Projects / Programmes
Rationalism as a position and rationality as a method – dilemmas and oppositions
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.10.00 |
Humanities |
Philosophy |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H001 |
Humanities |
Philosophy |
| H120 |
Humanities |
Systematic philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, ideology |
| H130 |
Humanities |
History of philosophy |
rationalism, rationality,informal logic, conditional logic, ethics, aesthetics, history of philosophy
Researchers (6)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The project consists of four parts: methodological, historical, and two thematic: (i) logic as a norm and a description of rational reasoning; (ii) historical roots – rationalism and rationality in ancient philosophy; (iii) dilemmas of ethical rationalism; (iv) rationalism and emotivism in aesthetics. Our starting points are: (i) modal logic can be used in the analysis of philosophical arguments; informal logic is compatible with the approaches of formal logic; conditional logic can be used as a model for a rational belief change; (ii) a description of the development from myth to rationality; a description of rationalism and the role of logos within ancient moral theories in connection with the requirement for moral justification; a description of theories which ascribe rationality to the cosmos and the workings of nature; (iii) ethical rationalism claims to be able to solve some of the most controversial meta-ethical problems: (1) the problem of justifying the content of moral precepts; (2) the problem of explaining the motivational force of moral judgments; (3) the problem of explaining the normative priority of moral considerations; (4) the problem of justifying the choice of leading a consistent moral life over leading an amoral or only partly moral one; it is argued that once properly formulated, ethical rationalism has the potential to withstand recent attacks; (iv) the analysis of the emotional response to representational and non-representational artworks; different elements of emotion, such as belief, sensation, feeling, pleasure, pain, should not be seen as simply bundled together, and the emotion as a mere conglomeration; emotional responses, typical of our concern in art, strive to be of a moderately, or highly, cognitively involved sort. Metaphilosophically, the starting point of the project, is an understanding of philosophical activity as rational and argumentative. The project aims to explore the historical roots of rationalism and rational methods in philosophy, demonstrate the value of formal and informal logical methods in philosophical investigations and study the dilemmas of ethical rationalism and aesthetical rationality. It will point out that different forms of rationalism are distinguished by different descriptions of the alternatives to which reason is opposed and by the choice of area of enquiry (ethics, metaphysics…)
