Category: Essays

PRC & Me

Post-Rational Constructivism

What is meant by “Post-Rational”?

I’m inclined to think of the quasi-mythical philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, as the founder of post-rationalism. He’s best known for the stunt where he carried a lamp in the market, searching for an honest man.

He’s also widely considered the inventor of the rubber chicken shtick. He reportedly flung a plucked chicken, a real one as rubber hadn’t been invented yet, before Plato in the Symposium.

Plato had been very proud of his compact definition of man as a “featherless biped.” While these two traits did, doubtlessly, attach with some incidental significance, one might wonder if the essence of humanity can be fully captured by the absence of feathers, or upright stance. These statements may be true, but do they hold verity? Is it a useful definition, delivering the essential sine qua non of human uniqueness? Is it relevant to the reason for devising a formal definition in the first place?

Can it be debunked with a simple joke?

Diogenes is, by far, my favorite philosopher from that Hellenistic heyday of philosophy. He scorned the mores and applied a savage wit to his theatrical hijinks. This skepticism of the weaker conceits of reason is what is meant here by “Post-Rationalism.”

What is meant by “Constructivism?”

Constructivism would be the notion that collective concepts exist as “social constructs”. These are agreements we make, culturally, to believe certain ideas, and to assert particular status realities.

So our basic essential premise, the initial axiom, is that truth is a social construct, and therefore, all statements about truth, including this one, are also social constructs.

A social construct can be considered the framing of idea that makes it portable between minds. A social construct is neither inherently true or false; it is a reflection of the collective subjective interpretation of observations.

How do we obtain information on which we construct the idea of truth?

There is conventional information, which is supplied by other people and institutions. We take this on faith, or fail to, depending on our trust in such people and institutions.

There is instrumental data, which is comprised of measurements taken by seismographs or spectrographs or audio and video recordings. These instruments record frequency and amplitude in precise detail, and these findings are generally summarized and disseminated in abridged form, becoming part of conventional information.

And lastly, there are personal, experiential observations mitigated through senses: events that a given individual has personally seen or heard, what is legally known as eyewitness evidence.

Regardless of the source of data, it is inevitably processed through the subjective sense mechanism of each individual’s nervous system.

Each of these sources have two notable issues: incompleteness, and the possibility of bias. Whereas the data itself might be accurate, the reason for collecting it may be in doubt. The meaning of the information, the interpretation of it, may be affected by biases.

This is further complicated by the ideological dissemination of information, which includes bad-faith framing for power and profit.

So one might say “data is truth”. But was the data honestly collected? Does it mean what the presumed interpretation suggests? And is there enough missing to potentially outweigh the small sampling offered?

This is why we prefer to refer to “verity”, as opposed to “truth”.

Why Post-Rational

It’s impossible to say who the first post-rational philosopher may have been, but Diogenes of Sinope is a good candidate.

Philosophers have long sought, as the central premise of the endeavor, to derive immutable truths. The so-called “Age of Reason” was a reformation effort, seeking to prioritize the logical process as key to obtaining truth.

During the 20th century, philosophers became increasingly dissatisfied with the weakness of rational thought. It depends on premises, each of which is accepted on the basis of further nested premises. Reason is a house of cards resting on the flimsiest of tightropes. It is difficult indeed to prove absolute axioms such that no dubious assumptions are ventured.

The advance of this direction of thought, in the wake of Existentialism, has been termed “post-modern”; but this term, an academic social construct, we find problematical for several reasons.

It has become associated with fuzzy thinking and loose truth, and, no wonder, for the term itself is somewhat nonsensical and lacking perspective. What could possibly be “post-modern”? As modernity is a measure of recency, moving perpetually like the hands of a clock, it makes little sense to declare anything to subsequent to it.

While also putting some distance from any ideas so branded, one might consider that that “post-rational” is a better way to describe some of the ways of considering the process of assessing verity.

Put together, Post-Rational Constructivism is meant to address these issues and provide a novel paradigm for the consideration of verity, utility, and relevance.

1. All premises are provisional
2. Priorities come first.
3. Always choose from among alternatives

The Optimal and All-Case Scenario

Nothing unreal exists

The primacy of subjective experiential reality

Skin in the game: Objective truth ought to be considered unknowable, because no observer is without biases and limitations. Such and observer would have neither means nor motivation to communicate such absolute truth, as any such motivation would constitute bias.

Science and Post-Rationalism

The essential premise of Rational philosophy is that truth is discernible through the scientific method. As a pure ideal, that works quite well, and as a practical approach to developing technology, it has worked wonders.

We do not abandon reason, or the scientific method, for the sake of being post-rational. These are methods for transcending the limitations of logic, for navigating the paradoxes it produces.

Some of these limitations derive from the nature of science itself. The process contains certain assumptions that are not epistimologically sound.

For example, it is considered unscientific to propose an hypothesis which is not falsifiable; that is, there must be some test capable of disproving the proposal. While this is a fine filter for deciding what gets published in journals or who qualifies for laboratory privileges, there is a problem.

What if the truth is not falsifiable? What if the Sun, and indeed all stars, were blazing nuclear-powered intelligent entities, existing at a scale so vast in comparison to us that mutual recognition or communication were impossible? What test could disprove this thesis? What evidence would satisfy a skeptic?

Now the scientist would devise tests, based on their own expectations and premises. Perhaps one, being adventurous, would present a pattern that that demonstrated the presence of consciousness in the cycle of sunspots.

Would they then be able to prove that the Sun thinks? That the sun uses language? Or would we then regress into a discussion of whether these were simply natural patterns which seem to mirror intelligence because these are the very patterns our own evolution is based on?

Data alone is not enough to determine essential verities. How was the data collected? In what ways might it be incomplete? And what biases, what presuppositions are being used to frame interpretations?

Of course, scientists are trained to consider these details, but also strongly motivated to ignore them. Most scientific papers contain a section on the limitation of the study design, all the ways in which the conclusion might be undermined by the choices made my the experimental team.

These caveats rarely enter into the mind of the masses, who are satisfied to say “Science Says….” and be done with the matter.

The problem is not so much with science, or even with scientists, who freely admit such limitations, but the way scientific results enter the conventional sphere. Science is slanted, by grant-seeking behavior and funding, but also by subtle world-view premises and the power of sensationalism.

“Truth by Science” is a very popular method of declaring status reality, but “Science” does not form opinions. Scientists form these opinions, under the weight of their own self-interest, the dogmas of their field, and the very pressing financial incentives to provide results desired by government and industry.

To subscribe to the authority of Scientists, without an understanding of their methods and limitations, is an argument from authority, which is a logical fallacy. A belief in “peer review” is as faith-based as a belief in the College of Cardinals to select an infallible Pope.

To subscribe to the collective weight of such scientists, to assume that their institutional process is reliable enough to substitute for individual contemplation of the matter, is an argument from popularity, another notable logical fallacy.

The argument for a scientific truth rests on fallacies. It’s fallacies all the way down.

The Gordian Knot and Alexander’s Sword of Simplicity

Consciousness and causality as a dimension

Psychodynamics and the transcendent psychology of PRC

Object vs Process