Collected Papers: Volume 3 Studies in Idealism 9783110326307, 9783110325362

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Nicholas Rescher Studies in Idealism

NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS

Volume III

Nicholas Rescher

Studies in Idealism

ontos verlag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick

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Contents Preface Chapter 1: WHAT SORT OF IDEALISM IS VIABLE TODAY? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

On Viability Idealism and its Modes Problems of Idealism Conceptual Idealism and its Merits What Conceptual Idealism Comes To Problems of Mind and Matter

1 1 2 4 8 10

Chapter 2: REALITY IN THE LIGHT OF REALISM AND IDEALISM 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Preliminaries Reality Scientific Realism and its Problems The Security/Definitiveness Trade-Off Common Sense Realism and its Problems Why Not Abandon Realism? Regulative Realism Realism and Idealism

17 18 22 24 26 28 30 32

Chapter 3: THE ARGUMENTS FROM ERROR AND IGNORANCE: AN EPISTEMIC APPROACH TO FACTUAL REALISM 1. Error 2. Ignorance 3. Lessons

35 37 38

Chapter 4: PRAGMATIC IDEALISM AND META-PHYSICAL REALISM 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Existential Component of Realism Realism in its Regulative/Pragmatic Aspect The Role of Presumption The Role of Retrovalidation

41 44 51 53

5. Retrospect

54

Chapter 5: POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM AS AN APPROACH TO MODAL ONTOLOGY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Modal Conceptualism Possibility Conceptualism Why Not Possibility Realism? Why Not Possibility Nominalism? The Crux of Possibility Conceptualism Overcoming the Gödelian Objection Overcoming the Insufficiency Objection

57 63 67 69 70 73 75

Chapter 6: OPTIMALISM AND THE RATIONALITY OF THE REAL (ON THE PROSPECTS OF AXIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION) 1. Is The Real Rational? 2. The Turn to Axiology 3. Abandoning Causality 4. Why Optimalism? 5. Is Optimalism Theocentric? 6. Is Optimalism Purposive? 7. Further Difficulties 8. Violating Common Sense 9. Wishful Thinking? 10. Conclusion

81 81 83 86 88 90 92 93 95 95

Chapter 7: THE REVOLT AGAINST ABSOLUTES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Stagesetting The Assault on Absolutes: Certainty The Assault on Absolutes: Necessity The Assault on Absolutes: Exactness And Detail The Attack on Absolutes: Universality The Assault on Absolutes: Timelessness The Assault on Absolutes: Objectivity A Fundamental Choice 103

97 98 99 99 100 101 102

9. Anti-Philosophy as the New Absolute

105

Chapter 8: THE ABSOLUTE: A CONCISE HISTORY 1. Introduction 2. Kant (1724-1804) 3. German Idealism 4. British Idealism 5. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) 6. Pragmatism 7. Wittgenstein (1889-1951) 8. Retrospect 9. Coda 10. Prospect

109 111 112 116 119 120 125 126 128 129

Chapter 9: DIALECTIC: A BRIEF HISTORY 1. Pre-History 2. Plato 3. Aristotle 4. The Medievals 5. Kant 6. Fichte and Schleiermacher 7. Hegel 8. Marx 9. 20th Century Analytic Philosophy 10. Examples of Dialectical Analysis 11. The Dialectic of Aporetic Situations 12. Summary

133 134 135 137 138 139 140 144 146 149 152 155

Chapter 10: MCTAGGART’S LOGICAL DETERMINISM 1. 2. 3. 4 5. 6.

Introduction 157 Extrinsic Determination 157 Thing and Quality: Individuation 159 The Scope and Structure Of McTaggart’s Necessitarianism 160 Vulnerability of the Position 163 Implications for McTaggart’s Determinism 167

Chapter 11: BLANSHARD AND THE COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Coherence as the Definition of Truth The Criteriology of Truth Truth-Criteria as a Rational Warrant Basic Problems of the Coherence Theory of Truth A Contrast with Bradley Conclusion

Name Index

169 171 174 179 182 185 187

PREFACE

W

hen I first began to consider myself an idealist some thirty years ago there was only a small number of philosophers—all of a decidedly earlier generation—who were willing to have this label applied to themselves. What led me to see matters differently? Two prime considerations, I think. One was that I looked back to Leibniz as my philosophical hero. The other was that it seemed to me that the prevailing materialistic/positivistic ethos was inducing philosophy to wear blinders vis-à-vis a good many of the key issues regarding ourselves and our place in the world’s scheme of things and that the idealistic tradition opened the way to averting an unhealthy impoverishment of the subject. The material collected together in this volume are studies written over the last twenty years or so. (Detailed acknowledgement of prior publication is given in the footnotes.) Taken all in all, these essays convey a rounded and representative picture of the sort of idealistic position that I deem is promising and productive to defend in the present state of discussion of the subject. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her help in preparing this material in a form suitable for the printer’s use.

Nicholas Rescher Pittsburgh May, 2005

Chapter 1 WHAT SORT OF IDEALISM IS VIABLE TODAY? 1. ON VIABILITY

W

hat sort of issue is this anyway—this question of whether or not a certain philosophical position is viable today. We are clearly not dealing here with the sociological question of what people-in-general think in the manner of public opinion questionnaires— what they would agree to or disagree with if asked. We are not testing the popular pulse. Rather, what is at stake is related to William James’s distinction between live and dead issues. Viability should here be construed in terms of consonance and compatibility with what the general run of relevantly well-informed people—professional philosophers in particular— think of as being at least a real option: a position to be reckoned with through being taken seriously enough to discuss and debate, even if only by way of rejection and refutation. 2. IDEALISM AND ITS MODES Idealism, broadly speaking, is the doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlative or mind-coordinated. Bertrand Russell said that “idealists tell us that what appears as matter is really something mental.”1 But that is rather stretching things. Idealism certainly need not go so far as to maintain a causal theory to the effect that mind somehow makes or constitutes matter. This over-simple view of idealism ignores such versions of the theory as, for example, the explanatory idealism which merely holds that an adequate explanation of the real always requires some recourse to the operations of mind. A genuine idealism will indeed center around the conception 1

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 58.

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that reality as we understand it reflects the workings of mind. But it need not necessarily see mind as a causal source. Traditional ontological idealism of the sort criticized by Russell did indeed center on the idea that thought creates reality. And in this regard such an idealism the cart before the horse. For the situation is the very reverse: the fact of biological of evolution means that natural reality creates thought. It seems best to take the line that thought has gained its key foothold on the world stage not so much by creating it as by virtue of the emergent saliency of its role in nature. In the historic past, disputes raged within the idealist camp over whether “the mind” at issue in the position’s definition was a mind emplaced outside of or behind nature (absolute idealism), or a nature-pervasive power of rationality of some sort (cosmic idealism), or the collective impersonal social mind of people-in-general (social idealism), or simply the distributive collection of individual minds (personal idealism). But over the years, the more grandiose versions of the theory have dropped increasingly from favor, and in recent times virtually all idealists have construed “the minds” at issue in their theory as a matter of separate individual minds equipped with socially engendered resources, and thus forming part of the world rather than standing outside or behind it. The aim of the present discussion is thus to argue for a version of idealism that does not go too decidedly against the grain of such current philosophical sensibilities. What it seeks is a form of idealism that is modest—or, if your insist, minimalistic—enough to flourish in the intellectual climate of the times. 3. PROBLEMS OF IDEALISM It is quite unjust to charge idealism with an antipathy to reality, with ontophobia, as Ortega y Gasset called it. For it is not the existence but the nature of reality upon which idealism sets its sights. Materialism is what classical idealism rejects—and even here the idealists speak with divided voice. (Berkeley’s “immaterialism” does not so much deny the existence of material objects as their unperceivedness.) There are certainly versions of the doctrine well short of the spiritualistic position of an ontological idealism that (as Kant puts it at Prolegomena, sect. 13, n. 2) holds that “there are none but thinking beings.” Few among the so-called idealists have held to pan-psychism of the high-octane variety. To be sure Berkeley maintained an idealistic position on the basis of his thesis that “to be (real) is to be perceived” (esse est percipi). It seems

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more sensible, however, to adopt “to be is to be perceivable” (esse est percipile esse). For Berkeley, of course, this was a distinction without a difference: if it is perceivable at all, then God perceives it. But if we forego philosophical reliance on God, the matter looks different. We are then driven back to the question of what is an object of perception. On this basis, something really exists if it is, in principle, experientiable: “To be (physically) real is to be actually perceivable by a possible perceiver—one who is physically realizable in the world.” Physical existence is seen as tantamount to observability-in-principle for perceivers who are physically realizable in “the real world”. The basic idea is that one can only claim (legitimately or appropriately) that a particular physical object exists if there is potential experiential access to it—if something indeed exists in the world, then it must be observable-in-principle, detectable by a suitably endowed creature equipped with some suitably powerful technology. On such an approach, to exist (physically) is to be “observable” in principle—to be open to experiential confrontation by a cognition-capable creature of some sort. And such merely dispositional observability is clearly something objective, in contrast to actual observations, which are always personalized. Observability is a matter of what beings with mindendowed capacities can encounter in experience, and not one of what any particular one or more of them actually does encounter in experience. The physical features of the real come to be seen as mind-correlative dispositions—conceivably dispositions in both the perceptual and the conceptual order. In this sense, detectability and discriminability in principle is an indispensable request for qualifying as part of the actual furniture of the world. And it is clear that such a weak—and cognitive rather than ontological—version of substantial idealism is altogether unproblematic. Over the years, many objections to idealism have been advanced. Samuel Johnson thought to refute Berkeley’s phenomenalism by kicking a stone. He conveniently forgot that Berkeley’s theory goes to great lengths to provide for stones—even to the point of invoking the aid of God on their behalf. G.E. Moore pointed to the human hand as an undeniably mindexternal material object. He overlooked that, gesticulate as he would, he would do no more than induce people to accept the presence of a hand on the basis of the hand-orientation of their experience. C. S. Peirce’s “Harvard Experiment” of releasing a stone held aloft was supposed to establish scholastic realism because his audience could not control their expectation of the stone’s falling to earth. But an uncontrollable expectation is still an

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expectation, and the realism at issue is no more than a realistic thoughtposture. Immanuel Kant’s famous “Refutation of Idealism” argued that our conception of ourselves as mind-endowed beings presupposes material objects because we view our mind-endowed selves as existing in an objective temporal order, which is something that indispensability requires the existence of periodic physical processes (clocks, pendula, planetary regularities) for its establishment. At most, however, this argumentation succeeds in showing that such physical processes have to be assumed by minds that insist upon a certain view of themselves—the issue of their actual mindindependent existence remaining unaddressed. (Kantian realism is an intraexperiential “empirical” realism.) In sum, each of the traditional objections to idealism has inherent limitations that allow a judiciously formulated version of idealism remain unscathed. 4. CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM AND ITS MERITS The crux of the conceptual idealism here espoused is that the conceptual instruments we standardly and typically use in characterizing the things of the world we live in are conceptually mind invoking in pretty much the same way that our conception of a door-stop or a hammer is. For such things are literally inconceivable in under that description in a word that has never seen the presence of mind. Conceptual idealism’s central thesis is that the principal characterizing properties ascribed to physical things in our standard conceptual scheme are at the bottom of all relational properties, with some facet of “the mind”—or of minds-in-general—serving as one term of this relation. Specifically, it holds that the concept-scheme we standardly use to construe our experience itself ascribes to “material” objects, properties and characteristics that involve some reference to mental operations within the very meaning of the terms at issue. Let us consider how this is so. Conceptual idealism is predicated upon the important distinction between conceptual mind-involvingness and explicit mind-invokingness, illustrated in the contrast between a book and a dream. To characterize an object of consideration as a dream or a worry is explicitly mind-invoking. For dreams and worries exist only where there is dreaming and worrying, which, by their very nature, typify the sorts of things at issue in the thought-processes of mind-endowed creatures: where there are dreams or

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worries, these must be mind-equipped beings to do the dreaming and worrying. A book, by contrast, seems at first sight entirely non-mental: books, after all, unlike dreams or worries, are physical objects. If mind-endowed beings were to vanish from the world, dreams and worries would vanish with them—but not books! Even if there were no mind-endowed beings, there could certainly be naturally evolved book-like objects, objects physically indistinguishable from books as we know them. Nevertheless there could not be books in a world where minds have no existence. For a book is, by definition, an artifact of a certain purposive (i.e. communicative) sort equipped with pages on which “reading material” is printed. Such purposive artifacts all invoke goal directed processes of a type that can exist only where there are minds. To be a book is to have writing in it, and not just marks. And writing is inherently the sort of thing produced and employed by mind-endowed beings. In sum, to explain adequately what a book is we must thus make reference to writing and thereby in turn, ultimately to minds. The salient point here is not that the book is mentalesque as a physical object, but rather that to explicate what is involved in characterizing that object as “a book”—to explicate what it is to be a book—we must eventually refer to minds and their capabilities, seeing that, given our understanding of what is at issue, a book is by its very nature something for people to read. A world without minds can contain objects physically indistinguishable from our books and nails, but books and nails they could not be, since only artifacts created for a certain sort of intelligence-invoking purpose can correctly be so characterized. The status of those objects as books or nails is mind-conducted. And so, while books—unlike dreams—are not mental items, their conceptualization/characterization must nevertheless in the final analysis be cast in mind-involving terms of reference. What it is to be a book is to be something to which minds are related in a suitable and characteristic sort of way. Books as such can only exist in mind-affording contexts. Now the pivotal thesis of conceptual idealism is that we standardly think of reality in implicitly mentalesque terms. And this contention rests on two basic theses: (1) That our world, the world as we know it, is—inevitably—the world as we conceive it to be, and

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(2) That the pivotal concepts (thought-instrumentalities) that we standardly use in characterizing and describing the world contain in their make-up, somewhere along the line, a reference to the operations of mind. Observing that our “standard conception” of the world we live in is that of a multitude of particulars endowed with empirical properties and positioned in space and time and interacting causally, conceptual idealism goes on to maintain that all of the salient conceptions operative here— particularity, spatio-temporality, causality, and the possession of empirical (experientially accessible) properties—are (so conceptual idealism contends) mind-involving in exactly the sense explicated above. Within the present confines, there is not room enough to tell the whole story. So a vary part of it will have to do. Let us begin at the beginning— with particularity. Particularity is a matter of identification; causality a matter of bringing about, and spacetime a matter of locating—and all these are mind-involving processes. And similarly with the rest. But the fact is that careful analysis shows that identification, causal explanation, and spatio-temporal positioning—are all implicitly mind-involving activities that envision the world’s operations in terms of characteristically mental processes. The world as we conceive it accordingly emerges throughout a mental artifact that is constructed (at least partly) in mind-referential terms— that the nature of the world as we conceive of it reflects the workings of mind. (Of course, in speaking of mind-involvement or mind-invocation, no reference to any particular mind is at issue. The mental aspect here operative is not private or personal: it is not a question of whose mind—of this or that mind rather than another. The dependence at issue is wholly generic and systematic in nature.) And so, conceptual idealism sees mind not as causal source of the materials of nature, but as indispensably furnishing some of the interpretative mechanisms in whose terms we understand them. It is predicated on the view that reality as we standardly conceive it—in terms of material objects identifiable through discernible dispositional properties and causally interacting with one another in a setting of space and time—is thereby unavoidably enmeshed with the operations of mind. It maintains that the mind understands nature in a manner that in some ways reflects its own operations in some fundamental respects—that we come to cognitive grips with nature on our own terms, that is, in terms of concepts whose make-up involves some reference to minds and their operations. The position rests squarely

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on the classical idealistic doctrine that mind contributes essentially to the constitution—as well as the constituting—of our knowledge of reality. Such a view of reality is not a do-it-yourself position that lets us shape the world in any way we please. Historically, idealists have always recognized objective constraints: God with Berkeley, the faculty-structure of the mind with Kant, biological and perhaps ultimately Darwinian considerations with Bergson, and so on. And conceptual idealism correspondingly acknowledges the restrictive role of an objectively given conceptual scheme. Thus the items that such an idealism characterizes as “minddependent” can be perfectly interpersonal and objective; they need not be subjective at all—let alone be something over which people have voluntary control. It is sometimes said that idealism is predicated on a confusion of objects with our knowledge of them and conflates the real with our thought about it. But this charge misses the point when a conceptual idealism is at issue. Conceptual idealism’s thesis is not the trivial one that mind makes the idea of nature, it is not open to Santayana’s complaint against Schopenhauer that “he proclaimed that the world was his idea, but meant only (what is undeniable) that his idea of the world was his idea.” Rather, what is at issue is that mind-patterned conceptions are built into our idea of nature— that what this idea involves is itself limited to mental operation in that the way we standardly conceive of nature is in some crucial respects involved with the doings of minds. The conceptualistic idealist sees mind as an explicative resource for our understanding of the real, rather than as a productive source in the causal order of its genetic explanation. Accordingly, while the thesis that our world picture is mind-provided is not a philosophical doctrine but a simple truism, nevertheless this thesis that an adequate world-picture is one that must be mind-patterned—that it will have to be painted in the coloration of mind, or (to put is less picturesquely) that will involve a recourse to the analogy of mind—is something at once far less obvious and far more interesting. For an idealism designed along these lines has it that while our minds neither make nor constitute nature, they nevertheless depict it in their own terms of reference. At this point, Santayana’s triviality charge falls apart. To say that we can only obtain a view of reality via its representations by mind is true but alas trivial—we can only obtain a mind-provided view of anything whatsoever. But to say that our view of reality (as standardly articulated) is one that represents reality by means of concepts and categories that are themselves mind-referring in their nature is something very

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different. For this idealism is one that sees our view of the world as to be such as to attribute to it features in whose conceptual make-up mindcoordinated conceptions play a pivotal and ineliminable role. And it is this position that is at stake in the conceptual idealism that is now at issue. 5. WHAT CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM COMES TO The most common objection to idealism in general centers on the issue of the mind-independence of the real. “Surely,” so runs the objection, “things in nature would remain substantially unchanged if there were no minds. Had intelligent creatures never evolved on the earth, its mountains and valleys would nevertheless be much as they are, and the sun and moon remain substantially unaffected.” This contention is perfectly plausible in one aspect, namely the causal one—which is just why causal idealism has its problems. The crucial mind-independence of the real has to be granted in the causal mode. But not in the conceptual. For the objection’s exponent has to face the question of specifying just exactly what it is that would remain the same. “Surely roses would smell just as sweet in a mind-denuded world!” Well . . . yes and no. Agreed—the absence of minds would not change roses. But rose-fragrance and sweetness—and even the size and shape of roses—are all features whose character hinges on such mindinvoking operations as smelling, scanning, comparing, measuring, and the like. For something actually to be a rose it must, unavoidably, have various capacities to evoke mental responses—it must admit of identification, specification, classification, and property attribution, and these, by their very nature, are all mental operations. Striking people as being rose-like is critical to qualifying as a rose; if seemingly rose bushes performed strangely—say by sprouting geranium like flowers—they would no longer be so: rose bushes just don’t do that sort of thing. A rose that is not conceived of in mind-referential terms is—nothing at all. To be sure, the conceptual idealism envisioned here does not maintain that any possible way of conceiving nature must proceed in mind-invoking terms of reference (difficult though it is for us to imagine how things could be otherwise). Its purport, rather, is to stress the role of mind-invocation operative in the standard conceptual framework that we in fact (de facto) use to recognize and interpret our experience. It is geared to what has here been characterized as “our standard conception of reality,” and so its strictures need not and will not invariably apply to other possible conceptions of the real. Specifically, it does not apply to a contingent regularity view of

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the world that dispenses both with laws (and thus lawful processes): and thereby with the disposition-demarcated particulars to whose conception lawfulness is indispensable. And while it is not easy to conceive in detail what such a kaleidoscopic reality that dispenses both with sensory identifiable particulars and with necessitarian laws would be like, nevertheless, that does not render it impossible. All this must be conceded. Is this concession damaging? Does it mean that conceptual idealism, with its focus in the ideational mechanisms in whose terms “we standardly think” of the real, is a position no more than a sociological significance? The answer is clearly negative. For while how we act is simply a reflection of sociological matters, how we think of things is, clearly, something of deeper and more far-reaching significance—and inevitably so, seeing that our only possible access to how things are is through the mediation of what we think them to be. There is, ultimately, no way of limiting the consequences of “how we think of things” to appertain merely and wholly to facts about us rather than facts about them. Still, must not a genuine idealism ask for more? Must it not argue transcendentally that every possible conceptual scheme for exploiting experience to form a picture of objective reality must be mind-involving? Can it rest content with what is so relative to our standard concept-scheme rather than inevitably? As one critic has objected: Rescher tries to handle the problem by, an appeal . . . to . . . the standard conceptual framework. But . . . the real and unavoidable problem is to determine the conditions of the possibility of any conceptual framework whatsoever.2 A splendid Kantian ambition, this—but very much misguided. For it makes little sense to demand that which one cannot realistically hope to obtain. Kant’s lesson holds good: for us, reality unavoidably has to be an empirical reality—reality as we can experience it. This sort of transcendentalism is quixotically unrealistic because we cannot use the mechanism of our conceptual scheme to project from within the confines of that very conceptual scheme what the essential lineaments of other, different conceptual schemes must of necessity be.

2

Robert E. Innes, “[Review of] Conceptual Idealism,” Foundations of Language, vol. 14 (l976), pp. 287-95 (see p. 294).

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No state of science, no genre of art, no style of life or framework of thought can possibly manage to encompass all the rest. This sort of thought-imperialism is just not in the cards. Our own cognitive position cannot at one and the same time be—as it inevitably must—just one position among others, and at the same time somehow encompass them by embracing their essential features. No state of knowledge, no doctrinal theory or position can ever find the holy grail of self-transcendence—can ever transmute itself into something that achieves more than the situational immanency of being just one particular alternative among others. The envisioned quest for a self-transcendingly transcendental basis of “conditions under which alone conceptualization is possible” must accordingly be seen as a futile endeavor that is destined to failure from the very outset. And the implications of this fact are, for us, innocuous rather than skeptically nihilistic. For that standard concept-scheme of ours has to be taken at face value. No doubt, it is—in theory—conceivably one alternative among others, without any inevitable foothold in the very structure of intellect, let alone in the nature of things at large. No doubt, its status is the product of natural and cultural evolution. Let all this be as it may. Still, for us the fact remains that this scheme is what we have and is all that we have. What matters in the end is that this alternative is our alternative. Our intellectual dependence on it is as absolute as our physical dependence on the air we breathe. For us there are no options. If this be “mere contingency,” we have little alternative but to make the most of it.3 6. PROBLEMS OF MIND AND MATTER The following sort of objection against a conceptual idealism along the indicated lines may well be offered: How can one sensibly maintain the mind dependency of matter as ordinarily conceived, when all the world recognizes that the operations of mind are based on the machinations of matter. (As Mark Twain asked: “When the body is drunk does the mind stay sober?”) To be an idealist in the face of this recognition is surely to be involved in a vicious or at least vitiating circle.

3

This issue is also treated from another point of departure in the author's The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,1985).

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However, this objection simply gets things wrong. There just is no question of any real conflict once the proper distinctions have been drawn, because—as indicated above—altogether different sorts of dependencies or requirements are at issue in the two theses: 1. that mind is causally dependent upon (i.e., causally requires) matter, in that mental process demands causally or productively the physical workings of matter. 2. that matter (conceived of in the standard manner of material substance subject to physical law) is explicatively dependent upon (i.e., conceptually requires) mind, in that the conception of material processes involves hermeneutically or semantically the mentalistic working of mind. We return here to the crucial distinction between the conceptual order with its essentially hermeneutic or explicative perspective upon the intellectual exposition of meanings, and the causal order with its explanatory perspective upon the productive efficacy of physical processes. In the hermeneutic framework of consideration, our concern is not with any facets of the causal explanation of intellectual processes, but upon understanding them from within, on their own terms—in the conceptual order. The issue is not one of causal explanation at all, but one of the understanding to be achieved through an analysis of the internal meaning-content of concepts and of the semantical information conveyed by statements in which they are operative. Because of the fundamental difference between these two perspectives, any conflict in the dependency relations to which they give rise is altogether harmless from the standpoint of actual inconsistency. The circle breaks because different modes of dependency are involved: we move from mind to matter in the conceptual order of understanding (of rationes cognoscendi or rather concipiendi) and from matter to mind in the ontological dependency order of causation (rationes essendi). Once all the due distinctions are duly heeded, any semblance of vicious circularity disappears. No doubt, this calls for a certain amount of care and subtlety—but then so do many issues of intellectual life, and why should things be easier in philosophy than elsewhere? And so, while the conceptual idealist’s thesis that one specific direction of dependence (viz., that of the physical upon that of the mental) is built

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into the view of reality at issue in our standard conceptual scheme, this must not be seen as conflicting with the debatable (but by no means thereby negligible) prospect that the scientific explanation of causal relationships might envision a reversal in the direction of dependence. Where different perspectives are involved, seemingly conflicting theses are perfectly compatible. (I can say without conflict that my car is economical in point of gas mileage and uneconomical in point of maintenance costs.) But even if no vicious circle arises, do we not arrive at an equally vicious infinite regress that altogether precludes understanding? For is understandability not precluded from the outset if an adequate overall understanding of mind requires reference to its causal origins in matter and an adequate overall understanding of matter requires reference to its functional presuppositions of a mind-invoking sort? The answer is negative. A problematic regress would arise here only if one adopted an essentially linear model of understanding. But this is quite inappropriate in the case of coordinated concepts such as the present instance of mind/matter or the simpler case of cause/effect. To say that we cannot fully understand the cause until we understand its effect, and that we cannot fully understand the effect until we understand the cause, is not to show that there is a vitiating regress with the result that we cannot understand either one. All it shows is that two such coordinated and interrelated concepts cannot be set out through a sequential explanation but must be grasped together in their systematic unity. A somewhat crude analogy may be helpful at this point. Take a knife and its blade. If that object yonder is to count as a knife, then that shiny thing attached to the handle must be a blade, but this thing cannot count as a blade unless the whole it comprises together with that handle is a knife. The two items stand in conceptually symbiotic apposition: X cannot be properly characterized as X unless it is duly related to Y and Y cannot be properly characterized as such unless it is duly related to X. We cannot pick up either end of the stick without avoiding the other, but must grasp the whole in one fell swoop. Just such a cognitive coordination of mentalistic and materialistic concepts holds with respect to our present analysis of their mutual interdependencies. But interdependency does not annihilate difference, and by maintaining due distinctions, any collapse into vicious circularity or vitiating regress can be avoided. Conceptual idealism is thus even compatible with a causal materialism that maintains matter to be basic to mind in the causal order. On the causal issues of the origins of mind, conceptualistic idealism is silent and so com-

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patible with various theories—materialism itself not excluded. Conceptual idealism just is not an explanatory theory regarding the causal mechanisms of the mind’s processes or mode of origination; it is an analytical or hermeneutic theory regarding the nature of the conceptual mechanisms of the categories of understanding. It can thus coexist with any theory of mind that is articulated along strictly causal lines, be it a materialistic view that sees the causal origin of mind in matter of a Cartesian-style dualism of reciprocal influence or even an epi-phenomenalism. The conceptual idealist accordingly has no vested interest in denying a “scientistic” view that mind and its functioning may ultimately prove to be somehow causally emergent from the processes of matter. The position does not need to be argued through an attack upon causal materialism: it is quite compatible with the idea that mental functioning has its material basis and causal origins in the realm of physical process. The doctrine’s point is simply that our standard conception of the world—its material sector specifically included—is forthcoming in terms of reference that are at bottom mind-involving. It is the analytical issue of how we actually think of the world, not the operational issue of the mechanics of its causal goingson, that constitutes the focus of concern. And this point is crucially connected to the issue of idealism’s contemporary viability as mastered in our title. For our present-day intellectual outlook is committed to a scientifically naturalistic understanding of nature far more deeply and pervasively than was the case with the cognitive ethos of the earlier eras in which idealism took root. But what of an “identity theory of mind” that flatly identifies mental processes with the operation of certain material configurations—namely our brains? Is our conceptual idealism not incompatible with such a theory? Not necessarily. It depends upon whether the identity at issue is seen as being a factual one (like the identity of the morning star with the evening star or that of the tallest man in the room with the poorest man in the room), or as a conceptually necessary one (like that of Smith’s only brother with Smith’s only male sibling). Our idealism will encounter no difficulties with a thesis of contingent identity. An incompatibility will arise only if the identity theory of the mental with the material is taken to obtain in conceptual terms, as holding the essentially concept-relative thesis that mentalistic talk is eliminable, in that it can be translated without conceptually viable residue into talk about the behavior of matter. Such a conceptually eliminative reductionism is indeed incompatible with a conceptual idealism. For if “mentalese” were analytically altogether reducible to materialis-

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tic discourse, then mind could not be conceptually basic to matter in the sense of our theory. But, of course, since our theory is based on an analysis of the standard conceptual scheme, this goes no further than to show that this ordinary scheme is incompatible with a conceptually reductive materialism, and this upshot is perhaps not surprising. (If we point out to the reductive materialist that he violates the standard conceptual scheme, he may well reply that he is only too ready to do so. And in taking this stance he is, to be sure, not inconsistent. But he does cut himself off from participation in those discussions that take place within the mentalistic framework of our standard conceptual scheme which is, after all, the frame of reference in which the whole issue is posed in the first place.) Finally, why adopt a conceptual rather than a more traditional ontological idealism? The basis for a response goes back to the title of the essay with regard to tenability today. Three considerations seem to have particular saliency here: (1) NATURALISM. pivots on the idea that the world is at least in some significant aspect or other—mind-made. And this leads straightaway to the question of whose mind it is that can plausibly claim responsibility for this vast task. Three possible alternatives come to the fore: • One’s own mind—that of the particular individual at issue. This is not an alternative option. For here lies the road to megalomania and solipsism. • God’s mind; the world spirit; the absolute idealist’s all encompassing eternal mind. But surely non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum. It seems unreasonable to ask God to do our philosophical work. • Our mind; social mind as reflected in the collectivity created deposit of languages, ancient-scheme, theory-systems, etc. that are the aggregated work of evolved intelligences. Only the last of these alternatives can be seen as a currently alternative option, and it is surely a merit of conceptual idealism that it takes this line. (2) REALISM. Mind is the only resource we have for the constituting of our picture or model of reality. And it is only natural and to be expected that in constituting this picture or model mind does so to some extent in its

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own terms of reference. But of course the instruction is not a free construction. Peirce’s Harvard experiment comes to mind here. Nature’s lawfulness is the pivotal factor, with its mandating how things must and have to be. For plausibility, the operations of mind in the devising of a reality-picture have to be seen as subject to constraint seen as inexorable and imposed. Mind is not at liberty to proceed as it wishes. Its subscription to this sort of realistic modesty is clearly another venture of conceptual idealism. (3) SCIENCE ACCEPTANCE AND EVOLUTIONISM. Clearly any currently viable form of idealism has to make its peace with science and come to terms with the world as the science of the day depicts it. And in particular it must accept the theory of evolution—cosmic and biological alike— and come to terms with a universe that initially dispensed even with solid state physics (to say nothing of chemistry, let alone biology). In such a universe, the emergence of mind comes late in the day; mind is but a “Johnny come lately.” And this too is something that a conceptual idealism can manage to take in stride. In sum, then, a cogent case can be made out for holding that the familiar objections to idealism—traditional and recent alike—can virtually all be overcome when one makes a shift to the conceptualistic version of the doctrine. And I submit that it is, to all appearances, this sort of idealism that nowadays offers the best promise of acceptability.4

4

This essay served as basis for a paper of the same title presented at a conference on Anglo-American Idealism held at Harris Manchester College, Oxford in July of 1997.

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Chapter 2 REALITY IN THE LIGHT OF REALISM AND IDEALISM 1. PRELIMINARIES

R

ealism is a complex and rather murky topic. And dealing with it is made no easier by the fact that there are as many realisms as there are realists. So let me begin by defining my terms. As I shall consider it here, realism is a doctrine that holds at least the following two theses: 1. That there is a real physical world out there. This reality is mindindependent: we must accept that life is not a dream; that nature is not just a drama played on the screen of mind; that the being of things does not merely consist in their being conceived; that the world would continue to exist much as is if all mind-endowed creatures were to be annihilated. 2. That this reality bears a suitably intimate relation to our knowledge; that we possess at least a modicum of accurate information about this mind-independent reality; that we know, in some significant measure, what reality is actually like. The first point is ontological; the second epistemological. Both are crucial aspects of the overall position. The metaphysical realism of the first point is the doctrine that the world exists independently of the thinking beings that inquire into it, that its nature (its having whatever characteristics it does have) is also comparably thought-independent. The fundamental idea of this realism is that the existence and nature of the world are separate from our thinking about it: that the world is what it is without any reference to our cognitive endeavors, and that the things of nature are―in a sense―quite impervious to the state of our knowledge or belief regarding them. One recent expositor formulates this idea as follows:

Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers III

Even if there were no human thought, even if there were no human beings, whatever there is other than human thought (and what depends on that, causally or logically) would still be just what it actually is1

Such a realism is based upon a commitment to the notion that human inquiry addresses itself to what is really and truly the condition of things whose existence and character are altogether independent of our cognitive activities. Reality is not subject to the operations of the human mind; au contraire, man’s mind and its dealings are but a minuscule part of reality. The second point addresses the epistemological aspect of realism. It too is indispensable to the overall doctrine. Clearly it does us little good to subscribe to an an sich world out there if we cannot get into some sort of cognitive relation to it―it remains a je ne sais quoi about which we can say effectively nothing. And yet, as I see it, it is this second point that is the main source of difficulty for the realist. 2. REALITY Reality (on the traditional metaphysicians’ construction of the concept) is the condition of things answering to “the real truth”; it is the realm of what really is as it really is. The pivotal contrast is that between “mere appearance” and “reality as such,” between “our picture of reality” and “reality itself,” between what actually is and what we merely think (believe, suppose, etc.) it to be. And our allegiance to the conception of reality, and to this contrast that pivots upon it, roots in the fallibilistic recognition that, at the level of the detailed specifics of scientific theory, anything we presently hold to be the case may well turn out otherwise―and indeed certainly will do so if the past experience gives any auguries for the future. Our commitment to the mind-independent reality of “the real world” stands coordinate with our acknowledgement that in principle any or all of our 1

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William P. Alston. “Yes, Virginia, There is a Real World.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 52 (1979), pp. 779-808 (see p. 779). Compare: “[T]he world is composed of particulars [individual existing things or processes] which have intrinsic characteristics i.e., properties they have or relationships they enter into with other particulars independently of how anybody characterizes, conceptualizes, or conceives of them.” Frederick Suppe, “Facts and Empirical Truth,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 3 (1973), pp. 197-212 (see p. 200).

REALITY IN THE LIGHT OF REALISM AND IDEALISM

present scientific ideas as to how things work in the world, at any present, may well prove to be untenable. Our conviction in a reality that lies beyond our imperfect understanding of it (in all the various senses of “lying beyond”) roots in our sense of the imperfections of our scientific worldpicture―its tentativity and potential fallibility. We need the notion of reality to operate the conception of truth. The statement “There are pi mesons” is true if and only if the world is such that―really and truly-pi mesons exist within it. True claims presumably state facts; they state what really is―which is exactly what it is to “characterize reality.” The conceptions of truth and of reality come together in the notion of adequatio ad rem―the venerable principle that to speak truly is to say how matters stand in reality, in that things actually are as we have said them to be. Unfortunately, however, these truisms nowise help us towards getting a cognitive grip on reality. In our own case, here and now, we have no decisive way of discriminating real from apparent truth, of distinguishing between our truth and the truth. And far-reaching implications issue from this absence of any inquiry-independent access to reality, and the circumstance that in scientific inquiry, as in his other endeavors, man’s proceedings are imperfect. Presumably, science is our most accurate source of information about reality. But there are problems here. The ineliminable prospect of error―the recognition of the potential corrigibility of all our scientific theorizing, and the unavoidable acknowledgement that we are not in a position to claim that in this domain our truth is the truth―means that we cannot ever lay claim to a definitively correct and final picture of reality at the level of scientific process and detail. Once we acknowledge that a prospect of incompleteness and a presumption of at least partial incorrectness attach to our present picture of the world, we can no longer subscribe to the idea that the world really exists as we conceive of it in accurate science. And so we can no longer adopt the view that, at the level of scientific theorizing, “our world picture” depicts “the real world”―the world as it actually is. We have no choice but to view what we do get hold of by way of “scientific truth” about the world―now, or ever―as being (at the synoptic, systemic level) imperfect: incomplete, incorrect, perhaps even inconsistent. We realize in our heart of hearts that there is a strong prospect that we shall ultimately recognize that many or most of our current scientific theories are false and that what we proudly vaunt as “scientific knowledge” is a tissue of hypotheses―of tentatively adopted contentions many or most of

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which we will ultimately come to regard with the wisdom of eventual hindsight as quite untenable and in need of serious revision or perhaps even abandonment. (To be sure, this realization is something of which we can make no effective use―while we realize that many of our scientific beliefs are wrong, we have no way of telling which ones, and no way of telling how error has crept in.) We must temper our claims to scientific knowledge with a Cognitive Copernicanism which recognizes that the current state of “knowledge” is simply one state among others that share in the same imperfect footing in point of ultimate correctness of truth. We learn by empirical inquiry about empirical inquiry, and one of the key things we learn is that at no actual stage does science yield a final and unchanging result. All the experience we can muster indicates that there is no justification for viewing our science as more than an inherently imperfect stage within an ongoing development. And this brings us to the realization that we have no responsible alternative but to presume the imperfection of what we take ourselves to know. We occupy the posture of the socalled “Preface Paradox”―standing in the shoes of the author who apologizes in his Preface for those errors that have doubtless made their way into his work, and yet blithely remains committed to all those assertions in the body of the work itself. We know or must presume that our vaunted “knowledge of the world” includes errors, though we certainly cannot identify them and say just where and how they arise. Once we “distance” ourselves from our epistemic commitments and recognize that they can, nay presumably do go awry, we realize that “our reality” is not reality per se, and that we have neither the inclination nor the warrant for claiming that reality actually is as we picture it to be. And given this presupposition or presumption, we have no alternative but to suppose reality to have a character regarding which we are only very imperfectly informed, at best. As concerns our cognitive endeavors, “man proposes and nature disposes,” and it does so in both senses of the term: it disposes over our current view of reality and it will doubtless eventually dispose of it as well. Committed to the unproblematic claim that reality exists, we are nevertheless equally committed to a standing (and surely correct!) presumption that its nature is in various not unimportant ways different from what we think it to be. We can make no confident claims in this matter of “describing reality”: the most we can do is to give our best estimate of its descriptive constitution. We recognize that “our picture” of reality is no more than an estimate of the truth. We are constrained to acknowledge that it is

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not our science, or even future science, but only ideal science that correctly describes reality―an ideal science available to us only in utopia, but not in this mundane dispensation. To be sure, “our world” (= “the world as we picture it”) and “the real world” (= “the world as ‘ideal science’ pictures it”) are not distinct worlds: there is just the world (the actual, extant one), of which we on the one hand, and “ideal science” on the other, draw rather different pictures. It would be a grave mistake of illicit hypostatization to reify “the world as we see it” into a thing distinct from the real world just as it would be a mistake, as we have seen, to populate the world with two Harrys, “Harry as I picture him” and “the real Harry”). “The world AS it is depicted” from the vantage point of a certain state of science may differ from one time to another, but not “the world THAT is so depicted.” It is not a matter of plurality of worlds, but of a single world conceptualized differently―and, by us, imperfectly. (This is how we can know that the world of ideal or perfected science exists, while yet being ignorant with respect to what it is actually like; for, of course, we can make no substantive assertions whatsoever regarding reality itself as contradistinguished from reality as we picture it.) To say all this is not, of course, to say that reality is inherently unknowable through science. Such mystification to the effect that science provides no reliable information about the world is not at issue. The point is merely that, at the level of exactness and generality at issue in scientific theorizing, our “knowledge” of reality is always purported knowledge; it is knowledge whose tentativity and provisionality must always be acknowledged. We recognize, or at any rate have no alternative but to suppose, that reality exists, but we are not in a position to stake any final and definitive claims as to what it is like. Historical experience and consideration of the theoretical general principles of the matter combine to indicate that at the level of scientific generality and precision, our “knowledge of reality” is always putative knowledge. Not only are we not in a position to claim that our knowledge of reality is complete (that we have gotten at the whole truth of things), but we are not even in a position to claim that our “knowledge” of reality is correct (that we have gotten at the real truth of things). To close the gap between “the world as we ourselves picture it” (our putative truth) to “the world itself’ (the real truth), we would have to suspend our clear recognition that our present picture of the world―as best we can now form it in the existing cognitive state-of-the-art―must be presumed to be gravely deficient. We must accept the idea that our scientific knowledge of the world fails in crucial respects to give an accurate picture of it. To be

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sure, we subscribe for the most part to the working hypothesis that in the domain of factual inquiry our truth may be taken to be the truth. Yet we cannot but recognize that this “empirical reality” is a fiction―a minddevised, man-made artifact that cannot be identified with actual reality because we full well realize that reality is not actually as we picture it, that our truth is not the real truth, that we are probably quite wrong in supposing that the furnishings of “our science” actually exist as we currently conceive of them. 3. SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND ITS PROBLEMS Scientific realism is the doctrine that science correctly describes the real world:2 that the world actually is as science takes it to be and that its furnishings are all science envisages them to be.3 If we want to know about the existence and the nature of heavy water or quarks, of man-eating molluscs or a luminiferous ether, we are referred to the natural sciences for the correct answer. The stance is that the theoretical terms of natural science refer to real physical entities and describe their attributes and comportments; for example, the “electron spin” of atomic physics refers to a behavioral characteristic of a real albeit unobservable object―an electron. On this realistic construction of scientific theorizing, the declarations of science are factually true generalizations about the actual behavior of objects that exist in the world. Is this a tenable position? It is quite clear that it is not. There is obviously insufficient warrant for and little plausibility to the claim that the world indeed is as our science claims it to be―that we’ve got matters right, so that our science is correct 2

This sort of descriptive realism has nothing to do with traditional ontological realism: the doctrine that the world exists independently of the thinking beings that inquire into it and that its nature (its having whatever descriptive characteristics it does have) is also comparably thought-independent. Ontological realism contrasts with ontological idealism; scientific realism contrasts with scientific instrumentalism: the doctrine that science nowise describes reality, but merely affords a useful organon of prediction and control.

3

For some recent discussions of scientific realism see: Wilfred Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London, 1963); E. McKinnon (ed.), The Problem of Scientific Realism (New York, 1972); Rom Harre, Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago, 1970); Frederick Suppe (ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories (2nd. ed., Urbana, 1977).

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science and offers the definitive “last word” on the issues. We really cannot reasonably suppose that science as it now stands affords the real truth with regard to its creatures-of-theory. The characteristic genius of scientific realism is inherent in its equating of the resources of natural science with the domain of what actually exists. But this equation would work only if science, as it stands, has actually “got it right,” at any rate in essentials. And this is something we are certainly not minded―and not entitled―to claim. The postulation as real of the commitments of our science is viable only if done provisionally, in the spirit of “doing the best we can now do, in the current state-of-the-art” and giving our best estimate of the matter. The step of reification is always to be taken provisionally, subject to a reservatio mentis of presumptive revisability. We do and must recognize that we can only “accept” them with a certain tentativity, subject to a clear realization that they may need to be corrected or even abandoned. These considerations must inevitably constrain and condition our attitude towards the natural mechanisms envisaged in our science. We certainly do not―or should not―want to reify (hypostasize) the “theoretical entities” of current science―to say flatly and unqualifiedly that the contrivances of our present-day science correctly depict the furniture of the real world. We do not―or at any rate, given the realities of the case, should not―want to adopt categorically the ontological implications of scientific theorizing in just exactly the state-of-the-art configuration presently in hand. Scientific fallibilism precludes the claim that what we purport to be scientific “knowledge” is in fact correct, and accordingly blocks the path to a scientific realism that maintains that the furnishings of the real world are exactly as our science states them to be. The world that we describe is one thing, the world as we describe it is another, and they would coincide only if our descriptions were totally correct―something that we are certainly not in a position to claim. The world-as-known is a thing of our contrivance, an artifact we devise on our own terms. Even if the “data” uniquely determined a corresponding picture of reality, and did not underdetermine the theoretical constructions we base upon them (as they always do), the fact remains that altered circumstances lead to altered manifolds of “data.” Our recognition of the fact that the world-picture of science is ever-changing blocks our taking the stance that it is ever correct. According to one expositor, the scientific realist:

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Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers III maintains that, if a theory has scientific merit, then we are thereby justified in concluding that . . . the theoretical entities characterized by the theory really do exist.4

But this sort of position has its difficulties. Phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether all had scientific merit in their day, but this did not establish their existence. Why, then, should things be all that different with us, and our “scientific merit” now suddenly assure actual existence? What matters for real existence is clearly (and only) the issue of truth itself, and not the issue of what is thought to be true at some particular stage of scientific history. And here problems arise. For its changeability is a fact ABOUT science that is as inductively well established as any theory OF science itself. Science is not a static system but a dynamic process. 4. THE SECURITY/DEFINITIVENESS TRADE-OFF The contrast between the world-view of science and that of common sense is critical for present purposes. Science is the venture of providing the best available estimates of answers to our questions about the furnishings of the world and their modes of comportment. Increased confidence in the correctness of our estimates can always be purchased at the price of decreased accuracy. We estimate the height of the tree at around 25 feet. We are quite sure that the tree is 25±5 feet high. We are virtually certain that its height is 25±10 feet. But we are completely and absolutely sure that its height is between 1 inch and 100 yards. Of this we are “completely sure” in the sense that we are “absolutely certain,” “certain beyond the shadow of a doubt,” “as certain as we can be of anything in the world,” “so sure that we would be willing to stake our life on it,” and the like. For any sort of estimate whatsoever there is always a characteristic trade-off relationship between the evidential security of the estimate, on the one hand (as determinable on the basis of its probability or degree of acceptability), and on the other hand its contentual definiteness (exactness, detail, precision, etc.). A situation of the sort depicted by the concave curve of Figure 1 obtains.

4

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Lehrer, Keith, “Review of Science, Perception and Reality by Wilfred Sellars,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 63 (1966), pp. 266-277 (see p. 269)

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___________________________________________________ Figure 1 THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEFINITENESS IN INFORMATION EXTRACTION

increasing definiteness

increasing security Note: given suitable ways of measuring security (s) and definiteness (d), the curve at issue can be supposed to be the equilateral hyperbola: s x d = constant.

____________________________________________________ Now the crucial point in this regard is that natural science eschews the security of indefiniteness. In science we always endeavor to attain the maximal achievable universality, precision, exactness, etc. The law-claims of science are strict-precise, wholly explicit, exceptionless and unshaded. They involve no hedging, no fuzziness, no incompleteness and no exceptions. In saying “the melting point of lead is 327.5°C,” in science we mean to assert that all pieces of (pure) lead will unfailingly melt at exactly this temperature; and we certainly don’t mean to assert that most pieces of (pure) lead will probably melt at somewhere around this temperature. By contrast when we assert in ordinary life that “Peaches are delicious” we mean to be understood as asserting something like “Most people will find the eating of suitably grown and duly matured peaches a relatively pleasurable experience.” Such a statement has all sorts of built-in safeguards like “more or less,” “in ordinary circumstances,” “by and large,” “normally,” “if other things are equal,” and the like. They are not really laws but rules of thumb, a matter of practical lore rather than scientific rigor. In natural science, however, we deliberately accept risk by aiming at maximal definiteness―and thus at maximal informativeness and testability. The theories of natural science take no notice of what happens ordinarily or normally; they seek to transact their explanatory business in terms of strict universality―in terms of what happens always and everywhere and in all

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circumstances. But in consequence we have no choice but to accept the vulnerability of our scientific statements relative to the operation of the security/definiteness tradeoff. The fact that its theoretical claims are “mere estimates” that are cognitively at risk roots unavoidably in science’s inherent commitment to the pursuit of maximal definiteness, which assures its theories a modest lifespan. The security/definiteness trade-off is the basis of scientific fallibilism. Its cultivation of informativeness (definiteness of information) entails the risk of error in science. The increased vulnerability, the diminished security of our claims is the unavoidable other side of the coin of the pursuit of definiteness. Science operates in its upper left-hand sector of the diagram of Figure 1. The claims of science are subject to a high level of insecurity. What is learned at one level of scientific systematization is unlearned at the next. It is this fact that blocks the option of a scientific realism of any straightforward sort. 5. COMMON SENSE REALISM AND ITS PROBLEMS The ground-rules of ordinary life discourse are altogether different, however. Ordinary-life communication is a practically oriented endeavor carried on in a social context. The operative injunctions here are: “Aim for security, even at the price of definiteness; don’t lay yourself open to the reproach of error and the purveying of mistaken information. Avoid misleading people, or―even worse―lying to them by asserting outright falsehoods; do not take a risk and “cry wolf.” Preserve your credibility!” In ordinary life we operate at the lower righthand side of the Figure 1 curve. The aims of ordinary-life discourse are primarily practical and geared to social interaction and the coordination of human effort. Through this context, it is crucial that we aim at trust and acceptance―that we establish and maintain a good reputation for reliability and trustworthiness. In the framework of common-life discourse we thus take our stance at a point of the curve of security/definiteness trade-off substantially removed from that of science, whose objectives are largely theoretical, and where the name of the game is disinterested inquiry. Very different probative orientations thus prevail in the two areas. In ordinary-life contexts, our approach is one of situational satisfying: we stop at the first level of sophistication and complexity that suffices for our present needs. In science, however, our approach is one of systemic maximizing: we press on towards the ideals of

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systemic completeness and comprehensiveness. In science we put ourselves at greater risk because we ask much more of the project. We must recognize―without any relapse into pervasive skepticism―that the cognitive stance characteristic of science requires the acceptance of fallibility and corrigibility, and so constrains a certain tentativity, engendering the presumption of error. Because the aims of the enterprises are characteristically different, our inquiries in everyday-life and in science have a wholly different aspect, with the former achieving a stability and security at the price of sacrificing definiteness, a price which the latter scorns to pay. A possible misapprehension arises in this connection. A view along the following lines is very tempting: “Science is the best, most thoroughly tested knowledge we have―the “knowledge” of everyday life pales by comparison. The theses of science are really secure; those of everyday-life casual and fragile.” But the very reverse is the case: our scientific theories are vulnerable and have a smallish lifespan; it is our claims at the looser level or ordinary life that are relatively secure and stable. And so, the strongest case for realism can be built on the side of common sense rather than science. The cognitive claims of the two enterprises stand on a very different plane in point of security. We know in our heart of hearts that not a single thesis of the latest Handbuch der Physik will stand unrevised in the year 3000. But rougher theses: “There are rocks in the world,” “There are gasses in the world,” etc. are to all appearances invulnerable. Stone-age physics is in far better shape than the “advanced” physics of the day. If we want to be realists―and I think we do―it is rather to the bank of common sense that we should entrust our resources than to that of science. And yet, common sense, too, has its problems. For its concepts are loose, fuzzy, general. Its world is populated with things like trees, rocks, gasses, and all those conceptions of a stone age science that we deem too loose and sloppy to characterize the world as it really is. We realize in our heart of hearts that the concepts of everyday life are too vague to characterize the world as it really is. The scientific project itself teaches us that. It was the unsatisfying character of the “stone-age physics” of common sense that drove us to develop science in the first place. What we ideally want is information about reality that is both highly tenable (secure) and highly informative (definite). But just this is something that the exclusion principle encapsulated in the security/definiteness trade-off precludes.

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What we know about the world in the secure, definitive sense of “know” is only the rough approximate sort of thing at issue in the realm of common sense―the world of rocks and apples, odors, and colors. It is exactly the world of the plain man that we know securely. And the adequacy of this sort of knowledge (in point of definiteness rather than security) is something that science has undermined for good and all. It is only the reality of “stone age physics” that we can securely get at, and it leaves us totally dissatisfied. We are in a bind. From the angle of precision, science is in good shape, but its condition is very problematic from the angle of truth. Common sense on the other hand stands on firm ground in relation to truth, but is so sloppy conceptually that we have no confidence in its capacity to characterize the reality of things. Either way, the epistemic component of realism is in difficulty. 6. WHY NOT ABANDON REALISM? Given that even our most exactingly contrived scientific view of the nature of reality is―and must always be―provisional and tentative, why not abandon the whole notion? Why endorse the conception of “reality” at all, why postulate something to which we can never stake a secure and final claim? The answer here lies in considering the price that such an abandonment would exact from us. Even though we have no cognitively secure way of getting there from here―no way of securing information about reality of a quality that can implement the demands of epistemic adequacy inherent in realism―powerful considerations hold us to the essentials of a realistic position. To begin with, we indispensably require the notion of reality to operate the classical concept of truth as “agreement with reality” (adaequatio ad rem). Once we abandon the concept of reality, the idea that in accepting a factual claim as true we become committed to the proposition that that’s how the facts actually stand ”how it really is” would also go by the board. Semantics constrains realism: we have no alternative but to regard as real those states of affairs claimed by the contentions we are prepared to make. (That is, once we put a claim forward by way of serious assertion, we must view as real the states of affairs it purports.) The nihilistic denial that there is such a thing as reality at all would destroy once and for all the crucial

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Parmenidean divide between appearance and reality. And this would exact a fearful price from us: we would now be reduced to talking only of what we (I, you, many of us) think to be so. The crucial contrast notion of the real truth would no longer be available: we would only be able to contrast our putative truths with those of others, but could no longer operate the classical distinction between the putative and the actual, between what we think to be so and what actually is so. We could not take the stance that, as the Aristotelian commentator Themistius put it, “that which exists does not conform to various opinions, but rather the correct opinions conform to that which exists.”5 Second, the issue of cognitive coordination comes into play. Communication and inquiry, as we carry them on, are predicated on the fundamental idea of a real world of things existing and functioning “in themselves,” without dependence on us and so equally accessible to others. Underlying and underpinning our discourse is the commitment to the realistic idea of “real things” whose being and comportment is quite independent of whatever thoughts about them and regarding which we ourselves may (very possibly) have quite the wrong conception. Only through reference to the real world as a common object and shared focus of our diverse and imperfect epistemic strivings are we able to effect communicative contact with one another. But if reality were dispensed with, the whole notion of person indifferent facts―on the basis of which alone any real communication is possible―would also go by the board. And at this point, the idea of inquiry, or seeking after the objective truth of things, would also run into difficulty. Inquiry, like communication, is geared to the conception of an objective world: a communally shared realm of things that exist strictly and “on their own,” comprising an enduring and impersonal realm within which and, more importantly, with reference to which inquiry proceeds. Inquiry, as we standardly conceive it, is predicated on the commitment to an inquiry-independent reality; it is a quest for information about “the real world” with respect to which our own conceptions of things are nowise definitive, and into which others can accordingly enter unproblematically. We could not operate the notion of inquiry as aimed at estimating the character of the real if we were not prepared to presume or postulate a reality for these estimates to be estimates of. It would clearly be pointless to devise our characterizations of reality if we did not stand committed to the proposition that there indeed is a reality to be characterized. 5

Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, 1,71, 96a.

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Last but not least, we need the conception of reality to operate the causal model of inquiry about the real world. Our standard picture of man’s place in the scheme of things is predicated on the fundamental idea that there is indeed a real world (however imperfectly our inquiry may characterize it) whose causal operations produce inter alia those impacts upon us serve as the basis in constructing our world-picture. Reality is viewed as the causal source and basis of the appearances, the originator and determiner of the phenomena of our cognitively relevant experience. “The real world” is seen as causally operative in serving as the thoughtexternal molder of thought and as constituting the ultimate arbiter of the adequacy of our theorizing. The conception of Reality thus plays a triple role in our thinking. It is seen as the epistemological object of veridical cognition, in the context of the contrast between “the real” and its “merely phenomenal” appearances. Again, it is seen as the target or telos of the truth-estimation process at issue in inquiry, providing for a common focus in communication and communal inquiry. (The “real world” thus constitutes the “object” of our cognitive endeavors in both senses of this term―the objective at which they are directed and the purpose for which they are exerted). Finally, reality is seen as the ontological source of cognitive endeavors, affording the existential matrix in which we move and have our being and whose impact upon us is the prime mover for our cognitive efforts. All of these facets of the concept of reality are integrated and unified in the classical doctrine of truth as adaequatio ad rem. The conception of reality affords a fundamental presupposition for the entire network of ideas relating to communication and inquiry as we traditionally understand them. In communication and inquiry alike we seek or offer answers to our questions about how matters stand in this “objective realm.” 7. REGULATIVE REALISM As these deliberations indicate, we are committed to the idea that there is a thought independent reality even though we are not in a position to stake any claims to authentic scientific knowledge about what its nature is. We know that there is a real and definitive truth of things, but not what it is. And any rejection of this commitment to Reality “an sich” (or to the actual Truth about it) exacts an unacceptable price. For in abandoning this commitment we also lose those regulative contrasts that canalize and con-

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dition our view of the nature of inquiry (and indeed shape our conception of this process as it stands within the framework of our conceptual scheme). We would no longer be able to use the idea of inquiry as truthestimation if there were no real truth to be estimated, and we could no longer assert “What we have there is good enough as far as it goes, but it is presumably not ‘the real truth’ of the matter.” Not only are such claims intelligible, but we in fact stand committed to them as facts that constitute a crucial part of the conceptual scheme within whose orbit we operate our concept of inquiry. The very conception of inquiry as we conceive of it would have to be abandoned if the contrast conceptions of “actual reality” and “the real truth” were no longer available. For what really is true is obviously nowise affected or determined by what we think to be true. And so, since reality, as the condition of things answering to the real truth, is clearly not something we are going to alter or modify by changes in what we think about it, it is bound to be unaffected by any developments with respect to what we purport to be true through cognitive endeavors. Our view of the real is unavoidably conditioned by our acknowledgement that a full and final knowledge of reality is something we cannot justifiably claim to have―now or ever. Reality is recognized as being too elusive to be securely caught in the net of new cognition. We have no way of implementing the distinction between real and merely putative knowledge. Towards absolute reality itself, transcendental reality (reality “as it actually is”) as contradistinguished from our empirical reality (reality “as the science of the day deems it to be”), we must accordingly take much the same stance that Kant took towards his “thing in itself.” As such, there is nothing we can say about it; its character is fundamentally a matter of je ne sais quoi, because we recognize that definitive and error-immune claims to knowledge cannot be substantiated at the level of scientific theorizing. On the other hand, we stand committed to the idea that there must indeed be such a thing as knowledge-transcending reality, because only in this way can we operate our conceptual scheme with respect to inquiry and communication,―with its inherent dedication to the conception of an objectivity which recourse to “the real world” can alone sustain. Negative and regulative though the conception may be, we nevertheless require it as a tool of indispensable utility.

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8. REALISM AND IDEALISM To be sure, such an account does not show that realism is correct―that there indeed is a Reality that is wholly thought-independent and transcends all of our knowledge of it. All we have done is to argue that just such a realism underlies our conceptual scheme―that a real world matrix of Truth and Reality that is at once the subject of our inquiry and the determiner of its results must be assumed or postulated to operate this scheme. This approach places Reality in the light, not of a discovered fact, but in that of a fundamental presupposition that governs and undergirds the framework of our thought about the world. Its status is not that of a discovery or finding but of a governing assumption. Its existence is a matter not of demonstration, but of postulation or presupposition. All our ventures at communication and communal inquiry are predicated on an information-transcending stance: the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of objectively existing things―a realm of “real things” amongst which we live and into which we inquire, but about which we ourselves presumably have only imperfect information. But this is not something we learn in the course of inquiry. The “facts of experience” can never reveal it to us. It is something we postulate or presuppose from the very outset. Its epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery, but that of a regulative presupposition needed to underwrite the very possibility of communication or inquiry as we standardly conceive of them.6 6

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At the present time of day, this view seems sheer heresy. We are told on all sides that the concept of “the world” and of “the truth of things” and of “reality itself,” viewed in explicit separation from any relationship to the practices and processes of inquiry, are simply empty and altogether vacuous. Arguments to this effect are nowadays almost commonplace. We find them in W. V. Quine's Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass; 1960) and in “Ontological Relativity” in Ontological Relativity (New York, 1969), in Nelson Goodman's “The Way the World Is” in Ways of World Making (Indianapolis, 1978), in Richard Rorty's “The World Well Lost” (The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 69 (1972), pp. 649-666). in Donald Davidson's “The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 47 (1973-4), pp. 5-20), in Hilary Putnam's “Realism and Reason” in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London, 1978), and in Jay Rosenberg's Linguistic Representation (Dordrecht, 1974). But none of these assaults on truth/world/reality deal adequately with (or indeed even address themselves to) the need for this conception as a negative contrast and as a regulative principle. A notion that has important work to do cannot be dismissed as vacuous or superfluous.

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Of course, what is learned by experience is that in proceeding on this prejudgment. Our attempts do, by and large, work out pretty well vis-à-vis the purpose we have in view for inquiry and communication. This success of our objectivity-presupposing proceedings shows that they are in a sense warranted. But this legitimation through the retrospective revalidation of experience does not alter their status as presuppositions and transmute them instead into established inductive conclusions. It does no more than to justify our reliance on a picture of the world that is geared to―but still transcends―the products of inquiry. The existence of a mind-independent reality that is at once the object of and the operational stage for our cognitive endeavors is thus by no means the discovery of an objective fact, a finding as to the nature of things. Far from it! A commitment to the idea of reality is an inherent presumption of our conceptual scheme. We have here to do not with an objective discovery about the descriptive constitution of nature, but rather a formative presupposition that is part and parcel of the conceptual machinery that we ourselves bring to the process of inquiry. The reality of this mode of realism is a scheme-internal one, and not a supervenient ab extra addition to the commitment of our conceptual scheme. What we have here is a “transcendental argument” from the character of our conceptual scheme to its inherent presupposition. Now if realism ultimately stands on this basis, then it is clear that we have a realism whose rationale is ideal. It clearly does not rest on substantive considerations about how things stand in the world, but rather is established by talking about how people think about the world within the orbit of the conceptual scheme they employ for its characterization. Realism, in sum, is ultimately not a thesis about the world, but reflects a facet of how we conceive of the world―not a discovered fact, but a methodological presupposition of communication and inquiry: an input into our investigation of nature rather than an output thereof. Such a position sees this commitment to a mind-independent reality in an essentially regulative role―as a functional requisite or presupposition for our intellectual resources, our conceptual scheme. What we have here is an object-level realism that rests on a presuppositional idealism at the justificatory metalevel. We thus arrive, paradoxical as it may seem, at a realism that rests on a fundamentally idealistic basis.7 7

This chapter is a revised version of “Reality and Realism,” in W. Leinfellner and W. Wuhetits (eds.), The Tasks of Philosophy (Wien: Hoelden-Pichler-Tempsky

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Verlag, 1986; Proceedings of the 10th International Wittgenstein Symposium), pp. 75-85.

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Chapter 3 THE ARGUMENTS FROM ERROR AND IGNORANCE: AN EPISTEMIC APPROACH TO FACTUAL REALISM 1. ERROR

F

actual realism is a position defined by the following contention:

Being a fact does not depend on what people know/think/believe to be so; facts obtain independently of such epistemic considerations. Such a conception of factual realism immediately opens the door to what might be characterized as an error-based approach. The basic idea goes back to Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, where Socrates presents the following line of thought: False judgment [i.e., error] is the sort of misjudgment that occurs when a person confuses two things, both of which are distinct, through asserting that the one is the other [viz., what realities is and something else that is not] . (Theaetetus 189 BC.)

Obviously, if error consists in confusing what is with something else, than error there could not be if “what actually is” were not acknowledged. In one form or another this approach has recurred in various guises over the years. Not only was it at work with Plato, but it rose to prominence once more in the thought of Josiah Royce, who in his classic 1885 book on The Religious Aspect of Philosophy made error the pivot-point of his deliberations. To begin with he stressed the absolute inevitability of accepting the reality of error by reasoning essentially as follows: Consider our conviction that there is such a thing as error. Then either we are right, and then error exists, or we are wrong, and then error ex-

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Consider our conviction that there is such a thing as error. Then either we are right, and then error exists, or we are wrong, and then error exists as well. Such a constructive dilemma indicates the inevitability of error. And then came the crux of Royce’s argumentation: Error is . . .defined as a judgment that does not agree with its object. In the erroneous judgment, subject and situation are so combined as, in the object, the corresponding elements are not included. And thus the judgment comes to be false.1

For error to obtain—for a judgment to be untrue to the object —means that the object’s actual condition is not as the judgment claims it to be which, of course, requires an actual condition to realize this situation. And so realism is home free. Error, for Royce, is the “indubitable fact” on which realism can rely for a firm foundation.2 Argumentation along the general lines as those articulated by Plato and Royce has also been expounded in varying ways by such contemporary philosophers as Gerhard Vollmer and the present author.3 In the latter case, the proposed line of reasoning runs essentially as follows: • When I believe that p, then I am either right about this or else in error. (This in effect, is a doxactic version of the Law of Extended Middle.) • When I am right about believing p, then p is (really and actually) the case—that is, it is true. • Every truth stands coordinate with a truth-maker—there is always a corresponding set of characteristic facts that renders it true. 1

Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885), Chap. 11 and especially pp. 396-97.

2

See James Courant in R. A. Puta (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William James (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 187-89.

3

See Gerhard Vollmer, Wissenschaftstheorie am Einsatz (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1993) and also Nicholas Rescher, Realistic Pragmatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), and Epistemology (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2003).

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• So in this case then must be fact that render p true independently of what people may think on the matter. • If I am wrong and in error about believing p, then p is (really and actually) not the case, i.e., it is false. • Every false statement has a false-marker—there is always a corresponding set of facts that render it false. • So in this case there must be facts that render p false independently of what people may think about the matter. • But now we have a constructive dilemma on our hands, viz., an inescapable alternative either hand of what leads to the one conclusion. Hence this conclusion must obtain. • It follows that there will be facts that obtain independently of what people may know/think/believe to be so. And so, what we have here is once again an argument to factual realism from a basis of considerations regarding the limits of knowledge. The realization that we are sometimes mistaken is not a particularly edifying piece of knowledge. But it is at least something about which we cannot be mistaken. 2. IGNORANCE It should be noted, however, that such reasoning from error to factual realism contrasts significantly with the Argument from Ignorance to the effect that if—as is often the case—we are (all of us!) ignorant of certain facts, then it must be that such facts, at least, obtain independently of what we think. For, clearly, whenever it can be established on the basis of general principles that there are certain matters of fact with regard to which not only do we know or indeed even know of, then this too indicates the implausibility of holding that in regard to fact it is our thinking that makes it so.4 After all, when a question that must actually be decided one way or 4

On this line of argumentation see Chapter 6 of the author’s Reason and Reality (Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

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the other is such that we cannot decide it, then it becomes distinctly impracticable to ascribe the solution to us. But while this argumentation too is cogent, it represents a different sort of approach from that based on error. To argue for realism from error is to argue from a fault of commission. By contrast, to argue to this conclusion from ignorance is to argue from a fault of omission. While the upshot is substantially the same the route leading to it is quite different.5 3. LESSONS It is important to note, however, that the realism at issue with error and ignorance is in both cases alike of a sort that does not take the categorical form: “Factual realism is correct since such-and-such is actually the case.” Instead it approaches the matter in a conditional and oblique manner. Its format is: “If (as is indeed only sensible) you are going to think that of our cognitive situation is of a certain sort—namely as not only open to ignorance or error but to some extent actually enmeshed in it—then you will have to endorse factual realism as well.” Such argumentation clearly pivots not on what is but on what is thought to be. It thus emerges as a key feature of the epistemic approach to factual realism that it illustrates the characteristic style of conceptual idealism in that it really does not establish in a direct, ontological way that thoughtindependent reality exists. Instead, it takes the line of arguing that our conceptual scheme—and, in particular our concept of error—is such that perceptually presupposed. In effect it argues that “Given that we use the conception of error as we actually do, the very idea that error occurs demands (given the nature of the concept at issue) that we stand committed to the correlative existence of an objectively mind-independent reality.” In sum, what such reasoning endeavors to establish is that the conceptual mechanisms in whose terms of reference our thought about these matters is formed commit us to endorsing a thought-independent reality. On this basis, factual realism (viewed at) is in the final analysis perfectly consistent with an idealism of sorts at the metalevel of justifactory considerations. That pivots matters on how we think about things.

5

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Ironically the ultimate basis of our commitment to realism does not inhere in our cognitive powers but in our cognitive debility—in the inexorable prospects of error and ignorance.

THE ARGUMENTS FROM ERROR AND IGNORANCE

And this should really not be seen as all that surprising. After all, when we turn to the matter of what we really think to be actually so, the contrast between what actually is and what “is to be” becomes inoperable. Clearly, the request “Don’t tell me what you think to be so, just tell me what actually is” presents a challenge which, as a matter of principle, it is impossible to meet. A creature that acknowledges its susceptibility to error and ignorance has no choice but to acknowledge the contrast between what is and what it thinks to be so—even though it can do this only in general terms, subject to an inescapable incapacity to provide concrete instances.

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Chapter 4 PRAGMATIC IDEALISM AND METAPHYSICAL REALISM 1. THE EXISTENTIAL COMPONENT OF REALISM

R

ealism has two indispensable and inseparable components—the one existential and ontological, the other cognitive and epistemic. The former maintains that there indeed is a real world—a realm of concrete, mind-independent, objective reality. The latter maintains that we can to some extent secure adequate descriptive information about this mindindependent realm—that we can validate plausible claims about some of the specifics of its constitution. This second contention obviously presupposes the first, seeing that behind the question “Are our claims about an item correct?” there unavoidably stands the question “Is there indeed such an item for our claims to be about?” But how can that pivotal, ontological thesis of metaphysical realism be secured within a generally pragmatic approach? How can functional considerations of use and purpose come to have a relevant, let alone formative bearing on theoretical matters of correctness, truth, and fact? The answer here lies in the consideration that metaphysical realism represents a commitment that we presuppose for our inquiries rather than discover as a result of them. For we do not—cannot—discover as a result of (mind-managed!) inquiry and investigation that a totally mind-detached reality actually exists. This is clearly not an inductive inference issuing from the scientific systematization of our observations, but rather represents a regulative, thought-guiding presupposition that makes empirical inquiry possible in the first place. How could we possibly learn from observation that our mental experience is itself largely the causal product of the machinations of a mind-independent manifold—that subjective experience has objective bearing because all those phenomenal appearances are causally rooted in an altogether mind-external physical realm whose reach and range outrun the confines of our experience? What is ultimately at issue here is a practice-enabling presupposition that experience is indeed objective. That what we take to be evidence in-

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deed is evidence, that our sensations yield information about an order of physical existence outside the experiential realm itself, and that this experience is not just merely phenomenal but represents the appearance of something extra-mental belonging to an objectively self-subsisting order—all this is something that we must always presuppose in using experiential data as “evidence” for how things stand in the world. For if we did not presume from the very outset that our sensations somehow relate to an extra-mental reality so as to be able to evidentiate claims about its nature, then we could clearly make no use of them to draw any inference whatever about “the real world.” Commitment to a mind-independent reality is, all too clearly, a precondition for empirical inquiry rather than a consequence of it—a presupposition we have to make to be able to use observational data as sources of objective information. We really have no alternative but to presume or postulate it. Objectivity represents a postulation made on functional (rather than evidential) grounds: we endorse it in order to be in a position to learn by experience. What is at issue here is not so much a product of our experience of reality as a factor that makes it possible to view our experience as being “of reality” at all. As Kant clearly saw, objective experience is possible only if the existence of such a real, objective world is an available given from the outset rather than the product of experience—an ex post facto discovery about the nature of things.1 Our endorsement of the reality of observation-engendering causes in nature—which as causes of experience in the order of being also do double duty as inferences there from in the order of learning—is not based on empirical investigation but on general principles of a procedural character. What we learn from science is not and cannot be that an inherently unobservable sub-observable order of physical causality undergirds nature as we 1

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Immanuel Kant held that we cannot experientially learn though perception about the objective reality of outer things, because we can only recognize our perceptions as perceptions (i.e., representations of outer things) if these outer things are supposed as such from the first (rather than being learned or inferred from representations). As he summarizes the matter in the “Refutation of Idealism”: “Idealism assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from it we can only infer outer things—and this, moreover, only in an untrustworthy manner . . . . But in the above proof it has been shown that outer experience is really immediate . . . .” (Critique of Pure Reason, B276). Here “is really immediate” should be construed as: “must be accepted noninferentially from the very outset, because inference could not accomplish what is needed to arrive at those outer things.”

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observe it, but rather what—with their reality taken as given—these underlying and preliminarily presumed agencies must specifically be like. Science does not (cannot) teach us that the observable order emerges from underlying unobserved causes and that the phenomena of observation are signs betokening this extra- and sub-phenomenal order of existence. For this is something that we must presume from the outset of any world in which observation as we understand it can transpire. What science does teach us (and metaphysics cannot) is what can plausibly take to be the descriptive character of this phenomena-engendering order once its existence is taken for granted. For once an objective reality and its concomitant causal operation has been postulated, then principles of inductive systematization, of explanatory economy, and of common cause consilence can work wonders in exploiting the phenomena of experience to provide the basis for plausible claims about the nature of the real. But we indispensably need that initial existential presupposition to make a start. Without that natural commitment to a reality serving as ground and object of our experience, its cognitive import will be lost. Only on this basis can we proceed evidentially with the exploration of the interpersonally public and objective domain of a physical world-order that we share in common. Only by way of a facilitating presupposition—albeit that is ultimately retrovalidated through its applicative utility and efficacy—can we ever hope to establish that our observational experience (unlike our dream experience) is ever evidence for anything objectively mind-external, that is, is ever able to provide information about a “real world.” Accordingly, that second, descriptive (evidential) component of realism stands on a very different footing from its first, existential (presuppositional) component. For reality’s nature is something about which we can only make warranted claims through actually examining it. Substantive information must come through inquiry—through evidential validation. Once we are willing to credit our observational data with objectivity,— with reality-orientation and thus with evidential bearing—then we can, of course, make use of them to inform ourselves as to the nature of the real. But the objective bearing of observational experience is not something that we can preestablish; it is something we must presuppose in the interest of honoring Peirce’s pivotal injunction never to bar the path of inquiry. And the functional nature of this practice-enabling presupposition means that the validation process at work must—at this fundamental level—be altogether pragmatic. It represents a step we take prospectively—in order to put ourselves into a position to satisfy our goals.

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2. REALISM IN ITS REGULATIVE/PRAGMATIC ASPECT The preceding deliberations point clearly in the direction of a pragmatic justification for a realistic stance toward our experience as indicative of something beyond itself. The commitment to realism is the possibilizing instrumentality for a certain practical modus operandi. Accordingly, we have good reason—good pragmatic reason—for standardly operating on the basis of the “presumption of objectivity” reflected in the guiding precept: “Unless you have good reason to think otherwise (that is, as long as nothing impedes: nihil obstat) treat the materials of inquiry and communication as veridical—as representing the nature of the real.” The ideal of objective reality is the focus of a family of convenient regulative principles—a functionally useful instrumentality that enables us to transact our cognitive business in the most satisfactory and effective way. And so, bearing this pragmatic perspective in mind, let us consider this issue of utility and ask: What can this postulation of a mind-independent reality actually do for us? The answer is straightforward. The assumption of a mind-independent reality is essential to the whole of our standard conceptual scheme relating to inquiry and communication. Without it, both the actual conduct and the rational legitimation of our communicative and investigative (evidential) practice would be destroyed. To be evidentially meaningful, experience has to be experience of something. And nothing that we do in this cognitive domain would make sense if we did not subscribe to the conception of a mind-independent reality. And since this is not a learned fact it is—and must be!—an assumption whose prime recommendation is its utility. To begin with, we indispensably require the notion of reality to operate the classical concept of truth as “agreement with reality” (adaequatio ad rem). Once we abandon the concept of reality, the idea that in accepting a factual claim as true we become committed to how matters actually stand—”how it really is”—would also go by the board. The very semantics of our discourse constrains a commitment to realism; we have no alternative but to regard as real those states of affairs that are affirmed by the contentions we are prepared to accept. Once we put a contention forward by way of serious assertion, we must view as real the states of affairs it purports, and must see its claims as facts. We need the notion of reality to operate the conception of truth. A factual statement on the order of “There are pi mesons” is true if and only if the world is such that pi mesons exist

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within it. By virtue of their very nature as truths, true statements must state facts: they state what really is so, which is exactly what it is to “characterize reality.” The conception of truth and of reality come together in this notion of adaequatio ad rem—the venerable principle that to speak truly is to say how matters stand in reality, in that things actually are as we have said them to be. In the second place, the nihilistic denial that there is such a thing as an objectively mind-independent realm would destroy once and for all the crucial Parmenidean divide between appearance and reality. And this would exact a fearful price from us, since we would then be reduced to talking only of what we (I, you, many of us) think to be so. The crucial contrast notion of the real truth would no longer be available: we would only be able to contrast our putative truths with those of others, but could no longer operate the classical distinction between the putative and the actual, between what people merely think to be so and what actually is so. We could not take the stance that, as the Aristotelian commentator Themistius put it, “that which exists does not conform to various opinions, but rather the correct opinions conform to that which exists.”2 The third point relates to the issue of cognitive coordination. Communication and inquiry, as we actually carry them on, are predicated on the fundamental idea of a real world of objective things, existing and functioning “in themselves,” without specific dependence on us and so equally accessible to others. Inter-subjectively valid communication can only be based on common access to an objective order of things. All our ventures at communication and communal inquiry are predicated on the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of things. They presuppose there is a realm of “real objects” amongst which we live and into which we inquire as a community, but about which we ourselves as individuals presumably have only imperfect information that can be criticized and augmented by the efforts of others. This points to a fourth important consideration. Only through reference to the real world as a common object and shared focus of our diverse and imperfect epistemic strivings are we able to effect communicative contact with one another. Inquiry and communication alike are geared to the conception of an objective world: a communally shared realm of things that exist strictly “on their own” within which and, more importantly, with reference to which inquiry proceeds. We could not proceed on the basis of 2

Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M Friedländer (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1904), I, 71, 96a.

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the notion that inquiry estimates the character of the real if we were not prepared to presume or postulate from the very outset a reality for these estimates to be estimates of. It would clearly be pointless to devise our characterizations of reality if we did not stand committed from the outset to the proposition that there is a reality to be characterized. The fifth consideration is that the very idea of inquiry as we conceive it would have to be abandoned if the conceptions of “actual reality” and “the real truth” were no longer available to serve their crucial contrasting roles. We could no longer assert: “What we have there is good enough as far as it goes, but it is presumably not ‘the whole real truth’ of the matter.” Without the conception of reality we could not think of our knowledge in the fallibilistic mode we actually use—as having provisional, tentative, improvable features that constitute a crucial part of the conceptual scheme within whose orbit we operate our concept of inquiry. For our commitment to the mind-independent reality of “the real world” stands together with our acknowledgment that, in principle, any or all of our present scientific ideas as to how things work in the world, at any present, may well prove to be untenable. The information that we may have about a thing, be it real or presumptive information, is always just that—information we lay claim to. We recognize that it varies from person to person. Our attempt at communication and inquiry are thus undergirded by the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of objectively existing things, a world of “real things” amongst which we live and into which we inquire (but about which we do and must assume that we have only imperfect information at any and every particular stage of the cognitive venture). Our conviction in a reality that lies beyond our imperfect understanding of it (in all the various senses of “lying beyond”) roots in our sense of the imperfections of our scientific world-picture—its tentativity and potential fallibility. In abandoning our commitment to a mind-independent reality, we would lose the indispensably objective impetus of inquiry. After all, reality (on the traditional metaphysicians’ construction of the concept) is the condition of things answering to “the real truth;” it is the realm of what really is as it really is. The pivotal contrast is between “mere appearance” and “reality as such,” between “our picture of reality” and “reality itself,” between what actually is and what we merely think (believe, suppose, etc.) to be. Our allegiance to the conception of reality, and to the appearance/reality contrast that pivots upon it, roots in the fallibilistic recognition that, at the level of the detailed specifics of scientific theory, anything we presently hold to be the case can possibly turn out other-

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wise—indeed, certainly will do so if past experience give any auguries for the future. Sixthly and finally, we need the conception of reality in order to operate the causal model of empirical inquiry regarding the real world. Our standard picture of man’s place in the scheme of things is predicated on the fundamental idea that there is a real world (however imperfectly our inquiry may characterize it) whose causal operations produce inter alia causal impacts upon us, providing the basis of our world-picture. Reality is viewed as the causal source and basis of the appearances, the originator and determiner of the phenomena of our cognitively relevant experience. “The real world” is seen as causally operative both in serving as the external moulder of thought and as constituting the ultimate arbiter of the adequacy of our theorizing. In summary, then, we need that postulate of an objective order of mindindependent reality for at least six important reasons. • To preserve the distinction between true and false with respect to factual matters and to operate the idea of truth as agreement with reality. • To preserve the distinction between appearance and reality, between our picture of reality and reality itself. • To serve as a basis for inter-subjective communication. • To furnish the basis for a shared project of communal inquiry. • To provide for the fallibilistic view of human knowledge. • To sustain the causal mode of learning and inquiry and to serve as basis for the objectivity of experience. Above all, it is crucial for realism that the idea of mind-independent reality is functionally pivotal in matters of communication. Subscription to an objective reality is indispensably demanded by any step into the domain of the publicly accessible objects essential to communal inquiry and interpersonal communication about a shared world. We could not establish communicative contact about a common objective item of discussion if our discourse were geared to our own idiosyncratic experiences and these conceptions bound up with them. But the objectivity at issue in our communi-

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cative discourse is a matter of its very status as putatively communicative, rather than somehow depending upon its specific content. For the substantive content of a claim about the world in no way tells us whether it is factual or fictional. This is something that we have to determine from its context, which means, in effect, that in general it is provided for by a preestablished conventionalized intention to talk about “the real world.” This intention to take real objects to be at issue, objects as they actually are, our potentially idiosyncratic conceptions of them quite aside, is fundamental because it is overriding—that is, it overrides all of our other intentions when we enter upon the communicative venture. Without this conventionalized intention we should not be able to convey information—or misinformation—to one another about a shared “objective” world that underlies and connects those variable experiences of ours. If it were not reality as it actually is that we are concerned to discuss, but merely “reality-as-I-conceive-it-to-be,” then we could not really manage to agree or disagree with one another. Indeed we then just could not communicate successfully in the informative mode. We are able to say something about the (real) moon or the (real) Sphinx because of our submission to a fundamental communicative convention or “social contract” to the effect that we intend (“mean”) to talk about the very thing itself as it “really” is—our own personal conception of it notwithstanding. We adopt the standard policy in communicative discourse of letting the communally established language rather than whatever specific informative notions and conceptions we may actually “have in mind” on particular occasions, be the decisive factor with regard to the things at issue in our discussions. When I speak about the Sphinx (even though I do so on the basis of my own conceivably strange conception of what is involved here), I will be discussing “the real Sphinx” in virtue of the basic conventionalized intention governing our use of referring terms within the wider community. Any effective venture in communication must be predicated on the fundamental intention to deal with the objective order of this “real world.” What is at stake here is thus ultimately a principle of practice—though, to be sure, it is thought-practice that is at issue. Accordingly, the justification for this fundamental presupposition of objectivity is not evidential at all; postulates as such are not based on evidence. Rather, it is practical and instrumentalistic—pragmatic, in short. It is procedural or functional efficacy that is the crux. The justification of this postulate lies in its utility: we need it to operate our conceptual scheme. We could not form our existing conceptions of truth, fact, inquiry and communication without presup-

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posing the independent reality of an external world. In its absence, we simply could not think of experience and inquiry as we actually do. (What we have here is a “transcendental argument” of sorts, namely one that from the character of our conceptual scheme to the unavoidability of accepting its inherent presuppositions.) Any and all pretensions to the primacy and predominance, let alone the definitive correctness, of our own conceptions regarding the realm of the real must be set aside in the context of communication. In communication regarding things we must be able to exchange information about them with our contemporaries and to transmit information about them to our successors. And we must be in a position to do this against the background of the recognition that their conceptions of things may not only be radically different from ours, but conceivably also rightly different. Thus, it is a crucial precondition of the possibility of successful communication about things that we must avoid laying any claim either to the completeness or even to the ultimate correctness of our own conception of any of the things at issue. This renders critically important that (and understandable why) conceptions are not pivotal for communicative purposes. Our discourse reflects our conceptions and perhaps conveys them, but it is not substantively about them. We thus deliberately abstain from any claim that our own conception is definitive if we are to engage successfully in discourse. We deliberately put the whole matter of conceptions aside—abstracting from the question of the agreement of my conception with yours, and all the more from the issue of which one of us has the right conception. This sort of epistemic humility is the price we pay for keeping the channels of communication open. But why embark upon the objectivity-presupposing projects of inquiry and communication at all? Why not settle back in comfortable abstention from this whole complex business? The answer is straightforward. The impetus to inquiry for knowledgeacquisition reflects the most practical of imperatives. Our need for intellectual accommodation in this world is no less pressing and no less practical than our need for physical accommodation. But in both cases, we do not want just some house or other, but one that is well built, that will not be blown down by the first wind to sweep along. Sceptics from antiquity onward have always said, “Forget about those abstruse theoretical issues; focus on your practical needs.” They overlook the crucial fact that an intellectual accommodation to the world is itself one of our deepest practical needs—that in a position of ignorance or cognitive dissonance we cannot

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function satisfactorily. After all, the project of cognitive development is not optional—at any rate not for us humans. Its rationale lies in the most practical and prudent of considerations, since it is only by traveling the path of inquiry that we can arrive at the sorts of good reasons capable of meeting the demands of a “rational animal.” Man has evolved within nature into the ecological niche of an intelligent being. In consequence, the need for understanding, for “knowing one’s way about,” is one of the most fundamental demands of the human condition. The practical benefits of knowledge, on the other hand, relate to its role in guiding the processes by which we satisfy our (noncognitive) needs and wants. The satisfaction of our needs for food, shelter, protection against the elements and security against natural and human hazards all require information. And the satisfaction of mere desiderata comes into it as well. We can, do, and must put knowledge to work to facilitate the attainment of our goals, guiding our actions and activities in this world into productive and rewarding lines. And this is where the practical payoff of the information we secure through inquiry and communication comes into play. Here again, pragmatic considerations are paramount. And so, our commitment to the mind-independent reality of “the real world” stands alongside our fallibilistic acknowledgment that in principle any or all of our present scientific ideas as to how things work in the world, at any present, may well prove to be untenable. Our conviction of a reality that lies beyond our imperfect understanding of it (in all the various senses of “lying beyond”) roots in our sense of the imperfections of our scientific world-picture—its tentativity and potential fallibility. In abandoning this commitment to a mind-independent reality, we would lose the impetus of inquiry. And yet realism’s epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery, but that of a presupposition whose ultimate justification is a transcendental argument from the very possibility of the projects of communication and inquiry as we standardly conduct them. The presuppositional conception of a mind-independent reality accordingly plays a central and indispensable role in our thought about matters of cognition. It is seen as the epistemological object of veridical cognition, in the context of the contrast between “the real” and its “merely phenomenal” appearances. Moreover, it is seen as the target of telos of the truthestimation process at issue in inquiry, providing for a common focus in communication and communal inquiry. (The “real world” thus constitutes the object of our cognitive endeavors in both senses of this term—the ob-

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jective at which they are directed and the purpose for which they are exerted.) And, further, reality is also to be seen as the ontological source of cognitive endeavors, affording the existential matrix in which we live and move and have our being—and whose impact upon us is the prime mover for our cognitive efforts. All of these facets of the concept of reality are integrated and unified in the classical doctrine of truth as it corresponds to fact (adaequatio ad rem), a doctrine that not merely invites but indeed requires a commitment to mind-independent reality as constituting at once the framework and the object of our cognitive endeavors in science. And their ultimate ratification lies in their role as indispensable presuppositions for our unavoidable practices. 3. THE ROLE OF PRESUMPTION That our experience relates to the lineaments of an objective thoughtindependent order of things is not something that we learn: it is something we presume from the outset. With presumption we take to be so what we could not otherwise derive. This idea of such presumptive “taking” is a crucial aspect of our languagedeploying discursive practice. For presumptively justified beliefs are the raw materials of cognition. They represent contentions that—in the absence of pre-established counter-indications—are acceptable to us “until further notice,” thus permitting us to make a start in the venture of cognitive justification without the benefit of pre-justified materials. They are defeasible alright, vulnerable to being overturned, but only by something else yet more secure than some other preestablished conflicting consideration. They are entitled to remain in place until displaced by something better. Accordingly, their impetus averts the dire consequences that would ensue if any and every cogent process of rational deliberation required inputs which themselves had to be authenticated by a prior process of rational deliberation—in which case the whole process could never get under way. Yet indespensability apart, what is it that justifies making presumptions, seeing that they are not established truths? The answer lies substantially in procedurally practical considerations. Presumptions arise in contexts where we have questions and need answers. It is a matter of faute de mieux, of this or nothing (or at any rate nothing better). Presumption is a thought instrumentality that so functions as to make it possible for us to do the best we can in circumstances where something must be done. And so

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presumption affords yet another instance where practical considerations play a leading role on the stage of our cognitive and communicative practice. For presumption is, in the end, a practical device whose rationale of validation lies on the order of pragmatic considerations. The obvious and evident advantage of presumption as an epistemic recourse is that it enables us to vastly extend the range of questions we are able to answer. It affords an instrument that enables us to extract a maximum of information from communicative situations. Presumption, in sum, is an ultimately pragmatic resource. To be sure, its evident disadvantage is that the answers that we obtain by its means are given not in the clarion tones of knowledge and assertion but in the more hesitant and uncertain tones of presumption and probability. We thus do not get the advantages of presumption without an accompanying negativity. Here, as elsewhere, we cannot have our cake and eat it too. We proceed in cognitive contexts in much the same manner in which banks proceed in financial contexts. We extend credit to others, doing so at first to a relatively modest extent. When and as they comport themselves in a way that indicates that this credit was warranted, then we extend more. By responding to trust in a “responsible” way—proceeding to amortize the credit one already has—one can increase one’s credit rating in cognitive much as in financial contexts. In trusting the senses, in relying on other people, and even in being rational, we always run a risk. Whenever in life we place our faith in something, we run a risk of being let down and disappointed. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly reasonable to bet on the general trustworthiness of the senses, the general reliability of our fellow men, and the general utility of reason. In such matters, no absolute guarantees can be had. But, one may as well venture, for, if venturing fails, the cause is lost anyhow—we have no more promising alternative to turn to. There is little choice about the matter: it is a case of “this or nothing”. If we want answers to factual questions, we have no real alternative but to trust in the cognitively cooperative disposition of the natural order of things. We cannot preestablish the appropriateness of this trust by somehow demonstrating, in advance of events, that it is actually warranted. Rather, its rationale is that without it we remove the basis on which alone creatures such as ourselves can confidently live a life of effective thought and action. In such cases, pragmatic rationality urges us to gamble on trust in reason, not because it cannot fail us, but because in so doing little is to be lost and much to be gained. A general policy of judicious trust is eminently cost-effective in

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yielding useful results in matters of cognition. 4. THE ROLE OF RETROVALIDATION Of course, further difficulties yet remain: Pragmatic utility is all very good but what of validity? What sorts of considerations validate our particular presumptions as such: how is it that they become entitled to this epistemic status? The crux of the answer has already been foreshadowed. A two-fold process is involved. Initially it is a matter of the generic need for answers to our questions: of being so circumstanced that if we are willing to presume we are able to get . . . anything. But ultimately we go beyond such this-or-nothing consideration, and the validity of a presumption emerges ex post facto through the utility (both cognitive and practical) of the results it yields. We advance from “this or nothing” to “This or nothing that is determinably better.” Legitimation is thus available, albeit only through experiential retrovalidation, retrospective validation in the light of eventual experience. It is a matter of learning that a certain issue is more effective in meeting the needs of the situation than its available alternatives. Initially we look to promise and potential but in the end it is applicative efficacy that counts. The fact is that our cognitive practices have a fundamentally economic rationale. They are all cost-effective within the setting of the project of inquiry to which we stand committed (by our place in the world’s scheme of things). Presumptions are the instrument through which we achieve a favorable balance of trade in the complex trade-offs between ignorance of fact and mistake of belief—between unknowing and error. The starting point of our justifactory reasoning was a basic projectfacilitating postulation. Yet this does not tell the whole story. For there is also the no less important fact that this postulation obtains a vindicating retrojustification because the farther we proceed on this basis, the more its obvious appropriateness comes to light. With the wisdom of hindsight we come to see with increasing clarity that the project that these presuppositions render possible is an eminently successful one. The pragmatic turn does crucially important work here in putting at our disposal a style of justificatory argumentation that manages to be cyclical without vitiating circularity. What is at issue is a matter of unavoidable presumptions whose specific mode of implementation is ultimately retro-validated in the light of experience. We want and need objective information about “the real world.” This,

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of course, is not to be had directly without the epistemic mediation of experience. And so we treat certain data as evidence—we extend “evidential credit” to them as it were. Through trial and error we learn that some of them do indeed deserve it, and then we proceed to extend to them greater weight—we “increase their credit limit” as it were and rely on them more extensively. And, of course, to use those data as evidence is to build up a picture of the world, a picture which shows, with the “wisdom of hindsight,” how appropriate it was for us to use those evidential data in the first place. We accordingly arrive at the overall situation of dual “retrojustification.” For all the presuppositions of inquiry are ultimately justified because of a “wisdom of hindsight” enables us to see that by their means we have been able to achieve both practical success and a theoretical understanding of our place in the world’s scheme of things. Here successful practical implementation is needed as an extra-theoretical quality-control monitor of our theorizing. And the capacity of our scientifically devised view of the world to underwrite an explanation of how it is that a creature constituted as we are, operating by the means of inquiry that we employ, and operating within an environment such as ours, can ultimately devise a relatively accurate view of the world is also critical for the validation of our knowledge.3 The closing of these inquiry-geared loops validates, retrospectively, those realistic presuppositions or postulations that made the whole process of inquiry possible in the first place. Realism thus emerges as a presupposition-affording postulate for inquiry—a postulation whose ultimate legitimation eventuates retrospectively through the results, both practical and cognitive, which the process of inquiry based on those yet-to-be-justified presuppositions is able to achieve. In sum, while our presumptions possibilize science in the first place, in the end its successor retrojustifies them. 5. RETROSPECT Let us then review the overall line of deliberation. Metaphysical realism—the doctrine that there is a mind-independent reality and that our experience can provide us with a firm cognitive grip upon it—does not represent a learned fact but a presuppositional postulate. As such, it has a complex justification that unfolds in two phases. 3

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Compare the discussion of cognate issues in the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977).

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The first, initial phase is prospective, proceeding with a view to the functional necessity of taking this position—its purpose-dictated inevitability. For this step alone renders possible a whole range of activities relating to inquiry and to communication that is of the highest utility for us—and indeed is a practical necessity. In possibilizing4 a host of purposemandated activities—that is, bringing them within the range of the feasible—the postulate of metaphysical realism obtains its initial justification in the practical order of reasoning. However, such an initial functional justification of metaphysical realism is good but not good enough. And so, a second phase of justification goes further—indispensably albeit only retrospectively. It proceeds by noting that when (which is to say after) we actually engage in the goal-directed practice that the postulate in question possibilizes, our applicative and explanatory efforts are, in fact, attended by success—that making the initial postulate has an immense pragmatic payoff since what is involved is not just pragmatic utility but pragmatic efficacy. This issue of actual efficacy is ultimately crucial for the justification of the practical postulate at issue. In this way, then, the overall strategy of validation has two phases—the one preliminary and prospective, the other substantiative and retrospective. That we must take on a commitment to realism is presupposed for the conduct of inquiry as we understand it. However, that we fare well through proceeding in this way in matters of communication and inquiry is something that has the status of an ex-post-facto discovery. Insofar as actual evidentiation is asked for, we have all that we can reasonably hope to obtain, given the inevitable realities of the situation we confront in this domain. And so, in seeking for the most plausible rationale for realism we enter the region of pragmatic presuppositions retrojustified through their applicative and implementational efficacy. The utility of the conception of reality is so great and the service it renders so important that if it were not already there we would have to invent it. But the pragmatic success that ensues systematically when we put this conception to work goes to show that in doing so we have not proceeded capriciously.5

4

In English, we have no one-word verb “to make possible” akin to the German ermoeglichen, apart from the obsolete possibilitate, nowadays known only to readers of the O.E.D. To adopt “possibilize” for this purpose would perhaps be sensible and certainly convenient.

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Now insofar as realism stands on this pragmatic basis, it does not rest on considerations of independent substantiating evidence about how things actually stand in the world, but rather it is established by considering, as a matter of practical reasoning, how we do (and must) think about the world within the context of the projects to which we stand committed. Such a position sees this commitment to a mind-independent reality in an essentially utilitarian role—as a functional requisite for our intellectual resources (specifically for our conceptual scheme in relation to communication and inquiry). Thanks to its enmeshment in considerations of aims and purposes, it is clear that this sort of commitment to an objectivistic realism harks back to the salient contention of classical idealism that values and purposes play a pivotal role in our understanding of the nature of things. Seeing that a pragmatic line of approach pivots the issue on what is useful for us and productive for us in the context of our evaluatively legitimated aims and purposes, we return to the characteristic theme of idealism—the active role of the knower not only in the constituting but also in the constitution of what is known. To be sure, this sort of idealism is not substantive but methodological. It is not a denial of real objects that exist independently of mind and as such are causally responsible for our objective experience. Quite the reverse, it is designed to facilitate their acceptance. But it insists that the justificatory rationale for this acceptance lies in a framework of mind supplied purpose. For our mind-independent reality arises not from experience but for it—i.e. for the sake of our being in a position to exploit our experience to ground inquiry and communication with respect to the objectively real. Accordingly, what we have here is an object-level realism that rests on a presuppositional idealism at the justificatory infralevel. We arrive at a realism that is founded—initially at least—on a fundamentally idealistic basis. In sum, paradoxical though it may seem, we obtain a realism the tenor of whose justifactory basis is thoroughly idealistic.6

5

The author’s Empirical Inquiry (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982) and his Realistic Pragmatism (Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press, 2000) present considerations relevant to this theme.

6

This chapter was originally published as a contribution to a Festschrift for Joseph Margolis.

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Chapter 5 POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM AS AN APPROACH TO MODAL ONTOLOGY 1. MODAL CONCEPTUALISM

O

ntology, as Leibniz already defined it, is the study of being and its conceptual congeners at large.1 Thus construed, ontology deals alike with what is and what is not with existence and nonexistence, entity and nonentity, what is actually real and what is merely possible. Our present concern is with this last item, the ontology of possibility. The real (and the real alone!) is accessible to experience—to observation and other modes of causal interaction with ourselves. It stands correlative to the domain of fact-oriented inquiry. Our cognitive dealings with reality are rooted in experience. The actual world is the one in which we live and have our being—the only one in which objects can be identified by ostension. The merely possible, by contrast, is accessible not to interactive experience but only to fact-indifferent speculation. Our cognitive dealings with the domain of the merely possible are a matter of unfettered thought—of free-floating conceptualization. Our knowledge of irreality— such as it is—is rooted in logico-conceptual machinations of mind proceeding in the medium of language. Here experience yields way to supposition, hypothesis, and speculation. How are we to regard the realm of irreality and non-being? The present discussion will espouse a theory that deserves the name “actualism”2 in that it sees any and all identifiable possibilities as coordinate with what is

1

Ontology, Leibniz wrote, is scientia de aliquo et nihilo, ente et non-ente, re et modo rei, substantia et accidente. (Introductio ad Encyclopaedium Arcanum in Louis Couturat (ed.), Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (Paris: Vrin, 1903), p. 512.

2

Used by Armstrong 1989 in characterizing the position of Adams 1974.

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accessible in theory to intelligences existing in the actual world.3 On such a view, only identifiable existents have an identity. To be sure, we can, of course, talk about nonexistents. However, it is always possibilities that are at issue in our discourse not possibilia— possible situations or states of affairs and not possible objects of some sort. The principle at issue here is in the final analysis of the rational economy of the Occamist idea that avoidable complications are to be avoided. The ontological cost (as one recent writer puts it4) of accrediting mere possibilities as existing (or even merely “subsisting”) objects of some sort is clearly to be avoided insofar as possible. Possible-world talk trips all too easily off the tongue of contemporary philosophers. One of them writes “When we think of Ronald Reagan as someone who might have remained a film actor, we think about a possible world in which Reagan himself . . . never became president.” Stuff and nonsense! We do not here think about alternative possible worlds at all. What we think about is merely an alternative possibility for this world, namely that “Reagan remained in the acting business.” Even as with an agent we can contemplate an alternative for him without invoking an alternative to him, so for the universe at large. Nonexistent worlds just do not come into it when alternative possibilities for the things of this world are on the agenda. Some theorists claim that the rejection of “other possible worlds” apart from the actual will result in abolishing contingency. R. M. Adams, for example, says that “a denial [of nonactual possible worlds] entails that there is no such thing as contingent actuality . . . [so that] we would have to conclude that the actual world, in all its infinite detail, is the only possible world that could have been actual.”5 But this sort of actualitynecessitationism nowise follows the abandonment of nonexistent worlds. To reject nonexistent alternative worlds is emphatically not to reject unrealized alternative possibilities: it is merely to deny that explicating alterna3

Here the phrase “in theory” acknowledges that this may outreach what lies within the capacities and capabilities of humans in particular. Possibilities relate to whatever can be, capacities and capabilities relate specifically to what can be produced by a certain sort of agent.

4

Divers 2004, p. 683.

5

Adams 1974, p. 201.

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tivity to how things happen in the world (this real and actual one!) requires recourse to alternative nonexistent worlds. In considering possibility talk we have to distinguish between • de dicto talk of possible states of affairs described abstractly— scenarios as they may be called. • de re talk of possible objects—possible particulars on the order of possible individuals or possible worlds. For it is surely false that alternative possibilities (de dicto) are inseparable from alternative possibilia (de re). And this rejection of the reification or hypostatization of possibilities is not only practicable but actually advantageous alike on grounds of intelligibility and rational economy. In this regard the presently adopted position is altogether Kantian. With the author of the Critique of Pure Reason, it holds that the only way in which we can ever come to cognitive grips with individual objects, with particulars, is through the doorway of experiential encounter. Such an approach straightaway confines authentic objecthood to actualia. To deny the existence of nonactual possible objects is not a venture in problematic and controversial theorizing; it is simply a matter of paying close heed to what “nonactual” means. For of course to reject possibilia (possible objects, individuals, and worlds) is not, however, to reject talk about them. For one thing, making a statement like • There might have been fewer kangaroos. is not to talk about possible worlds at all but rather about this world. It certainly does not come to • There is a world with fewer kangaroos than ours. but rather to • This world of ours might have fewer kangaroos than it actually does. Moreover—and no less to the point—a statement like • There might be a world with fewer kangaroos than ours.

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need not and should not be construed as • There is a possible world with fewer kangaroos than ours. but rather needs to be reformulated de dicto as coming to no more than: • It is possible for there to be fewer kangaroos than there actually are. There is, that is to say, always the option of referring directly to the possibilities at issue rather than bringing in as such the possibilia they purport to discuss. Some rather abstract theoretical considerations become crucial at this stage. For we must distinguish between necessity-constituted items and contingency-constituted ones. The former have all of the properties of necessity: numbers, for example, or shapes, or colors. (Note: It is not a property of green as such that it characterizes yon apple.) The later, contingently constituted items include such instances as individuals (Julius Caesar) or objects (the Eiffel Tower) or this world (Mundus) or this language (English). Now the salient fact that looms here is that the thesis (P) Different possibilities for an X imply or engender different possible X’s—different alternatives to X. represents a principle that holds with—but only with!—necessityconstituted items (e.g., colors), and does not hold for contingencyconstituted ones (e.g., persons). To insist upon applying the principle (P) across the board, without distinguishing the sorts of items at issue, is to conflate concrete (which in general are contingency-constituted items) with abstracta (which in general are necessity-constituted items). Such an approach takes the following line: • It is not the case that there are (in any plausible sense of existence or being) any possibilia: merely possible worlds, substances, individuals do not exist (and do not “subsist” either). • What there indeed are, are possibilities (not possibilia) possible states of affairs or situations―that and not possible individuals or objects,

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so that we can—and should—dispense with de re possibilia and make do with de dicto possibilities alone. • Insofar as they can be identified and individuated these possibilities are conceptual constructs, devisable (albeit not necessarily actually devised) by minds proceeding by means of concepts available to them. However here “devisable” must be construed not in terms of the capacities and capabilities that actual minds actually do have—in terms of what they can do—but rather (and more generally) in terms of what it is that they might do, that is, in terms of what is theoretically possible for them. • On this perspective, possibilities-in-general come down to what are, in the end, specifically mind-envisionable possibilities. What we have here is a position that dispenses altogether with possibilia— with possible worlds and individuals. We confine our modal horizons to de dicto possibilities and purposes to get by with this for all purposes— practical and theoretical alike. So regarded, to be a possibility is to figure on the agenda of possible consideration—to be in a position to afford grist to the mill of mind. The only possibilities are thus those to which cognitive access by way of assumption or supposition is (in theory) possible. Accordingly, the pivotal consideration here is that we have ◊p iff p where p abbreviates not that “Someone—some intelligent being—is capable of conceiving p,” but rather (and quite differently) that: “Someone’s conceiving of p is a (theoretical) possibility” or again “A coherent scenario or story can in theory be produced in which p obtains.” Thus p entails ◊(∃x)Cxp, albeit not (∃x)◊Cxp—the range of possible conceivers is drawn more widely than the actual conceivers of possibilities.6 6

Bishop Berkeley was perhaps wrong in thinking that “To be is to be conceived.” But it is surely correct that “To be possible is to be conceivable—in theory, at least, if not in practice.” It is that final qualification that drives that ◊ to the front of the formulas at issue here.

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The idea at the basis of  requires commentary. For one thing, conceivability in the sense presently at issue is not, however, a psychological concept but a logico-conceptual one. It does not relate to the actual psychological capacities and capabilities of humans or other intelligent beings and is not a matter of what such beings can do by way of intellectual performance. Rather, it is a matter of what can be done in principle. (No finite intelligence can name all the integers, but nevertheless these integers are all namable. No finite intelligence can identify the objects in the universe, but nevertheless all such objects are identifiable). There is—and is bound to be—a vast gap between possibilities of which we can conceive, individually and specifically, within the terms of reference at our disposal and those that would be accessible if—but only if— our conceptual resources were ampler. Of course those theoretically “available” ampler conceptual resources lie outside the manifold that our prevailing terms of life reference afford. And so, this ampler domain of what one could realize in principle, but not in practice, is something into which we have no insight. It marks the significant difference between effective conceivability and conceivability-in-principle. But either way, it keeps the significant idea of the conceivability of possibilities in the forefront. As put in an earlier publication, this approach “takes [mere] possibilities to correspond to [possible] intellectual constructions, and thus to be of the status of entia rationis produced by certain characteristically mental processes [such as supposition or hypothesis].”7 This view of the matter does not, however, constrain what P. F. Ramsey once called “the unusual view” that any imaginable situation must confine its purview to real objects alone. There is, of course, no earthly reason why one cannot discuss nonexistent objects and talk as though they were real. Our possibility conceptualism does not preclude our talking about nonexistents: it certainly does not propose to abolish discussing the Easter Bunny—or Sherlock Holmes for that matter. What possibility conceptualism denies, rather, is that any authentic objects are at issue with such object-purporting discourse, insisting that what is at issue in not reference but mere pseudo-reference. In sum (to reemphasize) the present approach discusses not possibilities but possibilia and rejects possibilia not at the level of discourse but at that of ontology. Its stance is that there just are no such items, so that we cannot ever refer to them. But of course talking as though they were real is nowise precluded. Talk is cheap!—we can talk as though anything is the 7

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Rescher 1974, p. 197.

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case. To reject possibilia is not to abandon ways of talking—it is, rather, to deny that there are (in any sensible sense of the term) any particular nonexistents for such talk to be about. After all, an imaginary object is not more an object than an imaginary burglar is a burglar. On such a view, then, there just are no merely possible objects or worlds—they do not exist and they do not quasi-exist (“subsist” or such like) either. What there is is discourse about such worlds—fictions if you will. Thus consider the statement (1) There is a (nonexistent albeit possible) world in which dogs have horns Such a statement is simply false, indeed it represents a self-contradiction arising as between the initial “there is” and the subsequent stipulation of nonexistence. However, while (1) is false—and necessarily so—what it (presumably) intends to say is salvageable by reformulation. Specifically, either of the following would be plausible candidates here: (2) It is possible for there to be a world whose dogs have horns. (3) It is possible for a world to have dogs with horns. However, both of these statements project de dicto possibilities (possibilities-that) rather than involving de re claims to nonexistent entities. And both of them follow from and are substantially equivalent with: (4) It is possible for there to be a dispensation different from this actual world of ours in which dogs have horns. Accordingly, the rejection of merely possible worlds nowise preludes possible world talk and possible world stories. It is just that they are rooted in de dicto possibilities involving the sort of suspension of disbelief at issue with suppositions and assumptions. And none of this requires the slightest commitment to an ontology of merely possible objects, individuals, and worlds as such. 2. POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM The modal conceptualism being articulated here rests on two theses:

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•

There just are (be it exist or “subsist”) no possibilia, no de re possibles, or merely possible objects, individuals, or worlds. Instead all that “there are” (in any ontologically geared sense of this term) are de dicto possibilitites.8

•

De dicto possibilities are correlative with what minds might do. Their “being” resides not, to be sure, in actually being thought, but in being thinkable-in-theory.

What we thus have is, in effect, a reductive theory of possibility that reduces possibility-in-general to what minds might (in principle or theory) manage to do. Such a conceivability theory of possibility amounts to: • Conceptualism. There are no substantive de re possibilia at all, but only unrealized possibilities that are coordinate with what in principle is sayable by intelligent beings who need not necessarily be human). For unrealized possibilities, to be is to be projectable: they are conceptual constructions. A question looms regarding those mere possibilities de dicto: Are they “independently real” (modal realism) or are they verbally “mind generated” (modal nominalism). The answer is: neither. They fall on neither side of this particular divide, but lie betwixt and between. They are certainly not mind-correlative in a way that means that there are no unthought-of possibilities. But they indeed are mind-correlative in a way that incurs that there are no unthinkable-of possibilities. Those mere possibilities are indeed mind-coordinate insofar as they relate to what mind endowed beings can (possibly) performatively manage, though at the same time they are “(mind) independently real” insofar as they pivot on the (conceptual) resources (possibly) available to those minds of the management of their work. Mere inexistent possibilities are not existentially mind-dependent by way of depending for their being upon what actual minds actually do. A modal conceptualism of this sort thus represents a middle way intermediate between two alternatives: 8

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The rejection of possible objects and worlds goes back to Quine 1939 and especially 1948 and his assault was continued in Rescher 1975 and Armstrong 1986.

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•

Realism. Unrealized possibilities (de re) exist—or, rather, subsist as possibilia (possible objects, individuals, and worlds) that function— in and of themselves, in a realm wholly separate from and independent of human thought and language.9

•

Nominalism. There are no substantive de re possibilia at all, but only unrealized possibilities de dicto relative to contentions (dicta) that are wholly and entirely the creatures of human thought and language. For unrealized possibilities to be is to be projected by people: possibility talk is purely a matter of saying things—of formidable sentences and/or sets of sentences.10

Both of these views have problems. Nominalism ties matters too closely to the world contingent realities. Realism, despite it name, is not particularly realistic in its problematic commitment to the reality of unreals. Possibility conceptualism also stands in contrast with yet another available position, namely • Constructivism. There are possibilia—possible objects and individuals and worlds. But they are (somehow) constructed out of the descriptive and operative instrumentalities afforded by the resources of the real world.11 In this regard, however, our conceptualism is less radical not less restrictive. It does not confine its horizons to that actuals are and do, but allows an ampler recourse to what can in theory be done. It is (emphatically) not being maintained here that if mind-endowed beings had not evolved, there would be no possibilities. Causal dependency is not at issue. Rather, those inexistent possibilities are conceptually mind 9

David Lewis has been the prime defender of possibilia realism. See his 1986.

10

Carnap 1947.

11

This is the position of R. M. Adams that any and all true statements regarding nonfactual possible worlds “must be reducible to statements in which the only things that are said to be are things that there are in the actual world.” (Adams 1974, p. 206.)

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dependent in that the very meaning of the ideas relate to what minds can in principle do—namely, think about them.12 And so, when one commentator writes that Rescher’s emphasis on the discussable, rather than the discussed, does not only give his position a “fairly realistic coloration: it gives his position a thoroughly saturated realistic hue,”13 his observation is not far off the mark. But the consideration to be stressed is that this realism is one that is oriented de dicto rather than de re, to mind-geared discussability rather than to an ontology of quasisubstantial possibilia. Real possibilities are indeed at issue but they are possibilities for the operation of minds. The key issue is not that of what minds can do, but of what they could or might do—of what is theoretically possible for them. Possibility conceptualism rejects any and all acceptance of possibilia— of merely possible worlds or substances or individuals—be they seen as constructions or not. While there is discourse that purports to deal with such individuals there is no prospect of ever identifying them (and indeed not them to be identified). Authentic particularity is deemed to be a feature of the actual world alone. Accordingly, such a position claims a critical difference between possible-world descriptions and possible worlddescriptions and endorses only the latter idea. A cynic might well say that the whole difference between possibility conceptualism and possibility realism lies merely in the placement of a hyphen. But there is in fact nothing “merely” about it: the difference is significant and portentous. There is, after all, a life-and-death difference between a defunct presidentbiographer and a defunct-president biographer. In telegraphic outline, then, the possibility conceptualism being advocated here takes the following position: 1. Unrealized possibilities are always abstract, schematic, and de dicto. They are never concrete, objective, and de re. Such possibilities are schematic rather than concrete and never manage to get past possible states of affairs to possible objects as such (concrete and particularized).

12

On the distinction at issue here see the author’s Conceptual Idealism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).

13

Bradley, 1992, p. 197.

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2. The only specific possibilities are those that answer to verbal formulas. They are always verbally projected and coordinate with language formulated scenarios that are schematic (rather than developtively complete) in nature. They are the cognitive projections of mind-endowed and language equipped beings. References occur only in the context of specific possibilities. Thus a constructionism obtains here. 3. Such possibilities are always schematic and correspond to abstract kinds of types. They are not specifically referred to but only mentioned generally and indirectly. (So here we have mention but not reference.) Such possibilities align with general concepts. Accordingly we have a conceptualism of generic possibility (in contrast to a constructivism of specific possibility)—albeit one of constructability rather than of constructiveness. 4. For the intellectual construction at issue is potentialistic and performatory in nature. The possibilities at issue are not restricted to what intelligences actually do, but rather to what intelligences possibly can do. Such an approach delimits possibilities-at-large in aligning them to possible performances (by actual minds). (Q. Why not possible performances by possible intelligences? A. Because possible intelligences do (and must—correspond to possible descriptive performances of actual intelligences). These theses encapsulate the position of possibility conceptualism, sometimes also referred to as modal conceptualism. On its approach concrete substances and worlds in effect disappear without trace, and all that remains in being is the Cheshire cat smile of certain abstracta, viz., propositions. But what of the alternatives? 3. WHY NOT POSSIBILITY REALISM? This is not the place to set out the many-sided case against modal realism—an enterprise on which I have embarked elsewhere at considerable length.14 In the end, the fatal flaw of possibilia—of merely possible ob14

See A Theory of Possibility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), Imagining Irreality (Chicago: Carus Publishing Co., 2003), and Conditionals (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

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jects, individuals, and worlds—roots in the fact that (for rather complicated reasons) there is no way to provide those putative possibilia with an identity—no way to individuate or identify them. The only authentic objects we can ever deal with are with real world’s exponentially accessible world’s concreta.15 Particular objects are concretized in experiential encounters and the only things we can ever encounter experientially are existent things: items of the furniture of the real world. And so the fatal flaw of modal realism is that its talk of merely possible individuals and worlds issues a promissory note—that it is authentic individuals and worlds that are at issue—which it simply cannot cash in because the individualizing detail that is the essential characteristic of authentic individuals and worlds is something that those inevitably schematic so-called individuals and worlds just cannot realize. In the end there is nothing one can really do with possible individuals and worlds, no useful function that these de re resources serve, that cannot be accomplished by de dicto possibility alone. And to seek to explain de dicto in terms of de re possibility is (1) to explain what is obscure by what is yet more so, and (2) to forget that in order to explain what is at issue with the possibility of possible worlds and objects one needs to take recourse to the de dicto possibility of the descriptions and characterization through whose means those possible individuals and worlds are able to make good their claims to qualify as such. Many contemporary theorists in the fields of semantics, logic, and metaphysics are deeply attached to possible worlds and individuals. They deem these items useful, nay virtually indispensable, for their work. But the ice they skate on here is very thin. Yet does not the semantics of quantified modal logic enjoin possibilia? Not really! What comes closest here would be something on the order of the contention (C) ~(∃x)◊Fx & ◊(∃x)Fx to the effect: “Even though no existing individual can possibly have the feature F, it is nevertheless possible that some individual should do so.” Press, 2005). See also John Divers “Agnosticism About Other Worlds” A New Antirealist Program in Modality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 69 (2004), pp. 660-85. 15

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This is essentially the position of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

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But appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, even this does not require that there be anything existing or quasi-existing that realized the possibility at issue. The possibility that something have F does not require a something—an identifiable individual—that encapsulates this possibility. To be sure, if abandoning modal realism were to render us totally impotent to do certain things that actually very much need to be done—make sense of contingency talk, for example, make room for a sensible account of counterfactuals, devise a viable semantics for formal logic—then its alternatives would one and all be rendered unattractive. But none of these dire consequences do in fact ensue from abandoning de re possibilia and taking recourse to de dicto possibilities instead. In each and every case the ends whose realization they think to require possibilia can be achieved by other means. This is a far-reaching claim and this is not the place to argue for it, that being a task to whose realization I have already devoted a spate of books. What will be undertaken here is something far more modest, namely to describe how the theory of possibility that confines its horizons to de dicto possibility can be constituted and to explain what a plausible version of such a theory would look like. 4. WHY NOT POSSIBILITY NOMINALISM? Ludwig Wittgenstein held that the actual world just is the totality of true propositions. Such a possibility propositionalism views possibilities as linguistic complexes—sentences, sets of sentences, or the like. (Rudolf Carnap’s 1947 book on Meaning and Necessity systematized this sort of view.) And various writers extend this idea to say that a merely possible world is simply the totality of propositions that are true of (or, as they preponderantly put it, in) it. But there are deep logical problems with this “totality of truths” approach. For starters, the very idea of “the set of all truths” is impracticable even with regard to the actual world.16 And the idea of effecting all truths for a nonactual world cannot be put into practicable effect. Moreover, this propositionalistic view of things is in the end unrealistic in more senses than one. For its sole reals are propositions, not things, individuals, substances and worlds. To identify a world with a world story or world account is as absurd as identifying Snow White with the Snow White story. Discourse can discuss nondescript objects (actual or imaginary) but it cannot constitute them. In discussing a nonexistent we are in16

See Grim 1984, pp 206-9 as well as Grim 1986.

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deed discussing something, but that something is not a thing or object of any sort, but a thematic item or topic. A mere discussion-object (ens rationis) is a thing or object (ens) no more than a wax apple is an apple. Identifying things with discourse about them is to commit about as serious a confusion as there is. As we standardly think about the matter, there are more possibilities than ever get to be supposed or projected in thought. Take this stick. It is eight inches long. It is certainly possible to project the prospect of a stick otherwise much like it but having a different length. There are, in fact, lots of probabilities here—indeed a transdenumerable multitude of them. But of course only a finite number of them ever will or indeed (given the limitations of human existence) can ever be projected. A nominalism of the “to be a possibility is to be encoded in thought and language” is clearly too confining—which is not the case with a position which, like the present, does not see possibilities as mere encodings but rather as the envisioned referents thereof. The long and short of it is that the way in which we standardly think and talk about possibilities is predicated on envisioning a range of phenomena far ampler than what possibility nominalism is able to accommodate. 5. THE CRUX OF POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM What clearly seems to be needed is a via media, a middle way between an inflated and oversized possibility realism and an overly restricted and under-sized nominalism. And it is here that conceptualism comes to the fore. Conceptualism in effect takes the line that for possibilities to be is not to be linguistically projected or described, but rather to be linguistically projectable or describable so that to be a possibility is to be (not conceived but) conceivable. Accordingly, modal conceptualism takes logicoconceptual tenability as symbolized by the  of section above as the crux of possibility, coordinating possibility with cogent and coherent thinkability. Such an approach effectively coordinates a proposition’s possibility (de dicto) with the nonexistence of a cogent demonstration of its falsity. We thus have: ◊p iff ~├ ~p

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Here ├ represents logico-conceptual demonstrability—the resources of rational inference in the nonmodal domain, which thus serves as the explanatory starting point. And it should be stressed that what is at issue with ├ is demonstration that is generically logico-conceptual in nature, rather than being of the logico-mathematical kind. The rationale for this specification of possibility (◊) stands as follows. At its root lies the idea that there are no merely possible worlds as such but rather (incomplete) state-of-affairs characterization descriptions. For such a contention p to be meaningfully comprehensible (as per  above) it is necessary and sufficient that the contention at issue be coherent (i.e., logico-conceptually tenable in point of self-consistency). And this requirement, namely ~(p ├ ~p) comes to ~├ ~p.17 Against this background, then, the present approach proposes to explicate and analyze propositional possibility at large in terms of what is or is not logico-conceptually demonstrable. One recent critic of the present position has written: It is easy to cite actual examples . . . of impossibilities which certainly cannot be certified as such by means of the resources of any available logic . . . As a case in point consider Wittgenstein’s example (Tractates 6.3751) of the impossibility of two colors being present in the same place in the visual field.18

The point here is that the presence of one particular color in a certain experiential locus precludes that of another: looking red precludes looking green. (And equally, “appearing to be round” precludes “appearing to be square” and “being Henry” precludes “being Henry’s brother Tom.”) But of course these exclusions are not logical: a logic is ordinarily understood: it takes no note of red or square, let alone Henry. What is at issue is not so much logical inconsistency as conceptual incoherence. Saying that the selfsame something looks green and that it looks red is a conceptual absurdity—exactly as in the case with saying the selfsame something looks

17

It is, presumably, the case that logico-conceptual facts are logico-conceptually necessary, so that the idea that ◊p is tantamount to ¢p will lead to ◊p ↔ □◊p, and from the angle of its logic our system of modality will have the structure of C. I. Lewis’s system S5. But there does not seem to be anything problematic or objectable about this.

18

Bradley, p. 195.

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(or is) round and that it looks (or is) square is an absurdity. The issue, in sum, is one of logico-conceptual incongruity.19 Note that p ├ q could also be construed as saying: p renders q conditionally necessary: given p, q must obtain. And now upon introducing the null condition, ∅ = [q v ~q], we have it that ∅ ├ p comes to □p that is to “q is unconditionally necessary” in obtaining on logicoconceptual grounds alone. Given that ◊ comes to ~□~, we straightaway arrive at our specification ◊p = ~ (p ├ ~p) or equivalently ~├ ~p As far as the domain of contingent factualities (rather than purely formal) contentions is concerned, the manifold of logic-conceptual considerations does nothing to distinguish the true from the false. The only propositions whose truth-status is determined by logico-conceptual considerations are those which are (logico-conceptually) necessary or impossible. But with respect to these propositions, logico-conceptual considerations are decisive and determinative—as is thus the case for the mode of de dicto possibility we have in view here. Thus conceived, logico-conceptual consequencehood is a matter of what can be shown to obtain by logical reasoning on the basis of conceptual relations alone. (That triangles have three angles, for example—seeing that one would not call something a triangle if it did not.) On the other hand, that tomorrow’s newspaper will have an E on its front page—however certain this is—will not be a logico-conceptual certainty seeing that its estab19

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In this regard possible world semantics can stake no valid claims to rational economy. For what those possible world theorists must of course supply is some prior and independent specification of the possibility at issue here, and this constrains a reliance on logico-conceptual demonstrability. Thus for example those possibleworld semanticists who, like Adams 1974 and Stalnaker 1976 regard possible worlds as sets of co-tenable (mutually compatible propositions—be they maximal or not—will have to cash in that idea of compatibility in terms of demonstrability (and specifically the non-derivability of counteractions).

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lishment requires information about how things work in the language over and above conceptual facts about the meanings of words alone. Accordingly, even though there is no such prospect of an E-less front page tomorrow—that it is effectively certain that this just will not happen—it is nevertheless possible that it can. The fact that the non-occurrence of E-lessness is certain does not render it (logico-conceptually) necessary. Certainty and necessity are decidedly different things. To be sure, if we had a prior and independent understanding of ◊ we could reverse this line of thought and explicate derivability (├) in terms of possibility (◊). But just this is not the case. For while we have a fairly secure grip on the idea of logico-conceptual derivability (├), nevertheless possibility (◊) is a comparatively more obscure idea. And it is, after all, a fundamental principle of rationality to proceed with explanation in order of intelligibility/comprehensibility/clarity subject to the classical injunction not to explain the obscure in terms of what is yet more so.20 Yet is the coordination of de dicto possibility with logico-conceptual demonstrability not somehow circular? Surely not in any vicious way. One cannot explain a fact save by invoking others. The factual realm is hermeneutically closed. And the same thing holds for the realm of possibility. In explaining any sort of possibility we have to invoke possibilities of some sort. Accordingly, the best one can ever manage with regard to possibility is to provide a reductive account that explicates many sorts of possibility in terms of fewer. In effect we have an account of possibility that is reductive rather than eliminative. 6. OVERCOMING THE GÖDELIAN OBJECTION It has been urged as a fatal objection to the coordination of possibility with demonstrability that Kurt Gödel has shown that arithmetical truths 20

One would of course seek to explain possibility in terms of necessity via the familiar equivalence: p is possible = not-p is not necessary But this does not succeed in providing an explanatory reduction. For like left/right and cause/effect, possibility/necessity are simply correlative concepts, so that “explaining” one in terms of the other is not explicative of all: it simply indicates that the inherent possibilism of possibility infects necessity as well.

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(which, as such, are of course necessary) are not all demonstrable, so that we become enmeshed in a contradiction as between (∀t)□t and so (∀t)├ t where t ranges over arithmetical truths on the one hand, and on the other the Gödelian result: (G) ~[(∀t)├ t] However this objection is predicated on the misconception. For what Gödel has in fact shown is not (G) but rather (G′) ~[(∀t) ╞ t] where ╞ represents formal provability in axiomatized arithmetic. And in the wider scheme of things we must, of course, distinguish between this rather specialized and technical mode of axiomatically formulized provability and the rather more ample sort of logico-conceptual establishment at issue with demonstrability at large as per ├. The generic demonstrability at issue in the latter case is not and should not be confined to the more restrictive provability at issue on the former. And it is significant here that this distinction is in fact crucial to Gödel’s argumentation itself. For what his argumentation seeks to establish is that not every arithmetical truth is seeking in a certain (recursive) sort of axiomatization of the arithmetical domain. But what is clearly required for this end is some sort of demonstration that it is in fact an arithmetical truth that the sort of axiomatization at issue is unable to establish. And in order to show this, recourse must of course be made to a larger/wider/ampler mode of thesis establishment since only then can one certify that it is indeed a truth that is at issue with that indemonstrability argument. The salient point to emerge here is that insofar as we generalize the idea of the truth-establishing demonstration at issue with ├ beyond the axiomatic provability at issue with the recursive/effective Gödelian ╞, we have to recognize that there indeed is a mode of (logico-conceptual) truthdemonstration that reaches beyond mathematical provability. And accordingly we must not and cannot equate logico-conceptual demonstrability with axiomatic provability. Against this background, it should be clear that formalized provability in mathematical and formal logic is not what is at

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issue with the logico-conceptual demonstrability├ of our present deliberations. And this crucial distinction between the generic demonstrability of ├ and the formal provability of ╞ makes it possible to avert certain other objections as well. In reacting against an account which proposes to construe possibility in terms of demonstrability, one critic has written: The impossibility of a . . . .tone lacking pitch [or] of an object of touch lacking some degree of hardness . . . flow from the essential properties of things, or kinds of things. Intuitively most of us will want to say, with Wittgenstein, that in any possible world in which sounds occur, these sounds will have some pitch or other, and so on. These are all examples of de re necessary truths, truth about the material (essential) properties of things and kinds of things. Yet their necessity, and the impossibility of their denial, seems in some sense to follow from what Wittgenstein refers to as “the nature of all being” (Notebooks 39/9) rather than from anything purely formal. It seems therefore to fall well outside of Rescher’s constructionist program.21

But once that red herring of “purely formal” is put aside here through distinguishing between ├ and ╞, this view of the matter seems very questionable indeed. Moreover, the exclusion of greenness by redness or the exclusion of pitchlessness by tonality does not really turn on possible words and their putative furnishings, and in fact does not have any de re foundation in the nature of things (objects) at all. For this is surely entirely a matter of the de dicto compatibility of propositions, rooting in the consideration that greenness and redness (or again tonality and pitchlessness) are properties that so function that it makes no sense to associate them with on another. The issue—surely—is one of the de dicto incongruity of making attributions of incompatible adjectives, rather than one of the de re constitution of things and kinds of things. 7. OVERCOMING THE INSUFFICIENCY OBJECTION But does not conceptualism founder on the discrepancy between language-grounded conceivability on the one side and objective fact on the other? After all, impossibility de dicto is a matter of how language works. And language, as here understood, is a concrete resource. With respect to 21

Bradley, p. 195.

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propositionalized thought such an approach takes the line that if you can think something to be so, you can say it, and that if you can say it you can (in principle) write it. And as long as the language you decide to write it in is developed recursively, there will never be more than denumerably many things one can possibly write. And this limits the whole range of the sayable/thinkable to a denumerable magnitude, given that the co-writers of the universe will be at most countably infinite in number. How then can one defensibly equate possibility with (coherent, selfconsistent) assertability/conceivability, given that the recursive resources of language are only denumerably infinite while the realm of the possible must be viewed as transdenumerably vast. Are there not then bound to be some possibilities to which language-geared indemonstrability considerations cannot provide cognitive access? Of course there are! But this does not invalidate possibility conceptualism. For where it comes to the question of how many possibilities language can possibly deal with we must be very careful. For there are dealings and dealings—in particular those that are individualized and specific and those which are schematic and generic. Given the recursive nature of language, it can indeed deal at most and at best with denumerably many possibilities in the particular/individualized mode of dealing with possibilia. But there is of course no comparable limitation as regards the generically schematic, generalized mode. We can say that every integer is either odd or even. But we cannot possibly say of every integer that it is either odd or even. We must, accordingly, distinguish between two very different modes of reference, namely specific mention and generic allusion. And this means that the consideration of possibilities is not restricted to denumerability by the recursive limitations of language. With regard to language too we confront a Musical Chairs situation. After all, only a denumerable number of language-using creatures can ever be squeezed into the fabric of the cosmos. And so the realistically practicable possibilities are at most denumerable here. But that is not the end of the matter. Suppose I pick an integer, and then offer you three chances to guess it. How many integers can you select? How many can you possibly choose? In one sense the answer is clearly three—the number of choices you can make. But in another sense the answer is infinitely many, there being infinitely many alternatives available for you to choose. And much the same sort of distinction holds for the question: How many possibilities are linguistically expressible? In one sense the answer is a merely countable in-

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finity. For only that many linguistically formable propositions are available. But in the other sense the answer is uncountably many. For this is the number of possibilities that are in theory there are available for linguistic expression. The situation at issue pivots on the distinction between particular possibilities that are specifically identified as such, and generic possibilities to which one merely alludes under the cover of generality. As particular individual items with their characteristic identity we must deal with possibilities via the limited descriptive resources of language. And here we are confined to the denumerable range of recursive mechanisms. But of course this very recourse also makes it possible to deal with possibilities at the larger level of schematic generality. Insofar as we contemplate a particularized reference to specific cases, we are limited by the recursive nature of language to dealing with a denumerable range. But insofar as we are content with generic allusion we can manage even with our limited conceptual/ linguistic resources. And so, the impossibility of transfinite reference does not entail that of transfinite allusion. But of course reference of any sort is—and always must be—conceptually mediated. So in the end a possibility conceptualism can cope. In this way our theory of possibility becomes—like the realism of the preceding chapters—involucrated in an expository rationale embedded in the resources and operations of mind.

Bibliography Adams, R. M., “Theories of Actuality,” Nous, vol. 8 (1974), pp. 211-231. Reprinted in Loux 1979, pp. 190-209. Armstrong, David, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Bennett, Jonathan, “Counterfactuals and Possible Worlds,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4 (1974), pp. 281-402. Bradley, Raymond, The Nature of All Being (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Brock, S., “Model Fictionalism: A Reply to Rosen,” Mind, vol. 102 (1993), pp. 14750.

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Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers III Carnap, Rudolf, Meaning and Necessity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947). Chihara, Charles S., The Worlds of Possibility: Modal Realism and the Semantics of Modal Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Currie, Gregory, “Fictional Names,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66 (1986), pp. 471-88. Divers, John, “Modal Fictionalism Cannot Deliver Possible Worlds Semantics,” Analysis, vol. 55 (1995), pp. 81-88. ———, “A Genuine Realist Theory of Advanced Modalizing,” Mind, vol. 108 (1999), pp. 217-39. ———, “Agnosticism About Other Possible Worlds: A New Antirealist Programme in Modality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 69 (2004), pp. 66085. Divers, John and J. Hagen, “The Modal Fictionalist Predicament,” in F. McBride (ed.), Identity and Modality (Oxford: Clarendon, forthcoming). Divers, John and Joseph Melia, “The Analytical Limits of Genuine Modal Realism,” Mind, vol. 111 (2002), pp. 15-36. Felt, James W., “Why Possible Worlds Aren’t,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 50 (1996), pp. 63-77. Forbes, G., The Language of Possibility (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). Grim, Patrick, “There is No Set of All Truths,” Analysis, vol. 44 (1984), pp. 206-09. ———, “On Sets and Worlds,” Analysis, vol. 46 (1986), pp. 186-91. ———, “Worlds by Supervenience: (1997), pp. 415-29.

Some Further Problems,” Analysis, vol. 57

Hintikka, Jaakko, Models for Modalities (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969). Jubien, Michael, “Problems with Possible Worlds,” in D. F. Austin (ed.), Philosophical Analysis (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988). Kripke, Saul, “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic,” Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 16 (1963), pp. 83-94. Lewis, David, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

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Linsky, Bernard, Review of Chihara 1998. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 63 (2001), pp. 483-86. Loux, Michael, The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979). Menzel. Chris, “Actualism, Ontological Commitment, and Possible Worlds Semantics, Synthese, vol. 85 (1990), pp. 355-89. Miller, R. B., “There’s Nothing Magical about Possible Worlds,” Mind, vol. 99 (1990), pp. 435-57. Place, Ullim T., “De Re Modality without Possible Worlds,” Acta Analytica, vol. 23 (1997), pp. 129-43. Prior, Arthur N., “Possible Worlds,” The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12 (1962), pp. 36-43. Prior, Arthur N. and Kit Fine, Worlds, Times and Selves (London: Duckworth, 1976). Quine, W. V. O., “Designation and Existence,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 36 (1939), pp. 701-49. Reprinted in H. Feigl and W. Sellars (eds.), Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York, 1949), pp. 44-51. ,“On What There Is,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 2 (1948), pp. 21-38, reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 19xy, pp. 1-19, and also in L. Linsky (ed.), Semantics and the Philosophy of Language (Urbana, 1952), pp. 189-206. , “Worlds Away,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 73 (1976), pp. 859-63. Rescher, Nicholas, Conceptual Idealism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973). ———, A Theory of Possibility (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975). ———, Imagining Irreality (Chicago: Open Court, 2003). Rosen, Gideon, “Modal Fictionalism,” Mind, vol. 99 (1990), pp. 327-54. Roy, Tony, “Worlds and Modality,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 102 (1993), pp. 335-61. Skyrms, B., “Possible Worlds, Physics and Metaphysics,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 30 (1976), pp. 323-32.

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Stalnaker, Robert, “Possible Worlds,” Noûs vol. 10, (1976), pp. 65-75; and in Loux (1979), pp. 225-34. ———, “Possible Worlds and Situations,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 15 (1986), pp. 109-123. Vendler, Zeno, “The Possibility of Possible Worlds,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 5 (1975), pp. 57-72. Van Fraassen, Bas C., “‘World’ Is not a Count Noun,” Nous, vol. 29 (1995), pp. 139157. Van Inwagen, Peter, Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). , “Modalities and Possible Worlds,” in J. Kim and E. Sosa, A Companion to Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 333-37. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tradition Locigo-Philosophicus, tr. by D. F. Peirs and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1961). Woods, John,“Descriptions, Essences, and Quantified Modal Logic,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 2 (1973), pp. 304-321. Yagisawa, Takashi, “Beyond Possible Worlds,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 53 (1988), pp. 175-204.

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Chapter 6 OPTIMALISM AND THE RATIONALITY OF THE REAL: ON THE PROSPECTS OF AXIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION 1. IS THE REAL RATIONAL?

I

s the real ultimately rational? Can we ever manage to explain the nature of reality—the make-up of the universe as a whole? Is there not an insuperable obstacle here—an infeasibility that was discerned already by Immanuel Kant who argued roughly as follows: The demand for a rationale that accounts for reality-as-a-while is a totalitarian demand. As such it is illegitimate. All explanations require inputs. Explanation always proceeds by explaining one thing in terms of something else. There thus is no way to explain Reality, to give an account of everything-as-a-whole. For this sort of thing would either evade a vitiating regress of a vicious circle.

So goes Kant’s reasoning. And there is much to be said for it. After all, in the realm of a factual explanation we always have recourse to factual premisses to substantiate our factual conclusions. And so an allencompassing explanation of the facts is clearly impossible. Or so it seems. But here appearances are deceiving. In the present, genuinely extra-ordinary case of totalitarian explanation, another very different option stands before us. For here we can—and in the final analysis must—shift the framework of explanation from the descriptive/factual to the normative/axiological order of explanation. But what would such an explanation look like? 2. THE TURN TO AXIOLOGY From its earliest days, metaphysics has been understood also to include “axiology,” the evaluative and normative assessment of the things that exist. And just here lies the doorway to another mode of explanation—an explanation of facts in terms of values and of reality in terms of optimality.

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ist. And just here lies the doorway to another mode of explanation—an explanation of facts in terms of values and of reality in terms of optimality. Accustomed as we are to explanations in the mode of efficient causality, this idea of an axiological explanation of existence on the basis of an evaluative optimalism has a decidedly strange and unfamiliar air about it. Let us consider more closely how it is supposed to work. The approach rests on adopting what might be called an axiogenetic optimality principle to the effect that value represents a decisive advantage in regard to realization in that in the virtual competition for existence among alternatives it is the comparatively best that is bound to prevail.1 Accordingly, whenever there is a plurality of alternative possibilities competing for realization in point of truth or of existence the (or an) optimal possibility wins out. (An alternative is optimal when no better one exists, although it can have equals.) The result is that things exist, and exist as they do, because this is for the (metaphysically) best. No doubt it will be a complicated matter to appraise from a metaphysical/ontological standpoint that condition X is better (inherently more meritorious) than condition Y. But, so optimalism maintains, once this evaluative hurdle is overcome the question “Why should it be that X rather than Y exists?” is automatically settled by this very fact via the ramifications of optimality. In sum, a Law of Optimality prevails; value (of a suitable— and still unspecified—sort) enjoys an existential bearing, so that it lies in the nature of things that (one of) the best of available alternatives is realized.2 Ontological optimalism is closely related to optimism. The optimist holds that “Whatever exists is for the best,” the optimalist maintains the converse that “Whatever is for the best exists.” But at least when we are dealing with exclusive and exhaustive alternatives the two theses come to much the same thing. For if one of the alternatives A, A1, . . . An must be the case, then if what is realized is for the best it follows automatically that the best is realized. 1

The prime spokesman for this line of thought within the Western philosophical tradition was G. W. Leibniz. A present-day exponent is John Leslie. (See the Appendix to this chapter.) See also the present author’s The Riddle of Existence (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1984).

2

To make this work out, the value of a disjunction-alternative has to be fixed at the value of its optimal member, lest the disjunctive “bundling” of a good alternative with inferior rivals so operates at to eliminate it from competition.

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3. ABANDONING CAUSALITY Optimalism is certainly a teleological theory: it holds that reality’s modus operandi manifests a tropism towards a certain end or telos, namely optimization. Such an axiology represents a doctrine of “final causes” in Aristotle's sense. But it is emphatically not a causal theory in the nowadays standard sense of efficient causation. It does not—and does not need to—regard value as a somehow efficient cause, a productive agency. On the contrary—value is not productive at all, but merely eliminative in so functioning as to block the way to availability of inferior productions. It does not drive causal processes but only canalizes or delimits them by ruling certain theoretical (or logical) possibilities out of the realm of real possibility. Consider an analogy. The English language allows double letters in its words, but not triple letters. But that doesn't mean that the double L of “follow” causes that ll-successive letter to be something different from l. The principle explains without causality. It merely imposes a structural constraint of possibility. The lawful principle at issue explains the factual situation without any invocation of causality, seeing that an explanation via inherent constraints on possibility is not a causal explanation at all. It would be a deeply mistaken idea to see value as a somehow actively productive agency. They play an explanatory role alright, but not in the causal mode. Causality is, after all, not our only explanatory resource. For example, when natural laws obtain, there is, no doubt, a reason for their obtaining (an axiological reason, as we ourselves see it). But this reason can presumably be provided by an explanatory principle that need not carry us into the order of efficient causality. Optimalism readily concedes that value does not engender existence in the mode of efficient causations and that it would indeed be rather mysterious if values were asked to do so. But this is to be seen as irrelevant. The fact of it is that the complaint “How can values possibly operate causally?!” simply confuses axiological explanation with productively efficient explanation. Only with the explanations of why physical objects and events exist need we involve causes and effects. But laws of nature themselves do not “exist” as constituents of the physical realmthey just obtain. They don't have causes—and don't need them. It would be inappropriate to ask for their explanation in the order of efficient causation. And so the fact that

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axiology does not provide such an explanation is not an occasion for appropriate complaint. It does not stop value-explanations from qualifying as explanations. They present perfectly good answers to “Why is something-or-other so?” type questions. It is just that in relation to laws, values play only an explanatory role though possibility elimination and not a causally productive role though actual creation. And this is no defect because a productive process is simply not called for. And so, to inquire into how values operate causally in law-realization is simply to adopt an inappropriate model for the processes involved. Value explanation just is not causal: values do not function in the order of efficient causality at all. After all, questions like “Why is there anything at all?” “Why are things-in-general as they actually are?”, and “Why is the law structure of the world as it is?” cannot be answered within the standard causal framework. For causal explanations need inputs: they are essentially transformational (rather than formational pure and simple). They can address themselves to specific issues distributively and seriatim, but not collectively and holistically. If we persist in posing the sorts of global questions at issue, we cannot hope to resolve them in terms of orthodox causality. But where to turn? Extra-ordinary problems require extra-ordinary answers. In view of the difficulties that any attempt to provide an ordinary run-of-the-mill account must encounter here, it is worthwhile to consider yet another possibility that moves in a rather different direction: an axiological explanation that pivots on the factor of value. Such an approach that explains existence by way of an evaluative optimalism has a distinctly strange and unfamiliar air about it. Let us consider more closely how it is supposed to work. The approach rests on adopting what might be called an axiogenetic optimality principle to the effect that value represents a decisive advantage in regard to realization in that in the virtual competition for existence among alternatives it is the comparatively best that is bound to prevail.3 Accordingly, whenever there is a plurality of alternative possibilities competing for realization in point of truth or of existence the (or an) optimal possibility wins out. (An alternative is optimal when no better one exists, although it can have equals.) The result is that things exist, and exist as they do, be3

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The prime spokesman for this line of thought within the Western philosophical tradition was G. W. Leibniz. A present-day exponent is John Leslie. See also the present author's The Riddle of Existence (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1984).

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cause this is for the (metaphysically) best. It would be a deeply mistaken idea that values are somehow actively productive agents. Now when laws obtain, there is, no doubt, a reason for their obtaining (an axiological reason, as we ourselves see it). But this reason can presumably be provided by an explanatory principle that need not carry us into the order of efficient causality. Optimalism readily concedes that value does not engender existence in the mode of efficient causations and that it would indeed be rather mysterious if values were asked to play a causal role in regard to laws. But this is to be seen as irrelevant. The real point is that while value does not efficiently cause existence it nevertheless explains it, exactly because causal explanation is not the only sort of explanation there is. Accordingly, the objection wrongly supposes that causality is something that is required for law-explanation—and thus assumed by axiological explanation. The complaint "How can values possibly operate causally?!" simply confuses axiological explanation with productively efficient explanation. Laws don't have causes—and don't need them. It would be inappropriate to ask for their explanation in the order of efficient causation. And so the fact that axiology does not provide such an explanation is not an occasion for appropriate complaint. It does not stop value explanations from being explanations. They present perfectly good answers to "Why is something-orother so?" type questions. It is just that in relation to laws, values play only an explanatory role thru possibility elimination and not a causally productive role thru actual creation. And this is no defect because a productive process is simply not called for. The crux of it, then, is that Law of Optimality does not function causally at allits modus operandi involves the exigency of principle not the productivity of causes. Now when laws obtain, there is, no doubt, a reason for their obtaining (an axiological reason, as we ourselves see it). But this reason can presumably be provided by an explanatory principle that need not carry us into the order of efficient causality at all. To ask for an engendering cause is to resort to the problematic idea that all reasons must always be grounded in the productive agency of thingthat the laws hold as they do because some producer has it function as it does (e.g., because God instituted them in that particular way). But this is simply a mistaken idea. Only for the explanations of why physical objects and events exist need we involve causes and effects. But laws of nature themselves do not “exist” as constituents of the physical realmthey just obtain. Being neither things nor events, they neither have causes, not constitute causes (the

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causally operative items on the world’s stage are the things and events which “obey” the laws). To inquire into how values operate causally in law-realization is simply to adopt an inappropriate model for the processes involved. Value explanation just is not causal: values do not function in the order of efficient causality at all. 4. WHY OPTIMALISM? “But why should it be that optimalism obtains? Why should what is for the best be actual? What sort of plausible argument can be given on this position's behalf?” That Law of Optimality to the effect that “whatever possibility is for the best is ipso facto the possibility that is actualized” is certainly not a logico-conceptually necessary truth. From the angle of theoretical logic it has to be seen as a contingent fact—albeit one not about nature as such, but rather one about the manifold of real possibility that underlies it. Insofar as necessary at all, it obtains as a matter of ontological rather than logico-conceptual necessity, while the realm of possibility as a whole is presumably constituted by considerations of logico-metaphysical necessity alone.4 To be sure, optimalism itself presumably has an explanation, seeing that one can and should maintain the Leibnizian Principle of Sufficient Reason to the effect that for every contingent fact there is a reason why it is so rather than otherwise. But with the Law of Optimality this explanation resides in itself—in its own nature. For it is, in the final analysis, for the best that the Law of Optimality should obtain. After all, there is no decisive reason why that explanation has to be “deeper and different”—that is, no decisive reason why the prospect of self-explanation has to be excluded at this fundamental level.5 After all, we cannot go on putting the explanatory 4

The operative perspective envisions a threefold order of necessity/possibility: the logico-conceptual, the ontological or proto-physical, and the physical. It accordingly resists the positivistic tendency of the times to dismiss or ignore that second, intermediate order of considerations. And this is only to be expected since people nowadays tend to see this intermediate realm as predicated in value considerations, a theme that is anathema to present-day scientism.

5

After all, there is no reason of logico-theoretical principle why propositions cannot be self-certifying. Nothing vicious need be involved in self-substantiation. Think of “Some statements are true” or “This statement stakes a particular rather than universal claim.”

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elephant on the back of the tortoise on the back of the alligator ad infinitum: as Aristotle already saw, the explanatory regress has to stop somewhere at the “final” theoryone that is literally “self-explanatory.” And what better candidate could there be than the Law of Optimality itself with the result that the divisions between real and merely theoretical possibilities is as it is (i.e., value based) because that itself is for the best?6 Optimalism has many theoretical advantages. Here is just one of them. It is conceivable, one might contend, that the existence of the world—that is to say, of a world—is a necessary fact while nevertheless its nature (i.e., of which world) is contingent. And this would mean that separate and potentially different answers would have to be provided for the questions “Why is there anything at all?” and “Why is the character of existence as is—why is it that this particular world exists?” However, an axiogenetic approach enjoys the advantage of rational economy in that it proceeds uniformly here. It provides a single uniform rationale for both answers— namely that “this is for the best.” It accordingly also enjoys the significant merit of providing for the rational economy of explanatory principles. In the end, we must expect that any ultimate principle must explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. The impetus to realization inherent in authentic value lies in the very nature of value itself. A rational person would not favor the inferior alternative; and a rational reality cannot do so either. To be sure, the Law of Optimality presupposes a manifold of suitable value parameters, invoking certain physically relevant features (symmetry, economy, regularity, or the like) as merit-manifesting factors. It should be acknowledged that the optimization at issue is—and should be—geared to a “scientifically reputable” theory of some suitable kind, coordinate with a complex of physically relevant factors of a suitable kind. After all, many a possible world will maximize a “value” of some sort (confusion and nastiness included). For present purposes, value will have to be construed in its positive sense—of being valuable by way of worthiness of 6

Optimalism is closely related to optimism. The optimist holds that “Whatever exists is for the best,” the optimalist maintains the converse that “Whatever is for the best exists.” However, when we are dealing with exclusive and exhaustive alternatives the two theses come to the same thing. If one of the alternatives A, A1, . . . An must be the case, then if what is realized is for the best it follows automatically that the best is realized (and conversely).

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positive appraisal. The manifold of logical possibility is subject to various reductions. Conformity with the laws of nature induces a reduction to physical possibility. Conformity with the principles of metaphysics induces a reduction to metaphsyical possibility, and conformity to considerations of value induces a seduction to axiological possibility—which is perhaps the most stringent of these. Along these lines, for example as Leibniz sees it, the value of a system is determined by an optimal balance of procedural order (uniformity, symmetry) and phenomenal variety (richness, plenitude)— both reflected in such cognitive features as intelligibility and interest. It is its (presumed) gearing to a positive value which like economy or elegance is plausibly identifiable as physically relevant—contingently identifiable as such subject to scientific inquiry—that establishes optimalism as a reasonable proposition and ultimately prevents the thesis “optimalism obtains because that’s for the best” from declining into vacuity. And this of course means that optimalism is not so much a practice as a program. 5. IS OPTIMALISM THEOCENTRIC? “Yet what if one is sceptical about theism? Would one then not have to reject optimalism?” Here the optimalist replies: “Not at all. Optimalism does not require theismit need not call upon God to institute optimalism. The doctrine is perfectly self-supportive: it obtains on its own basis, not necessarily because God willed it so, but just simply because that’s for the best.” For the fact of it is that optimalism does not require a creator to provide for the productive efficacy of value. The insistence upon the need for a productive agency is based on the mistaken idea requiring an explanation in the mode of efficient causality as nowadays understood. But this is problematic since, as indicated above, an operative principle can require conformity without any sort of productive action. A word of caution at this point. One of the prime motives for taking axiological explanation seriously is that it enables us to avert the temptations and difficulties of theological explanation. But the rationale for this is not an odium theologicum—an aversion to theological considerations as such. It is rather the idea of the medieval dictum non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum—that we should not ask God to pull our philosophical

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chestnuts out of the fire.7 Synoptic questions like “Why is there anything at all?” are philosophical questions and they ought ideally to be answered by philosophical means. On the other hand, it must be stressed that axiological explanation is altogether congenial to theism—even though it does not require it. After all it is only to be expected that if the world is created by a God of the sort that the tradition encourages us to accept, then the world that such a God creates should be one in which values play a role. And so it would seem that theism requires axiological explanation even more than axiological explanation requires theism.8 All the same, the present axiological approach thus differs decisively from that of Leibniz. He proposed to answer the question “Why is it that the value-optimizing world should be the one that actually exists?” with reference to the will of a God who chooses to adopt value optimization as a creative principle. Thus Leibniz was committed to an idea that it is necessary to account for the obtaining of a principle in terms of the operation of an existing entity (specifically the agency of an intelligent being—viz. God). Instead, an axiological approach sees the explanatory bearing of a principle of value as direct, without mediation through the agency of a substantial being (however extraordinary) as final and fundamental.9 On grounds of explanatory economy, at least, purpose is thus something that we would be well-advised to forego if we can actually manage to do so. 7

Indeed an over-enthusiastic optimalist could take the line that theism hinges on optimalism rather than the reverse because: “God’s own existence issues from optimalism: he exists because that’s for the best.”

8

Would such argumentation subordinate God to a Principle of Optimality? Not at all! The theistic optimalist can take the following stance in the interests of orthodoxy. In the order of beings (or entities or substances) God has absolute primacy. In the order of principles (of factual propositions or truths) the Principle of Optimality is paramount. And neither order is subordinate to the other, rather they are coordinated via God’s knowledge of the truth.

9

Our metaphysical invocation of a principle of value is akin to A. C. Ewing’s theological application of similar ideas in his interesting article “Two ‘Proofs’ of God’s Existence,” Religious Studies, vol. 1 (1961), pp. 29-45. Ewing there propounds the argument that God’s existence is to be accounted for axiologically: that he exists “because it was supremely good that God should exist” (p. 35). This approach has the substantial merit of avoiding Leibniz’s tactic of grounding the efficacy of value in a preexisting deity by contemplating the prospect that value is so fundamental that the deity itself can be accounted for in its terms.

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Let us have a closer look at this issue of purposes. 6. IS OPTIMALISM PURPOSIVE? In taking the axiological route, one is not saying that the realization of value is reality's purpose. We need not personify nature to account for its features. To say that nature embodies value is a very far cry from saying that the realization of value is one of its purposes. That reality operates in a certain manner—that its modus operandi follows certain laws or principles—is in general an entirely impersonal thesis. The values involved in axiological explanation need not be SOMEBODY'S values. No element of personification, no reference to anyone's aims of purposes, need be involved in axiological explanation. Purpose, on the other hand, necessarily requires a purposer—it must be somebody's purpose. In this regard, value stands with order rather than with purpose. Order “seeking” in nature does not presuppose an orderer, nor value “seeking” a valuer. The maintenance of enhancement of a value can be a matter of “blind” operation of impersonal optimific forces. Let us return to the idea of purposiveness and consider the objection “It is only by constituting the motives of agents that wishes can obtain explanatory efficacy. Only by serving as some deliberate agent’s motivational repertoire can a value come into effective operation.” Such a view of value-explanation is nothing new: it has existed in embryo since Plato's day thanks to his conception of demiurge. The guiding idea has generally been that the only way in which values can be brought to bear in the explanation of phenomena is through the mediation of a creative agent. Accordingly, thinkers from classical antiquity onwards, have defended (or attacked) the principle that explaining the presence of order in nature— the fact that the world is a cosmos—requires postulating a creative intelligence as its cause. That nature manifests and exemplifies such cognitive values as order, harmony, uniformity was thus explained by regarding these as marks of purpose. On this basis, the mainstream of Western thought regarding axiological explanation has taken the line that there is a super-natural agent (God, demiurge, cosmic spirit) and the values obtain their explanatory bearing by influencing the state of mind which governs his creative endeavors. This essentially purposive approach characterizes the traditional “argument from design,” which explains the creation with reference to a creator (as its ratio essendi) and infers the existence of this creator from the or-

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derly structure of created nature (as his ratio cognoscendi).10 The sequential explanatory slide from design to value to purpose to intelligence was historically seen as inexorable. And so the idea of a recourse to an explanatory principle that is geared to values without any such mediation represents a radical departure. The guiding conception of the present deliberations—that value is the natural place to sever this chain—reflects a break with a longstanding tradition. However, the justification of this break with the tradition of design explanation lies in observing the important distinction between values and purposes. Granted, a purpose must be somebody's purpose: it must have some intelligent agent as its owner-operator. It lies in the very nature of the concept that purposes cannot exist in splendid isolation; they must, in the final analysis, belong to some agent or other. For purposes as such, to be is to be adopted. Purposive explanations operate in terms of why conscious agents do things, and not ones of why impersonal conditions obtain. A value, however, can be altogether impersonal. And this means that value explanation is not necessarily purposive. Being a value does not require that somebody actually values it (any more than being a fact requires that somebody actually realizes it). A person can certainly hold a certain value dear but if it indeed is a value, then its status as such is no more dependent on its actually being valued than the symmetry of a landscape depends on its actually being discerned. Values admit of being prized, but that does not mean that they actually are, any more than a task's being difficult means that anyone actually attempts it. To be of value is to deserve to be valued, but that of course need not actually happen: the value of things can be underestimated or overestimated or totally overlooked. Neither the items that have value nor the facts of their being of value depend on apprehending minds for their reality. And this holds in particular for “ontological” values like economy, simplicity, regularity, uniformity, etc., that figure in the axiological explanation of laws. In sum, the being of values does not consist in their being valued: any more than does the being of most other sorts of things demands their 10

For a useful collection of relevant texts see Donald R. Burrill, The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1967). Two interesting recent accounts of the issues and their historical ramifications are: William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and William L. Craig, The Cosmological Argument From Plato to Leibniz (London: Macmillan, 1980).

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being perceived. We surely do not need to anthropomorphize here, even as a claim to end-directed transactions in the world (“Nature abhors a vacuum”) is without any implications about a purposively operating mind. A system can be goal-directed through its inherent natural “programming” (e.g., heliotropism or homeostasis) without any admixture of purpose even as a conservation of energy principle need not be held on the basis of nature's “seeking” to conserve energy. And so, while axiological explanations fail to address a question for which design explanations have an answer—namely the causal question “How do values operate productively so as to bring particular laws to actualization?”—this reflects no demerit. For it seems plausible to see this question as simply inappropriate. Values don't “operate” in the purposively causal order at all. Value-considerations render certain lawpossibilities “real” in somewhat the same way as law-conformity renders certain event possibilities “real.” The issue of a specifically purposive efficacy simply does not arise. 7. FURTHER DIFFICULTIES However, a threatening difficulty seems to arise in the form of a possibility range that is evaluatively “topless”—that is, which does not have some alternatives that are optimal in the sense of not being bettered by any others.11 In such a range each alternative is surpassed by yet another that is better. And so on optimalistic principles it would transpire that there are no real possibilities at all. Within such a range there will be no optimum and thus no possibility of actualization. Here optimalism must take the bull by the horns. Insofar as situations can be imagined which—like that of a “topless” infinite alternative spectrum—could raise difficulties for the theory, it could and should simply be seen as part and parcel of optimalism to assert that such situations cannot actually arise: that a reality that is benign all the way through is thereby such that as to exclude such a problematic situation with respect to what is really possible. As optimalism sees it, the very fact that toplessness conflicts with optimalism excludes it from the range of real possibilities. 11

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Leibniz saw the existence of the actual world as itself providing for a decisive argument against hopelessness since existence could not be realized in a realm of topless meritoriousness. Here a benevolent creature would be effectively paralyzed.

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But what if there is a PLURALITY of perfection-contributory features so interrelated that more of the one demands less of the other? Here everything is bettered in some respect by something else, so that to all appearances it would result that nothing is synoptically and comprehensively allin best. However, in such cases one can—and should—resort to a function of combination that allows for the interaction of those different value parameters. For example, with two operative value-making factors, say cheapness (that is, inverse acquisition cost) and durability in the case of a 100-watt light bulb, one will use the ratio of (cost of purchase) to (hours of usability) or equally cost/hour of service as a measure of merit. This prospect possibilizes the reduction of the multi-factor case to the situation of a single compound and complex factor, so that optimization is once again possible. And that this should obtain is guaranteed by optimalism itself; it is part and parcel of the best possible order of things that optimalism should be operable within it. 8. VIOLATING COMMON SENSE To anyone who is minded to object to optimalism as somehow violating common sense, I have only one thing to say: “Where have you been recently and what have you been doing?” One thing you certainly have not been doing is keeping track of the expository literature of contemporary microphysics and cosmology, and one place you have certainly not been is at your television set watching any of the recent science channel programs on string theory. Surely common sense no longer qualifies as a club for any explanatory theorizing on reality’s fundamentals. Insofar as common sense is to be used as a yardstick it is surely not optimalism but contemporary cosmology that falls short. But—really!—how can sensible people possibly embrace the conception that the inherently best alternative is thereby automatically the actual (true) one. Does not the world’s all too evident imperfection stand decisively in the way here? The matter is not all that simple, however. For the issue is going to pivot on the question of what “inherently best” means. If it means “best” from that angle of your desires, or of my interests, or even of the advantage of homo-sapiens in general, then clearly the thesis looses its strong appeal. For such plausibility that “best” had best be construed as looking to the condition of existence-as-a-whole rather than one particular privileged in-

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dividual or group. Optimality in this context is clearly not going to be a matter of the affective welfare or standard of living of some particular sector of existence; it is going to have to be a metaphysical good of some synoptic and rather abstract sort that looks to the condition of the whole. Yet is such a theory of axiological ontogenesis not defeated by the objection: If it really were the case that value explains existence, then why isn't the world altogether perfect? The answer lies in the inherent complexity of value. An object that is of any value at all is subject to a complex of values. For it is the fundamental fact of axiology that every evaluation-admitting object has a plurality of evaluative features. Take a caran automobile. Here the relevant parameters of merit clearly include such factors as speed, reliability, repair, infrequency, safety, operating economy, aesthetic appearance, road-handle ability. But in actual practice such features are interrelated. It is unavoidable that they trade off against one another: more of A means less of B. It would be ridiculous to have a supersafe car with a maximum speed of two miles per hour. It would be ridiculous to have a car that is inexpensive to operate but spends three-fourths of the time in a repair shop. It is an inherently inevitable feature of the nature of things—an inevitable “fact of life”—that value realization is always a matter of balance, of trade-offs, of compromise. The reality of it is that value factors always compete in matters of realization. A concurrent maximum in every dimension is simply unavoidable in this (or indeed any other realistically conceivable) world. All that one can ever reasonably ask for is an auspicious combination of values. Perfectionmaximum realization of every value dimension all-at-onceis simply unrealizable. And of course it makes no sense to ask for the impossible. And so, the objection “If value is the key to existence, the world would be absolutely perfect” proves to be untenable. All that will follow on axiogenetic principles is that the world will exemplify an optimal balance of the relevant evaluative factors. An optimally realizable best need not be “perfect” in the normal sense of that term which unrealistically demands value maximality in every relevant respect. Because some desiderata are in conflict and competition with others, it is an inherently inevitable feature of the nature of things—an inevitable “fact of life”—that value realization is always a matter of balance, of tradeoffs, of compromise. The reality of it is that value factors always compete in matters of realization. A concurrent maximum in every dimension is simply unavailable in this or indeed any other conceivably possible world.

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All that one can ever reasonably ask for is an auspicious combination of values. And here optimalism can take comfort in the view that there indeed is just exactly one over-all optimal alternative, just exactly because that’s for the best. 9. WISHFUL THINKING? But is not optimalism merely a version of wishful thinking? Not necessarily. For even as in personal life what is best for us is all too often not at all what we individuals want so in metaphysics what is abstractly for the best is very unlikely to bear any close relationship to what we would want to have if we humans could have things our way. What prevents optimalism from being too Pollyanna-ish to be plausible is the deeply pessimistic acknowledgment that even the best of possible arrangements is bound to exhibit very real shortcomings. The optimalist need not simply shut his eyes to the world’s all too evident parochially considered imperfections. For what the optimalist can and should do is to insist that, owing to of the intricate inherent interrelationships among value parameters, an “imperfection” in this or that respect must be taken in stride because they have to be there for an optimal overall combination of value to be realized. Leibniz took the right approach here: optimalism does not maintain that the world is absolutely perfect but just that it be the best that is possible—that, all considered, it outranks the available alternatives. There is, in fact, a point of view from which optimalism is a position that looks to be not so much optimistic as deeply pessimistic. For it holds that even the best of possible arrangements is bound to exhibit very real imperfections from the angle of narrowly parochial concerns or interests. 10.

CONCLUSION

The upshot of these deliberations is that once one is willing to have recourse to axiological explanation there no longer remains any good reason to think that both the existence and nature of the real is something deeply so problematic that it remains inexplicably unintelligible—an issue which—on Kantian or other principles—we really ought not to inquire into. The axiological approach to explanation that is at issue with optimalism, to be sure is a drastically unusual and extra-ordinary one. But then of course the question of why Reality should be explicable is a highly unusual

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and extra-ordinary question, and it is a cardinal principle of cognitive sagacity that if one is asking an extra-ordinary question one must expect an extra-ordinary answer.12

12

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This chapter draws on “Optimalism and Axiological Metaphysics,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 53 (2000), pp. 807-35. It served as my March 2005 presidential address to the Metaphysical Society of America. On relevant issues see also my books, The Riddle of Existence (Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 1984), and Nature and Understanding (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000).

Chapter 7 THE REVOLT AGAINST ABSOLUTES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 1. STAGESETTING

I

t is notorious that philosophers disagree. So, are there any examples of something that is typical and characteristic of twentieth century philosophizing—a position or doctrine held consensually or at least widely across the spectrum of thinkers of the period? The present discussion will argue that there indeed is such a widely shared position, to wit the assault against absolutes within philosophy itself, and that this anti-absolutism is a doctrinal stance to which mainstream American philosophers in particular have made a signal and significant contribution during the twentieth century. Earlier, from classical antiquity onwards, philosophers aspired to an insight into the nature of things that achieved various absolutistic desiderata, preeminently including certainty, necessity, exactness, universality, timelessness, and objectivity. Viewing such absolutistic factors as the salient features of arithmetic and geometry, these hall-marks of mathematics have served philosophers as the paradigm of an exact science which their own subject can and should emulate. But in the course of the twentieth century this view of the matter became seriously unraveled with the diffusion of the idea that the quest for absolutes is doomed to failure. And, as most of the century’s philosophers have come to see it—particularly among the Americans—the problem lies not in the shortfall of our insight but in the overreach of our philosophical aspirations. It is thus fair to say the with the possible exception of religious scepticism, no philosophical doctrine has more decidedly characterized the naturalistic general tenor of twentieth century philosophy—in its American setting above all—than its opposition to absolutism, which runs as a recurrent Leitmotiv throughout the era. It is instructive to consider the unfolding and the ramifications of this development. In doing so we will move sequentially through the entire

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spectrum of prime absolutes: certainty, necessity, exactness, universality, timelessness, and objectivity. 2. THE ASSAULT ON ABSOLUTES: CERTAINTY A contention is certain if its acceptability is beyond reasonable doubt. (The circumstance that some people doubt it is not a decisive impediment to its certainty. Not all people are reasonable.) After the close of the 19th century, the assault on certainty has been a salient feature of American philosophizing. Its launching platform was the fallibilism of C. S. Peirce. And William James carried the battle-flag forwards, complaining that: In philosophy the absolute tendency has had everything its own way. The characteristic sort of happiness, indeed, which philosophies yield has mainly consisted in the conviction felt by each successive school or system that by it bottom-certitude had been attained. “Other philosophies are collections of opinions, mostly false; my philosophy gives standing-ground forever,”—who does not recognize in this the key-note of every system worthy of the name? A system, to be a system at all, must come as a closed system, reversible in this or that detail, perchance, but in its essential features never!1

John Dewey too proved himself an enthusiastic opponent of certainty. And latter-day neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty were only too eager to join in. Overall, scepticism regarding philosophical certainty has come to pervade the North American scene. To be sure, the rejection of certainty in twentieth century philosophy was by no means confined to American pragmatism. For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty—which could just as well have been entitled Against Certainty—carried the fight into domain of mathematics itself, the very citadel of the traditional stronghold of certainty. And following the lead of Rudolf Carnap philosophers of positivistic inclinations questioned the prospect of achieving any certain information in philosophical matters—that is, when they did not reject altogether the potential of the field as a whole. And philosophers of naturalistic sympathies who saw no reason to concede to philosophy the prospect of an absolute certitude that they deemed absent from the natural sciences themselves. All in all, then, the

1

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William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York and London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), pp. 12-13.

THE REVOLT AGAINST ABSOLUTES

Cartessian quest for irrefragable certainty in philosophy was rejected by a wide spectrum of twentieth century as a harmful illusion. 3. THE ASSAULT ON ABSOLUTES: NECESSITY Necessity has been yet another focal area in the struggle against philosophical absolutes. Early on in the twentieth century the pursuit of necessity was still very much in vogue. And here, mathematics again served as the paradigmatic ideal, and theorists from Gottlob Frege to Kurt Gödel probed for justificatory foundations to provide a cogent rationale for necessitarian claims, and Edward Husserl and his school projected such efforts into philosophy with his theory of “intuition into essences” (Wesensschau). But with the rise of logical positivism (or “empiricism”) a fervent opposition to a metaphysically laden doctrine of essences and necessities became prominent. Ever since Greek antiquity philosophers had contended the issue of what is necessary in the nature of things (physis) and what is determined by mere human convention (nomos). But now the scale dipped decidedly in favor of the latter. As William James saw it: “the trial of the human serpent” covered all. And other pragmatically inclined American philosophers like C. I. Lewis and the later Rudolf Carnap joined in by insisting that all that could be found are conveniences and efficiencies where other thinkers had seen necessities. A leading development in this circumstance was W. V. Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction. And while some possible world logicians such as David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker sought to rehabilitate necessitarianism via possible-world theory in semantics, other philosophers (the present writer included) viewed thus as a doctrina non grata and sought to close off this sort of back-door to it.2 4. THE ASSAULT ON ABSOLUTES: EXACTNESS AND DETAIL The sorts of claims to which philosophy traditionally looks for answering its questions envision exactness, precision, detail. In philosophy’s earliest days when the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues interrogated his interlocutors regarding matters of truth, knowledge, goodness, justice, and the like—the aim of the enterprise was to arrive at an understanding of ideas 2

Of course Americans were not alone in this. For example, the Ludwig Wittgenstein of his later, conventionalistic period affords another notable instance.

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that is precise, exact, and accurate in detail. Traditionally, philosophers have never been content with answers that indicate roughly or approximately how matters stand. Detailed precision has been seen as the essential to the enterprise. But the twentieth century has seen some significant backtracking in this regard. For one thing, the rationale of “ordinary language” philosophy that was in vogue in Britain (and especially Oxford) after World War II held in theory—and manifested in practice—that in its concern with such concepts as truth, knowledge, goodness, etc., philosophizing must base itself on the actually accepted usage of real term and should not endeavor to endow them with an precision that our actual usage of such terms does not actually warrant. And American pragmatism also moved in this general direction. Insisting that terms and concepts must be seen as communicative tools, pragmatists rejected the project of endowing them with clarity and detail beyond their natural use. After all, we do not ask that a yardstick make its measurements to the nearest millimeter (let alone micron). In problem-solving as elsewhere clarity, exactness, precision, and detail are not ends in themselves—we require only as much of them as is needed for the purposes at hand. And, so pragmatists like James and Dewey argued, the same alternative must govern the philosopher’s concern for the everyday-life ideas and concepts with which philosophy ultimately deals. Then too there are those who argue, with Nancy Cartwright, that the philosophy of science, like the sciences themselves, has unjustifiably laid claim to an exactness of detail that the world’s more complicated realites do not provide for.3 All in all, the century has seen—especially in America—thinkers who deny to philosophical deliberation the prospect of realizing detailed precision in the resolution of its problems. 5. THE ATTACK ON ABSOLUTES: UNIVERSALITY Universality is yet another of the absolutes whose role in philosophy has been under attack. Traditionally universal claims have pervaded philosophy. “All men are rational beings,” “All lies are immoral”. “Beliefs open to doubt never qualify as knowledge”. But some philosophers regard claims to synoptic totality along these lines as inherently problematic. The 3

See Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

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uniformity that universality requires is at odds with the variability and density of the complex matters at issue. And there is much to be said for construing such philosophical generalizations as requiring a less rigorous reading that forgoes totality and limits itself to what is typical, insisting that all such philosophical generalizations are subject to qualification and exceptions—this very claim itself included. Such a position foreshadowed in the pragmatism of James and Dewey and in the historicism of R. G. Collingwood.4 And it has been argued in explicit detail in the present author’s 1994 book on Philosophical Standardism.5 The problem with universality in philosophy is that the discipline generally addresses matters of human concern and human affairs and that in this domain is notorious for unusual conditions and extraordinary circumstances. It is wrong to take people’s property without their knowledge and permission—but what if one needs their ladder to save somebody’s life. It is inappropriate to act on insufficient evidence, but what if we are in a situation where suspending judgment immobilizes action in a way that causes disaster? Exceptional circumstances will often arise in human affairs in theory—and occasionally in practice as well. Throughout philosophy one can substantiate many generalizations “as a rule” with which one nevertheless must, on occasion, acknowledge the extraordinary circumstance that make for exceptions. 6. THE ASSAULT ON ABSOLUTES: TIMELESSNESS The timelessness of truth was perhaps the first of the traditional absolutes to come under attack. The post-Hegelian era saw the emergence in 4

See especially R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) and An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933).

5

The Aristotelian contrast between universality and that which obtains only mostly/generally/usually/normally has run as a continuing thread throughout my own thought. In the 1960’s it figured in my work in formal logic in relation to the “Rescher quantifier” (see “Plurality Quantification Revisited,” Philosophical Inquiry, vol. 26 ne 1-2 (2004), pp. 1-5), and also in my work in the history of logic in relation to temporal modalities like “usually” or “mostly” (see Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic). It also figured in my work in the philosophy of the human sciences (see Scientific Explanation [New York: The Free Press, 1970 , and in metaphilosophy (see Philosophical Standardism [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

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philosophical thought of a new emphasis on history and historical development. In the era from Descartes up to Kant it had been mathematics and the mathematical sciences—especially physics—that were seen to provide the ideal for rational inquiry. But in Hegel’s wake the history-geared human sciences came to be viewed as the model for philosophical understanding. And a host of influential thinkers emerged in Germany—Dilthey and Erdmann prominent among them—to advocate a “historicism” that put historical developments in transient social and cultural contexts at the forefront of philosophical concern. This school of thought insisted that philosophy must put aside its traditional aspiration to resolving its questions by answers having the status of timeless, eternal truths. In philosophy, as elsewhere, so these thinkers urged, we simply have to do the best we can with the materials available in our day. One cannot go beyond the opportunities afforded by the resources of one’s time. As regards the Anglo-Saxon world this line of thought found only a limited acceptance in Britain, with R. G. Collingwood as perhaps its only significant exponent. But in the USA it greatly influenced the thought of C. S. Peirce and his pragmatist successors. And in the last third of the twentieth century it gained currency through the work of Thomas Kuhn. Moreover, its impact on theory was matched by its impact on philosophical practice—especially in the philosophy of science—by a shift from a concern for general principles and pervasive tendencies to a justification of case studies of particular episodes with a view to particularized conditions and local circumstances. Specialized case-studies became the order of the day and the search for timeless generalities came to be seen among philosophers—philosophers of science in particular—as the mistaken aspirations of a naïve and now happily bygone day. 7. THE ASSAULT ON ABSOLUTES: OBJECTIVITY Objectivity is a matter of something’s being so in fact independently of what people think to be so. It pivots on the question: “What is the case in relation to such-and-such a matter?” rather than “What do people think to be the case in relation to such-and-such a matter?” This issue is of course made poignant by the fact that people cannot answer the question “Tell me what is the case but do this entirely independently of what you think to be so!” For this, of course, is an absurdity—a request for doing something that is logically impossible. Accordingly, objectivity is something of an

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idealization. Exactly as with the other absolutes it is going to prove beyond convenient reach. On this basis, objectivity (impersonality, unrestricted cogency) is that among all absolutes which has fared most harshly at the hands of the twentieth century. Here relativism, subjectivism, and “that’s-just-what-youhappen-to-believe” thinking has pervaded the landscape of thought in every sector. After all, interpretations—those of evidence specifically included—are interpreter-correlative because they have to make use of background information and prioritization on whose basis they do (and must) rely in devising their interpretative version of the issues. Here the salient question takes the form “How does such-and-such an issue look to you (or “to members of your group)?” But all this, of course, is a matter of the contextualism of evidence and not one of the relativism of standards. 8. A FUNDAMENTAL CHOICE A consensus emerged on many sides of twentieth century philosophy— alike among postmodernists, neo-pragmatists, ordering-language aficionados, and devotees of the later Wittgenstein—that there is no appeal from our actual practices in matters of cognition to any objective standards—no belief-independent quality control over the merits of our beliefs. The historic appeals to common sense, to intuition, to the consensual authenticity, to tradition, and the like, were all rejected as obscurantist. The most promising alternative—available alike through Aristotelian naturalism and Piercean paleo-pragmatism (viz., to let nature herself instruct us in the natural course of events about which ways of resolving our cognitive problems are effective above all through successful guidance in matters of prediction and control) never got much of a hearing as the lemmings of twentieth century anti-absolutism rushed over the cliffs of populist relativism. The twentieth century’s antipathy to absolutes can be regarded as part of a wider phenomenon—the rejection of norms. For as we have seen, absolutes are normative in nature, part of what is appropriate rather than merely actual, of what people ought to do rather than merely what they actually do. And across the entire spectrum of human affairs—ranging from speech and thought to behavior and action—twentieth century intellectuals have tended to distrust, dislike, and reject normative concerns. The diffusion of Darwinism had led Western intellectuals to see criterial norms as a convenient human contrivance and to regard that not only history but all of culture is produced by the pens of the victors. The anti-normativity of the age can

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be seen in this light as part of the larger cynicism characteristic of twentieth century disillusion. In this spirit Martin Heidegger dismissed all those absolute truths of traditional philosophy as no more than “remnant of Christian theology in the problem field of philosophy.”6 In viewing absolutes as unattainable, various prominent schools of twentieth century thought have proposed to carry the matter to its seemingly logical conclusion by discontenancing philosophizing altogether as an inappropriate and illegitimate enterprise. Logical positivism as well as some extreme versions of hermeneutics and of pragmatism have taken exactly this line. They in effect say, let us abandon philosophy and replace it by the theoretical study of science (positivism) or of human culture and creativity (hermeneutics) or of social interaction (pragmatism) or of the history of thought and ideas (historicism). And in urging the abandonment of philosophy and its replacement by some surrogate mode of inquiry each of these ventures has found prominent exponents in the course of twentieth century thought. The rejection of absolutes has had the consequence that one of the most strongly characteristic features of twentieth century philosophizing has been the rejection of philosophy as traditionally conducted. The theses of philosophy are meaningless due to a lack of testability, said the logical positivists and logical empiricists. They violate the conventions of proper usage, said the analysts of the ordinary language school. They address questions that cannot properly arise, said Wittgenstein and his acolytes. They reflect the parochial culture prejudices of a Eurocentric culture said relativists of varying prominence. They are predicated on incorrect presuppositions claimed the historicists, they are based on historically outdated and misguided world-views claimed Heidegger and his followers. And of course the charges of outmoded absolutism fueled the flames of all of their destructive fires. However, other schools of thought do not favor an abandonment of philosophy and its replacement by something else, but rather propose a revision in the aims and objectives of philosophy by lowering the bar of its aspirations. This line of thought brings us to the theme of realism—and not so much realism in philosophy but rather realism about philosophy with lower expectations along the lines of the contrasts regarded in Display 1.

6

“Reste von christlicher Theologie unterhalb der philosophischen Problematik,” Sein und Zeit (Leipzig: M. Niemeyer , 1923), p. 23.

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_______________________________________________ Display 1 SOME CONTRASTS Absolute

Alternative

Certainty

Plausibility

Necessity

Cogency

Timelessness

Timeliness

Universality

Generality

Exactness

Approximation

Objectivity

Contextuality

_______________________________________________ On this basis of diminished aspirations various philosophers have proposed what is in effect a transformation of philosophy into a substantially less ambitious human-sciences enterprise. But, of course, whatever its merits, such a proceeding itself encounters problems of self-consistency when carried out (as is usually the case) in a dogmatically absolutistic spirit. 9. ANTI-PHILOSOPHY AS THE NEW ABSOLUTE Perhaps strange to say, it is exactly this, very flagship of the attack on absolutes that is the most vulnerable, the least justified aspects of twentieth century anti-philosophizing. For a dogmatic anti-absolutism—of whatever motivation—has real difficulties. Ironically, it is precisely the impracticability of attaining strict universality in philosophical matters upon which anti-absolutes are want to dwell that renders a categorical in across-theboard rejection of absolutes itself problematic. It was common among major thinkers of the twentieth century to argue that a mundane situation in the world’s scheme of things affords us no pathway to the establishment of absolutes. But this seemingly plausible line of thought overlooks an important consideration that the very concepts that underpin our linguistic operations provide for various absolute-

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encoding interrelations. For in the constituting of knowledge facts flow through the channels provided by concepts. It is the virtue of the circumstance that “being an apple tree” answers to a certain concept that yon particular tree’s features make it appropriate to class it as an apple tree. And similarly with (say) moral concepts. What makes it appropriate to class that action as wrong is its falling within the scope of the concept of “an infliction of needless pain.” Thus facts flow through concepts to yield not only botanical characterizations, but moral characterizations as well. And it is this that endows these absolutes principles grounded in conceptual relationships—with their applicability and significance.7 After all, a general claim to the effect that A’s must be B’s can and often does inhere in the logical-conceptual proprieties in the consideration that one could not properly speaking call something an A unless it were a B. Consider for example the epistemological thesis that knowledge is only possible with truths: that only true facts can ever be known. The crux here is that we would never properly speaking endorse a claim to knowledge where the item at issue is something we do not accept as true: If we deemed p false we would never say “X knows p” but “X believes p” or—at most—“X thinks he knows p.” The groundrules of careful usage block any room for quarreling with the contention at issue, viz. that knowledge—that is, actual and authentic knowledge—must be true. The very proprieties of coherent discourse provide for the absoluteness of this contention. And so the long and short of it is that—short of abandoning linguisticsemantical clarity—there are absolutes in every sector of philosophy: • in ethics: It is wrong to mislead someone willingly but without any reason. • in epistemology: If you claim to know something to be so then you cannot coherently think that it may possibly not be so. • in metaphysics: Only a creature capable of making a free choice among alternatives can be characterized as rational. • in social philosophy: A distributive argument that does not give equal weight to equivalent claims is inherently unfair. 7

On these issues see the author’s Moral Absolutes (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989).

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To be sure, the matter is complicated. Thus consider such ethical these as • It is wrong to inflict needless harm on people or again • It is wrong to cause pain to people solely for one’s own pleasure. Stripped of their guiding qualifications (“needless,” “solely for one’s own pleasure” they become unacceptable (think of injuring X by a rough push that gets him out of the way of a onrushing bus, or of causing Y pain in the course of a dental operation). But these indicated qualifications save the day for absoluteness. Malice and Schadenfreude are the very paradigms of wrongdoing and these theses consequently obtain as absolutes on essentially conceptual grounds. There is, in fact, a cogent and conclusive reason why absolutes should be taken in stride rather than exiled from philosophy. The key lies in a philosophical standardism that views philosophy not as engaged in an uncompromising pursuit of absolutes as addressing the issues in terms of what is certain, necessary, universal—but rather with a view making matters clear in regard to what is normal, ordinary, standard. Such a position does not proscribe absolutes but rather to see them as special cases obtaining in special conditions—exceptions in special circumstances rather than a cast-iron rule. It would, after all, be entirely in the spirit of scepticism about philosophical absolutes to be skeptical as well about an absolutely universal and unqualified proscription of absolutes.8 The lesson of such deliberations is straightforward. A sensible antiabsolutism must adopt the medicine of its own prescribing and be willing to take a more flexible and undogmatic line. It makes perfectly good sense to adopt an Occam’s-Razor-reminiscent attitude toward absolutes and accept that they are not to be multiplied beyond the necessity of need. Yet 8

The author’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994) endorses a case against absolutes, but true to the spirit of antiabsolutism it does so on an undogmatic basis that envisions a limited scope to absolutistic contentions And the author’s Moral Absolutes (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989) follows through in this prospect by elaborating the case for such principles in the moral sphere.

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one ought also to realize that the very concepts that are at work in our philosophizing will by their inherent meaning and purport involve certain requisites in a way that renders absoluteness unavoidable. And so anti-absolutism, viewed as a systemic doctrine, is untrue to itself and thus ultimately incoherent. For the all-out rejection of absolutes is itself an absolutistic position. The sensible position is not to reject absolutes dogmatically but to be very cautious and conservative in their endorsement. Accordingly, a moderate absolutism not a contradiction in terms! And so, it seems not unfair to say that the all-out rejection of philosophical absolutes to which twentieth century philosophers have been so extensively inclined carries matters too far. Here, as elsewhere, what seems best warranted is a middle of the road position between untenable extremes. For the very antipathy to dogmatic uniformity that characterizes the era’s sensibilities will—or should— militate against an absolutistic position in relation to philosophical absolutes. In sum, then, there is good reason to see the radical anti-absolutism of twentieth Century thought as itself absolutistically misguided and in need of replacement by a position that is far less doctrinaire. In the spirit of the anti-absolutist enterprise itself, it seems well-advised not to be absolutist about anti-absolutism.9

9

This chapter was originally published in Idealistic Studies, vol. 35 (2005).

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Chapter 8 THE ABSOLUTE: A CONCISE HISTORY 1. INTRODUCTION

T

he idea of the Absolute in its cognitive aspect involves a distinction between that which is conditioned by matters of time and circumstance and that which is not. Now for us humans, the development of knowledge is of course temporal and—so one hopes—progressive. Accordingly, we have to start with the idea of the “state of the (cognitive) art” of different times and places, and can then proceed by way of contrast to envision the completion or perfection of man’s inquiry into the worlds ways. It is this idealized aspiration that is encapsulated in the idea of the Absolute as the completion or perfection of the cognitive prospect of inquiry into the nature of the real. So conceived, the Absolute is not an attained object of knowledge at all but the result of the attempt to answer the question: If (per impossible) we were able to carry the cognitive prospect through to its final completion and achieve a definitive answer to the questions we have regarding the nature of the world and its modus operandi, just what sort of result would we have on our hands. What is it that, in the end, is the ultimate aim or objective of the cognitive project? What is it that we would have to have to be able to claim with warranted confidence that we really understand reality? The question “Whose knowledge is at issue with Absolute knowledge” makes no more sense than “Whose knowledge is at issue with mathematical—or with geographical—knowledge. In each case we have to do with the totality of potentially realizable knowledge of the domain—with what can be known here. We are dealing with realizable information and not with the restricted information passed by this or that individual or group in this or that particular place and time. The Absolute does not belong to the substantive content of our knowledge—individual or collective—but rather to what is, if not the expectation or goal then the aspiration or hope of the cognitive enterprise in achieving a complete, comprehensive, and adequate systematization of the theoretically available knowledge about the real. Our truth—the truth insofar as we

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do (and perhaps even can) know it—is no more than a partial and grossly incomplete part of the Absolute, framed in inevitably imperfect systematization. One recent commentator writes that [While] the Absolute is the fundamental category of absolute idealism . . . few categories in the history of philosophy have been as intractable to conceptual specification . . . . Introduced by Schelling and utilized by Fichte, the category of the Absolute pervades the philosophy of Hegel. [But for many of his readers] the doctrine of the Absolute was an enigma in need of solution.1

Yet its enigmatic nature notwithstanding, the prominence of the idea of the Absolute in modern philosophy makes it instructive to have a closer look at what is at issue here. Once the idea of the Absolute as a perfected system is in view, it becomes possible to see retrospectively with the wisdom of hindsight that behind the actual history of the idea there also lies a pre-history. And here, as always, pre-history hinges on how close an analogy one proposes to require. Now in the present case it seems plausible to regard the conception of the Absolute as rooted in the idea of God’s plan of creation as described in the Book of Genesis. Here step by step God made the firmament, the seas, the land, the creatures, etc. and at each step paused to see that “it was good”—that the realized actuality lived up to the projected idea. (Genesis I, verses 10, 13, 18, 21, 25.) And the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis II, 17) had to do not just with knowledge of right and wrong, but with knowledge in general—and in particular knowledge of God’s overall plan for his creation. The transgression of man in relation to that off-limits apple lay in man’s endeavor to trespass upon God’s knowledge of God’s plan for the whole of creation. And in this regard the lesson of the Genesis story relates not just to moral but also to cognitive transgression. Moving beyond Genesis we come to the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus who instilled a rational cosmic order into the scheme of things so that the idea of cosmos vs. chaos became basic here. And then there is the Agent Intellect of Averrostic Aristotelian, the world spirit of the Cambridge Platonists, and in due course the Leibnizian concept of the cosmic plan of a divine creator-architect who produces everything in the world in line with its “complete individual concept.” 1

Andrew Reck, p. 169

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Be all this as it may, with regard to background, the authentically philosophical story of the absolute begins with Kant and then moves on from there. 2. KANT (1724-1804) The history of the Absolute in relation to cognition—the theme of this paper—can plausibly begin with the conception of the Ideas and Ideals of Reason in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781). As Kant saw it, an Idea “postulates a complete unity in the knowledge obtained by our understanding, by which this knowledge is to be not a merely contingent aggregate, but a system according to necessary laws.”2 This “absolute” term of descriptive contrast, betokening a correlative opposition to that which is relative and other-constituted.3 And more specifically, in the present cognitive context, it stands in contrast to the imperfect and incomplete, of finite knowers. It relates to “the known”—or rather “the knowable”—at large, rather than the fragmented and partial bits and pieces of knowledge at our ultimate unification of cognition in a setting of systemic unity means that: We must regard everything that can belong to the context of possible experience as if this experience formed an absolute . . . unity, and yet also at the same time as if the sum-total of all phenomena (the sensible world itself) had a single, highest and all-sufficient ground beyond itself, namely a self-sustained, original, creative reason with respect to what all empirical use whatsoever of our reason is so oriented as if the objects themselves originated from this basic rational archetype.4

Viewed in this way, the Absolute, accordingly, would represent the definitive account of the truth in its totality—the sum total of articulable fact about reality that encompasses the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a virtually unified synoptic system that is coherent, complete, and articulated in a rationally cohesive way. Accordingly absolute know2

CPuR, A645 = B673.

3

Kant himself never uses the word Absolute as a noun—with one obscure exception, claiming that the fact that totality is ever-unattainable in the phenomenal realm [Sinneswelt] shows “that the Absolute must be sought elsewhere and that it [the phenomenal realm] exists only in relation to our senses” [Nachlass, 5968].

4

CPuR, A672-3 = B 700-701.

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ledge must be complete in a way that human knowledge can not possibly be. For what is “absolute” about this mode of knowledge is not so much its definitive finality as the synoptic totality that is envisioned from it. It is this comprehensiveness above all that serves to differentiate the issue from the sort of knowledge available to us humans. Viewed in this way, what is at issue is a matter of aspiration rather than realization. As Kant puts it: “The idea of [all-comprehending] unity is inseparably inherent in the very nature of our reason. This idea is legislated for us.”5 As a mere ideal, however, this is nowise a constituent of the world’s findings but is an underlying methodological resource that guides and stimulates our reason in the performance of its explanatory work. It is an idealization that encapsulates a regulative/methodological aspiration whose pursuit draws our explaining ever forwards in an utopian aspiration in which we cannot—in the very nature of things—expect to reach a state of final completion. As such an ideal, it fails to be an existing item as part of the world’s furnishings (i.e., does not have objective reality) but is a mere mind-creative (or ens rationes) the thought of which is so useful in our practical requisites that it possesses object validity. As Kant saw it, the ideal of knowledge perfected in systemic comprehensiveness serves as a contrast to our human knowledge as we have it, providing us with a comparison-conception which—not withstanding its unrealism—can constitute order as grounding us in the expansion and development of our knowledge. It is this methodological role—rather than its capacity to describe anything that exists within our cognitive reach— that betokens the utility of this conceptual resource.

3. GERMAN IDEALISM A. FICHTE (1762-1814) For Johann Gottlieb Fichte the cognitive Absolute inheres in certain self-engendered (“spontaneous”) structural features to which all substantive knowledge must conform. What is thus absolute for Fichte is not the content of knowledge but its categorical structure (to put in Kantian terms). And so, for Fichte, the cognitive Absolute comprises not the totality of 5

CPuR, A695 = B723.

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knowledge, but rather its subsector of noncontingent (necessary/a priori) knowledge. The information at issue with the Absolute is thus effectively self-knowledge regarding the intelligible structure of all human knowledge—absolute in that those formal conditions are operative everywhere, throughout the realm of objective knowledge. It roots if not in the capacity then at least in the aspiration of inquiring knowers to discern the fundamental concepts and principles of knowledge-development. Its realization turns on achieving an “intellectual intuition” regarding the instrumentalities for knowledge development itself. Accordingly, there is, for Fichte, an experience-transcending unity of conception akin to Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception and this leads him to envision (somewhat mysteriously) an “Absolute self” (das absolute Ich) as the agency of cognition— an idea which is at once a cousin and a contrast to Kant’s transcendental ego. With Fichte, this Absolute self became the pivot for all unconditioned a priori knowledge and the peg on which all philosophical knowledge must hang (an idea which Schelling was to carry forward). But for better of for worse, Fichte did not stop here. When Kant had regarded the systemic unity of knowledge as a regulative ideal for human inquiry, Fichte, in his Wissenschaftslehre,6 transmogrified this conception from an Ideal of cognition into a ground or a source of all that is knowable. And so, in the end, the Fichtean Absolute is not a feature of knowledge as such—its substance (or material)—but relates to the ground or raison d’être of knowledge, to its truth-makers in the form and technology of the present day. Such an objectification and hypostatization of an Ideal was of course anathema to Kant. But it deeply influences—and some might say corrupted—thinking about the Absolute for many years to come. B. HEGEL (1770-1831) Hegel did not much care for the Fichte-Schelling conception of the Absolute. Its lack of ascertainable features lead him in his 1807 Phenomenology of Mind to mock Schelling’s ultimate knowledge in which cognition and its object merge as “a night in which all cows are black “Instead of conceiving of the Absolute as the ultimate goal of inquiry Hegel proposed to conceive of it as the overall process of inquiry: the workings of the mind seen in their synoptic totality. Thus in the transit on the “Philosophy of 6

Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794).

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Mind” that constitutes the third point of Hegel’s Encyclopedia, he writes: “the Absolute is mind: this is the highest definition of the Absolute.” In his 1801 monograph on systemic philosophy, Hegel’s discussion is repeatedly focused on the Absolute, and he complains in relation to contemporary philosophy that “What is merely an Appearance of the Absolute has isolated itself from the Absolute and set itself up as Independent.”7 Hegel objects to the inclination to see the Absolute in epistemetric terms as appertaining to knowledge rather than in ontological terms as appertaining to the reality that is the source or ground of our knowledge. This line of thought proved to be prominent over the succeeding century, finding its characteristic in the philosophy of F. H. Bradley. The Absolute idealism of the 19th century is marked by just this tendency to deal with the characteristic features of Absoluteness (comprehensiveness, frailty, ultimacy, etc.) in ontological rather than epistemological terms. The recovery of the Kantian view of an epistemological perspective had to await the 20th century. For Hegel the Absolute comprises the ultimate knowledge of things not as mere phenomena appearing to us, but as they are in what is (or would be) “the universal divine Idea.”8 What is at issue here is the (ultimately incomprehensible) fusion of knowledge with the object known, with truth not merely as an adequation to reality (adaequatio ad rem) but a fusion or conglomerate of the two. Little wonder, then, that later philosophers who were less prepared to take an otherworldly view of the issues, inclined to leave Hegel by the wayside and in abandoning Hegel abandoned also the flock of neo-Hegelian thinker who strove to make the idea of an Absolute more congenial to the spirit of their age. The progressive development of human knowledge—in its dialectical totality—rather than the ever unachievable limit to which it leads is what constitutes the Absolute for Hegel. And although many interpreters view Hegel’s Absolute in theological terms (since the competence totality of knowledge is accessible to God alone) others take a less otherworldly view of the matter and see Hegel’s Absolute as the more mundane process of cognitive endeavor that ongoingly progresses to an ever ampler and more appropriate conception of the nature of the real.

7

Differenz des Fichtischen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie, 1801.

8

The Logic of Hegel, ed. by William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), pp. 93-94.

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C. SCHELLING (1775-1854) Friedrich von Schelling moved on from the position that Fichte had taken with respect to the Absolute. In the exposition of his system of philosophy,9 Schelling writes that “there is no philosophy except from the standpoint of the Absolute” and he equates the Absolute with the workings of reason as such (“Reason is its Absolute”). As Schelling saw it, in the full development of knowledge within the general synthesis that constitutes Absolute knowledge it emerges that knowledge and its objects stand coordinated in a unifying fusion. And so this philosophy, for Schelling, is “the science of the Absolute,” and its knowledge becomes factual rather than merely epistemological at the fact at hand that knowledge and its object coalesce. Only in the final analysis when knowledge perfected can be identified with its subject does philosophy accomplish it mission. In an appendix to the second (1803) edition of his 1797 “Thoughts Towards a Philosophy of Nature” (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur) Schelling maintains that the goal of philosophy as a theory of first principles is the construction of “an absolute science” since all of the world’s contingent features and facts are conditioned (bedingt) the proper preoccupation of philosophy is not with these but rather with the process of knowledge itself, and deal with the nature of knowledge itself rather than that of its putative objects. In this appendix, Schelling held that, as a science of first principles “philosophy is the science of the Absolute” and the Absolute as such invokes the identity of the act of knowing with what is known. This identifying fusion is achieved in an “intellectual interaction” which a mode of coincidence between the knower and the known is realized (in a way strongly reminiscent of Aristotle’s discussion of the signet ring). Where Hegel regarded Schelling’s Absolute as a featureless blur, Schelling retaliated by regarding Hegel’s Absolute as “panlogistical”—an empty framework of abstract categories. But in his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel responds by holding that the Absolute is simply mind at work in that “the Absolute is mind: this is the highest definition of the Absolute.” He then proceeds to argue that as human inquiry progresses in the course of history, 9

Friedrich von Schelling, Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, 1801.

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the Absolute finds its most developed realization, in the thought of the philosopher-scientist. On this basis he saw the Absolute as a once comprehensive and limitless but yet at the same time as inclusive of multiplicity and diversity. In responding to all this, some philosophers saw Hegel’s position as social and communitarian (McTaggart) others as pan-psychic—”a single self” in which all individuality is lost (Prigle Pattison) and others as geared to idealization (Peirce). Still others viewed it as transcendental and theological in realism (Hocking). Schelling’s Scottish disciple J. S. Ferrier in his Institutes of Metaphysics (1854) postulated a diversified Berkeleyesque plurality of “Absolute Existences” consisting of finite minds in conjunction with what they appertained and coordinated with one another by one, necessary and allentrancing “Absolute Existence which is a supreme, infinite, and everlasting mind in synthesis with all things,” effecting a unified fusion of knowers and the known. Such a communitarian conception of the Absolute was to find resonance in Josiah Royce. 4. BRITISH IDEALISM A. BRADLEY (1846-1924) Francis Herbert Bradley’s metaphysical deliberations are rooted in a distinction between Appearance and Reality, a distinction underpinned by a division of labor between experience and reason. Bradley’s rationale for envisioning an Absolute was rooted in correlation of logic, specifically in his theory of judgment. For him, “Judgment proper is the act which refers an ideal content . . .[at issue in the judgment’s predicate] to a reality beyond the act.”10 Accordingly, “the act [of judgment] attracts a floating adjective to the nature of the world, and, at the same time, tells me it was there already.”11 The ultimate subject of all factual judgment is thus always “reality’ or “the world”—the whole of existence as it actually exists. And this, in sum, is the Absolute, to whose characterization all judgment aspires. (But fails!) For human judgment is always relational and connexive. It links this to that. And these features 10

F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893), p. 10.

11

Ibid, p. 11.

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which judgment separates are in reality joined, fused, unified. All of the devices we employ in judgment—all of the categories of human thought— are mused in conditionals that make them as appertaining to Appearance. By contrast, reality as it really is ultimate reality is unified, coherent, insistent. And just this is its definite mark: “Ultimate reality is such that it does not contradict itself; here is an absolute criterion.”12 And this criterion is not only itself absolute, it serves to define the Absolute itself. Bradley writes: Reality is one . . .Appearance must belong to reality, and it must therefore be coincident and other thus it seems. The building success of phenomenal diversity must hence somehow be a unity and self-consistent; for it cannot be elsewhere in reality, and reality excludes discord . . . .It is one of the sense that its positive character embraces all difference in an all-inclusive harmony.13

This then is Bradley’s view of the Absolute as a single unified coherent and consistent reality whose inclusion is at once the source and the ground of all of our inherently inadequate and imperfect judgments. It encapsulates the ultimate truth to which human judgment aspires—and nevertheless inevitably fails to reach. The realm of experience is (as Bradley sees it) based on such relatingdistinctions as those between substantive and adjective, thing and quality, and self and world—all of which are ultimately incomprehensible (“inconsistent” as Bradley prefers to say) because comprehension requires unification and where ideas are indeed separate they cannot at the same time constitute a similarity unified whole. This blanket rejection of separate items in linking interrelationships unravels the rational coherence requisites for rational comprehensibility as totally absent from the world of ordinary experience (with its differentiations of cause/effect, spatial transaction, temporal before/after, self and object, etc.). The real world—which must satisfy the demands of reason and intelligibility—cannot be comprehended on this basis. But while we must acknowledge that that unified Absolute exists we cannot know what it is like. For our knowledge is invariably relational and this fact alone would invalidate its claims to adequacy. Only the via negation of saying what the Absolute is not like is open to us. Nonconceptualized, indifferentiated experience alone could provide the analogy 12

Ibid, p. 120.

13

Ibid., p. 123.

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basis required for achieving some rough glimmer of understanding the totum simul indifferentiatedness of the harmonious unity that characterizes the Absolute. The Absolute, one thus might say, is Reality seen from the standpoint of an omniscient God rather than from that of a cognitively limited and imperfect creature.14 It represents the sort of coherent knowledge we cannot possibly achieve. B. BERNARD BOSANQUET (1842-1923) Bernard Bosanquet maintained that “reality [is]. . .that which has nothing without to set against it”: it is an all-inclusive undivided, an all encompassing individuality which, as such, constitutes it “the criticism of the ultimately real”15 For Bosanquet, this individuality—existence-as-a-whole, where he also has the world or cosmos—constitutes the Absolute, for there can only be one genuine (all-comprehending) individual, and that the individual, [is] the Absolute.”16 As the object and substance of all factual knowledge also stands correlative to (and for Bosanquet identical with) the workings of mind. Bosanquet’s theory of the Absolute is less austere and transcendental than Bradley’s. For Bosanquet all knowledge about matters of fact and existence are ultimately knowledge about one single thing: Reality or the Absolute. As he sees it, instead of saying “The cat is on the mat” we can and strictly speaking should say “In Reality, the cat is on the mat.”; and “Lions are carnivores” comes to “Reality’s lions are carnivores.” Whatever statements we appropriately accept as true merely convey incomplete and imperfect characterization of Reality = the Absolute. And so, for Bosanquet, it transpires that at bottom “there can be only one individual and that, the individual, is the Absolute.” And whatever we can know is thus only figmenting and aspectual in relation to the Absolute and for this reason misleading and erroneous. If knowledge is to be adequative ad rem than our “knowledge” is strictly speaking not knowledge at all. 14

Here Bradley’s light comes much to T. H. Green’s conception of an Eternal Consciousness. See also Andrew Seth’s The Conception of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy (London, 1917).

15

Bernard Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (London: Macmillan, 1912), p. vi.

16

Ibid, p. 168.

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* * * By contrast, with such later idealists such as McTaggart or Hocking the concept of the Absolute leads to shed its epistemological involvements and becomes reality at large, seen from a strictly ontological point of view. Sometimes this is seen as the Universe and thus as a non-person (McTaggart), sometimes personal and ultimate, and then effectively God (Hocking). But in any event the earlier, epistemic conception of the Absolute now passed from the scene. 5. HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903) With Herbert Spencer, however, the Absolute was still in its epistemological phase. As Herbert Spencer saw it, human knowledge is invariably incomplete, imperfect, and inadequately systematized. As such it stands in contrast over against something we do not, cannot have, seeing that “the power which the Universe manifests to us is [ultimately] inscrutable.17 All of our knowledge is conditioned and relative, and “From the necessity of thinking in relation, it follows that the Relative is itself inaccurate, except as related to a real Non-relative. [Thus] unless a vast Non-relative be postulated, the Relative itself becomes absolute, and so plunges the argument into a contradiction.”18 Our imperfect knowledge thus points by way of indispensable contact to a perfected Absolute that stands outside its range and beyond its reach. Same for its role as a contract principle any and all cognitive access to it is precluded. * * * The common thread linking the earlier Absolute Idealists was the idea of a contingent and aspectivally conditioned world of phenomena in contrast with and opposition to an infinite, necessary, and all-linking Reality as the absolute source and origin of its being and being-known. Contingent and conditional Reality—as those absolutists saw it, must have its ground and basis—alike its reason for being and for being known in some17

Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 6th ed. [London: Appleton & Co., 1900), p. 30.

18

Ibid., p. 151.

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thing whose nature is nonconditioned and noncontingent. Their motto could have been that of Leibniz’s idea: Si nullum esset ens necessariun nullum foret adquid contingens. It was the common supposition of Absolute Idealism in all its forms: • That the sum-total of knowable fact constitutes a coherent whole. • That this totality comprises a manifold that is above and beyond what individual knowers can achieve. • But that it is nevertheless inherently knowable and cognitively accessible either collectively to minds at large (in their trans-historical totality) or to a transcendental Cosmic Mind or (be it divine or actual) that it is at once the source of the knowability and the ultimate actualizer of knowledge of the Reality. The governing idea was that there is a world amenable to rational comprehensibility because rationality itself plays a crucial role in its constitution. The line of thought at issue relies on the ancient Greek principle that like can come only from like so that the world’s intelligibility must in the final analysis have grounding in a world-formative intelligence. 6. PRAGMATISM A. PEIRCE (1848-1914) For Charles Sanders Peirce as for Kant, the idea of capital K Knowledge—knowledge completed and systemically perfected—played a central role in his thought. Specifically, he conceived of this as the reality depicted by Eventual Science—knowledge as the unfettered and unlimited pursuit of the scientific method in the long run eventually will (or, in his later philosophy, in theory ultimately would) bring it to light. Peirce accordingly propounded an ingenious theory regarding the relationship between the results of scientific inquiry and the nature of “the real truth” in factual matters regarding actual existence in the world. In the face of the philosophic sceptic’s agnosticism as to the very possibility of attaining “the real truth” about nature, Peirce proposed that the truth about reality is simply “the limit of inquiry”—that is, what the scientific enterprise will discover in the idealized long run, or would discover if the efforts

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were so extended.19 Once scientific progress reaches a point at which a question is answered in a certain way and that answer is thereafter maintained without change within the ongoing community of inquirers, then it is indeed the true answer to the question in hand.20 At issue is a Copernican inversion reminiscent of Kant: It is not that “rational inquiry” is appropriate because what it ultimately arrives at is the actual truth, but rather that “the actual truth” qualifies as such because rational inquiry ultimately arrives at it. As Peirce put it, the truth simply is “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate.”21This, in effect, is Peirce’s vision of the Absolute. He writes: Reality, the fact that there is such a thing as a true answer to a question, consists in this; that human inquiries,―human reasoning and observation,―tend toward the settlement of disputes and ultimate agreement in definite conclusions which are independent of the particular stand-points from which the different inquirers may have set out; so that the real is that which any man would believe in, and be ready to act upon, if his investigations were to be pushed sufficiently far. (CP, 8.41 [c. 1885])

By this ingenious doctrine of Hegelian inspiration, Peirce was able to bridge the Kantian gap between reality as it is an sich and our reality (our scientific conception of reality). For him, the former is simply the long-

19

If “life and mental vigor were to be indefinitely prolonged,” as he puts it in one passage (CP, 8.41 [c. 1885]). Again: “Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief” (CP, 5.565 [1901]).

20

We must not be parochial and conceive of “the ongoing community of inquirers” as necessarily limited to human beings: We may take it as certain that the human race will ultimately be extirpated. . . . But, on the other hand, we may take it as certain that other intellectual races exist on other planets, ―if not of our solar system, then of others; and also that innumerable new intellectual races have yet to be developed; so that on the whole, it may be regarded as most certain that intellectual life in the universe will never finally cease. (CP, 8.43 [c. 1885])

21

CP, 5.407 [1878]. In the essay “What Pragmatism Is” (CP, 5.41634), Peirce proposes “to define the ‘truth’ as that in a belief to which belief would lead if it were to tend indefinitely toward absolute fixity.”

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range projection of the latter.22 It is this idea of cognitive absoluteness that furnishes the basis for Peirce’s rather idealistic version of what he calls his scholastic realism. For as he sees it, reality really and just exactly is what ultimate science (construed along the lines just indicated) ultimately reveals it to be. For Peirce truth and reality stand coordinate in an adequation between thought and reality that is actually a matter of not what we think here and now but rather of what ultimate or ideal science will eventually have to say on the matter. This, in effect, is Peirce’s version of the Absolute. B. JAMES (1842-1910) For William James the fatal flaw of the Absolute is that we cannot get there from here—we cannot grasp it. But James conflated the cognitive state or condition of knowing something with the informative content to what is known. He wrote The absolute and the world are one fact. . . . The absolute just is our philosophy [i.e., our highest knowledge] along with everything that is known.23

As he saw it, advocates of the Absolute write to identify the known facts with the knowledge of them—thus holding when this is accomplished in (inevitably unrealizable) totality, then we have the Absolute. Little wonder that James finds the idea unappealing. For surely even the conception of the Absolute cannot bridge over the vast gulf between the manifold of fact and our—or anybody’s—limited and incomplete grip of it. So if such a bridging-over were indeed required for a conception of the Absolute then

22

Occasionally Peirce says things like, “the validity of induction depends merely on there being any reality” (CP, 5.349 [1869]). But this is careless; strictly construed, his theory is that the dependence is reversed: reality of the only sort “that can concern the pragmaticist, knowable reality, depends on the validity of induction, its self-corrective capacity ultimately to uncover whatever statistical stabilities may be there. Peirce himself came to recognize the carelessness at issue and ultimately rejected his earlier view that scientific reasoning requires a reality postulate. (See the important 1884 paper, “Design and Chance” [Ms. 875]. I am grateful to Dr. H. William Davenport for providing me with a photocopy of it.) Cf. note 44 below.

23

A Pluralistic Universe, p. 83.

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James is right—the idea is useless because we indeed cannot get there from here. There is, however, a big problem in this view. For as the absolutism theorists whom James opposed saw the matter, it is not a defect of the Absolute but a key aspect of its defining character that finite intelligences cannot possibly manage to wrap their minds around it in anything like an adequate way. C. ROYCE (1855-1916) Josiah Royce developed an ingenious argument for the existence of a cognitive Absolute—based on an appeal to error. Surely, so he maintained in effect, everyone grants that our beliefs and actions with regard to things may be in error. But this very circumstance is an acknowledgement of the Absolute, seeing that “My ideas are in any detail false, only . . . [insofar as they have] contents which I just now imperfectly conceive. In any case, then, truth is possessed by precisely that whole of experience which I never get.”24 The salient consideration for Royce is that for a proposition to be false it must “fail to tell it as it is”, which means that the very idea of falsity and error presuppose a reality that one can fail to be faithful to. And since what is false for one of us must be so for all the rest—truth and falsity being no respecters of persons—there must be an absolute reality irrespective of what individual members may think or do.25 Error, that is, presupposes truth, and truth—the actual and entire truth—is precisely what the Absolute is all about. And so, with Royce, the Absolute (in its cognitive/epistemic dimension emerges from what he sees as an inevitable discrepancy between our ideas about things which are always limited and imperfect and here manage to represent accurately and adequately the actual facts and relations that those ideas aspire to represent. It is our unavailable acknowledgement of cognitive frailty and fallibilism which—as Royce sees it, constrains the acceptance of an Absolute to betoken the gulf between achievement and aspiration in cognitive matters. 24

Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (N.Y.: Maxmillian, 1908), p. 343.

25

On these issues as a point of controversy between Royce and James see Richard M. Gale, The Divided Self of William James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 166-68.

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To be sure, in Royce’s controversy with William James, James insisted, and Royce conceded, that actual knowledge of the Absolute—that is of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—is an unrealizable ideal for us imperfect human knowers. But it quite sufficed Royce’s purposes to maintain that there is such a thing without having to go on to specify what it is substantively like. In The World and the Individual Royce agreed with Bradley that an ultimate synthesis of man’s finite knowledge of reality occurs in the Absolute. But Bradley had held that knowledge of just how this transpires as inaccessible to us imperfect intelligences. Royce resisted this sort of agnosticism, although he was never able to refute it to his own—or anybody else’s—satisfaction. Royce, much like Spencer, approached the Absolute by contrast reasoning, arguing from the conditionality and incompleteness of human knowledge.26 But over and above its cognitive aspect in relation to the limitedness of imperfect knowers, the Absolute according to Royce, also had a moral aspect manifested in the vagueness and rivalries of individual wills. These diversities ultimately bled into a systemic integration that represents the Absolute in its moral domain. And beyond this there is also an interpretative Absolute that endows all of reality with significance and meaning, so that all time of absoluteness in the compass of reality run to gather in a theological focus in which the Absolute becomes the God of Christian atheism. It is difficult to say whether this apotheosis of the Absolute represents the perfection of absolutism. But in any event, it is (if the perspective of our precept discussion holds good) a return to the ultimate root conception of the idea. D. DEWEY (1859-1952) John Dewey was thus yet another pragmatist who carried an earlier allegiance to Kant and Hegel over into his mature philosophy. He espoused a principle of cognitive continuity. As he put it in his 1938 Logic, “The idea of continuity is not self-explanatory. But its meaning excludes complete separation . . . and . . . precludes breaks and gaps.”27 The mission of 26

Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).

27

John Dewey, Later Works, ed. by JoAnn Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), Vol. 12, p. 30.

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knowledge development is integration, and inquiry is always a process “by which problematic situations are analyzed with a view to transformation into unified situations.”28 Accordingly, rational inquiry aims at synoptic unification—a synthesis in which all, discontinuities, transformations, and separations are somehow overcome. Put into different terms, rational inquiry is directed towards realizing the cognitive Absolute.29 While Dewey might indeed have rejected the ontological holism of his early Hegelian commitment to the idea that everything is ultimately interrelated and interconnected in the world, he nevertheless seems to have retained an epistemological holism in his belief that the cognitive enterprise is a chain-mail of overlapping and interpretation experiences that constitute an organic unity of some sort. 7. WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951) For the early, Tractarian Ludwig Wittgenstein, “The world is everything that is the case” (Tractatus, 1-1.12): the totality of facts (and not of things). These facts can be axiomatized via “elementary propositions” in such a way that When all true elementary propositions are listed, the world is completely described. (Tractatus, 4.26).

In this way, Wittgenstein projected the idea of a synoptically comprehensive world-description that encapsulates the entire range of arithmetic fact about reality seeing that “the rum-total of reality is the world” (Tractatus, 2.063). Such a world-picture of comprehensive totality is linked to the world as its cognitive image, for: “Just this is how a picture is tied (verknüpft) to reality: it reaches out to it (Tractatus 2.1511). To all intents and purposes, Wittgenstein’s “picture of reality” effectively constitutes an allinclusive manifold of truth that is pretty much the same as what the generality of philosophers had heretofore designated as the Absolute. And this 28

John Dewey, Later Works, ed. by JoAnn Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), Vol. 12, p. 511.

29

This strand of Dewey’s thinking, going back to Hegel, was a target of Bertrand Russell’s in his contribution to the Schilpp volume on The Philosophy of John Dewey.

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Wittgensteinean view of the matter was decidedly elaborated in the work of Rudolf Carnap.30 8. RETROSPECT The same issue concerns the whole tradition of absolutism throughout its entire history, namely: How are we to understand and describe the connection between the body of knowledge actually at our disposal (K) and the absolute (A) represented by the coherent, complete, systemically integrated manifold comprising the whole of the capital-T truth about reality? As the preceding survey indicates, there are various alternatives here, as reflected in the variety of solutions that have been proposed. • The theological solution (Leibniz). The God who has engendered A in creating this universe has thereby also created a mind equipped with a capacity to develop K in such a way as to afford a substantial insight into the principal features of A. • The methodological solution (Kant). There is no such thing as A as such—it is a mere friction, an ens rationis. What there is is the idea of A which serves us as a regulative ideal in the unfolding development of K. • The concrescence Solution (Schelling and Fichte). A just exactly is the entire process of K-development seen in its progressive totality towards an ultimate fusion of knowledge and reality. • The spiritualist solution (Hegel). The determinative force of Reason (Geist) concurrently guides both the unfolding development of the cosmos and the operations of man’s intellect. Cosmic evolution is thus an historical process that ongoingly drives both A and K into closer conformity. • The idealist solution (Bradley and British Idealism). There is no such thing as authentic K: the idea of knowledge of reality is an illusion. We need not relate K to A because K dissolves into misconcep30

See Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947) and Logical Foundation of Probability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950, 2nd ed. 1960).

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tions. In the final analysis authenticity and validity belong to A alone. • The evolutionary convergentist solution (Peirce). As scientific progress advances, K becomes an increasingly closer approximation to A. • The mereological solution (Royce). K is a part of A, but a diminutively small one, a mere drop in the ocean of potential cognition. • The logical engrossment solution (Wittgenstein). A is in effect an axiomatization of truth-about-reality in which the whole domain of fact is inferentially encompassed. • The semanticist solution (Carnap). Not only is there a comprehensive world-description that embodies A because the entirety of truth can be derived from it—but there is also a vast proliferation of Aalternatives that represent nonexistent possible worlds. What K seeks—and to some partial extent succeeds in accomplishing—is to provide an adequate view of A. The history of the Absolute is played out in a range comprising logicoepistemological consideration on the one side and ontologicoconsiderations on the other. With Kant it represents a cognitive idealization regarding the ultimate structure of knowledge. In term idealism it migrates towards a pole of ontological realism via an identity theory of the relation between knowers and the known. And with an aspect of the mind of God as omniscient knower. Then too the idea of the Absolute migrates from the stance of knowers-in-general to knowers-as-a-whole (Mind at large). Social mind to the idea of a single all-embracing comprehensive knower—in effect the Mind of God. Only in its latest 20th century phase does the Absolute return once more to its epistemological roots but to the ultimacy of the objects (all-comprehending systematization) to whom the cognitive prospect aims. Late 19th century absolute idealism thus came to a consensus on the ultimately Schellingesque Idea that knowledge represents a structural unity (conformity) of knower and known, so that then, globally, knowledge-atlarge conforms to reality-at-large. Accordingly, these thinkers would agree with the early John Dewey, that “The difficulty of Locke is the difficulty of

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every theory of knowledge that does not admit an organic unity of the knowing mind and the known universe.”31 However, the Absolute of the 20th Century theorists is far less ambitious focused not on process but on product—and looked to absolutes namely on the side of the manifold of truth and fact, focusing on its nature alone and deferring the issue of its ontological rationale. * * * Need the Absolute be conceived of in theological terms, as so many idealists inclined to do? The answer here is a somewhat indecisive yesand-no. Viewed as representing the totality of knowledge, there are two significantly different ways of construing the Absolute, namely as the totality of what will ever be known (of realized knowledge), or, alternatively, as the totality of what can be known (the totality of potential knowledge). However, even the latter does not quite come to the totality of actual fact, given that some facts—and specifically the megafact represented by that totality itself—cannot possibly be known, at any rate by finite intelligences. To arrive at the Absolute in its third and most ambitious sense we would indeed have to take the theological turn and bring the idea of an infinite intelligence upon the scene. And so the theological approach to the Absolute does have something to be said for it. 9. CODA But why accept the idea of a cognitive Absolute? From a functional standpoint the idea has two purposes. On the one side we have what might be called the optimistic idealists for whom the idea serves as an assurance of the rationality of the real—a guarantee of the ultimate efficacy of human inquiry in that our reason to come to discern (some glimmering of) the characterizing features of an intelligible world. On the other side we have the pessimistic idealist, for whom the Absolute represents the quintessence of what we cannot achieve and serves to highlight the incapacity of an imperfect intelligence in relation to a complex reality. There is, accordingly, 31

John Dewey, Early Works, 5 vols., ed. by JoAnn Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-72), Vol. 1, p. 395. Dewey goes on to endorse what he takes to be Leibniz’s view that “God is the unity of intelligence and reality” (ibid., p. 422).

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something rather ironic about the idea of the Absolute as akin to the half filled cup which some see as half full and others as half empty. Clearly, the sort of ultimate and perfected knowledge that would be involved in cognition at the level of the Absolute is more than we do—or indeed ever can— manage to realize. What is at issue is thus best seen as a contrast term to mark our acknowledgement of the incompleteness and imperfection of what we do—or ever will—acquire in the line of knowledge. To speak of the Absolute of perfected cognition in this context is not to claim more than we ever can justify, but rather to realize and acknowledge that there is more to be claimed than we can ever manage to secure. Accordingly, within the range of alternatives that the preceding deliberations have put on the menu of selection, the most plausible would seem to be the one that provided the starting point for the whole business, namely the Immanuel Kant’s idea of the Absolute as a speculative fiction whose validating service is to put before the mind’s eye, the vision of an idealization towards which we can (regulatively) strive while at the same time recognizing that its actual achievement is—like the ideal of moral perfection—an ultimately unrealizable pie in the sky. 10.

PROSPECT

Even as the idea of the Absolute has a pre-history, it has a post-history as well. This is represented by the idea of a Grand Unified Theory of Everything in contemporary physics—a theory in which all of the fundamental laws of nature (or at least of physics and chemistry) are encompassed in a mathematical system based on a single basic principle, a sufficient basis from which this whole manifold of laws can be inferentially derived.32 What these physicists actually want is a theory that restores all of those traditional absolutes: totalitarianism, all-embrancingness, bedrock ultimacy, self-explanatory axiomaticity, necessitarian exigency. Those GUT theorists are willing—nay eager—to trade all those hard-fought philosophical struggles against absolutism for a nostalgia satisfying pre-modern necessitarianism. And from this perspective it can be seen that—perhaps surprisingly—the Absolute yet lives. Not only does it have a restrospective history, it seems to have a prospective future as well. And so, overall,

32

For a readable account see Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York, 1993). A more technical exposition is H. M. George, “General Unified Theories” in Paul Davies (ed.), The New Physics (Cambridge, 1986).

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the Absolute represents an amazingly tenacious and adaptable idea. If survival indicates fitness, there are few fitter. What we have here is a head-to-head battle between a scientific penchant and a philosophical tradition that has step by step worked its way out of a classical absolutism. There is, obviously no safe way of predicting which side will win out—a modernity that abandons absolutism or an idealized mathematical physics that demands it. But there is no room for doubt that a contest of epic proportions is being played out—a Promethean struggle to wrest enlightenment from the reluctant gods. It will be fascinating to see this struggle unfold. The stakes are massive. For what is at issue is not only our scientific view of the world we live in but also our image of the sorts of creatures that we ourselves are.33

REFERENCES Barron, Joseph Thomas, The Idea of the Absolute in Modern British Philosophy (Washington, DC.: Catholic University of America Press, 1929). Braun, Edmund., La logique de l’absolu (Paris: Perrin, 1887). Cramer, Wolfgang, Das Absolute und das Kontingente (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1959). Ewing, A. C., Idealism: A Critical Survey (London: Methuen, 1934 ). Huber, Gerhard, Das Sein und das Absolute (Basel: Verlag für Recht und Gesellschaft, 1955) Kroner, Richard, Von Kant bis Hegel (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1921). Loewenberg, Jacob, “The Apotheosis of Mind in Modern Idealism,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 31 (1922). McTaggart, J. M. E., Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901).

33

This chapter was originally published in Idealistic Studies, vol. 35 (2005).

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THE ABSOLUTE: A CONCISE HISTORY Passmore, John, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968). [See especially Chap’s 3 and 4.] Rademacher, Hans, Fichte’s Begriff des Absoluten (Stuttgart: Euler, 1970). Rodhe, Sven E., Zweifel und Erkenntnis: Ueber das Problem des Skeptizismus und den Begriff des Absoluten (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup; Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1945). Sabine, G. H., “Idealism: The Social Origin of the Absolute,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 12 (1915). Sprigge, T. L. S., The Vindication of Absolute Idealism University Press, 1983.)

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh

White, Alan, Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press,1983).

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Chapter 9 DIALECTIC: A BRIEF HISTORY 1. PRE-HISTORY

W

ith the much-maligned Sophists of Greek antiquity, dialectic was a process of arguing persuasively on both sides of an issue. It constituted that part of the rhetoric of persuasion dealing with the unfolding of counter argumentation in rational debate, with its standard three-stage structure: thesis → objections → response

According to Xenophon, Socrates said “that dialectic (to dialegesthai) was so called because it is an inquiry pursued by persons who take counsel together.”1 And with the Megarians who followed in the footsteps of Socrates—his disciple Euclides of Megara in particular—dialectic became eristic, the “art of disputation.”2 According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle in his (now-lost) Sophist named Zeno of Elea, the eminent paradoxer, as the true originator of philosophical dialectic in bending Sophistical practice to the needs of philosophical investigation.3 But be this as it may, dialectic as a philosophical resource was clearly at work in the endeavors of the Platonic Socrates to utilize the discursive rhetorical theory and practice of the Sophists as an instrument of rational inquiry. And Plato himself was the first philosopher who pointedly and explicitly assigned a pivotal philosophical role to dia-

1

Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, v., 12.

2

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 30 and 107.

3

Diogenes Laertius, op. cit., VIII, 57. On dialectics in early antiquity see Carl Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, Vol. I (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1855), pp. 9-11.

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lectic as such. Hegel rightly called Plato’s Parmenides “the masterpiece of ancient dialectics.”4 2. PLATO For Plato, dialectic—based on the Socratic model of a discursive exchange between a questioner and respondent—is a rational procedure for investigating the range and substance of the basic conceptions of philosophical concern such as truth, beauty, justice, pleasure, and the like—the Platonic “Forms” in short. In these matters of philosophical elucidation, the consecutive interchanges of a carefully conducted rational debate between questioner and respondent can ultimately bring the truth of the matter to light, so that , as Plato saw it: Dialectic does not treat its hypotheses as first principles, but as hypotheses in the literal sense, things “laid down” as a flight of steps which mount up to something that is not hypothetical but the first principle of all. Then having grasped this dialectic turns back, and proceeding via the consequences that depend upon it, it descends to a conclusion, using no sensible objects at all, but only Forms, moving from one to another and terminating with the same. . . .[In this way, dialectic is superior to the special sciences because] their students do not go back to first principles but proceed from [otherwise unexamined] hypotheses. (Republic VI, 511 b-d.)

For Plato, accordingly, dialectic—characterized in the Republic as “the keystone of the sciences”—figures as an instrument of rational inquiry in matters where, like philosophy, we are not prepared to work with predetermined fixities (along the lines of the definitions, axioms, and postulates of geometry). As he saw it, dialectic provides the methodology of rational inquiry into fundamentals: it furnishes the means for effecting a transit from the tentative and conditioned to the transcendent “Forms” that constitute the fundamental Ideas at stake in philosophical deliberation. On this basis, Plato viewed dialectic as the proper method of philosophy by providing an effective and reliable pathway to the understanding of fundamentals, and he accordingly contrasted this productive dialectic with the sophistic pseudo-dialectics of the Sophists.

4

G. W. G. Hegel, Phenomenology, sect. 57.

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3. ARISTOTLE Aristotle regarded dialectic in a decidedly less favorable light.5 For Aristotle, the aim of rational inquiry is to establish the necessity of its conclusions and this is something that only inferentially airtight, scientifically demonstrative reasoning is able to do. As Aristotle portrays the matter in his Topics—the only treatise he devoted to the study of authentic dialectic6—dialectical reasoning is in progress when the terms at issue have not yet been sufficiently clarified,7 and where the relationships at issue may be merely accidental.8 The dialectician feels free to argue for mere plausibilities instead of assured certainties.9 One can argue dialectically for opposed contentions with inconclusive cogency, and this is something that demonstration reasoning excludes.10 As Aristotle saw it, dialectic is plausibilitymongering and cannot provide authentic knowledge.11 For him, dialectic is best a matter of refutation and is thus at its strongest with reductio ad absurdum arguments of the sort at issue with indirect proofs in mathematics. 5

For Aristotle’s position on dialectic see G. E. L. Owen (ed), Aristotle in Dialectic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) and J. D. G., Evans, Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), as well as C. D. C. Reeve, “Dialectic and Philosophy in Aristotle” in Jyl Gentzler (ed.), Method in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 227-252; and also D. W. Hamlyn, “Aristotle on Dialectic,” Philosophia, vol. 65 (1990), pp. 455-76.

6

The Sophistical Refutations is best viewed as an examination of spurious or mistaken dialectic.

7

Topics 77b31. In particular, dialectic fails when the propositions at issue are not mutually inconsistent, so that the falsity of the one need have no bearing on the truth of the other. In this issue see C. W. A. Whitaker, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), especially pp. 99-108. 127-28, and 178-82.

8

Topics, 78a12. Thus in rhetorical practice, dialecticians are prepared “to draw opposites conclusions impartially,” Rhetoric 1355a35; see also Sophistical Refutations, 183a37.

9

Topics, 81b19.

10

Topics, 77a33

11

Metaphysics, 1004b 22-26.

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However, such argumentation only shows that something must be sure, seeing that the denial is untenable. It does not—as apodictic demonstration does—show how and why it must be so.12 For Aristotle, then, the contrast between demonstrative apodictics and suggestive dialectics is basic. And while dialectical reasoning, is neither erroneous nor useless, it is nevertheless an inferior mode of reasoning that is acceptable only where the more rigorous demands of scientific demonstration cannot be met. Dialectic is not (as in Plato) a secure pathway to knowledge, but represents the compromise of a second best acceptable only where the condition requisite for rigorous demonstration are not effectively satisfied.13 As Aristotle argues in detail in the Topics, dialectics does not establish what demonstratively must be but only indicates what plausibly may well be the case. It is useful mainly for explaining pro’s and con’s before the real business of actually settling an issue on scientific principles gets under way. As Friedrich Solmsen puts it: “The highest claim to which dialectic may aspire [on Aristotle’s view] is to be a progymnastic or propaedentic of philosophy.”14 To Aristotle’s mind, dialectic—however useful in the training of philosophers—is not really suitable as an instrument of philosophical inquiry as such. And that as far as philosophy from late antiquity through the middle ages was concerned, was that. However, beginning with the Stoics,15 subsequent tradition played Aristotle an unkind trick. For whereas he explicitly contrasted logic (i.e., “analytics”) with dialectic—to the decided detriment of the latter—later thinkers, some Stoics and most medieval Schoolmen among them, while effectively agreeing with him on this substantive issue, nevertheless fixed on the term dialectic to stand for logic/analytics at large, so that the crucial Aristotelian contrast was lost.

12

Sophistical Refutations, 170a20-b10 and 171b10-173b5.

13

On this basis, a good case could be made out from regarding Aristotle’s dialectic as a “logic of plausibility” which effectively anticipates the substantial effort of the late 20th century in the areas of informal logic, nonmonotonic inference, and reasoning artificial intelligence.

14

In G. E. L. Owen (ed.), Aristotle on Dialectics (op. cit.), p. 34.

15

See Diogens Laertius, op. cit., II, 43-44 and VII, 48. The Stoics allotted to logic (i.e., their dialectic) such a centrality that they came to be called dialektikoi (dialecticians). See Prantl, Geschichre, vol. I (op. cit.), pp, 419 and 512.

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4. THE MEDIEVALS When the medievals dealt with dialectics, they meant logic as such, and dialectic in the historic Greek sense of the term that was at issue from the Sophists through Aristotle largely fell by the wayside. For the medievals, then, dialectics was logic at large, the science of demonstration through which rational inquiry sought veritatis seu falsitatis discretio.16 And as such dialectic constituted a key part of the institutional trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic (i.e., logic). Thus while the medieval treatment of “dialectic” forms an important chapter in the history of logic, it can be left aside in the context of the history of dialectic as traditionally understood in its relation to philosophical methodology.17 However, insofar as dialectic is a feature of the actual practice of academic disputation, it continued to play an important role in higher education throughout the middle ages.18 16

Abelard, Dialectica, p. 435. For an English translation of a typical medieval treatise on dialectic see John Buridan, Summulae de dialectica tr. by Gyula Klima (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2001). A look at the elaborate table of its Contents shows that with regard to topics that the treatise remains well within the boundaries of Aristotle’s logical organon. Not until the Renaissance did Petrus Ramus reconstitute the idea of dialectic as the art of disputation (doctrina disputandi). See his Dialecticae Constitutiones (1543).

17

Over and above the standard histories of logic, the following treatments of medieval dialectic are highly instructive: T. J. Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (London: Brill, 1996); J. A. Endres, “Die Dialektik und ihre Gegner im 11. Jahrhundert,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 19 (1906), pp. 20-33; N. J. Green-Pelensen, The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages (Munich, Philosophia Verlag, 1984); and above all, Eleanore Stump, Dialectic and its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

18

On medieval academic disputation see A. G. Little and F. Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 29-56. A vivid account of scholastic disputation is given in Thomas Gilby, O. P., Barbara, Celarent A Description of Scholastic Dialectics (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1949), see especially Chapter XXXII on “Found Dialectic,” pp. 282-93; and see also Bromley Smith, “Extracurricular Disputation: 1400-1650,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 34 (1948), pp. 473-96. On medieval and renaissance discussions of Platonic dialectic see Raymond Klibansky, “Plato’s Parmenides in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 1 (1941/43), pp. 288ff.

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5. KANT With Kant, dialectic is a logic of error: a process of reasoning that brings to light the flaws and faults of the mis-reasoning in which we become enmeshed in taking the mis-step of letting reason go beyond its proper role in taking its own (self-postulated) instrumentalities as actual objects (given realities), thereby endowing something of merely subjective validity with objective reality. Kant accordingly saw dialectics as a matter of the pathology of reason seeing that reasoning in abstraction from the sensuous condition under which alone—as Kant sees it—a knowledge of objects is possible: [Such reasoning will] always be a logic of illusion, that is, be dialectical. For abstract reason yields nothing whatever about the content of our cognition, but merely sets the formal conditions of their accordance with the understanding, which do not characterize objects and instead are quite indifferent to them . . . . For this reason we have choose to designate this part of logic Dialectic, in the sense of a critique of dialectical illusion.19

With Kant, dialectics is thus an exercise in mis-reasoning, the product of a fallacy—the fallacy of illicit reification, inappropriate hypostatizations that arises by treating as an object (thing or substance) something that is a mere idea. Dialectic thus deals with “a natural and unavoidable illusion [of human thought] which arises when subjective principles impose themselves upon us as objects.”20 Accordingly, in dialectical situations there is a reciprocal intertwining of thesis and antithesis. Both T ⇒ A and A ⇒ T will now obtain, where A is effectively not-T. Since in the standard logic of things the former relationship (T ⇒ not-T) means that not-T obtains, and the latter relationship (not-T ⇒ T) means that T obtains we arrive at the self-contradiction: T and not-T. The situation that results is thus one of reciprocal annihilation, this being just as strong an argument for affirming as for denying a claim about the non-entity at issue. In dialectical situations we have a literal self-contradiction that betokens the fact that our theoretical reasoning cannot reach beyond the realm of experience into an experience transcendent realm of things in themselves. For Kant, dialectic is thus 19

Critique of Pure Reason, A293 = B349.

20

Critique of Pure Reason, A298= B354.

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merely a logic of error—specifically error that results when pure thought outreaches itself in seeking entry on its own basis into the domain of actual reality and objective fact.21 6. FICHTE AND SCHLEIERMACHER One significant attempt to rescue dialectic from the strictures of Kant was Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay on eristic dialectic.22 Schopenhauer, however, approached the issue from the angle of logic in specific, rather than that of philosophical methodology at large. Here the earlier postKantians had taken a different line. Fichte in effect turned the Kantian picture of philosophical dialectic upside down. For him, dialectical reasoning does not mark a separating boundary between thought and reality but rather a joining linkage between these two domains; it explores a boundary that does not so much separate as adjoin. For Kant the only reality there is for us—the only reality with which we finite intelligences can have any cognitive contact—is the reality at issue in our thought: the reality that we ourselves construct in the course of thinking of reality “in itself” (as such)—apart from the reality of our appropriate thinking—is an unalterable function with which we can have dealings. And dialectic is the realm of illusion and delusion that arises when we treat this unalterable irreality as part of our domain of knowledge. Dialectic, in sum, represents a domain of illusion. Fichte would have none of this. For him, dialectic is the very process by which we construct that one and only view of reality as one can ever achieve: it affords the means by which thought at once engenders and devises its view of reality. Dialectic, in short, is the process of rational inquiry that we all use—not just as individuals, but as a community of rational investigators—in determining the truth which (in virtue of being just that—namely truth) gives us our account of the real. Communally understood dialectic is a subject-transcendent (objective) process. The dialecti21

On Dialectic in Kant see Michael Wolff, Der Begriff des Widerspruchs: Eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels (Meisenhein: Hain, 1981).

22

Arthur Schopenhauer, “Eristische Dialektik” in Arthur Schopenhauer: Der Handschriftliche Nachlass, ed. by A. Hübscher, Vol. III (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970), p. 666-95.

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cal interchange through which one’s personal instructions-to-think (one’s “theses”) encounter and respond to the opposed difficulties and objections (the “antitheses”) arising in the intersection of oneself with others is the pathway to objectivity and rational certainly. And so the schema thesis → antithesis → synthesis formed a centerpiece of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, and for him the corresponding dialectic provides a pathway not to Kantian delusion but to certified truth. Friedrich Schleiermacher was yet another German idealist who took a view of dialectic more favorable than Kant. For even as for the Stoics, “dialectic” was simply logic in general, so for Schleiermacher, it was simply the process of philosophizing (of ars philosophandi: die Kunst zu philosophieren).23 Given that natural philosophy forms part of philosophy at large, dialectic is thus a matter of the methodology of rational inquiry in general and überhaupt, the “organon of all the sciences.” And so in much of post-Kantian German idealism dialectic became the methodology of philosophy (at least) or even Wissenschaft (at large): the rational advance of inquiry from an achieved stage of development to its successors. Given this synoptic view of the matter, it is not surprising that Schleiermacher never gave any definite view of how dialectic works as a precisely defined process. For him, dialectic was the methodology (organon) of cognitive development at large which eventuated in a systemic—or, as he says, “symphonic”—coordination within the community of inquirers at large in a way that assures the objective cogency of their findings. 7. HEGEL While Hegel sometimes talks as though dialectic were simply the general method of philosophizing—in his own philosophy at any rate—he generally means something more specific by the term, namely the rationally determinate (Geist-managed) developmental process through which Existence/Reality (das Seiende) unfolds over time with historical necessity. After all, the self-definition of anything is a matter of distinguishing and 23

Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, Dialektik [1811], ed. by Andreas Arndt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986); see also Terence N. Tice (ed.), Friedrich Schleiermacher: Dialectic or the Art of Doing Philosophy (Atlanta: Schiler’s Press, 1996).

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distancing it from that which it is not, and in this mode of “negative reason” is dialectic.24 As such, it is inevitably developmental because any given mode of conception—of explanatory understanding—leads to inconsistency and contradiction unless and until qualified and reconfigured through inclusion within a larger framework of understanding.25 As Hegel put it: Everything about us in this world may be viewed as a product of Dialectic. For we must realize that everything finite, rather than being stable and ultimate, is changeable and merely transient. Just this is what we mean by the Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, implicitly encompassing more than what it is, is forced by and its own immediate or natural being so as to turn suddenly into its opposite.26

Hegel thus saw dialectic as tracking an unfolding process alike in thought (discursively) and in nature (developmentally). Such a step from cognitive to ontological dialectic is pivotal for the philosophy of Hegel, which sees dialectic as being concurrently and conjointly a process in the development of knowledge and in the development of the universe itself—the reality which includes the evaluation of “Absolute Thought.” For Hegel’s predecessors, and Fichte in particular, dialectic was an instrument of inquiry— for the development of rational thought about the real. With Hegel, however, an insistence on the correspondence of true thought with its object dualized dialectic into a process of information that yields a conveniently ontological and epistemological account of reality. Hegel thus saw dialectic as a process of rationally enforced convergences of our inquiry-based question-resolution on the one hand and the world’s actual facts on the other, a convergence in which the potential disparity between thought and

24

The Science of Logic, sect. 79.

25

To give a somewhat crude illustration. If we focus exclusively on the even integers we are led toward the absurd idea that there are all there is, whereas in fact those evens inevitably lead beyond themselves to the odds and must accordingly be cognized in relation to and coordination approximating with something else that is very different, calling for comprehension within the broader context of integers-atlarge, thereby manifesting a conceptual impetus toward inclusion in a larger complex.

26

G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic (=Part I of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), sect. 81.

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truth is ultimately overcome in a unity identification that constitutes absolute knowledge.27 The Hegelian dialectic is, in effect, the entire process of inquiry, construed two-sidedly, on the one hand in progressively constituting and reconstituting our view of the world in cognition with, on the other hand, the world as presented in the world-picture that results. It is thus the complex composite of (as it were) the map and the terrain it maps conjoined in due coordination. Dialectic accordingly deals developmentally with the structure of reality and conjointly in its cognition and ontological manifestation. And developmentally this process comes to an ever more adequate and improved revision increasingly approximating the Absolute Idea towards which the actually realized situation is tending and, as it were, striving. The sequential pattern of such a specifically dialogic process is of course readily generalized to the idea of any cyclically repetitive process of production where the end product of each cycle furnishes the starting ingredient for the next interaction. The work of Hegelian dialectic is thus two-sided, representing a parallelism in the development not just of a cognition of reality but coordinatively of the very reality that is cognized.28 This parallelism is encapsulated in the thesis that the real is realist—that the rational structure which inquiry brings to light in its study of reality is at the same time a characteristic of the structure of that reality itself. Just as a printing press gives physical realization to the cognitive content of a text, so physical reality at once encapsulates and encodes a cognitive. Accordingly, Hegel was in effect the founding father of what the 20th century has come to know as “intelligent design” theory: for him physical reality is the material encoding of a fundamental structure of rationality in that for Hegel, the structure of explanatory thought in rational inquiry and 27

On Hegel’s dialectic see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, tr. by P. C. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Dialectic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and Michael Wolff’s Der Begriff des Widerspruchs (op. cit.). The development of Hegel’s thought regarding dialectic is examined in detail in P. Kondyles, Die Entstehung der Dialektik (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979), and Manfred Baum, Die Entstehung der Hegelschen Dialektik (Bonn: Bovier Verlag, 1986).

28

In this regard as in other’s Hegel’s concept of dialectic departs radically from that of the ancients, as commentations have long emphasized. See, for example, K. L. W. Heyden, Kritische Darstellung der Aristotelischen und Hegelschen Dialektik (Erlangen: 1845).

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the structure of causal eventuation in the development of nature are simply one and the same structure. Thought encodes physical reality as a map encodes a physical terrain. In any proper causal explanation of events the structure of evolving understanding and the structure of evolving occurrence are parallel. In both cases alike that which is (the natural condition of things) and that which is not (i.e., not yet) come to terms in yielding an as yet unrealized result which, overall manifests a process of development (“synthesis”) in which these several stages (“moments”) are linked together in creating a new status quo, which itself simply sets the stage for the next interaction of the same developmental pattern. In nature, as in the development of knowledge, there is always the self-transcendences at issue when things pull themselves forward by their own bootstraps: their development is a matter of self-preservation—a process in which things change (as they must) not only for the sake of preserving something of themselves at the next stage of development so that there is at once sublation (change) and continuation (preservation), at work in the dual sense of the German expression “sich aufheben.” For Hegel, dialectic is the process which through the operations of reason come to be manifest in reality. Since truth corresponds to reality (an adequatio ad rem) this correspondence manifests itself two-sidedly—both in the character of adequate thought and in the rational investigation of nature that such thought portrays. And just as natural reality has an historical and developmental character, so this is trusted by the cognitive proceedings of the thinking beings whose operations—from one part of view— represent the strings of natural reality to come to cognitive terms with itself. Understood in this way, dialectic is the interactive process thought in which reality comes to be self-comprehended (and thus spiritualized or rationalized). Thus as Hegel sets matters in the Encyclopedia, dialectic makes manifest two sides of the same coin: that of actual occurrence as reflected in the parallel duality of physical (material) explanatory (intellectual) process. For him, dialectic is a two sided process that is at once epistemological and ontological, because—so he holds—the studies of explanatory understanding in the development of knowledge simply link the structure of causality in the ontological development of natural reality. With Plato and to a lesser extent Aristotle, dialectic was an instrument of inquiry, by looking at what can be said on both of the opposed sides of a question we can realize a judicious intermediation that is apt to be more faithful to the truth of the matter than either of those conflicting extremes. Thus ancient dialectic is a matter of the search for truth between the ex-

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tremes of opposition set by an either-or. With Hegel, on the other hand, we have a position that wants it both ways—that strives for a (potentially unrealizable) both-and. As Gadamer puts it “For Hegel, the point of dialectic is that precisely by pushing a position to the point of selfcontradiction it [the dialectical impetus] makes possible the transition to realizing a higher truth which embraces both sides of that contradiction.29 Moreover, Hegel viewed the process of dialectical development as having an inner logic through which the transition from one phase to the next is developmentally or (perhaps better) historically necessitated. It is this aspect of the Hegelian dialectic that has become at once the most influential (via Marx) and the most sharply criticized. For as Hans-Georg Gadamer has noted, Wilhelm Dilthey and others (Jonas Cohn, Nicolai Hartmann) object that the system of relationships of logical concepts [in Hegel’s Logic] is more various and contains more dimensions than those admitted by Hegel himself, who forces matters into the monolithically unified level of his own dialectical progression.30

Moreover, as critics of Hegel from Trendelenburg onwards have rightly complained, notwithstanding his insistence on logical necessity in dialectic, this very feature is prominently absent in the dialectical expositions that Hegel himself exfoliates in his Logic. 8. MARX Where Hegel sought to spiritualize the materiality of physical process, Karl Marx sought to materialize the spiritual dimension of human thought and action within nature. His dialectic is not cognitive but physically developmental, somewhat in the manner of the pattern tendency → counter tendency → stable resolution somewhat in the way in which introducing a hot object into a cold environment (a mass of hot coal into a cold room) will collaboratively produce a new state of balancing things out. 29

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, tr. by P. S. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 105.

30

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic (op. cit), p. 11.

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Thus while retaining from Hegel both the dialectical structure of natural occurrence and the historical necessitation of the process of dialectical development, Marx simply lopped off the head of the cognitive and “spiritual” involvements at issue in the Hegelian view of things, only retaining the material causality of physical process. The Marxian dialectic, accordingly, is not a cognitive resource of inquiry but a characterization of the material (physical and socio-physical) processes through which (and, as he sees it, through which alone) nature’s occurrences eventuate. Marx, in sum, effectively offers Hegel without Geist. Accordingly, Marx in effect abandons dialectic as anything like its traditional role as a cognitive process and trades this in for the physical causality of natural process and the material productivity of human effort. His dialectical materialism is causal materialism pure and simple. Thus while Marx claims to have “stood Hegel on his head” the net effect of the violence this does to Hegel’s ideas is that (as Mure put it) “Marx’s dialectic is no more than a sham façade for his materialism.”31 At any rate, this is how more orthodox Hegelians would see it. Then too, in various Marx-influenced “postmodernist” discussions, dialectic has come to stand for any sort of interaction between opposed tendencies—social, economic, psychological or whatever.32 Here any sort of feed-back process is viewed as dialectical, with a result of shifting the idea to a considerable remove from its historical roots.

31

G. R. E. Mure, The Philosophy of Hegel (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 32n.

32

See, for example. Yvonne Sherratt’s treatment of Adorno’s Positive Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). In Adorno we find an impenetrably opaque discussion of “the decline of enlightened knowledge acquisition through its dialectical regression into its animistic variant” (p. 126). Here “dialectic” is a black hole into which verbiage vanishes and nothing intelligible emerges. And this situation is not greatly improved in neo-Marxist ideological dialect, whose verbal gymnastics are examined in Maurice Merleau Ponty’s The Adventures (“Mis-adventures” would be more accurate) of Dialectics (initially published in Paris in 1955 under the title Les aventures de la dialectique.

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9. 20th CENTURY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Twentieth century analytic philosophy saw a significant revival of dialectic. However this occurred not at the level of deliberations about methodological issues and general principles, but rather at that of the actual practice of philosophizing.33 For the fact of it is that the conduct of much of ___________________________________________________ Display 1 ANALYTIC DIALECTIC THESIS

thesis

ANTI-THESIS

objections to the thesis

SYNTHESIS

refinement of the thesis in the light of the objections

___________________________________________________ twentieth century philosophy has involved what is in effect, an analytic employment of dialectic as per the pattern set out in Display 1. What we have here is the standard dialectic pattern of interchange between the prospect of a thesis and an opponent who contests it, the standard pattern, that is to say of contention, counter-contention, and revised (qualified, amended) contention. This process is predicated on a certain view of the problem-situation of philosophy, a view which stands roughly a follows: 33

The only latter-day books on philosophical dialectics that I know of are Chaim Perelman, Rhétorique et philosophie pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1952), and my own Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1977) and see also R. C. Pinto, “Dialectic and the Structure of Argument,” Informal Logic, pp. 16-20. However, dialectic as a feature of rhetoric and academic disputation is the subject of an extensive literature. On the theoretical side there is Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de l'argumentation; la nouvelle rhétorique, 2 vol’s (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958). And as regards academic debating there is a vast literature, typified by Austin J. Freeley, Argumentation and Debate (2nd ed., Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1966).

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The phenomena with which philosophy has to deal are so complex and variegated that no generalized thesis can do them justice. Moreover, the language at our disposal for philosophical dialection is inadequate to the task. The complex realities bust the boards of conceptualization that it makes available. Thus any general philosophical thesis is over-simple to the point of inadequacy and has to be qualified and enmeshed. The task of dialectic is to reveal and mitigate the misconceptions at issue by means of what is to all intents and purposes a cyclic process of dialogical challenge-and-response. Dialectic thus affords an instrumentality of inquiry that provides for an ongoing negotiation between philosophical thought and the complex phenomenon that comprises in the reality that it addresses. The resultant practice generally conforms to a rather definite format whose overall structure is essentially as follows: Stage 1:

Thesis → Antithetical Objections → Synthetic Revision

1.1 State the thesis 1.2 State the counter-considerations (objections). 1.3 Qualify the thesis so as to meet (avert) the con-considerations Stage 2: Emended Thesis → Expository Deficiencies → Synthetic Reformulation 2.1 State the duly emended thesis 2.2 Expose its ambiguities, equivocations, evasions. 2.3 Restate the thesis in sharper/clearer form so as to eliminate misunderstandings Stage 3:

Revised Thesis → Reappraisal → Synoptic Reevaluation

3.1 Restates the sharpened thesis

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3.2 Explain the implications that the whole process carries for the thesis 3.3 Reevaluate the thesis in the light of these lessons ___________________________________________________ Display 2 DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS THESIS

ANTITHESIS objections

START

thesis equivocations qualification ramifications reformation SYNTHESIS

___________________________________________________ As such an account indicates, in dialectical analysis we process a thesis in a three-fold manner: first by a revision by qualification designed to minimize it against objections; second by a reformulation designed to render it more exact and perspicuous; and third to highlight the lessons from its meaning and impact that emerge from the preceding stages of the analysis. On this basis, the overall structure of a dialectical analysis stands as per the diagram of Display 2. This sort of analytical dialectic rests on the underlying idea that the complexity of the issues at stake in philosophical deliberation is such that philosophical generalizations almost inevitably oversimplify matters in a way that demands retrenchment, qualification, revision. The aim of dialectical analysis is to implement these general ideas in concrete circumstances. And dialectical inquiry serves to refine a general thesis by constraining it to come to terms with challenges by way of objections, counterexamples, and unclarities. The goal of this process is to secure the most general principle that is capable of accommodating adequately a range of phenomena, so as to secure an ongoingly more adequate approximation to an adequate account of the issue at state.

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On its approach, the dialectical analysis of a thesis is a multistage process of reexamination and revision with a view not only to rendering the basic idea at issue more perspicuous and acceptable, but also as bringing to light the lessons of this process from an underlying of what is at issue. 10.

EXAMPLES OF DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS

It is instructive to consider some examples of dialectic inquiry in the style of latter-day philosophical analysis. We here offer three schematic illustrations: (I) IMAGINATION AND POSSIBILITY Stage 1 Thesis (1.1): “Whatever someone imagines is possible.” Objection (1.2): People seem able to imagine all sorts of absurdities Revised thesis(1.3): “Whatever can be cogently managed is possible.” [Qualify with reference to cogent imaginability.] Stage 2 Revised thesis (2.1): “Whatever can be cogently imagined is possible.” Clarification (2.2): The possibility at issue should be seen as logical possibility. Sharpened thesis (2.3):

“Whatever can be cogently imagined is logically possible.

Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1):

Reappraisal (3.2):

“Whatever can be cogently imagined is logically possible.”

We need to shift to cogent imaginability and consider this with specifically logical possibility.

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Systemic reevaluation (3.3): What ultimately counts for the imagination/possibility linkage is a matter of logical considerations, not psychological ones. (II) LYING Stage 1 Thesis (1.1): “Never tell a falsehood.” Objection (1.2):

In various situations, telling the truth can lead to (morally) unacceptable results.

Revised thesis (1.3): “Never tell a falsehood unless in doing so you avert a result that is, in the circumstances, morally unacceptable. Stage 2 Thesis (2.1): Never tell a falsehood that does not avert a morally unacceptable result. Clarification (2.2): Anything due solely for the purpose of self-satisfaction (or indeed any discreditable motive) . . . Sharpened thesis (2.3): “Never tell a falsehood save for the purpose of . .. Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1): “Never tell a falsehood except to realize . . . Reappraisal (3.2): We need to take the motivation into account. Synthetic reevaluation (3.3): In laying down a rule of action we must not only look to the status of the act (as negative or positive)

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but must look to the motive (rationale) of its preference as well. (III) KNOWLEDGE AND CERTAINTY Stage 1 Thesis (1.1) “Only what is absolutely certain can be known.” (It makes no sense to say “I know that p but very possibly it may not be so.” Objection (1.2): One knows full well that one will not win the lottery [for which one holds one of 100 million tickets], or again one knows full well that the first first-page column of tomorrow’s New York Times will contain the word THE. But surely neither of these eventuations is “absolutely certain.” Revised thesis (1.3): “Only that of which the subject is absolutely certain can be said to be known by him/her.” We must distinguish between objective and subjective certainty, and collaterally (concomitantly) between warranted and frivolous subjective certainty. Stage 2 Revised thesis (2.1): “Only that of which someone is warrantedly certain can be designated as something this individual knows.” Clarification (2.2): The warrant at issue here is something that we credit to the individual on our own account, and not just something to which the individual lays a (possibly unjustified) claim. Sharpened thesis (2.3): “Only that of which is certain on the basis of what we (the knowledge attributions) deem appropriatly warranted can be said to be something that the individual knows. Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1): Identical with (2.3).

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Reappraisal (3.2): The certainty of knowledge attributions is something that must appertain both to the attributor and the attributee. Systemic reevaluation (3.3): In attributing knowledge we not only credit the attributee with occupying a certain position with relation to the fact at issue but claim responsibility also on our own account. (Thus is makes no sense to say “X knows that p, but I don’t.”)34 Throughout such dialectical analyses the ultimate aim is one whose orientation is pretty much the same, namely, to exact the larger lesson inherent in the fact that a certain philosophical thesis runs into problems and to exploit this circumstance to bring into clearer view the inherent complexity of the relevant issues. 11.

THE DIALECTIC OF APORETIC SITUATIONS

One particular sort of context in which analytical dialectic has come to prominence in twentieth century philosophy is represented by the aporetic situations that arise when a collection of individually plausible contentions turns out to be collectively inconsistent. An instance of this is afforded by the thesis of the equality of rights. The aporetic situation at issue here is based on three contentions: (1) All people have equal rights. (Equality of rights). (2) Everyone has a right to that to which they have a legitimate claim. (Right-claim coordination). (3) The legitimate claims of people are not always equal. (“Only the victor can claim the prize.”) A dialectic situation: (1) as thesis, (2) & (3) as the antithesis. This situation involves a thesis-qualifying synthesis along the lines of

34

This sort marks a crucial difference between propositional (that p is the case) and performative (know-how geared) knowledge.

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(1*) All people have equal rights insofar as their legitimate claims are equal.

At this point a further step of dialectical advance (4) The rights of people must be honored: a just system will accord to everyone that to which they have a right. (5) In situations of unavoidable scarcity the legitimate claims of people cannot all be satisfied. Again this poses an aporetic conflict, now with (1*) as thesis and (4) & (5) as the antitheses. This situation under the yet further qualification of (1) as (1**) All people have equal rights insofar as their legitimate claims are equal and are capable of being met (equally) in the circumstances at hand. A rather common form of dialectical argument emerges in the context of a philosophical standardism which holds that philosophical generalizations should not be construed with strict universality but only qualifiedly with regard to what obtains “standardly”—that is, ordinarily, or normally. The argumentation that unfolds here has the following structure: • Thesis: “All X’s are Y’s.” • Antithesis: A series of counterexamples to the effect that the XA’s, XB’s, and XC’s constitue groups of X’s that are not Y’s. • Synthesis: An argument that since these counterexamples have features that explain their exceptionality, it transpires that: “the X’s are standardly (normally, ordinarily) Y’s. In many areas of present-day philosophizing this sort of reassuring is not only practicable but virtually essential,35 so that here too dialectic is a significant service of philosophical practice. 35

See the author’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

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As mentioned above, this sort of dialectic rose to prominence in 20th century analytic philosophy—however not in the work of individuals but in the way the philosophical community did its work. After one author or another has propounded some thesis, others would launch into objections. Then friends of the thesis would leap to its defense by means of mere revisions, and so the whole dialectical process was well and truly launched. The net effect is a communally operated dialectic that so functions as to endow 20th century analytic philosophy with its characteristic feature of an adversarially collaborative process. Canonical instances of a dialectical process unfolding along exactly these lines are afforded by the aftermath of the work of Nelson Goodman on induction,36 of Roderick Chisholm on cognitive justification,37 and of Edmund Gettier on knowledge.38 As recent anthologies make visually clear, in each of these cases there has evolved a history of challengingresponse cycles that exhibits overall the dialectical structure typical of analytical dialectics as characterized above. One point should, however, be noted. With Hegel dialectic is a process of logical resolution whose unfolding proceeds by a response that is necessitated by the lineament of the situation at issue. For Hegel (as for Marx in his wake) the resolution of the thesis and antithesis results in a synthesis that is, in effect, a forced choice and the concept of historical necessity is at work. In this regard, aporetics—and analytical dialectics in general—is quite different. To be sure, whenever there is a logical contradiction it is clear that a resolution is forced upon us. But how that resolution is to be effected is invariably a matter of a choice among alternatives—a choice whose resolution is not forced upon us by the necessities of things but is, rather, a free choice whose outcome is determined by our evaluative assessment of the costs and benefits involved.39

36

Douglas Stolker (ed.), Grue: The New Riddle of Induction (Chicago and La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1994).

37

See Ernest Sosa and Juegwon Kim (ed.), Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

38

See J. S. Crumley II (ed.), Reading in Epistemology (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999).

39

On these issues see the author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).

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12.

SUMMARY

In sum, philosophical dialectic has had a long and checkered history whose principal stages are as follows: • Plato: Dialectic seen as rational discussion serves as a prime instrument of reasoned philosophical inquiry. • Aristotle: Dialectic as loose thinking: a poor (pre-scientific) second best to logic as the scientific organism of thought. • Kant: Dialectic as failed reasoning: a “logic of error.” • Fichte: Dialectic restored to its Platonic primacy as a prime instrument of philosophical inquiry through sequential stages in the refinement and sophistication of thought. • Hegel: Dialectic ontologized: elevated to an ontological level as bearer of rationality (“spirit”) in nature and of historical necessity. • Marx: Dialectic materialized as a natural/physical process of development. • Analytic Dialectic: A return to Plato via Fichte. Dialectic—at the communal level—seen as providing for a process of rational inquiry—albeit now with vastly diminished claims and aspirations. As even so brief a sketch shows, from the very start of the subject down to the present day, dialectic has figured in the foreground of philosophy, be it as an object of theory or as an instrumentality of practice. Against this background it emerges that, interestingly enough, the history of dialectic itself manifests and illustrates a decidedly dialectical course of development.

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Chapter 10 McTAGGART’S LOGICAL DETERMINISM 1. INTRODUCTION

O

ne of the most notable theses of McTaggart’s system is his doctrine of logical determinism, the contention that—on grounds of fundamental logical principle—everything in the world must of necessity be just exactly as it is, that nothing could possibly differ in any particular from its actual condition. McTaggart holds that given that any substance in the world is what it in fact is, every substance must be just as is. And so “all that exists, both substances and [their] characteristics, are held together in one system of extrinsic determination” (p. 151, §138).1 For “every fact about every other substance [different from the universe itself] extrinsically determines every fact about the universe, and...every fact about the universe extrinsically determines every fact about every other substance” (p. 151, §137). And, therefore, “the supposition that anything should be different from what it is, therefore, is one we have no right to make” (p. 152, §139). Things are bound up in one vast network of mutual necessitation. The aim of the present discussion is to examine the structure of McTaggart’s reasoning in support of this view and to evaluate the soundness of his position. 2. EXTRINSIC DETERMINATION The road to McTaggart’s necessitarianism is mapped out in terms of his conception of “extrinsic determination,” which he specified in the following terms: No quality of a substance, therefore, will be different while leaving the others un1

J. M. E.McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, 2 vols. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1927). All references here will be to vol. 1.

Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers III changed, and no quality of a substance is completely contingent to any of its other qualities. We may thus say that every quality of a substance will determine every other quality of that substance, but the determination will be of a very different kind from the intrinsic determination we have already considered. . .We may perhaps call it, without impropriety, Extrinsic Determination, since it holds, not between two qualities as such, but between two qualities in virtue of the relation in which they stand to the same substance. . . .[All] qualities of a substance extrinsically determine one another. (pp. 113-14)

What McTaggart is clearly saying here is that all of the qualities of a substance will reciprocity determine one another solely in view of their mutual apposition in serving coordinately as qualities of that thing (i.e., “in virtue of the relation in which they stand to the same substance”). The relationship to the common bearer that has the same two qualities becomes transformed into a mutual relationship of one to another of the qualities themselves. Accordingly, we arrive at the determinism of the thesis that, given a substance has anyone of its qualities, it must—thanks to the mutual relationship between them—also have all of the others. The determination at issue is not absolute or categorical, but relative or hypothetical. We do not have it that everything regarding a substance must be as it is (period), but rather that, given that anything is as it is, everything is as it is. McTaggart next proceeds to develop another line of thought: If one of the qualities of [a substance] A were not there, there would be no ground to assert that the others would be there. . . If any part of the nature of A goes, the nature of A as a whole goes. The substance which: replaces A might have some qualities in common with A, just as any other substance might have qualities in common with A. But we have no right to subtract Z, and then say “because we have only subtracted Z, and because there is no intrinsic determination of Z by X and Y, therefore X and Y remain.” By subtracting Z, we have destroyed A, and X and Y were here only as parts of the nature of A. No quality of a substance, therefore, could be different while leaving the others unchanged, and no quality of a substance is completely contingent to any of its other qualities. (p. 113, §109)

At first thought this doctrine seems absurd. What could be less interdependent than the whiteness of the lump of sugar and its sweetness? But just this independence is denied by McTaggart. His reasoning here proceeds somewhat as follows: examine more closely the nature of this supposedly independent whiteness of the lump. What can be said of its nature? Clearly what is at issue is not just whiteness, whiteness pure and simple, but whiteness-in-the-presence-of-the-sweetness-of-the-lump And, similarly, all of

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the properties of a thing can—and McTaggart would say must-be qualified to note the specific mode of their presence in the object, and, accordingly, the copresence of its other properties. Thus the fact that two of the qualities of a thing (e.g. its color and its flavor) have nothing to do with one another as abstract qualities, i.e. they lack any intrinsic mutual determination, must not, according to McTaggart, be taken to mean that they are otherwise indifferent to one another. The very fact that they stand in mutual copresence and apposition as both characterizing a common bearer means that we must take the view that these qualities mutually require one another (in that if either were modified then the thing they characterize would be altered into no longer being what it was, with the result that the other quality, since it no longer characterizes that thing, would also be altered, and so would no longer continue as the quality it was). On this basis, McTaggart holds that all the properties of a thing are indissolubly linked to one another. 3. THING AND QUALITY: INDIVIDUATION McTaggart’s theory of substance is geared to a Leibnizian theory of individuation. As McTaggart sees it, things must have qualities, for, when something exists, then “of that something, something besides its existence must be true” (p. 61, §60). Moreover, things are differentiable and identifiable through the qualities they have: every substance has its unique description in qualitative terms which is such that “the substance is absolutely identified by the description” (p. 102, §101). Since “no substance can have exactly the same nature as any other” (p. 106, § 104), every substance has an exclusive description that characterizes it alone and which nothing else can reinstantiate. Accordingly, McTaggart is firmly committed to Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, as well as the cognate principle which he calls the Dissimilarity of the Diverse. The former holds that things with the same overall description must be identified, the latter that things with different descriptions must be differentiated. The fundament of McTaggart’s theory of individuation is that distinct substances must somehow be qualitatively dissimilar: “The necessity that a substance should have an exclusive description arises from the fact that two substances cannot be completely similar, and that a substance that is not completely similar to any other has necessarily an exclusive description” (p. 109, §105). And since a thing is thus individuated as the thing it is in terms of its qualities, it follows that its identity cannot survive any alteration of its qualities.

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4 THE SCOPE AND STRUCTURE OF McTAGGART’S NECESSITARIANISM Let us now put together the two doctrines considered above: McTaggart’s theory of individuation holds that things (substances) are uniquely determined in terms of the complex of qualities that they bear. His doctrine of extrinsic determination holds that all of the qualities of the things of this world stand in a relationship of mutual linkage such that they reciprocally require one another. These two premisses are sufficient to yield his necessitarianism. For suppose that anything in the world were in any respect different from what it is. Then, of course, it immediately follows from his theory of individuation that an altogether different thing is at issue (Dissimilarity of the Diverse). For the identity of something as the thing it is cannot survive its hypothetical alteration in any respect: if it were different in any particular, then it just would no longer be the thing it was. But in thus effecting a hypothetical alteration (and thus replacement) of something, we have not simply effected its hypothetical replacement in a world whose population is otherwise preserved. To the contrary. By the principle of Extrinsic Determination, a change in its qualities entails an alteration in the qualities of other things. And a change in their qualities entails a change in their identity. Thus a hypothetical change in anything entails a hypothetical change of everything, and so, given that anything is what it is, everything must be as it is. The doctrine of pervasive extrinsic determination among the qualities of a thing leads immediately to a relative necessitarianism of the descriptive constitution of things in general. Given that anything bears the description it does, everything bears the description it does. To change any property of anything is to change every property of everything: We saw in Chapter XII that all the qualities of any substance are connected with one another by extrinsic determination, so that it is unjustifiable to assert that any of them would remain the same if any others were different from what they are now. And the universe is a substance. It would therefore be unjustifiable to assert that, if A had not the quality X, any of the qualities of the universe would remain the same. For if A had not the quality X, the universe could not have the quality X’, and X’ extrinsically determines all the other qualities of the universe. (p. 150, §137)

In the context of his theory of individuation, McTaggart’s doctrine of a

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pervasive extrinsic determination leads immediately to his (relative) necessitarianism with respect to the descriptive constitution of things. The hypothesis of an alteration of the qualities of anything commits us to postulating an alteration in the qualities of all things, and thus leads to an allinclusive replacement of the things at issue. Accordingly, nothing in the world can be different in any respect from what it is if anything is to remain the same. If something were somehow different from what it is, then nothing could remain the same; everything would be different from what it is, and the world would not be what it is. In consequence, everything in the world must of necessity have—given that it is this world that is at issue—just exactly those properties that it does in fact have. And so the world—this actual world - must of necessity be precisely as it is. For since the things of the world have among their qualities the feature of existing,2 one must accept their existence too as necessary. The step from extrinsic determination to the pervasive reciprocal determination of all existing things is accomplished inexorably through McTaggart’s theory of individuation. This, then, is the core of McTaggart’s logical determinism. We have characterized it as such, ie., as “logical,” because the position derives from premisses whose status is fundamentally logical or conceptual, viz., the analysis of the nature of qualities (resulting in his doctrine of extrinsic determination) and his theory of individuation. This explication of the conceptual sources of McTaggart’s logical necessitarianism brings its relativistic, nonabsolute nature into clearer relief. It does not categorically state that everything must be as it is, but only conditionally that everything must be as it is if anything is. As he himself recognizes, McTaggart’s necessitarian position on this issue is essentially Leibnizian. For Leibniz, too, espouses a relative necessitarianism that sees all features of the things of this (or any) world as necessary to them, but does not take this fact to block the prospect of alternative possible worlds. Moreover, on McTaggart’s theory—as in that of Leibniz—the things of this actual world cannot be carried over into “another possible world”— such a world must be populated by altogether different things. And, of course, these different (unreal) things will also of necessity have the qualities that they do have (their nonexistence presumably included). Thus on McTaggart’s approach the “necessity” of the actual world does 2

And therefore whatever is existent must have some quality besides existence, which is itself a quality” (p. 61, §60; my italics).

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not block the prospect that other, variant schemes of things can meaningfully be contemplated. Rather, it is seen as mandatory that such an alternative would have to be an altogether different dispensation. Another possible world could not—on McTaggart’s premisses—be construed as another possibility for this world. The things of this (or any) world simply have no other possibilities.3 There is no place for Aristotelian accidents in the qualitative makeup of things, and no prospect of saying with respect to anything that it might have been otherwise. Alternative possibilities come only at the wholesale level of total world dispensations and not at the retail level of alternative possible prospects of particular items. (And even an “alternative possible world” must be construed, not as an alternative possibility for this world, but as a possibility alternative to it.) Hypothetical fictionalizing is in principle possible at two levels. There is the irreality of actuality modification at issue in contrary to fact hypotheses (“Assume Napoleon had won at Waterloo”). But then there is also the irreality of purely hypothetical things like griffins and Grecian gods and golden mountains. Hypotheses can present us either with familiar (real) things reclothed in different garbs of qualities or else with altogether different things. McTaggart’s position restricts us to the latter of these alone.4 On this issue, McTaggart agrees with his idealistic congeners, Leibniz, Bradley, Bosanquet, and Blanshard, among others, in rejecting the viability of counter factual hypotheses. For him any thing-modificatory supposition is automatically false, nay self-contradictory. And, accordingly, the eliciting of the consequences of such a supposition that is at issue in counterfactual conditionals like, “If this rubber disc were made of copper, it would conduct electricity,” is to be viewed as an automatically selfdefeating exercise. As McTaggart sees it, a change of qualities removes the thing at issue (Dissimilarity of the Diverse) and so leaves nothing about it unchanged. In altering things, counterfactual hypotheses abolish them as the things they are.

3

This, I take it, is the construction we must place upon McTaggart's discussion on pp. 32-33, 1§35-36, of the “reality” of possibilities, culminating in the thesis that: “There is nothing which makes it necessary for us to accept the reality of...possibilities.”

4

Unlike Nelson Goodman who would restrict meaningful discourse to the latter alone.

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5. VULNERABILITY OF THE POSITION There is little to fault in the logic of McTaggart’s argumentation for his logical determinism. The reasoning is tight enough: his conclusions do follow from his premisses. The vulnerability of the argument must thus be seen to turn on the acceptability of its premisses. Now two main items are at issue at this level, McTaggart’s (essentially Leibnizian) theory of individuation and his doctrine of extrinsic determination. I propose here to concentrate primarily upon the latter, both because it is crucial for broader aspects of McTaggart’s overall position and because it is more narrowly characteristic of McTaggart, whereas his theory of individuation is a doctrine he shares with the whole Leibnizian tradition in idealism. As to the serviceability of McTaggart’s theory of individuation, it would seem that the criticism salient for present purposes is one offered by C. D. Broad: Now it seems to me that there are two propositions which must be most carefully distinguished from each other, but which are very easily confused. They may be stated as follows: (i) “One and the same particular cannot have each of two different natures”; and (ii) “One and the same particular could not have had one or other of two different natures.” The first of these is obviously true. But it does not entail the second, and it is the second that McTaggart needs in order to establish the Principle of Universal Extrinsic Determination. Another way of putting the two propositions is this: (i) “If A is a particular with a certain nature N, then any particular whose nature differs in the slightest respect from N is a different particular from A”; and (ii) “If A is a particular with a certain nature N, then any particular which had had a nature differing in the slightest respect from N would have been a different particular from A.” Here again, the first is obviously true. But it is different from, and does not entail, the second; and it is the second that McTaggart needs.5

Let us consider this point from a somewhat different direction of approach. The fact that qualitatively different substances will (thereby) automatically be numerically distinct may well be held as an operative principle within this actual (or within any other merely possible) world, but this fact, if fact it is, does nothing to abolish the prospect of reidentifying qualitatively diverse substances across possible worlds, so that a qualitatively altered version of some real substance might exist in some other possible 5

An Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Cambridge, The University Press: 1933).

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dispensation of things. McTaggart’s principle of the diversity of the dissimilar (i.e., that qualitatively different individuals must also differ numerically) may well be true—i.e., true contingently within this world—without producing the sorts of necessitarian consequences he seeks to obtain.6 Let us now return to the issue of the extrinsic determination that prevails, according to McTaggart, among all the qualities of a substance. The crux here is that McTaggart’s thesis that “every quality of a substance will determine every other quality of that substance” places pivotal reliance upon a distorted conception of what “qualities” are all about. The key question is, “Just what sort of thing is a ‘quality’ of a substance?” And McTaggart plays fast and loose with this central issue. To be sure, McTaggart is perfectly explicit as to what he means by the “qualities” of a thing: “that which is true of something is a Quality of that something” (p. 61. §60). But this is clearly cheating. It may be true of my dog Rover that he was born on Tuesday, was delivered by Caesarian section, had milk to drink on his first birthday, etc., but these truths regarding him scarcely confront us with any qualities of his. There must be no quibbling about the fact that a “quality” of a thing is something on the order of its color (say red) or its shape (say triangularity). In indicating a quality of a thing, we in effect provide a certain definite sort of typological information about it. We provide an answer to a type oriented question, such as, “What is its color?” or “What is its shape?” or “How long is it?” or the like. And these very questions reflect the categorical divisions that separate qualities of different sorts. Qualities inevitably relate to such “dimensionally” distinguishable aspects of things. There is, of course, a long philosophical tradition of recognizing item correlative, possession specific individualized properties. Plato, for example, speaks in the Phaedo (102 ff.) not only of Simias and the form Tall, but also of the tallness in Simias; and in the Parmenides (130B) he speaks of not only you and me and the form Similarity, but of “the Similarity which we possess.” Again, Aristotle in the Categories seems to recognize individualized colors as something nonrepeatable and item particularized. And this sort of thing recurs throughout the history of philosophy. It is nevertheless problematic in its extreme. Colors and similarity—properties and relations—are something inherently generic, providing answers to questions at the typological level. To speak of these things on a particular6

Some of the relevant issues are dealt with in my A Theory of Possibility (Oxford: Blackwells, 1975).

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ized, item specific level is to become enmeshed in confusion. To be sure, another thing cannot share its instantiation of this color or similarity relation—its particular possession thereof. But that is not a fact about color or similarity but about possession. There is no valid way of moving from particularity of possession (i.e., of exhibiting a quality or relation) to establish particularity in the item that is possessed. The particularity of instancing just cannot yield particularity in what it is that is instanced: whatever color or similarity relations a thing may have, something else can in principle share these. What is at issue with qualities is always general, typological information that fits into the framework of a characteristic sort of taxonomy. And, accordingly, a quality specification provides separate and separable bits and pieces of “dimensionally” diverse information about a thing.7 To be sure, a thing has each of its qualities along with others. But this conjunctivity of qualities in the thing they jointly characterize does not provide a valid principle for differentiating the qualities themselves. Redness in the presence of sweetness does not become a different color from redness in the presence of sourness. “It is triangular-and-blue-all-over” does not state a suitable answer to the question of its shape (although a suitable answer, viz., that it is triangular, can indeed be inferred from this statement). Qualities are inherently generic or sortal, and never thing-relativized and inherently idiosyncratic. When something “has” a quality, it does not do so in a way that precludes its possession by something else as well. Qualities being what they are, their possession is in principle not preemptive, i.e., possession by one thing cannot through this fact alone preclude possession by something else. Philosophers sometimes write as though it were in principle impossible that the particular yellowness of this lemon might (also) have characterized my blue pen. But whatever may be at issue when one talks this way of an exclusive instantiation or possession it will certainly not be a color. Qualities are by nature sharable; and whatever something may “have” or “possess” in an inherently exclusive and nonsharable mode cannot count as a quality. The genuine qualities of a thing (“genuine” in the sense of conforming to the standards properly at issue when one speaks of a quality of a thing) 7

It is useful to compare the “dimensionality” at issue here with that of the altogether analogous “categorically” diverse aspects of human actions. Cf. the writer's essay “On the Characterization of Actions” in Myles Brand (ed.), The Nature of Human Action (Glenview, III.: Scott, Foresman, 1970), pp. 247-54.

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are logically independent of and separate from one another subject to their “dimensional” groupings. The fact that the standard qualities of something (e.g., its shape and color) can be rendered inseparable by introducing such contextually inflated “qualities” as triangularity-in-the- presence-of- the- redness-of- the- thing and redness- in-the- presence-of - the- triangularity-of-the-thing is wholly besides the point.8 Given that qualities of substances are the sorts of things they are, they do not mutually determine one another, and the sorts of bloated descriptions that do determine one another do not represent qualities of things. These considerations bring down the rational scaffolding of McTaggart’s doctrine of the extrinsic determination of the qualities of things. To be sure, the truths (or facts) about a thing are connected in lock step—we cannot alter some without altering others. Thus, if in fact x has both φ and ψ one cannot simply alter φ and φ and “leave all else alone.” For the “all else” includes the truths “φx v ψx” and “ψx,” and these in turn will entail “φx” once more. But to grant that truths are to some extent connected in this interlinked way is not to grant that the qualities of things are. At any rate, this becomes clear once one gives up (as one must) McTaggart’s insistence that every truth about a thing is a truth about its qualities, a contention that inflates the notion of a “quality” beyond any recognizable proportion. McTaggart’s coordination of qualities with truths invites us to follow him in the fallacious step of maintaining that since the truths about anything are (as truths about that thing) connected or connectable, it follows that for this reason the qualities of the thing are similarly connected. His theory comes to shipwreck on the objection that while a truth about something can indeed always be conjunctively amplified to yield yet another truth, its qualities (in any viable sense of the term) do not behave in this fashion. It deserves stress that McTaggart could not obtain his pervasive necessitarianism as persuasively from truths as from qualities. For the thesis that all truths about something are equally essential to its “nature” is by no 8

Triangularity-with-redness is no more a shape than greenness-with-serrated-edges is a color.

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means as attractive and apparently plausible as the corresponding thesis about its qualities (one cannot as readily maintain that a thing is only to be individuated by the totality of truths about it). In any case, the argument for necessitarian determination at this level becomes superfluous: for on this theory of individuation, necessitarianism need not be a discursive output since it is already an assumptive input. To put the case from extrinsic determination on this footing is to deprive it of persuasive force. 6. IMPLICATIONS FOR McTAGGART’S DETERMINISM If the properties of things are conceptually separable from one another in the “dimensional” manner indicated above, then the prospect evidently arises that some among them will be hypothetically alterable without affecting others. Now in this event it makes sense at least to entertain the prospect that some among its in principle alterable properties are essential to a thing and others accidental, and that at least some (hypothetical) alterations of properties can leave the thing at issue unchanged. Thus, even if one grants (as one surely should and must) that every substance in any possible world has a unique individual description (dissimilarity of the diverse), this does not entail that there cannot be other, alternative possible worlds in which this self-same substance would have different (contingent) properties, so that it makes perfectly good sense to say that things might have been different from what they are. Of course, the working out of this line of thought poses a substantial project of theoretical development―one upon which we cannot even enter in the confines of the present paper. The main point for present purposes is simply this: McTaggart’s arguments for logical determinism do not provide a sufficient basis for abandoning as inherently hopeless from the very outset this project of devising a contingentist metaphysic of accidental properties and hypothetically alterable individuals.9

9

This chapter was originally published in Idealistic Studies, vol. 12 (1982), pp. 23141.

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Chapter 11 BLANSHARD AND THE COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH 1. COHERENCE AS THE DEFINITION OF TRUTH

T

he earlier coherence theorists tended to view coherence as a characteristic mark of the truth without any very specific and definite commitment as to the exact nature of the “mark” at issue. Is coherence a somehow necessary feature of the truth—is it a part of the definition of truth or even the whole of it? Such questions did not generally receive close attention. After F. H. Bradley, however, the issue could not readily be avoided, and Brand Blanshard faced it squarely in his characteristically hard-headed fashion. His answer is clear and emphatic: truth consists in coherence; coherence is not just a feature of truth, but its nature. The critical defect of this approach to the definition of truth in terms of coherence is that it leaves the link from truth to factuality not just unrationalized but unrationalizable. The linkage surely cannot be of contingent character. But yet how can the step from coherence to factuality possibly be a necessary one? Upon what sort of logical basis could one possibly erect an airtight demonstration that whatever satisfies conditions of maximal or optimal coherence must indeed be the case in actual fact? Surely this poses an insuperable difficulty. Blanshard himself is, seemingly, perfectly ready to grant this. He writes: Suppose that we construe experience into the most coherent picture possible, remembering that among the elements included will be such secondary qualities as colours, odours, and sounds. Would the mere fact that such elements as these are coherently arranged prove that anything precisely corresponding to them exists ‘out there’ [i.e., less eccentrically formulated, is actually the case]? I cannot see that it would, even if we knew that the two arrangements had closely corresponding patterns. . . . It is therefore impossible to argue from a high degree of coherence within experience to its correspondence in the same degree with anything outside [i.e. with what is in fact the case], . . . In the end, the only test of truth that is not misleading is the special. nature or character that is itself constitutive of truth [viz., coherence]. [The Nature of Thought (NT), 2:268]

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Given my (perhaps somewhat tendentious) reading of this argument against a correspondence theory, it would seem that Blanshard is fully prepared to regard the step from “coherence” to “correspondence with the facts of the matter” as problematic and potentially fallible. We once again encounter the difficulty that has been brought forth so often, and from so many different angles of approach, as to merit classification as a central problem—if not the central problem—of the coherence theory of truth. I have in mind the difficulty which, in one form, has been put by Bertrand Russell as follows: . . . there is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that, with sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the world that would perfectly fit on to what we know, and yet be quite different from the real past. In more scientific matters, it is certain that there are often two or more hypotheses which account for all the known facts on some subject, and although, in such cases, men of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the hypotheses except one, there is no reason why they should always succeed.1

The point is, that even if one utterly rejects the core thesis of the correspondence theory that truth means “correspondence to fact” (adaequatio ad rem in the old formula) one is still left, in any event, with the impregnable thesis that a true proposition is one that states what is in fact the case. The link from truth to factuality is not to be broken, regardless of one’s preferred conception of the definitional nature of truth. Even the most ardent coherence theorist must grant, certainly not the premiss of the correspondence theory, that truth means correspondence to the facts, but merely its consequence, that truths must correspond to the facts. Even if we follow the coherentist in rejecting the definitional route from the former to the latter, we must still be able to link them mediately, via coherence. And the standard problem as put forth in the Russell passage is simply: How can this be done? How can coherence of itself ever guarantee factuality? Cannot the clever novelist make his tale every bit as coherent as that of the most accurate historian? Given the (relatively clear) fact that the products of creative invention and imagination can be perfectly coherent, and given that alternate coherent structures can always be erected from given elements (as scientists frame different hypotheses to account for the same 1

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Henry Holt; London: Williams & Norgate, 1912), 191.

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body of data), how can coherence possibly furnish a logical guarantee of fact? So runs one of the standard objections to the coherence theory of truth, one which, to all appearances, tells also against Blanshard’s formulation of the theory. In seeking to impugn the correspondence theory by insisting that there is infallible linkage between coherence and correspondence-to-fact, Blanshard succeeds less in invalidating correspondence as a standard of truth than in highlighting a fundamental difficulty of the coherence theory of the type he espouses, one according to which coherence represents the very nature of truth. 2. THE CRITERIOLOGY OF TRUTH Blanshard emphatically recognizes and stresses the critical difference between a criterion or test of truth and a definition thereof: It has been contended in the last chapter that coherence is in the end our sole criterion of truth. We have now to face the question whether it also gives us the nature of truth. We should be clear at the beginning that these are different questions, and that one may reject coherence as the definition of truth while accepting it as the test. It is conceivable that one thing should be an accurate index of another and still be extremely different from it. There have been philosophers who held that pleasure was an accurate gauge of the amount of good in experience, but that to confuse good with pleasure was a gross blunder. There have been a great many philosophers who held that for every change in consciousness there was a change in the nervous system and that the two corresponded so closely that if we knew the laws connecting them we could infallibly predict one from the other; yet it takes all the hardihood of a behaviourist to say that the two are the same. Similarly it has been held that though coherence supplies an infallible measure of truth, it would be a very grave mistake to identify it with the truth. [NT, 2:260]

Recognizing in general the potential difference between a criterion and a definition, Blanshard argues that in the special case of truth this difference cannot be maintained: here definition must collapse into criterion once coherence is recognized as the criterion of truth. The argument is set out in the following terms: As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, there have been some highly reputable philosophers who have held that the answer to “What is the test of truth” is “Coherence,” while the answer to “What is the nature or meaning of truth?” is “Correspondence.” These questions are plainly distinct. Nor does there seem to be any direct path from the acceptance of coherence as the test of truth to its acceptance as the nature of truth. Nevertheless there is an indirect path. If we accept coherence as

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Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers III our test, we must use it everywhere. We must therefore use it to test the suggestion that truth is other than coherence. But if we do, we shall find that we must reject the suggestion as leading to incoherence. . . . Suppose that, accepting coherence as the test, one rejects it as the nature of truth in favour of some alternative; and let us assume, for example, that this alternative is correspondence. This, we have said, is incoherent; why? Because if one holds that truth is correspondence, one cannot intelligibly hold either that it is tested by coherence or that there is any dependable test at all. Consider the first point. Suppose that we construe experience into the most coherent picture possible. . . . Would the mere fact that such elements as these are coherently arranged prove that anything precisely corresponding to them exists “out there”? I cannot see that it would, even if we knew that the two arrangements had closely corresponding patterns. . . . It is therefore impossible to argue from a high degree of coherence within experience to its correspondence in the same degree with anything outside. And this difficulty is typical. If you place the nature of truth in one sort of character and its test in something quite different, you are pretty certain, sooner or later, to find the two falling apart. In the end, the only test of truth that is not misleading is the special nature or character that is itself constitutive of truth. [NT, 2:267-68].

The structure of this argument can be presented as follows: (1) A coherence theory of truth cannot do less than take coherence as a, nay the prime, test of truth. (2) Now if the definition of truth finds the nature of truth to reside in something other than coherence, something which—like correspondence—is not logically tantamount to coherence but can potentially diverge from it, then coherence cannot qualify as a failproof guarantor of truth. (3) But since a coherence theory of truth must take coherence to be the prime test of truth (Premiss 1), it must see in coherence a failproof guarantor of truth. (4) But then it follows (from Premiss 2) that a coherence theory of truth must take coherence to represent the nature of truth, and not merely to provide a test-criterion thereof. For only what is essential to its very nature can provide a conceptually failproof guarantee for a thing, and not any mere test-criterion. The upshot of Blanshard’s argument is that a recognition of coherence as the test-criterion of truth forces the conclusion that coherence must repre-

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sent the definitional nature of truth. This argument seems to be perfectly unexceptionable: Given its premisses, the conclusion must be granted. But what is to be said about its premisses? Of the essential premisses (1)-(3) of this Blanshardesque argument, it seems clear that (1) and (2) are effectively beyond cavil. Only (3) is potentially vulnerable—and indeed actually so. For why must the coherence test be seen as providing a failproof guarantee of truth? From the very outset, any discussion of tests and criteria does well to recognize an important distinction: that between a guaranteeing criterion and an authorizing criterion. The issue is posed by the question: “What is the relationship between passing-the-criterion-for-being-an-X and actuallybeing-an-X?” When criterion satisfaction logically precludes the failure of feature possession, when the criterion is absolutely decisive for the feature, then we have a guaranteeing criterion. (Among plane figures, triangularity, for example, provides a guaranteeing criterion for trilaterality.) On the other hand, if criterion satisfaction at best provides a rational warrant for the claim of feature possession—without giving a logically airtight guarantee—then we have an authorizing criterion. Satisfaction of an authorizing criterion provides a presumptive assurance of feature possession, and constitutes a reasonable basis for claiming the feature. Now a guaranteeing criterion is certainly very closely linked to the issue of definition; indeed it might be viewed as simply an aspect of the question of definition in its larger sense. With an authorizing criterion, however, we leave the logicosemantical issues of definition sufficiently far to enter a distinct, genuinely criterial realm. Recognizing this distinction, we may note that, on Blanshard’s approach as enshrined in premiss (2), the partisan of coherence as the criterion of truth is committed to regarding coherence as a guaranteeing criterion. He is committed to regarding the link from coherence to truth as inevitable and necessary. Now subject to this presupposition, Blanshard’s position is unquestionably a strong one. But why need this presupposition be made? Why could not or should not the coherence theorist intent on taking coherence as a criterion of truth regard it as an authorizing rather than a guaranteeing criterion? Why, in short, should coherence not be accepted as a generally effective test of truth rather than an inescapable aspect of its nature? This prospect of taking coherence as an authorizing or presumptive standard of truth rather than an inevitable aspect thereof is prima facie attractive and certainly deserves exploration. But in any case, it must be

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stressed that the orthodox mainstream of idealist thought from F. H. Bradley to A. C. Ewing2 accepted coherence as a test of truth while rejecting it in favor of correspondence as an explication of the nature of truth. The distinction between authorizing and guaranteeing criterion however remained undrawn and latent in their discussions. 3. TRUTH-CRITERIA AS A RATIONAL WARRANT The distinction between a definition and a test-criterion of the authorizing variety, established and familiar in other contexts, is also operative with respect to truth. The criterial approach to truth is decision-oriented: its aim is not to specifiy in the abstract what “is true” means, but rather to put us into a position to implement the concept by instructing us as to the circumstances under which there is rational warrant to characterize or class something (i.e. some proposition) as true. Why bother with a criterion once a definition is at hand? The answer is obvious in the light of the preceding example. To know the meaning of a word or concept is only half the battle: we want to be able to apply it too. The courtier knows perfectly well what “pleasing to the king” means; what he strives to know is where it applies. When it eventuates that the meaning specification is ineffectual for constituting the rules of application, the criterial problem remains an important issue—even for “meaning” itself, though in a broader sense. It does us little good to know how terms like “speed limit” or “misdemeanor” are defined if we are left in the dark as to the conditions of their application. This line of thought applies to “is true” as well. Thus even if it turns out that certain conceptions of truth do not qualify as definitions, and so do not answer the question of meaning, there remains the significant task of examining their prospects from the criterion angle of approach. And yet if we do take a criterial perspective upon truth, a critic might object: “You are not really grappling with the core issue of what it is to be true but with the merely epistemological question of what is thought or taken to be true.” To this we reply: Our concern is not merely with what “is thought or taken” to be true, but with what is reasonably and warrant2

See F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality (London: Clarendon Press, 1914) and A. C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey (London: Methuen, 1934). Even J. M. E. McTaggart, who is at bottom a correspondence theorist, is prepared to concede coherence the place of a test of truth.

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edly to be so—thought or taken. In this area the themes of definition and criteria come close. With some things there is virtually no difference at all (What is a chair? What is reasonably to be thought to be a chair?); with others a gap does open up (What is an insoluble problem? What is reasonably to be regarded as an insoluble problem?). The criterial question can be important in its own right, and can even be a significant aspect of the question of “meaning” in a sense broader than the strictly definitional. Criteriological theories of truth share one very important common feature contrasting them with a definitional theory of truth. To bring this out it is helpful to introduce some abbreviative symbolism. Let P be an otherwise unspecified proposition and let us write: D(P) for up conforms to a definition of truth” C(P) for “P conforms to a certain criterion of truth” (one that may be merely an authorizing criterion) T(P) for “P is true (in actual fact).” Then not- T(P) will be logically incompatible with D(P); the failure of T(P) in the face of D(P) would simply reveal that the definition at issue is improper and incorrect. There can be no logical gap between D(P) and T(P). It must be a point of logical necessity that D(P) “iff T(P)” With the entrance of a criterion, however, one that need not necessarily be a guaranteeing criterion, a logical gap does open up. Precisely because C need not be tied to a definition, there will be a potential difference between the criterial and the definitional conformity. The logical fit is now incomplete: it is no longer logically necessary and inevitable that C(P) iff T(P) once C can be an authorizing rather than strictly guaranteeing criterion. Definitional conformity is an unfailing guarantee of truth; criterial conformity may at best provide a rational warrant to justify the claim of truth and does not yield a certainty beyond the possibility of mistake. Now, of course, our adoption of C as an at least authorizing criterion of

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truth is essentially an adhesion to the policy that we are never to claim T(P) when C(P) fails, and that we will always claim that T(P) when C(P) holds. In short, we subscribe to the regulative precept: to-assert-that- T (P) iff C(P). Unlike a definitional theory of truth, a criteriological theory of truth is regulative because it is fundamentally decision-oriented. One does not decide what is true, but one must decide upon the implementation of a truth criterion: viz., to class (or to “accept”) something as true. An “act” at issue, though, to be sure, a purely cognitive one. Actions, of course, can be rational or irrational, prudent or rash. A proper criterion must have a rational foundation. It does not provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a proposition’s being true; that would carry it over to the definitional side of the border. Rather, it seeks to present a necessary and sufficient condition for a proposition’s being rationally and warrantedly classed as true. With any genuine criterion, however, we must be prepared to recognize that, at least in principle, our assertions may be wrong—even our rationally well warranted assertions. Whereas D(P) must logically entail that T(P) and so have it as a deductive consequence that P. C(P) does no more than to commit us—subject to an acceptance of the criterion C—to endorsing T(P) and thus to asserting (maintaining) that P. The inference from D(P) to P is one of deductive logic, that from C(P) to P one merely of logicoepistemic policy. Given D(P), it is impossible that T(P) should fail to be so; but given C(P), it is certainly possible that T(P) should fail to be so, though an adoption of C puts it—ex hypothesis—beyond our power to claim that T(P) does fail. A real definition—one that purports to capture the meaning of a term possessing a fixed preestablished usage—is either correct or incorrect, and that’s the end of the matter: its correctness may need to be pointed out, but it does not need argument or justification. A criterion of truth on the other hand—above all an authorizing criterion—definitely requires justification. In closing the logical gap between C(P) and P it takes a step that can be made well or badly, wisely or foolishly. It represents the adoption of one among alternative procedures, and here, as in all such cases, the question of the rational justification of adopting one specific alternative is in order. This is a question to which we must eventually give attention. One of the tasks of the theory of statistics is that of devising “acceptance rules” for hypotheses. In employing such a rule it sometimes happens

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that false hypotheses are accepted (according to the rule), and sometimes that true hypotheses are rejected. Adopting a usage proposed by the statisticians Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson, the rejection of a true hypothesis is generally designated as a type I error and the acceptance of a false hypothesis a type II error. This usage is readily extended to our context. Given the existence of a logical gap between C(P) and T(P), a criterion of truth can commit errors of two corresponding kinds: (1) A type I error when T(P) obtains—Leo when P is in fact true—but not-C(P), Le., P fails to satisfy the criterion. (2) A type II error when C(P) obtains, so that P is acceptable according to the criterion, but not- T(P), Le., P fails to be true. Or look at the matter from another perspective. The criteriological rule T(P) iff C(P) has two forms: (i) If T(P), then C(P). (ii) If C(P), then T(P). When (i) leads us into trouble because T(P) and not C(P), the error is of type I. When (ii) is the source of difficulty because C(P) but not T(P), the error is of type II. With authorizing criteria of truth—unlike definitions— the prospect of both of these types of error opens up. It is an inherent feature of any essentially criterial approach to truth that a logical gap remains between C(P) and T(P), and that while “P satisfies the criterion” provides a rational warrant for “P is true,” it need not provide an unfailing guarantee. In developing a criteriological theory of truth, we do not want to have it be a matter of logical validity that the inferences from C(P) to infer P. from P to infer C(P)

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must be warranted. This requisite would be far too restrictive. A criterion C conforming to it might be adequate as definition but would be too restrictive to serve as a viable criterion. It would mean that in the order of demonstration we would be called upon to settle the question of the truth of the proposition in order to bring our criterion of truth to bear upon it. One reason why the Tarski condition regarding truth, (T) T(P) iff P, is best looked upon as definitional rather than criteriological in nature is that it leaves no room for any looseness of fit. For there should be in principle be no room for a type I error where something true is not accepted nor yet a type II error where something false is. It is, after all, improper (senseless) to affirm the truth of something in conjunction with an assertion of its contradictory. When C(P) is simply P itself—that is when we have C(P) iff P—then the tightness of fit between T(P) and C(P) is complete (logical). In giving prominence to this distinction between a definitional theory of truth and a criteriological theory our aim is not to make a virtue of a defect but to recognize that a criteriological theory has a job to do fundamentally different from that of a definitional one. Thus in accepting the reality of errors of types I and II we maintain on the metasubstantive level: (∃p)[T(p) & C(p)] (∃p)[C(p) & ~T(p)] But it is obvious that we must not regard the substantive replaceability of C(P) by T(P) as warrant for maintaining: (∃ p)[T(p) & ~T(p)]. Our insistence that the regulative replacement principle in view is an epistolerically warranted policy does not drive ad absurdum a recognition of occasional errors of the two types. The point is this: C(P) approximates to T(P), and in substantive contexts we can proceed to treat the approximation as “the real thing.” But this regulative procedure must never blind us to the essential fact of a logical gap between C(P) and T(P), a gap which must be carefully maintained in higher level, metasubstantive contexts. As this discussion shows, there is no reason of principle why any criteriological theory of truth—such as the coherence theory or the pragmatic theory—need pick any quarrels with the Tarski condition (T). At the ab-

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stract, metasubstantive level any such theory can endorse this principle in full. But at the applied substantive level where the regulative precept (P) to treat C(P) as amounting to T(P) enters in the context of substantive applications, the conclusion that (P) applied to (T) entails C(P) iff P must, and can, successfully be resisted, with the justification that (T) is not a substantive context in which (P) can be applied. The very recognition of C as an authorizing criterion blocks acceptance of the substantive equivalence in the wake of the regulative precept (P). The pivotal point here is, after all, operative in any situation where approximations come into play. Whenever Q’ is introduced as approximation for Q, the range of equivalence of these quantities must be restricted. For example, we will generally know perfectly well that Q’ ~Q, but we would not be prepared to substitute Q’ for Q in this thesis. The criteriological approach to truth simply proposes to apply this universal truism about approximations to the special circumstance of T(P) and C(P). But if these considerations are to apply to the coherence theory, if coherence is taken to provide a presumptive and authorizing rather than a guaranteeing standard of truth, then we must resolve the questions: How can coherence considerations be made to work so as to provide a rational warrant for truth-claims? How does coherence operate to yield a reasonable basis for imputations of truth? 4. BASIC PROBLEMS OF THE COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH The time has come for a close look at the concept of coherence. Just what is “coherence” and what does it involve? The two key questions are: (1) What is it to cohere? (2) What does the cohering? “Fully coherent knowledge,” Blanshard tells us, “would be knowledge in which every judgment entailed, and was entailed by, the rest of the system.”3 He goes on to observe: 3

Coherence can be defined without this point, which, as A.C. Ewing remarks (Idealism. 231), makes the case harder to establish. In no mathematical system, for example, would anyone dream of trying to deduce all the other propositions from any

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It is perhaps in such systems as Euclidean geometry that we get the most perfect examples of coherence that have been constructed. If any proposition were lacking, it could be supplied from the rest; if any were altered, the repercussions would be felt through the length and breadth of the system. Yet even such a system as this falls short of an ideal system. Its postulates are unproved; they are independent of each other, in the sense that none of them could be derived from any other or even from all the others together; its clear necessity is bought by an abstractness so extreme as to have left out nearly everything that belongs to the character of actual things. A completely satisfactory system would have none of these defects. No proposition would be arbitrary, every proposition would be entailed by the others jointly and even singly, no proposition would stand outside the system. [NT, 2:265-66]

Coherence is thus a feature of propositions, a contextual feature that characterizes them in the wider setting of a system of propositions. One proposition coheres with the rest if what it says is said also, explicitly or implicitly, by all the rest. Thus if P, Q, and R are three independent propositions, the set P,Q,R represents a highly incoherent system, whereas P &(Q & R), Q & (P & R), R & (P & Q) is altogether coherent. Here every proposition, being placed explicitly into the context of all the others, can be derived from anyone of the rest. To be sure, the concept that in a coherent system every proposition entails every other is not, for Blanshard, a feature essential to the very definition of coherence. But he follows H. H. Joachim in regarding this as the definitive characteristic of a perfectly coherent system. Coherence, from this angle, is seen in the light of a condition of redundancy, and full coherence is maximal redundancy. This, surely, is not a very satisfactory conception. What great philosophic merit can possibly issue from the redundant formulation of information? And, above all, it is, to say the least, obscure how this can proposition taken singly. But when we are describing an ideal, such a fact is not decisive, and I follow Joachim in holding that in a perfectly coherent system every proposition would entail all others, if only for the reason that its meaning could never be fully understood without apprehension of the system in its entirety.

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possibly have a helpful bearing upon the issue of truth. With Blanshard’s explanation of the nature of coherence—an explanation not unique to him, but also to be found in other coherence theorists4—we are given an explication of the nature of coherence which leaves it very unclear how this concept is adequate to the truth determining role for which the theory has cast it. This problem leads to our second question: Just what is it that is to do the cohering when coherence is deployed as a standard of truth? It is clear enough, both in itself and in Blanshard’s discussion, that it is judgments or propositions that are at issue. When coherence is intended as a test of truth, and the locus of truth is seen in the realm of judgments or propositions, it is patently these that must do the coherence. But which propositions? Where are we to search out coherence? In the realm of all propositions, the grossest fictions as well as the plainest facts? This family of questions poses an issue that Blanshard does not face as squarely as he might. He comes close to suggesting that not all possible judgments or propositions are at issue, but only those we believe, viz. “our beliefs.”5 On this approach, coherence might well serve as a standard of rational evaluations for determining which of our beliefs should be accepted as “actually true”: viz. those that “best cohere” with the rest. But this view is hardly consonant with Blanshard’s settled position that coherence represents the meaning of truth. For it is plain that only beliefs themselves—i.e. select elements among “our beliefs” —will count as coherent propositions in this specified sense. But if coherence is confined to beliefs it cannot possibly represent the meaning of truth. Nobody would—or at any rate should—want to maintain that only those propositions that are believed can possibly be true.6 In another passage, Blanshard approaches the issue from another angle. He writes: 4

E.g. H. H. Joachim, see his Logical Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948).

5

“Now I think it can be shown that coherence is our test, the final and invariable test, when our beliefs are under pressure” (The Natur of Thought).

6

Not—in any case—without a theological postulate that salvages the thesis by a deus ex machina. Nor will it do to attempt to save the thesis by a distinction between actual and possible beliefs. For unless the concept of a possible belief carries us back to the sphere of all propositions (and then good-bye coherence), it enmeshes us in a hopeless conundrum.

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Granting that propositions, to be true, must be coherent with each other, may they not be coherent without being true? Are there not many systems of high unity and inclusiveness, which nevertheless are false? We have seen, for example, that there are various systems of geometry each of which seems to be as coherent internally as the others. Since they are mutually inconsistent, not more than one of them can be true, and there are many mathematicians who would say that none of them are true; yet if truth lies merely in coherence, are we not compelled to take all of them as true? Again, a novel, or a succession of novels such as Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, may create a special world of characters and events which is at once extremely complex and internally consistent; does that make it the less fictitious? . . This objection, like so many other annihilating criticisms, would have more point if anyone had ever held the theory it demolishes. But if intended to represent the coherence theory as responsibly advocated, it is a gross misunderstanding. That theory does not hold that any and every system is true, no matter how abstract and limited; it holds that one system only is true, namely the system in which everything real and possible is coherently included. How one can find in this the notion that a system would still give truth if, like some arbitrary geometry, it disregarded experience completely, it is not easy to see. (The Natur of Thought 2:275-76).

This key passage, intended to answer a basic objection, leaves matters in an unsatisfactory state. Just where and over what range is coherence to be operative? In “the system in which everything real and possible is coherently included”? But here, in this all-inclusive system, there is no difference drawn or to be drawn between the actually real and the merely possible: this exactly is the force of the objection. On the other hand, if the coherence at issue is not a matter of “coherence with everything” but rather of “coherence with experience” (as the final part of the passage suggests in despite of what has preceded), then there must surely be some further indication of how this conception is to be implemented—particularly because “experience” itself is not given as a consistent and coherent unit for other things to cohere with. Blanshard’s discussion thus leaves in an unsatisfactory state the crucial question of exactly which propositions are to represent the domain over which the selective processes of a coherence analysis are to be deployed. 5. A CONTRAST WITH BRADLEY The vulnerability of Blanshard’s version of the coherence theory of truth can be highlighted in a comparison with the (in my view essentially correct) version of the theory espoused by Bradley—at any rate the Brad-

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ley of the essay “On Truth and Coherence.”7 To begin with, Bradley confines the role of coherence to that of a criterion of truth rather than a definition. He is quite willing to have truth defined along the traditional lines of correspondence with the facts: “Truth, to be true, must be true of something, and this something itself is not truth. This obvious view I endorse.”8 Thus Bradley is able to preserve without difficulties the essential linkage of truth to factuality. Coherence, in his view, does not give us the nature of truth but merely affords a testing procedure for discriminating presumptive truths from presumptive falsehoods. With regard to the key question of what does the cohering, Bradley gives a relatively clear answer in terms of a peculiar and characteristic conception of “facts.” In his essay “On Truth and Coherence,” he introduces the concept of a fact so as to have it play a role closely akin to that of a truth-candidate or prima facie truth. For Bradleyan “facts”—let’ us call them B-facts—differ from everyone else’s facts in not necessarily being factual, i.e. true. Typical, for Bradley, are the “facts of perception and memory,” which need not, of course, be true, but are at best purportedly or presumptively veridical: . . . these facts of perception [and memory], I further agree, are at least in part irrational [and so false]. . . . [Yet] I do not believe that we can make ourselves independent of these non-rational data. But, if I do not believe all this, does it follow that I have to accept independent facts [i.e. facts true independently of all other considerations]? Does it follow that perception and memory give me truths which I must take up and keep as they are given me, truths which in principle cannot be erroneous? This surely would be to pass from one false extreme to another. . . . I therefore conclude that no given fact is sacrosanct. With every fact of perception or memory a modified interpretation is in principle possible, and no such fact therefore is given free from all possibility of error.9

Bradley thus espouses—with respect to the limited range of perception and memory—a notion of “fact” according to which the facts do not automatically qualify as truths at all but at best as possible or potential truths. Bradley’s special conception of “facts” puts him into a position to an7

Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, chap. 7, “On Truth and Coherence,” 202-18.

8

Ibid., 325..

9

“On Truth and Coherence,” 203-4.

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swer in a relatively satisfactory way the question of just where the coherence considerations are to be applied. Moreover, since he conceives the coherence standard along criteria I rather than definitional lines, the internal tensions that develop in Blanshard’s treatment of this issue are avoided entirely. Bradley also gives a more viable account of the nature of coherence. Basically, he conceives the coherence theory as maintaining “the claim of system as an arbiter of fact.”10 He formulates the matter as follows: The test which I advocate is the idea of a whole of knowledge as wide and as consistent as may be. In speaking of system I mean always the union of these two aspects, and this is the sense and the only sense in which I am defending coherence. If we separate coherence from what Prof. Stout calls comprehensiveness, then I agree that neither of these aspects of system will work by itself. . . . All that I can do here is to point out that both of the above aspects are for me inseparably included in the idea of system, and that coherence apart from comprehensiveness is not for me the test of truth or reality.11

On a Bradleyan approach, the coherence theory takes a position altogether different from Blanshard’s definitional line. We begin with a family of competing truth-candidates: the propositions we are disposed to maintain on the basis of sense, memory, reports, or whatever other sources of putative information may be at our disposal.12 And the analysis of coherence considerations provides the screening procedure needed to determine us to accept as true certain among these conflicting competitors, to wit, that maximally comprehensive subgroup among them whose overall coherence adjustment to one another is of the highest order. Here coherence (construed to embrace comprehensiveness) functions as a testing procedure to determine which among conflicting candidates are best qualified for acceptance as true. This explication of the workings of the coherence concept in terms of a combination of the logical factor of consistency and the factual factor of comprehensiveness gives a more plausible and applicable construction of 10

Ibid., 219.

11

Ibid., 202-3.

12

Ewing justifies this proceeding on Bradley's behalf in the following manner: “The principle of accepting as fact what one immediately experiences can itself be justified by the coherence theory. . .” (Idealism, 239).

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the nature of coherence than the redundancy considerations operative in Blanshard’s conception. For on Bradley’s approach we can see how a linkage from coherence to truth can be maintained, not—as with Blanshard— as a definitional connection, but as a matter of epistemic warrant. 6. CONCLUSION From this perspective upon the workings of coherence, the difficulties encountered by Blanshard’s version of the coherence theory of truth stem from its getting off to a bad start. It goes amiss at a very fundamental point, owing to the fact that Blanshard insists on seeing in coherence the very nature of truth, and is not content with having coherence play the more restricted part of a test-criterion for truth-determinations. This deprives him of the prospect of making sense of the ancient thesis that it is necessary that a true proposition agree with the facts of the case, a thesis not to be abrogated merely by abandoning a definitional correspondence theory of truth, but rather one that must survive any such abandonment. Blanshard is inexorably forced to this insistence that coherence represents the definitional nature of truth by two considerations: (1) the (in my view essentially unproblematic) premiss that coherence is a key criterion of truth, and (2) the argument that the necessary linkage of truth-criterion to truth-definition cannot be preserved unless the criterial factor (viz., coherence) is taken over as definitional. Blanshard’s argument here is perfectly correct, but his position is not. For it is neither necessary nor desirable for the adoption of coherence as a (or even the) criterion of truth to construe this as a necessitating or guaranteeing criterion rather than one that is presumptive and authorizing. And once this insistence upon a linkage of necessity is abandoned the argument “coherence-as-criterion entails coherence-as-definition” becomes abortive. Had Blanshard not started down this necessitarian path in his articulation of the coherence theory he would, presumably, have arrived at a less vulnerable (and in my view more useful) version of the theory, one articulated along the lines of the conception that coherence provides a presumptive rather than guaranteeing criterion of truth.13

13

This chapter was originally published in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1980).

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Name Index Abelard, 137n16 Adams, R. M., 57n1, 58, 58n5, 65n11, 72n19, 77 Adorno, Theodor, 145n32 Alston, William P. 18n1 Aristotle, 83, 115, 133, 135, 135n5, 135n7, 136, 136n13, 137, 143, 155, 164 Armstrong, David, 64n8, 77 Barbara, O. P., 137n18 Barron, Joseph Thomas, 130 Baum, Manfred, 142n27 Bennett, Jonathan, 77 Bergson, Henri, 7 Berkeley, George, 2, 3, 7, 61 Blashard, Brand, 162, 169-185 Bosanquet, Bernard, 118n15, 118-119, 162 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 71n18, 114, 116n10, 116-118, 118n14, 124, 126, 162, 169, 174, 174n4, 183, 183n7, 184, 184n12, 185 Bradley, Raymond, 66n13, 75n21, 77 Braun, Edmund., 130 Broad, C. D., 163 Brock, Stuart, 77 Buridan, John, 137n16 Burrill, Donald R., 91 Carnap, Rudolf65n10, 69,78, 98, 99, 126, 126n30, 127 Cartwright, Nancy, 100, 100n3 Chihara, Charles S., 78 Chisholm, Roderick, 154 Cohn, Jonas, 144 Collingwood, R. G., 101, 101n4, 102 Courant, James, 36n2 Craig, William L., 91 Cramer, Wolfgang, 130 Currie, Gregory, 78 Davenport, H. William, 122n22 Davidson, Donald, 32n6 Descartes, René, 102 Dewey, John, 98, 100, 101, 124-125, 124n27, 125n28, 125n29, 127, 128n31 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 144 Divers, John, 58n4, 68n14, 78

Endres, J. A., 137n17 Erdmann, Johann, 102 Euclides of Megara, 133 Evans, D. G., 135n5 Ewing, A. C., 89n9, 130, 174, 174n2, 179n3, 184n12 Felt, James W., 78 Ferrier, J. S., 116 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 110-113, 126, 139-140, 155 Fine, Kit, 79 Forbes, Greame, 78 Freeley, Austin J.,, 146n33 Frege, Gottlob, 99 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 142n27, 144, 144n29, 144n30 Gale, Richard M., 123n25 Galsworthy, John, 182 Gasset, Ortega y, 2 George, H. M., 129n32 Gilby, Thomad, 137n18 Gödel, Kurt, 73, 99 Goodman, Nelson, 32n6, 154, 162 Green T. H., 118n14 Green-Pelensenm, N. J., 137n17 Grim, Patrick, 69n16, 78 Hagen, J., 78 Hamlyn, D. W., 135n5 Harre, Rom, 22n3 Hartmann, Nicolai, 144 Hegel, 102, 110, 113-116, 124, 125n29, 126, 134, 134n4, 140-144, 141n26, 142n28, 145, 154-55 Heidegger, Martin, 104 Heyden, K. L. W., 142n28 Hintikka, Jaakko, 78 Hocking, William Ernest, 116, 119 Holopainen, T. J., 137n17 Huber, Gerhard, 130 Husserl, Edward, 99 Innes, Robert, 9 James, William, 1, 98, 98n1, 99, 100, 101, 122-124, 123n25 Joachim, H. H., 180, 181n4

188

Johnson, Samuel, 3 Jubien, Michael, 78 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 4, 7, 10, 31, 42, 42n1, 68n15, 81, 102, 111n3, 111-113, 121, 124, 126-27, 129, 138-140, 139n21, 155 Kim, Jaegwon, 80 Klibansky, Raymond, 137n18 Kondyles, P. 142n27 Kripke, Saul, 78 Kroner, Richard,130 Kuhn, Thomas, 102 Laertius, Diogenes, 133, 133n2, 133n3, 136n14 Lehrer, Keith, 24n4 Leibniz, 57, 57n1, 82n1, 84n3, 88, 89, 89n9, 92n11, 95, 120, 126, 128n31, 161, 162 Leslie, 82n1, 84n3 Lewis, C. I., 71, 99 Lewis, David, 65n9, 78, 99 Linsky, Bernard, 79 Little, A. G., 137n18 Locke, John, 127 Loewenberg, Jacob, 130 Loux, Michael, 79-80 Maimonides, Moses, 29n5, 45n2 Marx, Karl, 144-45, 154-55 McTaggart, J. M. E., 116, 119, 130, 157-167, 157n1, 162n4, 174n2 Melia, Joseph, 78 Menzel, Chris, 79 Miller, R. B., 79 Moore, G. E., 3 Mure, G. R. E., 145, 145n31 Neyman, Jerzy, 177 Olbrechts-Tyteca, L., 146n33 Passmore, John, 131 Pattison, Prigle, 116 Pearson, Egon, 177 Peirce, C. S., 3, 15, 43, 98, 102, 116, 120-122, 121n21, 122n22, 127 Pelster, F., 137n18 Perelman, Chaim, 146n33 Pinkard, Terry, 142n27 Pinto, R. C., 146n33 Place, U. T., 79

189

Plato, 35-36, 90, 99, 110, 133-34, 136, 137n18, 143, 155, 164 Ponty, Maurice Merleau, 145n32 Prantl, Carl, 133n3, 136n15 Prior, Arthur N., 79 Putnam, Hilary, 32n6 Quine, W. V. O., 32n6, 64n8, 79, 99 Rademacher, Hans, 131 Ramsey, P. F., 62 Ramus, Petrus, 137n16 Reck, Andrew, 110n1 Reeve, C. D. C., 135n5 Rescher, Nicholas. 9, 36n3, 62n7, 64n8, 66, 75,79, 101n5 Rodhe, Sven E., 131 Rorty, Richard, 32n6, 98 Rosen, Gideon, 79 Rosenberg, Jay, 32n6 Rowe, William, L., 91 Roy, Tony, 79 Royce, Josiah, 35, 36, 36n1, 116, 123-124, 123n24, 123n25,124n26, 127 Russell, Bertrand, 1, 1n1, 2, 125n29, 170, 170n1 Sabine, G. H., 131 Santayana, George, 7, 8 Schelling, Frederich von, 110, 113, 115n9, 115-116, 126 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., 139-140, 140n23 Schopenhauer, 7, 139, 139n22 Sellars, Wilfred, 22n3 Seth, Andrew, 118n12 Sherratt, Yvonne, 145n32 Skyrms, Bryan, 79 Smith, Bromley, 137n18 Socrates, 35, 99, 133 Solmsen, Friedrich, 136 Sosa, Ernest, 80 Spencer, Herbert, 119n17, 119-120, 124 Sprigge, T. L. S., 131 Stalnaker, Robert, 72n19, 80, 99 Stout, George F.,184 Stump, Eleanore, 137n17 Suppe, Frederick, 18n1 Tarski, Alfred, 178 Themistius, 29, 45

190

Trendelenburg, Adolf, 144 Twain, Mark, 11 Van Fraassen, Bas C., 80 Van Inwagen, Peter, 80 Vendler, Zeno, 80 Vollmer, Gerhard, 36, 36n3 Weinberg, Steven, 129n32 Whitaker, C. W. A., 135n7 White, Alan, 131 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 69, 71, 75, 80, 98, 99n2,103-04, 125-127 Wolff, Michael, 139n21, 142n27 Woods, John, 80 Xenophon, 133, 133n1 Yagisawa, Takashi, 80 Zeno of Elea, 133

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Nicholas.Rescher@ontosverlag Nicholas Rescher Cosmos and Logos Studies in Greek Philosophy

Nicholas Rescher Value Matters Studies in Axiology SERIES: Practical Philosophy Vol. 8 140 pp., Hardcover € 58,00 ISBN 3-937202-67-6

This is a study of key issues in value theory, setting out a case for regarding evaluation as a rational and objective enterprise. The principal issues dealt with include the purposive rationale of evaluation, the modus operandi of value reasoning, the fallacies that can arise here, and the role of values in the larger context of philosophical deliberation. A special feature of the book is its defence of absolute values in the face of widespread contemporary antagonism to this idea. Table of Contents 1. By the Standards of their Day 2. On the Import and Rationale of Value Attribution 3. Nomic Hierachies and Problems of Relativism 4. Is Reasoning about Values Viciously Circular? 5. Rational Economy and the Evolutionary Impetus 6. Evaluation and the Fallacy of Respect Neglect 7. Credit for Making a Discovery 8. Optimalism and the Rationality of the Real (on the Prospect of Axiological Explanation) 9. The Revolt against Absolutes in Twentieth Century American Philosophy

SERIES: Topics in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 1 130 pp., Hardcover € 58,00 ISBN 3-937202-65-X

The six studies comprising this volume deal with some fundamental issues in early Greek thought: cosmic evaluation in Anaximander, the theory of opposites from the Pre-Socratics to Plato and Aristotle, thought experimentation in PreSocratic thought, the origins of Greek Scepticism among the Sophisists, the prehistory of “Buridan’s Ass” speculation, and the role of esthesis in Aristotle’s theory of science. In each case the early discussion seeks to show how certain ideas bore unexpected fruit during the subsequent development of philosophical thought. Table of Contents 1. Cosmic Evolution in Anaximander 2. Contrastive Opposition in Early Greek Philosophy 3. Thought Experimentation in Presocratic Philosophy 4. Greek Scepticism’s Debt to the Sophist 5. Anaximander, Aristotle, and “Buridan’s Ass” 6. Aristotle on Ecthesis and Apodeitic Syllogisms

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