Rationality, Reason and the History of Thought

Philosophers over the course of the last century, including Edmund Husserl, Chaim Perelman, and Jacques Derrida, have attempted to unravel the tangled relationship between the rational and the reasonable in order to understand how the history of thought progresses. Critical political theorists, including Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau have also investigated this issue from a range of perspectives, especially as it relates to the relationship between ideational limits and their transgression and the universal and the particular. This essay compares these perspectives to locate the rational dimensions of the reasonable, and to relate that “meta-reason” to the irrational and unreasonable aspects of identity formation and the unfolding of world history.     

Freedom and Practical Reason

Practical reasons, roughly, are reasons to have our desires and goals, and to do what might secure these goals. I argue for the view that lack of freedom to do otherwise undermines the truth of judgments of practical reason. Thus, assuming that determinism expunges alternative possibilities, determinism undercuts the truth of such judgments. I propose, in addition, that if practical reason is associated with various values in a specified way, then determinism precludes such values owing to determinism's imperiling practical reason.

Liberating Ecological Reason Through Interdisciplinarity

The theory and practice of ecological reason have consistently suffered various shortcomings, versions of anthropocentrism and holism prominent among them. Even definitions of ecological reason that rely on philosophically informed policy studies and that explicitly take the functional and substantive moments of reason into account have not escaped these problems. An account of interdisciplinarity can shed light on how these intractable problems arise, since many of them fail to build interdisciplinarity as such sufficiently into the definition of ecological reason. Genuine interdisciplinarity, distinguished from both multidisciplinarity and metadisciplinarity, can thus be seen to be necessary (not sufficient) to liberate ecological reason and to illuminate its theory and practice for late moderns.     

Hume on the Distinction of Reason

This paper concerns Hume’s treatment of the distinction of reason in the Treatise, I.i.7. Many scholars have claimed that there is a tension between his account of the distinction of reason and his commitment to his so-called separability principle. I explain why Hume’s account of the distinction of reason is fully consistent with the principle, and show how other discussions, both critical of and sympathetic to Hume, fail to appreciate the radicalness of his position. I evaluate Hume’s bold position and compare it to earlier positions (Aquinas) and current positions (Donald Davidson).     

理性的定位与思想的复兴

理性实为人类思想之根本。近代理性哲学,主要是在认识论的层面探讨精神何以可能的问题。理性是一种行动指南,更是一种批判的能力。理性的定位既是人类的自我重新定位,又是思想复兴的表征和开端。     

经济活动中的道德理性

经济活动不仅是人们的物质生产活动,也是人们“理性化”的认知活动和实践活动。它既体现了人类主体对技术、工具手段的认知理性,又体现了人类主体“合理性”、“合目的性”的价值理性。而道德价值理性是一切合理有序的经济活动的价值标矢和理性基础。     

The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason

According to John Rawls's ideal of liberal public reason, comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines should play no more than an auxiliary or marginal role in the political life of constitutional democracies. David Reidy has recently claimed that since liberal public reason is incomplete, comprehensive doctrines, and non-public reasons, must play a wider role than Rawls admits. In response, I argue that Reidy's arguments do not establish that liberal public reason is incomplete. Furthermore, even if the substantive values embodied in liberal public reason were insufficient to determine certain fundamental decisions, such indeterminacy need not be eliminated by recourse to comprehensive doctrines. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Practical Reason and the Stability Standard

Practical reasoning, reasoning about what to do, is a very familiar activity. When we think about whether to cook or to go out for dinner, to buy a house or rent, or to study law or business, we are engaged in practical reasoning. If the kind of reasoning we engage in is truly a rational process, there must be some norms or standards that govern it; the process cannot be arbitrary or random. In this paper I argue that one of the standards that governs practical reasoning is the stability standard. The stability standard, I argue, is a norm that is constitutive of practical reasoning: insofar as we do not take violations of this norm to be relevant considerations, we do not count as engaged in reasoning at all. Furthermore, I argue that it is a standard we can explicitly employ in order to deliberate about our ends or desires themselves. Importantly, this standard will not require that some ends are prescribed or determined by reason alone. The stability standard, therefore, allows us to retain some of the attractive features of instrumentalism without accepting the implication that there is no rational way to evaluate ends.     

Volatile Reasons

I argue for the existence of a category of practical reasons which I call ‘Deliberation-Volatile Reasons’ or ‘DVRs’. DVRs have the distinguishing feature that their status as reasons for action is diminished when they are weighed in deliberation by the agent. I argue that DVRs are evidence of ‘deliberative blind spots’. I submit that an agent manifests a peculiar kind of practical irrationality in so far as she endeavours to find a deliberative path to what she has reason to do, when the discovery of such a path renders the destination inaccessible.     

Narrative rationality and the logic of scientific discourse

This essay argues that scientific discourse is amenable to interpretation and assessment from the perspective of the narrative paradigm and its attendant logic, narrative rationality. It also contends that this logic entails a revised conception of knowledge, one that permits the possibility of wisdom. The text analyzed is James D. Watson and Francis H. Crick's proposal of the double helix model of DNA.     

Mackie on Practical Reason

I argue that John Mackie’s treatment of practical reason is both attractive and unjustly neglected. In particular, I argue that it is importantly different from, and much more plausible than, the kind of instrumentalist approach famously articulated by Bernard Williams. This matters for the interpretation of the arguments for Mackie’s most famous thesis: moral scepticism, the claim that there are no objective values. Richard Joyce has recently defended a version or variant of moral scepticism by invoking an instrumentalist theory like Williams’. I argue that this is a serious strategic mistake.

Passion and Reason: Aristotelian Strategies in Kierkegaard's Ethics

Both Aristotle and Kierkegaard show that virtues result, in part, from training which produces distinctive patterns of salience. The frame problem in AI shows that rationality requires salience. Salience is a function of cares and desires (passions) and thus governs choice in much the way Aristotle supposes when he describes choice as deliberative desire. Since rationality requires salience it follows that rationality requires passion. Thus Kierkegaard is no more an irrationalist in ethics than is Aristotle, though he continues to be charged with irrationalism. The compatibility of an Aristotelian reading of Kierkegaard with the suspension of the ethical and general problems with aretaic ethical theories are treated briefly. The author argues that it is possible to preserve a realist ethics in the face of the tradition relativism which threatens the version of virtue ethics here attributed to Kierkegaard.     

Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality.     

Sysmex血细胞分析仪检测中血小板参数不显示的原因分析

Sysmex血细胞分析仪是医院临床检验常规仪器。用于白细胞,红细胞,血小板及其相应参数的检测。由于其在检测过程中存在血小板参数不显示的现象,本文通过分析其不显示的原因,提示临床检验工作者努力减少血小板参数不显示的现象,从而提高血小板参数的检出率及准确率。     

Belief Revision,Rational Choice and the Unity of Reason

Hans Rott has argued, most recently in his book Change, Choice and Inference, that certain formal correspondences between belief revision and rational choice have important philosophical implications, claiming that the former strongly indicate the unity of practical and theoretical reason as well as the primacy of practical reason. In this paper, I confront Rott's argument with three serious challenges. My conclusion is that, while Rott's work is indisputable as a formal achievement, the philosophical consequences he wants to draw are not forthcoming. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

发展:从“硬道理”、“第一要务”到“科学发展”

改革开放的三十年所取得的成功的经验之一,就是找到一个适合中国国情的发展观,即从“发展是硬道理”到“发展是第一要务”从而确立了科学发展观。“发展是硬道理”向我们表明,在发展过程中,“软道理”要服从“硬道理”,无论在何种情况下,我们都是坚持马克思主义历史观,把经济发展看作是社会发展的基础,同时在经济发展中兼顾其他各个方面的发展。     

Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.     

Kant and Rousseau on the Critique of Philosophical Theology: The Primacy of Practical Reason

This paper explores the Rousseauian background to Kant’s critique of metaphysics and philosophical theology. The core idea is that the rejection of metaphysics and philosophical theology is part of a turn from theoretical to practical reason influential on European philosophy of religion, a turn we associate with Kant but that is prefigured by Rousseau. Rousseau is not, however, a thinker normally associated with the notion of metaphysical criticism, nor the notion of the primacy of practical reason. The paper draws out this dimension of Rousseau’s thinking and its importance for Kantian thought. It will proceed by discussing the Kant-Rousseau connection; demonstrate the importance of practical philosophy for Kant and the critical project generally; overview Kant’s critique of metaphysics; and turn to a consideration of Rousseau, particularly from the text émile. Given the indisputable influence of Rousseau on Kant, the purpose of this paper is to explore the ways that Rousseau’s own rejection of philosophical theology might be suggestive to those interested in Kant and the way in which it throws new light on Kant’s philosophy of religion. As well as drawing out the Kant-Rousseau connection, it also, implicitly, defends the general orientation of these philosophers as one that is important, perhaps vital, to philosophy of religion.

康德哲学与企业文化

本文分析了中国当前企业文化的三种类型即官商、儒商和佛商,指出佛商流行于华南一带,是目前最有生机活力的一种企业文化,但这种生机活力是由于解构一切规范带来的,具有投机性,不具有积极建设性,对市场经济规律没有自觉意识,尤其对于赚钱的目的性不明确,背后受本能欲望的支配;康德哲学和西方基督教文化在这方面的启示是能够提供一种终极关怀,实践理性的道德自律为人的生存指明了一种理想目标。因此,当代企业文化的发展前景依赖于个人自由意志的确立和建立理性的规范,赚钱的目的应归结到完成自由人格。     

Reason,Representation, and Participation

This paper argues that the contrast between direct and representative democracy is less important than that between simple majoritarianism and deliberative i.e., public reason centred, democracy, as only the latter is sufficiently sensitive to the problem of domination. Having explored a range of arguments in favour of direct democracy it is argued that moves in this direction are only warranted when the practice of public reasoning will be enhanced. Both symbolic representation and delegate democracy are rejected in favour of substantive measures to formalise communication between voters and representatives and permit the formal contestation of political decision on the ground that these will provide stronger defences against domination within the political system.