Rational Reconstruction and the Construction of an Interlocutor

• Main Author: Prescott-Couch, Alexander
• Other Authors: Hall, Edward
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Harvard University 2015
• Subjects: Philosophy
• Online Access: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845505

There has been much recent work in philosophy of science on idealization – the way inaccurate representations can be used to understand a target system. My dissertation concerns a particular sort of idealization that is familiar but often overlooked: rational reconstruction. Rational reconstructions are “cleaned-up” – more coherent and accurate – versions of an individual’s or a group’s attitudes. They are the kind of idealized model that facilitates a crucial aim of the interpretive sciences, the understanding of another’s point of view. I provide an account of rational reconstruction and argue that such an account can help us make sense of many intellectual projects in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences. I then argue that this account can also be used to resolve a problem in democratic theory: how deliberative institutions can facilitate understanding and discursive engagement with “inchoate” points of view. A theory of rational reconstruction thus elucidates an important way that the humanities and interpretive social sciences can be politically significant. === Philosophy