I have never thought of the twelve virtues as representative of what I think rationality is, and I’ve never heard anyone seriously defend them. They were written in a different time and for a different context than the one we’re in.
I think the phrase “the art of rationality” points to something coherent and large, and that “winning” or even “systematized winning” is not a good description of it. Winning is at best a diagnostic. I think a better description is something like this: we live in a world we were never intended to inhabit. There are challenges we face now that are totally unlike the challenges our ancestors faced and were selected for facing. The fact that we can do anything about this is pretty amazing, but we can probably do a lot better than what we do by default, by inventing and learning mental motions and patterns of mental motions our ancestors never needed, suited to our new environment (in the same way that parkour consists of physical motions our ancestors never needed, suited to the new environment of the urban jungle).
I agree that “winning” isn’t a good description, but to me it’s more a guiding principle than a diagnostic.
It feels like the kind of advice which is universally applicable but almost entirely useless, like “between consenting adults, there’s no right or wrong way to have sex; do whatever works for you”. (I feel like there must be a word for this kind of thing. It’s maybe not quite a platitude, but I guess it’s a subset of platitudes.)
That is, “rationality is about winning” doesn’t really help to point someone at how to win; but if you ever go “we’re not trying to win here, we’re trying to be rational”, you’ve gotten confused somewhere.
I have never thought of the twelve virtues as representative of what I think rationality is, and I’ve never heard anyone seriously defend them. They were written in a different time and for a different context than the one we’re in.
I think the phrase “the art of rationality” points to something coherent and large, and that “winning” or even “systematized winning” is not a good description of it. Winning is at best a diagnostic. I think a better description is something like this: we live in a world we were never intended to inhabit. There are challenges we face now that are totally unlike the challenges our ancestors faced and were selected for facing. The fact that we can do anything about this is pretty amazing, but we can probably do a lot better than what we do by default, by inventing and learning mental motions and patterns of mental motions our ancestors never needed, suited to our new environment (in the same way that parkour consists of physical motions our ancestors never needed, suited to the new environment of the urban jungle).
I agree that “winning” isn’t a good description, but to me it’s more a guiding principle than a diagnostic.
It feels like the kind of advice which is universally applicable but almost entirely useless, like “between consenting adults, there’s no right or wrong way to have sex; do whatever works for you”. (I feel like there must be a word for this kind of thing. It’s maybe not quite a platitude, but I guess it’s a subset of platitudes.)
That is, “rationality is about winning” doesn’t really help to point someone at how to win; but if you ever go “we’re not trying to win here, we’re trying to be rational”, you’ve gotten confused somewhere.