We argue in favour of identifying one aspect of rational choice with the tendency to conform to the choice you expect another like-minded, but non-communicating, agent to make and study this idea in the very basic case where the choice is from a non-empty subset K of 2 A and no further structure or knowledge of A is assumed.

A striking thesis lies at the core of Davidson's philosophy: when we attribute intentional content to another creature's mental states and speech acts, we must treat the creature as largely conforming to our own rational norms. I will discuss how this thesis informs Davidson's treatment of rationality and intentionality. After reviewing some historical background, I present basic aspects of Davidson's position. I then examine various worries about the position. I conclude by highlighting some key Davidsonian insights into rationality.

Thomas Hobbes' method of deriving some moral principles from a social contract has inspired some contemporary moral philosophers to combine the contractarian approach with the model of rational behavior familiar to economists, in order to derive substantive principles of right from essentially formal constraints on the choice of principles. They argue that the device of a hypothetical social contract could serve to generate intuitively plausible moral principles even when the contractors are assumed to be self-interested maximizers of expected utility . (...) Since economic rationality, as defined here, is a relatively pliable model of rational deliberation, the hope is that this approach will provide a systematic tool for the derivation and justification of moral principles. ;Given this conception of rationality, a hypothetical social contract may be interpreted as any of several formal models of rational choice, each of which I examine, as exhibited in the work of some contemporary contract theorists: John Rawls' early work represents the view that choosing the social contract involves an individual decision under certainty; in his later work , Rawls presents the social contract as an individual decision made under ignorance; John Harsanyi defends the case for an individual decision under risk; and David Gauthier's recent work treats the social contract as the product of a rational collective bargain. ;I argue that, if the model of economic rationality is taken seriously, none of these conceptions of the social contract produce principles which conform to our considered moral judgments, and most of them will fail to produce a contractual agreement of any sort. Consequently, I conclude that the combination of economic rationality and procedural constraints on the deliberations of such contractors is an inadequate substitute for other-regarding sentiments usually considered necessary for the justification of moral principles. (shrink)

It is often believed that the only alternative to an idealist conception of natural phenomena excludes both the presence of objective universal forms and their progression towards higher forms as the finality of processes in the natural world. Realism regarding the universal and teleological approaches regarding processes are signs of idealism. Therefore, materialism, it would seem, must conform to a nominalist and mechanical view of nature. However, an intelligent materialist reading of idealism’s classics reveals a more complex scenario. A real (...) fact is expressed in a mystical fashion in idealism’s conceptions of objective universals and teleology. This article attempts to show such a real fact in its authentic (materialist) form. With that goal in mind, the present article discusses the notion of nature’s alienation, the distinction between abstract and concrete universals, and the concept of dialectical interaction. The natural-historical emergence of a higher form of matter’s organization assimilates, as its organs, the conditions that preceded it in time, transforming itself into an active producer of such conditions. That is the secret glimpsed but not correctly understood by idealism that a consistent materialist should not ignore. (shrink)

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. (...) All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Axiomatic rationality is defined in terms of conformity to abstract axioms. Savage limited axiomatic rationality to small worlds, that is, situations in which the exhaustive and mutually exclusive set of future states S and their consequences C are known. Others have interpreted axiomatic rationality as a categorical norm for how human beings should reason, arguing in addition that violations would lead to real costs such as money pumps. Yet a review of the literature shows little evidence (...) that violations are actually associated with any measurable costs. Limiting axiomatic rationality to small worlds, I propose a naturalized version of rationality for situations of intractability and uncertainty, all of which are not in. In these situations, humans can achieve their goals by relying on heuristics that may violate axiomatic rationality. The study of ecological rationality requires formal models of heuristics and an analysis of the structures of environments these can exploit. It lays the foundation of a moderate naturalism in epistemology, providing statements about heuristics we should use in a given situation. Unlike axiomatic rationality, ecological rationality can explain less-is-more effects, formalize when one should move from ‘is’ to ‘ought,’ and be evaluated by goals beyond coherence, such as predictive accuracy, frugality, and efficiency. Ecological rationality can be seen as a formalization of means–end instrumentalist rationality, based on Herbert Simon’s insight that rational behavior is a function of the mind and its environment. (shrink)

Numerous authors have defended the rough idea that it is irrational to fail to conform to one’s judgments about what it would be rational to do, or what doxastic states it would be rational to be in. This chapter examines rational reflection principles as an attempt to implement this idea in contexts of uncertainty about what credence distributions are rational. After outlining some problems with Old Rational Reflection, the chapter discusses what seems like a well-motivated fix, New Rational Reflection. It (...) is argued that an intuitive way of trying to motivate the principle fails, and that it faces counterexamples. To say the least, the principle imposes substantial and controversial constraints on the kinds of epistemic situations it is possible to be in. A more general problem is that rational reflection principles seem doomed to take seriously certain kinds of uncertainty about what is rational, but not others. (shrink)

What, normatively speaking, are the grounds of rational choice? This paper defends ‘comparativism’, the view that a comparative fact grounds rational choice. It examines three of the most serious challenges to comparativism: 1) that sometimes what grounds rational choice is an exclusionary-type relation among alternatives; 2) that an absolute fact such as that it’s your duty or conforms to the Categorial Imperative grounds rational choice; and 3) that rational choice between incomparables is possible, and in particular, all that is needed (...) for the possibility of rational choice is that one alternative is not worse than the others. Each challenge is questioned. If comparativism is correct, then no matter what normative theory you favor, your answer to the question, ‘What makes my choice rational?’ must be comparative in form. In this way, comparativism provides a framework for normative theorizing. (shrink)

Philosophical/epistemic theories of rationality differ over the role of judgment in rational argumentation. According to the “classical model” of rationality, rational justification is a matter of conformity with explicit rules or principles. Critics of the classical model, such as Harold Brown and Trudy Govier, argue that the model is subject to insuperable difficulties. They propose, instead, that rationality be understood, ultimately, in terms of judgment rather than rules. In this article I respond to Brown's and Govier's (...) criticisms of the classical model, and to the “judgment model” they propose in its place. I argue that that model is unable both to distinguish between rational and irrational judgment and to avoid recourse to rules, and is therefore inadequate as an account of rationality, critical thinking, or argument appraisal. More positively, I argue that an adequate account of rationality must include a place for both rules and judgment. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes six elements in the Platonic concept of rationality as it appears in the Republic: (a) being fully informed; (b) thinking logically; (c) having the single correct ultimate end; (d) determining the appropriate means; (e) matching action to thought; and (f) promotingone’s own interest. The evidence linking the rational part of the soul (the logistikon) to each of these aspects is discussed. The philosopher-guardians are shown to exemplify full and complete “Platonic rationality”, whereas the unjust men (...) in books 8 and 9 exhibit different degrees of failure to conform to the six elements listed above. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes six elements in the Platonic concept of rationality as it appears in the Republic: (a) being fully informed; (b) thinking logically; (c) having the single correct ultimate end; (d) determining the appropriate means; (e) matching action to thought; and (f) promotingone’s own interest. The evidence linking the rational part of the soul (the logistikon) to each of these aspects is discussed. The philosopher-guardians are shown to exemplify full and complete “Platonic rationality”, whereas the unjust men (...) in books 8 and 9 exhibit different degrees of failure to conform to the six elements listed above. (shrink)

Much recent work on Kant's argument that the Categorical Imperative is the fundamental principle of morality has focused on the gap in that argument between the conclusion that rational agents conform to laws that apply to every rational agent, and the requirement contained in the Universal Law of Nature formula.1 While it seems plausible – even trivial– that a rational agent, insofar as she is a rational agent, conforms to whatever laws there are that are valid for all rational agents, (...) there does not appear to be any obvious route from this seemingly trivial claim to the controversial and substantive principle of acting only on maxims that one can at the same time rationally will every rational agent to act on.2 In what follows, I argue that the connection between rational agency and mere conformity to universally valid laws is not as trivial as it may seem. Many readers, I suspect, assume that Kant makes the trivial claim about rational agency because rational agency is rational, and being rational requires conforming to those laws that apply to all rational beings. For instance, this assumption is implicit in Onora O'Neill claim that "the interest of a Kantian universality test is that it aims to ground an ethical theory on notions of consistency and rationality rather than upon considerations of desire and preference."3 But, as I contend in what follows, the requirement to conform to laws valid for all rational agents is based on the fact that rational agency is, not rational, but agency. Indeed, the arguments leading to the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative rely on the idea of rational willing as a kind of causation in order to show this. And, as it turns out, the claim that the concept of causation contains the idea of conformity to universally valid laws is not a trivial claim. (shrink)

In the wake of Kolodny (2005) and Raz (2005), the normativity of rationality has become the topic of an intricate debate: what normative reasons are there, if any, to be rational? This article explains what kinds of ‘reasons to be rational’ there are. It then argues that, while we often have reason to be rationally disposed, rationality is neither itself normative nor necessarily underwritten by normative reasons – at any rate not when construed as conformance with coherence requirements. (...) Allegedly omnipresent reasons to be coherent are shown to be ‘ghost-like’: hard to disprove, and yet irrational to believe in. This conclusion is rendered persuasive with scenarios featuring rewards for violating coherence constraints. The article also deals with the long-standing objection that such ‘irrationality rewards’ would be reasons ‘of the wrong kind’. Furthermore, Kolodny’s explanation of why rationality has the appearance of being normative is replaced with a more credible ‘error theory’. (shrink)

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that (...) it is because deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-knowledge, our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our (...) rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals. This paper has two goals. The first is exegetical: to identify agentialism's defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose a way to understand the role of agency in reasoning and avowals, one that does justice to what is distinctive about these phenomena yet is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. (shrink)

A striking thesis lies at the core of Davidson‟s philosophy: when we attribute intentional content to another creature‟s mental states and speech acts, we must treat the creature as largely conforming to our own rational norms. I will discuss how this thesis informs Davidson‟s treatment of rationality and intentionality. After reviewing some historical background, I present basic aspects of Davidson‟s position. I then examine various worries about the position. I conclude by highlighting some key Davidsonian insights into rationality.

This book argues that moral philosophy should be based on seven scientific principles of theory selection. It then argues that a new moral theory—Rightness as Fairness—satisfies those principles more successfully than existing theories. Chapter 1 explicates the seven principles of theory-selection, arguing that moral philosophy must conform to them to be truth-apt. Chapter 2 argues those principles jointly support founding moral philosophy in known facts of empirical moral psychology: specifically, our capacities for mental time-travel and modal imagination. Chapter 2 then (...) shows that these capacities present human decisionmakers with a problem of diachronic rationality that includes but generalizes beyond, L.A. Paul’s problem of transformative experience: a problem that I call “the problem of possible future selves.” Chapter 3 then argues that a new principle of rationality—the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative—is the only rational solution to this problem, as it requires our present and future selves to forge and uphold a recursive, bi-directional contract with each another given mutual recognition of the problem. Chapter 4 then shows that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three identical formulations analogous but superior to Immanuel Kant’s various formulations of his ‘categorical imperative.’ Chapter 5 shows that these unified formulas jointly entail a particular test of moral principles: a Moral Original Position similar to John Rawls’ famous ‘original position’, but which avoids a variety of problems with Rawls' model. Chapter 6 then shows that the Moral Original Position generates Four Principles of Fairness, which can then be combined into a single principle of moral rightness: Rightness as Fairness. This new conception of rightness is shown to reconcile four dominant moral frameworks (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and contractualism), as well as entail a new method of moral decisionmaking for applied ethics: a method of “principled fair negotiation” according to which applied ethical issues cannot be wholly resolved through principled debate, but must instead be resolved by actual negotiation and compromise. This method is then argued to generate novel, nuanced analyses of a variety of applied moral issues, including trolley cases, torture, and the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals. Chapter 7 then shows that Rightness as Fairness reconciles three leading political frameworks—libertarianism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism—showing how all three embody legitimate moral ideals that can, and should, be fairly negotiated against each other to settle the scope, and nature, of domestic, international, and global justice on an ongoing, iterated basis. Finally, Chapter 8 argues that Rightness as Fairness satisfies all seven of the principles of theory-selected defended in Chapter 1 more successfully than rival theories. (shrink)

In the decision of modern problems of education and, first of all, removal of extreme measures of unification and autonomic of its development the significant role is got with strategy of optimum forming of a harmonious parity of sensual and rational approaches in the organization and conducting educational processes in preparation of youth for a life. Educational process is indissoluble unity sensual and rational as preparation of the person for a life it is necessary includes as purchase versatile and a (...) profound knowledge and skills, and the certain personal attitude (feelings, behaviors) it to the world, other people and to itself. If sensual approaches are characterized mainly by problems of formation of practical knowledge of the person about the validity, progresses of its first-hand experience and the attitude to a life within the limits of culture of the nearest environment rational approaches at the most are focused on progress of intelligence of the person, on formation of its capacity completely to capture and interpret great volume of the information. Both that, and another approaches contain the dignity and the lacks. Therefore, in rational strategy of education scholastic theoretical speculations quite often replaces everyday, practical knowledge. As a result, the person not always correctly understands and estimates the importance of the decision of those or other problems in sphere of the activity and development of the country.Rational approaches dominate over modern education systems. Rational domination in educational processes shows that there is a gap between scientific and personal models of an image of the world of the modern person. All this considerably affects moral consciousness of modern youth and its civil socialization. For this reason, it is important to lead at reforming education systems to conformity (harmony) of sensual and rational approaches. (shrink)

Abstract It is usually attempted teleologically to demonstrate the rationality of the so?called scientific method. Goals or aims are posited (and their specification defended) and it is then argued that conformity with some body of methodological rules is conducive to the realization of these goals or aims. A ? deontological? alternative to this approach is offered, adapting insights of contemporary political philosophers, especially John Rawls and Bruce Ackerman. The ?circumstances of method? are defined as those circumstances in which (...) it alone makes sense to seek some method for the resolution of disputed issues. It is then shown that individuals who find themselves in these circumstances have reason to conduct themselves in conformity with certain simple rules of argumentation?have reason, indeed, in the very fact that they do so find themselves and altogether without reference to any goals or aims which it might be hoped to achieve. These rules require non?interference, responsiveness, relevance, and publicity, and are, arguably, the rules which define the concept (and which therefore provide a framework for various conceptions,) of scientific method. (shrink)

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. (...) All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Being incoherent is often viewed as a paradigm kind of irrationality. Numerous authors attempt to explain the distinct-seeming failure of incoherence by positing a set of requirements of structural rationality. I argue that the notion of coherence that structural requirements are meant to capture is very slippery, and that intuitive judgments – in particular, a charge of a distinct, blatant kind of irrationality – are very imperfectly correlated with respecting the canon of structural requirements. I outline an alternative strategy (...) for explaining our patterns of normative disapproval, one appealing to feasible dispositions to conform to substantive, non-structural norms. A wide range of paradigmatic cases of incoherence, I will argue, involve manifesting problematic dispositions, dispositions that manifest across a range of cases as blatant-seeming normative failures. (shrink)

This article discusses rationality gaps triggered by self-referential/cyclic choice, the latter being understood as choosing according to a norm that refers to the choosing itself. The Crocodile Paradox is reformulated and analyzed as a game—named CP—whose Nash equilibrium is shown to trigger a cyclic choice and to invite a rationality gap. It is shown that choosing the Nash equilibrium of CP conforms to the principles Wolfgang Spohn and Haim Gaifman introduced to, allegedly, guarantee acyclicity but, in fact, does (...) not prevent self-referential/cyclic choice and rationality gaps. It is shown that CP is a counter-example to Gaifman's solution of the rationality gaps problem. (shrink)

Among the ideas implicitly present and generally accepted in legal theory we can find claims, such as: 1. Justice concerns distribution of goods and burdens. 2. It is connected with the relationship between law and morality. 3. Justice has an existential dimension and is rooted partially in irrational attitudes and intuitions. The first two prepositions make it possible to characterize justice as the conformity with that part of morality which concerns the distribution and exchange of goods and burdens. Justice (...) connects law as an intentionally rational phenomenon with irrationality and particular existential experience. Thus the proposed understanding of justice connects the law or other social phenomena with a specific part of morality, irrationality and particular existential experience. (shrink)

Kant taught us that there are two kinds of norms: Categorical imperatives that one ought to follow regardless of one's personal aims and circumstances, and hypothetical imperatives that direct us to employ the means towards our chosen ends. Kant's distinction separates two approaches to normative epistemology. On the one hand, we have principles of "inductive rationality", typically supported by considerations such as intuitive plausibility, conformity with exemplary practice, and internal consistency. On the other hand, we may assess rules (...) for forming belief by how well they attain the objectives that motivate inquiry; in Levi's words, "the ends of inquiry control the legitimacy of inferences" [Levi 67, p. 241]. A doctrinaire attitude would ignore one of these perspectives in favour of the other; a balanced approach is to develop both and compare [cf. Helmann 97, Sec.2]. There are three possible relationships between hypothetical and categorical imperatives for empirical inquiry. (shrink)

This study will explore the Enlightenment conception of the individual of reason, its attempted formulations in actor biographies, and its ultimate denial by the reality of human identity as multiple, fluid, and dialogical. Such fluidity sought to overcome the marginal status of the stage player through the embodiment of rational models of personality. Some stage celebrities, most notably David Garrick, were offering themselves as public models of identity for the new age of reasoned discourse. This involved the presentation before the (...) public of stage performers as fully realized individuals. However, the unavoidable problem was that presenting an individual, even a renowned stage star, as a living paradigm of the enlightened person of reason would prove elusive. Aside from the inherent contradiction of locating any perfected stereotype in an actual person, the qualities making an individual in full conformity to his or her “reason” did not match the particular cultural qualities demanded for a successful eighteenth-century middle-class Englishman or Englishwoman. Nonetheless, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century, significant advances were made both within the particular profession of acting and before the onstage and offstage public. The acting profession was moving quickly and for the first time in England away from its marginalized status to offer respected agents for cultural change. The new genre of actor biographies as well contributed to this more fully realized formulation of the modern individual. (shrink)

What is it to be an agent? One influential line of thought, endorsed by G. E. M. Anscombe and David Velleman, among others, holds that agency depends on practical rationality—the ability to act for reasons, rather than being merely moved by causes. Over the past 25 years, Velleman has argued compellingly for a distinctive view of agency and the practical rationality with which he associates it. On Velleman’s conception, being an agent consists in having the capacity to be (...) motivated by a drive to act for reasons. Your bodily movements qualify as genuine actions insofar as they are motivated in part by your desire to behave in a way that makes sense to yourself. However, there are at least two distinct ways of spelling out what this drive towards self-intelligibility consists in, both present in Velleman’s work. It might consist in a drive towards intelligibility in causal-psychological terms: roughly, a drive to maximize the rational coherence of your psychological states. Alternatively, it might consist in a drive towards narrative intelligibility: a drive to make your ongoing activity conform to a recognizable narrative structure, where that structure is understood emotionally. Velleman originally saw these options as basically equivalent, but later came to prioritize the drive towards causal-psychological intelligibility over that towards narrative intelligibility. I argue that this gets things the wrong way round—we should instead understand our capacities to render ourselves intelligible in causal-psychological terms as built upon a bedrock of emotionally suffused narrative understanding. In doing so, we resolve several problems for Velleman’s view, and pave the way for an embodied, embedded and affective account of practical rationality and agency. According to the picture that emerges, practical rationality is essential to agency, narrative understanding is essential to practical rationality, and the rhythms and structures patterning the ebb and flow of our emotional lives are essential to narrative understanding. (shrink)

Jon Elster denies that collectives can behave rationally. Rational behavior requires action in conformity with preferences and beliefs. According to Elster, however, social choice theory demonstrates that collectives cannot have preferences, even in principle, and this precludes them from behaving either rationally or irrationally. (Irrationality, after all, is a property that can only be possessed by something that could in theory be rational.) Elster, however, does not fully accept this refutation of the possibility of collective rationality. For in (...) exploring the question of random selection, he argues that collectives, as well as individuals, can employ random selection as a tool to facilitate more rational behavior. This contradiction can be resolved if collective preferences are not as inconceivable as Elster suggests, and Elster himself gives reason for believing they may not be. He does this by distinguishing between a thin and a broad theory of rationality. His refutation of the possibility of collective preferences depends on a thin theory of preferences (and beliefs), a theory that he admits is inadequate for purposes of normative assessment. A broad theory of preferences and beliefs, when properly developed, could well accommodate the notion of collective preferences and beliefs, and thus of collective rationality. Key Words: Elster • rationality • social choice theory. (shrink)

This paper explores the sense in which modern societies can be said to be rational. Social rationality cannot be understood on the model of an idealized image of scientific method. Neither science nor society conforms to this image. Nevertheless, critique is routinely silenced by neo-liberal and technocratic arguments that appeal to social simulacra of science. This paper develops a critical strategy for addressing the resistance of rationality to rational critique. Romantic rejection of reason has proven less effective than (...) strategies that conceptualize modern artefacts, systems, and organizations as rationally underdetermined. This approach first appears in Marx's analysis of capitalist economics. Although he lacks the concept of underdetermination, Marx gets around the silencing effect of social rationality with something very much like it in his discussion of the length of the working day. Frankfurt School Critical Theory later blended romantic elements with Marxian ones in a suggestive but ambiguous mixture. The concept of underdetermination reappears in contemporary science and technology studies, now clearly articulated and philosophically and sociologically elaborated. But somewhere along the way the critical thrust was diluted. Critical theory of technology attempts to recover that thrust. Here its approach is generalized to cover the three main forms of social rationality. (shrink)

The paper begins by providing a game-theoretic reconstruction of Gilbert’s (1989) philosophical critique of Lewis (1969) on the role of salience in selecting conventions. Gilbert’s insight is reformulated thus: Nash equilibrium is insufficiently powerful as a solution concept to rationalize conventions for unboundedly rational agents if conventions are solutions to the kinds of games Lewis supposes. Both refinements to NE and appeals to bounded rationality can plug this gap, but lack generality. As Binmore (this issue) argues, evolutive game theory (...) readily explains the origin of conventional behavior, but that is not Lewis’s project. Gilbert’s critique is generalized by reference to Bacharach’s (2006) work on team reasoning in games. The paper then argues that although Lewis’s account of the rationalization of conventions is shown by the reconstruction of Gilbert’s critique to be incomplete, Gilbert is wrong to conclude that classical (‘eductive’) game theory lacks the resources to explain conformity to conventions among people. A game-theoretic account of the dynamics of socialization, based on Ross’s (2005, 2006) idea of ‘game determination’, rationalizes choices of conventional strategies in overlapping generations contexts, provided agents are products of evolutionary selection and know that other players are also such products. (shrink)

Theory of mind, the capacity to understand and ascribe mental states, has traditionally been conceptualized as analogous to a scientific theory. However, recent work in philosophy and psychology has documented a "side-effect effect" suggesting that moral evaluations influence mental state ascriptions, and in particular whether a behavior is described as having been performed 'intentionally.' This evidence challenges the idea that theory of mind is analogous to scientific psychology in serving the function of predicting and explaining, rather than evaluating, behavior. In (...) three experiments, we demonstrate that moral evaluations do inform ascriptions of intentional action, but that this relationship arises because behavior that conforms to norms (moral or otherwise) is less informative about underlying mental states than is behavior that violates norms. This analysis preserves the traditional understanding of theory of mind as a tool for predicting and explaining behavior, but also suggests the importance of normative considerations in social cognition. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates that Athenagoras’ theology is primarily concerned, not with the creative activity of God, as L.W. Barnard has argued, but rather with the immateriality of the divine nature and the unity of the Father and the Son. It is this two-fold basis of distinction and unity that makes the apprehension of God possible only by mind and reason. Since the divine nature is heavenly and immaterial, such apprehension cannot occur in the physical realm as promoted in pagan worship, (...) but must take place in the mind through the Son, who is the Logos or Mind, the Reason and Wisdom of the Father. Athenagoras’ assertion that the immaterial God can only be apprehended by reason emphasizes the distinction between God and matter, while the unity of the Father and Son in God’s acts and teachings highlights the role of reason in the soul’s apprehension of the divine. One must be conformed to the Son, who is the Reason of God, in order to apprehend God the Father, and Athenagoras evokes the ethical dimension of reason in the soul’s apprehension of the divine. As the soul follows the Son in obeying his teachings, it is conformed to the Son, thereby becoming rational and engaging in rational worship, focusing on the heavenly rather than the earthly. Thus it is in ethical conduct that Christians are essentially pure in spirit and rational in worship, as they are directed by the Son, who is unified with the Father, to apprehend the immaterial God. (shrink)

Both 'persuasion' and 'rational convincing' play a major role in argumentative discourse but only the latter is said to constitute argument and be amenable to traditional logical analysis. I argue against this assumption by showing that there are many paradigmatic instances of persuasion which are best understood as implicit arguments. So understood, acts of persuasion can conform to well recognized argument schemata and are best assessed accordingly. I shall argue that the attempt to distinguish arg ument and persuasion is fraught (...) with difficulties. I contrast my conclusions with those of authors like Gilbert, Johnson, and Johnson and Blair. (shrink)

This paper explores R.G. Collingwood's argument that a new type of archaeology, taking fairy tales as its subject matter, is capable of expanding our historical knowledge of cultural practices. I suggest that it is interesting from the point of view of current discussions about cosmopolitanism and communitarianism and also for understanding past practices, such as magic, without having to attribute failure of reasoning or a breakdown in mentality to the participants, as Le Roy Ladurie does. Collingwood maintains that the natural (...) sciences are unsuitable models for the human sciences. They are incapable of distinguishing between the inside and outside of an event. They do not acknowledge that a historical process is very different from a natural process. In addition, the natural sciences cannot take account of the self-critical or criteriological aspect of thought. Human sciences are criteriological in that they are capable of taking individuals who formulate intentions and purposes, and employ criteria to judge the extent to which they succeed or fail. Thought is self-critical, and to say that a certain thought conforms to a type of neurosis is to ignore its criteriological character. The implication is that when magic is viewed as bad science, or a failure in rationality, the criteriological character of magical thought is being denied. When magic is understood as an integral part of fairy tales and as a practice designed to arouse specific emotions to be channelled into practical effects, such as to inspire courage in warriors in battle, its character as purposive and intentional thought is being acknowledged. (shrink)

3 in philosophy, and therefore in metaphilosophy, cannot be based on rules that avoid spending time on pseudo-problems. Of course, this implies that, if one succeeds in demonstrating convincingly the pseudo-character of a problem by giving its 'solution', the time spent on it need not be seen as wasted. We conclude this section with a brief statement of the criteria for concept explication as they have been formulated in several places by Carnap, Hempel and Stegmiiller. Hempel's account is still very (...) adequate for a detailed introduction. The process of explication starts with the identification of one or more vague and, perhaps, ambiguous concepts, the so-called explicanda. Next, one tries to disentangle the ambiguities. This, however, need not be possible at once. Ultimately the explicanda are to be replaced by certain counterparts, the so-called explicata, which have to conform to four requirements. They have to be as precise as possible and as simple as possible. In addition, they have to be useful in the sense that they give rise to the formulation of theories and the solution of problems. The three requirements of preciseness, simplicity and usefulness. have of course to be pursued in all concept formation. (shrink)

Causal Bayes nets have been developed in philosophy, statistics, and computer sciences to provide a formalism to represent causal structures, to induce causal structure from data and to derive predictions. Causal Bayes nets have been used as psychological theories in at least two ways. They were used as rational, computational models of causal reasoning and they were used as formal models of mental causal models. A crucial assumption made by them is the Markov condition, which informally states that variables are (...) independent of other variables that are not their direct or indirect effects conditional on their immediate causes. Whether people’s inferences conform to the causal Markov and the faithfulness condition has recently been investigated empirically. A review of respective research indicates that inferences frequently violate these conditions. This finding challenges some uses of causal Bayes nets in psychology. They entail that causal Bayes nets may not be appropriate to derive predictions for causal model theories of causal reasoning. They also question whether causal Bayes nets as a rational model are empirically descriptive. They do not challenge, however, causal Bayes nets as normative models and their usage as formal models of causal reasoning. (shrink)

Kant is often regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern liberal democracy. His political theory reaches its climax in the ground-breaking work, Perpetual Peace (1795), which sets out the basic framework for a world federation of states united by a system of international law. What is less well known is that two years earlier, in his Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793/1794), Kant had postulated a very different, explicitly religious path to the politics of peace: he (...) presents the idea of an “ethical community” as a necessary requirement for humanity to become “satisfactory to God”. While many recent scholars have noted the importance of Kant’s concept of the ethical community, few recognize the force of his argument that such a community is possible only if it takes the form of a church; as a result, the precise status of his proposal remains unclear and under-appreciated. He argues in Division One, Section IV, of Religion’s Third Piece that the idea of this community can become a reality only through a “church” that is characterized by four rational requirements: unity, integrity, freedom, and the changeability of all church rules except these four unchangeable marks. Prior to Section IV, Division One portrays this ethical community as having a political form, yet an essentially nonpolitical matter. He compares it with Jewish theocracy, but observes that the latter failed to be an ethical commonwealth because it was explicitly political. Whereas traditional theocracy replaces the political state of nature (which conforms to the law, “might makes right”) with an ethical state of nature (which conforms to the law that I call, “should makes good”), or attempts to synthesize them, non-coercive theocracy transcends this distinction through a new perspective: it unites humanity in a common vision of a divine legislator whose only law is inward, binding church members together like families, through the law of love. Whereas the legal rights supported by democracy and a system of international law can go a long way to prepare for world peace, Kant’s conviction is that it will be ultimately impossible without support from healthy religion. (shrink)

A central question for psychologists, economists, and philosophers is how human lives should be valued. Whereas egalitarian considerations give rise to models emphasizing that every life should be valued equally, empirical research has demonstrated that valuations of lives depend on a variety of factors that often do not conform to specific normative expectations. Such factors include emotional reactions to the victims and cognitive considerations leading to biased perceptions of lives at risk (e.g., attention, mental imagery, pseudo-inefficacy, and scope neglect). They (...) can lead to a valuation function with decreasing marginal value and sometimes even decreasing absolute value as the number of victims increases. As a result, people spend more money to save an individual while at the same time being insensitive and apathetic to large losses of life, despite endorsing egalitarian norms. In this conceptual paper, we propose a descriptive model highlighting the role of different motivations and the conditions under which cognitions and emotions result in deviations from egalitarian normative valuations of human lives. (shrink)

The commentaries suggest many important improvements to the target article. They clearly distinguish two varieties of rationalization – the traditional “motivated reasoning” model, and the proposed representational exchange model – and show that they have distinct functions and consequences. They describe how representational exchange occurs not only by post hoc rationalization but also by ex ante rationalization and other more dynamic processes. They argue that the social benefits of representational exchange are at least as important as its direct personal benefits. (...) Finally, they construe our search for meaning, purpose, and narrative – both individually and collectively – as a variety of representational exchange. The result is a theory of rationalization as representational exchange both wider in scope and better defined in mechanism. (shrink)

Rationalization in the sense of biased self-justification is very familiar. It's not cheating because everyone else is doing it too. I didn't report the abuse because it wasn't my place. I understated my income this year because I paid too much in tax last year. I'm only a social smoker, so I won't get cancer. The mental mechanisms subserving rationalization have been studied closely by psychologists. However, when viewed against the backdrop of philosophical accounts of the regulative role of truth (...) in doxastic deliberation , rationalization can look very puzzling. Almost all contemporary philosophers endorse a version of the thesis of deliberative exclusivity—a thinker cannot in full consciousness decide whether to believe that p in a way that issues directly in forming a belief by adducing anything other than considerations that he or she regards as relevant to the truth of p. But, as I argue, rationalization involves the weighing of considerations that the thinker kn.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics As First EthicsLevinas and the Alterity of Literary DiscourseHenry McDonald (bio)1Notwithstanding the considerable amount of scholarly attention paid since the 1980s to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy of “the other,” critics and theorists have generally approached the relation between ethics and aesthetics in his work warily. Although readings of poetry and fiction inspired by Levinas’s philosophy continue to grow at a rapid rate, arguments applying that philosophy to literary (...) and aesthetic theory have been few and tentatively advanced. Some critics have contended that Levinas was something of a Platonic moralist who “disparaged” and “denounced” art and literature as failing to conform to his idea of what was “ethical.”1 If there is a critical consensus on the issue, it would seem to be that Levinas believed that art and ethics are incompatible.2Based on the aesthetic writings that Levinas produced over a four-decade period, as well as on the role literature played in the genesis and development of his ethical philosophy, such assessments seem puzzling. A Lithuanian Jew who studied with Husserl and Heidegger in 1929–30, Levinas (1906–95) came to philosophy initially through literature, especially Russian literature and Shakespeare: “the whole of philosophy,” he said, “is only a meditation of Shakespeare.”3 In the first work of his philosophical maturity, Existence and Existents (1947), discussions of aesthetics and literature introduce and develop the notion of being as il y a (there is), an account which, in giving emphasis [End Page 15] to being’s “horror” (horreur), simultaneously critiques ontology and places ethics on a tragic basis.4 The il y a, along with its temporal counterpart, the entretemps (between times), introduced just one year later in “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948), are of particular importance to his writings on aesthetics, produced during a period from the 1940s through the 70s.5 The latter provide abundant evidence of the potential for ethical meaning, indeed transcendence, he attributed to the artwork, as in “The Poet’s Vision” (1956), in which he asserts: “Literature is the unique adventure of a transcendence beyond all the horizons of the world... the authenticity of art must herald an order of justice” [“The Poet’s Vision” 134, 137]. Although Levinas never completed anything approximating a “system of aesthetics,” it is nonetheless true that in pieces ranging from developed essays on literary theory and aesthetics to brief commentaries on dozens of literary figures and works, he gave substantive indications of the ways in which his radically nonconceptual, nonontological account of ethics might alter our understanding of the status of “the literary artwork.”Most crucial among those indications is the close connection he posited between the alterity, or otherness, of the artwork and its tragic nature, which he defined in terms of his antiontological accounts of “being” and especially “time” (entretemps, “between times”). As early as “Reality and Its Shadow,” Levinas proposed the thesis, extended in his later essays, that the alterity of art and literature was located not in any ontological or conceptual “beyond”—in a spiritual dimension “which sets itself up as knowledge of the absolute” [1]—but in the “interstices” of language [3], in the “between times” (entretemps) of its modes of temporality: which can be accessed only by way of “the tragic” in art. Time in Levinas’s aesthetics is signified diachronically, from within a region of diaspora. What Levinas terms “alterity,” or otherness, points not toward a privileged, interpersonal dimension freed from the problematics of modernity, but strives to expose the complicity between the West’s concept of rationality and its history of barbarism exemplified by the Holocaust, its history, as Levinas put it, of “National Socialism, Stalinism, the camps, the gas chambers, nuclear weapons, terrorism and unemployment.”6 Art and literature demonstrate a utopian, emancipatory potential in revealing the fissures and hidden pathways that run through the hegemonic structures and totalizing frameworks of modernity.A central aspect of such an aesthetics is its privileging of music and musicality, which Levinas shares with a more recent thinker and critic, Paul Gilroy.7 Like Gilroy, Levinas deploys “musicality,” which he characterizes as “writing in its significance without signifiers” [157] not just to “refute,” as Gilroy... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:482 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY G. E. Michalson, Jr. TheHistoricalDimensions ofaRattonalFaith. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1977. Pp. 222. $8.65. The primary intentionof this work is to argue that historical or ecclesiastical religion plays a vital role in Kant's religious thought, because it is necessary to provide a sensible content for the purely formal doctrine of Kant's "moral" religion. But Michalson resists that this strategy cannot succeed, because of (...) the technical requirements of Kant's eplstmology, and that we must ultimately encounter an "impasse" in Kant's thought on history and religion (pp. 77, 134, 169). This is an area of Kant's thought that has not until recently received the attention it deserves. A careful consideration of all the related issued helps one to recognize, from perhaps the most beneficial standpoint, how all the various parts of Kant's philosophical scheme fit together. Michalson quite rightly maintains that we must remain within the epistemological framework Kant has established for the Critical Philosophy. But unfortunately he recognizes only the negative aspects of this framework. What he chooses to call "Kant's principle of human limitations" (mentioned thirtynine times) is the essential element in his interpretation. Secondly, Michalson is unwilling to follow the lead of other commentators (e.g., Michel Despland and Ylrmiahu Yovel) in broadening the context still further in order to take into account the full scope of Kant's philosophical project. These two defects persist throughout Michalson's analysis, and ultimately they prevent any fruitful conclusions. The approach employed, in its most simple form, ~sto point out that historical religion belongs to the phenomenal order and that morality (as the basis for Kant's technical rehgious position) belongs to the noumenal order. Kant's recognition of the need to bridge this gap is dealt with in terms of the "schematism of analogy" (pp. 95, 112-13) mentioned in Religion withinthe Ltmits ofReasonAlone. Michalson provides an interpretation of the schematism m Chapter 3 and concludes that "Kant's Religion is not altogether consistent with certain basic teachings of the critical philosophy" (p. 132). His attempt to deal with this problem carries him into a discussion of teleology and the highest good (Chapter 4), and it is only in this concluding chapter that his various interpretive errors crystallze and produce their Inevitable consequences. Rather than emphasizing the negative aspects of Kant's conception of man, Despland offers Kant's positive perspective on man and his destiny----drawing, for example, on the Anthropologyfrom a PragmaticPoint of View. Employing equally good judgment, Yovel provides an interpretation of the highest good which shows it as the culmination (in the indefinite future) of the concrete process through which man's social, political, educational, and religious development takes place. These perspectives permit the historical dimension (both religious and secular) to be gradually transformed by the imposition of moral designs--as men ~lowly and painfully assume responsibility for directing the blind laws of nature into patterns that serve moral ends. Such commentators help us to see more clearly what Kant was attempting to achieve and how the elements of his total philosophical scheme are to be understood as interconnected. Michalson, on the other hand, has only his impasse to offer us. Because history is phenomenal and religion (as morality) is noumenal, he maintainsthat no bridge is possible between the two realms. But this is simply a failure to recognize Kant's strategy. For Kant is very careful to restrict knowledge (in the strict sense) to the phenomenal order. But he is equally clear in asserting that it is legitimate (indeed, necessary) to postulate those conditions which alone make it possible for us to act in conformity with the moral law. Therefore, we must postulate not only God and immortality but the possibility of a worldly order which conforms both to the laws of nature and to the moral law. And for Kant these postulates have the full strength of rational truths, m that--like the postulates of mathematics -reason cannot reject them. Interpreting Kant's phenomenon-noumenon distinction strictly (but misapplying it), Michalson insists that such a projected ideal state of the world is inconsistent with Kant's epistemological commitment. For such... (shrink)

In this essay, I develop and defend a virtue-theoretic conception of rationality as a capacity whose function is understanding, as opposed to mere truth or correctness. I focus on two main potential advantages of this view. First, its ability to explain the rationality of forms of explanatory reasoning, and second, its ability to offer a more unified account of theoretical and practical rationality.

The demands of rationality are linked both to our subjective normative perspective (given that rationality is a person-level concept) and to objective reasons or favoring relations (given that rationality is non-contingently authoritative for us). In this paper, I propose a new way of reconciling the tension between these two aspects: roughly, what rationality requires of us is having the attitudes that correspond to our take on reasons in the light of our evidence, but only if it (...) is competent. I show how this view can account for structural rationality on the assumption that intentions and beliefs as such involve competent perceptions of downstream reasons, and explore various implications of the account. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and (...) 'the ethics of belief', I argue that, despite enjoying considerable popularity among both epistemologists and philosophers of science, it is ultimately indefensible. Having thus argued for the distinctness of epistemic and instrumental rationality, I attempt to clarify the role played by each in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. I suggest that being theoretically rational--that is, being proficient with respect to theoretical reasoning--is best construed as a hybrid virtue, inasmuch as it involves manifesting sensitivity to two very different kinds of reasons. (shrink)

John Broome argues that rationality cannot consist in reasons-responsiveness since rationality supervenes on the mind, while reasons-responsiveness does not supervene on the mind. I here defend this conception of rationality by way of defending the assumption that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind. Given the many advantages of an analysis of rationality in terms of reasons-responsiveness, and in light of independent considerations in favour of the view that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, we should take seriously the (...) backup view, a hypothesis that explains why reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind even though paradigmatic reasons are external facts. I argue that Broome’s objections to the backup view, as well as his more general objection to the thesis that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, do not succeed. (shrink)

A concept that can be expressed by the term ‘rationality’ plays a central role in both epistemology and ethics -- and especially in formal epistemology and decision theory. It is argued here that when the term is used in this way, the concept of “rationality” is the concept of a kind of virtue, with all the central features that are ascribed to the virtues by Plato and Aristotle, among others. Interpreting rationality as a kind of virtue helps (...) to solve several problems, such as the relations between “rationality” and “rational requirements” and between “propositional” and “doxastic justification”, and to answer objections to the thesis that “rationality” is a normative concept that are based on the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. (shrink)