Comment on Making Rationality General-Interest

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 01:37:57 GMT

thinking about your own knowledge and beliefs from an outside perspective

Interesting. I'd probably call this self-reflection. I am also wary of the "if they are not helpful and don't make sense" criterion -- it seems to depend way too much on the way a person is primed (aka strong priors). For example, if I am a strongly believing Christian, live in a Christian community, have personal experiences of sensing the godhead, etc. any attempts to explain atheism to me will be met by "not helpful and doesn't make sense". And "believing things on purpose" also goes there -- the same person purposefully believes in Lord Jesus.

Epistemic rationality should depend on comparison to reality, not to what makes sense to me at the moment.

For instrumental here are some things possibly missing: Cost-benefit analysis. Forecasting consequences of actions. Planning (in particular, long-term planning).

But I don't know that you can't find all that on the self-help shelf at B&N...

Discuss