PHL 333 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Rationality

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PHL333
Lecture 12
Essay
- What are the views she is trying to challenge
- Take her line of thought and question it
- Controversy about language, culture or rationality- assess Midgley thoughts on them
- Convince reader that position is viable
- Either challenge some aspect Midgley says or defend it
- Write as if your writing for a friend interested but does not know what Midgley says
- Asking self- should I believe arguments in book and why or why not
Midgley
- In all three chapters- she takes things thought to be unique to humans and want to resist
unique property we have and show greater continuity
- Two argumentative strategies- other animals have these things too and to show human
ability to engage in these things is rooted in natural instinct, human nature
- Third thing she does
- Main thing she does is try to understand a wider understanding of topics than we have
rather than have narrow definitions
- We think of language as communication of words and she says yes that is unique to us
and we do that, but notices language is not just speaking thing, it involves so many other
things- gesture, tone etc.
- Language is a cluster of other properties- some species have this cluster, and others have
this- language is not unique to humans
- Culture has to be understood in wide way and once you see that you see that animals
have it too
- Human having of language is rooted in our general knowledge- they are natural
- Rationality- typically contrasted with our emotional life, distances us when you are
emotionally attached to something, rationality is what causes us to step back and think
- Rationality seems connected to capacity to stand back and think- seems to people as an
unnatural instinct
- Humans laugh because we are physiologically made to laugh- part of nature but capacity
to stop and think about what you’re doing seems to be something that allows you to step
back from nature (Kant’s thought- Kant thinks rationality is distinctly our own thing
because we thought it through in our own terms rather than rush into it because our nature
made us that way) Midgley challenges Kant
- Midgley challenges Descartes too (my senses compel me to believe what I see in front of
me is really there but when I rationally think of it and the basis of my beliefs, I start to
doubt it and do not for sure if my senses are 100% accurate)
- Fundamental distinction between rationality and natural
- Midgely’s general argument is rationality involves much more than calculation ability-
involves wider set of abilities, wider set of things we should be thinking about and true
other animals may not have all of those things but they have some and therefore
rationality is not distinct to humans, and completely counter to nature
- Things we do naturally, we do blindly and automatically
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