Meta-rationality: Outline

This is the Table of Contents for Part Four of my meta-rationality book. Part Four is the part that is actually about meta-rationality!

You might want to start reading the book at the beginning, instead of here. Parts One through Three are background that will be helpful for reading Part Four. (But maybe not necessary for all readers.)

I am publishing draft sections of Part Four as Substack posts. This page outlines the whole Part. Sections I’ve posted are underlined and linked.

• Summary of Part Four; plus summaries of previous Parts, in case you missed them

• Meta-rational practice: an overview

  • When to get meta-rational

  • Meta-rational norms

  • Meta-rational processes, operations, and methods

  • Penicillin: a case study

  • Opportunities for meta-rational improvement

  • Meta-rational maxims

  • Sorcery: fluid competence

• Making meta-rationality available

  • How meta-rationality is invisible

  • Why meta-rationality is invisible

  • Learning inscrutable sorcery

  • Rational reconstruction

  • Getting credit for meta-rational work

• Case study: Meta-rational failure (and success) in the covid crisis

• Meta-rationality illustrated: software architecting

  • What is software architecting?

  • Why must software architecting be meta-rational?

  • Oblivious software development rationalism

• Purposes in meta-rationality

  • Analyzing software purposes rationally

  • Understanding purposes meta-rationally

  • Understanding software purposes meta-rationally

  • Clarifying the roles of purposes

  • Purposes and power

  • Ethics in technical work

  • Meta-rationality, moral force, and nobility in public health policy

• Meta-rational epistemology

  • Meta-rational judgement

  • How “HIV is the cause of AIDS” is true

  • Knowledge and understanding

  • Varieties of truth

  • Coping, deciding, and transmuting

  • Aspects of meta-rational activity

• Feeling for an ontology and creating Problems

  • Locating a proto-Problem

  • Getting an ontology and formulating Problems

• Evaluating, selecting, and applying rational systems

• Combining multiple systems

• Creating rational systems

• Limiting rationality to its limits

• Engineering circumrational supports

• Monitoring, maintaining, and retiring systems

• Case study: reinventing copier repair

• Developing meta-rationality

• A research agenda

• Glossary