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Beyond rationality ?

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Appropriate judgment and interpretation

If formal systems, not as abstract objects but as embodied, always exist within a process of reinterpretation and remaking which is not itself governed by a larger formal system, then what happens to rationality in the process? Does the process become random or arbitrary?

This gets into very murky waters about whether rationality is to be defined in terms of conformity with formal processes. I had some things to say in an earlier book about "appropriate judgment" and "disciplined skill" being wider categories than strict rationality. We have to avoid getting trapped into the opposition of rationality and arbitrariness. Kant shows us the way with his doctrine of judgment, and lots of people have relevant things to say about this issue: Hegel, Habermas, Derrida, McDowell.