  A number of other conclusions follow from this understanding of modality. First, a mode of experience implies a distinct and autonomous kind of understanding. It implies a universe of discourse with its own arguments and ways of assessing and grounding them. Because propositions in one mode of discourse have no standing in another, truth is coherence, however defined, within a given mode. To argue across a modal boundary is to commit the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi (irrelevance). If there is any relationship between the modes it is conversational, not argumentative: cross-modal encounters yield differences, not supra-modal conclusions. Oakeshott sometimes makes this point by speaking of modes as “voices” in an inter-modal conversation (RP 488–491, 497). In conversation the rules of relevance are relaxed: a conversation is not an argument. Second, because what counts as rational in discourse depends on the mode of discourse itself, there is no extra-modal definition of reason or rationality. The illusion that there is arises from privileging what counts as reasonable within a given mode and denigrating what is considered reasonable in other modes. This illusion of superiority generates the narrowness, and at times hubris, characteristic of each mode connoted by the labels “historicism”, “scientism”, “pragmatism”, and “aestheticism”. A conversational as opposed to argumentative juxtaposition of modal voices is respectful of differences and for that reason inherently civilized, which means that to insist on the primacy of any single mode is not only boorish but barbaric. And because the modes are independent of one another, and none is more expressive of an imagined mode-independent reality than any other, there can be no hierarchy of modes.