Is Human Reasoning Rational?

Abstract

The article surveys two opposite, prima facie irreconcilable views of rationality. On the one hand we have optimistic view which claims that we, human beings, are rational and inferentially guided by infallible logical principles. On the other hand there is the pessimistic view in the centre of which is the notion of unrationality as the basic condition of human cognition. Inspite of such state of the art I firmly believe that we can find the way out from these irreconciliable opposites. If we reject the radical variants (the theory of absolute rationality and eliminativism) on both sides we still have in hand some modest views among which we can find our required compromise. I take side with rationality. The basic claim says that people are not wholly rational but rationality is somehow a part of reasoning. According to my proposal the condition for one’s rationality is that the relations between contents of one’s beliefs are tokenings of proto-logical forms which are not constituents of any systematic logical system. These proto-logical forms are innate universal base for development, through learning, of our logical abilities.