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The parts may come together in apparent coherence as with a kaleidoscope, but the ‘fixed’ outcome will only be provisional. As Sivasubramaniam suggests in this volume, we must therefore view all attempts a creating ‘final’ systems as temporary. Moser coins the phrase ‘meta-epistemic instrumentalism’ (p.16) which “enables us to explain as rational conceptual divergence what initially looks like perennial disagreement.” In Moser’s view, “the diversity hides a deeper rational unity” (p.17). Moser (p.16) argues instead that to characterize the present state of epistemic scholarship as ‘rational’, a tolerance of conceptual divergence is needed that might not be encompassed in a coherent holistic model (coherentism). However, Moser does not support the artificial creation of a tidy fixed, impervious system of interconnected beliefs.

For Moser (2002, p.6), holism is related to ‘epistemic coherentism’ as it “finds the ultimate source of justification in a system of interconnected beliefs or potential beliefs”. In our own field, we might want to reconsider whether a common target for rejection (frequently also within this volume), Chomskian linguistics, is indeed really in opposition to holistic views of competence. This can sometimes take the form of rejecting scholarship that we cannot reconcile within our own paradigm. When faced with a broad and divergent body of knowledge, it would have been tempting to simplify the different accounts of knowledge into some kind of coherent whole. As Moser, (2002, p.17) eloquently suggests in defence of his own epistemology, meta-epistemic instrumentalism, Within the tolerant confines of meta-epistemic instrumentalism, we can welcome even as rational, much of the remarkable divergence we see in contemporary epistemology (p.17). After all, the tolerance of different perspectives is an essential part of the epistemology of EIL. We do not wish to attempt to resolve differences of perception, although I will discuss some differences in this introduction. In this introduction and part 1, the four chapters on the meaning of EIL competence by four different authors present very different perspectives. The introduction to this volume is intended to be a holistic introduction to international /intercultural communicative competence.

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