The thing is, Drew and Sic (and Bob Gray before them) definitely still do think so it becomes a question of why they don't care. This question has become more and more interesting to me over the last few years. I am starting to think (or, I should say, believe, as will become apparent) that it is actually literally true that we are not rational beings and that all rationality is a cloak we throw on after the fact. We hold certain beliefs, full stop. Where they come from is a separate question. We then circle back around and "discover" our beliefs to be rationally justified. Not cynically; we simply have no way of concluding otherwise. So we conclude we decided from the facts and now hold that conclusion provisionally until it can be disproven. That's the way Aristotle and Locke and Kant said correctly functioning humans work, even as they disagreed about the source of the facts (actual nature, our sensory interpretation of stimulae, a priori categories of understanding in our minds, respectively).
But maybe we don't. Maybe we never actually reason at all. What if everything I believe I believe for non-rational reasons (upbringing, mentoring, bigotry, unfamiliarity, whim, randomness)? This is what I've observed in many other people over a long period of time, so I have no trouble with the possibility that this can happen to a person. What if it is the fundamental and unavoidable nature of every person?
I have hitherto rejected anti-rationalist philosophy as being a blind recoil against the dehumanization by bureaucracy and technology (Rousseau) or the erosion of faith by reason (Augustine) by emotional reactionaries, and indeed some of it seems to be just that. As a rationalist my conclusion was the world was divided into smarties who reasoned from evidence to belief and dummies who were led by irrationality from belief to selection of evidence.
But what if we are all dummies?
Does it change anything? We still are in the world and we still have to function, and we still believe what we believe and we still find it to be rational for whatever reason. I will still defend my beliefs and try to work for what I perceive to be rational ends -- I don't see how the removal of the actual rational basis of my decisions has to lead to paralysis or angst (perhaps I am simply not French).
Let's assume it doesn't change anything about what we should do in the world -- we should still be agents of the change we wish to see. How does this affect how we go about doing that? For one thing it sure seems to be easier now for me to approach Drew or Sic because while, yes, it's true they are dummies, so am I so I don't have anything to be all that frustrated about.
How can we dummies interact with one another usefully? I'm ruling out violence and let's in fact rule out all the behaviors we traditionally call immoral: forms of trickery, coercion, just general not niceness. We can talk to each other politely. We can be mutually respectful in the clear light of recognition that we are all mutually stupid. That conversation and friendliness then becomes a lever to change their minds (or my own), depending on how our beliefs are actually acquired.
Under rationalism, the mission was: how do you convince people who have come to untrue conclusions that they are untrue? Under irrationalism that result is unlikely*. But it becomes eminently possible to change people's beliefs if we understand how beliefs are formed. That becomes the program.
* It is still theoretically possible to convince somebody strictly on matters of new facts but I doubt it is likely because beliefs are so strong they resist contrary facts.
