Of Reason

[shkrobius]

...What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming, than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in all the universe beside there is no such thing? Or that those things, which with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all?Read more... )

Comments

[nedosionist]

You're asking two different questions, shifting the meaning of "rational" in a non-trivial way: about human rationality and about rationality of the universe. Laws of nature provide the link between the two, and while on one hand known laws of nature are indeed our own generalizations (human rationality), I'd say that in another sense realist view is appropriate, and law of nature do exist, as as-yet-unknown regularities (rationality of nature): similar objects in similar circumstances act in similar ways. But your answer to the puzzle why laws exist is begging the question: we can say that fundamental constants are product of chance in multiverse, which is similar to your argument here, assuming axiomatically existence or at least possibility of some laws. If we argue, as you do, that existence of laws of nature themselves (rationality of nature) is a product of chance, you merely shift the burden and axiomatize chance. Then: Why chance exists? It is not clear that existence of chance is any more fundamental than existence of laws of

[shkrobius]

I am only suggesting that we are rational because the world is rational. There are no two meanings of the word, only one. Had the world been irrational, it would be useless to ask questions at all. Any questions. Assuming that a question WHY has an answer already presupposes that the world is either rational or quasirational.

[nedosionist]

Granted; but in your comment you are shifting from ontology to epistemology. Your post itself suggests a lot stronger reading. In truly irrational world, that is, the world without laws of nature at all, there is at best utter chaos (even that, if we can assume preexistence of chance). There are no organisms, no evolution, no cells, no molecules, no atoms. So by a version of anthropic principle, if life exists (or anything at all for that matter), then the world is already necessarily rational.

[shkrobius]

But this IS a world without laws, if you follow a materialist viewpoint. Laws are regular patterns suggested by human mind. They connect concepts rather than material objects. It may be as well that these are purely imaginary patterns or the ones that are cast by our own minds so there is always an agreemnt with observtion. It is less an epistemiological problem than that of the ontological status of the laws. In any case, it is insufficient to have laws to be rational. You also need the ability to follow these laws. The chaos that you mention is not, actually, chaos at all, just each particle of that world follows its own laws. So you would have an astronomical number of laws, but an infinitely caable rational mind would certainly be able to follow it all. So there is no reason to believe that there is no life in chaos.

[nedosionist]

That's exactly why I referred to duality of "laws of nature" in my root comment. You're describing the laws of nature that science (that is, rational human mind) uses. The complementary position is realist, as I said above; which is at least compatible with some materialisms. While laws of nature as used by humans indeed connect concepts, the laws of nature per se are those very certain regularities that you mention, and relate material objects. Earth revolves around the Sun, water freezes into ice, speed of light is constant, ratio of mass of alpha particle to electron is constant and so on. That is your rationality of nature, in absence of a rational observer. In a counterfactual irrational world where these laws (actual regularities) are absent, each material object down to subatomic particles would exhibit a behavior akin to free will that we discussed . A planet would rotate a bit in this direction, a bit in that; electric charges would not be quantifiable, light speed would vary etc.

an astronomical number of lawsWhy would

[shkrobius]

If you look through pink glasses everything looks pink. It does not mean that the word is pink. If our mind can only recognize regular patterns, everything will appear regular. If it can handle only so many premises, everything will appear to have so many premises. I remind that cognitive capabilities do not need to yield an accurate picture of the world. Rather, they need to provide the one that helps to survive. It is hard to see what could be a rational basis of realism. The materialists of the first kind do have a point

[nedosionist]

If I understood you accurately, you're either conceding or were not interested in the first place in more fundamental aspects of you prior argument about possibility of irrational world (w/o regularities) as we know it now. Instead, your focus seems to be on macro-level events observable to early humans: ecology, weather, society etc. If it is so, and we accept basic regularities at molecular level and down, then the onus is on skeptic to show why a world rational (in a sense of regularized) on a micro-level becomes irrational on a macro-scale.

Observation of regularities is no evidence for rationality of nature.
As I said, the culprit here is a shifting meaning of "rational". If rational nature is the one governed by laws-regularities then observation provides sufficient evidence.

It is also unclear to me why you seem to view anthropic principle as a weak device in this argument.

[shkrobius]

The level does not matter.

[shkrobius]

It matters not, because you follow into the same trap, making no difference between something real and the object that the mind recognizes in this reality. Regularities pertain to the concepts themselves, and the scale does not matter. If you expect a regular pattrrn and you are given chaotic input, you will observe order in this chaos as you filter the rest. It simply does not exist for you.

[nedosionist]

I understand your argument, you've already made this point couple times. This is a legitimate epistemological issue, but it is not the final answer to this problem. We have mind that, given an input, can classify it as rational/regularity or as irrational/chaotic; and we have inputs that may be either regular or chaotic. You're are stressing a possibility of false positive - deciding that input is patterned/regular/rational when it is not. However, you've taken to argue (i.e. when you say that level does not matter) a much more radical point - that all inputs are in fact chaotic, or at least have to be presumed so. This way you're setting up for false negative.

Presumption of rationality would be beneficial in an environment where aggregate or average costs of such false positives (looking for patterns in chaos) would be less than costs of false negatives (ignoring existing regularities).

[shkrobius]

Correct, but the whole question is why would that be so? Forgive my bluntness, but rephrasing it in so many ways does not amount to answering it.

[nedosionist]

I see two answers to this question, and I split the branches accordingly. First, taking as our environment the whole of nature, as you suggested in the post, if nature is rational (as defined), then recognizing these regularities should be advantageous. and I showed above that nature is necessarily rational, in other words a truly irrational world is impossible. Hence rationality is beneficial.

Second, on a micro-level people might have simply stumbled into a local environment where natural observable regularities were conducive. As I suggested in the other branch, an example might be winter/summer cycle. In equatorial Africa benefits from foreseeing winter would be small, and balance would be skewed towards irrationality. In ice-age Europe, the same benefits would be considerably larger, and hence advantages from emerging rationality.

Blessed are You…..Who gave the heart understanding to distinguish between day and night.

[nedosionist]

If we accept regularities and focus on survival advantages of recognizing them, sun would be an easy culprit. The simplest regularities observable by early humans would be daily (light/dark) and seasonal (cold warm) cycles. Adaptation to a daily cycle is done instinctively, however recognition by early humans that in moderate climate long time after it is hot and there's plenty of food it is always cold and scarce, and then warm again, and therefore it may help to store supplies (fruits or animal hides) - should give a major survival advantage in winter months.

For this argument we need only to kickstart the process of recognition of regularities. Even if we know that we have pink glasses, something in the world is still actually pink. And this, by the way, may help to account for why rationality or at least civilization didn't develop in Africa.

[shkrobius]

You do not need rationality or regularity to adapt to such conditions. Conceptualizing day and night or winter is winter does not help surviving in day or winter. Again, think like Bergson: practical activity can be purely instinctual, while intelligence is only rationalizing what is instinctual, it has no bearing on anything occurring in reality.

[nedosionist]

Conceptualizing winter as winter does not help surviving. Making descriptive inference and actionable prediction about temperature patterns does. Yes, adaptation can be done instinctively; but rationality may speed up adaptation. Of two early humans, one with minimal recognition of this regularity (rational), and one without it (instinctive), I don't need to argue that the latter doesn't adapt at all. It is sufficient that the rational one adapts faster, for him to gain an incremental advantage.

[shkrobius]

We have radar, satellites and whatnot, and we still routinely fail to predict temperature patterns. Rapid adaptation always beats smarts. We do live in a chaotic environment. A thesis that intelligence pays off finds little support in nature. I recall there was a lively debate in this journal on this very topic a while ago,
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/145318.html
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/148402.html

Intelligence and rationality ARE greatly overrated, I fully agree with the first kind of materialists on this point. But I do not value either one of them because they help to increase one's fitness. I do not believe that they do and I believe even less that they exist because they do. The problem, and an intractable problem a that, emerges only if you hold such beliefs.