The normativity of rationality /

Kiesewetter (Humboldt Univ. of Berlin, Germany) presents a tightly argued defense of the normativity of rationality whereby--in opposition to structuralist conceptions of rationality--rationality is a matter of responding to available reasons. Having argued in great detail that there are no structural requirements of rationality, and that rationality is not merely a matter of the internal coherence of one's beliefs, the author shows how practices of rational criticism involve the assumption that rationality is normative. Building his argument through careful and thorough discussions of the positions of John Broome, Jonathan Dancy, Donald Davidson, Niko Kolodny, Derek Parfit, and Joseph Raz, Kiesewetter argues against the claim that a structuralist view of types of irrationality (such as akratic, instrumental, doxastic, and modus ponens irrationality) entails a structuralist view of rationality. Questions such as "Why be rational?" and "Why be moral?" are ill-conceived efforts to find a general reason that supervenes on existing available decisive reasons. The requirements of rationality are just the requirements of the available reasons. Such a view enables one to draw the connection between the subjectivity of rationality, i.e., its purchase on one, and the objectivity of rationality, i.e., its dependence on evidence. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. --Sheila Ann Mason, emerita, Concordia University