He further argues that it is necessary to rethink traditional conceptions of argument, and to find a position that avoids the limitations of both the highly abstract approach of formal logic and the highly contextualized approaches of rhetoric and communication theory.".

In this paper, I respond to papers on my Manifest Rationality (2000) by Leo Groarke, Hans Hansen, David Hitchcock, and Christopher Tindale presented at the meetings of the Ontario Philosophical Society, October 2000. From the many useful challenges they have directed at my position, I have chosen to focus on two. The dominant issue raised by their papers concerns my definition of argument, and particularly problems with the idea of a dialectical tier. I have selected that as the (...) first strand. Second, several have raised questions that deal with the relationship between logic, rhetoric and dialectic. That is the second strand. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two views of the necessity to manifest the rational adequacy of argumentation. The view advanced by Ralph Johnson’s program for informal logic will be compared to one based on an account of obligations incurred in speech acts. Both views hold that arguers are commonly obliged to make it apparent that they are offering adequate support for their positions, but they differ in their accounts of the nature and scope of those obligations.

I argue that emotions are not only rational in-themselves, strictly speaking, but they are also instrumentally rational, epistemically rational, and evaluatively rational. I begin with a discussion of what it means for emotions to be rational or irrational in-themselves, which includes the derivation of a criterion for the ontological rationality of emotions (CORe): For emotion or an emotion there exists some normative standard that is given by what emotion or an emotion is against which our emotional responses can be (...) judged or evaluated in virtue of the fact that our emotions manifest our rationality. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this account. (shrink)

There are scenarios in which letting one’s own views on the question whether p direct one’s inquiry into that question brings about individual and collective epistemic benefits. However, these scenarios are also such that one’s evidence doesn’t support believing one’s own views. So, how to vindicate the epistemic benefits of directing one’s inquiry in such an asymmetric way, without asking one to hold a seemingly irrational doxastic attitude? To answer this question, the paper understands asymmetric inquiry direction in terms of (...) having one’s inquiry be guided by a doxastic attitude, which I call hypothesis, that’s governed by the following norm: One’s hypothesis that p is rational just in case it is a manifestation of the best feasible way to form a doxastic attitude regarding p that promotes the best feasible ways to advance towards settling the question of p’s (or of any other suitably related proposition’s) truth-value. (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)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with the distinction that most contemporary epistemologists express by distinguishing between “propositional” and “doxastic” justification. The goal is to develop an account of this distinction that applies, not just to full or outright beliefs, but also to partial credences—and indeed, in principle, to attitudes of all kinds. The standard way of explaining this distinction, in terms of the “basing relation”, is criticized, and an alternative account—the “virtue manifestation” account—is proposed in its place. This account has a (...) certain kinship with the epistemological approach that is known as “reliabilism”, but it also has certain key differences—above all, it is compatible with an internalist view of rationality. (shrink)

Vagueness is often regarded as a kind of defect of our language or of our thinking. This paper portrays vagueness as the natural outcome of applying a number of rationality principles to the cognitive domain. Given our physical and cognitive makeup, and given the way the world is, applying those principles to conceptualization predicts not only the concepts that are actually in use, but also their vagueness, and how and when their vagueness manifests itself.

In ‘Rationality and Revolution’ Nancy Holmstrom addresses an issue that has gained considerable currency among social and political theorists. She asks what insight, if any, Marxists might glean from rational choice accounts of radical working class collective action. The purpose of this comment is to argue that Holmstrom’s unfavorable estimation of rational choice accounts is ill-conceived.Holmstrom raises two basic objections to rational choice explanations of working class collective action. First, she contends that such accounts are limited, inadequate or incomplete (...) and indicates several manifestations of this purported deficiency. Second, Holmstrom alleges that rational choice accounts are ideologically suspect and, as such, fundamentally at odds with Marxist explanations of revolutionary action. Holmstrom appears to believe that this second line of criticism ‘follows’ in some sense upon the first. H so, it would be sufficient to establish the error of her initial line of argument. Because neither of her criticisms can withstand scrutiny, however, independent reasons will be advanced for rejecting each. (shrink)

Philosophers, psychiatrists, and social scientists would welcome clarification of the distinction between rational and irrational desires. It may be proper to say that rational desires are those which manifest rationality. But since this seems a rather unilluminating characterization, philosophers sometimes offer definitions of what constitute such manifestations of rationality. I shall consider definitions provided by John Rawls and Richard Brandt. Their definitions are unsatisfactory mainly because they include subjunctive conditionals. An alternative approach, which avoids conditionals, is attractive. (...) But it encounters so many additional problems that I shall conclude that we are not now in a position to define rationality in this area and must treat it as a state or disposition which to date has only been partially characterized. Thus, if we want a definition of the difference between rational and irrational desires, we must at present settle for the rather unexciting one mentioned above. (shrink)

In her book The Rationality of Perception, Susanna Siegel argues for the interesting idea that perceptual experiences are in an important epistemic sense much more like beliefs than has previously been supposed. Like beliefs, perceptual experiences themselves already manifest a certain epistemic status, and, like beliefs, the way in which those experiences are formed will impact what that epistemic status will be. In what follows, I will first contrast this view of the rationality of perception with the (...) usual way of thinking about perception and justification and explain some of its crucial motivations (§1). I will then go on to critically discuss some of the details of Siegel’s account about what grounds the epistemic status of experience (§2) and how that status is inferentially modulated (§3). Although this raises some doubts about the specific way in which Siegel cashes out the rationality of perception, the core idea remains an interesting open possibility. (shrink)

An increasingly prevalent approach to studying human cognition is to construe the mind as optimally allocating limited cognitive resources among cognitive processes. Under this bounded rationality approach (Icard in Philos Sci 85(1):79–101, 2018; Simon in Utility and probability, Palgrave Macmillan, 1980), it is common to assume that resource-bounded cognitive agents approximate normative solutions to statistical inference problems, and that much of the bias and variability in human performance can be explained in terms of the approximation strategies we employ. In (...) this paper, we argue that this approach restricts itself to an unnecessarily narrow scope of cognitive models, which limits its ability to explain how humans flexibly adapt their representations to novel environments. We argue that more attention should be paid to how we form our cognitive representations in the first place, and advocate for pluralistic framework which jointly optimizes over both representations and algorithms for manipulating them. We identify several fundamental trade-offs that manifest in this joint optimization, and draw on recent work to motivate a unified formal framework for this analysis. We illustrate a simplified version of this analysis with a case study in social cognition, and outline several new directions for research that this approach suggests. (shrink)

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a (...) characterization of rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers. (shrink)

We are creatures of habit. Familiar ways of doing things in familiar contexts become automatic for us. That is to say, when we acquire a habit we can act without thinking about it at all. Habits free our minds to think about other things. Without this capacity for habitual action our daily lives would be impossible. Our minds would be crowded with innumerable mundane considerations and decisions. Habitual actions are not always mundane. Aristotle famously said that acting morally is a (...) matter of exercising the right habits.2 For him, a lack of conscious thought is no bar on an action’s moral status. Habits are involved in our most prized activities. Of course our natural capacity for acquiring habits is sometimes a nuisance, and we acquire bad habits all too easily. But we nevertheless could not do without a vast array of habits which are not like this, and we can’t help but exercise them in our daily lives. It does not seem too strong to say that we spend much more of our time acting habitually than we do acting in the light of conscious thought. We are also rational creatures. It is because of our rationality that we naturally think that most human actions are different in kind from the behaviour of other animals. This difference is manifest in the fact that we hold rational creatures personally responsible for what they do, in ways that would make no sense for nonrational creatures. Our rationality, then, appears to give our actions a unique quality. (shrink)

The present essay explores plausible affinities between the Orphic theogony embedded in the Derveni papyrus and its interpretation in the mode of physikē philosophia by the Derveni author. It focuses specifically on the relationship between latent meaning and manifest content in the text as a whole. The Derveni author’s complex techniques of allegorical exegesis and his mental makeup are the subject-matter of the firstpart. The ways in which he is influenced by, and diverges from, Heraclitus in a crucial column (...) of the papyrus are taken as indicative of his specifically Orphic concerns. The sequence of the mythical events narrated in the poem is established in the following part, and those which seem to be original with the poet are distinguished from the traditional material of Hesiod’s Theogony. Special emphasis is put on the psychological significance that a narrative stressing a double or two-phased generation of the world-order, may have had for initiates of the so-called Orphic type. In the third part of the essay, a similar two-phased creation of the world-order is discerned in the Derveni author’s ‘scientific’or‘rational’cosmogony. A table of tentative correspondences between the Derveni author’s cosmogony and the Orphic poet’s theogony is also included. The final remarks explore the place of the Derveni author in ‘the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’, and highlight what seems to have been his most perplexing concern: the simultaneous immanence and transcendence of divinity with respect to the world. (shrink)

Given that Enlightenment rationality developed in Europe as European nations aggressively claimed other parts of the world for their own enrichment, scholars have made rationality the subject of postcolonial critique, questioning its universality and objectivity. In _On Reason_, the late philosopher Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze demonstrates that rationality, and by extension philosophy, need not be renounced as manifestations or tools of Western imperialism. Examining reason in connection to the politics of difference—the cluster of issues known variously as cultural (...) diversity, political correctness, the culture wars, and identity politics—Eze expounds a rigorous argument that reason is produced through and because of difference. In so doing, he preserves reason as a human property while at the same time showing that it cannot be thought outside the realities of cultural diversity. Advocating rationality in a multicultural world, he proposes new ways of affirming both identity and difference. Eze draws on an extraordinary command of Western philosophical thought and a deep knowledge of African philosophy and cultural traditions. He explores models of rationality in the thought of philosophers from Aristotle, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes to Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jacques Derrida, and he considers portrayals of reason in the work of the African thinkers and novelists Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka. Eze reflects on contemporary thought about genetics, race, and postcolonial historiography as well as on the interplay between reason and unreason in the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He contends that while rationality may have a foundational formality, any understanding of its foundation and form is dynamic, always based in historical and cultural circumstances. (shrink)

While it is well known that Kant’s transcendental idealism forbids the transcendent use of reason and its ideas, what had been underexplored until the last decade or so is his account of the positive use of reason’s ideas as it is expounded in the “Appendix” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The main difficulty faced by his account is that while there is no doubt that for Kant we need to rely on the ideas of reason in order to gain (...) knowledge of the empirical world, the justificatory grounds for our use remain unclear. Commentators have suggested various ways of addressing this worry. Some emphasize that reason’s demand for systematicity is purely methodological; others that the assumption that nature itself is systematically unified is transcendentally necessary. Some simply deem Kant’s account “extremely self-contradictory.” What is clear is that if neither the presupposition of nature’s systematic unity nor the command to seek this unity have any justification, reason’s regulative function, which plays a crucial role in Kant’s account of cognition, also lacks justification. This would be a disastrous result, for it would threaten the very possibility of cognition and its progress. This chapter proposes to tackle this problem from a new angle by exploring the role of reason’s feelings in Kant’s account. While the relationship between practical reason and feeling has been explored at length in the literature, the relationship between theoretical reason and feeling has not, and my aim is to suggest that doing so can shed new light on reason’s cognitive activity. For focusing on the fact that theoretical reason’s need manifests itself as a feeling will enable me to reassess how this need is met through reason’s regulative use of its ideas. (shrink)

This book uses the psychological literature on rationality to weigh in on the recent debate between virtue epistemologists and epistemic situationists. It argues that both sides have misconstrued the literature and that an interactionist framework is needed to square epistemic theory with empirical facts about reasoning and inference. The explosion of empirical literature on human rationality has led to seismic shifts across a multitude of academic disciplines. This book considers its implications for epistemology. In particular, it critically evaluates (...) the treatment of the rationality literature within the recent controversy between virtue epistemologists, who attempt to ground knowledge in stable epistemic virtues, and epistemic situationists, who claim that such a project is doomed by empirical evidence of widespread irrationality. It links this foundational controversy to two of the most important debates in psychology: the Rationality Wars and the person-situation debate. The book argues that both virtue theorists and epistemic situationists have misunderstood the implications of these debates, leading them to focus exclusively on personal dispositions and situational factors as two independent sources of epistemic success, failure, and improvement. A more accurate reading of the empirical literature implies that interactions between epistemic agents and their social, informational, and institutional environments are the fundamental drivers of both rational and irrational behaviour. An interactionist framework motivated by this insight conceives of epistemic virtues and vices as both responsive to and responsible for the environments in which they're manifested and cultivated. The central aim of this book is to present and defend this novel type of virtue epistemology. Rationality in Context will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. (shrink)

The value of rational choice theory for the social sciences has long been contested. It is argued here that, in the debate over its role, it is necessary to distinguish between claims that people maximise manifest payoffs, and claims that people maximise their utility. The former version has been falsified. The latter is unfalsifiable, because utility cannot be observed. In principle, utility maximisation can be adapted to fit any form of behaviour, including the behaviour of non-human organisms. Allegedly 'inconsistent' (...) behaviour is also impossible to establish without qualification. This utility-maximising version of rational choice theory has the character of a universal 'explanation' that can be made to 'fit' any set of events. This is a sign of weakness rather than strength. In its excessive quest for generality, utility-maximising rational choice theory fails to focus on the historically and geographically specific features of socio-economic systems. As long as such theory is confined to ahistorical generalities, then it will remain highly limited in dealing with the real world. Instead we have to consider the real social and psychological determinants of human behaviour. (shrink)

In retrospect, I think I was right to compose Natural Supernaturalism by relying on taste, tact, and intuition rather than on a controlling method. A book of this kind, which deals with the history of human intellection, feeling, and imagination, employs special vocabularies, procedures, and modes of demonstration which, over many centuries of development, have shown their profitability when applied to matters of this sort. I agree with Booth that these procedures, when valid, are in a broad sense rational, and (...) subject to analysis and some degree of definition. But the rules underlying such a discourse are complex, elusive, unsystematic, and subject to innovative modification; they manifest themselves in the intuitive expertise of the historian; and the specification of these rules should not precede, but follow practice. . . . After the fact, nevertheless, a book like Natural Supernaturalism is subject to close critical inquiry about its methods and rationale. I am grateful to Booth for opening up such an inquiry, and for doing so in a way that is not only disarming, but seems to me to be the most promising of useful results. That is, instead of adopting a prosecutorial stance, demanding: "Justify the rationality and probative force of what you have done; it looks dammed suspicious to me," he has adopted the friendly tactic of saying: "Your book, in my experience of it, has yielded discoveries that I want to call knowledge, by methods, however deviant from standard rubrics of valid reasoning, that it seems irrational to call non-rational. Let's set out to clarify what these methods are, and to see what grounds we can find for the claim that they provide warranted knowledge." M.H. Abrams' contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Deconstructive Angel" and "Behaviorism and Deconstruction: A Comment on Morse Peckham's 'The Infinitude of Pluralism'". (shrink)

This article seeks to analyze the conditions in which group-based pride is rationally appropriate. We first distinguish between the shape and size of an emotion. For the appropriate shape of group-based pride, we suggest two criteria: the distinction between group-based pride and group-based hubris, and between we-mode and I-mode sociality. While group-based hubris is inappropriate irrespective of its mode due to the arrogant, contemptuous, and other-derogating character of this emotion, group-based pride in the we-mode is appropriate in terms of shape (...) if it is felt over an achievement to which the group members collectively committed themselves. For the same reason, members of I-mode groups can feel appropriately proud of the achievement of their group if they have collectively contributed to it. Instead, group-based pride by mere private identification with a successful group can be rationally appropriate if it manifests the person’s reduced-agency ideal and is also part of a coherent pattern of rationally interconnected emotions focused on the same ideal. Moreover, we suggest that pride in the success of one’s family member or a close friend is typically felt over the rise of social status that one group member’s success grants to the group. However, social status cannot be valued for its own sake as this undermines the values upon which social status is founded. Instead, direct or indirect causal contribution to the success of one’s child, friend, or student can warrant group-based pride, which may be justified on the basis of shared values without causal contribution as well. Finally, regarding the size of group-based pride, members of we-mode groups are warranted to experience and express more intense pride than members of I-mode groups. Moreover, the proper intensity of this emotion depends on the particular other to whom the expression is directed. Finally, criteria of appropriate size don’t apply to shared group-based pride as sharing increases the intensity of emotion by default. (shrink)

This paper introduces a model for evidence denial that explains this behavior as a manifestation of rationality and it is based on the contention that social values (measurable as utilities) often underwrite these sorts of responses. Moreover, it is contended that the value associated with group membership in particular can override epistemic reason when the expected utility of a belief or belief system is great. However, it is also true that it appears to be the case that it is (...) still possible for such unreasonable believers to reverse this sort of dogmatism and to change their beliefs in a way that is epistemically rational. The conjecture made here is that we should expect this to happen only when the expected utility of the beliefs in question dips below a threshold where the utility value of continued dogmatism and the associated group membership is no longer sufficient to motivate defusing the counter-evidence that tells against such epistemically irrational beliefs. (shrink)

Emotions are Janus‐faced. They tell us something about the world, and they tell us something about ourselves. This suggests that we might speak of a truth, or perhaps two kinds of truths of emotions, one of which is about self and the other about conditions in the world. On some views, the latter comes by means of the former. Insofar as emotions manifest our inner life, however, we are more inclined to speak of authenticity rather than truth. What is (...) the difference? We need to distinguish the criteria of correspondence or appropriateness suitable for authenticity from those that embody the criterion of truth. Furthermore there is also a question about the transitions – among states of mind, and between states of mind and behaviour – that emotions encourage. This realm of transitions concerns rationality. After sketching the relevant distinctions, I will endeavour to justify the view that emotions should be appraised in terms of all three terms. (shrink)

According to a widespread view, Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific development would relegate rationality to a second plane, openly flirting with irrationalist positions. The intent of this article is to clarify this aspect of his thinking and refute this common interpretation. I begin by analysing the nature of values in Kuhn’s model and how they are connected to rationality. For Kuhn, a theory is chosen rationally when: i) the evaluation is based on values characteristic of science; ii) a (...) theory is considered better the more it manifests these values; and iii) the scientist chooses the best-evaluated theory. The second part of this article deals with the thesis of the variability of values. According to Kuhn, the examples through which epistemic values are presented vary for each person, and for this reason individuals interpret these criteria differently. Consequently, two scientists, using the same values, can come to a rational disagreement over which theory to choose. Finally, I point out the limitations of this notion of rationality for the explanation of consensus formation, and the corresponding demand for a sociological theory that reconnects individual rationality with convergence of opinions. (shrink)

One of the central tasks of a theory of argumentation is to supply a theory of appraisal: a set of standards and norms according to which argumentation, and the reasoning involved in it, is properly evaluated. In their most general form, these can be understood as rational norms, where the core idea of rationality is that we rightly respond to reasons by according the credence we attach to our doxastic and conversational commitments with the probative strength of the reasons (...) we have for them. Certain kinds of rational failings are so because they are manifestly illogical – for example, maintaining overtly contradictory commitments, violating deductive closure by refusing to accept the logical consequences of one’s present commitments, or failing to track basing relations by not updating one’s commitments in view of new, defeating information. Yet, according to the internal and empirical critiques, logic and probability theory fail to supply a fit set of norms for human reasoning and argument. Particularly, theories of bounded rationality have put pressure on argumentation theory to lower the normative standards of rationality for reasoners and arguers on the grounds that we are bounded, finite, and fallible agents incapable of meeting idealized standards. This paper explores the idea that argumentation, as a set of practices, together with the procedures and technologies of argumentation theory, is able to extend cognition such that we are better able to meet these idealized logical standards, thereby extending our responsibilities to adhere to idealized rational norms. (shrink)

A report suggests that United States’ army officers may engage in dishonest reporting regarding their compliance procedures. Similarly, nurses with espoused high ethical standards sometimes fail to live up to them and may do so while deceiving themselves about such practices. Reasons for lapses are complex. However, multitudinous managerial demands arising within ‘technical and instrumental rationality’ may impact on honest decision‐making. This paper suggests that compliance processes, which operates within the social structural context of the technical and instrumental (...) class='Hi'>rationality manifest as ‘managerialism’, contributes to professional ‘dishonesty’ about lapses in care, sometimes through ‘thoughtlessness’. The need to manage risk, measure, account, and control in order to deliver efficiency, effectiveness, and economy (technical rationality) thus has both unintended and dysfunctional consequences. Meeting compliance requirements may be mediated by factors such as the ‘affect heuristic’ and ‘reflexive deliberations’ as part of the ‘structured agency’ of nurses. It is the complexity of ‘structured agency’ which may explain why some nurses fail to respond to such things as sentinel events, a failure to recognize ‘personal troubles’ as ‘public issues’, a failure which to outsiders who expect rational and professional responses may seem inconceivable. There is a need to understand these processes so that nurses can critique the context in which they work and to move beyond either/or explanations of structure or agency for care failures, and professional dishonesty. (shrink)

INCONTINENCE, HONOURING SUNK COSTS AND RATIONALITY According to a basic principle of rationality, the decision to engage in a course of action should be determined solely by the analysis of its consequences. Thus, considerations associated with previous use of resources should have no bearing on an agent’s decision-making process. Frequently, however, agents persist carrying on an activity they themselves judge to be nonoptimal under the circumstances because they have already allocated resources to that activity. When this is the (...) case, agents are said to be honouring sunk costs. Honouring sunk costs is thus typically viewed as irrational economic behaviour. Two striking findings of the psychological literature on the sunk cost effect are that it is, in general, not lessened by having taken previously courses in economics, and that agents who did take such courses and that do honour sunk costs seem to be frequently aware of a cognitive dissonance in their behaviour. Davidson’s account of the possibility conditions of incontinent action renders continent action materially unfeasible. The very idea of incontinent action becomes thus a hollow one. I’ll present an alternative description of these possibility conditions that renders continent action materially feasible, and both, continent and incontinent action, cognitively plausible. In a nutshell, my proposal rests upon the drawing of an essential cognitive contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and lower level heuristic procedures. I conclude the paper arguing that my redescription of incontinent action accounts for the above mentioned cognitive dissonance effect better than the alternatives and that viewing at least an important subset of behaviours of honouring sunk costs as incontinent actions will enable us to consider them as peculiar manifestations of a more general and meaningful pattern in human behaviour. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this with the psychoanalytic distinction between contained and uncontained states of mind. On the face of it, Moran's distinction appears to be a useful theoretical deepening of the psychoanalytic distinction. On closer examination, however, it appears that (a) rational health is a more demanding standard than containment, (...) so the rationally unhealthy contains much that is mentally (quite) healthy; and (b) more seriously, some states that meet the “transparency” condition are manifestly mentally unhealthy. So transparency needs to be supplemented by an independently understood notion of containment to approach a realistic norm of mental health/ill health. (shrink)

It is no longer the fashion to imagine Herodotos a liar when he tells marvellous stories, for some of his most extraordinary statements have long since been shown to contain at least a substantial measure of truth. It is perhaps not sufficiently realized, however, that on occasion he misleads his readers and himself by too much critical unbelief in his materials and consequent application of the crude methods of mythological investigation then current. In other words, he often rationalizes in the (...) only way then possible, superficially altering the story so as to rid himself of the incredible details, or at all events, as I think, attributing to the actors motives which a somewhat drily rational mind could understand and approve or condemn. It is of course well known that at least the former method was a commonplace of the sophists, whose influence on Herodotos is manifest and widespread; it has been said, indeed, that it is much older than they and characteristically Ionic. L. Radermacher finds traces of it in the Odyssey itself and adds that, although we can sometimes catch the rationalizer at work, we cannot be sure of always doing so and ‘müssen annehmen, dass der Glaube an die Geschichtlichkeit ihrer Sage manche griechischen Autoren früh verführt hat, sie geschichtlicher zu erzählen als eigentlich erlaubt war’. This is a true and useful statement. Modern criticism has long learned to set aside ancient allegorizations of myths, about which I need say nothing, for the subject has been repeatedly and well handled by my colleague, Dr. J. Tate; it has often, however, confused ancient interpretation of myth with ancient criticism of saga. Euhemerism indeed is usually recognized for what it is, although even this is not always so; but uixere inepti ante Euhemerum multi, and their efforts are by no means always distinguished either from allegorizing or from real sagas. For an example of the former confusion I may refer to Stallbaum's note on Plato, Phaedrus, 29 C-D, where the reader is referred to the account given by Lobeck of the rise and growth of allegorization. But Plato says nothing at all of allegories in this passage. He quotes, with ironical admiration of its ‘wisdom’, a version of the story of Boreas and Oreithyia according to which she. was knocked off the Areiopagos, or some other place, by a strong north wind, and so was killed and consequently said to have been carried away by Boreas. He adds that it would be a laborious and dismal business to go through all the tales of wonder in that way, rationalizing the Hippocentaurs, Gorgons, Chimaira, Pegasos, and the rest out of existence; a wise saying which was uttered in vain for Palaiphatos and his kind. However, most moderns know a myth from a saga and an allegory from a crude rationalization which accepts the story as true except for the incredibilities and is quite ready to believe, for instance, in Romulus if we will but postulate that he was not snatched up to heaven but murdered and his body hidden. There is a much more subtle snare, consisting of a story which, although rationalized, is well told, and Herodotos in this respect can be a notable offender, for he never tells a story ill. (shrink)

Contemporary biological psychiatry is in a seemingly inchoate state. I assert that this state of biological psychiatry is due to its violation of an epistemological criterion of rationality, i.e., the relevance criterion; that is, contemporary biological psychiatry is irrational as it adopts a conception irrelevant to the psychobiological domain. This conception is mechanistic. The irrationality of biological psychiatry is manifest as the dominance of neurochemical explanations of psychopharmacological correlations, resulting in predictive sterility and, correspondingly, in the dominance of (...) serendipity. I suggest a rationalization of biological psychiatry through a conception relevant to the psychobiological domain. This conception is hierarchical. Keywords: criterion of relevance, epistemology, hierarchical conception, mechanistic conception, rationality CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Although the controversy between Malthus and Ricardo has long been considered to be an important source for the history of economic thought, it has hardly been the object of a careful study qua controversy, i.e. as a polemical dialogical exchange. We have undertaken to fill this gap, within the framework of a more ambitious project that places controversies at the center of an account of the history of ideas, in science and elsewhere. It is our contention that the dialogical co-text (...) is essential for reconstructing the meaning and the evolution of science. In the present paper we try to substantiate this contention by means of a pragma-rhetorical study of this particular controversy. First, we reconstruct, through an analysis of a chunk of the correspondence, a micro-level of specific moves and countermoves which constitute a sequential structure within which also meta-scientific and meta-controversial considerations play a role. We then move to a macro-level of analysis, looking for recurrent patterns of argumentation. Finally, we draw epistemological conclusions on the nature of rationality and progress as manifested in actual scientific controversies. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a puzzle about the connection between an agent’s knowledge and her rationality and a way to solve it. The puzzle is that, intuitively, many of us want to accept both that it is rational for an agent to act on what she knows and that it is irrational for an agent to take what she knows for granting in her practical reasoning. These two claims about rationality present us with a puzzle because, holding (...) fixed our interpretation of rationality, we cannot accept them both. According to my view, the most compelling way of solving this puzzle is to distinguish between our primary and dispositional evaluations of actions. By making this distinction, we not only gain a unique perspective on the relationship between knowledge and rationality, we also see how doing what we know is best might still manifest an undesirable habit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical LifeLiz DisleyRobert B. Pippin. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi + 308. Paper, $29.99In this work, Pippin offers an interpretation of freedom, rationality, and agency in Hegel’s work and adds substantive content to the key concept of recognition. In doing so, he offers not only a compelling elucidation of a (...) particularly opaque part of Hegel’s analysis of human action and interaction, but also demonstrates the relevance of his practical philosophy to contemporary discussions about free will, intersubjectivity, autonomy, recognition, and liberalism. Pippin provides a substantial defense of Hegel’s position in the context of contemporary political philosophy, arguing against a commonly-held view that Hegelian political philosophy must be much closer to modern communitarian theories than those of classical or modern liberalism. Pippin’s work is central to the recent resurgence of interest in Hegel’s theoretical philosophy by analytical philosophers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell, as well as the renewed study of recognition in a practical context.Controversially, Pippin claims that Hegel has only one theory of intersubjectivity and recognition from the time of the Jena writings to the Philosophy of Right. The theory develops from an initial stage, where “the desideratum of mutual recognition is posed and explored,” to a realization that ethical life as described in the Philosophy of Right provides the necessary conditions for rational, mutual recognition (184n4). Thus, he rejects the common view in recent Continental Hegel scholarship, asserted by critics including Jürgen Habermas, Michael Theunissen, and Axel Honneth, that Hegel fails to develop adequately the theory of intersubjectivity initially present in his earlier writings and subsumes intersubjectivity into a “grand metaphysical process” of the Absolute Subject’s self-manifestation (184).Pippin defends Hegel from this common charge on the basis of his “very unusual” concept of freedom (185). The key claim here is that Hegel does not set recognition or indeed other-relation as a precondition for any kind of self-relation, but rather, “A true individual [End Page 112] is a free subject and recognition relations function in a complex way as conditions for that possibility” (186). This seems like a promising method of demonstrating that Hegel’s intersubjectivity does not, after all, dissolve in the face of a monological divine conception of reality. The difficulty with the approach, as Pippin concedes, is that it involves making a series of radical, strange, and controversial claims. These claims, in general, focus on the temporal priority of freedom, recognition, and rationality: deeds can count as “mine” in Pippin’s special sense only if they are undertaken rationally, but this state of rationality depends on being in a social state of recognizing and being recognized (190). However, it is neither radical nor strange to make a clear distinction between human interdependence in terms of our particular social psychology and in terms of “an ideal of normative mutuality inherent in any attempt to act” (211).Pippin appreciates that defenders of Hegel’s concept of recognition do not want to say that I cannot be a free subject by myself, but at the same time want to leave the door open for there to be some kind of possibility of ascertaining moral harm in cases of failure to recognize. For Pippin, free actions, and actions committed out of free will, are those committed by agents in a particular social context, namely being situated within norm-governed relations of reciprocal recognition to others. Such an approach fulfills neither of these criteria, since it means I cannot be free by myself but also that, in the case of my being placed in a situation where I am not within these relations of reciprocal recognition to others, there is no obvious originator of moral harm caused by this recognition (218). Pippin accepts that there is no clear answer to this difficulty, but his account of the genesis of norms and social rationality does save Hegel’s account from the objection by Theunissen, Habermas, Honneth et al. mentioned above. Like Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Pippin sees the answer to charges of introducing a... (shrink)

In Anaxagoras’ system, cosmic Mind is one, indivisible and immutable and thus cannot be divided into parts, into individual minds residing in living beings. The same Mind is in one living being as it is in another. Also, the soul is an individual entity, one soul in one living being. Mind does manifest itself in a living being, not as the soul, but through the soul. Mind must be constantly present in the individual soul for the soul to be (...) capable of thought. Only in this sense could the soul’s dormant cognitive ability be called an individual mind. However, for man, only this life remains, although man is highest in the hierarchy among existing beings. Mind seems to make man alive and rational so that man can admire its handiwork, the order and harmony of the world. But this is where man’s cosmic role ends. (shrink)

Ralph Johnson's Manifest Rationality (2000) is a major contribution to the field of informal logic, but the concept of argument that is central to its project suffers from a tension between the components that comprise it. This paper explores and addresses that tension by examining the implications of each of five aspects of the definition of ‘argument’.

This is a study of Master Ramchandra, a nineteenth-century Indian mathematician, social commentator and Urdu journalist. The contradictions manifest in his projects, it is contended, were actually the products of the contradictions manifest in the political and ideological thinking of the period. One encounters in his writings a dominant critique of the prevalent religious, social and educational systems and also a call for social transformation, wherein scientific rationality and realism came to play an important role. Ramchandra's understanding (...) is quite close to that of the Comtean positivists. An attempt is made here to locate this emerging scientism within the context of nineteenth-century colonial politics. (shrink)

The author shows that the search for new, non-classical forms of rationality is a symptom of the crisis of systematicity in human existence. Rationalism is a worldview correspondence to systemic human existence, and the limits of rationalism coincide with the limits of systematicity. Referring to postmodern philosophy, the author proves that human existence is not limited to systematicity. The scientific scope of the general, the ratio, is inferior to other horizons – aesthetic, moral, mystical, etc. culture-building existence has now (...) declared itself as the only truly human, supersystemic being-in-freedom, whose logic is not limited to rationality. The crisis of rationality has led to an understanding of man as not needing any guidance, and the highest manifestation of his unlimited freedom is his own uncaused self-restraint. (shrink)

The essence of Kant’s conception of God is that God is constitutively, as opposed to causally, responsible for spatiotemporal existence: God is responsible for the world not by creating it but by grounding it. And, so Kant holds, God grounds it by virtue of being identical with it (or, more precisely, with its noumenal substrate: see below), with the qualification that, in being identical with it, he infuses it with his own rationality, this being manifested as natural law.

ABSTRACTTimothy Williamson recently argued that the notion of epistemic rationality is ambiguous between a Content-oriented schema and a Disposition-oriented schema. I argue that the Disposition-oriented schema suggested by Williamson is not faithful to the main idea behind it and that it should be replaced with the Disposition-Manifestation schema. This replacement suffices for avoiding Williamson's ambiguity thesis.

In recent years, the issue of the determinants of human gender identity has been lively discussed. In such discussions, there are numerous supporters of the belief that a person’s gender identity does not depend directly on a given individual’s biological endowment with sex, but is the result of various socio-cultural circumstances in which a given person lives. This view began to gain popularity in the scientific community in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is now considered paradigmatic in the (...) rapidly evolving interdisciplinary study of cultural gender development, which is commonly referred to as gender studies. Representatives of gender studies often present the findings obtained in the course of their research as brilliant and modern. However, when viewed through the concept of philosophical superstition, authored by the Polish logician Józef Maria Bocheński, it can be concluded that the proponents of gender studies significantly exaggerate the intellectual momentum of their conclusions and postulates. Furthermore, one can even say that according to Bocheński’s concept of philosophical superstition, gender studies is a discipline which only creates a semblance of rationality. This is because gender studies fail all six criteria which, as Bocheński maintains, distinguish beliefs, views, and theories which are manifestly irrational from those which are not philosophical superstitions. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, Bocheński’s concept of philosophical superstition is discussed and, in particular, the criteria are outlined which, in Bocheński’s opinion, allow one to identify philosophically superstitious thinking. This section also provides examples of philosophically superstitious beliefs, views and theories that fall under each of the criteria. In the second part, gender studies are characterized in terms of the basic assumptions adopted within this trend, as well as its theses and postulates. The third part of the article is devoted to the assessment of gender studies with the use of criteria which, according to Bocheński, make it possible to distinguish theories, beliefs and views without the hallmarks of rationality from those that are not philosophically superstitious. (shrink)

In the spirit of recent analytic investigations, Bennett seeks to analyze the concept of rationality. He approaches this topic by first considering the behavior of honey-bees, which he claims is non-rational. Using this as a model he examines variations that more closely approximate the linguistic manifestation of rationality. Bennett's most interesting thesis is that while language is necessary for rationality, the possession of language is not sufficient for rationality. A good deal of familiar ground is covered (...) here and while Bennett has many novel insights, there seems to be little genuine advance over the work of the later Wittgenstein and his followers.—R. J. B. (shrink)

Self destruction, inapprehensible an option as it might be, has been a challenging issue for philosophers and scholars since the dawn of time, forcing meditation into a vigorous and everlasting debate. The core question is: could suicide ever be deemed rational a choice? And if so, could it count as a moral alternative, if the circumstances call for it? The Stoics from Zeno up to Epictetus and Seneca regarded suicide as the ultimate resort, as the utmost opportunity for a rational (...) being to maintain his virtue, when all other bridges are burnt. For an act to be moral, it has to be deliberate, as well as the manifestation of an established evaluative hierarchy, however spontaneous and instantaneous might the latter be. In other words, a moral act is one that agents rationally opt for over other possible alternatives, on the subjective basis of their alleged best interests. Modern philosophers as Tom Beauchamp, Margaret Battin and Jacques Choron stress the criterion of rationality as a key issue regarding the ethics of suicide. Utilizing Rorty’s second definition of rationality, the article examines whether self destruction can be the outcome of proper evaluative assessment and deliberation, given that, as T. N. Pelegrinis suggests, such an evaluation seems to rest on a symmetry case, which might hardly be based on sound foundation. (shrink)

I propose some changes to the conceptions of argument and of argumentative discussion in Ralph Johnson's Manifest Rationality (2000). An argument is a discourse whose author seeks to persuade an audience to accept a thesis by producing reasons in support of it and discharging his dialectical obligations. An argumentative discussion (what Johnson calls ‘argumentation’) is a sociocultural activity of constructing, presenting, interpreting, criticizing, and revising arguments for the purpose of reaching a shared rationally supported position on some issue. (...) Johnson's theory of argumentative discussion, with occasional modifications, is derived from this definition as a sequence of 17 theorems. Argumentative discussion is a valuable cultural practice; it is the most secure route to correct views and wise policies. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour proper) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour proper is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition--of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that (...) possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour proper in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour proper and the relations to others it impels us to establish. (shrink)

In the article, referring to the method of rational reconstruction described by R. Rorty, an analysis of some works of J. Locke has been made in order to identify new prospects in John Locke's philosophy researches. As a result, it’s been demonstrated the presence of silence as an argument and a manifestation of respect J. Locke’s research of realms of cognition, political philosophy and philosophy of education. This is not covered in modern John Locke's philosophy researches. The authors emphasize that (...) J. Locke, although not directly exploring silence as an argument, however, describes the argument ad ignorantiam, the wording of which in the work «An Essay Concerning Human Understanding» and his understanding of tacit consent in the work «Two Treatises of Government» are related to silence as an argument and a manifestation of respect. The position that silence as an argument is present in all four arguments (argumentum ad verecundiam, argumentum ad ignorantiam, argumentum ad hominem, argumentum ad judicium) described by J. Locke is substantiated. Additionally, the argument ad ignorantiam can be considered both as an argument from silence (ex silentio argument) and as a kind of argument to silence. Considered arguments can serve as an argument to silence for the proponent and/or the third party, that is, anyone who is not directly involved in the dispute. Basing on J. Locke's explanation of the characteristic feature of tacit consent, that is, the absence of the expressed consent/disagreement, the possibility of distinguishing the indirect connection between tacit consent and the argument ad ignorantiam is demonstrated, since both tacit consent and the argument ad ignorantiam in J. Locke's works rely on the absence of expressed statements on the consent or disagreement of the opponent. It is established that the ideas of the education of children described by J. Locke also correlate with silence as an argument and a manifestation of respect. Applying the classification of the types of respect proposed by S. Hudson and complemented by R. Dillon to the use of the term «respect» to the various texts of J. Locke, it is substantiated that described by him respect covered almost all kinds of this classification. (shrink)