Lecture by Professor Mitsui at the Foundation Academy, July 2098:
The 20th century was once called mankind's bloodiest and most sordid century. The 21st century has turned out to be even worse. Then again, should we be surprised? It is not as if we humans have suddenly transformed our violent and selfish ways after two world wars, numerous genocides, failed political utopias, global warming and of course the invention of nuclear weapons. If anything, the onslaught of a blind and relentless materialism has caused our morals to further degenerate.
In a bid to seek the power and immortality of the gods, mankind began to research certain 'transhumanist' technologies in the late 20th century. These include the last stage of computer technology--artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Increased pleasure, immortality, wealth, intelligence and the surface knowledge of rationality (glorified as the highest form of cognition)--these are the goals of the transhumanist project.
In the early 2000s, the transhumanists were still a small, but already potent force including many members of the technological elite. The fateful event propelling them to eventual dominance was the horrific 2009-11 Middle Eastern war, where the liberal use of chemical and biological weapons forced the major antagonists to perfect and deploy proto-types of military robots. In retrospect, we know that this was indeed the first of mankind's robotic wars, and also the first in which those nations without sufficient robotic support were annihilated. Thus did Israel and her allies manage to secure a terrible victory over the Arabic nations; but not before the destruction of half her population in the so-called 2nd Holocaust.
In addition, the plagues spread by the war also encouraged genetic research, and many cures (and evils) came of that in the coming decades.
Encouraged and enriched by the bloody success of their (still primitive) robotic drones, many corporations in the developed world began to build even more advanced versions. By then both China and India had also entered the fray, and this caused the West to invest further in their military establishments. By the late 2010s, truly autonomous vehicles without human control began to be deployed. On another front, robotic companies, especially those in Japan, also released a wider and wider range of domestic robots.
Meanwhile, biotechnological companies had begun an exponential growth as new discoveries extend genetic medicine and therapy into every corner of society. Of course, this was also the period when the Foundation began investing in various biotechnological startups. In conjunction with the spectacular cures (many pioneered by the Foundation startups), a whole new sophisticated range of biological weapons were also developed.
By 2030, the transhumanist movement included some of the richest and most powerful men and women in the world. Robotic and genetic engineering corporations also became the largest and most dominant companies of the world economy. It was also in the late 2020s that the first political parties (funded by rich corporations) dedicated to a transhumanist agenda began to take shape. The wonders of genetic engineering and robotics (backed by nanotechnological improvements) seemed to promise a great new civilization, a whole new wonderful age.
Yet all these were built on deceptive sand. Fundamentally, man in general remains a petty brutal being. The immense power given by technology changes nothing. And indeed, the miracles of genetic engineering became more and more dubious as new viruses and pathogens created by mischievious and misguided imaginations appear almost daily. The increasing numbers, power and intelligence of robots also grew more and more disturbing. At the same time, many transhumanist began merging with machinery, purportedly creating a new race of cyborgs. Meanwhile many conservatives and religious folks began to react violently to these changes.
Social tensions, divisions and chaos increased steadily. Meanwhile, another catastrophic war broke out. This time, it was the First East Asian War (2029-2030) between Japan and China. For the last 10 years, Japan had built up perhaps the world's most advanced robotics industry. This naturally allowed her to potentially become a very threatening military power. China, who had become the world's largest economic power, did not look on this kindly. Prompted by hawks on both sides and a series of ridiculous incidents, a titantic conflict erupted, and it soon dragged in Taiwan and Korea.
Both Europe and America were too enervated by internal conflicts to intervene much, while India prudently decided to remain neutral. Left to her own devices, Japan fought valiantly but her navy and air force was eventually destroyed by the combined assault of the Chinese and Korean forces. This left her open to invasion, and she sued for peace. Imposing a crushing treaty on Japan, China and Korea exulted in their triumph over their old enemy. In Japan itself, the government collapsed, and a movement for vengeance began. For the time being, the clear retreat of the West, and the defeat of Japan left China as the sole hegemon of the East Asian region. Taiwan was forcibly merged and all the disputed islands of East Asia (including Japan's Okinawa) fell into Chinese hands.
Faced with economic and political collapse, the radical wing of the Japanese transhumanist party came to power promising a national 'gaizen'. Previously unthinkable projects like the mass production of war robots and the enforced implanation of machinery into human beings were implemented. New forms of deadly biological and nanotechnological weapons were also created. Finally, huge underground factories swarming with robots were also built, in a desperate effort to match the military prowess of China, an economy almost 10 times that of Japan.
Obviously the victorious Chinese and Koreans viewed this emerging Japanese juggernault with alarm. But short of launching an unthinkably bloody land invasion of Japan, or risking an exchange of WMDs, they could do little more than to build up their own transhumanist armies. In any event, their combined economy was so much larger than the Japanese that despite their inferior robotic industries, they quickly manage to match and then exceed the feverish Japanese war efforts. Thus in the 2030s, robotic and other transhumanist forms of warfare advanced faster than ever before.
The UN tried to mediate between the feuding East Asian nations but to no avail. The late Foundation chairman also met the leaders of both China and Japan in an attempt to ameliorate the crisis. But Japan and China refused to budge. The Foundation then pulled out all research and technological resources from East Asia. The different Foundation companies were henceforth centered mainly in Europe, India, Singapore and New Zealand. Its financial wing however kept its branches in Shanghai.
12 uneasy years went by. Meanwhile in the Americas, the United States was facing the worst economic crisis in its history. Years of over-spending, socio-political disorder and the severe competition from Asia had taken a terrible toll. In 2042, matters came to a head when Hurricane Lulu struck the Eastern seaboard, devastating New York City, Boston and Washington simultaneously. The damage was horrific in New York. Sea walls were breached and much of lower Manhattan was flooded and destroyed before evacuation could take place. Countless people were killed, including many of America's top financial talents. The financial markets (still functioning in cyberspace), were already depressed by the American economic failure and threatened to collapse completely after the unprecedented disaster.
Complete collapse was averted when the greatest European and American banks joined the Foundation companies to save collapsing banks, insurance agencies and other financial institutions. Both the ECB and what remained of the Federal Reserve also joined this financial coalition. After 3 weeks of harrowing rescues, the worst was over and capital markets remain intact throughout the world. However the US economy was irreversibly damaged, and the days of US dominance was clearly over. For a short while, it seemed as if the world would be ruled by the Chinese.
However this hope was to be shortlived. Fearing a Chinese pre-emptive strike now that the United States was clearly too weak to rescue anybody, PM Tsuji of Japan put an apocalyptic plan into action. On July 15 2042, all the nuclear and biotechnological weapons of Japan were launched at the cities of China and Korea. Most of the nuclear missiles were stopped by Chinese defenses, but many of the bio-tech weapons went through, starting the worst epidemic in mankind's history. Plagues of a thousand varieties sprouted all over East Asia, and much faster than the production of remedies. Millions died within days, and almost 300 million in the next decade.
Meanwhile, airloads of cybernetic 'super-soldiers' and robots headed en masse towards Korea and Eastern China. Their mission was simple: total subjugation so as to save Japan. The Chinese and Koreans were caught by surprise and were disoriented by the WMD first strike. Pearl harbor-like, they quickly lost many of their main cities and troops. Within just 3 months, Japanese forces had captured Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing and had surrounded Chang-An (the new Chinese capital, the old Xian). Korea was completely overrun. However Japanese losses had been very significant. After all, they were fighting against a stronger enemy.
Soon, like the 2nd Sino-Japanese war of the 20th century, the size of China again worked against Japan. For one thing, China and Korea had managed a terrible WMD revenge against Japan in the first days of the war. Much of Japan had already been reduced to wasteland and half its population would die in just a few months. It certainly could not launch a second wave of invaders. Even its underground factories had not managed to replace the severe losses of the war in China.
On the other hand, the surviving industries of the Chinese hinterland churned out relentless waves of robotic and cybernetic armies. In a decisive battle around Chang-An, the Chinese army managed to beat back the Japanese invaders and annihilate their best generals. Without support and adequate replacements, Japanese forces were defeated in a crushing offensive that drove them out of the Asian mainland by early 2043. Bloodthirsty Chinese and Korean troops then readied themselves to invade Japan.
At this point, the complete destruction of Japan might have followed. Fortunately, the European Union, which (with the fall of America and the destruction of Asia) had become the world's pre-eminent power, decided to intervene. It brokered a deal in which European aid will pour into devastated China, Korea and Japan, while what remained of Japan will join the EU as a member. Japan will lose her independence but at least would maintain her national existence under a benign government. Thus in 2043, the EU became a Eurasian power.
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8 comments:
Very interesting... but I'd like to point to some gaps which you may want to plug (or not):
1. Where does the reconstruction of the 1918 virus fit into this?
2. A somewhat biased point, but if you have NZ, where is Oz in your scheme of things?
3. The lecturer is Japanese: the slant seems out of character in places.
Finally, I do not agree with the philosophical point that "rationality" leads to a loss of morality and inevitable war. "Irrationality" and other modes of thought (that presumably do not produce "surface knowledge"), I believe, are also known to lead to the same.
On another note, I also do not fully comprehend why you give rationality (I prefer the term "reason") such short shrift. Perhaps you do not fully understand what reason actually is. Perhaps this is a problem with terminology and the contrast between "ir/rationality".
I am of the view that what is viewed as "irrational" from one POV (point of view) is "rational" (or arrived at with reason) from another POV (often the target of the label "irrational"). In particular, I am of the view that the "brutal" nature of humans can be comprehended from the POV of reason. One obstacle, perhaps, to such comprehension, as far as I can see, is the speciesism or specialism (especialism?) generated out of self-interest (of the species) and justification of the exploitation of other species.
I can go on about this (and I was about to), but I want to return to the problem of understanding reason. As I see it, reason is our thinking. The way(s) in which reason proceeds may then be termed "logic". The logic as studied by philosophers and mathematicians is one form (which has many variants, many of which may be alien to those familiar to you) of this process. Granted that there may be other forms of "logic", one question then arises: what are the relations between these logics? Your conclusions thus far seem to indicate that there is one form of logic which is inferior to all others, and it is this stratification of logics that I beg to differ.
Another of your views appears to be that reason is inferior. But I contend that reason IS our thinking. All our thoughts, all our beliefs, everything that is in our psyche: these are there because of the various inputs together with our innate capacity of reason (of whatever form). The inputs are what are given to us from our surroundings; reason, then, sums up what our thinking is.
You may well propose some sort of transcendental scheme to project some sort of utopian (I would not say Platonist) vision of thinking. But I'd suggest that this is all we have... unless we pursue some sort of "trans(cendental)-humanist" program that will fundamentally alter the way humans exist as physical entities.
And the current transhumanist vision is primitive by far ... machines are, in some sense, built in our image too, so cyborgs will still be more of the same.
RL
Given that you are so passionate about reason and its true nature, you might want to enlighten me on how you deduce 'the philosophical point that "rationality" leads to a loss of morality and inevitable war' from my article? Or was it a random thought that happened to pop into your mind while reading?
If the former, then I would suppose your deduction is based on the single line stating how transhumanist goals include 'the surface knowledge of rationality (glorified as the highest form of cognition)'. Or perhaps the part about 'a blind and relentless materialism' that cause degenerating morals?
If so, then based on my sadly inferior understanding of rationality, I must insist that your deduction is mistaken.
The article quite clearly seek to illustrate how the IRrational behavior of men--his self-destructive tendencies, short-sightedness, greed, fears, hatred, and the violent residue of his animal nature, lead to disaster.
I know very well that ethics is linked to reason. From the earliest times, philosophers of many cultures have used reason as a tool to construct self-consistent systems of morals, metaphysics and laws.
Reason is obviously what distinguishes men from most animals, and even at its lowest denominator, can counsel an enlightened self interest. Reason and its offspring (culture, literacy, science, even religion--believe it or not) is what allows us to build an ethical, orderly and sophisticated social system in the first place.
Reason, as many political philosophers point out, is precisely the thing that PREVENTS men and nations from being in a perpetual state of war.
WHAT destroys morality is this: a supposed rationality, a church of matter that makes certain crude, bland and downright unimaginative assumptions about the universe, clincally dissects its corpse, and then aggressively expound eternal truths.
This church is where so many of our scientists and the 'enlightened' elite are schooled without even knowing it. I am therefore not referring to any scientific theory but the mindset underlying much of scientific work.
I am acquainted with enough such workers to know that they see materialistic monism as a liberating point of view as compared to the supernaturalism of the dark misty past.
What they fail or don't bother to see is that our current social, ethical and political systems can only make full rational sense with certain assumptions; assumptions which simply do not exist with materialistic monism.
Assumptions that include an abstract Good worth dying for, and assumptions that assign a value to our actions with reference to something that IS the truth. Or as the Hindus nicely put it, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the Truth, the Right, the Vast. The dharma, the eternal Law.
In other words, transhumanism and its underlying dogmas destroy our morality and culture because it attacks their hidden metaphysical assumptions. Without these assumptions, our social/ethical system becomes senseless and irrational. Nietzsche was the one prescient philosopher who realized that most deeply and most early; and well, he went mad.
Enough for now. The main reason I do not reply to your mails etc. is because I found in the past that my replies, like this blog article, are usually not understood clearly. Given that I lack the linguistic prowess to express myself coherently to you, I hence ceased wasting time in replying. Let us hope we can work on a more satisfactory basis.
I enjoyed reading this fictional speech. Should ask yiyong to read this (if he hasn't already done so).
Just like what Dr Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates in Massachusetts said ironically: 'Predicting the coming end of everything has become a new "growth industry"'. (ST, Oct 15, "Doomsday: Is it the end of the world?")
Oops, forgot to put my name on the previous comment...
Let us hope, indeed. I have to say that my comment was hastily posted, as many contributors of comments to blogs usually do. I have learnt my lesson, and I hope that, having devoted much thought to this reply, the following comments will be clearer to you.
First, allow me to acknowledge that my deduction of the "philosophical point" may have been inadequately justified, to the extent that I have not made clear that I have used as input past conversations with you on "rationality". In the sense that your "philosophical point" about "rationality" has been paraded before my dull mind many a times before, that "deduction" of mine was certainly something that popped into my mind.
In fact, it was more visceral than a deduction. It comes as an opposition to your point of view, perhaps every bit as ferocious as yours, so that it has compelled me to try to put down, in calm and careful words, what I think about these issues.
Alas, it has been a difficult task, for your linguistic prowess and philosophical agility in your arguments were rather taxing to this addled mind, burdened by the vagaries of life and haunted by years of untutored learning. If I do not convey my thoughts with the clarity and fluency that you have displayed, then may you have the kindness to, at the least, correct me.
Allow me then to proceed to outline my arguments, before I plunge into them. I shall first set out what I believe we hold in accord, as a careful reading of our arguments has shown some common areas of understanding. This shall hopefully serve as common ground, arguments which I shall try assiduously to avoid disputing. Next, I shall outline the issues I have with some of your arguments. Finally, I shall outline some ideas which I have obliquely referred to in my previous comments.
Let me begin by acknowledging what I found, upon a careful reading of our arguments, to be some common ground. You propose, and I concur, that reason (which I claim is just "our thinking") has allowed us to build an "ethical, orderly and sophisticated social system", which I shall abbreviate, rather brashly, to the shorthand "civilisation". You have also claimed, and I second, that reason has also spawned literacy, science and Even Religion (tm). We are also in accord that reason is a useful philosophical tool, useful in constructing systems of morals, metaphysics and laws.
However, this is where I have to part company with you. In the following comments, I shall present some of my arguments on the issues you have raised. The next comment will also indicate what that "(tm)" sign means.
Let me start off by introducing the "(tm)" sign. The phrase "even religion -- believe it or not" amused me no end when I first read your arguments. It has the ring of those clever taglines that you find in advertisements everywhere. Also, as I peruse your arguments, my dim mind finds itself constantly tripping over certain terms that seems to be obvious to you. Now, it is my experience that, in mathematical writing, when authors mark some arguments as obvious, one can be sure that the reader with less expertise will find such apparently cavalier authorial tactics frustrating. More so in philosophy, where we appear often to know not of what we speak, and of which I am still a rank novice.
Given these problems, allow me then to affix the "(tm)" sign to a word or terminology that I consider to be a "thought-mark": an empty symbol, a cipher. These are words that I shall not use without due annotation, for fear of burdening the reader with a choice of meanings from the web of possible meanings behind the word, such choice of which is likely to distort the discourse. The "(tm)" sign is a device, then, to draw attention to words I find problematic and deserving of further clarification.
Here are the "thought-marks" that I shall note in the following discussion: Rationality (tm) and Irrationality (tm), Materialistic Monism (tm), Unimaginative (tm), Church (tm), Supernaturalism (tm), (Our) Morality (tm), (Our) Culture (tm), The Truth (tm), Animal Nature (tm) and Transhumanism(tm).
It would, no doubt, be of much convenience if you could supply your definitions. For the sake of discussion, however, I shall take the liberty here of first constraining any such terminology as I may see fit. You are, of course, very welcome to correct my definitions, for this would aid in clarifying our discourse.
Returning to where I left off previously, I observe that our views diverge on two major issues. The first is on the effects of reason on the behaviour of humans (men, if you will). The other is on the nature of Rationality (tm) and its relations to science, civilisation (specifically, concerning its Morality (tm) and Culture (tm)) and Transhumanism (tm).
Allow me to first dwell on the issue of reason and human behaviour. To begin with, let us review some of your arguments on this. You stated that your article demonstrates how the "IRrational behaviour of men -- his self-destructive tendencies, short-sightedness, greed, fears, hatred, and the violent residue of his animal nature" can be disastrous. You also accuse Materialistic Monism (tm) (or Rationality (tm), since it appears to my confused mind that you have equated the two to some extent in your arguments) of disposing of certain "metaphysical assumptions" that are crucial to civilisation making full rational sense, including "an abstract Good worth dying for" and an assignment of "value to our actions with reference to something that IS the truth".
These arguments are all very well and good. They also bear your mark of eloquence and philosophical depth. However, I wonder whether such metaphysical assumptions, which you have exalted to be the cornerstones of civilisation, could actually lead to the range of Irrational (tm) behaviours which you have so diligently supplied, and which you have so strenuously denounced.
Consider the first metaphysical assumption: "an abstract Good worth dying for". I have struggled to see how this will not lead to any of your list of Irrational (tm) behaviours, but in vain. Instead, this assumption seems to me to lead directly to many of the Irrational (tm) behaviours that you have cited.
Specifically, I refer to the Irrational (tm) behaviours of "self-destructive tendencies" and "the violent residue of ... animal nature". If we grant the above metaphysical assumption, it is not hard to infer (quite immediately, in fact) that an individual can justify committing suicide, pursuing a course of action that is suicidal (in whatever sense) or engaging in violent actions, on the basis that these actions are fulfilling some "abstract Good worth dying for". More relevant to your point and article is that an individual may well enrol in some adventure that is destructive at the suprapersonal level, e.g. armed conflict. Needless to say, such an individual is unlikely to avert exercising the violent residue of her animal nature, and may well invite fear and hatred willingly into her mind.
Your second metaphysical assumption is fraught with difficulties, as far as I can see. What is The Truth (tm), and how does its nature allow one to judge one's actions with reference to it? How is one to go about judging one's actions? How valid is one's judgment, given that such a judgment is indeed possible?
Here, allow me to introduce an idea which you and I have discussed in previous conversations. This idea is of the so-called "finiteness" of human beings, the definition of which I shall refine further. We may say that humans are "finite" beings, since they have limited abilities and are not omnipotent. We may also say, since humans are neither immortal (unbounded in time), nor omniscient (knowing all things in all space and time), nor omnipresent (being in all space (and time)), that they are "local" beings, or are "localised".
Granted this, it then follows that a human's judgment of her actions must, thanks to her finite abilities, be not good enough. Furthermore, as she is only local and cannot possibly know everything, nor perhaps even everything about her actions, her perception of The Truth (tm) must also be, sadly, not good enough.
What this means is that any human being may well, through reason, engage in behaviour that may exhibit characteristics of such abstract notions as greed, fear and hatred. Thus, their behaviour then falls under your domain of Irrationality (tm). However, as I have just argued, and dispensing with "(tm)'s" for the duration of this sentence, such behaviour is rational, in the usual sense of the word, i.e. proceeding from reason.
Moreover, these resultant Irrational (tm) and harmful behaviours follow from your metaphysical assumptions, which you remind us are crucial to our civilisation -- our "social/ethical system". Without them, so you claim, our civilisation "becomes senseless and irrational". With them, whither our civilisation?
Allow me to now proceed to the second issue: Rationality (tm) and its relation to scientific work. This is something which you appear to be very passionate about too. I hope, in your response, that you may enlighten me on your views.
You proclaim that there is a Church (tm) of Rationality (tm) / Materialistic Monism (tm), based on some "crude, bland and downright unimaginative assumptions" about the world. It has somehow acquired a corpse, via this means, to be dissected clinically, and then is somehow responsible for "aggressively expound[ing] eternal truths". But for your consistent reminders of Rationality (tm), and your insertion of an anatomy class into the description, I might have been deluded into thinking you were speaking of organised religion itself!
But my insolent mind wanders. You were, of course, referring to this nefarious doctrine of Materialistic Monism (tm) / Rationality (tm). My understanding of philosophical ideologies is quite limited, however, so I am compelled to take your words as a working definition. This, thankfully, curtails substantially my discussion, which is threatening to grow to outrageous proportions and induce stupor in the reader.
Your first characterisation of the doctrine is that it makes "crude, bland and downright unimaginative assumptions". This is apparently undesirable, since this Church (tm) is "where so many of our scientists and the 'enlightened' elite are schooled", and I seem to detect alarm when you note that many persons engaged in scientific work "see Materialistic Monism (tm) as a liberating point of view".
I have difficulties with this characterisation, inasmuch as it is as vague and crude as the alleged assumptions made by this Church (tm). My questions are these: what are these assumptions? why are they crude? why are they bland? why are they Unimaginative (tm)? why should they be otherwise (i.e. what is the nature of alternative assumptions that are not crude, bland or Unimaginative (tm))?
On this first characterisation, then, I would be grateful if you can answer my queries, for I cannot proceed with the discussion while grasping on straw.
Your second characterisation, which is curiously anatomical, is that this Church (tm) somehow is able to clinically dissect a corpse. As I have been translating some French writing recently, it distresses me to see such Anglo-Saxon imprecision in coordinating sentences. Presumably, you are talking about the "corpse" of the universe, rendered "dead" by the aforementioned assumptions.
Here is where I feel that your disgust has overtaken your argumentation. Was it not through the study of anatomy that modern medicine gained the ability to save lives through surgery and a better understanding of the human body? Even if we do not wish to speak of such an odious discipline, surely anatomical studies also benefited the fine arts. If you would be aghast at this statement, allow me to point you to Michaelangelo, whose fine sculptures and frescos reveal his intimate knowledge of the architecture of the human body. From the linked article, the following quote gives some evidence for where he might have got his knowledge:
"[Michaelangelo] produced a Wooden crucifix (1493), as a thanksgiving gift to the prior of the church of Santa Maria del Santo Spirito who had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corps of the church's Hospital."
In any case, your expressed views appear to me to reflect certain naive attitudes some people had held in the past. Your possession of such attitudes is rather ironic, in my view, given that you had, in all likelihood, dissected a few corpses (of animals, to be sure) yourself in your study of biology many years ago.
Even if your "corpse" is a metaphor for a model of the world based on "crude, bland and downright unimaginative assumptions", this also confuses me no end. How exactly does a model of the world, built on assumptions which are presumably abstracted from observing the world, change the world into a "corpse"? As far as I can tell, the world still functions well despite the fact that models of it have come and gone.
Decrying the study of models is also, in my view, a rather curious thing to do. Humans, through reason, construct models of the world in their mind, not just for the sophisticated studies we have invented, but also for daily survival. We NEED models of the world so we can perform the daily "mundane" operations that propel us through each day. So models of the world have come and gone, trillions of them in past and present human lives, and the makers of these models have clinically dissected the models or not, depending on their inclinations, their circumstances, and their wits. Scientific work is no different, only it takes place at a more sophisticated and intense level. To prohibit the dissection and study of models is, thus, to prohibit the activity of reason itself. But surely you do not wish that...
It is on the third issue where I have ambivalent views. My arguments so far would refute your accusation that Rationality (tm) expounds eternal truths, for given the assumptions I have made on human limitations, reason would lead us to observe that whatever truths we find using reason are provisional. One should, then, change one's assumptions if one finds enough evidence such that one's reasoning points to such changes as necessary. This is, in my view, also how scientific work, and perhaps all academic work, proceeds, from an idealistic point of view.
Yet, real events have also shown that there are people, engaged in scientific work, who have aggressively expounded certain truths, eternal or not. Given that scientific and academic work are also conducted within the realm of human affairs, it is perhaps not surprising that workers would seek to advance their own agendas. Furthermore, reason alone does not endorse a cavalier throwing off of earlier assumptions or acquired knowledge/prejudice, but requires substantial evidence for such change, so that inertia is to be expected, and probably should be.
This state of affairs becomes a problem, however, when society is exposed to stories generated by some over-enthusiastic and telegraphic reporters who report on new theories, based on popularisations fed to them by proponents who are eager to fan some interest in scientific work. This phenomenon is called "hyping", and in my view, it harms the popular acquaintance with the nature of scientific and academic work. It shortens the attention span of society and heightens expectations unrealistically, so that society becomes disenchanted when the glamour wears off. This brings disrepute, to use an old-fashioned turn of phrase, to such work, and seems to me to also lead to the cause of this debate.
In summary, then, my problems with the second issue are these: I have not the faintest idea why there is a Church (tm) of Rationality (tm); I have no clue as to why the assumptions you claim Rationality (tm) make are "crude, bland and downright unimaginative", nor what those assumptions are; given that assumptions are made, I have no problems with the conducting of analysis on the model so built; and I do not see why reason leads one to "aggressively expound eternal truths", but I do concur that there are some who have done so. Furthermore, and finally, I cannot engage in a proper discussion on Materialistic Monism (tm) without seeing a proper definition and arguments reflecting that definition.
Now, allow me to flesh out some ideas that were hinted at in my first comment. These are ideas that "I can go on about ... (and I was about to)", but which I had abstained from discussing in detail. It appears that these ideas should now be exposed for your examination.
Firstly, I find the distinction between "rational" and "irrational" distinctly unhelpful. It is a manifestation of the aversion to something that is out of the ordinary vocabulary of the speaker's experience. By using such labels, one sets up a preference to engage with "rational" behaviour, and specifically ignores "irrational" behaviour. Ignorance may be bliss, but if one is to be serious in one's philosophy about the world, one can only find such a view unsatisfactory, as I shall explain.
As I have said, what is viewed as "irrational" becomes "rational" from a different point of view (POV from now on). The underlying assumption here is that there is no "anti-reason", something that is fundamentally unlike human thinking (or "our thinking", as I have referred to earlier). What is "irrational", as I have demonstrated in my previous comments, turns out to be within reason, once one grants certain assumptions about the circumstances surrounding that behaviour, such assumptions which were likely to have not been considered previously.
This is not a radical point of view. Modern studies of the human brain and mind have revealed a taxonomy of mental disorders and afflictions, some of which are currently susceptible to some form of treatment or control. It also reveals that these afflictions affect behaviour, behaviour that is many a times disconcerting in so far as it instils a sense of being threatened in the beholder. Thus, it is not, as previously held under supernaturalism, a malicious discorporeal entity which has taken over the functions of a human being, but rather the dysfunction of the human brain itself, that is frequently responsible for such disturbing behaviour.
More complicated disorders are also being investigated by neurologists, who now have a supply of patients with a range of brain damage, thanks to the current level of life-saving abilities that medicine has. Such study reveals how the thinking faculties are affected, given certain damages to the brain, and gives neurologists better information about the functions of various parts of the brain, and sometimes even the whole brain itself.
But the philosophical point to take away from the above discussion should surely be that one human mind is different from another, not just in terms of belief and knowledge systems, but also in terms of capacity and function (or the lack thereof). Thus, what may be a simple sentence structure to you (a simple SVO sentence) is inexplicably difficult to comprehend for someone who has lost the ability to internalise grammar structures, and has to now painstakingly, and consciously, figure out the grammar structure of the sentence placed in front of him. (This is the source from which I found the example, which has been altered in one minor detail. The primary source is A. R. Luria's "The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound".)
Now, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates how, from that POV, some behaviour that is inexplicable to us (the pathetic struggle with very "simple" tasks) is actually perfectly reasonable, given the situation confronting that POV. Would it then not be perfectly reasonable to study what situations give rise to POVs that one would term "irrational"?
And, of course, there is such a study: literature. Granted, it is fiction, and therefore hardly ideal. However, what has been crucial and central in the study of literature, or even in the pedestrian perusal of fiction, is that one is confronted with another POV, which one "identifies with" and assumes. One is presented with the situation confronting that POV, and one is oftentimes supplied with the reasoning as well. Whatever one eventually thinks of the protagonist or principal POV, one should get a good impression, at least from a well-crafted piece of fiction, of the circumstances surrounding that POV, and of the reasoning of that POV that led to the resultant behaviours that then forwarded the story.
The thing, as always, is that the world of fiction is only a laboratory. The reader is frequently bored to bits if the author decides to parade the vagaries of life (in the world of the author's creation) in front of the former. Real-life conditions are abstracted, foreshortened, exaggerated, and mal-treated in a variety of literary machinations. So, perhaps, one should try to fathom how one can better extend the simple tools of literature to pick out information about the real world.
Very humbly, I would like to propose a sketch of a programme, a vision if you will. I propose that one borrows ideas from modern geometry and apply them to the study of the landscape of reason. The idea is this: one can view reason as the dynamics of our thoughts (i.e. our thinking), in which case circumstances and assumptions supply the curvature, kinks, turns and twists of this landscape.
I can already hear your angry revulsion. I beg your pardon, but as you may understand, just as every problem is a nail to a hammer, every problem is mathematical to a student of mathematics. However, this is the limit of my concession to your view (in the past?) of the prevalent mathematisation of the social sciences. As I see it, I feel that we, as an enquiring civilisation, have to make attempts to use the tools we have at our disposal to attack new problems (new, at the least, to the usual setting where the tools apply). This view may be naive, but if so, it has at least attracted the attention of some social scientists and even the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It may be naive, and it may be wrong-headed, but there is no evidence yet that it is both.
I believe, additionally, that it is less naive than you may think. In this state, of course, my idea is only a wish. However, mathematics has changed into a discipline that is now characterised by an arithmetic that is so unlike the (supposedly) dry schoolhouse arithmetic. Mathematics is now able to deal with arithmetic that does not commute, and may well be able to do non-associative arithmetic. The geometries that geometers now avail themself may still be modelled on Euclidean geometry, but the generalisations (algebraic varieties, sheafs, schemes, stacks, manifolds, fibre bundles, categories, topos, etc...) have make geometry more supple and farther-reaching. Some of the generalisations seem to me to be rather reminiscent of a model of Plato's cave (the idea of projection of a higher object onto a lower one), and one can cite applications of modern geometry to logic (stemming ultimately from A. Grothendieck's innovative and ground-breaking works).
Given this, then, it may well be not unreasonable to hope, at the least, for a programme that can apply this geometric knowledge to model certain aspects of our social world, which proceeds about its business, in most parts, via reason. As the linked Proceedings of the NAS article above argues, social sciences ARE the hard sciences, in so far as social scientists have to consider, not only what is, but what will be and/or what ought to be. Thus, shouldn't they be equipped with the best mathematics the world has to offer?
As for transhumanism, I shall leave it for another day. Suffice it to say that I find it a radical philosophy, one that is not exactly to my taste, so I hope you do not think I am as sympathetic to it as you may have thought.
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