
The End of Rationalism: An Interview with John Ralston Saul (2001) - walterbell
http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/saul.html
======
muraiki
I find the author's discussion of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil a bit
confusing, precisely because the tree holds the knowledge of _good and evil_,
not the type of scientific knowledge the author seems to be discussing.
Forgive me for a bit of a rant, but I think that understanding how to
interpret this story actually helps make his point better.

The message isn't to be innocent of scientific knowledge -- it's to be
innocent of evil. And that evil is immediately made manifest not just in Eve
blaming the snake, but perhaps more heinously by Adam blaming not only Eve but
God: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I
ate". Adam and Eve demonstrate a renunciation of self responsiblity and
ultimately, of the gift of free will that they have been given, for the sake
of trying to falsely appear blameless. Contrast this with the new Adam,
Christ, who takes the blame of others upon Himself (even though He is
blameless) demonstrating not just His divinity but _what humanity truly is_.

So we see that the message of the fall, once fully illumined by Christ, is
really that we ought to love one another by covering one another's sins (isn't
this forgiveness?) It is in this that we become God-like: not by simply eating
of the tree. And if we use only our rational minds we might not ever arrive at
this point, because to make oneself responsible for things one isn't
responsible for -- whether it is problems others face or the outright wrong
things other people have done -- is beyond rationality and is instead both
truly human and divine.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree RE Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; that's what I was taught about
it and it makes perfect sense in the context. But I disagree with your last
sentence:

> _because to make oneself responsible for things one isn 't responsible for
> -- whether it is problems others face or the outright wrong things other
> people have done -- is beyond rationality and is instead both truly human
> and divine._

Actuall, covering for other people's sins is perfectly rational if it makes
others likely to cover for your sins as well. Cooperation is hard to ensure,
but it usually has better payoffs than minding only your own interest. C.f.
iterated prisoner's dilemma, etc.

~~~
muraiki
I understand what you're saying. I didn't want to make a long post even
longer, but I will try to clarify without hopefully writing stuff that's too
obtusely theological. :)

Christ says that one of the greatest expressions of love is to die for a
friend. But who is it that dies for one's enemy? Yet this is what Christ does
for humanity, forgiving them even while hanging upon the cross, and it is what
He calls all Christians to offer to their enemies.

One way I think of this is that there is one mode of living, which I'll call
economic, where we do things in order to receive things. That's what you've
described in "if it makes others likely to cover for your sins as well". But
what the Christian tries to live, what St. Silouan the Athonite would term
theanthropic living, is that of humility: of loving even when there is no
chance of receiving a reward. One might argue that in this other mode of life,
one is awaiting some kind of heavenly reward. But I don't think that is the
case because as one approaches God closer, one sees just how _unlike_ God one
is; as a saint has said "none of the saints have counted themselves worthy of
Heaven."

What I mean is that in approaching God we become aware in the depths of our
heart of our fundamental wrongness towards others and toward God, and the
great darkness that lies within ourselves. This isn't some kind of masochistic
pleasure in self-hatred. It's an awareness that penetrates one's entire being.
And _balancing this recognition_ is that God Himself loves us even unto death.
Despite this incredible self-awareness, we are indeed not lost. Even more than
that, we are empowered to become like God (theosis). The result of this is the
joyful sadness of the theanthropic life: one accounts only oneself as
deserving of death, while one sees all others as worthy of the Kingdom of
Heaven. And really, this is what Christ Himself did in His life, His death,
and His descent into Hades. But Hades could not contain God, and St. Silouan
says that death also cannot contain any truly theanthropic person, for they
become blameless. This is how death becomes the gateway to divine life.

Perhaps there is a rational way to justify suffering and even dying at the
hands of one's enemy. I'd honestly be interested in hearing such an argument!

~~~
muraiki
Whoops, one correction, as I misquoted St. Silouan. It's not that the
theanthropic person become blameless (as in sinless), but that they become
beyond judgment. I've tried to explain some pretty weighty concepts in a very
short amount of text. For those interested in St. Silouan's thought I
recommend the books "The Enlargement of the Heart" and "The Hidden Man of the
Heart," but they require a bit of background that probably isn't appropriate
for those unfamiliar with Orthodox theology.

------
rlx0x
Well that didn't make a whole lot of sense. The most methodical use of the
methods of rationality you'll find are the natural sciences and they are
incredibly open to anyone interested. Its just that most people are not
actually interested at all. Nor are they in rationality.

This guy is a bit like a confused version of Noam Chomsky.

~~~
littletimmy
He's essentially trying to say that there is more to knowledge than reason.
Which is true and often ignored in today's "scientific" society [for example,
the demise of humanities funding in colleges]. Proust is completely
_unreasonable_ when he talks about certain smells evoking memories of his
mama, but it is unfair to dismiss his thoughts - as many uber-rationalists do
- as worthless sentiment.

~~~
harshreality
It's reasonable, and scientifically compatible, to talk about smells evoking
memories of parents. There isn't a rational process that creates the link
between a sensory trigger and a memory, but there's a rational process and
scientific field(s) of study by which that link (neurobiology) and its
formation (psychology) can be understood.

That kind of argument seems to me like, "Nobody [unless there's a God]
rationally constructed the theory of gravity, or the complexity of fluid
dynamics, therefore there's more to gravity or fluid dynamics than can be
understood through rationality and science."

~~~
littletimmy
Scientifically compatible, yes. Reasonable, no. Emotion is not reason; it is a
completely separate enterprise. That's partly what the article is talking
about.

~~~
harshreality
Does that "separate enterprise" amount to knowledge? I don't think so. It's an
artifact of neurology. It's an important artifact, and one that can't be
ignored (when studying psychology or sociology, or managing humans, or
planning events involving humans), but nevertheless that emotional artifact is
not useful knowledge. Only the [scientifically and rationally understandable]
mechanisms behind the emotional and sentimental connections are useful
knowledge. The connections themselves may serve sociological purposes,
enabling cultural knowledge generation and accumulation, not to mention
improving societal stability, but in themselves emotional artifacts are not
knowledge.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
You fly through words like "knowledge" and "useful" without giving them proper
thought. What do these words mean? We lived in a philosophy-starved culture.
Too much social media, not enough deep thought.

And how can you know that what you call rationality is also not an artifact of
neurology? In fact, Gödel proved that if you don't doubt your own rationality,
you are in fact being irrational.

I think science is cheapened by this sort of blind faith. The defining
characteristic of the scientific attitude is doubt, not certainty.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>And how can you know that what you call rationality is also not an artifact
of neurology? In fact, Gödel proved that if you don't doubt your own
rationality, you are in fact being irrational.

That is not at all what Goedel's theorems actually say.

>We lived in a philosophy-starved culture. Too much social media, not enough
deep thought.

No, we live in a culture that _loves_ to engage in cheap, shoddy
philosophizing by generalizing incorrectly from facts.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> That is not at all what Goedel's theorems actually say.

An informal description of his second incompleteness theorem (from the
"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"):

"For any consistent system F within which a certain amount of elementary
arithmetic can be carried out, the consistency of F cannot be proved in F
itself."

One example of a sufficient "certain amount of arithmetic" for this to apply
to a system is the use of the integer numbers, addition and multiplication.
Such a system can no longer prove its own consistency.

If you think that this does not apply to human efforts at rationality, I would
like you to explain why.

Debate becomes cheap and shoddy not when someone is wrong (I could be), but
when you resort to name-calling instead of pointing out where you think the
mistakes are.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>If you think that this does not apply to human efforts at rationality, I
would like you to explain why.

Human beings aren't proof systems. We don't operate under conditions of
certainty via deductive reasoning. We're _inductive_ (or rather, abductive)
reasoners from the get-go.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Sure, and abductive reasoning can be formalized in certain modal logics with
Kripke semantics.

What Gödel tells us is that, as long as you have a sufficiently powerful
formal system, you cannot prove the consistency of the system itself. Modal
logics are no exception.

If you are a computationalist (that is to say, you believe that the human mind
can be emulated by a Turing machine), then you might want to take a look at
Gödel, Escher, Bach, where Hofstadter discusses how the second incompleteness
theorem applies to Turing machines.

You might also enjoy "Forever Undecided" by Smullyan. It uses puzzles to guide
you to an intuition about what the incompleteness theorems means to human
knowledge and its limitations. In the worst case it's a fun read.

Peace!

~~~
eli_gottlieb
> Sure, and abductive reasoning can be formalized in certain modal logics with
> Kripke semantics.

No, it can't. Abductive reasoning is probabilistic modelling, and notably,
there's a line of research by Cristian Calude showing that you can soundly,
non-paradoxically place probabilities on Halting questions.

(Computational tractability is still an obstacle with his current approach,
but it has been shown _not_ to generate paradoxes, which is already a major
step forward.)

>you might want to take a look at Gödel, Escher, Bach, where Hofstadter
discusses how the second incompleteness theorem applies to Turing machines.

This is backwards: halting problems and Kolmogorov complexity for Turing
machines _give us_ the two Incompleteness Theorems for proof systems, via
_Chaitin 's_ Incompleteness Theorem.

Which also neatly gives a way around the Second Incompleteness Theorem: a
hierarchical-probabilistic reasoner can create an abstract, _compressed_ model
of themselves which consists of small-enough amounts of information that they
can reason about its behavior without becoming subject to Chaitin
Incompleteness.

------
pron
He mentions ethics as a quality, but I think it is empathy which is more
fundamental. Ethics can be the result of empathy and reason, but empathy
cannot be a product of any of the qualities he mentions. Which leads us to his
reading of the story of the Garden of Eden. A more nuanced reading notes that
it is not the tree of knowledge but the tree of knowledge _of good and evil_.
The serpent says to the woman, "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing _good and evil_ ". God then acknowledges
this and says, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and
evil". So it is not _knowledge_ that came from the serpent, but knowledge and
ethics, and that is what made man godlike.

~~~
leereeves
> Ethics can be the result of empathy and reason, but empathy cannot be a
> product of any of the qualities he mentions.

He claims it can, but I agree with you. Empathy is an emotional quality, while
common sense, creativity, ethics, intuition, memory, and reason are not.

------
walterbell
A few excerpts form Saul's satirical dictionary, "The Doubter's Companion",
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary-
Aggr...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary-
Aggressive/dp/0743236602)

 _" CALM: A state of emotion which is overrated except in religious retreats..
The Captain of the Titanic was no doubt pleased that his male passengers in
first class remained calm as they waited to drown. Had they been less
controlled, they might have gained some small satisfaction in passing their
time by throwing him overboard._

 _CROISSANT: Islamic symbol of paradise in the shape of a quarter moon. As an
act of religious denigration during the Turkish invasion of Europe, Austrian
bakers reduced the croissant to a breakfast bun._

 _DENIAL: Characteristic reflex of a technocrat. Since actions are the result
of solutions arrived at by experts, there can be no error. Error is replaced
by a linear succession of right answers. This requires the systematic denial
of error when each preceding answer fails to do the job in spite of being
right._

 _ECONOMICS: The romance of truth through measurement._

 _" FREE SPEECH ... is afflicted by two widely held, contradictory opinions.
The first is that we have it; the second is that it is a luxury.

How can you have something which exists only as an existential act? ...
freedom of speech is only maintained at sufficiently high levels through
constant use. The exhausting effort which this requires involves a willingness
to listen combined with a desire to be heard. Listening means taking into
account, not simply hearing what people have to say. And being heard means
being exposed to criticism, even ridicule.

.. A new method of limitation involves arguing that free speech, having been
won in the absolute, can now be treated as a luxury. What people need above
all, the argument runs, is prosperity. With the physical well-being and
stability that brings, people have the time and energy to engage in free
speech. It follows, sotto voce, that the more unsuccessful those in
responsible positions are at running the economy of a country, the less the
citizenry should use their free speech."_

------
unabst
Logic is hollow until we add references to reality. That is what physics is.
It's filling variables with real data. Without data, mathematics is completely
hollow. Skip this step, and it's all constrained fiction, but fiction
nevertheless.

Comparatively speaking, English is an extremely logical language and it does
enforce a level of active reasoning on the speaker[0]. Combined with the
emphasis on individuality and the value of self, both being highly western
values, we have ample examples of what John calls the bastardization of reason
and aggressive common sense. It's everywhere... politics, pseudo-science, non-
science, and even simple everyday conversations are full of reasons that
actually are immaterial, which makes them illusionary, but that are encouraged
by the culture and the language we use to express ourselves. Worse yet,
feeding off our obsession and trust of science (and in many cases celebrity),
communicators repeatedly abuse reason to accomplish their motives, be it
commercial or personal. Donald Trump exemplifies the bastardization of reason
and aggressive common sense. He's betting his campaign on it, and it's working
because these observations of western culture are true.

Beyond that point, regarding "6 qualities" John is easier to challenge on the
merits. But if one subscribes to scientific models instead of axioms [1], then
it is but another model which is worth analysis and pursuing for all of it's
bases and applications. In terms of the physics of this, the other elements
(common sense, creativity, ethics, intuition, memory) would be the input
(hopefully evidence but not to be confused) and reasoning would be the logic
(hopefully mathematically accurate but not to be without checks and balances).

Anecdotally, as evidence of hollow reasons there is the _excuse_. We are all
trained to make good excuses growing up, but what are they really? They are
simple statements used to shift blame, and are backed first and foremost by a
motive (not science). Hence the smarter we are the more excuses we can
generate, and the better they will be. Most of them may even be true. But the
point is, given the circumstances and our intelligence, we can pretty much
reason ourselves and others to think anything when trusted. When we start
twisting the facts and deceiving even ourselves, we have confabulation, and
this too is a real and serious problem [2].

\--

[0] Wish I had a quick reference, but by being the Lingua Franca of science
English has been pushed to be easier to reason with. Japanese for example,
does not have plurals and no subject-object distinction. It is harder to do
math and science when the language doesn't care how many or what is objective.

[1] "The semantic view of theories, which identifies scientific theories with
models rather than propositions, has replaced the received view as the
dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science." (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#About_theori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#About_theories)
)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation)

