Quote (by Angellous #21):
Originally Posted by Bill
Actually, my interest is not so much in this specific historical development of religious thinking but instead in the third exponential change that our species, I believe, is beginning to undergo.
I detected that.
Anyway, I don't see why you think that we are going to have an exponential change in our species related to rational thinking when several philosophers all over the world have encouraged rational thinking and ethics for thousands of years.
Let us note that you are looking for the culmination of an exponential change at its very beginning. You are looking at evidence that such change is possible, and saying that because the change has not already occurred, or has not occurred fast enough, it is impossible.
I really don't see anything new in your book.
You won’t see anything new in the book until you read the book, and in the order written so that the method of the book is preserved. But I will try to clarify the above below.
Your ideas come across as both irrationally optimistic and passionately humanistic. I consider myself a humanist, too, but also a realist.
I consider myself a realist also. The problem that produces, I believe, the impression that my ideas are irrational is that they are not yet understood, as I will give an example of below. There is no substitute for lots and lots of words to increase accuracy of understanding as to what the other person believes. (Of course it takes far more than that, because when the words are used according to faulty methods, the result can still be inaccurate understanding, and even worse.) So it will take time for you to understand me (and I, you). I doubt that if you condensed all that you believe into a few paragraphs and presented this to someone, you would believe that this person had a really good idea as to all that you believe.
Humanity has been thinking rationally and ethically for thousands of years - at least the philosophers, their schools, and their massive impact on Western culture. Do you think that there will be a sudden wholesale popular shift to thinking rationally? If you do, I don't see why.
I understand, I believe, your perspective, and agree with it, especially because I sort of have a vague idea about what you mean by “thinking rationally and ethically.” The problem is that you have not understood yet what I am saying about this exponential change. I absolutely agree that there will not be a sudden wholesale popular shift to “thinking rationally,” as you are imagining that, nor even the shift or change to what I am trying to describe.
First, let us clarify what time frame we are talking about. I am looking back a million years, or 500,000 years, or even 200,000 years, at what has happened to our species. At one time we had about as much capability of language as chimps. They have some capacity for the use of symbols and syntax, especially if we train them, but we humans have acquired and come to make use of an essentially unlimited capability in this regard. An example is taking place right now. Now, if you use your imagination and try to get a picture of the development of this capability, do you think it has been linear, or exponential? But it certainly wasn’t a sudden wholesale popular shift to the essentially infinite use of symbols and the rules of syntax.
Now let us look at the development of the rules of logic and the rules of evidence, that have given us our science and technology. Here the exponential nature of the change is surely obvious. We began to see the acceleration of this process in ancient Greece, but it didn’t really start taking off until the Enlightenment, industrial revolution, age of information technology, etc. And now look at us!
So for either of these two exponential changes, imagine what the reaction would be to someone, early in the development of the change, making a prediction as to what we would ultimately achieve. If 200 years ago you had tried to tell me I would be able to drive down the road 60 mph, I would have ridiculed you, pointing out how I would scare all the horses. Do you see any similarity to what happens to me?
So with regard to this third exponential change that I am predicting as at least a possibility, I am in no way predicting a “sudden wholesale popular shift to rational thinking.” And in fact I don’t even use the phrase “rational thinking.” (This phrase, seldom defined, usually means “thinking that agrees with mine.”
The shift that I am talking about is the shift from the ethics that comes to us naturally to an ethics that works better. And by works better, I mean that it will promote not only the survival of our species but also the good life for everyone, now and in the future. And by good life I mean nothing more than as much joy, contentment, and appreciation as possible and as little pain, suffering, disability, and early death (PSDED) as possible. The ethics that we have always had primarily, that is legitimized by its consistency with the ultimate ethical principle that we should obey the most powerful, has itself been responsible, in part, for incredible amounts of PSDED.
You will of course look around at how we are now and say that, because of how we are and have always been, there is no way that we globally could change to something better. And I agree unless we actually come to understand what would be involved and work hard to promote it. I am trying to do my part in promoting this change by calling attention to it and trying to clarify it. I am trying to describe something that is already occurring but early in its development. You have alluded to the few individuals that indeed seem to have acquired capabilities along the lines that you think I am talking about. Now if some can do it, then there must be a way. If we understand the way and make use of that understanding, then we can help the process along. I write elsewhere about rational-ethical anger prevention, rational-ethical child rearing, and rational-ethical belief management. These will be very specific endeavors that we will have to understand, learn to use, get real good at, model for identification, and advocate to others. The first step is understanding. Accurate understanding.
There is much, much more to this third exponential change, that follows from the change to “rational ethics” as I use the term. We are talking about changing our behavior from that which occurs naturally (and produces so much good for us but also so much PSDED) to behavior that is not likely to cause PSDED. This means we have to have, to a certain extent, new rules of conduct, new principles, and new methods of increasing the “ethical sense,” by which I mean the motivational state that is produced by the activation of an ethical belief, the wanting to do something that is produced by believing it is the right thing to do. (We, on the average, obviously have a fairly weak “ethical sense,” in addition to our non-optimal ethical beliefs.) But in order to avoid doing the things that cause so much PSDED, we have to have accurate beliefs, the ability to predict accurately the outcomes of our behavior. We have to want to do the right thing, and we have to have accurate beliefs about what the right thing to do is.
Well, we have a long way to go with regard to accuracy of belief, right? We have our current postmodern philosophical position that one opinion is as good as another. What is true for me is not necessarily true for you. My reality may be different from yours. So what? Let’s just agree to disagree and go on. No such thing as Absolute Truth. So let’s have lots of little truths. Variety is the spice of life.
The problem is that what is true for me may be that I will be doing what my God wants me to by sacrificing my life to kill you, and He will even give me 72 virgins if I do it. What’s true for me is that the levees will hold. What’s true for me is that the world will end in another few years, so carpe diem.
If global warming is occurring, and we believe it isn’t, the PSDED will be enormous. If we believe that there is no hope for our species, no reason to try to make ourselves better, the PSDED will be enormous.
We may indeed be doomed. We may indeed never accomplish the making of ourselves into “Homo rationalis.” We certainly won’t if we believe there is no hope. But is that belief accurate? Is there really no reason to put forth the effort? I could not live with myself if I did not. I have this one life, now almost over, that has been so wonderful for me (despite much suffering), so how then can I not try to do my part to give back to my species what I can for the good of those to come, as so many others have done for me?
Yes, you and I are humanistic. I wonder if we can overcome the obstacles to working together in behalf of that ethical motivation.
Bill Van Fleet
HomoRationalis.com
