Rationality as the rule of reason

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the prospects of a non‐structuralist account of rationality that doesn't postulate primitive structural requirements (whether of wide or narrow scope) for combinations of attitudes. Instead, it takes competent perceptions of reasons for attitudes to be basic. While broadly similar proposals have been offered before by Thomas Scanlon and Niko Kolodny, this paper adds two important elements to the picture. First, it argues that perceptions of reasons are implicit in intentions and at least certain beliefs (Normative Constitutivism). This allows for addressing challenges raised by John Broome, and makes it possible to derive norms for structural rationality in a natural way. Second, to avoid bootstrapping issues and to capture the authority of rationality, the paper argues that only competent perceptions of reasons give rise to rational requirements and permissions. The relevant kind of competence is a fallible sensitivity to at least basic favoring relations, including the weights of reasons and patterns among them. If we use Reason as the label for such competence, to be rational is to be ruled by one's Reason. If this proposal is successful, there is a common source for the diverse manifestations of rationality and irrationality.