When you write about rationality as a way to defeat self-certainty, I’m excited and grateful. That’s also how I use it. I’m more nervous when you write as if rationality is a tool that inevitably to accurate beliefs.
I think, if you’ll look at what’s said above, the idea is that to get anywhere we must follow a course that partakes of the rationality-pattern, of evidence-processing. Nothing is said of all problems being solvable. Nothing is being said of humans becoming perfect through following, with their finite computing power and noisy brains, some rationalist’s apprehension of the Way.
But it is equally an error to say, “This Way will not always give you a solution; therefore, it must not be the true Way; therefore, to draw maps without looking must be the true Way, and will always yield a solution.”
When you write about rationality as a way to defeat self-certainty, I’m excited and grateful. That’s also how I use it. I’m more nervous when you write as if rationality is a tool that inevitably to accurate beliefs.
I think, if you’ll look at what’s said above, the idea is that to get anywhere we must follow a course that partakes of the rationality-pattern, of evidence-processing. Nothing is said of all problems being solvable. Nothing is being said of humans becoming perfect through following, with their finite computing power and noisy brains, some rationalist’s apprehension of the Way.
But it is equally an error to say, “This Way will not always give you a solution; therefore, it must not be the true Way; therefore, to draw maps without looking must be the true Way, and will always yield a solution.”
More on the concept of “a priori” tomorrow.