Topics Rationality

Question I have read in more than one place that "rationality is normative". I'm not too sure about what this means. I guess "normative" is whatever is related to what one ought to do or think. Does the first sentence just mean that one is rational when one thinks as one ought to? Should I also say that cooking is normative, since one ought to cook some ways and not the other? Where can I read more about this? The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no article on "rationality", nor on "normativity".

Accepted:
June 12, 2007

Comments

It's hard to be sure what "rationality is normative" means, but I think I know what someone who would write that would mean. (That is: what they meant, whatever it is their words meant.)

The word "rationality" is an abstract noun, formed from the adjective, "rational". So we ought really look at that adjective. So we say things like, "It is rational to do X", or "Doing X is (or would be) rational", and the like. To say that these are "normative" statements is to contrast them with merely "descriptive" statements: They are normative in the sense that they say, in some sense, what one ought to do. Now exactly how claims about rationality are related to claims about what one ought to do---that's the really hard question.