EUJAP’S SPECIAL ISSUE “THE BOUNDS OF RATIONALITY” EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

We thought it appropriate for a philosophical reflection on the concept of rationality and irrationality to start out with this excerpt from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1882). The idea that error may be an intrinsic part of life—surely a Baconian echo—appears particularly useful to zoom in on all the difficulties that arise whenever we focus on the boundaries surrounding rationality. In our everyday experience of the world, as well as of ourselves and our minds, our capacity for rational judgment proves staggeringly unsuccessful in carving out a stable dominion for itself. We delude ourselves to be rational even when we employ apparently solid a posteriori arguments. Confabulation is part and parcel of our mental life: it comes in the form of the explanations that we provide to ourselves and others for actions or thoughts that we are unable to authentically understand (Hirstein 2009).