Bonus Episode: Don't Think for Yourself, Chapter 1

I'm not sure about other bonus episodes, but interestingly this episode shows up on the Epistemology theme page! So I think it'd be a great addition to Religion and Reason too. And most of the other bonus episodes too, of course, do make sense in the themes. I'm assuming these too can be displayed chronologically - and I think it'll make the theme pages even more useful as one-stop shops for all episodes on an area.

Thanks too for clarifying the bit on justified taqlīd. 

Revisiting after Strauss's Jerusalem and Athens lectures, and Ch. 3 of your book! I'm fascinated by how the thinkers you discuss do recognise that justified taqlid isn't a faith in one's epistemic authority as absolutely unerring. In other words: I don't assume my professor is omniscient (in their field), or that my doctor is infallibly right. BUT I know enough (for instance, about the effort, training, and acquired expertise and built-up experience) to judge that this is an epistemic authority I can trust, because their likelihood of being right trumps that of being wrong. And the epistemic authority can, of course, be another person, or a text -- very broadly a 'signal' or 'sign', to borrow Stuart Hall's term from the Encoding-Decoding essay (discussed in Africana philosophy!)

Do you see this connecting to pragmatist and Bayesian positions - even if these were formulated much later?

Also, justified taqlid does seem to imply that the Athenian can recognise the value of thinking like a Jerusalemite - using reason to acknowledge the value of trusting revelation when justified. Does it also imply that the Jerusalemite can also reason -- or if they do, are they making a rationalist move? (By 'Athenian' and 'Jerusalemite' I'm NOT referring to actual citizens from these cities. Using them as metaphors rather for an adherent of taqlid/revelation and ijtihad/reason instead!)