1. AULA PPE 2011.1 A

2. RACIONALIDADE
MONOLÓGICA CARTESIANA
AS ORIGENS DA RACIONALIDADE
QUE SUBJAZ AO PLANEJAMENTO
TÉCNICO

3. PROMETHEUS PERPLEXED
 GELLNER, ERNEST, “Prometheus
Perplexed” ” in JARVIE, Ian & LAOR,
N. (eds.), Critical Rationalism, the Social
Sciences and the Humanities.
Essays/or Joseph Agassi, Vol. II, 3-18.
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers

4. CARTESIAN RATIONALISM
AND AUTONOMY
 “One of the central theme, perhaps indeed
the central obsession, of Cartesian
rationalism is the aspiration for autonomy
[…]. [GELLNER,1999:3]

5. CARTESIAN
RATIONALISM
“Man makes himself, and he does
so rationally.
[GELLNER,1999:3]

6. CARTESIAN RATIONALISM
 Cultural accumulation is irrational: it is a
blind process […]
 [GELLNER,1999:3]

7. CARTESIAN RATIONALISM
 What you have not made and tested
yourself, you cannot trust.
[GELLNER,1999:3]

8. CARTESIAN RATIONALISM
 The unexamined inheritance of mere
custom and example, of the jetsam of
history, of the bank of custom of a culture,
can never satisfy the stringent rationalist
criteria.. [GELLNER,1999:3]

9. CARTESIAN RATIONALISM
 Autonomy requires reason, and reason
requires autonomy. [GELLNER,1999:3]

10. PROMETHEAN ASPIRATION
AND THE COSMIC EXILE

11. PROMETHEAN ASPIRATION AS AN
COSMIC EXILE
 “To what extent can this Promethean
aspiration to autarchy and self-creation be
satisfied ? The answer is simple. It cannot.
[GELLNER, 1999:5]

12. PROMETHEAN ASPIRATION AS AN
EXILE COSMIC
 !We cannot, as Descartes in effect planned and
desired, excogitate ourselves ex nihilo. We
cannot think up, from the recesses of our private
consciousness, both the criteria and the tools
required for the erection of a new conceptual
and cognitive edifice, destined no longer to be a
beholden to any prior history. [GELLNER,
1999:5]

13. COSMIC EXILE vs.
PROVIDENTIALISTS
 Such an aspiration towards such a “cosmic
exile” is pervasive in the history of modern
Western thought. [GELLNER,1999:3]
[GELLNER, 1999:5]

14. COSMIC EXILE
the mith of a new king of culture
 The Cosmic Exile the opting out of culture,
is impracticable. But it constitutes the
noble and wholly appropriate charter or
myth of a new kind of culture, a new
system of a distinctively Cartesian kind of
Custom and Example. Custom was not
transcended: but a new kind of custom
altogether was initiated. [GELLNER,
1999:5]

15. COSMIC EXILE
initiated and made possible na age
totally unprecendent
 “The separation of referential cognition from
other activities, the systematic submission of
cognitive claim to a severely extra-social
centralized court of appeal, (under the slogan of
“clear and distinct ideas,’ or of “experience”) and
the establishment of a single currency of
reference, had burst open the limits of
knowledge. It initiated and made possible an
age of totally unprecedent, fabulous cognitive and
economic growth. Through its associated
technology, it brought the Malthusian age to an
end. Henceforth resources would, and generally
did, grow faster than population. [GELLNER,
1999:5]

16. COSMIC EXILE
initiated and made possible na age
totally unprecendent
 Through its associated technology, it
brought the Malthusian age to an
end. Henceforth resources would,
and generally did, grow faster than
population. [GELLNER, 1999:5]

17. DESCARTES
 Descartes was wrong in supposing that he could
liberate himself from culture, from custom and
example. The truth of the matter is that what
was emerging was a radically different new kind
of culture, a new custom which he helped
codify. But it was not simply one further
culture amongst others. It was new king,
and was built on wholly new principles.
All the same , it was a culture, rather than
a transcendence of all culture, as
Descartes had supposed. [GELLNER,
1999:6]

18. DESCARTES
A new king of society had engendered a
new species of compulsion
 It had its own and distinctive compulsions,
and they too had their social roots, as
Weber taught. A new king of society had
engendered a new species of compulsion,
and it was in turn sustained by them [...]
under the guise of an account of the
human mind a such, they give us a
portrait, from the inside, of the unique
new kind of Custom and Example.
[GELLNER, 1999:6]

19. DESCARTES
The practice of scrutiny-by-doubt as an means of
conceptual purification
 The practice of scrutiny-by-doubt, which Descartes
proposed as a means of conceptual purification, is in fact
an excellent customs procedure for vetting what could,
and what could not be granted an entry point into the
new culture […][GELLNER, 1999:6]
 The logical compulsion which owes nothing to culture,
and which can consequently give us a vision of nature
valid for all cultures and rooted in none, are in the end
quite simple: the givenness of data, (present in
Descartes´ thought as the immediate availability of the
thinking substance to itself), plus the simple logical
principle that no generalisation incompatible with data
may be accepted. [GELLNER, 1999:6/7]

20. DESCARTES
a vision of nature valid for all cultures and rooted in none
 The logical compulsion which owes nothing to
culture, and which can consequently give us a
vision of nature valid for all cultures and rooted
in none, are in the end quite simple: the
givenness of data, (present in Descartes´
thought as the immediate availability of the
thinking substance to itself), plus the simple
logical principle that no generalisation
incompatible with data may be accepted.
[GELLNER, 1999:6/7]

21. DESCARTES
The Crusoe Style of Cognition
 “So the heroic erection of an entire world
by a single individual, the Crusoe style of
cognition, the use of naught but his own
and self-tested and self-produced
resources, is indeed impossible.
[GELLNER, 1999:7]

22. CRUSOE/DESCARTES
new man vs. new world
 “How did we build this new world ? It was built
up by new men imbued by the Crusoe/Descartes
spirit. Robinson Crusoe was a man who carried
the essential part of his culture in himself and
could re-erect it on the island on his own. He
needs no complementary fellow-specialists,
whose zone of competence he is ritually or
legally barred from entering. In other words, all
the specialism of his culture employ the same
idiom, which he has mastered, and they are
open to him. [GELLNER, 1999:7]

23. DESCARTES
new king of culture, a new king of
epistemic constitution
 “But the almost-as-heroic establishment of
a new king of culture, endowed with a
new king of epistemic constitution, was
possible, and it did take place. We were
bound to fail, but we were also bound to
try; and the effort bore magnificent fruit,
even if it was not all that the founder
Rationalist had proposed.. [GELLNER,
1999:7]

24. DESCARTES
The abortive effort defined a new
civilization
[GELLNER, 1999:7]

25. DESCARTES/CRUSOE
A RADICALLY NEW SOCIAL
ORDER

26. A RADICALLY NEW SOCIAL ORDER
 “But to say this is not to reduce the
philosophical content of individualist
rationalism to its social role. GELLNER,
1999:7]


27. DESCARTES
the manner in which the new social
order works
 This is not a sociologically reductionist
position. The philosophical content
genuinely illuminates the manner in which
the new social order works: it really is
individualist, and it is based on genuine
and cumulative knowledge. [GELLNER,
1999:7]


28. DESCARTES AND THE
RATIONALISTS CONTRADICTION
 “ […] the wants to produce knowledge
from his own resources, and he also wants
it to refer to something objective.
[GELLNER, 1999:8]

29. RATONALISM
cognitive self-made man vs.pursuit
of transcendence
 “A conspicuous feature of Rationalism was
its aspiration for cognitive self-reaction:
the rationalist desires to be a totally self-
made-man […]. […] The second closely
related and equally important, trait is the
pursuit of transcendence. [GELLNER,
1999:8]


30. RATONALISM
cognitive self-made man vs.pursuit
of transcendence
 Rationalism unquestionably conceives
knowledge as the attainment of something
external and independent: it must not be
merely something which is, so to speak,
internally spawned by the organism. This
would seem to constitute a contradiction:
the rationalist wants to produce
knowledge from his own resources, and
he also wants it to refer to something
objective. But it is not. [GELLNER,

31. AUTONOMY VS. TRANSCEDENCE
 “[…] So there is a kind of paradox: the
citizen of a rational order claims autonomy
precisely because the contents of his
knowledge, the cognitive claims he makes,
are totally independent of him. He did
not make it up: he found it. You might
have expected the opposite. You might
have expected the autonomous agent to
create this object. Not so. But the paradox
is only apparent. [GELLNER, 1999:8]

32. AUTONOMY VS. TRANSCEDENCE
a kind of paradox
 “[…] So there is a kind of paradox: the
citizen of a rational order claims autonomy
precisely because the contents of his
knowledge, the cognitive claims he makes,
are totally independent of him. He did
not make it up: he found it. You might
have expected the opposite. You might
have expected the autonomous agent to
create this object. Not so. But the paradox
is only apparent. [GELLNER, 1999:8]

33. CARTESIAN/EMPRICIST METHOD
 “They observe the rules of what may be called
Cartesian/empiricist method: separation of all
questions and issues and, second, the subjection
of all claims to tests of all questions and issues
and, second, the subjection of all claims to tests
not under their own control. This, in
conjunction with the strong implusion to
generality and order, seems to have engendered
a form of knowledge of astonishing power, and
one not linked to any cultural system.
[GELLNER, 1999, 8/9]

34. CARTESIAN/EMPIRICIST METHOD
 It appears that if the world is to be knowable at
all, it will yield to this strategy alone. That it is
knowable at all, that it does surrender its secrets
to such a strategy, if to no other, is a miracle.
The question concerning why it should be such
a world cannot be answered by the deployment
of that strategy itself. As there is no other
method, it must remain a secret for us.
[GELLNER, 1999, 8/9]

35. KARL MARX,
HOLY GHOST AND
PROVIDENTIALISM

36. COSMIC EXILE vs.
PROVIDENTIALISTS
 “The Providentialists try to provide an
alternative to Cosmic Exile […] [GELLNER,
1999:5]

37. KARL MARX AND HOLY GHOST
An Providentialists
 “Marx was one of the many
Providentialists: he could deride the
aspiration to stand outside society and to
tell it where to go. He could do so
because he believed that he had access to
knowledge concerning where it must go ..
[GELLNER, 1999:4]

38. KARL MARX AND HOLY GHOST
An Providentialists
 “We could trust the World-Process, … we
can trust “revolutionising practice” , his
version of the Holy Ghost. [GELLNER,
1999:4]