According to Habermas, cogent argumentation does not compel assent in the manner of logical deduction but only makes assent to a claim possible or reasonable. This suggests that, at least in some cases – and particularly in more controverted matters – both assent and dissent may be reasonable options. Both options are so insofar as an open, unconstrained process of discourse has not been able to exclude either option as illogical or clearly inferior in responsiveness. How is it, then, that some participants are rationally motivated to accept a claim p and others to reject p, given that everyone has heard the same arguments pro and con? Although both options are reasonable, it is hardly a matter of indifference which side the participants believe – that is, participants in argumentation do not simply feel free to adopt either of the two reasonable options. The gap, then, lies between the possibility of reasonable assent provided by logical and dialectical standards, and actual rational motivation.
It looks like you identify philosophy with rationality, but they are not the same thing. — Angelo Cannata
A philosopher is free to recommend other approaches — J
The gap, then, lies between the possibility of reasonable assent provided by logical and dialectical standards, and actual rational motivation. — J
actual rational motivation.
In other words, is it possible that the often frustrating morass of competing “reasonable” claims might be a revealing wake-up call about rationality itself, and its role in philosophy? — J
These are good questions, and need to be taken separately. Philosophical disagreement can be a "problem" in two senses. First, it can puzzle and distress individual philosophers, especially those who have held out high hopes for something like a scientific philosophical method, one that obviously converges on truths within given paradigms. Should it distress them? It’s hard to know quite what to say here. It seems more a psychological than a philosophical question.So, why do you see disagreement as a problem? Why should philosophers agree about something? — Angelo Cannata
I question the framing of the problem in terms of rational motivation. The participants each come to the argument with their own education, experiences, prejudices, interests, temperament, and so on. — Fooloso4
What do those today within the Socratic tradition have to wake-up from, if anything? — Fooloso4
Even posing the issue raises issues. — Arne
Is that the end of the story? — J
Are we left with the dreaded "incommensurability" of viewpoints? — J
Presumably, the Socratic tradition would be seen as a chimera, something that promises Truth and doesn't deliver, because capital-T Truth just isn't on offer. — J
If disagreement puzzles and distresses any philosophers, this tells me that they are far from being good philosophers, they are just aspiring dictators that don’t like to be contradicted.it can puzzle and distress individual philosophers — J
Let’s leave science to scientists and philosophy to philosophers. Philosophy can dialogue with science, of course, but a philosophy that wants to be science is just disguised dictatorship.high hopes for something like a scientific philosophical method — J
This inability to converge on a consensus is exactly what has made philosophy productive, a way for growth, discovery, progress, in any epoch.What can we discover in the history and practice of philosophy that might account for such widespread inability to converge on a consensus? — J
While this is surely not the whole story I think, partly, there is value to disagreement. Agreement allows us to proceed, but philosophy doesn't proceed; Or when philosophy agrees it stops being philosophy and becomes something else. This doesn't accord well with philosophical traditions, which seem to have a sort of progress to them that's a mixture of agreement and disagreement, so it's definitely not the whole story. Only I think it worth highlighting that rational disagreement is valuable, and so the elusiveness of rational agreement isn't necessarily a fault against philosophy
I agree. There is a reason The Allegory of the Cave comes early in the study of philosophy. — Arne
One of the perennial problems in philosophy is why a general consensus or rational agreement is so hard to come by on virtually all the interesting topics. — J
I don't want to derail the topic but the Socratic tradition does not promise Truth. — Fooloso4
I agree. — Arne
Some interpret it to mean that we can transcend the cave, but others that we remain in it. Some despise Plato because no matter how deep they go they find only questions and not answers, others love him for the same reason — Fooloso4
we are left with an acknowledgement of the irreconcilability of viewpoints. The question then is, how best to live together given that there are differences that cannot be reconciled. — Fooloso4
From your position, I wonder whether you think there might be something sufficiently intersubjective – not to say objective – in “creative imaginative thinking” that could take the place of rational argument and inspire consensus? Or might we need to supplement imagination with rhetoric in order to persuade? — J
Second, one of most prevalent tendencies in post-modern philosophy has been to question, often hostilely, the role of rationality itself – what is it, what is it worth, what knowledge does it lead to, etc. Can this sort of critique of rationality be deployed to examine the Habermas problem? In other words, is it possible that the often frustrating morass of competing “reasonable” claims might be a revealing wake-up call about rationality itself, and its role in philosophy? — J
What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”
Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.
The gap, then, lies between the possibility of reasonable assent provided by logical and dialectical standards, and actual rational motivation
He wants to know whether the premises for a logically valid deduction can also be rationally justified in a way that would compel agreement. — J
You said you did not want to pursue the use of rhetoric and emotion — Fooloso4
So let me re-pose the problem in two ways. First, notice that when an important question receives competing reasonable answers in philosophy, there’s almost certainly a meta-question involved. That question focuses on what are the correct or convincing ways to argue rationally on that topic.
Second... is it possible that the often frustrating morass of competing “reasonable” claims might be a revealing wake-up call about rationality itself, and its role in philosophy? How far could such a critique be taken?
It could be argued that reason in contemporary culture lacks the kind of lodestar that was formerly provided by religion. After all, it was suppose to provide the summum bonum, the reason for all reasons. But then religion seems itself to have demolished that ideal, when viewed through the history of religious conflict in Western culture.
none of those concerned are interested in looking for a truth that they are not already in possession of — kudos
'Competing reason' is an oxymoron. — kudos
The participants each come to the argument with their own education, experiences, prejudices, interests, temperament, and so on. — Fooloso4
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