I characterize a notion of internal irrationality which is central to hard cases of self-deception. I argue that if we aim to locate such internal irrationality in the _process of self-deception, we must fail. The process of self-deception, I claim, is a wholly arational affair. If we are to make a place for internal irrationality we must turn our attention to the _state of self-deception. I go on to argue that we are able to (...) offer an account of this peculiar form of irrationality only if we recognize the role the self-deceiver's own efforts at self-explanation play in the generation of internal irrationality. (shrink)

This volume consists of the invited papers presented at the 23rd International Wittgenstein Conference held in Kirchberg, Austria in August 2000. Among the topics treated are: truth, psychologism, science, the nature of rational discourse, practical reason, contextualism, vagueness, types of rationality, the rationality of religious belief, and Wittgenstein. Questions addressed include: Is rationality tied to special sorts of contexts? ls rationality tied to language? Is scientific rationality the only kind of rationality? Is there something like a Western rationality? and: Could (...) we genetically engineer human beings to be less wicked? (shrink)

Any theory of practical irrationality necessarily imposes a division of labour between an account of the agent's intentional states and how these are formed, and an account of how these intentional states get applied in particular circumstances to choose a particular action. Nevertheless, questions that concern the content of the agent's beliefs and desires are still routinely lumped together with questions that deal with the way the agent chooses in the light of these beliefs and desires. This generates a (...) number of pseudoproblems. Seeks to clarify some of them, by considering the internal structure of decision theory. (shrink)

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, (...) the role of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)

Personnalité et irrationalité chez Merleau-PontyUne personnalité est l’ensemble des traits et des qualités propres à une personne spécifique. Il s’agit d’un être humain concret, considéré dans sa totalité et distinct des autres individus. Merleau-Ponty s’est peu intéressé au concept de “personnalité”. Mais il fait référence au concept de totalité pour un individu lorsqu’il parle d’ “existence” ou d’ “être humain”. Grâce à la clarification du concept merleau-pontien de personnalité, je voudrais démontrer ce qui suit : la philosophie merleau-pontienne de la (...) structure caractérise la personnalité humaine comme un tout. Cette idée est héritée du “personnalisme” de la psychologie française inauguré par Ribot. La personnalité ainsi définie possède une rationalité téléologique (un objet visé). Cependant, lorsque Merleau-Ponty propose plus tard le concept d’“institution”, il souligne que toute signification de l’expérience humaine se fonde sur une expérience particulière et sur un point de vue concret ayant valeur de dimension, de niveau, ou encore sur un critère qui donne un sens à l’expérience suivante. S’il en est ainsi, les êtres humains doivent posséder une irrationalité fondamentale au coeur de leur personnalité ; irrationalité désigne une attitude attachée à une expérience particulière ou à un point de vue singulier. Les hommes peuvent “ré-instituer” leur expérience, c’est-à-dire abolir et transformer une dimension, un niveau ou un critère de l’expérience en y intégrant d’autres points de vue à travers leurs relations intersubjectives. Ils gagnent ainsi en nuance et en objectivité. Cependant, ils ne parviennent jamais à une rationalité totale si celle-ci se définit par une pensée totalement objective, universelle et non située, capable de voir le monde de nulle part. La ré-institution pourrait aussi entraîner une rupture dans la personnalité de quelqu’un et la rendre complexe et multiple, sans être pathologique pour autant.Personalità e irrazionalità in Merleau-PontyLa personalità è l’insieme delle qualità e dei tratti peculiari di una certa persona. È un essere umano concreto, preso nella sua interezza e distinto dagli altri individui. Merleau-Ponty non si è mai occupato molto del concetto di “personalità”. Ma si è riferito a tale concetto di totalità di un individuo sotto i nomi di “esistenza” o “essere umano”. Chiarendo la concezione merleau-pontiana della “personalità”, intendo sostenere che la filosofia della struttura di Merleau-Ponty caratterizza la personalità umana come un tutto unificato. Quest’idea è un’eredità del “personalismo” della psicologia francese inaugurata da Ribot. La personalità definita come tale ha una razionalità teleologica (orientata ad un obiettivo). Tuttavia, quando Merleau-Ponty propose più tardi il concetto di “istituzione”, sottolineò più di quanto avesse fatto precedentemente che perché ogni esperienza umana abbia un significato occore stabilire una particolare esperienza ed un punto di vista concreto quale dimensione, livello, o criterio che dia significato all’esperienza successiva. Se così è, gli esseri umani devono avere una fondamentale irrazionalità nel profondo della loro personalità, intendendo con irrazionalità un atteggiamento che è legato ad una particolare esperienza o punto di vista. Gli esseri umani possono “re-istituire” la loro esperienza, ovvero, riconsiderare una dimensione, un livello, o un criterio dell’esperienza attraverso l’integrazione degli altri punti di vista grazie alle loro relazioni intersoggettive. Guadagnano, così, sfumature e obiettività. Tuttavia, non possono mai realizzare la razionalità completa se per razionalità s’intende il pensiero completamente oggettivo, universale, imparziale, che guarda il mondo da nessun luogo. E la re-istituzione potrebbe creare una fessura decisiva nell’identità personale di un uomo, e rendere tale personalità complessa e “multipla,” anche se non necessariamente patologica. (shrink)

Personnalité et irrationalité chez Merleau-PontyUne personnalité est l’ensemble des traits et des qualités propres à une personne spécifique. Il s’agit d’un être humain concret, considéré dans sa totalité et distinct des autres individus. Merleau-Ponty s’est peu intéressé au concept de “personnalité”. Mais il fait référence au concept de totalité pour un individu lorsqu’il parle d’ “existence” ou d’ “être humain”. Grâce à la clarification du concept merleau-pontien de personnalité, je voudrais démontrer ce qui suit : la philosophie merleau-pontienne de la (...) structure caractérise la personnalité humaine comme un tout. Cette idée est héritée du “personnalisme” de la psychologie française inauguré par Ribot. La personnalité ainsi définie possède une rationalité téléologique (un objet visé). Cependant, lorsque Merleau-Ponty propose plus tard le concept d’“institution”, il souligne que toute signification de l’expérience humaine se fonde sur une expérience particulière et sur un point de vue concret ayant valeur de dimension, de niveau, ou encore sur un critère qui donne un sens à l’expérience suivante. S’il en est ainsi, les êtres humains doivent posséder une irrationalité fondamentale au coeur de leur personnalité ; irrationalité désigne une attitude attachée à une expérience particulière ou à un point de vue singulier. Les hommes peuvent “ré-instituer” leur expérience, c’est-à-dire abolir et transformer une dimension, un niveau ou un critère de l’expérience en y intégrant d’autres points de vue à travers leurs relations intersubjectives. Ils gagnent ainsi en nuance et en objectivité. Cependant, ils ne parviennent jamais à une rationalité totale si celle-ci se définit par une pensée totalement objective, universelle et non située, capable de voir le monde de nulle part. La ré-institution pourrait aussi entraîner une rupture dans la personnalité de quelqu’un et la rendre complexe et multiple, sans être pathologique pour autant.Personalità e irrazionalità in Merleau-PontyLa personalità è l’insieme delle qualità e dei tratti peculiari di una certa persona. È un essere umano concreto, preso nella sua interezza e distinto dagli altri individui. Merleau-Ponty non si è mai occupato molto del concetto di “personalità”. Ma si è riferito a tale concetto di totalità di un individuo sotto i nomi di “esistenza” o “essere umano”. Chiarendo la concezione merleau-pontiana della “personalità”, intendo sostenere che la filosofia della struttura di Merleau-Ponty caratterizza la personalità umana come un tutto unificato. Quest’idea è un’eredità del “personalismo” della psicologia francese inaugurata da Ribot. La personalità definita come tale ha una razionalità teleologica (orientata ad un obiettivo). Tuttavia, quando Merleau-Ponty propose più tardi il concetto di “istituzione”, sottolineò più di quanto avesse fatto precedentemente che perché ogni esperienza umana abbia un significato occore stabilire una particolare esperienza ed un punto di vista concreto quale dimensione, livello, o criterio che dia significato all’esperienza successiva. Se così è, gli esseri umani devono avere una fondamentale irrazionalità nel profondo della loro personalità, intendendo con irrazionalità un atteggiamento che è legato ad una particolare esperienza o punto di vista. Gli esseri umani possono “re-istituire” la loro esperienza, ovvero, riconsiderare una dimensione, un livello, o un criterio dell’esperienza attraverso l’integrazione degli altri punti di vista grazie alle loro relazioni intersoggettive. Guadagnano, così, sfumature e obiettività. Tuttavia, non possono mai realizzare la razionalità completa se per razionalità s’intende il pensiero completamente oggettivo, universale, imparziale, che guarda il mondo da nessun luogo. E la re-istituzione potrebbe creare una fessura decisiva nell’identità personale di un uomo, e rendere tale personalità complessa e “multipla,” anche se non necessariamente patologica. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There are three competing theories to account for our affective responses to fictional events. The proponents of imagination + i-desire argue that the alternative accounts imply that consumers of fiction are irrational. In Imagination, Desire and Rationality, Spaulding challenges this claim and argues that the imagination + desire and desire + desire accounts do not imply that consumers of fiction are irrational. In this paper, I attempt to rebut Spaulding’s arguments.

Theology is a neglected resource in international relations scholarship; it is, more often than not, characterised as a threat to political order because it is seen as a cradle of fanaticism and irrationality. Postsecular scholarship challenges this view by exploring the persistence of theological ideas and religious belief in political discourse and practice. Political Theology of International Order is my own contribution to this type of scholarship. This article engages responses from five distinguished scholars. It considers the implications of (...) taking theology seriously when theorising international order; the veracity of narratives that frame the study of international relations; and new directions and possibilities that arise out of the book. (shrink)

These comments on Cohen’s paper (IJPP, this issue) focus on the question of whether Cohen’s attempt to derive antidotes from incompatible or contradictory philosophical camps— such as Hume’s subjective theory of beauty, on the one hand, and Augustine’s objectivist account—present a fatal problem for Cohen’s LBT. The paper concludes with suggesting a constructive way around the problem.

This book takes the debate about the rationality of the transition to ethical life in Kierkegaard’s thought in a significantly new direction. Connecting the field of Kierkegaard studies with the meta-ethical debate about practical reasons, and engaging with Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Bernard Williams’ thought, it explores the rationality of the choices for ethical life and Christian existence. Defending a so-called ‘internalist’ understanding of practical reasons, Compaijen argues that previous attempts to defend Kierkegaard against MacIntyre’s charge of irrationality have failed. (...) He provides a thorough analysis of such fundamental topics as becoming oneself, the ideal of objectivity in ethics and religion, the importance of the imagination, the power and limits of philosophical argument, and the relation between grace and nature. This book will be of great interest to Kierkegaard scholars in philosophy and theology, and, more generally, to anyone fascinated by the rationality of the transition to ethical life and the choice to accept Christianity. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree with Socrates that it is not possible to perform an akratic action consciously and freely. They take this view because they assimilate the internal irrationality of such a performance to the internal irrationality of drawing a theoretical conclusion which contadicts one's premisses. This article develops some arguments against that assimilation. The extreme cost of theoretical self-contradiction is forming the belief both that something is so and that it is not so. This is impossible (...) for anyone who understands what he is doing, and the impossibility can be explained: nothing could conceivably make such a conjunction of beliefs true. But the conjunction of a value-judgement judgment and an action that gets against it is different. Although it too is internally irrational, there is no property like truth which the value-judgement and his action ought both to possess, but cannot both possess. This article proposes a different model for akratic action, which might serve as a basis for disagreement with Socrates' view of it. (shrink)

This paper discusses internal dynamics of the firm that contribute to the failure of knowledge conditions, using the Enron scandal as a case study. Ability of the board to effectively monitor conduct at operational levels includes various dynamics: senior management being isolated from those at operational levels; individuals pursuing subgoals that are contrary to overall corporate goals; information flow along a narrow linear channel that effectively forecloses adverse information from getting to senior management; a corporate culture of intimidation, discouraging (...) open expressions of doubt or skepticism, resulting in reluctance to challenge senior officials, and pushing the limits of ethics and the law.Elements of information blockage in the corporation include: the "law of diminishing control"; deliberate concealment of information by officers; motivation to report to the boss what one perceives the boss wants to hear; theory of "bounded rationality" that explains surprising role of irrationality in decisionmaking – unconscious emotions and motivations. Discussion of behavioralist studies of cognitive dissonance, belief perseverance, confirmatory bias, entity effect, motivated reasoning, group cohesion or "groupthink," and the false consensus effect. Problem of overoptimism – tendency of many people to overrate their own abilities, contributions and talents – and tendency toward puffery and dismissal of risks in formulating disclosures and press releases. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are important irrational elements to love. In the philosophical literature, we typically find that love is either thought of as rational or arational and that any irrational elements are thought to be defective, or extraneous to love itself. We argue, on the contrary, that irrationality is in part connected to what we find valuable about love. -/- We focus on 3 basic elements of love: -/- 1) Whom you love 2) How much you love (...) them 3) How much of a role love plays in your life -/- And in each case, we argue that love can be irrational and valuable. (shrink)

Tensions Regarding Epistemic Concepts The paper argues that there is no logic of scientific discovery, but there is an inference-like pattern that we can model as a "logic," retrospectively, once a discovery has been successfully made. While accepting a kind of epistemological pluralism and opportunism, the claim will be advocated that a convergent and reasonably wide-ranging normative "logic" might be constructed, one that might even work reasonably well in selected applications and might (therefore) also lead us to make congruent judgments (...) of irrationality or illogicality wherever it seems not to yield the "normatively appropriate" outcomes in otherwise comparable specimen cases. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The list of proposed addictions has recently grown to include television, videogames, shopping, day trading, kleptomania, and use of the Internet. These activities share with a more established entry, gambling, the property that they require no delivery of a biological stimulus that might be thought to unlock a hardwired brain process. I propose a framework for analyzing that class of incentives that do not depend on the prediction of physically privileged environmental events: people have a great capacity to coin (...) endogenous reward; we learn to cultivate it, and, where it is entrapping, to minimize it, by managing internally generated appetites for it. The basic method of cultivating endogenous reward is to learn cues that predict when best to harvest the reward that has been made possible by the growth of these appetites. This hedonic management occurs in the same motivational marketplace as the instrumental planning that seeks environmental goods in the conventional manner, and presumably obeys the same laws of temporal difference learning; but these laws are no longer limiting. Furthermore, instrumental contingencies often provide the most productive structure for hedonic management as well, for reasons that I discuss; but the needs of hedonic management create incentives both to pursue instrumental goals in a suboptimal manner and to avoid noticing how the hedonic incentive affects this pursuit. The result is the apparent irrationality that is often observed in process addictions. (shrink)

The domain of “folk-economics” consists in explicit beliefs about the economy held by laypeople, untrained in economics, about such topics as, for example, the causes of the wealth of nations, the benefits or drawbacks of markets and international trade, the effects of regulation, the origins of inequality, the connection between work and wages, the economic consequences of immigration, or the possible causes of unemployment. These beliefs are crucial in forming people's political beliefs and in shaping their reception of different policies. (...) Yet, they often conflict with elementary principles of economic theory and are often described as the consequences of ignorance, irrationality, or specific biases. As we will argue, these past perspectives fail to predict the particular contents of popular folk-economic beliefs and, as a result, there is no systematic study of the cognitive factors involved in their emergence and cultural success. Here we propose that the cultural success of particular beliefs about the economy is predictable if we consider the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality. These systems, for which there is independent evidence, include free-rider detection, fairness-based partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and more. Information about modern mass-market conditions activates these specific inference systems, resulting in particular intuitions, for example, that impersonal transactions are dangerous or that international trade is a zero-sum game. These intuitions in turn make specific policy proposals more likely than others to become intuitively compelling, and, as a consequence, exert a crucial influence on political choices. (shrink)

Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, xenophobia, and paeans to “traditional values,” in brazen bids for electoral support. How are we to understand this move to the mainstream of political policies and platforms that lurked only on the far fringes through most of the postwar era? Does it herald a new wave of authoritarianism? Is liberal democracy itself in crisis? In this volume, three distinguished scholars draw on critical theory to address our (...) current predicament. Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon, and Max Pensky share a conviction that critical theory retains the power to illuminate the forces producing the current political constellation as well as possible paths away from it. Brown explains how “freedom” has become a rallying cry for manifestly un-emancipatory movements; Gordon dismantles the idea that fascism is rooted in the susceptible psychology of individual citizens and reflects instead on the broader cultural and historical circumstances that lend it force; and Pensky brings together the unlikely pair of Tocqueville and Adorno to explore how democracies can buckle under internal pressure. These incisive essays do not seek to smooth over the irrationality of the contemporary world, and they do not offer the false comforts of an easy return to liberal democratic values. Rather, the three authors draw on their deep engagements with nineteenth–and twentieth–century thought to investigate the historical and political contradictions that have brought about this moment, offering fiery and urgent responses to the demands of the day. (shrink)

In this paper I contemplate two phenomena that have impressed theorists concerned with the domain of reasons and of what is now called ‘normativity’. One is the much-discussed ‘externality’ of reasons. According to this, reasons are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of contingent desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we (...) take no notice of them. They thus very conspicuously shine the lights of objectivity, and independence, and even necessity. By basking in this light, ethics is rescued from the slough of sentiment and preference, and regains the dignity denied to it by theorists such as Hobbes or Hume, Williams, Gibbard or myself. Hence, many contemporary philosophers compete to stress and to extol the external nature of reasons, their shining objectivity. The other phenomenon is that of the inescapable ‘normativity’ of means-ends reasoning. Here the irrationality of intending an end but failing to intend the means is a different shining beacon. It is that of pure practical reason in operation: an indisputable norm, again showing a sublime indifference to whatever weaknesses people actually have, and ideally fitted to provide a Trojan horse for inserting rationality into practical life. If the means-end principle is both unmistakably practical and yet the darling child of rationality itself, then other principles of consistency or of humanity, or of universalizing the maxims of our action, can perhaps follow through the breach in the Humean citadel that it has spearheaded. And so we get the dazzling prospect that if people who choose badly are choosing against reason, then this can be seen to be a special and grave defect. It would locate the kind of fault they are indulging. It would give us, the people of reason, a special lever with which to dislodge their vices. Being able to herd knaves and villains in a compound reserved for those who trespass against reason and rationality therefore represents definite progress. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reasonis an outstanding reference source to this exciting and distinctive subject area. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field covering questions such as: What is the nature of the reasons for which we act and what is the nature of the faculty of practical reason? What are normative reasons for action? What is practical irrationality and what are the requirements, permissions, and powers (...) that explain what it is to be practically rational and irrational? What is the relationship between ethics and the philosophy of practical reason? This handbook will be essential reading for philosophy students and researchers in metaethics, philosophy of action, action theory, ethics and history of philosophy. (shrink)

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & (...) A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market? What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex? In Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life. (shrink)

Paradox — the simultaneous existence of two inconsistent states — has become orthodox. The orthodox is now the paradox. The orthodox world of ordering, controlling and organizing is increasingly opposed to a normalizing world of disordering, disrupting and disorganizing. And organization studies cannot avoid changing its conceptions of reality as that reality changes. In the future, organization studies will be the study of paradox, how to understand it, how to use it. In this book of original contributions addressed to management (...) and organization paradoxes the authors address the new state of the field in terms of representations — representing paradoxes — and materialisations — materialising paradoxes. The themes — although varied, ranging from dialectics to internal tensions; from collaborations to ethics and value conflicts; from resistant labourers and wharfies to cartoon characters such as The Simpsons; from the irrationalities of finance to the psychoanalytic rationalities of auditing, and from issues of governance in Asian and international business to the composition of the new knowledge work force in the business professions — cohere around core aspects of paradoxicality. Overall, the contributions to Management and Organization Paradoxes are diverse and challenging. Each contribution takes a different angle on the central theme. All of the chapters illuminate diverse aspects of contemporary paradoxes in management and organization theory. The book provides, in each of its chapters, a challenge to the still overwhelmingly rationalist views of theory and practice that dominate the field and provides new directions for understanding organizations and management.The contributors are drawn from leading European, Australian and Latin American contributors. (shrink)

Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reasoning. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an (...) inadequate response to disconfirming evidence and internal incoherence. Drawing analogies to Lakatosian research programs, we argue that maintaining a core conspiracy belief can be Bayes-rational when it is embedded in a network of auxiliary beliefs, which can be revised to protect the more central belief from disconfirmation. We propose that the (ir)rationality associated with conspiracy belief lies not in a flawed updating method, but in their failure to converge toward well-confirmed, stable belief networks in the long run. This approach not only reconciles previously disjointed views, but also points toward more specific hypotheses explaining why some agents may be prone to adopting beliefs in conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – while elucidating a wide (...) range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature. (shrink)

The ideas of Hans Morgenthau dominated the study of international politics in the United States for many decades. He was the leading representative of Realist international relations theory in the last century and his work remains hugely influential in the field. In this engaging and accessible new study of his work, William E. Scheuerman provides a comprehensive and illuminating introduction to Morgenthau’s ideas, and assesses their significance for political theory and international politics. Scheuerman shows Morgenthau to be an uneasy Realist, (...) uncomfortable with conventional notions of Realism and sometimes unsure whether his reflections should be grouped under its rubric. He was a powerful critic of the existing state system and defended the idea of a world state. By highlighting Morgenthau’s engagement with the leading lights of European political and legal theory, Scheuerman argues that he developed a morally demanding political ethics and an astute diagnosis of the unprecedented perils posed by nuclear weaponry. Believing that the irrationalities of US foreign policy were rooted partly in domestic factors, he sympathized with demands for radical political and social change. Scheuerman illustrates that Morgenthau’s thinking has been widely misunderstood by both disciples and critics and that it offers many challenges to contemporary Realists who discount his normative aspirations. With the advent of the cosmopolitan goal of international reform, Morgenthau’s work serves up an unsettling mix of sympathy and hard-headed skepticism which remains crucially important in the development of the field. Lucidly and persuasively written, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars seeking to understand the continued importance of Morgenthau’s thinking. (shrink)

Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reasoning. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an (...) inadequate response to disconfirming evidence and internal incoherence. Drawing analogies to Lakatosian research programs, we argue that maintaining a core conspiracy belief can be Bayes-rational when it is embedded in a network of auxiliary beliefs, which can be revised to protect the more central belief from disconfirmation. We propose that the irrationality associated with conspiracy belief lies not in a flawed updating method, but in a failure to converge toward wellconfirmed, stable belief networks in the long run. This approach not only reconciles previously disjointed views, but also points toward more specific descriptions of why agents may be prone to adopting beliefs in conspiracy theories. (shrink)

In this paper I contemplate two phenomena that have impressed theorists concerned with the domain of reasons and of normativity. One is the much-discussed ‘externality’ of reasons. Reasons are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of contingent desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we take no notice of them. They thus (...) very conspicuously shine the lights of objectivity, and independence, and even necessity. By basking in this light, ethics is rescued from the slough of sentiment and preference, and regains the dignity denied to it by theorists such as Hobbes or Hume, Gibbard or myself. Many contemporary philosophers compete to stress the external nature of reasons, their shining objectivity.1 The other phenomenon is that of the inescapable ‘normativity’ of means-ends reasoning. Here the irrationality of intending an end but failing to intend the means is a shining beacon of pure practical reason in operation: an indisputable norm, again showing a sublime indifference to whatever weaknesses people actually have, and ideally fitted to provide a Trojan horse for inserting rationality into practical life. If the meansend principle is both practical and the child of rationality itself, then other principles of consistency or of humanity, or of universalizing the maxims of our action, can perhaps follow through the breach in the Humean citadel that it has spearheaded. And so we get the dazzling prospect that if people who choose badly are choosing against reason, then this can be seen to be a special and grave defect. It would locate the kind of fault they are indulging. It would give us, the people of reason, a special lever with which to dislodge their vices. Being able to corral knaves and villains in a compound reserved for those who trespass against reason and rationality may therefore represent definite progress. It is sad to have to spoil the party, but my claim is straightforward.. (shrink)

David Rodin denies that defensive wars against unjust aggression can be justified if the unjust aggression limits itself, for example, to the annexation of territory, the robbery of resources or the restriction of political freedom, but would endanger the lives, bodily integrity or freedom from slavery of the citizens only if the unjustly attacked state actually resisted the aggression. I will argue that Rodin's position is not correct. First, Rodin's comments on the necessity condition and its relation to an alleged (...) "duty to retreat" misinterpret the law, and a correct interpretation of the law is not only compatible with, but implies a permission to resist the "bloodless invader," and this is also the correct view from the perspective of morality. Second, Rodin's remarks on the proportionality of self-defense against conditional threats focus on physical or material harm but implausibly ignore the severity of the violations of autonomy and of the socio-legal or moral order that such conditional threats involve. Third, I will address Rodin's claim that defensive wars against "political aggression" are disproportionate because they risk the lives of those defended in an attempt to secure lesser interests. I will argue that this take on proportionality misses the point in an important respect, namely by confusing wide and narrow proportionality, and makes unwarranted assumptions about the alleged irrationality or impermissibility of incurring or imposing lethal risks to safeguard less vital interests. Next, I will also show that while Rodin talks of a "myth of national self-defense" and of the necessity of moving beyond traditional just war theory and international law, it is actually his interpretation of just war theory and international law that weaves myths. Finally, I will argue that Rodin's views on national self-defense on the one hand, and "war as law enforcement" on the other, are incoherent. (shrink)

In this article, I develop an Augustinian response to some contemporary philosophical proposals concerning the problem of weakness of will. I argue that many philosophers tend to cast the problem in terms of irrationality, focusing on psychological components such as judgment, desire, and resolution. In contrast, I contend that weakness of will has more to do with the absence of a coherent conception of practical identity and with a misleading conception of practical identity that overestimates the agent’s normative and (...) motivational capacities. I claim that the irrationality of the weak-willed agent is at best a symptom, rather than the ultimate source, of weakness of will which cannot be properly understood without first addressing the deficiency of our internal resources relative to our willing and doing. (shrink)

Debates about political correctness often proceed as if proponents see nothing to fear in erecting norms that inhibit expression on the one side, and opponents see nothing but misguided efforts to silence political enemies on the other.1 Both views are mistaken. Political correctness, as I argue, is an important attempt to advance the legitimate interests of certain groups in the public sphere. However, this type of norm comes with costs that mustn’t be neglected–sometimes in the form of conflict with other (...) values we hold dear, but often by creating an internal schism that threatens us with collective irrationality. Political correctness thus sets up dilemmas I wish to set out (but not, alas, resolve). The cliché is that political correctness tramples on rights to free-speech, as if the potential loss were merely expressive; the real issue is that in filtering public discourse, political correctness may defeat our own substantive aims. (shrink)

Freud’s metapsychology has been interpreted in a number of different ways. Some scholars see him committed to classical scientism, others to genuine hermeneutics. Many Freud philologists suggest that he moved from an early scientism to hermeneutic methods in his later writings, and some think he misunderstood his own angle, thinking himself to be a natural scientist, but actually practising hermeneutics. The article first looks at Freud’s model of the soul and his remarks about psychoanalytic explanations and concludes that there is (...) overwhelming evidence for the contention that he conceived of psychoanalytic explanations in terms of causal explanations and that his metapsychology is, all things considered, scientistic. However, it seems that Freud did not clearly distinguish between causal and rational explanations. The article emphasizes that he could have found this distinction in the writings of Max Weber. In the last two sections, the article turns to a meticulous analysis of two vignettes describing Freud’s own treatment of two cases that he takes to be fine examples of the technique used in psychoanalytic treatment. It turns out that Freud himself looks at these cases and their treatment, throughout, in terms of rationality and irrationality. In particular, he seems to distinguish between an “external” irrationality and an “internal” rationality of neurotic diseases. He also seems to point to functions of neuroses representing certain solutions for mental disturbances. Thus, there is much evidence for assuming that in his psychoanalytic technique, Freud relied on genuine hermeneutic and functional methods; and therefore, Freud’s official metapsychology seems to be methodologically inconsistent with his analytic technique. (shrink)

Scientists and their supporters often portray as exasperatingly irrational all those laypersons who refuse to accede to practical recommendations issued by expert scientists and 'science appliers'. After first considering the latter groups’ standard explanations for such non-deference, which focus upon irrationalities besetting the laity, I will propose that a better explanation for at least some of the non-deference is that many laypersons are rationally electing to substitute their own judgments for those urged upon them by the scientific community. Science-based recommendations, (...) as I treat them, have the general form In light of the science on X, if you seek outcome O, you ought to V. Non-deferring laypersons deny the soundness or cogency of the V-supporting argumentation—though they are supposedly not competent to do so, given their gross epistemic inferiority to the scientific authorities who create and endorse the arguments. On account of thus being epistemically irrational, they end up being instrumentally irrational, pursuing courses of action that are poor choices for serving their own interests. The non-deferring laypersons are thought to violate two mandates of rationality: for internal deference to the underlying science as true enough to constitute an unproblematic background for decisionmaking, and for external deference to the practical application of that science to the concrete extra-scientific circumstances in question. I claim that rationality does not require categorical adherence to these mandates. In any given case, non-deference by some laypersons might be warranted by one or more of four distinct rationales. 1. Value-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly includes non-scientific value-choice or value-weighting assumptions. It embodies a certain prioritizing of the plurality of specific values packed within its O parameter, and some laypersons may permissibly substitute their own. 2. Non-scientific-reasoning-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly relies upon reasoning moves that are not distinctive to science, moves whose critical assessment demands no scientific expertise. Error-free reasoning is difficult to attain, and the laypersons may justifiably take themselves to have found weaknesses in the V-supporting argumentation that undermine the case for conformity to the recommendation. 3. Overgeneralization: The science-based recommendation discernibly is not adequately tailored to the specific situation of the laypersons in question. 4. Untrustworthy science: The science-based recommendation discernibly is based upon scientific research that is of doubtful quality. The first three rationales cast doubt upon the External Deference Mandate, questioning not the existence of sound underlying research but the recommendation’s judgments about how this research ought to be applied. The fourth is a challenge to the Internal Deference Mandate. (shrink)

The decline of formal religious systems has left a moral and emotional emptiness in Western culture. George Steiner, internationally renowned thinker and scholar, pursues this and examines the alternative "mythologies" of Marxism, Freudian psychology, Lévi-Straussian anthropology, and fads of irrationality.

Clausewitz is not as some misinterpretations suggest a philosopher of total war. An analysis of his hermeneutical key presented in the first chapter of the first book of 'On War' makes it clear that there is a crucial distinction between his pure abstract concept of war - the notion of absolute war - and his theory of real war, where the irrationality ofviolence and the force of the military will, are subjected to political rationality. According to Clausewitz politicians carry (...) the ultimate responsibility in determining the ends of war, and this can only be done after a thorough appraisal of national and international realities. One of the consequences of his position is that the military and political levels are not, as A. Rapoport suggests, interchangeable but in a subordinate position. Military leaders should always follow the logic of politics, politicians however should not neglect the grammar of war. Despite some texts that might suggest the contrary, Clausewitz held a clear option for a defensive policy. Value judgments are left to philosophers. (shrink)

The paper is a response to recent criticisms of agatheism, a new pluralistic interpretation of religious belief put forward by Janusz Salamon with the aim of accommodating the epistemological challenge of religious diversity. Agatheism is an axiologically grounded religious belief which identifies God, the Absolute or the ultimate reality religiously conceived with the ultimate good as the ultimate end of all human agency and thus an explanation of its irreducibly teleological character and a source of its meaning. Janusz Salamon argues (...) that this grounding of religious belief in the human axiological consciousness makes it immune to falsification by any future science. Replying to the concerns of the critics about about irrationality of doxastic commitment to a particular religious tradition, Janusz Salamon argues that to the extent the fundamental agatheistic religious belief is presupposed in such tradition as its doxastic core, its belief system - if internally coherent and aligned with a worldview that is consistent with undisputed scientific findings - may be considered rational, despite there being a plurality of such belief systems. (shrink)

“Deus fons veritatis”: the Subject and its Freedom. The Ontic Foundation of Mathematical Truth is the title of Gaspare Polizzi’s long biographical-theoretical interview with Imre Toth. The interview is divided into eight parts. The first part describes the historical and cultural context in which Toth was formed. A Jew by birth, during the Second World War Toth became a communist and a partisan, enduring prison, torture, and internment in a concentration camp from 1940 until 6 June 1944. In the second (...) part Toth presents his mathematical training as a “vocation” that led him to rethink the whole tradition of mathematical thought critically, on the basis of non-Euclidean geometry. In the third part Toth describes his research in the history of mathematics, which begin with his studies on Aristotle and mathematical thought and on Plato and the negative ontology of the irrational recognizable in the theory of the infinite dyad and of the One. In the fourth part Toth criticizes the positions of Frege, who came to deny non-Euclidean geometry, viewing it as an expression of irrationality and mysticism. In the fifth part Toth maintains that mathesis and poiesis have similar ontological structures, and he speaks of his collages métaphysiques. In the sixth part Toth recalls how the birth of the idea of freedom made possible the highest political, social and artistic achievements, as well as the entire movement of human emancipation. And this was thanks to philosophy, which is not a science but a knowledge of the subject on the subject’s part. In the seventh and eighth parts Toth speaks of the value and the role of mathematics in the affirmation of the phenomenology of freedom, and remarks on his relations with French and Italian cultures. (shrink)

George Orwell wondered why oppressed proletariats in the communist and capitalist worlds did not rise up and replace the governments that oppressed them with something better for them. This is a puzzle we still face today, wherever a majority faces exploitation. The chapter examines the question of why exploited peoples don’t replace exploitative governments in their own best interest, whether through revolution or through the ballot box. The question is examined through the lens of the political philosophy and political fiction (...) of George Orwell, with special attention to how his philosophy applies to the modern USA and the Trump administration. It is argued that in the modern US, there are many reasons why the masses are exploited, but the most important is that they don’t understand the nature of their exploitation. Citizens are often isolated in reality bubbles. Our basic human irrationality, hypocrisy, and willingness to rewrite the past, are harnessed and used against us. International conflicts stoke nationalism and prevent the masses from finding a common identity with the masses worldwide. Within the US, conflicts between different social groups pit the masses against one another, and prevent them from recognizing their common condition. (shrink)

In this article, we attempt to synthesize the findings of the branch of behavioral economics known as “picoeconomics” with insights from Foucauldian thought in order to demonstrate that a richer and more nuanced understanding of strategies for self-managing human irrationality can be achieved when both approaches are mobilized. Picoeconomic games can be modeled as an intrapsychic exercise of the disciplinary power thereby suggesting an important contributing factor to the formation of effective Ainslean will. On the other hand, picoenomic descriptions (...) of the functioning of mind do not only align with Foucault’s concept of the “techniques of the self” but also point to the possibility of the transformation of disciplinary practices into modes of subjectivation once the former are fully internalized. On the basis of these findings, we propose an empirically testable hypothesis about the biographical correlates of strong Ainslean will and a prospective area of subjectivity research in the vein of Foucauldian studies. (shrink)

Hegel′s concept of truth and contemporary theories of truth could mutually profit from one another in two regards. Hegel′s unity of truth and rationality makes an attempt to undermine the antagonism of internal and external concepts of knowledge and gives an account for truth in ethics. Ethical truth is accounted for by an external concept of practical rationality without assigning truth an epistemic design. To understand practical rationality, we must account for irrationality as a case of self-deception which (...) seems to be incompatible with an external concept of rationality. Hegel′s 'inclusive monism′ elucidates a concept of rationality which complies with the requirements for ethical truth. (shrink)

It is true of many truths that I do not believe them. It is equally true, however, that I cannot rationally assert of any such truth both that it is true and that I do not believe it. To explain why this is so, I will distinguish absence of belief from disbelief and argue that an assertion of “p, but I do not believe that p” is paradoxical because it is indefensible, i.e. for reasons internal to it unable to (...) convince. A closer examination of the irrationality involved will show that such is the skeptic’s predicament, trying to convince us to bracket knowledge claims we have good grounds to take ourselves to be entitled to. Even if the sceptic cannot be proven wrong, his challenge still demands an answer, if not a treatment. In this paper, I argue that the cure lies in epidemiology rather than epistemology: instead of attacking the sceptic head-long, I commend guerilla tactics, vaccinating our fellow non-sceptics against the sceptical virus. I will not argue that the sceptic is wrong, necessarily wrong or that he cannot be believed, but that he cannot convince. Scepticism requires a leap of faith: something we may justifiably refrain from even on the sceptic’s own standards. (shrink)

The twenty-first century so far has seen the global rise of authoritarian populism, systematic racism, and dogmatic metaphysics. Even though these events demonstrate the growth of an age of 'unreason', in this original and compelling book John Roberts resists the assumption that such thinking displays an unthinking irrationality or loss of reason; instead he asserts that an important feature of modern reactionary politics is that it offers a supposedly convincing integration of the particular and the universal. This move is (...) defined by what Roberts calls the 'reasoning of unreason' and has deep roots in the history of Western thought and politics. Tracing the dark history of enlightenment-disenlightenment, John Roberts explores 'the reasoning of unreason' across centuries from Aquinas, William of Ockham, the most important treatise on witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum, Locke, Kant, and Count Arthur de Gobineau, to Social Darwinism, Nazism, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Friedrich von Hayek. Roberts provides a new set of philosophical-political tools to understand the formation and denigration of the rational subject and the current reinvestment in various forms of political unreason globally. The Reasoning of Unreason is the first book to draw on the philosophy of reason, political philosophy, political theory and political history, in order to produce a dialectical account of the 'making of reason' internal to the forces of unreason and the limits of reason. (shrink)

Some have argued that specifically moral demands or norms are justified by the constraints of rationality. On this view, any agent who comes to doubt, challenge, or reject the authority of moral demands does so on penalty of irrationality. According to this view, the agent who asks the question Why be moral? can be given a rational justification for the demands that morality makes on her, regardless of her individual reasons and motives. ;I consider amoralism as a test case. (...) Could a proposed justification of morality answer to the amoralist? I develop two characterizations of amoralism: the principled objector and the amoralist from indifference. I argue that normal moral agents may adopt or succumb to either type of amoralism without forfeiting their claim to rationality, and further, that such amoralists are not best understood as demanding a justification of morality. ;Some philosophers have objected that the notion of amoralism is conceptually mistaken or incoherent. I address three forms of this argument. First, I argue that the inverted-commas argument attributed to R. M. Hare fails to show that purported amoralists cannot really make or understand value judgments. Second, I argue that Michael Smith's internalist argument against amoralism is unconvincing. Third, I consider Christine Korsgaard's argument in The Sources of Normativity that the very nature of rational action entails moral obligation. ;I conclude by discussing the way in which a justification of moral demands can only be made internal to a particular moral outlook or way of life. To attempt to respond to amoralists who are radically dissatisfied with, or dissociated from, a moral perspective with a wholesale rational justification of morality is to misunderstand the nature of their disaffection as well as to misunderstand the project of moral philosophy. However, acknowledging the limited role of justification in moral theory and argument does not entail that moral philosophy's primary enterprise is merely the explanation of moral phenomena. Moral normativity is a function of our capacity for reflection. Thus, the work of moral philosophy lies in making reflective recommendations for which norms to adopt, how to obligate oneself and others, and how to live. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 4.1 (1997) 91-93 Concurrent Contents: Recent and Classic References at the Interface of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology Articles Allen, J. F., J. Hallperin, and R. Friend. 1985. Removal and diversion tactics and the control of auditory hallucinations. Behavior Research and Therapy 23:601-605.Baker, H. D. 1995. Psychoanalysis and ideology: Bakhtin, Lacan, and Zizek. History of European Ideas 20:499-504.Bernet, R. 1994. Derrida-Husserl-Freud: The trace of transference. Southern (...) Journal of Philosophy 32 suppl.:141-158.Boden, M. A. 1996. Commentary on "Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:135-136.Castelfranchi, C., and M. Miceli. 1996. Commentary on "Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, no. 2:129-133.Fowes, B. J., and F. C. Richardson. 1996. Why is multiculturalism good? American Psychologist 51, no. 6:609-621.Frith, C. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:91-93.Forde, R. 1996. Inclusion of psychosocial conditions in clinical practice and the problem of medicalization. Theoretical Medicine 17, no. 2:151-161.Gaylin, W., and D. Doukas. 1995. The second-hand suicide threat. Hastings Center Report 25:20-22.Gillet, G. 1995. Consciousness, thought, and neurological integrity. Journal of Mind and Behavior 16, no. 3:215-233.Haskell, R. E. 1993. Realpolitik in the addictions field: Treatment-professional, popular-culture ideology, and scientific research. Journal of Mind and Behavior 14, no. 3:257-276.Kuys, T. 1995. The tally argument again. Methodological Science 28, nos. 2-3:43-55.Lear, J. 1995. The heterogeneity of the mental: Sebastian Gardner's irrationality and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 104:863-879.Libet, B. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 3:95-96.Lloyd, D. 1996. Commentary on "Toward a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:127-128.Pepper-Smith, R., W. R. C. Harvey, and M. Silberfeld. 1996. Competency and practical judgment. Theoretical Medicine 17, no. 2:135-150. [End Page 91]Spence, S. A. 1996a. Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:75-90.------. 1996b. Response to the commentaries. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:99-100.Stein, D. J. 1996. The philosophy of psychopathy. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39:569-580.Stephens, G. L. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:97-98.Varela, C. R. 1995. Ethnogenic theory and psychoanalysis: The unconscious as a social construction and a failed explanatory concept. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 25:4.Weisberger, A. M. 1995. The ethics of the broader usage of Prozac: Social choice or social bias? International Journal of Applied Philosophy 10, no. 1:69-74.Wright, I., A. Sloman, and L. Beaudoin. 1996a. Response to the commentaries. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:137.------. 1996b. Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:101-126. Books American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on Consent to Voluntary Hospitalization. 1993. Consent to voluntary hospitalization. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Christiansen, H. D. 1972. Ethics in counseling: Problem situations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Clark, P., and C. Wright, eds. 1988. Mind, psychoanalysis and science. New York: Blackwell.Comerchero, V., ed. 1970. Values in conflict: Christianity, marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Epstein, R. S. 1994. Keeping boundaries: Maintaining safety and integrity in the psychotherapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.Fairbairn, G. J. 1995. Contemplating suicide: The language and ethics of self harm. New York: Routledge.Grubb, A., ed. 1991. Decision-making and problems of incompetence. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Haas, L. J., and J. L. Malouf. 1995. Keeping up the good work: A practitioner's guide to mental health ethics. 2nd ed. Sarasota: Professional Resource Exchange.Hacking, I. 1995. Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton: Princeton University... (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious way, those (...) institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)