I think the group focusses too much on epistemic rationality—and not enough on reason.
Epistemic rationality is one type of short-term goal among many—whereas reason is the foundation-stone of rationality. So: I would like to see less about the former and more about the latter.
Processing your sensory inputs to derive an accurate model of the world without actually performing any actions (besides what is necessary to output your results).
Reason can be considered to be one part of rationality.
No. Epistemic rationality is a type of instrumental rationality which primarily values truth-seeking. To find the truth, you sometimes have to take actions and perform experiments. Reason is more basic, more fundamental.
Only if those “tools” don’t involve doing things. Once you start performing experiments and taking steps to gather more data, then you have gone beyond using reason.
If you like, you can imagine a test of reason to match the circumstances of a typical exam—where many ways of obtaining the correct answer are forbidden.
I would rather say that “reason” is a useful concept. They call them “deductive reasoning” and “inductive reasoning”—and those are the correct names for some very useful tools.
Anyway, you should be able to make out my request to LessWrong—to talk more about reason, especially when it is reason that is under discussion.
I think the group focusses too much on epistemic rationality—and not enough on reason.
Epistemic rationality is one type of short-term goal among many—whereas reason is the foundation-stone of rationality. So: I would like to see less about the former and more about the latter.
What do you mean by “reason”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason is fairly reasonable.
Deduction, induction and Occam’s razor.
Processing your sensory inputs to derive an accurate model of the world without actually performing any actions (besides what is necessary to output your results).
Reason can be considered to be one part of rationality.
isn’t that epistemic rationality? I.e arriving at the correct answer?
No. Epistemic rationality is a type of instrumental rationality which primarily values truth-seeking. To find the truth, you sometimes have to take actions and perform experiments. Reason is more basic, more fundamental.
so you mean the tools by which we arrive at the correct answer?
Only if those “tools” don’t involve doing things. Once you start performing experiments and taking steps to gather more data, then you have gone beyond using reason.
If you like, you can imagine a test of reason to match the circumstances of a typical exam—where many ways of obtaining the correct answer are forbidden.
Reason is useless without rationality.
I would rather say that “reason” is a useful concept. They call them “deductive reasoning” and “inductive reasoning”—and those are the correct names for some very useful tools.
Anyway, you should be able to make out my request to LessWrong—to talk more about reason, especially when it is reason that is under discussion.