Meta-Rationality

Discussion

David Chapman on the sources for understanding meta-rationality [1]:

Donald Schon

"Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action is the closest thing we have to a manual of meta-rationality.

Schön observed in detail how experts in five technical fields addressed nebulous problems. He found that technical rationality—“the formulas learned in graduate school”—doesn’t cut it. Those methods only apply when a problem has already been well-characterized—that is, translated into a formal vocabulary. That is not what a civil engineer encounters in the field: what you find there is water and rocks and dirt, and it’s a mess. It’s not what a project manager encounters in a tech company: what you find there is a bunch of people squabbling about a slipped schedule, and it’s a mess. Rationality solves formal problems, but that’s not what expert professionals do. They transform nebulous messes.

Meta-rationality requires understanding the relationship between a particular clear-cut rational system and a particular messy, nebulous reality. The “solution” to a slipped schedule undoubtedly involves fiddling with a GANTT chart, or some similar project-management formalism. However, the mess can’t be “solved” entirely, or mainly, in this formal domain. The manager needs to understand how the GANTT chart relates to what people are actually doing.

There can be no fixed method for this; it’s inherently improvisational. That does not imply mystical intuitive woo. It means a lot of well-thought-out practical activity, immersing yourself in the mess, and reflecting on how specific rational methods could work in this concrete situation.

Mastery of professional practice is not the ability to solve cut-and-dried problems. That’s for junior staff, straight out of school. Professional mastery is the ability to re-characterize a nebulous real-world situation as a collection of soluble technical problems." (https://meaningness.com/further-reading)

Robert Kegan

"Robert Kegan’s model of adult psychological development profoundly shapes my understanding of meta-rationality—as well as ethics, relationships, and society. I wrote about his work overall here.

His two major books are The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.

Kegan’s account of meta-rationality is frustratingly abstract, but his explanation of the ways it restructures the self gives insights not available elsewhere.

...

Robert Kegan’s The Evolving Self is the most sophisticated explanation I’ve found of the ways we relate self and other, and the ways we relate to our selves.

The book strikes many readers as a major revelation. It’s not only intellectually fascinating, making sense of so much of our lives—it’s also useful in practice as a guide to radical personal transformation.

Other readers find nothing meaningful in it. Tentatively, I suspect that’s not because they miss the point, but because Kegan’s framework simply doesn’t apply to everyone.

...

Robert Kegan’s work began as an extension of Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. I think Kegan’s stage 5 is the most sophisticated ethical framework available. It requires meta-rationality: relating different ethical systems to each other, and reflecting on their relationship with reality.

Among his several books, only The Evolving Self discusses ethics."

Kramer and Alstad

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad’s The Guru Papers was mis-named. It discusses gurus only in passing.

Their book is a sprawling but brilliant discussion of the major topics of Meaningness—unity and diversity, self and other, sacred and profane, life-purpose, ethics, ultimate value, and so on. It is a memetic nosology—a classification of contagious harmful ideas, attitudes, and practices."