Rationality as Effective Organisation of Interaction and Its Naturalist Framework

Axiomathes 21 (1):99-172 (2011)
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Abstract

The point of this paper is to provide a principled framework for a naturalistic, interactivist-constructivist model of rational capacity and a sketch of the model itself, indicating its merits. Being naturalistic, it takes its orientation from scientific understanding. In particular, it adopts the developing interactivist-constructivist understanding of the functional capacities of biological organisms as a useful naturalistic platform for constructing such higher order capacities as reason and cognition. Further, both the framework and model are marked by the finitude and fallibility that science attributes to organisms, with their radical consequences, and also by the individual and collective capacities to improve their performances that learning organisms display. Part A prepares the ground for the exposition through a critique of the dominant Western analytic tradition in rationalising science, followed by a brief exposition of the naturalist framework that will be employed to frame the construction. This results in two sets of guidelines for constructing an alternative. Part B provides the new conception of reason as a rich complex of processes of improvement against epistemic values, and argues its merits. It closes with an account of normativity and our similarly developing rational knowledge of it, including (reflexively) of reason itself

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Citations of this work

Many Meanings of ‘Heuristic’.Sheldon J. Chow - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):977-1016.
What’s the Problem with the Frame Problem?Sheldon J. Chow - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (2):309-331.
Re-modelling scientific change: complex systems frames innovative problem solving.Cliff Hooker - 2018 - Lato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 5 (1):4-12.
A New Problem-Solving Paradigm for Philosophy of Science.Cliff Hooker - 2018 - Perspectives on Science 26 (2):266-291.

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References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas Samuel Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Otto Neurath.
The sciences of the artificial.Herbert Alexander Simon - 1969 - [Cambridge,: M.I.T. Press.
Criticism and the growth of knowledge.Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (eds.) - 1970 - Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press.

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