Rationality Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Rationality - Term Paper Example That’s why it is called foundationalist. It interprets knowledge according to one’s personal foundations, how one is taught about things. These basic beliefs are treated as self-justifying meaning to say that it does not need any reason or explanation whatsoever in understanding the said belief. This is used to understand other things as these reasons are the basic principles of how the human mind works. The foundationalist approach to rationality then is a more rigid structure of what is and what is not without needing to explain things further or whether to think that something can be interpreted in more ways than one. This is how it is different from the constructivist approach wherein this approach interprets rationality as something that can be viewed differently from one person to another, whether they are from the same or different cultures, or whether they had the same or different experiences. Its basis is upon one’s own personal interpretations and whil e interpreting and explaining things, it moves on to create new explanations that further open new roads and opportunities of thought processes. The constructivist approach to rationality is a more flexible way of understanding things, as the term implies it constructs explanations rather than ground them as what foundationalist approach does. With this, I can say that rationality can be perceived both ways (although this still is a more constructivist approach). We can use grounded beliefs in interpreting different things that needs explanations, although there are some specific things that need to be interpreted depending on how one is raised upon it. Evidently, this shows that good reasons are evidently true depending on how we try to explain things. Classmate Todd’s interpretation of the foundationalist and constructivist approach to rationality allows us to see that both approaches can go hand-in-hand in understanding rationality. This is