Any defensible theory of rationality must include a factual account of human beings

Evidence

This scission between formalist metaethics and substantive political philosophy indicates, in my view, that any defensible theory of rationality cannot be purely procedural but must incorporate a factual account of human beings and their place in the world. This claim is, indeed, a corollary of the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. If the clarification of meanings cannot be divorced from empirical enquiry into the structure of the world, then philosophy must be seen as continuous with rather than an a priori foundation of the sciences. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 428

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Callinicos’s ‘philosophy continuous with rather than a priori foundation of the sciences’ is a genuinely dense anti-foundationalist position — it both borrows from and turns against Habermas’s proceduralism, and it drives the ensuing account of truth.
• DEFINE: Defines the naturalistic epistemology Callinicos counterposes to Habermas: rationality grounded in factual accounts of humans, rejecting the analytic-synthetic split.
• XREF: connects to: Knowledge and objectivity are only knowable in relation to humanity; Economic man’s rationality is founded precisely on everything that eludes his calculation — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1438

Broader Connections

• Knowledge and objectivity are only knowable in relation to humanity #corroborates (0.85)