Q. About Rationality and Nature

[Mudhammam]

Do you think the whole of nature, as in the primeval substance in which it began to exist, can be deemed either rational, irrational, or arational? Is it necessarily unknowable for beings within a sphere of empirical experience? (A. Is any other kind possible? B. Is an empirical experience, as opposed to an imagined one, a prerequisite for any conceptualization or is it vice versa?) In other words, does Reason reign supreme to Sense, or the other way around? Do intelligent beings derive their own rationality from a non-sensuous intelligible source, giving them a means to understand the sensuous, Nature and her laws, which have the appearance of rationality--or is it vice versa--does rationality, and hence the mathematical precision we have developed to intimately understand external objects in our intercourse with the world, find their source only in the spontaneous generation from an arational state, though unlike anything in our range of experience, in that it is unconditionally necessary?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nature is neither rational or irrational, just as tacos are neither cosmopolitan nor hungry.

So I'm thinking "c", arational. The concept of rationality doesn't apply to that which simply is.

I think intelligent beings derive their reason from the attempts over the eons to perceive and predict nature accurately. Selection, being a difficult taskmaster, mercilessly winnows those whose minds don't comport with reality.

[Mudhammam]

Nature is neither rational or irrational, just as tacos are neither cosmopolitan nor hungry.

So I'm thinking "c", arational. The concept of rationality doesn't apply to that which simply is.

I think intelligent beings derive their reason from the attempts over the eons to perceive and predict nature accurately. Selection, being a difficult taskmaster, mercilessly winnows those whose minds don't comport with reality.

So then, nothing can really be said about nature as it is in itself, but only as our minds represent to us, representations which aren't derived by anything at bottom that can be called rational?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nature is neither rational or irrational, just as tacos are neither cosmopolitan nor hungry.

So I'm thinking "c", arational. The concept of rationality doesn't apply to that which simply is.

I think intelligent beings derive their reason from the attempts over the eons to perceive and predict nature accurately. Selection, being a difficult taskmaster, mercilessly winnows those whose minds don't comport with reality.

So then, nothing can really be said about nature as it is in itself, but only as our minds represent to us, representations which aren't derived by anything at bottom that can be called rational?

At the risk of sounding solipsistic (which I'm not), our perceptions are the data stream upon which we base our inductions. It is entirely possible that we are right, about nature, for the wrong reasons, in the same way that intuition can give you the right result without any possible explanation of how you got there. We may not be perceiving accurately, but we still may be perceiving accurately enough to get the job done.

As far as your use of rational, I think the difficulty I'm having with it is that it is a personal faculty, being applied to an impersonal phenomenon. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that you perhaps mean "comprehensible"? Correct me if I'm wrong. I certainly think that the Universe is comprehensible, that it follows an internally logical set of behaviors that we humans call "laws".

Sorry if I seem overly pedantic about this.

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Also, it should be pointed out that our minds, too, are natural. Where that puts us vis the rationality of nature is a little recursive. It seems the above could well be in error, then.

[LostLocke]

As far as your use of rational, I think the difficulty I'm having with it is that it is a personal faculty, being applied to an impersonal phenomenon. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that you perhaps mean "comprehensible"? Correct me if I'm wrong. I certainly think that the Universe is comprehensible, that it follows an internally logical set of behaviors that we humans call "laws".

This is pretty much where I would go with this.

To use a real world example, some people consider time moving at different rates, within our own universe, to be 'irrational'.
The problem with that is that, either it does or it doesn't. The universe doesn't care what we think is rational, it is what it is and does what it does. If we learn that it's doing something we consider 'irrational', then it is our responsibility to reconsider what we think is 'rational', not the universe's responsibility to adjust what it does.

[jughead]

OP...don't know. I'm not that deep of a thinker.

Let me say if I did have a god, nature would be it.

[Mudhammam]

All I can say upon nearing the completion of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is that it is by far the best case I have ever read for something as if a Supreme Being--existing necessarily as an ideal by which our sense of systematic unity, as in Ego and Reason (and consequentually, all empirical intuitions) find their basis.

Anyone know of any go-to philosophers who have since held their own against Kant's Critique? Schopenhauer?

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As far as your use of rational, I think the difficulty I'm having with it is that it is a personal faculty, being applied to an impersonal phenomenon. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that you perhaps mean "comprehensible."

Yes, I suppose that is what I mean, though to clarify, I suppose my question pertains to whether or not it is possible to have an empirical existence, in Time and Space, without a priori pure reason, which seems inextricably interwoven with the most basic categories of existence/non-existence, unity/divisibility, finite/infinite, etc.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think reason seems inextricably interwoven because that is the faculty we use to process our perceptions. As to whether that is a requirement for physical existence or not, I have no idea.

[Whateverist]

As far as your use of rational, I think the difficulty I'm having with it is that it is a personal faculty, being applied to an impersonal phenomenon. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that you perhaps mean "comprehensible."

Yes, I suppose that is what I mean, though to clarify, I suppose my question pertains to whether or not it is possible to have an empirical existence, in Time and Space, without a priori pure reason, which seems inextricably interwoven with the most basic categories of existence/non-existence, unity/divisibility, finite/infinite, etc.

It isn't the existence of whatever it is that gives rise to our sense data which depends on pure reason, just us.

[Mudhammam]

Yes, I suppose that is what I mean, though to clarify, I suppose my question pertains to whether or not it is possible to have an empirical existence, in Time and Space, without a priori pure reason, which seems inextricably interwoven with the most basic categories of existence/non-existence, unity/divisibility, finite/infinite, etc.

It isn't the existence of whatever it is that gives rise to our sense data which depends on pure reason, just us.

Go on... I think I agree but can you spell it out a little more?

Also, as a side, it is kind of remarkable to read what Kant argues as his conception of God on the basis of pure logic and what modern cosmology has dubbed the Singularity.