This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti
At a fundamental level, aren't science, logic, and rationality all the same thing? Let's call them "reason," as opposed to emotion. How can we possibly test reason as a memeplex, beyond noting that it usually works? We can test only examples of the use of reason. For example, we know from people's experience that it is safer to exit from an upper story of a building via the stairs or elevator than via a window. If we relied on an emotion, such as that we are so happy that we feel that we could fly out the window, then we're in trouble. But this example constitutes a test of one use of reason, not of reason as a memeplex.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I speak for Stanovich here, but I think of the three terms as distinct. Logic, for example, doesn't require the search for new empirical evidence, which is of the essence of science, and pretty important for rationality, too. If we as a species were satisfied with our existing database, having no curiosity to expand it, we would essentially be shutting down the memcomplex of science. This would still allow us to be perfectly logical in the way we work upon that existing database, the inferences we draw.
ReplyDeleteRationality involves two drives that pull us in opposite directions -- the one is the desire to be acquainted with facts, lots of facts (the encyclopedia side of rationality), the other is the desire to simplify and unify it all (concision as rationality). We think it marvellously rational when a mass of data can be boiled down to a single sentence, when an extensive treatise on morality can be summarized as "follow your bliss, and please help me follow mine," for example.
So, if I'm write that rationality is two different impulses, we have four different memeplexes on Stanovich's list: science, logic, the concision impulse, the encyclopedist impulse. I suppose any three of them can be bracketed for an analytical discussion/examination of the other.
I mostly like this quote because of the way it reminds me of the concept of pulling one's self up by one's bootstraps, Munchausen style. Or Commander McBrag, "There I was, in the desert. Out of water. The only way to save myself was to re-examine all my premises." "Goodness commander, whatever did you doooo."
Christopher,
ReplyDeleteI agree that the three (or four) are distinct. I said that they were the same only at a fundamental level--that all are types of reason as opposed to emotion. But put that aside. My main problem was that I do not see how we can test any of them. By what standard could we test logic? Determining whether logic is logical would be pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps. Maybe that's the point, and I missed it before.