Our obsession with our differences has created the impression that there is no common domain of rationality within which disagreements can be thrashe… - Julian Baggini
" "Our obsession with our differences has created the impression that there is no common domain of rationality within which disagreements can be thrashed out. We just have a multiplicity of discourses and rationalisations to legitimise different interest groups. This is not just a criticism of those currents of thought broadly and loosely labelled postmodern. The enemies of postmodernism have set themselves up as the sole champions of reason – something made easier by their opponents’ willingness to relinquish the labels of rationality and reason. In so doing they too have contributed to the sense in which the intellectual sphere is too fragmented and divided along factional lines for any general dialogue to be possible. By dismissing large sections of the intellectual community as anti-rational, the anti-postmodernists have also contributed to the sense that it is pointless to seek to argue one’s case in the widest possible forum.
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About Julian Baggini
Julian Baggini (born 1968) is a British philosopher.
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Additional quotes by Julian Baggini
That is why there can be no one account that is ‘the truth’, not because ‘truth’ is beyond us. We need to distinguish between an account which is ‘the truth’ and one which is ‘truthful’. If by ‘the truth’ of a life we mean the one, true, complete account of it, then no such truths can be told. But we can tell more or less truthful stories about our lives and those of others: ones that do not gloss over embarrassing facts, ones that reveal many sides of a personality and not just those we wish to promote. Relating such a truthful story is not about cataloguing the largest possible number of true facts about a person. That is why our commitment to truth and rationality requires that our conceptual maps only include genuine features of what we are mapping and do not leave out anything that a user of that map might reasonably be expected to find useful. But the idea that we can come up with any kind of conceptual map that does not reflect our values and interests is a mirage. Philosophical autobiography helps us to see that behind all reasoning is a reasoner who can never drain away all her individuality.
Only our most intimate friends know our deepest flaws, and in the same way the greatest skeptics about reason should be those who seek to defend it. If we do not debunk the grandiose myths of reason then its enemies will do so far more destructively. My positive case for rationality therefore requires taking us through four key myths of rationality, all of which can be traced back to Plato. These myths are: that reason is purely objective and requires no subjective judgement; that it can and should take the role of our chief guide, the charioteer of the soul; that it can furnish us with the fundamental reasons for action; and that we can build society on perfectly rational principles.
To answer this requires knowledge of ‘child development, healthy emotional lives, healthy cognition and what is going to equip children to become high-functioning adults’, and ‘there are scientific truths there waiting to be discovered’. But again, this only implies that scientific knowledge can inform ethics, not that it can determine it. Similarly, we can learn from a neuroscientific point of view why it is that heartbreak feels so bad, but neuroscience can’t tell us if it is worth taking the risk of paying that price by opening ourselves up to love.
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