Siegel, Harvey (1997). Rationality redeemed? Further
dialogues on an educational ideal. New York: Routledge.
Pp. xii & 234.
$19.99 ISBN 0-415-91765-4.
Reviewed by Mike Gunzenhauser
Oklahoma State University
March 14, 2000
In the introduction to Rationality Redeemed? Further Dialogues
on an Educational Ideal, Harvey Siegel describes his book as
a defense of rationality – an “old-time Enlightenment
metanarrative” – as an educational ideal. In this
collection of essays, Siegel responds to philosophers of
education who have taken on his prior works, Relativism
Refuted (1987) and Educating Reason (1988), or who
have written about issues associated with rationality, critical
thinking, and epistemology. Some of the chapters in Rationality
Redeemed are direct responses to papers or book chapters.
In other essays, Siegel addresses criticisms of his position more
generally, clarifying his arguments regarding critical thinking
and the essential contributions that rationality and epistemology
make to educational philosophy. Siegel describes his
position in this way:
a
wide-ranging set of theses concerning the role of reasons in
human life, the importance of individual autonomy, the
centrality of considerations of justice to the evaluation of
actual and possible social arrangements and relationships,
the value of knowledge, the importance of believing
responsibly, i.e. in such a way that beliefs are informed by
and based upon relevant evidence, and so on. (p. 2)
The issues Siegel raises in this passage are crucial issues in
the philosophy of education. As the subtitle of the book
suggests, there have been considerable debates about these issues
across different approaches to philosophy. As a
representation of the analytic tradition in the philosophy of
education, this collection is an important and formidable
contribution to dialogues about rationality and epistemology.
Although Siegel breaks little new ground in his arguments for
rationality as an educational ideal, his frank but considerate
attention to critics makes this a valuable collection. Because
of the current diversity in educational theory, there is a great
need for philosophers to juxtapose diverse philosophical
approaches to epistemology and rationality. Philosophers of
education and other scholars may benefit from communication
across disciplines and through theoretical traditions. This
kind of dialogue may help give careful consideration to what it
would mean to do things such as simultaneously rejecting
metanarratives and embracing progressive political projects.
Much has been written about the political implications of
critical, feminist, poststructural and postmodern theory, and
Siegel’s contribution here is to advance arguments against
relativistic theorizing and for more conventional rationality.
A reader may wish for more voice from Siegel’s
interlocutors, so that there may be richer dialogue, but in Rationality
Redeemed Siegel defends himself in a spirit of engagement
that invites further dialogue. In fact, since the book’s
publication, many philosophers of education have addressed
salient issues in the book (e.g., Ellett & Ericson, 1999;
Garrison, 1999), and so the dialogue has continued.
In this review, I first identify the main arguments that cut
across the chapters so that I may locate the direction Siegel
wishes to take the dialogue about rationality. After that,
I summarize the individual chapters and show how they contribute
to his arguments. I then offer some critiques of Siegel’s
arguments in the interest of formulating a broader dialogue about
rationality and epistemology.
Defending
rationality, epistemology, fallibilism, and critical thinking
As I see it, Siegel has four simultaneous subsidiary projects
that support his main objective of defending his previously
articulated theory of rationality. These overlap and
support each other at various points in the collection. Going
not so much in the order he presents them but in their perceived
order of importance, the first is a defense of his prior
arguments for the centrality of critical thinking, which Siegel
argues is the educational cognate of rationality. He
explains in further detail his view that a critical thinker
possesses both skills and character traits. The latter he
calls the critical spirit. His argument is that a person
must not only be able to think critically, but the critical
thinker must be willing or otherwise disposed to doing so. As
he argues in the introduction, his argument has been that
educators are morally obliged to foster critical thinking in
their students, for failure to do so is to show disrespect for
their integrity as persons.
The second project in the book is a discussion of universalism
and particularity, in which Siegel takes on seemingly
over-zealous postmodernists who would deny the existence and
feasibility of metanarratives. Siegel argues that
progressive political projects necessarily are grounded in
ethical metanarratives of the Enlightenment, and that
liberationists must reject relativism and other untenable
postmodernist notions in order to justify their liberationist
projects. For Siegel, Enlightenment ideals are remarkably
pliable, particularly if they are used as ideals and are not seen
as totalizing.
A third project, and closely related to the second, is
consideration of the appropriate place for inclusion, or
something like it, in a theory of rationality. Siegel
argues for inclusion as an ethical rather than epistemological
virtue. In doing so, he rejects claims by feminists and
others as to the significance of inclusive discourses to the
justification of knowledge. He argues that inclusion is at
times meaningful but neither necessary nor always desirable.
Implied here is maintaining a separation between ethics and
epistemology.
As a fourth project, Siegel articulates a fallibilist,
contexualist epistemology that uses truth as a criterion for
knowledge claims but separates truth from justification. The
epistemology underlying the view is the standard definition of
knowledge as justified true belief. In Siegel’s words,
this is fallibilism: “while there is truth, there is no
certainty; we get at truth by way of warrant and justification,
and these are always open for further consideration” (p.
23). Siegel acknowledges that certainty is problematic and
that nearly all contemporary philosophers reject it as a
criterion for knowledge justification. Retaining a notion
of absolute truth, Siegel maintains a distinction between truth
and justification and builds his argument for fallibilism and
against relativism. For Siegel, truth remains absolute
although unverifiable, and justification is forever open to
defeat. The distinction between fallibilism and relativism
is indeed highly significant for Siegel, and he uses it in
several of the essays to defeat his critics.
Charting the defense
Establishing his fallibilist epistemology is one of Siegel’s
projects in Chapter One, which opens the first of two parts of
the book after a brief and general introduction. This first
part, “Development and Defense,” brings together a
series of essays grouped here to describe his view or rationality
more thoroughly. The second part, titled “Dialogue,”
is a series of responses Siegel has written in the past ten
years, mostly in response to philosophers who have addressed
Siegel specifically. Chapter One includes the definition of
fallibilism excerpted above. It becomes important as Siegel
wraps up his argument that critical thinking pedagogy is
necessary to encourage students to be reasoned thinkers. In
order to support critical thinking pedagogy, Siegel argues for
the significance of epistemology. Educators must
necessarily reject relativism, he argues, and he provides his
fallibilist epistemology as supporting ground for the right
application of reason.
In Chapter Two, Siegel splits critical thinking into its reason
assessment and critical spirit components, arguing that both
components are generalizable and boosting his argument that
critical thinking itself is generalizable. In his
discussion on critical thinking skills, he attends to the debates
among advocates of critical thinking over whether skills and
criteria of reason assessment are subject-specific or
subject-neutral, and he debates on behalf of the latter. Siegel
rejects the notion of subject-specific reason assessment
criteria, noting the blurred distinctions between genres. While
there may be different criteria for reason assessment, there are
not different epistemologies operating. This becomes Siegel’s
chief defense against alternative epistemologies or otherwise
contextualist epistemological theories. Further, Siegel
argues here that critical thinking needs an epistemology that
does justice to reason and rationality, an argument that later
informs his discussions about critical pedagogy and inclusion.
This epistemology needs to distinguish between rational
justification and truth, reject relativism, and acknowledge
rational justification as a fallible indicator of truth. Rejecting
relativism means rejecting the notion that rational justification
is merely the rationalization of interests. For Siegel, the
justification of beliefs should arise because of good reasons,
supported by standards that are nonetheless fallible.
The epistemological contextualism implied in the language “good
reasons” is actually a weaker form of contextualism, because
Siegel wants to be able to identify good reasons across contexts.
Although different groups may have meaningful standards for what
count as good reasons within their individual contexts, a common
epistemology allows (or is required for) not only the contextual
justifications but also justification across contexts. He
describes the situation in what follows:
we
are entitled to regard these various criteria as appropriate
criteria of reason assessment, and to appeal to them in order
to establish or determine the goodness of putative reasons,
only because they are sanctioned by a common epistemology: a
theoretical understanding of the nature of reasons, according
to which putative criteria are recognizable as appropriate
criteria of reason assessment. (p. 32)
In arguing for the critical spirit component, Siegel transposes
the skills of a critical thinker into character traits. For
Siegel, the critical spirit is “a complex of dispositions,
attitudes, habits of mind, and character traits” (p. 35),
and he specifies the particular traits that he has in mind in
these four categories. Included are the following:
dispositions
to seek reasons and evidence in making judgments…;
respect for the importance of reasoned judgment and for truth…;
a rejection of partiality, arbitrariness, special pleading,
wishful thinking, and other obstacles to the proper exercise
of reason assessment and reason judgment; …habits of
reason seeking and evaluating…, engaging in the
fairminded and non-self-interested consideration of such
reasons. (pp. 35-36)
In
short, Siegel is describing someone who values reasons and
desires to exercise good judgment. Tucked in between the
other virtues is the notion of non-self-interest, and elsewhere
Siegel describes this virtue as highly important for the critical
spirit. Disinterested assessment of reasons is crucial,
because it allows Siegel to defeat relativism. At bottom of
certain other theorists’ notions of reason assessment is a
different thesis about knowledge, a Mannheimiam notion that it is
a product of interest, that it cannot be separated from the
interests of those claiming it. Siegel denies this and
furthermore argues that the traits that make up the critical
spirit are generalizable across contexts.
Siegel appears to step in a different direction with Chapter
Three, but by the end of the chapter, he has connected back to
his argument for the critical spirit. He describes the use
of the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel The Brothers Karamazov to
teach reasoning. He also uses his discussion of the novel
as a springboard for defending a rationality theory of teaching,
in which a teacher should foster critical thinking in her
students. He thinks of the novel as a way for students to
develop dispositions toward rationality, in short how to feel the
putative force of reasons. This is his link to the critical
spirit.
Critical spirit remains the focus in Chapter Four, wherein he
defends the necessity of a critical spirit. In a response
to a paper by Connie Missimer. Here we are a bit left out
of the conversation, for we do not have Missimer’s text in
front of us, and much of the article is written as if the text
had just been read. And although this is a dialogue in a
similar vein to those of the second part of the book, it proves
the exception to the rule and fits nicely here. In this
chapter, Siegel gives a more thorough defense of the necessity of
the critical spirit, making it seem necessary to the
generalizability of the critical spirit.
In Chapter Five, he takes on the defense of rationality, a
seemingly circular logical task or defective question that relies
on its own existence for the act of its defense. Instead of
taking the route that other rationalists take and argue that the
justification of rationality is a question-begging exercise, or
choosing the route that Popper takes and argue for an irrational,
leap-of-faith justification for rationality, Siegel argues for a
self-reflexive justification of rationality. The first part
of this argument involves showing that asking for the
justification of rationality presupposes its existence. Siegel
here is arguing that the skeptic who asks for the justification
of rationality must assume rationality in order to ask her
question in the first place (presuming her question is a serious
one). To make this argument, Siegel relies on a coherentist
view of justification. He requires that the skeptic's
question be coherent with (i.e., justify in a mutually coherent
way) her act of questioning (this requirement may be another form
of question-begging). Siegel justifies rationality in this
way: “In order seriously to question the value or
justificatory status of rationality, one must assume the
relevance of considerations which rationally support one or
another answer to the question; in so assuming, one is
presupposing the rationalist’s position” (p. 82).
In Chapter Six, Siegel very briefly addresses critical thinking
and prejudice. Siegel theorizes here the usefulness of
critical thinking in fostering tolerance. He comments,
“For if prejudice can be seen as a violation of the canons
of rationality/critical thinking, then effective educational
intervention aimed at increasing students’ critical thinking
abilities might serve to ameliorate our shared circumstance by
reducing prejudice” (p. 90). This is in response to an
incident not so much of prejudice but racism directed at Siegel’s
Jewish identity after he participated in a debate and gave a
rationalist critique of Christianity. He uses Bernard
Williams’ definition of prejudice as a quality of being
non-reflective and self-protective. Siegel shows how
prejudicial judgements (or more accurately, racist judgments) are
irrational. He then links it to a defense of democracy, a
brief but helpful touch on the complexities of democracy as an
ideal. More of this is certainly needed.
Next begins the dialogue chapters, in which Siegel responds to
and comments on various philosophers of education. In the
next several chapters, the reader begins to see the implications
of a redeemed rationality for ideas such as standpoint
epistemology, critical pedagogy, and emancipatory research
agendas. Collectively, these chapters are the most engaging
portion of the book, with the deepest implications for
educational theorizing, and the greatest opportunity for
furthering dialogue.
In Chapter Seven, Siegel takes on the notion that rationality is
contextually determined. This aim is similar to what he
accomplished in Chapters Two and Five. In this chapter, he
threads his way between absolutism and relativism. On the
one hand, Siegel argues that rationality is not contextually
determined, that while what counts as good reasons may vary from
context to context, rationality remains the same. On the
other hand, he argues against a formalistic sense of rationality
– essentially pure logic – as desirable as an
educational ideal, because what is needed instead is awareness of
the epistemic relations between substances. This is
rationality as a substantive epistemic notion. The
attention to epistemic relations and acknowledgement of the force
of putative reasons sets him apart from Nicholas Burbules’s argument
for strong contextualism. With the sentence, “Justifying
putative virtues of reasonableness by noting that we regard them
as such cannot succeed” (p. 107), Siegel invokes the
familiar critique that agreement within a context, however
well-articulated, is not the same as justification. If it
were, persons within a context who use heinous logic could make
heinous beliefs seem perfectly rational. The heart of
Siegel’s position is as follows:
I
agree with Burbules that the social contexts and relations
which he suggests are causally efficacious in fostering
reasonableness are desirable. My point is that
understanding why they are requires exactly that we do not
regard them as “constitutive of” or “inherent
in” the ideal of reasonableness. So understood,
their causal efficacy is rendered irrelevant to their
justification, as is the warrant they duly enjoy from our
moral and epistemological theorizing. Regarding causal
factors as “inherent in the ideal” mistakes causal
efficacy for epistemic support. (p. 109)
This
last sentence is one of his main criticisms of the Burbules
approach. This distinction proves useful again later to
stake out philosophical territory for epistemology.
In Chapter Eight, Siegel continues addressing interlocutors, this
time addressing Mark Weinstein regarding the limits of a priori
philosophy. Siegel sees Weinstein’s critique as a
problematic conflation of several related but distinct concepts,
such as foundationalism, a priori reasoning, and certainty.
Siegel clarifies the meanings of these terms and their
relationship to each other. He thinks that Weinstein has
him wrong, particularly on the link between correctness
(Weinstein’s term for “certainty”) and
applicability. Consistent with his previous arguments,
Siegel takes this as an opportunity to reiterate his distinction
between truth and justification. Siegel uses this familiar
argument here to reframe a further question of interest to
Weinstein, namely what Siegel refers to as the
extra-philosophical theorizing needed to put a critical thinking
pedagogy into practice. Siegel takes care to place this
theorizing outside the realm of philosophy, and he focuses more
narrowly on the philosophical project of justification.
The subsequent section of Chapter Eight, on absolutism,
relativism, fallibilism, and justification, is one of the most
important in the book. In this small section is substantive
discussion of epistemological justification, with Siegel
exploring the distinctions between his version of contextualism
and other, stronger forms. In this section is Siegel’s
most thorough attention to contextualism as an epistemological
theory. Throughout, Siegel holds to the distinction between
justification and certainty. This allows him to reject
Weinstein’s critique of foundationalist epistemology
(although as Siegel shows, Weinstein has not given a consistent
or recognizable definition of foundationalism), because the basis
of foundationalist epistemology are self-justified or otherwise
foundational beliefs, which does not make these beliefs certain.
Further discussion recalls Siegel’s critique of Burbules in
Chapter Seven. Significant here is attention to Weinstein’s
move to focusing on discourse frames, or what in other language
would be communities of thinkers. The argument against
strong contextualism is the same, worded differently:
More generally, Weinstein
runs together a community’s regarding or taking
a claim to be a (good) reason, and that claim’s being
a (good) reason. But this distinction is crucial for
any view which seeks, as Weinstein’s does, to avoid a
pernicious relativism. (p. 124, emphasis in original)
The
difference in this defense is attention to relativism, which
leads to further discussions about the difference between
relativism and fallibilism. Siegel makes the distinction
between his own fallibilism and relativism in this way:
the
argument fails because it confuses the process of judgment with
the epistemic status of judgements arrived at through that
process. All of our judgments, including our epistemic
evaluations of other judgments, are contextual, and all are
fallible. But accepting that evaluations are themselves
contextual, community-based judgments does not preclude the
relevance of (fallible) standards in accordance with which
judgments are to be evaluated. Any particular judgment must
admit of criterion-based evaluation, however fallible –
including judgments of the adequacy of such criteria themselves.
(p. 125)
Siegel
establishes this as the standard that epistemic contextualism
cannot meet and which ultimately defeats it. In other
words, for Siegel, contextualist epistemology is not epistemology
in any meaningful philosophical sense. Repeating the logic
from a prior chapter, Siegel writes, “Without some criteria
with which, or perspective from which, we can fairly assess the
merits of critiques and alternatives, our epistemic judgments
will be powerless, arbitrary, or worse” (p. 126).
As Siegel notes near the end of the book, Chapters Nine and Ten
are opportunities for him to argue for distinctions between moral
and epistemic justification. Things get really interesting
in Chapter Nine, with Siegel taking on Weinstein again, this time
making the argument of the chapter’s title, “Gimme That
Old-Time Enlightenment Metanarrative: Radical Pedagogies (and
Politics) Require Old-Fashioned Epistemology (and Moral Theory).”
In this chapter, he takes on Weinstein’s assertion that the
moral failing of discourses that exclude or totalize amounts to
the epistemological weakness of those discourses. Weinstein
uses this argument to support the simultaneous so-called
postmodernist embrace of progressive politics and rejection of
metanarratives. Siegel’s position: “Postmodernism,
or any other perspective which seriously endorses radical or
progressive social and educational change, requires an
epistemology which endorses truth and justification as viable
theoretical notions” (p. 139).
Siegel here faults Weinstein for ambiguous invocations of the
terms metanarrative and discourse frame. In Siegel’s
words, “There is no Enlightenment principle which
forces Patriarchy. It is rather the manifestation of
deficient practice. On this deficiency Modernists
and Postmodernists are, or at least should be, agreed” (p.
136). This assertion is of course highly contested. The
view of postmodernism that both Weinstein and Siegel address is
amorphous but seems to tied to critical theorists such as Henry
Giroux. Siegel offers no definition, but does note in
passing that if the mark of postmodernism is incredulity toward
metanarratives, then postmodernists have no business working
toward emancipation, liberty, democracy, or other similar
principles, which are not only metanarratives, but Enlightenment
metanarratives as well. Presumably the question is, how can
postmodernists live with the irony? This leads Siegel to
conclude the following:
Postmodernism
is best seen, then, not as a rejection of Modernism, but as
an advanced movement within it: one which accepts basic
Modernist, Enlightenment principles and intuitions concerning
truth, justification, fallibilism, justice, and respect, and
seeks politically and epistemologically more sophisticated
understandings of those principles and more realistic
explanations for failures to live up to them. (p. 137)
Here
Siegel is reinforcing the pliability of his fallibilism, so much
so that it can incorporate the epistemological skepticism usually
associated with postmodernism. Again, this argument is made
in the context of defining postmodernism with theorists such as
Giroux. Siegel more thoroughly addresses the
epistemological issues in the next chapter.
Chapter Ten, while not a dialogue like the other chapters in this
part, continues this line of argument from Chapter Nine, focusing
more specifically on the epistemological requirements for
critical pedagogy. His view in this regard is clear in the
following passage:
In
particular, it is commonly held that education ought to
respect all students/persons, regardless of their race,
gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.; and moreover that
education ought to be particularly, and scrupulously,
sensitive to the needs and interests of minority and other
“marginalized” students. These needs and
interests include (though they are not limited to) protection
from the hegemonic domination of the dominant culture. Multiculturalist
initiatives in education are generally understood in this
light. I fully endorse this general moral/political
perspective…. However, this moral/political perspective
is often conjoined with a related epistemological perspective….
I will argue not only that that perspective is of dubious
epistemic merit, but additionally, that honoring it has the
unfortunate consequence of undermining the moral/political
commitment to which it is routinely related. (pp. 141-142)
For
Siegel, radical pedagogy reflects dedication to
Enlightenment-oriented ideals of inclusion and democracy. For
him, the commitment is not epistemological. It does not
necessitate the acceptance of alternative epistemologies that are
culturally specific (he seems to mean standpoint epistemologies,
as in Harding, 1986; Collins, 1991) as necessarily relevant and
certainly not equivalent. Siegel offers two reasons that
embracing culturally specific, alternative epistemologies is
unjustified. One, the epistemological basis for them are
unjustified, and two, defending the principles behind radical
pedagogy require rejecting alternative notions of rationality
(which would presumably put those principles in jeopardy).
Instead, commitments to respect others are moral. This
moral justification places critical pedagogy squarely in a
conventional epistemological position. He says,
Thus,
accepting education’s moral obligation to engage in
multicultural initiatives, and regarding as educationally
important the obligation to treat marginalized students and
their cultures with respect – and in doing so, striving
to avoid “monocultural domination” – are
straightforward requirements of “liberal” moral and
social/political theory. (p. 144)
Further,
he says, “In this sense, educational multiculturalism is a
moral/political view (rather than an epistemological one) which
rests on the culture-neutral principles of moral and political
theory – principles which apply with equal force to all
persons and cultures” (p. 144).
Siegel uses his by now familiar argument against those who would
reject the universality of metanarratives. A critical
pedagogue cannot reject the universality of metanarratives,
Siegel argues, because the rejection itself is a universal
metanarrative. Further, a critical pedagogue cannot regard
alternative epistemologies as equally legitimate, because to do
so is to accept as most forceful the argument for equal
legitimacy. He concludes, “But this is exactly to
favor its own epistemological perspective in a way which it
denounces as disrespectful” (p. 151). Siegel sees
these as self-contradictory. His aim is to guard against
relativism (which he defeats similarly). Again, it is
fallibilism that provides the alternative to relativism:
A
better way to understand it is to regard our own
epistemological views as fallible; to acknowledge that
alternative epistemologies may be held by others, and may in
fact be superior to our own; and to commit ourselves to a
fairminded evaluation of ours and its alternatives. (p.
151)
The further distinction in his argument is the again familiar one
between relativism and fallibilism and the consequent
epistemological roles of justification and truth. Despite
the admission that truth is absolute but fallible, rationality
apparently provides a strong enough justification to make
guarantees that go beyond the fallibility. It is strong
enough that Siegel would claim the following, a statement that
while repetitive of what has come before, has an unmistakably
forceful conclusion:
In
order to establish these judgments as true and/or justified,
we must have recourse to conceptions of truth, justification,
etc., which provide us with the conceptual resources to
establish those claims. Without those resources, there
is no possibility of acting, in a morally motivated and
justified way, so as to end or alleviate the suffering
wrought by injustice. (p. 152)
The discussion then spills over into Chapter 11, wherein Siegel
reflects on the implications of feminism and postmodernism on
knowledge and certainty. The chapter repeats responses
Siegel made to Lynda Stone and Rene Arcilla in Wendy Kohli’s
edited volume of philosophical dialogues. The chapter fits
here as an extension of Siegel’s defense of rationality.
Toward that end, Siegel depicts Stone’s rejection of
certainty and essentialism as being consistent with conventional
rationality. Siegel simplifies Stone’s arguments, so
that they sound very much like Siegel’s fallibilist view of
epistemology. This leads him to conclude the following:
As
Stone suggests, it is both theoretically and politically
important to recast our philosophical musings so as to reject
the traditional desire for certainty and to embrace as
something positive – indeed, to accept as “a new
ethic” (185, [in Kohli]) – the uncertainty which
characterizes women’s lives and actions. (p. 158)
Siegel
seems to read Stone’s embrace of radical uncertainty as the
same as contemporary epistemologists’ rejection of certainty
as a criterion for knowledge justification. In Siegel’s
words: “In so rejecting certainty as a condition of
knowledge, most contemporary epistemology unproblematically
accepts Stone’s ‘feminist’ insistence on
uncertainty as characteristic of knowledge” (p. 158). He
also sees Stone’s denial of essentialism itself as an
essentialism (he would depict Stone as arguing that the essential
thing about women is that they are essentially different).
Siegel uses a similar tactic for his response to Arcilla. Siegel
takes on Arcilla’s use of Derrida and his theories about the
limitations inherent in language. By this point, the alert
reader not only will recognize the logic of the critique in the
following passage but should anticipate it. Siegel here
writes:
if
language has only provisional meaning, and is indefinite,
then the premise expressing that claim is itself only
provisional and indefinite. But if so, the claim is at
least to some extent undermined, because its grand
pronouncement about the nature of language is (to say the
least) significantly limited. (p. 163)
Siegel
then goes on to espouse fallibilism as an alternative to
postmodern skepticism. For Siegel, Derrida is merely a
fallibilist.
By the final chapter, Chapter Twelve, the arguments and
strategies are clear, but he engages formidable and numerous
adversaries. Siegel addresses several theorists who would
argue for the epistemological significance of inclusion (or
something like it). Mostly these are critical theorists in
education, feminist epistemologists, and feminist philosophers of
science. He quotes Mark Weinstein (who in the passage
excerpted argues that discourse frames should be judged on
inclusion), Lorraine Code (who argues that the ideals of
rationality and objectivity have excluded certain attributes and
experiences, notably those of women), Helen Longino (who argues
that enlarging perspectives leads to greater objectivity), Henry
Giroux (who argues that abstract and non-particular is
totalitarian), Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (who are
skeptical of a universal account of knowing without context), and
Sandra Harding (who advocates research out of women’s
experience, leading to fuller knowledge).
Common to these diverse perspectives is some agreement on the
epistemological significance of the experiences of women, people
of color, and others traditionally excluded from Western
discourse. Siegel finds exclusion and inclusion to be
morally but not epistemologically significant. For him, the
important question is, “Should philosophers of education
value inclusion? If so, should they also value
particularity, and devalue universality?” (p. 170). Siegel
is committed to inclusion, but he argues that it is not an
epistemic virtue. Further, inclusion requires what many
advocates of inclusion reject. Siegel argues the following:
embracing
the ideal of inclusion forces us to reject either the aim of
striving for universalistic theories, e.g. theories
concerning what is true of, or best for, all people; or the
idea that theorizing is governed by (fallible but)
universally applicable standards. (pp. 170-171)
He
allows that often inclusion is an epistemic or methodological
virtue; however, since as he notes, “inclusion is not
necessary for good science; exclusion does not guarantee bad
science” (p. 173), inclusion remains only a moral ideal that
occasionally has epistemological significance, apparently by
chance. While it does appear that Siegel considers context
to matter in this case, it does not seem to vary systematically.
Siegel makes this distinction to reject the valorization of
particularity and the necessity of considering alternative
epistemologies. Here Siegel argues for the necessity of
visions of universal characterizations of persons in order to
make comprehensible knowledge claims and to take defensible
political stances.
Commentary
Returning now to the four main themes I identified in Rationality
Redeemed, I have a few general and a few specific comments to
make about the collection. First, a few general comments
about the structure of the book. As a collection, the book
is comprehensive in that it brings together much of Siegel’s
work on the issues of critical thinking and rationality since the
publication of his previous books. The collective nature of
the book helps the reader to see how Siegel has responded to
various concerns that philosophers of education have raised about
his prior work, and it is helpful to have Siegel extend his reach
to concerns raised by others, notably issues of language raised
by Arcilla, feminist critiques of essentialism raised by Stone,
and more generally, the significance of inclusion raised by
several others.
Siegel has chosen to let the chapters stand on their own, which
lends them individual integrity. The original arguments are
intact, and in most cases, the original context is preserved.
The individual chapters hang together as a volume mostly because
of the consistency of the arguments. There is also a down
side to the collection approach, in that the arguments recur in
many places, so that toward the end of the book, once the view of
the Siegel presents the view of the interlocutor, the reader can
anticipate the critique before Siegel gets to it.
A second comment is related. While he does not always
engage to a length that a reader might want in a book-length
treatment of rationality, it is significant that he addresses
these issues earnestly across different philosophical
orientations. For me, this is the particular strength of
the work, and it seems that further dialogues across
philosophical orientations may continue to result in fruitful
exchange. Going deeper on some issues would be of benefit.
For example, of great benefit would be an extended chapter in
which Siegel engages not only Arcilla but Derrida on the
indefiniteness of language, so that he might have the opportunity
to explore the connection he proposes between Derrida and
fallibilism, which would take some doing to explicate fully.
Similarly, his attention to feminist critiques of epistemology is
broad, in that he mentions and excerpts numerous feminist
philosophers of education and philosophers of science, but his
engagement with them is rather brief and the arguments limited.
It would contribute greatly to the conversation about rationality
to link his notion of fallibilism to feminist discourse on issues
such as the struggles between subjectivism and objectivism, as
well as feminist (and other) philosophers’ willingness to
theorize ethics and epistemology as not-so-separate entities.
It is not Siegel’s fault that he does not address
everything, but it is an indication of the diversity of issues
associated with his arguments and the potential for dialogue
across difference.
At this point, I have a few comments about what I earlier
suggested were Siegel’s four subsidiary projects that
support his main objective. The first of these is his
defense of critical thinking, and he devotes much attention to
defending his notion of the critical spirit. It does seem
clear that he has a compelling argument to contrast Missimer, in
which he advocates the necessity of the critical spirit as
providing essential elements in addition to the skill component.
There are many reasons for thinking that character matters in the
development of critical thinkers. I wonder, however, that
Siegel seems merely to list the virtues of a critical thinker
rather than argue for them specifically. It would be
fruitful to engage dialogue regarding the qualities that make for
a critical thinker.
Particularly intriguing is of course the virtue of disinterest.
Although he clarifies disinterest as not a rarefied or pure
disinterest, it still strikes me as particularly white, male, and
Western (culturally speaking). He argues that the critical
spirit is not culturally bound and generalizes across difference
cultures. However, it seems to be in contrast to the black
feminist epistemology of Patricia Hill Collins (1991), for
instance, and radically so. Collins includes the
justification criteria of responsibility and caring (among
others, and I am oversimplifying) in her epistemology, and these
criteria strike me not just as (weakly) contextual criteria, but
as foundational to the qualities of the critical thinker. If
the qualities of a critical thinker are up for discussion, and
there is evidence of radically different qualities in different
contexts, then perhaps there is more to the discussion of
alternative epistemologies than Siegel seems to believe is
warranted. Although I am reasonably sure he disagrees with
me on this point, it does seem that by arguing for the critical
spirit component, that Siegel opens the door for discussion about
epistemological relativism. More on this below.
In the meantime, a related concern is why he would leave out
other virtues that educators might wish to instill in students,
some of which may be applicable to critical thinking, but others
which may not. It would seem to be a more defensible
philosophy of education to be more comprehensive, although I can
understand that Siegel would want to include only those virtues
that would support critical thinking. However, this
observation may also support further dialogue on such virtues, or
a challenge to the notion that critical thinking is in some way
an activity that can be isolated.
Siegel’s second subsidiary project is defense of the
necessity for Enlightenment metanarrative and conventional
epistemology to support critical pedagogy and associated projects
for liberation or emancipation. Here I concur with Siegel
that in much of the critical theory literature in education,
there has been inadequate attention to the epistemological
implications of the simultaneous assumption of liberationist
politics and disavowal of Enlightenment metanarrative. As
with Giroux, whom Siegel addresses directly, there are calls for
“rejecting” or “refusing” generalization,
universalism, or metanarrative, suggesting with that language
that they have a moral commitment. Frequently these
theorists exhort us to “rethink” how we connect our
projects to “radical notions of democracy” or some
other Enlightenment notion or principle (as in Kincheloe &
McLaren, 1994). I see in Siegel’s attention to these
issues one earnest approach, but there are certainly others.
Feminists in particular have addressed this concern more
recently, among them Collins (1991), Code (1995), and Sharon
Welch (1990), as have philosophers of education, such as Frank
Margonis (1998). The ideas these theorists have put forward
should further enrich the dialogue that Siegel has extended.
Third is the concern that occupies Siegel as he moves into the
later chapters, his argument for inclusion as an ethical rather
than an epistemological virtue. My comment refers to Siegel’s
engagement of inclusion and multiculturalism in the final chapter
but also throughout the book. Siegel seems to view these
issues as the same. He describes multiculturalism as
primarily the manifestation of respect for the experiences of
others, with special concern for the self-images of students and
providing opportunities for multiple perspectives. While
this view is certainly a reasonable beginning point, it speaks to
the vagueness of the term multiculturalism. It also limits
the possibilities for engaging conventional rationality. When
Siegel argues about inclusion and exclusion, he seems to fit them
into his arguments against epistemic contextualism. As
examples of multiple contexts, however, some cultural groups have
thorough critiques of conventional rationality, even in its
fallibilist form. Siegel underestimates the extent and
depth of the critiques. If multiculturalism is understood to
include more elaborate and defensible articulations of constructs
such as standpoint epistemology and alternative visions of
rationality (or critiques of its possibility), then it amounts to
a more radical critique than that which can be solved through
greater inclusion. Sharon Welch (1990), a feminist
philosopher and theologian, is not the only theorist to argue
that, “The perspective of Euro-American women or the
perspective of African-American women and men cannot be simply
added to that of privileged Euro-American males” (p. 128).
Welch argues (as does Collins, 1991) that when alternative
perspectives are merely added to the larger picture, the dominant
discourse maintains dominance and distorts alternative
perspectives dramatically. It strikes me as a problem of
de-contextualizing inclusion. While it may not be necessary
in all contexts to be radically inclusive, it seems unproblematic
that inclusion should be a necessity in particular contexts, such
as occasions when theorists make claims about a certain
population.
Nevertheless, I view Siegel as providing a valuable contribution
on this issue by setting the terms for debate about inclusion, or
at least one portion of the debate. Siegel gives points of
entry for philosophers who wish to engage conventional
epistemologists on the separation of epistemology and ethics,
particularly the moral dimensions of knowledge.
The fourth subsidiary project is his articulation of a
fallibilist, contextualist epistemology. On this point,
Siegel is most clear, and the chapters give him opportunities to
consider the many implications of fallibilism. My comments
here regard his defeat of relativism and its distinction from
fallibilism. I should admit finally that I do not find
compelling the self-defeating argument against relativism. It
is not clear why the same argument, which he uses elsewhere
(relativism makes relativism itself relative; the rejection of
universals makes the rejection itself a universal; etc.) would
not also defeat fallibilism. I do not suggest that it
should. It does seem to me that acknowledging the futility
of certainty (we are in agreement on the this) excuses
philosophers from having to justify sentences that are merely
restatements of the clich�, “the only thing I am certain of
is uncertainty.”
More problematic, however, is that Siegel does not identify
relativism with a particular theorist or a particular argument,
and as nearly as I can tell, the relativism he is arguing against
is the view of the global skeptic (or typical teenager). Consider
the following statement in his argument for the importance of
critical thinking:
If
the goodness of reasons is relative, then we cannot say that
one assessment of an argument is better than another; worse,
we cannot legitimately think that our argument assessment
rules and criteria are superior to our students’
untutored rules and criteria (or denial of such). (p. 20)
His
arguments against the kind of relativism implied here are
certainly useful, and he goes on to give suggestions of how to
encounter this form of relativism when it is encountered in the
classroom. But there is more to the discussion of
justification than choosing among determinism, fallibilism, and
(this form of) relativism. Here, fallibilism seems
remarkably pliable, because its main alternative, relativism, is
made of straw.
Because he makes relativism a weak straw man, Siegel is able to
use the phrase “having good reasons” as a logical place
holder for his view of rationality (for in his view of
relativism, it is nonsensical to speak of reasons as being good).
If he were to accept a stronger form of contextualism, “having
good reasons” would come off as rather vague. It would
not be so easy to reject an alternative epistemology, because
while “having good reasons” could describe numerous
epistemologies, the criteria would be significantly different
(but epistemologically so).
If relativism is redefined, perhaps using the sociology of
knowledge or standpoint epistemology as the guiding theory, the
aspect of Siegel’s epistemology that would remain and
continue to be contentious would be absolutism. Siegel
holds on to a notion of absolute truth, however unattainable it
is. Truth remains an arbiter for him in fallible knowledge
claims. In certain alternative views of epistemology, that
is not the case, and so with this distinction, there is further
exploration for dialogue. On that point, I would maintain
that fallibilism does not need an ideal notion of truth in order
to operate, particularly if we are excused from having to justify
relativism. There is, in any event, a clear need for
further dialogue and greater nuance in theory about rationality
and epistemology. Siegel seems to want to limit himself in
this area to the traditionally philosophical approach to these
subjects, but it would seem to me a fruitful discussion to expand
linkages to what Siegel calls extra-philosophical approaches as
well.
References
Code, L. (1995). Rhetorical
spaces: Essays on gendered locations. New York:
Routledge.
Collins, P.H. (1991). Black
feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of
empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Ellett, F.S., & Ericson, D.P.
(1999). Yes…but is it naturalism? In S. Tozer
(Ed.), Philosophy of Education 1998: Proceedings of the 54th
annual meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society (pp.
235-243). Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.
Garrison, J.W. (1999). Reclaiming
the logos, considering the consequences, and restoring context: A
Deweyan response to Siegel's Rationality Redeemed? Educational
Theory, 49(3), 317-337
Harding, S. (1986). The
science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Kincheloe, J.L., & McLaren, P.L.
(1994). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative
research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook
of qualitative research (pp. 138-157). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Margonis, F. (1998). Theories of
conviction: The return of Marxist theorizing. Educational
Theory, 48(2), 85-102.
Siegel (1987). Relativism
refuted: A critique of contemporary epistemological relativism.
Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co.
Siegel, H. (1988). Educating
reason: Rationality, critical thinking, and education. New
York: Routledge.
Welch, S.D. (1990). A
feminist ethic of risk. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
About the Reviewer
Mike
Gunzenhauser is an assistant professor of social
foundations in the College of Education at Oklahoma State
University. His areas of interest are ethics, epistemology,
critical ethnography, and feminist theory.
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