Robert writes: > I would track back the idea that there are > separate rationalities ['western' and (to me > mysterious) 'others'] primarily to a paper > written for UNESCO by Levi Strauss about 1952.
Robert, Let me help you a bit so that we can "mobilize" some others to say what they think/know about this. When I talk about "western rationality", I have some "western" microeconomics books, like the one by Hall Varian, some "western" game theory books, like the one by Fundenberg and Tirole, etc, in mind. It seems that in all of such books, there is the assumption that human beings are rational. But, when I read these books, which are quite mathematical, I come to the conclusion that from chapter to chapter their definition of rationality changes. So I find this concept of rationality quite mysterious, although, like you, I find this concept of "others" quite mysterious as well. As a friend, who is a subscriber of this list, and hence, who can identify himself if he reads this post and then so chooses, said: > Debates about human nature are unproductive > since we have no conclusive proof about what > constitutes human nature. It is my view that "human nature" is a historically and geographically varying probability distribution. So any attempt to define it is no better an attempt than throwing a dart to a dart board at a given time and then claiming that whatever the properties of that point on the board, those are the properties of the entire dart board for all times. However, it is possible to talk about the mean, variance and higher moments of this distribution at any given time and at certain times, such as ours, their geographical variation can be slow. But when I say "western rationality", I have a very specific "thing" in mind. It is the "rationality" our neoclassical economists talk about, not the "western rationality" of Weber, Wallerstein and the like, about which I know very little. I don't know what this "rationality" is and have doubts that our economist friends can come up with a universally accepted definition of it but most likely it is something related to this "thing" called Nash equilibrium. Let us see if this bait will catch any fish. Best, Sabri
