Abstract
Rationalists assign primacy to rational thought, not to action; irrationalists dispute this. This discrepancy should be recast in view of recent modifications of rationalism.
Traditional rationalism ascribes rationality to demonstrated opinions; contemporary rationalism replaces this by some more moderate view. According to traditional rationalism the rationality of actions is borrowed from the rationality of the opinion on which they rest (given actors’ goals and circumstances). This creates an unbridgeable chasm between thought and action. It is therefore better to view rationality as a quality of action alone, and take actors’ knowledge to be a component of their circumstances, and their search for new knowledge as rational action. As the rationality of opinions, it is now viewed as a matter of tests, which is a rational activity, so that now thought and action may combine.
Scientific technology invites further reform of the theory of rationality, with the rejection of the old view of it as applied demonstrable opinion. Technological conduct often rests on institutionalized opinions, not on actors’ personal opinions: institutions determine levels of rationality and of social responsibility. Scientific technology depends more on skills than on information; it thus differs from fully articulated knowledge and is differently institutionalized.
Scientific technology is an institutional complex of articulated knowledge and skills that depends on social responsibility. The irrationalist view of the primacy of tradition or of action precludes their rational control. Rational control is best attained by democratic legislation aimed at improving the performance level of technology and its contribution to the quality of life.
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Notes
Bertrand Russell: 1935, Religion and Science, London, commenting on the observation that “science is not enough”: this is “a truism: Science does not include art, or friendship, or various other elements in life”. See for a discussion of this my Science in Flux, 1975, Kluwer, Dordrecht, p. 444.
It is hard to deny that there is much ambiguity in the argument from the incontestable fact that we always act without knowledge. It is not thereby denied that knowledge is able to improve action, but that religious practice may be beneficial though we do not know this. Not only is this argument thin because it justifies, if at all, conflicting religious practices. It can only be marshalled as long as science and faith do not conflict; for, when science tells us what is wrong with our diet we alter it. And so, at the very least religion should yield when science demands it. When at the time of the scientific revolution Robert Boyle declared in his celebrated Things Above Reason that religion is above reason he was at pain to make it clear that he was not in any way opposed to this demand; he simply did not see how reason can apply to religious matters proper, and that means that if it can be applied it should. Boyle’s rationalism is expressed in his making it amply clear that he allowed and even demanded this. For more discussion of the point see my “Can Religion Go Beyond Reason?”, republished in my Science in Flux, op. cit.
Jane Austen advocacy of rationalism while observing the constraint of rationalism by commonsense fills a literature. Notice, however, that this is not all that there is to her fiction. See, for example, Douglas Bush, “Mrs. Bennet and the Dark Gods: The Truth About Jane Austen”, in E. Rubinstein, editor: 1969, Twentieth Century Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ, pp. 111–115, first paragraph: “Her critics still talk about… eighteenth-century rationality …. Jane Austen’s essential affinity with Melville and Kafka…. ” But perhaps a more balanced view is the 1940 William Empson, “Jane Austen: A Letter”, reprinted in his Arguing, 1988, Hogarth, London, pp. 456-458. See also Roger Sales: 1994, Jane Austen and the Representation of Regency England, Routledge, London.
This is the celebrated tu quoque argument discussed at great length in W. W. Bartley’sclassical The Retreat to Commitment, 1962, Knopf, New York; second edition, LaSalle IL, Open Court, 1984. See also my “Rationality and the Tu Quoque argument”, reprinted in my Science and Society, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1981.
The locus classicus for this assertion is the conclusion of Russell’s “Mysticism and Logic”, in his Mysticism and Logic, London: Allen and Unwin, 1910, 1966.
See Jacques Hadamard: 1948, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Princeton University press, communication by Einstein.
See note 5 above.
It was Russell who viewed rationalism and irrationalism as the contemplative and the active attitudes. See my Science in Flux, op. cit., p. 389 for a clarification and my quotations of activist views, of Hegel and others, in my Towards a Rational Philosophical Anthropology, 1977, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 222 and 242.
For the irrationalist condescending admission of science, see my “Irrationalism Today”, Dialectica 36, 1982, 465–480.
J. A. and I. C. Jarvie, editors: 1987, Rationality: The Critical View, Kluwer, Dordrecht, especially the contribution by Noratta Koertge. See also John O’Neill, editor: 1973, Modes of Individualism and Collectivism, Heinemann, London and Ernest Gellner: 1993, The Psychoanalytic Movement, second ed., Fontana, London.
It was Russell who first pointed out the importance of Kant’s philosophy for the development of mathematics as it was the target of mathematical criticism throughout the nineteenth century. This was the thesis of Russell’s earliest study, his magnificent Foundations of Geometry of 1896. This book then is a predecessor to J. O. Wisdom’s study of the import of Berkeley’s critique of the calculus, his “The Analyst Controversy: Berkeley’s Influence on the Development of Mathematics”, Hermathene 54, 1939, 3–29, “The Analyst Controversy: Berkeley as a Mathematician”, Hermathene 59, 1942, 111-128, and “Berkeley’s Critique of the Infinitesimal”, BJ.P.S. 4, 1954, 22-25, as well as to Imre Lakatos’ magnificent Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, 1976, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, that despite its shortcomings, establishes the critical view of mathematics.
Hegel’s expressed view that great men are guided by great passions is his famous view of the cunning of Reason, or of History. (History and reason are identified in his philosophy of identity.) See also Robert Tucker: 1972, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Chapter 5, for an interesting view of Hegel’s psychiatric diagnosis of God.
Herbert A. Simon: 1955, “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice”, Q. J. Econ. 69, 99–118. See also his Reason in Human Affairs, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1983, and his “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science”, Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 79, 1985, 293-304.
See I. C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, “The Rationality of Magic”, reprinted in Agassi and Jarvie, op. cit.
The idea that rationality is not justification but criticism first occurs in Karl Popper: 1945, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, Chapter 24. The idea that the problem of rationality should be presented as the problem of demarcation of rationality was first presented in W. W. Bartley, III, The Retreat to Commitment, op. cit. My suggestion is that to be truly non-justificationist a satisfactory theory of rationality should primarily explain the fact that we take some disputes as more rational than other. It was first presented in my “Unity and Diversity in Science”, reprinted in my Science in Flux, op. cit.
See Karl Popper: 1972, Objective Knowledge, an Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford. See also my review of it reissued at my The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics, 1985, Open Court, LaSalle IL.
Russell’s statement that Hume was the one who opened the door to irrationalism is the conclusion of the chapter on Hume in his A History of Western Philosophy (1946) 1961, Allen & Unwin, London, p. 646. Popper’s uses this statement as the motto of the first chapter of his Objective Knowledge, op. cit. See my Anthropology, op. cit. for the view that the cause of irrationalism was the failure of the French Revolution which was largely inspired by classical rationalism.
D. C. Brown, “Knowing How and Knowing That, What”, in Oscar P. Wood and George Pritcher: 1970, Ryle, Macmillan, London, pp. 213–248.
For details see my “Technology Transfer to Poor Nations”, in Edmond Byrne and Joseph Pitt, editors, Technological Transformation: Contextual and Conceptual Implications, Philosophy and Technology 5, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1989, 277–283.
See my Technology: Philosophical and Social Aspects, 1985, Kluwer, Dordrecht; also my “The Confusion Between Science and Technology in Standard Philosophies of Science”, Technology and Culture 7, 1966, 348-366, reprinted in F. Rapp, editor: 1974, Contributions to the Philosophy of Technology, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 40-59 and in my Science in Flux, op. cit.; my “Between Science and Technology”, Phil. Sci. 47, 1980, 82-99; and my “The Uniqueness of Scientific Technology”, Methodology and Science 20, 1987, 8-24.
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Agassi, J. (1997). Thought, Action and Scientific Technology. In: De Vries, M.J., Tamir, A. (eds) Shaping Concepts of Technology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5598-4_4
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