Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Reason and Rationality

  • Practical and Evidential Aspects of Rationality: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

    I need to get clearer about the rationality of beliefs versus the rationality of actions. One question is whether it is ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence. And if it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act…

  • ‘Practical’ and Religious Attitudes Toward Philosophy

    Philosophy is unserious to the onesidedly worldly and 'practical' because it bakes no bread. To which the best response is: "Man does not live by bread alone."  To the onesidedly religious, philosophy is unserious because it begets pride and does not lead unto salvation. "Not worth an hour's trouble," said Pascal with Descartes in his sights.…

  • Camus and Shestov

    Albert Camus is a frustrated rationalist. He values reason and wants  the world to be rationally penetrable, but he finds that it is not. What he calls the Absurd consists in the disproportion between the human need for understanding and the world's unintelligibility, "the unreasonable silence of the world." (Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage 1955, p.…

  • Avoid Misology

    Reason, though weak,  is a god-like power in us, and at the same time a power that makes us normatively human — which is why calls for the crucifixion of the intellect should give pause if not cause a shudder of disgust.

  • Time To Be Unreasonable

    It is not reasonable to be reasonable with everyone.  Some need to be met with the hard fist of unreason.  The reasonable know that reason's sphere of application is not limitless.

  • Reason, Passion, and Persuasion

    1. The cogency of an argument is neither augmented nor diminished by the passion of the arguer.  Cogency and passion are logically independent.  The same goes for the truth or falsity of an assertion.  The raising of the voice cannot transform a false claim into a true one, nor make a true one truer. 2.  What's more,…

  • The Infirmity of Reason

    It is indicative of the infirmity of reason that one cannot prove the infirmity of reason.  A faculty so weak that it must remain in doubt about its own strength and weakness.

  • A Farewell to the Philosophy of Religion? Why not a Farewell to Philosophy?

    Steven Nemes  informs me that Keith Parsons is giving up teaching and writing in the philosophy of religion.  His reasons are stated in his post Goodbye to All That.  The following appears to be his chief reason: I have to confess that I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud and I can…

  • Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers

    "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars."  Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which  he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654.  Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49): These words represent Pascal's change…

  • Fruitful Tensions

    Mike Rand e-mails, I was interested to see your recent correspondence and post on the radical vs the conservative. I couldn't help but notice that there is a potential parallel between this and a common interest of yours [ours?], the productive tension between Aristotle and Plato. A radical may be liable to point out that…

  • Sacrificium Intellectus

    No thank you.  A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship.  Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis…

  • The Infirmity of Reason Versus the Certitude of Faith

    Reason is infirm in that it cannot establish anything definitively. It cannot even prove that doubting is the way to truth, "that it is certain that we ought to be in doubt." (Pyrrho entry, Bayle's Dictionary, tr. Popkin, p. 205) But, pace Pierre Bayle, the merely subjective certitude of faith is no solution either! Recoiling…

  • Lycan, Rationality, and Apportioning Belief to Evidence

    Is William G. Lycan rational? I would say so. And yet, by his own admission, he does not apportion his (materialist) belief to the evidence. This is an interesting illustration of what I have suggested (with no particular originality) on various occasions, namely, that it is rational in some cases for agents like us to believe…