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=GJ RATIONALITY

Shane 0 1

Neill

Introduction Emancipation and the control of nature Science as rational inquiry The spectre of relativism and the politics of science language and context Cultural difference Conclusions Questions Further reading

==(] INTRODUCTION

Philosophers often categorize human beings as rational animals, and they regard our potential for reason to be a distinctively human characteristic. Our capacity for rational action is also considered to be a vital source for the hope that social order and political justice can be reconciled with individual freedom. This hope is most particular­ ly associated with the project of Enlightenment, a philosophically inspired movement that flourished among intellectual circles in eight­ eenth-century Europe. This project continues to provide the most fundamental orientation for modern ideas of progress.

The philosophers of Enlightenment argued that with the devel­ opment of scientific method, human reason could illuminate the darker aspects of nature. Such advances in knowledge would provide us with the means to control both the natural world around us and the tendencies inherent in human nature that, left untamed, can lead

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t� d!sorder and conflict. Rational inquiry would sweep aside unques­ t1onmg acceptance of religious or political dogma and usher forth a truly human age, where all could fulfil their potential for autonomous living.

This bold outlook has been the source of much controversy in recent social and political theory. The impulse to dominate nature that lies behind the Enlightenment conception of rationality has led some to attack its very foundations, while others have sought to refor­ mulate the ideal so as to illuminate the darkness of our own times. The aim of this chapter is to outline some of the issues at stake in these controversies and critically to assess the extent to which it is possible to acquire knowledge that facilitates the rational control of nature and society.

EMANCIPATION AND THE CONTROL

OF NATURE

For Enlightenment thinkers rationality is the key to human emanci­ pation. By the light of reason we can discover the laws which keep the natural and human worlds in motion. There is, in principle, no funda­ mental difference between the kind of knowledge we can have of the external world of nature and the inner world of human intellectual and moral experience. This assumption has played a vital role in the development of social and political theory. Later we will see that the attempt to model the social sciences on the natural sciences has some serious and troublesome consequences. For now we need to realize what first motivated these efforts. From the Enlightenment perspec­ tive, scientific knowledge liberates us from the shackles of dogma, leading us into a realm of freedom where we alone are in control of our destiny. No longer need we defer to the authority of a judgemental God who can condemn us at will to a tragic fate; nor need we have any superstitious reverence for the unfathomable mystery and insur­ mountable power of nature. There is no higher authority than the individual subject and it is on the basis of that subject's rights that a new emancipatory order is to be constructed (see also Chapter 5). That order will be characterized by social and economic progress, political justice and personal autonomy.

This is an exhilarating vision shot through with intoxicating op­ timism. One of its most remarkable expressions is found in the Mar­ quis de Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795). This philosophical manifesto of the Enlighten­ ment was written during one of the most turbulent periods of the French Revolution. Despite his optimism regarding the progress of the human mind, Condorcet had already fallen foul of the Jacobin administration. With cruel irony, he was executed less than a year

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after writing this impassioned hymn to the dawn of reason that the Revolution was thought to herald.

In the final chapter, Condorcet made a set of predictions, based on past experience of the ongoing triumph of reason, that outlines our imminent emancipation.

The time will therefore come when the sun will shine onlv on free men who know no other master but their reason; ..;hen tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes; to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking on their excesses; and to learn how to recognize and so to destroy, by force of reason, the seeds of tyranny and supersti­ tion, should they ever dare to reappear amongst us.

(Condorcet 1955: 179) Condorcet's supposedly well grounded prediction is exceedingly opti­ mistic, not to say naively utopian. His hope that we were soon to real­ ize such a rational form of life was sustained above all by confidence in the advances of scientific method that had transformed the intel­ lectual landscape of Europe.

When reason is applied scientifically, it can yield knowledge of the truth about nature. A philosophical grounding for this enterprise had already been provided in the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon, one of the philosophers most admired by the Enlightenment thinkers. He maintained in Novum Orga1111m (1620) that knowledge and power were one and the same thing, 'for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced' (Bacon 1955: 462). Bacon insisted that if we were to achieve certain knowledge of the true mechanisms of nature we would be able to control it, exert power over it and trans­ form human life for the better. But how was such certain knowledge to be had? Bacon proposed two ways by which truth could be discov­ ered: empirical induction and rationalist deduction. The former, which was preferred by Bacon, suggests that we begin by considering the world as it is experienced through our senses and then, 'rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent' (Bacon 1955: 465), we arrive at the most general of axioms. This, in the most simple terms, is the empiri­ cist method of science.

According to the empiricist method, any knowledge we have about nature is given a firm foundation in self-evident truths to which we have immediate access through sense-perception. For example, I know that sulphur burns with a bright yellow flame because I have seen it do so. This is a basic fact about a singular phenomenon, or par­ ticular, that one can observe. If we observe this repeatedly, without exception, then we can infer that this phenomenon always occurs when the same conditions obtain that sulphur always burns with a

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bright yellow flame. Thus we have arrived at a general axiom that can be tested by experiment. The kind of generalization involved here is warranted by a principle of induction that allows us to infer from past experience to the expectation of similar future experience. Hence we expect sulphur to continue to burn with a bright yellow flame. If we can identify such law-like regularities in the behaviour of particulars, then we will have grounds for claiming that we have discovered a uni­ versal truth about nature.

The second method for discovering truth, as identified by Bacon, is rationalist deduction. This begins with the most general axioms, 'the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable', and then proceeds by a process of logical deduction to a set of universal laws of nature that must hold by necessity. The name most immediately associated with this rationalist method is Rene Descartes. In his Meditations on

First Philosophy (1641), Descartes provided an alternative foundation for certain knowledge. He began by doubting the truth of any know­ ledge derived from our sense-perception, thus immediately rejecting the empiricist's starting point in the quest for certain knowledge. My senses might deceive me, or I could be dreaming, or I may be under the power of a malicious demon. How can I be certain that the partic­ ulars I experience are true? After a good deal of tortuous agonizing, Descartes concluded that the proposition '/ am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind' (Descartes 1984: 17). The only possible foundation for certain know­ ledge, then, is that I myself exist. This is the one thing that cannot be doubted even if I am indeed under the power of a malicious demon in imagining that other particulars are true. Once we have this foun­ dation of certainty we can, by the complex and often dubious logic of Descartes's theory of knowledge, go on to use our reason in working out the mathematical principles according to which the universe must conform. Thus, through a faculty of rational intuition, and prior to any observation of particulars, we can develop explanatory know­ ledge of the causal mechanisms that operate as universal laws of nature. By the light of reason we discover the truth of nature without relying on the untrustworthy evidence of our senses.

Of course, the Enlightenment vision goes well beyond the aim of guaranteeing certain knowledge of the laws of external nature. Con­ dorcet also believed that we could have such knowledge about the progress of the human mind.

The sole foundation for belief in the natural sciences is this idea, that the general laws directing the phenomena of the universe, known or unknown, are necessary and constant. Why should this principle be any less true for the development of the intel­ lectual and moral faculties of man than for the other operations of nature?

(Condorcet 1955: 173)

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A historical study of the various stages of human society can yield knowledge of laws of intellectual and moral development that allow us both to explain the past and to predict the future. Reason, accord­ ing to Condorcet, has been the driving force of history, and the development of our faculties has made possible ever more rapid progress towards a perfect form of human society - a life enlightened by human rationality at its highest stage. The more we know about the laws of human nature, the more happy and virtuous will we be. The age of reason will be the age of moral goodness, for we can be assured 'that nature has linked together in an unbreakable chain truth, happiness and virtue' (Condorcet 1955: 193).

The future, as predicted by Condorcet at the end of the eighteenth century, would see 'the abolition of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within each nation, and the true perfection of mankind' (Condorcet 1955: 173). There will be no cause for war, since rational actors will realize that the costs of war far outweigh any ben­ efits. Once all nations have been enlightened, there will be agreement among them as to the moral principles that are to regulate inter­ national politics, and all national animosities will disappear. The main causes of inequality within society, differences in wealth, status and education, will diminish. This will occur through the abolition of privileges of birth, an increasing liberalization of economic markets and the introduction of welfare provision for the weaker members of society. Furthermore, if we act according to our rational faculties, we will manage to annihilate all the prejudices perpetuated by our rever­ ence for tradition and custom. We will, for example, refuse to endorse any inequality of rights between the sexes. As inequality is overcome, between and within nations, all human beings will have the oppor­ tunity, through education and the free exercise of their reason, to per­ fect themselves and to achieve happiness. Thus society becomes more perfect, more virtuous and more rational.

Reason will reign in a society where all people can think for them­ selves. In public encounters, characterized by a free and open exchange of views among rational individuals, a spirit of tolerance and rational respect will emerge. Immanuel Kant, perhaps the greatest of all philosophers associated with the optimism of the late eight­ eenth century, understood the Enlightenment to represent 'man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity' (Kant 1991: 54). We overcome this immaturity by having the courage and resolve to think for ourselves and by refusing to have others think for us. No clergy­ man, politician or teacher can really think for us. If we are to become mature, rationally autonomous human beings, we must be free to use our own understanding, particularly with regard to matters of reli­ gion. We are all to pursue our own happiness in whatever way we choose, once it is consistent with the principles of morality. For Kant, the only moral principles we should accept are those that could be accepted by every other rationally autonomous agent. In other words,

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each of us must accord to all others the same rights that we would seek for ourselves.

What more appealing vision could there be than a world without war, poverty or oppression; where equality, justice, tolerance, peace and happiness reign supreme; where all individuals are free to pursue, in a rationally autonomous manner, their own chosen life projects; where everyone respects the rights of each of their fellow human beings; and where an educated and virtuous public can deliberate over the common good by the light of a reason unfettered by the dogmas of tradition and prejudice? In that world, suffering and violent con­ flict would be minimized. We would use our knowledge of the external world to tame the dangers of nature, while our knowledge of human nature and society would allow us to bring about rapid progress in the improvement of humanity. Rationality is the key to such control of nature, and it offers us a direct path to human emanci­ pation.

Vast resources have been spent developing the social sciences so as to investigate social and political life with a view to its amelioration. Most social scientific disciplines are still dominated by schools of thought sharing the Enlightenment assumption that we can discover universal laws of human behaviour. These laws are typically thought to serve as a foundation for theories that can help us to control social development for the better. This is a general characteristic of ap­ proaches as varied as behaviourism, utilitarianism, rational choice theory, functionalism, contemporary systems theory and some forms of Marxist analysis. Nevertheless, as we approach a new millennium we seem to be no nearer to a realization of Condorcet's vision. Our confidence in the ideal of a rationalized world has been shaken dra­ matically by the horrors of two world wars, the barbarism of genocide, the tyranny of totalitarianism and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Continuing famine, war, torture and degradation, as well as the shock­ ing facts of destitution among large numbers of the world's popu­ lation, remind us of the fact that we live in a world where injustice, oppression and misery are still widespread. Sexism, racism, sectarian­ ism, homophobia and many other forms of prejudice are far from van­ quished. Furthermore, we are now facing a potentially catastrophic ecological crisis that has been brought about by the ongoing destruc­ tion of the natural environment.

But what might disturb Condorcet most of all, were he miraculously to reappear among us, is the fact that the Enlightenment project itself is implicated in much of the misery that is around us. Think of the contributions that developments in the natural sciences have made to recent wars or to the ecological crisis. Or the fact that problems of poverty, famine, political oppression and social alienation appear more acute than ever in spite of, perhaps because of, the impulse rationally to control human nature. It could be argued, with some cogency, that the social and economic sciences have, more often than

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not, served to exacerbate inequalities by contributing to the efficiency of an unjust and oppressive global system. They have been used to protect mystifying state bureaucracies and rampant economic markets from the radical criticism that seeks to address such injustice and oppression. It would appear that the development of the sciences and the attempt to control nature have led to at least as much suffering as they have managed to alleviate. Perhaps rationality is not the key to emancipation, but the primary source of our misery.

The idea that modern societies are characterized primarily by dangerous processes of rationalization is the central theme of the work of Max Weber (1991). His account of social rationalization is one of the most influential analyses of modernity, and a founding moment of modern sociology. Weber argued that in modern societies we live in a disenchanted world, where all notions of the sacred, the magical, the mysterious or the religious have been exposed to the ra­ tional interrogations of the scientific worldview associated with the project of Enlightenment. He was keenly aware of the fact that this legacy of disenchantment is a double-edged sword. The process of rationalization may well provide us with a more efficiently organized form of life and a more objective means of regulating legal and social relations than would have been available to traditional societies. It might also leave us as individuals with more scope for autonomous action. But there are real dangers in the development of a rationally efficient bureaucratic system. The more control it achieves over social and economic life, the more alienated the individuals it is supposed to serve will become. If the system can cope with every eventuality then there will no longer be any need for democratic discussion or collec­ tive deliberation about the merits of one proposal or another. Indi­ vidual freedom and human creativity would then be stifled, as we

would find ourselves institutionalized and trapped within, as Weber put it, an 'iron cage of bureaucracy'.

While the Enlightenment conception of rationality, as the power to control nature, continues to animate much of the work in the social and political sciences, there has been, in the later decades of this cen­ tury, a series of forceful theoretical challenges to the naive triumphal­ ism of this project. In the remaining sections of this chapter, the sources of these intellectual challenges will be traced, first, by assess­ ing some influential work in the history and philosophy of science and, second, by analysing the impact on the social sciences of the work of certain philosophers of language. The upshot of much of this work is to undermine not only the Enlightenment belief that the key to emancipation is the control of nature but also our confidence in human reason as a power that can provide certain knowledge of the laws that govern nature and society.

8 SHANE O'NEILL

� SCIENCE AS RATIONAL INQUIRY

Rational inquiry, from the perspective of the Enlightenment thinkers, is grounded in scientific method. One source of disquiet regarding the prospects for ever more rapid rational progress in our struggle with nature has emerged in a series of debates concerning scientific methodology. Perhaps the two most important thinkers who have contributed to these debates are Karl Popper (1994) and Thomas Kuhn ( 1970). In order to understand the significance of their contributions, we need, first, to consider once again the empiricist method of sci­ ence.

Long before the beginning of the twentieth century, empiricism had held sway over rationalism as the dominant philosophical mode of grounding the scientific enterprise. It was generally thought that sense-perception was a more reliable foundation for certain know­ ledge than an assumed faculty of rational intuition that claimed immediate access to the laws of nature prior to experience. But serious doubts had also been raised about the logical coherence of the prin­ ciple of induction on which the empiricist's claim to certain know­ ledge of the laws of nature had been based. This problem was given its most devastating formulation by David Hume (1978).

From an empiricist perspective, our only valid source of knowledge is sense-perception. If, through observation, we can identify law-like regularities, we can then infer, by the principle of induction, that we have arrived at a general axiom, or a truth of nature. Normally we take this to mean that we have discovered a necessary connection between a cause and its effect - such as the combustion of sulphur and the bright yellow flame with which it bums. Hume argued that we can have no such knowledge of causal necessities. Simply because we have, up to the present, always observed sulphur to bum with a bright yellow flame, we have no logical reason to claim that it must always do so in the future, or that it represents a necessity of nature. While we can have no knowledge of any unobservable mechanisms of nat­ ural necessity, this does not ruffle the feathers of a calm empiricist like Hume. We can, as he suggested, think of a cause merely as a regular correlation or a 'constant conjunction' between one event and another. Our expectations of future events are therefore not based on rational grounds but rather on habit or custom. Induction then yields only general correlations, but this is, according to a sceptical Hume, the only kind of knowledge we need, or can reasonably expect.

How then are we to account for the scientific status of a theory, or a set of generalizations that have been made on the basis of ob­ servation? How are we to test the truth of the claims that are made? The 'logical positivists', a group of hard-core philosophical empiri­ cists working in Vienna in the 1930s, sought to formalize rational

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conditions according to which the truth of a generalization could inductively be justified. They insisted that the only valid test of truth would be the extent to which a theory could be verified by obser­ vation. Karl Popper rejected this reliance on verification and argued instead that empiricism could be better preserved if we were to accept fully the implications of the problem of induction by treating all scientific theories as tentative hypotheses. Hume's formulation of the problem makes it clear that the truth of all theories is contingent on matters of fact. A theory should be rejected if it is contradicted by facts that we can observe. We can then, on the basis of observation, show that a theory is not true. If it is contradicted by facts it has been shown to be false. So while one more piece of sulphur burning with a bright yellow flame could never guarantee the certainty of the claim that 'sulphur always burns with a bright yellow flame', one piece burning with a green flame would guarantee the falsity of that claim. There is no certain knowledge, no absolutely true theory. Scientific method depends not on verification but on falsification.

For Popper, science does not follow a path beginning with the. observation of particulars, moving by way of the principle of induc­ tion, to a set of generalizations or laws. Rather, it begins with theories that seek to order our experience by offering tentative hypotheses as to the laws of nature. All theories are conjectures that invite refuta­ tion, and the bolder the conjecture the more interesting the truth that it promises. A genuinely scientific theory will make very clear the empirical tests according to which it might be falsified. Scientists do not seek confirming evidence to verify their hypotheses, but seek contradictory evidence so as to falsify them. This rules out certain theories that could claim to be confirmed by empirical evidence but that cannot underwrite their own falsifiability. Popper rejected such theories as being pseudo-scientific, and he included among them Marx's historical materialism and Freud's psychoanalytic theories. Since neither Marx nor Freud could show how their theories could be falsified by empirical evidence, they cannot even stand as conjectures that might be true. They are speculative theories that have no rational grounding, and so they cannot even enter the scientific domain.

Popper's primary concern is to overcome Hume's scepticism by proposing a view of how we can, on purely rational grounds, prefer some competing conjectures to others. W hat makes for a genuinely scientific theory, a conjecture that can be justified on the basis of rational argument, is the fact that it can survive severe tests. We prefer Newton's theory to Kepler's, and Einstein's to Newton's, because of the fact that the theory we prefer in each case has less contradictory empirical evidence standing against it. This critical rationalist per­ spective still allows for the growth of knowledge and so guarantees the progress of the scientific enterprise. We can through the rigorous testing of ever more adequate theories solve problems that impede our efforts to control nature. Our scientific knowledge is always

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open-ended, depending as it does on the critical reception of bold conjectures, but rational progress is still possible. This is as true of the social sciences as it is of the natural sciences. We can, in an open society, test social scientific hypotheses by trial and error and so engage in piecemeal social engineering by introducing reforms that will improve our condition. In this way, Popper's theory of scientific knowledge is related to his political defence of liberalism and to his critique of thinkers such as Plato, Hegel and Marx (Popper 1957). Progress is held to depend on a particular sort of 'open society' charac­ terized by a limited government that seeks neither to impose judge­ ments nor to plan society according to some elaborate scheme or principle.

Popper shares the Enlightenment conviction that rationality, as manifested in scientific knowledge, represents the key to progress. His conception of knowledge seeks to avoid the irrational consequences of Hume's effort to ground scientific method not on reason but on habit. He admits, however, that we can have no certain knowledge of absolute truths. Nor is there any immediate access to truth through sense-perception, since our theoretical conjectures will always inform our observations. But this claim is conveniently forgotten when Popper tries to show how one singular fact can falsify a theory. Is our observation of the falsifying fact not itself informed by a conflicting theory? Rather than pursue the highly questionable consistency of Popper's view on these matters, we can consider the way in which this claim, that facts are never innocent of theory, is given a much more radical twist in Thomas Kuhn's account of the history of science.

Kuhn's concept of the scientific 'paradigm' has had a remarkable impact on contemporary theory, with the consequence that our belief in the possibility of rational, scientific progress has been seriously undermined. For Kuhn, the history of science has not been one of steady progress in the accumulation of truth, either through inductive reasoning as positivists would have it, or by Popper's method of falsi­ fication. It has instead been characterized by a series of 'paradigms' punctuated by discontinuous ruptures, or revolutions, in scientific reasoning. The term paradigm is used in many different ways, even by Kuhn himself, but it has two particularly significant and related senses that are relevant here. First, it indicates the entire constellation of beliefs, values and techniques shared by the members of a scientific community. Second, it denotes one exemplary, concrete set of solu­ tions to scientific problems that act, for that community, as a model for the solution of other puzzles. In the first sense, the paradigm oper­ ates as a 'disciplinary matrix'; in the second, as an 'exemplar'. Key exemplars in the history of science would include Copernican as­ tronomy, which placed the sun at the centre of the universe, or Einstein's physics, which explained how predictions based on New­ tonian mechanics could often be seriously mistaken. Copernicus and Einstein both provided model, or paradigmatic, solutions to a set of

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problems, and these solutions then became the focus of a new constellation of beliefs, or disciplinary matrix, around which a scien­ tific community continued to operate for a sustained period.

ln any given discipline, one paradigm of inquiry dominates at a par­ ticular historical period, and when this dominance is more or less unquestioned the community lives in a period of 'normal science'. The paradigm of research, such as Copernican astronomy or Einstein's physics, guides new generations of scientists in so far as it provides both a model set of solutions and a remaining set of puzzles that are still to be solved. During such a period of 'normal science', the basic assumptions that guide the research are taken for granted and so are immune from challenge. There will, however, be certain phenomena that the guiding theory cannot explain. Often adjustments can be made in order to deal with such anomalies. At a certain time in the history of a paradigm, the number of anomalies increases to such an extent that the basic assumptions of the theory can no longer be con­ sidered to be immune from challenge. This heralds the end of the period of normal science and the beginnings of a period of crisis, or revolution. At some stage, a rival theory will emerge, characterized by a set of assumptions that are not compatible, or are incommensurable, with those of the old paradigm. If two bodies of thought are incom­ mensurable, it means that they cannot be measured against one another because no suitable standard of evaluation that could objec­ tively be applied to both can be found. lf the new rival theory can gain the allegiance of the more influential scientists of the day, then it will be in a position to set itself up as a new paradigm. Eventually, as suc­ cessive generations of scientists are trained into this new constellation of beliefs, a new period of puzzle-solving normal science is insti­ tutionalized. This will continue until an increasing number of anoma­ lies destabilizes the new paradigm, leading to yet another period of crisis and a revolutionary rupture in scientific thinking.

THE SPECTRE OF RELATIVISM AND THE

POLITICS OF SCIENCE

There are at least two aspects of Kuhn's account of the history of sci­ ence that have led indirectly, and often in spite of Kuhn's own inten­ tions and hopes, to a radical questioning of the Enlightenment aspiration to a steady growth of rationally grounded scientific know­ ledge that would enable us to control nature and to emancipate our­ selves from the causes of unnecessary suffering. First, there is the emphasis on the fact that paradigms are incommensurable. There can be no compromise between Copernican astronomy and the Ptolemaic paradigm it replaced. The sun could not be the centre of the universe if we assumed that the Earth was. What is involved is a radical trans­ formation of thought akin to a religious conversion. Copernican

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astronomy did not build on the Ptolemaic model but shattered it. After such a revolution scientists see everything differently, and in this sense 'work in a different world' (Kuhn 1970: 135). So while a new par­ adigm can solve more problems than the one it replaces, it cannot show itself to be more true to the way the world really is. Since para­ digmatic assumptions and methods differ so sharply, there are no rational criteria that would allow us to compare one paradigm with

another. There is therefore no straightforward cumulative growth of knowledge, no way of closing in on the absolute truth of reality.

The implications of this view, that scientific paradigms are incom­ mensurable, has led to a series of debates about the status of scientific method as a model of rational inquiry. If the most basic assumptions of any scientific outlook cannot themselves be rationally defended, how can any form of knowledge have secure foundations? Perhaps, as Paul Feyerabend (1993) suggests, there are no objective criteria of rational justification and the truth of any theory is relative to a par­ ticular view of the world. But if there are no rational criteria for choos­ ing one paradigm over another, why not choose to continue to believe that the Earth is the centre of the universe, or that Newton's physics is preferable to Einstein's? Why not consider Marx's theory of history or Freudian psychoanalysis as incommensurable, but equally legiti­ mate, paradigms that rival Popper's programme of falsificationism? Indeed, why should we invest more in medical science than in home­ opathy, or prayer, or witchcraft? Should we not follow Feyerabend in adopting as our sole methodological principle the anarchistic motto: 'anything goes' (Feyerabend 1993: 296)?

Popper (1970) argued strenuously against the implied relativism of Kuhn's views about incommensurability, insisting that critical rational inquiry can provide a framework that allows comparison across paradigms. But Kuhn's main point was not that comparison across paradigms was impossible, but that there could be no shared rational scale according to which rival theories could decisively be ranked. [mre Lakatos (1970) offered a more sophisticated defence of falsificationism by drawing on many of the insights of Kuhn's work. He suggested that we should think of scientific inquiry as a series of research programmes that progress as long as they continue to make novel and interesting predictions. The core assumptions of the pro­ gramme are protected by a belt of secondary or 'auxiliary' hypotheses, some of which could be rejected in the light of conflicting evidence. [f the search for new auxiliary hypotheses becomes loose and arbi­ trary, then the research programme itself begins to degenerate. It is then time to abandon the core assumptions and to pursue an alterna­ tive research programme. Lakatos gives an insightful account of the standards according to which much scientific research is actually con­ ducted, but he does not overcome the problem of showing how the core assumptions of research programmes could be ranked according to rational criteria.

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An alternative conception of science that claims to offer an escape from relativism is the critical realist approach defended by Roy Bhaskar (1978). Realism opposes empiricism, in that it does not think the scientific enterprise to be primarily concerned with the search for law-like regularities. According to the realist, neither the positivist who seeks to verify the truth of a law of nature, nor the Popperian who seeks to falsify conjectures about truth, has an adequate account of explanation. In order to explain why sulphur burns with a bright yellow flame, it is not enough to insist that it always does so. We need to analyse the causality involved in terms of the nature of things and the way they interact or, in other words, with reference to the under­ lying structures and mechanisms of reality that generate observable phenomena. Such explanation often requires us to postulate the exist­ ence of non-observable entities, such as gravitational force. The onus on the scientist is to offer a description of reality that would allow us to explain events. Since the emphasis is not on regularities but on the complex interaction of causal tendencies within an open system, pre­ diction is of secondary concern.

The realist can evade the charge of relativism more effectively than the empiricist by making a very clear distinction between ontology, the way things are in the world, and epistemology, the way we gain knowledge about the world. We must assume that things are the way they are whether or not we know about them. So the realist assumes that there are laws of nature to be discovered and that we have come closer to finding out the truth about nature with the development of the sciences. But the realist also accepts that there is no immediate access to knowledge of the laws of nature. Facts are never innocent of theory, and science itself is a social practice institutionalized within a particular cultural and historical context. What scientific theories offer are fallible explanations of real entities, and these theories must always be open to further elaboration or correction. So while our knowledge of nature is transitive, the world we seek to know is intran­ sitive, in that it exists independently of our knowledge. Bhaskar (1986, 1988) has argued that realist principles also inform a critical social science that seeks to explain the way in which social structures can determine and constrain our activities. Such explanation of the obstacles to human development can facilitate programmes that might lead to the emancipatory transformation of those structures.

The second aspect of Kuhn's work that undermines the Enlighten­ ment belief in science as the vehicle of rational progress is the stress he places on the institutional setting of scientific practice. New gener­ ations of scientists are socialized into the disciplinary matrix of a par­ ticular paradigm. They are trained to ask certain questions and to pursue their research according to specific methodological principles. Scientific inquiry is embedded in a social and political context, and research projects are dependent on their being funded. The vision of the isolated scientist investigating the laws of nature by the light of

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pure reason is a far cry from the reality of research funding competi­ tions. Paradigms of research can be propped up with the support of social and political forces, governments, corporate bodies and private concerns that are far from disinterested observers of the laws of nature.

What Kuhn's work makes clear is that theories may not be chosen purely on the basis of logical reasoning or empirical evidence. We also have to consider factors such as conventional and political restrictions on research, conservative conformity to particular patterns of thought and the hierarchical structure of the scientific community. This has led to a proliferation of studies on the relation between science and social power, most notably the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge defended by Barry Barnes and David Bloor (1982). The guiding principle of this programme is the relativist view that there are no rational criteria that could justify the truth of a scientific theory. The decisive factor in the acceptance of one theory over another is the political struggle between the advocates of competing paradigms. A further implication of this relativist view is that there are no rational criteria according to which these political conflicts about scientific theories could themselves be objectively evaluated. Truth is the outcome of a power struggle.

Some feminist theorists, such as Helen Longino (1990) and Sandra Harding (1991), have also been inspired by this aspect of Kuhn's work. Since the notion of a paradigm reveals how certain unquestioned assumptions can shape and guide scientific research, it might be poss­ ible to show how gender bias enters surreptitiously into mainstream theory. Furthermore, since there are no criteria according to which the rational superiority of one paradigm could be demonstrated, it would seem legitimate for scientific inquiry to be inspired by a feminist worldview. According to Longino, we can be informed, in our inter­ pretation of empirical data regarding sexual differences, by a set of values that favours egalitarian relations between the sexes. This egali­ tarian interpretive framework can challenge, on scientific grounds, the dominant malestream paradigm that is informed by patriarchal assumptions (see Chapter 6). If we are concerned to foster scientific practices that do not reproduce inequality and oppression, then we must advocate conceptions of scientific objectivity that challenge the external influences and background assumptions that members of the scientific community bring to their work. According to Harding, this means that the political standpoint of the scientist is a relevant con­ sideration in the evaluation of scientific theories. Rigorous scientific scholarship can only take place under conditions where women and members of marginalized races and cultures have an opportunity to articulate their own standpoints. rt would seem to be the case that, for Longino and Harding, as well as for Barnes and Bloor, scientific and political discourse are thought to interpenetrate in ways that would have horrified not only the Enlightenment thinkers but also Popper, and even Kuhn himself.

RATIONALITY 15

Conceptions of rational inquiry have also been influenced by recent developments, such as chaos theory, that challenge fundamental assumptions about the natural sciences. Furthermore, there has been a growing scepticism in society regarding the power of the sciences and their ability to provide us with rational control over nature. This has been illustrated very clearly, for example, in the crisis over British beef. Scientists seem to be unable to explain convincingly, let alone solve, the problem of BSE infection. Many members of the public think that scientists are so caught up in the political and commercial aspects of the crisis that so-called experts can now say nothing on the matter without adding to the confusion.

A related form of scepticism has been expressed theoretically in recent decades by a number of philosophers and social theorists who have refused to model human rationality on the scientific enterprise. If we are to conceive of rationality in a broader way, as these contex­ tualist philosophers suggest, then we might be able to show why it is that science could not deliver on the promise of Enlightenment, par­ ticularly with regard to the aspirations of the social sciences. For these thinkers, any genuine understanding we might have of social and political life must be based on a rejection of the Enlightenment assumption that there are immutable laws of moral and intellectual development waiting to be discovered. We need to understand ration­ ality in a less triumphalist way by breaking free of the Enlightenment obsession with foundations for certain knowledge. In other words, we need to emancipate ourselves from the illusions that have been gener­ ated through the impulse to control nature that drives the scientific enterprise.

� LANGUAGE AND CONTEXT

One of the key features of the Enlightenment's vindication of the effort to study social and political life on the model of the natural sci­ ences was that its primary concern would be the explanation of human behaviour with reference to a set of law-like generalizations. According to the positivist research programme that has dominated the social sciences in the twentieth century, these generalizations would be grounded in the empiricist method of science, based on observation and inductive reasoning. This programme has been chal­ lenged by a number of philosophers who argue that the focus of the social sciences should not be the explanation of behaviour from the external perspective of a rationally disengaged observer. The focus should instead be the interpretation of social meanings within a particular cultural context. The social scientist must learn how to understand the meaning that action has in its context before the ques­ tion of explanation could legitimately be considered. The shift of

O 16 SHANE O'NEILL

emphasis here from explanation to interpretation, from observation to participation, reflects a shift in the understanding of rationality. We should think of rationality not in terms of a discovery of laws of nature but in terms of the rules that give an action meaning in a par­ ticular context. The role of language is crucial here.

One of the most striking explanations of the need to adopt an inter­ pretive approach to the social sciences is found in the work of Peter Winch (1990). Influenced by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, (1967), Winch argues that language offers us the only access we can have to reality. 'Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of experience we have of the world' (Winch 1990: 15). There is no way we can get outside of language in our effort to grasp reality. We can only understand meaning if we know what it is to use words in a particular way. This understanding depends on our follow­ ing the rules involved in the use of those words in their context, and this presupposes the idea that other people can also follow them. The rules of language are like the rules of a game. For example, unless I understood what it means to serve, to return serve, to award points and to keep score, I could not be playing tennis but, rather, I would be aimlessly hitting a ball with a racket. Similarly, if I was making noise with my vocal chords I could not be using language unless I under­ stood that I was uttering words that carry a particular meaning. We can only use language if we know how to play the game involved, and we can only do that if we know the rules (see also Chapter 3).

For Winch, these rules constitute a 'form of life' into which we are integrated when we learn a language. There can be no private lan­ guage, since we only learn what it is to follow a rule in a social con­ text. It must be possible, in principle, for other people to grasp the rules of any language that I might, for whatever perverse reason, seek to invent for my own private use. As with any language game, all meaningful action is rule-governed. No way of life, be it that of the monk, the entrepreneur or the anarchist, would have any point if it were not constituted by rules. Human action is thus understood as the application of a set of rules. Similarly, all social institutions embody ideas, and social relations are 'expressions of ideas about reality' (Winch 1990: 23).

From this perspective, and in contrast with the natural scientist who seeks to discover causes, the social scientist tries to interpret meanings. There is no possibility of scientific prediction, since actors must decide for themselves how best to follow a rule, or to pursue a particular way of life, in new circumstances. Unlike burning pieces of sulphur, human beings are not causally conditioned. If we are to understand an action, we cannot provide explanations based on law­ like generalizations; instead we must learn how people live in a par­ ticular way. We need to grasp the rule that is pursued by the actor. In other words, our understanding depends on our adopting the

r

RATIONALITY 17

perspective of the people whose social action we are studying. In analysing social phenomena, we must begin to participate in a par­ ticular form of life. There are two important implications of Winch's application of Wittgenstein's later philosophy to the social sciences. First, the pre-eminent status of scientific knowledge is denied. Second, the possibility of our developing critical perspectives on other cultures and forms of life is undermined.

Science is denied pre-eminent status as a form of knowledge, in that it is thought of as one language game among others. It is inappropri­ ate to apply the rules of the scientific language game to many aspects of social reality. In seeking to yield explanatory accounts of certain natural phenomena, science provides us with one mode of under­ standing reality. But the criteria of intelligibility that are employed in the practice of science are peculiar to science itself. They should not be thought to set critical standards to which other modes of under­ standing reality must aspire. Religion is one such alternative mode of understanding reality, and it too has a logic of its own. Again the ques­ tion of incommensurability arises here. There are no criteria of intel­ ligibility or logic, no rational standards according to which the games of science and religion, or art or politics, could all be evaluated criti­ cally. We should not judge a mystic's religious experience according to the criteria of a scientific outlook. Nor should we judge political action according to criteria appropriate to aesthetic appreciation. All criteria of logic are internal to a variety of ways of living or modes of social life, and it is this that leads Winch (1990: 102) to insist that 'reality has no key'. The great mistake of the Enlightenment thinkers was to reduce rationality to the criteria of logic associated with the discovery of the laws of nature. If we accept that science, no more than any other mode of inquiry, is not the key to reality, then we will have to adopt a broader conception of rationality. It will no longer suffice to think of rationality as a tool that can facilitate the control of nature.

Winch's concerns on this matter are not unlike those of Feyerabend, who, as we have already seen, seeks to undermine the pre-eminence of scientific reasoning in our culture. The dominance of science is a form of cultural imperialism that is underpinned by state support for scientific research. Science is not, objectively, any more legitimate a form of inquiry than mysticism, or witchcraft. Indeed, there is no objective point of view from which such a claim to pre-eminence could be made. If we still believe that science is the key to reality, then it is because of the way in which social power has operated by illegit­ imately enthroning science as the only logical mode of making sense of life. Like all other modes, such as religion, art or politics, its per­ spective is limited. We must be careful not to reason scientifically about activities and practices that have a different, and incommensu­ rable, logic.

There are echoes of these sentiments in the postmodern attitude characterized by Jean-Franr;ois Lyotard (1984) as an 'incredulity'

18 SHANE O'NEILL

towards all 'metanarratives', or grand theories that claim some uni­ versal significance. The Enlightenment's conception of scientific rationality as the key to continuous and universal progress in our struggle "Yith nature is the ultimate metanarrative of modernity. The dominance of some such metanarrative will, Lyotard suggests, inevitably involve the subjugation of other discourses, or language games. Just as a religious experience could not be understood properly from a scientific perspective, neither can gender-based oppression be challenged effectively in a Marxist language of class struggle, nor can the interests of ethnic minorities be articulated within a discourse of national liberation. In order to overcome these forms of subjugation, or differends as Lyotard (1988) refers to them, we must introduce nar­ ratives whose effect is not to embellish a continuous, universal story, but rather to disrupt and to destabilize language games that illegiti­ mately claim universal significance. Rather than thinking of ration­ ality as the thread that holds together the story of human progress, we must stress the discontinuities and ruptures that inevitably ensue when one mode of rationality is illegitimately imposed on another. Politics, from this postmodern perspective, is the agonistic struggle of incommensurable forms of rationality. In this respect, Lyotard's theor­ etical interventions share many of the general assumptions that char­ acterize the work of poststructuralists discussed elsewhere in this book: the genealogical inquiries of Foucault (see Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8), Derrida's project of deconstruction (Chapter 3), the interroga­ tions of gendered identities by Butler (Chapters 5 and 6) and the con­ ception of democratic politics in Laclau and Mouffe (Chapters 3 and 8). The stress these thinkers place on the need to destabilize dominant discourses is in tension with Winch's rather static understanding of forms of life. Poststructuralists draw on a rather different interpre­ tation of the later Wittgenstein's views on language (see Chapter 3).

CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

The second implication of Winch's Wittgensteinian view that criteria of rationality are internal to particular language games is that the possibility of having a critical understanding of other cultures would appear to be undermined. From the perspective of Enlightenment rationalism, Western culture sets standards according to which the progress of other cultures could be assessed. The more rational, and therefore advanced, cultures were those that had apparently achieved some success in bringing human destiny under scientific control through the systematic domination of nature. From Winch's point of view, this involves the imposition of our standards of rationality on them and a failure on our part to recognize the extent to which their standards of rationality differ from ours. We will not understand the

RATIONALITY 19

role that magic plays in certain African societies if we think of it as a mistaken form of science {Winch 1972). Such a judgement involves our failing to grasp the meaning of the social practice of magic in that context. Magic in those societies is an entirely different mode of understanding reality, one that is incommensurable with science since it does not seek to provide causal explanation. In contrast, magic addresses questions on which science has nothing to offer, such as the distribution of good or bad fortune. We have no hope of understand­ ing other cultures if we do not learn how to participate in their form of life. We must grasp the rules of the language games they play, rather than seeking to judge them according to external standards of scien­ tific rationality that are dominant in our culture but entirely inappro­ priate to the social practices we are hoping to explain.

The relativist implications here raise a number of concerns. If stan­ dards of rationality are internal, or relative, to social practices in par­ ticular cultural contexts, what is the scope for valid criticism of that form of life? ls it illegitimate for an external critic to challenge the validity of such social practices? Must we only learn how to participate in forms of life without ever having the opportunity to reject practices that appear to us to be unjustifiable? Take, for example, the caste system, the practice of female genital mutilation or the expression of racial prejudice. ls the point of social research merely to grasp the meaning of such practices by learning the rules of the game involved, or is it not also meant to offer a critical perspective on the moral jus­ tifiability of those practices? ls the need for criticism not all the more crucial if we bear in mind the fact that practices do not emerge only through the free use of language but also as a consequence of the oper­ ation of power? In fact, some social practices, including those men­ tioned above, may very well be produced by a set of power relations that systematically favour the members of some social groups over others {see Chapter 4).

All theorists who adopt a contextualist or interpretive framework are confronted by these problems, and there have been a number of significant responses to the charge of relativist conservatism. Richard Rorty (1990) maintains that an ethnocentric attitude, which is self­ consciously rooted in a particular context, is inescapable, but that we should not worry about it. In Western societies we just happen to have come to identify ourselves with liberal political institutions that seek to ensure the avoidance of cruelty and the promotion of tolerance. We should defend these institutions, not because they embody some uni­ versally significant conception of human rationality, but simply because they are institutions that have helped us to cope with the reality of a modern pluralist world. Michael Walzer (1987, 1989a) argues that social criticism must be interpretive, since it involves the articulation of shared ideals that constitute the bonds holding politi­ cal communities together. This does not imply that internal criticism cannot challenge current social practice. In fact, the point of criticism

20 SHANE O'NEILL

is to show how we often fail to live up to our own deepest shared con­ victions.

While the approaches of Rorty and Walzer may be able to show how some form of legitimate social criticism is possible within one form of life, or one tradition of inquiry, there is still a question as to how we might adjudicate between rival traditions. What if our standards of rationality demand that we condemn certain practices that seem cen­ tral to their form of life? Alasdair MacIntyre (1988, 1990), who shares with Rorty, Walzer and Winch a scepticism about the possibility of a universally valid account of human rationality, does seek to show how a conflict between two rational traditions might be resolved. A rational solution can emerge only if one tradition can draw on aspects of the other to provide an enriched account of rationality that over­ comes the conflict. For this to count as a rational solution, it must first show that it retains elements of continuity with both traditions. Second, it has to explain why neither of them were by themselves able to move in a coherent manner beyond the original problem of incom­ mensurability. MacIntyre offers examples of resolutions of intellectual conflict in the history of philosophy (such as Thomas Aquinas's inte­ gration of the Aristotelian and Augustinian traditions of inquiry), but a similar type of analysis could be provided for conflicts of rationality involving cultural traditions.

In this respect, Charles Taylor (1985) invokes Hans-Georg Gadamer's (1989) notion of a 'fusion of horizons', the sharing of per­ spectives that we aspire to in our efforts to understand other cultures. While we are initially oriented in the encounter by an historically rooted account of rationality that constitutes our limited horizon of understanding, we must seek to achieve a fusion with the horizon of those 'others' we study. If we are genuinely to achieve an understand­ ing of the rationality of the other, then we will change our own stan­ dards of rationality by revising them in the light of the insights that emerge from a critical exchange. In this sense, understanding some­ thing new is self-transformative to the extent that it involves a broad­ ening of our own horizon. So, to return to Winch's example, while African tribes may have something to learn from Western researchers about the achievements of science, we may have much to learn from them about the best ways to attune ourselves to the natural environ­ ment. And of course the learning could also take place the other way around; we might learn some science and they might learn something about attunement to nature.

But doubt remains as to the adequacy of these contextualist solu­ tions to the problem of criticism. There would appear to be no guaran­ tee that the rationality embedded within particular traditions and practices will have the resources necessary to challenge effectively the ways in which systematic power can operate to the advantage of some social groups and to the disadvantage of others. This is the main reason why some contemporary critical theorists are determined not

RATIONALITY 21

to give up on the possibility of reconstructing an account of human rationality that has universal significance. Only some such account of rationality could provide critical standards that would act effectively as a challenge to illegitimate power in all cultural contexts. The most influential theorist to pursue this project is Jurgen Habermas (1984, 1987a).

From Habermas's point of view, there is no possibility of a critical exchange across cultures unless there is some shared standard of rationality to facilitate mutual understanding. What makes for a rational solution to a conflict between two traditions is not just the possibility of a fusion of horizons, but the fact that there are certain criteria of rationality that all language games share (see Chapter 2 on some more general features of Habermas's critical theory). In Haber­ mas's view, there is always the possibility of using language in an effort to reach understanding with another person or group in spite of the vast cultural differences that might be involved. This possibility is built into language as such. The ability to use language in a com­ municative way that facilitates mutual understanding is one of the key characteristics that distinguish human beings from other creatures. According to Habermas, the standards of rationality that constitute the communicative use of language are of universal significance. They are not internal to any particular culture, but uni­ versal, or, to put it another way, internal to all cultures. These stan­ dards of communicative rationality are the key to cross-cultural understanding, in that they create the conditions for the possibility of a rational solution to cultural conflict (see Chapter 8 on Habermas's views on justice). In this way, they might also provide a basis for cross­ cultural criticism, in that they could yield an account of the social conditions that must obtain if rational solutions to potential conflicts are to be possible.

For example, the only way in which torture can be rejected as a legitimate social practice, with standards of rationality peculiar to itself, is to show how torture violates certain moral principles that must be upheld if social relations are to be built on mutual under­ standing rather than brute force and violence. If we are to minimize violence then we must seek to institutionalize a set of human rights that can be justified, not in relation to the aspirations of a particular culture, but on the grounds of an account of rationality that is uni­ versally valid. This formal universalism that Habermas reconstructs from our capacity to use language communicatively represents the most significant attempt to continue the Enlightenment project in a

way that takes on board many, if not all, of the concerns of its con­ textualist critics.

22 SHANE O'NEILL

� CONCLUSIONS

We have seen how developments in the philosophy of the social sci­ ences have combined with recent thinking on the history and phi­ losophy of the natural sciences to undermine confidence in the emancipatory hopes of the Enlightenment project. In fact, the general thrust of most contemporary social and political theory leaves us with a very sobering view of what human rationality can achieve. The pic­ ture of the rational individual disengaged from nature, investigating the laws by which the natural and the social worlds are kept in motion, is simply not sustainable in the face of the critical concerns we have considered here. Human rationality must be thought of as being embedded within particular forms of life, and even the most abstract of the natural sciences is rooted historically in a particular institutional setting. There is no pure reason to enlighten us, only impure, historically bound forms of rationality.

It does not follow that the rationality embedded in particular prac­ tices does not have the capacity to direct us to a less violent and more just world. Current debates continue to rage regarding the possibility of reconstructing a conception of rationality that is both historically embedded and effectively critical. If it is possible to construct a uni­ versalist account of rationality by investigating the structure of the communicative use of language, as Habermas and others have tried to do, then perhaps it is also still possible to pursue, in a more sober and humble manner, the project of Enlightenment. If we cannot find a rational guide to minimize suffering and to overcome the causes of violence, then we are doomed to a fate where one system of repression simply replaces another. If the emancipatory project of Enlighten­ ment is to have any future, it must be based on a conception of ration­ ality that is no longer thought of primarily as a means of controlling nature, but rather as the means by which human beings can reach mutual understanding in spite of the social and cultural differences between them. Only some such rationally grounded understanding can allow us to live together in this multicultural world of late mod­ ernity without resorting to violence.

� QUESTIONS

1 What are the main dangers involved in thinking of rationality as a means of controlling nature?

2 How can the objectivity of the scientific enterprise best be de­ fended?

RATIOI\JALITY 23

3 If we adopt a conception of rationality that views science as one lan­ guage game among others, what implications does this have for social and political theory?

4 Can a universalist conception of rationality do justice to the reality of cultural pluralism?

� FURTHER READING

One of the best places to begin with an exploration of the legacy of the Enlightenment for contemporary social and political theory is the work of Richard Bernstein: the views of Kuhn, Winch, Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty and others are discussed at length in The Restructur­ ing of Social and Political Theory ( 197 6) and Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (1983), while The New Constellation (1991) engages with the radical critiques of reason offered from postmodern perspectives. More generally, the possibility of our gaining certain knowledge of the social world is typically the dominant theme in the many introduc­ tory works available on the philosophy of the social sciences. One of the most readable recent accounts is given by Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction (1994) but see also Trigg, Understanding Social Science (1985) and Anderson et al., Philosophy and the Human Sci­ ences (1986). On Weber's work, see the editors' introduction by Gerth and Wright Mills to their collection of his writings, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1991).

For a useful account of the philosophy of science, with extensive discussions of Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, see Chalmers, What ls This Thing Called Science? (1978), and for a more recent survey see Couvalis, The Philosophy of Science: Science and Objectivity (1997). The differences between Popper and Kuhn are explored in Lakatos and Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970). While Bhaskar is the most influential advocate of critical realism in the social sciences, useful introductions to this perspective include Keat and Urry, Social Theory as Science, 2nd edn (1982), Sayer, Method in Social Science ( 1984) and Outhwaite, New Philosophies of Social Science ( 1987). There are a number of collections of essays that gather together some influential feminist interventions in debates about science and objec­ tivity: Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology (198 7), Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodemism (1990) and Alcoff and Potter (eds), Feminist Epistemologies (1993).

Some of the key contributions in the debate about relativism that was stirred up by Winch's work are to be found in Wilson (ed.), Ration­ ality (1970) and Hollis and Lukes (eds), Rationality and Relativism (1982). The concerns of many of the most significant contemporary contextualist thinkers, including Rorty, Walzer, MacIntyre and Taylor,

!. ji

24 SHANE O'NEILL

are analysed in Mulhall and Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd edn (1996). On more recent developments in the debates about rationality that have been central to the controversies about post­ modernity, see White, Political Theory and Postmodemism (1991), McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (1991) and the exchange between David Couzens Hoy and Thomas McCarthy in Critical Theory (1994). For readings relevant to the postmodern ideas discussed in this chapter (such as those of Lyotard), consult the further reading sections of the chapters that follow.