Rational Truth Research Articles

This is not a pipe: Rationality and affect in European public debate

There is a deep discrepancy between political actors’ official calls for public debate in and on the European Union and the debates in which European publics actually partake. Top-down invitations to debate in the deliberative mode leave the citizens cold, and political actors are unable or unwilling to listen to, let alone engage with, emotionally guided bottom-up participation. Using an illustrative case of a Danish public debate over an alleged ban on liquorice pipes, this article argues that the disconnect between invitation and participation may be explained by the fact that representatives of (national and European) political institutions tend to rely on a simplified version of deliberative democracy. This implies privileging rational truth claims at the expense of emotional truthfulness. Connecting invitation and participation, it is argued, requires a reconciliation of rationality and affect within the deliberative paradigm that may enable the conceptualization and practice of public debate as affective rationality.

Why (not) disagree? Human values and the readiness to question experts’ views

Whether people blindly trust experts on all occasions or whether they evaluate experts' views and question them if necessary is a vital question. This study investigates associations of human values with the readiness to question experts' views and one's reasons for not disagreeing with experts among randomly sampled Finns. Readiness to question experts' views and one's reasons for not disagreeing were inferred from self-reported written accounts. Value priorities were measured with Schwartz et al.'s Portrait Values Questionnaire and Wach and Hammer's items concerning rational and non-rational truth. The results showed that after adjusting for the effects of age, sex and education, the values of power and rational truth were positively associated, whereas the values of security, conformity and tradition were negatively associated with readiness to question experts' views. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that the reasons for not disagreeing with experts were related to individual factors, situational factors, social risks and views about experts.

Teori Atom menurut Asy’ariyyah

Al-Asy’ariyyah is one of school of thought in Islam came from the hand of Abu Hasan al-Asy’ari. Asy’ari’s pattern of thought tried to harmonize of both ratio and text implicating the concept of universe as thing constituted from number of atom and accident. This concept had been criticized by several figures. However, al-Asy’ariyyah assert that Allah created something in the way of atom to show His power. In addition, they consistently contend by their ontological view that God’s will is the foundation of the regularity and harmony of this universe. This opinion is important to be known came in the middle of three large school of thought: school of Salafiyah initiated by Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal known by their highly textual method in the making of text as source and instrument to understand Islam; second, school of Islamic philosophy that comprehend aqidah based on ratio as the only source of knowledge; and third, school of Mu’tazilite combine between ratio and text while making ratio as a determinant if the text founded contradict with the rational truth. So al-Asy’ariyyah give a form to their thought dynamically with several features mentioned. According to al-As’ariyyah, the reality of body or thing consists of atom known as al-juz’u alladzi la yatajazza’. This theory is improved later by al-Asy’ariyyah in order to reduce the universe to regular subjectivities which led to God’s will that qadim thus encouraging human to put a faith God as only cause of everything exists. This paper will examine carefully the theory of atom in the view of al-Asy’ariyyah, also present a discussion about the divinity that happen between the mutakallims.

Which Came First? Nature, Music, and Poetry in Mallarmé’s ‘Bucolique’

It is normally, if tacitly, assumed that nature came before poetry, and music somewhere in between the two. Mallarmé’s ‘Bucolique’, in the folds of its syntax, demonstrates why this belief is unsustainable. None of those concepts really functions unless, at a more or less hidden level, each can behave as if it were both anterior to and born of the others. Mallarmé does not assert this as a rational truth; rather, he shows this behaviour at work. Poetry, in this view, is both the consequence and the precondition of nature — and vice versa. Hence, perhaps, ecopoetry is the only poetry.

Leibniz, China, and the Problem of Pagan Wisdom

Leibniz, China, and the Problem of Pagan Wisdom Daniel J. Cook (bio) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ mature years coincided with the first major European encounter with the thought and civilization of China. From the 1660s onward, many European thinkers and theologians were especially fascinated with this pagan culture. Although Christendom had previously encountered the pagan traditions of Greece and Rome, they had been incorporated into European thought since the origins of Christianity. From the time of the Church fathers, Christendom had developed various strategies to appropriate and reform classical philosophical thought for its own purposes. Leibniz echoes this Christianizing attitude when he says that “the doctrine of Plato concerning metaphysics and morality is holy and just. . . .”1 China represented a challenge to Christendom in that it was seen as an advanced civilization with its own highly developed belief system, which differed markedly from any of the Abrahamic religions. Whereas the ancient Greeks were long gone, Chinese wisdom threatened the monopoly of religious truth that the Christian West believed it possessed.2 “Freethinkers” would argue—as indeed they already had—that one could be ethical and civilized without believing in a Christian God. Joachim Bouvet—a French Jesuit serving in the court in Beijing and Leibniz’ main correspondent on matters Chinese—warns him that if their venerated texts are not somehow “sanctified,” there will be a living example of a highly civilized country being completely atheistic.3 Various solutions were offered to explain how pagans gained the wisdom thought to have been revealed exclusively to the Jews and Christians.4 Leibniz is the only major Western philosopher who attempted in various ways to accommodate the pagan wisdom of the Chinese to prevailing European philosophical and theological beliefs. His goal was to demonstrate that, when properly interpreted and reformed on the basis of reason, their relevant pagan texts were compatible with his own philosophy, that is, a natural theology that was in turn compatible with a Christian belief system. The implications for his lifelong ecumenical and irenic goals are clear. In his treatment of pagan wisdom, we see strong testimony to Leibniz’ belief in humankind’s intellectual ability to arrive at the basic truths of monotheism without compromising the singular truth and location of the Judeo-Christian revelation. Leibniz held to the literal biblical view that all of humanity originated with Adam. This monogenetic view of all humankind contributed to his basic belief in the natural ability of certain individuals of all eras to arrive at the same natural theology, that is, [End Page 936] those rational truths concerning the nature of God and the human soul. Justin Smith has argued that this contributed to Leibniz’ belief in the intrinsic equality of all peoples, though there may be great cultural and intellectual differences among them.5 Leibniz sought a path that could recognize the equality (let alone the superior mores that he thought Chinese society embodied) of pagan wisdom but at the same time support the unique and supreme nature of Christianity’s doctrines and mysteries. He believed that the superior scholarship and methodology developed by the Christian tradition to convert Jews could be used to this end. His European and Christian hubris on this point is apparent: It is not absurd for discerning Europeans . . . to see something today which is not adequately known by the Chinese erudites, and to be able to interpret their ancient books better than the erudites themselves. Who does not know in our own day that Christian scholars are much better interpreters of the most ancient books of the Hebrews than the Jews themselves? . . . This is even more likely concerning doctrines more than twenty centuries removed from the Chinese, who are quite possibly not as equipped with the interpretive aids as we, informed about Chinese literature, and especially aided by European methods.”6 I Unlike many of his contemporaries, who spurned classical learning, Leibniz, both temperamentally and philosophically, never ceased stressing the importance of classical texts. Arguments that appealed to ancient learning and wisdom should be attractive to Leibniz not only on purely intellectual grounds, but for polemical reasons as well. For example, he suggested to Bishop Huét that deepening our study of ancient pagan sources (especially...

A note on axiomatizations of Pavelka-style complete fuzzy logics

Pavelka-style completeness, a property relating degrees of provability and truth, was previously studied mainly in the context of logics with continuous connectives. It is known that in some other logics one can use infinitary deduction rule(s) to retain this form of completeness. The present paper offers a systematic study of this idea for fuzzy logics which expand MTL and are given by a fixed standard algebra. We explore the structure of the class of all ‘reasonable’ expansions of any such logic by rational truth constants and, for several prominent cases, provide axiomatizations of particular expansions enjoying the Pavelka-style completeness.

Perfect Pavelka Logic

Zadeh's Fuzzy Logic was introduced as a mathematical tool for deduction working with different degrees of truth, instead of the two truth degrees of Classical Logic. The next step taken by Pavelka was to admit assumptions and theorems which are also satisfied only to some truth degree, as well as deduction rules transferring these degrees to the deduced formulas. In the semantics these possibly, but not necessarily, correspond to the degrees of satisfaction of formulas. A significant consequent progress towards this direction was achieved by Hajek's work on Rational Pavelka Logic; it forms formulas with graded truth as couples of a formula and a rational truth value. The success of the Rational Pavelka Logic follows from the properties of the standard MV-algebra, i.e. the real unit interval [0,1] with the Łukasiewicz operations, which was used as its semantical interpretation. The main mathematical result is that the Rational Pavelka Logic is sound and complete in the sense that the syntactical provability degree and the semantical degree of satisfaction coincide. In this paper an alternative to Pavelka's approach is investigated. Instead of the standard MV-algebra, the truth values are taken from a perfect MV-algebra, in particular, Chang's MV-algebra. This is the opposite extreme among MV-algebras, it admits only infinitesimals besides the two classical truth degrees. We argue that such an example also has a motivation in deduction imitating human reasoning. As Chang's MV-algebra is not complete, the provability degree need not exist. Nevertheless, as the main result the following weak completeness theorem is proved: If the provability degree of a formula exists, it coincides with the degree of satisfaction. This result is obtained by adding to Pavelka's original approach a new rule of inference, Hájek's book-keeping axioms and an axiom valid in Chang's MV-algebra. An example that clarifies the differences between Classical Logic, Rational Pavelka Logic and Perfect Pavelka Logic is given, and some new fuzzy rules of inference are introduced.

POLITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AS A CRITIQUE OF PLATONISM

The paper examines the phenomenon of politics as a distinctive domain of practical experience, particularly focusing on the analysis of political space and political time. Along with this, other political aspects are taken into account, such as desire and lack, interest, action, deliberation, judgment, fragility, and freedom. Political phenomenology is contrasted with the notion of politics expounded in Plato’s “Republic”, which centres around the famous Analogy of the Cave. According to the Analogy, the fundamental precondition of political knowledge is a deliberate delocalization – a philosopher’s dissociation from all time-bound factors and the existing political reality which is conceived as a prison of unstable, unreliable “shadows”. The paper suggests that the application of platonic Forms to political life is inadequate, because politics is an essentially temporal, fragile realm. Politics is “nourished” by the past and historical precedents, and also by future, through political aims and visions. Therefore, historical prudence, practical experience and intuition are considered of more relevance for a political subject than theoretical definitions and abstractions. It is argued that the phenomenon of politics has its own specific structure of functioning: it has no need to “borrow” any immutable principles from metaphysicians. Metaphysics does not possess an exclusive access to political knowledge. Objections to Platonism are based on the insights of Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Michael Oakeshott and some other important political thinkers. Aristotle valuably distinguishes between theory and practice, situating politics in the realm of the latter and thus restoring dignity to the “cave-dweller” and his common sense. Arendt skillfully elaborates on the aspects of fragility of a political action, as well as on conceptualizing the experience of freedom as essential to political life. Furthermore, the paper draws heavily on Arendt’s distinction between rational truth and politics. It is argued that the two are mutually incompatible or even in conflict, because politics allows only for opinions and persuasion, whereas the unchangeable rational truth is conceived as coercive in nature. On his part, Oakeshott provides arguments for the importance of prudence and historical understanding, while also criticizing Plato’s “demonstrative” science of politics. These and a few other lines of reasoning are invoked to account for an inappropriateness of using the Cave Analogy for the understanding of politics.

Between the Tyranny of Opinion and the Despotism of Rational Truth: Arendt on Facts and Acting in Concert

Between the Tyranny of Opinion and the Despotism of Rational Truth: Arendt on Facts and Acting in Concert

Connecting the Dots: Threat Assessment, Depression and the Troubled Student

One of the numerous responses to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007 has been the call for higher education institutions in the United States to take an increased role in identifying troubled students. This has had widely felt effects, with educational institutions across the United States developing mechanisms such as Threat Assessment Teams to respond to the perceived heightened threat of campus violence. At the core of these responses is the notion of the troubled student that brings dangerousness and depression together. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to this, arguing that extreme violence has been extended from the provenance of the dangerous mad individual to a potential characteristic of the depressed individual. Interrogating this shift takes on special significance because understanding depression and violence is deemed vital to “connect the dots” to detect the troubled student, thereby preventing campus violence in higher education institutions. To consider this shifting conceptualization, this article draws closely on Hannah Arendt’s distinction between factual and rational truths and Michel Foucault’s analysis of melancholy. The Arendtian distinction between factual and rational truths facilitates analysis of the truths of the troubled student, as well as underscoring the importance that this recognition has for debate. Foucault’s investigation of melancholy together with his emphasis on the “structure of perception” is employed to tease out how truths of the troubled student are produced, and thereby demonstrate that they are rational truths. Drawing on these ideas, the article offers a critical examination of how depression figures as potency and advances the argument that in the take‐up of these emerging conceptualizations, there is a significant shift in how the troubled student is understood in higher education.

Guarding and Transmitting the Vulnerability of the Historical Referent

In her essay “Truth and Politics,” Hannah Arendt distinguishes between “rational truth” and “factual truth.” Arendt associates “rational truth” with durability: the human mind will always be able to reproduce axioms, rational discoveries, and theories, so “the burning of all books of geometry would not be radically effective” (TP, 230). On the other hand, when it comes to “factual truth,” or the historical referent, we are dealing with something much more fragile that is in danger of being lost forever. Given that historical facts and accounts of events are the outcomes of human beings living and acting together in an ever-changing context — given that historical facts depend on the precariousness of human relationality rather than solitary deductions — Arendt notes that once the historical referent is lost, “no rational effort will ever bring [it] back” (TP, 231, emphasis added).

Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers by Ralph McInerny

BOOK REVIEWS Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers. By RALPH MCINERNY. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 2007. Pp. 313. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1458-0. Ralph Mclnerny's Gifford Lectures, Characters in Search of their Author (1999-2000) examined criticisms of natural theology posed by various practitioners of modern philosophy. Praeambula Fidei is a more technical, broad, and ambitious attempt to analyze the internal structure ofThomistic natural theological reasoning. It also seeks to respond to thinkers who (according to Mclnerny) sought to marginalize the place of this doctrine in modern Catholic theology. The book is polemical in that it takes issue with interpretations of Aquinas developed by such influential figures as Etienne Gilson, Henri de Lubac, and Marie-Dominique Chenu. Simultaneously, however, the presentation is expository , offering a counterproposal based upon the Aristotelianism ofAquinas. Mclnerny's defense of a distinctly philosophical theology in Aquinas, and of the profound strands of continuity between Aquinas's metaphysics and that of Aristotle, will leave no Thomist indifferent. For contemporary theologians, the book offers interesting arguments about fundamental theology, stressing oftforgotten truths worthy of serious (re)consideration. The book proceeds in three parts. In the first section the author exposes the doctrine of the praeambula fidei, those truths revealed by God that are also accessible to human reason. Such truths denote even to the philosophical intellect the potential truth of the Catholic faith: truths such as the existence of the soul, the rationality of the natural law, and, in particular, the philosophical demonstrability of the existence of God. Here Mclnerny articulates eloquently the Thomistic distinction between knowing by reason and believing by faith. His attentiveness to Aquinas's philosophy of first principles, self-evident propositions , and demonstrative reasoning toward non-self-evident rational truths (717 ) allows him to identify clearly the character of philosophical knowledge of God he wishes to defend. God may be known a posteriori, indirectly, as a cause is known from its effects, even while his existence is not self-evident to us a priori. This genuine form of rational knowledge is absolutely distinct from the revealed truths of divine revelation, which in turn have their own "principles" and (eventual) propositional articulation (20-23). The latter are accepted in love by an act of the will, based upon the authority of God revealing himself. These 633 634 BOOK REVIEWS two ways of knowing God are not alien to one another, however, since "the bulk of things we hold as true is based on trust" (16) and, consequently, trust in the word of another is a necessary dimension of human reason. The study of the praeambula fidei guarantees a sense of the potential harmony between faith and reason, since it demonstrates that there exists for natural reason a final term (knowledge of the existence of God) which revelation both complements and completes. In the twentieth century, however, the pursuit of this harmony has been attenuated by "flawed understandings of the nature of Christian philosophy, a tendency to disparage the natural in favor of the supernatural, [and] the suggestion that the philosophy of St. Thomas is to be found only in his theological works, and cannot be separated from them" (32). In the second section of the book, the author goes on to analyze critically the interpretations of Aquinas offered by Gilson, De Lubac, and Chenu. It is their works in particular that contributed to the above-mentioned problematic tendencies . Mclnerny sees particular evidence of this in their respective treatments of Cardinal Cajetan, and the Dominican commentary tradition more generally. What follows in the second section, then, is an extended defense of Cajetan's reading ofAquinas concerning the metaphysics of esse, the final end of man, and the integrity of philosophical theology as distinct from sacra doctrina. This defense is conducted in dialogue with the writings of Gilson, De Lubac, and Chenu, sequentially. Mclnerny first studies Gilson's claim that Aquinas' doctrine of esse (as existence "beyond" essence) was deemphasized or forgotten by the Thomistic school, and principally by Cajetan (39-68). Examining in particular Gilson's "Cajetan et !'existence" (Tijdschriff voor Philosophie 15 [1953]: 267-86), Mclnerny shows multiple ways in which Gilson...

合理的受容可能性と真理

合理的受容可能性と真理

Waarheid en betekenisgelaagdheid

An evaluation of an individual’ s contribution towards theology needs to be placed against the backdrop of the story of faith and theology. In this case it would be the story of religious and theological truth, taking it up in the early Christian Church with the example of the descensus. That showed a plurality of fundamental expressions of faith, as well as a plurality of the forms in which truth is expressed and layered reality of meaning which progressively became unveiled in history. Although this diversity and process was halted by the modern rationalistic intermezzo of the Enlightenment which reduced it to logical, rational and verifiable eternal truths, it gradually reappears in various forms of post-modern thought. It is part of the exciting story of faith and theology in our own time.

Computational complexity of t-norm based propositional fuzzy logics with rational truth constants

If a continuous t-norm on [ 0 , 1 ] maps pairs of rationals into rationals then the corresponding fuzzy propositional calculus can be extended by rational truth constants and “bookkeeping” axioms for them. (Łukasiewicz t-norm is the classical example.) Computational complexity of such logics is studied. Consequences for fuzzy description logic are formulated.

Science matters, culture matters.

MY FATHER AND MOTHER BELIEVED in science as a source of rational truth. Science was trustworthy and exportable to the many corners of human activity. Medicine, engineering, weather prediction, and even social planning could be approached scientifically. All one needed to do was isolate a problem, analyze it carefully, and design appropriate solutions. Politics were a separate matter. One could (and certainly did) argue about whether it was moral or immoral to drop the atomic bomb, or whether Lysenko had any right to stick his nose into the development of Soviet genetics. But although both science and politics were important for producing human progress, scientific knowledge and social belief were different beasts.

Philosophy of science, policy sciences and the basis of decision support with LCA Based on the toxicity controversy in Sweden and the Netherlands

Current LCA implicitly assumes that a single rational truth can be found. Mainstream policy sciences has taken a different starting point when analysing decision making in complex and controversial societal debates for already several decades. In such debates, in general, more than one reasonable conceptualisation or ‘framing’ of the problem is at stake which forms the core of the controversy. This paper analyses the Dutch chlorine debate and the Swedish PVC debate and shows that (three) frames also play a role in toxicity controversies: the risk assessment frame, the strict control frame, and the precautionary frame. The latter frame, adhered to by the environmentalists, seeks to judge substances mainly on their inherent safety. The cases show that this logic may be defended as at least being equally reasonable to the emission-effect calculations that form the core of Risk Assessment and Life-cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). As predicted by policy sciences, this finding implies that the political neutrality of tools like LCIA is questionable. In summary, the approaches and procedures developed for LCA have to be reconciled with key lessons from policy science and philosophy of science, i.e. considering the fact that multiple realities play a key role in many decision making processes. This paper suggests some alternative indicators for toxicity evaluations, and indicates the implications of LCA method development.

Division of labour in the social construction of argument

This paper examines how ideological assumptions about the meanings of naturally occurring social arguments lead to different outcomes for women and for men. Three main themes in the ideology of argument are outlined: as rational means of ascertaining the truth, as adversarial confrontation and as rhetoric. Gender roles provide society a way to deal with the conflict between argument and the ideology of affiliation. The division of labour assigns rational truth seeking to men and to women the task of nurturance: this has permitted men to take over argument in all its positive aspects and to attribute to women the negative aspects of argument as damaging confrontation or as unfair rhetoric.

Free Mules, Talking Buzzards, and Cracked Plates: The Politics of Dislocation in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered apolitical by some readers, is profoundly political in its repeated undermining of hierarchy as an unquestioned mode of perception. Three formal devices in the text highlight this undermining: the free mule story and its chain of associations, the buzzard tale that moves from the inside to the outside of the free mule story, and the novel's pervasive physical imagery. Language that forces readers to juggle multiple and contradictory meanings intertwines with an acknowledgment of physicality — human sexuality, human death — in a powerful display of the limits of rational truth telling. Rooted in African American women's history, the novel confronts the complexities of racism and sexism while undercutting a belief in any monological understanding of person or politics, text or nation.

Locke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticlesLocke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?William T. Bluhm, Neil Wintfeld, and Stuart H. TegerWilliam T. Bluhm Search for more articles by this author , Neil Wintfeld Search for more articles by this author , and Stuart H. Teger Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 42, Number 2May, 1980 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2130467 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1980 Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Erman KAÇAR A Discussion on the Political Context of Locke's Critique of Innate Ideas, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi (Apr 2022).https://doi.org/10.32600/huefd.986287Vered Sakal Two Conceptions of Religious Self in Lockean Religiosity, The Journal of Religion 96, no.33 (Jun 2016): 332–345.https://doi.org/10.1086/686565Elissa B. Alzate From Individual to Citizen: Enhancing the Bonds of Citizenship Through Religion in Locke’s Political Theory, Polity 46, no.22 (Nov 2016): 211–232.https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.2Thomas G. West THE GROUND OF LOCKE'S LAW OF NATURE, Social Philosophy and Policy 29, no.22 (Jul 2012): 1–50.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052511000392 Michael S. Rabieh The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Questionableness of Christianity, The Journal of Politics 53, no.44 (Oct 2015): 933–957.https://doi.org/10.2307/2131861Michael P. Zuchert Self-Evident Truth and the Declaration of Independence, The Review of Politics 49, no.33 (Aug 2009): 319–339.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500034434 Sanford Kessler John Locke's Legacy of Religious Freedom, Polity 17, no.33 (Nov 2016): 484–503.https://doi.org/10.2307/3234655Richard Sherlock Suicide and public policy: A critique of the ?New consensus?, The Journal of Bioethics 4, no.1-21-2 (Mar 1982): 58–70.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01352274