# Rationality in Academic Disciplines

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: K. P. Mohanan, Rationality in Academic Disciplines, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines
> 
> K.P.Mohanan
> 
> Abstract
> 
> Following Fleck and Kuhn, the academia in the twenty first century have
> come to recognize the value of acknowledging and understanding the
> diversity of "epistemic cultures”, that is, the thought styles of
> communities engaged in the production of knowledge. For an academic
> community to construct public knowledge through teamwork, there are
> two important pre-requisites. First, the members of the community must
> have a shared language that presupposes approximately the same pairings
> of concepts and words. Second, they must have a shared epistemic value
> system on the basis of which they make collective decisions on what is
> credible and what is not, and choose between competing candidates for
> excellence in knowledge. A subset of such criteria for critical thinking
> also allows us to engage in rational argumentation within the community.
> 
> If we define ’’dialogue" as a two-way conversation between two parties, it
> follows that contemporaneity is a necessary condition for all dialogue: we
> cannot have any dialogue with ancient cultures or civilizations of the past.
> If dialogue involves rational argumentation across epistemic cultures, it is
> equally important that their epistemic value systems have a set of shared
> commitments as well. In my paper, I will make an attempt to outline such
> a shared set of commitments that provide the basis for dialogue across
> academic cultures, ranging from history and philosophy to biology and
> physics, and various sub-communities within a discipline.
> 
> 1. Unity in the Diversity of Academic Inquiry
> 
> The word rational means “agreeable to reason,” or “reasonable,” and
> irrational means “contrary to reason” or “unreasonable.” Rational inquiry
> would therefore be inquiry that is founded on a commitment to the value
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> 
> of reason.
> 
> Now, what appears reasonable to one person or community may not
> appear reasonable to another. As a result, what is judged to be highly
> credible or of high quality by one individual may be judged to be not
> credible or of poor quality by another. In many instances, disagreements
> on what is reasonable and what is credible arise from differences in the
> prior knowledge and value systems that we tend to take for granted.
> 
> Any evaluation of quality in any domain involves a set of commitments to
> a value system on the basis of which we perform the evaluation. When we
> judge a person to be more beautiful or graceful than another, an action to
> be morally good or bad, a pumpkin pie to be the most delicious we have
> had, a person to be a better tennis player than another, or a teacher to be
> outstanding, we draw upon an implicit or explicit system of criteria for
> evaluation. The pursuit of academic excellence is not different from these
> activities in that academic judgments also involve a set of commitments to
> what constitutes good or reliable academic knowledge, on the basis of
> which we judge academic work to be poor, good, or excellent. Every time
> academics grade a student essay, evaluate a doctoral thesis, argue with
> one another on the relative merits of competing theories, or think through
> a research problem, they draw upon an academic value system.
> 
> In a number of domains, the criteria upon which our evaluation is based
> vary across individuals, causing their judgments to diverge. Thus, the
> garlic pickle that one person judges to be the tastiest in the world may be
> judged as foul tasting by another for whom garlic is unpleasant. Likewise,
> disagreements on the relative beauty or grace of two models may not be
> resolvable because one person may be attracted by the sultry looks that
> another person reacts negatively to. The situation is no different in
> academic work. A research paper judged to be excellent by one journal
> reviewer may be judged to be unpublishable by another, and a student
> essay that receives a C from one professor may receive an A+ from
> another.
> 
> In spite of these individual differences, the value systems of the members
> of a community have a set of shared characteristics, and most individuals
> in a community imbibe and conform to this socially shared system of
> values. Hence, we find relative uniformity within a culture, but variability
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                    89
> 
> across cultures. Plump women used to be regarded as beautiful in Western
> cultures during a certain period, and they still are in some current cultures,
> but are surely not so in modem western cultures. This is a general pattern
> that cuts across individuals in a given culture. Likewise, premarital sex is
> judged to be immoral in some communities but morally neutral in others.
> A singer unanimously judged to be the best in the community of South
> Indian classical music may sound harsh to the European ear. Likewise, a
> theoretical framework that is judged to be a major breakthrough in some
> academic circles may be judged to be mediocre in others.
> 
> Differences in academic value systems constitute one of the central
> components of the differences that come under the rubric of paradigms or
> “discourses”. That scientific research is predicated on a set of largely
> implicit axiomatic commitments was probably first pointed out in 1935 by
> Ludwik Fleck in Genesis and Development o f a Scientific Fact. Fleck,
> referred to these commitments as thought-styles. His insight was
> popularized by Kuhn in 1962 in The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions
> which raised the problem of incommensurability across scientific
> communities with different value systems and different terminologies.
> Kuhn used the term “paradigm” instead of “thought-style” to refer to the
> commitments that drive scientific research. The notion of paradigms has
> been subsequently generalized to academic work in general, and has given
> rise to research on the epistemic cultures of academics. In the post­
> modern language, the epistemological differences among academic
> communities have come to be designated as alternative “discourses” of
> different “epistemic cultures.”
> 
> Now, despite the obvious differences across cultures, there are also certain
> broad characteristics that are shared by the value systems of different
> communities, and properties that are repeatedly found in cultures across
> space and time. Thus, even though some cultures approve female genital
> mutilation and others consider it barbarous, all human cultures seem to
> agree that causing suffering and death to fellow humans intentionally and
> without a compelling moral justification is morally bad. Likewise,
> qualities like compassion, love, generosity, courage, self-lessness, and
> truthfulness are typically regarded as morally desirable across human
> cultures, while qualities like cruelty, hatred, greed, selfishness, cowardice,
> conceit, deceit, and dishonesty are regarded as morally undesirable.
> Similar patterns emerge in the judgments of beauty as well. In spite of
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> 
> individual and cultural differences in what is regarded as beautiful, there
> are certain broad tendencies that are shared across individuals and cultures
> such that given extreme cases, even individuals with widely divergent
> cultural backgrounds agree on which of two people compared is more
> beautiful than the other.
> 
> The common values shared across cultures in ethics and aesthetics point
> to the possibility of similar cross-cultural patterns in academic values as
> well. Now, it is fairly obvious that divergences in academic value systems
> can lead to extremely frustrating situations in academic interactions, and
> hinder productive collaborations. In debates on beauty, we can agree to
> disagree and hold on to our personal judgments, and disagreements
> between judges in beauty contests can be resolved through some form of
> voting. Most academics would agree that this solution cannot be extended
> to the problem of academic quality, where quality is not a matter of
> popularity. A solution to this problem would be for each of us to articulate
> as explicitly as possible our commitments in academic inquiry, then to
> identify those commitments shared across individuals or communities,
> and resolve our differences through negotiation on the basis of the shared
> commitments.
> 
> One way of exploring the value system shared across academic
> communities ranging from physics to philosophy would be to assume that
> academic inquiry is a form of rational inquiry, and look for the general
> characteristics of rational inquiry in a wide spectrum of academic
> disciplines. In other words, in order to facilitate conversation and healthy
> debate across epistemic cultures (research paradigms, alternative
> discourses), it is crucial that we understand our own commitments and see
> what we have in common with others.
> 
> What follows is an initial attempt to identify these shared commitments to
> facilitate conversations across academic cultures. We may think of it as a
> manifesto of rational inquiry, the axioms of which are fairly obvious to
> any academic. I doubt very much if practicing academics would disagree
> on the desirability of these postulates in principle, but once explicitly
> formulated we can see that many research programmes do not actually
> practice what they might agree to in principle.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                    91
> 
> 2. Foundations of Rational Inquiry
> 
> Consistency and coherence
> The foundational principle of rationality is the prohibition of logical
> contradictions, explicitly formulated by Greek philosopher Aristotle. We
> cannot simultaneously believe that the earth is flat and the earth is not flat,
> or that Zeno broke the jar and Zeno didn’t break the jar. Believing in such
> contradictory statements would amount to irrationality. The prohibition
> against logical inconsistency (mutual contradiction) may be explicitly
> stated as:
> 
> A.      Logical Consistency: The totality of statements that we believe to be
> true (what we regard as knowledge) must not
> contain logical contradictions.
> 
> The prohibition of logical inconsistency is a first step towards rationality.
> If we give up (A), we cannot engage in rational argumentation, as it is the
> foundation of rational inquiry in every discipline, ranging from
> mathematics and physics to history and literary theory.
> 
> Related to logical consistency is the somewhat elusive intuition of
> coherence that is not easy to articulate explicitly except as the property of
> cohering, i.e., sticking together in a unified manner. Coherence involves
> connectedness, both conceptual and logical. Compare, for instance the list
> under (i) with that in (ii):
> 
> (i) Gravity, Force, Acceleration, Velocity, Time, Space
> (ii) Gravity, Feminism, AIDS, Calculus, Trillion, Schizophrenia
> 
> The list in (i) forms a set of conceptually connected items, while that in
> (ii) is a random set. To take another example, consider paragraph (iii) with
> that in (iv):
> 
> (iii)   All gleeps are dovineš. All dovineš have six legs. Blimpsey is a
> glump. All glumps have one leg less than a gleep.
> (iv)    All gleeps are dovineš. All gleeps have six legs. Blimpsey is a
> glunk. All glunks have one leg less than a dovine.
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> 
> The statements in (iii) are logically connected. By putting them together,
> we can deduce the consequence that Blimpsey has five legs. In contrast,
> the statements in (iv) do not form a coherent set.
> 
> We will have more to say about coherence later, but for now we can state
> an important criterion on rational knowledge as follows:
> 
> B.   Coherence:       The totality of statements that we believe to be true
> must be maximally coherent, i.e., must fit together
> in the best possible way.
> 
> While (A) makes an absolute prohibition of logical inconsistency, (B)
> calls for the maximization of coherence.
> 
> For a set of statements to be coherent, they should be free from logical
> inconsistency, but mere logical consistency is not sufficient for coherence:
> a random set of unrelated entities which have nothing to do with one
> another may still be free from logical inconsistency. Hence, even though
> coherence is a pre-requisite for consistency, the two requirements are not
> the same.
> 
> Justification
> 
> Another fundamental requirement of rational inquiry is that of
> justification, stated as C:
> 
> C.   Justification:   The statements that we believe or claim to be true
> must be justified on basis of appropriate grounds
> and/or reasoning.
> 
> In mathematics, a theorem is justified by demonstrating that it follows
> from the axioms of the theory. Thus, theorems are justified on the basis of
> pure reasoning. In physics, a theory is justified by demonstrating that it
> provides the best explanation for a range of puzzling observations. In
> ethical philosophy, a conclusion is justified by demonstrating that it
> follows from our fundamental ethical commitments. An analysis of a
> poem is justified by showing that it provides an insightful interpretation of
> the poem that fits with our response to the poem.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                   93
> 
> As in the case of (A) and (B), criterion (C) is also part of all modes of
> academic inquiry. What constitute appropriate grounds may not be
> identical in all disciplines, but the commitment to justification cuts across
> all forms of rational inquiry.
> 
> 3. Statements about the world
> 
> Fit with experience
> As stated above, knowledge claims in the formal sciences of mathematics
> and logic are justified by showing that they follow from the axioms of the
> theory. Whether the axioms are true or not is irrelevant. Depending upon
> which axioms we assume, we get different results. Likewise, ethical
> judgments are justified on the basis of the ethical axioms that we are
> committed to. Why is it morally undesirable to kill kittens? Because we
> are committed to the moral axiom that it is immoral to cause death or
> suffering to living creatures, and killing kittens is causing death. This
> justification is not valid if we do not subscribe to the prohibition against
> causing death and suffering to living creatures.
> 
> This state of affairs does not hold for disciplines like history,
> anthropology, literary criticism, psychology, geography, biology, and
> physics, where knowledge claims are justified by showing that they fit
> with our experience of the world. By “experience” we refer to a wide
> .spectrum of input ranging from sensory experience (length), non-sensory
> experience (pain), data, text, documents, sources, measurements, witness
> testimonies, and so on. Such statements include theories, frameworks,
> models, analyses/interpretations, generalizations/correlations, and singular
> statements. Some of the statements of substantive knowledge are
> statements of direct experience (e.g., My brother is taller than my sister;
> there were tears in my aunt’s eyes yesterday; there was a flash of lightning
> two hours ago, followed by a peal of thunder) while others are
> conclusions drawn from experience (e.g., Men are taller than women; my
> aunt was sad yesterday; lightning and thunder are caused by the flow of
> electricity from rain clouds).
> 
> We may state as follows a condition on statements about the world:
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> 
> D.   Fit with experience: Statements that we believe to be true of the
> world must fit with our experience of the world.
> 
> Given (D) it follows that our experience of the world forms the grounds
> for the justification of what we believe to be true about the world. We can
> therefore formulate a more specific version of the condition on
> justification in (C) to hold on statements about the world. In this version,
> (C), the appropriate grounds and reasoning are our experience of the
> world:
> 
> C \ Justification:    The statements that we believe or claim to be true
> about the world must be justified on the basis of our
> experience of the world, together with reasoning
> where necessary.
> 
> Testimonies
> What happens when we are not in a position to have direct experience?
> For instance, let us suppose an acquaintance has borrowed a large sum of
> money from me, and has repeatedly failed to return it when promised. If
> he called me and said that he came to my office and didn't find me there, I
> would not be inclined to believe him. Suppose, however, that three of my
> colleagues saw him knocking on my door, and then leaving, and told me
> so, thereby corroborating his statement. Even though I did not actually see
> him, it is now perfectly rational to subscribe to the belief that he did come
> to my office when I was away. Such a belief would be based on
> testimonies, not on direct experience.
> 
> If we are not in a position to have direct experience, the next best option is
> to accept the testimonies of those who have. We may therefore expand C’
> asC ” :
> 
> C” . Justification:   The statements that we believe or claim to be true
> about the world must be justified on the basis of our
> experience of the world, and/or testimonies of others
> on their experience, together with reasoning where
> necessary.
> 
> The commitment to C” rules out from rational knowledge beliefs based
> on dogma (It is true because X says so), conformity (It is true because
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                                 95
> 
> everyone else thinks it is true), appeal to mortal authority (It is true
> because my teacher says so), and appeal to divine authority (It is true
> because my scriptures say so). Such appeals are excluded from academic
> inquiry, though not, say, from theology and various systems of classical
> medicine.
> 
> Deductive justification
> For several centuries, in the Western tradition ranging from Plato to
> Descartes, Euclidean geometry was looked upon as a model for all human
> knowledge. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the postulates of
> mathematical systems were regarded as a priori truths about the world.
> Since the theorems are “proved” (that is, arrived at from the premises
> through valid deductive logic), if mathematical axioms are a priori truths
> about the world, it follows that mathematical theorems are also truths
> about the world. This picture of the relation between mathematics and the
> world was shattered by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries based
> on axioms different from those of Euclid. The result was the recognition
> of a fundamental difference between formal knowledge of the kind
> provided by mathematics and logic (if such and such statements are true,
> then such and such other statements are also true), and the knowledge of
> the world provided by disciplines as diverse as physics, biology,
> anthropology, history, philosophy of science, and literary criticism (such
> and such statements are true of the world).
> 
> Theorems in the formal sciences (mathematics and logic) are justified on
> the basis of pure reasoning, without the need to point to experience. In
> contrast, observational statements are justified by appealing to a direct
> match with experience.1 The justification of theoretical hypotheses in
> empirical sciences involves the appeal to both experience and reasoning.
> The centrality of evidence and reasoning articulated in (D) is what
> distinguishes rational knowledge from other forms of knowledge, such as
> mysticism, intuition, tradition, and commonsense.
> 
> Mathematics requires the most stringent form of justification, namely,
> proof or deductive justification. Thus, a conjecture in mathematics
> 
> 1 As pointed out earlier, statements about the world (e.g., sugar is sweet; everything
> attracts everything else with a force directly proportional to the product o f their masses and
> indirectly proportional to the square distance between them; mangoes are sweeter than
> lemons) are justified in terms o f our experience o f the world.
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> 
> becomes a theorem when we find a proof. In contrast, theories in natural
> sciences cannot be proved to be true: they can only be justified through
> non-deductive forms of reasoning.
> 
> Equating justification with deductive justification, philosopher Descartes
> proposed the program of deducing all knowledge from the self-evident
> axiom “I think.” in such a way that every proposition in the body of
> knowledge was beyond the least shadow of doubt. Subsequently,
> philosopher Hume pointed out that the Cartesian program was impossible,
> because generalizations based on observations are justified in terms of
> inductive, not deductive reasoning, and hence are not deductively
> justified. Scientific theories are justified in terms of speculative-deductive
> reasoning, not deductive reasoning, and hence the Cartesian program is
> impossible for science as well. Finally, extending the Cartesian thought
> experiment to the famous brain-in-the vat conundrum, Harvard
> philosopher Hilary Putnam showed that no individual can deductively
> demonstrate even the single observation that (s)he has a body, since there
> is no way of ruling out the possibility that (s)he is simply a brain in the vat
> of an alien scientist feeding various inputs to the brain to create the
> illusion that it has a body and is interacting with people.2 In sum, whether
> in terms of a single observation, a generalization based on a set of
> observations, or an explanation for a set of generalization, the Cartesian
> program of deductive justification that demands certainty without the
> shadow of doubt is impossible. Hence, it is imperative that the concept of
> justification be interpreted in a broad sense going beyond justification in
> terms of classical deductive reasoning.
> 
> Degrees o f objectivity
> Neither experience (including sensory experience) nor testimonies of
> others is guaranteed to be an error-free source of knowledge. We have all
> seen rainbows in the sky, but we also know that there is no such “thing”
> as the rainbow, that it is an illusion created by the bending of light rays
> passing through droplets of water. That we see a star at location X in the
> sky does not necessarily allow us to conclude that there is a star at
> location X in the sky: perhaps our sensory experience of the star is the
> result of light rays from a star that died a few decades ago.
> 
> 2 H. Putnam, “The brain in the vat conundrum,” Reason, Truth, and History.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                   97
> 
> Compare the following examples:
> 
> I saw a book on the table in front of me.
> There was a book on the table.
> 
> I saw a rod half immersed in water in front of me,
> bent at the point of immersion.
> There was a rod half immersed in water, bent at the
> point of immersion.
> 
> We consider the conclusion in the first example as justified. The
> conclusion in the second example, however, we treat as a mistake because
> we have evidence from other sources to believe that the sensory
> experience reported here is an illusion. In other words, experience,
> sensory or otherwise, can be misleading in the sense that it can lead us to
> incorrect observations on the world.
> 
> Because we are aware of this pitfall, we look for additional evidence to
> corroborate or correct our initial conclusions based on sensory
> experience. Let us suppose that we see a jar on a stand on the table. We
> legitimately conclude that there is a solid object (a jar) on a stand on the
> table on the basis of visual sensory experience. We now feel the jar with
> our fingers, and the tactile sensory experience corroborates our earlier
> conclusion that there is a solid object on the stand in front of us. Now,
> suppose our fingers had passed right through the jar, without meeting with
> resistance. We would then have concluded the opposite, namely, that there
> is no solid object on the stand in front of us, and that the earlier
> conclusion based on visual sensory experience was false. The new
> conclusion would have been that there is a hologram of ajar in front of us,
> not a real jar.
> 
> Let us take another example. Suppose you walk into a room, and see two
> suitcases on the floor. You try to lift them, and you find that you can lift
> suiticase A with some effort, but suitcase B is impossible to lift. You will
> conclude that suiticase B is much heavier than suitcase A. Given the
> information that you have, your conclusion, based on the sensation of
> strain on your muscles when you try to pull something, is quite justifiable.
> However, suppose you now open the two suitcases, and find that suitcase
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> 
> A is full of books while suitcase B is empty. You will doubt your earlier
> conclusion, and wonder why you were unable to lift suitcase B. On futher
> examination, you notice that suitcase B is screwed to the floor. On the
> basis of this additional information through the visual channel, you will
> now conclude that your earlier conclusion was false, and that suitcase A is
> heavier than suitcase B. The sensation of strain on your muscles need not
> always be a consequence of the weight of an object, though it is often so.
> 
> Let us go back to our earlier example of the visual sensory experience of a
> jar on a stand, which could be a real jar or a hologram. Suppose we try to
> pick up what we visually interpreted as the jar. Our fingers touch
> something solid and heavy, and we pick it up. On the basis of tactile-
> kmesthetic experience, we will conclude that our internal visual
> experience of the jar is not an illusion, but is triggered by the “objective”
> reality of a jar out there in the real world. The sense of objectivity in this
> case is the result of the eye, the skin, and the muscles pointing to the same
> conclusion. To put it differently, what the eye says is corroborated by
> what the skin and muscles say.
> 
> A characteristic that increases the credibility of a claim about the world is
> its being justified by evidence from many independent sources:
> 
> E.     Independent corroboration: A conclusion justified by the
> convergence of evidence from independent
> sources of evidence              (= independently
> corroborated by different sources of evidence) has
> greater credibility. The greater the convergence of
> evidence, the greater the credibility of a statement
> about the world.
> *
> 
> Suppose someone tells us that a close friend of ours has been speaking ill
> of us to our associates. We will probably dismiss it as a rumour. However,
> if several people tell us the same thing independently of one another, we
> will probably change our mind and begin to think that the report may have
> some truth in it. Corroboration triggers conviction.
> 
> If we hear a voice from inside a room, we are justified in believing that
> there is someone inside the room. If we now open the door and see
> someone inside the room, the belief based on our auditory experience is
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines
> 
> corroborated by our visual experience. If, on the other hand, we do not see
> anyone inside, we tend to look for recorded speech as the source of the
> auditory experience. The claim that the accused is guilty of murder,
> argued on the basis of evidence from an eyewitness (who saw the accused
> covered in blood on the night of the murder) is made more credible if
> corroborated by finger prints of the accused on the murder weapon.
> 
> Corroboration is a form of coherence, the way different statements fit
> together. Hence, we may take the requirement of increased corroboration
> as a special case of the requirement of increased coherence as applied to
> our knowledge of the world.
> 
> We may now define objectivity as independent corroboratability. Let us
> suppose that Jen Flagerty wakes up in the morning one day, and recalls
> the sense of a stranger being near her bed at night. She would probably
> dismiss it a dream, an extreme case of subjective experience. However, if
> her sister wakes up and reports the same feeling of a stranger being inside
> the room at night, Jen would conclude that her initial feeling was not so
> subjective at all, because it is corroborated by her sister’s impression. If
> she now sees that her window is forced open, and her jewelry is missing,
> the sense of objectivity would be further heightened. What started out as a
> purely subjective experience now has become objective reality.
> 
> From the purely subjective to totally objective is a continuum. We may
> say that there is nothing that we can prove to be totally objective.
> However, the greater the degree of independent corroboratability, the
> greater the degree of objectivity. Given that increased corroboration is a
> special case of the requirement of coherence, it follows that objectivity is
> a special case of coherence.
> 
> Yet another special case of independent corroboration is replicability, an
> important consideration in scientific experiments. If John Briggs sees
> flying horses at midnight every day, chances are that he and others are
> likely to treat it as an instance of hallucination. However, if several others
> independently see flying horses at midnight, i.e., if his observation is
> replicated by others, we are unlikely to attribute it to collective
> hallucination. Instead, we might think of the possibility that someone has
> invented a flying machine that looks like a horse. Replicability of
> experimental results is conventionally required in scientific inquiry:
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> 
> “I meditated for four months in the mountains, and at the end of my
> meditation, it was revealed to me that Einstein’s theory of relativity is
> false. Therefore I am justified in believing that Einstein’s theory of
> relativity is false.”
> “Last night, an angel told me in my dreams that Hitler was not
> responsible for the killing of Jews. Therefore I am justified in
> believing that Hitler was innocent.”
> 
> These forms of justification are inadmissible in a form of inquiry that
> subscribes to (C” ).
> 
> Many mystical modes explicitly reject (A)-(C” ) as not only inadequate
> but misleading.3
> 
> 4. The Rational Mindset
> 
> Uncertainty o f knowledge
> In the preceding discussion, we had many examples of mistaken
> conclusions, whether based on experience or testimonies. Now, if there is
> one characteristic that distinguishes the spirit of twentieth (and twenty
> first) century science from that of the past, it is an awareness of the
> fallibility and uncertainty of human knowledge, and the resulting need for
> systematic questioning. The human mind has a natural desire for total
> certainty, and a tendency to accept as certain what on closer examination
> reveals itself to be less than totally certain. It is important therefore to be
> constantly watchful. Let us state this recognition as follows.
> 
> F.       Fallibility and uncertainty: Human knowledge is fallible and
> uncertain.
> 
> 3 1 am not rejecting the mystical mode o f inquiry, or saying that the rational mode is
> superior to the mystical mode. Nor that it is impossible to provide a rational argument
> against the mystic’s position, or a rational argument to show that the rational mode is
> superior to the mystical mode: any rational argument presupposes a commitment to the
> value o f rationality which the mystic rejects, so we cannot rationally argue for rationality
> without the vicious cycle o f presupposing what we wish to argue for.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                   101
> 
> G.      Requirement o f questioning: Hence, statements that we believe or
> claim to be true must be subjected to systematic
> questioning.
> 
> This awareness lies at the heart of not only history and anthropology, but
> also physics and biology.
> 
> If we wish, we may refer to (F) and (G) as the “postmodern” condition,
> but it might be useful to remember that it had its origins in early twentieth
> century science, long before the postmodern discourses discovered the
> condition. As Richard Feynman puts it:
> 
> “The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and
> uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think.
> When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is
> ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain.
> And when he is pretty dam sure of what the result is going to be, he is
> still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in
> order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for
> doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying
> degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none
> absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it
> for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is
> possible to live and not know. But I don’t know if everyone realizes
> this is true. Our freedom to doubt was borne out of a struggle against
> authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and long
> struggle: permit us to question-to doubt—to not be sure. I think that it
> is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus lose what we
> have gained. Herein lies a responsibility to society.”4
> 
> Commitment to minimizing uncertainty and error
> Having pointed out the importance of uncertainty and the need for
> questioning, we should also take into consideration what Feynman says
> about degrees of uncertainty. Though our knowledge is fallible and
> uncertain, it is not completely unreliable or false either, and not all
> statements are equal with regard to the degree of certainty. Our third
> commitment, therefore, is to that of increasing the credibility of what we
> 
> Richard Feynman, “What do you care what other people think? ” p. 245.
> 102           THE SINGAPORE BAHÁ’Í STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> take as knowledge:
> 
> H.     Systematicity and rigour: We should do the best we can to increase
> the reliability of human knowledge by being as
> systematic and as rigorous as possible, minimizing
> the possibility of errors, reducing the degree of
> uncertainty and increasing accuracy.
> 
> The commitment to (H) distinguishes natural sciences from some of the
> postmodernist approaches in the humanities and the social sciences. It
> drives us to the use of precise measurements in situations where it is
> meaningful (e.g. measurement of length and weight, but not beauty and
> happiness), and the use of rigorous mathematical modelling where
> appropriate and feasible (e.g. in the physical sciences but not when
> making ethical decisions). We resort to systematic experimental strategies
> with controlled variables (e.g. in studying the movement of electrons and
> the effects of brain impairments in rats) but are satisfied with less rigorous
> means where experimentation is not feasible (e.g. the movement of
> planets and the effects of brain impairment in humans). The degree of
> rigour and systematicity in rational inquiry varies across domains, but
> what is important is the commitment to maximize rigour and systematicity
> wherever possible and useful.
> 
> Collective verification and authentication
> Human beings have the natural tendency to conform to the beliefs of their
> community. Given this tendency, it is not surprising to find that there is
> considerable overlap between the private knowledge of an individual and
> the public knowledge of the community. However, there are three
> important ways in which the two can be different, namely:
> 
> Some of the statements of a given individual’s knowledge may be
> irrelevant for the purposes of public knowledge, (e.g. I happen to
> know that there was a red car parked near the library at 11 am on
> 22 February 1999, but this piece of information has no relevance
> for public knowledge.)
> Some of the statements of a given individual’s private knowledge
> may not have entered public knowledge, (e.g. I have discovered
> something interesting about the Malayalam syntax, but I have not
> written a paper about it and hence no one else knows about it.)
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                    103
> 
> An individual may disagree with the other members of the
> community, and hold views that are not in conformity with the
> community, (e.g. I happen to believe that the currently dominant
> theory of Optimality Theory is mistaken in using ranking as the
> formal device for conflict resolution, but I have not managed to
> convince my research community yet.)
> 
> Given the distinction between private knowledge and public knowledge,
> rational inquiry makes a set of demands on the statements that enter the
> realm of public knowledge from the realm of private knowledge. Recall
> that the justification of statements about the world involve appeal to
> experience. In the formation of public knowledge, we demand that
> experiential statements be collectively verifiable:
> 
> I.     Collective verifiability o f experience: The statements of experience
> that we appeal to in our justification must be open
> to independent verification. That is to say,
> experiential statements must be such that when
> exposed to the same trigger or situation, different
> individuals in the community must not disagree on
> whether the statement is true or false for that
> trigger or situation.
> 
> This commitment rules out beliefs based on hallucinations and dreams
> (non-replicable sensory perceptions), personal tastes (e.g. garlic tastes
> foul) and mystical revelations (e.g. I know it is true because an angel
> revealed it to me yesterday), but allows interpersonally corroborated
> experience (e.g. we are justified in believing that boiling water falling on
> our body causes physical pain, and the loss of a loved one causes grief).
> 
> A similar condition on independent authentication applies to reasoning as
> well:
> 
> J.     Collective authentication o f reasoning: The reasoning that we
> appeal to in our justification must be open to
> independent authentication. That is to say, given a
> chain of reasoning, different individuals in the
> community must not disagree on whether it is
> legitimate or not.
> 104          THE SINGAPORE BAHA’I STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> This commitment requires that the members of the community have an
> explicit or implicit agreement on the rules of inference that connect the
> premises to the conclusions, and the ground rules on the basis of which
> we decide whether a statement is true or false. The reasoning in
> mathematical proofs, for instance, is restricted to deductive reasoning,
> while the reasoning in empirical generalizations is inductive. The use of
> these modes of reasoning is agreed upon in the respective communities.
> 
> 5. Scientific Inquiry
> 
> The general principles of rationality stated above are common to all forms
> of academic inquiry, ranging from philosophy and history to physics and
> mathematics. In addition to the principles listed above, one may
> acknowledge (L)-(N) as the central characteristics of theoretical research
> in the natural sciences, extendable in principle to other domains as well:
> 
> K.     Sensory perception: What our sense organs tell us about the world
> is credible. Statements about the world must be
> justified in terms of replicable sensory experience.
> L.     Explanation: Observations         must     be    accompanied     by
> explanations of what we find puzzling in the
> observations.
> M.     Motivation:     Constructs in knowledge propositions must be
> motivated i.e., shown to be useful for some
> purpose, where purpose = description, explanation,
> action, etc.). Theoretical constructs (i.e.,
> classificatory or hypothetical constructs that are
> postulated in explanations) must be motivated by
> their usefulness in providing explanations.
> 
> The axiom in (K) is a special form of the axiom of the credibility of our
> experience, which forms one of the two parts of (C” ).
> 
> In addition, scientific inquiry demands (N) and (O) of its theories:
> 
> N.     Correct predictions: Scientific theories must correctly predict the
> observations.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                     105
> 
> O.     Generality and simplicity: Scientific theories must be as simple
> and general as possible.
> 
> We may think of the requirement of correct predictions (N) as a special
> case of the requirement of fit with experience (D). Though inquiry in
> humanities (e.g. history, literary theory) is subject to experience based
> justification (C” ) and fit with experience (D), they are not subject to the
> specialized conditions in (N)-(O).
> 
> 6. Conflict resolution
> 
> What happens when inferences from axioms (A)-(O) result in conflicts
> with one another? Take the axiom of the credibility of the sense organs.
> Under normal circumstances, if we see a vase on a table in front of us, we
> take it as true that there is a vase on the table, trusting the credibility of
> what our eyes tell us. However, if we try to pick up the vase and our
> hands pass through the vase, we conclude that the vase is an optical
> illusion (a hologram), and there is no vase in front of us. Potentially, the
> inferences that there is a vase and there is no vase in front of us violate the
> condition on logical consistency, and hence at least one of the inferences
> should be ruled out. In this particular case, we assign lower priority to our
> eyes, and conclude that what our hands tell us is more credible.
> 
> Rationality demands that we assign highest priority to the prohibition of
> logical contradictions, which itself is an axiomatic commitment.
> 
> P.     Priority o f consistency: Given a conflict between experience
> (including (K)) on the one hand, and the
> prohibition of logical contradictions on the other,
> the latter has priority.
> 
> Given (K), it follows that we would trust what our eyes and hands tell us,
> and conclude that there both is a vase and isn’t a vase in front of us.
> However, given (P), such a conclusion is illegitimate. Given the conflict
> between (K) and (P), the winner is (P). Hence we conclude that at least
> one of the senses is not telling us the truth. Had we assigned higher
> priority to (K) instead, we would have chosen to believe that there is a
> 106              THE SINGAPORE BAHÁT STUDIES REVIEW
> 
> vase in front of us and that there is no vase in front of us, violating the
> prohibition of inconsistency.
> 
> To illustrate further the centrality of (P) in rationality, consider the
> following axiomatic commitment in certain forms of theological inquiry.
> 
> Q.      Credibility o f the scriptures: What the scriptures tell us is credible.
> 
> As stated earlier, commitment to (Q) is excluded in academic disciplines,
> and even forms of metaphysics, but it is found in many forms of
> theological inquiry. What happens when scriptures contain logical
> contradictions? Rationality demands that we take logical consistency to
> have priority over (Q), and reject at least one of the two contradictory
> propositions in the strictures. Alternatively, we may step outside the
> bounds of rationality, and, assigning highest priority to (Q), embrace the
> logical contradiction in the scriptures as truth.5 If so, (Q) can be replaced
> by the stronger version in (R):
> 
> R.      Infallibility o f the scriptures: What the scriptures tell us is
> infallible.
> 
> Having acknowledged the axiomatic commitment to (Q) as being
> consistent with rationality (but not in academic disciplines) as long as the
> prohibition of logical consistency is prior to (Q), we can now see how
> science and fundamentalist theology diverge in their approach to
> knowledge. What happens when there is a conflict between (A) to (P) on
> the one hand, and (Q) on the other? A clear example is the conflict
> between Evolutionary Theory in biology and the Creationist Theory based
> on the literal interpretation of the Bible. If we take (R) to have priority
> over the combination of (A) to (O), the prohibition of logical
> contradictions demands that we reject the evolutionary theory. If, on the
> other hand, we take (A) to (P) to have priority over (R), we have to reject
> the creationist account. Are they both forms of rationality? Yes. Are they
> both forms of academic rationality? No: academic inquiry demands that
> we either reject (R) or at least take (A) to (Q) to have priority over (R).
> 
> 5 As pointed out earlier, the position that rationality is limited and that we need to accept
> logical contradictions to understand reality is found in certain forms o f mysticism as well.
> Rationality in Academic Disciplines                     107
> 
> Our final example comes from a widely used axiom in everyday life:
> 
> S.     Credibility o f the knowledgeable: What credible people tell us is
> credible.
> 
> As in the case of (R), appeal to the credibility of people is inadmissible in
> academic argumentation, but is commonly used in argumentation in the
> law court in accepting conclusions and informed opinions of specialists as
> reliable evidence. Notice that there is a conflict between (S) on the one
> hand, and the combination of (A) to (Q) on the other. The demands of (A)
> to (Q) require us to check the evidence and argumentation on our own
> before accepting a knowledge claim, but when we have no direct access to
> the relevant evidence, or when the evidence is too specialized for us to
> process, we relax (A)-(Q) and go by (S) in every day life. However, when
> the results of (A) to (Q) conflict with those of (S), we go by the former.
> 
> W O RK S C ITED
> 
> Feynman, Richard, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?":
> Further Adventures o f a Curious Character, Bantam Books, 1988.
> 
> Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development o f a Scientific Fact, The
> University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979. Originally published in
> German, Benno Schwabe Co., Basel, 1935.
> 
> Khun, S. Thomas, The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions, The
> University of Chicago press, Chicago, 1962.
> 
> Putnam, H., “The brain in the vat conundrum,” Reason, Truth, and
> History, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
>
> — *Rationality in Academic Disciplines (Used by permission of the curator)*