Rationality and narrative: A relationship of priority

Abstract

While it has been shown that narrative cannot be clearly demonstrated to be ontologically prior to rationality, that rationality qua capacity cannot be shown to arise from narrative, modes of reasoning that manifest rationality can be constrained by an agent's narrative. Luria's research of oral peoples in Uzbekistan shows that individuals who had access to only oral narrative were limited to operational modes of reasoning. Without writing, such individuals were unable to achieve the level of abstraction that makes deduction possible. As such, oral peoples do not seem to utilize the higher order modes of reasoning. It is not that their rationality is defective, it means only that the tools they have for manifesting that rationality are limited by the modes of reasoning that can be utilized in a purely oral culture. Their set of available modes of reasoning is lacking, not their rationality itself. In the case of Plato's dialogues, the audience's rationality, whether that audience is idealized by Plato or actual, is rooted in the narrative field. Alan Gross notes: No one today would find Ptolemy's argument compelling, since no one today would presuppose the Aristotelian physics that Ptolemy presupposes. But the fact that this passage is riddled with errors does not affect the fact that Ptolemy was addressing a universal audience with what he thought were compelling arguments, arguments so compelling that he believed that those who would disagree with him had a burden of proof so heavy that it was "ridiculous" to try to discharge it. (1999, 208) Rationality seems to transcend the particular narrative construct, and therefore one might claim that rationality is prior to narrative. However, it is the narrative that provides the field in which symbolic meaning rises. Rationality is working in the shifting gestalt, but does not precede it. There are essential aspects of reasoning that cannot be captured independently of the context in which they are conceived and presented. In short, an adequate account of the argumentative mode of reasoning cannot be constructed without reference to narrative. Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University.