This is a glossary of terms that are unfamiliar, new coinages, or used in non-standard ways here. Ones in purple link to pages that discuss them in more detail.
- advanced rationality
Advanced rationality operates within a formal system to Solve Problems when a general solution method is unknown, or when it is unclear whether a Solution is even possible. You may have to apply several different methods in non-obvious ways, devise a new one, or somehow find a one-off Solution “by the seat of your pants.” In the J-curve of increasingly sophisticated ways of reasoning, advanced rationality comes between basic rationality (solving a problem with a known method) and with adventure rationality, in which no formal Problem is given or evident.
- adventure rationality
Adventure rationality applies formal methods when, initially, no formal Problem is given or evident. This requires locating a proto-Problem within a mess and formalizing it so that basic or advanced rationality applies. In the J-curve of increasingly sophisticated ways of reasoning, adventure rationality comes between advanced rationality and multi-rationality.
- affordance
An affordance is a commonly-occurring, perceivable feature of a situation that makes a corresponding form of routine activity possible. For example, a door handle affords opening the door.
- basic rationality
Basic rationality Solves Problems when it is clear which standard methods to use. It contrasts with advanced rationality, which finds Solutions when no standard, guaranteed-to-work approach is available.
- circumrationality
Circumrationality is the non-rational, concrete activity at the edge of a rational system that connects it with reality. Formal systems cannot bridge the gap between abstractions and the world on their own. That takes on-going work, typically including perception, actions affecting inanimate objects, and social interaction.
- closed-world idealization
Rational practice depends on restricting a formal system to a small, workable set of factors. In reality, there are always an unenumerable, extremely large number of potentially relevant considerations, nearly all of which we must ignore. A closed-world idealization enumerates which entities we will consider, and how they are relevant. Explicitly or implicitly, we must accept such an idealization before getting started in applying rationality.
- concrete proceduralization
We think of inference according to formal rules as abstract, and occurring in a Platonic domain of pure forms; but in reality, it is accomplished by material, embodied activities, such as writing on paper. Such an activity is a concrete proceduralization of the formal rule.
- correspondence fairy
Rationalism has no explanation for how abstract, non-physical representations can connect with the physical things they represent. Implicitly, it depends on metaphysical correspondence fairies to do that work, apparently by magic.
- decontextualization
Decontextualization enforces a rational closed-world idealization. We evolved to maintain open awareness of unenumerable potentially relevant factors. Surrounded by a buzzing cloud of distracting possibilities, we are incapable of focusing for rational inference—without cognitive supports that shield us from the noise. Any trick for ignoring reasonably relevant considerations that the idealization omits is a decontextualization method.
- eggplant-sized
The eggplant-sized world is everything bigger than, say, a bacterium, or maybe even a large molecule. Some version of quantum field theory might be a complete, exact, perfectly correct theory of extremely small things, and therefore capable of expressing absolute truths about objects on that scale. There can’t be an analogous theory for the eggplant-sized world, for many reasons explored in Part One: among them, that it is nebulous which atoms are, and are not, part of an eggplant.
- epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, belief, and truth. An epistemology is a specific theory of what can be known and how; what a belief is, what justifies a belief; and what it means for something to be true. Compare ontologies: understandings of how things are.
- ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology is the study of the methods people use to accomplish everyday reasonableness and also technical rationality.
- Fluid competence
Fluid competence is the willingness and ability to address a situation’s purposes using any field or system of knowledge, skill, practice, method, mode of reasoning, form of understanding, or way of being.
Fluid competence is general competence, meaning potentially competent enough in any domain to provide “what the situation needs.” It doesn’t mean you are expert at everything; no one can be. It’s based on a realistic assessment of what you can do now, and what it may take you to become able to act outside your areas of expertise well enough to address the current situation.
Fluid competence is a direct consequence of prioritizing meta-rational norms over rational, systemic ones.
- formalism
What it means to be formal is somewhat nebulous. It is disputed in the philosophy of mathematics, for example. For our purposes, it’s a matter of degree: mathematical logic is extremely formal; a chemistry methods manual is quite formal; a corporate personnel policy is somewhat formal; a “Do Today” task checklist is only barely formal.
Generally, formal rules are absolute, in theory at least. If something is formal, than any statement about it, or action based on it, is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
In practice, formal inference depends on two tricks: concrete proceduralization and decontextualization. These are accomplished using external, culturally produced, mostly-recent technologies that allow us to repurpose brains evolved for mere reasonableness to do rationality.
- J-curve
The J-curve of development is a series of increasingly sophisticated ways of reasoning that you must learn in order. The major landmarks are reasonableness, formal reasoning, rationality, and meta-rationality. It’s called the “J” curve because the breadth of context the reasoning takes in starts with just the immediate concrete situation in reasonableness, decreases to zero in purely formal reasoning, and then gradually increases to a vast panoramic overview in meta-rationality.
- knowing-how
Cognitive psychology makes a distinction between knowing-how, or procedural knowledge, and knowing-that, or propositional knowledge.
- mess
A mess is a situation you don’t have a coherent description of. A mess cannot be approached rationally, because there is not (yet) even an informal understanding of it.
- meta-rationality
Meta-rationality means thinking about and acting on rational systems from the outside, in order to use them more effectively. It evaluates, selects, combines, modifies, discovers, and creates rational methods. Meta-rationalism is an understanding of how and when and why rational systems work. It avoids taking them as fixed and certain, and thereby avoids both cognitive nihilism and rationalist eternalism.
- multi-rationality
Multi-rationality can bring unspecified, potentially multiple, potentially contradictory whole rational systems and ontologies to bear, typically on a mess or semi-specified problem.
- nebulosity
Nebulosity is the insubstantiality, transience, boundarilessness, discontinuity, and ambiguity that (this book argues) are found in all phenomena.
- oblivious rationalism
Oblivious rationalism means failing to think and act meta-rationally when that’s what’s needed. That could be, for instance, failure to make meta-rational choices explicitly; failure to notice that a rational system is not interfacing well with its context; or failure to reconsider the purposes of your system. Refusing to acknowledge the limits of rationality commonly results in oblivious rationalism. Oblivious geekery is an informal alternative term.
- ontology
An ontology is an understanding of how things are. Typically an ontology includes an explanation of what sorts of things there are, what their characteristics are, and how they relate to each other. Compare epistemologies, theories of what can be known and how.
- orienting
To orient to something, as we use the word in this book, is to take it into account; to bear it in mind. “Orienting to a rule” is the central example. Orienting to a rule does not necessarily mean following it, much less being mechanically governed by it. It means you are aware of it, along with many other aspects of a situation; and act accordingly, rather than being ignorant of it or ignoring it.
- pattern
Pattern is the quality that makes phenomena interpretable: regularity, causality, distinctness, form.
- Problem
A Problem, with a capital P, is a formal specification of what would count as a Solution. Rationalism often confuses real-world problems, and other phenomena such as hopes, desires, hassles, breakdowns, and opportunities, with Problems. A Problem may be a useful abstraction for those, and Solving it may be relevantly useful for them—but these are not the same things.
- rationalism
Rationalisms are ideologies that claim that there is some way of thinking that is the correct one, and you should always use it. Some rationalisms specifically identify which method is right and why. Others merely suppose there must be a single correct way to think, but admit we don’t know quite what it is; or they extol a vague principle like “the scientific method.” Rationalism is not the same thing as rationality, which refers to a nebulous collection of more-or-less formal ways of thinking and acting that work well for particular purposes in particular sorts of contexts. See also: meta-rationalism.
- rationality
Meaningness and The Eggplant use the word rationality specifically for more-or-less formal, systematic rationality (and therefore not as including informal reasonableness). Rational methods are explicit, technical, abstract, atypical, non-obvious ways of thinking and acting, which have some distinctive virtue relative to informal ones.
- rationality theater
Rationality theater is activity that superficially resembles rationality, but which bears little meaningful relationship with reality. It differs from earnest rationalist obliviousness in being at least partly aware that it is a sham produced for an audience. The audience might be an academic journal, your boss at work, or even yourself when you use a simulation of rationality to calm your anxiety in the face of nebulosity. A complicated risk-benefit analysis that depends on probability values you can’t assign meaningfully, and which semi-deliberately omits significant risks that are inconvenient to model, is an example.
- really
“Really” is a weasel-word. It is used to intimidate you into accepting dubious metaphysical claims. When someone uses it, substitute “in some sense,” and then ask “in what sense?”
- reasonableness
Mere reasonableness is everyday, informal thinking and acting, in ways that make sense and are likely to work. Reasonableness is not formally systematic, and therefore not technically rational, but it is not irrational either. Much of In the Cells of the Eggplant is about synergies between reasonableness and rationality.
- Romanticism
Romanticism—in this book—is the view that the True Self is mystically connected with The Entire Universe. The “True Self” is spiritual and emotional and intuitive, so Romanticism is anti-rational. Romanticism is closely related with monism, since it imagines connections that do not actually exist. Unlike monism, however, Romanticism does not deny all differences. Historically, it was primarily an aesthetic movement, based on the idea that ultimate reality expressed itself through the artist’s True Self based on their special connection.
- routine
Routine activity is familiar, practiced, ordinary, and unproblematic. It goes pretty much as expected. Routine does not mean totally a fixed sequence of actions; most routine activity involves frequent minor improvisations to deal with minor unique features of the immediate situation. However, these are so easy and unremarkable that the details are not worth recalling or recounting.
Reasonable activity is almost all routine. Rational Problem-Solving can also be routine, if methods you know well apply unproblematically.
- shielding
Shielding is any method for isolating a situation from factors ignored by the rational system you apply to it. That makes its closed-world idealization more nearly true. We might also describe shielding as “relevance control”: it’s ways of making as many of the unenumerable potentially relevant factors as irrelevant as possible.
- Solution
A Solution, with a capital S, is a formal object that meets the specification given by a formal Problem. As a formal, abstract object, it is often unclear how or whether a Solution addresses real-world phenomena such as informal, lowercase-p problems or design goals. To be useful, a Solution must connect with reality by means of circumrationality. Arranging this circumrational relationship may be difficult or impossible; when successful, it may take much more work than finding the Solution.
- standardization
Standardization is work that reworks the world to make it more nearly fit a rational ontology. That makes formal inferences within the rational system more likely to hold true.
- technician
A technician, as this book uses the word, has expert esoteric knowledge of specialized aspects of a rational system, without understanding the abstract principles underlying its overall operation. A technician has mainly factual rather than theoretical knowledge, also privileging knowing-how over knowing-that: because the job is to make concrete things work smoothly, not innovation or formal Problem Solving. This type of work is advanced circumrationality.
- trading zone
A trading zone is an interface between two rational systems that have incommensurable ontologies. The systems use a “pidgin” vocabulary to communicate across the boundary, which is usually good enough for coordination.
The term was introduced by Peter Galison, who gave the example of theoretical and experimental particle physicists having quite different ideas about what “proton” means, but could use the word to coordinate their work effectively anyway.
- usualness condition
In some domains, rationality usually works. Everything in the eggplant-sized world is nebulous, though, so there’s never an absolute guarantee that it will. The correctness of a particular rational system, theory, or method relies on the world behaving itself well enough. Usually it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. “Usualness conditions” are whatever needs to be true for the system to work. Ultimately, usualness conditions are unenumerable and unknowable. Discovering as many as possible is a meta-rational way of improving rational practice.