The purpose of this post is to summarize the basis of the philosophy of rationality–that is, our conception of knowledge and values which give birth to rationality–give two popular criticisms, and refute them.
Everyday life testifies to the fact that human activity is intentional or purposive. We do x for the sake of y. Life also shows us that we regard some intentions or purposes as better than others. This is the basis of such distinctions as those between good and evil, noble and base, beautiful and ugly. But the mere fact that I judge something to be good does not make it good. Differently stated, if the goodness of a speech or deed depends upon my opinion of its merits, then I cannot appeal to the intrinsic goodness of the speech or deed in order to demonstrate that my assessment is correct, and thus better than the assessment of those who disagree with me. Speaking very generally, we can verify whether a deed has occurred, just as we can understand the content of speeches if we know the language and are familiar with the topics discussed. But there seems to be a discontinuity between our perception of the fact and our estimation of its goodness. In contemporary language, there seems to be a disjunction of facts and values.
Accepting this disjunction does not require us to deny the existence or intelligibility of values. What happens is that the concept of an intrinsic good–that is, a degree of goodness that is visible within an act or event as independent of the opinion of the person who esteems it–is replaced by the concept of the good as equivalent to the fact of estimation. Values become facts, but in so becoming they lose their value. By this, I mean that the value lies renowned not in the act or event, but in your or my estimation of the goodness of that act or event. The value becomes a matter of opinion. It is no longer, properly speaking, regarded as a part of knowledge.
From this standpoint, the traditional conception of wisdom as a unity of knowledge is substantially modified, if not rejected. Knowledge is now defined as a grasp of what is the case, or how things are; it is thus closely associated with the technical arts and sciences. Competent observers can arrive at agreement about how things are in a way that is verifiable through observation or logical argument. Otherwise stated, how things are is in principle open to public scrutiny, or still better, it can be decided by techniques that are universally applicable. But no such techniques exist by which to determine which conception of good or assignment of value is the correct one.
According to those who disagree with this basis, there are two fundamental defects in attempting to replace the traditional conception of wisdom with one that is more precise, more conceptually sophisticated, or closer to the procedures of the mathematical and natural sciences. The arguments go as follows.
In the first place, every step forward in the pursuit of logical and scientific sophistication is a step away from the understanding of wisdom as a unity of knowing what is the case and how we shall live. Despite various attempts to conceive of the unity of science, scientific progress has in fact been associated with the increasing fragmentation of human existence, and in the extreme case, with the inability to attribute any kind genuine value or significance to it. If human experience is indeed a kind of secondary result of the motion of matter in the void, then it would seem to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” to borrow a line from William Shakespeare.
The second flaw is revealed by this last observation. The defect lies in the rejection of the traditional conception of wisdom. Whereas it was intended to rectify the ostensible subjectivity of commonsense or pretheoretical doctrines of goodness, and to replace the ostensibly arbitrary conception of happiness with a precise and objective conception of knowledge, those opposed to the basis used to form rationality use what is called the technical conception of wisdom to lead instead to the triumph of subjectivity and the rejection of the objective status of values. In a purely theoretical doctrine of philosophy, which depends upon logic and scientific procedures to define rationality, it is impossible to attribute rationality to the claim that we ought to be rational. In other words, the statement “reason is good” is itself rhetorical or purely subjective. And the problem is intensified by the progressive reduction of conscious human experience to fluctuations in our neurophysiological system. This development leads to the depreciation, or indeed to the denial, of the very existence of subjectivity. From this standpoint, what is today called “postmodernism”–the celebration of difference, change, the multiplicity of viewpoints, and the absence of a unified central consciousness or personal identity as well as of any hierarchy of purposes or ends–is simply an ideological adaptation of the results of the scientific rationalism of the modern Enlightenment.
In summary, the refutation of the basis for rationalism is based on the idea that values, and thus opinions about the good life, are either illusions or prejudices. Or, in the language of the theory of evolution, those views have come toprevail that are “useful” for the preservation of the species. Even assuming that this could actually be shown, the preservation of existence is a biological drive, not a value. It states how things are, not what we ought to do. And indeed, the extraordinary progress of science in the last century opens the real prospect that we can change our evolutionary destiny. But should we do this? And if we should, in what way? Plainly, the dreams initiated by science leave references to self-preservation incomplete and unsatisfactory.
Refutation:
The first idea posed–the idea that the further science progresses, the further we get from understanding wisdom as a combination of what is the case and how we shall live–really falls victim to the false dichotomy that science and philosophy are separate entities. By finding out what is the case, how we live follows suit. Truth drives our way of life; we all form our morals and ways of life based on what we perceive to be true. When a universal understanding of the truth is revealed, we will have a universal understanding of how to live. This can only be obtained through scientific philosophy, that is, the process of scientific inquiry and the philosophy behind what is considered to be scientific.
The second point is victim to much the same flaw. The idea that rationality does not offer any answer as to why we should be rational seems to fall victim to the false dichotomy of philosophy and common sense. Common sense and philosophy are one in the same. The philosophy of philosophy is based upon observations of agreed common sense. In other words, since rationality has since led to the proof of the superstitious and mythical ideas of traditional/early philosophy, it is a way of drawing a definitive line between illusion and reality, and therefore leads us to truth.
And lastly, the rejection of the idea that the values that we have evolve over time so to preserve our existence, shows a clear misconception of evolution. It is clear that since the vast majority of human beings reach a concensus on basic morals (i.e. not killing one another) and that those who do not agree are generally subject to a psychological or neurological disorder, offers evidence to suggest that our values have evolved along with our physical/chemical makeup to perpetuate our existence. If this were not the case, the human race would have died out long ago.
