Yeah, I later realized that my comment was not really addressing what you were interested in.
I read you as questioning the argument “separation of concerns, therefore, separation of epistemic vs instrumental”—not questioning the conclusion, which is what I initially responded to.
I think separation-of-concerns just shouldn’t be viewed as an argument in itself (ie, identifying some concerns which you can make a distinction between does not mean you should separate them). That conclusion rests on many other considerations.
Part of my thinking in writing the post was that humans have a relatively high degree of separation between epistemic and instrumental even without special scientific/rationalist memes. So, you can observe the phenomenon, take it as an example of separation-of-concerns, and think about why that may happen without thinking about abandoning evolved strategies.
Sort of like the question “why would an evolved species invent mathematics?”—why would an evolved species have a concept of truth? (But, I’m somewhat conflating ‘having a concept of truth’ and ‘having beliefs at all, which an outside observer might meaningfully apply a concept of truth to’.)
Yeah, I later realized that my comment was not really addressing what you were interested in.
I read you as questioning the argument “separation of concerns, therefore, separation of epistemic vs instrumental”—not questioning the conclusion, which is what I initially responded to.
I think separation-of-concerns just shouldn’t be viewed as an argument in itself (ie, identifying some concerns which you can make a distinction between does not mean you should separate them). That conclusion rests on many other considerations.
Part of my thinking in writing the post was that humans have a relatively high degree of separation between epistemic and instrumental even without special scientific/rationalist memes. So, you can observe the phenomenon, take it as an example of separation-of-concerns, and think about why that may happen without thinking about abandoning evolved strategies.
Sort of like the question “why would an evolved species invent mathematics?”—why would an evolved species have a concept of truth? (But, I’m somewhat conflating ‘having a concept of truth’ and ‘having beliefs at all, which an outside observer might meaningfully apply a concept of truth to’.)