Tidying the Rational* Home

Rationality, once this chapter has laid it out into at least 21 complete and substantial senses, now appears overburdened, cumbersome, even messy, and hardly attractive for empirical analysis. It seems, then, we need a way, like a dentist prepares a procedure by cleaning up the target organ, to clean it. We need a plan, an alternative that circumvents all the proposed “rationalities” as a first broad attempt at possibly coordinating and, in time, unifying them. The idea emerging is that of a most explanatory theory or “sense” of rationality: The best that a given rationality provides us of why it can explain itself and other rationalities is now in the lead among theories of rationality.