what cost rationality? –– cfi community & student leadership conference, june 2007 ––...

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

Taner EdisTaner EdisTruman State UniversityTruman State University

Kirksville, MissouriKirksville, Missouri

www2.truman.edu/~edis

2007 What cost rationality? 2

Enlightenment Rationalism

I defend Enlightenment Rationalism; a very science-chauvinist version.

Today, emphasize mistakes, open questions, and costs.


Knowledge and Nature

Explanation(theory)

Reality testing(experiment)

Detailed naturalistic picture of our world

produces

success


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.)


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.


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.


Prevent short-circuiting

Explanation

(theory)

Reality testing

(experiment)

Detailed naturalistic picture of our world

produces

success

Deflect

Faith-based

challenges


Where’s the motivation?

Moral critiques: “supernaturalism socially harmful”; “faith leads to atrocities”; “Religion restricts human freedom.”

Extend naturalism beyond academia.


Overstated?

Yes, modern, secular, liberal attitudes attractive to many––compared 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?


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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?


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.


Islamic pseudoscience

Science enticing but dangerous. Need insulating layers of pseudoscience.

Science-in-Quran, creationism, Islamized social science, …

Revelation has to remain central.


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.


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


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.


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 Islam––unscholarly nonsense.


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 war––not “terrorism”). In the long term, it may be more costly to be held back by religious constraints on our moral imagination.


Books, books!


Thanks for listening!

Any questions?

what cost rationality? –– cfi community & student leadership conference, june 2007 ––...

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