In defense of public reason: On the nature of historical rationality

Educational Theory

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 133-161

  Ellett, Frederick S ^a   Ericson, David P ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

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EID: 0342785275     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1997.00133.x     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Kenneth A. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech: Pluralism and Public Reason, I' Educutionul Theory44, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 1.
2. One anonymous revicwer recommends that we call this view "historicist rationality" so as not to mislead readers into thinking that we are doing history or writing about historical matters. Perhaps that would be acceptable as long as we are not saddled with being historicists in some Hegelian or other mode. Perhaps it might he called, alternatively, "enculturated rationality." Though we shall stay with "historical rationality," what we mean to pick out by this term is that rationality is embedded within and can only be understood against a background of sociocultural practices that extend over time. In other words, our conception of rationality is not a culturally-invariant one that allows one to argue back to First Principles that somc writers argue are needed to secure ohjectivity. But neither does this conception of rationality commit one to a facile relativism that we think infects the idea of local rationality or its variants. Historical rationality argues against the notion of First Principles; it does not think they are needed to secure objectivity. Our discussion of the development of the concept of probability attempts to show how it is embedded within a particular socio-cultural tradition but plays a striking, working role in objective accounts [suitably understood) yielded by the Western tradition of science.
3. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 2.
4. For example, in a recent article, Maxine Greene also sees Rorty as holding the idealist view that we construct both truth and reality.
5. See Greene, "Epistemology and Educational Research: The Influence of Recent Approaches to Knowledge," in Review of Research in Education 20 (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, 19941,423-64, esp. 430 and444-45. This anti-realist view of Rorty's work is supported by Rorty's writings in such places as "The World Well Lost" in Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982),3-18 and in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 315-17.
6. In this respect, we shall argue that Rorty may have converged with anothcr well-known philosopher, W.V.O. Quine, who most recently has, it seems, recanted his famous view that "epistemology can be naturalized." First see Quine, "Naturalizing Epistemology," in W.V.O. Quine, Ontological Relativity rind Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). Then see his recantation, W.V.O. Quine, The Pursuit of Truth /Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990, chap. 1, sec. 8). Along wlrh the writings of other philosophers, such as Hilary Putnam and Joseph Margolis, they help motivate our views on historical rationality as opposed to local rationality.
7. Peter Winch, The Idea of (I Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).
8. Paul Hirst, "Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge," in R.F. Deardcn, Paul Hirst, and R.S. Peters, eds., Education and the Development of Reason (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). Here Hirst sometimes seeins to advocate the more radical non-realist view.
9. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 2.
10. "Probability" also plays an essential role in many conceptions of practical rationality. For example
11. see Max Black's "Reasonableness" in The Prevalence of Humbug: And Other Essays (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983) and John Rawls, A Theory of lustice (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971).
12. See W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960); Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays; Quine, Pursuit of Truth; DonaldDavidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); and Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
13. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays; Quine, Pursuit of Truth; Donald
14. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)
15. Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
16. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," passage from p. 4 and footnote 1 1. To make the analogy as clear as possible, we have replaced his phrase "the nature of a just society" with the phrase "the way the world is."
17. This is Robert Nozick's well-known characterization of a view on philosophical argumentation, a view that Nozick also rejects.
18. See Robert Noziek, Philosophical Explanations [Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981).
19. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, und Praxis [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 8.
20. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech,'' 7.
21. This is suggested by an anonymous reviewer.
22. This is suggested by another anonymous reviewer.
23. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 7.
24. As he states, "To summarize: There are two broad views we can take as the sources of a civic language. One grounds civic discourse in a position supported by a deep philosophical justification. The second sees civic discourse as rooted in a moral tradition that reflects an "overlapping consensus.. .between various local perspectives." Ibid., 7 (emphasis added).
25. Here we stand with Sir Isaiah Berlin's dicta: "Some of the Great Goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss." Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humnnity (New York: Knopf, 1991), 13. Neither Rawls's, nor especially Strike's, conceptions of an overlapping consensus seems to appreciate how deeply this truth cuts for theories that seek to stay as far as possible "on the surface" and why any interesting consensus among groups is impossible.
26. Ibid., 3. In contrast, historical rationality holds only that one is pzima lacie committed to the principles that have arisen in one's culture; here it remains an open question whether or not one's moral principles are inclusive (or exclusive) in content.
27. Hilary Putnam, "Two Philosophical Perspectives," in Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198 1 ), 54-55.Hilary Putnam, "Two Conceptions of Rationality," in Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, 123. It is unfortunate that here Putnam uses "objectivity for us" and tried to define truth as some kindof idealizntion of rational acceptability. He corrects these mistakes in his Realism and Reason, 123. Please note that this use of "fit" above is irredeemably metaphorical; it is not to be considered anew "relation" that replaces the [unworkahle) correspondence relation. On this use of "relativism," see also Bemstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 92.
28. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 8
29. Of course, the way that Rawls sets up his version of an overlapping consensus avoids this kind of problem.
30. Strike "On the Construction of Public Speech," fn. 30, 13
31. Ihid., 5-6. The second claim here can he generalized to epistemology as a whole: it has gone relative. "Justification in morality, as in science, is relative.. , to one's epistemic circumstances, including reasons and evidence available at the current stage of inquiry." Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel (Boston: Beacon Press, 19881, 29. It is vital to note here, however, that this does not entail that truth has gone relative.
32. We must warn the reader that the form of realism appropriate to the social sciences need not he the form of realism appropriate to the natural sciences.
33. Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face, ed. James Conant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), xi [emphasis added).
34. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981)
35. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose lustice! Which Rationality! (Notrc Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
36. Strike "On the Construction of Public Speech," 2.
37. See also the similar views of Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," in Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 68. We refrain from taking up the vicws of Lyotard and Michel Foucault here. Lyotard has connected science with the search for truth and the "vain" attempt at "legitimation" by means of a "metanarrative" juniversalism).
38. See Jcan- FranGois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiii-xxiv. Quite apart from failing to show how his own "narratives" are "reliable," Lyotard never wonders whether a non-metanarrative on science may prove workable. Foucault, on the other hand, is primarily concerned to emphasize thc relationship between knowledge and power, so much so that many of his followers think all truth-claiming is merely "masked power." [Strike's Philosopher C is clearly singing this "radical" Foucault tnnc.) But Foucault has actually been constructing confirmable, "objective" histories or "genealogies" that have not merely an emancipatory function, but also play a cognitive role as well.
39. See Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures" in PowerlKnowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (1980),83-85.T hus, Foucault and Lyotard have needed some kind of objectivity for their own inquiries, but failed to provide the necessary epistemology and ontology. For related criticisms of Lyotard and Foucault, see Rorty's "Cosmopolitanism without Emancipation" in Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, 21 1-22; "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity" and "Moral Identity and Private Autonomy: The Case of Foucault" in Essays on Heidegger and Others [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19911, 177-92 and 193-98.
40. See also Joseph Margolis, "Order Restored," in The Truth about Relativism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 19911, 189-206.
41. Max Black, "Rationality and Cultural Relativity," in Problems of Choice and Decision, ed. Max Black (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Program on Science, Technology, and Society, 1975), 128. In other words, Black takes Winch to be asserting the rationality-is-local view.
42. Margolis, The Truth about Relativism, 191.
43. Black, "The Objectivity of Science," in Black The Prevalence of Humbug: And Other Essays, 59.
44. Israel Scheffler, "Pragmatism as a Philosophy," in Israel Scheffler, Inquiries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 19861,378.
45. See also Ian Hacking, The Tmning of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). We do not believe that Scheffler is in full agreement with our views on historical rationality, but we must await a later time to locate his own views. Similar comments pertain to Harvey Siegel.
46. For a highly readable account of the theoretical and experimental breakthroughs in nineteenth and twentieth century physics and chemistry that led to the unleashing of the power of the atom, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1986).
47. As I.C. Jarvie has noted, in most parts of the world the traditional cultures eventually opt for "western magic." See Jarvie, "Understanding and Explanation in Sociology andsocial Anthropology,"inExplanation in the Behuvioral Sciences, ed. Robert Borger and Frank Cioffi [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19701, 241. It is important to note that there seem to be widespread, cross-cultural, shared beliefs in the efficacy of certain technology. We draw the modest, but important, conclusion that such success suggests that the technology (anditsgenerative theory) is somehowin touch witha worldexternal tous. Black seems not to grasp the import of this jpragmatic) conclusion.
48. For aii introduction to some of the problems
49. see Henry E. Kyburg, Jr., Epistemology and Inference (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
50. We adapt the phrase from Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 1. Putnam agrees that probahility is a central part of our reasoning strategies, but said only that "this is where my spade its turned." He should have said that prohahility is, as best we can judge, a working part of a successful [so far) system. See Putnam, Lecture IV, Section "The Importance of Peirce's Puzzle," in Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism [LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987), 85.
51. The phrase is from Rorty, Essays on Heidegger, 21 1.
52. Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," 25, 27, and 216; Rorty, Essays on Heidegger, 167 and 198.
53. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 356 and Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," 39.
54. Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," 21 7. Clearly, within agroup of scientists, this wouldnot be your ordinary New England town meeting.
55. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger, 169.
56. See, for example, John Dewey's comments on rationality in Reconstruction in Philosophy, enlarged ed. [Boston: Beacon Press, 19481, xiii - xix.
57. Rorty also professes to follow Donald Davidson. We regard Davidson and Quine to be advancing basically the same views, especially now that Quine has adopted Davidson's view of mental terms.
58. See Quine, The Pursuit of Truth, section 29.
59. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Narure , Chapter 6, Sect. 2 and 4. Rorty did acknowledge there, however, that Putnam had started to recant.
60. Hilary Putnam, Representation and Reality (Cambridge: Bradford Books, 19881, 107.
61. See also Hilary Putnam, "How the World Is," in Realism with a Human Face, ed. James Conant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 261-67.
62. Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," 1-17, esp. 9-11.
63. See also 21-34, esp. 22.
64. Rorty rejects this modest form of ontological externalism in Rorty, Philasophyand the Mirror ofNature, 276 and 385.
65. But then see Rorty, "Pragmatism without Method," 4-12 and Rorty, Essays OR Heidegger, 4-6 for his current position.
66. Hilary Putnam, "Two Philosophical Perspectives,'' in Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, 49
67. For an excellent discussion of this complexity
68. see Joseph Margolis, "Scientific Realism as a Transcendental Issue,'' in Joseph Margolis, Pragmnlism Without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 281-312. Margolis has "rewoven" the term "transcendental."
69. Putnam, Represenration and Reality, 11 4.
70. W.F. Sellars, "Truth and Correspondence," in W.F. Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 197-224. Sellars here clearly rejects the classical correspondencc theories of truth, but argues that something morc is needed than Tarski's "semantic" theory, 197. In the case of "matter-of-factual" statements, there is a "second mode of "correspondence" that is essential to the understanding of truth, 198, 223." At a minimum, Sellars has Committed to ontological externalism.
71. This is only a first step. Historical rationality then goes "within the domain of inquiry" to ask what are the "objects" of knowledge and how we have access to them.
72. See Margolis, Pragmatism Without Foundations, 165-86.
73. Putnam, Representation and Reality, 115-16 SO. Quine puts the point this way: "What the indeterminacy thesis is meant to bring out is that the radical translator [or inquirer] is bound to impose as much as he discovers," Quine, The Pursuit of Truth ," 49. See also Section 43: "Two Indeterminacies." Finding and making are inseparably linked.
74. For another expression of this position
75. see Margolis, Pragmatism Without Foundations 82. W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), 25.
76. Quine, The Pursuit of Truth, Sect. 41-42.
77. Ibid., 101 (emphasis added). Quine goes even farther: he thinks it unlikely that there is a unique theory, 35.
78. Perhaps it is that the objects of physics have natures, while persons have histories. Persons are enculturated beings. This suggests that in the social sciences realism will have to receive a different treatment. For some of the issues, see Joseph Margulis, The Flux of History and ihe Flux of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
79. For some of the issues, see Joseph Margulis, The Flux of History and ihe Flux of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
80. Strike "On the Construction of Public Speech," 4
81. See Strike's equivalent move on local rationality in Ihid., 5 and our discussion of our shared assumptionabove.
82. Ibid. As we noted above, this is likely to include nearly all topics. With Strike's notion of an actual historical overlapping consensus, he clearly departs from Rawls's views and opens himself to a criticism that Hegel made of Locke's contract theory to the effect that it "improperly subjects the social relationships of moral persons to historical and social contingencies that are external to, and eventually undermine, their freedom and equality"; Rawls, Political Liberalism /New York: Columhia University Press, 19931, 287.
83. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 22-28, 39, 126, 147, 208, and 285-88 for some of the important distinctions and arguments. While Strike here seems unaware of Rawls's criticisms of his kind of approach, his more recent work shows explicit evolution away from a modus vivendi approach. At the same time, it is highly critical of Rawls's use of the original position since it "reeks of neo-Kantianism" and a "burden of judgment [that] is strongly associated with empiricist epistemology," something with which Strike clearly cannot abide
84. See Kenneth A. Strike, "Must Liberal Citizens Be Reasonable?" The Review of Politics 57, no. 1 [Winter 1996): 44, We suspect that Strike did not follow Rawls's approach to an overlapping consensus in Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," because of his objections to Rawls's original position approach. But in wishing to push a constructivistic approach as far as it may go, he perhaps saw no alternative to Rawls other than amodus vivendi approach. While his remarks are sketchy in this most recent paper, he seems to begroping for amore adequate conception of an overlapping consensus than either Rawls's or the modus vivendi approach. Still, he does not seem to recognize the possibility of a via media between a strong foundations rationality and local rationality. And though he may ultimately reject our historical rationality approach to political liberalism, once again we invite Strike to consider its virtues and resources as an alternative to any overlapping consensus approach. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this later paper by Strike to our attention. This is not, however, to say that Rawls's Kantianconstructivism is more adequate.
85. See, for example, J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 1977) and Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy /Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) for deep critiques of Rawls's kind of view, critiques to which Rawls never has adequately responded.
86. In asserting this cardinal principle of liberalism, it is vital to note that this does not commit us to various ontological and moral doctrines that have long been associated with classical liberalism: ontological and moral individualism. Ontological individualism, which is opposed to a "communitarian" view that individuals are socially constituted and that community is essential to the realization of human flourishing, argues that only individuals are real, are the sole repository of rights and interests, and are ontologically antecedent to society. Moral invidualism, which presupposes ontological indwidualism, is a comprehensive moral theory that identifies human happiness and moral goodness with the satisfaction of an individual's goals, desires, and preferences. Moral individualism is, thus, gravely ambivalent about community and society since they can be desirable only insofar as they are instrumental to the satisfaction of individuals' wants and needs.
87. See Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of lustice (Cambridge: Cambridgeuniversity Press, 1982) andFrederick Stoutland, "Self and Society in the Claims of Individualism," Studies in Philosophy and Education 10 (1990): 105-38 for characterization and analyses. Now it may be true that the tradition of moral individualism, as it developed from Locke to the early Rawls and Nozick, providedfertile soil for growth in the belief of the dignity of the individual. But, as Stoutland and others have shown, these historical relations between liberalism and moral individualism are not necessitatcd by any logic. It is logically possible to hold the belief in the dignity of the individual, with its account on equal respect and moral equality, without buying into the comprehensive doctrine of moral individualism. For the political and educational import on this
88. see David P. Ericson, "Humanization, Democracy, and Political Education," Studies in Philosophy and Education 11 (1991 1: 31-43.
89. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 17.
90. Sir Isaiah Berlin, "The Pursuit of the Ideal," in Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity.
91. Strike, "On the Construction of Public Speech," 26.
92. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 48-54, esp. fn. 1. expresses his longtime indebtedness to the work of W.M. Sibley, "TheRational Versus the Reasonable," Philosophical Review 62 (October 1953),554-60. MaxBlack, The Prevalence of Humbug, is aware of Sibley's paper, but Black implicitly rejects Siblcy's major claims.
93. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 63-66.
94. hid., fn. 19, p. 64.
95. See also 55, 58,60,63-64, and 122. It is interesting to note that Rawls, like Strike, expresses no awareness anywhere in this work of what Putnam, Quine, and Margolis have been doing.