Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Agency
Rationality: To be rational, the agent is supposed to
have identified the objective to be attained, to have
chosen an effective (or even the most efficient)
action plan to be undertaken, and finally to have
concrete idea and/or belief of the chance for
success.
Reasonable: To be reasonable, the agent will not
only have to be rational but must justify her actions
and/or project to be socially acceptable. In other
worlds, she must provide a normative justification
to the public (both partners and audiences) within
the respective institutional context.
Topic 3
Rationality and Reason
(I)
Concepts of Rationality
and action
Rationality as mental processes that
consciously strive to master reality
However much they may vary in content,
mental processes that consciously strive
to master reality are common to all types
of rationality.
(Karlberg, 1980, p. 1159)
Actor
To act &
to master
Degree of
Consciousness / Reflectiveity &
Knowledgeability
Rationality
The World
Substantive rationality
Conscious mastery of reality through ordering
action into pattern/hierarchy in accordance with
past, present, or potential value postulate.
Formal rationality
Conscious mastery of reality through means-end
calculation by reference back to universally
applies rules, laws or regulations.
Theoretical rationality
Conscious mastery of reality through
construction of precise abstract concepts rather
than action
Philosophers, priest and then scientist
Traditional action
Affectual action
Value-rational action
Purposive-rational / Means-end rational action
Occident
Domains of rationalization
Cognitive-instrumental rationality:
Communicative rationality:
Actor
Mutual understanding
and consensus
Communicative
Rationality
Another Actor
of communicative rationality:
of communicative rationality:
Types of argumentation:
Therapeutic critique: In the case of private and/or selfpresenting expressions, their validity claims will be
based on the truthfulness and sincerity of the speakers.
The prototypical case of therapeutic critique, which
Habermas specifies, is critique employed by
psychotherapists to distinguish their clients selfdeceptive and/or illusive utterances from truthful and/or
sincere expressions.
Explicative discourse: It refers to a form of
argumentation in which the comprehensibility, wellformedness or rule-correctness of symbolic expressions
is no longer naively supposed or contested but is
thematized as a controversial claim. (1984, p.22)
Topic 3
Rationality and Reason
(I)
Concepts of Reason
40
practical reasons:
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as
truth is of system of thought. A theory however
elegant and economical must be rejected or
revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and
institutions no matter how efficient and wellarranged must be reformed or abolished if they
are unjust. Being first virtue of human actives,
truth and justice are uncompromising. (Rawls,
1971, Pp. 3-4)
More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the
particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they
do not know its economic or political situation, or the level
of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The
persons in the original position have no information as to
which generation they belong. (Rawls 1971, p. 137; the
Roman numberings are mine)
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justice
of justice
of justice
Topic 3
Rationality and Reason
END