Rationality, Normativity and Transparency

Rationality, Normativity and Transparency Forthcoming in Mind

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny’s defense of it—particularly his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be n...

Epistemic norms Engel Routledge 140509

5936 words 36634 signs 1. Epistemic normativity 2. Norms of rationality 3. Epistemic norms and concepts 4. The Ur-Norm of truth 5. Epistemic norms and epistemic values 1. Epistemic normativity When we evaluate our beliefs and our reasonings as justified or unjustified, good or bad, rational or irrational, we make, in a broad sense of the term, normative judgements about them. It is often said t...

Discussion Note Two Accounts of the Normativity of Rationality by Jonathan Way

Naturalising Normativity

In this paper I discuss the problem of providing an account of the normative force of theories of rationality. The theories considered are theories of rational inference, rational belief and rational decision— logic, probability theory and decision theory, respectively. I provide a naturalistic account of the normativity of these theories that is not viciously circular. The account offered does...

Instrumental Desires , Instrumental Rationality

The requirements of instrumental rationality are often thought to be normative conditions on choice or intention, but this is a mistake. Instrumental rationality is best understood as a requirement of coherence on an agent's non-instrumental desires and means-end beliefs. Since only a subset of an agent's means-end beliefs concern possible actions, the connection with intention is thus more obl...