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Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Zenji
by Thomas ClearyZen has often been portrayed as being illogical and mystifying, even aimed at the destruction of the rational intellect. These new translations of the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen--one of most original and important Zen writers--illustrate the rational side of Zen, which has been obscured through the centuries, tainting people's understanding of it. Rational Zen consists of enlightening selections from Dogen's two masterworks, "Treasury of Eyes of True Teaching" (the famed Shobogenzo, Japan's most sophisticated philosophical work) and "Universal Book of Eternal Peace," which until now has been unavailable in English. The translator also provides explanations of the inner meanings of Dogen's writings and sayings--the first commentaries of their kind of English. A compendium of authentic source materials further enhances the reader's insight into Dogen's methods, linking them to the great classical traditions of Buddhism that ultimately flowered in Zen.
Rationalism in Greek Philosophy
by George BoasOriginally published in 1961. Greek philosophers were concerned with the distinction between appearance and reality, and all the differences in their philosophic systems were ultimately predicated on their different views of this distinction. The history of Greek rationalism is, then, a study of the changing basis of Greek philosophy. George Boas provides a historical account of rationalism in classical philosophy. He focuses on four central topics: the distinction between appearance and reality, the method used to establish the distinction, the appraisal of life made by the philosophers studied, and their ethical theories.
Rationalism in Politics
by Peter J. SteinbergerArguing against emergent and even dominant tendencies of recent political thought that emphasize the so-called primacy of affect, Peter Steinberger challenges political theorists to take account of important themes in philosophy on the topic of human rationality. He engages with major proponents of post-Kantian thought, analytic and continental alike, to show how political judgment and political action, properly understood, are deeply and definitively grounded in considerations of human reason. Focusing especially on influential arguments in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of action, he seeks to rediscover and reanimate the close connection between systematic philosophical speculation on the one hand and the theory and practice of politics on the other. The result is a neo-rationalist conception of judgment and action that promises to offer a substantial and compelling account of political enterprise as it plays out in the real world of public affairs.
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays
by Michael OakeshottRationalism in Politics, first published in 1962, has established the late Michael Oakeshott as the leading conservative political theorist in modern Britain. This expanded collection of essays astutely points out the limits of "reason" in rationalist politics. Oakeshott criticizes ideological schemes to reform society according to supposedly "scientific" or rationalistic principles that ignore the wealth and variety of human experience. "Rationalism in politics," says Oakeshott, "involves a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge. " History has shown that it produces unexpected, often disastrous results. "Having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis," the Rationalist succeeds only in undermining the institutions that hold civilized society together. In this regard, rationalism in politics is "a corruption of the mind. "
Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique (Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory)
by Nathan BrownTwenty-first-century philosophy has been drawn into a false opposition between speculation and critique. Nathan Brown shows that the key to overcoming this antinomy is a re-engagement with the relation between rationalism and empiricism. If Kant’s transcendental philosophy attempted to displace the opposing priorities of those orientations, any speculative critique of Kant will have to re-open and consider anew the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience. Rationalist Empiricism shows that the capacity of reason and experience to extend and yet delimit each other has always been at the core of philosophy and science. Coordinating their discrepant powers, Brown argues, is what enables speculation to move forward in concert with critique.Sweeping across ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy, as well as political theory, science, and art, Brown engages with such major thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Bachelard, Althusser, Badiou, and Meillassoux. He also shows how the concepts he develops illuminate recent projects in the science of measurement and experimental digital photography. With conceptual originality and argumentative precision, Rationalist Empiricism reconfigures the history and the future of philosophy, politics, and aesthetics.
Rationality Through Reasoning
by John BroomeRationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking.Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thoughtIncludes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in usGives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thoughtContains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else.Offers a new answer to the 'motivation question' of how a normative belief motivates an action.
Rationality and Cognition
by Nenad MiscevicCognitive science has posed some radical challenges to philosophy in recent years, particularly in the study of the cognitive activities and capacities of individuals. Many philosophers have taken up the challenge, and one result has been the emergence of a radical new wave of relativism, one that assaults the credibility of rationalist views. In this book Nenad Mis c evic defends naturalistic rationalism against these recent relativist attacks.The book begins with an excellent introduction to cognitive science, and goes on to create a searching defence of human rationality and of a traditional role for truth in epistemology. Mis c evic presents a critical scrutiny of the relativism championed by Stephen Stich and Paul Churchland and their followers, showing that it not only exaggerates the subversive impact of science, but relies on its links with naturalism for much of its crediblity. His careful dissection of relativist arguments establishes the main outlines of a positive rationalistic picture that is both original and convincing.
Rationality and Explanation in Economics (Routledge Frontiers Of Political Economy Ser.)
by Maurice LagueuxEconomical questions indisputably occupy a central place in everyday life. In order to clarify these questions, people generally turn to those who are familiar with economics. In answering such legitimate questions, economists propose explanations which rest on a few principles among which the rationality principle is by far the most fundamental. This principle assumes that people are rational, but what is meant by this has to be specified. Rationality and Explanation in Economics claims that only a minimal kind of rationality is required to ‘animate’ economic explanations. However, such a conception of rationality faces serious objections: it is closely associated with harshly criticised methodological individualism and it is not easily disentangled from sheer irrationality. The book answers these objections and shows that the economists’ way of mobilising the concepts of maximization or of consistency for defining rationality raises more serious problems. Since the latter have encouraged various attempts to downgrade or even to dispense with the very notion of rationality, the book is largely devoted to countering arguments associated with these attempts and to show why postulating that agents are rational is still the only efficient way to explain economic phenomena as such. The author also proposes original views about the role of rationality, the meaning of methodological individualism, the relevance of the selection argument and the relation between ‘rational’ explanations of economics and explanations in natural sciences.
Rationality and Logic
by Robert HannaRobert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals and that rational animals are essentially logical animals.
Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory #Vol. 13)
by Diane JeskeThis book provides answers to both normative and metaethical questions in a way that shows the interconnection of both types of questions, and also shows how a complete theory of reasons can be developed by moving back and forth between the two types of questions. It offers an account of the nature of intimate relationships and of the nature of the reasons that intimacy provides, and then uses that account to defend a traditional intuitionist metaethics. The book thus combines attention to the details of the lived moral life – the context in which many of our most pressing moral questions arise, how we deliberate and make moral decisions, the complexities that plague our attempts to know what we ought to do – with theoretical rigor in offering an account of the nature of reasons, how we come to have moral knowledge, and how we can adjudicate between competing positions.
Rationality and Relativism
by Steven Lukes Martin HollisAre there absolute truths that can be gradually approached over time through rational processes? Or are all modes and systems of thought equally valid if viewed from within their own internally consistent frames of reference? Are there universal forms of reasoning and understanding that enable us to distinguish between rational beliefs and those that are demonstrably false, or is everything relative? These central questions are addressed and debated by the distinguished contributors to this lively book. Some of them -- Hollis, Lukes, Robin Horton, and Ernest Gellner -- discuss new directions in their thinking since their earlier articles appeared in 1970 in the seminal volume Rationality (edited by Bryan Wilson). They are now joined in the debate by Ian Hacking, W. Newton-Smith, Charles Taylor, Jon Elster, Dan Sperber, and, in the jointly authored lead article, by Barry Barnes and David Bloor. Emerging from the debate are a variety of supportable interpretations and conclusions rather than a single, distinct "truth. " The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.
Rationality and Ritual: Participation and Exclusion in Nuclear Decision-making (The Earthscan Science in Society Series #Vol. 3)
by Brian WynneIn Rationality and Ritual, internationally renowned expert Brian Wynne offers a profound analysis of science and technology policymaking. By focusing on an episode of major importance in Britain's nuclear history – the Windscale Inquiry, a public hearing about the future of fuel reprocessing – he offers a powerful critique of such judicial procedures and the underlying assumptions of the rationalist approach. This second edition makes available again this classic and still very relevant work. Debates about nuclear power have come to the fore once again. Yet we still do not have adequate ways to make decisions or frame policy deliberation on these big issues, involving true public debate, rather than ritualistic processes in which the rules and scope of the debate are presumed and imposed by those in authority. The perspectives in this book are as significant and original as they were when it was written. The new edition contains a substantial introduction by the author reflecting on changes (and lack of) in the intervening years and introducing new themes, relevant to today's world of big science and technology, that can be drawn out of the original text. A new foreword by Gordon MacKerron, an expert on energy and nuclear policy, sets this seminal work in the context of contemporary nuclear and related big technology debates.
Rationality and Time Bias (Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy)
by Abelard PodgorskiWe often care not only about what happens to us, but when it happens to us. We prefer that good experiences happen sooner, rather than later, and that our suffering lies in our past, rather than our future. Common sense suggests that some ways of caring about time are rational, and others are not, but it is surprisingly challenging to provide justifying explanations for these tendencies. This Element is an opinionated, non-technical guided tour through the main philosophical issues about the relevance of the temporal location of our experiences to our desires and our choices, and the major arguments for and against different kinds of so-called time bias.
Rationality and the Study of Religion (Acta Jutlandica Ser. #72.1)
by Jeppe Sinding Jensen & Luther H. MartinDoes rationality, the intellectual bedrock of all science, apply to the study of religion?Religion, arguably the most subjective area of human behaviour, has particular challenges associated with its study. Attracting crowd-healers, conjurers, the pious and the prophetic alongside comparativists and sceptics, it excites opinions and generalizations whilst seldom explicitly staking out the territory for the discussions in which it partakes. Increasingly, scholars argue that religious study needs to define and critique its own field, and to distinguish itself from theology and other non-objective disciplines. Yet how can rational techniques be applied to beliefs and states of mind regarded by some as beyond the scope of human reason? Can these be made empirically testable, or comparable and replicable within academic communities? Can science explicate religion without reducing it to mere superstition, or redefine its truth in some empirical but meaningful way? Featuring contributions from leading international experts including Donald Wiebe, Roger Trigg and Michael Pye, Rationality and the Study of Religion gets under the surface of the religious studies discipline to expose the ideologies beneath. Reopening debate in a neglected yet philosophically significant field, it questions the role of rationality in religious anthropology, natural history and anti-scientific theologies, with implications not only for supposedly objective disciplines but for our deepest attitudes to personal experience. 'Interesting and important. Religion has long been associated with irrationality, both by its defenders and its critics, and the topic of rationality has been unjustly neglected The book certainly deserves to be widely circulated.'Greg Alles, Western Maryland College
Rationality as Virtue: Towards a Theological Philosophy (Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology)
by Lydia SchumacherFor much of the modern period, theologians and philosophers of religion have struggled with the problem of proving that it is rational to believe in God. Drawing on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, this book lays the foundation for an innovative effort to overturn the longstanding problem of proving faith's rationality, and to establish instead that rationality requires to be explained by appeals to faith. To this end, Schumacher advances the constructive argument that rationality is not only an epistemological question concerning the soundness of human thoughts, which she defines in terms of ’intellectual virtue’. Ultimately, it is an ethical question whether knowledge is used in ways that promote an individual's own flourishing and that of others. That is to say, rationality in its paradigmatic form is a matter of moral virtue, which should nonetheless entail intellectual virtue. This conclusion sets the stage for Schumacher's argument in a companion book, Theological Philosophy, which explains how Christian faith provides an exceptionally robust rationale for rationality, so construed, and is intrinsically rational in that sense.
Rationality in Action
by John R. SearleThe study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false.
Rationality in Context: Unstable Virtues in an Uncertain World (Routledge Studies in Epistemology)
by Steven BlandThis book uses the psychological literature on rationality to weigh in on the recent debate between virtue epistemologists and epistemic situationists. It argues that both sides have misconstrued the literature and that an interactionist framework is needed to square epistemic theory with empirical facts about reasoning and inference. The explosion of empirical literature on human rationality has led to seismic shifts across a multitude of academic disciplines. This book considers its implications for epistemology. In particular, it critically evaluates the treatment of the rationality literature within the recent controversy between virtue epistemologists, who attempt to ground knowledge in stable epistemic virtues, and epistemic situationists, who claim that such a project is doomed by empirical evidence of widespread irrationality. It links this foundational controversy to two of the most important debates in psychology: the Rationality Wars and the person-situation debate. The book argues that both virtue theorists and epistemic situationists have misunderstood the implications of these debates, leading them to focus exclusively on personal dispositions and situational factors as two independent sources of epistemic success, failure, and improvement. A more accurate reading of the empirical literature implies that interactions between epistemic agents and their social, informational, and institutional environments are the fundamental drivers of both rational and irrational behaviour. An interactionist framework motivated by this insight conceives of epistemic virtues and vices as both responsive to and responsible for the environments in which they’re manifested and cultivated. The central aim of this book is to present and defend this novel type of virtue epistemology. Rationality in Context will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology.
Rationality in Economics
by Vernon L. SmithThe principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium states implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. In personal, social, and economic exchange, as studied in two-person games, cooperation exceeds the prediction of traditional game theory. This book relates these two findings to field studies and applications and integrates them with the main themes of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the thoughts of F. A. Hayek: through emergent socio-economic institutions and cultural norms, people achieve ends that are unintended and poorly understood. In cultural changes, the role of constructivism, or reason, is to provide variation, and the role of ecological processes is to select the norms and institutions that serve the fitness needs of societies.
Rationality, Democracy, and Justice
by Claudio López-Guerra Julia MaskivkerThis volume advances the research agenda of one of the most remarkable political thinkers of our time: Jon Elster. With an impressive list of contributors, it features studies in five topics in political and social theory: rationality and collective action, political and social norms, democracy and constitution making, transitional justice, and the explanation of social behavior. Additionally, this volume includes chapters on the development of Elster's thinking over the past decades. Like Elster's own writings, the essays in this collection are problem-driven, nonideal inquiries of practical relevance. This volume closes with lucid comments by Jon Elster.
Rationality, Education and the Social Organization of Knowledege (Routledge Library Editions: Education)
by Chris JenksThe manner in which we variously come to an understanding of our world presents problems for us all, but the unified method by which we ought best to acquire such knowledge represents the particular problem of contemporary education. This important book seeks to explore some of the underlying practises and assumptions that go to produce and sustain both such sets of activities. As a result of its concerns with the social organization of knowledge at all levels, the sociology of education has become a central form of much contemporary sociological theory. All the papers in this collection are formulations of a ‘reflexive’ method of theorizing within sociology of education. This is a mode of address, deriving partly from social phenomenology, which seeks to display the grounds of the theorists’ speech as itself an essential feature of any informative dialogue. Major themes in education and in sociology are considered in this way, including the social form of rationality, the constitution of curricula, normative beliefs about Learning, the nature of literary study as liberal education and the character of scientific knowledge in the social world.
Rationality, Hermeneutics and Dialogue: Toward a Viable Postfoundationalist Account of Rationality (Ashgate New Critical Thinking In Philosophy Ser.)
by Paul HealyWhat is rationality and how are we to conceive of it today given the major theoretical changes that have profoundly altered our philosophical self-understanding? Rationality, Hermeneutics and Dialogue develops a systematic response to these questions, defending an approach to rationality that can meet the demands of a postfoundationalist and pluralistic era. Engaging critically with the work of Habermas, Gadamer and Foucault, Healy makes the case for a dialogical approach to rationality as a fitting response to postfoundationalist needs. As well as advancing existing scholarship on these theorists, Rationality, Hermeneutics and Dialogue contributes to filling a significant lacuna in the literature on rationality, as prefigured by Richard Bernstein and others. By showing how the dialogical approach can resolve two challenging contemporary problems for rationality, it demonstrates how critical engagement with the Continental tradition can facilitate the resolution of aporias arising within the Analytic tradition. It thereby sets the scene for a productive and potentially provocative debate about rationality in the twenty-first century.
Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability (Routledge Revivals)
by Howard SankeyFirst published in 1997, this volume brings together a series of essays on the philosophy of science and responds to the "crisis of rationality" which evolved from the denial of both a stable methodology and a common language for science. Howard Sankey holds that important insights about scientific methodology and rationality may be gleaned from the historical approach, from which the existence of profound conceptual change in science, as well as the absence of a neutral observation language, are important findings. Half of Sankey’s essays concentrate specifically on the thesis that alternative scientific theories are incommensurable due to semantic differences between the vocabulary in which they are expressed. Several others seek to derive a new way of thinking about scientific rationality from the historical critique of the idea of a fixed scientific method. Still others demonstrate how some seemingly relativistic themes of the historical approach may be embraced in a non-relativistic manner within the context of a pluralistic and naturalistic theory of scientific methodology and rationality.
Rationality, Representation, and Race
by Deborah K. HeikesDuringthe Enlightenment, rationality becomes not a property belonging to all humansbut something that one must achieve. This transformation has the effect ofexcluding non-whites and non-males from the domain of reason. Heikes seeks touncover the source of this exclusion, which she argues stems from the threat ofsubjectivism inherent in modern thinking. As an alternative, she considers post-Cartesian reactions of modernrepresentationalism as well as ancient Greek understandings of mind as simplyone part of a functionally diverse soul. In the end, she maintains thattreating rationality as an evolutionarily situated virtue concept allows for anunderstanding of rationality that recognizes diversity and that groundssubstantive moral concepts.
Rationality, Time, and Self
by Olley F. O. C. H. PearsonThis book provides a new argument for the tensed theory of time and emergentism about the self. This argument derives in part from theories which establish our nature as rational and emotional beings whose behavior is responsive to reasons which are facts. It is argued that there must be reasons, hence facts, that can only be captured by tensed and/or first-personal language if our behavior is to be by and large rational and appropriate. <P><P>This establishes the tensed theory of time and emergentism or dualism about the self, given the physical body can plausibly be fully described non-first-personally. In the course of this discussion the book also clarifies and defends a notion of fact and responds to McTaggart’s paradox and Wittgenstein’s private language argument.
Rationality, Virtue, and Liberation
by Stephen PetroThis book explores the overlooked but vital theoretical relationships between R. M. Hare, Alan Gewirth, and Jürgen Habermas. The author claims their accounts of value, while failing to address classic virtue-theoretical critiques, bear the seeds of a resolution to the ultimate question "What is most valuable?" These dialectical approaches, as claimed, justify a reinterpretation of value and value judgment according to the Carnapian conception of an empirical-linguistic framework or grammar. Through a further synthesis with the work of Philippa Foot and Thomas Magnell, the author shows that "value" would be literally meaningless without four fundamental phenomena which constitute such a framework: Logical Judgment, Conceptual Synthesis, Conceptual Abstraction, and Freedom. As part of the 'grammar of goodness,' the excellence of these phenomena, in a highly concrete way, constitute the essence of the greatest good, as this book explains.