Preface

102
Leibniz or Kant differed so deeply over what reason was and
could do. As power theorists tend to fall back on force as the deus
ex machina, so do rationalists in the last resort to logic. It is to
pretty palaeolithic ideas of logic though, like the ‘laws of thought’
or a simple logic of propositions, to which they turn. The
hesitancy in pinning their epistemological flags to the mast even
here may be because the going gets treacherous long before
reaching the murky waters of a logic of classes, predicate calculus
or non-standard logics aimed at coping with some of the more
massive leaks in the ship of reason.
Logic is not then so simple, nor safe. The complexities of the
truth-conditions even of elementary ‘if...then’ constructions,
which worry semanticists (Kempson 1975; Wilson 1975; Lyons
1977:138-229), have exercised some of the finest philosophical
minds (e.g. Russell 1905; Strawson 1950, 1964). If logic is so
troublesome why assume it to underwrite the universal efficacy of
reason? For such
deductive logic is but a poor thing, being merely a tool for achieving
consistency. Rationality requires more than consistency’ (Newton-
Smith 1982: 110, my emphasis).
At best it seems we need more than logic. What this surplus is
varies between philosophers. So does whether the resulting
rational brew is an a priori condition of intelligibility (Hollis
1982), or an a posteriori test of practical, let alone interpretive,
success (Newton-Smith 1982; Horton 1979, 1982; Taylor 1982)? 93
The further one inquires the more the universalist plight mirrors
that of the monocular Tsew in a three dimensional world.
93 It is often unclear whether the claim is that we must assume a common rationality for
the purposes of translation, or whether it is some ontological commitment to rationality as
a human universal. The going gets rough when one asks of what ‘rational’ is predicated.
Is it of collective representations, of persons, of thought, of action, or of criteria of
verification? If it be thought, are we speaking of propositions, utterances, semiotic
regularities or semantic rules? If it be action, what relation do these have to the actor (for
instance, are they causes of action). A problem here is settling what is rationality and what
a rationale. The closer the argument gets to postulating rationality as a priori, the more it
is open to criticisms of the kind levelled against Chomsky for suggesting so much can be
bracketed away in a theory of ‘innate abilities’.