Communication and community : a Thomistic rationality
My thesis is a description of the structure of rationality and morality. It does not argue for one conception of rationality against others, but argues that all conceptions of rationality are the result of participation in a basic sort of activity - theoretical activity - which I understand as the fundamental exercise of reason. It is in terms of this, deeper, activity of reason that all individual conceptions of rationality can be explained, even though rational behaviour is explained not in terms of it, but of the individual conception of rationality of the agent. Consequently, I oppose only conceptions of rationality which are 'absolutist': which imply that rational behaviour can only be behaviour justified by <i>their</i> principles, and never behaviour justified by the principles of conceptions of rationality arrived at through different exercises of theoretical activity. Since rationality is participation in forms of theoretical activity concerning principles by those whose principles they are, the basis of rationality is the shared life in which principles are learned and the kinds of intellectual activity in which they are confirmed and/or revised. These features are also the basis of morality: communication
Ramsay, Hayden
Communication and community : a Thomistic rationality. My thesis is a description of the structure of rationality and morality. It does not argue for one conception of rationality against others, but argues that all conceptions of rationality are the result of participation in a basic sort of activity - theoretical activity - which I understand as the fundamental exercise of reason. It is in terms of this, deeper, activity of reason that all individual conceptions of rationality can be explained, even though rational behaviour is explained not in terms of it, but of the individual conception of rationality of the agent. Consequently, I oppose only conceptions of rationality which are 'absolutist': which imply that rational behaviour can only be behaviour justified by <i>their</i> principles, and never behaviour justified by the principles of conceptions of rationality arrived at through different exercises of theoretical activity. Since rationality is participation in forms of theoretical activity concerning principles by those whose principles they are, the basis of rationality is the shared life in which principles are learned and the kinds of intellectual activity in which they are confirmed and/or revised. These features are also the basis of morality: communication
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