Rationality, Consistency and Truth

Abstract

The question of whether it can be rational to belive in a contradiction is discussed. By following a distinction between truth in the correspondece sense and a recent formulation of 'pragmatic' truth and noting an analogy with the distinction between 'factual' and 'representational' beliefs, it is argued that although it is irrational to hold a factual belief in a contradictory proposition, this may not be so for representational beliefs in structures which are pragmatically true only. The paper concludes with some brief considerations of scientificrationality in general.