Silencing the Voice of Reason
Feyerabend's warning to those who would lay an exclusive claim to the power of rationality
“Just as a well-trained pet will obey his master no matter how great the confusion in which he finds himself, and no matter how urgent the need to adopt new patterns of behaviour, so in the very same way a well-trained rationalist will obey the mental image of his master, he will conform to the standards of argumentation he has learned, he will adhere to these standards no matter how great the confusion in which he finds himself, and he will be quite incapable of realizing that what he regards as the ‘voice of reason’ is but a causal after-effect of the training he had received. He will be quite unable to discover that the appeal to reason to which he succumbs so readily is nothing but a political manoeuvre.”
- Paul Feyerabend, Against Method
My first encounter with Paul Feyerabend (pronounced ‘fire-a-bend’) was an anecdote about a conference to be held in his honour. Feyerabend was one of a very small number of major philosophers of science in the twentieth century. Wittgenstein died before he could take on Feyerabend as a student, and he eventually apprenticed under Karl Popper. Yet when calls went out to recruit attendees for a conference about his work, almost everyone invited (so the story goes) vehemently declined, some with the most shocked attitudes about the very idea of hosting such an event!
Dramatically denounced in Scientific American under the headline “The Worst Enemy of Science”, Against Method was Feyerabend’s magnum opus. It was originally intended as a dialogue between Feyerabend and his rationalist friend, Imre Lakatos, to be entitled For and Against Method. After Lakatos’ untimely death, Feyerabend completed his half of the argument alone, and dedicated the book to his friend. It was to prove as popular with the counter-culture as it was excoriated by the establishment - and small wonder! For if there is a central idea in Feyerabend’s philosophy it is that there is no tradition, no culture, no way of life that does not offer at least some possibility of learning something new.
The quote above showcases Feyerabend at his most bombastic. He delighted in shocking people, and perhaps never more so than by embracing an ‘anarchy of knowledge’ based around the remarkable suggestion that there were no rules to scientific practice without exception. He argued that any attempt to impose a single methodological approach for legitimate science could only hinder the development of human knowledge by placing unreasonable restrictions upon it. Like Thomas Kuhn, he came at these problems from a historical perspective - but whereas Kuhn tried to play down the apparent ‘irrationality’ of his work, Feyerabend took great pleasure in making reason his whipping boy.
The point of the comparison above regarding “a well-trained pet” is to emphasise that rationality instils habits upon those who wish to wield reason as a tool (or indeed, as a weapon). As with anything habitual, rationality is always learned through repeat exposure to specific practices. As such, every form of reason is a tradition. Yet while those who practice a religious tradition cannot avoid admitting this, those who wish to evoke the ‘voice of reason’ are in denial that they are operating within a tradition at all.
Feyerabend’s barb about ‘domesticated reason’ warns that our rational habits will persist no matter the extent of our confusion. This is cognitive dissonance, as it applies to scientists… Such heresy! Yet it is undeniable, and we have witnessed first hand exactly this situation: the relentless political attempts to claim the ‘voice of reason’ that were merely attempts to seize authority without all that messy business of scientific discourse or political debate. ‘Shut up and listen to the experts’ becomes increasingly farcical when those claiming this all-powerful voice are clearly in a state of utter bewilderment.
What lends the ‘voice of reason’ its power are the taught habits of rational traditions. If we wish to give knowledge every hope of prospering, we must admit that we inevitably approach each and every discussion already within a tradition, one that we may have to bend, break, fold, spindle, or mutilate if we wish to get to the heart of our investigation. This is Feyerabend’s challenge to those practising the sciences: to silence the voice that insists upon your own superior rationality. It is a demand quite akin to that carved over the entrance to the Delphic oracle: know thyself.
For Babette
AGREE #SVRagr_1: Rationality Habits
“rationality instills habits upon those who wish to wield reason”
COMMENT
It’s not just rationality that’s a habit. Don’t we begin to form our habits of mind when we take our first breath? Don’t we continue to add to, and strengthen these habits every hour we are conscious? These habits form the girders of our private reality. To most of us our own reality changes little after the age of 25. A few of us realize this, and make an effort not to be trapped in the mental cages in which life has ensnared us. These efforts are also but bars on our mental cage.
Thanks for a stimulating post.
Might be of interest:
A Brief Chronology of Feyerabend’s Life and Work https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/
Section 5. Feyerabend’s Later Work: Towards Relativism, but then Beyond It
5.1 Against Method (1970–75)
Section 6. Conclusion: Last Things
Feyerabend’s autobiography occupied him right up until his death on February 11th, 1994, at the Genolier Clinic, overlooking Lake Geneva. At the end of the book, he expressed the wish that what should remain of him would be “not papers, not final declarations, but love” (p. 181).
His autobiography was published in 1995, a third volume of his Philosophical Papers appeared in 1999, and his last book The Conquest of Abundance, edited by Bert Terpstra, appeared in the same year. A volume of his papers on the philosophy of quantum mechanics is currently being prepared, under the editorship of Stefano Gattei and Joseph Agassi.
Although the focus of philosophy of science has moved away from interest in scientific methodology in recent years, this is not due in any great measure to acceptance of Feyerabend’s anti-methodological argument. His critique of science (which gave him the reputation for being an “anti-science philosopher”, “the worst enemy of science”, etc.) is patchy. Some of its flaws stem directly from his scientific realism. It sets up a straight confrontation between science and other belief-systems as if they are all aiming to do the same thing (give us “knowledge of the world”) and must be compared for how well they deliver the goods. A better approach would be, in Gilbert Ryle’s words, “to draw uncompromising contrasts” between the businesses of science and those of other belief-systems. Such an approach fits far better with the theme Feyerabend approached later in his life: that of the disunity of science.