"Rationalism" is used in many ways, some overlapping, some inconsistent. Ask a philosopher what rationalism is and you'll likely hear about a distinction between different camps of early modern philosophers. Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza are paradigmatic rationalists, opposed to Berkeley, Hume, and Locke as the paradigmatic empiricists. *Very* roughly, the distinction concerns how much can be known by reason alone, vs. how much you need experience for. This way of carving up the history of early modern philosophy is often associated with Kantian triumphalism, where Kant is seen as having synthesized what was best in the rationalist and empiricist traditions.
"Rationalism" in this sense has little to do with decision theory and overcoming cognitive biases. For that contemporary movement, there isn't an agreed upon unambiguous term, so I use "Bay Area Rationalism" to refer to the EY/Scott Alexander/Robin Hanson camp. I'm open to better labels. Already this can be confusing because Bay Area rationalists are pretty clearly more sympathetic to the early modern empiricists than the early modern rationalists.
But this op-ed author is using rationalism in yet another sense, but not an idiosyncratic one. He's probably been reading Oakeshott, or people who read Oakeshott, who wrote "Rationalism in Politics" (he's a critic). Bay Area rationalists like James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" (read Scott Alexander's wonderful review), and what Scott means by "high modernism" has a lot in common with what Oakeshott means by "rationalism", if that helps. But you could also have a look at the SEP entry on Oakeshott: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/oakeshott/#RatiRati
Again very roughly, rationalism for Oakeshott is a kind of hubris, thinking that the sort of knowledge you can get from science and abstract formal principles is adequate to guide political decision-making, which he thinks requires much more experience and judgment.
I don't want to say they have nothing to do with each other though. I imagine fans of Oakeshott's critique of rationalism in politics would probably tend to think that plenty of Bay Area rationalists are overly optimistic about how far decision theory can get you in thinking about politics.
"It’s a little more flowery, but it’s the same kind of question-begging: why should “true intellectual diversity” exclude critical theorists?"
The weak answer is to just quote Karl Popper. Critical theorists, if left inside a space, multiply and devour like locusts. They can't be tolerated.
The strong answer is realizing that Rufo isn't interested in true intellectual diversity. He recognizes that universities like Yale and Harvard are responsible for selecting the ruling class of America and its empire. For the right to have a fighting chance, it has to make a play for transmitting its values through those universities, as the left has been doing for centuries.
Both the right and the left use and abuse words almost exclusively in bad faith… As if they’re creating a new dictionary in real time and just ahead of the general population’s ability to see through the sleight of…tongue (?). Orwell pointed at that in his famous essay, and George Carlin had a great routine about the shifting of words’ meanings.
"Rationalism" is used in many ways, some overlapping, some inconsistent. Ask a philosopher what rationalism is and you'll likely hear about a distinction between different camps of early modern philosophers. Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza are paradigmatic rationalists, opposed to Berkeley, Hume, and Locke as the paradigmatic empiricists. *Very* roughly, the distinction concerns how much can be known by reason alone, vs. how much you need experience for. This way of carving up the history of early modern philosophy is often associated with Kantian triumphalism, where Kant is seen as having synthesized what was best in the rationalist and empiricist traditions.
"Rationalism" in this sense has little to do with decision theory and overcoming cognitive biases. For that contemporary movement, there isn't an agreed upon unambiguous term, so I use "Bay Area Rationalism" to refer to the EY/Scott Alexander/Robin Hanson camp. I'm open to better labels. Already this can be confusing because Bay Area rationalists are pretty clearly more sympathetic to the early modern empiricists than the early modern rationalists.
But this op-ed author is using rationalism in yet another sense, but not an idiosyncratic one. He's probably been reading Oakeshott, or people who read Oakeshott, who wrote "Rationalism in Politics" (he's a critic). Bay Area rationalists like James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" (read Scott Alexander's wonderful review), and what Scott means by "high modernism" has a lot in common with what Oakeshott means by "rationalism", if that helps. But you could also have a look at the SEP entry on Oakeshott: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/oakeshott/#RatiRati
Again very roughly, rationalism for Oakeshott is a kind of hubris, thinking that the sort of knowledge you can get from science and abstract formal principles is adequate to guide political decision-making, which he thinks requires much more experience and judgment.
I don't want to say they have nothing to do with each other though. I imagine fans of Oakeshott's critique of rationalism in politics would probably tend to think that plenty of Bay Area rationalists are overly optimistic about how far decision theory can get you in thinking about politics.
"It’s a little more flowery, but it’s the same kind of question-begging: why should “true intellectual diversity” exclude critical theorists?"
The weak answer is to just quote Karl Popper. Critical theorists, if left inside a space, multiply and devour like locusts. They can't be tolerated.
The strong answer is realizing that Rufo isn't interested in true intellectual diversity. He recognizes that universities like Yale and Harvard are responsible for selecting the ruling class of America and its empire. For the right to have a fighting chance, it has to make a play for transmitting its values through those universities, as the left has been doing for centuries.
Both the right and the left use and abuse words almost exclusively in bad faith… As if they’re creating a new dictionary in real time and just ahead of the general population’s ability to see through the sleight of…tongue (?). Orwell pointed at that in his famous essay, and George Carlin had a great routine about the shifting of words’ meanings.