Against Requirements of Rationality
نویسنده
چکیده
Are inferences, theoretical and practical, subject to requirements of rationality? If so, are these of the form ‘if ... ought ...’, or ‘ought ... if ...’? If the latter, how are we to understand the ‘if’? It seems that, in all cases, we get unintuitive implications if ‘ought’ connotes having reason. It is difficult to formulate such requirements, and obscure what they explain. There might also be a requirement forbidding selfcontradiction (not that one’s current beliefs can be consciously contradictory). It is a good question whether self-contradiction constitutes, or evidences, irrationality; but talk of a rational requirement causes trouble.
منابع مشابه
In Defense of Right Reason
Rational requirements have a special status in the theory of rationality. This is obvious in one sense: they supply the content of that theory. But I want to suggest that rational requirements have another special status—as objects of the theory of rationality. In slogan form, my thesis is: Fixed Point Thesis: Mistakes about the requirements of rationality are mistakes of rationality. The key c...
متن کاملWide or Narrow Scope?
This paper is a response to ‘Why Be Rational?’ by Niko Kolodny. Kolodny argues that we have no reason to satisfy the requirements of rationality. His argument assumes that these requirements have a logically narrow scope. To see what the question of scope turns on, this comment provides a semantics for ‘requirement’. It shows that requirements of rationality have a wide scope, at least under on...
متن کاملDoes Rationality Give Us Reasons?
Most of us take it for granted that we ought to be rational—to have the bundle of dispositions and abilities that constitute the faculty of rationality. Most of us also take it for granted that we ought to satisfy various individual requirements of rationality: we ought not to believe it is Monday and also believe it is not Monday; we ought to intend to catch the 12.50, if we intend to get to a...
متن کاملJurisprudence and Rationality
There are different concepts of rationality: specific rationality, normative rationality and instrumental rationality whose limitation covers the holistic rationality and represents the fate of rationality in the West. Thus following Hume reason became the slave of feelings and lost its authority for choosing the goal. In Islamic culture reason with its undeniable background in Shariah enjoy...
متن کاملHow to be a Cognitivist about Practical Reason
Cognitivism about practical reason is the view that intentions involve beliefs, and that the rational requirements on intentions can be explained in terms of the rational requirements on the beliefs that figure in intentions. In particular, cognitivists about practical reason have sought to provide cognitive explanations of two basic requirements of practical rationality: a consistency requirem...
متن کامل