Why is there even any need for these ephemeral “beyond-isms”, “above-isms”, “meta-isms”, etc?
Sure, not all people think/act all the time 100% rationally (not to mention groups/societies/nations) but that should not be a reason to take this as law of physics, baseline, axiom, and build a “cathedral of thoughts” upon it (or any other theology). Don’t understand or cannot explain something? Same thing—not a reason to pick randomly some “explanation” (=bias, baseline) and then mask it by logically built theories.
Naively, one would say: since we began to discover logic, math and rational (scientific) approach in general thousands of years ago, there’s no need to waste our precious time on any metacrap.
Well, there’s only one obvious problem—look who is doing it: not a rational engine but a fleshy animal with wetware processor. Largely influenced even by its reptilian brain or amygdala, with reward function that includes stuff like good/bad, feelings, FFF reflexes, etc.
Plus the treachery of intuitive and subconscious thinking—even if this “brackground” brain processing is 100% “rational”, logical and based on our knowledge, it disrupts the main “visible” rational line of thought simply because it “just appears”, somehow pops up… and to be rigorous, one has to in principle check or even ” reverse engineer” all the bits and pieces to really “see” whether they are “correct” (whatever it may mean).
The point?
As we all know, it’s damn hard to be rational, even in restricted and well defined areas, not talking about “real life”… as all the biases and fallacies remind us.
Often it’s next to impossible to even simply realize what just “popped up” from the background (often heavily biased—analogies, similarities, etc.) and what’s “truly rational” (rigorous/logical/unbiased) in your main line of thought. And there’s the whole quicksand field of axioms, (often unmentioned) assumptions, selections, restrictions and other baseline shifts/picks and biases.
So, did these meta-ists really HAVE TO go “beyond” rationality? Because they “found limits”? Or somehow “exhausted possibilities” of this method?
Since, you know, mentioning culture, community, society, etc. does not really sound like the “killer application” for me: these subjects are (from the rationalistic point of view) to a large extent exactly about biases, fallacies, baselines, axioms, etc—certainly much more than about logic or reasoning.
Why is there even any need for these ephemeral “beyond-isms”, “above-isms”, “meta-isms”, etc?
Sure, not all people think/act all the time 100% rationally (not to mention groups/societies/nations) but that should not be a reason to take this as law of physics, baseline, axiom, and build a “cathedral of thoughts” upon it (or any other theology). Don’t understand or cannot explain something? Same thing—not a reason to pick randomly some “explanation” (=bias, baseline) and then mask it by logically built theories.
Naively, one would say: since we began to discover logic, math and rational (scientific) approach in general thousands of years ago, there’s no need to waste our precious time on any metacrap.
Well, there’s only one obvious problem—look who is doing it: not a rational engine but a fleshy animal with wetware processor. Largely influenced even by its reptilian brain or amygdala, with reward function that includes stuff like good/bad, feelings, FFF reflexes, etc.
Plus the treachery of intuitive and subconscious thinking—even if this “brackground” brain processing is 100% “rational”, logical and based on our knowledge, it disrupts the main “visible” rational line of thought simply because it “just appears”, somehow pops up… and to be rigorous, one has to in principle check or even ” reverse engineer” all the bits and pieces to really “see” whether they are “correct” (whatever it may mean).
The point?
As we all know, it’s damn hard to be rational, even in restricted and well defined areas, not talking about “real life”… as all the biases and fallacies remind us.
Often it’s next to impossible to even simply realize what just “popped up” from the background (often heavily biased—analogies, similarities, etc.) and what’s “truly rational” (rigorous/logical/unbiased) in your main line of thought. And there’s the whole quicksand field of axioms, (often unmentioned) assumptions, selections, restrictions and other baseline shifts/picks and biases.
So, did these meta-ists really HAVE TO go “beyond” rationality? Because they “found limits”? Or somehow “exhausted possibilities” of this method?
Since, you know, mentioning culture, community, society, etc. does not really sound like the “killer application” for me: these subjects are (from the rationalistic point of view) to a large extent exactly about biases, fallacies, baselines, axioms, etc—certainly much more than about logic or reasoning.