Irrationalism

[Antlerman]

What is Irrationalism? This is take off thread from another conversation that was starting elsewhere which needs to be a topic of discussion of its own. I will use the word irrationalism often times in speaking of systems of belief that are symbolic, metaphoric, or poetic in nature as point of counter to the belief that holds rationality and science as the highest ideal by which humanity can find truth and meaning in the world. It is not intended to say that it in itself is devoid of reason or logic; to suggest it is “senseless” or purposeless.

 

It is a term that has an history in 19th and 20th- Century philosophy as a movement that embraced the non-rational side of humanity as a means to gain awareness, appreciation, and understanding of life, as opposed to embracing science and reason as the path to understanding. It’s expression found its way into the arts, literature, theatre, and modern religion:

 

Irrationalism Philosophy

 

Main

 

A 19th- and early 20th-century philosophical trend that claimed to enrich man’s apprehension of life by expanding it beyond the rational to its fuller dimensions. Rooted either in metaphysics or in an awareness of the uniqueness of human experience, irrationalism stressed the dimensions of instinct, feeling, and will as over and against reason. The term is used chiefly by continental European philosophers, who regard irrationalism as one of several strong currents flowing into the 20th century.

 

There were irrationalists before the 19th century. In ancient Greek culture—which is usually assessed as rationalistic—a Dionysian (i.e., instinctive) strain can be discerned in the works of the poet Pindar, in the dramatists, and even in such philosophers as Pythagoras and Empedocles and in Plato. In early modern philosophy—even during the ascendancy of Cartesian rationalism—Blaise Pascal turned from reason to an Augustinian faith, convinced that “the heart has its reasons” unknown to reason as such.

 

The main tide of irrationalism, like that of literary romanticism—itself a form of irrationalism—followed the Age of Reason and was a reaction to it. Irrationalism found much in the life of the spirit and in human history that could not be dealt with by the rational methods of science. Under the influence of Charles Darwin and later Sigmund Freud, irrationalism began to explore the biological and subconscious roots of experience. Pragmatism, existentialism, and vitalism (or “life philosophy”) all arose as expressions of this expanded view of human life and thought.

 

For Arthur Schopenhauer, a typical 19th-century irrationalist, voluntarism expressed the essence of reality—a blind, purposeless will permeating all existence. If mind, then, is an emergent from mute biological process, it is natural to conclude, as the pragmatists did, that it evolved as an instrument for practical adjustment—not as an organ for the rational plumbing of metaphysics. Charles Sanders Peirce and William James thus argued that ideas are to be assessed not in terms of logic but in terms of their practical results when put to the test of action.

 

Irrationalism is also expressed in the historicism and relativism of Wilhelm Dilthey, who saw all knowledge as conditioned by one’s private historical perspective and who thus urged the importance of the Geisteswissenschaften (the humanities). Johann Georg Hamann, spurning speculation, sought truth in feeling, faith, and experience, making personal convictions its ultimate criterion. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi exalted the certitude and clarity of faith to the detriment of intellectual knowledge and sensation.

 

Friedrich Schelling and Henri Bergson, who were preoccupied with the uniqueness of human experience, turned to intuitionism, which “sees things invisible to science.” Reason itself was not repudiated; it had simply lost its commanding role inasmuch as personal insights are impervious to testing. In its aspect as a vitalism, Bergson’s philosophy—as well as that of Friedrich Nietzsche—was irrationalistic in holding that instinctive, or Dionysian, drive lies at the heart of existence. Nietzsche viewed moral codes as myths, lies, and frauds created to mask forces operating beneath the surface to influence thought and behaviour. For him, God is dead and man is free to formulate new values. Ludwig Klages extended life philosophy in Germany by urging that the irrational springs of human life are “natural” and should be followed in a deliberate effort to root out the adventitious reason; and Oswald Spengler extended it to history, which he viewed intuitively as an irrational process of organic growth and decay.

 

In existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus all despaired of making sense out of an incoherent world; and each chose his own alternative to reason—the leap of faith, radical freedom, and heroic revolt, respectively.

 

In general, irrationalism implies either (in ontology) that the world is devoid of rational structure, meaning, and purpose; or (in epistemology) that reason is inherently defective and incapable of knowing the universe without distortion; or (in ethics) that recourse to objective standards is futile; or (in anthropology) that in human nature itself the dominant dimensions are irrational.

 

In response to points brought up by Heavenslaughing in the other thread this is breaking away from:

 

Antlerman rejects the absolute supremacy of instrumental, scientific rationality, though in this particular argument he defers at first to the terms that Vigile and others have used: rational versus irrational. As AM's subsequent invocation of other terms suggests, framing the questions of this forum in terms of "irrational belief systems" may misguide us. I do not know of any seriously proposed theory of religion in the empirical social sciences which treats religion in this way.

I’ve always had concern that using the term irrationality in regards to religion is taken as an insult. It’s really not meant that way at all, at least not in how I’ve meant it, which is in the philosophical sense as above. On the contrary, it to me shows a kind of rationality in its own right. First, in that it acknowledges that the things of ‘transcendent’ or aesthetic quality are not apprehensible through reason. Unlike the religious apologist who takes, say a teleological approach to God, that God can be reasoned, the irrationalist will recognize that reason cannot apprehend it and not attempt to do so. This is where the “Leap of Faith” idea of Kierkegaard comes in. In a “rational” choice of “faith”, one embraces the “irrational” (that which defies reason) as a means to gaining awareness.

 

So religion, then becomes a philosophical path. Irrationalism can be pursued in many systems. My personal one that I find speaks to me, is music on the level that Schopenhauer talks of, which I was talking about before. I can also see the arts through abstract expressionism, symbolism, surrealism, etc as tapping into that “spiritual” aspect of us. That aspect which reason alone can not inform us of. It takes something “beyond reason” to do this.

 

Religious symbolism can achieve this as well. But I am being clear to make the distinction between those who use religious symbols as points of rational discussion. Talk of “proof” of God, is completely contrary to this, as would be to speak of the factuality of the signs. To ask that question, is to miss the point.

 

Dawkins, who does make such claims, doesn't actually research religions; he simply evaluates the claims put forth by some religions as falsifiable or non-verifiable under his area of expertise, evolutionary biology, then quite unscientifically makes pronouncements about religion.

Beautifully put. I truly enjoy how you put this. I’ll add this to my bookmarks of quotes. Dawkins has always annoyed me for this reason. He speaks to things authoritatively to things outside his context. His appeal seems to be because he appears to make it seem so simple – when it’s not.

 

The closest you'll find to a rational/irrational divide among scientists of religion would be Tambiah's division of human experience into causal versus participatory modes. The causal mode concerns what we might call instrumental rationality, whereas the participatory mode concerns a more emotive rationality in connection with a place in a group or in nature. Even this approach universalizes and dichotomizes more than most contemporary scholars in anthropology would find acceptable. Weber proposed four different modes of rationality engaged in by Westerners alone: instrumental rationality, value rationality, affective rationality, and habitual rationality. Each kind follows a rationality in that it puts its means in accords with what it aims to achieve. Irrationality, as Antlerman suggests, obtains only when some mode of rationality obstructs another, or when an actor can frame no kind of rationality at all. When we leave the West, I suspect our categories of rationality may again need to shift.

In the contexts of which you’re speaking I can see what you’re saying. The context I was meaning was in the philosophical one I addressed above. As I said above, that “irrationality” in a philosophical context could be considered itself to be rational choice, in the context you cite above. A “Leap of Faith” itself can be a rational choice. Admittedly it is difficult to put this into words that convey this meaning without causing confusion. It’s always a struggle of communication.

 

Irrationality is a poor frame for understanding religion, whether from the inside or from an analytical outside. Insistence to the contrary without engaging in dialogue with the empirical study of religion would itself count as "irrational" under the terms as used. What kind of rationality is being deployed, and (to repeat again the chief concern) what are its effects? These are interesting questions.

Again, I think in the philosophical context it makes sense, as a response to an age where science and rationality in a materialistic age are being embraced by the neo-atheists as the path of pure enlightenment over religious thought. Of course from an empirical study of religion, I would agree religion has a context of rationality. It serves a rational purpose… this leap of faith into the realm of “non-reason”, so called. I want to be clear however, that fundamentalism however does not qualify in this context. It doesn't because it embracing an empirical methodology as its basis for "faith". There is no leap needed if it "makes sense". In the context of reason based belief, it's just bad information.

[R. S. Martin]

The closest you'll find to a rational/irrational divide among scientists of religion would be Tambiah's division of human experience into causal versus participatory modes. The causal mode concerns what we might call instrumental rationality, whereas the participatory mode concerns a more emotive rationality in connection with a place in a group or in nature. Even this approach universalizes and dichotomizes more than most contemporary scholars in anthropology would find acceptable. Weber proposed four different modes of rationality engaged in by Westerners alone: instrumental rationality, value rationality, affective rationality, and habitual rationality. Each kind follows a rationality in that it puts its means in accords with what it aims to achieve. Irrationality, as Antlerman suggests, obtains only when some mode of rationality obstructs another, or when an actor can frame no kind of rationality at all. When we leave the West, I suspect our categories of rationality may again need to shift.

 

AM, I hope you don't mind. This is going to shift the focus slightly from philosophy and Schopenhaur. Perhaps we should start yet another thread?

 

HL, when I read this part of your post on HanSolo's thread, I wanted to contact you in the worst way possible. There's another social scientist of religion on here!!!! WooHoo!!!

 

Anyway, can you tell me more about Weber's mode of rationality and where I can learn about it? Is it in Sociology of Religion? Or did he write a lot of other books? Sorry, I didn't take too many courses in religious studies--only on the intro level. I applied the concept of social patterns to religious patterns found in society. In other words, I think I understand the underlying principles of anthropology and sociology of religion but I have very little exposure to the literature beyond the intro level. There's probably no one else quite like me but that's where I'm at and I'm really curious about this concept, if you care to elaborate on it.

 

~Ruby

[Antlerman]

AM, I hope you don't mind. This is going to shift the focus slightly from philosophy and Schopenhaur. Perhaps we should start yet another thread?

Before there's even one response? I hope not. I certainly don't mind talking about those points of view in the context of discussing this topic, and in fact I hope to for various reasons. But obviously I would like the topic to center around the points I'm raising about religious experience in the context mentioned above. Perhaps trying to look at those points of view in the context I'm bringing up may prove informational as well.

[Heavenslaughing]

Particularly after reading about Antlerman's philosophical use of the word "irrational," I'm seeing our difference in vocabulary as a primarily semantic one resulting from a difference between a way of speaking about certain experiences within the Western philosophical tradition versus a dialogue (also mostly among Westerners) about how to compare different traditions around the world. Both of us see alternatives to scientific rationality as having an internal sensibility, as having potential value, and as subject to evaluation in terms of their effects.

 

Here are some ways that the differences might be more than semantic. Using irrationality to describe the modes of experience under discussion might participate in what I would term narrative encapsulation. Rationality and irrationality emerged as terms for logical or emotive modes of experience in the course of science establishing itself as the former and not the latter. Males and modern Westerners participated more in the former; women and primitive savages participated more in the latter. Weber spends several ink bottles discussing modernization as the subordination of all forms of living to instrumental rationality. Instrumental rationality becomes rationality itself, with all other forms of rationality deemed irrational. The philosophical school of irrationalism, as I understand it, revalorizes these aspects of human experience buried and devalued underneath the universalizing claims of instrumental rationality. It does so, however, under the only terms available now that instrumental rationality has defined itself as rationality. It changes its valuation of the categories, but it keeps the categories themselves. Philosophical irrationalism does do more than swap hero and villain in its refiguring of the human drama; it changes the relationship of the characters to one of mutual dependency--yet still the same characters play the stage. Its narrative remains encapsulated by that of the dominant narrative of positivism. When we fight a way of framing knowledge on its own terms, we stand a poorer chance of changing the frame. (Notice that if we were not explicitly discussing irrationalism, I wouldn't see a need to bring up this challenge to the term, but would instead accept our difference in language as primarily semantic, as above.)

 

Also note that the language I tend to use takes different rationalities as historically particular generative principles. That is, I do not take Weber's four categories as descriptive of the four rationalities at work to different degrees in all of human experience. A mode of rationality emerges from the results of the strategies produced within prior rationalities. Thus, I do not speak in terms of universal relationships between rationality and irrationality or among different kinds of rationality, though categories such as Weber's can serve for getting a quick handle on a quite foreign rationality.

 

I'm finding, interestingly enough, that this difference might lead to a different way of discussing fundamentalism, a variety of religiosity which both of us view as harmful.

Of course from an empirical study of religion, I would agree religion has a context of rationality. It serves a rational purpose… this leap of faith into the realm of “non-reason”, so called. I want to be clear however, that fundamentalism however does not qualify in this context. It doesn't because it embracing an empirical methodology as its basis for "faith". There is no leap needed if it "makes sense". In the context of reason based belief, it's just bad information.

I'm not certain that the fundamentalist bastardization of science excludes them from value-rationality in a Weberian sense. First, I don't think they base their belief on logical proof methods. I have the impression that they base their belief on a deeply ingrained way of creating meaning, a narrative-based form of value rationality, and that they then muster evidence from all available sources to defend that belief without much genuine attempt to evaluate that evidence. Similarly, they don't read the scriptures to determine their beliefs; they have their beliefs, and reading scriptures serves to muster support for those beliefs. In short, value-rationality overrides and co-opts instrumental rationality in a way that leads to significant abuses. They have subordinated every means imaginable to the ends of their way of maintaining meaning. Like fascism, it is horribly, horribly rational.

 

@ R.S. Martin, Weber talks about rationality all over the place, and the man evidently never had a thought he didn't publish. Sorting through his work on this matter can be difficult, especially since you'll frequently find instrumental rationality referred to simply as rationality once he's established that form as dominating twentieth-century social organization. For a widely used Weberian theory of religion, read Clifford Geertz' "Religion as a Cultural System." For a damning critique of that theory, read Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion. For a critique of that critique... see maybe a pm or a different thread?

[R. S. Martin]

@ R.S. Martin, Weber talks about rationality all over the place, and the man evidently never had a thought he didn't publish. Sorting through his work on this matter can be difficult, especially since you'll frequently find instrumental rationality referred to simply as rationality once he's established that form as dominating twentieth-century social organization. For a widely used Weberian theory of religion, read Clifford Geertz' "Religion as a Cultural System." For a damning critique of that theory, read Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion. For a critique of that critique... see maybe a pm or a different thread?

 

Thank you.

[Antlerman]

Particularly after reading about Antlerman's philosophical use of the word "irrational," I'm seeing our difference in vocabulary as a primarily semantic one resulting from a difference between a way of speaking about certain experiences within the Western philosophical tradition versus a dialogue (also mostly among Westerners) about how to compare different traditions around the world. Both of us see alternatives to scientific rationality as having an internal sensibility, as having potential value, and as subject to evaluation in terms of their effects.

I’m in agreement that it will be helpful to establish a clearer understanding of terms and use in order to hopefully explore and expand upon those commonalities, or to discuss those differences in a more common frame of reference. I will accept the burden of attaining a more expanded contemporary vocabulary rests on me, which I will attempt to do so, with some leeway of patience.

 

Here are some ways that the differences might be more than semantic. Using irrationality to describe the modes of experience under discussion might participate in what I would term narrative encapsulation. Rationality and irrationality emerged as terms for logical or emotive modes of experience in the course of science establishing itself as the former and not the latter. Males and modern Westerners participated more in the former; women and primitive savages participated more in the latter. Weber spends several ink bottles discussing modernization as the subordination of all forms of living to instrumental rationality. Instrumental rationality becomes rationality itself, with all other forms of rationality deemed irrational. The philosophical school of irrationalism, as I understand it, revalorizes these aspects of human experience buried and devalued underneath the universalizing claims of instrumental rationality. It does so, however, under the only terms available now that instrumental rationality has defined itself as rationality. It changes its valuation of the categories, but it keeps the categories themselves. Philosophical irrationalism does do more than swap hero and villain in its refiguring of the human drama; it changes the relationship of the characters to one of mutual dependency--yet still the same characters play the stage. Its narrative remains encapsulated by that of the dominant narrative of positivism. When we fight a way of framing knowledge on its own terms, we stand a poorer chance of changing the frame. (Notice that if we were not explicitly discussing irrationalism, I wouldn't see a need to bring up this challenge to the term, but would instead accept our difference in language as primarily semantic, as above.)

There’s many points in the above that I’ll try to break down. First, though it is true, and something I’ve noted myself as well prior to this, that defining itself historically as “Irrationalism” is to acknowledge the positive position of “Rationalism”, and instead try to make Irrationalism the positive position. It’s much like how I see the use of the term atheism. By definition it acknowledges God in the positive, but likewise tries to assert itself as the positive. This is where terms like Secular seem to me a better term. I’m not quite sure yet the best way to talk about this. That’s what this discussion hopefully will offer some value towards.

 

Looking at the 4 categories of Weber you mentioned before: instrumental rationality; value rationality; affective rationality; and habitual rationality, what I am really seeing in how I understand traditional philosophical irrationalism, really falls more under value and affective rationalities. Value/belief rationality in that it is chosen and acted upon for intrinsic reasons alone, such as a choice of ethics for ethics sake regardless of the potentials of specific outcomes; Affective rationality in that it’s chosen for the sake of emotional experience. But I also see it as instrumental rationality in that it is purposefully chosen for a specific end; an end of gaining awareness and insights aesthetically, not just simply experience for experience sake.

 

I’m going to attempt to make some corrections/clarification on my part and some further distinctions. Before when I spoke of “irrationality being a rational choice”, that should be struck from the context I meant, which I just explained in the previous paragraph. Rational Irrationality is really more appropriately applied to those who either choose to continue to believe in God, or choose to not concern themselves with such questions for reasons of cost/benefit. It is instrumentally rational to be epistemically irrational. This to me would describe, not a philosophical choice to act contrary to a position for a positive gain, a choice that could bare some substantial costs in cases as I described earlier, but one more of what I’d see as complacency.

 

It is far easier to not challenge ones beliefs for reasons of social bonding, upsetting the coherence of a held belief (possibly upsetting the very premises), etc. In cases like this, it becomes what we see as irrationality (in the context of Weber’s definition of rational as instrumental rationality). It’s in this context that people who hold high value, or faith, in reason will accuse the “religious” as being irrational. Yet it highly unlikely anyone can act through pure reason alone, due to our psychological makeup. We are influenced by many means socially and psychologically that make complete control over rational thought some sort of elusive ideal such as the notion of a perfect God.

 

So I suppose where I see the appeal to the embrace of a philosophical “leap” beyond attempting to find “truth” through reason, is for the fact that that ideal is ultimately as much a religious belief as belief in a God. To me it seems to recognize our “intuitions”, if you will (those things that draw us in certain directions towards certain desired ends), in addition to using reason to the best we are able, understanding the imperfectness of how it works in us, is to potentially find a balance within ourselves, to find the highest potentiality possible within our imperfection as both reasoning and emotively led human beings.

 

Of course from an empirical study of religion, I would agree religion has a context of rationality. It serves a rational purpose… this leap of faith into the realm of “non-reason”, so called. I want to be clear however, that fundamentalism however does not qualify in this context. It doesn't because it embracing an empirical methodology as its basis for "faith". There is no leap needed if it "makes sense". In the context of reason based belief, it's just bad information.

I'm not certain that the fundamentalist bastardization of science excludes them from value-rationality in a Weberian sense. First, I don't think they base their belief on logical proof methods. I have the impression that they base their belief on a deeply ingrained way of creating meaning, a narrative-based form of value rationality, and that they then muster evidence from all available sources to defend that belief without much genuine attempt to evaluate that evidence. Similarly, they don't read the scriptures to determine their beliefs; they have their beliefs, and reading scriptures serves to muster support for those beliefs. In short, value-rationality overrides and co-opts instrumental rationality in a way that leads to significant abuses. They have subordinated every means imaginable to the ends of their way of maintaining meaning. Like fascism, it is horribly, horribly rational.

I’ll agree with this in this light. Wouldn’t you say that it follows the theory of rational irrationality to some extent, that the cost of instrumental rationality is too great in order to embrace epistemic rationality? What do we see with those who we would agree to calling it acting irrationally, in the epistemic sense? We see people influenced strongly by social concerns, personal identity concerns, personal gain factors, entire world-view crises, etc. All these things will lead to making, I suppose what I would call a bad leap, or perhaps as Sartre would say, acting in Bad Faith?

 

I think we are in agreement in this, from what I can see.

[Neon Genesis]

I’ve always had concern that using the term irrationality in regards to religion is taken as an insult. It’s really not meant that way at all, at least not in how I’ve meant it, which is in the philosophical sense as above. On the contrary, it to me shows a kind of rationality in its own right. First, in that it acknowledges that the things of ‘transcendent’ or aesthetic quality are not apprehensible through reason. Unlike the religious apologist who takes, say a teleological approach to God, that God can be reasoned, the irrationalist will recognize that reason cannot apprehend it and not attempt to do so. This is where the “Leap of Faith” idea of Kierkegaard comes in. In a “rational” choice of “faith”, one embraces the “irrational” (that which defies reason) as a means to gaining awareness.

I think this quote from Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter book series sums it up nicely,

Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

[Heavenslaughing]

I’m in agreement that it will be helpful to establish a clearer understanding of terms and use in order to hopefully explore and expand upon those commonalities, or to discuss those differences in a more common frame of reference. I will accept the burden of attaining a more expanded contemporary vocabulary rests on me, which I will attempt to do so, with some leeway of patience.

 

Antlerman, you are gracious to point of fault. I bring language more from the social sciences, you bring language more from philosophy, and we both learn in conversation.

 

There’s many points in the above that I’ll try to break down. First, though it is true, and something I’ve noted myself as well prior to this, that defining itself historically as “Irrationalism” is to acknowledge the positive position of “Rationalism”, and instead try to make Irrationalism the positive position. It’s much like how I see the use of the term atheism. By definition it acknowledges God in the positive, but likewise tries to assert itself as the positive. This is where terms like Secular seem to me a better term. I’m not quite sure yet the best way to talk about this. That’s what this discussion hopefully will offer some value towards.

 

Looking at the 4 categories of Weber you mentioned before: instrumental rationality; value rationality; affective rationality; and habitual rationality, what I am really seeing in how I understand traditional philosophical irrationalism, really falls more under value and affective rationalities. Value/belief rationality in that it is chosen and acted upon for intrinsic reasons alone, such as a choice of ethics for ethics sake regardless of the potentials of specific outcomes; Affective rationality in that it’s chosen for the sake of emotional experience. But I also see it as instrumental rationality in that it is purposefully chosen for a specific end; an end of gaining awareness and insights aesthetically, not just simply experience for experience sake.

Philosophical irrationalism, as I understand Weber, would appear to valorize mainly value and affective rationalities. Something purposefully chosen for a specific end wouldn't necessarily qualify as instrumental rationality, though: every kind of rationality puts its means in accord with its ends (this is the definition of rational for Weber); the difference is what sort of ends they are, which correspond also in his thought with the sorts of means which will come under consideration. Instrumental rationality, at least ostensibly, doesn't much value the aesthetic. Look at modern architecture, with its rejection of decoration in favor of the dictum that form should follow function. (In support of your thesis concerning the way that instrumental rationality never truly operates alone, note how functionality in modern architecture frequently becomes an aesthetic itself more than a genuine attention to human needs.) When we get into a case of subordinating the "irrational" to achieve a more instrumentally rational goal (e.g. belief in whatever really will help my leg heal faster), then we've also left philosophical irrationalism, because the "irrationality" (or other modes of rationality) have become means, not ends. I'm not seeing philosophical irrationalism arguing that people should value the aesthetic and emotional because they assist in material benefit, with material benefit as the ultimate end. I'm also not seeing belief and affect valued to the exclusion of instrumentality, at least not for the most part. I'm seeing an argument for the complementarity of rationalities, where a full experience of life comes with bringing means in accord with balanced value, affective, and instrumental ends. (They do seem to leave out habitual rationality, which many of the philosophers in question might see as ritual in the sense of meaningless repetition.)

 

Incidentally, while Weber provides an excellent starting point for discussing different rationalities, I don't apply him directly in my work. I derive the larger chunk of my theoretical apparatus from Bourdieu, who worked toward more of an open system in describing culturally particular rationalities.

 

So I suppose where I see the appeal to the embrace of a philosophical “leap” beyond attempting to find “truth” through reason, is for the fact that that ideal is ultimately as much a religious belief as belief in a God. To me it seems to recognize our “intuitions”, if you will (those things that draw us in certain directions towards certain desired ends), in addition to using reason to the best we are able, understanding the imperfectness of how it works in us, is to potentially find a balance within ourselves, to find the highest potentiality possible within our imperfection as both reasoning and emotively led human beings.

When we speak of reason or rationality, we frequently bump into the problem that the term can mean some very specific things at the same time that it connotes what is generally sensible. Rational irrationality and similar terms make perfect sense in the context in which you use them, though the load of both words forces philosophical irrationalism into a semantically difficult space dependent on keeping the double-meaning of rationality while trying to eschew the opposite double-meaning for irrationality.

To make a leap beyond reason, reason must already begin as the starting point, and it must exclude that to which we leap. You made extremely well the point that "reason" never truly holds the monopoly it pretends to, so as you say, what's at stake is to find a balance with parts of ourselves that we learn from an early stage do not have the same validity. An appeal for a leap beyond reason makes sense for those of us who experience reason as something prior and separate at the same time that it subtly establishes that priority and separation. Maybe a different metaphor would imply a sense of rebuilding or reconnecting atrophied parts.

 

I’ll agree with this in this light. Wouldn’t you say that it follows the theory of rational irrationality to some extent, that the cost of instrumental rationality is too great in order to embrace epistemic rationality? What do we see with those who we would agree to calling it acting irrationally, in the epistemic sense? We see people influenced strongly by social concerns, personal identity concerns, personal gain factors, entire world-view crises, etc. All these things will lead to making, I suppose what I would call a bad leap, or perhaps as Sartre would say, acting in Bad Faith?

 

I think we are in agreement in this, from what I can see.

Sartre's Bad Faith may well apply here: despite how fundamentalists continually portray believing in the Christian god versus not as a choice, I don't perceive them as considering themselves as free to leave belief. There's only one right choice, as they see it, and that's the choice they must make. I'm not certain I side with the idea of a radically free individual to begin with, and if it's a bad leap, it's a bad leap to scientific logic, not from it. Regardless, as you say, we're basically in agreement and splitting hairs over how we phrase ourselves in this particular matter.

[Antlerman]

I’m in agreement that it will be helpful to establish a clearer understanding of terms and use in order to hopefully explore and expand upon those commonalities, or to discuss those differences in a more common frame of reference. I will accept the burden of attaining a more expanded contemporary vocabulary rests on me, which I will attempt to do so, with some leeway of patience.

 

Antlerman, you are gracious to point of fault. I bring language more from the social sciences, you bring language more from philosophy, and we both learn in conversation.

I take that as both a compliment and a warning! No, seriously I struggle with being able to express these thoughts, and finding a reason to expand my vocabulary to talk about them is welcome. I actually look for motivations to dig into areas of interest to me. My sin is laziness. I’m a fickle sort in that way.

 

Philosophical irrationalism, as I understand Weber, would appear to valorize mainly value and affective rationalities. Something purposefully chosen for a specific end wouldn't necessarily qualify as instrumental rationality, though: every kind of rationality puts its means in accord with its ends (this is the definition of rational for Weber); the difference is what sort of ends they are, which correspond also in his thought with the sorts of means which will come under consideration. Instrumental rationality, at least ostensibly, doesn't much value the aesthetic. Look at modern architecture, with its rejection of decoration in favor of the dictum that form should follow function. (In support of your thesis concerning the way that instrumental rationality never truly operates alone, note how functionality in modern architecture frequently becomes an aesthetic itself more than a genuine attention to human needs.) When we get into a case of subordinating the "irrational" to achieve a more instrumentally rational goal (e.g. belief in whatever really will help my leg heal faster), then we've also left philosophical irrationalism, because the "irrationality" (or other modes of rationality) have become means, not ends.

There’s a saying that the best engineering is invisible. I would call that both an instrumentally rational form along with an aesthetic one. That’s elegance and functionality in a complete package. Rhetorically speaking, what would you call that? I guess I’d call it reflective of the natural system; Elegance and function: the highest form of the aesthetic – God. Love; Beauty; Attraction; Appeal; Reproduction; Life.

 

Anyway… back to the rational.

 

I'm not seeing philosophical irrationalism arguing that people should value the aesthetic and emotional because they assist in material benefit, with material benefit as the ultimate end. I'm also not seeing belief and affect valued to the exclusion of instrumentality, at least not for the most part. I'm seeing an argument for the complementarity of rationalities, where a full experience of life comes with bringing means in accord with balanced value, affective, and instrumental ends. (They do seem to leave out habitual rationality, which many of the philosophers in question might see as ritual in the sense of meaningless repetition.)

Yes, that’s how I’m seeing it. I’m smiling to see you brought up the habitual in this. I left that out, in hindsight I suppose, because of my personal quandary with ritual.

 

I’ve been meaning for the longest time to start a topic about ritual, but have never seemed to find the motivation to do it. Meaningless repetition? Yes, it can be on its negative flip-side. The positive “Side A” of the album, so to speak, is the message conveyed in the repetition of the symbol. That can be an incredibly powerful means of imparting meaning. But as Weber meant it in terms of motivations behind rationality – the tradition, the familiar, the habitual, I would see that falling under possibly more biases that influence belief preferences.

 

Where would the positive side of ritual, or the habitual, fall under the value of philosophical irrationalism? Meaning in the form. As one acts out the message in the physical world, it symbolically communicates meaning to the internal experience. Additionally, it separates thought from the mundane to flow in free form to the thought of the mind beyond the rational/mechanical world – to the abstract of imagination through disassociation. As one repeats the same motions over and over, disengagement occurs and the mind is freed.

 

So anyway, where does this leave the habitual in the irrational? Not so much as a reason for choice, but as possibly reinforcement, or even a vehicle of the end. I’ll leave that for now.

 

Incidentally, while Weber provides an excellent starting point for discussing different rationalities, I don't apply him directly in my work. I derive the larger chunk of my theoretical apparatus from Bourdieu, who worked toward more of an open system in describing culturally particular rationalities.

Interestingly as I was doing follow up looking at the various schools of thought surrounding rationality, I found reference to Herbert Simon who supposed started the thought of Bounded Rationality, and how that he thought that people are only partly rational and are emotional/irrational in the rest of their actions (see Wiki). Sounds sort of familiar to me.

 

I’ll look into Boudieu to see more where you’re coming from later on.

 

I’ll also pick up the rest of this tomorrow when I’ve had some rest. For now, I appreciate this discussion with you. It’s beginning to help me in ways that are “useful” to me.

[Heavenslaughing]

There’s a saying that the best engineering is invisible. I would call that both an instrumentally rational form along with an aesthetic one. That’s elegance and functionality in a complete package. Rhetorically speaking, what would you call that? I guess I’d call it reflective of the natural system; Elegance and function: the highest form of the aesthetic – God. Love; Beauty; Attraction; Appeal; Reproduction; Life.

 

Anyway… back to the rational.

 

Agreed that the best architecture combines practical use and aesthetic value. Weber (and most contemporary social scientists) consider their abstractions to be ideal types, meaning that they occur in their pure form only as concepts and will appear with different degrees and kinds of mixture in practice. In the case of Western society, instrumental rationality assumed a dominant position and claims it can operate without the others, but it never completely does. I think that what's coming out of our discussion is that a healthier, happier way to live combines rationalities in ways that do not straightforwardly subjugate one to another, but allow them to complement one another.

 

One my side, I tend to argue for most human behavior following a rationality of some kind, with irrationality reserved for an utter breakdown in making sense of the world, or perhaps for combinations of rationalities so maladaptive that the logics of all become confounded.

 

Yes, that’s how I’m seeing it. I’m smiling to see you brought up the habitual in this. I left that out, in hindsight I suppose, because of my personal quandary with ritual.

 

I’ve been meaning for the longest time to start a topic about ritual, but have never seemed to find the motivation to do it. Meaningless repetition? Yes, it can be on its negative flip-side. The positive “Side A” of the album, so to speak, is the message conveyed in the repetition of the symbol. That can be an incredibly powerful means of imparting meaning. But as Weber meant it in terms of motivations behind rationality – the tradition, the familiar, the habitual, I would see that falling under possibly more biases that influence belief preferences.

 

Where would the positive side of ritual, or the habitual, fall under the value of philosophical irrationalism? Meaning in the form. As one acts out the message in the physical world, it symbolically communicates meaning to the internal experience. Additionally, it separates thought from the mundane to flow in free form to the thought of the mind beyond the rational/mechanical world – to the abstract of imagination through disassociation. As one repeats the same motions over and over, disengagement occurs and the mind is freed.

 

So anyway, where does this leave the habitual in the irrational? Not so much as a reason for choice, but as possibly reinforcement, or even a vehicle of the end. I’ll leave that for now.

 

Protestant and secular philosophers alike have given ritual the short end of the stick. As Christianity emerged, it associated meaning with language, interpretation with linguistic exegesis, and the beginning with the Word. Yet meaning inheres in the muscle and movement of the body, in its apprehension and interaction with the material world. Even words, after all, come to be only through actions of the body, whether my rattling vocal chords or my tapping fingers. Ritual activates meanings through the body, meanings that do not simply reflect those expressed through language but which operate according to their own medium, and which sometimes defy linguistic exegesis.

 

For Weber, habitual rationality constituted one form of ends in itself, including a pursuit of familiarity beyond only religious ritual. Habituation figures rather differently into my own thinking; it's not so much a kind of rationality as the way in which rationalities get produced.

 

Interestingly as I was doing follow up looking at the various schools of thought surrounding rationality, I found reference to Herbert Simon who supposed started the thought of Bounded Rationality, and how that he thought that people are only partly rational and are emotional/irrational in the rest of their actions (see Wiki). Sounds sort of familiar to me.

 

I’ll look into Boudieu to see more where you’re coming from later on.

 

I’ll also pick up the rest of this tomorrow when I’ve had some rest. For now, I appreciate this discussion with you. It’s beginning to help me in ways that are “useful” to me.

 

Herbert Simon helped improve what's called "Rational Choice Theory." Rat choice theory predicts social outcomes based on the cumulative self-interested decisions of individuals. Each individual, the idea goes, makes decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis of how each option best suits his or her own self-interest, usually understood in a narrowly material sense. Rat-cho, in other words, represents the supreme ascension of instrumental rationality: all persons are assumed to act in accord with it, and social and economic outcomes can be predicted based on the decisions of individuals, without recourse to concepts such as culture. Large chunks of our current economic and public policy language currently depend on ratcho, and the theory's seeming immunity to falsifying data never ceases to astound me. I would call the persistence of the theory an example of your argument that faith in absolute rationality can become itself religious. Naturally, some clever ratcho theorists have emerged who find ways to incorporate the cultural concepts which the theory so sorely lacks. Still, their domination of the field has associated the term "rationality" with the self-interested cost-benefit calculations of individuals.

 

Bourdieu argued as vehemently against rational choice theory as any social scientist has. A warning concerning Bourdieu: in contrast to his passionately phrased language as an activist, his theoretical writings number among sociology's most difficult to read. Where Weber writes Gothic castles for sentences, Bourdieu writes a Byzantine labyrinth. I think he struggled to find language for concepts beyond what his tradition bequeathed him, and he only managed it well later in life.

 

Extrapolating from Bourdieu, I take one of extremely few human universals to be creativity. This only sometimes means artistic creativity; more generally, it means a constant reassembly of familiar elements for the present moment, a generative principle. The practice of everyday life habituates this creativity in particular ways. Habituation isn't the simple repetition of something learned (though this can be the outcome); it is the shaping of generative strategies. Embodied experience produces inclinations to create particular kinds of solutions in pursuit of particular ends. Practical logic, by and large, operates as a "fuzzy logic," more concerned with assembling the necessary parts to fulfill a goal than with establishing conceptual clarity, but it is capable of rigorous self-examination if such activity is itself habituated. Bourdieu terms the habituation of creativity for a particular person or group its habitus. I cannot do full justice to the concept here, but it's a core element of Bourdieu's attempt to explain different rationalities as both structured and structuring, as actively and continually produced in particular contexts.

[Legion]

I strongly suspect that there is no formula for art. And if this makes art irrational then so be it.

[Deva]

I strongly suspect that there is no formula for art. And if this makes art irrational then so be it.

 

 

Agree with Legion there is no formula for real art - and having a bachelor's degree in the subject makes me right LOL.

[Legion]

I strongly suspect that there is no formula for art. And if this makes art irrational then so be it.

Agree with Legion there is no formula for real art - and having a bachelor's degree in the subject makes me right LOL.

Whew! I am glad to have the agreement of someone who knows their stuff Deva.

 

My interests have always leaned towards the sciences. But as I have grown older I have become more cognizant of the idea that art may infuse all areas of human endeavor, even the sciences. If and when I go back to school I intend to cultivate my much atrophied artistic side.

 

I hold as a small article of faith that everything can, in principle, be understood. And I might not be too surpised if one day we find that the creative act involves what we might now call "irrationality."

[Antlerman]

I'm still here. Just on a bit of a vacation break, so finding it hard to put my thoughts into writing in between fishing and bicycling up North. Nonetheless, I'm far from having abandoned what I hope to explore in this. Patience. It's just begun. Up next, thoughts about Saphir-Whorph and my quest towards the theory of everything.

[Heavenslaughing]

Congratulations on the new job bringing you out of vacation, AM! I'll await your return to the thread, or initiation of a new one. For an anthropologist who takes up something very similar to a recursive thesis of yours, by the way, see Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench by Vincent Crapanzano. He treats literalism as a modern hermeneutic and rhetorical strategy whose power lies in its presentation of itself as self-evident, and he traces its operation through conservative readings of both holy and legal writ. I have not yet finished it, but it certainly seems up your alley.

[Antlerman]

Congratulations on the new job bringing you out of vacation, AM! I'll await your return to the thread, or initiation of a new one. For an anthropologist who takes up something very similar to a recursive thesis of yours, by the way, see Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench by Vincent Crapanzano. He treats literalism as a modern hermeneutic and rhetorical strategy whose power lies in its presentation of itself as self-evident, and he traces its operation through conservative readings of both holy and legal writ. I have not yet finished it, but it certainly seems up your alley.

Thank you. I appreciate it. A lot of change happening, and I've been deliberately putting myself in decompression mode for a time. Almost wish I had extending this a few months, instead of mere weeks. I do hope to get back to this as I wanted to discuss ritual and Protestant Christianity and the loss of meaning, and all subsequent strivings to define itself and it's flounderings and failing, culminating in fundamentalism. But alas, it was a bit large of a thought to hash out in between biking, gardening, fishing and general decompression. I'll do my best to come back to this, but the other easier posts such as the one on defining spirituality last night can tie into this.

 

You know the feeling of having your mind pregnant with thought and the frustration that comes with distractions so you're unable to deliver? Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts. They've been providing a positive platform for me to exercise my thoughts, and to realize the potentials of where they can and likely need to go.

 

In the mean time, there's an old topic I started some time back that will tie into this at some point you may find interest in. I was just beginning to thinking along these lines working off of some things I'd been exposed to, and trying fleshing out a few thoughts in it. It's not all that well formed, but you'll catch the idea of where I was going with it: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=15020&hl=

[Antlerman]

There’s a saying that the best engineering is invisible. I would call that both an instrumentally rational form along with an aesthetic one. That’s elegance and functionality in a complete package. Rhetorically speaking, what would you call that? I guess I’d call it reflective of the natural system; Elegance and function: the highest form of the aesthetic – God. Love; Beauty; Attraction; Appeal; Reproduction; Life.

 

Anyway… back to the rational.

 

Agreed that the best architecture combines practical use and aesthetic value. Weber (and most contemporary social scientists) consider their abstractions to be ideal types, meaning that they occur in their pure form only as concepts and will appear with different degrees and kinds of mixture in practice. In the case of Western society, instrumental rationality assumed a dominant position and claims it can operate without the others, but it never completely does. I think that what's coming out of our discussion is that a healthier, happier way to live combines rationalities in ways that do not straightforwardly subjugate one to another, but allow them to complement one another.

 

One my side, I tend to argue for most human behavior following a rationality of some kind, with irrationality reserved for an utter breakdown in making sense of the world, or perhaps for combinations of rationalities so maladaptive that the logic of all become confounded.

I agree this is where are heading, to find that balance, to eliminate that perceived dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism. It’s sort of my Holy Grail search to find a way to bring the value of both together into a system that allows for the whole person to be fully realized (religiously speaking, of course ). I’m also coming to learn a better way of expressing my thoughts as well in this, framing them in this language as I work to learn it.

 

I’ve been impressed for some time how the language we use affects our overall world views; possibly to some extent our abilities, but at least the level of difficulty or ease with which we are able to conceptualize. If someone has no exposure to languages of art, or on the other hand science, though they may have the capacity for both they can become thwarted in their ability to talk about it to themselves and the world around them, or in the extreme their capacity can be so dulled it becomes stunted. For me this is all an exercise of taking concepts I have and finding a vocabulary to ease my ability to understand them with – such as recognizing what I’m talking about here as a type of Moderate Worphianism.

 

From that, the Holy Grail search considers some possible language that encompasses both aspects; objectivism and subjectivism, in order to create a sort of feedback loop, where the language allows the mind and emotion to be exercised, which feeds the language, which feeds the human. Another way I’ve conceptualized this is in saying that we create God in our own image, and serve God, in order for God to serve us. God exists because it’s served us. People feed God because they need God to feed us: “God” being that pool of ideals and embodiment of our identity in our practices and beliefs (perhaps relating to the idea of the Habitus?). In which case, what happens when we kill “God” (or what people embody in God)? Do will kill something we are, something we have become innately in our evolution through bio-cultural feedback loops? Did we evolve to become Vulcans or Humans?

 

I shared the link to the earlier post I made touching on this in the previous thread.

 

Protestant and secular philosophers alike have given ritual the short end of the stick. As Christianity emerged, it associated meaning with language, interpretation with linguistic exegesis, and the beginning with the Word. Yet meaning inheres in the muscle and movement of the body, in its apprehension and interaction with the material world. Even words, after all, come to be only through actions of the body, whether my rattling vocal chords or my tapping fingers. Ritual activates meanings through the body, meanings that do not simply reflect those expressed through language but which operate according to their own medium, and which sometimes defy linguistic exegesis.

 

For Weber, habitual rationality constituted one form of ends in itself, including a pursuit of familiarity beyond only religious ritual. Habituation figures rather differently into my own thinking; it's not so much a kind of rationality as the way in which rationalities get produced.

I want to explore this to some depth here: Protestant Christianity, the loss of ritual, and the search for meaning.

 

You are correct about ritual becoming a source of meaning, or that it creates meaning. I think that’s what I’m driving at as well. Where Protestant Christianity fails in this is in that it minimizes or ignores the power of ritual, and replaces it with theology – with creating its meaning or value with defining itself outside being Catholic.

 

Their focus is on a defining of themselves theologically in opposition to Catholicism. Meaning is found in a theological identification, rather than in an experiential one. The religious experience tied to ritual has a huge advantage over one tied to an intellectual one. Protestants have moved from the rites and rituals of religion, to the ideological, the theological, and the theoretical.

 

But where do people live? What percentage of them are theologians? What percentage of philosophers? Is identifying yourself as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc enough? Does it go far enough into emotional needs for a sense of identification, a sense of meaning, a sense of significance?

 

Ritual provides that. I have been friends with numerous people from Turkey. They are Muslims who perform the ritual prayer towards Mecca, along with their prayer beads, rugs, icons, holidays, feasts, etc. They are all intelligent people, but have this shared bond. As I witnessed them do this as a friend of theirs, I was struck by the level of meaning that was imparted to each of them as individuals, and as a group, and never once did it impress me as them being superstitious, ignorant, or any such shortcoming of reason. To them it’s part a whole identification system. These rituals define a commonality amongst themselves, an identity for themselves, and a sense of meaning through enacting these rituals physically. The “factuality” of their beliefs, falls significantly to the way side compared to the system itself. That Mohammad is the final prophet of God, is to me, more an excuse for the ritual.

 

Now to Protestants. Dropping most of the system of rituals and symbolisms from their Mother, the RCC, they are left with trying to impart significance to their followers through theology – why they are “right”. The problem with this is, with that comes every Tom, Dick, and Harry, who have a better theology that makes them more “right”. This denomination and it’s doctrines becomes the identification of this ethnic group, another with it’s doctrines becomes the identification of another group.

 

As you have changes in societies through the influences from the enlightenment, you have neo-orthodoxy arising, blending enlightenment ideas with Christianity in hopes to find relevance, in hopes to impart meaning, and then the fundamentalist who sells to those who find that too far of a reach and prefer the old fashioned ways of some nostalgic ideal past. And on and on it goes, clamoring for the best position to appeal to a desire for meaning to those who find themselves in the Protestant sphere, all the way to the ultimate example of this in the modern Evangelical selling Jesus as your personal savior, for your salvation, your blessing, your prosperity, your health, you, you, you; giving meaning to the Christian faith by selling it to the consumerist market, complete with their scriptural verses supporting their marketing angles (theology). But behind it all is the essential definition of a Protestant: not being Catholic. They really are in a sense little systems of anarchy in the belly of bureaucracy: the Christian Religion.

 

How many Protestant denominations are there? Thousands? How many forms of Catholicism are there? Less than five? Is it possible that there is something that Protestants are not offering that makes it splinter apart into thousands of pieces this way? What is the common identification amongst all these Protestants? A small handful of doctrines that people mentally assent to? That’s hardly something that in practice creates that sense of commonality, of belonging, of identity, of significance, of meaning that a set of shared rituals provide.

[Alice]

Protestant Christianity, the loss of ritual, and the search for meaning.

 

How many Protestant denominations are there? Thousands? How many forms of Catholicism are there? Less than five? Is it possible that there is something that Protestants are not offering that makes it splinter apart into thousands of pieces this way? What is the common identification amongst all these Protestants? A small handful of doctrines that people mentally assent to? That’s hardly something that in practice creates that sense of commonality, of belonging, of identity, of significance, of meaning that a set of shared rituals provide.

 

I have never truly considered the far greater tendency for protestant christians to split as oppossed to catholic, before. I think if I had I would have assumed that this was because Catholic churches maybe had more power in their heirarchy so that people were less inclined to 'go against authority'. I guess because the roman catholic church also believes that the 'church' is as important as their 'scriptures' they have sources of interpretation that take precedence over individual understanding ~ for protestants, along with the personal saviour comes the personal holy spirit interpretation of the bible.

 

I think there is a fear in the protestant psyche of 'ritual' as being a 'copy' of 'the real thing', or even as a distraction from the 'real thing'. I can see how this could arise from an absence of language and consideration of what is objective and what subjective, or a dissmissal of what is seen as 'subjective' as something that has less value than the objective.

 

A lot of people seem to use subjective and objective in the same way that they use rational and irrational ~ with one being way more 'superiour' than the other. In fact I have heard subjective and irrational used in a negative way (and used them this way myself) so often it is quite hard to shake this understanding of the terms.

[Vomit Comet]

Where Marx and Weber concur is that the old mystified ways are pushed aside by the advent of modern industrial capitalism.

 

Marx stated that "all that is solid melts into air." He was referring to the old pastoralism of serfs and nobles, and the spiritual apparatus that made it cohere. In its place is a "naked cash nexus", where workers sell their labor to bourgeois owners. In other words, the bullshit is stripped away and the cut-and-dry economic relations underlying everything are laid bare.

 

Weber said that bureaucratic instrumental-rationality was going to take over everything. The "iron cage of rationality" was our lot. He summed up "all that is solid melts into air" with one word: "disenchantment."

 

However, there's one thing that neither of the two was able to anticipate: the role of entertainment, in particular what the Frankfurt School went on to call the "culture industry."

 

Entertainment is what takes the edge off for people. It has taken the place of religion.

[Heavenslaughing]

I agree this is where are heading, to find that balance, to eliminate that perceived dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism. It’s sort of my Holy Grail search to find a way to bring the value of both together into a system that allows for the whole person to be fully realized (religiously speaking, of course ). I’m also coming to learn a better way of expressing my thoughts as well in this, framing them in this language as I work to learn it.

 

I’ve been impressed for some time how the language we use affects our overall world views; possibly to some extent our abilities, but at least the level of difficulty or ease with which we are able to conceptualize. If someone has no exposure to languages of art, or on the other hand science, though they may have the capacity for both they can become thwarted in their ability to talk about it to themselves and the world around them, or in the extreme their capacity can be so dulled it becomes stunted. For me this is all an exercise of taking concepts I have and finding a vocabulary to ease my ability to understand them with – such as recognizing what I’m talking about here as a type of Moderate Worphianism.

 

Whorf spoke of language as having a limiting effect on thought, and when seeing examples of things that some group won't think of because it does not exist in their language, it's easy to think of the relationship in this way. (Whorf's examples from his days as a fireman are pretty hilarious. Evidently people rather frequently set things on fire in ways that Whorf explained with linguistic determinism on thought.)

 

I'm not so sure I see the effect of language as limiting. Instead, I might call it specifically generative. That is, we learn to generate thought in ways particular to the tools and media we have available. We don't learn to generate thoughts (or actions) outside the terms we have available. To someone for whom thoughts outside our vocabulary or grammar feel natural, and who finds herself stymied in trying to communicate them, it can seem very much as if language prevents certain kinds of thought. I would say that languages in this case are generating thought in different directions. To change direction, we frequently do need to innovate linguistically, sometimes by inventing new words and other times by resignifying old ones.

 

So, instead of language determining thought, the theory I run with argues that all thought operates through some medium or another, and necessarily takes shape only through a medium of some kind. That said, the challenge becomes much the same: how to how to reinvent our medium so as to create a way of knowing beyond the dualisms which ensnare us.

 

From that, the Holy Grail search considers some possible language that encompasses both aspects; objectivism and subjectivism, in order to create a sort of feedback loop, where the language allows the mind and emotion to be exercised, which feeds the language, which feeds the human. Another way I’ve conceptualized this is in saying that we create God in our own image, and serve God, in order for God to serve us. God exists because it’s served us. People feed God because they need God to feed us: “God” being that pool of ideals and embodiment of our identity in our practices and beliefs (perhaps relating to the idea of the Habitus?). In which case, what happens when we kill “God” (or what people embody in God)? Do will kill something we are, something we have become innately in our evolution through bio-cultural feedback loops? Did we evolve to become Vulcans or Humans?

 

I would point out here the cultural particularity of God. The monotheistic "pool of ideals and embodiment of our identity" is a kind of god-symbol which has emerged from the religions of the Book and from several other locations independently, but it's far from everywhere, and it's only through a certain degree of assimilation of concepts that we translate the beings that many other cultures have revered, feared, or otherwise engaged "gods." Hunter-gatherer tribes who believe in no manner of gods, spirits, or afterlife are not uncommon, in contrast to horribly outdated but still popular theories on the evolution of religion. I suppose what I am saying here is that we are not necessarily looking for a solution to a universal human dilemma, but a more culturally particular one in which God has come to mean certain things, and it is difficult to disentangle God from certain aspects of living that we find important. Since we find the effects of a literally personified and omnipotent God unacceptable, we find ourselves faced with the choice either to resignify God, or to invent something different altogether. Both are an extreme challenge.

 

I want to explore this to some depth here: Protestant Christianity, the loss of ritual, and the search for meaning.

 

You are correct about ritual becoming a source of meaning, or that it creates meaning. I think that’s what I’m driving at as well. Where Protestant Christianity fails in this is in that it minimizes or ignores the power of ritual, and replaces it with theology – with creating its meaning or value with defining itself outside being Catholic.

 

Their focus is on a defining of themselves theologically in opposition to Catholicism. Meaning is found in a theological identification, rather than in an experiential one. The religious experience tied to ritual has a huge advantage over one tied to an intellectual one. Protestants have moved from the rites and rituals of religion, to the ideological, the theological, and the theoretical.

 

But where do people live? What percentage of them are theologians? What percentage of philosophers? Is identifying yourself as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc enough? Does it go far enough into emotional needs for a sense of identification, a sense of meaning, a sense of significance?

 

Ritual provides that. I have been friends with numerous people from Turkey. They are Muslims who perform the ritual prayer towards Mecca, along with their prayer beads, rugs, icons, holidays, feasts, etc. They are all intelligent people, but have this shared bond. As I witnessed them do this as a friend of theirs, I was struck by the level of meaning that was imparted to each of them as individuals, and as a group, and never once did it impress me as them being superstitious, ignorant, or any such shortcoming of reason. To them it’s part a whole identification system. These rituals define a commonality amongst themselves, an identity for themselves, and a sense of meaning through enacting these rituals physically. The “factuality” of their beliefs, falls significantly to the way side compared to the system itself. That Mohammad is the final prophet of God, is to me, more an excuse for the ritual.

 

Now to Protestants. Dropping most of the system of rituals and symbolisms from their Mother, the RCC, they are left with trying to impart significance to their followers through theology – why they are “right”. The problem with this is, with that comes every Tom, Dick, and Harry, who have a better theology that makes them more “right”. This denomination and it’s doctrines becomes the identification of this ethnic group, another with it’s doctrines becomes the identification of another group.

 

As you have changes in societies through the influences from the enlightenment, you have neo-orthodoxy arising, blending enlightenment ideas with Christianity in hopes to find relevance, in hopes to impart meaning, and then the fundamentalist who sells to those who find that too far of a reach and prefer the old fashioned ways of some nostalgic ideal past. And on and on it goes, clamoring for the best position to appeal to a desire for meaning to those who find themselves in the Protestant sphere, all the way to the ultimate example of this in the modern Evangelical selling Jesus as your personal savior, for your salvation, your blessing, your prosperity, your health, you, you, you; giving meaning to the Christian faith by selling it to the consumerist market, complete with their scriptural verses supporting their marketing angles (theology). But behind it all is the essential definition of a Protestant: not being Catholic. They really are in a sense little systems of anarchy in the belly of bureaucracy: the Christian Religion.

 

How many Protestant denominations are there? Thousands? How many forms of Catholicism are there? Less than five? Is it possible that there is something that Protestants are not offering that makes it splinter apart into thousands of pieces this way? What is the common identification amongst all these Protestants? A small handful of doctrines that people mentally assent to? That’s hardly something that in practice creates that sense of commonality, of belonging, of identity, of significance, of meaning that a set of shared rituals provide.

 

I'm not sure I would see the splintering as an outcome of Protestantism failing to offer something. It might be, but splitting could be an outcome of the basis of community in Protestantism, as you also suggest. In Catholicism, community and authority comes from ritual and the church hierarchy. It Protestantism, more of both comes from the holiness of the Bible and from particular positions on theology and worship. If you have a doctrinal divide in Catholicism, unless it's excommunicable, there's no reason to form a new denomination. In Protestantism, since interpreting the Bible in a particular way is the basis of your community, a new interpretation means a new community.

 

Protestants do have rituals, of course, but they tend to deride non-verbal, non-exegetical rituals, rituals whose meanings activate in the muscles of the body, as empty repetition. I don't believe the charismatics stand as an exception to this, since there's a demand that each experience of writhing or speaking in tongues have the character of newness, uniqueness, and authenticity. (Mary Douglas has a genuinely fascinating theory on the variable's controlling a group's mode of ritual symbolism, which might deserve discussion later.) Now, we're exploring above how to create new meaning through words, which is in its way a "Protestant" method for going about things. Another way I've seen you explore would be to ask whether some set of rituals can activate a different meaning for God, or activate those aspects of living we find important without recourse to God.

 

 

And then, a side note...

Where Marx and Weber concur is that the old mystified ways are pushed aside by the advent of modern industrial capitalism.

 

Marx stated that "all that is solid melts into air." He was referring to the old pastoralism of serfs and nobles, and the spiritual apparatus that made it cohere. In its place is a "naked cash nexus", where workers sell their labor to bourgeois owners. In other words, the bullshit is stripped away and the cut-and-dry economic relations underlying everything are laid bare.

 

Weber said that bureaucratic instrumental-rationality was going to take over everything. The "iron cage of rationality" was our lot. He summed up "all that is solid melts into air" with one word: "disenchantment."

 

However, there's one thing that neither of the two was able to anticipate: the role of entertainment, in particular what the Frankfurt School went on to call the "culture industry."

 

Entertainment is what takes the edge off for people. It has taken the place of religion.

 

Weber did indeed see the supremacy of instrumental rationality as causing a "disenchantment" of the world. His original word, "Entzaubering," suggests more than the regular denotation of disenchantment. The world becomes de-magicked, both the in the sense of disillusioned and in the sense of magic actually leaving: dis-enchanted.

 

Marx did believe that the personalized systems of economics and meaning get stripped away, but he did not believe that capitalism washes away religion. Marx believed that people practice religion to alleviate their suffering in this world, hence the poorly translated and understood "opiate of the masses" phrase, which is meant to suggest more a painkiller than a hallucinogenic. Capitalism brought new degrees and kinds of suffering, and ought also to bring a new kind of religion. It's interesting that subsequent Marxists frequently understood religion as a false consciousness in need of curing, since following Marx's logic, religion doesn't need curing, but suffering caused by social inequality does.

 

I would see the two as more opposed on this issue. Both believed that modernity washed away traditional orders of all kind, but they have quite different notions about the continued significance of religion. In holding the imagination to derive from sensual, lived experience (which is quite a different proposition from the simplistic reading that semiotics derives from economics), my own thinking derives abstractly from Marx, though I do not pathologize the source of religion in the way most of his readers do.

[REBOOT]

Weber did indeed see the supremacy of instrumental rationality as causing a "disenchantment" of the world. His original word, "Entzaubering," suggests more than the regular denotation of disenchantment. The world becomes de-magicked, both the in the sense of disillusioned and in the sense of magic actually leaving: dis-enchanted.

 

Right on !

Irrationality: attributing meaning without considering any scientifically validated consensus.

 

Ex: The beauty of a blossoming flower.... a fundy christian will say: 'this must be a gift from god created to enhance the scenery and please humans' where a scientist will start describing complex pollination ecology and insect/plant relationships that have shaped them both through millions of years of evolution in a frenzy to survive the elements.

 

Lifting the veil of irrationality is absolutely disenchanting, as we are no longer the center of the universe but a very complex interactive element inside an eco-system. Our creative potential expressed through religions, art, music, movies and entertainment... etc... is needed magic to pacify existential angst in a world where the unknown is greater than the known.

 

Forcing meaning through the irrational is an emotional 'band-aid' until we build the instrument that will debunk it. What's up with the LHC these days ?

[DesertBob]

I have never truly considered the far greater tendency for protestant christians to split as oppossed to catholic, before. I think if I had I would have assumed that this was because Catholic churches maybe had more power in their heirarchy so that people were less inclined to 'go against authority'. I guess because the roman catholic church also believes that the 'church' is as important as their 'scriptures' they have sources of interpretation that take precedence over individual understanding ~ for protestants, along with the personal saviour comes the personal holy spirit interpretation of the bible.

 

I think there is a fear in the protestant psyche of 'ritual' as being a 'copy' of 'the real thing', or even as a distraction from the 'real thing'. I can see how this could arise from an absence of language and consideration of what is objective and what subjective, or a dissmissal of what is seen as 'subjective' as something that has less value than the objective.

I agree with your analysis. I would add that Catholicism attracts people who are pleased and comforted by the idea of continuity, consistency, and tradition. You can't have an experience of meditation or worship in one of the great ancient cathedrals without feeling that you're a part of a continuum reaching back to Christ himself, and you can't sustain that feeling in a disheveled pole barn built in 1978 in anticipation of a rapture sometime before 1990.

 

And yes, there is a fear among protestants (or at least among evangelicals / fundamentalists) of ritual and outward form substituting for a real inward experience. Also, a fear of irrelevance, or "dead religion" in place of "living faith". And it's not without some merit; the old mainline denominations often seem like they're going through empty motions. It's just that frenetic fanaticism and emotionalism is just as empty, even if in the short run it appears more "real" or can be more "exciting".

[lunaticheathen]

More about AM's original thoughts on this - I totally "get" irrationalism. Hell, that's basically how I view myth. It's not a lie, it's just not rational. Doesn't make it useless. It's simply another mode of expressing the human experience. Ritual is the same way. Science says it doesn't "do anything", unless you're a sociologist, then it brings people together - but I don't think it's even as simple as that. It alters consciousness.

I think irrationalism might have a lot to say about what spiritual/mystical experiences do to consciousness, and how they change humans. Irrationalism fits in my liminal world and experiences. Thanks for a non-pejorative use of this term!

[Antlerman]

More about AM's original thoughts on this - I totally "get" irrationalism. Hell, that's basically how I view myth. It's not a lie, it's just not rational. Doesn't make it useless. It's simply another mode of expressing the human experience. Ritual is the same way. Science says it doesn't "do anything", unless you're a sociologist, then it brings people together - but I don't think it's even as simple as that. It alters consciousness.

I think irrationalism might have a lot to say about what spiritual/mystical experiences do to consciousness, and how they change humans. Irrationalism fits in my liminal world and experiences. Thanks for a non-pejorative use of this term!

This is interesting to see this topic of mine from two years ago and check it against where my thoughts have moved to today. I can see a lot my thoughts today in this from before, just expanded a little more now. I just posted some understandings of the use of the words belief and faith in another thread recently and I can see that they hold up quite well to what I was getting at in this thread from two years ago.

 

I think I can add perhaps an additional layer to this that might help put some perspectives on it. What I would say more today is that this is about the non-rational aspects of being human. Irrational tends to be a misnomer as it suggests against-rationality. I prefer the use of the word nonrational, and to expand on this, add the terms prerational and transrational to it. The mythic/magical modes of thought is more prerational, "rational" in the sense of the Age of Reason as a mode of thought. Transrational would be to go beyond rationality in that sense, not against it or in objection to it, but to not be limited by it. Prerational is operating in nonrationaity, but before a developed sense of reason and rationality as in a mode of thought. Both prerational and transrational are nonrational, but with a distinction of context.

 

Indeed we do pull from the nonrational to inform us, to give us knowledge, but there is a distinction between not incorporating higher mode of view in the desire and incorporating but going beyond it, not being limited to just that and that alone as the highest state of mind or means of knowledge.

[Legion]

I so want to critique this. But this is the wrong forum for being critical.