[extropy-chat] Good Epistemology (was Rational thinking)

[Lee Corbin]

Jef wrote

>> And let's be wary of falling into the thinking-trap whereby no decision
>> is "rational" because no process of decision-making nor source of
>> knowledge can be perfectly founded.

and Chris wrote

> I'm willing to agree that there are gradations between [kinds of rationality].
> That doesn't mean we can't make distinctions between them.  The fact that
> hot and cold both lie along a scale, and that 50 degrees is hot in some 
> contexts and cold in others doesn't mean that it isn't useful to notice 
> the difference.

And yesterday I wrote

> > Um, no human being is "rational" which may be one reason why I declined 
> > to provide a definite answer to your question.
> 
> I might as well mention something else that's also obvious: namely,
> that rationality is, of course, a matter of degree...

It's odd that we all need to be saying this to each other.  I almost, in fact,
deployed Chris's hot/cold analogy myself.

Almost everything outside mathematics lies on a continnum. We all
know that.  Let's practice keeping it in mind.

Lee