What is the difference between rationality and reason

Each of the ten chapters discusses the relation of reason to one area of inquiry, including: science, knowledge, woman, politics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, language, logic, and metaphysics. They guide the reader through some of the more relevant positions and recent literature on the topic in question, ultimately arguing for some particular understanding of reason and rationality or a related concept. All in all, I think this book is a stimulating and comprehensive introduction to questions of reason and rationality from within particular philosophical subfields.

Most of the essays could provide advanced undergraduate or graduate students instructive introductions to the most prominent and current ideas on these issues. Stathis Psillos "Reason and Science" explores the problem of induction. Distinguishing between what he calls premise-circularity "an argument such that its conclusion is among its premises" 42 and rule-circularity "[in which] the argument itself is an instance, or involves essentially an application, of the rule of inference whose reliability is asserted in the conclusion" 43 , Psillos argues that only premise-circularity and not rule-circularity is viciously circular and that an inferential justification of induction is an instance of the latter.

Further, he claims we have reason to rely on induction and other basic inferential rules we accept because we value them -- and "we value them because they are. Psillos expands on the importance of shared values by claiming that we need to appeal to values and virtues that scientists share and want their theories to have, in order to offer a rational critique of method and theory-change in science cf. In "Reason and Knowledge" [4] , Pascal Engel does a fine job of laying out the conceptual territory of contemporary epistemology.

He introduces us to internalist and externalist conceptions of knowledge and reasons for belief, moving on to "no-reason" views that "try to dispense with any independent account of justification and of reasons" altogether, [5] through accounts that appeal to safety, landing ultimately at basing relations.

Engel then submits that "the internalist requirements on reasons are well motivated, and that an externalist theory of knowledge has to take them into account anyway" After a helpful discussion of internal reasons and entitlement , he proposes a version of epistemic compatibilism, which "combines externalist elements -- since it allows a definition of knowledge as ungettierised safe belief, and does not require access -- with internalist elements -- since beliefs have to be sensitive to reasons and to epistemic norms" I found this chapter both highly engaging and easy to wade through and would recommend it for use in introductory epistemology courses.

Lorraine Code "Reason and Woman" presents an important and less widely-discussed approach to the subject,in which she critiques Enlightenment approaches to reason and rationality and their emphasis on features like detachment, autonomy, universality, and purity.

Code give us an overview of her work and that of a few related feminist and post-colonial philosophers. Code claims that, from the Enlightenment concept of reason down to its contemporary Anglo-American heirs, "questions about who the knowing subject is or was are traditionally absent and deemed inconsequential" Thus, as I understand her, we need to look to the particularity of epistemic agents and their relations to others and the world around them, in order to guard against or at least make ourselves aware of the potentially hypocritical ways in which agents have been excluded by the very notions of reason operating in the "mainstream".

It is not entirely clear to me what this "radically innovative conceptual apparatus" which should "infiltrate the social order where it can expand to undermine the intransigent hierarchical arrangements that hold it in place" 85 is supposed to look like. My understanding, however, is that it involves a suspicion regarding overgeneralizations and potentially exclusive terms and policies, adopts an interdisciplinary approach, and places an emphasis on epistemic diversity, ideally replacing or at least supplementing the " epistemological monoculture " of Western Anglo-American philosophy cf.

Further, it is not clear what the solution is supposed to be. To reject Enlightenment models of reason altogether? To show that women, too, meet Enlightenment criteria? Compare Dogramaci and Schafer One might, of course, respond to these concerns by calling into question how important the concept of reason as a faculty ever was to this network of concepts.

For instance, one might argue that the important connections here are really between the other concepts in this network, and that the faculty of reason only came to play a central role in this network because of the general importance of faculty-theoretic notions during an earlier period of intellectual history.

I think there are some prima facie reasons for caution about this line of thought, but it is exactly the sort of question this story should prompt us to think about. Similarly, given such questions, our narrative also seems to give us some reason to take more seriously views of rationality on which something like the traditional notion of reason as a faculty or capacity does continue to play a central role.

For such views would seem to gain at least some prima facie plausibility from the fact that they dominated so much of the history of these concepts. Compare Kauppinen and Wedgwood For the psychological respectability, both of capacity-theoretic notions and of the notion of reason as a capacity has recently been on the rise. And, insofar as each of these conceptions of function is purely naturalistic in character, some might question where they provide us with the notion of function that is well suited to play a central role in a network of normative or evaluative concepts like the one we are considering.

So, whether the recent willingness to make use of capacity- or faculty-theoretical notions in psychology is really so friendly to a return to a more traditional conception of rationality is a complicated question. What is interesting about this story, to my mind, is its ability to raise these sorts of questions - and not its ability to provide answers to them.

If something like this is right, then the recent history of metaethics looks like a series of at best partial attempts to appreciate this point. For an overview of this debate, see Schafer a,b. As we noted above, this is certainly where Kant himself would have started. In short, viewed from the perspective of the present paper, a good deal of contemporary Kantianism can easily appear as a sort of distorted reflection of the traditional conception of rationality we have been discussing.

To be sure, none of this represents a clear objection to these views. But it does, I think, provide a context that should encourage us to carefully consider why the concepts of reason as faculty and reasoning as the activity of that faculty were for so long taken to be central to the network of concepts we have been discussing. Of course, we should not in general treat the past as authoritative for these sorts of philosophical debates, but at the same time, we should perhaps be cautious to assume that we can neatly sever some elements of this network of concepts from the others, without undermining all of the concepts in the network.

Abrir menu Brasil. Abrir menu. KS copy. Abstract The title really says it all, doesn't it? For example, when one of the great anti-rationalist philosophers of this age attacked the pretentions of rationalist moralists, he wrote the following: Actions may be laudable or blameable; but they cannot be reasonable or unreasonable: Laudable or blameable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable.

Classical Probability and the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, How Reason Almost Lost its Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Motivational Internalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, HUME, D. A Treatise of Human Nature. Norton eds. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Plunkett eds. The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. London: Routledge, Camic, P. Trukek eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Shafer-Landau ed. Russell ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, c.

Speirs eds. Wells eds. New York: Penguin Books, On What Matters. Being Realistic about Reasons. The Normativity of Rationality. The Importance of Being Rational. To fulfil that traditional expectation reason would have to be a superior faculty and have principles at its disposal which permit it to establish a meta-order.

This is however not the case. Crucially, reason does not possess such principles. Reason is to be understood as pure reason, meaning that it does not possess any principles. To put it more exactly: it is not in possession of any principles relating to content, rather it possesses formal principles, logical principles alone. Reason is fundamentally an unlimited faculty of reflection, hence its universality and sovereignty. But this depends upon the purity of reason.

Of course, there is no guarantee that any use of reason corresponds to its ideal purity. The important thing however is that reason is the only faculty for recognizing, correcting, and transcending its own actual impurity.

Through self-reflection, reason can free itself from one-sidedness. It is precisely this faculty of self-purification that we refer to when, reasonably and even emphatically, speaking of reason. If things were any different, if reason were to possess - as one, in alleged reverence, attests to it - principles relating to content which would permit it to establish a meta-order, then reason would not be reason, but merely rationality.

Advocating principles relating to content, making statements about objects and constituting fields is the hallmark of rationality. Put harshly, the well-established notion of reason fails its concept in the most fundamental way. It wrongly turns reason into hyper-rationality. It paralyzes the concept of reason. If this notion were in fact right, there would be no reason at all. This possibility is excluded by reason's purity and its being devoid of content.

The result is the impossibility of a meta-order. Rationality is characterized too much by plurality and diversity to be able to attain such a meta-order. Nor is reason, with its purity, in a position to issue a meta-order. It is precisely at this central point of traditional philosophizing that a rethink is called for. Incidentally, as with almost everything important today, Wittgenstein already pointed this out when he said that there is no "metaphilosophy," a remark to wich he added: "We might so present all that we have to say that this would appear as a leading principle.

Transversal Reason 1. Reason and Transition - Transversal Reason Let me now turn to the explanation of transversal reason. If reason does not operate from an Archimedean position, in what way does it proceed?

If it does not decree a contented order of rationality, what does it accomplish in the field of rationality? With the departure from the Archimedean conception of reason, the axis of reason rotates from verticality to horizontality. Reason becomes a faculty of transitions. It does not contemplate from a lofty viewpoint, but passes between the forms of rationality. This is a consequence of its status of purity, since it is just as pure reason that it cannot begin with the possession of contents, but must operate processually.

All reason's activities take place in transitions. These form the proprium and the central activity of reason. Reason is thus transformed from a static and principle-oriented faculty into a dynamic and intermediary faculty.

In view of this transitional character, I designate the form of reason thus outlined "transversal reason". Orientation amidst the Disorderliness Altogether, transversal reason aims at making transparent the new constitution of rationality, from paradigm pluralization through to rational disorderliness.

In this sense, the explanation of rationality given before was already an explanation in the light of transversal reason. Moreover, transversal reason contributes to the correct procedures in the situation of rational disorderliness. It forms the foundation of competences in a world of complexity. Transversal reason makes clear to us the multitude of rationalities so that we can recognize their complex conditions as the real constitution of rationality.

What's more, it shows how this situation is formed and what the reasons are for the unavoidable and unsurpassable nature of disorderliness. At the same time, it enables us to understand that this constitution is not a loss, but an enhancement of rationality. Contrary to traditional prejudice, it doesn't mean chaos, baselessness, or ruin. Transversal reason involves itself in this disorderliness.

In a confused situation only transversal reason still offers orientation. It shows how one can move steadily on wavering foundations and in the midst of disorderliness. Transversal Reason in its Critical Relation to the Structures of Rationality Transversal reason strives for as comprehensive as possible analysis and the reconstruction of the singular paradigms.

Reasonable contemplation uncovers the interparadigmatic network of loans and reasoning amidst which the respective paradigms operate, and to which they owe their arrangement and effectiveness. Whereas paradigms themselves tend to fail to recognize their complex character, reasonable reconstruction points to their deeper levels and ramifications.

This requires the advocates of a paradigm to proceed from narrow self-apprehension to consideration of the vastness and interparadigmatic constitution of the paradigm concerned. At the same time a next step, the departure from hypertrophic self-confidence, is prepared for. Corresponding to their limited self-apprehension, paradigms often have unlimited self-confidence.

They claim to be exclusive. Instead of facing up to the factual multiplicity of, and competition between paradigms, they beat a hasty retreat. Once the interparadigmatic character has been uncovered, not only the inner, but the outer blinkers become decrepit.

The singular paradigm must situate itself in the midst of a multitude of other paradigms and abandon the pretense that it is exclusive. New self-awareness knows about entanglements with other paradigms and acknowledges their plurality and legitimacy.

In all this, reason transfers the constituents of rationality - from the microlevel of paradigms to the macrolevel of holistic interpretations - from their originally limited to their reasonable form. It confers on them an awareness which knows its own complexity and vastness, and doesn't deny the existence and legitimacy of other rational constituents.

Instead, it incorporates and acknowledges them. The ultimate result of reason's activities amidst the rationalities might then be described as rational justice. Transitional Characteristics The transitions of reason are of a peculiar kind: they are transitions in the transitionless, dialectic and inconclusive in nature.

I have tried to make clear in what a far-reaching sense the diverse rational complexes, between which reason has to pass, are different in their rational typicality. The differences do not first concern singular statements. They concern the entire basic typicality the architecture or logic of the rational complexes. A comparative and pondered transition between such complexes demands a faculty which is capable of determining its conditions without, in so doing, wiping out or compromising their heterogeneity.

The main responsibility of this faculty is to operate unerringly in a mixed constitution of heterogeneity and entanglement. The transitions of reason do not form a system or approach an ultimate synthesis. Perhaps they include synthetic feats, for example, rational architectures can be supplemented, paradigms conjoined, new concepts generated, but, decisively, they are dialectical transitions without ultimate synthesis.

At least some of the rational complexes will not allow themselves to be reduced to a common denominator, ordered in a linear series, or organized in a systematic association. They remain divergent. Hence, reason's transitions do not lead to a system of the whole, but, conversely, to uncovering the impossibility of a conclusive architecture.

If reason's transitional feats were not to occur, then the field of rationality would shatter into mere fragments. If, on the other hand, one were to misunderstand the transitions synthetically, then the constitution of reason would be debased. Transversal reason's transitive activity holds the middle ground between the hell of atomization and the high water of totalization.

Inconcludability Transversal reason faces up to the phenomenon of inconcludability. It doesn't do this simply in view of the fact that the processes of rationality keep going anyway, but in view of the reasons which are responsible for it.

Reasonable contemplation uncovers an uninhibitable instability in all configurations and reasoning. About this book Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Reason and Aesthetics Susan L. Amoretti, M. Reason and Rationality.