CFP: Res Philosophica (Prize Issue CFP)

Call for Papers:
Special Issue on Rationality and the First Person

Res Philosophica invites papers on the relation between rationality and the first person for the 2024 Res Philosophica Essay Prize. The author of the winning paper will receive a prize of $3,000 and publication in the special issue of the journal on the same topic. Submissions for the prize will be automatically considered for publication in the journal's special issue. Accepted papers will be published alongside an invited paper by Eric Marcus (Auburn).

Guest Editor: Eric Wiland (University of Missouri - St. Louis)
Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2024
Prize: $3,000

Description:
What is the connection, if any, between self-consciousness and rationality? Going back at least to Kant, there is a tradition that sees the two topics as intimately related. This tradition understands self-consciousness as a precondition for the kind of reflective awareness that characterizes being a rational creature. Answering the question whether there is a reason to believe p has seemed, to some, to depend upon the capacity to ask whether I myself have a reason to believe p. Answering a question asking about the reason for one’s action has seemed, to some, to depend upon the ability to know one’s own (intentional) actions in a distinctively first-personal way.

Philosophical orthodoxy, however, sees self-consciousness and rationality as two rather distinct topics. Some now view rationality as primarily a matter of whether one’s various psychological attitudes are coherent with one another. Thus the question of rationality (or lack thereof) can apply to any creature with a diverse array of mental states, applying equally well to frogs, dogs, and human beings. Others now view rationality as the subjective shadow of reason, according to which one is rational just in case one’s psychological attitudes would be reasonable if the world were as one believes it to be. One does not need the first-personal concept to be rational, so understood. Neither picture of rationality, then, sees an essential connection between self-consciousness and rationality.

We invite original submissions that discuss whether there is indeed some relation between rationality and the first-personal stance—and, if so, what that relation is.