The Quest for Rationalism without Dogmas in Leibniz and Toulmin

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to connect Leibniz's and Toulmin's conceptions about practical and deliberative rationality. When trying to rationally justify contingent judgments Leibniz, like Toulmin, defends a weighing argumentative method. Thus, in Leibniz we can discern the balance between the legitimate demands of formal models of rationality and the lessons of a practice "situated" on a historical, social, and evaluative context (theoria cum praxi).

Philosophy of Globalization

“…In other words, alongside these concepts that we maycategorized as 'rigid', there appears in the origin of modernity another group of 'flexible' concepts (Roldán /N avarro 2007)t hata re instrumental in introducing diversity,g radualism and pragmatism (Ausín 2006) into our reflections. These concepts are none other than thoseo fc ontingency, freedom (autonomy), equality and tolerance )-all of them placed under the umbrella of the broader principle of 'plurality',w hich Leibnizd escribes from an ontological-gnoseological point of view as 'perspectivism' in his Monadology,r ecaptured by OrtegayGasset as 'historicalp erspectivism'.…”

“…It would be arationality that is no longer basedona bsolutetruths, but rather on the graduality of them; i. e., ordered in different steps, 'modulated',s ot hat 'true' and 'false' lose their static and abstract character,but without falling into relativism; in which the values of truth are not onlyhoused in the propositions themselves, but in their 'intervals' (as fuzzy calculus defends) or in its 'intermediates teps',s upported by the relational character of truth, as the ontologicala nd moral point of view of Dewey'sp ragmatism holds. It would be ar ationality for whose definitionw e could also borrow from the field of legal logic the concepts of 'weighting' and 'presumption' (Ausín 2006). It would be an argumentative rationality, in short, that is the recovery of ac ertain 'heterodox' enlightened tradition that we can find in the 'nuanced' rationalism of Leibniz, in Marie de Gournay'sd iscourse on equality; in the one on sympathyb yS ophie de Grouchy( excluded from the usual histories of philosophy, as is Marquise de Châtelet's Lessons in Physics), or in Lessing'sc oncept of tolerance.…”

Conflict of values in pharmaceutical research: Between public health and markets

“…Ya hemos analizado en otro lugar la importancia de los derechos sociales 17 , como la atención sanitaria primaria, en el marco general de los derechos humanos, en línea con la doctrina de las Naciones Unidas sobre la indivisibilidad e interdependencia de todos los derechos humanos, civiles, políticos, sociales, económicos y culturales. Pero en el caso del cuidado sanitario, su relevancia es aún más evidente y palmaria -como lo muestran claramente todas las encuestas y los sondeos de opinión pública que recogen que el servicio público de mayor interés para las personas es la sanidad, por delante de la vivienda, la educación y la seguridad.…”