(Also, I think rationality should still be less totalizing than many people take it to be, because a lot of people replace common sense with rationality. Instead one should totalize themselves very slowly, over years, watching for all sorts of mis-steps and mistakes, and merge their past life with their new life. Sure, rationality will eventually pervade your thinking, but that doesn’t mean at age 22 you throw out all of society’s wisdom and roll your own.)
Reservationism is the proper antidote to the (prematurely) totalizing nature of rationality.
That is: take whatever rationality tells you, and judge it with your own existing common sense, practical reason, and understanding of the world. Reject whatever seems to you to be unreasonable. Take on whatever seems to you to be right and proper. Excise or replace existing parts of your epistemology and worldview only when it genuinely seems to you that those parts are dysfunctional or incorrect, regardless of what the rationality you encounter is telling you about them.
(Don’t take this quick summary as a substitute for reading the linked essay; read it yourself, judge it for yourself.)
Note, by the way, that rationality—as taught in the Sequences—alreadyrecommendsthis! If anyone fails to approach the practice of rationality in this proper way, they are failing to do that which we have explicitly been told to do! If your rationality is “prematurely totalizing”, then you’re doing it wrong.
Consider also how many times we have heard a version of this: “When I read the Sequences, the ideas found therein seemed so obvious—like they’d put into words things I’ve always somehow known or thought, but had never been able to formulate so clearly and concisely!”. This is not a coincidence! If you learn of a “rationality”-related idea, and it seems to you to be obviously correct, such that you find that not only is it obvious that you should integrate it into your worldview, but indeed that you’ve already integrated it (so naturally and perfectly does it fit)—well, good! But if you encounter an idea that is strange, and counterintuitive, then examine it well, before you rush to integrate it; examine it with your existing reason—which will necessarily include all the “rationality” that you have already carefully and prudently integrated.
But the “community” should not be totalizing.
(Also, I think rationality should still be less totalizing than many people take it to be, because a lot of people replace common sense with rationality. Instead one should totalize themselves very slowly, over years, watching for all sorts of mis-steps and mistakes, and merge their past life with their new life. Sure, rationality will eventually pervade your thinking, but that doesn’t mean at age 22 you throw out all of society’s wisdom and roll your own.)
Reservationism is the proper antidote to the (prematurely) totalizing nature of rationality.
That is: take whatever rationality tells you, and judge it with your own existing common sense, practical reason, and understanding of the world. Reject whatever seems to you to be unreasonable. Take on whatever seems to you to be right and proper. Excise or replace existing parts of your epistemology and worldview only when it genuinely seems to you that those parts are dysfunctional or incorrect, regardless of what the rationality you encounter is telling you about them.
(Don’t take this quick summary as a substitute for reading the linked essay; read it yourself, judge it for yourself.)
Note, by the way, that rationality—as taught in the Sequences—already recommends this! If anyone fails to approach the practice of rationality in this proper way, they are failing to do that which we have explicitly been told to do! If your rationality is “prematurely totalizing”, then you’re doing it wrong.
Consider also how many times we have heard a version of this: “When I read the Sequences, the ideas found therein seemed so obvious—like they’d put into words things I’ve always somehow known or thought, but had never been able to formulate so clearly and concisely!”. This is not a coincidence! If you learn of a “rationality”-related idea, and it seems to you to be obviously correct, such that you find that not only is it obvious that you should integrate it into your worldview, but indeed that you’ve already integrated it (so naturally and perfectly does it fit)—well, good! But if you encounter an idea that is strange, and counterintuitive, then examine it well, before you rush to integrate it; examine it with your existing reason—which will necessarily include all the “rationality” that you have already carefully and prudently integrated.
(And this, too, we have already been told.)