What Cost Rationality CFI Community

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What Cost Rationality? CFI Community Student
Leadership Conference, June 2007

• Taner Edis
• Truman State University
• Kirksville, Missouri
• www2.truman.edu/edis

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Enlightenment Rationalism

• I defend Enlightenment Rationalism a very
  science-chauvinist version.
• Today, emphasize mistakes, open questions, and
  costs.

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Knowledge and Nature
Explanation (theory)
produces
Detailed naturalistic picture of our world
Reality testing (experiment)
success
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No revelation?

• No faith-based short-circuiting of process.
• Everything open to criticism, including
  scientific methods.
• Revelation cannot constrain inquiry, but we may
  come to see a particular revelation as
  trustworthy after all. (Just happens not to be
  the case.)

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Not true that

• The gods are immune to scientific criticism or
  if you invoke supernatural agents it is not
  science.
• Intelligent design cannot be ruled out of bounds.
  ID is wrong because it is a scientific failure.

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The role of philosophy?

• Enlightenment rationalism prefers philosophy over
  religion.
• No proofs of God.
• But armchair analysis does not overrule
  supernaturalism. Agnosticism? Stalemate?
• Defensive role much of philosophy joins science.

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Prevent short-circuiting
Deflect
Faith-based challenges
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Wheres the motivation?

• Moral critiques supernaturalism socially
  harmful faith leads to atrocities Religion
  restricts human freedom.
• Extend naturalism beyond academia.

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Overstated?

• Yes, modern, secular, liberal attitudes
  attractive to manycompared to organic,
  authority-based morals.
• Still, Enlightenment rationalism is weakest in
  matters of identity and community. (Loyalty to
  skepticism?)
• Unclear whether Enlightenment humanism is
  practical for human societies. Europe?

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Problems Example 1

• Modern, secular moral philosophy all very well,
  but too often
• Tries to attain hard (science) objectivity, to
  replace religious morality.
• Disconnected from natural science.
• Not emotionally compelling.

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Example 2

• Neoclassical economics?
• Too many aspects that seem faith-based,
  ideological.
• Badly emulates physics Disconnected from natural
  science.
• Disconnected from ethics.
• If problematic, then also a secular problem.

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Lack of success?

• Cultural competitors of Enlightenment rationalism
  in stronger position
• Hard-core faith
• Soft-core, liberal faith New Agery
• Unreflective secularity.
• Even in intellectual life, comprehensive
  naturalism hardly dominant.

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The costs of reason

• How to understand all this?
• One major reason We Enlightenment rationalists
  have underestimated or downplayed the costs of
  our style of rationality.
• Naturalistic thinking is not natural for humans.
  Needs costly effort to overcome our natural
  cognitive tendencies.

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Science is hard

• Scientific view of world requires extensive
  education and knowledge base.
• Science continually goes against common sense!
• World looks designed.
• Quantum randomness, cosmology and time, etc.

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Social thinking is natural

• Mythic thinking is natural. Rationalists want to
  drop intuitive ways of social legitimation and
  signaling trustworthiness.
• In social life beyond science and philosophy, we
  have many interests other than achieving truth.
  These interests can conflict.
• A quick-and-dirty approach that comes easily and
  works more often than not can be the most
  cost-effective. Religion?

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Islam, science, secularism

• Muslim lands scientific disaster areas.
• Science and technology always imported, always
  with worries about also importing secular,
  impious culture.
• Moral and religious concerns remain central.

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Islamic pseudoscience

• Science enticing but dangerous. Need insulating
  layers of pseudoscience.
• Science-in-Quran, creationism, Islamized social
  science,
• Revelation has to remain central.

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Social costs

• Morality, political legitimacy all tied up with
  religion.
• Too costly to challenge primacy of religion even
  to set up separate spheres for secular and
  religious interests.

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Failure of secularism

• In Muslim lands, secularism retains some elite
  allegiance, but imposed by force on a pious
  population.
• Challenged by new religious elites, with working
  class allies. Cultural re-Islamization.
• Democratic, populist anti-secularism

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Secularism delegitimized

• Secularism
• Against communal religious liberty
• Alien cultural imposition
• Despotic, military-backed.
• New social equilibrium Not strict sharia, but
  much more Islam in public life.
• Secularism has been too costly.

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Outlook Intellectual scene

• Enlightenment rationalism is healthy in
  intellectual institutions. Always challenged, but
  that is as it should be. Some concerns
• Parallel institutions linked to hard-core faith.
  Examples intelligent design biology. Christian
  law schools that feed administration. Islamized
  science.
• Direct influence of soft-core faith. Example
  Templeton Foundation.
• Reputation of popular critics of faith as having
  superficial view of religion. Partly correct.
  Example Sam Harris on Islamunscholarly
  nonsense.

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Outlook Public arena

• Not persuasive. Secularization falling away from
  organized religion, relativism. Europeans not
  turning into Enlightenment rationalists.
• Little analysis on how we might structure our
  social lives so as to reduce costs of
  rationality.
• Need to be more persuasive? Global effects of
  civilization, global threats (environment,
  nuclear warnot terrorism). In the long term,
  it may be more costly to be held back by
  religious constraints on our moral imagination.

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Books, books!
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Thanks for listening!

• Any questions?

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