The Сircular Understanding of Rationality and the Experimenter’s Regress

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of circular proof, which arises in the philo­sophical discussions about rationality, its ideals and standards. Trying to define what rationality is, we are forced to refer to its ideals and criteria, the rationality of which must be established in advance with the help of rational procedures. This situation is characterized as an epistemic circular dependence of the instru­ment and the result and is compared with the situation of experimenter’s regress. The experimenter’s regress is a circular reasoning in which it is possible to judge the correctness of the scientific results obtained only on the basis of the correct­ness of the procedure for obtaining them, and it is impossible to judge the cor­rectness of the procedure for obtaining them without reference to the obtained results. Thus, the proponents of the objectivity of the result and their opponents have no rational grounds for choosing one of the alternatives. The epistemo­logical problematization of the experimenter’s regress indirectly problematizes the theories of rationality, since science and the criteria of rational choice adopted in it act as standards of rationality in itself. It is shown that the epistemological justification of overcoming the experimenter’s regress is carried out by referring to “external factors” that are rationalized by the epistemologist. Although these external factors are declared “irrational,” they are rationalized in the epistemolo­gist’s “laboratory,” add to the baggage of the grounds of rational consent, and en­rich the notion of rationality. This allows us to qualify the circle described by ra­tionality in defining itself as virtuous.