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they are attacking our present notion of rationality from within, and
this is what the reader feels and is troubled by ." We in the West seem
caught in the web of rationality , for the only way we can criticize
human reason is by claiming that it is "irrational."
Up to this point, Putnam's criticism of foundationalism seems
to converge with Goodman's, and in fact he does admit his debt to
the author of
Ways of Worldmaking
in the preface of this volume. Dif–
ferences in temperament and attitude, however, eventually win out.
Goodman , after dismissing foundationalism, goes on to defend what
can be described only as an "aesthetics of knowledge," while Putnam
seems intent on preserving a more rigid sense of scientific rationality
as real knowledge.
If
we cannot hope to have a firmly grounded real–
ism that explains everything for all time , Putnam at least wants to
salvage "realism for us ."
This "internal" realism can make no claims to absolute truth,
but it can claim to be rational- again , by our present lights - and
what is truth but "an idealization of rational acceptability"? Even if
we have given up the search for truth with secure foundations, it is
clear from the criticisms of antifoundationalists that we can still
operate with some sense of what it means to be rational; and if ra–
tionality itself is not firmly grounded, it is still a value worth de–
fending . The important question to answer is not "is it possible to be
rational?" - we would not be asking if we thought not - but "why is it
good to be rational?"
Putnam retraces the development of logical empiricism and
logical" positivism in this light, trying to understand how each move–
ment believed rationality to be some "thing" which would eventually
be "formalized," thus making philosophy scientific. In language and
logic, twentieth-century philosophers thought they had found
the
ra–
tional foundation, and as that dogma has slowly lost its grip on the
minds of those in academia, both foundational ism
and
rationality
were rejected. Putnam wishes to make a more limited case for ra–
tionality as a value.
If rationality is not a free-floating enterprise, or merely a qual–
ity, then it must be part of something ongoing, something connected
up with our sense of what is valuable. Rationality must be made
"relevant ," and that only happens within a certain shared way oflife :
Using any word ... involves one in a history, a tradition , and of
adapting it to new contexts, extending and criticizing it. One can
interpret traditions variously , but one cannot apply a word at all
