Abstract

There is a crisis in philosophical rationality today—in which modern logic is implicated—that can be traced to the abandonment of a common background of principles. The situation has no parallel within the pre-modern tradition, which not only admits of such principles (as an unproblematic presumption), but also refers them back to a set of assumptions grounded in a clearly religious frame of mind. Modern conceptions of rationality claim complete independence from religious sources, as from tradition more generally, and typically end up disposing of first principles altogether. The result is a fragmentation of reason, which can be seen to be dramatically exemplified in the realm of modern logic, populated by countless different systems and incompatible conceptions of what it is to be a logic. Many of the conceptual choices that became implicit in the philosophical discussions eventually leading to the rejection of the religious picture, and ultimately to the aforementioned crisis, were themselves originally linked to religious premises, so that all along, a kind of religious subconscious has subsisted throughout those disputations; however, the lack of any proper recognition of this background obstructs the possibility of making a reasonable assessment of the nature and causes of the crisis. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose thought inspires the argument developed here, reached similar conclusions regarding practical (or moral) rationality and the effects of abandoning the teleological framework of Aristotelian (and Thomistic) philosophy. MacIntyre’s arguments can be adapted, as he suggests, to deal with reason more generally, and his insistence upon the tradition-laden character of rational enquiry can help point toward the grounding of human reason in religion.

Highlights

  • There is a crisis in philosophical rationality today—in which modern logic is implicated—that can be traced to the abandonment of a common background of principles

  • THE CRISIS OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALITY A characteristic trait of contemporary philosophical culture, at least as Alasdair MacIntyre would see it, is its rejection of first principles

  • I believe, that we can speak of a more general form of emotivism whenever we find the thesis that some area of speech with epistemic claims is reducible to the expression of emotions, impulses or attitudes toward life—as when Rudolf Carnap proposes to understand metaphysical statements as expressions of attitudes toward life

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Summary

THE CRISIS OF CONTEMPORARY LOGICAL RATIONALITY

While there maybe no absolutely definitive consensus to the effect that there is a crisis in philosophical rationality, this is widely acknowledged as being the case. Grzegorz Malinowski argues that the very distinction between designated and undesignated values (essential to the standard definition of validity of inference) suggests the truth of Suszko’s thesis for finite-valued logics.73 Even if such an approach can open the way to a broad mathematical study of logics, conceived of as a certain sort of structure, and perhaps arrive—given, quite possibly, just some minimal restrictions—at some highly general outlines for a formal theory of logics in one of the broadest acceptable senses of the word, this will still tell us very little (if anything) about the reasons we might have for approving logic’s authority over philosophical rationality. As was has just been seen, philosophy cannot call upon logic—at least as presently understood—to aid it in such a task. To allude to the title of a book by Richard Mason, something must come before logic.

THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALITY
THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF LOGICAL RATIONALITY
A CLASH OF NARRATIVES
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