Rationality as a Philosophical Problem

C.J.B. Macmillan
Florida State University

Several years ago, I read a paper to the Philosophy of Education Society that concerned itself with rationality in teaching. After the paper, Harvey Siegel took me to task for not providing him or anyone with any sense of what I would count as "rationality." What I was willing to take as an undefined term (or perhaps as an unspecified ideal), Siegel wanted to have nailed down. Where I would have accepted "having reasons for doing what one does" as a working definition (and I hope I did), I'm sure that Siegel would have pushed for more precision and accuracy, perhaps a theory of rationality. Where I'll go for a sweeping generalization, he wants a precise argument. Where I'll accept a Wittgensteinian language game, he wants a syllogism.

Rationality Redeemed? discusses the sort of analysis that I suspect Siegel would have liked me to have given. The book is pure Siegel; literate, well-argued, aggressive philosophy in the service of important educational ideals and clear thinking. It is a collection of previously published papers that deserve the attention that they are likely to get when presented this way, for Harvey Siegel's work exemplifies an important strand of twentieth-century philosophy that is under attack from many sides. It's a tradition that in most ways I share, the "modernist" position that Siegel unabashedly and effectively defends against "postmodernists" and others who attack the ideal or even the possibility of generalizability, universality, and rationality in thought and action.

There are some things we shouldn't look for in Siegel's work. He doesn't make specific suggestions about how to run schools, about what teaching methods are best; except very indirectly in his discussion of the "rationality theory of teaching" first brought out by Israel Scheffler in the early sixties. Indeed, Siegel eschews a view of philosophy that would have it on the educational firing line, at least if that means giving direct advice to school people about how to do things. Here's his view of philosophy of education:

a philosopher of education is one who worries about fundamental philosophical questions concerning education - what are the aims of education?; how can such aims be justified?; what moral and intellectual considerations rightly guide and constrain educational activities?; what duties and obligations must educators and educational institutions meet?; how should we understand key educational notions, like "teaching," "learning," "knowledge," and so on?; how is the curriculum best understood and designed?; and a host of other such questions and worries about these questions in a way which is methodologically sophisticated and which is informed by past efforts to come to grips with them. This locates philosophy of education in a tradition, to be sure; and some may wish to reject that tradition (p. 165).

One might accept the "tradition" that Siegel appeals to here while at the same time holding that philosophers of education have a professional duty to be more involved in recommending specific policies and practices to school people. Siegel wouldn't put up with Mr. Gragrind (he's not a rational teacher), but if I read him right, he wouldn't make suggestions to the school board about how to organize things so that Mr. Gragrind can't harm our children. I admire Siegel's modesty; he doesn't claim that philosophy can solve practical problems. We agree that philosophers aren't scientists, discovering and defending new information (or knowledge) about the world; nor are they school principals, expert in administering cumbersome educational bureaucracies. Rather, they show us what our lives amount to, and puzzle us about anomalies in our lives.

It's those anomalies that bother me in Siegel's analyses of educational ideals. Remember that he and I come at educational philosophy from within a similar "situatedness." As he describes himself,

I am a white, male, analytically trained philosopher, who writes philosophy and philosophy of education in the no longer dominant (let alone hegemonic) analytic style. My main philosophical preoccupations concern some of the issues long regarded as central to epistemology: issues concerning justification, truth, rationality, and relativism (p. 156).

The description would fit me as well, although I have a few years on him. But we come at philosophical problems from different directions within that "style." I am much more of an "ordinary-language" philosopher than he. In Wittgensteinian fashion, I find myself puzzling over some things that Siegel says as he develops his conception of rationality and critical thinking. Let me briefly spell out one oddity.

The critical thinker, it is said (p. 2, and elsewhere) is one who is "appropriately moved by reasons." Later, Siegel puts this in terms of helping students:

Students ought to be helped to develop appropriate skills of reason assessment, so that they can competently evaluate putative reasons and distinguish good reasons from weak or spurious ones; they should also be encouraged to develop attitudes of reasonableness and the disposition to be moved by reasons so evaluated; to be disposed to seek reasons on which to base beliefs and actions; and to believe and act on the basis of reasons they have themselves submitted to rational scrutiny (p. 49).

What I miss in Siegel's discussion here and throughout the book is any sense that there is a philosophical problem embedded in this discussion. A basic assumption is that human beings are responsible for their beliefs as well as for their actions; they can be praised or blamed for believing certain things, based, in Siegel's case, upon the evidence or reasons that support the beliefs. But "responsibility" hides all sorts of philosophical puzzles here. Siegel will (and does) analyze the notion by attending to the meaning of "probative force," or to logical validity, and other such notions. Turn in the other direction, though: to hold Abbie responsible for her beliefs seems to involve a belief that she could choose to believe otherwise; and this, as I've argued elsewhere, is at best a strange way of talking.^[1] Siegel wouldn't come to the same conclusions as I have about choosing beliefs, but it worries me that he doesn't feel the problem there. To his credit, he does not say that students like Abbie have to decide on their beliefs only that their beliefs should be "based on" reasons. But the extent to which that sort of responsibility commits us to talk about choosing our beliefs is worthy of more philosophical discussion. I'd like to see Siegel turn his attention to such matters, because this seems so much closer to our lives.

This example may point to a deeper difference. What is philosophy all about? One doesn't have to reject the "enlightenment metanarrative" to see that there are very different ways of viewing philosophy. For example, I would argue that Wittgenstein, despite his radical differences from Siegel, is within the same "modernist" tradition that Siegel and I share. Yet the view of philosophy differs drastically. Here's Siegel:

On my (admittedly traditional) view, philosophy is fundamentally concerned with reasons, arguments, and, with Socrates, is committed to following the argument wherever it leads - that is, to basing belief, action and judgment on epistemically forceful reasons. The aim of the exercise is the discovery of philosophical truths (p. 187, emphasis added).

Like Wittgenstein I wonder about that "aim." Wittgenstein, as is well known, denied that there were "philosophical truths" and spent his life trying to show why. I'm not so sure that I'd go as far as he did, since I think there are persistent philosophical problems that deserve constant worrying, but I have suspicions about the idea of philosophical truth. When could we be said to have arrived at a philosophical truth? Has Siegel arrived at any? Which would he claim to be philosophical truths? Perhaps the three points about epistemology ably defended in chapter 1 and summarized on p. 34: (1) that truth and justification are separable; (2) that relativism is untenable; (3) that the "upshot of rational justification is a prima facie case for truth." These are central to his justification for critical thinking as an aim of education, and to his definition for critical thinking. I would contend that they are philosophical because they are supported by the peculiar arguments that are used in their defense. But are they "truths?" I suspect they function more like rules or decisions than as truths.

To say this is only to say that Siegel and I share very different views of philosophy, and about why it's important to our lives. I wouldn't have wanted him to write a different book, but I'd love to see him take on this sort of question.

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[1] C.J.B. Macmillan, "Choosing to Believe in Modern Schools," in Philosophy of Education 1993, ed. Michael B. Katz (Urbana, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1994).