Rationality as Virtue Ethics

What is it to believe (that P, of x that it is F, in x, etc.)? If it is a family of mental representations, in regard to what common characteristics is it appropriate to bind them together? What kind of content does a belief consist in? What sort of attitude are we having in believing it? Under what condition could we identify ourselves as believers? The answers to these questions are in desperate need as the language-game of doxastic states is all too an intimate affair in our life. Here are some findings so far:

(1) The contents of beliefs are propositional, and the condition of satisfaction (meaning) of doxastic propositions is their truth-conditions. As such, the grammatical parts of these propositions (expressing objects, properties, and relations) are knit together as to be referring to specific states of affairs.

(2) The reference is fixed by (a) the causal link between the proposition and a state of affair and (b) the inferential relations among propositions: the former instantiates correspondence which is to be identified (or determined) by coherency instantiated by the latter.

(3) To believe that P (or of x that it is F) is therefore to uphold this normative nature of proposition and be committed to the inferential rule underlying the identification of the causal link. As such, a belief is a provisional judgment, whose end is knowledge (epistemically ideal state), thus the distinction between proximate and distal.

(4) What underwrites the causal link is lawfulness (or lawlikeness), which is pinned by the notion of de re necessity. In turn, de re necessity presupposes essentialism. In my view, the only true essence is self-identity (x = x), and what semantic theory is to account for self-identity is an open question for me.

(5) What it is to adopt the attitude of belief (i.e., to conceive oneself as engaging in the epistemic practice of cognition) is to be attributed with the status of rational agent. Rationality, on this view, is the ability to, so to say, rise above and recognize (lawlike) patterns in nature. As such, rationality endows one with the power to manipulate his surroundings, in itself being a ghost in the machine (spirit).

(6) The source of the attribution is an open question. Some of its candidates include evolutionary, pragmatic, and socio-political.

(7) It is in respect to the attribution of rational agency is the normativity (or intentionality) of proposition sustained. Thus, objectivity (scientific image) and agency (manifest image) are co-parasitic; the reality consists in fact and responsibility, neither of which is reducible to the other.

(8 ) The ideal rational agent who is in the epistemically ideal state, viz., the knower, is in virtue of whom the worldview of reality (logos) is upheld by its participants (humans). This figure of myth is, in my intuition, whom we call YHWH.