This paper is based on the assumption that critical rationalism represents a middle position between absolutist and relativistic positions because it rejects all attempts of ultimate justification as well as basic relativistic claims. Even though the critical-rationalist problem-solving-approach based on the method of trial and error leads to an acknowledgment of the plurality of theories and moral standards, it must not be confused with relativism. The relativistic claims of the incommensurability of cultures and the equality of all views of (...) the world and all moral systems can be challenged by two basic critical‐rationalist arguments:(1) Popper’s critique of ‚the myth of the framework’; (2) the criticalrationalist conception of different levels of rationality (Albert, Agassi and Jarvie). In ethics moral standards and norms can be interpreted from a critical‐rationalist perspective as undogmatic suggestions for the regulation of social behaviour and as attempts to answer different problems, resulting from social life. This allows for the comparison of different moral standards, norms, practices and institutions with reference to the underlying problem situation and the search for culturally overlapping moral standards. (shrink)

Au Congrès de philosophie scientifique de 1935 comme lors du lancement de l’Encyclopédie internationale de la science unifiée, Federigo Enriques était reconnu par les néo-positivistes comme un de leurs pères fondateurs, sans qu’il fût tout à fait d’accord. À Paris, Enriques représentait le groupe des philosophes des sciences italiens et son nom était lié au journal Scientia, ouvert aux contributions des positivistes logiques. Ces derniers, désireux de constituer un front commun pour lutter contre les philosophies idéalistes et métaphysiques alors dominantes, (...) surestimaient sans doute la force du groupe italien, comme ils sous-estimaient les critiques d’Enriques sur l’usage de la logique formelle ou sur l’importance du langage. Dès les débuts de son implication en philosophie, il avait souligné la nécessité d’une fondation psychologique des concepts scientifiques, et en 1901, il avait donné un exemple de ce type d’analyse pour les postulats de la géométrie. Il n’appréciait guère les travaux logiques de Giuseppe Peano, affirmant que son formalisme manquait de bases psychologiques. Cependant, contre les mouvements anti-rationalistes de son temps, il défendait la valeur cognitive de la science et, dans ce climat d’appréciation mutuelle, les différences passaient au second plan. (shrink)

Scholars from various philosophical schools of thought, including cultural relativism, hermeneutics, and postmodernism, have recently critiqued rationalism in light of new developments in the cognitive sciences. Each of these new developments set into motion new inquiries in each school philosophical school of thought. Now, in Facets of Rationality, a distinguished team of scholars examines these new inquiries and bring rationality back into the mainstream of the social sciences. The unique feature of this book lies in its multidisciplinary exploration of (...) rational concerns and in discovering the integral meaning of rationality as viewed by the perspectives of different disciplines. As such, it will of considerable interest to those involved with the study and teaching of philosophy, theoretical psychology, cognitive science, political theory, and linguistics. (shrink)

This collection of original essays examines the controversy over and attacks on rationality in the methodologies of the humanities and the physical and social sciences. These essays represent the thinking of a wide variety of philosophers, psychologists, historians, classicists, and economists about the role of rationality in thought and action. Reflecting the differing perspectives of their authors' disciplines, as well as the centrality of rationality to those disciplines, they are important additions to a debate that has been going on for (...) some twenty years. Beginning with an introductory essay in which K.D. Irani covers the various ways in which rationality can be approached, the body of the book is divided into five sections dealing with various aspects of the issue. Respectively, they are concerned with rationality as it relates to ethical and social thought and action; general scientific thought and the particular disciplines of economics, history, and law; the analytic and hermenutic approaches to communications and learning; and the contrasting classical traditions of ancient Greece and China. In the final section, two differing theories concerning the nature of rationality itself are presented. A list of suggested further readings completes the volume. (shrink)

If nothing else, the twelve papers assembled in this volume should lay to rest the idea that the interesting debates about the nature of science are still being conducted by "internalists" vs. "externalists,"" rationalists" vs. "arationalists, n or even "normative epistemologists" vs. "empirical sociologists of knowledge. " Although these distinctions continue to haunt much of the theoretical discussion in philosophy and sociology of science, our authors have managed to elude their strictures by finally getting beyond the post-positivist preoccupation of defending (...) a certain division of labor among the science studies disciplines. But this is hardly to claim that our historians, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have brought about an "end of ideology," or even an "era of good feelings," to their debates. Rather, they have drawn new lines of battle which center more squarely than ever on practical matters of evaluating and selecting methods for studying science. To get a vivid sense of the new terrain that was staked out at the Yearbook conference, let us start by meditating on a picture. The front cover of a recent collection of sociological studies edited by one of us (Woolgar 1988) bears a stylized picture of a series of lined up open books presented in a typical perspective fashion. The global shape comes close to a trapezium, and is composed of smaller trapeziums gradually decreasing in size and piled upon each other so as to suggest a line receding in depth. The perspective is stylized too. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 561-562 [Access article in PDF] Gianni Paganini, Miguel Benítez, and James Dybikowski, editors. Scepticisme, Clandestinité et Libre Pensée. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Pp. 382. Cloth, €60.00. This book consists of papers from two Tables rondes held in Dublin in 1999 on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment. The contributors are: Paganini, Benítez, Dybikowski, Alan Charles Kors, Winfried (...) Schröder, José R. Maia Neto, Adam Sutcliffe, Justin Champion, Antony McKenna, Lorenzo Bianchi, Christine Berkvens-Stevelinck, Pierre Lurbe, Stephen David Snobelen, Nigel Aston, and Stuart Brown. There is remarkably little overlap among the papers and Paganini has clearly insisted on very [End Page 561] high standards. Because of space limitations, I shall focus on several of the general themes which run through the book rather than on individual contributions.Despite the phenomenal success Richard Popkin and collaborators like the late Charles B. Schmitt, Giorgio Tonelli, and Ezequiel de Olaso have had in documenting the amazing impact of skepticism in the Renaissance and in the years up to the Enlightenment, this volume demonstrates that skepticism, that many-faceted force, continued throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. After Bayle, and the application of his special forms of skepticism to theological topics—forms which were often employed, contrary to Bayle's probable intentions, in defense of atheism—skepticism went "underground." A large variety of literature was circulated in manuscript form, the clandestine literature of the period. The lesson which this conference celebrates is that skepticism did not cease being a major cultural force. Thus there is, thanks to the philosophical dimension of the clandestine literature in the eighteenth century, a transition from Christian rationalism to an anti-Christian rationalism.Major figures of the Enlightenment were, of course, well-acquainted with skepticism, e.g., Berkeley, Voltaire, Hume, Crousaz, Condillac, Reid, and Kant. Not surprisingly, the major topics discussed in these papers center around skepticism, fideism and atheism, proofs for the existence of God, and the status of the "preambles" to the faith. These all receive careful attention. The tension between the arguments for Christian Pyrrhonism versus anti-Christian rationalism runs through many of these papers. And of course Bayle's points of view on both sides of the Christian debate appear in much of the clandestine literature. The matter of the immortality of the soul is carefully discussed. What is the status of this doctrine? Is it a question of Church dogma or is it another belief to be discarded in the light of reason?The connection perceived to hold between atheism and political legitimacy are explored in several papers. In the seventeenth century, Locke would exclude atheists from the body politic, in part because they were unable to truthfully swear an oath. Atheists were perceived as a danger for many eighteenth-century figures and the political need to suppress atheism was widely understood and accepted by those in the various religious establishments. Bayle's two-century-old attempt to break the putative logical tie between morality and religion failed in his own day, and despite the efforts of the authors of clandestine philosophical literature, the intimate link Bayle tried to break seems to be stronger than ever in much of the world today. It is interesting that the United States is virtually the only industrial and democratic society in which atheists are virtually precluded from being political candidates in federal, and probably most local, elections. Among other things, the papers in this volume help one to understand just how difficult breaking free from theological constraints in the interest of political freedom has proved to be. Harry McFarland Bracken Arizona State University, Tempe... (shrink)

Given the beginnings of the United States of America, its sympathy with the French revolution and its rationalist attitude towards the institutions of society, one would have expected that it would have been one of the first nations to adopt the new metric system that was introduced in France in 1800. But the history of the attempts to do so is decidedly mixed. American Congress authorized the use of the metric system in 1866. In 1959, American measurements were defined in (...) relation to the metric system. In 1968, the government ordered a study which was published three years later under the title “A Metric America: A Decision Whose Time Has Come”. The year 1975 then saw the Metric Conversion Act, leading to the establishment of the US Metric Board. Amended in 1988, it resulted in the Metric Program, an organization founded to support the various federal agencies, which are required since 1991 to file an annual report on their efforts to change to the metric system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics of Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) DAVID BAUMGARDT* SALOMON MAIMON is now generally considered the most acute mind among the earliest critics of Kant. Kant himself had praised his acumen,1 though later qualifying his regard decisively.2 Johann Gottfried Herder called * We have just learned of the death of the author. David Baumgardt, born in Germany on April 20, 1890, studied in Vienna and in Berlin and taught philosophy (...) at the University of Berlin from 1924 to 1935 as Privatdozent, Extraordinarius and Ordinarius, until he was forced by Germany's racial laws to resign, but after the end of the war the Free University of Berlin appointed him honorary professor. From 1935 to 1939 he taught at the University of Birmingham; after his arrival in the United States he first joined the staff of the Pendle Hill School and, from 1941 to 1954, he served with the Library of Congress as a consultant in the field of philosophy. In 1955-56 he was Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. After his retirement he continued to publish and at present there are five publications by him in the press. The number of books and articles written by him probably well exceeds two hundred. Just in the last months of his life he was presented with a Festschri[t (Horizons of a Philosopher), indicative of a wide range of friends, students, and fellow-scholars who wanted to express their appreciation of the man and his work. On the continent Baumgardt was perhaps best known for two books: Franz yon Baader (1927) and Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorliiufern der Modernen Ethik (1933). The former threw full light on an important but unduly neglected figure of the German romantic school of philosophy; the latter confronts Kant's rationalistic ethics with the irrationalism of a Herder, Hemsterhuis, and Jacobi. In the United States he published, among others, Bentham and the Ethics of Today (1952) and Great Western Mystics (1961), originally delivered as Matchette Lectures, but enriched, for publication, by voluminous notes containing a wealth of information on mystics, some of whom, especially Jewish ones, are familiar only to the expert. At the time of his death he was working on a book which would probably have become his opus magnum: an attempt to reconcile what he called the ethics of force with the ethics of love. Baumgardt described his own philosophic position as that of a Benthamian hedonist, asserting that only hedonism, when carried to its conclusions, would permit such a reconciliation. Systematic, ethical and religious problems underlay all his historic research; thus his loss will be felt keenly and widely. (PHILIP MERLAN) t See Kant's Gesammelte Schri[ten, ed. K6nig. Preuss. Akad. Wissenschaften, Vol. XI, Abt. II, Kant's Briefwechsel (1900), Vol. II, p. 49, letter to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789: "Nicht allein" hat "niemand yon meinen Gegnern reich und die Hauptfrage so wohl verstanden, sondern nur wenige... mochten zu dergleichen tiefen Untersuchungen so viel Scharfsinn besitzen... als Hr. Maymon." 2See ibid., p. 476, letter to Carl Leonhard Reinhold, March 28, 1794: "Was aber z. B. ein Maimon mit seiner Nachbesserung der critischen Philosophie... eigentlich wolle," habe ich "nie recht fassen k6nnen." The noticeable change in Kant's judgment of Maimon's work is hardly due to the fact that his praising remarks were addressed to a Jewish friend and the disapproving ones to a gentile disciple. The reason for this shift in his evaluation of Maimon's later writings 099] 200 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Maimon's Versuch iiber die Transzendentalphilosophie "profound" and "comprehensive.''~ Even Goethe and Schiller mentioned him with esteem in their correspondence;~ and Johann Gottlieb Fichte explicitly' warned that coming centuries would ridicule us bitterly for disregarding this "immensely great talent." It may, therefore, not be out of place if, even more than 150 years after Maimon's death, some attention is paid to his generally neglected criticism of Kant's categorical imperative. Maimon's acute critical observations on Kant's ethics may claim to be of interest even to the analysis of some basic issues of contemporary moral philosophy. In an autobiography, culturally of general interest, edited by the psychologist and esthetician Karl... (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn When over two hundred people gathered in Amsterdam in 1952 and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union, they had available to them a range of words to describe their non-religious worldview; among them atheist, ethicist, freethinker, humanist, rationalist and secularist. Why then, did those at the inaugural congress chose 'Humanism' over all the other available options?

First the rationalist tradition and then the cognitive revolution put limits on the philosophy and social sciences with regard to the analysis of emotion, of irrationality in mental events and actions, to the reduction of our representations to conceptual elements, and so on. This fact caused an increasing interest in these topics. In this paper, we intend to claim the significant relations among these three issues: emotion, selfdeception and non-conceptual content, with two aims: i) to analyse the relation between non-conceptual (...) content of emotion and the phenomenon of self-deception; and ii) to explain how self-deception canbe overcome by the conceptualization of some non-conceptual elements of emotion. (shrink)

What is actual being? The empiricist answers that only what is given to sensation is actual. The rationalist answers that the given to sensation is not actual being but the reasonable connection of the world is a genuine actuality. Kant shows his commitment to empiricism by arguing that only the given to sensation exists.Sensation as an ultimate criterion for actuality is the base of Kant’s critique of the traditional metaphysics. If sensation is proved to be problematic as a criterion for (...) actuality, Kant’s empirical critique of the traditional metaphysics is undermined. This paper will show that in criticizing Kant’s critique of the traditional metaphysics, we can not do so on the basis of an empirical distinction between dream and actuality. On the basis of Hegel’s explanation of the rational actuality,I will show further that the criterion for distinction between dream and actuality is the reasonable connection of the states of affairs. (shrink)

Both descending love of western erotic novels and eastern poetry that ascends love to heavens are considered non-acceptable. Neither eastern maximalism and mysticism, nor western extreme rationalism and pragmatism are approved. Studying the “rational” appearance standing between these two extremes is preferred. Individual-human, real love stands somewhere between the Earth and sky, erotic and divine love. Differing from the understanding of love as a pure idea (Plato, Pushkin), and as a pure psychophysiological phenomenon (“Kama Sutra”, Sigmund Freud), synthetic unity (...) of these two factors that leads to more realistic description of love is preferred in this article. (shrink)

Kant’s views on enlightenment are best known through his essay, “What is Enlightenment?” This is, however, merely the first of a series of reflections on the subject contained in the Kantian corpus. In what follows, I shall attempt to provide an overview of the Kantian conception of enlightenment. My major concern is to show that Kant had a complex and nuanced conception of enlightenment, one which is closely connected to some of his deepest philosophical commitments, and is as distinct from (...) the views of his contemporaries, including Mendelssohn’s, as his critical philosophy is from the rationalism of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. (shrink)

This essay deals with a particularly recalcitrant problem in the history of ideas, that of irrationalism. It emerged to full consciousness in mid-eighteenth century thought. Irrationalism was a logical consequence of individualism which in turn was a direct outcome of the Cartesian self-reflective subject. In time these tendencies produced the "critical" Zeitgeist and the "epoch of taste" during which Kant began thinking about such matters. Like Alfred Bäumler, I argue that irrationalism could not have arisen in ancient or medieval philosophical (...) discourse, as they both lacked a certain type of rationalism required as its conceptual antipode. Only after the Lisbon earthquake (1755), and the ensuing reason vs. passion debate acknowledging for the first time both human powers as equal contenders, did the specter of irrationalism arise and become a focus. Kant's revolution in thought produced "transcendental psychology" reconciling "pure" sensibility and "pure" reason and provided, I argue, the conceptual wherewithal to grant aesthetic feeling and irrationalism a philosophical niche. (shrink)

For the life system, the being behind physics being is a being of unequilibrium thermodynamics system with high negative entropy. The western science, the western philosophy includes the rationalism, and non-rationalism, the post modernism can't be complete to describe this metaphysics being. But the yin and yang theories is complete to describe this at the right moment and more. The yin and yang theories is the metaphysics of the life system, is the metaphysics of the being with negative (...) entropy. (shrink)

There is a lot of talk around about Globalisation and its mana-like benefits; indeed, there are many, in areas such as the spread of communication capabilities, social media, and wider distribution of goods in the free trade marketplace that in previous decades were ‘protected’ by exorbitant excise tariffs, licensing restrictions, and low turn-overs. Since Weber, Robertson, Wallerstein, Appadurai, Tambiah et al, there has been much theorizing on the inevitability of Globalisation and its neat corollaries, Free Trade, Liberalisation, Parallel Modernities, and (...) Economic Rationalism. Yet, Globalisation has both its protagonists and antagonists alike. The paper focuses on case studies from the Indian-end, impelled by the question: in what ways has Globalisation benefited and hurt India’s economy, the slow growth and periodic stagnation of its capabilities, the stability of the nation and its people? As part of the reciprocal deal on Liberalisation, Free Trade agreement has enabled myriads of TNCs with to reign in large Western capital-investment and start-up industrial bases, which have undoubtedly helped push India to becoming the third largest world economy. However, the encroachments of TNCs and their impact on agro-economics, biodiversity, the plight of farmers, the further disenfranchisement of numerically small from a share in the national weal, the uneven regional deliverance from poverty, malnutrition, the disproportionate gender-ratio, rural illiteracy among the neglected, and other fall-outs, have worried critics of India’s ‘easy ride’ on the highway of Globalisation. The arguments will be developed extensively with illustrations. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that the traditional concept of universality entails three dogmas, the validity of which have seldom been called into question. To each of these dogmas correspond to common commitments to the universal in the Western tradition. I argue that the only legitimate answer to the question ‘what is the universal?’ requires abandoning the three dogmas of universality and the entailments that follow from them. Moreover, the question ‘what is the universal?’ requires that we adopt self-reference into (...) our concept of the universal, a feature rarely allowed to be predicated of the universal in contemporary and classical Analytic philosophy yet required if any progress on the question ‘what is universality?’ may be had. If my argument is successful, philosophers have an obligation to investigate the work of G.W.F. Hegel more closely, since he is the only philosopher in the rationalist tradition to properly identify these dogmas and think a concept of the universal that avoids the pitfalls that follow from their adoption. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion propose an assortment of epistemic preferences with reference to the extent and limits of knowledge of God, ranging from moderate fideism to robust rationalism. In the past two decades, a seismic shift has occurred away from more classical strategies to movements that reflect the current Zeitgeist (e.g. postmodernism and pseudo-modernism). In my paper, I will argue for rational confidence and epistemic modesty in an attempt to find some balance between faith and reason.

For the Life system, behind the physics being, there is a metaphysics being that poses a non-equilibrium thermodynamics system which consist high negative entropy. Western science, western philosophy, including Western rationalism, and the nonrational, post-modernism can not completely explain this being. Theyin and yang theory can clearly illustrate it. The Yin and Yang is the knowledge of metaphysics being of life, is the metaphysics theory under the law of negative entropy.

The problem of cultural environment is not new, but the use of the theory on cultural environment is clearly a new approach to the consideration of familiar questions. That is the problem, is it true that the context has become such that man, as an individual, is becoming increasingly smaller, weaker, more tightly defined and restrained, in a society which is steadily developing in the direction of becoming multi-dimensional and ambiguous with its “logic of imposition”? As for the cultural environment, (...) is it true that the part in it where man has no right to choose, the part which he is compelled to adapt to, will grow bigger and bigger than the part each individual, each community can create, build, and amend? More concretely, is it true that the European rationalist and anthropological culture has become too “classical” and “secular,” now getting replaced by a “fast-food culture” or “stewing-pot culture”? Or is it only a “superficial choice” of globalization times? Is the present philosophy too weak, leaving society to the mercy of less-than-clairvoyant logics of life, in which “such environment, such man” is only one of many behavioral logics which are not too bad in modern social relation? Or has the role of philosophy itself changed - the “Flat world” philosophy now deprived of the responsibility to control, regulate, and, as necessary, determine the context, as it was in the past? Base upon reliable qualitative and quantitative datas, thepaper prover that: 1. If natural environment is the regrouping of factors outside the social-human system making conditions necessary for this system to exist and develop, then cultural environment is regrouping of factors inside the social-human system making sufficient conditions for each subsystem of this system to identify itself and progress. 2. Never in the past has the cultural environment in Vietnam been so rich and varied, so dynamic and positive, so encouraging and attractive, with so many opportunities and challenges as is now the case. The degree of richness and diversity, the dynamic and active rhythm of Vietnam’s cultural environment are now enough to foster good ideas and stimulate discovery and creation. But on the flip side, there are still many challenges andattractions, so hopefully every individual, family, and community will become vigilant before the risk of losing the way or making a mistake. (shrink)

The philosophical thought of Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1713) does not constitute two aspects of a spirit or a man that is that of the man of God and that of the man of letters. Malebranche, as a successor of Descartes in the history of European philosophy, although God is not the wise for him but He is wisdom and science Himself. For Malebrache, God is the reason of the world. God, as a substantial source, is able to create the ideas of (...) the spirit of man and motivate his body. However, there is an archetypal idea of soul which comes in front of the body. According to the mentioned metaphysical definition, God is not doubtable in soul which is related to his Word. Malebranche introduces a rationalism emerging the mathematical values to provide an accurate and justifiable idea for Godbecause the continuous search of truth within sciences and our fear of a false existence can find answers in the system of arithmetic and algebra. Therefore, Malebranche’s thought constitutes “an intellectual mystic” denoting the connection of logic and belief. (shrink)

The dispute between fideists and rationalists seems intractable since those who argue for faith alone claim that they are offended by the use of reason in religion. The advocates of reason claim that they are equally offended by the appeal to faith. This dispute may be resolved by showing that those who rely on faith may be seen as engaging in an experiment of living, so they can become part of a rational experiment without having to alter their practice; in (...) contrast, those who use reason to justify religion can be seen as addressing a spiritual need. From an evangelical point of view, it would be wrong to disparage the mathematician’s use of the mathematical proof of God’s existence. Wittgensteinian objections to natural theology can be met by showing that the use of reason in religion is distinct from the general kind of philosophical speculation to which Wittgenstein rightly objected. Those who claim that one must already have faith in order to seek understanding successfully can be answered by showing that their claim can be tested empirically only when there is a robust practice of natural theology among those who do and do not have a prior faith. There is reason for thinking religion should be subjected to a more rigorous scrutiny than used in secular matters. (shrink)

Problem of truth and reality is age old in the field of philosophy as well as in the field of science. People very often confuse between ‘Truth’ and ‘Reality’ Most people think them to be one and the same, but there are differences. Whatever exist is real, reality and existence are interchangeable words. We can say truth, which is unchangeable and reality, which exist but change. False, which is not exist at all. People have suggested various taste to decide the (...) truth falsity of our description of reality. Some suggested Pragmatic theory and some other have suggested Coherence as a test of truth. Realism is also an ontological theory and has been probably the most ancient one. According to ancient man, real is that which perceived. Latter on, due to religious impact the knower became more important then the knowing object. Barkeley developed an extreme position that the objective material world does not exist at all. Dewey has developed the position called Instrumentalism. Halt, Perry, Marvin, Pitkin are the chief advocates of this position. Philosophers such as Darke, Lovejoy, Cellars, and Santayana held a position of Critical Realism. These people hold that mind does not see the object directly as they are but only through their representatives, as regards the object of knowledge is concerned, the Neo Realist are monist while Critical Realist are dualist. Indian rationalist philosopher Dr. D.D. Bandiste introduces a new concept of reality Radical Realism. He proved that knowledge change the knower not the object. to him every new knowledge make some change or other inthe knowing person. Epistemological position of john Dewey called instrumentalism. According to him knowledge is an instrument of action and a meaningful action is always of a problem-solving type. Every knowledge is an instrument to serve some need or other, neither is any knowledge final, nor is any truth final. Not only everything in the world is changing, their mutual relations also change. Knowledge is not a goal, but only a instrument to achieve this or that goal. In my paper I haves discussed various theories regarding whether knowledge change the object known. In this contest I have discussed varieties of realism, Idealismand so on, but importantly I have also discussed a new theory Radical Realism. (shrink)

In the 1990s P.H. Hirst criticizes his influential forms of knowledge theory, suggesting a new concept of education. In this paper I explain why Hirst suggests the new concept of ‘education as initiation into practices’. Although the latter Hirst’s position had positive implications on education, it is frequently confused with theutilitarian position. In order to provide a more coherent concept of education, I compare basic features of the rationalist (R), the utilitarian (U), and the practices-based (P) approach. Then I discuss (...) the implications of this concept. The main features of R, U, and P are respectively as this: 1) A person is seen as a rational being, a being of wants and desires, and a rational practitioner who is socially constructed. 2) The nature of reason is conceived as ‘rational’,‘instrumental’, and ‘practical’. 3) The aim of education is education for theoretical rationality, education for maximum satisfaction of desires, and education for identity formation by participating in practices. 4) The contents of education are theoretical knowledge, instrumental knowledge with utility, and practical knowledge for various practices. 5) R pursues absolute transcendental values, U pursues extrinsic instrumental values, and P pursues values internal to a practice. 6) R conceives education as ‘seeing’, U as ‘doing’, and I suggest ‘listening’ model for P. Based on this conception of practices-based position, I hope we can provide better education. (shrink)

Epistemological investigation belonged to the core topics in Indian philosophical traditions, too. Right cognition had generally been regarded as one of the important means to emancipation (niḥśreyasa) since ancient times. To reach this religious goal, they keenly discussed the problems of what kinds of cognition we should accept as right or what kinds of objects a right cognition refers to. Specifically it is about the number and the nature of the means of right cognition that opinions differ from school to (...) school. The number ranges from one (perception) to six or even ten (perception, inference, comparison, testimony, implication, non-perception, equivalence, tradition, gesture, and intuition). The concept of each means of right cognition, too, varies greatly among schools. In this paper I take up the Nyāya System, a rationalistic school of Brahmanic philosophy. In Nyāya the inference is regarded as particularly important, but it never means that logical thinking dominates testimony or the authority of religious scriptures in the Nyāya System. On the contrary we find such cases as the religious authority seems to delimit the validity of inference. Some inferences are obstructed by an axiom established in the school, whereas others by a ristriction of Brahmanic tradition. In this manner they seemed to protect their whole system from followers of other Schools. By examining this topic I would like to throw a tiny light on the characteristic affinity between philosophy and religion in Indian thought. (shrink)

In recent years empiricism has come under attack. Some argue that the view is incoherent and conclude, on that basis, that some knowledge is a priori. Whatever the merits of such arguments against empiricism, they cannot be parlayed into an argument in support of the a priori unless the latter is not open to those arguments. My primary contention is that the a priori is open to the arguments offered against empiricism. Hence, they do not advance the case for the (...) a priori. I go on to offer an alternative strategy. The leading idea is that, instead of arguing against empiricism, rationalists should marshal empirical support for their position. (shrink)

In my book In Defense of Pure Reason, I offer an extended defense of the idea of a priori justification and, more specifically, of a rationalist conception of such justification: one according to which rational insight or intuition provides genuine justification for claims that need not be merely definitional or tautological in character. In the relatively brief space available to me on the present occasion, I want to present and defend, necessarily in rather broad strokes, four of the most central (...) claims that are discussed at much greater length in that book. I will say the most about the first of these theses, somewhat less about the second and third, and only a very little about the fourth. (shrink)

I first examine and reject a prominent rationalist approach to knowledge of metaphysical modality, advocated by philosophers such as Yablo and Chalmers, who rely on the notion of conceivability to explain how we can achieve such knowledge. The focus of my criticism concerns a particular requirement of these accounts, namely that the content of modally reliable conceivability intuitions, which is in the first instance a simple imaginary situation, can be extended to completeness and thus considered to be verifiable by a (...) range of possible worlds. I thus argue that the notions these philosophers employ cannot provide the criteria by which we could understand how such an operation could be understood in a purely epistemic way. This is because they rely on substantial metaphysical assumptions, for instance the assumption that all aspects of reality can in principle be represented and grasped by the human mind as a unified whole. These assumptions render their notion of conceivability inadequate to be used as an epistemic guide to possibility. Finally, I outline the broad epistemological principles that pertain to a specific Kripkean understanding of metaphysical necessity that I favor, which construes it as a kind of natural necessity. (shrink)

The linguistic theory of Chomsky has changed the long, traditional way of studying language. The nature of knowledge, which is closely tied to human knowledge in general, makes it a logical step for Chomsky to generalize his theory to the study of the relation between language and the world-in particular, the study of truth and reference. But his theory has been controversial and his proposal of "innate ideas" has been resisted by some empiricists who characterize him as rationalist. In our (...) view, these empiricists make a mistake. In the present paper we attend to his position regarding linguistics as a science of mind/brain, which we believe is an important aspect of his theory that has not been paid enough attention or understood by his opponents. In turn, this will help to clarify some of the confusions around his theory. Finally we will discuss some of the debatable issues based on the outlines we draw. (shrink)

The paper centers on philosophy's major trends and trials at the turn of the XXt h and XXIs t century, its leading idea is based on several basic assumptions which can be summarized as follows: 1) the title is a query after XXt h-century philosophy's main achievements and their usefulness in the XXIs t ; 2) speaking about philosophy's achievements, the author particularly means its critical role in condemning and de-mystifying evil, dispelling illusion and myth, and disclosing untruth; 3) the (...) answer to the titular question is based on the entire paper's main assumption that there are three main problems of XXt h-century thought which - as a heritage - will be carrying over into the XXIs t. These problems are the problem of being (Sein), the problem of reason, and the problem of humanity (man). In connection with these problems the author formulates his main thesis that the twentieth century philosophy is characterized by three features which are the following: (a) anti-metaphysical disposition, (b) anti-rationalism, and (c) anti-humanism. (shrink)

In this paper, a comparison is made between the rationalistic and phenomenological approaches to understanding the Islamic philosophy of illumination. The analysis shows that the rationalistic bias in translations of the relevant texts causes a misunderstanding of Suhrawardī’s argument and a subsequent misinterpretation of his key terms. The Islamic philosophy of illumination is especially vulnerable to rationalistic mis-translations due to the intuitional-eidetic character of its epistemology. In contrast to rationalism, the new phenomenological ontologies provide an adequate framework for reading (...) Suhrawardī. A parallel is made between Suhrawardī’s treatment of the central principle, nūr mujarrad, and Husserl’s epoché and phenomenological reduction. Without this comparison, nūr mujarrad is translated as a symbolic, metaphoric term referring to an ideal entity. However, the closeness of Husserl’s and Suhrawardiīs views on consciousness, and the phenomenological nature of evidence in Part 2 of Hikmat-al Ishrāq, prove that nūr mujarrad refers to the pure subjectivity of consciousness, which is lived reality available in presentive intuition. Consequently, the term nūr mujarrad is not metaphorical, but descriptive, i.e. direct signification referring to pure awareness as the self-effulgence of consciousness-being, an ontological principle by which all selves and things in existence are present for us. (shrink)

This research attempts to throw light on and show the fundamental similarities and differences between the African and Western ethical conceptions by examining the foundation of ethics and morality in the two systems, using the Golden rule principle in African ethics and Kant’s categorical imperative in Western ethics as tools of comparative analysis. The African indigenous ethics revolves round the “Golden Rule Principle” as the ultimate moral principle. This principle states that “Do unto others what you want them to do (...) unto you”. This principle compares favourably with Immanuel Kant’s whose main thrust is found in his “Categorical Imperative”, with the injunction for us to “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” The categorical imperative becomes for Kant, the principle of universalizability, which according to Kant, is categorical and must be equally binding on everyone. This idea of Kant, we argue, compares with the “Golden Rule Principle”. Both are rationalistic and social but the limitations of Kant which we hope to point out, make it quite insufficient as the foundation of morality. The Africans’ which is more humanistic describes morality and is better served. The main difference between the two ethical systems lies in the fact that whereas the “golden rule” starts from the self and considers the consequences on the first before others, the universalizability principle on the other hand considers the consequences on others first before self. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss the main approaches of moral epistemology in the major sects of Islamic theology; the Mu’tazilah and Shi‘ite, who formulated rationalistic ethical system between the eighth and tenth centuries, and the Ash‘arites, who developed a voluntaristic system of morality. At first the answer of Mu’tazila and Shi‘ite to the main question of moral epistemology namely the justification of moral beliefs will be discussed and compared with the intuitionism of Western ethics. Secondly the voluntarism of Ash‘arite (...) concerning the moral knowledge will be discussed and rejected. (shrink)

TGiulio Preti, born in Pavia (Italy) in 1911 and dead in Djerba (Tunisia) in 1972, represents one of the most subtle Italian thinkers of the latter half of the twentieth century. After graduating in 1933 discussing a thesis about The Husserl’s historical significance, he connected more and more to the Antonio Banfi’s lesson of critical rationalism and he elected him as his master. Starting from Banfi’s The principles of a reason theory (1927), Preti studied in depth the program of (...) historization of the Kantian transcendental both in books such as Idealism and positivism (1942), and in Praxis and empiricism (1957), in Rhetoric and logic (1968), and then in his numerous essay studies, later collected in fundamental posthumous volumes, Philosophical essays (1976, 2 vol.). Preti’s decisive problem is the following question: how is it possible to historicize human knowledge without a relativization? According to Preti, in order to answer this question, it is necessary to acknowledge the objectivity of scientific knowledge. The objective knowledge mustn’t be confused with an absolute knowledge or, least of all, with a subjective, or toutcourt relative, knowledge. Therefore it is necessary to avoid either opposite poles, but specular, in which the different epistemologicaltraditions of the last century are, on the contrary, stopped. In Preti’s opinion, the objectivity of knowledge arises from the eidetic, linguistic and operative structures, within the limits of which develops a determinate form of human scientific knowledge. In other words: every scientific knowledge, structured into a particularscientific theory and relating to a particular technological heritage, consists of a precise theoretical-practical horizon, that determines, with Husserl’s words, a specific “ontological region”, or, with Bachelard’s words, a specific “ontogenesis”. So Preti recovers the heuristic rule of the Kant’s transcendental reason. Nevertheless, unlike Kant, Preti believes the aprioristic structures of our ideas always have a conventional and historical foundation. In this way, the Kantian a priori changes into an historical and relativistic a priori. Certainly in Kant’s opinion an historical and relativistic a priori would have looked like a “round-square”, an authentic contradiction, a pure logical impossibility. According to Preti, on the contrary, this paradoxical aspect is the true distinctive feature of scientificknowledge objectivity, which has no more any eternal or absolute value, but is always built by men born to die and is always bound to determinate historical forms of civilization. Starting from these assumptions, Preti builds, in this way, a research programme on the possibility to individualize a form of “critic ontologism”, which hasn’t any more connection with the claims and the traditional metaphysical structures of the “Being qua Being”. On the contrary, Preti thinks the only “being” we can rationally talk about is the one constituted within the different cognitive ambits. Philosophy then must be able to develop a “meta-reflection” on different knowledge elaborated by single sciences. According to Preti, in fact, philosophy is the formality of human culture, it is, in other words, a form of self-reflection by the human culture about itself. Therefore philosophy has no more any privileged subject, but it must be always able to reflect, with great theoretical humility, on the different cognitive forms, in order to study languages, structures, methods, extension and limits of the human knowledge. In this way Preti’s “critic ontologism” is a kind of historical-objective transcendentalism, able to study the different configurations of the technical-scientific heritage produced by mankind during his history. (shrink)

The point of view expressed in the present research is directed towards the ideational “torsion” from rationalism to the “language-games” drawing up an analysis according to which one can notice the rationalist and post-rationalist aspects in the philosophy of communication, and the consequences of these perspectives, which could be of great interest as regards the philosophical concepts related to communication, to man or to the human community. As a matter of fact, “the torsion” is only apparent; it cannot hold (...) a dramatic change of the thinking range, from “rationalism” to “neo-positivism”, as regards the comment on Habermas’ theory of communication, as compared to Wittgenstein’s ideas about “the language-games” as central elements of human communication. Jürgen Habermas manifest a specific turn in his way of thinking, aiming at the contemporary modulation of the rationalist approach by means of inter-subjectivism orhumanism, and stressing the modulation of the logical approach, by means of “language-games” and “life-forms.”. (shrink)