it is common to praise the beauty of theories, the elegance of proofs, and the pleasing simplicity of explanations. We may admire, for example, the beauty of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the simplicity of Darwin’s idea of natural selection, and the elegance of a geometrical proof of Pythagoras’s theorem. Aesthetic judgments such as these have much currency among scientists, and they are employed in the search for knowledge more broadly. But while the use of aesthetic judgments in science is (...) widespread, it is not uncontroversial.1 On one side, such judgments are often inspired by the Platonic vision that beauty and truth are ultimately one. As Henri Poincaré saw it, science is the “disinterested pursuit... (shrink)

Der Band 14 des Internationalen Jahrbuchs des Deutschen Idealismus ist dem Thema der Auseinandersetzung von Kant und den Vertretern des Deutschen Idealismus mit den Rationalisten gewidmet. Beleuchtet werden in den Beiträgen die Beziehungen von Kant zu Wolff und Leibniz; von Fichte zu Spinoza und Leibniz, von Hegel zu Descartes und Spinoza, von Schelling zu Spinoza sowie von Novalis zu Spinoza. Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Bezügen bietet die Möglichkeit, Transformation und Kontinuität konkreter metaphysischer Themen der Frühen Neuzeit zu diskutieren. In vielen (...) Beiträgen wird darüber hinaus auch zum Thema gemacht, inwiefern und in welchem Sinne Kant und die deutschen Idealisten selbst eine 'rationalistische' Philosophie vertreten. Autori*innen des Bandes sind: Brady Bowman, Daniel Breazeale, Karin de Boer, Willem de Vries, Johannes Haag, Dietmar Heidemann, Thomas Hilgers, Marco Ivaldo, Anja Jauernig, Franz Knappik, Jane Kneller, Brandon C. Look, John McCumber, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Oliver Sensen, Paul Ziche. Der Band bietet Einzelstudien herausragender Wissenschaftler*innen zum Verhältnis zweier wichtiger Traditionen in der Geschichte der Philosophie. (shrink)

The three great historical philosophers most often associated with rationalism - Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz - opened up ingenious and breathtaking vistas upon the world. Yet their works are so difficult that readers often find themselves stymied. "Understanding Rationalism" offers a guide for anyone approaching these thinkers for the first time.With clear explanations, elegant examples and insightful summaries, "Understanding Rationalism" unlocks their intricate metaphysical systems, which are by turns surprising, compelling and sometimes bizarre. It also lays out their controversial stances (...) on moral, political and religious problems. The study is framed by an opening discussion of the broad themes and attitudes common to these three philosophers and a closing analysis of the legacy they left for the rest of philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter compares rationalist theories of sense perception to previously held theories of perception (especially of vision) and examines rationalist accounts of sensory qualities and sensory representation, of the role of the sense-based passions in guiding behavior, of the epistemological benefits and dangers of sense perception, and of mind–body relations. Each section begins with Descartes, the first major rationalist of the seventeenth century. The other major rationalists, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz, and also lesser known figures such as Pierre Regis, (...) Jacques Rohault, and Antoine Le Grand, were well acquainted with Descartes' work. Indeed, the first three were each deeply influenced by Descartes in their early years before developing their own philosophical systems, and the latter three were all advocates of Descartes' philosophy (perhaps with slight revision). Each of the major rationalists, while sharing some positions in common, developed a distinctive metaphysics of perception and of the mind–body relation. Earlier sections chart these differences and a final section sums up common features and touches on the continuing significance of their views. (shrink)

Rationalism, Platonism and God comprises three main papers on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It provides a significant contribution to the exploration of the common ground of the great early-modern Rationalist theories, and an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. -/- John Cottingham identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes's cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and 'contemplative', the (...) other modern and 'controlling'. He finds the same tension in Descartes's moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. -/- Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? Michael Ayers argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes's Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology - like the physics - is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. -/- Robert Merrihew Adams focuses on the Rationalists' arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of 'the priority of the perfect', i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. He finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz's for consideration. -/- These papers receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza. (shrink)

Rationalism offers an account of moral properties as a subset of the properties which serve to rationalize right actions, and these properties are fit to be the referents of our moral terms. That fitness can be exploited in constructing an externalist theory of reference determination for these terms. The resulting externalist theory draws support from standard responses to Moral Twin-Earth scenarios. The relevance of these responses to moral semantics has recently beenvigorously challenged by Dowell and by Schroeter and Schroeter. The (...) social character of meaning relations, which can explain the openness of questions about an analysis, may thereby also make Twin-Earth judgements beside the point. But the resources available to translators go beyond semantic competence and it is these resources that nonetheless make the Moral Twin-Earth responses relevant. (shrink)

According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgment hold that people generally come to have moral judgments about particular cases on the basis of gut-level, emotion-driven intuition, and do so without reliance on reasoning and hence without reliance on moral principles. In recent years the intuitionist model has been forcefully defended by Jonathan Haidt. (...) One important implication of Haidt’s model is that in giving reasons for their moral judgments people tend to confabulate – the reasons they give in attempting to explain their moral judgments are not really operative in producing those judgments. Moral reason-giving on Haidt’s view is generally a matter of post hoc confabulation. Against Haidt, we argue for a version of rationalism that we call ‘morphological rationalism.’ We label our version ‘morphological’ because according to it, the information contained in moral principles is embodied in the standing structure of a typical individual’s cognitive system, and this morphologically embodied information plays a causal role in the generation of particular moral judgments. The manner in which the principles play this role is via ‘proceduralization’ – such principles operate automatically. In contrast to Haidt’s intuitionism, then, our view does not imply that people’s moral reason-giving practices are matters of confabulation. In defense of our view, we appeal to what we call the ‘nonjarring’ character of the phenomenology of making moral judgments and of giving reasons for those judgments. (shrink)

Critical Rationalism has become an influential philosophy in many areas including a great number of scientific disciplines. Yet only few studies have been devoted to the role of the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper in the vast field of education. This volume undertakes to fill this gap. Leading scholars in the educational science and in the philosophy of education have critically written for this volume in an attempt to elaborate Popper's methodological and socio-political views and confront them with a globally (...) relevant spectrum of scientific objectives and cultural values. Among the topics discussed are moral values, education for freedom and its consequences for the student, and the critical attitude in political education. Attention is also paid to the historiography of this significant philosophical movement. Regarding pedagogical research, the empirical paradigm, the falsificatory approach to educational research, the complex relationship between educational theory and practice as well as the problem of value-neutrality in educational science are objects of critical analysis. (shrink)

I welcome many of the conclusions of May's book, but I offer a suggestion – and with it what I take to be a complementary strategy – concerning the core commitments of rationalism across the domains of moral psychology in the hopes of better illuminating why a rationalist picture of the mind can deliver us from pessimism.

One of the liveliest areas in moral psychology in recent years has been research on the extent to which conscious reasoning leads to the formation of moral judgments. The goal of this chapter is to review and briefly assess three of the leading positions today on this topic - traditional rationalism, social intuitionism, and morphological rationalism - each of which has significant implications for moral epistemology.

This chapter contains sections titled: Descartes on Innateness Two Rationalist Doctrines The Methodical Case for the Two Rationalist Doctrines.

David Miller elegantly and provocatively reformulates critical rationalism—the revolutionary approach to epistemology advocated by Karl Popper—by answering its most important critics. He argues for an approach to rationality freed from the debilitating authoritarian dependence on reasons and justification. "Miller presents a particularly useful and stimulating account of critical rationalism. His work is both interesting and controversial... of interest to anyone with concerns in epistemology or the philosophy of science." —Canadian Philosophical Reviews.

“Renascent Rationalism represents a new and provocative departure from the mostly barren currents of twentieth-century philosophy. The author, enlisting the aid of theoretical science, leads off from the tradition of Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Russell and then steps well beyond. The result is a single, integrated philosophical system resting in direct opposition to the contemporary positions of analysis, empiricism, pragmatism, existentialism, and phenomenology.There are four major effects of Helier Robinson’s acceptance of the Leibniz-Russell theory of perception as his base: (...) all the philosophic problems of perception are solved; a whole new philosophy of science develops; an entirely new theory of mind emerges; and some startling theological and ethical consequences ensue. The art of metaphysical speculation is thus revived.Renascent Rationalism offers a clear, if controversial, alternative to the dominating influence of Hume and Kant and the resulting blind alleys of much modern philosophizing.”- Publisher. (shrink)

Nowadays, there is still a widely held view that the Chinese and Western modes of thought are quite distinct from each other. In particular, the Chinese mode of thought derived from Confucianism is considered as comparatively less rational than the Western one. In this article, I first argue that although the analogical mode of argumentation, which is often claimed to be in sharp contrast with the Western mode of rationalism, has played a prominent role in Confucianism, it does not make (...) Confucianism any less rational. Then, I examine the normative and communicative features of Confucian rationalism, exploring the implications of these features for critical thinking in education. (shrink)

This book brings together thirteen articles on the most discussed thinkers in the rationalist movement: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche. These articles address the topics in metaphysics and epistemology that figure most prominently in contemporary work on these philosophers. The articles have all been produced since 1980, and their authors are among the most respected in the field.

In _Realistic Rationalism_, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, that numbers (...) are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research. (shrink)

Engineering is often said to be ‘scientific’, but the nature of knowledge in engineering is different to science. Engineering has a different ontological basis—its theories address different entities and are judged by different criteria. In this paper I use Popper’s three worlds ontological framework to propose a model of engineering theories, and provide an abstract logical view of engineering theories analogous to the deductive-nomological view of scientific theories. These models frame three key elements from definitions of engineering: requirements, designs of (...) artefacts, and theories for reasoning about how artefacts will meet requirements. In a subsequent paper I use this ontological basis to explore methodological issues in the growth of engineering knowledge from the perspective of critical rationalism. (shrink)

"Rationalism 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."Timothy Fuller is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the College at Colorado College. (shrink)

The treatment of Descartes' philosophy within this book takes it to be a specific instance of rationalism. Descartes gave the human intellect the central role in this system; thus, it is considered a variant of an intellectual rationalism.

This book is a wide-ranging examination of rationalist thought in philosophy from ancient times to the present day. Written by a superbly qualified cast of philosophers Critically analyses the concept of rationalism Focuses principally on the golden age of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Also covers ancient rationalism, nineteenth-century rationalism, and rationalist themes in recent thought Organised chronologically Various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented.

I survey the debate over rationalism and empiricism in science. This chapter contains sections titled: The New Experimental Science as a Challenge to Intuition, Geometry and Intuition, The Mathematical Tradition and Theoretical Science.

In _Realistic Rationalism_, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, that numbers (...) are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research. (shrink)

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

Excerpt from Rationalism Islam. By the Rt. Hon. Ameer ali syed, of the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council, author of The Spirit of Islam and Ethics of Islam. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In (...) rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Engineering deals with different problem situations than science, and theories in engineering are different to theories in science. So, the growth of knowledge in engineering is also different to that in science. Nonetheless, methodological issues in engineering epistemology can be explored by adapting frameworks already established in the philosophy of science. In this paper I use critical rationalism and Popper’s three worlds framework to investigate error elimination and the growth of knowledge in engineering. I discuss engineering failure arising from the (...) falsification of engineering theories, and present taxonomies of the sources of falsification and responses to falsification in engineering. From this I discuss contexts of research and design in engineering, ad hoc rescue of engineering theories, and engineering assurance. (shrink)

Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz stand out among their seventeenth-century contemporaries as the great rationalist philosophers. Each sought to construct a philosophical system in which theological and philosophical foundations serve to explain the physical, mental and moral universe. Through a careful analysis of their work, Pauline Phemister explores the rationalists seminal contribution to the development of modern philosophy. Broad terminological agreement and a shared appreciation of the role of reason in ethics do not mask the very significant disagreements that led (...) to three distinctive philosophical systems: Cartesian dualism, Spinozan monism and Leibnizian pluralism. The book explores the nature of, and offers reasons for, these differences. Phemister contends that Spinoza and Leibniz developed their systems in part through engagements with and amendment of Cartesian philosophy, and critically analyses the arguments and contributions of all three philosophers. The clarity of the authors discussion of their key ideas including their views on knowledge, universal languages, the nature of substance and substances, bodies, the relation of mind and body, freedom, and the role of distinct perception and reason in morals will make this book the ideal introduction to rationalist philosophy. (shrink)

Metaphysical rationalism, the doctrine which affirms the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR), is out of favor today. The best argument against it is that it appears to lead to necessitarianism, the claim that all truths are necessarily true. Whatever the intuitive appeal of the PSR, the intuitive appeal of the claim that things could have been otherwise is greater. This problem did not go unnoticed by the great metaphysical rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz. Spinoza’s response was to embrace necessitarianism. (...) Leibniz’s response was to argue that, despite appearances, rationalism does not lead to necessitarianism. This paper examines the debate between these two rationalists and concludes that Leibniz has persuasive grounds for his opinion. This has significant implications both for the plausibility of the PSR and for our understanding of modality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Rationalism and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction A priori Principles I: Davidson on Causation and the Mental Constitutive Principles and Classical Rationalism Classical Rationalism or Kantian Transcendentalism? The Refutation of (Transcendental) Idealism Rationalism Full‐Blown.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Emergence of Phenomenology Amid Varieties of Rationalism Phenomenology in Brief From Logic to Phenomenology A Phenomenological Theory of Knowledge Intuition of Essences Intuition of Meanings A Phenomenological Critique of Empiricism and Rationalism.

Many different serious challenges like catastrophes, conflicts, wars humanity often has to face make both historical science and philosophy of history (historiosophy) very actual branches of knowledge. It is necessary to take care of their theoretical basis thoroughly. That is why development of human rational approach to historical process must be considered as an important problem of philosophical discourse. The aim of our research is to prove the expediency of moderate rational comprehension of historic process. The research methodology can be (...) explained as critical rationalism in the meaning of tending to use our rational abilities actively. Research results: Having analyzed the theory of cognition by famous Polish thinker and artist Leon Chwistek, the author of the treatise underlines the value of the so-called “strict thinking”. Undoubtedly, the usage of the latter is really able to improve a process of scientific exploration. At the same time, we should to avoid the absolutization of our rational potential: it is obvious enough one just cannot comprehend all the facts connected with the object of our study. Actually, there is plenty of historical facts, and it is impossible to take into consideration all of them with the help of our sensory cognition and to think all of them over as well. Thereby, rationalism as a belief in our intellectual potential must the moderate and even the modest one. Conclusions. The moderate rationalistic position would help scientists to be careful while making their conclusions. Such reasonable approach presents a theoretical instrument of more or less successful and adequate comprehension of history and of its principles – the only possible way of rational studying of historical process. (shrink)

Enquiries into the possible nature and scope of innate knowledge never proceed in an empirical vaccuum. Instead, such conjectures are informed by a theory concerning probable representational form. Classical approaches to the nativism debate often assume a quasi-linguistic form of knowledge representation and deliniate a space of options accordingly. Recent connectionist theorizing posits a different kind of represenational form, and thus determines a different picture of the space of possible nativisms.

This paper concerns the normative status of coherence of desires, in the context of moral rationalism. I argue that 'desiderative coherence' is not tied to rationality, but is rather of pragmatic, instrumental, and sometimes moral value. This means that desire-based views cannot rely on coherence to support non-agent-relative accounts of moral reasons. For example, on Michael Smith's neo-rationalist view, you have 'normative reason' to do whatever your maximally coherent and fully informed self would want you to do, whether you want (...) to do it or not. For these reasons to be non-agent-relative, coherence would have to be grounded in rationality, but I argue that it is not. I analyze, and reject, various strategies for establishing a coherence-rationality connection, considering in detail a purported analogy between desires and a priori beliefs, with particular attention to the case of mathematics. (shrink)

In his New Science of Politics, Eric Voegelin offers an analysis of modernity: at its heart, it is a radicalization of Christianity—a radicalization that counts as a betrayal. Like other movements of its time, Christianity judged this world in terms of another—one wherein all of us were brothers and sisters, wherein justice mattered more than victory and mercy more than justice. But rather than endure in patience their own limitations, those whom Voegelin calls “gnostics” tried to build heaven on earth—inevitably, (...) by violence. This serves as his postmortem on the twentieth century: liberalism, communism, and fascism are all, according to Voegelin, trying to do what cannot be done—specifically, to do what Voegelin calls “immanentizing the eschaton.” Each is, in its own way, a revolt against the human condition—and so a revolt against God. -/- But these gnostics would hardly have seen themselves in this demonic light. Indeed, they often called themselves “rationalists” and saw themselves as a brave few who might lead humanity out of the madness of the past. Of course, Voegelin would hardly grant that Plato or Saint Augustine were less rational than, say, Thomas Hobbes. But he would certainly grant that the gnostics hoped to render the world “rational” by abolishing whatever aspects of the human condition were “irrational”—in the case of Hobbes, our capacity for mystical experience of God. -/- Of course, this is hardly how contemporary political scientists would explain Hobbes. In the introduction to his New Science of Politics, though, Voegelin offers an indirect explanation of this. He warns that the social sciences are prisoners of their idolatry of the natural sciences: they ignore any data that cannot be rendered in language that is entirely descriptive—insisting as they do so that this methodology is only “rational.”. (shrink)

According to the scrutability argument against physicalism, an a priori gap between the physical and conscious experience entails a lack of necessitation and the falsity of physicalism. This paper investigates the crucial premise of the scrutability argument: the inference from an a priori gap to a lack of necessitation. This premise gets its support from modal rationalism, according to which there are important, potentially constitutive, connections between a priori justification and metaphysical modality. I argue against the strong form of modal (...) rationalism that underwrites the scrutability argument and suggest a more moderate rationalist view. I offer a novel demonstrative reply to the scrutability argument, according to which demonstratives play a vital role in the generation of meaning for our representations of conscious experience. This connection between conscious experience and demonstratives, rather than a metaphysical gap generated by the truth of dualism, is the source of the epistemic gap between consciousness and the physical. (shrink)

In France there is a way of thinking about freedom that often impedes its realization. To understand this question first a fundamental contradiction of the tension between political rationalism and popular sovereignty is examined. The terms of this contradiction are presented along with the ways in which this tension manifested itself in France during the Revolution of the 19th Century. This is also shown by contrasting the French approach to producing the law-state with English liberalism which relies on a balance (...) of powers. The French case shows that there is a way, other than representative government, to think about protective rule: the establishment of a good, rational authority based on science. Key Words: democracy • France • law-state • liberalism • politics • political rationalism • popular sovereignty. (shrink)

2017 substantive revision of the original 2008 "Continental Rationalism" entry (and 2012 revision) that introduces women and non-European authors and new historiographical considerations.

In this new interpretation of Plato's Phaedo, Paul Stern considers the dialogue as an invaluable source for understanding the distinctive character of Socratic rationalism. First, he demonstrates, contrary to the charge of such thinkers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Rorty, that Socrates' rationalism does not rest on the dogmatic presumption of the rationality of nature. Second, he shows that the distinctively Socratic mode of philosophizing is formulated precisely with a view to vindicating the philosophic life in the face of these uncertainties. (...) And finally, he argues that this vindication results in a mode of inquiry that finds its ground in a clear understanding of the problematical but enduring human situation. Stern concludes that Socratic rationalism, aware as it is of the limits of reason, still provides a nondogmatic and nonarbitrary basis for human understanding. (shrink)

Thirty years after the rise of the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, formal training in philosophy remains poorly represented among medical students and their educators. In this paper, I argue that EBM’s reception in this context has resulted in a privileging of empiricism over rationalism in clinical reasoning with unintended consequences for medical practice. After a limited review of the history of medical epistemology, I argue that a solution to this problem can be found in the method of the 2nd-century Roman (...) physician Galen, who brought empiricism and rationalism together in a synthesis anticipating the scientific method. Next, I review several of the problems that have been identified as resulting from a staunch commitment to empiricism in medical practice. Finally, I conclude that greater epistemological awareness in the medical community would precipitate a Galenic shift toward a more epistemically balanced, scientific approach to clinical research. (shrink)