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2 ideas
6950 | You can be rational with undetected or minor inconsistencies [Harman] |
Full Idea: Rationality doesn't require consistency, because you can be rational despite undetected inconsistencies in beliefs, and it isn't always rational to respond to a discovery of inconsistency by dropping everything in favour of eliminating that inconsistency. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being correct, and is (I am beginning to realise) a vital contribution made to our understanding by pragmatism. European thinking has been too keen on logic as the model of good reasoning. |
6954 | A coherent conceptual scheme contains best explanations of most of your beliefs [Harman] |
Full Idea: A set of unrelated beliefs seems less coherent than a tightly organized conceptual scheme that contains explanatory principles that make sense of most of your beliefs; this is why inference to the best explanation is an attractive pattern of inference. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.5.2) | |
A reaction: I find this a very appealing proposal. The central aim of rational thought seems to me to be best explanation, and I increasingly think that most of my beliefs rest on their apparent coherence, rather than their foundations. |