Marct,

Some more grist for your mill.
Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
The only problem I have with this distinction, and I would grant that it is a valid one in some situations, is that I believe it is a sliding scale distinction, rather than a qualitative distinction. This is based on the observation that "rationality", which relies on logic, is culturally specific rather than universal. I would certainly grant that some cultural logics are closer to an hypothesized transcendent logic, and I'd say that it is usually only in the realm of mathematics or, possibly, music that we get the closest approximations of this transcendent logic (yes, there are definite Pythagorian influences operating in my brain ).
Your presuppositions are showing here. Where I come from, 'rational' simply means giving reasons for one's position. It does not specify how many or what kind of reasons count as enough. We could define a sliding scale of rationality as follows: to be more or less rational is to justify more or fewer of your beliefs with reasons. That, however is not what I had in mind.
Logic is also not merely mathematical reasoning a la Whitehead, Russell, Quine, Tarski, etc. Nor is it just a Pythagorean harmony of the spheres. Logic is a set of rules for a method of enquiry. In addition to truth functional logic (which need not just be two-valued, as in true or false), we have, among others, epistemic logics, deontic logics, modal logics, and, my personal favorite, interrogative logics. This last is the kind of thing we find in Platonic dialectic/the Socratic Method, Aristotle's Organon, and Hegel's Transcendental Dialectic, to mention some of the big names. I think the most lucid description of it, however is Collingwood's logic of question and answer.
We can, of course qualify, our assessment of arguments in each of these logics with normative statements as to what kinds of reasons are good or better than others. This might put us into a different type of sliding scale than the one you seem to allude to in your response. But we don't have too.

Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
"[G]nothi seauton" or "know thyself"). I would, however, point out that the routes to knowing yourself are, in and of themselves, culturally bound and symbolically limited.
I think this last smacks of the worst sort of relativism, derived from what I take to be the misinterpretation of the work of William Graham Sumner. I also don't drink from the Foucault and Derida post-structuralist Kool-Aid. And I don't necessarily agree with the "language as semiotics" interpretations of folks following in the wake of C.S. Peirce. Some things about who and what we are just are not up for grabs--we are all, after all, members of the same species. As a result we all have some of the same basic needs (although they may not follow Maslow's hierarchy). We probably best know ourselves by knowing others around us.
This last is a long way around getting to the point that others mentioned. We can best train ourselves for operations in another cultural milieu by training ourselves in another cultural milieu.