The Importance of Being Rational

Carlos Núñez

doi:10.1093/pq/pqaa004

Abstract

The Importance of Being Rational

Highlights

This is a fascinating idea of great philosophical interest
Errol Lord’s The Importance of Being Rational is a systematic defense of ‘Reasons Responsiveness’ (RR), the thesis that being rational consists in responding correctly to the objective normative reasons you possess—where these are understood as the facts you are in a position to both know and use as reasons for what they favor
It would (1) imply the falsity of the popular idea that rationality is a matter of coherence; (2) vindicate the intuitive—though recently controversial—thought that rationality is normative; and (3) provide an important element in, and so a reason to favor, two wider philosophical programs: ‘Reasons Fundamentalism,’ which seeks to understand all normative phenomena in terms of reasons, and ‘KnowledgeFirst Epistemology,’ which seeks to understand prominent epistemic notions in terms of knowledge

Summary

Introduction

This is a fascinating idea of great philosophical interest. Among other important upshots, it would (1) imply the falsity of the popular idea that rationality is a matter of coherence; (2) vindicate the intuitive—though recently controversial—thought that rationality is normative; and (3) provide an important element in, and so a reason to favor, two wider philosophical programs: ‘Reasons Fundamentalism,’ which seeks to understand all normative phenomena (among them, rationality) in terms of reasons, and ‘KnowledgeFirst Epistemology,’ which seeks to understand prominent epistemic notions (among them, justification) in terms of knowledge. Errol Lord’s The Importance of Being Rational is a systematic defense of ‘Reasons Responsiveness’ (RR), the thesis that being rational consists in responding correctly to the objective normative reasons you possess—where these are understood as the facts you are in a position to both know and use as reasons for what they favor.

Results

Conclusion