The Value of Rationality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts

Rationality is a central concept for epistemology, ethics, and the study of practical reason. But what sort of concept is it? It is argued here that—contrary to objections that have recently been raised—rationality is a normative concept. In general, normative concepts cannot be explained in terms of the concepts expressed by ‘reasons’ or ‘ought’. Instead, normative concepts are best understood in terms of values. Thus, for a mental state or a process of reasoning to be rational is for it to be in a certain way good. Specifically, rationality is a virtue, while irrationality is a vice. What rationality requires of you at a time is whatever is necessary for your thinking at that time to be as rational as possible; this makes ‘rationally required’ equivalent to a kind of ‘ought’. Moreover, rationality is an “internalist” normative concept: what it is rational for you to think at a time depends purely on what is in your mind at that time. Nonetheless, rationality has an external goal—namely, getting things right in your thinking, or thinking correctly. The connection between rationality and correctness is probabilistic: if your thinking is irrational, that is bad news about your thinking’s degree of correctness; and the more irrational your thinking is, the worse the news is about your thinking’s degree of correctness. This account of the concept of rationality indicates how we should set about giving a substantive theory of what it is for beliefs and choices to be rational.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Language ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Linguistic Intuitions

This chapter introduces the book’s central themes. Arguments are offered to support the assumption that there is a single concept of ‘rationality’, which applies univocally to mental states (like beliefs and intentions) and processes of reasoning (like choices and belief revisions), and plays a central role in epistemology, ethics, and the study of practical reason. It will be widely believed that ‘rationality’ is a normative concept: to think rationally is in a sense to think properly, or as one should think. The goal of the book is to defend this belief, and to explain how ‘rationality’ differs from other normative concepts. Although normative language is not the main topic, reflections on language will be methodologically important, to ensure that we are not misled by our linguistic intuitions.

Evaluation Turned on Itself

2021 ◽  
pp. 207-232
Author(s):  
Tristram McPherson ◽  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The Way

This chapter clarifies and addresses a deep challenge to the conceptual ethics of normativity. The challenge arises from the fact that we need to use some of our own normative concepts in order to evaluate our normative concepts. This might seem objectionably circular, akin to trying to verify the accuracy of a ruler by checking it against itself. We dub this the vindicatory circularity challenge. If the challenge cannot be met, it would suggest that all normative inquiry (not just the conceptual ethics of normativity) rests on worryingly arbitrary foundations. We defend a way of answering the challenge that adapts anti-skeptical resources from epistemology. Along the way, we reject several alternative replies to the challenge. These include dismissing the challenge because it cannot be formulated with our concepts, answering it by appeal to a distinctive normative concept, and answers that appeal to certain metaphysical or metasemantic resources.

scholarly journals Conceptual Ethics and the Methodology of Normative Inquiry

2020 ◽  
pp. 274-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristram McPherson ◽  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Normative Authority ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Certain Answers

This chapter explores two central questions in the conceptual ethics of normative inquiry. The first is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around folk normative concepts (like KNOWLEDGE or IMMORAL) or around theoretical normative concepts (like ADEQUATE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION or PRO TANTO PRACTICAL REASON). The second is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around concepts whose normative authority is especially accessible to us (such as OUGHT ALL THINGS CONSIDERED), or around concepts whose extension is especially accessible to us (such as BETRAYAL). The chapter aims to make vivid and plausible a range of possible answers to these questions, and important forms of argument that can be used to favor certain answers over others.

Normativity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Darwall
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Normative Claim ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Implicit Normativity ◽  
Normative Aspect

Something is said by philosophers to have ‘normativity’ when it entails that some action, attitude or mental state of some other kind is justified, an action one ought to do or a state one ought to be in. The philosophical area most distinctively concerned with normativity, almost by definition, is ethics. Arguably, every ethical concept or category involves normativity of some kind. One area of lively debate within ethics concerns the precise kind of normativity that is possessed by different ethical concepts: moral wrongness, virtue, well-being and so on. For example, if an action is wrong, does that entail that there is reason not to do it or just that there is reason to take a certain attitude (blame) towards those who do act in that way? A second way in which ethics is concerned with normativity is in investigating how an ethical proposition’s normative claim might be vindicated and considering whether it actually is vindicated. For example, if an action is morally wrong only if there is reason not to do it, can we then satisfactorily establish that any actions actually are wrong? Yet a third kind of engagement with normativity concerns the very sources of normativity itself. An attempt to vindicate or debunk the implicit normativity of some specific ethical claim will ultimately face the question of what could support claims to normativity in general. Here we find a fertile debate between Humeans, who seek to ground practical normativity in instrumental rationality, and Kantians, who argue that practical reason necessarily includes formal constraints that extend beyond means/end coherence. Philosophical discussion of normativity is by no means restricted to ethics, however. Epistemology has an irreducibly normative aspect, in so far as it is concerned with norms for belief. And the idea that meaning is implicitly normative has sparked some of the most exciting discussions in recent philosophy of language.

The normativity of democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Frega
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Function ◽  
Norm Compliance ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Normative Content

The aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the normative grammar of the concept of democracy by distinguishing two levels at which a political concept may play a normative function, and proceeds by analysing the concept of democracy at these two levels. It distinguishes in particular between normativity as ‘norm-compliance’ and normativity as ‘paradigmatic’ and contends that the concept of democracy has a normative content that extends over both levels. A model of democracy consistent with this approach is then outlined based on a sociological account of democratic patterns of interaction. The structure of the paper is as follows. In sections one and two, I distinguish two meanings of normativity and introduce the concept of ‘paradigm normativity'. In section three, I provide examples of rival ‘paradigm normative' concepts. In section four, I provide an account of democracy as a ‘paradigm normative' concept and in sections five and six, I present its two most important theoretical features.

Some Metaphilosophical Issues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Eklund
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Quantifier Variance ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Conceptual Engineering ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Applied Philosophy

This chapter discusses three metaphilosophical issues. First, the themes that have been the focus of the discussion relate to the trend of considering conceptual engineering, or conceptual ethics: how can we improve on the concepts we currently have? In fact, consideration of thin normative concepts presents distinctive theoretical questions: what do or can we mean when we ask whether some possible thin normative concept is better than another? Second, much contemporary metaethics focuses on accounting for our actual normative terms and concepts and is a kind of applied philosophy of language: but what is the broader philosophical upshot of such discussions? Third, the book’s main themes parallel the discussion of quantifier variance in metaontology. The similarities between these parallels are explored.

scholarly journals Resisting Reductive Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-117
Author(s):  
N. G. Laskowski
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Reductive Realism

Ethicists struggle to take reductive views seriously. Influential proponents of reductive views themselves admit as much. Ethicists also have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures. Understanding why ethicists resist reductive views and why ethicists have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures shores up new evidence for various theses about the distinctiveness of our use of normative concepts. This chapter builds on previous work to make a cumulative case for the view that what it is to use a normative concept is to use an unanalyzable natural-cognitive concept that is related to noncognitive elements of our psychology.

The Unity of Normativity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
In Virtue Of

What is normativity? It is argued here that normativity is best understood as a property of certain concepts: normative thoughts are those involving these normative concepts; normative statements are statements that express normative thoughts; and normative facts are the facts (if such there be) that make such normative thoughts true. Many philosophers propose that there is a single basic normative concept—perhaps the concept of a reason for an action or attitude—in terms of which all other normative concepts can be defined. It is argued here that this proposal faces grave difficulties. According to a better proposal, what these normative concepts have in common is that they have a distinctive sort of conceptual role—a reasoning-guiding conceptual role. This proposal is illustrated by a number of examples: different normative concepts differ from each other in virtue of their having different conceptual roles of this reasoning-guiding kind.

scholarly journals Authoritatively Normative Concepts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristram McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Authority ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Constitutive Norms ◽  
Clear Statement ◽  
Arbitrary Selection

This chapter offers an analysis of the authoritatively normative concept PRACTICAL OUGHT that appeals to the constitutive norms for the activity of non-arbitrary selection. It argues that this analysis permits an attractive and substantive explanation of what the distinctive normative authority of this concept amounts to, while also explaining why a clear statement of what such authority amounts to has been so elusive in the recent literature. The account given is contrasted with more familiar constitutivist theories, and briefly shows how it answers “schmagency”-style objections to constitutivist explanations of normativity. Finally, the chapter explains how the account offered here can help realists, error theorist, and fictionalists address central challenges to their views.

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