In this paper a bootstrap theory of rationality is presented. Such a theory is an attempt to explain how standards of rational inquiry may be rationally revised — without assuming that there are any basic and fixed standards for evaluating such revisions. The general bootstrap idea is briefly presented in the first sections. The main part of the paper consists of a discussion of what normative requirements a bootstrap theory should contain, and a number of requirements on rational revisions are (...) proposed. The final section deals with the question of whether a bootstrap theory is self-referentially coherent. (shrink)

In april 1872, with the caisson at a depth of seventy-odd feet and still no bedrock, two men died. The strain for Roebling was nearly unbearable, as his wife later said. On May 18, a third man died, and that same day Roebling made the most difficult and courageous decision of the project. Staking everything — the success of the bridge, his reputation, his career - he ordered a halt. The New York tower, he had concluded, could stand where it (...) was, at a depth of 78 feet 6 inches, not on bedrock, but on “hardpack” sand. From examinations of the strata he had determined to his own satisfaction that no movement had occured at the level since the time of deposit millions of years in the geologic past; so, he said, it was “good enough to found upon”. (shrink)

The present paper argues that there is an affinity between Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is maintained, in particular, that Kuhn's notion of paradigm draws on such Wittgensteinian concepts as language games, family resemblance, rules, forms of life. It is also claimed that Kuhn's incommensurability thesis is a sequel of the theory of meaning supplied by Wittgenstein's later philosophy. As such its assessment is not fallacious, since it is not an empirical hypothesis and it does (...) not have the relativistic implications Kuhn's critics repeatedly indicated. Although concepts are indeed relative to a language game or paradigm, interparadigmatic intelligibility is preserved through the standard techniques of translation or praxis. The impossibility of radical translation which is captured by the claim of incommensurability lies with that which cannot be said but only shown. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991.