Rationality as Dynamical Process / Casrg / Research Centres / The University of Newcastle, Australia

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Rationality as Dynamical Process

Books:

Hooker, C. A. (1995), Reason, Regulation and Realism: Towards A Regulatory Systems Theory Of Reason And Evolutionary Epistemology. Albany: State University of New York Press. Contents

A book is completed in draft:
Hoffmaster, C.B. and C.A. Hooker, Re-reasoning Practical Ethics.
It argues that an agent-based, dynamical process conception of reason resolves the difficulties faced by more transcendent, formal conceptions of reason in providing a sufficiently coherent, powerful and evolving set of rational capacities to adequately ground our manifest abilities in both science and ethics.
In doing so the book provides a deep critique of formal reason, argues that the structures of practical rationality are essentially the same in science and ethics, and argues that in both these domains the deeper exercise of rationality lies in the design of the institutionalised processes themselves, from which any ‘rules’ (cognitive and ethical) emerge as context-dependent organisation.

Papers:

Christensen, W.D. and C.A. Hooker (1998) ‘The Dynamics of Reason, Critical Symposium on Paul Churchland: The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LVIII(4), 871-878.
Hooker, C.A. (1994) ‘Idealisation, Naturalism, and Rationality: Some Lessons from Minimal Rationality’, Synthese 99, 181-231.
Hooker, C.A. (1994), 'Value and System, Notes Toward the Definition of Agri-culture', Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, 7, Special Supplement. (pp.84)
Hooker, C.A. (1989), ‘From Logical Formalism to Control System’ in Fine, A. and Leplin, J. (eds.), PSA 1988, East Lansing, Philosophy of Science Association, 211-221.