Anti-epistemology is a more general model of what is going on in the world than rationalizations are,
Yes.
so it should all reduce to rationalizations in the end.
Unless there are anti-epistemologies that are not rationalizations.
The general concept of a taboo seems to me to be an example of a forceful anti-epistemology that is common in most moral ideologies and is different from rationalization. When something is tabooed, it is deemed wrong to do, wrong to discuss, and wrong to even think about. The tabooed thing is something that people deem wrong because they cannot think about whether it is wrong without in the process doing something “wrong,” so there is no reason to suppose that they would find something wrong with the idea if they were to think about it, and try to consider whether the taboo fit with or ran against their moral sense.
A similar anti-epistemology is when people believe it is right to believe something is morally right… on up through all the meta-levels of beliefs about beliefs, so that they would already be committing the sin of doubt as soon as they begin to question whether they should believe that continuing to hold their moral beliefs is actually something they are morally obliged to do. (For ease of reference, I’ll call this anti-epistemology “faith”.)
One of the three things that rationalization, taboos, and faith have in common is that they are sufficiently general modes of thought to permit them to be applied to “is” propositions as well as “ought” propositions, and when these modes of thought are applied to objective propositions for which truth-values can be measured, they behave like anti-epistemologies. So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should presume that they behave as anti-epistemologies for morality, art criticisms and other subjects—even though the existence of something stable and objective to be known in these subjects is highly questionable. The modes of thought I just mentioned are themselves inherently flawed. They are not simply flawed ways of thinking about morality, in particular.
If you are looking for bad patterns of though that deal specifically with ethics, and cannot be applied to other subjects about which truthiness can be more objectively measured, the best objection (I can think of) by which to call those modes of thought invalid is not to try to figure out why they are anti-epistemologies, but instead to reject them for their failure to put forward any objectively measurable claims. There are many more ways for a mode of thought to go wrong than for it to go right, so until some thought pattern has provided evidence of being useful for making accurate judgments about something, it should not be presumed to be a useful way to think about something for which the accuracy of statements is difficult or impossible to judge.
Yes.
Unless there are anti-epistemologies that are not rationalizations.
The general concept of a taboo seems to me to be an example of a forceful anti-epistemology that is common in most moral ideologies and is different from rationalization. When something is tabooed, it is deemed wrong to do, wrong to discuss, and wrong to even think about. The tabooed thing is something that people deem wrong because they cannot think about whether it is wrong without in the process doing something “wrong,” so there is no reason to suppose that they would find something wrong with the idea if they were to think about it, and try to consider whether the taboo fit with or ran against their moral sense.
A similar anti-epistemology is when people believe it is right to believe something is morally right… on up through all the meta-levels of beliefs about beliefs, so that they would already be committing the sin of doubt as soon as they begin to question whether they should believe that continuing to hold their moral beliefs is actually something they are morally obliged to do. (For ease of reference, I’ll call this anti-epistemology “faith”.)
One of the three things that rationalization, taboos, and faith have in common is that they are sufficiently general modes of thought to permit them to be applied to “is” propositions as well as “ought” propositions, and when these modes of thought are applied to objective propositions for which truth-values can be measured, they behave like anti-epistemologies. So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should presume that they behave as anti-epistemologies for morality, art criticisms and other subjects—even though the existence of something stable and objective to be known in these subjects is highly questionable. The modes of thought I just mentioned are themselves inherently flawed. They are not simply flawed ways of thinking about morality, in particular.
If you are looking for bad patterns of though that deal specifically with ethics, and cannot be applied to other subjects about which truthiness can be more objectively measured, the best objection (I can think of) by which to call those modes of thought invalid is not to try to figure out why they are anti-epistemologies, but instead to reject them for their failure to put forward any objectively measurable claims. There are many more ways for a mode of thought to go wrong than for it to go right, so until some thought pattern has provided evidence of being useful for making accurate judgments about something, it should not be presumed to be a useful way to think about something for which the accuracy of statements is difficult or impossible to judge.
This is a much better explanation of the OPs point than the OPs own posting.