ABSTRACT
Public administration (PA)-think has been inefficient, but not idle, in uncovering false assumptions in its own thinking. Carroll describes what he considers to have been the unconscious momentum that shaped not only the history of the Department of Defense but also public attitudes and government in the United States. On business as unusual, there is the false assumption that the Western “mentality” is the only way of thinking and acting about PA, that is, that PA-think should stop at the water’s edge of Western mentality (or mentalities). Yet it is not true that schools of philosophy have no foundational assumptions. Then, of course, there is Eastern philosophy. Nisbett claims that “Eastern lack of concern about contradiction and emphasis on the Middle Way undoubtedly does result in logical errors, but Western contradiction phobia can also produce logical errors.”.
