On the status of universal rationality

Liana A. Tukhvat­uli­na
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

On the sta­tus of uni­ver­sal ratio­nal­i­ty

Abstract. The author con­sid­ers inter­dis­ci­pli­nary ten­den­cies in the social sci­ences in the con­text of the idea of uni­ver­sal ratio­nal­i­ty. She dis­cuss­es the con­cept of mod­er­ate uni­fi­ca­tion­ism in the phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence by Philip Kitch­er. The author pro­vides some argu­ments against the con­cept of uni­ver­sal ra-tion­al­i­ty by Ralph Wedg­wood. She argues that the key dis­ad­van­tage of Wedgwood’s project is that it pays too much atten­tion to one’s men­tal states. How­ev­er, the author claims that the men­tal states reduc­tion is an unnec­es­sary step for the recon­struc­tion of one’s ratio­nal­i­ty. Mean­while, she sug­gests a way to con­sid­er ratio­nal­i­ty with­in the jux-tapo­si­tion of its nor­ma­tive, indi­vid­ual and insti­tu­tion­al aspects.

Key­words: ratio­nal­i­ty, mod­er­ate uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, Wedg­wood, Kitch­er, uni­ver­sal­ism, objec­tivism

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20192336

Acknowl­edge­ments
This research is sup­port­ed by the Russ­ian Foun­da­tion of Basic Re-search, research project no. 18–311-00282 “Ratio­nal­i­ty in the Humani-ties: The­o­ret­i­cal Con­tra­dic­tions and Dis­ci­pli­nary Prac­tices”.

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