In most contemporary accounts, rationality is “always already” implicit in what we do. (See philosophy versus sociology.) In contrast, Fuller's version of social epistemology holds that rationality is normally alienated from our epistemic practices. It exists as an external standard to which we hold ourselves and others accountable. Indeed, this standard may be embodied in a book or a machine that attracts widespread agreement. Nevertheless, there remains the problem of how to make good on the definition, or “instantiate the ideal”, as Plato might put it. Philosophers tend to make life easy for themselves by claiming that we are “always already” rational. In practice, this might amount to an endorsement of the scientific establishment or a retreat to Kantian transcendentalism. (See explaining the normative structure of science.) But in either case, any radical sense of criticism is rendered virtually impossible. For its part, science and technology studies treats the divergence of scientists' rationality talk from their day-to-day practice as a de facto falsification of the rationality talk as an account of the norms governing their practice. While accepting this divergence as an empirical fact, perhaps most social epistemologists, including Fuller, would claim that rationality talk remains valid as long as the scientists would have themselves be judged by the standards embodied in that talk.

As a point of historical reference, consider that before the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the set of laws that should be used for trying non-citizens was an open question.