And here’s that same quote from Santayana again:

Transcendental logic. the method of discovery for the mind, was to become also the method of evolution in nature and history. Transcendental method, so abused, became transcendental myth. A conscientious critique of knowledge was turned into a sham system of nature. We must therefore distinguish sharply the transcendental grammar of the intellect, which is significant and potentially correct, from the various transcendental systems of the universe which are chimeras.
The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy

“Just a bit condescending.”

You don’t have to read my comments

If only…

Anyway, I could have this kind of “debate” with the drunks who hang around outside Brixton tube, but on this occasion I’ll pass. No offence meant. As you were.

This thread was about Max Sawicky. My question was how it was possible for someone to write something that was meant to be complimenary and make it sound more like an encomium to the subtleties of author’s own imagination. Again: the difference between thoughful arrogance, whiich can be charming, and arrogant thoughtfulness, which isn’t. “See how generous I am.” What kind of man can’t tell the difference? Someone who is so busy looking at other things that he never looks back at himself.
“M&E?” The research model of sciences brought over to the humanities? Sputnik? How did it become possible for a philosophy to be called “techincal”?

Designers are never empiricists. And neither are Utilitarians. I’ve never been able to define “utility”, and i worry about anyone who has. I had a subscription to the Joural of Philosophy years ago. It was amazing. The narcissism of deconstrution without the irony or sense of humor. Hany ideas can fit on the head of a pin?
But Max[speak] contained multitudes, and Sandwichman too.

Also for the Bill Gates reference above, replace it with Google, a more malign influence anyway, since they’re actually good at what they do.

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
A nice thought but an impossible rule. The best one can do is try to observe one’s own actions, even the most casual and thoughtless ones, and wonder at what it would mean if each or any should become a universal law. That’s my definition of the philosophical life and it takes up many hours of my day. And I tell you, my days are pretty nervous. What can I say, I’m ecccentric. I don’t like people who make great claims for themselves who aren’t scared shitless. And calling yourself a philosopher is a pretty big claim.

I’ll say it again, and maybe I’m the only one who does so, but it seems so obvious I can’t think it’s not a truism: “The rule of law is not the rule of reason.” I wish people would spend more time thinking about what that means. And I wish people who would argue that the rule of law does or can not not exist, would spend some time thinking about the implications of their ideas as it affects their understanding and opinions of republican government.

Maybe it’s just a different angle. Maybe you’re both right, but you talk past each other, so there’s no counterargument. Reason is (according to Saul) just but a tool; can be used to build a house, can be used to blow it up.

I didn’t like his book much, actually; too many examples, interpretations, confusing. But I share the sentiment.

We carefully – rationally in fact – assign blame for our crimes to the irrational impulse. In this way we merely shut our eyes to the central and fundamental misunderstanding: reason is no more than structure. And structure is most easily controlled by those who feel themselves to be free of the cumbersome weight represented by common sense and humanism. Structure suits best those whose talents lie in manipulation and who have a taste for power in its purest form.

Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.

rationalism [...]

“logically valid reasoning from unexamined premises”

Same shit.

It’s the nature of professionalism that premises are no longer questioned. If you were still questioning premises you’d never even get there.

And here’s evil philosopher and arch-rationalist Descartes

Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice I had subsequently based upon them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.

Now by all means complain that present-day academic philosophers fail to live up to the founding spirit of their discipline. But claiming that philosophy is inherently opposed to questioning basic assumptions is to turn things upside down.

In your last comment, you seem to be using it in a pejorative sense which is derived from its meaning in the history of philosophy; roughly, an over-reliance on reason, rather than experience, as a guide to truth. But then the distrust of “rationalism” in this sense is central to the self-image of the Anglo-American intellectual culture which you rail against, which has always claimed to be a common sense, empiricist style of thought, as against the speculative “theory” of the European continent (to which you appear to be more sympathetic) and the “ideology” of the Soviets. That’s why I asked you whether you would want to label Hegel as an empiricist, and J.S. Mill as a rationalist. Such a categorisation would certainly be unorthodox.

“rationalism |ˈra sh ənlˌizəm; ˈra sh nəˌlizəm| noun a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response : scientific rationalism.”

• Philosophy the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge.
• Theology the practice of treating reason as the ultimate authority in religion

Faith is arguing from linguistic foundations as if language were the world
“logically valid reasoning from unexamined premises”

Same shit.
It’s the nature of professionalism that premises are no longer questioned. If you were still questioning premises you’d never even get there.
Live up to you pseudonym Engels, or find another one.

your reference to Khomeini was absurd

Well, if I may remind you, your original claim was that “Confident rationalists are… a threat to the republic.” I merely pointed out that this sentiment is not exactly original, having been shared by people including Karl Rove, Mao Zedong and Nicholas II of Russia.

Abb’s comments were on point

Are you referring to the comment that I am “in a bad mood” or the comment that I have rabies?

By that logic the critique of classical economics has been lead by wizards, warlocks and catholic priests.

No, by that logic it’s been led by people who feel that those assumptions are not truly reasonable. And you really are using the word “rationalist” in an idiosyncratic way if you take it to mean “logically valid reasoning from unexamined premises”. I doubt if anyone would want to defend that as a definition of rational enquiry. Being rational ought to mean submitting all of one’s beliefs to the test of reason. To be rational a formal system would have to be built on rational principles.)