Rationality

What do we mean by rationality? Is it just the ability to judge whether the means will achieve the ends? Is it some all-encompassing understanding of existence? Or is it something else?

Comments

Philosophers distinguish different types of rationality. The ability to judge whether means will achieve ends is generally called 'instrumental rationality'. Epistemic rationality consists in proportioning one's beliefs to the relevant evidence--although it's a nice and subtle question just what counts as 'relevant', and seems to me in fact to call for the exercise of epistemic rationality. A third type of rationality, related to the first, since it concerns actions, is practical rationality, or practical reason: the exercise of reason in forming one's intentions, or determining what one should do in a given situation. There may well be other types of rationality as well, but to my mind at least, the three types that I have identified continue to receive the most attention from philosophers. One issue that continues to be engaged concerns the relation between instrumental and practical rationality: some philosophers have claimed that practical rationality just is instrumental rationality; other philosophers have claimed that even instrumental rationality is governed by the norms of practical rationality, and so should be subsumed under it. It might also be claimed that there isn't a sharp distinction between epistemic and practical rationality: although differing in their objects (epistemic rationality concerning beliefs, practical rationality concerning intentions or actions), they are nevertheless exercises of one and the same capacity. But what is this capacity? I'm inclined to think that an agent is rational just in case s/he can determine herself on the basis of reasons. But what it is to determine oneself on the basis of reasons? What are reasons, anyways? These are deep and subtle questions, exploration of which, I think, is necessary in order to determine the nature of rationality.

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