The Rationalization of Rationality

Economics and Philosophy, 2020

2014

In contemporary philosophy and social science the features of rationality play a new significant role in the theory of mind, language, action, decision theory and in questions of cross cultural understanding. The approaches do not conceive of rationality as a subjective a priori principle of reasoning; they present a different attitude towards questions of conceptualizing rationality, and this is a first step towards contextualized understanding of rationality. We can only grasp what rationality means in this way. Rationality is not given but is rather a result of our conceptualizing and a matter of contextualization and this is also a question of rationalization of means for our personal and our collective goals. The reader presents an outline on contemporary orientations about the subject of understanding "rationality" along the main topics in philosophy, theory of language, and social science. Topics are radical interpretation, naturalized epistemology and normativity; intentions and the social aspects of rationality; and concepts of explanation, justification and reality.

Political Studies Review, 2018

Rationality is an enduring topic of interest across the disciplines and has become even more so, given the current crises that are unfolding in our society. The four books reviewed here, which are written by academics working in economics, political science, political theory and philosophy, provide an interdisciplinary engagement with the idea of rationality and the way it has shaped the institutional frameworks and global political economy of our time. Rational choice theory has certainly proved to be a useful analytic tool in certain contexts, and instrumental reason has been a key tenet of human progress in several periods of history, including the industrial revolution and the modernity that emerged in the nineteenth century. Given the complexity of our current challenges, however, is it time to ask whether this paradigm might be better complemented by more holistic and heterodox approaches? Hindmoor A and Taylor TY (2015) Rational Choice (Political Analysis), 2nd edn. London; N...

Philosophia, 1987

Philosophical Explorations, 2001

In our intellectual culture, we have a quite specific tradition of discussing rationality in action. This tradition goes back to Aristotle' s claim that deliberation is always about means, never about ends, it continues in Hume's famous claim that, "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions", and in Kant' s claim that, "He who wills the end wills the means". The tradition receives its most sophisticated formulation in contemporary mathematical decision-theory. The tradition is by no means unified, and I would not wish to suggest that Aristotle, Hume, and Kant share the same conception of rationality. On the contrary, there are striking differences between them. But there is a common thread, and I believe that of the classical philosophers, Hume gives the clearest statement of what I will be referring to as "the Classical Model". I will mention six assumptions that are largely constitutive of what I call "The Classical Model of Rationality". I do not wish to suggest that the model is unified in the sense that if one accepts one proposition one is committed to all the others. On the contrary, some authors accept some parts and reject others. But I do wish to claim that the model forms a coherent whole, and it is one that I find both implicitly and explicitly influential in contemporary writings. Furthermore, the model articulates a conception of rationality that I was brought up on as a stu-66

Philosophical Psychology , 2022

Ladislav Koreň: Practices of Reason: Fusing the Inferentialist and Scientific Image. New York and London, Routledge, 2021, x+256 pp, £ 120 (HB): ISBN 97803677022122

CONTEMPORARY analyses of practical ration ^^ ality generally adopt one of two accounts of how desires, reasons for action, and the explanation of action are related. The dominant view1 insists that something can be a reason for a person only if it relates in some way to his wants, desires, or pro-or con-attitudes. "It is supposed to be a neces? sary condition of something's being a reason for an agent," writes E. J. Bond, "that it be a motivator, and motivation requires wants (Hume's principle) in the broadest sense of that term. (No want, no reason)."2 According to this Humean orthodoxy,3 without a motivating desire or attitude,4 one could never have more than a conditional reason to per? form some act Q\ "there is a reason to Q if you want to Q or if Q is a means to satisfying some other desire that you have." So the desire which is believed to be necessary for a reason for action also provides the drive to get the agent moving. Reasons are then not merely justificatory, but, because they are causally effective, they are explanatory too. A variant of this account, proposed by David A. J. Richards, suggests that, while reasons are not necessarily grounded in desires, they move to action only if one has the desire to be, for instance, rational or reasonable.5 He concedes that the agent's belief might supply him with practical reasons which nevertheless do not move him to act, just because he has no related desire?a concession which must be unintelligible to the orthodox Humean, according to whom the idea of a practical reason cannot get going without a desire. But if one takes seriously the notion that principles, for instance, can furnish reasons for action, and if one recognises that a person has some principle as one of his beliefs, then one has to say that he has a reason to act as that principle indicates.6 For Richards, however, to have a principle is to take up only a theoretical position. One still needs a desire to motivate one to act on it.7 II. Belief, Action, and Commitment In this paper we reject both the orthodox and the revised Humean accounts. We aim to show that desires and attitudes are neither basic nor necessary to explanations of action as rational. We do not say, of course, that people do not have desires; rather, that the explanatory work done by even paradigmatic desires, such as sexual desire or the desire for food, can be adequately accommodated in an alternative explanatory framework, the pri? mary components of which are beliefs and the com? mitments that follow from them. We avoid the phrases 'reason for action' and 'reason for belief; instead, we shall refer (i) to action commitments and belief commitments, and (ii) to a rational action as being, under certain conditions, the thing to do, and to a rational belief as the thing to believe. This is not mere quirkiness. We hope to avoid some of the obscurities which arise from the ambiguity of "reason to..." as between external and internal reasons. A person holding certain false beliefs might be said to have a reason for holding certain other beliefs which those false beliefs entail, though just because they are false there is a reason not to hold them or their entailments. Equally, if certain propositions are true, there is a reason to hold what they entail, but someone who doesn't believe the premises has, in one sense at least, no reason to believe the conclusion. And correspondingly with action. However, using our terminology, we can say that a person is committed by his other beliefs to believing p even though, p being false, it is not the thing to believe. Similarliefs to believing/? even though, p being false, it is not the thing to believe. Similarly, someone may be committed by his belief p to doing Q, even though Q is not the thing to do; for again, p may be false. Conversely, though 255

Philosophical Papers, 2005

The paper is a critical study of Christopher Peacocke's book _The Realm of Reason_. The content of the paper is both exegetical and critical. In its latter capacity the paper is centrally concerned to correct Peacocke's understanding of Tyler Burge's version of rationalism; and to criticize Peacocke's position from this competing perspective.

Philosophia, 1989