Showing papers on "Rationality published in 1971"

The Hidden Curriculum and the Nature of Conflict.

Abstract: There has been, so far, little examination of how the treatment of conflict in the school curriculum can lead to political quiescence and the acceptance by students of a perspective on social and intellectual conflict that acts to maintain the existing distribution of power and rationality in a society. This paper examines two areas—social studies and science—to indicate how an unrealistic and basically consensus-oriented perspective is taught through a “hidden curriculum” in schools. The argument centers around the fundamental place that forms of conflict have had in science and the social world and on the necessity of such conflict. The paper suggests that a greater emphasis in the school curriculum upon the ideal norms of science, e.g., organized skepticism, and on the uses of conflict could counterbalance the tacit assumptions being taught.

God and rationality

Abstract: In this title, Professor Torrance calls for "a return to theological rationality": theological thinking must not be a construction of man's making but controlled and conditioned by the nature of its object, God, the supreme reality.

Muddling through: planning for health care in England.

Abstract: Some of the limits of rationality in health planning are illustrated in contemporary England. The English penchant for "muddling through," often considered to be the antithesis of rational planning, may in fact suggest that in certain stable political environments a model of comprehensive rationality in decision-making not only is not, but also cannot and should not, be followed. Development of policies in regard to physician manpower, hospital beds, and health centers reflects a complex mixture of advocacy and evidence in the decision process. Although the English style of health planning illustrates the limits of a rational model, the National Health Service appears to have provided extraordinary value for money over the past two decades.

The Grounds of Reason

Abstract: IN A recent paper [13] J. W. N. Watkins attacks the views of W. W. Bartley III on the problems of rationality [3]. Specifically, Watkins presents arguments to show that Bartley's conception of rationalism-comprehensively critical rationalism-is, contrary to appearances and intentions, a perfect example of a dictatorial strategy or of a reinforced dogmatism ( [13], pp. 57, 60). We here defend Bartley, not because we accept his position--on this the authors of the present note are of divided opinionbut because we agree that Watkins' arguments fail. Bartley's conception of rationalism [3], [4], [5] is, like Watkins' [14] (and like ours: [1] [2], [7], [12]) a variant of Sir Karl Popper's ( [9], ch. 24). Yet the debate is not simply a quarrel within that family of ideas: it has a long ancestry-in the works of Bertrand Russell, [11] Heinrich Heine, [6] and even, perhaps, Plato (Phaedo, 89c-91b), to mention just a few names far removed from one another in time and circumstances. Bartley draws attention to the related problems of the identity and the integrity of the rationalist: if rationalism is the philosophical idea that reasonable (or rational) men hold only those beliefs which can be justified, rationalism cannot be justified. Thus, if the demand for justification be thorough-going ('comprehensive rationalism'), rationalism is self-defeating. On the other hand, if the demand be relaxed so that belief in rationalism is exempted from its own demand for justification ('critical rationalism'), rationalism appears to be unreasonable, and opponents of rationalism are supplied with a rational excuse for holding irrational (unjustified) beliefs. Popper, generalising his characterisation of scientific method, [8], [10] proposed the view that rationality consists mainly in the elimination of error: not that any one of our beliefs can be justified but that some of them can be criticised and thus improved upon. On this view rationality becomes equivalent to Socratic method: the method of approximation to the truth by trial and error, conjecture and refutation, question and answer and cross-examination. This view we call 'critical rationalism' (using the name differently from Bartley) to distinguish it from the various justificationary views which we call 'uncritical rationalism'. Bartley asks whether (what we call) critical rationalism is, like uncritical rationalism, hit by its own standard; and, if so, whether Popper is right to allow that his basic injunction to criticise has to be accepted uncritically. If rationality is openness to criticism, then, Bartley suggests, if we declare the position that everything is open to criticism to be itself open to criticism, then rationality can meet its own standard and is thus consistent. This view Bartley calls comprehensively critical rationalism (CCR for short). Watkins presents CCR as asserting: '(1) A rationalist can and should hold all his positions open to criticism. (2) That a rationalist can and should hold all his positions open to criticism is a position that he can and should hold (so long as it withstands criticism).' from which we may derive: '(3) That a rationalist can and should hold all his positions open to criticism is itself a position that he can and should hold open to criticism.' ([13], p. 58)

The Internationale of Science

Abstract: In the book from which this chapter is extracted, I call technonature the 'theatre' of the new relationships between power and knowledge The scientist's situation in the modem world is circumscribed in a framework of political decisions which affect his research work and which his work affects In this framework, science realises itself as a technique among others; it is the manipulation of natural forces under the horizon of political decisions, both conditioning new problems for power and conditioned by the objectives that the former seeks Technonature does not designate a faction, a group, an elite which would seek power as such, but the situation in which science conceived as a discourse of truth can no longer be dissociated from the function it fills and the power it exercises as a political discourse Technonature is the theatre in which the meaning of science is conceived exclusively as instrumental, that is, in fact subordinated to values and ends to which scientists claim themselves, in theory, to be strangers Thus they discover that the discourse of science, apparently neutral, does not preserve them from what Weber called the antinomies of 'the ethics of responsibility' Technonature forbids seeing science as an enterprise indifferent to values, ideologies, conflicts that put more than a suspicion of irrationality on human affairs; although it claims rationality from the methods and results of science, it shows that such a suspicion lies on the affairs of science itself

The Rationality of Science versus the Rationality of Magic

Abstract: Assuming that it is rational for us in the West to reject magic, it may sensibly be asked how to assess the rationality of its continued practice within cultures different from our own. Answers to this question have varied considerably, revealing not only different views of magic, but also different views of science and, hence, of rationality. In this essay, I discuss various attempts to solve the problem of the rationality of magic, demanding of any theory of magic that it be consistent with findings in the field, and of any theory of rationality that it explain science as well as it explains magic. As a further constraint on theories of magic, I might demand also that solutions to the problem of the rationality of magic avoid insulting its practitioners. Since being rational is part of being human-although some people are more consistently rational in their behaviour than others, and none is rational all the time-it might be insulting to many people in cultures where magic fills a large segment of people’s lives (if it does not pervade every segment) to declare magic irrational. Now, no anthropologist wishes to insult the natives of the society he studies. Far from it. Whatever popular prejudice or opinion may aver to the contrary, and whatever the paternalist and colonialist attitudes of foreigners in primitive societies may suggest about the subordinate intelligence and sensibleness of the natives, anthropological studies never aim to impugn-indeed rather the reverse; they almost seem to aim not to impugn-the intelligence or sanity or good sense or human dignity of the generality of people studied. Anthropologists assume that there are not different intellectual types, corresponding to differences

Rational Planning Reexamined

Abstract: This article explores the feasibility of rational planning using as evidence the regional planning experience of the Appalachian program. During its first three years of operation, the Appalachian planning process sharply converged with its ability for rational behavior—an ability shown to be a close approximation of a pure rationality model. An important gap still remains, however, between this capacity for rationality and the actual performance of the planning process: the lack of knowledge or unwillingness on the part of the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Appalachian states to operationalize their goals. A multitier decision model is suggested which could make the goals of the Appalachian program, as well as other programs, at least partially operational.

Decision Making and the Study of Social Process

Abstract: Within the limits set by structural arrangements and by institutions, individuals choose their course of action. Anthropologists have always been interested in the outcome of these choices either because they reflect ongoing change or because they elucidate interrelations between institu tions. In order for decision-making analysis to be more than anecdotal, however, it needs to be guided by a set of assumptions concerning reasoning and cognitive processes, and the conditions germane to them. Economists. sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and mathematicians have already outlined many useful assumptions. Part of our task in this paper is to con tribute to a systematization of those assumptions that arc most relevant to anthropological interests. We also discuss the advantages and limitations of decision analysis for social anthropology, examine the theoretical and methodological implications of "rationality," and present a sequence of hypothetical steps that we regard as requisites for an adequate d...

Political rationality reconsidered: Notes on an integrated evaluative scheme for policy choices.

Abstract: This essay deals with the concept and problem of political rationality. Following the ancient conception that the absence or presence of rationality manifests itself in choice situations, we try to explore at first the specific characteristics of political choice, then turn to a discussion of the criteria for rationality, considering process, goal contents and structure criteria, point to the restrictions for rationality analytically inherent in any choice structure, and try in the end to make clear the difference between these analytical (i.e. principally unremovable) restrictions and the (principally removable) “confining conditions” (Kirchheimer) for rational political choices provided by the circumstances of present-day politics.

The Green Revolution and "Economic Man": Some Lessons for Community Development in South Asia?

Abstract: ONE OF THE GREAT controversies in the literature of development has revolved around the issue of rationality in the peasant farmer. Is he basically an "economic man," or is there substantial truth to the image of nonWestern man as non-materialistic and other-worldly? It would appear that the "Green Revolution" in much of the underdeveloped world today has resolved this debate, at least in large measure, in favor of "economic man." At the same time a similar though rather ill-defined argument has been going on about political development at the peasant level. The central issue here is whether or not this peasant is a political analogue of "economic man." The failure to resolve this question has been a major reason for the unfortunate record that community development has produced thus far. The present article will focus on this similarity between economic and political development at the village level in South Asia, where the available research on these issues is far greater than for other developing areas. South Asia is also the area where one of the most promising experiments in community development has been attempted-the Comilla project in East Pakistan. This experiment, it will be contended, was promising (at least until the i97i civil strife) largely because it showed a way to apply the lessons of the Green Revolution to low-level political development and to combine both the economic and the political spheres in a singularly effective manner.* What was for many years the accepted view of Indians as a spiritual, other-worldly, and in general non-materialistically oriented people has its intellectual foundation in the works of Max Weber.1 Weber's thesis was that (subject to some qualifications) Hinduism inhibited the development of a South Asian counterpart of the "Protestant Ethic" that served as the mainspring of the Industrial Revolution in the West. Even today, some scholars hold to one version or another of the Weberian thesis.2 Like many of Weber's

Rationality and Relevance in Social Choice Theory

Abstract: The central argument of this paper is that concepts such as "social preference," "social rationality," "public interest," "social benefits" and "social welfare" are unnecessary for the development and application of welfare economics principles and the design and/or modification of political economic processes. The primary reasons for using these constructions as offered by Samuelson and Arrow are misleading if not simply wrong. The features of the concepts which make their use compelling, are also features of other approaches to problems. Furthermore, since the tools themselves automatically restrict analysis to a rather "uninteresting" family of political-economic processes, their use may even be detrimental to the development of a relevant body of theory.

Disanalogies in Plantinga's Argument regarding the Rationality of Theism

Abstract: exists because the teleological argument strongly resembles the analogical argument used to justify our belief that others have minds. His argument fails because of a disanalogy between the two arguments. One who uses the analogical argument cannot deny that a person who acts as they do has a mind. But a person who uses the teleological argument can deny that God exists while admitting that the universe is designed if they believe the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. Analogical arguers consider only factors relevant to the analogical argument while theists must assert many propositions, such as "evil is justified" and "exactly one Being designed the universe," which are not relevant to the teleological argument. Since atheists need only deny one of the many propositions theists must assert, it Is reasonable to believe that God does not exist.

Positive Evidence as a Social Institution

Abstract: The current literature in methodology and epistemology is almost exclusively devoted to one topic: positive evidence, or favourable evidence, or empirical support, or harmony between theory and experience, confirmation, etc. etc. The problem concerning evidence which engages the current literature most is, how does evidence back theory? The present chapter is devoted to the question, what is the good of such backing? The literature views evidence as the basis of rational belief in theories and as the justification of their practical application. Now consider criticism rather than justification to be the key role of rational activity. You will then consider negative evidence as important and tend to view positive evidence plainly as failure, as the undesired outcome of attempts at criticism or at refutation. Since this is not the whole story, the identification of rationality with criticism, as advocated by Popper in his The Open Society and its Enemies, must be rejected. Once we view only internal criticism as rational, once we view rationality as goal-directed and rational criticism only with respect to given ends, then the picture changes. The end of pure science is a theory which is both true and comprehensive or encompassing explanation. Consequently, though negative evidence of a comprehensive explanation is more important than positive evidence, positive evidence is important too — as one which renders theory more comprehensive, or more explanatory.

Modes of irrationality : preface to a theory of knowledge

Abstract: I: The Irrationality of the World.- I: Reason.- II: Various Concepts of the Irrational.- A. The Material as Irrational.- B. Sensing as Irrational.- C. The Passions as Irrational.- D. God as the Irrational.- E. The Irrational as a Mode of Knowledge.- III: The Formula for False Irrationality.- A. The Material as Irrational.- B. Sensing as Irrational.- C. The Passions as Irrational.- D. God as the Irrational.- E. The Irrational as a Mode of Knowledge.- II: The Rationality of the World.- IV: The Rationality of the World: The First Argument.- V: The Rationality of the World: The Second Argument.- III: The Irrationality of Reason.- VI: The Irrationality of Reason (I).- VII: The Irrationality of Reason (II).- Conclusion.

The application of rationality to medical records

Abstract: A formal approach is presented for the optimization of the strategy for the retention of clinical information. Informally we emphasize the advantages of having succint records, and of retaining information that (i) is otherwise irrecoverable, and (ii) conveys a reasonable amount of evidence for the diagnosis of those future diseases that have a nonnegligible probability of occurring and for which the utility of treatment is also nonnegligible.

Empiricism and rationality

Abstract: A: When is an empiricist a good empiricist? B: When he philosophizes in accordance with the principles of empiricism. A: Can an empiricist who defends a logical conception of probability be a good empiricist? B: No, for a logical conception of probability in the end leads inevitably to a violation of the principles of empiricism. A: But isn't Rudolf Carnap a good empiricist? B: Not when he defends his logical conception of probability.

Some Myths in Management

Abstract: The myths of a business organisation, like those of a community, have their foundation in partial reality at a given period of time but they scarcely ever represent the total reality. They satisfy a variety of social and psychological needs of the system and of its managers. They help provide rationality to behaviour in the organisation and justification for managerial inactivity or failure; they minimise anxiety by transferring managerial failures to external events or to the powers that guide their destiny.