The Phylogeny of Rationality

A rational agent has beliefs reflecting the state of its environment, and likes or dislikes Its situation. When it finds the world not entirely to Its liking, it tries to change that. We can, accordingly, evaluate a system of cognition in terms of its probable success in bringing about situations that are to the agent's liking. In doing this we are viewing practical reasoning from “the design stance.” It is argued that a considerable amount of the structure of rationality can be elicited as providing the only apporant solutions to various logical and feasibility problems that arise in the course of trying to design a rational agent that satisfies this design specification.     

The Ladder of Rationality

This paper is a review and critical discussion of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning. In particular, it engages critically with (i) Broome’s view on the independence of normative reasons and rationality, (ii) his construal of the capacity, property, and requirement senses of “rationality”, and (iii) his account of reasoning as a conscious, rule-following operation on mental contents.     

The Rationality of Happiness

Abstract

In his recent book, Happiness: personhood, community, purpose, Pedro Tabensky answers the question of what happiness is. He develops an Aristotelian account of happiness that, he claims, is everyone’s maximally rational ideal. Much of the support for this claim rests on what Tabensky calls the method of critical introspection. This method involves introspecting on the kind of beings that we are and the kind of lives we can thus lead. If properly carried out, Tabensky claims, critical introspection will reveal to any individual that the active life of virtue is in fact the maximally rational ideal. I argue that two features of Tabensky’s account undermine this claim. The first is his account of the method of critical introspection itself. The second is his account of the nature and acquisition of virtue developed in his analogy between living and painting, and in his discussion of the eudaimon community. Tabensky’s account of critical introspection carried out at the general level of persons shows only that it works negatively to identify the kind of lives we could not lead as persons. It does not function positively to reveal that the maximally rational life for any person is the active exercise of virtue. Tabensky does suggest that the method carried out by particular individuals will reveal the kind of life they should be leading. However, it follows from Tabensky’s account of the nature and acquisition of virtue, I argue, that critical introspection can only reveal the active life of virtue to be the maximally rational ideal for those individuals who have had the right sort of upbringing in the right sort of community.     

The Varieties of Instrumental Rationality

It is a mistake to think that instrumental rationality fixes a single standard for judging or describing actions. While there is a core conception of instrumental rationality, we appeal to different elaborations of that conception for different purposes. An action can be instrumentally rational in some sense(s) but not in others. As we learn more about behavior, it is possible to add useful elaborations of the core conception of instrumental rationality. In this paper, I propose a new elaboration based on Frederic Schick's work on understandings.     

The Virtue of Practical Rationality

Practical rationality is best regarded as a virtue: an excellence in the exercise of one's cognitive capacities in one's practical endeavors. The author develops this idea so as to yield a Humean conception of practical rationality. Nevertheless, one of the crucial features of the approach is not distinctively Humean and sets it apart from the most familiar neo-Humean approaches: an agent's practical rationality has to do with the presence and form of his cognitive activity, as well as with how it engages his emotional and motivational states, rather than with the impact that his actions have on his utility or with how his actions relate to his expected utility. The approach also contrasts with full-information accounts of rationality. The paper ends with a discussion of our interest in operating with the conception of practical rationality that emerges from this approach, even if it is so demanding that it would be humanly impossible to be perfectly practically rational.     

The Evolution of a Scientific Concept

A philosophically comprehended account is given of the genesis and evolution of the concept of protein. Characteristic of this development were not shifts in theory in response to new experimental data, but shifts in the range of questions that the available experimental resources were fit to cope with effectively. Apart from explanatory success with regard to its own range of questions, various other selecting factors acted on a conceptual variant, some stemming from a competing set of research questions, others from an altogether different field of inquiry, and still others from the external environment. These results are best explained on, hence support, an evolutionary model of the progress of experimental investigation, whose outlines are briefly discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

知性思维的合理性问题

本文认为,知性思维尽管是一种“呆板”的、“教条”的思维范式,可它在人的认识过程中还是有一定的合理性存在的范围和根据的。它同辩证思维一样都是人的生存方式和需要的产物,都是人的创造性思维的表现,都是人的认识过程的环节。因此,不能简单地把知性思维与形而上学的思维方式划上等号。我们既要防止知性思维的不合理越界,即用它来反对、否定,甚至取代辩证思维的意义,也要防止辩证思维的不合理越界,即用它来贬低、消解,甚至取代知性思维的作用。     

The Rationality of the Arms Racers

Abstract  Against Peter Baehr's 'The irrationality of the arms race', published in Vol. 2 No. 2 of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, this paper argues that, at least directly and in the first instance, both rationality and irrationality characterise individual beliefs and individual behaviour. Furthermore it is fundamental to the understanding of persons that, before putting anyone down as in either respect irrational, we should first reconsider whether we were right, either in attributing to them beliefs which it would have been irrational for them to hold, or in assuming that their actual purposes and priorities were indeed such as to make their behaviour—by these standards—counterproductive. Once our present questions are approached in this way it becomes apparent that we have been given no sufficient reason for concluding that there is significantly more irrationality here than elsewhere. More than enough is too much.     

规范癌痛治疗从转变观念入手

疼痛是人类一种普遍的经历.疼痛的理论和治疗历经几个世纪后得到了很大的发展.历史告诉我们疼痛的重大变革都伴随着坎坷和荆棘,一度曾经流行的"新"思想、概念和药物治疗方法都被时间证明是无效甚至是非常有害的.新研发的止痛药物以及新的无创性治疗方法深刻地影响着疼痛的治疗.本文就疼痛的概念、信仰和治疗所经历的漫长历程做一概述.     

Fumerton's Puzzle for Theories of Rationality

Richard Foley has presented a puzzle purporting to show that all attempts in trying to find a sufficient condition of rationality are doomed. The puzzle rests on two plausible assumptions. The first is a level-connecting principle: if one rationally believes that one's belief that p is irrational, then one's belief that p is irrational. The second is a claim about a structural feature shared by all promising sufficient conditions of rationality: for any such condition, it is possible that one's belief satisfies it and yet one rationally believes that it doesn’t. With the two assumptions, Foley argues that a sufficient condition of rationality is impossible. I explain how exactly the puzzle goes and I try to offer a solution. If my solution works, all theorists of rationality who accept certain level-connecting principles need to add an extra condition to their favourite rationality-making condition.     

The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences

It has been claimed that, in response to certain kinds of evidence (“incomplete” or “non‐specific” evidence), agents ought to adopt imprecise credences: doxastic states that are represented by sets of credence functions rather than single ones. In this paper I argue that, given some plausible constraints on accuracy measures, accuracy‐centered epistemologists must reject the requirement to adopt imprecise credences. I then show that even the claim that imprecise credences are permitted is problematic for accuracy‐centered epistemology. It follows that if imprecise credal states are permitted or required in the cases that their defenders appeal to, then the requirements of rationality can outstrip what would be warranted by an interest in accuracy.     

The Concept of Truth in a Finite Universe

The prospects and limitations of defining truth in a finite model in the same language whose truth one is considering are thoroughly examined. It is shown that in contradistinction to Tarskirs undefinability theorem for arithmetic, it is in a definite sense possible in this case to define truth in the very language whose truth is in question.     

The (Un)Reasonableness of Rawlsian Rationality

Abstract

In Political Liberalism John Rawls argues that “the reasonable” and “the rational” are “two distinct and independent” ideas. This differentiation is essential to the viability of Rawls’ conception of political liberalism insofar as it facilitates the recognition and subsequent voluntary acceptance of the need for a public conception of justice that requires all individuals to forsake the unfettered pursuit of their personal ambitions. However, the soundness of Rawls’ argument is premised upon a number of questionable claims that, in effect, render his proposed distinction between the reasonable and the rational more chimerical than real, and in so doing critically undermine the ability of his conception of justice to secure the type of voluntary public consensus he deems necessary to establish and sustain a just and stable liberal democracy. It is concluded that the only way one can be assured of generating the sought after conditions is to develop a regulatory framework that publicly supports and protects the principles embodied in Rawls’ conception of reasonableness, rather than relying upon the reasonableness of individuals to secure and nourish the required conditions.     

技术理性的伦理表征及其超越

技术理性作为一种观念和能力,通过其伦理表征引导人类的行为。技术理性主要表现为追求最大化力量和力量最大化的力量伦理、追求产出最大化和投入最小化的效率伦理、追求规则与目标一致性的计算伦理、追求永无止境增长的增长伦理,在给人类社会带来繁荣的同时也招致诸多负面影响和伦理风险。为了克服技术理性的负面影响,人类需要构建包括非力量伦理、责任伦理和发展伦理在内的新伦理。