Rationality and Feminist Philosophy (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)

Rationality and Feminist Philosophy

Continuum Studies in Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the whole field of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research. Aesthetic in Kant, James Kirwan Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, Christopher Brown Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips Demands of Taste in Kant’s Aesthetics, Brent Kalar Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry Descartes’ Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson Dialectic of Romanticism, Peter Murphy and David Roberts Duns Scotus and the Problem of Universals, Todd Bates Hegel’s Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, David James Hegel’s Theory of Recognition, Sybol S. C. Anderson The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory, Alison Assiter Leibniz Re-interpreted, Lloyd Strickland Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, H. O. Mounce Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner Platonism, Music and the Listener’s Share, Christopher Norris Popper’s Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox St. Augustine of Hippo, R. W. Dyson Thomas Aquinas & John Duns Scotus, Alex Hall Tolerance and the Ethical Life, Andrew Fiala

Rationality and Feminist Philosophy

Deborah K. Heikes

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Deborah K. Heikes 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-6127-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rationality and feminist philosophy / Deborah K. Heikes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-4411-6127-7 1. Rationalism. 2. Reason. 3. Feminist theory. I. Title. B833.H45 2010 149'.7–dc22 2009028819

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

In memory of Kathryn L. Harris

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

viii

Part One: Feminist Approaches to Rationality 1 Introduction: With Good Reason 2 Musings on the Landscape: Feminism and Rationality

3 14

Part Two: Enlightenment Approaches to Rationality 3 The Good, the Bad, and the Dichotomous: Cartesian Rationality 4 Instrumentalism on Steroids: Humean Rationality 5 Reason Only a Father Could Love?: Kantian Rationality Part Three: Contemporary Approaches to Rationality 6 Let the Games Begin: Wittgensteinian Rationality 7 The Unbearable Emptiness of Pure Reason: Evolutionary Rationality 8 We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Rules: Virtue Rationality

27 40 53

69 84 101

Part Four: Feminist Approaches to Rationality, Revisited 9 Baby Come Back: Feminists Need Rationality 10 Virtue is Its Own Reward: Toward a Feminist Theory of Rationality

123

Notes References Index

158 166 171

135

Acknowledgements

Any honest author will tell you, books are not written on their own. There are many more people involved in the writing process than there are people who get their names on the binding. This book is no exception. This text began life a long time ago, and in a very different form. The people who helped shape it along its way are various. Although he may or may not remember giving me this advice, Steve Wagner encouraged me to take my love for the history of philosophy and to develop it in a way that commented on problems within contemporary philosophy. The historical view I always bring to philosophy was first instilled by my undergraduate teachers, but that conversation with Steve some years later led me to consider how current debates are informed by the past. More recently, this book underwent a tremendous transformation due to the insight of my colleague, Andy Cling. Early on in the writing, I had trouble formulating what I actually wanted to say on the topic of rationality. I gave Andy a very rough draft of the first few chapters. After reading these chapters, he asked some highly insightful questions about what I was doing and why. As I thought about his questions, it became clear to me that my initial approach was all wrong. So, I started furiously rewriting, and at the end of the process ended up with something very close to the final version. I have learned to trust Andy’s philosophical instincts, and this book is all the much better for his help. I also have to thank several anonymous, and not so anonymous reviewers. In particular, I need to thank Ann Cudd, who has been supportive through the entire process. She provided helpful comments and has been instrumental in helping me through the publishing process. I am also grateful to Peg O’Conner for her comments and for her suggestion that I include the final chapter. Finally, my family has been consistently behind this project. My parents have been my biggest cheerleaders and the most consistent prodders of my work. During long slow months of the writing process, they would ask me over and over again if I was getting my work done. While I was indeed

Acknowledgements

ix

working, I began working at a much faster rate of speed ‘just to show them.’ That turned out to be just what I needed. My single biggest debt, however, is to Augusta Gooch, who had the patience and willingness to read the manuscript time and time again. She is a wonderful editor, both for content and style. And she made the writing process all that much easier because I could always rely on her to insist that I make my writing clear—even when I did not particularly feel like rewriting yet another time. She is absolutely intolerant about grammatical mistakes, unclear phrasing, poor exposition, and inaccurate bibliographical references. Her corrections often frustrated me greatly, but it was a rare occasion indeed when I did not take her advice. Any remaining errors are naturally mine. Finally, I would like to thank my grandmother, Kathryn Harris. She did not live to see this book, but she certainly made it possible. Without her, I could not have done this.

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Part One

Feminist Approaches to Rationality

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Chapter 1

Introduction: With Good Reason

The attempt to understand rationality is as old as philosophy itself, and this fact makes writing a book on rationality an especially daunting task. Almost equally as daunting is attempting to defend rationality from a feminist perspective. After all, rationality tends to get some bad press in many feminist circles, and even when it is defended, it is usually the subject of heated debate. In many ways, though, the history of philosophy is a history of our attempt to understand reason and rationality. Given the centrality of reason to the philosophical enterprise, the scope of these efforts seems, at times, almost limitless. And given the centrality of reason to the feminist enterprise, it seems as if the concept of reason is often portrayed as both the source and the result of a thoroughgoing philosophical androcentricism. From Plato and Aristotle, through the moderns, and up to the present day, rationality has been one of the most foundational, the most thoroughly examined, and the most debated elements in all of Western philosophy. Despite philosophy’s long and complicated love affair with reason, the relationship has of late become quite rocky—and not simply within feminist circles. Two decades ago, Richard Bernstein wrote: I want to understand why today there are so many ‘voices’ screeching about Reason . . . Why is it that when ‘Reason’ or ‘Rationality’ are mentioned, they evoke images of domination, oppression, repression, patriarchy, sterility, violence, totality, totalitarianism, and even terror? (Bernstein 1986, 187) More than ever before, philosophers openly, and in large numbers, express a certain skepticism about reason. The situation for reason is so dire that one philosopher admits to receiving a comment from a reviewer which stated: ‘“the ideal of rationality” is dead, and polemics about it are “killing the dead over and over”’ (Niz˙ nik 1998, 7). I myself have been the subject of equally scathing attacks at conferences when I have dared to argue for the

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autonomy and unity of rational persons.1 Such attacks, including those specifically mentioned here, often originate outside of feminist circles. But, while feminist philosophers are certainly a part of the chorus critiquing, criticizing, and even attacking rationality, they are not necessarily at the front of every attack. Due to the widespread nature of these attacks, I intend to keep in mind the broader philosophical context of the debate as I defend rationality against its enemies. Although the underlying concern of my arguments rests with feminism’s relation to rationality, the arguments are not always especially feminist in nature. The reason? I maintain that a successful feminist theory of rationality should be a good theory, simpliciter. As a result, my concerns are not always specific to feminism. Nonetheless, throughout this book my focus is feminist in one important respect, namely, that I ultimately seek to establish a philosophical grounding for feminist projects, especially the strength of argument for feminism and the moral force of feminist claims. My primary concerns are normativity, objectivity, and truth—all of which are grounded in rationality and all of which feminist projects need (to some extent) in order to be successful. My own view is that rationality is far from dead, but that does not mean it is a concept in good health. It has been under attack for some time, and it has suffered from these repeated attacks. Although rationality is alive, if not well, what does appear to be dead is the ideal of an objective, universal, totalizing, autonomous, transcendent rationality. More simply, the traditional modern or Enlightenment conception of rationality is no longer a live philosophical option. Yet we cannot take the death of this particular rational ideal as the end of rationality itself without jeopardizing our ability to understand much of what makes us human and our ability to do philosophy. That rationality is central to who we are and how we think goes back to Plato and Aristotle. The criteria of rationality that Aristotle establishes, such as conforming to the laws of logic, having the right sort of justification of one’s beliefs, and acting in a way that contributes to moral virtue, have never quite been abandoned by philosophers. After all, to abandon these general sorts of rational constraints would undermine the possibility of presenting a philosophical argument in the first place. Philosophy is grounded in rationality, but the difficulties and doubts generated by specifically Cartesian and Humean conceptions of rationality have generated a great deal of skepticism about the concept. Such doubts have motivated philosophers to seek different ways of conceiving of rationality, ways that may not radically break from the past but that certainly alter key assumptions and move beyond Enlightenment ideas.

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In both philosophy and cognitive science, there has been a shift in our understanding of reason. Enlightenment rationality, as developed throughout the modern era, takes rationality to be essentially disembodied, ahistorical, transcendent, and dispassionate. While some elements of Enlightenment rationality remain, and as I argue should remain, the terms ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ do not have the same import they did even a century ago. Research into cognitive science has made a significant impact in our understanding of reason and rationality. In their book, Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 4) summarize some of these changes: z

z

z

z z z

Reason is not disembodied . . . but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. . . . Reason is evolutionary . . . [i.e., it develops within and in response to the environment]. Reason is not universal in the transcendent sense; . . . it is [however] a capacity shared universally by all human beings. . . . Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious. Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative. Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.

Each of these claims about reason stands in contrast to the standard Enlightenment conception introduced by Descartes, but each of these claims also avoids the more extreme position that reason is hopelessly fragmented and lacking in autonomy. The death of Enlightenment rationality does not signal the death of rationality itself. It merely signals a new conception built upon a different understanding of what it means to be rational. As long as we understand rationality (and more specifically the rules or principles of justification) in modern or Enlightenment terms, the ‘rage against reason’ will continue. All this talk about the ‘rage against reason’ begs the question about what the terms ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ actually mean. Broadly speaking, reason is the faculty of forming beliefs, making judgments, and choosing action. Rationality is the activity of that faculty. Put another way, rationality is about responding to reasons both for and against beliefs and actions. Rationality encompasses our ability to not only respond to the world around us, but to investigate, understand, and manipulate it. Aristotle begins the explicit formulation of rational principles and correct forms of reason, and this tradition continues and further develops through Descartes, Hume, Kant, and into the present day. While discussions of rationality occur at just about

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every level of detail, much of the current discussion of rationality is, as Nozick would say, ‘awash in technical details,’ so much so that often times the nature of justified belief is taken to be coextensive with rationality (1993, xiv). While I have no serious quarrel with those who focus on the technical details of rationality, I think that doing so to the exclusion of broader considerations tends to limit our understanding of it. I share some of Robert Solomon’s irritation that ‘[a]ll too often, we find that learned philosophers exercise great ingenuity to establish what they in fact all began by agreeing to: the belief that rationality is that virtue best exemplified by philosophers’ (1992, 599). He goes on to add the abuse rationality has suffered at the hands of philosophers: It has been obscured; ambiguities and equivocations have been plastered over; ever more technical meanings have been invented and then undermined (for example, Bayesian and other concepts of maximization in decision theory); and ever more stringent criteria have been applied to guarantee that, in the last analysis, no one could possibly qualify as a rational agent unless he or she had pursued at the minimum a baccalaureate, if not a Ph.D., in philosophy. (1992, 599) It is with many of the same concerns in mind that I turn to a rather more pedestrian and ordinary rationality as my guiding concern. I do not wish to take this analogy very far, but the study of reason is not unlike the study of the physical world. When we study the world around us, there are many levels of generality and specificity available to us. Which level we concern ourselves with depends on the nature of the question we are asking. In studying a tree, for example, I may concern myself with its relationship to the larger environment, or I may wish to understand it at the cellular level. Reason is no different. There are global and focal aspects to reason, and the questions one asks about it will dictate how general or specific one’s focus should be. At the most basic level, I am curious about the rationality that all humans seem to share as a matter of course, assuming normal psychological development. Thus, my concern is with more global or structural aspects of reason, primarily because I believe that one must have a relatively clear grasp of the overall structure of reason to ask the right questions about its focal nature. The focal aspects of rationality, such as the specific principles governing it, are surely indispensable, but these details make sense only within the structural context of an overall rationality. Adopting a broader

With Good Reason

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approach provides a corrective for more technical accounts of rationality, in much the same way that ethical theory and practice exist in reflective equilibrium. And just as a good theory of ethics should be, in principle, understandable by ordinary folk, so too should a good theory of rationality. My investigation into reason, then, is simultaneously transcendental and grounded in the ordinary. Transcendental because outside of serious developmental deficiencies, all adult humans are rational, and it is this widespread and common ability that I care to understand; grounded in the ordinary because I am concerned primarily with our everyday ability to reason. One of the aspects of reason that I find most remarkable is that even those people who seem to be judged deficient in their rational abilities (e.g., people with mental illnesses that impinge on one’s rationality in specific instances) still possess an amazing capacity for rational thought. One can be, with good reason, labeled ‘crazy’ but not be entirely lacking in responsiveness to reasons. Rationality clearly exists along a continuum, and most of us still possess a fair amount of it even when we act irrationally. Philosophical theories of rationality should be able to account for this phenomenon. Those who subject rationality to radical critique and who appear committed to the arational, if not the irrational, lose sight of the basic nature of reason that permeates our everyday lives. Day in and day out, our beliefs and actions are guided by considering reasons. Yet, however much ordinary conceptions of rationality are the underpinning of this book, philosophy is not simply about articulating the ordinary conceptions of the concepts we use. The task, then, is to provide some coherent narrative about rationality that responds to the philosophical problems facing the concept. Bernstein (1986, 186) describes this process beautifully, saying: every significant philosopher situates his or her own work by telling a story about what happened before he or she came along—a story that has its own heroes and villains. . . . And the stories that they tell are systematically interwoven with what they take to be their distinctive contributions. I do have a particular story to tell. It begins, naturally enough, with Descartes and the Cartesian view of reason. Yet unlike many other stories, some of them feminist, mine does not make Descartes out to be irredeemably villainous. Without question, Descartes’ version paints the faculty of reason as disembodied, transcendent, universal, methodologically logical, and dispassionate—all aspects of reason that are under attack throughout

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much of the philosophical world. But Descartes also provides the tools to argue for Enlightenment ideals of equality, autonomy, freedom, and justice. These should not be discarded without careful consideration. Cartesian rationality is certainly troubled and wrongheaded in places, but I believe it would be a mistake to abandon it without considering the consequences of doing so. The first part of my story, then, traces the Enlightenment development of rationality through the ‘big three’ of Descartes, Hume, and Kant, with the key theme being the dichotomies that each relies upon in defining reason. The most significant of these dichotomies are (1) the divide between mind and body (or between subject and object), (2) the divide between the objective and the subjective, and (3) the divide between the transcendental and empirical self. In the modern era, these dichotomies are clearly delineated and philosophers tend to come down clearly on one side or the other. It is with these sharply divided dichotomies that modern philosophy generates many of its difficulties, particularly insofar as these divisions isolate rationality from its environment. That there are such divides and that these divides are problematic for philosophy is not a particularly novel observation. However, taking the time to understanding where and why such divisions take place is useful for it highlights both the strengths and weakness of modern accounts and helps us see with greater clarity both the good and the bad of Enlightenment rationality. Furthermore, these dichotomies are to a great degree the locus of the difference between Enlightenment and contemporary accounts of rationality. To understand why current views of rationality take the form that they do, it is important to see clearly how they respond to earlier accounts of reason. The second part of my story considers how our understanding of rationality has changed over the last century, starting with Wittgenstein, who denies any gap between subject and object and who decidedly shifts our understanding of reason toward the social, empirical world. Wittgenstein is a pivotal figure in the transition away from the Enlightenment, and his work in many ways sets up biological, evolutionary approaches to rationality.2 It furthermore informs many features of the virtue-centered approach to rationality that has recently begun to attract some feminist interest. The theme of this section is how mainstream contemporary philosophy has rejected and modified much of the Enlightenment notion of rationality— and what the modified theories of rationality have to offer feminism. When it comes to feminist critiques of rationality, feminists have, rightfully, focused on Enlightenment rationality. But, at this point, these critiques

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may be overdone. Linda Alcoff (1995, 6) defends these critiques, arguing that the feminist critique of reason is not obsessing over an outdated conception of reason but revealing the implicit assumptions still operative in even the minimal conception of reason endorsed today. In other words, the idea of a radical break (or incommensurable paradigm shift) between Modernist concepts of Reason and modern accounts of reason is both implausible and in fact mistaken. While I admit that there is no radical break between Enlightenment and contemporary theories of rationality, the feminist critique of reason has indeed been obsessed with an outdated conception. The view of rationality that emerges in the twentieth century, as evidenced in Wittgenstein, Nozick, and Audi, is one that is fully immersed in the world, both natural and social, that is less individualistic or egoistic, and that is not totalizing, at least not in a way that disallows or diminishes all difference.3 Furthermore, these theories all share in the widespread suspicion of the mind-world divide that so permeates the Enlightenment. In short, current theories of rationality do not greatly resemble (although there is some resemblance) the historical views against which some philosophers seem to have so much rage. Like the Enlightenment tradition before it, though, new efforts to account for rationality have their knotty points. For those views that reject transcendental grounds and the separation of mind from world (or subject from object), the deep underlying problem is the thoroughly permeating nature of bias. When one gives up the possibility of an objective and transcendent view of the world, there emerges the genuine threat of being unable to escape subjectivity. Of course, part of the motivation for rejecting transcendental grounds, especially for feminists, is precisely to create room for subjectivity. The problem, however, is that pure subjectivity cannot establish any standard outside of itself, and to be trapped within a radical subjectivity is a poor basis for establishing the truth of one’s position. The question, then, is how best to account for the normative aspect of rationality, that part that tells us how we ought to think about or act in the world. If we allow that reason is fully a part of the world and is either socially or evolutionarily determined (or both), rationality seems to no longer provide a cross-cultural constraint on thought and behavior. If this is the case, rationality is, at best, a thoroughly relativistic concept lacking in any substance beyond its instrumental function. The problem for those who adopt

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this view, in particular feminists, is that they lose the ability to sustain their arguments. In addition, they cannot formulate moral objections against those who adopt different standards of what is rational. And feminists, of course, do wish to object to standards of rationality that lead to gender hierarchies and inequalities. Finding normativity in a conception of an immanent and contextually determined rationality is complicated and often messy, especially if one is a feminist. But we need not, and cannot, give up on the normativity offered by the concept of rationality. The third and final part of my story has itself two subplots. The first subplot is fully integrated within the larger narrative, and it addresses the feminist ‘rages against reason’ as they have been formulated either for or against elements of rationality. Those feminists who are not downright antagonistic to the idea of rationality tend nonetheless to be ambivalent toward it. Philosophers have, after all, consistently used the concept of rationality to intellectually exclude women. With few exceptions, the history of philosophy is a history of the masculinity of reason, although there is great debate over how masculine this reason actually is. As a result, feminists do seem to agree that no feminist philosopher should adopt an uncritical stance toward rationality. The debate, then, is over how critical one should be. My own approach is solidly revisionist rather than radical. I certainly share the view that women have been excluded from the domain of reason, but I fail to see that the concept is irredeemably masculine. Feminists who are willing to grant the inherent masculinity of reason are, I believe, doing themselves a great disservice. Feminism needs rationality to succeed. So, as my narrative progresses, I consider the positive aspects of each of the various conceptions of rationality rather than focusing only on the biased and destructive elements, which have been well-documented. My arguments primarily concern what I take to be the foundational elements of almost all feminist philosophy: first to identify and second to overcome oppression. These tasks require us to take rationality seriously. Feminism needs reason, objectivity, and truth—it just does not need the specific Enlightenment ideals these concepts have historically signified. The second subplot comes in the final chapter, at which point I argue for a specifically feminist theory of rationality. While I reject the idea that there can or should be only one theory of rationality that feminists would do well to adopt, I do argue that understanding rationality as a virtue concept resolves many of the concerns that feminists have typically expressed with respect to rationality. Furthermore, a virtue rationality offers a means to negotiating the tensions between objectivity/subjectivity and universality/ diversity that permeate much feminist discourse. While I make no claim

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that I can actually resolve these tensions, I do believe that if we consider both what theories of rationality have become over the past century and also the ways in which current views address problems with Enlightenment rationality then feminists may find rationality a useful, rather than an oppressive, concept. I further ague that the door is open for feminists to contribute to mainstream dialogues concerning rationality, particularly with respect to challenging nonfeminist philosophers to take gender issues more seriously. So much for my story’s plot. Although the narrative that follows is mostly a historical progression from Descartes to the present day, I begin in medius res with an overview of feminist critiques of reason and my broadly based reasons for believing why feminists should pay serious attention to rationality. I consider three different approaches to rationality: the strong critical project, the different voice project, and the classical feminist project.4 While I reject from the outset the strong critical project with its complete renunciation of rationality as a genuine, unbiased human ideal, my own sympathies fall somewhere in between the different voice and classical projects. The different voice project is one that objects to the conception of rationality because the concept leaves out capacities and activities that have traditionally been devalued and associated with women—especially, emotions. The classical feminist project instead argues that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept of rationality; rather, the problem is that women simply need to be allowed to develop their rational capacities. The differences between these views reflect a tension, evident throughout much of feminism, between ‘difference’ and ‘equality.’ My own approach to rationality shares this tension. However, as I argue, this tension is not restricted to feminist work. It may not be as evident outside of feminism, but a problem for all theories of rationality is how to walk the tightrope between the universality and diversity of rationality. Current debates over rationality exhibit this same tension, and the ways in which mainstream theories have attempted to resolve this tension can serve as an important source for further feminist reflections. There are a couple of significant aspects about what follows that should be noted. The first is that this is hardly a typical feminist text. While my explicitly stated concern is with the relationship of the concept of rationality to central concerns of feminist philosophy, I am also interested in telling a particular story about the history and development of rationality. Feminist philosophy should be, first of all, good philosophy, and feminism is not isolated from the questions and problems that arise in more mainstream philosophy. The story of how we have come to acquire the concept of

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rationality that we have is one that arises out of our philosophical past. The questions asked, and the answers given, by philosophers do influence our intellectual development, whether or not we acknowledge it. We can sometimes best understand where we are by examining where we have been and how we arrived at our current theories. A good feminist theory of rationality should be a good theory of rationality, and the fundamental soundness as a theory should be what grounds the claims peculiar to feminist concerns; otherwise, philosophy becomes merely a rhetorical instrument to be used in the furtherance of a political goal. While some feminists will have no serious problem with treating philosophy as a rhetorical instrument—or might encourage such a view of philosophy—I believe philosophy is still a pursuit of truth, or at the very least is a corrective for wrongheaded views. The second area of note concerns the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Clearly, feminist concerns tend to be informed by the ethical, which might lead one to think that the discussion that follows is primarily concerned with practical reason. However, practical reasoning is dependent upon the theoretical in important ways. To reason practically, one must be able to form and maintain appropriate sorts of beliefs, to consider reasons for and against a course of action, and to consider evidence available to one. In other words, practical rationality requires in large measure that we have our house of theoretical rationality in order. The line between the theoretical and practical is not always an especially sharp one, and while I focus in my arguments largely on the theoretical side of rationality, the practical side cannot be entirely ignored. As I proceed throughout the text, there will be occasions when I switch from the theoretical, which is my primary interest, to the practical. Given feminism’s dual concern with the reality and injustice of oppression, both the theoretical and practical sides of rationality are relevant. However, given the nature of my narrative, such shifts happen without much dwelling upon them. Ultimately, I am not claiming that feminists should necessarily adopt any particular theory of rationality, even though I argue both that a virtue rationality is sensitive to many of the issues that concern feminists and that it prima facie appears quite appealing as a feminist rationality. Instead, I argue, first, that feminists should consider their need for a theory or theories of rationality in order to ground their projects and, second, that current, nonfeminist accounts of rationality are not as antithetical to feminism as they are often taken to be. Having an understanding of rationality, both what it is and how it functions, will not solve any particular feminist problem, but it would offset a tendency toward irrationalism that undercuts any

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intellectual defense of feminism. Rationality is no longer a univocal concept. Even the most malestream of contemporary philosophers (e.g., Nozick and Audi) argue for the diversity and plurality of rationality. Feminists who ignore the movement away from the so-called androcentric elements of Enlightenment rationality do a disservice to feminism. There is a clear opportunity to reshape our conception of rationality in a way that recognizes feminist concerns and that provides the philosophical basis to defend feminist objections to injustice and inequality in the world. Despite the fact that much work remains to be done prior to any final judgments concerning a feminist theory of rationality, I offer a version that I believe has a great deal of promise.

Chapter 2

Musings on the Landscape: Feminism and Rationality

The diversity of feminist philosophy makes it just about impossible to say what, if anything, all feminist philosophers share in common. Two points of agreement appear to be a commitment to recognizing the existence of oppression and to doing something to eliminate it. What constitutes oppression, who is oppressed, what should be done about it—these are all questions that remain open and highly contentious—but regardless of other differences, feminist philosophers concur that women have been treated unequally and often unjustly. Those who seek to address these issues draw, obviously enough, on both feminism and philosophy. As philosophers, feminist philosophers are trained in the same canon and socialized into the same methodologies as nonfeminist philosophers. As feminists, though, these philosophers share a dedication to at least some aspect of the politics of feminism—which aspect of those politics will depend, of course, on the individual philosopher. The result is that however committed one is to the philosophical tradition, no feminist philosopher approaches the tradition uncritically, especially when it comes to the Enlightenment project and its conception of reason. Throughout the vast majority (perhaps even the entirety) of the philosophical canon, reason is clearly associated with masculinity. This is especially true of the Enlightenment. The political and intellectual environment against which feminists typically fight is largely derived from the Enlightenment and its particular conception of rationality. For many, if not most, feminists, the Enlightenment understanding of rationality has directly led to much of the oppression, sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of privileging to which feminists object. As a result, feminist philosophers have had, at best, a seriously ambivalent relationship with reason. While there is obviously a good basis for such ambivalence, I believe that the concept of rationality is not only redeemable but is also necessary for the success of the feminist project. Furthermore, our understanding of

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rationality has evolved since the Enlightenment, so feminists who defend rationality need not be, indeed will not be, wedded to Enlightenment ideals. Several features of rationality to which feminists seriously object emerge out of the modern philosophical era. These features include: z z z

reason’s function as a ground for a unified, autonomous self capable of understanding and controlling the world, reason’s correct use resulting in universal knowledge, and reason’s ability to provide an objective foundation for knowledge, such that conflicts about the truth of claims can be resolved through its application.

As shocking as this may sound to some, I suspect that, given sufficiently persuasive and nonsexist arguments in defense of each of these features, that many feminists would find little fault with the above claims taken in isolation, that is, when removed from their oppressive history. Of course, to say that any idea can be isolated from its oppressive history seems clearly objectionable. To say this also seems to ignore much feminist argument concerning the insidious nature of bias. A significant part of most feminist projects entails arguing that attempts at such isolation are not only impossible but downright destructive to women since neutrality always favors the masculine. On the other hand, I fail to see how, as philosophers, we can say on the basis of what empirically has been a well-established fact that the underlying philosophical principles are beyond repair. Given the right context, autonomous selves, universal knowledge, and objective foundations would be a significant boon to feminist projects: to establish the autonomy of women as well as the objective claims about the injustice of oppression that were not only true but could be universally known would provide a solid intellectual ground for political action. The obvious problem, however, is that underlying each of the above claims is an implicit assumption that feminists have struggled to make explicit: namely, reason is masculine. What feminists mean by this is that the features which define rationality focus on qualities typically associated with the masculine. Beginning with Descartes, Enlightenment philosophy develops and utilizes a number of dichotomies, such as rational/irrational, subject/object, universal/particular, and mind/body. Since its advent, feminists have been deeply suspicious of, and often downright antagonistic toward, these dichotomies because they almost always come with a certain

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valorization of one aspect of each dichotomy.1 Not surprisingly, the half that is valorized invariably turns out to be the one associated with male qualities while the one diminished is invariably associated with female qualities.2 The result is that feminist philosophers are often strong critics of such dichotomizing conceptions of rationality. Feminist attacks on rationality have focused on its connotations of masculinity and the exclusion of women from the domain of the rational. While it would be far from the truth to claim that feminists call for a total rejection of the concept of rationality, most believe that the concept, as articulated in the work of Descartes, Hume, and Kant, is deeply troubled, if not untenable. On the one hand, I certainly share something of this attitude, although my arguments will show that my reasons are often decidedly nonfeminist ones. On the other hand, what many feminists lose sight of in their frequent attacks on Enlightenment rationality is that how we understand and conceive of rationality has implications for the types of philosophical justifications available in defense of various claims. Feminists should be careful what they wish for when it comes to overcoming so-called masculine conceptions of rationality. For the feminist project to be successful, feminists need Enlightenment concepts like ‘rights,’ ‘equality,’ ‘fairness,’ and ‘justice.’ This is not a new idea, of course, but what may sometimes get lost is that these concepts are difficult to defend in the absence of autonomous rationality. We may wish to give up radical, modern conceptions of autonomy, but we still need a conception of reason that can allow for a sufficient defense of basic political and moral concepts. This is not to say that feminists should accept any Enlightenment ideals uncritically, but we should not be eager to dispose of the tools we need to philosophically defend feminist projects. In graduate school, I read Louise Antony’s paper ‘Quine as Feminist.’ One of the passages that most struck me was the one in which Antony confesses her ‘absolutist leanings.’ She says, ‘I do believe in truth, and I have never understood why people concerned with justice have given it such a bad rap’ (2002, 115). The need to make true claims about the existence— and wrongness—of oppression struck me at the time as entirely obvious, and I was heartened by Antony’s willingness to say so. That feminist claims concerning justice require a concept of rationality (along with its derivative concept ‘objectivity’) with some normative force strikes me as equally obvious. For feminist claims to have any traction, there must be a difference between thinking one is right and actually being right. It must be the case that there is some manner of determining which are the correct ways of thinking about issues of oppression, justice, equality, and so on. Rationality, through

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its ability to set standards for how we ought to think and act, provides a way to make such distinctions. Of course, what sorts of distinctions we can make will depend upon what sort of conception of rationality we have. The concepts of ‘reason’ and ‘rationality,’ however they are understood, underlie our justifications for claims such as ‘oppression is real’ or ‘oppression is unjust.’ Furthermore, if we do care about ethical concepts such as ‘justice,’ ‘fairness,’ ‘equality,’ and so on, there must be some way to defend these concepts such that we can claim that those who disagree with us are actually morally mistaken. If we reject outright the idea of rationality—of having beliefs that are reasonable, justified, or in some sense preferable to other sorts of beliefs—or if we limit ourselves to a minimalistic, instrumental understanding of rationality, we undercut our ability to defend our views, whatever they may be. So, it is reasonable to ask why reason has such a bad reputation in some (although clearly not all) feminist circles. When it comes to criticizing the concept of rationality most feminists focus on Cartesian or Enlightenment conceptions of rationality since the tradition Descartes originates has, until recently, dominated the philosophical landscape.3 Whatever the dissimilarities among feminist philosophers, there is much agreement that Descartes and other Enlightenment philosophers articulate a concept of rationality that ‘evokes images of domination, oppression, repression, patriarchy, sterility, violence, totality, totalitarianism, and even terror’ (Bernstein 1986, 187). Enlightenment rationality is a concept which emphasizes the universal over the particular, the transcendent over the immanent, the objective over the subjective. One of the most significant of feminist criticisms revolves around rationality’s supposed ability to transcend particularity and subjectivity in order to establish universal and objective truth. The problem for feminists is this: appealing to transcendence not only fails to establish universal and objective truth but, more significantly, introduces the philosophical grounds for many inequalities and injustices. In particular, transcendence dooms to disenfranchisement and subjugation those who are deemed to be bound to immanence and subjectivity, and of course, those who are incapable of transcendence are non-male, nonwhite, and non-property-owning. There is much debate over whether Descartes himself is guilty of drawing the androcentric conclusions that his philosophical dichotomies support; however, what is clear is that the Cartesian dichotomies—such as mind v. body, objectivity v. subjectivity, and reason v. emotion—correspond to a division between the masculine and feminine that has valorized the masculine at the expense of the feminine. Almost universally, feminists reject either the valorization or, more

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fundamentally, the dichotomies themselves. And as a result, one of the major debates within feminist philosophy has been what to do about the concept of reason and the dichotomies on which it depends. There are three main options when it comes to attacking the concept of reason: reject reason as an irredeemably andocentric concept; redefine reason in a less gender-determined manner; or argue that there is nothing wrong with reason but rather the error is in how particular philosophers have made use of it. Karen Jones has called these three options the strong critical project, the different voice project, and the classical feminist project (Jones 2004). The strong critical project denies that the available theories of rationality represent human (rather than male) ideals. The different voice project argues that theories of rationality fail because of what they leave out, such as body and emotion. And the classical feminist project argues that what we need to challenge is not the concept of rationality but the assumption that women cannot achieve rationality’s norms. The first of these options is the most radical, viz., rejecting reason outright. This rejection arises out of the postmodern and poststructuralist theories of those such as Derrida, Foucault, Saussure, Lyotard, and Lacan. What often draws feminists to postmodernism is a jointly held suspicion and criticism of the so-called ahistorical approach to philosophy. Postmodernists and feminists share a critical stance toward the dichotomies, binary oppositions, and hierarchical dualisms of Enlightenment philosophy. Postmodernists create discourses that are fragmented, historically situated, and concrete rather than offering theories purporting to provide universal principles or objective truth. And feminists tend to find attractive such insistence on perspective. They are particularly eager to allow for a multiplicity of subjects and perspectives, believing that many voices have been silenced by Enlightenment conceptions of rationality. Someone like Foucault, who argues that knowledge and power are inextricably linked, gives feminists more tools to challenge traditional philosophy and its exclusion of anyone who is not male, white, and propertied. Postmodern feminists share the general desire of feminists to upset the power structures and rules that have silenced women of all types. With its rejection of dichotomies and absolutes, the discourse of postmodernism does a great deal to attack precisely those aspects of the philosophical tradition that feminists are most eager to reject. Nonetheless, this is a problematic approach. The assertion of claims such as infinite fragmentation and multiplicity of perspectives threatens to undermine any substantive meaning for the concept of rationality and the modernist concepts on which many feminist claims are grounded. Feminists in the postmodern tradition may take issue with the claim that they reject reason outright, but postmodern philosophy leaves little room

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for any stable meaning of the terms ‘reason’ and ‘rationality.’ Not only is postmodernism eager to attack these concepts themselves; this approach simply rejects the kind of stability and normativity on which the meaning of the concepts depends. If ‘reason’ has no stable meaning, if the term is constantly shifting and entirely dependent upon perspective and context, then, it cannot serve as a corrective for belief or action. It becomes simply another socially dependent and fragmented concept. The obvious response is: so what? Why not admit that the concept of reason, if there is one, is pluralistic, fragmented, and constantly shifting? The answer, for feminists at least, is fairly simple: because such a view undermines the possibility of success for the feminist project. Over two decades ago, Nancy Hartsock argued this point saying: In our efforts to find ways to include the voices of marginal groups, we might expect helpful guidance from those who have argued against totalizing and universalistic theories such as those of the Enlightenment. Many radical intellectuals have been attracted to . . . figures such as Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, and Lyotard, [who] argue against the faith in a universal reason we have inherited from Enlightenment European philosophy. . . . [T]hese theories, I contend, would hinder rather than help its accomplishment . . . . [P]ostmodernism, despite its stated efforts to avoid the problems of the European modernism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at best manages to criticize these theories without putting anything in their place. For those of us who want to understand the world systematically in order to change it, postmodernist theories at their best give little guidance . . . . Those of us who are not part of the ruling race, class, or gender . . . need to know how it works. Why we are—in all our variousness—systematically excluded and marginalized? What systematic changes would be required to create a more just society? At their worst, postmodern theories merely recapitulate the effects of Enlightenment theories—theories that deny marginalized people the right to participate in defining the terms of interaction with people in the mainstream. (Hartsock 1987, 190–191) Hartsock’s point is this: if we are going to argue for the right to have a voice and to participate within mainstream avenues of expression, it is important to understand the intellectual system that excludes people—and why those exclusions occur. Her objection to postmodernism is not that it argues against the totalizing theories of the Enlightenment but rather that, even if it successfully refutes modernism, it does so in a highly destructive fashion.

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It is one thing to tear down theories; it is another thing entirely to replace them with something that will better help us understand our world and cope with its deficiencies. A useful feminist theory cannot simply tear down oppressive structures while leaving their effects in place. And if it does, we have gained nothing. A further argument against the tearing down of Enlightenment ideals is found in Sandra Harding, who argues that feminism, in fact, needs the Enlightenment. She writes: However a specifically feminist alternative to Enlightenment projects may develop, it is not clear how it could completely take leave of Enlightenment assumptions and still remain feminist. The critics are right that feminism (also) stands on Enlightenment ground. Most obviously, critics of the feminist epistemologies join those they criticize in believing in the desirability and the possibility of social progress, and that improved theories about ourselves and the world around us will contribute to that progress. Thus, within feminism, the disagreement is over other matters, such as what those theories should say and who should get to define what counts as social progress. (Harding 1996, 313) The idea expressed here is that feminist philosophy cannot do without Enlightenment ideals because without them the normative standards for evaluating social progress would be absent. And in the absence of any possibility of social progress, there is little that feminism can actually accomplish. Normativity without feminism may be oppressive, but feminism without normativity is empty. Echoing this notion is Seyla Benhabib, who goes even further in her criticism of postmodernism. She maintains: A certain version of postmodernism is not only incompatible with but would undermine the very possibility of feminism as the theoretical articulation of the emancipatory aspirations of women. This undermining occurs because in its strong version postmodernism is committed to three theses: the death of man understood as the death of the autonomous, self-reflective subject, capable of acting on principle; the death of history, understood as the severance of the epistemic interest in history of struggling groups in constructing their past narratives; the death of metaphysics, understood as the impossibility of criticizing or legitimizing institutions, practices and traditions other than through the immanent appeal to the self-legitimation of ‘small narratives.’ Interpreted thus, postmodernism

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undermines the feminist commitment to women’s agency and sense of selfhood, to the reappropriation of women’s own history in the name of an emancipated future, and to the exercise of radical social criticism which uncovers gender ‘in all its endless variety and monotonous similarity.’ (Benhabib 1992, 228–229) Benhabib repeats, once again, the chorus that feminism needs key elements of the Enlightenment, especially the agency and sense of selfhood provided by the concept of rational selves. Furthermore, she recognizes that in order to speak of individual rights, equality, and justice we require a commitment to certain liberal ideals and the stability of rational subjects. Postmodernism can support neither these ideals nor the stable subjects necessary for moral responsibility. Whatever the appeal of postmodernism, feminists certainly do not embrace it wholeheartedly. These, then, are some of the already well-known criticisms leveled against postmodernism’s lack of solid foundations and its rejection of truth. The most devastating criticisms against this view are that it descends into radical relativism and abandons the tools of argument. To be successful, feminism cannot entirely abandon the argumentative tools we have inherited from the Enlightenment for they are the tools that allow us to establish, for example, the truth of the feminist position and the immorality of injustice. Thus, the radical postmodern approach to feminist problems is self-defeating. The idea that the concept of rationality is so thoroughly masculine and tied up in modernist dichotomies that it cannot be salvaged opens the door to an irrationality that does little to bolster feminist claims against their opponents. If we emphasize the counter-concept, irrationality, we end up in ‘both a theoretical and a practical dead end. . . . [A] critique can only be convincing, even among women, when expressed in argumentative language’ (Nagl-Docekal 1999, 60). Feminism as a political movement concerned with identifying and overcoming oppression must rely on appeals to normative concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘equality.’ If we give up the argumentative tools that can ground such claims, feminism cuts itself loose from the public discourse and intellectual debates needed for the desired changes. Yet, the basic concern remains: is reason always masculine? If it is, then clearly feminists should be suspicious of it and should challenge the use of the concept. Perhaps we have no choice but to embrace a rejection of the rational. On the other hand, if a masculine bias is not essential to reason, we should pause before being willing to give up on it so quickly. The fact that feminist philosophers go around giving and responding to reasons

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indicates that there is much to rationality that is more human than it is masculine, and most feminists actually do recognize the importance of rationality. The problem is that there is often too little constructive work done on the topic of reason. Feminist philosophers need to ask what a good feminist theory of rationality might look like. In the arguments that follow throughout this book, I maintain that rationality is neither necessarily nor inherently a masculine concept, although there are surely some serious difficulties with bias in Enlightenment conceptions of rationality. Yet even if the worst case scenario were to prove true and Enlightenment rationality shown to be incapable of escaping its masculine bias, these arguments will not easily translate or apply to contemporary views of rationality. Current conceptions of rationality substantially diverge from and are in fact opposed to Enlightenment conceptions. And if reason is truly a human faculty, the issue for feminists becomes a matter of asking how we should reconceive of reason, not how we can dispose of it. The remaining two options with respect to feminist attitudes toward reason are redefining it (i.e., the different voice project) or wresting it from those who would use the concept to exclude women (i.e., the classical feminist project). While these options are less radical, I believe these are also far more promising options. Rather than undermine Enlightenment concepts, these projects work to transform them and to make them genuinely inclusive. In the central arguments of the following chapters, I assert that the classical or Enlightenment conception of rationality is a dying philosophical concept, and as a result, I expect my view could be classified as being more in the different voice camp. However, I also have strong sympathies with those who challenge the idea that the Enlightenment concept of reason is intrinsically male. Despite my belief in the eventual demise of Enlightenment rationality, the fact is that when one considers some of its fundamental features— such as requiring thinking to proceed according to principles, requiring one to consider more than one’s own subjectivity, or even requiring one to take responsibility for one’s own beliefs and actions—I fail to see how these are masculine, as opposed to human, features. If these are actually features of only a masculine style of thinking, we really do need to completely reenvision our understanding of reason. The evidence from our everyday lives, however, does not support that only men think in these ways. At the most basic level, we teach our children (and not, for example, our pets) to do these things as a matter of course when we challenge them, for example, to explain their actions, to share their toys with others, and to apologize for pulling another child’s hair. While other features of the Enlightenment can

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surely come under challenge, our everyday understanding of rationality is unlikely to be sexist to the core. While Enlightenment rationality is built upon dichotomies that do privilege so-called masculine traits and that have been destructive to women, these dichotomies are themselves rife with tensions independent of those concerning feminist philosophers. There are more broadly (nonfeminist) philosophical concerns that should make us rethink the Enlightenment conception of rationality, and philosophers over the past century have come a long way in shifting our understanding of rationality. The result is that current theories of rationality are decidedly different from those of the Enlightenment. Hence, my own take on reason is probably somewhere between the different voice and classical feminist projects. Whatever features of Enlightenment rationality are salvageable, they must be integrated into a newly emergent understanding of rationality. Before tackling what is new in rationality, however, I offer a narrative on the old—and the problems that lead philosophers to offer alternatives to it.

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Part Two

Enlightenment Approaches to Rationality

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Chapter 3

The Good, the Bad, and the Dichotomous: Cartesian Rationality

Whether for good or for ill, the dialogue of the modern era has set the stage for all subsequent musings on the topic of rationality, including the attack on rationality. As a result, there really is no better place to begin the discussion of rationality than with modern philosophical approaches. In most cases, philosophical problems can be more clearly articulated and fruitful avenues of investigation more easily developed by considering paths tread by other philosophers. Descartes himself makes this point: We ought to read the writings of the ancients, for it is of great advantage to be able to make use of the labours of so many men. We should do so both in order to learn what truths have already been discovered and also to be informed about the points which remain to be worked out in the various disciplines. (Descartes 1985b, 13) Although Descartes proceeds to abandon much of ancient philosophy’s ontology and methodology, he recognizes that it is easier to find one’s way when there is a map indicating both the dead-end trails and the paths with promise. Today, we have the great advantage of making use of the labors of the moderns who set before us a framework for understanding rationality. This understanding informs almost every aspect of our current theories, if only by standing in opposition to the modern view. Yet perhaps the most significant advantage of studying the questions others have asked and the framework within which they answer these questions is that these provide insight into the assumptions made by other philosophers. Recognizing these assumptions and seeing the progress (or lack thereof) to which those assumptions lead can guide us in bringing to light our own assumptions, which then inform our own theories.

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One of the key transitions from the pre-modern era, and one of the most significant and lingering assumptions of the modern era, is Descartes’ inward turn toward reason itself. This inward turn produces many of the dichotomies that become central to Enlightenment conceptions of rationality. It is also turns out to be one of the more problematic aspects of Enlightenment rationality, and one of the first to be rejected.1 Descartes’ idea, which becomes the standard of Enlightenment philosophy, is that rationality can be best understood by turning inward and considering the process of reason in itself. In making this turn, Descartes not only begins what will become Kant’s Copernican Revolution, he also introduces sharp divisions between the mind and the external world; between the knowing subject and the object known; and between the objective rules of rationality and the subjective content of experience. However, the assumption of turning inward to understand reason itself creates a philosophical knotty point, leading to a paradox described by Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self: Here we see the origin of one of the great paradoxes of modern philosophy. The philosophy of disengagement and objectification has helped to create a picture of the human being, at its most extreme in certain forms of materialism, from which the last vestiges of subjectivity seem to have been expelled. It is a picture of the human being from a completely thirdperson perspective. The paradox is that this severe outlook is connected with, indeed, based on, according a central place to the first-person stance. Radical objectivity is only intelligible and accessible through radical subjectivity. (Taylor 1989, 175–176) The great irony of modern rationality is that it focuses only on itself: its own methods, it own procedures, its own content. But this radical self-concern is nonetheless the key to methods of achieving certainty and objectivity. In turning the mind inward on itself, we no longer need to concern ourselves with anything outside of our control. Instead, we access the very structure of knowledge so that once we are clear about that structure, we can be assured of the objectivity of our beliefs and our justifications of them. The resulting tensions between such radical subjectivity and radical objectivity are, in many ways, responsible for the current ‘rage against reason.’ Without doubt, Descartes sets philosophy on the path that generates this contradiction of reason—and that further generates the deep divide between mind and body.

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I An often overlooked and fundamental assumption of the Cartesian account is that rationality is a common human trait. Descartes begins his Discourse on Method by claiming that the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thought along different paths and do not attend to the same things. For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well. (1985a, 111) Here Descartes opens the door to one of the most central problems of philosophy: what does it mean to correctly apply one’s cognitive faculties? From the beginning, he affirms a fundamental presupposition concerning rationality, namely, that we human beings share in common a capacity to consider reasons and to formulate beliefs and action on the basis of those reasons. While Descartes allows that some people may be better at this than others, he denies that this superiority is due to the fact that some of us inherently possess more reason. Instead, he maintains that it is due to the fact that some of us are better at using our reason.2 Assuming that humans are rational beings, there is prima facie evidence that we humans share a roughly equal capacity to reason.3 A brief justification for this assumption can be made by pointing to the fact that rationality concerns our ability to investigate, understand, and act in the world. This does not require any special ability or training, although training can certainly help one to reason better. Given average intelligence, even the most uneducated of human beings is nonetheless quite adept at processing information and determining what to believe or do on the basis of that information. This basic ability is something that we share. The real trick lies not in merely possessing the basic ability but in how well one applies it. In the case of a child, for example, we can almost see the process of reasoning when, say, the child is caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar: ‘I’m in trouble,’ she is thinking, ‘but if I lie, maybe I can get out of it.’ As we grow older, most of us get better at thinking our way through these sticky, and even not so sticky, situations, but the average adult is no more or less able than other adults in terms of her ability to consider reasons, pro and con. What makes this Cartesian assumption appear objectionable, when it is noticed at all, is the essentialism that Descartes attaches to it. This essentialism

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shows up in the second Meditation after Descartes establishes the cogito. He immediately asks what this ‘I’ is. The answer is conscious thought, which constitutes the essence of mind and, thus, the essence of the person. This grasp of essence prior to any knowledge of the body or of any particularities of one’s existence is highly suspect and problematic (for both feminists and nonfeminists alike) in the current philosophical framework. Feminists, especially, object to placing the essence of humanity within the mind because it marginalizes the body and, by extension, women. But Descartes’ faith in the basic rationality of human persons surely has merit.4 He assumes a fundamental capacity to reason that is independent of what sort of body parts one has. To reject a shared human capacity to reason hardly puts feminism on a stronger philosophical ground for to do so would then require one to argumentatively establish the rationality of women (or men). Furthermore, not all women have found the concept to be oppressive. Take the modern philosophers Mary Astell and Damaris Masham. Both of these women take from Descartes the understanding that rationality is simply a human trait and is synonymous with thinking. Neither believes that Descartes excludes women from the domain of the rational, and in fact, each utilizes a Cartesian understanding of rationality to argue that the development of reason should not be denied to women. Margaret Atherton, who examines the work of both insofar is it relates to Descartes, argues that when construed narrowly (e.g., as establishing substantive standards for rationality that are biased toward so-called masculine traits) Cartesian reason does undermine the status of women, but when conceived more broadly (e.g., as a method of thinking accessible to all humans) it can be liberating (Atherton 2002). Astell and Masham take Descartes’ emphasis on introspection as signaling that anyone, including women, is capable of right reasoning. The only requirement is that one actually attend to the process of reasoning. On this interpretation, Cartesian reason offers a path for the liberation of women rather than their oppression. Of course, feminism today has become far more developed and insightful about the lives of women and the forces acting upon them than Astell or Masham could probably imagine, but theirs is the idea that there is human reason underlying the constraints and the masculine elements. This type of argument is a paradigmatic example of the classical feminist project, which may not be the trendiest aspect of feminist philosophy but which does get at something important: reason need not be inherently masculine. Cartesian reason may be deeply problematic in many respects, but to be fair, there are aspects of Cartesian philosophy that are friendly to feminist goals and that feminists have recognized as such.

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II If we accept this presupposition of a commonly shared rationality, the central Cartesian question becomes: how are we to use our reason? Because rationality demands following certain principles that govern how one ought to reason, Cartesian rationality originates a shift to a methodological or procedural account of rationality. This shift, however, turns out to come at a very high price. Unlike previous philosophers, Descartes does not see reason as being directed externally towards some natural or right order; rather, he alters his focus inward toward his own thoughts and how those thoughts should be ordered. With Descartes, rationality is no longer focused on reflecting upon an external reality, as it was for the ancients; rather, the emphasis shifts to the methodology of reason and the formal operations that reason performs on ideas. Reason becomes a self-sufficient and internal property of subjective thinking. Such subjective thinking constructs an orderly and objective conceptual system through the application of formal procedures. This concern with formal procedures is a hallmark of Cartesian rationality. The opening rule of Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind captures this when he states: ‘The aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgments about whatever comes before it’ (Descartes 1985b, 9). Throughout much of his work, Descartes’ central concern is to determine exactly what constitutes ‘sound and correct judgment.’ Naturally enough, Descartes offers a solution to the problem of arriving at correct judgment. The method that Descartes would have us follow can be summarized in the following rules: z z z

z z z

The human intellect should concentrate only on matters that it appears able to know certainly and indubitably. (Rule II) Knowledge comes only from one’s own intuition or by one’s own (correct) deduction. (Rule III) The method of investigating truth must reduce complex propositions to simpler ones, and then attempt to find the intuitive source of the simple propositions. (Rule V) For any subject, if one lacks sufficient intuition, one must stop all investigation of that subject. (Rule VIII) Running through, at one time, all the deductions that follow from intuitive knowledge is the best way to achieve certainty. (Rule XI) Understanding, imagination, sense, and memory are aids to reason. (Rule XII)

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What should be clear from this short summary is that there is practically no room for anything outside of one’s own mind. Rule III specifically states that we should not concern ourselves with what others have thought on a subject matter. Rather, what is important to gaining knowledge is that we focus on our own intuitions and deductions. In Rule XII, Descartes adds that we actually must make use of other faculties such as imagination and sense, but senses are not to be taken as giving information about particular objects. In fact, the conclusion of Descartes’ famous wax example in the second Meditation, is this: ‘I must therefore admit that the nature of this piece of wax is in no way revealed by my imagination, but is perceived by the mind alone’ (Descartes 1984, 21). Thus, in adopting his inward stance on rationality, Descartes clearly distinguishes the rational mind both from the world and from the senses that inform us about this world. Rationality requires that we see the relationship among ideas themselves as governed by rules of deduction. This leads to a disengaged stance toward the world. This dichotomy between the rational mind and the material world, this disembodiment of reason, is a hallmark of Enlightenment theories of rationality, and it is one of the most widely criticized aspects of Cartesian philosophy, from Locke through to contemporary feminists. As it turns out, one of the most fundamental differences between Enlightenment and postEnlightenment theories of rationality lies in the assumptions made about the relationship between mind and body. However, Descartes’ approach to body and the consequences of his approach are rather complex. Feminists, in particular, object to Cartesian rationality because they believe that it undermines a significant source of knowledge, namely the body (and because of its association with body, emotion). Nonetheless, Descartes’ attitude toward body and sensory impressions is ambivalent, at best. He is simply not as eager to reject the body as he is often made out to be, although he does leave himself little philosophical room in which to salvage a commitment to embodiment. Contrary to philosophical stereotypes, Descartes does not eliminate the body as a source of knowledge. Descartes writes that we should bear in mind that there are two ways of arriving at a knowledge of things—through experience and through deduction. Moreover, we must note that while our experiences of things are often deceptive, the deduction or pure inference of one thing from another can never be performed wrongly by an intellect which is in the least degree rational, though we may fail to make the inference if we do not see it. (1985b, 12)

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Descartes starts out here by allowing experiential knowledge. When it comes to knowledge gained through experience, however, what Descartes gives with one hand, he takes with the other. Although he maintains that knowledge of facts can be gained through experience, he also insists that they cannot provide indubitable knowledge. And, of course, the mark of truth is the clarity and distinctness that experience can never provide. Nonetheless, while the diminishing of the body is unquestioningly evident in Descartes’ writings, what is often overlooked is that he never truly doubts that we can have knowledge of the world of appearance (and of bodies), even though empirical knowledge can always be doubted. In both the Discourse on Method and the Meditations, Descartes’ goal is not to undermine his beliefs; rather, it is to put them on a firm epistemological foundation. He writes in the Discourse: ‘My plan has never gone beyond trying to reform my own thoughts and construct them upon a foundation which is all my own’ (Descartes 1985a, 118). Furthermore, Descartes concludes in Meditation VI that . . . all my senses report the truth much more frequently than not. Also, I can almost always make use of more than one sense to investigate the same things; and in addition, I can use both my memory, which connects present experiences with preceding ones. . . . Accordingly, I should not have any further fears about the falsity of what my senses tell me every day; on the contrary, the exaggerated doubts of the last few days should be dismissed as laughable. . . . I ought not to have even the slightest doubt of their reality if, after calling upon all the senses as well as my memory and my intellect in order to check them, I receive no conflicting reports from any of these sources. (1984, 61–62) Assuming we grant Descartes, if only for the time being, this conclusion that he should trust his senses, the fault with his view cannot be simply that he fails to acknowledge experience of the world around us as a source of knowledge. He does, after all, clearly allow that what our senses tell us should not, when duly corrected by reason, be in any way doubted—and that our senses stand in need of correction by reason is hardly a matter of controversy. Even the most ardent of empiricists will allow this.5 Furthermore, in the Discourse, Descartes writes that I showed how it is not sufficient for it [the rational soul] to be lodged in the human body like a helmsman in his ship . . . , but that it must be more closely joined and united with the body in order to have . . . feelings and appetites like ours and so constitute a real man. (1985a, 141)

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As a practical matter, Descartes clearly refuses to doubt that mind and world can and must interact. He acknowledges that at least part of what makes us human is our feelings and appetites. He understands that rationality exists within a world known through experience. Our experience may not be a source of complete knowledge, but it does provide some of the content for knowledge. Unfortunately for Descartes, his own practical assurance of the union of the rational mind to the external world is insufficient epistemic assurance, a fact of which he is well aware. Despite wanting to accept the trustworthiness of the senses and the union of mind and body, the failure of the arguments Descartes garners to support such trustworthiness is well-recognized. His difficulties, however, go far deeper than simply the inability to argue convincingly for the trustworthiness of the senses. Because he establishes a methodological approach to rationality that is grounded in a radical individualism or egoism, he can rely on nothing outside of himself, and what lies within him cannot escape radical subjectivity. The problems begin in the first Meditation. With the dream hypothesis, Descartes shifts the focus of reason inward and generates a rift between reason and the world, a rift which undermines reason’s ability to know the world of appearances. This, in and of itself, is a strong break with the ancients. In dividing mind from world, Descartes rejects the rationality of Plato and Aristotle. For Plato, reason was governed by the natural order of things; for Aristotle, by the subject matter or ends of activity. By contrast, Cartesian reason must internally ground itself. However, with the evil deceiver hypothesis, Descartes proceeds to undermine the ground for the reliability of reason itself. In the opening Meditation, then, Descartes, all at once, gives us the mind/body problem and establishes that rationality itself can be suspect. It would be one thing if Descartes simply failed to establish the veracity of our judgments about the world of sense. It is another thing entirely that Descartes cannot actually establish the reliability of reason’s method. Given that reason and rationality are normative concepts—and that Descartes is above all concerned with them as normative concepts—he has a significant problem. The principles and rules for the direction of the mind that he offers cannot withstand his evil deceiver hypothesis. If there actually is an evil deceiver, reason itself becomes suspect, and all of the claims that Descartes builds upon the procedures of right reason are thereby lacking justification. Take the passage in which Descartes begins to establish his evil deceiver hypothesis: How do I know that he [God] has not brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the

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same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now? What is more, . . . may I not similarly go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simple matter, if that is imaginable? (1984, 14) Descartes begins with the possibility that God could deceive me about things such as heaven and earth, extended objects, magnitude, and place. This is an interesting place to be since in the previous paragraph, Descartes has already called into question ‘all . . . disciplines which depend on the study of composite things.’ Since any possibility of doubt should lead him to consider those beliefs false, presumably any inquiry concerning matters known through the senses are dubious prior to the introduction of the evil deceiver. What is yet to be doubted, and what the evil deceiver hypothesis is specifically designed to undermine, is deductive reasoning. After all, prior to the introduction of the evil deceiver Descartes concludes that arithmetic, geometry, and other subjects of this kind, which deal only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they really exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false. (1984, 14) Yet such truths can incur serious suspicion of falsity with the possibility of an evil deceiver. Unfortunately, once the deductive sciences become doubtful, reason itself is left with few, if any, resources with which it can ground itself. It must, of course, ground itself since Descartes’ only plan is ‘to reform my own thoughts and construct them upon a foundation which is all my own’ (1985a, 118). Thus, even if we give Descartes every benefit of the doubt and assume that he can indeed discharge the evil deceiver hypothesis, reason still cannot connect to the world in any meaningful way. Reason can rely on nothing but itself. It can only reflect inwardly on its own ideas. And since those internal ideas cannot establish the indubitable existence of the external world, the only constraints on what is rational are, of necessity, purely internal ones. In the final analysis, Cartesian reason is alone in a world it cannot know to exist. Perhaps its ultimate flaw is that it demands a certainty that it can never hope to achieve. So here is Descartes’ dilemma. Reason operates with the greatest assurance when it concerns itself with clear and distinct ideas. But what constitutes clear and distinct ideas must be determined through reason, and

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reason alone. In the final analysis, reason is unfettered from outside influence, but such freedom undermines its normative function. Why is that? Because there can be, as Wittgenstein would say, no difference between thinking one is right and being right. Of course, Descartes would vehemently deny this, arguing that he at least has his principles of deductive reasoning and that these certainly cannot be mistaken when I attend to them clearly and distinctly. Yet, there are two problems with this response. First, Descartes cannot indubitably establish this ‘light of reason’ which allows one to ‘clearly and distinctly’ perceive these principles. Second, even if he could establish these principles, they can tell us nothing about a world from which they are necessarily divorced. Descartes ultimately leaves rationality ungrounded and nowhere, in a literal and figurative sense. As a scientist, he wants and needs to give us the connection between reason and experience, the trustworthiness of the senses, and our ability to reliably know the world around us. But he does not leave himself the philosophical space to adequately defend these conclusions. That Descartes’ inward turn leaves reason operating without resistance is, to be sure, an unintended consequence, but this frictionless (i.e., free from experience) account of reason sets the stage for almost everything that follows in theories of rationality.

III That feminists have concerns with Cartesian rationality is an understatement. However, I have argued that the problems with Cartesian reason lie much deeper than the disagreements feminists have with it and its role in diminishing the status of women. This is not to say that feminists are in any way mistaken in arguing that Cartesian reason functions as a key philosophical source of oppressive and exclusionary practices. It is rather to say that there are other reasons to reject this account of rationality. To return to the paradox Taylor identifies within Cartesian rationality: Descartes envisions a rationality in which objectivity can only be achieved through a radical subjectivity. But Cartesian reason, which must begin with radical subjectivity, cannot ultimately escape from it. Thus, Descartes never actually establishes the objectivity necessary for his conclusions. Given the influence over philosophy, the failures of Cartesian rationality are a key factor in the growing skepticism concerning rationality, and they are why Cartesian reason is hardly a live concept.

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Nonetheless, what feminist critics often overlook is that our current theories of rationality are decidedly un-Cartesian. Take the following passage from Susan Bordo’s treatment of Descartes, for example: The Cartesian epistemological ideals of clarity, detachment, and objectivity, although still largely unquestioned as requirements for scientific and philosophic investigation, have been interpreted as serving an obsessive concern with purity and a corresponding desire to exorcise all the messier (e.g., bodily, emotional) dimensions of experience from science and philosophy. (1987, 4) That such Cartesian ideals have been interpreted as obsessively expunging the emotional and bodily from philosophy and science is certainly accurate; however, it is not the case that these ideas are largely unquestioned.6 Louise Antony makes this point, saying: When we look at the actual content of the particular conceptions of objectivity and scientific method that the feminist critics have culled from the modern period, and which they subsequently attach to contemporary epistemology, it turns out that these conceptions are precisely the ones that have been the focus of criticism among American analytic philosophers from the 1950s onward. (2002, 119) The ideals of clarity, detachment, and objectivity are already widely recognized to be philosophical dead-ends, precisely in those areas of philosophy where feminists seem to argue they are held without question. Although the main demonstration for this conclusion must wait until I have finished tracing the historical development of theories of rationality, one can look at Putnam, for example, who writes that ‘[if] our “objectivity” is objectivity humanly speaking, it is still objectivity enough’ (1981, 168). Another clear example is Paul Moser, who writes in a book entitled (of all things) Philosophy After Objectivity, that ‘philosophy after objectivity acknowledges its own stance-relativity, without descending into an “anything goes” attitude toward normative assessment’ (1993, 18). Putnam and Moser are clearly the type of analytic philosophers whom feminists believe to be promoting Enlightenment ideals, but each denies Cartesian detachment and objectivity. One other, perhaps even more telling, bit of ready evidence of the demise of the ideals of radical separation and objectivity comes from simply looking at popular texts on contemporary science, those meant simply to convey facts

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rather than make arguments. In the introduction to one such a text, the authors write: The old science emphasized the distinction between observer and observed. In all the new sciences, this distinction is blurred, sometimes even meaningless. . . . Rather than standing back and observing in a detached way, the new scientist becomes part of the process he or she is studying. (Marshall and Zohar 1997, xxvi) Science is the place where radical Cartesian detachment of the rational mind (i.e., the subject of knowledge) from the world (i.e., the object known) is supposed to be most firmly entrenched, at least according to some feminist critics. But there is little evidence that such radical detachment is an ideal still held in science or philosophy. What this means for feminism is that we need to cease beating up on dead concepts, or on those aspects of the concepts that are dead, and focus our efforts on those that currently hold intellectual weight. There are other places, however, where elements of Cartesian rationality are still alive and well, for example, political philosophy, especially liberalism. Liberalism is, after all, grounded firmly in the Enlightenment tradition founded by Descartes, so one would expect to find Enlightenment ideas— ideas such as equality, justice, fairness, human rights, and so on—still hold sway. These ideas are built upon a Cartesian picture of mind, with its autonomously independent reasoners who depend only upon principles accessible to all. Whether feminists should abandon the ideals of equality, justice, fairness, and rights, all of which are ideals that depend in some measure on a Cartesian picture of mind, is a highly contentious debate. There are, of course, feminist defenders of liberalism, with its commitment to human individuals as a central moral concern and with its appeal to concepts of equality, autonomy, and justice.7 Yet even if one cares not to defend liberalism, feminist philosophers do wish to defend the injustice of oppression. If Cartesian rationality and the concepts which depend on it are indeed dead, we will certainly need to find alternative foundations for such ideals. Those whose political programs rely on appeal to Enlightenment concepts such as equality, freedom, and justice should be concerned about what happens to those concepts when the ground shifts—and I will return to this concern when the discussion shifts to the twentieth century. The conclusion for the time being, though, is that to reject Cartesian rationality as irredeemably masculine is to also seriously jeopardize Enlightenment moral concepts built upon it. It may be worth feminists’ attention to attempt to

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salvage some aspects of Cartesian rationality as a means to salvage these useful concepts. Whatever advantages a Cartesian view might possibly offer to feminist philosophy, though, the truth is that there are broader concerns with Enlightenment rationality. After all, not every modern philosopher is a Cartesian. In particular, empiricists adopt a radically different approach to the relationship of reason to experience. Most notably, Hume turns Cartesian reason on its head, and as a result of his greater emphasis on body and emotion, he is often considered a much more feminist-friendly philosopher than Descartes. While Hume does tend to leave reason slightly less detached from the world, I argue in the following chapter that Humean reason remains just as ineffective when it comes to coping with the world. In both epistemology and value theory, Humean reason has little efficacy in our efforts to understand and cope with the world. In the final analysis, while Descartes and Hume may adopt radically different approaches to questions concerning human rationality, the results of their arguments are not all that different. Hume is no more able to offer a ground for reason than is Descartes. That both philosophers take an individualistic and egoistic stance toward reason is not especially newsworthy. But that each ends up with a radical subjectivity that fully divorces reason from the world and leaves it ineffectual is not always recognized. Their insights and failures are recognized and addressed by Kant, but that is a further issue. For now, I focus on Hume’s instrumentalist account.

Chapter 4

Instrumentalism on Steroids: Humean Rationality

Feminists often consider Hume to be a philosophical friend.1 In fact, Hume turns upside down a great many aspects of Cartesian rationality that feminist philosophers most detest: universal structures, transcendental unity, and the denigration of empirical and emotional content. In particular, his empiricist approach allows him to see quite clearly Descartes’ inability to allow for the interaction of the structural elements of rationality with its sensory content. To resolve this failure, Hume is willing to eliminate many of rationality’s structural elements as well as to discredit the idea that reason dictates our desires. As a result, he offers what may appear to feminists to be a much more attractive understanding of rationality: one that is highly suspicious of the supposed sovereignty of reason, that questions the unitary nature of the soul, and that rejects substantive claims about the universe outside of our experience. On Hume’s understanding, reason does not determine what the world must be; instead, it responds to the world of sensation and to our natural propensities in dealing with this sensation. For philosophers who seek out a conception of rationality that responds to experience and is open to pluralism, Hume seems to be a good role model. His understanding of reason stands in further opposition to Cartesian reason insofar as it does not direct and control the passions; it is the slave of passion. He goes beyond simply re-introducing emotion into the realm of rationality; he gives emotion preeminence. Humean rationality is, without doubt, much less authoritarian and tyrannical. And, for feminists who long to see philosophy take seriously the role of emotion in our lives, Hume is a uniquely attractive figure. Nonetheless, despite his willingness to consider emotion, Genevieve Lloyd finds that Hume advocates public passions and interests as a corrective for more specific, short-term, passions and private interests, which naturally enough promotes the same male-interests as other philosophers.

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She concludes that ‘Hume’s version of Reason, like Descartes’s, which made it possible, takes on associations with maleness, even if these are not specifically required by their philosophical theory’ (1984, 56). In other words, this friend of feminists is not always friendly. While Humean reason appears, at least to Lloyd, to retain certain masculine associations, the philosophical concerns feminists should have about it run deeper than simply the worry concerning the likelihood of gender bias. Hume may not set out to undermine rationality, especially its capacity to provide normative structures that organize the content of experience and make our lives understandable and manageable, but undermine it he does. In the final analysis, Hume can, no more than Descartes, overcome or resolve the insecurities generated by his skeptical approach. And ultimately, such skepticism threatens to undermine the possibility of meaningful feminist assertions concerning the reality and injustice of oppression. For feminists who are drawn to Hume precisely because he rejects a so-called masculine conception of reason and because he makes reason the slave of the passions, there should be cause for concern about whether Humean reason can establish two important features of feminism: the reality of oppression and the injustice of oppression. To see why there may be a problem requires a clearer look at Humean reason. From Descartes, Hume inherits a conception of rationality turned in on itself. Cartesian reason is an introspective and individualistic faculty that functions according to formal principles, that can grasp its own structure, and that can supposedly know its own ideas with certainty. While Hume retains much of the individualism and introspectiveness that originates with Descartes, he, unlike Descartes, grasps the ineffectiveness of rationality to move outside of itself. More than any modern philosopher, save Kant, Hume understands and responds to the problems created by Cartesian rationality. His empiricist approach distances him from many rationalist assumptions and allows him to view clearly the failures of the Cartesian project. While sensation, imagination, and emotion are part of the Cartesian account, they are not essential to our rationality and are, at best, problematically related to the rational mind. Hume turns this view upside down. Where Descartes assumes the trustworthiness of reason, which in turn grounds the trustworthiness of the senses, Hume reverses this approach. He takes impressions and their corresponding ideas to be a given, and only then addresses the role of reason in human cognition. Where Descartes finds epistemic authority in deductive reason, Hume shifts the focus to a reflection on ideas originally obtained through the senses.

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That there exists this strong contrast between Cartesian rationalism and Humean empiricism is impossible to deny. Nonetheless, the surprising fact is that Descartes and Hume are actually not that far apart when it comes to the relationship of rationality to experience. While Hume rejects almost all of the basic presuppositions of rationalism—innate ideas, the isomorphic mapping of the structures of reason to the structure of the world, dependence upon deductive reasoning—and while Hume further rejects the efficacy of reason for gaining knowledge beyond immediate sensation, his conclusions about reason and its relation to the world share a strong similarity to Descartes’ view. And for much the same reason. The path each philosopher follows is widely dissimilar, but their final destination is not. Hume can no more ground reason nor demonstrate its connection with the world than can Descartes. And without deductively valid structures, Hume is much worse off when it comes to establishing a view of rationality that can provide a normative constraint on belief or action. Unfortunately, Hume’s own nondeductive account of rational structure ends in his adoption of a skeptical stance toward rationality. As a result, he is no better able to resolve the difficulties of Enlightenment rationality than is Descartes.

I Given the sharp division between rationalism and empiricism throughout much of the Enlightenment, one would be tempted to think that the differences between Cartesian and Humean approaches to reason would lie in their attitude towards sensation, or more broadly, experience. However, Descartes and Hume share a similar approach toward the senses and ideas gained through them. Lest one think that Hume takes sensation more at face value than does Descartes, consider the following passages, first from Descartes: For example, I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘having a sensory perception’ is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking. (1984, 19) Then from Hume: If our senses . . . suggest any idea of distinct existences, they must convey the impressions as those very existences, by a kind of fallacy and illusion.

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. . . [T]hat all sensations are felt by the mind, such as they really are, and that when we doubt, whether they present themselves as distinct objects, or as mere impressions, the difficulty is not concerning their nature, but concerning their relations and situation. (1978, 189) Both philosophers assert that sensations, as felt by the mind, are neither true nor false. They simply are what they are; or more precisely, we cannot be wrong about the having of sensation. No doubt Descartes is ultimately more eager to find a rational ground on which to assert the reliability of our senses. But Hume reiterates Descartes’ exhortation: alone, sensations can tell us nothing about their relations to each other or objects external to us. To count as knowledge, our senses must be epistemically governed by reason. In considering the trustworthiness of our senses, Descartes puts one key condition on their trustworthiness, saying that they are beyond the slightest doubt if ‘after calling upon all the senses as well as my memory and my intellect in order to check them, I receive no conflicting reports from any of these sources’ (1984, 62). But this requirement that sensation be examined prior to judgment is not especially controversial. Even an ardent empiricist like Hume concurs. Hume, in fact, argues, like Descartes, that experience cannot always be taken at face value and that the truth of our judgments about experience is subject to question. In the first Enquiry Hume says, ‘Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors’ (1964, 89). In concluding that the wise person proportions his or her belief to the evidence, Hume attributes to reason a governing role in determining what we ought to judge about experience. The real difference between these philosophers is not, then, in their differing attitudes toward experience. The fundamental difference lies in the structure of rationality and how rationality relates to the world given through sensation. Cartesian rationality, as a result of its inward focus, does not share in the premodern understanding of rationality as the capacity to perceive order in the external world. Yet if we allow Descartes the conclusions of his arguments, Cartesian reason is not thereby lacking objective constraints. It is simply that those constraints are composed of deductive principles and innate ideas, which in turn maps out the structure of the world. Hume follows Descartes in turning the rational mind inward toward ideas, but he rejects both that deductive principles can tell us anything about the world and that innate ideas are possible. Instead, Hume argues that simple ideas originate with simple impressions and that these simple ideas correspond

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with and exactly represent those impressions. We then connect these simple ideas through use of the principles of resemblance, contiguity, and causation. Thus, while both philosophers hold that the objects about which one reasons are ideas in the mind, the content and method of rational thought is conceived of quite differently by each. Hume begins his reflection with sense impressions, which of course he recognizes are always open to doubt; what is at issue for Hume is no different than what is at issue for Descartes, namely, the nature of our cognitive capacities. Hume presents his own case that the principles of rationality are those of resemblance, contiguity, and causation. However, unlike the deductive principle of Cartesian philosophy, these principles are fallible. Hume writes: These principles I allow to be neither the infallible nor the sole causes of an union among ideas. They are not the infallible causes. For one may fix his attention during some time on any one object without looking farther. They are not the sole causes. For the thought has evidently a very irregular motion in running along its objects, and may leap from the heavens to the earth, from one end of the creation to the other, without any certain method or order. . . . [Y]et I assert that the only general principles, which associate ideas, are resemblance, contiguity and causation. (1978, 92–93) In this passage, Hume indicates that while reason does follow rules, there is no necessity in it doing so. Furthermore, utilizing such principles does not produce necessity or indubitability. Hume does allow one exception to reason’s inability to produce certainty, although this certainty is quite limited. This exception is the strictly deductive sciences, for algebra and arithmetic allow ‘a chain of reasoning to any degree or intricacy, and yet preserve a perfect exactness and certainty’ (Hume 1978, 71). This exception is so limited, though, that even geometry is excluded from exactness and certainty since ‘its original and fundamental principles are deriv’d merely from appearances’ (Hume 1978, 71). When it comes to more empirical sciences, the verdict is even more damning for Hume’s skepticism concerning inductive reasoning undermines almost the very possibility of rational certainty in anything but the most a priori disciplines. Concerning inductive reasoning, Hume says: ‘Reason can never shew us the connexion of one object with another, tho’ aided by experience, and the observation of their constant conjunction in all past instances’ [italics added] (1978, 92).2 In other words, experience is not held together rationally.

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Hume may, as Annette Baier argues, see the natural association of events in the past as having epistemic authority, but he is skeptical of reason’s role in this association (2002a, 41). He emphasizes again and again that while reason is useful to us and distinguishes us from the animals, it is nevertheless incapable of giving rise to ideas and is ‘nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls’ (Hume 1978, 179). Reason is not the ground of the causal connection among ideas; instead, custom plays that role: It is that principle [i.e., custom] alone which renders our experience useful to us. . . . Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation [italics added]. (Hume 1964, 89) Regardless of whether custom is considered an aspect of reason or an entirely separate faculty, this passage undermines the significance of reason. It implies that rationality, on the whole, plays little role in our understanding of the world, thereby undermining the normative function of rationality as a standard for the correctness of our beliefs. This is a quite different approach to reason than the Cartesian one. More typically, rationality involves our ability to investigate, discover, formulate goals, and guide actions, regardless of how it is understood in its details. Implicit in any appeal to ‘the rational’ (or ‘the irrational’) is the notion that there are standards for rationality such that not just anything we believe or do is rational. Hume’s approach to reason, however, challenges this notion. Rather than reason dictating its own structure, Hume reduces reason to a set of natural propensities, which at best rely on customary associations. These propensities are ultimately dependent upon inclination and desire to establish the ends of action. Hume allows that reasoning is ‘nothing but a species of sensation,’ and he goes on to draw the conclusion that naturally follows from this claim: ’Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinc’d of any principle, ’tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence. (1978, 103)

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Why choose one argument over another? Hume says because we feel that one is superior to another. Why would any philosopher make such a claim? Philosophers are, after all, committed to the idea that there are reasons to prefer some arguments to others beyond simply how one feels about them. To equate the philosophical process to an arbitrary, transient, blunt feeling is tantamount to sacrilege. One explanation for why Hume makes such a claim can be found in his purely instrumental stance toward reason. For Hume, reason is no longer the preeminent human faculty. Instead, it is a faculty that is entirely dependent upon passion in order to set its ends; it is, and ought only be, the slave of the passions (Hume 1978, 415). Reason is so dependent upon the passions that Hume argues it incapable of passing judgment on the passions. He maintains: Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. ’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. . . . ’Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. (1978, 416) Reason’s role is not to tell us what we ought to do but to direct the passions toward their satisfaction. In the case of competing passions, for example, whether I should prefer the destruction of the world to scratching my finger, reason is lacking in efficacy. In cases where I want to eat that extra piece of pie and also want to avoid putting on weight, reason is unable to guide me. When it comes to preferring one argument over another, Hume says, it comes down to how I feel about the arguments. Aside from what is likely a pragmatically true claim about how philosophers work (i.e., that we make our initial theory choices by following our tastes and sentiments), there is a deeper issue here. Hume wants to understand the faculty of understanding: how is it that we form ideas and put them together? What are the rules we use for this construction? By taking a strictly empirical look at cognition, Hume discovers that reason may not be at all what we thought it was. He finds the principles of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, but reason is not strictly bound by these principles. Even worse, in the case of causality, the most important of these three principles, Hume finds it to be entirely distinct from reason. If habit is the ground of the causal connection among ideas, then reason loses even more

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of its efficacy. While reason may be capable of deduction in nonempirical sciences, the greater the empirical content, the less it seems reason has a role in helping us make the transition from one idea to another or from idea to object. This is a highly deflationary account of rationality. The more Hume examines reason from an empirical perspective, the more the structure of reason appears to disintegrate into probabilistic associations dependent solely upon open-ended patterns in experience and upon the goals dictated by the passions. However, one difficulty here is that Hume’s view itself runs to many philosophical tastes. The problem of induction, for example, is specifically that, a problem. As with many of the recurring paradoxes and puzzles of philosophy, most philosophers are disturbed by induction. Deep down, our intuitions tell us, as Hume’s intuitions told him, there must be some way to justify induction. Why? Because, deep down, we think there is an order and structure to thought that not only can explain cognition but more importantly can justify or provide normative constraints on beliefs and actions. A further problem comes with Hume’s detachment of reason from the world. While Humean empiricism seemingly offers a stronger connection between reason and the world than does rationalism, all is not as it may at first seem. In the opening of the Treatise, Hume says that: ‘as the impressions of reflection, viz. passions, desires, and emotions, which principally deserve our attention arise mostly from ideas, ’twill be necessary to reverse that method . . . [and] give a particular account of ideas, before we proceed to impressions’ (1978, 8). This passage makes clear that, from the beginning, Hume is directly concerned with ideas, not impressions. Hume may attribute a different source to the ideas than does Descartes, but they both focus their attention on internal ideas. Furthermore, when it comes down to accounting for the origin of these ideas in impression, Hume is mired in the same idealism as Descartes. Even though Hume allows that all impressions and ideas are conceived of as existent, he goes on to maintain that the idea of existence adds nothing to an impression and that we cannot have an idea of anything beyond the original impression existent.3 Hume says later in the Treatise that it is ‘impossible . . . that from the existence or any of the qualities of . . . [perceptions], we can ever form any conclusion concerning the existence of . . . [objects], or ever satisfy our reason in this particular’ (1978, 212). Because external objects cannot make themselves immediately present to the mind, they can only appear to us as perceptions. As perceptions, immediately present to consciousness, we can know of objects, but to infer from this knowledge to actual bodies in the world is, according to Hume, ‘only a palliative remedy’ (1978, 211). As a result, we remain in much

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the same position as with Cartesian reason: we can know ideas, but not objects. Where Descartes at least attempts to reunite mind with world, Hume is philosophically content not only to disembody the rational mind but also to deny the possibility of embodiment. Or, to be entirely fair to Hume, it is not so much that he denies the possibility of embodiment as much as he discounts our ability to know bodies independently of the perceptions we have of them. Either way, the result is the same: we can access ideas only. Similarly, Hume does not deny the existence of mind-independent objects, but his argument produces much the same result: if there is in principle no way to know of such objects, there is little philosophical reason for positing them. Surely we know our own impressions, but what lies behind these impressions remains, of necessity, unknown. Descartes cannot overcome his initial skepticism over the existence of the external world and our knowledge of it, but he is not eager to abandon all metaphysical constraints on reason. Hume, on the other hand, explicitly makes this final break with the ancients. Hume’s arguments are a convincing attack on the unknowability of some external order of things to which the rational mind must conform. So while Hume is willing to follow the Cartesian turn inward toward a focus on ideas within the mind, he is not as willing to follow the Cartesian shift to an inward order provided by reason. Humean reason is equally focused on internal ideas, but its structure is determined solely by natural propensities.

II So what does all this mean for feminist philosophy? Of all modern philosophers, Hume is considered the biggest friend of feminism.4 Anyone who is willing to subvert the primacy of reason over the passions, to accept that knowledge is gained through the body (i.e., sensation), and to reject deduction as the primary mode of human cognition is bound to find friends in feminist circles. Hume goes even further toward advancing a view championed by feminists when he rejects the transcendence and identity of rationality. With respect to what lies behind our rational activities, Hume says: ‘what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and identity’ (1978, 207). In other words, the universalizing, totalizing elements of transcendent rationality are nowhere evident in Humean rationality. Hume is willing to allow only those

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ideas which correspond to some impression, and our impressions of rationality cannot generate transcendent unity or a special insight into the structural elements of an external world (and for that matter, it cannot get us the actual existence of an external world). This rejection of the transcendent unity of mind is the one area where Hume truly diverges from the received Enlightenment version of rationality. In its place, Hume has a nonauthoritarian rationality that is dependent upon sensation and emotion. The manner in which reason must cope with empirically originating content is not given in universal principles which demand purity and objectivity for their application. Instead, we have associations of ideas that are the result of habit. Rationality is messily bound up with the particularities of our experiences. What is there for a feminist not to like? Actually, feminists have good reason to be concerned about adopting a Humean rationality, even if there are aspects of it that are attractive. This is recognized even by feminist defenders of Hume, such as Helen Longino. When looking for philosophical resources that are able to characterize a non-authoritarian account of reason, Longino says: ‘When in a quandary, turn to Hume’ (2005, 84). However, despite her appeal to Humean reason, she also asks whether his account seems a very weak understanding of reason. After asking the question, Longino suggests that Humean rationality goes beyond ‘just any old association of idea’ and that it includes sets of rules for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable reasoning (2005, 85). Still, it remains unclear that a Humean account can establish rules to distinguish between reliable and unreliable associations of experiences. Humean rationality is mired in a skeptical morass that appears to make it ill-suited to provide the type of grounding that a successful feminist program requires. To demonstrate this, I take two of the most widely held, albeit general, claims of feminism: women are truly oppressed, and this oppression is unjust. The first of these statements is obviously ontological, which tends to generate suspicion in certain feminist circles. However, to deny the reality of oppression is to deny one of feminism’s most central tenets. Ontology has often been wielded against women and women’s interests, but if we reject the possibility of asserting meaningful ontological claims, we surely lose as much as we gain. Of course, Hume understands that just because one fails to see how to resolve a philosophical problem does not mean that there is no solution. Nevertheless, I fail to see how a feminist can seek to overcome oppression without believing that it genuinely exists. This leaves us with the problem of whether Humean rationality can establish the reality of oppression. Humean reasoners operate with various contingently determined principles for associating ideas in one’s mind, and the ideas on which these

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principles operate have no necessary relationship with anything outside the mind. Hume, no less than Descartes, places his emphasis on internal operations of individual minds. There is more contextual responsiveness in Humean rationality, but the responsiveness is to internal sensations that cannot be known to have any contact with an external world. We may be able to say that subjectively connected impressions lead us to believe that women are oppressed, but on a Humean view, we can never claim that this is actually the case. Women’s oppression is not the case beyond our believing it to be so—it lacks ontological independence. To make matters worse, reason is largely ineffectual when it comes to making moral claims such as ‘oppression is wrong.’ Humean morality is in many ways based on sympathy and ‘feeling with’ others, which makes it initially attractive as a feminist morality. In addition, Hume includes social responsiveness in his moral theory, arguing that morality is based on sentiments that do have a social function. These features all make Hume’s view quite feminist-friendly. The problem, however, lies in reason’s inability to constrain the passions. Humean morality allows for passions to lead to oppressive actions, behaviors, or social structures, especially if these passions are socially useful. Are such oppressive passions wrong? Not necessarily. And if oppressive passions are morally permissible, feminists have a big problem. So, why can Hume not rule out such passions?5 Humean rationality relies on passions to provide ends, and consequently, it cannot say whether such passions are wrong because it has no role in regulating the passions. All reason can do is guide us toward achieving those ends. Hume does allow that passions should be guided by a concern for justice, which involves promoting public utility, but he does not have an especially inclusive view of public utility (or who defines it). In fact, Hume lacks any notion of fundamental equality beyond what is actually useful for us in society. He writes: Were there a species of creatures, intermingled with men, which though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, makes us feel the effects of their resentment . . . [o]ur intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other. (1964, 185) If we adopt Hume’s version of rationality, this willingness to acknowledge the fundamental inequality of other rational agents who are incapable of opposing the stronger group follows quite naturally. It appears that this is

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precisely Hume’s attitude toward women, who share rights and privileges only because they are able to break the confederacy of men. On the other hand, Humean morality does have its defenders, especially when it comes to his attitude toward women. Annette Baier claims that Hume’s version of moral development has the main task of working on ‘a version of oneself and one’s own interests which both maximizes the richness of one’s potential satisfactions and minimizes the likely opposition one will encounter between one’s own and other’s partially overlapping interests’ (2002b, 245). She argues that this then leads Hume to the view that one cannot tolerate exploitation because a realistic estimate of the social costs and benefits of exploitation will show that tolerating secondclass citizenship will fail to maximize self-interest when ‘self-interest’ is construed broadly. However, Baier herself realizes that Hume still has some relatively unpleasant things to say about women. While attempting to defend Hume, she writes: What matters most, for judging moral wisdom, are corrected sentiments, imagination, and cooperative genius. There Hume never judges women inferior. He does call them the ‘timorous and pious’ sex, and that is for him a criticism, but since he ties both of these characteristics with powerlessness, his diagnoses here are a piece with his more direct discussion of how much power women have. (2005b, 247) The problem here is deeper than Baier makes it appear. Even if we grant that Hume never judges women inferior (an assumption I doubt holds up to serious examination), there is disturbingly little in Humean morality to undermine or defeat Hume’s dismissive attitude toward those who are inferior in body and mind. Whether women (or any less powerful group of people) are to have their interests considered depends, for Hume, on the answer to an empirical question: how much power do they have? Creatures without power to affect negatively the self-interest of the dominate group need not be taken into account. Thus, the only way for feminists to show the need for social change is to provide an empirical argument concerning the social usefulness of equality. While there is nothing wrong with making such an argument, feminist philosophers would, I hope, desire a stronger conclusion, namely, that such inequality remains unjust, even if inequality were to promote public utility. This stronger conclusion, Hume cannot defend. In the final analysis, Hume instrumentalizes reason and leaves it fairly isolated and ineffectual in grounding feminist ontological and moral claims. When it comes to perhaps the most fundamental claim of feminism, that

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oppression is unjust, the practical aspects of Humean rationality seem illprepared to defend oppression’s injustice just as the theoretical aspects seem ill-prepared to defend oppression’s reality. Humean rationality is disjointed, accidental, and dependent on emotions (especially if those emotions work against women’s interests). Hume is not quite the friend feminists sometimes take him to be. Kant, on the other hand, is often taken to be one of feminism’s greatest enemies, and yet Kant’s conception of rationality is far more capable of providing a defense of equality and a condemnation of injustice. While Kant follows Hume’s arguments, he does not arrive at Hume’s conclusions. Recognizing the high cost of Humean rationality, Kant instead adopts a transcendental approach which assumes rationality and then seeks to explain it. Transcendental rationality may be anathema to many, many feminists, but it does resolve the moral and epistemic quicksand of Humean rationality. Nonetheless, the assumptions of individualism and detachment that undermine both Descartes’ and Hume’s accounts do ultimately harm Kant’s account as well. Yet Kant lays a groundwork for the outward shift of rationality that occurs in the work of later Wittgenstein. The following chapter completes this short story of Enlightenment rationality and its relation to feminist philosophy. How this story ends makes possible the outward turn of reason in the twentieth century.

Chapter 5

Reason Only a Father Could Love? : Kantian Rationality

Kant is well-known by feminists as one of the biggest villains in philosophical history, and with good reason. He makes all sorts of sexist philosophical moves: he distinguishes reason from emotion, eliminates entirely emotion from the domain of reason, and relegates women to the domain of emotion (thereby denying women’s rationality). And, of course, since moral principles derive solely from reason, women are, naturally enough, then denied moral agency. To make matters even worse, Kant actively mocks women who attempt scholarly activities, and he explicitly relegates them to the rule of men (Kant 1960, 78–79). Even if we assume Kant is simply wrong on these points (which is surely a safe assumption), many feminists fail to find this comforting since there still remains a great deal in his philosophy to which they tend to object. Kant dismisses the body, excludes emotion from rational consideration, and supposedly champions a universal, totalizing, transcendent account of rationality. He very much appears the villain he is so often made out to be. Nonetheless, for anyone who is disturbed by the skepticism which results from the work of Descartes and Hume, Kant is worth considering. He most certainly understands the crisis of reason he inherits from both the rationalist and empiricist traditions, and he does his best to develop an account of rationality capable of overcoming these doubts. Above all, Kant is concerned with constructing an account of rationality that can establish the normative constraints necessary for both epistemology and ethics, thus coming closer than his predecessors to providing the philosophical ground to support feminist claims about oppression and injustice. Although feminists for whom Kant is an antihero are unlikely to be easily swayed, his version of rationality remains a gateway to a happier and more feminist-friendly view of reason.

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I What immediately distinguishes Kant’s theory of rationality from his modern predecessors is his philosophical commitment to there being a world that provides some constraint on reason (Kant 1998, A119–A122).1 The skeptical stance about the external world that Descartes introduces and that Hume embraces threatens the efficacy and normativity of rationality. If there is no world with which reason interacts, reason is nothing more than a frictionless play of concepts or an accidental and contingent association of ideas. Kant understands this. He thus begins from the position that even though we may not be able to provide a satisfactory response to the philosophical skeptic, there is a world that we know— ‘otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is an appearance without anything that appears’ (Kant 1998, xxvii). Either way, the concept of rationality lacks the ability to govern our cognition about the world around us. Essentially, his starting point boils down to this: I do know something about the world, and this knowledge is regular. Kant’s deceptively simple starting point—his assumption that in everyday life ‘none but a fool or madman’ would deny—is that we know something of the world regardless of our inability to know the transcendent truth of the matter. Given the problems generated by the skeptical concerns of Descartes and Hume, this is a logical place to begin. This starting point subtly shifts rationality away from its inward gaze and provides a slightly altered starting point for reflections on rationality. And because he is attuned to the mistakes of his predecessors, Kant begins from the position that rationality neither depends solely on itself nor is an accidental feature of the world. Kant understands that neither Hume nor Descartes can explain our ability to adequately form beliefs about the world, responses to the world, and actions within the world. When the ideal of rationality is pursued either as an accidental feature of nature, as with Hume, or as a faculty detached from any experiential ground, as with Descartes, the resulting account is unable either to provide unifying grounds or to stay focused on the realm of experience. In the case of Hume, Kant accepts much of his view concerning the role of sensation in cognition. In the Transcendental Deduction, he allows that representations of objects in the world are associated in exactly the manner Hume describes. But he also finds fault with Hume’s exclusive emphasis on the empirical aspects of rationality. In other words, Kant recognizes that we subjectively combine various sensations into more complex ideas or representations, but he also points out that if these associations are only accidental and lack some objective, unifying ground, then it becomes impossible to account for a rational understanding of experience.2

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Kant’s point is this: any view of rationality in which our grasp of the world relies on a subjectively associated bundle of perceptions falls well short of explaining the unity of my perceptions. There must be something necessary in the connection for, as Kant says: even though we had the faculty for associating perceptions, it would still remain in itself entirely undetermined and contingent whether they were also associable; and in case they were not, a multitude of perceptions . . . would be possible in which much empirical consciousness would be encountered in my mind, but separated, and not belonging to one consciousness of myself, which . . . is impossible. (1998, A121–122) In other words, rationality must be thoroughly unified and must operate according to some non-accidentally determined rules. Although Kant does argue, essentially in agreement with Hume, that causality ‘must either be grounded in the understanding completely a priori or else be entirely surrendered as a mere fantasy of the brain,’ he also maintains that to accept the latter option is to undermine entirely our ability to have rational insight (Kant 1998, A91/B123).3 Thus, Kant rejects it.4 In opposition to rationalism, and thus in opposition to Cartesianism, Kant argues throughout the Transcendental Dialectic against the use of reason when it is detached from the realm of appearances. When reason is allowed to operate unfettered from sensibility, the result is groundless pretensions and antinomies. Kant uses the analogy of a dove in flight, who imagines its flight would be easier without the resistance of the air. Without this resistance, however, the dove cannot move forward (Kant 1998, A5/ B8–9). Similarly, rationality can appropriately function only when applied to sensibility. Such insistence that rationality is necessarily bound to experience, and vice versa, allows Kant to avoid the errors of both empiricism and rationalism. Rationality, on this view, is an activity whose only legitimate use lies in applying principles to sensibility in order to generate experience. Thus, Kant begins his investigation into reason with two key assumptions: first, the only way to grasp reason is through the use of it, which thereby limits what reason can know of itself; and second, reason and sensation are interdependent in human cognition, thereby producing experience.5 With respect to the first of these assumptions, Kant appears to implicitly understand that any theory of rationality is necessarily self-reflective. In the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states: Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened by questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given

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to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason. Reason falls into this perplexity through no fault of its own. It begins from principles whose use is unavoidable in the course of experience and at the same time sufficiently warranted by it. With these principles it rises (as nature also requires) ever higher, to more remote conditions. But . . . it becomes aware in this way that its business must always remain incomplete . . . . (1998, Avii–Aviii) In this opening passage, Kant maintains that the principles reason has at its disposal are simply those which emerge from rationality’s efforts at coping with experience, and that these same principles are limited in their application. In setting his task for the first Critique, then, Kant explicitly sets out to identify the limits of rational cognition and to clearly specify what can and cannot be done by reason. Contrary to Descartes, Kant understands that reason has an incomplete ability to know itself. But while he rejects rationalism’s blind faith in reason, he is not silent on the topic of rationality. Instead, Kant steps back and considers rationality’s limits. He considers whether a radical subjectivity and a reason radically isolated from the world of sense can generate knowledge or guide actions. The second assumption, that reason and sensation interdependently generate experience, is found in Kant’s well-worn admonition that concepts without content are empty and content without concepts are blind. In this lies the requirement that a theory of rationality navigate a course that recognizes the contribution of sensation and that provides stable structures for organizing that sensation. Kant’s position is that one must have experience (or, more precisely, the manifold given in sensibility) prior to the possibility of cognition. Cognitive states can only count as genuine representations if they incorporate sensory contact with objects in the world (or if they incorporate some additional representations that have empirical content). Yet, sensory contact with objects means nothing if there are no determinate principles for how we are to make sense of them. Reason requires both the presupposition of externally originating sensations to provide content and internally operating concepts or rules to govern the synthesis of experience. This is a fair distance from the Cartesian view of reason which excludes experience and from the Humean view in which rationality has only those principles and features that can be discovered through empirical investigation. Kant’s account is different due to his commitment to rationality’s dual dependence upon the a priori and upon sensibility. Furthermore, Kant

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understands the unity of the rational mind in terms of this dependence as well. In discussing the identity of the mind, Kant writes: for the mind could not possibly think of the identity of itself in the manifoldness of its representations, and indeed think this a priori, if it did not have before its eyes the identity of its action, which subjects all synthesis of apprehension (which is empirical) to a transcendental unity, and first makes possible their connection in accordance with a priori rules. (Kant 1998, A108)6 Kant believes that cognition is impossible without this mental unity to ground the construction of appearances into a coherent experience, but here he claims that this mental unity depends upon the actual activity of reason in constructing experience. Kant reinforces this idea in the Critique of Practical Reason where he says, ‘There [i.e., in the first Critique] it was not fundamental principles, but pure sensible intuition (space and time), that was the first datum that made à priori knowledge possible . . . ’ (1909, 131). This is, of course, a radical departure from Hume, who is committed merely to what he can know empirically and who thereby is at a loss to explain mental unity. Yet, Kant’s approach is also a radical departure from Descartes, who treats reason as a self-contained faculty. For Descartes, what we can genuinely know, in the sense of certain and indubitable knowledge, can only be discovered with reason itself; all other knowledge rests on this foundation. Kant instead allows that sensation is a necessary aspect of having mental unity.

II Before I take my argument any further, I must address an objection since I can easily visualize feminist readers wriggling in their seats, if not throwing this book across the room in disgust, with my mention of a transcendental unity. The difficulty is twofold: first, transcendental selves with their detachment from sensation and emotion is one of the more objectionable elements of the so-called masculinity of Enlightenment rationality; and second, Kant’s notion of the transcendental versus the empirical self is a philosophical mess. That there are significant issues surrounding this latter objection I simply concede. To do otherwise would require a lengthy detour, and since I doubt feminists generally will ever care to adopt a Kantian view of self, there seems little point in such a detour. However, Kant’s motivation

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for proposing a transcendental self is worthy of feminist consideration and should make feminists wonder about either ignoring issues of mental unity or dismissing mental unity as an irredeemably malestream concept. Kant’s motivation is best seen through a reductio of Hume’s argument. Hume treats reason as a thoroughly natural phenomenon, which deflates many of the philosophical pretension’s attached to rationality and which surely earns him part of his reputation as a friend of feminists. But, because reason can only be known through experience, the mind can be understood neither as necessarily unified nor as providing anything other than a ‘subjective necessity’ through contingent associations of ideas. For Hume, reason itself is known as a matter of fact, and as a result, the principles for correct reasoning are, at best, contingently descriptive of how we reason. The problem with this is that there is no means to evaluate divergent patterns of reasoning, especially if that reason is indeed governed by the passions.7 Furthermore, without the unity of reason, both moral autonomy and responsibility are more difficult to ascertain. Even if we discount the possibility of complete autonomy, moral responsibility requires one to have some measure of control over one’s behavior. With a merely empirically related unity, autonomy and responsibility are on shaky ground. Subjective associations cannot guarantee one take into account the right sorts of considerations in the right sorts of ways—whatever those may turn out to be on a fuller theory. In response to Hume’s ‘bundle of perceptions’ theory, Kant maintains that there must be something that applies the rules of rationality, whether they be empirical or a priori (Kant 1998, A133/B172). And the only way to assure the unity of the resulting combination or association of ideas is through a unified consciousness. It turns out that this unified consciousness is a necessary condition for having a meaningful experience of the world (as opposed to mere sensation) (Kant 1998, A107). Internal mental states need not be actually unified or held consciously, but they need to be in principle capable of such unification. While this highly abstract argument is a long way from actual application in the world, having a ground for the unity of reason allows for the regularity of experience and for the responsibility of moral agents acting in the world. The real difficulty then becomes how to work out the details—without some ground, however, there is nothing to hold the details together. Of course, one problem with Kant’s argument is that he can establish mental unity only as a necessary presupposition since we can never experience such unity. That is, he admits that we can never know this unity actually exists.8 Nonetheless, Kant argues that we must assume such unity for if we fail to assume it, we can no longer explain how it is we come to have knowledge of anything.

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While some feminists would be happy to deny mental unity and allow radically fragmented selves, the challenge with this approach is its inability to provide normative standards for either belief or action. After all, fragmented selves are always partial and can share no common identity (other than an accidental one) with either themselves or others. The primary reason feminists reject unitary reason is the totalizing effect it has in diminishing difference at the expense of women. If we could have unity with partiality, much of this difficultly would resolve. Kant may not be the best model for unity with partiality, but he at least opens the door to that possibility by allowing that our empirical selves are ineliminable and not determined. (This insight is pursued in later philosophical developments, which I discuss in following chapters.) As for the argument remaining in this chapter, I am certain the cringing will continue. But, rest assured, I am not suggesting that a Kantian theory of rationality is a good feminist theory; I only suggest that feminists could use some of the philosophical traction sought, and perhaps even offered, in Kantian philosophy.

III As for the principles according to which sensation is unified, Kant allows that Hume is largely correct about the empirical associations of ideas; however, Kant is equally convinced that there must be some noncontingent principles also at work. While he allows that experience is subjective and personal, Kant is concerned about whether there is some universal form of rational cognition that sets limits beyond which one cannot be considered rational. His conclusion is that there are universally valid principles that govern rationality. The details of Kant’s arguments concerning the categories can be overlooked here. The main point is that Kant believes that a priori principles are indispensable for the possibility of experience; otherwise, ‘where would experience itself get its certainty if all the rules in accordance with which it proceeds were themselves in turn always empirical, thus contingent?’ (Kant 1998, B5). While the content of rational cognition is entirely dependent upon our actual encounters with the world, there are limits to how these encounters can be structured, at least if they are to be considered rational.9 Such standards do not depend on contingent elements of human nature. As a result, they allow for the possibility of arguments for the truth of claims universally, not simply truth from a limited, relative perspective, which is all Humean instrumentalism can manage. Kantian rationality, then, is designed to provide a means to evaluate, at a high level of generality, whether one rationally ought to believe or act in

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a certain manner, while simultaneously leaving the content of rational belief and action open-ended.10 In its actual use, reason is a faculty designed to guide us through the world. As a result, Kant’s intent is to give us a theory that not only establishes normative standards which must apply to all rational persons (at least insofar as they are considered rational) but also explains the variability of rational content and judgment. To put the matter more simply, Kant wants to say how we ought to think about the world regardless of what part of the world we encounter. To concern oneself only with the a priori ground of rationality is to miss the fact that one must also use this faculty in ways appropriate to the world in which one lives. An often unrecognized aspect of Kantian rationality (and morality) is that its content is always contextually determined. An example I often use with my students illustrates this. Take an activity that matters greatly in human affairs: weather prediction. What constitutes a rational explanation for, say, a thunderstorm? How would our explanation differ from the ancient Greeks? Simplistically, we say the storm is the result of atmospheric pressures and fronts; the Greeks say it is Zeus’ anger and the tossing of thunderbolts. Given that we humans need to be able to predict and react to weather patterns, is one explanation more rational? If the best one has at their disposal is appeals to deities, such appeals are actually not in any way irrational. But while belief in Zeus may not be an irrational belief for the Greeks, it will not pass the laugh test in the twentyfirst century because we have other, better explanations available. Much of rationality is like this. It depends on context. Here is another example that depends on context. I live in the woods in southeastern United States and spend a significant portion of my summers keeping a watchful eye out for snakes and poison ivy. This activity is quite rational given that I share the commonly held desire to avoid poisonous snake bites and uncomfortable allergic reactions. On the other hand, for me to keep an eye out for polar bears would be deeply irrational. Shift to the artic circle and the specifics concerning what is rational to believe can change quickly. Kant’s theory of rationality attempts to account for this sort of flexibility or plasticity, while also explaining why I cannot simply structure my experiences of any of these objects any old way I choose. Kant offers universal constraints, but the standards of rationality are at a high enough level of generality to allow a great deal of variability in how they are actually applied and what sorts of judgments we make on a day-to-day basis. However much this approach intuitively makes sense, the actual course of Kant’s argument here does get him into some difficulty. He claims that the concepts used by rational persons have no meaning apart from their

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application to the realm of sensation, but the emphasis of the first Critique is always on pure reason and its a priori concepts. Throughout the Transcendental Analytic in particular, Kant engages in a significant amount of handwaving about how concepts are meaningless apart from their application to the world of sensibility, but overall he ignores the empirical aspects of rational cognition. Basically, what Kant appears to say is this: concepts that do not relate to experience cannot be real concepts, but concepts are incapable of directly relating to experience. The tension between the rationalistic and empiricistic elements of his theory come into conflict here.11 While Kant acknowledges that the concepts of which rationality makes use can apply only to sensibility, he is greatly concerned with responding to what he sees as perhaps the most significant difficulty with Humean philosophy: its lack of necessity and objectivity. In this, Kant clearly expresses his rationalist tendencies. He first seeks to identify the a priori, objectively certain elements of rational cognition, and he then offers these as the ground of rationality itself. Due to the almost exclusive interest in the pure aspect of reason, he does not make it at all that clear how is it that the world can be brought up into and embraced by the mind. For the most part, Kant simply states that it must. Yet he needs rationality’s capacity to encounter and respond to the world if it is not to be an empty play of concepts—and he knows this. He deals with the precise nature of the relationship between mind and world in his schematism. The problem with the schematism, however, is that it fails to provide sufficient explanation of the link between mind and world, and this failure opens the door to the same idealism that troubles previous Enlightenment versions of rationality. For Kant, concepts are universally applicable rules for synthesizing representations. They are removed from the instances or the individual representations to which they apply. As universals, concepts (whether a priori or empirical) can never be encountered in experience, but concepts must be utilized in experience or they lack all role in thought.12 So Kant must connect the universal concept to specific instances, and to do this, he needs a link. Schema are this link. The schema of a concept is, as Kant defines it, a ‘representation of a general procedure of the imagination for providing a concept with its image’ (1998, A140/B179–180). What he appears to mean is that the schema of a concept functions as a link between the universal nature of rational concepts and the particularity of raw empirical content.13 The explanatory problem with schema, however, is that they remain ‘a hidden art in the depths of the human soul’ (Kant 1998, A141/ B180). Schema are supposed to work preconceptually, prior to conscious understanding or rational reflection, but since they operate prior to any

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conscious understanding, their operation remains mysterious. Given how decisively and sharply Kant distinguishes the universal from the particular or the a priori from the empirical, he needs some explanation of how these two actually come together to form experience. Here is where Hume finally has the upper hand. Hume maintains that all we have are, first, ideas (and the impressions that generate the ideas) of unknown origin and, second, the principles discovered by examining the actual operation of the mind. Kant, on the other hand, holds that there is an a priori form of thought into which the ideas generated by interactions with an actual world must fit. By Kant’s own admission, rationality is an orderly structuring of experience. But he cannot explain how the form and matter of experience are united. Even though Kant is absolutely convinced that reason’s possession of a concept entails the ability to use it, he is less than clear about how we can actually use them. Since he accepts the Enlightenment commitment to individualism, the solution cannot lie outside of reason. The only answer that lies within reason, though, is concealed within the human soul. In short, Kant, who on more than one occasion insists that mind and world are necessarily interdependent, actually get us no further toward eliminating the mind/world gap than does Descartes. The result is that the point of contact between thought and world is left mysterious and unexplained, which in turn leaves Kant’s realism dissolving into idealism. Although he claims there must be a world that stands behind the appearances, he cannot, by his own admission, establish the existence of this world, and he further fails to establish how it is that the ideas of rational persons reflect this world. The only content within the rational mind is always conceptually determined and, hence, conceptual. Occam’s razor would suggest eliminating the reference to a world beyond the conceptual elements of the mind. Despite his inability to account for the link between mind and world, Kant nonetheless provides a basic model for how the world can be embraced in thought without falling, anachronistically speaking, into the Myth of the Given.14 It is a model that Wittgenstein follows, without the baggage of Cartesian individualism. In Kant’s version, the contention is that experience and knowledge result from an interaction between reason—which provides the structural grounding of rules—and sensation—which provides the content upon which rational rules operate. The standard story is this: sensations are passively received, related in space and time, and finally synthesized into representations of objects and properties are constructed and are associated with one another in a rule-governed manner. The result is that at the most basic level of our awareness of the world, experience is already

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conceptual; that is, the faculty of reason influences our actual awareness of the world. This is Kant’s Copernican revolution. Yet Kant’s view can only be taken as a starting point for without the constraints provided by the world, reason remains a free-floating play of concepts. Another difficulty generated by Kant’s adoption of Cartesian individualism is his lack of recognition of the social dimension of rationality. Kant provides a detailed account of a priori concepts, including their function and necessity to human cognition, but nothing in his account suggests that we have socially derived concepts or that we ever communicate with one another concerning our judgments. Surely, he allows for both socially derived concepts and communication, but these are, in Kant’s mind, subjects not worthy of much philosophical attention. In principle, cognition can be an entirely private affair. The problem with treating cognition as if it occurs only privately, however, lies in the fact that thought does appear to depend as much on manifestible, intersubjective content as it does on necessary, objective synthetic processes. A thought that I am unable to communicate to others or that contains content that I alone can access is a thought of which I have an extremely tenuous grasp, if any grasp at all. And if thought does remain entirely private, a Kantian rationality struggles all the more with normative concerns since Cartesian skepticism cannot be entirely eliminated. Who is to say I have the ‘correct’ rational structure? How are we to know that the ground rationality provides for itself is the right ground? Social constraints, which become a central focus of the twentieth century, cannot resolve such questions, but appeal to them can address some of the skeptical concerns created by a radical individualism. Kant’s emphasis on the pure over the empirical and his exclusive concern with the a priori ultimately is bound by the same inward focus as the rest of the Enlightenment, and it leaves the social aspects of rationality unexplained. Kant’s response to this objection would surely be that such concerns are to be left to the empirical sciences. But this does not sufficiently account for the fact that when we examine rational cognition some normative constraints do arise through social interaction. Further, it overlooks the possibility that synthesis may have features external to the mind as well as internal to it. While Kant places the normative constraints of thought content within the mind via the a priori relationship between categories and object, he cannot fully account for the relationship. What the Kantian account lacks is some story about the normative constraints that experience places on rationality. As long as rationality’s attention is focused in on itself, the role of anything external to the mind is uncertain, at best—and superfluous, at worst.

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VI So how does Kantian rationality fit within feminist concerns? The problem with selling Kant to feminists not otherwise favorably predisposed to his philosophy is that, unlike Descartes, whose philosophy and personal behavior speaks well of his overall view of women, Kant’s does not.15 That Kant clearly sees women as lesser beings may be a stumbling block too big for those who believe that philosophical positions are irredeemably infected by the prejudices of their authors. Still, I believe his account of rationality offers feminists some needed philosophical traction. Since the opposition feminists have to Kant is well-known, I prefer to focus on those features of Kantian rationality that offer some hope for the success of the feminist project. The issues are fairly complicated, and I cannot hope to do justice to all of them here. What I can do is offer a sketch of those aspects of Kantian rationality that are most likely to help ground the feminist project and offer reasons to at least consider the consequences of rejecting a Kantian approach. Ultimately, however, it is only when these themes are picked up by contemporary philosophers that they begin to take on a form that reflects actual feminist concerns. While it is certainly true that Kant himself is tied to Cartesian oppositional categories and almost entirely dismisses the role of the body, subjectivity, and particularity in philosophical reflection, his view also recognizes and accommodates the personal nature of experience. Although the emphasis is on universalist and totalizing principles, Kantian rationality permits a tremendously wide variety of judgments. Rationality may be thoroughly rule-governed, but the vast majority of those rules are actually of empirical origin. And, when it comes to particular judgments, Kant says that rules demand guidance from judgment and that ‘the power of judgment is a special talent that cannot be taught but only practiced’ (Kant 1998, A133/B172). While the universal rules of rationality may be a priori, they are not determined in their application; instead, their application must be learned through individual instances and are open to interpretation. The a priori elements are part of the general structure of experience; yet, they do not absolutely determine specific empirical beliefs. As a result, Kantian rationality allows for a great deal of subjectivity. And this is true even in its moral expression. Although Kant’s moral theory is too complicated to develop here, it is worth mentioning. Very briefly, Kant has no lesser focus on the a priori throughout his moral theory, in which practical reason governs our choices (i.e., the will) independently of anything empirical. Nonetheless, just as with theoretical reason, where the content is given in

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sensation, the content or material of morality is given in subjective maxims. Our moral lives may be governed by a universal moral principle, but the content of our moral lives is quite different. But I digress. There is almost universal consensus that Kant is wrong about the details of his a priori principles (i.e., the Categories), but the general idea has some appeal. Rationality, regardless of time and culture, appears as an ever-present feature of human beings. We can look back as far as prehistory and consistently find evidence of rational behavior, independent of social or cultural context. It is reasonable to believe there are some general universal principles at work (for further discussion, see Chapter 10). Even though Kant himself surely has a narrower interpretation of rationality than the one I have provided here, his overall view is consistent with such permissiveness in its application. A further issue to which many feminists are likely to object, and which I have already touched upon, is Kant’s insistence on the unity of the rational mind. Without question, Kant is committed to an atomistic, independent concept of self, except perhaps insofar as we exist within a kingdom of ends. Feminists who reject Kant’s atomistic vision of the self instead assert a socially constructed, relational self. As I have previously indicated, I find Kant at fault for not recognizing the social dimensions of rationality, but to swing the pendulum over to socially constructed selves is fraught with difficulties, especially for feminists who clearly wish to maintain certain moral commitments to equality and justice. The moral responsibility of fragmented and socially constructed selves is often unclear. This may be advantageous in some respects, but in other respects, it has a dangerous edge. One who is socially determined to act in certain ways may not be fully responsible for his or her actions. In some cases it may excuse or explain behavior that seems if not wrong, at least illogical. Two examples are women who stay in abusive relationships or allow harm to come to their children within such relationships. Conversely, it can excuse or explain oppressive behaviors; after all, those who engage in oppressive behaviors are socially influenced in their beliefs and behaviors, are they not? The knife cuts both ways, regardless of how one assigns or diminishes individual autonomy. Since the content of both theoretical and practical reason is empirical, it is relatively easy to include social elements within a Kantian framework. Kantian rationality offers a means of retaining the notion of personal responsibility without necessarily eliminating social factors that determine the self. The chief advantage of a Kantian approach, then, is that it can effectively ground appeals to equality, justice, fairness—independently of some social acceptance or communally held desires. The universality of

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rationality accounts for our equality, and the normative structures of rational cognition provide a ground for the factual, if not the moral, error of destructively biased views. Even in the face of widespread agreement that oppression is socially advantageous (a scenario not all that difficult to imagine), Kantian morality cannot permit it. Kant’s refusal to allow that rationality is governed by desire or social utility is a solid ground for arguments opposing oppression, even if we gain great social advantage from it. And since the matter of morality comes in the form of subjective principles, the content of morality is not insensitive or unresponsive to personal preference. Kantian selves need not be immune to social influence, but they remain personally responsible for their actions, regardless of personal feeling or social pressure. Strict Kantianism may not be the theory of rationality most feminists would prefer, but feminist claims concerning the reality and injustice of oppression could use the substantive grounding Kantian rationality offers, even if that conception ends up being only loosely Kantian in nature. Aside from feminist qualms about Enlightenment conceptions of rationality, there is a further concern with adopting a thoroughly Kantian approach: our understanding of rationality has changed dramatically in the last century—so much so that any purely Kantian or Enlightenment theory of rationality is no longer a live option. While I have attempted to sketch some of the positive aspects of Enlightenment rationality and some reasons to defend various aspects of it, our understanding of rationality has moved beyond the narrow confines of the modern period. While we have clearly not forgotten the lessons of the Enlightenment, and while there is no sharp break between the Enlightenment and our current philosophical reflections, we have sought to overcome the difficulties of Enlightenment rationality. In the post-Enlightenment era, Kant’s insights concerning rationality’s self-reflective nature and the interdependence of reason and experience have in many ways become more entrenched. Yet, the arguments made by and the conclusions drawn by post-Enlightenment philosophers are often quite different from those drawn by Kant, Hume, and Descartes. It is hardly surprising that contemporary views of rationality better reflect feminist concerns, but that they do so independently of any thought to feminist goals and aims may surprise. There is much to recommend contemporary views of rationality, especially for feminists eager to move beyond Enlightenment ideals.

Part Three

Contemporary Approaches to Rationality

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Chapter 6

Let the Games Begin: Wittgensteinian Rationality

In some ways, the transition from Kant to Wittgenstein is a seamless one, and in other ways, the two philosophers are worlds apart. It is quite rare to find philosophers as alike and as different as these two. Kant is the quintessential Enlightenment philosopher articulating a philosophy based on epistemic individualism, autonomy, internal ideas, and universal rules of cognition. Wittgenstein is the philosopher who poses the first serious challenge to Enlightenment ideals, especially epistemic individualism, autonomy, internal ideas, and universal rules of cognition. Yet, much has been made of the similarities between them and their transcendental methods.1 Like Kant, Wittgenstein argues: (1) that we must begin our philosophical explorations from actual experience, (2) that philosophy is a critical endeavor with the goal of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate discourse, and (3) that skepticism should not be seriously entertained. He even follows Kant in insisting that reason cannot transcend its own limits, although he disagrees about the possibility of specifying those limits.2 When it comes to rationality, however, Wittgenstein is not very Kantian. Just as Hume turns Cartesian rationality upside down, so, too, does Wittgenstein turn Kantian rationality on its head. Although he shares with Kant the belief that rationality is embodied in rules, Wittgenstein’s rules are neither a priori nor internal. Instead, he focuses on the social and necessarily public dimension of rules. He radically shifts the focus of reason away from autonomy and individualism and toward social construction. The result is an entirely different perspective on rationality: rationality as a socially determined activity, neither capable of nor desirous of exhibiting the kinds of transcendental necessity and objectivity found in Kantian rationality.3 This shift away from individual autonomy and toward social determination immediately makes Wittgenstein a much more attractive figure for feminists. Despite Wittgenstein’s personal antagonism toward women and

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his focus on the philosophy of language (which has typically held little interest for feminists), feminist philosophers have nonetheless recognized in Wittgenstein a fellow critic of the philosophical tradition.4 In many ways, he is anything but an Enlightenment philosopher. First of all, Wittgenstein’s later work introduces ideas of social and cultural dependency that challenge the universalizing and totalizing elements of Enlightenment rationality in ways that overlap with feminist themes.5 Daniel Cohen argues that ‘situating and analyzing discourses within society’s power structures would have been unthinkable without Wittgenstein’s prior notions of “languagegames” and “forms of life”’ (2002, 139). For Wittgenstein, linguistic meanings and the ‘forms of life’ from which those meanings emerge are themselves dependent upon social practices that are immanent, never transcendent. Second, Wittgenstein abandons the idea of autonomous, disembodied subjects in favor of relational ones. He insists that subjects are constituted by social, cultural, historical, and discursive factors. In this, he clearly distances himself from the autonomous selves of the modern era. Third, he rejects the project of seeking absolute certainty, clarity, and precision. Instead, the rules of rationality are always open to interpretation and revision. In all of this, Wittgenstein is a critic of fundamental features of modern philosophy, which is why he is often taken to be a figure sympathetic to feminist concerns. Feminists may not be likely to follow him in his view that philosophical problems are mere grammatical confusions or that philosophy should allow things to be left as they are, but they are likely to sympathize with other aspects of his philosophy. In particular, his undermining of the quest for certainty and his rejection of autonomous, disembodied, individual subjects are in line with central feminist themes. The question, though, is whether a Wittgensteinian conception of rationality could ground feminist projects. His view is solidly empiricistic, and as such tends to have the same problems with normativity that are found with Humean rationality. What Wittgenstein has going in his favor that Hume does not is a social rather than individualistic focus. Still, in the final analysis, it is not clear if Wittgensteinian rationality allows for the strength of feminist claims, although its failures are generally much more acceptable to feminism than the failures of modernism. One final initial observation relates to the fact that the mention of Wittgensteinian rationality may sound odd since he stands out among philosophers for his apparent lack of interest in rationality. Wittgenstein does have precious little to say on the topic of reason. Furthermore, he denies that his work offers any substantive philosophical conclusions, which

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would indicate that he has little desire to attempt to construct a theory of rationality. Even so, it is clear that Wittgenstein’s work has serious implications for our understanding of the concept, despite some apparent irrationalist tendencies in his work.6 Wittgenstein picks up on several key aspects of Kantian rationality—but he does so while simultaneously rejecting many of those elements feminists find most objectionable in Kant. In some ways Wittgenstein and Kant share a common philosophical path. Where they diverge is often on issues of central concern for feminism. Wittgenstein does not completely reject the concept of rationality, but he does take away much of what is considered essential to reason from an Enlightenment point of view. In the end, his view opens the door to an outwardly focused and socially considered rationality, which better reflects contemporary notions of rationality, in addition to being more friendly to feminist concerns.

I Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach responds to problems that stem directly from modernism’s influence on philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century, often problems generated by logical positivism and its deep entrenchment in Enlightenment ideals. Positivists are thoroughly committed to the view of rationality as individualistic, inwardly focused, and distinct from the world to be known. While positivists wish to make philosophy scientifically respectable by putting it back on the path of Humean empiricism, the isolation of rational agents from each other and from the world supposedly represented through the senses leaves positivists no better able to establish the objectivity of empirically grounded knowledge claims than Hume. And if inheriting Humean difficulties were not bad enough, an unavoidable conclusion of Kant’s Copernican revolution is that insofar as we are aware of them, sensory impressions must be filtered through concepts. In other words, experience is always imbued with conceptual content, so we never quite have access to ‘objective’ sense datum. The result? Even hard-minded positivists, who above all seek clarity and certainty for scientific claims, must recognize that conceptual elements distort the so-called purity of sensory data. A case in point is the positivist struggle with observation sentences: How does one disentangle the rational or conceptual elements of a knowledge claim from the supposedly objective content of the claim? Wittgenstein, at least in his later work, responds to this question by saying, in essence, ‘you don’t.’

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Wittgenstein’s own philosophical approach starts with the premise that the world is indeed conceptually determined by the language we use. There is no conceptually independent world that can be articulated—and there is no sense in seeking one. In part, this is simply a continuation of the Kantian program, but without some key features of that program. Two fundamental questions of Kant’s first Critique are: (1) how do properties of the rational cognition shape its contents, and (2) how can contents of cognition be about the world? Wittgenstein is concerned with both of these questions, but he shifts the framework for the answer. While Wittgenstein has no quarrel with Kant concerning the importance of both structure and content, he does have a significant quarrel with Kant concerning how we should approach problems of structure and content. While Kant appeals to transcendental structures and noumenal contents, Wittgenstein rejects both. The possibility of there being a world outside of language is anathema to Wittgenstein. Wittgensteinian philosophy is thoroughly consistent on this point: language has limits, but we cannot say what these limits are because we cannot get outside of them to see or say what they are. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says, ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’ (1922, 5.6) And in his later philosophy he repeats the point saying, ‘The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway’ (1993, 187). Throughout all stages of his philosophical development, Wittgenstein maintains that language and the world are so intertwined that there is, in principle, no way we can tease them apart. Wittgenstein insists that if we want to understand cognition, we can do so only in the context of actual lives actually lived. In the so-called big typescript he argues, ‘As language gets its way of meaning from what it means, from the world, no language is thinkable which doesn’t represent the world’ (1993, 193) In other words, he accepts Kant’s view that there is an interdependence between rational persons and the world around them, but he takes the idea further than Kant, saying: That we don’t notice anything when we look around, look around in space, feel our own bodies, etc., etc., shows how natural these very things are to us. We don’t perceive that we see space perspectivally or that the visual image is in some sense blurred near its edge. We don’t notice this, and can never notice it, because it is the mode of perception. We never think about it, and it is impossible, because the form of our world has no contrary. (Wittgenstein 1993, 191) Here Wittgenstein is clearly in agreement with Kant that our faculties of perception determine how we perceive the world around us, but where he

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goes beyond Kant is in rejecting the possibility of objective constraints, whether in the form of mind-independent reality or transcendental constraints on rational cognition. While Wittgenstein follows Kant’s claim that reason cannot be independent of the world of experience, he rejects the idea that we can somehow get between the mind and the world in order to say something philosophically enlightening. There can be no gap between language (and presumably the rationality which lies behind its use) and the world. Furthermore, since the focus is on language, which he envisions as a social practice that obtains meaning through actual use, he rejects the Enlightenment idea of isolated reasoners. There may be certain a priori logical constraints on what one can rationally believe, but rationality ultimately depends on social contexts and practices to make it what it is. In all phases of his philosophy, Wittgenstein implores us to understand language, which makes language and language-games the natural place to begin any investigation into the particular features of his understanding of rationality. In his early work, he focuses on artificial, logical languages that supposedly map out the world; however, in his later work, he is much more interested in how language functions in situ. While later-Wittgenstein adopts a transcendental approach to the study of language-games insofar as he assumes linguistic meaning, he rejects any search for some a priori necessary conditions for meaning. Instead, he looks to how we actually make use of language. The task he sets for himself is to understand how language-games work and how to bring words back to their proper meaning within the language-games of everyday life. This task is made all that more difficult because he is committed to the open-endedness of the concept of ‘language-game.’ Although we may understand the general features of language-games, there are no necessary and sufficient conditions defining them. Wittgenstein specifically identifies language-games as ‘the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven,’ but this definition points toward the great diversity of language-games as well as their variability (1958, §7).7 Language-games grow out of living our lives and are constituted by whatever goes into the use of the words or expressions of language. Insofar as our activities and practices change, so to do our language-games. They are, as Wittgenstein says, simply there, ‘like our life’ (1969, §559). Out of these games emerge rules that must be followed if we are to be taken as playing the language-game correctly. The result is a view of language as an inherently cooperative activity, not an individualistic one. And like any cooperative activity, it requires some standards for it to function successfully.8 Someone who does not play by the rules, or someone who fails to share the same ‘form of life,’ would not be someone with whom we could communicate

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and could not recognize as rational. As Wittgenstein says, ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him’ (1958, 223). For communication to occur, we must share the customs and practices out of which language arises for they provide the framework within which one’s use of rules is judged to be correct or incorrect—and we do not share the practices of lions. The criteria that govern the application of words or the application of concepts are given by how these words or concepts are used in actual language-games or interactions with the world. These customs do not provide universally valid standards for the application of rules and concepts. Because they are inherently communal, these standards limit how language is used. The clear advantage of appeals to practice is that it can easily cope with the previous examples of weather prediction and keeping a watchful eye out for snakes or poison ivy. In both cases, our beliefs about the world and the expressions we give to those beliefs are dependent upon the practices of our culture. When my neighbor calls to tell me she needs help because there is a snake in her yard, I immediately know what she means: she has a poisonous snake in sight—and is clearly desperate for help given that she is calling me. The practices in my neighborhood rule out other interpretations. When instead she calls to ask if I have seen the emu, my reaction is one of deep confusion. While wildlife sightings are quite common for us, emus are not indigenous to the southeastern United States, (although my neighbors assure me there actually was an emu on the street at one time). The inherent flexibility of language-games permits the emu question to be meaningful, but not without some further elaboration since we have no practices in place for emu sightings in the way we do for snake sightings. Wittgenstein’s appeal to practices and language-games offers a clear way to account for the relatively clear meaning of ‘there’s a snake in my yard,’ the seeming senselessness of ‘there’s a polar bear in my yard,’ and the initially confusing but ultimately sensible expression ‘there is an emu in my yard.’ The language-games and practices of my community make all the difference. So, what grounds our language-games and allows for a meaningful appeal to the rules of a language-game is our ways of living, ways that form predictable patterns of behavior. And the purposes of language-games are to be found in our basic reactions and interactions with the world, not in isolation from the world but as part of the world.9 In this, Wittgenstein shifts the focus of philosophy toward socially conceived concepts, dependent upon a socially created world, with socially imposed constraints. This shift effectively rejects the emphasis on inwardly focused, individualistic conceptions of rationality. However, while Wittgenstein’s notion of a language-game is,

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aside from the usual philosophical debates, fairly well understood, there has been, until quite recently, little discussion of how language-games relate to rationality. Despite Wittgenstein’s own silence on the topic, his account of languagegames implicitly contains some assumptions about the nature of rationality and how it operates. After all, to be able to follow rules in the way Wittgenstein suggests we language-users do require an instrumental rationality, at the very least. For example, if I want my coworker to bring me a slab (as the primitive language-game of Investigations §2 suggests), I need to be able to communicate my desire in a manner she understands. It is up to me to figure out how to work with her in order to make this communication happen, and thus, the type of language-game with which Wittgenstein is concerned assumes, at minimum, an ordinary conception of rationality as responding to reasons. It is an ordinary conception of rationality that is embodied in our daily lives. Without the ability to interact with the world in a way that is responsive to reasons, our ability to communicate with others could not be. Although he rarely deals directly with reason or rationality, the abilities and activities with which Wittgenstein remains directly concerned are those that depend upon and grow out of our rational capacities. The switch to talk of reason and rationality might appear an illegitimate jump since Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the identification of language with thought, but he offers a glimpse of the connection in the following passage: Reason—I feel like saying—presents itself to us as the gauge par excellence against which everything that we do, all our language games, measure and judge themselves.—We may say: we are so exclusively preoccupied by contemplating a yardstick that we can’t allow our gaze to rest on certain phenomena or patterns. . . . The yardstick rivets our attention and keeps distracting us from these phenomena, as it were making us look beyond. (1993, 389) Here Wittgenstein expresses a certain skepticism about whether philosophical contemplation of reason as a yardstick is all that laudable, and this skepticism likely accounts for his silence on the topic. While his goal is to shift our attention back to the phenomena, reason does remain in the background. He acknowledges that reason is that against which we measure and judge language-games, and, conversely, his concern with our practices and language-games has implications for our understanding of reason. Thus, given that rationality lies behind the play of language-games, what language

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gives us is a way to understand, in part, what rationality is and how it works simply by examining how language functions. This understanding can only be in part, however, because language-games themselves do not admit of a systematic account. The same turns out to be true of rationality. Rational cognition cannot occur outside of the linguistic and cultural contexts of practices or language games. As a result, rationality is fully embedded in the rules of practices and language-games of which we actually make use. If we are to understand the rational mind, we must understand the practices, language-games, and contexts in which rationality operates. To understand the nature and character of our ability to participate within the language-games of our community’s practices is to grasp how rationality operates in the world, which is the only place rationality can operate.10 Language arises out of our practices and since these practices in turn arise out of our forms of living, it is our rational engagement with the world that grounds all of our rule-following practices. The integral connection rationality has with the world makes it inherently more open-ended, engaged, and flexible in its dealings with the world. The moderns, with their radical egoism, cannot as fully account for these aspects of rationality as Wittgenstein’s socially grounded view. The shift towards an externalization of rational processes makes such processes more open to view and, more importantly, bridges the gap between reason and world. By focusing on outward manifestations of rationality, Wittgenstein changes the focus from individual agents and internal principles of logic to the everyday world in which we live our lives. This externalization and contextualization also introduces a clear skepticism concerning universalizing theories of rationality, which in turn permits more flexibility and social responsiveness into the standards of what is rational. With Wittgenstein, rationality can finally break free of the universalizing constraints placed on it by modern philosophers, especially with respect to autonomy and self-sufficiency as these no longer demand the level of social isolation required by earlier accounts. Because he abandons mind-independent reality, transcendental constraints, and epistemic isolation, Wittgenstein generates a quite different picture of rationality and its function. No longer is rationality confined to an individual’s internal mental processes. In fact, one of Wittgenstein’s central interests is the nature of inner experience and the possibility of private sense data. Wittgenstein’s view is that inner experience drops out of consideration when we look at how terms are used. In other words, the idea of internal objects of rational contemplation, if there are such things, are not especially useful in language-games and the practices that ground them.

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To illustrate this, Wittgenstein uses the example of everyone having a box with a beetle in it (1958, §293). In his example, each of us knows what a beetle is by looking only at what is in our own box, but the result is that, because each of us cannot know what is in another’s box, whatever is in these boxes is actually not part of the meaning of the term ‘beetle.’ In this analogy, the beetles are our internal mental states. Wittgenstein’s intention is to demonstrate that there is no point to arguing that each of us has privileged access to our own sensory data for whatever that internal mental state is, it drops out of the actual meanings of linguistic expressions. This, however, is not to say that sensation is irrelevant. Wittgenstein allows that sensation ‘is not a something, but not a nothing either!’ He goes on to add that the ‘paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts’ (1958, §304). So, although Wittgenstein appears torn over whether there is private sense data, he is not at all ambiguous about rejecting Cartesian internalism, in which one has privileged and infallible access to one’s own mental states. The result is that what reason is and how it operates is no longer confined to internal mental processes. Instead, it is suddenly embodied in variable, socially influenced, and publicly available practices. In fact, with Wittgenstein it seems that embodiment is entailed in the idea of rational persons, even though he himself does not emphasize the point. In his notes, Wittgenstein makes the following observation when considering expressions of sensations: ‘The usual game played with the word “toothache” involves the distinction of bodies which have the toothache.’ This is then followed up with the comment: ‘Remember that whatever the word “I” means to you, to the other man it shows/draws his attention to/a human body, and is of no value otherwise’ (Wittgenstein 1993, 227–228). Here the self, the ‘I that thinks,’ is integrally associated with the body, which Wittgenstein surely thinks must be true of rational persons. After all, the dissolution of philosophical problems is to be achieved by returning words to their ordinary use, and outside of a quite peculiar Cartesian language-game, there is no use for the notion of disembodied reason. In this, as with the rejection of the paradox of private sensations, Wittgenstein rejects the dichotomies that define the Enlightenment. Such dichotomies may have a role to play, but only within the context of some practice. Change the practice and such dichotomies become no longer useful. And one practice Wittgenstein explicitly wishes to change is the that of philosophy. Part of Wittgenstein’s attempt to alter philosophy lies in his turning away from the inward focus of rationality and in his refusal to allow rationality to

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become disengaged from the world. Instead of considering isolated reasoners and the structure of their mental states, Wittgenstein examines our use of language as we function in the world. The emphasis on language, which is variable and public, is a radical departure from the isolation and totalizing universality of Enlightenment approaches. Due to its emphasis on the connection between human modes of living and linguistic methods of representing the world, Wittgensteinian rationality is neither isolated nor disengaged from the world. Instead, it is found in social practices, specifically within language-games, which although a vehicle for thought, are not simply the expression of thought.11

II There are clear advantages to such an approach to reason and rational activity. First, it integrally relates the functioning of reason within the world. Second, it demands that reason be flexible and adaptive to that world. There can be no transcendental investigation of concepts apart from content because for one to say something meaningful, one’s utterance must have significance within the structure provided by a language-game. Thus, the concepts we use to rationally understand and navigate our world arise out of and are employed within our modes of living and our ways of interacting with our environment. They are flexible tools that allow us to cope with the world. The result is that there are no absolutely correct concepts or methods of reasoning since differences are possible wherever life ‘runs differently’ (Wittgenstein 1967, 388). Wittgenstein’s appeal to empirically grounded practices places rationality fully in the world, which easily explains much of the flexibility of the concept. In the course of living, the rational person engages in various activities in differing contexts, and Wittgenstein’s account provides an effective explanation of such contextual plasticity. This plasticity does come at a price, however. The fact that languagegames are variable and lack absolutes permits the flexibility, but such variability still requires stable meanings if effective communication is to be possible. We require something that can fix the interpretation of rules. Without some standards which allow us to distinguish correct from incorrect uses of rules, anything goes. Of course, Wittgenstein does not endorse subjectivism or relativism concerning either language or the practices in which it is grounded. Nonetheless, language does not always function in the same way and the rules always allow for various interpretations. Hence, it is far from clear that Wittgenstein’s account can avoid an ‘anything goes’ relativism about either meaning or behavioral standards.

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For any given language-game, and presumably any rational activity, there are rules according to which one must act in order to play the game correctly, but these rules can always be changed or abandoned (Wittgenstein 1969, §256). A single rule may play different roles within the same languagegame, or it may play different roles in different language-games (Wittgenstein 1958, §53). The problem here is fairly obvious: to function normatively, rules require stability. For Wittgenstein, the solution lies in the fact that obeying or following a rule is nothing more than a custom or practice (Wittgenstein 1958, §199, §202). Since rules do not apply themselves or fix their own interpretation, the use of rules requires one to possess a certain array of abilities and to have mastered a technique for applying the rule.12 In Wittgenstein’s analogy, rules are akin to signposts, but signposts are only useful when there is a custom for their use. For example, most of us have been brought up to believe that respect for human beings and human life is fundamental to ethical action. The sixth commandment, which in the King James Bible reads, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is an example of this type of moral precept.13 Without the accepted practice of biblical interpretation, this moral precept is ambiguous for it does not specify what should not be killed—microscopic organisms, plant life, nonhuman animals, humans? On its own, the rule itself allows for various interpretations. As a result, there must be some means by which we fix the interpretation of rules so that we can actually make use of them. Central to Wittgenstein’s latter work is that ‘it is characteristic of our language that the foundation on which it grows consists in steady ways of living, regular ways of acting’ (1993, 397). This grounding in activity is central to explaining where rules come from and to cutting off skepticism about rule-following. Rules presuppose some custom, some regular way of acting that fixes the interpretation. In the case of prohibitions against killing, there are indeed regular ways of acting that fix the interpretation to some extent—although the qualifier ‘to some extent’ is significant. In the case of the Ten Commandments, our practice is to treat the prohibition as one against unjustified killing of human beings. However, there are clearly numerous different practices or social contexts in which the Ten Commandments can and do function. As a result, it is not the case that we can determinately fix the interpretation via appeal to a single practice. With this theory of language, there can always be as many meanings as there are practices that generate them. And because language defines the limits of the world, there is no way to get outside of language to determine how either language or the world must be. There is no way language must be. Furthermore, there is a difficulty with the underdetermination or indefiniteness of rules for this entails that any action I take can be interpreted either as according to or as conflicting with the

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rule I intend to follow.14 In language-games, the application of a word is not entirely bounded by rules.15 And because doubt may arise in the application of a rule, the use of a word within a language-game may become uncertain. I am then free to accept or reject the application of any rule (Dummett 1978, 171). There is here an obvious possibility of subjectivism in the interpretation of rules. Wittgenstein attempts to resolve this problem by appealing to a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation but rather is exhibited in what he calls ‘obeying a rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases (Wittgenstein 1958, §201). Following a rule presupposes a mastery of a technique which in turn assumes the existence of some established use (Wittgenstein 1958, §198–199). In applying a rule for the use of a word within a language-game, I can have doubt about the application only after I have grasped the rule, and since understanding a rule means to have mastered a technique of applying the rule, my doubt assumes that I can give examples of the correct application of the rule (Wittgenstein 1969, §115, §160). A fundamental feature of language-games is that they assume established activity and behavior such that learning a language-game, or more specifically, learning the rules that define the game, entails being able to apply those rules in particular cases. Thus, rule-following is a social activity; one cannot follow a rule by oneself, or follow a rule only once (McDowell 1984, 340–342). The idea is that obeying a rule is a practice whose system of reference lies within a complex structure of social interactions and activities, and this structure is supposed to eliminate the problem of arbitrariness. While rules can only be justified by appealing to other rules, the ultimate appeal, or the appeal that fixes the interpretation of the rule, is to one’s practice.16 Due to its grounding in action, a language-game requires no justification (Wittgenstein 1958, §654–655). For Wittgenstein, ‘What has to be accepted, the given, is . . . forms of life’ (1958, 226). These cannot be challenged.

III Wittgenstein’s uncritical acceptance of forms of life is something of a problem for feminists, who wish not to leave everything as it is. Sometimes it is precisely the form of life that we seek to challenge. But, there is also a deeper concern with justification. Because we seem to know how to proceed in actual cases, Wittgenstein considers the lack of further justification or foundation unproblematic.17 However, as Dummett points out, the appeal to practice ‘renders mysterious our capacity to know whether we

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understand’ (1991, 93).18 There is, according to Dummett, a constant push in the Investigations towards custom or practice as the ultimate justification of rules, which in turn has two implications for Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. First, understanding a word becomes a practical activity, and second, mastery of a language becomes simply a vast complex of practical abilities. Wittgenstein maintains that when I am asked if I have reasons ‘the answer is: my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons’ (1958, §210). He repeats this point in On Certainty (1969, §204) when he writes: Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;—but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of a language-game. The idea is that when justifications are exhausted and come to an end, I am inclined to say, ‘this is simply what I do’ (Wittgenstein 1958, §217) or ‘that’s how we do it’ (Wittgenstein 1978, 98). When I act according to a rule that I have mastered, my lack of reasons generally does not, and supposedly should not, bother me. The reason is because the application of the rule stems from custom, from a technique for applying the rule which has built into it a complex background of behavior and a way of looking at the world. The mysteriousness of this dependence on unjustified practice is taken to be evidence for Wittgenstein’s irrationalism, but it could also be simply the result of allowing oneself a purely immanent philosophical critique. Justifications must come to an end, and when they do, we cannot allow ourselves to be tempted to engage in transcendental dialectics. Instead, we must return to practices for that is all we have. Feminist philosophers may find this approach refreshing given that it echoes many of their own views in rejecting transcendental arguments and demands for certainty. It also requires us to consider how we actually act in and engage with the world. It focuses on particularity. The question is whether such an appeal to action can ground the sort of normativity appropriate for feminist concerns. Can we use a Wittgensteinian account of rationality to establish the truth of feminist claims concerning oppression? There is good reason to suspect that the mysteriousness cannot be overcome in a way conducive to establishing feminist claims. Concerns over justifying linguistic meaning or understanding is all fine and good until one considers, as feminists must, moral language-games and

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practical rationality. What Wittgenstein himself says about ethics is rather limited and comes no where near providing a theory of ethics. Still, feminists have recognized a great deal that is positive in taking a Wittgensteininspired approach to ethics.19 The problem is that for all its rejection of absolute certainty and universality, its acceptance of relational subjects, and its sensitivity to social contexts, Wittgensteinian rationality is unable to establish any normativity beyond instrumental concerns. In a rare mention of ethics within the Investigations, Wittgenstein says: ‘. . . Anything—and nothing—is right.’—And this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics. In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of the word (‘good’ for instance)? From what sort of examples? in what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings. (1958, §77) Wittgenstein certainly does not mean here that anything goes in ethics. Rather, what he appears to mean is that ethical terms are as dependent upon language-games and their surrounding practices as any other terms. Such contextualization of ethics seems quite friendly to feminism, which tends to be deeply suspicious of universal ethical theory because of its historical silencing of women’s voices. But, society’s practices must be capable of being incorrect if they are also to be correct. Of course, to say this seems to presuppose some independent ontology or transcendental constraint— but not necessarily. We question the practices of cultures and social groups all the time. A good historical example of this is slavery in revolutionary America. It was certainly an accepted practice in southern states, but it was not without its critics, both within and outside of the American south. If Wittgenstein is right, however, the practice or form of life is a given, which itself needs no justification—nor can it be given a justification. The embeddedness of moral language-games requires that we look to a network of activities and the meanings built upon them, and no further. Yet we must also be able to critique our own practices if we are to avoid leaving things as they are. If feminists wish to identify and change those aspects of practice that are detrimental to the lives of women, they either have reasons for such changes or they do not. The latter option leads toward irrationalism, but the former seems impossible if practices are simply social conventions. Take the Declaration of Independence with its ‘all men are created equal’ language.

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The framers of that document actually did mean ‘men’ quite literally. Women were not taken into consideration. Unless one wishes to allow that there can indeed be nothing wrong with practices that are actually in place and, consequently, that whatever behaviors we cooperatively engage in are basic and unassailable, it hardly seems in such cases that the practices should justify themselves. Surely not all practices should be treated as a given. When we shift our attention to the normativity of reason, the public norms of rationality that Wittgenstein sets forth are also problematic. Putnam has gone as far as to argue that ‘what the logical positivists and Wittgenstein . . . did was to produce philosophies which leave no room for a rational activity of philosophy’ (1981, 113). Wittgensteinian rationality is built on an instrumentalism that lacks any capacity to evaluate and ground the various ends it pursues for it appeals only to public or institutionalized norms to define what is and is not rationally acceptable. It cannot itself evaluate these norms. This leaves the Wittgensteinian account fundamentally flawed from the view of anyone who wishes to evaluate publicly held norms—and that includes most of us. Whatever our philosophical theories commit us to, it is not the case that most of us are actually neutral about the ends we and others rationally pursue, and this is particularly true for feminist philosophy. What Wittgenstein has, then, are the elements of a theory of rationality that breaks away from many of the difficulties of Enlightenment rationality but that retains the problems of normativity that affect empirically grounded accounts. In particular, Wittgenstein takes the principles of rationality and provides an external, social context for them. Presumably, rational thinkers must follow rules that are socially recognized and, therefore, publicly available, contrary to the internally originating and focused Enlightenment principles. The advantage is that the social and cultural aspects of rationality come to the forefront and the concept is no longer envisioned as a totalizing one. A Wittgensteinian rationality is far better able to explain cultural differences in rationality. The contextual elements of rationality are fully explainable, and the flexibility in how we make use of reason is of central importance. In addition, Wittgenstein does not endorse the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason and emotion or between mind and body. Being integrated in the world eliminates the focus on a disembodied and disinterested rationality. These are all features that feminists, in particular, would generally find attractive, and they are all features that tend to be carried forward by philosophers since Wittgenstein. The transition away from Enlightenment rationality begins, but does not end, with Wittgenstein.

Chapter 7

The Unbearable Emptiness of Pure Reason: Evolutionary Rationality

Wittgenstein shifts the discussion of rationality toward an embrace of social concerns and social issues, and this shift has had a great deal of influence on the development of post-Enlightenment understandings of reason. That such a transition away from Enlightenment ideals of autonomy, transcendence, and absolute objectivity has taken place is difficult to deny given even a cursory glance at contemporary discussions of rationality. After going through a discussion of various theories of rationality in Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam concludes that the value-ladeness of rationality needs no argument. He states: If ‘rationality’ is an ability (or better, an integrated system of abilities) which enables the possessor to determine what questions are relevant questions to ask and what answers it is warranted to accept, then its value is on its sleeve. But it needs no argument that such a conception of rationality is as value loaded as the notion of relevance itself. (1981, 202) Enlightenment appeals to detached objectivity are nowhere to be found here. Rather, Putnam allows that the values one holds are central to one’s rationality and that there is ‘no reason to accept the myth of the one Method’ in determining rational acceptability (1981, 203). Another philosopher who advocates a shift away from Enlightenment rationality is Bernstein, who, in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, agrees with Rorty that ‘we are coming to the end—the playing out—of an intellectual tradition (Rorty calls it the “Cartsian-Lockean-Kantian tradition”)’ (1983, 7). Bernstein is specifically concerned with a change occurring with ‘the categorical structure and patterns within which we think and act,’ which he

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believes relates to efforts ‘to determine the nature and scope of human rationality’ (1983, 2). He goes on to claim that: It has become a well-entrenched dogma of modern thought that only after we resolve the “hard” issues of epistemology and come to grips with scientific knowledge can we turn to the “softer” and “fuzzier” concerns of moral, social, and political philosophy. This . . . is being questioned in the new conversation about human rationality. (1983, 47–48) Here, again, is a clear turning away from the Enlightenment perspective on rationality and a turning toward the socially determined and contextual aspects of rationality. Current philosophical debates may have their roots in the Enlightenment, but as Putnam and Bernstein both demonstrate, philosophers are no longer uncritically operating within an Enlightenment framework. Debates on the topic of rationality nowadays take place within a framework that actually rejects many of the fundamental assumptions of the Enlightenment. Over the course of the next couple of chapters, I examine two live options in the discussion of rationality: the evolutionary rationality of Robert Nozick and the virtue rationality of Robert Audi. Obviously, neither Nozick nor Audi is a feminist philosopher. However, neither presents a theory that is at all consistent with Enlightenment conceptions. While the evolutionary account and the virtue account of rationality, each in a different way, continue the transition away from Enlightenment rationality, these contemporary theories are consistent with many feminist themes. Despite the problems with suggesting either of these views as a feminist theory of rationality, the insights provided by each view reflect feminist concerns and provide some basis for constructing a feminist theory of rationality. Feminist philosophers have something to gain by entering this debate. One immediate caveat arises at this point. The decision theory on which Nozick focuses is likely to be strongly objected to by many feminist philosophers because it supposedly continues the same male bias toward abstraction and mathematical models found throughout philosophy—to the detriment of women. Elizabeth Anderson, who herself defends rational choice theory, points out that feminists may see it as conceiving of rationality in terms of cold, instrumental, selfish, quantitative calculation, [that] relies on a gender polarized conceptual scheme,

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which counterposes these stereotypically ‘masculine’ qualities with stereotypically ‘feminine’ qualities of emotionality, expressiveness, caring for others, and sensitivity to qualitative differences. The theory thus presumes that only men or masculine persons are really rational. (2002, 369) If true, this is a fairly damning assessment of rational choice theory for it shows rationality to be an imperializing force that eliminates difference and ignores so-called feminine concerns. But not all feminists make this assessment.1 Furthermore, Nozick’s own version of the theory introduces the idea of symbolic value, which may not go all the way toward acknowledging emotionality or expressiveness but it does open the door to the significance of social values. Once social values are introduced into rational decisionmaking, there is suddenly a great deal of room to expand the theory into areas of feminist concern. Furthermore, once we rid ourselves of the assumption that purely Enlightenment theories of rationality are operative in rational choice theory, we can better evaluate the nature of so-called masculine bias in the theory. As it turns out, Nozick carries over aspects of Enlightenment rationality, particularly from a Humean account, but he is not at all an Enlightenment philosopher in his approach to rationality. Nozick offers a conception of rationality that remains grounded in certain aspects of the Enlightenment, especially concerning the appeal to principles according to which one must believe/act.2 On the other hand, his view includes decidedly non-rationalist considerations, specifically, a biological, social, and evolutionary basis for reason. Nozick also includes a discussion of symbolic utility which can draw upon the emotional meaning of other actions. He furthermore argues that rationality (even a decision-theoretic rationality) can pursue emotion, passion, and spontaneity (Nozick 1993, 26–35, 106). He explicitly rejects Cartesian individualism, saying that there is no reason to believe evolution would shape our rationality to conform to it (Nozick 1993, 178). And, he turns Descartes (not to mention Kant) on his head by no longer seeking a rational ground for reason but instead taking reason to be dependent upon facts (Nozick 1993, 111–112). What counts as rational, according to Nozick, is in continual interplay with our view of the world and ourselves. In addition, we also reason about our principles of decision, determining which principles we should follow (Nozick 1993, 135). However cold and impersonal decision theory can be, Nozick offers a warmer, more personal version, a version which is open to emotion and dismissive of the idea of reason as the infallible cognizer of independent reality. An evolutionary account of rationality shares many of the same features that make Humean rationality

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attractive to feminists. As a result, it deserves, at minimum, a casual glance before we dismiss it as androcentric or malestream.

I In the opening of The Nature of Rationality, Nozick notes, and expresses approval for, the technical turn that the study of rationality has taken since the beginning of the twentieth century. Nozick, in fact, describes his book as being ‘awash in technical details needed to push thinking on the fundamental issues of rationality further’ (1993, xiv). These technical tools revolve around a naturalistic and decision theoretic understanding of rationality; yet, however much Nozick relies on the technical elements of logic and decision theory, like any good philosopher, he also keeps an eye on the broader implications of the technical components of the discussion. The details do matter to Nozick’s view, but the fundamental nature of rationality that Nozick suggests is not dependent upon his being right about all the details. Actually, it is in the larger scaffolding that he offers for framing the technical details where the most intriguing insights are to be found. Despite his own admission that the account is ‘awash in technical details,’ what Nozick offers is an account that recognizes both the broad strokes and focal details of how we should consider rationality. This broader view shows reason to be greatly dependent upon empirically determined features of the world and upon social constraints. In this, Nozick offers an account open to many feminist concerns. The difficulty is that, like Wittgenstein, Nozick rejects transcendental grounds of rationality, and thereby encounters the problem of normativity so prevalent in post-Enlightenment philosophy. As Nozick recognizes, instrumental rationality may not cover the whole of rationality, but it is doubtful whether his view can provide for more than instrumental rationality. On the other hand, the evolutionary ground he offers goes a long way to helping us understand the what and the why of rationality’s functioning—and just might offer a defense of feminist demands for equality and justice. The single most important difference between Nozick and his predecessors (save, perhaps, Hume) is Nozick’s emphasis on giving an evolutionary account of rationality—which he claims reverses Kant’s Copernican revolution. Instead of reason determining the structure of the world, the world determines the structure of reason. According to Nozick, reason informs us about reality because ‘reality shapes reason, selecting for what seems “evident”’ (1993, 112). Where Kant claims that empirical facts are dependent

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on reason, Nozick suggests that reason itself is the dependent variable, that reason is shaped by the facts. Where Kant treats reason as independent of reality insofar as its structure is unaffected by reality, Nozick maintains that any ground for reason must emerge from reality since reason is itself shaped by evolutionary factors. In short, reality not only provides the content for reason but also its ground, at least insofar as reason has one. Although Nozick’s account shares Enlightenment ideals concerning justification, he follows Hume and Wittgenstein in taking as a given that rationality is a natural development that adapts to the world. Nozick takes the idea even further by arguing that rationality is nothing more than an evolutionary adaptation that is constrained by variable, contingent features of the world. Reason is what it is because it has evolved in a particular environment. As a result, reason has limits determined by the environment in which it has evolved. Such limitations lead Nozick to the suggestion, which on the face of it seems quite plausible, that intractable philosophical problems are intractable because reason has developed in a particular context for a particular purpose. In other words, rationality accepts certain features of its environment without critical examination simply because it has to do so. For example, rationality assumes the existence of an external world as a result of developing in a world with stable features that make such a presupposition quite ‘natural.’ It ultimately cannot make sense of questions about the existence of this world because it is built upon the assumption of it. Such assumed features are the empirical correlates of Kant’s necessary conditions for the possibility of thought. In the same way that Kant asserted ideas of reason (self, world, God) which must be presupposed even through they could never be known, problems such as induction or the existence of the external world point to things we must assume even though we can never know them. These problems forever remain knotty points that resist philosophical solutions because they go beyond reason’s delimited function.3 What makes the study of reason especially messy on this view is that rationality is fully involved in the world and necessarily cannot be separated from it. When we ask questions that assume a separation, we find ourselves in philosophically troubled waters. Nozick rejects the Enlightenment idea that we can distinguish reason from its context; instead, he adopts the Wittgensteinian approach that rationality cannot be isolated. The question of what rationality actually is, then, requires us to examine the function of reason in the world and how it fulfills its function. Nozick links his evolutionary approach to two key themes in the philosophical literature: rationality’s concern with reasons and its demand for reliability. Both of these issues he deals with by using decision theory. I will

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discuss this here only in outline since I am primarily concerned with the broader vision of rationality given by Nozick. In decision theory, which is the basis of much of Nozick’s discussion, the rationality of a belief requires two aspects: ‘support by reasons that make the belief credible, and generation by a process that reliably produces true beliefs’ (Nozick 1993, xiv). The rationality of an action on this view is typically determined by reference to expected utility. In other words, persons determine their preference for various outcomes and their probability of obtaining in order to determine the action with the highest expected utility, which is, then, the rational action. Despite his support for and use of decision theory as a tool to understand rationality, he rejects the idea that decision theory’s reference to expected utility necessarily delineates the rational action. Some proponents of decision theory claim that one is not acting rationally if one does not act in the manner dictated by the relevant decision theoretic procedure. In opposition to this view, Nozick maintains that the procedure or processes that maximize utility simply provide the criterion (or criteria) for the best action, not the rational action. He allows that we can make mistakes or miscalculate without acting irrationally. Instead, he is concerned with what makes beliefs and actions rational, even if they are less than the best. This involves examining the connection between reasons and reliability since ‘[r]easons without reliability seem empty, [and] reliability without reasons seem blind’ (Nozick 1993, 64). Nozick maintains that reliability is closely related to truth for when it comes to coping with dangers and opportunities in the world, truth has tended to serve us ‘better than falsehoods and better than no beliefs at all’ (Nozick 1993, 68). While philosophers tend to take truth to be a primary cognitive goal, Nozick argues that the basis of our concern for truth lies in the usefulness of believing truths that are at least approximately true. Given this usefulness, ‘some concern for truth in belief was evolutionarily selected for,’ says Nozick, ‘as was some curiosity to seek out truths’ (1993, 68n). He maintains that we care about truth not because truth itself is anything special but because curiosity about truth has tended to provide us with a better chance at successful living. Nonetheless, while we may be instrumentally disposed to pursue truth as our primary cognitive goal, there is more than one way to pursue this goal. We can pursue truth ‘as a side constraint, as a goal of maximizing the ratio of true beliefs, or as this goal weighted with the goal of avoiding a false belief this time’ (Nozick 1993, 69). Put another way, while we do seek to hold true beliefs, this goal of pursuing truth is not an end in itself. When we assess the rationality of a belief, we must not only consider cognitive goals but also the ways in which we pursue

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these cognitive goals and the structure each type of goal provides. In short, we must examine the instrumentality of reason. This approach builds upon the Wittgensteinian one of grounding rationality in practices and forms of life, but it does so using decision theory as a basis. Take the practice that my neighbors and I engage in during summer months, being watchful for snakes—and not polar bears—in the woods around our homes. The goal each of us has in keeping an eye out for snakes is to avoid serious injury, or even death, from a bite. Given that poisonous snakes are quite common where we live, we have good reason to keep an eye out for them (and not for polar bears). Nozick’s use of decision theory explains the rationality of our behavior, as well as the rationality of beliefs underlying that behavior. Once we take into account the serious cost of being wrong about a snake’s being poisonous, it is evident that a decision matrix will show the utility of the behavior. Nonetheless, the connection between reasons and reliability in cases such as this is not always straightforward and, in some ways, not especially strong. In fact, decision theory can actually explain why I should not care nearly as much about reliability when it comes to identifying poisonous snakes as I might care about reliability in other areas such as balancing my checkbook or paying my taxes. I have what I believe to be a quite reliable belief that copperheads and rattlesnakes are indeed poisonous and that their bite can be life threatening. I also have what I take to be a highly reliable belief that these types of snakes reside in my immediate neighborhood, and very likely in my yard. If one assumes that when I encounter a snake the probability of it being poisonous is only .25, that means the three of every four snakes I encounter is harmless. Overreacting to these encounters, however, hurts nothing, other than perhaps my pride. On the other hand, if I make the opposite mistake and fail to be appropriately fearful or cautious around a copperhead or rattlesnake, the negative consequences are quite substantial. While I actually would like to reliably identify and appropriately react to snakes, I am not especially worried about getting it wrong, so much so that I consistently make a rather minimal effort to truly know the difference. In my everyday practice of walking through the woods, truth is definitely a side constraint. Why? Simply because of the type of practice involved: I am more concerned with staying alive than I am with ‘getting it right.’ For other sorts of beliefs, it is also the case that reliability is not an especially important concern since ‘not every fact is worth knowing or even worth having a true belief about, although particular purposes may give such knowledge a point’ (Nozick 1993, 68). Nozick’s example is his own

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lack of concern with knowing all the state capitals. For the most part, it makes little difference if one knows all 50 state capitals, and while at onetime I could claim to know them all, I no longer can. Generally speaking, I do not believe I am any worse off for having forgotten a few capitals here and there. Conversely, with other practices, such as balancing my checkbook or paying my taxes, I care much more about the truth and reliability of my beliefs. If I make a mistake in financial matters, the consequences will matter to me, unlike the case of misidentifying a nonpoisonous snake or a state capital. The link between rationality and reliability is context-dependent. This is part of the great flexibility of rationality. In making rational assessments, we determine how much truth matters and adjust our reasoning accordingly. It is not only permissible, but often required, that we care less for truth in some circumstances than in others. It is not that we care so much about truth in itself but that truth tends to serve us better in coping with the world. In cases where truth will not help us do that, we tend to be less concerned with it, although reliability remains strongly connected to reasons. What this shows is that truth and reliability are, on their own, not enough to get rationality for there are occasions when we can, and should, care about other considerations more. It also shows that rationality does not have only one goal or only one means to pursue that goal. When it comes to reasons, the rationality of a belief is connected to a dense network of reasoning, inference, and evaluation of evidence in chains of overlapping statements. . . . This shows that rationality is not simply any kind of instrumentality. It requires a certain type of instrument, namely, reasons and reasoning. (Nozick 1993, 71) Such a requirement is a standard philosophical demand: to attain rationality, the reliability must come from a procedure that involves reasons and reasoning. No defenders of reason deny this. As Nozick reminds us, though, there are two types of reasons: reasons for a belief or action, and reasons against it. He thus proposes two general rules governing rationality.4 First, one should not believe any statement that is less credible than some incompatible alternative, and second, one should believe a statement only if the expected utility of believing it is greater than of not believing it. These two principles stem from what Nozick takes to be the evolutionary function of rationality, which is to enable us to ‘better cope with new and changing

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current situations or future ones that are presaged in some possibly complex, current indications’ (Nozick 1993, 120). Presumably, what we want are serviceable truths, and these two principles guide us toward the acquisition of these serviceable truths. Rationality would thus appear to be instrumentally directed toward achieving our goals, desires, and ends. In fact, Nozick appears to prefer a purely instrumental theory of rationality for he maintains that instrumental rationality gives us room to pursue our goals autonomously while substantive rationality ‘opens the door to despotic requirements, externally imposed’ (Nozick 1993, 176). However, he also understands that the absence of substantive rationality means that the door is also opened to objectionable, and even unethical, desires. Whatever his preference for a purely instrumental account, Nozick does attempt to place limits on rationality. Outside of the fact that he permits wide variation in the truth and reliability of the rational person’s beliefs, Nozick’s account of rationality has thus far been a straightforwardly typical account of instrumental rationality: evolutionarily guided efforts to cope with a stable environment give rationality not only the material for cognition but also its ends. This is a decidedly Humean approach, although Nozick does diverge from Hume’s individualism and his skepticism about the external world. While instrumental rationality is, without doubt, a large part of any supposedly complete theory of rationality, the question is whether instrumental rationality is all there is to rationality. Here, Nozick disagrees with Hume. In arguing that there is more to rationality than its instrumental components, Nozick’s motivation is one shared by many. Nozick says, ‘If human beings are simply Humean beings, that seems to diminish our stature. . . . It is symbolically important to us that not all of our activities are aimed at satisfying our given desires’ (Nozick 1993, 138). In other words, our concern for symbolic meanings, which stand apart from what they cause or produce, takes us beyond a merely instrumental rationality and allow actions to be expressive of feelings and personality. Symbolic meanings also say something about one’s life and ‘become part of one’s reason for acting ethically.’ Says Nozick, ‘Being ethical is among our most effective ways of symbolizing (a connection to) what we value most highly’ (Nozick 1993, 30). Actions have symbolic values and meanings for us; they express and reinforce, for example, one’s vision of oneself as an honest or just person, and thus, actions expressing these qualities get caught up in a vast and integrated structural relationship among beliefs. In other words, when reasoning, we consider more than merely expected utility. We also consider how actions reflect on who we are.

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In part, then, Nozick appears to agree with Kant that what is truly special about human rationality is that which takes us beyond the instrumental. Thus, there is some part of reason that transcends the instrumental. Where he diverges from the Kantian account, though, is with his concern for the various factors that shape rationality. Kant rejects the claim that experience or reality shapes reason, although he does recognize and allow that there is a close connection among them. Kant is aware of the influence of desires and social processes in our lives, but he explicitly removes them or ignores their presence when it comes to rational principles. Social processes, for example, have no significance for Kantian rationality, except perhaps in considerations of a kingdom of ends. This limitation is due to the individualism Kant inherits from Descartes. Our rational understanding and moral obligation are not impacted by society, except insofar as subjective considerations make some difference to the open-ended empirical content. In the case of desires, Kant addresses their impact on our lives, recognizing that, in fact, we probably act in the majority of cases because our desires motivate us in one way or another. Nonetheless, desires are not principled, not universally valid, and not objective.5 The a priori ground of practical reason cannot allow such subjective considerations to play a role in correct decision-making. Of course, Nozick thinks Kant is completely wrong-headed in this approach. On Nozick’s view, principles are meant to work in conjunction with desires, some of which, he points out, are biologically instilled. Rational principles were never intended by the evolutionary processes that shaped them to function in isolation from desires. In addition, Nozick recognizes that rational processes are also influenced by socially implanted processes, norms, and procedures (Nozick 1993, 125). Yet, on further examination, it appears that there is nothing here that takes us beyond Humean rationality or that demonstrates how symbolic utility moves us beyond mere instrumentalism. It is warranted to ask whether a naturalistically grounded account of rationality and the desires that shape it can actually transcend the instrumental. The standard criticism of instrumental or Humean rationality is that it provides no possibility to evaluate the goals, ends, and desires that we seek to achieve. Hume recognizes this when he states, ‘It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger’ (1978, 416). However strongly he endorses a theory of instrumental rationality as a key component of rationality, Nozick nonetheless claims to reject it as the only aspect of rationality. While not wishing to depart too far from Hume, Nozick again follows Kant by endorsing at least a minimal

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form of substantive rationality.6 Nozick offers a guide, in the form of twentythree conditions about the form our desires should take, which is meant to take rationality beyond Humean instrumentalism. These conditions have to do with ranking preferences among desires, conflicts among first-order and second-order desires, having desires that are in principle possible to fulfill, having stable goals, having a reliable process to produce desires, and consciously aiming at producing rationally coherent preferences. These conditions provide a normative structure of preferences and supposedly provide conditions on the rationality of goals, preferences, and desires. Nozick’s conditions move from more specific to more general, with the most general condition having to do with rationality’s self-conscious awareness (perhaps a version of Kant’s Transcendental Apperception?) which monitors and attempts to achieve the goals of rational coherence and truth. Because rationality requires this self-conscious guiding of one’s beliefs and desires, it is capable of shaping and controlling its own function (Nozick 1993, 150). Now, of these twenty-three principles, the key principle for cutting off a strict instrumentalism seems to be the one that states: XV. A particular preference or desire is rational only if there is a process P for arriving at desires and preference, and (a) that preference or desire was arrived at through that process P, and (b) that process P reliably yields desires and preferences that satisfy the above normative structural conditions. . . . (Nozick 1993, 148)7 This condition says that only those preferences or desires arrived at by a process that yields rationally coherent preferences and desires are rational. In short, the preferences and desires generated by some process P must satisfy conditions that lead to a consistent and attainable set of desires. In other words, not just any desires will do. While Nozick is not wholly committed to these 23 conditions, he clearly believes that we are not limited to or determined by the desires and goals we with which we begin (Nozick 1993, 163). The idea is that we can modify these goals and desires in small measure, leading perhaps to a larger cumulative change. In a further effort to distance his view from strict instrumentalism, Nozick appeals to the a priori. He advocates taking a factual approach and combining it with an a priori element. What he means by the a priori view is that the structural relationship between a reason and the hypothesis it supports is one that reason has the power to recognize. In opposition to the a priori lies

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the factual view in which a reason stands in a contingent factual relationship with the hypothesis it supports. Nozick believes that there is something right in both these views and suggests combining them such that: a reason r for h is something that stands in a certain . . . factual connection to h, while the contents of r and h stand in a certain structural connection that appears to us strikingly to make h (more) believable given r. (Nozick 1993, 108) Nozick goes on to argue that ‘acting upon reasons involves recognizing a connection of structural relation among contents. Such recognition itself might have been useful and selected for’ (Nozick 1993, 108). Obviously, there is a naturalization of reason here insofar as it is placed within a firmly evolutionary context, but the overall tone harkens back to Cartesian rationalism, which relies solely upon a priori structural relations. What distinguishes Nozick’s a priori structures is that his do not stem from some sort of universal or ahistorical reason. Instead, these structural relations develop out of reason’s adaptation to stable facts in the environment. Here again Nozick turns Kant on his head. Kant’s a priori is grounded in a transcendent reason while Nozick’s is grounded in a naturalistic and evolutionarily shaped reason. Despite Nozick’s appeal to the a priori, and despite his earlier appeal to a process that reliably yields rationally coherent preferences, there remains a serious question about how far this can or will take us beyond instrumentalism. At one point, Nozick speculates about the possibility of someone successfully devising an entirely adequate theory concerning the substantive rationality of desires. ‘To be sure,’ he says, ‘this would be a great improvement. . . . Still even with this modification, rationality would remain largely instrumental’ (Nozick 1993, 163). Just as with his claim about the despotism of a fully specified substantive rationality, Nozick again indicates a certain ambivalence about substantive rationality. There is, however, one further attempt Nozick makes at establishing some substantive structure of rationality. The final step in transcending the purely instrumental in rationality is the step toward decision-value. Decision-value is simply a weighted value of some combination of evidential expected utility, causally expected utility, and symbolic utility. Each of these, in turn, have to do with weighing the possibility of outcomes, causal influence, and the significance of actions for how we see ourselves.8 Nozick introduces decision-value in an effort to resolve technical problems in decision theory, namely Newcomb’s problem.

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The details here (which I admit are rather confusing for the non-initiated) are not as important as what Nozick goes on to say about decision-value. Basically, decision-value takes into account the values we hold and, thus, allows decision theory to go beyond considerations of simply maximizing consequences. A brief, simple example is probably useful. When dealing with students, most teachers wish to be both compassionate and fair. After all, we want our students to succeed, but we also understand the importance of holding everyone to similar standards. There are occasions when fairness must win out over compassion or compassion outweighs fairness. In other words, we sometimes revise the weights given various factors in decision-making. What Nozick does in introducing decision-value is to broaden the considerations and principles included so that decision-theory more realistically reflects how we weigh various factions when reasoning. A problem for decision-value, though, is how various decision-theoretic principles are to be weighed against one another, which is what decisionvalue (DV) is designed to do. Nozick writes: the weighted DV structure, all by itself, does not give anyone much guidance. How great should the weights be? Must a person use the same weights in all decision situations, or might the weights vary for different types of decision situation, or more systematically, according to where a decision situation falls along some dimension D . . . ? (1993, 46) While decision-value is designed to allow us to integrate different decision principles, Nozick admits that decision-value in itself is not much help in resolving conflicts among principles. What do we do with the student who has worked extremely hard but still falls short? How do we weigh different and, in this case, competing values against one another? Nozick understands that there may actually be no single best principle of rational decision (Nozick 1993, 49). Of course, his reasons for saying this are understandable: he believes the framework of decision-values should be capable of being altered to fit the structure of the world and how we see ourselves within that structure. But, if it is ‘the step to decision-value that decisively transcends this broadly instrumental structure,’ one should seriously question whether that instrumental structure can be transcended. After all, the structure of decision-value cannot alone provide much guidance since it is an open question how the probabilities should be weighted. This begins to sound much like the sort of problem Wittgenstein has with establishing standards for the interpretation of rules. In Wittgenstein, the question is what fixes the interpretation of a rule; for Nozick, the question

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is what weights ought we assign to various ways of calculating probabilities. Nozick tells us he would welcome a theory to tell us how to do this, but he apparently does not have one. In the case of solely instrumental rationality, our desires cannot be satisfied without properly understanding features of the world. Thus, it is not difficult to see how instrumental rationality can be constrained by features of the actual world. It need not evaluate the preferences, goals, and desires; it simply needs to properly weigh the probabilities of satisfying those preferences, goals, and desires. Contrary to instrumental rationality, however, substantive rationality is not neutral with respect to our desires. So, can Nozick’s evolutionarily and biologically grounded account of rationality ground substantive aims? Is it truly irrational, on this account, to prefer the destruction of the world to scratching my finger? In discussing his conditions on the rationality of preferences, Nozick begins by claiming that even Hume need not object to conditions about how our preferences hang together. On this point Nozick is probably right, but it will not take us beyond instrumentalism. All he is committed to is that we should want the outcome that we have a better chance of achieving. He does go on to add conditions such that we must prefer that conflicts between first- and second-order preferences be resolved (how we are to do this is an open question), that our rational desires and goals be those we believe it is possible to fulfill, and that the rational person consider what sort of person she is in choosing among various preferences.9 Surely these conditions do limit our preferences, desires, and goals, but they do not rule out the possibility of my rationally preferring the destruction of the world. Unlike Hume, we live in a time in which the destruction of the world can be accomplished—without an enormous amount of difficulty. A villain whose goal it is to destroy the world and who orders his or her preferences and desires accordingly would not, on these conditions, fail to act rationally in destroying the world. The naturalistic version of rationality seems to fail to establish any truly substantive element of the rational.

II Despite this failure, Nozick’s objection to Kant concerning the nature of desire is intuitively attractive. Nozick maintains that because we are partial, and not wholly autonomous, creatures that desires cannot be obtained from reason alone. Rather than developing independently from features of the world, rationality and its principles develop to cope with those features. It is not that our rational capacities are uninvolved in the choice of preferences,

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desires, and goals; rather, it is that these capacities cannot function in isolation from the world. This is a conception of rationality that has some affinity with feminist themes. Despite the heavy reliance on decision theory, the broader strokes of Nozick’s view concern the socially dependent, symbolic, and emotively responsive aspects of rationality. If one looks beyond the focus on specific principles of rational cognition, there lies a rationality that is responsive to the world and its social framework, not simply some universal, a priori principles. Evolutionary rationality does not assert an objective world structure to which rationality must conform, although it does make rationality necessarily dependent on the world for its features. Rational persons, on this view, are neither individual nor isolated; they do not experience the world in the same way; they cannot establish indubitable foundations. In short, evolutionary rationality rejects many of the central elements of Enlightenment conceptions, but without abandoning the idea of rational persons as intellectually and morally responsible agents. Thus, at least as far as the instrumental aspects of rationality are concerned, Nozick offers a strong model of reasoning that can account for both the diversity and unity of rational agents as rational. Nozick’s approach is built upon the idea that rationality is not universal or timeless—but that does not discount the possibility of saying what general principles rational persons must follow if they are to be rational. This is attractive because if rationality is to have any significance, it must allow us to distinguish correct from incorrect modes of thinking. This is no less true for feminist philosophers than for nonfeminist philosophers. Those who assert that women have been, and still are, subject to oppression need to be able to justify this claim, and to do so on the basis of experience. Nozick provides a model of rationality that can support this. The difficulty for this view arises when the goals and values of instrumental rationality come into question. One of the features of Nozick’s account is that his evolutionary rationality ‘leaves us the room to pursue our own goals autonomously,’ which stands in direct contrast to the despotism of substantive rationality (Nozick 1993, 176). This notion of autonomy, though, does not imply a strict Enlightenment individualism for the evolutionary environment in which rationality develops includes others. Furthermore, Nozick acknowledges that ‘[s]ometimes it will be rational to accept something because others in your society do’ (1993, 129). So, what happens when, as has happened throughout the history of philosophy, a group of men autonomously pursue goals that either actively or passively exclude and silence women? And what is the further consequence when these men

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create a stable social world in which women are given incentives to choose ways of life that promote their oppression? Nozick’s instrumental rationality may be able to establish the reality of oppression through appeal to stable facts in the environment, but it seems ill-prepared to make any value judgment concerning oppression. Ought I pursue equality if my society does not value or desire it? Although it does not rule it out, evolutionary rationality cannot offer a ground for doing so. However, not ruling out the pursuit is inadequate to establish feminist claims concerning the injustice of oppression. It does not help if we place on rationality the condition that preferences and desires must be arrived at by a process that yields consistent and obtainable desires. After all, if history teaches us anything, it is that the oppression of women can express a consistent and obtainable set of coherent desires. There is the option of modifying desires, especially communally and institutionally, over time, but there is no imperative to do so. On this view, feminists could not claim that we ought to change our desires so as to eliminate oppression. They could only suggest that we do so. Unfortunately, one of the aspects of Nozick’s account of rationality that is most consistent with a feminist position is nevertheless one that does a great deal to undermine feminist claims. Nozick claims: There are many possible kinds of reasons for and against any belief—certainly any one concerning a controversial social or normative question— and there are many possible standards for evaluating such reasons. . . . It seems reasonable to think that the factors studied by the classic sociologist of knowledge . . .—such as class position, education level, network of group ties, and so on—will affect which among the various possible rational reasons and evaluative standards a particular person pays heed to, which ones have saliency for him and are given some weight. . . . When faced with a complicated societal situation, people in different social positions may notice and focus upon different aspects and therefore invoke different principles . . . that yield different conclusions. Each may be right. . . . Each person also may be rational. . . . (1993, 105–106) Without doubt, this is a view that a great many feminists have gone to great lengths to argue, so it would appear that Nozick’s endorsement of this view could only strengthen the sense that his account of rationality is friendly to feminism. The problem is that this recognition of bias in the standards of evaluation also leads to what Antony has called the bias paradox.10 If we are all partial in our outlook, can it be so bad that men, in particular, are partial? Can it

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be such a problem that men invoke different principles and arrive at different conclusions. And if partiality is not all that bad, what exactly is wrong with masculine partiality? It cannot simply be that we do not like sexist views. There must be some means to explain why some types of partiality are objectionable and others are not. And if there is no such means of explanation, rationality allows for no normative judgments across differing sets of standards. Unfortunately, Nozick’s rationality offers little guidance in evaluating competing standards of rationality, and he indicates as much when he says that we can have different rational principles and different rational conclusions. I doubt anyone actually objects to the view that environmental and social factors influence what sorts of preferences and desires we rationally ought to pursue; however, as it stands, evolutionary rationality provides precious few grounds from which to argue against ‘autonomously’ chosen desires that express a preference toward the masculine or that oppress women. To do so requires some means to evaluate preferences and desires beyond producing a consistent and achievable set. Nozick’s account certainly goes a long way towards including considerations of social and symbolic utilities, but without some stronger substantive constraint on desires, it leaves open the possibility of one rationally preferring the destruction of the world—or the oppression of women. The issue is how to establish and incorporate non-despotic substantive constraints within the socially responsive elements of rationality. Evolutionary rationality fully incorporates the particularities of our lived environment, but substantive grounds must come from elsewhere.

Chapter 8

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Rules: Virtue Rationality

The transition from Enlightenment conceptions of rationality begins in large measure with Wittgenstein’s shift of focus to the social and communicative nature of reason. Nozick continues Wittgenstein’s outward focus but with a more evolutionary and biological approach. With each of these philosophers, however, reason retains the rule-governed focus it had throughout the Enlightenment. The difference is that with these latter philosophers the rules and principles of reason are no longer internal and socially isolated. Yet, in these instrumental accounts both the application and choice of rules lack substantive constraints, and in turn, this absence leads to problems grounding ontological and moral claims. This holdover from the Enlightenment, namely, the idea that rationality is constituted by rules, is, like any philosophical idea, subject to challenge. On a path that diverges from instrumental and rule-governed rationality lies virtue rationality. Virtue rationality, which Robert Audi advocates, is determined not by rules but by what a rational person says or does. Not only is rationality not defined by rule-following, Audi goes as far as to say: I conceive rational persons not as constantly reasoning, or as always self-consciously logical, in arriving at beliefs but rather as having in some sense internalized rational standards which then guide them without the conscious thoughts one might cite in explicitly rationalizing their behavior. This is not to deny that rational persons must be capable of reasoning; the point is that reasoning is not the only manifestation of our rationality nor a constant element in the formation of our beliefs. (2001, 33) Here is a sharp break from both rationalist and empiricist strains of Enlightenment rationality. Audi argues that rationality is not always selfconscious and not only about the process of reasoning. He shifts the focus on

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rationality from an epistemic rationality (i.e., one that considers primarily issues of justification) toward the realm of practice and action, with an emphasis on providing substantive constraints on desire.1 He also shifts some of reason’s focus back in on itself (as a result of his epistemic internalism), but contrary to the Enlightenment, virtue rationality has standards set, not by rules and processes, but by rational persons. Feminists have had little, if anything, to say about the work of Audi, most certainly because Audi is an analytic epistemologist and thus works in an area that is widely believed by feminists to be irredeemable. The fact that Audi revives the inward focus of reason may be somewhat problematic for feminists (and, as I shall ultimately argue, for those who wish to maintain some normative meaning of ‘reason’). Because he rejects the necessity of self-conscious reasoning and because he considers a multitude of ways in which rationality can manifest itself, Audi introduces a new type of post-Enlightenment view: one that diminishes the importance of rules and expressly allows for pluralism in the expression of rationality. In fact, Audi maintains: An adequate theory of rationality must do justice both to the variability that marks different ranges of experience and diverse cultural settings and to the constancies that, because of important elements in our humanity, can be expected as recurring elements, at least in any civilized society. (2001, 9) Audi may be less interested in the social aspects of rationality than other contemporary philosophers, but his shift toward viewing rationality as a virtue concept addresses the pluralism of rationality and refuses to equate rationality solely with rule-following.

I Audi begins with a holistic notion of rationality that shares its origin with Descartes. It is a common sort of rationality, not the technical conception that Nozick pursues. Virtue rationality starts from the fact that we generally tend to assume others are rational unless proven otherwise.2 That is, rationality, in the ordinary use of the term, is something that most humans acquire without a special effort. Audi believes that ‘rationality is a kind of gift’ (2001, 223). In order to determine whether a belief or action is rational, Audi appeals neither to the justification of a belief or action nor to the rule,

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process, or procedure used to justify the belief or action; instead, he maintains that ‘rational beliefs are a kind appropriate to a rational person’s holding them’ (Audi 2001, 55). One must possess a certain minimal level of rationality, conceived holistically, before others can attribute a failure of rationality to that person. Appeal to this ordinary use of the term ‘rational’ is not without its critics, however. One reviewer of The Architecture of Reason notes that Audi’s characterization of the word ‘rational’ reflects our ordinary use of the term and proceeds to ask: ‘what philosophical interest is there in Audi’s brand of rationality?’ While it is one thing to grant the ordinary conception of the word, this reviewer notes that it is quite another thing to suppose that there is a well-formed, shared, stable, and context-independent conception governing that application, such that we can consult that conception in order to adjudicate any number of abstract but fine-grained claims about the scope of the rational. (Bridges 2007, 1084) The reviewer’s argument concludes with the following: ‘The upshot is that it is never clear why the central question of the book—“What is rational, and what is not?”—should claim our attention’ (Bridges 2007, 1085). Surely, this is a question that stands in need of an answer. There are actually good reasons to ask the question ‘what is rational, and what is not?’ One of the primary motivations for asking such a general question is the one I have repeatedly emphasized in the context of arguments for feminism. Any good philosophical argument requires as an implicit condition for its success that we know (in the colloquial sense) the difference between what is rational and what is not. We philosophers expect our arguments to be grounded in reason, but if we cannot answer the question about the difference between the rational and nonrational, all our philosophical arguments are in some serious trouble. We must defend our concepts and conclusions, and must do so using reasons. For example, my own personal dissatisfaction with decision theory as a supposed theory of rationality stems from what I take to be a failure on the part of many of its proponents (Nozick excluded) to provide a satisfactory answer to the simple question: what is rational? The conclusion to which some decision theorists come is this: because we humans are particularly bad at applying decision theory in our everyday reasoning we are thereby not rational. However, this conclusion surely begs the question about rationality. Denying human rationality based on our clear failure to reason as decision theory says we

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should (i.e., as determined by decision matrices) is actually to provide an answer to the question ‘what is rational, and what is not?’ Only in this case, the conclusion, built on mathematical models, is that our ordinary sense of the term is misguided because what is rational is what decision theory’s models say is rational.3 Of course, this simply begs the question. The philosophical interest in understanding the ordinary use of ‘rationality’ is so that we can test our theories of rationality against it, much the way that reflective equilibrium in ethics requires us to test our ethical theories. Furthermore, that there is some ordinary sense of the term ‘rationality’ need not mean that there actually is a ‘well-formed, shared, stable, and context-independent conception governing that application.’ As I have been arguing, one of the hallmarks of rationality is its plasticity, its large dependence on context, and its pluralism. Whatever rationality is, the assumption that it must operate the same in all circumstances or must exhibit some stable, context-independent features seems wrong. In fact, if rationality is dependent upon, at least in part, human practices, then unless these practices are well-formed, shared, stable, and context-independent, there seems little reason to simply assume rationality will exhibit these features. Insofar as practices are stable, we can expect rationality to be as well—but practices are never static. As Audi himself admits, rationality is embodied in actual lives of persons with different experiences and cultures that fill in part of the content of rationality. There is no reason to believe that there need be some single, stable, context-independent conception that we all refer to in our use of the term ‘rationality.’ Of course, rationality is a normative concept, and normativity requires some stability and independence, which is where Wittgenstein’s and Nozick’s instrumental accounts ultimately encounter some difficulty. But the issue of substantive grounds is where Audi brings in his particular form of foundationalism and the structural features of rationality. What Audi’s account does is to move beyond the purely formal conditions of rationality and instead asks the question: how is it that a rational person thinks? Since this question underlies every attempt to identify and defend specific rules or principles grounding rational activity, answering it is central to more technical accounts. After all, however specific a philosopher’s concerns, the fact is that philosophy seeks unity in the face of multiplicity, and however specific the technical details, they mean little if they do not help us understand how rationality operates, not just in a specific area, but globally. As we have seen, rationality actually depends on an integrated network of beliefs and desires. If we understand what lies behind the beliefs and desires of those whose rationality appears beyond question,

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we can then seek to understand how those particular cases influence what it is rational to believe/do/desire in other cases. Audi returns us to the Enlightenment concern with the whole of rationality, not simply the technical details. But he also departs from the Enlightenment tradition by moving towards understanding reason as a virtue concept rather than one bound by a particular methodology or set of rules. The rational person is the standard of what is rational.4

II Because it is not focused on specific beliefs and actions, virtue rationality emphasizes what Audi calls ‘global rationality.’ It is not a simple matter to define ‘global rationality,’ but the general idea is that of a capacity which explains the overall rationality of persons. Rationality signals a capacity to form and maintain rational beliefs, even if not all of one’s beliefs are, in fact, rational. The focus with virtue rationality is on a ‘common sort of rationality’ that can be attributed to a person independently of that person having some justified belief or some proposition about which she is rational. Even so, global rationality is not independent of having specific beliefs about which one is rational and it can certainly be consistent with theories of rationality that are awash in technical details. But perhaps the best way to go about specifying what global rationality signifies is to contrast it, as Audi does, with a central element of more technical accounts: the concept of justification. Justification is the property a belief possesses when it is based on appropriate sorts of grounds. Beliefs are either justified or they are not. Unlike beliefs, rationality is more forgiving, although it is related to the concept of justification. For a belief to be justified means that it is rational, but the rationality of a belief does not imply justification (Audi 2001, 196). To return to my snake example, upon seeing a snake on my porch, I may not be justified in believing it to be dangerous, but the belief is not, on the face of it, irrational. Having a ‘default belief’ that those snakes I encounter are poisonous until proven otherwise may not be the best belief and it is certainly not a justified belief—but it is a rational belief, appropriately grounded in the experience of living in the woods. Such a belief can become irrational when I come to have a justified belief that the snake is indeed nonpoisonous. Still, I am not necessarily irrational on the whole if I refuse to acknowledge the harmlessness of some snakes. One can be rational overall and hold unjustified beliefs, just not ‘too many’ unjustified beliefs. How many is too many? Here is where the idea of

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rationality as a virtue concept enters the picture. In our common understanding, the standard is determined by the rational person or what is appropriate for the rational person. Such appropriateness is determined by the types of experiences we have, as well as four sources of justification, which Audi identifies as perception, memory, introspection, and reflection/reason. As it turns out, there is no strict standard for what proportion of our beliefs must be justified. ‘Global rationality’ is a holistic notion and refers to an overall rationality in which ‘a suitable proportion of . . . [one’s] beliefs, desires, and action tendencies—including those rooted in emotion— are individually rational and significantly connected with one another’ (Audi 2001, 225–226). For philosophers inclined to seek precision, such generality is suspect; yet given the contextual nature of rationality, it seems likely that the subject matter may not permit much more precision. Rationality admits of degrees, so it is not clear that some specific percentage of irrational beliefs will tip the scales toward irrationality. Also, the contextual nature of rationality makes it far from clear that the standard would be the same for all types of beliefs. When designing a rocket for the next moon launch, very few ‘irrational’ beliefs will be permitted. But, we have greater permissibility when it comes, for example, to superstitions about keeping a hitting streak going in baseball. More precision in the permissible levels of irrationality may be desirable; how much more is possible is an open-question. When it comes to global rationality, some beliefs, wants, desires, and so on are more important than others. More specifically, the strength, entrenchment, scope, psychological connectedness, integration, experiential, and intellectual harmony of a belief all play a role in its importance to one’s overall rationality. In opposition to rule-governed accounts of rationality, Audi argues that while rationality entails a certain responsiveness to reasons and grounds, there are no simple sets of principles that can capture what it is to rationally respond to the sensory and intellectual content of an experience.5 Rationality, of course, requires a fit between experience and beliefs, but there is no single set of principles that tells one how this fit should rationally occur. (This is a consistent theme among contemporary discussions of reason.) The result is that not all rational persons need believe the same thing. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Audi states that: Rational beliefs are well-grounded in the features of experience that are conducive to their justification; rational desires are well-grounded in the feature of experience that render them consonant with reason; and

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rational actions are characteristically well-grounded, through rational beliefs, in rational desires. . . . But people differ greatly in the range of their experiences, and over time the experiences of any one person may change dramatically. What it is rational for me to believe, then, may not be rational for another; and a desire rational for me now may not be rational for me later. (2001, 171) Here again is the plasticity that rationality entails because of its dependence upon experience and upon having to cope with the open-endedness of experience. But while rationality is grounded in experience, it also structures experience. In large measure, rationality is simply a structural notion; it tells us how, based on our experiences, we should organize beliefs and desires into an integrated whole. Audi maintains that if one has any beliefs at all, then there do seem to be kinds of beliefs and desires that one will typically have; however, the particular beliefs and desires that one has must be appropriately related to experiences that will be varied (Audi 2001, 172). Nonetheless, a central assumption of Audi’s argument is that there is no uncontroversial baseline of rationality, no totalizing and universal account of rationality. Rationality is a concept that does not apply in an ‘all-ornothing’ fashion. Furthermore, a wide and pluralistic variety of criteria can be used to assess rationality. Thus, whereas Audi continues the Enlightenment quest for a unifying theory of rationality, he rejects totalizing and universal approaches to rationality. For Audi, as with Kant before him, there are no specific beliefs, actions, or desires required by a structural account of rationality. And, like Kant, Audi leaves open ‘what sorts of beliefs and actions might be expected in a rational person with a normal range of experiences’ (2001, 213). Unlike Kant, however, Audi rejects the idea that there is a single set of principles that all rational persons must use in formulating beliefs and actions based on their experiences. So, even while he seeks to give a comprehensive theory of rationality that focuses on the structural elements of reason, Audi’s version of rationality leaves open-ended the structure reason imposes on experience. After all, rational structures are responsive to experience, and one cannot specify, in advance, what experience must be. On this view, a plausible structural account of rational belief requires four elements. The first is that the structure of one’s beliefs be foundational, with the foundation consisting in non-inferential beliefs that are rational on the basis of experience. Because these beliefs (and eventually desires) are rational when they adequately reflect one’s experiences, experience provides normative reasons for beliefs (and desires). The second element is

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that the rationality of foundational beliefs must be defeasible. However clear and distinct one’s foundational beliefs may be, they are, at best, fallibly known. Beliefs can be undermined either by experience or by other beliefs that turn out to be justified. Third is that the inferential transmission of rationality need not be deductive, and it need not involve explicit deduction. In other words, rationality is not necessarily self-conscious or solely deductive in its inferences. The fourth and final element is that non-foundational rational beliefs must gain enough of their rationality from the foundational beliefs so that if all other sources of their rationality were eliminated, they would remain rational. This structural view shares certain aspects of the Cartesian project, such as an insistence on foundationalism and the need for beliefs to gain their rationality from this foundation. Nevertheless, this view is also radically different from Cartesian rationality for its foundation includes experience and is defeasible. Furthermore, rational beliefs, on this view, need not be explicitly deduced or even deductively inferred at all. The result is an approach to rationality that insists upon foundations but that allows these foundations to be open-ended. Audi’s global rationality is, then, a foundationalist view, albeit not traditionally foundationalist. Where Nozick looks to turn Kant on his head, Audi turns to inverting Descartes’ pyramidal view of foundations. 6 Where Descartes is caught up in defeating skeptical concerns, Audi believes that focusing on skepticism makes philosophers too inclined to emphasize the justification of particular beliefs and justification of grounds. Audi dismisses such emphasis on skepticism and argues that cognitive systems are not dependent upon any fixed structure or any single pattern of justifying beliefs. The inverted pyramid of Cartesianism, says Audi, should be overturned and replaced with an image from nature, namely, a tree whose roots pull nutrients from the soil and send them to the branches and leaves. Audi explains that both the foundations and the superstructure built on those foundations can vary indefinitely in ‘shape, complexity, connectedness, and strength. They vary among persons; they range over an unlimited variety of subject-matters; and, over time, they change in any of us’ (Audi 2001, 40). These foundations or sources of justification (which for Audi are perception, introspection, memory, and reflection/reason) provide the non-inferential beliefs that stem from both experience and reason, and they ground the superstructure of beliefs that arise on the basis of them. But before any source of justification can act as a source, it requires enabling conditions. While sources of justification provide foundations, they are moveable foundations, meaning that while we may have non-inferentially justified beliefs,

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there is always the possibility that those beliefs may need inferential justification or may be defeated. Thus, it is not the case that there is any single specific belief or desire that a rational person must have because foundations are flexible and there are always different structures that can be built from the same kinds of raw materials.7 When there are conflicts among the various sources of rationality, how we weigh each source or resolve the conflict cannot be formulated in precise principles. Each case can differ. I can be justified in believing one thing while someone else could be just as justified in believing the opposite. However, because the basic sources of justification, particularly perception, underlie this relativity, rationality presumably can have standards that are stable and cross-culturally valid. The relativity here is a relativity to various grounds of justification, but this does not imply that the structural elements are different. After all, rational persons, as rational, must respond to their experiences by acquiring certain attitudes appropriately grounded in these experiences.8 The grounding of rationality on defeasible, empirical foundations is central to Audi’s conception of rationality, but such foundations do not apply only to beliefs. Another central element is the integration of the theoretical and practical: global rationality requires one to be rational both in the theoretical and practical elements of rationality. One’s preferences, desires, and goals are not independent from rational evaluation. In addition to having a suitable proportion of one’s beliefs be responsive to experience, one must also have a suitable proportion of one’s desires be responsive to experience. As with beliefs, intrinsic desires are defeasible, but Audi finds it implausible to conceive of a rational agent having no intrinsic desires (2001, 72–73). If we want anything at all, we want something intrinsically. Probably the most clearly established element of Audi’s argument is that, prima facie, there are things which it is rational to want—and to want them intrinsically. Humean instrumentalism tells us that there is no rational ground for preferring scratching one’s finger to the destruction of the world. Whatever our philosophical justification (or lack thereof), such a claim strikes most people as just wrong. If we take even the most obvious candidates for intrinsic desire—pleasure and avoidance of pain—we have reasons to rationally prefer the scratching of one’s finger for doing so is presumably more pleasurable for me, unless of course I have a strong desire to destroy the world. However, for such a desire to destroy the world to be rational on Audi’s view the relevant experience that warrants the desire would need to be genuinely rewarding for me. The wanting of things is

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grounded in their experiential qualities, and I would have to genuinely desire those qualities. However, even if I genuinely and rationally do desire the destruction of the world, Audi argues that we have further rational grounds to be empathetic with others, which in turn produces grounds for the rational ordering of desires. Hence, my desire to destroy the world may not come out on top. In the simplest terms, Audi argues that the qualities which lead to belief or desire are independent of the person experiencing those qualities. Even if it is you, and not me, that experiences the perception of the snake or the enveloping presence of water, my awareness of your perception gives me reason to believe there is a snake or to desire a swim. The case of desire here is the same as perception. We are prima facie equal in our experience of the kinds of qualities that ground action and belief, so there is no basis for thinking one person’s experiences are more important or to promote one person’s good over another’s good.9 My desire to destroy the world is no more important than your desire not to have the world destroyed. For Audi, because we have some rational obligation for altruism, empathy wins out in most cases of rationally ordering of desires. Even if Audi can establish no more than altruism’s consonance with reason, he at least lays the groundwork for thinking that rationality requires a connectedness and feeling with others that realizes their good.10 This view further provides a ground for equality and fairness. As Audi argues, we can only justify moral principles if they ‘embody a prima facie requirement of equal treatment of persons’ (2001, 158). If ultimately successful, such an account establishes tried and true Enlightenment moral concepts without reducing morality to some set of principles or instrumental desires that are themselves morally neutral. Because some desires (but not all) serve as appropriate foundations for rational actions, the structure of rationality, and its responsiveness to experience, recommends a concern for others. Propositional attitudes remain the primary criteria for judging rationality, but ‘rational persons must respond to their experiences by acquiring certain attitudes, and certain dispositions to form them, appropriately grounded in it’ (Audi 2001, 206). In other words, we are rationally required to conatively, as well as cognitively, respond to the world in appropriate ways. Here, at least, is a non-Enlightenment view of rationality that begins to offer some ground for the moral concepts upon which feminists must build their arguments. It is an empirically grounded virtue concept that attempts to explain why it is more rational to hold to the ideals of equality and empathy rather than to dismiss them. Furthermore, although Audi argues that altruism may be rationally demanded (and its complete absence indicative of an absence of rationality), he does not argue that altruistic

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desires must be pure, only that rationality recommends, and sometimes requires, acting for the good of others. Why? Because rationality is grounded in experience, and I have every reason to believe that my experiences are essentially no different and no more significant or rewarding than similar experiences in others. This is the justification for equal treatment. When it comes to acting morally, Audi suggests that empathy is a feeling with others, not simply a feeling for others, that motivates with or without duty (2001, 138). These are qualities of morality that should sound familiar and attractive to feminists. One aspect of Audi’s discussion of practical rationality that may not sound so appealing is his insistence that whatever is good is impersonally good. But his reasons for making such a claim are not antithetical to the feminist project. Audi argues that ‘if there are goods and evils realizable in the experience of anyone, then there are reasons for acting in certain ways toward anyone at all’ (2001, 157). This may sound like the same old universalist ethic that feminists tend to reject. But if it is, it seems the sort of universalism that we must demand of our morality. The idea is not that we should go around assuming that we all want the same things but rather that we each have a basis to believe that other persons have rational concerns similar to our own. As Audi puts it: Others can reason and discern facts; they want food, shelter, and company; and they can enjoy conversation and suffer from the cold. It is thus reasonable for rational persons to believe that others’ experiences are, in familiar situations, qualitatively similar to those that they themselves would have in these situations. (2001, 156–157) These concerns can be overridden by other concerns, as when I give up my coat to keep a child warm. As Audi points out, that does not mean that my original concerns (e.g., wanting to keep warm) are not there. It simply means that I recognize a concern for others as well as myself. This or some similar appeal to the equality of experience (and the moral obligations that arise out of this equality) is in fact necessary to ground many feminist moral claims. Audi’s point is that I am not permitted to treat others as if only my experience matters, which is a significant and recognized flaw of many explicitly feminist ethics. Nel Noddings’ example of the Mafioso neighbor, who is a good neighbor but a killer in the larger world, comes to mind.11 She claims that when the police knock on my door asking for information I can give, I am not morally obligated to give it because my own experience with the man is as a good neighbor. What this view misses,

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however, is the further consequences of following through on this sort of care ethic. In Noddings’ case, I have no moral obligation to the people my Mafioso neighbor harms because, first, my own experience is of good neighborly relations with him and, second, because I have no relation with those he harms. But let us change the case slightly. In the business world, there are men who have good relations with their male friends and associates— and no relation to myself or to other women in the field. Say these men are in a position to offer an opportunity either to those with whom they have good business relations or to a female stranger. Given the conditions in the Mafioso case, women have no strong moral claim to equality of treatment from those with whom I have yet to establish some relationship, so we cannot be surprised when business men fulfill their moral obligations toward their friends and associates. Conversely, if Audi is right, I have good grounds for believing that the experiences of the people harmed are no less (or more) important important than my own. And if I imagine myself in the place of the people my neighbor harms, I can fairly easily see that I would not find such experiences desirable. Surely, I cannot morally absolve myself simply because neither I nor those for whom I care are having those experiences. Virtue rationality offers a means to empirically justify a commitment to justice on the grounds of the equality of experience—and feminists need the concept of justice for without it there can be no appeal to the injustice of oppression and the practices that encourage it. Even if Audi’s view is universalist, it is not based in a priori necessity. Instead, this universalism is grounded in how it is that we humans experience the world.

III Virtue rationality, then, offers a means for achieving something that appears to escape purely instrumental approaches: it allows for the diversity of experience and culture while still maintaining the normative force of rationality. Still, Audi’s version of virtue rationality does have its difficulties. Despite elaborate efforts to argue that reason has substantive elements and that not all preferences, desires, and goals can be rational, Audi also maintains that the grounds of rational justification are internal. This raises a serious question about the normativity of rationality, and it is a serious challenge to his efforts to maintain the meaningfulness of the normative aspects of the concept, at least if one considers rationality to be a pursuit of truth. This internalism also creates a tension between maintaining a more virtue

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oriented conception of rationality and returning to the Cartesian roots of transcendental autonomy and individualism. I offer a fairly long quotation to highlight the full extent of what I take to be the problem generated by his commitment to internalism. Audi writes: One might think there are social constraints on rationality. Is not someone who is completely out of touch with what everyone else believes irrational? This does not hold of necessity. Experience might justify different beliefs: I could be the sole victim of demonic manipulation that make my behavior eminently rational given my vivid hallucinations. Granted, certain kinds of deviance provide good reason to consider a person irrational. But deviance in action or in (empirical) belief alone does not entail irrationality and is only a derivative criterion for judging rationality. Apart from knowing why someone is deviant, we many not be able to tell the difference between madness and genius. Similar points hold for factual constraints on rationality, at least regarding propositions about the external world. No matter how strange my beliefs about the world, they may, relative to my experience, still be eminently rational. If one’s beliefs do not accord with one’s own experience and reflection, this counts against one’s rationality; but the relevant standard here, experiential harmony, is neither factual in an ordinary sense, nor external, nor behavioral. (2001, 213–214) Now, there is surely something right here. Being out of touch with what everyone else believes is not necessarily a sign of irrationality, particularly when one has had experiences radically different from the experiences of others. Often times, one’s very odd behavior will seem quite reasonable once we know some crucial fact about the person’s background experience and thus understand the grounds for that person’s actions. At other times, odd behavior will pay off in the long run as with the ‘mad inventor’ who toils obsessively, until one day his or her ‘crazy’ invention turns out to be socially useful or economically successful. Yet Audi goes on to assert something much stronger: he says that being out of touch with others cannot be taken as a sign of irrationality. This latter claim is doubtful, at least as a general principle, and it threatens to undermine the meaning of ‘rationality’ as a normative concept. Any theory of rationality needs to allow for failures of rationality as well as its successes, but the scope of Audi’s claim that such evaluations require knowing the origin of a person’s beliefs makes irrationality difficult to establish or evaluate—hence, putting into question normative claims

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grounded in rationality. The tension between whether being out of touch can or cannot be taken as a sign of irrationality deepens when one takes into consideration that just a few pages earlier in his book Audi insists that ‘overall rationality demands an appropriate fit between experience and beliefs (or dispositions to believe) and that, other things equal, an improper fit counts significantly against the person’s rationality’ (2001, 209). This sounds quite the opposite of the view that it is not necessarily irrational to be out of touch with what everyone else believes, unless of course experience is private. In other places he claims that ‘action from virtue, as opposed to action merely in conformity with virtue, is very important in appraising people: the former, unlike the latter, is commonly a reliable indication of their aretaic character’ (Audi 1995, 465). Again, we cannot look to external evidence to determine one’s virtue, just as we cannot look to external evidence to evaluate the rationality of belief. So what are we to do? The crux of the problem is, I believe, what we make of the social character of experience. Audi himself downplays much of the social character of experience, although he does admit that ‘social practices are certainly a source of concepts, beliefs, and modes of thought that profoundly affect what justified beliefs and rational desires we form even directly from the basic sources [of justification]’ (2001, 191). Still, however profound an effect social practices have, we cannot, according to Audi, take being out of step with one’s community as a grounds for judging that one lacks rationality. But this claim appears simply wrong, at least in certain cases. Let me give an example. I start with a case that I believe demonstrates that social practices likely do matter greatly to one’s rationality, and not just to our assessment of other’s rationality. I once had a conversation with a schizophrenic individual who gave the following argument for the existence of God: There are five months with the letter ‘r’ in them; the name ‘Jesus’ has five letters; therefore, God exists. Ignoring translation and relevance issues, it is still the case that there are more than five months with an ‘r’ in them. How do I know this? Because there is a socially determined, and only socially determined, fact about what letters are in what names of the months. This sort of social constraint cannot rationally be ignored, even on Audi’s view, for to do so is to fail to ground one’s beliefs appropriately in experience. Thus, it would appear that this is the sort of case where deviance is an indication of irrationality. The situation gets more difficult, however, when we go one step further, as Audi does, to consider the possibility that one is the sole victim of demonic manipulation. This is a move made all the more peculiar given Audi’s earlier rejection of philosophy’s overemphasis of skeptical concerns. Nonetheless,

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he does consider demonic manipulation, and this concern with an evil deceiver does undermine the normative force of the concept of rationality. If, upon encountering a person who is entirely out of touch with others, I decide that I cannot evaluate this person’s rationality until I know if I am (or he is) being victimized by an evil deceiver, then rationality is no longer a meaningful normative concept. After all, I can never know if I am the sole victim of demonic manipulation. If this is a possibility that I must consider before passing judgment about one’s rationality, there is no sense to be made of any attribution of rationality or irrationality. To bring the issue back from implausibly skeptical scenarios, take the case of immigration here in the United States. There are a great many people who come to the United States with experiences radically different from those of a native born and raised American. However, being rational, and thereby able to cope with new and differing experiences, these immigrants come to understand the American way of life, and we Americans come to understand them—all without any serious questions about anyone’s rationality.12 The case is different with someone who is entirely out of touch with what other’s believe. On what basis could we assert someone’s rationality given that the person neither believes nor acts in ways that seem appropriate based on a common set of experiences? If we must first eliminate universal deception or, more reasonably, come to understand that person’s internal mental states, surely we would have little ability to ever evaluate that person’s rationality. Nozick’s point about rationality having evolved in an environment with certain stable features is a much more reasonable starting point in such cases. If we consider common, prima facie rationality we must assume that others have experiences mostly similar to my own. Audi himself admits as much in his discussion of altruism. Of course, this begs the question about whether we should stop with a common, prima facie rationality. Presumably, we should not end our inquiry with simply a common rationality. However, stopping with common rationality is not Audi’s difficulty here. What he says is that we cannot take being out of touch with others as an indicator of rationality, as is commonly done. Yet he appears to discount the social nature of experience and the role the external world plays insofar as it provides the content of rational investigation. Such discounting is sure to produce a certain skepticism about rationality for it means that there are, at minimum, circumstances when we cannot adequately judge the rationality of another. To return briefly to the example of the schizophrenic, given what is known about schizophrenia, it seems likely that my schizophrenic friend, who hears voices telling him that people are out to get him, really does have

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some experience of hearing voices. Rationality demands that he come up with some reasonable, reliable sort of story to explain his experience, so hypothesizing that the CIA has implanted a radio transmitter in his head is not necessarily irrational since the voices seem to come without visible embodiment. Thus far, this sort of deviance may not be a clear indicator of irrationality for the person is simply explaining away an experience unknown to most of us. However, there is another explanation that may be more ‘consonant with reason,’ but it requires responsiveness to social constraints. An alternative story available to my friend is that the voices he hears are not real but are simply a manifestation of his illness. This better accords with socially accepted beliefs and appears to make more sense if we consider rationality’s external aim of pursuing truth (whatever truth ultimately turns out to be). To make the point more simply, it is the case that all humans are susceptible to ‘irrational’ sorts of beliefs and actions, especially when placed under enough stress. In these circumstances, I may still have the unusual or idiosyncratic beliefs and desires but I can also ‘bracket them off,’ so to speak, as manifestations of my stress that will pass once the stress is gone. Nothing about having a highly unusual experience requires that I believe and act deviantly in response to it, although formulating a socially acceptable explanation does not make the experiences simply disappear nor does it make it easier to maintain the socially acceptable belief. The rational person’s actions, choices, and decisions will be informed by taking part in social practices. To be completely out of step with the practices of one’s community does, in fact, count against one’s rationality, although as with unjustified beliefs, it is an open question what the standards are for how much deviance there must be before it counts against one. Practices may not offer substantive constraints on rationality, but they are normative. In the common use of ‘rationality,’ we expect rational people to meet certain normative standards, even if we know why they have the deviant beliefs and perform the deviant actions that they do. Contrary to Audi, Wittgenstein and Nozick both have clear and similar responses to such failures of rationality, and they give what I take to be the right sort of answer to the problem. Take Wittgenstein’s aphorism: ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him’ (1958, 223). We do not share the experiences, practices, or forms of life of a lion, just as most of us do not experience schizophrenia. The lion or the schizophrenic might tell us a great many things about their lives, but could we truly understand?13 Wittgenstein allows that those who do not share our forms of life could very well be rational, but what he denies is that we could recognize the person (or lion) as rational.14 Nozick takes the point one step further and argues

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that rationality has developed within a world with the sorts of stable facts and experiences it has. To attempt to apply rationality beyond the scope of the function evolution has circumscribed for it leads to philosophical quagmires. Furthermore, if we adopt the contrary approach and circumscribe reason so narrowly that we eliminate any concern with stable facts in the environment, we end up on a path equally fraught with philosophical difficulties. Since the circumscribed function of rationality includes shared social constraints on the interpretation of experience, this should make us hesitant to narrow the scope of socially agreed upon constraints. If we rely on the rather ordinary use of the concept, rationality requires a responsiveness to reasons—which includes social reasons. As Nozick says: ‘sometimes it will be rational to accept something because others in your society do’ (1993, 129). We need external constraints on reason as well as internal ones.15 One final difficulty with Audi’s account is the circularity of setting standards of rationality on the ground of what the rational person thinks or does. Given the pluralism of rationality, who is to decide who is rational, or more rational than others? This is not an easy question to answer, nor is it a question that can be easily dismissed. Audi’s account of rationality does offer the possibility of an answer for it involves a capacity to respond appropriately to experience, even if one does not do so. The limits of what is rational to believe or desire are given by features of experience with which the rational person must cope (and hence include the same external constraints about which Audi is ambivalent in other contexts). Given the emphasis on rationality as a virtue concept, it is reasonable to suppose that the notion of human flourishing provides some constraint on how we are to cope with experience. Insofar as our responses to experience are conducive to the goal of human flourishing, we are rational, and the more we flourish, the more rational we are. Of course, what we mean by ‘human flourishing’ matters greatly. Since there are certainly different ways of defining it, we will have differing conceptions of what the rational person does (or should) believe and do. How we answer this question will have a great deal to do with the discussions of intrinsic versus instrumental desire, and may also need to include the technical details, such as those principles for ordering desires that are found in Nozick. Yet, there are surely some similarities in all conceptions of human flourishing, including the ability to adequately sustain one’s life, care for one’s children, gain the respect of others, and so on. Being human, we all have similar goals and aspirations at the most general level, although the context of society and culture will alter the expression of these greatly. Virtue rationality walks the tightrope between these univer-

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sal and pluralistic aspects of reason. If it cannot sufficiently establish the intrinsic desires necessary for a general account of human flourishing, it will fall off the tightrope and lose its substantive elements.

IV In the final analysis, there is still a great deal of work to be done. It is likely that when this work is done we will find that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for determining rationality. But Audi does a good job of explaining the general features of rational persons. What is lacking are the technical details, which is where something like Nozick’s decision theoretic account can provide further structure and clarification. I take it that, at least in their instrumental aspects, Nozick and Audi’s accounts are largely compatible, with each focusing on a different aspect of the question concerning what it means to be rational. Virtue concepts are not entirely without principles; otherwise, there would be no stability to such concepts. Ultimately, however, something about Audi’s open-ended approach captures the seemingly infinite plasticity of rationality. Although the end result may be an unsatisfactorily incomplete definition, that incompleteness may better reflect rationality’s inability to specify its own limits and it may better reflect the difficulty in weighing the different, and often conflicting, sources of rational justification. With respect to feminist interests, Audi’s conception of rationality has one specific drawback, and that lies in its approach to emotion. While Audi allows room for emotion, he is quick to say that emotions are prone to irrationality when grounded in irrational belief and that a poverty of emotion is not necessarily a deficiency in rationality. Despite the reluctant acknowledgement of the role of emotion in our lives, he still distances rationality from emotion. This is antithetical to many feminist views. Whether or not Audi’s own view remains committed to the reason/emotion distinction, he is neither entirely wrong in his claims about emotion nor fully committed to excising emotion. There is some truth to the claims that emotion can lead to irrationality when based on irrational beliefs and that emotion is not always essential to rationality. The real issue would be the degree to which Audi maintains these points. Yet even if he were to fully dismiss emotion, I believe he has developed a conception of rationality that is fully capable of incorporating emotion without undermining any of the key features of rationality as a virtue concept. The diminishing of emotion may be

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disappointing from a feminist perspective, but it may well be a surmountable concern. This is an argument to which I return to in the final chapter. On the other hand, rationality as a virtue concept offers several advantages for feminists. One of feminism’s biggest objections to rationality has been the narrowness of the concept, specifically the way that narrowness has been used to diminish the status of women. The idea of rationality as a virtue concept broadens rationality beyond that what is merely circumscribed by principles of justification. Instead, the standard of rationality is given by rational persons, who do not in every instance believe or act rationally. Another feminist objection, though, is that women have not been allowed or admitted to be rational persons. Audi’s common sort of rationality seems to have little of this sort of exclusion for he does not define rationality through abstract, deductive principles but through everyday responses, both theoretical and practical, grounded in experience. In addition, it allows for a certain pluralism about rationality. On an individual level, beliefs or actions that are rational for one person, may not be rational for others, depending upon foundational experiences and inferences made possible on the basis of that foundation. On a societal level, much of the content of rationality is provided not merely by the biological aspects of perception and experience but also by aspects of one’s culture. This is consistent with feminists concerns of inclusiveness of differing perspectives, but it does not abandon rationality’s universal structures, thereby allowing for the cross-cultural stability of the concept. These cross-cultural elements are not given through rules that one must follow to be rational, although blatant violations of, say, logical principles could count against one’s rationality in some contexts. Instead, they are given through the well-groundedness and integration of one’s attitudes and actions. Rationality, on this view, is not simply the product of culture. Culture provides the content and the context, not the structure of rationality. A final advantage of the virtue concept is that it attempts to generate a substantive grounding for equality from a largely empirical foundation. While it is unclear how successful his argument is, Audi makes great strides toward offering an argument for the rational necessity of equality and altruism, which is just the sort of argument that could more solidly ground feminist moral claims. To say that there are qualities of experience, regardless of whose experience it is, that both produce intrinsic desires and dictate that no single person’s or group’s goods are more important allows clear application to arguments concerning the injustice of oppression.

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Rationality as a virtue concept will not resolve every feminist challenge, but it certainly has promise as a feminist friendly way of understanding rationality. Feminists would do well to look closely at the current dialogue on rationality and seriously consider the types of grounds various theories of rationality can provide.

Part Four

Feminist Approaches to Rationality, Revisited

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Chapter 9

Baby Come Back: Feminists Need Rationality

Throughout the preceding tour of the history of philosophy, I have argued, independently of any particular feminist concern, for two distinct theses: first, that Enlightenment theories of rationality are flawed but that they nonetheless support moral concepts that we really do need; second, that current theories of rationality are fundamentally different from, albeit grounded in, Enlightenment accounts. Along the way, I have made two further arguments: that feminist philosophers need to consider how their own commitments as feminists may require Enlightenment concepts; and, that current work in rationality is consonant with many feminist concerns. The first of these arguments (i.e., concerning feminism’s need for Enlightenment concepts) is not particularly novel, but the second argument (i.e., concerning feminist-friendly aspects of current theories of rationality) is rarely addressed. Yet, regardless of one’s attitude toward it, rationality is a central concern of feminist philosophy, much as it is a central concern for nonfeminist philosophy. To ignore the current dialogue concerning rationality is dangerous, especially since feminists typically believe rationality is one of the more oppressive concepts in our philosophical past. To pass on the opportunity to engage in the discussion is to risk losing women’s voices in discussions of rationality, but this time the loss will be due to disinterest on the part of feminists, not male exclusion. Feminists surely have good reason to be suspicious of Enlightenment perspectives on rationality or conceptions of rationality that derive from the Enlightenment. In the conclusion to The Man of Reason, Lloyd states: It is clear that what we have in the history of philosophical thought is no mere succession of surface misogynist attitudes. . . . [T]he maleness of Reason goes deeper than this. Our ideas and ideals of maleness and femaleness have been formed within structures of dominance—of superiority and inferiority, ‘norms’ and ‘difference’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, the ‘essential’ and the ‘complementary’. And the male-female distinction

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itself has operated not as a straightforwardly descriptive principle of classification, but as an expression of values. (1984, 103) The history of philosophy, and particularly the modern era, is a history in which reason is consistently defined with reference to so-called masculine traits and by the exclusion of women. This is neither a shocking nor an especially controversial point anymore. As a result of this history, some feminists desire to break free of rationality and adopt a radical approach that entirely abandons the concept. By contrast, I maintain that feminists need, if not an explicit theory of rationality, at least some understanding of how various commitments concerning rationality affect the more central debates of feminist philosophy. At minimum, feminists must be able to present arguments and test them for either strength or validity—something no philosopher, even the most radical of philosophers, is likely to deny. The problem with adopting only this quite minimal conception of rationality, though, is that it does not allow for substantive metaphysical and moral claims. Feminists do understand that they cannot get by without rationality. Alcoff, herself no great defender of rationality, does argue that ‘feminist philosophy cannot entirely forego the recourse to reason, objectivity, and truth’ (1995, 10), but the problem for her, as for all feminists who find a deep-seated, perhaps ineliminable, sexism in philosophical theories of reason, is how to conceive of reason, objectivity, and truth in the face of radical rejections of these concepts.1 What is left of such concepts after their foundations have been dismantled? It is one thing to say that feminism requires recourse to reason, objectivity, and truth; it is another thing entirely to say what this means if we simultaneously argue that substantive accounts of reason are fundamentally and irredeemably masculine. If we give up on the concept of rationality, where is the objectivity and truth of feminist claims to the injustice of sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination? How can we expect to successfully argue against our opponents when we have dismissed that which lies at the heart of any good argument, namely, reason? One possible response, of course, is to reject entirely the need to argue against our opponents. The idea here is that feminists have no obligation to engage their so-called enemies, especially since they tend to ignore feminist arguments anyway. Furthermore, to argue with one’s opponents, on their own terms, is simply to buy into the adversarial philosophical paradigm of which feminists are highly critical. We need not allow ourselves to enter an argument on the basis of standards that we reject—or so the argument might go. One option, then, is to simply refuse to enter into debate. If we

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are truly willing to give up any claim to truth, perhaps this is not such bad response. Philosophy is not uniform in its methods and goals, and many philosophers do appear willing to give up on truth. However, abandoning claims to truth entails that there is no truth to be had on the topic of women’s oppression. If we want any truth at all in the political or moral domain, there must be some way of getting at and establishing that truth. This does not mean there is only one way or method of getting at that truth, but it does imply that there must be some standard against which to evaluate various claims. In the absence of rationality, the yardstick lying behind phenomena, we lack standards to evaluate beliefs— and in the absence of substantive rationality, we lack standards to evaluate desires. The fact that Enlightenment theories have proved to be flawed is no basis for failing to recognize that engaging in philosophical arguments assumes and requires certain elements of rationality. ‘Rationality’ is presumably a broader concept than is ‘Enlightenment rationality.’ Clearly, Enlightenment rationality is no longer a favored view, and not only in feminist philosophy.2 Throughout the twentieth century, there is a decided shift away from Enlightenment understandings, albeit not a complete rejection.3 Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of this shift is the move away from the transcendence, timelessness, and self-reliance of rationality toward a contextually, socially, and empirically dependent conception. To return to Alcoff’s claim concerning the current relevance of feminist critiques of reason, she writes: the feminist critique of reason is not obsessing over an outdated conception of reason but revealing the implicit assumptions still operative in even the minimal conception of reason endorsed today. In other words, the idea of a radical break (or incommensurable paradigm shift) between Modernist concepts of Reason and modern accounts of reason is both implausible and in fact mistaken. (1995, 6) In one way, Alcoff is clearly correct. There has been no radical, incommensurable break with modern concepts of rationality. On the other hand, her claim does seem mistaken. The fact is that few, if any, of the major assumptions upon which Cartesian rationality is founded have survived the twentieth century. Among the features of Cartesian philosophy that feminists have attacked are the following beliefs: z

Reality has an objective structure and that structure is accessible to humans.

126 z

z z

z

Rationality and Feminist Philosophy The faculties of reason and sensation are, in essence, the same for everyone. Humans gain knowledge as individuals. Reason (in contrast to body) is the primary human faculty for gaining knowledge. Knowledge may be validly inferred from indubitable premises.

In contrast, feminists typically claim: z

z

z z

z

Reality cannot be known to have an objective structure for as thoroughly partial beings, we can have no access to that structure. The faculties of reason and sensation are influenced (if not entirely determined) by one’s culture and one’s body; therefore, these faculties are not the same for everyone. Humans gain knowledge only within communities. Bodies are essential to (if not the primary source of) acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is specified through communally held standards.

Such objections to the Cartesian program, however, often assume a level of agreement that is not in the philosophical literature, and furthermore, what feminists often overlook is that these claims are not confined to feminist views. Similar arguments against standard Cartesian assumptions concerning reason can easily be found in nonfeminist philosophy. One need look no further than Hume to find persuasive arguments against the objective ontological structures and indubitable premises, and by the time Quine and Kuhn arrive on the philosophical scene, such claims are certainly no longer uncontroversial assumptions. The principle of underdetermination, for example, entails that even if reality has an objective structure, that structure will do us little good in our own efforts to cope with reality. It also leads clearly toward a communal understanding of knowledge and its standards. Furthermore, a cursory examination of Wittgenstein, Nozick, and Audi, none of whom is a feminist philosopher, gives few grounds to believe any of them have much allegiance to the above assumptions. In fact, when we consider the above claims, each of these philosophers seems much closer to feminist principles than to Cartesian ones. While reason retains its importance, Wittgenstein, Nozick, and Audi each allow that the body is essential to gaining knowledge. In addition, each asserts a social dimension to knowledge; rejects the possibility of indubitable premises; and denies an objective structure (i.e., one independent of experience) to the world. The assumptions

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upon which our theories of rationality are built are, in fact, not the same as the assumptions of the Enlightenment, with the one exception being the assumption that reason and sensation, in their most general features, are basic faculties. The last claim is somewhat controversial, however. As far as feminists are concerned, one of the more significant of the Cartesian assumptions is that the faculties of reason and sensation are the same for everyone. Feminist philosophers have rightfully considered this as a key element in the silencing of women and women’s experience for it entails that there is nothing different, or special, about how women experience the world. Experience, in other words, can be reduced to men’s experience. Yet, in making the alternative claim, as some feminists do, that women’s experience is a source of knowledge and truth about the world, feminists make a strong, and somewhat dubitable, claim.4 ‘Experience’ is not a straightforward or uniform concept, and ‘women’ is by no means a simple or homogeneous concept. Those aspects of experience that fall under the concept ‘women’s experience’ can, at best, be related by a family resemblance. To even assert that there is such a thing as ‘women’s experience’ or that such experience provides some special insight into the world opens up some serious epistemic difficulties. And if one further wishes to claim that women’s experience is a source of knowledge that not everyone will be in a position to have, bigger problems quickly arise. If we assert that not everyone can acquire knowledge because some of them will fail to have the right kinds of experiences, we are back to the same type of Enlightenment argument used to exclude women from being rational agents, albeit the argument is turned on its head by now claiming that one must have the right types of experience (as opposed to rational methodology) to gain knowledge. There is a distinct danger that this approach could lead to further marginalization of those lacking in power or even produce greater marginalization since, at least for some people, there is no way they could possibly have the ‘right sort of experience’ to gain knowledge. Feminists need to consider the implications of claims to the differences of reason and experience across gender or culture. Enlightenment assumptions of equality, when interpreted with a broader notion of equality, may not be all that distasteful since the alternative has the potential to be more exclusionary. And, current assumptions of the similarity of our rational and sensory capacities are not quite those of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment assumptions of an equal capacity to reason come with caveats. With Descartes, Kant, and even Hume (that great friend of feminists), there is a presupposition of some sort of rational or human nature that everyone shares, everyone, that is, who is male and European. Descartes actually

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comes closest to asserting a universal capacity to reason, but he also assigns reason the task of overcoming the deceptive elements of sensation, which is, obviously, the realm associated with women. Kant essentially denies women, and non-European men, the capacity to reason fully. And Hume discounts women’s equal capacity to reason, oddly enough, in arguing that in an afterlife women’s capacity to reason would actually be equal that of men’s: On the theory of the soul’s mortality, the inferiority of women’s capacity is easily accounted for. Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body. This circumstance vanishes and becomes absolutely insignificant on the religious theory: the one sex has an equal task to perform as the other; their powers of reason and resolution ought also to have been equal, and both of them infinitely greater than at present. (Hume 1964, 401). For Hume, women’s inequality is a direct result of social roles that ensure women a lesser status as rational beings. In this, of course, Hume is in no way unusual. It is a theme that is repeated throughout philosophical history. However, in the twentieth century, such explicit denials of women’s equal capacity to reason tend to disappear, for political if not philosophical reasons. It is worth examining whether such assumptions of inequality in rational capacity actually exist in current theories. Wittgenstein, Nozick, and Audi share some central themes in their approaches to rationality. These themes all build upon key aspects of Humean insights into the central importance of our experiences and into the relationship of rationality to these experiences (though Nozick and Audi significantly diverge from Hume in being strongly committed to the equality of our rational capacities).5 Such experiences are varied and numerous and provide (at least in Audi’s case) a defeasible foundation for belief and action. The result is a rationality that is always relative to experiential grounds. A belief or desire that is rational for me may not be rational for you, and vice versa. Given such flexibility and diversity in expressions of rationality, however, should we take this as evidence that there really is no universally shared sensory or rational capacities? Might this relativity be the case exactly because rationality is not the same for all humans? Although contemporary theories of rationality permit a wide range of expression, there is little reason to believe that we lack some underlying common faculty. After all, social and cultural aspects of our experience impact rationality, and one critical aspect of our social lives is the ability

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to communicate. Presumably, good communication allows us to not only make sense of another’s conflicting beliefs and desires, but also to resolve conflict. If there is, for example, a principled difference between men’s and women’s experiences—or between the experiences of differing cultural groups—then our rational grounds will be fundamentally different and our ability to engage in rational dialogue seriously impeded. If there is some incommensurable difference between the types of sensory experiences we have—or if there is an incommensurable difference between the ways we structure our experiences—our understanding of each other will suffer. The greater the incommensurable differences, the less understanding we will have of others. Unlike Enlightenment conceptions, contemporary understandings of rationality recognize significant variation across human experience. But these theories do not take differences in experience as evidence for the absence of common rational ground. Wittgenstein may say we cannot talk to a lion, but he never assumes that we cannot talk to other humans. Somewhere we all share some common forms of life—or if we did not, we would be unable to communicate with others. And we can, with almost no exceptions, communicate with other humans. To maintain some common elements in experience and in the rational capacities we have for dealing with this experience, we need not conclude that the body fails to influence what is rational or that women’s experiences are identical to men’s experiences. Neither need we conclude that sexed bodies generate incommensurable conceptions of rationality. The differing experience of women (as opposed to men) may actually lead women to have very different sorts of beliefs, and to have these beliefs quite rationally, but it does not entail that the way women go about forming, evaluating, and maintaining beliefs and desires is fundamentally different from men. To say otherwise is to say that there are, in fact, fundamentally different ways to reason, but there seems to be little evidence of this. Furthermore, if inclusion is indeed one of the main principles behind feminist challenges to rationality, we actually enhance the capacity to advance arguments for inclusion if we assume that there are common structural elements underlying rational activity. To assert incommensurable difference is to risk defending exclusionary conceptions. My approach to reason is obviously reformist. I believe that the concept of rationality need not be rejected—and we need not have a specifically feminist theory of rationality, although I argue for such a thing in the following chapter. A reformist project can allow that rationality responds to different experiences and that what is rational for me to believe may not be rational for you. It can allow that there are cultural differences in what is

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considered rational. And it can allow that not every conception of rationality will meet every feminist expectation—or that any one conception will meet every feminist conception. Then again, perfection is probably too high a standard for any theory. In arguments against Cartesian philosophy, malestream epistemology, and universalist ethical theories, feminists have consistently made the case that perfection is not an especially useful ideal, and to expect perfection in a theory of rationality is surely no more fruitful an expectation. In fact, there are no good grounds to believe that rationality, in its current instantiations, could ever be a concept that perfectly resolves philosophical problems, including feminist ones. Current views admit that necessary and sufficient conditions for rationality are lacking. They are also committed to rationality’s open-ended and pluralistic nature. And the self-referential nature of the investigation into reason means there will, necessarily, be blind spots in our grasp of it. What, then, are we to make of the so-called masculinity of reason? Alcoff, in line with much of feminism, maintains that the ‘major factor in this masculinist formulation of reason has been mind-body dualism’ (1995, 8). Clearly many of feminism’s problems with reason can be attributed to mindbody dualism, in which mind (or rationality) is associated with the masculine and body (nonrationality or irrationality) is associated with the feminine. Yet, feminist philosophers are only part of a loud chorus decrying mindbody dualism. Cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind are also deeply antagonistic to mind-body dualism, albeit for reasons quite different from those of feminists philosophers. Lakoff and Johnson summarize the difficulty with mind-body dualism thusly: The evidence from cognitive science shows . . . [there] is no such fully autonomous faculty of reason separate from and independent of bodily capacities such as perception and movement. The evidence supports, instead, an evolutionary view, in which reason uses and grows out of such bodily capacities. (1999, 17) The long tradition of separation of mind from body, which in many ways goes back as far as Plato, is dying. Without doubt this division functioned quiet effectively as a key justification for the exclusion of women from intellectual endeavors, but current philosophical trends consistently demonstrate a strong suspicion of this division. From supervenience theories to eliminative materialism, there are challenges to mind-body dualism, and no theory of rationality that currently holds sway is inclined to assert such a dualism.

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From Wittgenstein to Nozick and Audi there may not be as explicit a rejection of the mind-body split as some feminists may wish, but there is nonetheless a continual and deepening dependence of rationality on bodily experience. From Wittgenstein’s concern with physical sensation and the problem of access to internal mental states to Nozick and Audi’s evolutionary dependence and contextualism, the assumption is that rationality is fully integrated with the body. Lloyd wrote in 1984 that ‘our ideals of Reason are in fact male; and if there is a Reason genuinely common to all, it is something to be achieved in the future, not celebrated in the present’ (107). We are now a quarter century into that future, and in both Nozick and Audi we may not see an entirely complete rejection of disembodied reason, but neither do we see that ideal held up as a model. That rationality is shaped by the world and that it is dependent upon the body for information about that world is widely recognized, and not just within the last decade. The idea actually goes back as far as Hume and is surely evident in Wittgenstein. The problem dealing with bodies as a source of knowledge, though, remains what it has always been: the body’s inherent subjectivity. While it might appear that this dependence of reason on the body requires us to abandon all efforts to identify some common features of universal rationality, there are good reasons why many philosophers have refused to abandon this project: the primary motivation being the need for normativity. In other words, we need some constraints on how subjective sensations and desires are shaped or we are doomed to an ‘anything goes’ relativism. It is true that normative standards dictating the correctness of belief or action have often been construed quite narrowly, often at the expense of women. But the sword cuts both ways. If feminists deny that there are common or universal aspects of rationality, the specter of a dangerous relativism becomes evident such that the diversity of bodily experiences permit one to believe or do just about anything.6 Both Nozick and Audi recommend a limited relativism in which the conditions according to which reason is relative can be clearly specified. This sort of relativism is similar to that advocated by Lorraine Code in which knowledge is always relative to specifiable circumstances and is constrained by realist and empiricist commitments (1993, 41–42). This limited relativism is constructive and helpful in understanding rationality; after all, the question of what it is rational for one to believe or do is dependent upon the environment and our experiences of it. This sort of relativity lies at the heart of rationality for if reason is to function well, it must be able to adapt to various and changing circumstances. To be unable to adapt is to not be rational at all. Thus, being capable of responding differently in different

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sorts of specific circumstances is what makes it so powerful in coping with the world. On the other hand, if we go a step further and argue that such relativity entails that there are no common elements of rationality, it is unclear how rational debate could avoid ending in a deep-seated irrationalism. An example that feminists care deeply about illustrates this point. Feminists believe that philosophy has consistently excluded women and that such exclusion is not only wrong but should be eliminated. Such claims are based on clear readings of philosophical texts and on the experience of women. The value judgments in these claims are presumably based on some commitment to the ideals of equality and fairness. However, one does not need to look too far in actual philosophical discourse to find contrasting claims. So-called malestream philosophers can, and do, present arguments decrying the genetic fallacy in feminist epistemology and appealing to standards of rationality that exclude precisely the subjective elements that feminists claim to be important. Are these philosophers correct that there is a universal character to experience? Or, is it feminists, insisting on a diversity of voices, who have the stronger claim? These questions, and others like them, do need a philosophical response, and there must be rational grounds to support the feminist side of the debate. If rationality lacks some robustly universal elements and is solely the product of social and cultural standards, feminists can do little more to point to the disagreement and mouth disapproval. There is nothing substantive that can back up those objections—that is, if rationality is simply determined by, say, social practices. To make an argument for some truth about oppression or some wrongness of it requires that my interlocutor and I share some standards in common. To ground arguments in standards that are solely the result of some shared social practice will work as long as these shared standards permit such argument to take place. But how to do we argue with those who insist that there is nothing wrong with oppression? We can hope to change minds through politics or power in these cases, but might does not make right. Unless the claims of feminism are to be merely accidentally true, we need some grounds to present reasoned arguments, even when the other side does not wish to engage in reasoned argument. Feminists need some understanding of rationality sufficient to ground their arguments. To turn our backs to this is to risk undermining the significance of feminist arguments. Of course, theories of rationality will likely never have primary importance within feminism for the heart of feminism lies in its commitment to changing the world, especially for the betterment of women. That feminism

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originates from a political commitment to change the world for the betterment of women is, I believe, philosophically legitimate. After all, philosophy must originate from somewhere, and there is ample evidence to support the view that women’s lot can and should be improved in a variety of ways. Philosophy often turns away from the real-world consequences of its theories, which is all the worse for it. However, there is something suspicious about the idea that the political commitments of philosophers should trump the pursuit of truth. There seems little reason to believe that one’s political commitments are infallible, and the one area in which philosophy excels is in its ability to evaluate the truth of claims and the desirability of goals. Philosophy is a critical enterprise and should be made use of, as feminists have, in examining its own ends. Put alternatively, philosophers must be self-critical and self-reflective about their philosophical goals. Granted, our intuitions about where the truth lies do and should guide us, but we cannot stop there. In some sense, one must go where the arguments lead, even if that requires some reevaluation of the ends. The legitimate concerns of feminism should not be lost in a radicalism for radicalism sake. In Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam argues that ‘Rationality may not be defined by a “canon” or set of principles, but we do have an evolving conception of the cognitive virtues to guide us’ (1981, 163). Feminist philosophers would do well to consider what cognitive virtues guide them, not simply in the asking of specific philosophical questions but more broadly in how we understand what it is to reason, how that understanding fits within the history of philosophy, and most importantly, how that understanding seeks to unite or divide us. Any good conception of rationality must explain how diversity fits within unity, and unless our goal is infinite fragmentation, this is something that feminists must do as well. Understanding that we can formulate and debate conceptions of rationality that are distinct from Enlightenment conceptions can only add to the resources for feminist debate. After examining several historical and contemporary versions of rationality, I believe that feminists and nonfeminists alike should think of rationality as existing at the axis of several dichotomies (although I understand that reference to dichotomies, even to split the difference among them, is problematic). In the transition from the Enlightenment to our contemporary understanding, there has been a shift away from egoist autonomy toward social constructivism; from radical inwardness of disembodied minds toward the body as integral with the mind; and from individualism toward community. Rationality appears to lie in toward the center of these distinctions. Rationality belongs to and is expressed by individuals, but it is also

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influenced by social practice and culture. The body and sensations received from the world help determine both content and structure of rationality, but rationality also makes inferences and operates on internal states, just not private ones. Finally, while rationality cannot be fully socially determined (unless we are willing to abandon moral responsibility), social influences are always present. These are the general trends that are evident in current attempts to understand rationality. They are also trends within which feminists philosophers can situate and defend their claims. There is plenty of work to be done on rationality, but I believe that the time has come for feminists to move beyond Enlightenment rationality and to enter the post-Enlightenment debate.

Chapter 10

Virtue is Its Own Reward: Toward a Feminist Theory of Rationality

Enlightenment rationality is dead. Feminists need to engage contemporary theories of rationality. These are two of the central conclusions of the preceding chapters. But what does this really mean for feminism? After all, I seemingly have left open questions concerning what form a feminist theory of rationality should take. But only seemingly. Implicit in the arguments given thus far lies the groundwork for a feminist theory of rationality. In these arguments I have considered the types of assumptions and transformations made with respect to rationality over the past century; I have also considered some central goals of feminism. From a careful consideration of these two aspects of the preceding argument emerges the broad strokes of a feminist theory of rationality.1 What still needs to be done is to make explicit these broad strokes. I have thus far argued that the social focus of Wittgenstein, the evolutionary (and, hence, immanent) nature of Nozick’s rationality, and the virtue account of Audi each present elements of a feminist-friendly rationality. As the narrative of my preceding story suggests, I suspect that the truth (for lack of a better term) of rationality lies in understanding it as a virtue concept; however, I also believe that a virtue account can and should incorporate the insights of social and evolutionary approaches. The appeal to Wittgenstein is obvious insofar as he provides an account that emphasizes the relational, communicative, and culturally determined aspects of rationality. Feminists should also consider, with Nozick, that rationality develops in a lived environment. Such focus on the dependence of reason upon the environment in which it emerges both recognizes and guarantees a significant amount of flexibility in the concept. Feminists who focus on the empirical and environmental aspects of reason usually emphasize the diversity this creates, and pushing these concerns for diversity is something feminists should continue to pursue. On the other hand, the evolutionary approach to rationality also takes into account that, in many ways, the environment

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has not changed since the beginning of humanity. The sorts of everyday tasks that we and our ancestors share are probably more similar than different, and this is true across cultures. We all have the same basic needs, whether they be physical, social, or emotional—and we can generally identify these needs in both ourselves and others. In this, there is the opportunity to consider more universal (with a lower case ‘u’) aspects of rationality while maintaining a commitment to its diversity. I will return to this tenuous balancing act between the transcendental and immanent aspects of rationality shortly. In the end, however, I believe that the core of rationality can be best explained as a virtue concept and that virtue rationality is a good place for feminists not only to begin constructing a specifically feminist theory of rationality but also to engage with mainstream accounts. That a virtue theory of rationality can function as a feminist theory of rationality has recently received some attention.2 I believe there is good reason for such attention: virtue rationality is clearly nonmechanistic, perspectival, relational, and context dependent. In addition, virtue rationality decentralizes epistemic authority and allows for both immanent and transcendental aspects of reason (without necessarily setting up a dichotomy between the immanent and the transcendental). As will soon become clear, my reasons for arguing in favor of virtue rationality as an adequate feminist rationality lie partly in the fact that it exhibits many of the features that feminists claim to want in our understanding of rationality. But, then again, social rationality and evolutionary rationality also share many of these same features. What virtue rationality has, that the other two views lack, is a substantive normativity that is often lacking (but needed) in feminist accounts. Take, for example, Linda Nicholson’s discussion of the features central to an adequately feminist rationality. Nicholson argues for a postmodern rationality that has three key requirements. First, it would be explicitly historical and attuned to the cultural specificity of different societies and periods (and to differences within those societies and periods). Second, it would be nonuniversalist. And, third, it would be pragmatic and fallibilistic (Nicholson 1999, 114). These three requirements are actually captured by conceiving of rationality as a virtue concept. Nicholson further suggests adopting a rather Wittgensteinian approach to rationality, namely, treating ‘rationality’ as defined by ‘a complex and overlapping network of criteria no one of which is necessary to its use’ (1999, 120). Again, this is consistent with a virtue approach to rationality for this approach defines rationality in relation to how rational people respond to experiential grounds. However, given Nicholson’s postmodern emphasis, she goes on to add that

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‘rationality,’ like ‘woman’ and to a certain extent like ‘game,’ is a normative term, which means that few of us, as participants in a community in which the term is used, are neutral about its use. Because different uses rest on different assumptions and bring different consequences, philosophical reflection about those assumptions and consequences is important even when one rejects the philosophical enterprise as providing ‘the meaning of a term.’ . . . To recognize the historical and cultural messiness of concepts such as ‘woman’ and ‘rationality’ is to acknowledge that our moves to stipulate criteria are necessarily bound by purposes that may not be shared by those with whom we disagree. (1999, 121). The idea Nicholson suggests is that we must give up on the notion of establishing the meaning of terms like ‘woman’ and ‘rationality.’3 Whatever rationality is depends not upon some underlying feature of the faculty but upon different assumptions we bring to the use of the term. Of course, as Nicholson recognizes, such a view also introduces the threat of relativism, which she further views as a consequence of the fact that our principles for ‘getting along in the world’ are fundamentally human made. While Nicholson accepts that the specter of relativism can be disconcerting, she believes that diversity can only be had if we accept the possibility that, indeed, we might find ourselves in radical disagreement with others, so radical that all communication breaks down. She seems to maintain that rationality can allow diversity only if it is entirely contingent. But, if we rely entirely upon continent resources, the ground for feminist claims are thereby contingent. This is not a particularly strong basis from which to argue for justice. To ground feminist arguments, the normativity provided by the concept of rationality must be based in more than an agreed upon use of the term. Rationality needs some underlying unity, and that is precisely what a virtue conception of rationality can provide while also meeting many of the conditions for a satisfactory feminist rationality. Although I will, at the end of this chapter, specifically address how I believe virtue rationality can help us deal with this relativistic threat, I wish first to address the key features of current views on rationality, which I take to be largely coextensive with the features feminists want in a theory of rationality. I start with the insistence upon centrality of perspective, which is shared by both feminist and nonfeminist philosophers, and then work my way through the other qualities, demonstrating along the way how the concerns of feminist philosophers are addressed in current debates on rationality. Ultimately, I come down on the side of virtue rationality as an adequate feminist theory of rationality precisely because it shares many

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feminist concerns or can easily be adapted to share those concerns. The one truly controversial element of this discussion is my own insistence that our grasp of rationality include a transcendental element. Even in my brief tour of rationality, it is obvious that not every feminist or nonfeminist philosopher shares this view. However, I believe only with some transcendental ground can rationality provide normative constraints strong enough to allow us to assume a moral high ground against those who pursue oppressive practices.

I What has implicitly emerged from the preceding narrative, and what needs now to be explicitly discussed, is a set of qualities within contemporary accounts of rationality that are clearly ones with which feminists are sympathetic. The concept of rationality that slowly emerges from these accounts is a rationality that z z z z z z z z z z

affirms perspectivity decentralizes epistemic authority affirms nonmechanistic, preconscious, and tacit aspects of reason includes emotion within the domain of reason requires consideration of relational, communicative, and social factors is sensitive to cultural diversity depends upon contexts, purposes, goals considers questions about whose goals, purposes, and practices should be pursued permits non-transcendental subjects to be rational agents recognizes both the immanent and transcendental aspects (i.e., concerning both the architecture of what we actually do when reasoning and the constraints on what it means to reason at all)4

The degree to which various conceptions of rationality reflect each of these aspects of rationality obviously differs. The emphasis provided in mainstream accounts surely differs from how feminists emphasize each quality of rationality. Nonetheless, insofar as this list represents a departure away from objectionable features of rationality, feminists can surely find some common ground for debating the details. Perhaps the most central of feminist concerns over reason is that it is held to be a strictly universal and impartial adjudicator of legitimate belief.

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Rational agents, the familiar story goes, are not only expected but are also required to adopt a perspectiveless approach when applying the rules of rationality. Beliefs (and values) that do not meet this unwieldy standard of objectivity are diminished and dismissed. As has been thoroughly argued, however, to place epistemic authority in an ‘objective’ point of view is to take some particular perspective or bias and valorize it at the expense of differing viewpoints. The problem is that there are in actuality no so-called perspectiveless views (i.e., views from nowhere). Put another way, transcendent rationality fails to be a genuine human ideal according to many feminist philosophies because the so-called transcendent elements are always situated and biased.5 That is, they are actually immanent and partial, so as an epistemic norm, aperspectivity simply fails, even as an ideal. Sally Haslanger has identified two separate notions of aperspectivity: absolute aperspectivity and assumed aperspectivity. Haslanger defines them as follows: z

z

absolute aperspectivity: count observed regularities as ‘genuine’ regularities just in case (1) the observations occur under normal circumstances (e.g., by normal observers), (2) the observations are not conditioned by the observer’s social position, and (3) the observer has not influenced the behavior of the items under observation. . . . assumed aperspectivity: if a regularity is observed, then assume that (1) the circumstances are normal, (2) the observations are not conditioned by the observer’s social position, and (3) the observer has not influenced the behavior of the item under observation. (2002, 232–233)

Clearly, absolute aperspectivity is a stronger requirement on objectivity than is assumed aperspectivity for the former aperspectivity requires one to determine if a regularity is truly genuine while assumed aperspectivity assumes it will be genuine. For example, I drop my pen, and it falls. This happens every time I drop my pen. Absolute aperspectivity requires me to demonstrate that this regularity is genuine, while assumed aperspectivity takes the regularity of the events as an indication that the three conditions can be assumed. Haslanger’s argument is that since absolute aperspectivity is unobtainable, the weaker (and more conducive to the influence of bias) assumed aperspectivity becomes the epistemic norm. The debate with which Haslanger is specifically concerned, then, is whether aperspectivity, in either form, is gendered. That, however, is not my concern, especially since I believe both forms are likely gendered. My concern is whether contemporary theories of

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rationality even require aperspectivity, regardless of whether it is absolute or assumed. I have argued that there is good reason to hold that current theories reject the notion of both absolute and assumed aperspectivity. That absolute aperspectivity is rejected in contemporary discussion is, as Haslanger indicates, fairly clear. If nothing else, logical positivism teaches us the difficulty of accessing unconceptualized or unconditioned observation. Yet even the weaker assumed aperspectivity fails to be endorsed in the contemporary accounts I have discussed. Wittgenstein, Nozick, and Audi all start from the position that rationality is always contextual. Whether it is social practices, interaction with the empirical world, or defeasible foundations, rational reflection starts from a particular place and on the basis of particular experiences. More specifically, a virtue theory of rationality starts from the assumption that the standard of rationality is given by actual rational persons, not some ideal rational agent. One cannot evaluate the rationality of beliefs or desires in the abstract but only from particular perspectives. Perspectivalism does introduce problems in establishing the normative aspects of reason, but I will address these problems later. For now, it is sufficient to point out that at least these mainstream accounts of rationality are fundamentally perspectival.

II Another closely related area of feminist criticism is the supposed universality and authoritarianism of the concept of reason. Historically, the concept of rationality has tended to be exclusive, eliminating many persons from the realm of rationality. In a recent article, Longino summarizes the reflections of Michèle LeDoeuff and Miranda Fricker on the topic of rationality and concludes that ‘the question [for feminists] . . . is how to characterize a non-authoritarian reason’ (2005, 83). The guideposts offered by LeDoeuff and Fricker teach feminists: (1) to be suspicious of invidious uses of reason that cognitively disqualify persons as rational or enforce particular views, (2) to be alert to equivocations between prescriptive and descriptive uses of the concept of reason, and (3) to seek a concept of reason substantive enough to overcome the excesses of postmodern rejections but flexible enough to accommodate pluralism. Longino’s solution to the problem of how to conceptualize reason in a way that follows these guideposts is to turn to Hume. As I have argued, I do not believe Hume provides a conception of rationality robust enough to ground feminism’s moral and political claims. In particular, Humean reason fails to meet the third condition on

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an appropriately feminist conception of reason, namely, one substantive enough to overcome the excesses of postmodern rejections but flexible enough to accommodate pluralism. Beyond appealing to Hume, however, Longino also goes on to suggest that we need an authoritative, not authoritarian, conception of reason. Such a conception, she claims, allows for correction, enhancement, and modification. So, the question is what form such an authoritative conception would take. To elaborate this conception, Longino provides a rather lengthy example. Given that her example is a good fit for a virtue conception of rationality, I will spend some time discussing this example. Longino asks us to consider a construction project in which she took part. During the process, she expresses some curiosity about the different size pipes going to and from a water tank. Her questions: which size pipes bring water to the tank? Which size pipes take water away from the tank? Longino is told by one person, whom she trusts, that the wider diameter pipes are for flow to the tank, and she is then told by another person, whom she also trusts, that the wider diameter pipes are for flow away from the tank. During the process of reasoning about the direction of the water flow, she develops a rationale for each claim. While Longino never gives us the correct answer to the water pipe issue, she does believe this process of thinking about the issue tells us something important about reason. She goes on to conclude that while she may or may not have been correct about this particular issue, while she may or may not have had strong enough reasons, and while she may or may not have weighty enough considerations in her reasoning process, she did use reason throughout the process of thinking through the direction of the water flow. In this, she distinguishes between reason and good reason. Longino says: the capacity [to reason] is not primarily the capacity to reason correctly but to reason at all, and that this capacity is something like a capacity to bring together evidentially relevant considerations . . . , a capacity we should be able to describe without at the same time specifying what actually counts as good evidence, or good instances of reasoning. (2005, 86) In other words, Longino concludes that our capacity to reason has itself little to do with the question of what is the correct use of that capacity. This notion of reason as a capacity to bring together evidentially relevant considerations is largely unobjectionable. After all, what would reason be other than this capacity? However, this fills out little of the structure or the content of rationality. In Longino’s case, such generality is deliberate for

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she explicitly claims that we should be able to describe reason without specifying good or bad instances of it. However, reason is a normative concept and if we look at the most basic cases of actual instrumental reasoning, there are in fact good and bad instances of it. To stay with the construction theme, I have been having my kitchen remodeled, and during this process, I have asked my contractor various questions about electrical work, design, countertop installation, and so on. While I accept that there are various good answers to my questions and multiple explanations about why he makes the sorts of decisions he makes, I also expect good instances of reasoning from my contractor. There is an established goal, which in this case is laid out in a somewhat explicit fashion by the contract and drawings to which we agreed. I expect that his reasoning (in addition to his construction skill) is going to produce these desired results. There are standards here of what constitute good reasons (e.g., my desires for the kitchen and building codes being two important sets of standards). These standards emerge solely from what rational people establish for good kitchen design and construction, and these matter to me and, hopefully, to the contractor. Clearly, there are multiple different standards one can point to in the case of both design and construction, but the point here is that when coming to terms with rationality, we do need to consider the quality of reasons. However, there is another side to our understanding of reason, and that is the side Longino seeks to highlight: reason as authoritative without being authoritarian. This is a fine line to walk. How minimally normative do we wish to make reason? Longino mentions that committing a logical fallacy is to reason, even if it is not to reason well. While I agree that bad reasoning is still reasoning, the problem is that a conception of reason that only specifies what it is to reason without specifying what it is to reason well is hardly a complete account. This is especially true because implicit in any discussion of reason is a concern with standards or criteria for correct reasoning. We rarely care about what it is to reason incorrectly (unless we want to know the source of the failure of rationality). Furthermore, an account of reason simpliciter will be insufficient to ground the moral claims of feminism because we cannot defend moral goodness or rightness without correct reasoning. On the other hand, virtue rationality is capable of providing a more robust notion of rationality that remains merely authoritative and not authoritarian. Virtues are aspects of one’s character, aspects that make us care about following certain standards or meeting certain requirements. Further, many of those who advocate a virtue account of rationality, including Audi, distinguish mere rationality from reasonableness. In other words,

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one can be rational without being reasonable.6 This distinction follows much the same line as the division feminists have identified between the concept of reason and conceptions of reason. The person who possesses the virtue of reasonableness actually wants to follow the dictates of reason, but the dictates of reason, on this account, are not simply methodological and are certainly not authoritarian. They are sensitive to experience and to context. The good kitchen contractor, for example, will not (and should not) follow some formulaic process in remodeling each kitchen, precisely because every kitchen is different. On the other hand, not every kitchen remodel is equally good. Same goes for reason: there is no straightforward formula about how to reason, but that does not mean that all forms of reasoning are equally good. There is no simple methodology for determining, in advance, what it will be rational to believe or to do, but that does not mean just anything will count as rational. Rationality requires responsiveness to reasons, and the vast majority of these reasons will arise out of experiential grounds. Until such grounds are specified, there is no saying what is or is not rational. Stella Gonzalez Arnal argues for a more inclusive account of reason (one that includes practices and tacit, unspecifiable content), saying: I think that we should accept that an action is rational if it is appropriate for the circumstances, and if it shows that we know how to conduct it. Rationality might be shown in a diversity of behaviours and it can be attributed when it is made obvious to us that agents have reacted appropriately given the circumstances. (2003, 175) This claim that actions are rational if appropriate for the circumstances is why, as Audi argues, there is no uncontroversial baseline for what constitutes a rational person.7 Nicholas Burbules, who defends a feminist virtue conception of reason, adds: No one can be expected to be reasonable in entirely unreasonable circumstances; and a corollary of this insight is that the characterization of ‘unreasonableness’ is often more a critique of social circumstances rather than a criticism of persons. Contexts in which people are discouraged from careful deliberation and reflection; where dubious beliefs, values, tastes, and manners are enforced through strong social or institutional coercion; where hasty or overly simplistic choices are pressed upon persons; where there are few opportunities for intersubjective discussion and consideration of alternatives, are all unreasonable contexts, by which I mean

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that they are both the consequence of poorly-considered and oppressive social choices, and that they are likely to result in unreasonable thoughts and actions by persons within them. These circumstances are rampant in our society. (1995, 88–89) Given the importance of circumstances for determining the rationality of a given belief or action, we cannot speak of reasonableness or unreasonableness until such circumstances have been specified. At the same time, though, we can still identify criteria which point toward rationality or away from rationality (as, for example, Nozick does) because rational persons will be inclined to have sufficiently grounded and justified beliefs and desires.

III In addition to rejecting a methodological approach, virtue rationality also has the advantage of allowing for tacit knowledge. Typically, philosophers have tended to focus on propositional knowledge that can be consciously expressed and justified rather than on our knowledge of activities. In other words, there has been a tendency in philosophy to focus on knowingthat rather than knowing-how. Feminists often challenge this tendency by emphasizing tacit, rather than explicit, knowledge. The reason? Because, more often than not, tacit knowledge has historically been relegated to the realm of the feminine and thus ignored. Arnal, who specifically concerns herself with arguing against what she believes to be John McDowell’s close link between rationality and language, claims that we have tacit knowledge (e.g., knowing how to ride a bicycle) and claims that this tacit knowledge comes from acquiring skills necessary to grasp patterns, to understand new practices, and to make new integrations.8 When we participate in social practices, when we observe, and copy, and imitate, we begin to grasp the sense of the activity. We then continue in the activity until we understand it and are able to integrate different elements into it, whether or not we can articulate what it is we know. Insofar as we acquire certain skills, they become second nature. On the other hand, Rebecca Kukla, who is concerned with claims about aperspectivity and warrant, follows McDowell’s view ‘of having one’s eyes opened to reasons at large by acquiring a second nature’ (McDowell 1994, 84). In arguing that rationality should be viewed as a ‘second nature,’ she writes:

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Now Aristotle, as we know, argued that our capacity for moral perception—that is, the capacity to see moral reasons for action in the situation we encounter—is a contingently inculcated second nature, cultivated through history and education and unevenly distributed even among those whose organs are equally capable of processing sensory inputs. . . . But it is unclear why we ought to restrict the Aristotelian account of perception as a contingently inculcated virtue to the domain of morality. (Kukla 2006, 83) The expansion that Kukla is interested in lies in the realm of our perceptual capacities to see reasons, which she believes are also contingently inculcated second natures. Kukla gives examples of noticing features of a musical performance, of reading X-rays, and of viewing space through the eyes of a person with Parkinson’s disease. Her argument is that our interests and contingent histories shape our ability to ‘see’ facts, distinctions, and reasons. As any teacher can tell you, the difference between our students and us is often a difference in what one has been trained to see. I had an art history professor who, when challenged by one of my classmates, used an analogy to explain that we could indeed learn to see when and where a work was created just by looking at it. He assumed each of us had a favorite singer or band we followed. He pointed out that by listening to a small fragment of a song we would know which album it was from, which track it was on the album, and where the album fit within the career of the artist because we cared enough to pay attention to the details. In short, we understood the context and were able to clearly pick out the details relevant to placing the musical fragment within that context, not simply because we had some inherent perceptual capacity but because we had fine-tuned our inherent perceptual capacities to recognize and organize these aspects of our experiences. The result of all this talk of rationality as second nature is the notion that rationality need not be merely propositional nor even fully conscious. The rational person considers reasons that are not always consciously available to them, although they may become consciously available. Furthermore, as one becomes more aware of the various perceptual (and more broadly experiential) grounds for one’s beliefs and desires, one can become more rational. One can learn to see other points of view and to broaden considerations beyond one’s own narrow set. This is very much consistent with the treatment of rationality as a virtue. After all, virtues are character traits that are acquired only through the practice of them. And the more we practice, the better we get at using them. It is the doing and not necessarily

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the knowing that is significant in developing a virtue. Thus, we need not be consciously aware of what it is we are doing when we use our capacity to reason, and in fact the vast majority of our use of reason does not involve conscious awareness. Outside of philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, few people even care to explicitly understand rationality. In our everyday lives, we care that people act reasonably. And this notion of reasonableness is one that is emphasized by Audi as well as by philosophers with feminist concerns.

IV The difference between rationality and reasonableness is largely a matter of the degree to which one is expected to follow the criteria of rationality: as Longino reminds us, to commit the fallacy of denying the antecedent or the fallacy of affirming the consequent is still to reason. It is not, however, usually considered reasonable to do so (at least among those who understand how reasoning ought to proceed in such cases). Rationality is a much more permissive concept than is reasonableness. Reasonableness requires greater responsiveness to reasons, a measure of good judgment, selfcriticism, a capacity for social interaction, and a willingness to give and consider reasons.9 Audi does not fully develop the concept of reasonableness, but he does acknowledge that rationality is a broader concept than is the concept of reasoning well. One can reason badly and still be rational. As a general capacity concept, rationality does not specify that one must reason well. The virtuous rational agent, however, will not be satisfied with being merely rational. This distinction between rationality and reasonableness is actually pursued from a feminist perspective by Burbules.10 Burbules offers four interdependent criteria for reasonableness, criteria he believes are translated from the more ‘decontextualized’ language of rationality: objectivity, fallibilism, judiciousness, and pragmatism. Objectivity requires that we are capable of both acknowledging difference and of stepping back from our own point of view in order to engage with other points of view. More precisely, our pursuit of objectivity requires tolerance and pluralism, and it requires us to engage with others and to actually hear alternative points of view. I take it that this is, in many respects, a fairly uncontroversial notion of objectivity. The Cartesian concept of detached objectivity is largely a dead concept. But the underlying idea of what Descartes sought through the use of the term ‘objectivity’ cannot be completely abandoned. Any theory of reason or rationality (even folk

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theories) make distinctions between those views that are perniciously narrow and unreflective about other points of view and those views that make some effort to eliminate radical subjectivity and bias. To fail to make this distinction is to fail at some clearly agreed upon standard. While this is a fairly widely accepted interpretation of objectivity within feminist circles, it is also, as I have argued, to be found in mainstream accounts of rationality. In fact, it is consistent with each of the contemporary philosophical views on which I have focused. It is especially consistent with virtue rationality, which allows there to be subjective and experiential grounds of rationality while simultaneously asserting standards of rationality. Audi actually addresses this point, saying: The same sources that make it rational for different people to hold conflicting beliefs and to have disparate desires can make it possible for them to resolve disagreement in rational ways. . . . Even where consensus is not possible, . . . [o]ften we can also come to appreciate how and why others might rationally differ from us. The objectivity of the standards of rationality makes this appreciation possible; the internality of its grounds makes the plurality we can thus appreciate natural. (2001, 194) Feminist concerns for both plurality and objectivity are reflected in Audi’s remarks about virtue. When rational persons are reasonable, they can consider other perspectives and differing experiential grounds, but they do so on the basis of some common standards of rationality. Without the commonality, the plurality could not be appreciated. The second criteria, fallibilism, involves three aspects: being willing to make cognitive mistakes, the capacity to admit one is wrong, and a capacity to reflect on how and why mistakes are made. Fallibilism captures a certain capacity for change and for learning that is built on the recognition of error. One who never admits error is less reasonable than someone who not only can admit errors but can also critically reflect on those errors. Here again, a virtue account of rationality is consistent with Burbules’ argument about what a feminist theory of rationality should be. Virtue rationality is grounded in experience, which is by no means indefeasible. Rationality admits of degrees precisely because it is fallible. The rational person, on a virtue account, does not simply apply some rules in a determinate fashion in formulating well-grounded beliefs, desires, and even emotions. Rather, the rational person responds to the relativity of grounds and content that often allow for more than one rational belief or action. However, this ties into another of Burbles criteria, judiciousness.

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Judiciousness is built on the idea that there is often more than one reasonable belief or action. A reasonable person should have the ability to determine when to apply strict rules of evidence and when not to do so. In other words, the rules of evidence in a courtroom or an epistemology class are not always applicable or appreciated. In fact, most of the time, the level of scrutiny for knowledge claims will fail to reach such lofty levels. Of course, what counts as judiciousness can vary depending on the circumstances, so sometimes we will be more reasonable than others. Given such relativity, mistakes are likely. But when one makes a mistake, the reasonable person will generally acknowledge and reflect on it in hopes of better expressing the virtue of rationality in the future. Closely related to the fallibilism and judiciousness of virtue rationality is the final criteria, pragmatism. Pragmatism signifies, for Burbules, ‘a belief in the importance of practical problems in driving the process of intellectual, moral, and political development. Such an outlook is sensitive to the particulars of given contexts and the variety of human needs and purposes’ (Burbules 1995, 94). This pragmatism also ‘reflects a tolerance for uncertainty, imperfection, and incompleteness as the existential conditions of human thought and action’ (Burbules 1995, 94). While the emphasis here is on the existential conditions of human thought and action—conditions which tend to place reasonableness more within the domain of the subjective, personal, and social aspects of our lives—it is still consistent with a virtue approach. After all, virtue rationality requires a responsiveness to empirical grounds, and the existential conditions of human life are, if anything is, an empirical ground. More significantly, however, this shift of emphasis toward the more personal is the sort of expansion of the concept upon which feminists should insist. One of the strengths of feminism lies in pushing philosophers to consider a wider range of experience in the concept of rationality. While I argue that virtue rationality is consistent with many feminist concerns, I am not arguing the further claim that virtue rationality, as it exists outside of feminist philosophy, accomplishes everything a feminist might want in a theory of rationality. There is clearly room for further expansion and development of the concept, and thus, it is imperative upon feminists to push further the discussion of rationality.

V One of the most important areas in which feminists can push the discussion of rationality lies in the inclusion of emotion within the scope of the rational.

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In her book Rational Woman, Raia Prokhovnik speaks of feminism’s move to include emotion as a dimension of rationality and of third-wave feminism’s move to focus on relational, non-dichotomous thinking and social practices (2003, xi). While neither of these feminist concerns are a central focus of any of the mainstream views I have discussed, the conceptions of rationality offered by Nozick and Audi do not necessarily exclude such considerations. And it is here that feminism has something important to contribute to our understanding of rationality. In the dichotomies that have haunted philosophy since the modern era (if not before), the division between reason and emotion has been central. The methodological accounts of Enlightenment rationality not only excluded emotion as a legitimate epistemological concern, but further assigned to it a quite subversive effect on our ability to acquire knowledge. And despite all the changes in our conception of rationality over the past century, emotion remains largely excluded from the domain of reason, even when its effect is not considered entirely subversive. For example, both Nozick and Audi explicitly allow emotive considerations to be not only legitimate but also a necessary aspect of rationality and rational considerations. Thus, despite the continuing lack of specific interest in emotion, contemporary theories of rationality do acknowledge, in a hand-waving manner, that it must be included as part of rationality. On the other hand, neither Nozick nor Audi does much more than offer lip-service to the role of emotion within reason. Because feminists have a much greater interest in emotion and have thereby have tended to place emotional considerations at the heart of rationality, feminists have something significant to offer to the debate over rationality. Philosophers such as Allison Jaggar and Martha Nussbaum have challenged the presumed gap between emotion and reason (or emotion and knowledge). Jaggar actually does so by harkening back to Plato and a philosophical tradition that predates the modern period’s fundamental gap between emotion and reason.11 Nonetheless, there are just about as many ways to attack the gap between reason and emotion as there are feminists who attack it. What nonfeminist philosophers are only beginning to acknowledge (and, it seems, fairly reluctantly at that), feminist philosophers have been arguing about for decades. Given the significant amount of work that has been done on the role of emotion in reason and knowledge, this is an area where feminists truly have something to add to the ongoing debate. There is work to be done in fully integrating emotion within a virtue account of rationality. Yet, given virtue rationality’s ability to decentralize epistemic authority, to reject aperspective and mechanistic approaches, to operate in a relational and communicative manner, to remain sensitive to cultural

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diversity, to consider specific content within rational structures, and to ask questions about the goals, purposes, and practices that provide the context for rationality, it appears highly likely that it can also accommodate emotion. After all, virtue rationality relies on empirical grounds, and emotion is a significant aspect of these empirical grounds.

VI The final, and most controversial, aspect of virtue rationality that I address is the one which relates to the underlying theme of this book: how to establish a universal ground for a faculty as diverse and flexible as reason. Can virtue rationality account for transcendental or structural elements of rationality as well as it accounts for the immanent elements? Ultimately, I believe that this question provides a litmus test for any good theory of rationality. This is all the more a litmus test for a good feminist theory of rationality given the political aims of feminism. A partial and fragmentary account is simply inadequate to the normative function of the concept. When reason is fractured, so are our moral lives. If feminists cannot establish the objectivity and truth of the ontological and moral claims concerning women’s oppression, then we lose the traction necessary to argue against our opponents. However, this claim that feminists need objectivity and truth in their views is not always a popular view. Feminists often adopt the view that feminism must . . . accept its own status as context-specific, the product of socio-economic and historical movements. It has no more claim to speak the truth than any other discourse but must own up to its own points of view, specific aims, desires and political position within power relations. (Usher 1997, 49) While this view is not held by all feminists, it is clearly a popular response to perceived problems with the philosophical tradition’s emphasis on objectivity and objectivism. My concern is that if feminists are always and necessarily bound by their own point of view, with no opportunity to transcend that perspective, they are giving up more than a claim to speak the truth: they are giving up a claim to speak any truth. Feminists need to give themselves the philosophical room to defend their view as objectively and universally true (under some interpretation of

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‘objectively,’ ‘universally,’ and ‘true’—I leave open which interpretation). The philosophical debates over these terms are endless, but the idea that one should be able to say, and to say correctly and with justification, something like ‘women have been and still are mistreated’ and ‘the oppression of women is wrong’ is something for which our understanding of rationality should provide a ground. On the other hand, feminists also want enough room to allow for the fallibility and diversity of rationality. To fail to allow this would be to return to many of the objectionable and oppressive aspects of rationality. Thus, there is a tightrope that any feminist version of rationality must maintain. How does one establish a sufficient objectivity to assert the truth of feminism’s claims without introducing an oppressively totalizing rationality? An obvious path is through a concept of rationality that integrates some regulatory structures with the content governed by those structures. In other words, rationality should unite the transcendental and the immanent since this brings together the universality and the perspectivity necessary to provide constraints on diversity. As Putnam councils us, philosophers should not lose sight of the fact that while reason is always immanent aspect (i.e., it is always relative to specifiable contexts), it also requires a transcendental element if it is to serve a genuinely normative function (Putnam 1983, 234). Given that a virtue conception of rationality rejects aperspectivity, it would appear well-suited to the task of allowing for diversity within rationality. But the pressing question at this point becomes whether such perspectivity simply in and of itself can offer sufficient ground to distinguish (in some sense) between the way the world is and the way we take it to be. In other words, can an essentially perspectival theory of rationality provide for some substantive constraint on what is rational to believe? Or, can a view that rejects apersectivalism offer a satisfying account of which perspectives are better and worse for acquiring knowledge? It is not news to feminists that perspectivalism, if it is not to be radically relativistic, needs some means of distinguishing among perspectives. Standpoint epistemology, which is clearly a perspectival view, has been criticized for its inability to justify talk of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ points of view. Susan Hekman argues that even though standpoint theory denies the possibility of a metanarrative, Harding and its other proponents still need one. For Hekman, ‘all of Harding’s talk of “less false stories,” “less partial and perverse accounts,” and more “objective” research necessarily presupposes a shared discourse—a metanarrative, even—that establishes standards by which these judgments can be validated’ (1997, 355). Pure partiality does

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not offer any yardstick for evaluating perspectives against one another. Obviously, many feminists are uncomfortable with the possibility of a metanarrative; yet, without some constraint on the various partial accounts, there is no sense in speaking of ‘more or less partial’ or ‘more or less objective’ accounts. In much the same vein as standpoint theory, Code acknowledges that we should take into account subjectivity as well as objectivity, but she admits that there is such a thing as ‘getting it right’ because knowledge is constrained by realist, empirical commitments (Code 1993, 40). Instead of having a single, universal ‘view from nowhere,’ Code maintains that the promise of objectivity comes from within situated, critical knowledge (Code 1991, 123). Her view is that the ideal of objectivity can be had; it just cannot be had independently of a context of values, beliefs, desires, and goals. That is, we must specify the conditions under which we have knowledge. The problem, though, is that if Neurath’s boat is our model for how we are to evaluate our epistemic commitments, there is once again little opportunity for external critiques. We can change some of the planks in our boat if we wish, but we cannot afford to abandon ship because those on other ships disapprove of our design. It is one thing to say that the ideal of objectivity can be had; it is another thing entirely to say what that ideal is, especially when it is obtained only within some specified context. If we define ‘objectivity’ from some specified perspective, the definition will only hold for those who share this perspective. The question, then, is whether virtue rationality can do any better. Can it fill in some of the content of a contextual objectivity so that the concept ‘objectivity’ has some strength? Or to stay with Neurath’s boat, can virtue rationality function as a stable yardstick against which we can evaluate the relative merits of the different boats in the sea? Virtue concepts all originate with the somewhat circular, and not terribly encouraging, notion that virtue is defined by persons possessing the virtue. Rationality is no different. The idea of virtue rationality is that the standards for what it is rational to believe are determined by the virtuous person. On the face of it, this sounds entirely unsatisfying and potentially as oppressive as any other notion of rationality. What is to prohibit a group of androcentrically oriented philosophers, for example, from agreeing that what they would judge to be rational is rational, thereby simply perpetuating the oppression of past conceptions? This is exactly what European explorers did when encountering native peoples in the Americas.12 They concluded that their particular way of reasoning was superior and that those who failed to reason in the same way were deficient. However, to follow this line of thought is to lose the distinction between rationality and reasonableness. In the same

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way that denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent are consonant with reason, so, too, is claiming that those who reason differently, or who reason within a different empirical context, are irrational. It does not follow, though, that any of these judgments are reasonable or that they are judgments that a virtuous reasoner would adopt. In fact, virtue rationality requires us to consider the empirical grounds for our beliefs and desires. European explorers, who judged indigenous Americans less rational, clearly ignored or dismissed a great deal of evidence indicating that indigenous peoples were no less rational than themselves. They missed the fact that indigenous Americans had different empirical grounds and different social and cultural practices framing their actual reasonings. Of course, the distinction between rationality and reasonableness does not quite solve the problem. Even if we decide that the standards of rationality are given by the reasonable (and not merely rational) person, there remains the issue of determining the source from which reasonable people derive the standards of reasonability. It is at this junction that I believe the social and evolutionary approaches can be used to fill in key details in the story of rationality. Wittgenstein’s notion of social practices and Nozick’s story concerning the evolutionary origins of rationality go a long way toward establishing such standards, albeit with increasing levels of so-called objectivity. Social practices certainly provide many of the general elements of rational standards within social groups, but evolutionary/ environmental issues fill out many of the more widespread (i.e., universal) elements of rationality. Nozick asserts that ‘rationality is an evolutionary adaptation with a delimited purpose and function, designed to work in conjunction with other stable facts that it takes for granted and builds upon’ (1993, xii). He allows that each of us sees the world through specific conceptual schemes and is influenced by social practices, but at its heart, rationality forms principles that are designed to cope with highly stable features of the environment. At its focal level, rationality surely requires responsiveness to reasons that are empirical accidents (i.e., social, cultural, historical, and personal reasons). But at its global level, reason is shaped by our environmental reality, broadly conceived. In the image of Neurath’s boat, we all have to stay afloat. How we do that will depend on the conditions at sea, our own preferences, the resources we can access, and so on. But, in the end, we can look at how successfully our boats actually function in real-world conditions. On the evolutionary account, reason tells us about reality because reality is what shapes reason. It is what makes reason what it is. And this environmental reality is, across humanity, more similar than it is different.

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Evolution selects for belief-forming processes that are reliable, although we can surely improve upon these through self-conscious reflection. The result is that there will be some common elements or principles to rationality across various perspectives. We can, as Nozick does, attempt to identify specific principles governing the general conditions on forming rational beliefs and desires.13 However, we must also come to realize that human beings are not fully autonomous. We are partial creatures that are fully a part of the natural world. There may be some universal (in the loose sense) aspects of rationality, but they are not supernatural or transcendent, even if they are transcendental (i.e., providing structures that go beyond what we can experience). Virtue rationality is entirely consistent with this idea that universal constraints are those shared across humanity simply because of the kinds of creatures we are and the ways in which we have adapted to empirical features of the world. If we can specify these universal constraints on rationality given by shared experiences and shared goals, we then have the means to evaluate the rationality/reasonableness of the social aspects of reason. The key element within a virtue rationality is that the person possessing the virtue of reason will wish to acquire and express reasonability in her beliefs, desires, and actions. To return to Kukla’s defense of virtues as second nature, she argues that we should notice that the contingent histories of our rational capacities are not simply strings of chance events that result in a second nature we have by happenstance. Rather, as Aristotle emphasized, our second natures are educatable through practice and experience. It is insofar as our perceptual capacities can be cultivated that these capacities count as Aristotelian virtues. (2006, 87) In short, we can learn from experience—and if we are rational, we ought to learn from experience. Rationality entails a responsiveness to our environment, and such responsiveness requires learning to adapt through the cultivation of cognitive faculties. To understand rationality as a virtue is to understand it as sensitive to circumstances and as educatable as to how we should respond to those circumstances. It clearly allows for a means to judge better and worse ways of reasoning based on standards that can (but often need not) transcend quite particular contexts, albeit not all contexts. In other words, there are circumstances where knowing all the details and what mental contents one has available will matter greatly to the rationality

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of belief and action—but there are also shared features of rationality that outstrip particular contexts, even if they do not outstrip all experience. Now, such an understanding of reason will not be one all feminists wish to adopt. In particular, Longino claims: What the postmodernist and the feminist resist is the idea that there is a template of rationality in which all discourses fit, a template that dissolves the barriers of locality, a universal language into which all statement from local contexts can be translated and bought into logical relations with each other. . . . One person’s rationality, then, is another’s tyranny. (2005, 81) The understanding that I have proposed attempts, quite deliberately, to provide, if not a template of rationality in which all discourses fit or a template that dissolves the barriers of locality, one that comes close to doing so. Without some overarching template of rationality, we lose much of our ability to explain the cohesiveness and regularity of our cognitive and social lives, and we lose much of our ability to establish the superiority, or truth, of some views over others. And, surely, most feminists do not admit the epistemic equality of every perspective. Feminists should remain sensitive to the fact that one person’s rationality can be another’s tyranny, but we cannot defend our political goals without some overarching template or metanarrative. Virtue rationality, especially when combined with insights concerning our social and evolutionary development, can provide such an overarching architecture by providing a story about the commonly held elements of reason. But virtue rationality is also capable of capturing the immanence of reason expressed by Benhabib thusly: ‘if reason is the contingent achievement of linguistically socialized finite and embodied creatures, then the legislative claims of practical [and presumably theoretical] reason must also be understood in interactionist terms’ (1992, 6). Virtue rationality allows such interaction for it requires reasonable people to engage in dialogue with others and to seek out alternative points of view. In doing so, it decentralizes epistemic authority, although it does not abandon all hope of assigning epistemic authority on the basis of a standard of reasonableness. It explains rationality not in terms of mechanistic or conscious processes but in terms of second natures and tacit knowledge. It allows for a diversity of contexts and places rational persons within those contexts. But most importantly, it permits evaluation of the relative merits of perspectives on the basis of shared aspects of rationality. Virtue rationality

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does not demand that we be perfect reasoners, but it offers a means to make principled distinctions among better and worse reasoners—even while allowing that, all things being equal, we humans all possess the faculty of reason.

VII Regardless of whether virtue rationality will ultimately work as a feminist theory of rationality, feminists need the normativity offered by the concept. It is time, therefore, for us to consider what a good feminist theory of rationality looks like, not simply as a critical response to those views we oppose but more importantly by considering as fully as possible those views friendly to feminist aims. While there are many more attempts to characterize reason than I have offered here, the theories I have discussed are representative of the constructive side of the debate. The ‘rage against reason’ to which Bernstein refers has led some philosophers to argue that the concept is dead. My own view is simply that the Enlightenment version of it is dead. Rationality is still alive—and we are all the better for that. A cursory reflection on the concept of rationality within the philosophical tradition is enough to indicate its overwhelming centrality as well as its plasticity. Rationality has in many ways become whatever philosophers (typically male philosophers) have wanted it to become. In some ways, Descartes, Hume, and Kant each cast rationality in their own image—but not entirely. Over the years, rationality has been many things to many people, but every philosopher has to take seriously that reason is, at minimum, a natural phenomenon that has qualities independently of what we would choose for it to be. Given the self-referential nature of investigations into reason, we are assured of never having access to noumenal rationality, but when we represent reason, it is exactly that—a re-presentation of something. When Aristotle, and later Descartes, cast reason in terms of logical principles and processes, they do so in an attempt to capture what it is we do when we reason well. And while this fact has been lost on some philosophers over the years, most of us do reason rather well. Furthermore, the ways in which most of us reason well is translatable over time and culture. For example, anthropologists who study the origins of modern humans are eager to understand the emergence of rationality as a way to distinguish us from our non-modern predecessors. However, we never doubt that rationality does emerge in human development, and we never doubt that the creators of the paintings at Lascaux or the monoliths at Stonehenge are rational. We clearly grasp

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that the activities evidenced in these paintings and structures are the same sorts of activities that we find today in art galleries or skyscrapers. The contexts differ greatly, but we know rationality when we see it. In nonphilosophical contexts, we are often quite content to allow a great deal of permissiveness in our attributions of rationality—but not always. And, this is where feminists begin to be concerned. To whom do we grant the status of ‘rational agent’ and to whom do we deny this status? Since attributions of rationality tend to confer all manner of advantages on those deemed rational and since many otherwise normally functioning adults have not been deemed rational, the concept gets something of a bad rap as a deeply oppressive concept. What I have argued is that, while ‘rationality’ has honestly earned much of its bad reputation, the fault lies more with particular conceptions of rationality rather than with the concept itself. I further maintain that not only feminists have tended to think ill of rationality, or at least that particular conception of rationality that we inherited from the Enlightenment. That particular concept has been challenged by just about every school of contemporary philosophy. Thus, when we begin to examine rationality as it is, surely it is important to see what we have inherited and why we react to it. But it is also important to see that rationality is broader than any particular conception of it. The concept is flexible enough to accommodate much more inclusiveness and allow for more plurality. Will philosophers look back at our attempts to re-create reason in our own image and find the flaws with our attempts? The evidence from past philosophical history makes that seem fairly likely. However, we must, of necessity, start in media res, or in Neurath’s boat, and attempt to understand this faculty that we have. It is the foundation for arguments that really matter to us in ethics, in politics, in metaphysics, in epistemology. Thus, we cannot do without it. Virtue rationality may not be (surely is not) a perfect theory of rationality. What it gives feminists, however, is a way to ground the central claims of feminism in a way that reflects feminist commitments to openness, inclusion, contextuality, and particularity. Virtue rationality offers promise as a groundwork upon which feminists can begin to make their peace with reason.

Notes

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Feminist conferences tend to be kinder and gentler, so not surprisingly, my own experience of being attacked occurred at a nonfeminist conference, although I notice the cringing among feminists. This speaks both to the more cooperative nature of feminist philosophy and to the deep dissatisfaction philosophers have with traditional understandings of rationality. Later, I focus on two other approaches to rationality: Nozick’s evolutionary approach to rationality and Audi’s virtue approach. I do not mean to suggest that either Nozick or Audi is directly influenced by Wittgenstein. I only mean to point out that Wittgenstein sets the stage for post-Enlightenment conceptions of rationality that make the turn toward an outward looking and outwardly accessible reason. These three authors are representative figures from the so-called analytic tradition, which is certainly the heart of suspect malestream philosophy. Many others are equally critical of Enlightenment conceptions: Quine, Putnam, Bernstein, Taylor, Kuhn, MacIntyre, just to name a few. I take these terms from Karen Jones (2004, 302–305) and return to these in the following chapter.

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Some would say that dichotomies necessarily come with valorization of one side or the other. Whether it is fair to accuse all philosophers of engaging in these dichotomies is unclear. For example, Wittgenstein is clearly suspicious of these dichotomies, but he also engages in a type of philosophical reasoning with which feminists have other problems. Thus, the generalization about the negative treatment of qualities associated with women still holds. In Descartes’ discussion of reason, there is no mention of sex or gender or male/female. For his defenders (who are discussed in the following chapter), the Cartesian/Enlightenment conception of reason comes through Descartes as a concept neutral with respect to sex and gender. Put simply, Descartes never specifically claims women are excluded from reason. Yet Descartes lays the groundwork for philosophical rationality for at least three centuries, and the groundwork he lays, as feminists have emphasized, is not neutral, not objective, and not ahistorical.

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This turn away from the inward focus of reason is evident in Wittgenstein, and I will further develop this idea when discussing Wittgenstein. It could turn out to be the case that someone like an Einstein does have a greater capacity to reason, but the level of rationality with which both the moderns and myself are concerned is a rather basic notion: the ability to consider and respond to reasons, both for and against, beliefs and actions. On the face of it, almost all humans possess this fundamental ability. Granted, when we consider rationality at the level of specific judgments it is surely the case that some people fail to appropriately apply their ability to consider and respond to reasons in the right sorts of ways, but that is a separate issue from possessing the basic faculty. The same point is also made by Hobbes, who says in Leviathan: For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equall, than unequall. For there is not ordinarily a greater signe of the equall distribution of any thing, than that every man is contented with his share. (Hobbes 1966, 111)

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The issue of essentialism and the ‘universal’ nature of rationality will be treated in much greater depth in later chapters. For further justification of this claim, see the following chapter on Hume. The ideals of clarity, detachment, and objectivity are ones that science still seeks to hold dear, but philosophers of science have clearly demonstrated the inescapability of values in scientific endeavors, and the advent of quantum mechanics has undermined the radical detachment of observer and object. Post-Kuhnian philosophy of science may use the same terms, but the ideals are not decidedly Cartesian in their meaning given that certainty and transcendent, value-independent objectivity are no longer held to be possible. Furthermore, there is no longer any precise distinction to be made between contexts of discovery and justification. For example, see Ann Cudd (2004, 37–61).

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See Genevieve Lloyd (1984, 50–56), Annette Baier (2002a, 2002b), and Helen Longino (2005). Hume reiterates this claim in the first Enquiry when he says: All belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object. . . . All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent. (1964, 89)

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Hume (1978: 66–67). For example, see Nye (2004). Hume, who casually throws out the occasional racist or sexist remark, is quite content to maintain certain passions that privilege men—but this distinguishes him from no male philosopher within the canon. However, the issue here is not whether Hume actually holds views that subjugate women, the issue is with whether his view offers some principled way out of this subjugation. Hume’s view does fail on this latter point, or so I argue.

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I will use the standard pagination from the A- and B-editions of the first Critique. While my treatment of the topic is sketchy, the unity of reason is a key theme in the first Critique, especially in the A-edition Transcendental Deduction and the Transcendental Dialectic. For a more complete account see Brook (1994, 37–45, 119–143). Also see Kant (1998, A94/B127). See Kant (1998, B20). In Kant’s work, the term ‘reason’ is used in two different ways, either as a general term referring to the whole of human cognition or as a particular faculty that concerns transcendental ideas and the complete determination (according to rules, of course) of the objects of cognition. An example of the first use can be found in the opening sentence of the first edition preface, whereas examples of the second use abound throughout the Transcendental Dialectic. Given my own concern with the development of the concept of reason throughout the Enlightenment and not with the particular details of Kantian philosophy, I am unconcerned with the regulative principles of reason’s transcendental use and, thus, I use the term ‘reason’ here in the broader sense. For the B-deduction version see Kant (1998, B161). This is much the same problem as exists today with naturalism’s supposed inability to fully account for the normativity of belief and action. For a discussion of the problem see, in particular, Putnam (1983, 229–247). For a more recent summary of the debate, and for a defense of the a priori from a naturalized epistemology, see Antony (2004). Kant’s argument can be found in the Transcendental Deduction. See, in particular, Kant (1998, A669/B697–A678-B707). What counts as a priori is that which is known entirely apart from experience (A2/B3); yet the a priori gives only the form of thought (Kant 1998, B305–306). To put this point in Kantian terms, theories of both theoretical and practical rationality concern form and not content. This is because concepts are universal while sensations are particular. They must share something in common that mediates the relation between them. That something is the schematism. See Kant (1998, A137/B176–A147/B187). For his argument see Kant (1998, A142/B181, A139/B178). By the expression ‘raw content’ I mean what Kant means by the technical expression ‘manifold given in sensibility.’ While Kant ultimately believes concepts are in

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play even at this most basic level of sensation, sensibility directly involves only the intuitions of space and time, without any synthesis that would yet include any representation of individual objects. For a fuller discussion of Kant and the Myth of the Given, see McDowell (1994, 3–23). While Kant has his defenders in the moral realm, most notably Barbara Herman, Marcia Baron, and Herta Nagl-Docekal, there are few feminists willing to defend Kant’s conception of rational selves. The one exception is Adrian Piper.

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For an overview of the early literature on these two philosophers see Engel (1970). For a more current discussion, see Glock (1997). Wittgenstein claims that we cannot specify the limits of the rational because that would entail being able to see both sides of them, which we cannot do. There is much debate about whether a Wittgenstein view of reason is irrationalist, and some of this debate percolates throughout my discussion. While there are certainly irrationalist elements in Wittgenstein’s work, his philosophical approach is committed to the claims of reason, especially insofar as his work shares certain methodological similarities with Kant. Wittgenstein rejects much of the Enlightenment and its ideals, but he does not entirely abandon the claims of reason. For a more complete argument for this claim, see Glock (2001). Feminist interpreters have argued for a certain subversive element in Wittgensteinian philosophy. In particular, see Tanesini (1996, 353–365). Also see Tanesini (2004). Although I find that much of Wittgenstein’s earlier work congruent with many of the themes of his later work, I will limit my argument primarily to his later work since the themes of the later philosophy are more clearly and directly relevant to the present discussion. For more on these tendencies see Glock (2001, 195–220). For the Philosophical Investigations I use the section numbers for those passages with section numbers and page numbers for those passages without section numbers. See Wittgenstein (1958, §201–202, 258). See Wittgenstein (1958, §142). As Dummett repeatedly points out, Wittgenstein’s discussion of language is somewhat unsystematic and demonstrates an ambiguous attitude concerning the possibility of providing a systematic account of a meaning-theory for a natural language. My own view is that Wittgenstein neither intends, nor thinks it possible, to provide a systematic account of language. The corollary of this will be that it is not possible or desirable to provide a systematic account of rationality. See Dummett (1991, 305–306). Also see Dummett (1978, 450–451). See Wittgenstein (1958, §329, 223). See Wittgenstein (1958 §199); Wittgenstein (1967 §418–419). For more on this point see Dummett (1978, 85, 170–71, 199, 292). Exodus 20.13. There are translation issues that one could develop to eliminate the sort of interpretive problems I bring up in this example. However, the arguments

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concerning correct translations are only more complicated instances of precisely the kind of interpretive concerns I intend to illustrate. So, for simplicity’s sake, I stick with the English standard of the King James Bible and what it may mean. That there are a variety of different practices that surround biblical interpretation will matter shortly. I temporarily set this aside to be discussed in more detail later. See Wittgenstein (1958, §198). See Wittgenstein (1958, §84), and Wittgenstein (1967, §440). See Wittgenstein (1978, 34). Also see Putnam (1981, 67). Wittgenstein highlights this by saying: ‘When someone whom I am afraid of orders me to continue the series, I act quickly, with perfect certainty, and the lack of reasons does not trouble me’ (1958, §212). For the remainder of the argument see Dummett (1991, 93–95). See Hekman (2002). Also see Koggel (2002).

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In addition to Anderson, Cudd also defends rational choice theory. See Cudd 2002. One important point to keep in mind, however, is that Nozick says explicit principles should be taken with a grain of salt (1993, 79). See Nozick (1993, xii, 121). There is substantially more detail in Nozick’s full account, but my concern is with the broader aspects of rationality. For the more detailed account see Nozick (1993, 75–93). For Kant’s view on how desires, specifically the desire of self-love, influence our actions, see his Groundwork (1964, 74–75). As previously mentioned, where Nozick continues to strongly disagree with Kant is in whether we can derive goals solely from reason itself. Nozick says: no, we can’t. See Nozick (1993, 123). I omitted clause c, which Nozick introduces solely to handle reference class problems and which Nozick says should not have any weight put on its details. For a fuller discussion see Nozick (1993, 42–45). See Nozick (1993, 140–147). See Antony (2002, 113–116). Also see Heikes (2004).

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Audi does, however, clearly reject the idea that rationality is practice-relative. See Audi (2001, 189). To be fair, Nozick also agrees that the rationality of others is assumed and cannot be proven. See Nozick (1993, 178). Nozick does not take this stand. Instead he argues that decision theory sets a standard for the best or most rational belief or action; it does not give the only

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rational belief or action. Nozick also includes symbolic meaning in his decision procedure, which introduces considerations of value into the equation. There is an obvious problem of circularity here, which I will address at the end of this chapter. For a full discussion see Audi (2001, 208–209). This inverted pyramid has the cogito at its base and all other beliefs grounded upon that single point. It looks like this: d See Audi (2001, 174). See Audi (2001, 206). This is a brief summary of Audi’s arguments, but it is not without its difficulties. For an account of some of the problems with this argument see Marras (2003). For Audi’s argument see (2001, 135–168). This example can be found in Noddings (1984, 55–56). This is not to say that the process of coming to understand others is free from difficulty, or that everyone engages in the practice, but these are issues separate from our basic capacity for rational understanding. Consider Nagel (1974, 435–450). Kant also says much the same thing; the person who does not share in the Categories might be rational, but we could not recognize him or her as such. For a more in-depth discussion of uniting the internal and external aims of rationality see Wedgwood (1999, 113–131).

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Alcoff herself does not engage in a radical rejection of rationality, but she does express sympathies with this position. It is not just feminists who are critical of Enlightenment theories of rationality. The results of empirical research in cognitive science have placed Enlightenment rationality in a bad light. For a book length treatment of the disfavor with which Enlightenment theories are viewed, see Lakoff and Johnson (1999). The three philosophers I have specifically discussed are only examples of a general trend. One can find the same trend in the work of Quine, Putnam, Bernstein, Taylor, Kuhn, MacIntyre, and many others. While standpoint epistemologists typically argue that those who view the world from a marginalized standpoint see the world ‘more objectively,’ there are also more radical claims that there are kinds of knowledge gained from experience such that those who do not share those experiences cannot be said to know. I am thinking specifically of ‘Knowledge of “what it’s like”’ by Shapiro (2006). This paper developed the idea of ‘G-experiential knowledge’ introduced in Dalmiya and Alcoff (1993). For a further argument against the view that social position makes epistemic warrant inaccessible to some see Kukla and Ruetsche (2002, 403–405). This is not to say that everyone will turn out to be an equally good reasoner when it comes to forming beliefs or performing actions. It simply means that our capacity for rationality is equally distributed. I also leave Wittgenstein out of having

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a firm commitment to equality of reason because the argument would be much different and much harder to make in his case. In the long run, however, I believe such an argument can be made. The tension between feminism and relativism is well documented. For a good summary of the issues see Niiniluoto (1996).

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One caveat: this is not to say that there is, or should be, only one feminist theory of rationality, any more than we should say there is any single and fully satisfying theory of rationality. Because rationality takes many shapes and forms, it strikes me as highly unlikely that any single theory will fully capture it. However, simply because rationality is an open-ended and flexible concept does not mean that we should ignore the possibility of providing a general theory within which we can then argue about the details. So, my goal here is not to specify the theory of feminist rationality but only to specify a theory of feminist rationality. See Kukla (2006); Burbules (1995). Later on, I will briefly discuss the possibility of giving up the term ‘rational.’ While I do not myself give up the term, I offer a possible alternative to ‘rationality,’ namely ‘reasonableness.’ While most of this list is uncontroversial, the last claim is not. I defend its inclusion later. Jones (2004) identifies three main camps that push forward this objection: those who treat gender as symbolic, those who treat gender as psychosocial, and those who treat gender as relational. I focus specifically on one aspect of the gender-asrelational objection to norms of rationality, namely, the aspect of aperspectivity. Perhaps what feminists ought to do is give up the word ‘rational’ in favor of the word ‘reasonable.’ In particular, feminists could follow Tanesini (1996) in arguing that meaning claims are normative and that they are both grounded in social practices and prescriptive of future practices—so perhaps the best thing to do would be to give up on terms that involve oppressive practices. However, the second move in Tanesini’s argument is that we can co-opt and appropriate the meanings of terms to serve other normative aims. I follow this second line of attack. Rather than give up the word rational, my own view is that feminists should subvert both the oppressive meanings of ‘rationality’ and the social practices that undermine those oppressive meanings. See Audi, 220 (2001). The following discussion may raise doubts about whether McDowell actually links rationality to language, but Arnal is not the only one who recognizes an overemphasis of the higher levels of cognition. To quote his response to Hubert Dreyfus, McDowell reports that Dreyfus claims that I focus exclusively on ‘the conceptual upper floors of the edifice of knowledge’, and ignore ‘the embodied coping going on on the ground floor’. Or—worse—I deny the very existence of embodied coping, ‘in effect declaring that human experience is upper stories all the way down.’ (McDowell 2007, 338) See Audi (2001, 149–153).

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Feminists who truly wish to give up the concept of reason could easily abandon it for reasonableness without losing much of the philosophical ground reason has historically provided, although I believe rationality is a concept feminists should not abandon. See Jaggar (1996). Also see Nussbaum (2001). In discussing the work of Enrique Dussel, Linda Lange (1998) presents a detailed argument concerning how Europeans viewed the indigenous people in America. Europeans did not see the Americans as irrational but simply as deficient in their reason—they needed to be taught to think like Europeans. See Nozick (1993, 85–100, 139–151).

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—1978. Remarks on Foundation of Mathematics. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe Ed. G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —1993. Philosophical Occasions, ed. James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Index

Alcoff, Linda 9, 125, 130 altruism 110–11, 119 Anderson, Elizabeth 85–6 Antony, Louise 16, 37, 99–100 aperspectivity 139–40, 151 see also perspectivity Aristotle 3, 4, 34, 145, 156 Arnal, Stella Gonzalez 143, 144 Astell, Mary 30 Atherton, Margaret 30 Audi, Robert 101–20, 126, 128, 131–2, 143, 146–7, 149 autonomy 58, 65, 98, 154 Baier, Annette 45, 51 Benhabib, Seyla 20–1, 155 Bernstein, Richard 1, 7, 17, 84–5, 156 bias 9, 15, 41, 85–6, 99, 139, 147 bias paradox 99–100 body 30, 32–4, 48, 51, 53, 77, 83, 126, 129, 130–1, 133–4 see also mind and body Bordo, Susan 37 Burbules, Nicholas 143–4, 146–8 classical feminist project 11, 18, 22, 30 Code, Lorraine 131, 152 cogito 30, 163n. 6 cognitive science 5, 130 constraints, normative 47, 53, 63, 138 constraints, objective 43, 73 constraints, social 9, 63, 74, 87, 113, 114, 116, 117 constraints, substantive 100, 102, 116 constraints, transcendental 73, 76, 82 Copernican revolution 28, 63, 87 decision theory 85–6, 87, 88–96, 102–4 decision-value 95–6

Descartes, Rene 7–8, 17, 27–39, 42–4, 47–8, 57, 62, 86, 127–8, 156, 158n. 3 desire as ends 92–5, 96–7, 98–9 intrinsic 109–10, 117–19 moral 92, 110–11 ordering of 93–4, 99, 110 and rationality 40, 66, 95, 97, 109–10 dichotomies 8–16, 17–18, 21, 23, 32, 77, 83, 133, 149 different voice project 11, 18, 22 disembodiment 5, 32, 48, 70, 77, 131 Dummett, Michael 80–1, 161n. 10 embodiment 32–3, 42, 48, 77, 83 emotion 37, 39, 40, 53, 86, 106, 118–19, 149–50 see also sentiment environment, and rationality 8, 78, 88, 92, 95, 98, 117, 131, 135, 153–4 equality 50, 52, 110–12, 127–8 ethics of care 112 evil deceiver 34–5, 115 evolution, and rationality 86, 87–8, 92, 98, 153 expected utility 89, 91, 92, 95 experience 32–4, 36, 40–1, 43, 44, 54, 55–7, 58, 59, 61–2, 98, 104, 105, 106–12, 114–16, 117, 119, 127–9, 131, 132, 154–5 see also sensation women’s 127, 129 fallibilism 146, 147 form(s) of life 70, 73, 80, 82, 90, 116, 129 foundationalism 107–8 foundations, defeasible 108–9, 128, 104, 147

172

Index

grounds a priori 60, 93 empirical 71, 83, 148, 153 evolutionary 97, 95 experiential 54, 106–7, 109–11, 119, 128, 136, 143, 147 transcendental 9, 87, 138 unifying 54, 58 Harding, Sandra 20, 150 Hartsock, Nancy 19 Haslanger, Sally 139–40 Hekman, Susan 150 human flourishing 117–18 Hume, David 39, 40–52, 54–5, 56–7, 58, 62, 92, 93–4, 128, 140–1 individualism Cartesian 63, 86, 113 Enlightenment 98 instrumentalism 83, 93–4, 95, 99 internalism 77, 102, 113 irrationalism 12, 71, 81, 82, 132, 161n. 3 irrationality 21, 60, 89, 105–6, 113–15, 116, 118, 153 Johnson, Mark 5, 130 Jones, Karen 15 judiciousness 146, 147–8 justification 81, 102–3, 105–6, 108–9 Kant, Immanuel 52, 53–66, 69, 71, 72–3, 87–8, 93, 95, 107, 128 knowledge, social dimension of 69, 127 Kukla, Rebecca 144–5, 154 Lakoff, George 5, 130 language 72–4, 75–8, 79, 81 language-game 73–6, 78–80, 81–2 Lloyd, Genevieve 41, 123, 131 logical positivism 71, 83, 140 Longino, Helen 49, 140–2, 155 Masham, Damaris 30 McDowell, John 144

mind and body 30, 130–1, 133 inward turn 28, 32, 34, 35–6, 41, 43, 48, 63, 77–8, 102, 133 unity of 49, 57–9, 65, 98 and world 9, 28, 32, 34, 35–6, 38, 47–8, 50, 61–3, 72–3, 76 morality 38, 50–2, 58, 64–6, 81, 110–12, 119, 142, 150 Moser, Paul 37 Myth of the Given 62 Nagl-Docekal 21 Neurath’s boat 152, 153, 157 Nicholson, Linda 136–7 Noddings, Nel 111–12 normativity 10, 19, 20–1, 41, 45, 60, 63, 79, 82–3, 94, 100, 112, 115–16, 131, 136–8, 142 Nozick, Robert 6, 84–100, 115, 117, 131, 135, 149, 153–4 objectivity 28, 36, 37, 61, 84, 124, 139, 146–7, 150–2 ontology 27, 49, 82 oppression 10, 14, 17, 41, 49–50, 52, 66, 99, 132 passions 40–1, 46–7, 50, 86 perspectivity 18, 151 see also aperspectivity pluralism 40, 102, 104, 117, 119, 140–1, 146 postmodern feminism 18–19, 136–7 practices 70, 73–4, 75, 76, 77–8, 79, 80, 81, 82–3, 90–1, 104, 114, 116, 132, 144, 153 pragmatism 146, 148 preferences, rationality of 94–5, 97, 99, 100 principles 5, 31, 34, 36, 38, 43–4, 49–50, 55–6, 58, 59–60, 64–5, 80–1, 83, 86, 91–2, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 106, 107, 110, 119, 133, 137, 139, 153–4 Putnam, Hilary 37, 83, 84–5, 133, 151 pyramid, Cartesian 108, 163n. 6

Index rational choice theory 85–6 rationality Cartesian 7–8, 17, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36–9, 41, 43, 69, 108 see also rationality, Enlightenment common 7, 29, 102, 105, 115, 116, 119 contextual 83, 106 criteria of 4, 107, 110, 136–7, 142, 144, 146–8 dead 3–4, 38, 146, 156 degrees of 106, 147 emotion 40, 53, 83, 86, 106, 118, 148–50 Enlightenment 4, 5, 8–9, 14–17, 19–22, 28, 32, 39, 49, 66, 83, 84, 86, 101–2, 125, 149 see also rationality, Cartesian evolutionary 5, 87–8, 91, 93, 98–9, 100, 135, 153 focal 6, 57, 153 global 6, 104, 105–6, 108, 109, 153 Humean 40, 41–2, 48, 49–52, 56, 93–4, 140–1 instrumental 46, 51, 75, 83, 87, 90, 92–4, 95, 96–7, 98–9, 104, 142 Kantian 59–60, 63, 64, 65–6, 69, 93 ordinary 6, 75, 103–4, 117 plasticity of 60, 78, 104, 107, 118, 156 practical 12, 52, 64, 65, 93, 109, 111, 119 rule-governed 64, 101, 106 social aspects 9, 63, 65, 69, 70, 76, 77, 82, 83, 85, 86, 93, 98, 100, 113, 117, 132, 136, 153, 154 structural aspects 6, 40, 49, 62, 92, 94, 95, 104, 107–8, 109, 129, 150 substantive 30, 66, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 104, 112, 116, 124, 125 theoretical 12, 52, 65, 109, 119 transcendent 4–5, 48, 53, 95, 139 transcendental 52, 87, 136, 138, 150, 151 virtue 10, 101, 102, 105, 112, 136–7, 142, 144, 147–50, 152–3, 154, 155, 156–7 Wittgensteinian 70, 83, 88, 90, 136

173

reason, masculine 10, 15, 21–3, 30, 41, 86 reasonableness 142–4, 146, 148, 162–3, 164, 165 reflective equilibrium 7, 104 relativism 21, 78, 131, 137 reliability 34, 88–91, 92 rule-following 76, 79–80, 101, 102 rules interpreting 74, 78–81, 96 and rationality 28, 31, 44, 49, 55, 56, 58, 62, 64, 69–70, 75–6, 83, 91, 101, 104, 106, 139 schematism 61, 160n. 11 second nature 144–5, 154–5 selves fragmented 19, 59, 65 socially constructed 65 transcendental 57–8 unitary 59 sensation 40, 42–3, 45, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56–7, 59, 62, 77, 127 see also experience sentiment 45–6, 50, 51 see also emotion signposts 79 skepticism 41, 44, 48, 63, 75, 76, 79, 92, 108, 115 social construction 65, 69, 123 standpoint theory 151–2, 163n. 4 strong critical project 11, 18 subjectivity 9, 17, 22, 28, 34, 36, 64, 131, 147, 152 symbolic utility 86, 92, 93, 95, 100 symbolic value 86, 92 Taylor, Charles 28, 36 truth 17, 18, 21, 33, 35, 54, 59, 89, 91–2, 116, 124–5, 133, 150 underdetermination 79, 126 values 86, 96, 98, 152 see also symbolic value Wittgenstein, Ludwig 8, 36, 69–83, 96–7, 116, 135