The Failure of Common Sense

Abstract

We have seen that the villagers’ explanations were (loosely) rational. Does this loose rationality indicate that their decisions were constructed in a rational manner? In carrying out the decision study, I collected data in the form of villagers’ explanations of their own and others’ choices. I attended to the data as indications of a pattern of intentions and motives. This is not merely a social-scientific strategy, but the normal orientation of ordinary citizens in their everyday interaction. But of course, the data were not facts of decision making; they were merely talk about decision making. My growing appreciation of this point led to the analysis presented in the previous chapter. I noticed that the propriety and the intelligibility of explanation were intimately associated with its rationality. Without this feature, which I had originally taken to be descriptive of the villagers’ decision-making processes, their talk could not be understood as successful explanation. That is, it appeared that this feature was required by the communication process itself, and therefore, its presence called for understanding by reference to the nature of that process rather than to the nature of the object or the process that was the topic of the message. More specifically, if some aspect of an explanation of behavior is a necessary feature of any successful explanation, then that aspect reveals something about explanation, but it does not (in the absence of further grounds for acceptance) imply anything about how the behavior was actually constructed. The study of these required features constitutes the investigation of the conditions of communication.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Reason panders will.

Shakespeare, Hamlet