Rationality and its cognates (rational, reason, reasonableness), are, in anthropology, usually ascribed to ideas or thought (‘magic is irrational, science is rational’), to action (‘cloud-seeding is rational, rain dance is irrational’), or to social arrangements (‘feud is an irrational feature of social organization, bureaucracy a rational feature’). Some history will help explain this proliferation, while more recent debates show how to make some simplification.
To begin with ideas or thought, how can we recognize rational ideas? Intuitively, only true ideas are rational, erroneous ideas are not. The ancient Greeks were well aware that diverse societies had diverse ideas. They also made the shattering proto-anthropological discovery that all societies are symmetrical in taking it for granted that only their ideas are true, throwing into question the truth and rationality of the ideas of all societies, including the anthropologist’s own (and hence anthropological ideas). Most important, it vacates the intuitive standard, only true ideas are rational.
As a solution, Greek thinkers distinguished between two kinds of truth, truths by nature and truths by convention. The former are true, regardless of the history of local convention, because they accurately capture the world and hold for all times and places; they transcend history, geography and convention. Truths by convention are true by virtue of the historical fact that they enjoy local endorsement; elsewhere, they may not be endorsed. Truths by nature are always rational, truths by convention are at best locally rational.
A marked preference for universal truths of nature over limited truths by convention is the root of all versions of the problem of rationality: everyone thinks it is most rational to prefer universal truth. The Greek distinction raises the question: which view is true? Or, which views should I endorse as true? Even the relativists, who say universal truth is inaccessible to mortals, and the sceptics, who deny its very possibility, were compelled by the very distinction between two kinds of truth to face this problem of choice. Both sceptics and relativists insist that rationality is local, so they commend some limited local orthodoxy, usually a truth by convention if not always current convention. By contrast, Western natural science and technology assume that truths by nature are accessible, that only they can be rationally endorsed, and with the aid of logic and method. What logic and method? Variously: the logic of proof, of probability, of plausibility, of justification, of giving good reasons. A large and inconclusive literature discusses the precise meanings of these competing suggestions and their combinations. Anthropologists need a theory of rationality that escapes this quagmire.
It seems easy: descriptive reports on truths by convention can be true by nature, so *ethnography is rational even if its subjects are not. Instead, anthropology is wracked by disputes over the rationality of other societies (and over its own prao tice). How are such disputes to be adjudicated? The simplest answer is, some anthropologists say one thing and other anthropologists say another. †Thomas S.Kuhn (1962) gained great influence by labelling competing views †‘paradigms’ and legitimizing them all as truths by convention; especially those from different historical periods. He accepted the philosopher †Michael Polanyi’s (1958) picture of scientists as tribes centred around workshops. There is something to this but, as intellectual tribes trade in ideas, it gives no solution to the problem: which idea is it rational to endorse?
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