on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason. STIPULATIONS It is rational to hold opin

http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Closed-Mind-Understanding/dp/0812696859/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/181-2526688-3304011Thoughts on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason.

STIPULATIONS

It is rational to hold opinions.

It is rational to hold desperately to opinions.

It is rational to hold desperately to opinions even in the face of overwhelming argumentative evidence that one cannot refute.

It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs as a deliberate choice if one prefers to imagine the world as one wishes, versus represent it correspondingly.

It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs and to conduct constant selection bias because there exist a multitude of applications in which arational, and seemingly irrational behavior are beneficial strategies, immune to argumentative change.

THEREFORE

The rationality of a belief is not a truth proposition post-hoc, but a volitional necessity given the preconditions set by one’s ignorance.

This constrains rationality to constituent ignorance.

??No opinion then is criticizable as irrational?? Or is it that only simple and well constructed ideas are criticizable as irrational.

ABSENT FROM CONSIDERATION

The opportunity cost of erroneous ideas is neutral.

The cost of conducting persuasive argument is immaterial.

The difference in cost between the construction and distribution of various false and deceptive arguments, and truthful and honest arguments is immaterial.

The persistence of human cognitive biases, of metaphysical assumptions, of religious, philosophical, intellectual, and normative convictions, are rational tools, and therefore immaterial.

FALSE DICHOTOMY

First criticism as a false dichotomy:

1) Irrational: a statement that is internally inconsistent in construction, and we cannot determine if it would produce desired outcomes, or if it would produce undesirable outcomes.

2) arational: a statement that is not internally consistent in construction but whose use produces desirable outcomes.

3) rational: a statement that is internally consistent, and whose use produces desired outcomes.

As far as I know, an arational argument is scientifically demonstrable (knowledge of use), even if scientifically inexplicable (knowledge of construction).

As far as I know, a rational argument must be both explicable (knowledge of construction), and demonstrable(knowledge of use).

As far as I know, an irrational argument is neither explicable (knowledge of construction) nor demonstrable(knowledge of use).

FURTHERMORE

The absence of a logic of cooperation renders all moral arguments extant untestable, yet all political arguments are governed by moral constraints. As such no moral arguments can be rational?

The use of language consisting of aggregated meanings (functions) masks the underlying assumptions and renders arguments untestable, and deceptive.

The use of in-group identity bias literally ‘pays’ people to believe things that are irrational as stated, but rational to pursue for their group’s purposes. In other words, religious and cultural ‘beliefs’ produce high returns, and therefore may not be rational, or irrational, but arational.

CONCLUSIONS

Therefore unlike the calm, timeless, costless world of scientific philosophy, and its pursuit of platonic truth, the opposite is true, particularly under democracy: we are fighting, always, to use the violence of government to extract money from some purpose to apply it to some other purpose, in real time, with real consequences, and ignorance is a luxury in the philosophy of science but not in life.

Scientists consider the pursuit of truth independent of cost. No one else has that luxury. Scientists are a privileged class and advocate the belief systems of a privileged class. Unlike scientists, who are not temporally bound, or theologians who are neither temporally, or existentially bound, human action requires we compensate for temporal and existential constraints, as well as opportunity costs.

Because the purpose of thought is action. We do not live in the garden of eden. And that is the culture of the Academy: the Cathedral. The pretense of costlessness in a world constituted of the necessity of human action guided entirely by prices.