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Rationality as an Absolute Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Roy A. Sorensen
Roy A. Sorensen
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

My thesis is that ‘rational’ is an absolute concept like ‘flat’ and ‘clean’. Absolute concepts are best defined as absences. In the case of flatness, the absence of bumps, curves, and irregularities. In the case of cleanliness, the absence of dirt. Rationality, then, is the absence of irrationalities such as bias, circularity, dogmatism, and inconsistency.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 66 , Issue 258 , October 1991 , pp. 473 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991

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References

1 Proponents of this ‘classical picture of rationality’ are listed in Sarkar's, H. ‘A Theory of Group Rationality’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 13 (1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 ‘Default Reasoning: Jumping to Conclusions and Knowing when to Think Twice’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65/1 (01 1984) 37–58.Google Scholar

3 The philosophical fertility of absolute concepts was first emphasized in the second chapter of Unger's, PeterIgnorance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).Google Scholar For refinements, see Lewis's, David ‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’ in his Philosophical Papers vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar and Unger's, Philosophical Relativity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4 The greater clarity of ‘irrational’ is noted in Black's, Max ‘Ambiguities of Rationality’ in Naturalism and Rationality, Garver, Newton and Hare, Peter (eds) (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1986), 31.Google Scholar Bernard Gert argues that ‘Irrationality is a more basic normative concept than rationality’ in Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 20.Google Scholar

5 Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Harvard University Press, 1990), 7.Google Scholar

6 Nicholas Rescher characterizes rationality as the intelligent pursuit of ends in Rationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).Google Scholar

7 Alasdair MacIntyre argues for pluralism in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).Google Scholar

8 In Choice and Consequence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

9 This version appears on pages 96–97 of Rothman's, MiltonThe Laws of Physics (New York: Basic Books, 1963).Google Scholar

10 The Science in Science Fiction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 65.Google Scholar