Abstract
Now we stand at the starting line for inquiry into just what kind of a “thing” is rationality, if it is a “thing,” whether there can be an optimal such thing, and how to determine whether one such thing can be the best one. Is it reasoning or the product of reason? Is it a contrivance, with a millennial history of thousands of varieties? Or is it a natural development among human groups, abetted by human witnesses of its arising and potential for species or general use, with deliberate design and deployment? This chapter now sets forth the notion of best theory of rationality, with a systematic way to determine which way leads to a theory with the best explanatory priority over others.
She had arguments … at the tip of her tongue; and, in short, reasoned me out of my reason.
—Defoe, Moll Flanders
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Notes
- 1.
The broader aim would be to search, among the combined set ϕ of theories Tj, (j = 1, 2, …), for some theory TME which best explains the others in the set. This approach would be assuming that the senses of rationalityX are finite and tractable.
- 2.
To put this condition in other terms: In practice, a TR generally fulfills this condition by withstanding any argument that it requires yet another (“embedded”) TR in its explanation of rationality*. That is, Condition A is fulfilled if the theory requires no other TR to explain rationality*.
- 3.
It implicitly already has the criteria of rationality; the processor taking the QC-sifted input plays no primary role in determining rationality*. The essential part (the part that determines rationality*) of the rationality* faculty is the set of QC criteria for assessing which input, once processed, would lead to a rational* decision or justification. It is the inerrancy in the QC criteria that is critical in determining what is rational*, not that of the processor, which has no criteria of rationality* as it is merely a data-assembly mill.
- 4.
Although I have not seen such a proposal elsewhere, I will consider it later (in the context of considering theory TR10 in Miller, 2023).
- 5.
Yet, these emendations of the faculty as presented in TR2 have not provided how an agent determines which outputs are indeed rational* outputs, given a set of inputs. The agent can know either (a) intuitively, much as the agent knows intuitively that outputs of another faculty are gustatory or auditory; or (b) by applying a set of criteria that pinpoint the output as rational* or not. By neither of these two possibilities, though, does the agent have guarantee of the output’s rationality. By the first option, the agent automatically is perceiving rationality*, much as the visual or auditory faculty’s perceptual data is immediate and automatic. There is then no place for QC of that data (or perhaps there is in a very limited way); the text has already contended this approach does not work. But the second method of assessing the data via applied criteria begs the question of what those criteria inerrantly sift out as errant thus not rational*.
- 6.
Hung and Lane diverge further from my essay’s approach of seeing usefulness in further exploring the rationality project: “Given the premise that belief-forming processes need not be contextualized, perhaps it would be better to abandon the project of investigating rationality, in general, and replace it by approaches distinctive to individual disciplines” (7).
- 7.
The project must also be distinguished from the practices of the sciences themselves, which, as far as TR8 is concerned, does not have to be considered as culturally relative, and in fact can even be considered as “universal” or even embodying “universal truths without affecting the cultural basis of rationality* according to TR8.”
- 8.
Section 3.3.3. of Chap. 3 describes a rationality* sense rationality3, which uses a set of principles to guide behavior and belief formation. Thereby, TR3 and TR8 appear to hold much in common, as TR* speaks of a cultural project that involves uses of precepts to guide beliefs and behavior. Does not TR3 not include or entail TR8, or even vice versa? The difference between the two theories TR is that TR3 holds that rationality consists in these principles, whereas TR8 maintains it consists in a cultural practice, which is furthered or communicated via precepts (which could be considered principles). Pointing out this difference may seem to be a mere quibble, but I believe the difference is ontological and makes a difference in how either relates to other TR and thence a difference in the role either plays in position of EP, thus which has more explanatory power. See the Addendum (Miller, 2023) section A.1. on TR3’s candidacy for EP.
- 9.
To observe that scientific inquiry is a cultural tradition is no denial of scientific inquiry’s possible universal nature—that is, its disposition to generate truths that sustain whatever the culture into which they are introduced. One need not take a Kuhnian constructivist approach for how the sciences are practiced to concur that the practices do grow out of cultural traditions.
- 10.
This precept seems to counter Popper’s proposal, discussed above, that the source of the theory is not relevant to the theory’s validity. However, this precept does not disallow Popper’s idea. Exactly how the discoverer of the theory derived the theory may not be pertinent. But post hoc, one should be able to trace the logical connection between the experience and the explanation (rather than saying, “Oh, you know, it must simply be so”).
- 11.
There appears to be a vague contention here that if an individual I in some culture proposes an idea, that idea is a subset of that culture. That contention demands a view of culture much broader than would generally be acceptable, so that any notion a culture member concocts is a part of that culture. Thus, for example, Ted Kaczynski’s manic diatribes would be as much a part of Western culture as the U.S. Constitution or the 1789 French declaration of the rights of man. Notions of culture generally require the concept of sharing—of shared practices and beliefs. (This would not be to deny that Kaczynski’s writings, as a type of artifact as opposed to a set of shared beliefs, became a part of American pop culture when the New York Times published them in part.) By contrast, if I’s notions were to take on and become shared by a sizable amount of culture members, it would be plausible to say that these notions have now entered the culture and become a subset—at the least, of a subculture.
- 12.
This fact does not preclude a proposal for explaining in evolutionary terms how the cultural project developed in human prehistory or history. It merely means that TR8 need not evince such a proposal in defending its possible service in position of EP upon charges against it like those leveled at TR4.
- 13.
Such more complete description would require going exhaustively through all the theories and inquiring whether they could either serve in a co-priority position with TR8 or be prior to TR8. Considering these theories in a way similarly to the ones I have done in this context will, I believe, lead to the same conclusion: That they will lead to comparable problems.
- 14.
Such approach to the study of rationality* may resemble, in a superficial way, the field of science-studies, which takes the sciences to be cultural phenomena to be studied as such. A major difference, though, is that the phenomenon to be studied is rationality*, not the sciences, even though the sciences and their output play a role in the precepts of rationality*. Furthermore, the stress in the present study is upon a scientific anthropological approach. One may object, how can one use the tools of science to study something that itself assumes science? There is no question-begging here. The tools of science can be used to study the operations of science itself without paradox. The tools of the trade could as well be used to study a phenomenon (the cultural practice of rationality*) that somehow incorporates the sciences.
- 15.
However, as language is a phenomenon that arises in social contexts, one may contend that this essay’s concern with lexically originated differences is actually primarily about social constructions of the term “rationality.” However, one could say that, even given that fact, within that socially constructed thing, language, one can isolate lexically signified differences and contend that along these lines (despite the ontology of language) there are distinctions that demand unifying to make sense of what one is talking about. But then, an infinite regress can begin, so I leave the issue aside.
- 16.
I forgo for now the metaphysical question of what is an “object’—if it need be material and so on. Thus the scare quotes. Some social constructs are material, such as the construction of a community clan house. Other social constructs are immaterial, such as plans for a hunting or gathering trip tomorrow. “Objects” here then may refer to either material or immaterial items.
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Miller, L. (2024). The Ontology of Rationality. In: The Rationality Project. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39920-6_4
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