Beyond the “Education of
Reason”: Rationality in
Context
Sandra Jovchelovitch
London School of Economics
A Taxonomy of the Animal
Kingdom
 (a) those that belong to the Emperor; (b)
embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d)
suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones;
(g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this
classification; (i) those that tremble as if they
were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn
with a very fine camel’s hair brush; (l) others; (m)
those that have just broken a flower vase; (n)
those that resemble flies from a distance.
DSM IV, APA, 1994
 (1) Delirium, Dementia, and Amnesic and Other
Cognitive Disorders; (2) Mental Disorders Due to a
General Medical Condition; (3) Substance-Related
Disorders; (4) Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic
Disorders; (5) Mood Disorders; (6) Anxiety Disorders; (7)
Somatoform disorders; (8) Factitious Disorders; (9)
Dissociative Disorders; (10) Sexual and Gender Identity
Disorders; (11) Eating Disorders; (12) Sleep Disorders;
(13) Impulse-Control Disorders Not Elsewhere
Classified; (14) Adjustment Disorder; (15) Personality
Disorders; (16) Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in
Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence; (17) Other Factors
That May Need Clinical Attention.
The Child’s Conception of the
World (Piaget, 1929)
 Roy (6;0) ‘How did the sun begin? – It was when
life began – Has there always been a sun? – No
– How did it begin? – Because it knew that life
had begun. – What is it made of? - Of fire. – But
how? – Because there was fire up there. –
Where did the fire come from? – From the sky. –
How was the fire made in the sky? – It was
lighted with a match. – Where did it come from,
this match? - God threw it away.’ After a
moment’s pause: ‘What is life?- It is when one is
alive. – What made life begin? – We did, when
we started living.”
Reason and Society
Different societies give
you
different
rationalities
 Piaget’s Sociological
Studies
 Vygotsky and Lurias’
Ape, Primitive Man
and Child; Cultural
Expedition to Central
Russia
The claims of culture
 “Not all action of society on the individual
is the source of reason” (Piaget, 1967)
 “…to record those changes which develop
as a result of the introduction of higher and
more complex forms of economic life and
the raising of the general cultural level.”
(Luria, in Science,1931: 383)
Vygotsky and Luria, 1993
Evolutionary: use of tools by
anthropoid apes
Cultural: the thinking of
primitive men
Ontogenetic: the development of
the child
Educating Reason
 What makes rational knowledge? Logos
without ethos and pathos
 How do we educate reason? (dismissal of
ethos and pathos)
 How do societies shape rationality?
 Who is rational and who isn’t?
Reason and Life
Cognition
Emotions
Rationality
Interaction
Logic
Culture
Struggle or Religious Symbolism?
Urban frontiers in Brazil
Mexico: Religion or Bio-Medical
discourse?
Polyphasia in identity and
representations
 W: I think for me, keeping my Chinese name has almost been a
sense of keeping my identity and I feel that well, if I'm going to take
the trouble to know, to learn your name and your name may be, well,
it may be for example Sarah and really easy to remember, or it might
be an Italian name or something else which I'm equally unfamiliar
with and if I'm going to make the effort to learn your name, why can't
you learn mine. And I'm also a Christian and lots of people ask me, if
you are a Christian, why don't you have a Christian name? And I
think that's completely confusing the issue because being
Christian doesn't mean you lose your Chinese identity. Which
means I can be both Christian and keep my name at the same
time. And still they are not mutually exclusive and there's no
reason why I can't be one and totally the other at the same time.
(FG, young, female)
Cognitive Polyphasia
 different modalities of representation in the minds of
individuals and in the thinking of communities.
 human communities construct a wide, plastic and flexible
reservoir of representations, that can be used to fulfil
different function in different contexts.
 evolved socio-cognitive capacity
 the diversity and co-existence of representations is a
major cognitive asset of humans.
Expanding our view of reason
 Co-existence rather than displacement
(cognitive polyphasia)
 Communication:
expanding
the
potentials
for
dialogue
between
knowledges
 Integrating insights from research,
practice and policy