Ah Christ this stuff never ends. I recall hearing panicky stories like this back in the 90s. https://twitter.com/CathyYoung63/status/1329577678136020995

For a certain segment of society, "rational thought" just means "things that agree with me." And when you start to break it down, like, say, a philosopher would, there's a lot to learn about "rationality."

In the broadest sense, rationality is just giving reasons for propositional attitudes. Ratio = reason. Something is rational if it is reasoned. Entire wings of libraries could be devoted to what constitutes proper (and improper) reason.

For example, we know that basic sentential logic can adequately track truth values across permutations of propositional statements. That is, if we know A is true, then we know "A v B" is also true.

But even logic his this sort of bedrock where we have to rely on something else* other than logic itself to ground it. For instance, modus ponens, the logical inference rule that if P implies Q, given P, conclude Q, can't be justified except by reference to itself.

Obviously we need some sort of meta-rule that says that a rule-circular justification is permissible in at least the instance of justifying modus ponens, which is one of THE basic rules of logical inference.

Other types of reasoning are often claimed as sufficiently reliable to be considered rational (reliabilism) or in some other way related to or descended from a prior form of reasoning known to be rational (foundationalism).

Some people consider things with a sufficient probability, updated according to an information-aggregating theorem, to be rational (Bayesianism). Our idea of what should count as a "justified" or rational belief shifts between eras, cultures, and individuals.

For the epistemologist, this is not surprising and indeed forms the bedrock of WHY epistemology continues to be studied and debated today, but for the lay person, this is an unacceptable situation of affairs.

The "folk philosophy" belief that we have knowledge is persistent and pervasive. It's also probably correct, but (curious!) most people couldn't give a coherent account of why they have genuine knowledge.

This folk philosophy belief leads to a further, irrational one -- that there must be a single method of rationality and that there is always only one "rational" view or propositional attitude for a given subject.

This leads to "rational" becoming an expression of sociopolitical power. In our modern parlance, claiming the throne of the "rational" position is akin to claiming the divine right of kings or the right of a divine emperor to rule by fiat.

This is why some on the "left" (being, in this case, college professors whose work is specifically aimed at challenging entrenched sociopolitical power structures) might appear to attack "rationality" as a concept.

Not because they're embracing "irrationalism" (not a thing). Not because they think "nothing is true." Not because they doubt the efficacy of vaccines or the mechanics of internal combustion engines. But because the natural follow-up to the question of "is it rational?" is…

"by whose standard of rationality?" And, should it surprise you that a supposedly generic concept like "rationality" becomes the handmaiden of entrenched power, allow me to point you to literally EVERY form of human communication and effort.

There is nothing that power will not use for its own ends; nothing. How much of our scientific research is driven by military and armament investment and goals? What technological advancement occurs but where it can be exploited by corporate interests?

I am all for "rationality." I love epistemology and investigating just how we claim to know what we know. But the uncritical acceptance of "rationality," without inquiring into the conditions of possibility for genuine knowledge, or without…

consideration and criticism of the historical, social, linguistic, and political construction of our propositional attitudes, is nothing more than a rationalist mystery cult whose ritual is experiment and whose doctrines couched in math and symbolic logic.

The end result is a generation of people for whom rationality is a signifier and not a process, who know enough to keep pushing the button, but never ask why they were told to push the button in the first place.