A "community of reasoners"

In the preface of Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters Steven Pinker declares an inter-subjective aspiration which, as I was saying, distinguishes genuine rationality from personal self-indulgent bias. A "community of reasoners" can still get things wrong, but isolated individuals almost always do. And they almost never correct themselves.

"Many act as if rationality is obsolete—as if the point of argumentation is to discredit one’s adversaries rather than collectively reason our way to the most defensible beliefs. In an era in which rationality seems both more threatened and more essential than ever, Rationality [the book, the course, the ideal] is, above all, an affirmation of rationality. A major theme of this book [course] is that none of us, thinking alone, is rational enough to consistently come to sound conclusions: rationality emerges from a community of reasoners who spot each other’s fallacies."

And that's what our course on Rationality, commencing just after the fireworks, will be: a self-correcting little conversational community of rational inquiries and sharers of experience. Listeners, then, as well as spotters.

First, though, it will be rational to enjoy the celebration of independence that I choose to regard not as a patriotic/nationalistic holiday but rather as an occasion to rally around Immanuel Kant's clarion call for enlightenment. Sapere aude! Use your capacity for reasoned understanding, think for yourself. But do it in a reality-based community.

It's also my annual occasion to dust off and revisit Richard Ford's Independence Day and "consider in what ways we're independent or might be..."