Can Rationality Encompass the Whole of the Universe?

Personally, I would have to say "no". As Hamlet put it, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Even if we are granted an infinite amount of time to examine the universe (the lack of which has been noted as an obstacle to scientific progress), we would still not be able to get at what the universe is in its entirety.

There are things that are not material, and there are irrational pieces of work that come to us as divine revelation: Apollo needs his Dionysus to better understand the world.

Some things are just incommensurable to science. What do you dudes think?

I think that everything is rational, we just lack the brainpower necessary to make sense of it all.
Also, since we live in a three (four if you want to be picky) dimensional universe, we can't possibly imagine what happens in the countless others that could exist.

Rationality is merely the process of analyzing data that comes in through observation and study. Therefore, with the proper data that proves your argument, ANY argument could be considered rational - you could argue that ghosts live in Hades as long as you had the proper information to prove that Hades exists and that ghosts were there, and you could even argue that we were all made out of Play-Doh if you had the observations to back it up.

The only non-bull**** argument you've presented against analyzing observed data would be that a person wouldn't have the time to observe everything that might happen in the universe - however, any blithering fool would realize that this point doesn't actually indicate any sort of fault with the process, but merely with our own physical limitations. :O If any hyperuniversal being wanted to analyze our universe, for example, he'd be able to do so with the process of rationality and would get all of the results he wanted just fine. ^_^

andi has summed it up well.

Rationality is simply not believing something without evidence. How could it ever be a good idea to accept something without any evidence?

seems to me the limit is the metaphysical. theres no reason that with the time all of the future generations have we could attempt to analyze the entire empirical universe. But then we stop at the metaphysical boundary, bound as we are to our empirical selves.

Originally Posted by GDwarf

andi has summed it up well.

Rationality is simply not believing something without evidence. How could it ever be a good idea to accept something without any evidence?

Sorry that it took me a while to respond: I will start here. I did not mean to attack rationality, but the logical mindset. You know, the point of view where you need to be able to recreate it in a lab for it to be credible, or need it to synch up with other scientific things for it to work out.

If you mean evidence, there is such a thing as that which is given by authority, or personal experience of eldritch horrors. I was going for the more narrow, stereotypically scientific side of it. Analyzing things is a useful skill, but I would not be willing to found a government on it.

Sometimes, we are told that our government's decisions should be based solely on scientific theory, but that is not entirely feasible. Science as a whole credits itself with changing its paradigms on a dime if they have sufficient evidence, but government as a whole cannot do that. Scientific fads are not stable enough for laws. Eugenics is a good example of this sort of thing.

Originally Posted by HurriPen

Sorry that it took me a while to respond: I will start here. I did not mean to attack rationality, but the logical mindset. You know, the point of view where you need to be able to recreate it in a lab for it to be credible, or need it to synch up with other scientific things for it to work out.

They're the same thing. If you attack one, you de facto attack the other.

Originally Posted by HurriPen

If you mean evidence, there is such a thing as that which is given by authority, or personal experience of eldritch horrors. I was going for the more narrow, stereotypically scientific side of it. Analyzing things is a useful skill, but I would not be willing to found a government on it.

Appeals to authority, when a person can easily be wrong and their own experiences can be horribly skewed or easily distorted by memory? Personal experiences, even though it's well known that almost all people will state the most brazen of lies and the best can only suffer from severe hallucinations?

Sounds like if you're looking for something that will be consistent, those are the last two things you should use as a sound basis.

Originally Posted by HurriPen

Sometimes, we are told that our government's decisions should be based solely on scientific theory, but that is not entirely feasible. Science as a whole credits itself with changing its paradigms on a dime if they have sufficient evidence, but government as a whole cannot do that. Scientific fads are not stable enough for laws. Eugenics is a good example of this sort of thing.

So, if a government is not suited to its situation, it should be left alone instead of changed? Sounds like you're just pushing for as many revolutions as possible, eh?

Also, what, objectively speaking, is wrong with the idea of eugenics? When your idea of "the good members of a species" changes from "the ones with the blond hair and swastikas on their arm" to "those who are capable of performing the most effective tasks with the least amount of training", where does the concept of eugenics go wrong?

Originally Posted by andi

Also, what, objectively speaking, is wrong with the idea of eugenics? When your idea of "the good members of a species" changes from "the ones with the blond hair and swastikas on their arm" to "those who are capable of performing the most effective tasks with the least amount of training", where does the concept of eugenics go wrong?

Heres where it might go wrong. Who decides what 'the most effective or desirable' person is for selective breeding?? You cant just push certain people out of the gene pool because you want a load of perfect workers to work your factories. I mean, chavs may perpetuate themselves in the horrible, illiterate circumstances they cannot seem to get out of generation after generation, and i may hate them, but i cant just go *poof* youre no longer able to breed!

Originally Posted by andi

They're the same thing. If you attack one, you de facto attack the other.

So you can not use logic unless you follow the scientific method to the letter, including proper documentation? Sometimes, people do not have access to this sort of thing. Sometimes, all we have left after encounters with strange things is memory.

Appeals to authority, when a person can easily be wrong and their own experiences can be horribly skewed or easily distorted by memory? Personal experiences, even though it's well known that almost all people will state the most brazen of lies and the best can only suffer from severe hallucinations?

Sounds like if you're looking for something that will be consistent, those are the last two things you should use as a sound basis.

I'm not sure if you can denigrate long-term memory that much and assume short-term memory is infallible (i.e. the short amount of time between seeing something and writing it down). But that may just be me.

So, if a government is not suited to its situation, it should be left alone instead of changed? Sounds like you're just pushing for as many revolutions as possible, eh?

No, it's just that some philosophic dialectic may better serve the purpose of good government than a recent study in a scientific journal. It takes time to verify that sort of thing, but it is often used as the basis for government action. Not to mention the dangers of incomplete pictures being presented (such as forgetting to differentiate between the state of adult vs. embryonic stem cell research).

Also, what, objectively speaking, is wrong with the idea of eugenics? When your idea of "the good members of a species" changes from "the ones with the blond hair and swastikas on their arm" to "those who are capable of performing the most effective tasks with the least amount of training", where does the concept of eugenics go wrong?

The problem is that fallible beings who did not come from such a program are in charge of it. Also, since we are on the topic of breeding, have you seen dogs lately? I do not have enough faith in the ability of mankind to agree on something. The most likely result will be multiple "supermen" who are subservient to their masters.

Plus, what kind of people would allow their biological decisions to be made for them by the government? Cowards. And with the loss of courage would go intellectual and social progress.

I think you've all confused rationalism with empiricism a bit, guys.

A quick note: Rationality is very closely related to reason, in many cases they are the same thing.

So why, exactly, are the people arguing against it using reason to do so? It's like going around and punching people because you feel that violence is wrong.

Originally Posted by Terranix

I think you've all confused rationalism with empiricism a bit, guys.

Yeah, I guess I did. Sorry about that. ^_^;

Ah, there we go. This topic makes a decent amount of sense now. ^_^

Originally Posted by GDwarf

So why, exactly, are the people arguing against it using reason to do so? It's like going around and punching people because you feel that violence is wrong.

Using reason to disprove reason is a very unreasonable thing to do. So I guess that would mean they're...not using reason, because any reasonable person knows that you can't disprove reason with reason.

...I need to stop confusing myself

Is this an argument over whether reason exists or not?
And something that is "incommensurable to science" (quoth Hurripen) must be something that is more than what there is, right?

This is an argument against the empirical mindset, saying that there is more to the universe than what science can describe.

That may be the case, but I've yet to see any proof for it.


Now, before you jump on me for saying something that seems incredibly stupid, think about it for a bit.


You don't believe things without proof. You want some, no matter how flimsy, before you believe something. Otherwise pretty much everyone would come up with their own religion from scratch.

Science is simply a method to gather, evaluate, and draw conclusions from evidence.

So my question is: How is it any less able to 'see' the universe then non-science?

Well, for one thing, it only allows you to believe in events that you can reproduce, which makes it hard to understand miracles.

Of course there is more to the universe than science can describe. The limited nature of our senses necessarily leads to the idea that there is more to objects than we can possibly percieve.
And of course, the empirical cannot explain the metaphysical.

Ok, just so its being said.
Philisopically sure, you can rationlise the universe in its entirety... as long as you already have a complete picture of the Universe handy.

Scientifically no way, there are simply some places in the universe where science as we understand it doesn't apply.