There’s a dynamic here that I think is somewhat important: socially recognized gnosis.
That is, contemporary American society views doctors as knowing things that laypeople don’t know, and views physicists as knowing things that laypeople don’t know, and so on. Suppose a doctor examines a person and says “ah, they have condition X,” and Amy responds with “why do you say that?”, and the doctor responds with “sorry, I don’t think I can generate a short enough explanation that is understandable to you.” It seems like the doctor’s response to Amy is ‘socially justified’, in that the doctor won’t really lose points for referring to a pre-existing distinction between those-in-the-know and laypeople (except maybe for doing it rudely or gracelessly). There’s an important sense in which society understands that it in fact takes many years of focused study to become a physicist, and physicists should not be constrained by ‘immediate public justification’ or something similar.
But then there’s a social question, of how to grant that status. One might imagine that we want astronomers to be able to do their astronomy and have their unintelligibility be respected, while we don’t want to respect the unintelligibility of astrologers.
So far I’ve been talking ‘nationally’ or ‘globally’ but I think a similar question holds locally. Do we want it to be the case that ‘rationalists as a whole’ think that meditators have gnosis and that this is respectable, or do we want ‘rationalists as a whole’ to think that any such respect is provisional or ‘at individual discretion’ or a mistake?
That is, when you say:
I don’t consider this a problem, but I also recognize that within some parts of the rationalist community that is considered a problem (I model you as being one such person, Duncan).
I feel hopeful that we can settle whether or not this is a problem (or at least achieve much more mutual understanding and clarity).
So it is true that I can’t provide adequate episteme of my claim, and maybe that’s what you’re reacting to.
This feels like the more important part (“if you don’t have episteme, why do you believe it?”) but I think there’s a nearly-as-important other half, which is something like “presenting as having respected gnosis” vs. “presenting as having unrespected gnosis.” If you’re like “as a doctor, it is my considered medical opinion that everyone has spirituality”, that’s very different from “look, I can’t justify this and so you should take it with a grain of salt, but I think everyone secretly has spirituality”. I don’t think you’re at the first extreme, but I think Duncan is reacting to signals along that dimension.
There’s a dynamic here that I think is somewhat important: socially recognized gnosis.
That is, contemporary American society views doctors as knowing things that laypeople don’t know, and views physicists as knowing things that laypeople don’t know, and so on. Suppose a doctor examines a person and says “ah, they have condition X,” and Amy responds with “why do you say that?”, and the doctor responds with “sorry, I don’t think I can generate a short enough explanation that is understandable to you.” It seems like the doctor’s response to Amy is ‘socially justified’, in that the doctor won’t really lose points for referring to a pre-existing distinction between those-in-the-know and laypeople (except maybe for doing it rudely or gracelessly). There’s an important sense in which society understands that it in fact takes many years of focused study to become a physicist, and physicists should not be constrained by ‘immediate public justification’ or something similar.
But then there’s a social question, of how to grant that status. One might imagine that we want astronomers to be able to do their astronomy and have their unintelligibility be respected, while we don’t want to respect the unintelligibility of astrologers.
So far I’ve been talking ‘nationally’ or ‘globally’ but I think a similar question holds locally. Do we want it to be the case that ‘rationalists as a whole’ think that meditators have gnosis and that this is respectable, or do we want ‘rationalists as a whole’ to think that any such respect is provisional or ‘at individual discretion’ or a mistake?
That is, when you say:
I feel hopeful that we can settle whether or not this is a problem (or at least achieve much more mutual understanding and clarity).
This feels like the more important part (“if you don’t have episteme, why do you believe it?”) but I think there’s a nearly-as-important other half, which is something like “presenting as having respected gnosis” vs. “presenting as having unrespected gnosis.” If you’re like “as a doctor, it is my considered medical opinion that everyone has spirituality”, that’s very different from “look, I can’t justify this and so you should take it with a grain of salt, but I think everyone secretly has spirituality”. I don’t think you’re at the first extreme, but I think Duncan is reacting to signals along that dimension.