Comments on “The value of meaninglessness”
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I finally actually made the point
As you say, I’d been dissing rationalism for years, without clearly explaining what I was on about. I’m glad that it makes sense now that I finally have!
Russell a "logical positivist"???
It feels a bit odd to call Russell a logical positivist - I mean the various usual summaries talk about the Vienna and Berlin circles, there’s mentions of Wittgenstein, Russell gets mentioned as part of the philosophical background but not as part of the movement itself.
Russell
There’s a footnote about that earlier, in the chapter on logical positivism overall:
The category “logical positivism” is also nebulous; different thinkers and works are included or not by different historians. I will use it in the broadest, vaguest sense possible: as rooted in Frege’s development of formal logic; as including “logical empiricism,” which is sometimes treated as a distinct movement; and as stretching into the 1950s work of, for example, Carnap and Reichenbach.
I'm convinced, finally, that Bayesianism is not enough
I finally get the point you’ve been making, for years now, and understand that it really was, for many of us, what you call a ‘rationalism’.
It’s still very useful! But it’s only useful when used reasonably and, meta-rationally, it may not be useful, or the most useful form of rationality, for some (or most!) possible circumstances.
(I just started this ‘book’ from the begining, ignoring your advice to wait until the later parts of the book have been published. I suspect that, given my extended exposure to your writing, I’ll be okay.)
Thanks again for all of this wonderful work!