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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 459 vertical consistency all the way up. However, no single experience, or series of experiences, can ultimately satisfy our appetite for conceptual completeness, because the scope of the higher-level concepts we invoke to explain them necessarily outstrips the limited number of those experiences themselves. There will always be a lack of fit between our innate rational capacity and the empirical theories it generates, because they will always appear limited in scope in a way our innate capacity for explanation itself does not. So no matter how much sensory data we accumulate in support of our empirical theories of ourselves or the world, we are so constructed intellectually as to be disposed to feel somewhat dissatisfied, inquisitive, restless about whether there might not be more to explain, and to search further for whatever our search turns up.9 But this means that we are disposed reflexively to regard anomalous data as more than mere threats to the integrity of our conceptions of the world and ourselves, for the disposition to inquire further and to seek a more inclusive explanation of experience remains, even when literal self-preservation has been achieved. We also are disposed to regard those data as irresistible cognitive challenges to the scope of our conceptions, and as provocations to reformulate them so as to increase their explanatory reach. Because, according to Kant, we are always seeking the final data needed to complete the series of experiences our conceptions are formulated conclusively to explain, it could even be said that we are disposed actively to welcome anomalies, as tests of the adequacy of the conceptions we have already formulated. When applied specifically to the transcendent idea of personhood, this disposition to welcome theoretical anomaly as a means of extending our understanding amounts to a sort of xenophilia, a positive valuation of human difference as intrinsically interesting and therefore worthy of regard, and a disvaluation of conformity to one's honorific stereotypes as intrinsically uninteresting. It dismantles the assumption that there is any cause for selfcongratulation or self-esteem in conforming to any stereotype at all, and represents anomalous others as opportunities for psychological growth rather than mere threats to psychological integrity. It implies an attitude of inquiry and curiosity rather than fear or suspicion, of receptivity rather than This idea of theoretical rationality and theory-building as an innate disposition is given some support by Robin Horton's cross-cultural work. See his "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," in Rationality, Ed. Bryan Wilson (Evanston, Ill.: Harper and Row, 1970), 131-171. As I understand Horton's conclusions, the main difference between Western scientific theories and the cosmologies of traditional societies is that the latter lack the concept of modality, i.e. recognition of the conceptual possibility that the favored and deeply entrenched explanation may not be the right one or the best one. They therefore lack the attitude of epistemic uncertainty that leads in the West to the joint problems of scepticism and solipsism. To this extent the stance of intellectual dissatisfaction I am attributing to Kant's epistemology may be culturally specific. 9 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
