In his SLAP for this week, Michael, asks a very interesting question. One of the problems we found with Radical Constructivism was it's in-principle irrefutability, which looks like a strength but is actually the opposite, for if like a conspiracy theory nothing can ever in principle constitute counter-evidence, then neither can anything count as evidence for it. Michael wonders whether rationality, as Siegel defends it, doesn't suffer the same flaw, since the defense is reflexive, showing that the skeptic presupposes rationality in the very asking.
Suppose I claim you need a hammer to make a house, and you challenge my claim. Exotic materials and tools (nail guns, screws...) could give your objection some traction, making the humble hammer less central to the process, but because of the physics of our world and our shared goal of an architectural structure to live in, you would really be proposing just to hammer by other means. Thus that you can't seem to succeed in your criticism of my claim is simply an artifact of the circumstances we find ourselves in, which factually necessitate hammers (or at least hammering with things we don't call hammers). It is not the result of a sophistic dodge on my part to make my position unassailable in principle.
Like hammering, reasoning and knowing are so basic to our shared project of living in the world and in human communities that challenges to them tend unwittingly to presuppose them. This is in part why ancient Skeptics came to abandon altogether the search for knowledge, or even its refutation, instead seeking a happy life in the suspension of judgment. They couldn't show that knowledge was unattainable (which would have constituted a knowledge claim), so they tried instead to pursue a different kind of goal altogether.
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I asked the question in class but didn't receive much of a response. If the two home builders came to the conclusion they needn't argue about hammering and instead put the work towards something else entirely, what does Rationality put it's work towards? Teaching the youth about the inevitability of "hammering" and how best to do it? Becoming the best "hammerers" they can be?
I dunno. Can we think of anything rationality might be useful for?
I think the claim is that rationality puts its work toward truth.
From a practical standpoint, rationality defines itself through the actualization of a capable person’s potential. Deliberation, reflection, self-determination, and examination, are attributes that contribute to a person that acts reasonably. Reason helps us to understand our actions consequentially, and sequentially – reason also helps us to reflect about our actions as individuals in a societal setting. Humans have a natural tendency to desire or strive for reason (practical and theoretical). Perhaps it has something to do with actualizing our potential by degree; our end goal might be conceptual, and may also act as a compass of sorts. Aristotle refers to this tendency as telos; reason is the “efficient determinant” or motivation (compulsion) that helps humans achieve what we desire. And, sound reason, or deliberation, means that we employ sound ethical principles in all phases of our process.
Our capacity for reason seems to me a self-evident truth. We might claim that even those who are unreasonable, (e.g., persons who adhere to dogma as truth, those whose convictions are left unchallenged, etc.) are actualizing a potential to understand reason(s) – though unsound and unfamiliar (in nature).
Did the skeptics interpret the world subjectively and intuitively, e.g., ‘I am affected by a feeling of being tired today’, without making any knowledge claims about the world. This seems problematic for ethics; e.g., whatever makes me happy is morally permissible. (Was there a concept of morality?) If a person caused harm in general, was this intuitively understood as something immoral, and something that harms the individual perpetuating the initial harm? And, how might we establish an agreed upon moral behavior without making judgments? E.g., It is wrong to cause harm. Or - A happy life is the best kind of life.
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