On Rationality: The Unconventional Views of Noam Chomsky and Paul Feyerabend

A couple of books by Paul Feyerabend have radically changed my perspective about knowledge and rationality. I highly recommend his "Three dialogues on Knowledge" and "Science in a Free Soceity". Especially if one's rationality prevents one from appreciating something, say for example, the dance of the whirling dervishes, I think the Three dialogues is a very good antedote for it. I have never read a book which changed/freed my perspectives more than this one. It basically shows that there is nothing pure about reason except perhaps some bit of logic; that mostly what matters is aesthetics and taste (bias/intuition/insight/baseera). Thus our beliefs are based on our prior proclivities, rather than the purported deductions from axioms of rationality to logically justified conclusions.
In my reading this is consistent with what Ghazali(ra) has to say about faith based on reason:
‘Whoever supposes that faith is realized through speculative theology, abstract proofs, or academic divisions is an innovator. On the contrary, faith is a light that God, the Sublime and Exalted, casts in to the hearts of His servants with bounty and grace from His presence. Sometimes faith is evidenced internally and is impossible to express; sometimes, through a vision while asleep; other times, by witnessing the state of a pious man and receiving the emanation of his light as a result of his companionship and presence; and there are times when faith comes by the concurrence of circumstance. Indeed, a Bedouin came to the Prophet denying and disavowing him. But when his eyes fell upon his radiant aspect—may God increase its dignity and nobility—he saw in it the light of prophethood and exclaimed, “By God! This is not the face of a liar!” He then implored the Prophet to explain Islam to him and immediately embraced it.’
Realizing what one thinks to be the truth has a lot to do with direct (intuitive) perception of things. I do not belive it is arrived through reasoning; reasoning perhaps follows retroactively, perhaps to add intellectual respectability, and only in simple, straightforward and uninteresting cases.
What does that say about epistemology? It makes nonsense of the idea of "justified true belief", where reasons need to be articulated. Mostly what we believe is what we are already inclined to believe. A believer is inclined to prefer the intellectual proofs of the existence of God. None of the proofs are in of themselves conclusive. Actually the proofs themselves do not have any meaning, only readers impute some value and meaning to them, depending on the time, their background, and their inclination...i.e. whether they are interested in intellectual proofs. We know many pious people in our own history weren't very interested nor impressed with theology, on the other hand the believer's face has always been the "best argument". Aesthetics (perhaps same as sincerity/ikhlas/sidq) takes the front seat. What is in the Prophet's (saw) face that would lead one to draw conclusions and he is truthful (perhaps conclusions aren't drawn, its a direct perception of truth). No axiomatic inferences here.
The state of one's knolwedge/skepticism is mostly dependent not on formal conditions of proof, but rather on the state the heart is in: Its seeing and witnessing. I am not implying that rationality, as a calculater, as something which compares and produces analogies is useless. It has its uses in problem sovling, when the premises are given. But has no power to produce premises.
Even fiqh judgements are intuitive and their justifications retroactive. I can't imagine anyone axiomatically reasoning to a conclusion in fiqh, except only as an after thought, or to justify his view when writing down a fatwa. Furthermore, Feyerabend claims that the highest form of intellecutal exchange is story-telling. And that is again the way God speaks to man in the Quran. And sunnah is like a story too. Stories contextualize knowledge fully.
Hence, knowledge, rather than being something absolute and Platonic, is a living tradition, and understandings which are in the hearts and minds. Knowledge can be taken from books only because those symbols already mean something to the reader, and the text is able to suggest linkages and relations which perhaps the reader was unaware of, and thus, knowledge is ‘gained’ from books, and also because the reader can contextualize the statements. On the other hand if one cannot contextualize it properly, as in the case of a misreading (say a wahhabi reading of the Quran) one is just imputing meanings not intended by the author of the text. Thus meanings are thus the reader’s commentary on the text; in fact, the reader is the commentary (Shaykh Nuh). Even if one is to grant, in fact quite rightly, that the intended meanings are in the knowledge of God, those meanings aren’t accessible. Logicists and semanticists believe meanings are given, static, and unchanging. But given the above considerations, there is no such static thing which is accessible to human beings. Rather each human being approaches the text with his/her own background, reading meaning into the symbols, sometimes with interpretations close to what was intended, and sometimes not. Either way looking up a dictionary has limited benefit, because matters are not settled this way. Meanings are conventional uses of words, and dictionaries are posterior to the conventional use of words, and therefore not more authoritative than the speaker of that language or a member of the relevant culture.