改造自然世界的道德合理性追问

在现代人的视阚中.改造自然界的实践活动由于能够满足人类生存的需要,因而天然具有道德合理性.而恰恰在这种道德合理性背后却蕴涵着生物还原主义倾向和人对自然世界进行掠夺的逻辑张力.现代性社会的大量生产、大量消费和大量浪费的经济运行模式建立在这一道德合理性基础上.走出现代性道德理念的这种悖论性困境,需要改变评价这种道德合理性的认知向度,从人与自然共在的人性存在中确证改造自然界的道德合理性.只有合乎人与自然世界共在之人性的实践活动才具有道德合理性.     

Describing rationality

Philosophical Studies - This critical study of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning (i) raises some questions about the various requirements of rationality Broome formulates, pointing...     

Visions of rationality

The classical view that equates rationality with adherence to the laws of probability theory and logic has driven much research on inference. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have begun to espouse a view of rationality that takes account of organisms' adaptive goals, natural environments, and cognitive constraints. We argue that inference is carried out using boundedly rational heuristics, that is, heuristics that allow organisms to reach their goals under conditions of limited time, information, and computational capacity. These heuristics are ecologically rational in that they exploit aspects of both the physical and social environment in order to make adaptive inferences. We review recent work exploring this multifaceted conception of rationality.     

Entitlement and rationality

This paper takes the form of a critical discussion of Crispin Wright’s notion of entitlement of cognitive project. I examine various strategies for defending the claim that entitlement can make acceptance of a proposition epistemically rational, including one which appeals to epistemic consequentialism. Ultimately, I argue, none of these strategies is successful, but the attempt to isolate points of disagreement with Wright issues in some positive proposals as to how an epistemic consequentialist should characterize epistemic rationality.     

Ambiguity and rationality

Recently, several theories of decision making and probability judgment have been proposed that take into account ambiguity (Einhorn and Hogarth, 1985; Gardenfors and Sahlin, 1982). However, none of these theories explains exactly what the psychological causes of ambiguity are or addresses the issue of whether ambiguity effects are rational. In this paper, we define ambiguity as the subjective experience of missing information relevant to a prediction. We show how this definition can explain why ambiguity affects decisions in the ways it does. We argue that there are a variety of rational reasons ambiguity affects probability judgments and choices in the ways it does. However, we argue that the ambiguity effect does not cast doubt on the claim that utility theory is a standard of rational choice. Rather, we suggest that the effect of ambiguity on decisions highlights the fact that utility theory, like any normative model of decision making only prescribes the optimal decision, given what one knows.     

The rationality of reasonableness

Rationality and reasonableness are often sharply distinguished from one another and are even held to be in conflict. On this construal, rationality consists in means-end calculation of the most efficient means to one's ends (which are usually taken to be self-interested), while reasonableness consists in equitableness whereby one respects the rights of other persons as well as oneself. To deal with this conflict, it is noted that both rationality and reasonableness are based on reason, which is analyzed as the power of attaining truth, and especially necessary truth. It is then shown that, by the rationality involved in reason, the moral principle of reasonableness, the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), has a stringently rational justification in that to deny or violate it is to incur self-contradiction. Objections are considered bearing on relevance and motivation. It is concluded that, where reasonableness and egoistic rationality conflict, the former is rationally superior.     

Rational approaches to rationality

The Seventh International Colloquium on Cognitive Science was held at Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, 9–12 May 2001. The conference was organised by the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI), and the Dept of Logic and Philosophy of Science of the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.