Eliminations and Reductions II

This chapter examines and argues against attempts to eliminate the category of substantive rationality or reduce it to structural rationality. Together with the previous chapter—which argues against eliminations and reductions of the converse kind—it thereby provides a positive case for dualism about rationality according to which both kinds of rationality are genuine and neither is reducible to the other. On the way, it also argues against ideal attitudes accounts of reasons; neo-Kantian views according to which it’s structurally irrational to be immoral; and radical forms of coherentism and Bayesianism in epistemology.