DETACHMENT, INVOLVEMENT, AND RATIONALITY: ARE WE ESSENTIALLY RATIONAL ANIMALS?
DETACHMENT, INVOLVEMENT, AND RATIONALITY: ARE WE ESSENTIALLY RATIONAL ANIMALS?
复制标题
DOI：
10.2478/v10023-007-0010-0
复制
发表时间：
2007-12-01
影响因子：
0.4
通讯作者：
Dreyfus, Hubert
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dreyfus, Hubert
哲学家们长期以来一直认为，人类与纯粹动物的区别在于人类本质上是理性的。人类的理性本质在于他们能够将自己从持续的参与中分离出来，并为活动提出要求和给出理由。根据哲学传统，人类的行为和感知通常应该根据这种能力来理解。本文探讨了当代版本的这一信念，一个颁布的约翰麦克道尔。麦克道尔遵循传统，认为人们总是能够退后一步，询问并回答有关他们正在做的事情的问题，即，他们的行为总是有理由的。这篇文章表明，人们做的许多事情都没有理由。相反，他们经常只是对吸引和排斥的变化情境场做出反应。这些吸引力和排斥力不能以命题的形式被捕捉任何试图描述它们的尝试，甚至只是命名，都会把它们变成物体，并剥夺它们的动力。形势的要求不能作为理由，而只能作为行动的体现而存在。因此，麦克道尔错误地认为概念能力与人类活动密不可分。对于人类生活来说，超然的、理性的生存方式也不比应对更重要。
Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form-any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping.