Collected Papers: Volume 4 Studies in Philosophical Inquiry 9783110326321, 9783110325379

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Nicholas Rescher Studies in Philosophical Inquiry

NICHOLAS RESCHER COLLECTED PAPERS

Volume IV

Nicholas Rescher

Studies in Philosophical Inquiry

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

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Contents PREFACE CHAPTER ONE: TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE 1. How Much Can a Person Know? A Leibnizian Perspective on Human Finitude 2. The Leibnizian Perspective 3. Cognitive Finitude 4. Surd Facts and Unknowability 5. Sessons

1 4 7 8 10

CHAPTER TWO: LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE: UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS AND UNKNOWABLE FACTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Unknowable Facts Time and Prediction Noninstantiable Properties and Vagrant Predicates The Role of Numerical Disparity in Validating Claims of Inapplicability: The Musical Chairs Perplex Truths are Enumerable Truths vs. Facts The Transdenumerability of Facts A Surfeit of Facts Musical Chairs Does Incompleteness Entail Incorrectness? Coda: Against Cognitive Nominalism Postscript: A Cognitively Indeterminate Universe

13 16 19 22 23 24 26 29 30 33 34 35

CHAPTER THREE: ON CONCEPTUAL CHANGE 1. 2. 3. 4.

Hegel vs. Plato The Way of Concepts Conceptual Change Science vs. Common Sense

41 43 45 46

CHAPTER FOUR: POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM: AN ESSAY IN MODAL ONTOLOGY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Modal Conceptualism Possibility Conceptualism Dispensing with Possibilia On the Logic of Possibility Overcoming the Insufficiency

49 55 60 61 65

CHAPTER FIVE: THE FALLACY OF RESPECT NEGLECT 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Respect Neglect Simplicity Further Examples of Respect Neglect Perspectival Dissonance and Non-Amalgamation Respectival Problems of Analogy Summary

71 72 74 75 77 78

CHAPTER SIX: ON DISTINCTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

How Distinctions Work: Some Historical Backgrounds How Distinctions Can Fail Misassimilation Apories and the Role of Distinctions in Philosophy How Philosophical Distinctions can Fail The Shift of Standardism

79 82 85 89 92 93

CHAPTER SEVEN: ON PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMATIZATION: PLAUSIBILITY AND THE HEGELIAN VISION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

The Hegelian Vision A Fatal Obstacle: The Plunge into Inconsistency Plausibility to the Rescue How Plausibility Works Plausibility Syncretism and Aporetics Apory Engenders a Diversity of Resolutions The Role of Distinctions in Dialectics Distinctions as a Means to Preservation An Historical Illustration

99 100 101 102 103 105 109 113 115

10. Philosophy in a Different Light: Recovering the Hegelian Vision of Philosophy at Large

119

CHAPTER EIGHT: UNIVERSALITY OF REASON: ON KANTIAN UNIVERSALIZATION IN MATTERS OF RATIONALITY AND MORALITY 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Rationality and its Demands Obligatoriness Universality and Uniformity The Governing Maxims of Theoretical Reason The Governing Maxim of Practical and Evaluating Reason Interrelationships Among the Domains Maxims and Universalisation An Epistemological Turn: Deduction Consequentialism A Kantian Moral

125 126 127 128 130 131 133 136 138 139

CHAPTER NINE: ON THE IMPORT AND RATIONALE OF VALUE ATTRIBUTION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Tertiary Properties Values as Tertiary Properties Values as Supervenient Values as Beneficiary Coordinated? Paramount Consequences of Seeing Values as Tertiary Dispositions 7. The Epistemology of Value

141 141 143 145 147 149 152

CHAPTER TEN: ETHICAL QUANTITIES 1. The Problem of Ethical Quantities 2. An Impetus of Inexactness 3. Generality Creates Difficulties

155 157 160

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SCOPE AND IMPORT OF PRAGMATISM: ON THE METHODOLOGY OF PRACTICAL REASON 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Pragmatism and Purpose The Ramification of Purpose Overcoming Difficulties Epistemic Pragmatism Pragmatism and Value A Humean Excursion Moral vs. Epistemic Credit: A Case Study of How the Difference of Aims Explains the Difference Between the Principles at Work With Moral and With Epistemic Credit 8. The Crucial Rule of Interests and Needs: Wants and Preferences are not Enough 9. The Impetus of Interests

163 165 166 168 169 171 175 179 182

CHAPTER TWELVE: REFERENTIAL ANALYSIS IN PHILOSOPHY: A FORAY IN METAPHILOSOPHY 1. Referential Analysis 2. Some Not-so-Ideal Types Name Index

185 189 199

PREFACE The essays collected together here were principally written over the last three or four years, and several of them have already been published in the professional literature. (The footnote acknowledgements give the details.) Taken together they afford a good overview of my views on fundamental issues in epistemology in general and the epistemology of philosophical deliberation in particular. They reflect, above all, the conviction that while the prospects of speculative knowledge are limited we do well to test those limits to the utmost as best we can. One salient aspect of these studies is their instantiating of what I think of as the connectivity perspective: the view that technical issues in philosophy derive whatever importance they will actually have for their bearing upon the fundamental issues of the field, and that the authenticity of those bearings are best made manifest through contextualization in the history of philosophy. Detail finds its only justification in relation to its embodiment in “the big picture.” Accordingly, the best way to address our philosophical problems is, as I see it, to endeavor to elucidate the issues involved in a way that combines substantive analysis with historical contextualization. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her competence and diligence in getting my illegible manuscripts shaped up into publishable form.

Chapter One TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE

1. HOW MUCH CAN A PERSON KNOW? A LEIBNIZIAN PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN FINITUDE How much can people possibly know? What could reasonably be viewed as an upper limit of someone’s knowledge—supposing that factually informative knowledge-that rather than performative how-to knowledge or subliminally tacit intuitive knowledge is to be at issue? In pursuing this question, let us suppose someone with perfect recall who devotes a long lifespan to the acquisition of information. For 70 years this individual spends 365 days per annum reading for 12 hours a day at the rate of 60 pages an hour (with 400 words per page). That yields a lifetime reading quota of some 7.4 x 109 words. Optimistically supposing that, on average, a statement regarding some matter of fact requires on average only some seven words, this means a lifetime access to some 109 statements, around a billion of them: 1,000,000,000. No doubt most of us are a great deal less well informed than this. But is seems pretty well acceptable as an upper limit to the information that a human individual could probably not reach and certainly not exceed. After all, with an average of 400 pages per book, the previously indicated lifetime reading quota would come to some forty-six thousand books. The world’s largest libraries, the Library of Congress for example, nowadays have somewhere around 20 million books (book-length assemblages of pamphlets included.) And it would take a very Hercules of reading to make his way through even one-quarter one of one percent of so vast a collection (50,000 volumes), which is roughly what our aforementioned reading prodigy manages. If mastery of Library of Congress-encompassed material is to set the standard for informedness,

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then few of us would be able to hold our heads up very high.1 And this means that while a given individual can in theory read any book (so that there are no inherently unreadable books), the individual cannot possibly read every book (so that for anyone of us there are bound to be very many unread books indeed). All this, of course, still only addresses the question of how much information a given person—one particular individual—can manage to acquire. There yet remains the question of how much is in principle knowable—that is, can be known. And here it is instructive to begin with the perspective of the great seventeenth century polymath G. W. Leibniz. Leibniz took his inspiration from The Sand Reckoner of Archimedes, who in this study sought to establish the astronomically large number of sand grains that could be contained within the universe defined by the sphere of the fixed stars of Aristotelian cosmology—a number Archimedes effectively estimated at 1050. Thus even as Archimedes addressed the issue of the scope of the physical universe, so Leibniz sought to address the issue of the scope of the universe of thought.2 Leibniz pursued this project very much in the spirit of the preceding volumetric considerations. He wrote: All items of human knowledge can be expressed by the letters of the alphabet . . . so that it follows that one can calculate the number of truths of which humans are capable and thus compute the size of a work that would contain all possible human knowledge, and which would contain all that could ever be known, written, or invented, and more besides. For it would contain not only the truths, but also all the falsehoods that men can assert, and meaningless expressions as well.3 1

To be sure, there lurks in the background the question of whether having mere information is to count as having knowledge. With regard to this quantitative issue it has been argued that authentic knowledge does not increase propositionally with the amount of information as such, but only proportionally with its logarithm. (See Chapter 13 of the author’s Epistemology [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003].) This would suggest that the actual knowledge within the Library of Congress’s many volumes might be encompassed in some far more modest collection—one not vastly greater than what our assiduous reader is able to peruse. But this sort of complication can be put aside for present purposes.

2

On Archimedes’ estimate see T. L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897).

3

See G. W. Leibniz: De l’horizon de la doctrine humaine, ed. by Michael Fichant (Paris: Vrin, 1991). The quotation is from a partial translation of Leibniz’s text in

2

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Thus if one could set an upper limit to the volume of printed matter accessible to inquiring humans, then one could map out by combinatorial means the whole manifold of accessible verbal material—true, false, or gibberish—in just the manner that Leibniz contemplated. And this is exactly what he proceeded to do in a fascinating 1693 tract De l’horizon de la doctrine humaine.4 Any alphabet devisable by man will have only a limited number of letters (Leibniz here supposes the Latin alphabet of 24). So even if we allow a word to become very long indeed (Leibniz overgenerously supposes 32 letters5) there will be only a limited number of words that can possibly be formed (namely 24 exp 32). And so, if we suppose a maximum to the number of words that a single run-on, just barely intelligible sentence can contain (say 100), then there will be a limit to the number of potential “statements” that can possibly be made, namely 100 exp (24 exp 32).6 This number is huge indeed—a great deal bigger than Archimedes’ “Leibniz on the Limits of Human Knowledge,” by Philip Beeley, The Leibniz Review, vol. 13 (December 2003), pp. 93-97 (see p. 95). 4

It is well-known that Leibniz invented entire branches of science, among the differential and integral calculatus, the calculus of variations, topology (analysis situs), symbolic logic, and computers. But there is also one branch in which subsequent developments have not arrived even now, namely epistemetrics, the measurement of knowledge. For while intelligence measurement (IQ assessment) is a well-developed field, knowledge measurement is not—notwithstanding the proliferation of quiz shows comparing different people’s knowledge of various fields. The actual measurement of how much people do know—and no less importantly, of how much they can know—is still a substantially unrealized domain of investigation.

5

The longest word I have seen in actual use is the 34 letter absurdity supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the musical “Mary Poppins’.”

6

G. W. Leibniz, De l’horizon (op. cit.), p. 11. This of course long antedates the (possibly apocryphal) story about the Huxley-Wilberforce debate which has Huxley arguing that sensible meaning could result from chance process because a team of monkeys typing at random would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare—or (on some account) all the books in the British Library, including not only Shakespeare’s works but the Bible as well. (The story—which goes back, at least, to Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (London: McMillan, 1929; pp. 72-73) is doubtless fictitious since the Huxley-Wilberforce debate of 1860 antedated the emergence of the typewriter.) However, the basic

3

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sand-grains. Nevertheless, it is still finite, limited. Moreover, with an array of basic symbols different from those of the Latin alphabet the situation is changed in detail but not in structure. (And this remains the case even if one adds the symbols at work in mathematics, where Descartes’ translation of geometrically pictorial propositions into algebraically articulated format stood before Leibniz’s mind, to say nothing of his own project of a universal language and a calculus ratiocinator.7) The crux of Leibniz’s discussion is that any propositionalizable contention can in principle be spelled out in print. And there is only so much, so finitely much, that can be stated in sentences of intelligible length—and so also that can explicitly be thought of beings who conduct their thinking in language. Moreover, since this encompasses fiction as well, our knowledge of possibility is also finite, and fiction is for us just as much language-limited as is the domain of truth. 2. THE LEIBNIZIAN PERSPECTIVE These considerations mean that as long as people transact their thinking in language—broadly understood to encompass diverse symbolic devices—the thoughts they can have—and a fortiori the things they possibly can know—will be limited in number. The moment one sets a realistic limit to the length of practicably meaningful sentences one has to realize that the volume of the sayable is finite—vast thought it will be. Moving further along these lines, let it be that the cognitive (in contrast to the affective) thought-life of people consists of the language-framed propositions that they consider. And let us suppose that people can consider textualized propositions at about the same speed at which they idea goes back at least to Cicero: “If a countless number of the twenty-one letters of the alphabet . . . were mixed together it is possible that when cast on the ground they should make up the Annals of Ennius, able to be read in good order” (De natura deorum, II, 27). The story launched an immense discussion on the contemporary scene as is readily attested by a Google or Yahoo search for “typing monkeys.” It has also had significant literary repercussions as is exemplified by Jorge Luis Borges’ well-known story of “The Library of Babel” which contains all possible books. 7

4

Louis Couturat, La logique de Leibniz (Paris: Alcan, 1901) is still the best overall account of this Leibnizian project.

TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE

can read—optimistically, say, some 60 pages per hour where each page consist of 20 sentences. Assuming a thought-span of 16 waking hours on average, it will then transpire that in the course of a year a person can entertain a number of propositional thoughts equal to: 365 x 16 x 60 x 20 ≅ 7 x 106 So subject to the hypotheses at issue, this is how much material one would need to replicate in print the stream of consciousness thought-life of a person for an entire year. Once again, this number of seven million, though not small, is nevertheless limited. And these limits will again finitize the combinatorial possibilities. There is only so much thinking that a person can manage. And in the context of a finite species, these limits of language mean that there are only so many thoughts to go around—so many manageable sentences to be formulated. Once again we are in the grip of finitude. Now as Leibniz saw it, this line of thought can be carried much further. For the finitude at issue here has highly significant implications. Consider an analogy. Only a finite number of hairs will fit on a person’s head—say 1,000. So when there are enough individuals in a group (say 1001 of them) then two of them must have exactly the same number of hairs on their heads. And so also with thoughts. If only there are enough thinking intelligences in the aeons of cosmic history while the number of thoughts—and thus also thought-days and thought-lives—are finite, then there will inevitably be several people in a sufficiently large linguistic community whose thoughts are precisely the same throughout their lives. It also becomes a real prospect that language imposes limits on our grasp of people and their doings. Suppose the Detailed Biography of a person to be a minute-by-minute account of their doings, that allocates (say) 10 printed lines to each minute, and so roughly 15,000 lines per day to make up a hefty diurnal volume of 300 fifty-line pages. So if a paradigmatic individual lives 100 years we will need 365 x 100 or roughly 36,500 such substantial tomes to provide a comprehensive blowby-blow account of his or her life. But the inherent limits of textuality mean that the number of such tomes, albeit vast, is limited. In consequence, there are only so many Detailed Biographies to go around, so that it transpires that the number of Detailed Biographies that is available is also finite. This, of course, means that: If the duration of the species were long enough—or if the vastness of

5

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space provided sufficiently many thinkers—then there would have to be some distinct people with exactly the same Detailed Biography. Given enough agents, eventual repetitions in point of action became inevitable. And now moving on from Biographies (or Diaries) to Public Annals Leibniz thought to encounter much the same general situation once again. Thus suppose that (as Leibniz has it) the world’s population is one hundred million (that is 108) and that each generation lives (on average) for 50 years, then in the 6,000 years during which civilized man maybe supposed to have existed, there have existed some 1.2 x 1010 people—or some 1010 of them if we assume smaller generations in earlier times.8 Recall now the above-mentioned idea of 36,500 hefty tomes needed to characterize in detail the life of an individual. It then follows that we would need some 36.5 x 1013 of them for a complete history of the species. To be sure, we thus obtain an astronomically vast number of possible overall annals for mankind as a whole. But though vast, this number will nevertheless be finite. Moreover, if the history of the race is sufficiently long, then some part of its extensive history will have to repeat itself in full with a parfaite repetition mot pour mot since there are only so many possible accounts of a given day (or week or year). For once again there are only a finite number of possibilities to go around and somewhere along the line of total repetitions it will transpire that life stories will occasionally recur in toto (ut homines novi eadem ad sensum penitus tota vita agerent, quae alii jam egerunt9). As Leibniz thus saw it, the finitude of language and its users carries in its wake the finitude of possible diaries, biographies, histories—you name it, including even possible thought-lives in the sense of propositionalized streams of consciousness as well. Even as Einstein with his general relativity (initially) saw himself as finitizing the size of the physical universe, so Leibniz’s treatise saw the size of mankind’s cognitive universe as a manifold of limited horizons—boundless but nevertheless finalized through the limits of textuality. It was, accordingly, a key aspect of Leibniz’s thought that the human understanding cannot keep up with reality. For Leibniz, the propositional thought of finite creatures is linguistic and thereby unavoidably finite and limited. But he also held that reality—as captured in the thought of God, if 8

Leibniz, De l’horizon, p. 112.

9

Ibid., p. 54.

6

TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE

you will—is infinitely detailed. Only God’s thought can encompass it, not ours.10 Reality’s infinite detail thus carries both costs and its benefits in its wake. Its cost is the inevitability of imperfect comprehension by finite intelligences. Its benefit is the prospect of endless variability and averted repetition. And the result is a cognitively insuperable gap between epistemology and metaphysics. Everything that humans can say or think by linguistic means can be comprehended in one vast but finite Universal Library. But what do these Leibnizian ruminations mean in the larger scheme of things? 3. COGNITIVE FINITUDE First the good news. Through the use of generalizations one can of course refer unrestrictedly to everything. Bishop Butler’s “Everything is what it is and not another thing” holds with absolutely unrestricted universality. Moreover, once continuous quantities are introduced, the range of inferentially available statements becomes uncountable. “The length of the table exceeds x inches.” This clearly opens the door to the linguistic encompassing of uncountably many alternatives. However—and this is the crucial point—only a merely countable number of statements can ever be specifically made.11 But are there perhaps general truths whose determination would require the exhaustive surveying every specific instance of a totality too large for our range of vision? At this point our cognitive finitude becomes a crucial consideration. The difference between a finite and an infinite knower is of fundamental importance and requires closer elucidation. For an “infinite knower” need not and should not be construed as an omniscient knowerone from whom nothing knowable is concealed (and so who knows, for example, who will be elected U.S. President in the year 2200). Rather, what is at issue is a knower who can manage to know in individualized detail an 10

This is why the Leibnizian principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is a Godgeared metaphysical principle and not a man-geared epistemological one.

11

To make a statement is effectively to name it, and the inherently limited resources of language will only put countably many names at our disposal. On this issue see the Appendix below.

7

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infinite number of independent facts. Such a knower might, for example, be able to answer such a question as: “Will the decimal expansion of π always continue to agree at some future point with that of ,2 for 100 decimal places?” (And of course the circumstance that an infinite knower can know some infinite set of independent facts does not mean that he can know every such set.) Finite knowers can, of course, know universal truths. After all, we must acknowledge the prospect of inductive knowledge of general laws, we will have it that a knower can unproblematically know—for example—that “All dogs eat meat.”12 But what finite knowers cannot manage is to know this sort of thing in detail rather than at the level of generality. They cannot know specifically of each and every u in that potentially infinite range that Fu obtains—that is, while they can know collectively that all individuals have F, they cannot know distributively of every individual that it has F. Finite knowers can certainly know (via the U.S. Constitution) that Presidents are over the age of 35. But of course one has this knowledge nondescriptively without knowing of every President (including those one never heard of, let alone the yet unborn) that each individual one of them is over the age of 35something one cannot manage without knowing who they individually are. And this situation has significant ramifications. 4. SURD FACTS AND UNKNOWABILITY We cannot, of course, provide concrete examples of specific facts that are unknowable for finite knowers, seeing that a claim to factuality automatically carries a claim to knowledge in its wake. However while one cannot know what is such a fact one can certainly establish that there are such things. Given any collection of items there are two importantly different kinds of general properties: Those that all members of the collection DO have in common, and those that all members of the collection MUST have in common. The latter are the necessity-geared general features of the collection, the former its contingency geared features. Thus that all prime numbers greater than 2 are odd is a necessity-geared feature of these primes. Or consider the set of all post-Washington US presidents. That all 12

8

To be sure, the prospect of inductively secured knowledge of laws is a philosophically controversial issue. But this is not the place to pursue it. (For the author’s view of the matter see his Induction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.)

TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE

of them are native born and that all of them are over 35 years of age is a necessity-geared feature of the collection in view of our Constitution’s stipulations. However, that all were the favored candidates of a political party will (if indeed true) be a contingently geared feature of the collection that is neither necessitated by it constituting characterization nor accessible to induction on the basis of conceiving a natural kind. Now the crucial consideration for present purposes is that while the necessary features of a collection must inhere in (and be derivable from) the generalities that govern the collection at issue as a matter of principle, nevertheless its non-inductive contingent features will be surd in that they cannot be established on the basis of general principles. When and if such a generalization actually holds, this can only be ascertained through a caseby-case check of the entire membership of the collection. And this means that finite knowers can never decisively establish a contingently surd general feature of an infinite collection. Such features are something that we finite intelligences can never determine with categorical assurance because this would require an item-by-item check, which is ex hypothesi impracticable for us. And since this is often the case, for aught we know to the contrary, we must accept that we can never manage to ascertain all the facts regarding an unsurveyable totality! Actual knowledge of the matter is beyond our reach here. The best and most that we can ever do here is to employ plausibilistically conjectural or probabilistic reasoning in a way that in the end still leaves the issue beclouded with a shadow of doubt. Consider an illustration. The New York Times is an English-language newspaper. And as such, it is a necessary feature of the Times that throughout the history of its publication, mostly English words appear on its front page. However, it must also be presumed to be a fact that as long as the paper exists, every issue of the New York Times will be such that the word THE occurs more than ten times on its front page. This is almost certainly a fact. But to determine that it is actually so, a case-by-case check becomes unavoidable. Such a fact—one whose determination cannot be settled by general principles (laws) but whose ascertainment requires a case-by-case check—is generally characterized as surd. And such a property of something is contingent: it cannot be accounted for on the basis of the general principles at issue. Of course, “unknowably true” is a vagrant predicate—one that has no determinate address in that it admits of no identifiable instance. Instantiating this sort of thing can only be done at the level of schematic generality and not that of concrete instantiation. But we can convince

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ourselves—for good reason—that there indeed are such things even though it is in principle impracticable to provide specific examples of them. 5. LESSONS Overall, however, the situation is not as bleak as it may seem. For even though the thought and knowledge of finite beings is destined to be ever finite, it nevertheless has no fixed and determinate limits. Return to our analogy. As is counting integers, there is a limit beyond which we never will get. But there is no limit beyond which we never can get. For the circumstance that there is always room for linguistic variation—for new symbols, new combinations, new ideas, new truths and new knowledge— creates a potential for pushing our thought ever further. While the thought of finite beings is destined ever to be finite, it nevertheless has no fixed and determinable limits. The line of thought operative in these deliberations was already mooted by Kant: [I]n natural philosophy, human reason admits of limits “excluding limits,” (Schranken) but not of boundaries (“terminating limits,” Grenzen), namely, it admits that something indeed lies without it, at which it can never arrive, but not that it will at any point find completion in its internal progress . . . .[T]he possibility of new discoveries is infinite: and the same is the case with the discovery of new properties of nature, of new powers and laws by continued experience and its rational combination . . . . 13

And here Kant was right—even on the Leibnizian principles considered at the outset of this discussion. The cognitive range of finite beings is indeed

13

10

Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, sect. 57. Compare the following passage from Charles Sanders Peirce: “For my part, I cannot admit the proposition of Kant—that there are certain impassable bounds to human knowledge . . . . The history of science affords illustrations enough of the folly of saying that this, that, or the other can never be found out. Auguste Comte said that it was clearly impossible for man ever to learn anything of the chemical constitution of the fixed stars, but before his book had reached its readers the discovery which he had announced as impossible had been made. Legendre said of a certain proposition in the theory of numbers that, while it appeared to be true, it was most likely beyond the powers of the human mind to prove it; yet the next writer on the subject gave six independent demonstrations of the theorem.” (Collected Papers, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-58, 2nd ed.], vol. VI, sect. 6.556.)

TEXTUALITY, REALITY, AND THE LIMITEDNESS OF KNOWLEDGE

limited. But it is also boundless because it is not limited in a way that blocks the prospect of cognitive access to ever new and continually different facts thereby affording an ever ampler and ever more adequate account of reality. Some writers analogize the cognitive exploration of the realm of fact to the geographic exploration of the earth. But this analogy is profoundly misleading. For the earth has a finite and measurable surface, and so even when some part of it is unexplored terra incognita its magnitude and limits can be assessed in advance. Nothing of the kind obtains in the cognitive domain. The ratio and relationship of known truth to knowable fact is subject to no fixed and determinable proportion. Geographic exploration can expect eventual completeness, cognitive exploration cannot. There are no boundaries—no determinate limits—to the manifold of discoverable fact. The fact that we cannot know everything does not of itself mean that there is anything in particular that we cannot possibly know. The limitedness of knowledge does not of itself settle the issue of definite limits to knowledge. To probe this issue we shall have to bring different considerations into view.14

14

This essay draws upon my study of “Leibniz’s Quantitative Epistemology,” Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 37 (2005).

11

Chapter Two LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE: UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS AND UNKNOWABLE FACTS 1. UNKNOWABLE FACTS This discussion spotlights unavoidable ignorance. It is not concerned about what we do not know but rather about what we cannot know and focuses not on questions that this or that individual cannot actually answer, but rather upon questions that no-one can possibly answer. (No-one knows what Caesar ate for breakfast on that fatal Ides of March—but that is so simply because there are no records.) The crux here is a matter of the inevitable infeasibility that obtains when information is inaccessible owing not merely to obtruding impracticabilities, but rather for reasons of general principle. Accordingly, what is on the present agenda are those matters that lie outside the limits of possible knowledge. C.S. Peirce wrote: For my part, I cannot admit the proposition of Kant—that there are certain impassable bounds to human knowledge. . ..The history of science affords illustrations enough of the folly of saying that this, that, or the other can never be found out. Auguste Comte said that it was clearly impossible for man ever to learn anything of the chemical constitution of the fixed stars, but before his book had reached its readers the discovery which he had announced as impossible had been made. Legendre said of a certain proposition in the theory of numbers that, while it appeared to be true, it was most likely beyond the powers of the human mind to prove it; yet the next writer on the subject gave six independent demonstrations of the theorem.1

The present discussion will argue that, notwithstanding the plausibility of Peirce’s considerations, there indeed are in-principle impassable bounds to human knowledge, albeit limits which appertain less to the knowledge of nature than to the knowledge of knowledge. 1

Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. by C. Hartshorne et al., Vol. VI (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929), sect. 6.556.

Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers IV

It is crucial to distinguish between two sorts of unknowability: absolute and conditional. Conditional or circumstantial unknowability conforms to the thesis “Given that something or other is the case, you cannot possibly know such and such.” Absolute unknowability conforms to the flatly categorical thesis “You cannot possibly know that such-and-such is the case.” It is, clearly, impossible—and indeed logically impossible—ever to give an example of an absolutely unknowable fact. For to establish that it is indeed a fact that is at issue, one must get to know it as such. The challenge at issue with presenting an absolutely unknowable fact is one that cannot— as a matter of fundamental principle—possibly be met. The best we can do is to establish that something or other is a conditionally unknowable fact, and then to come up with an example of questions that indeed have answers, but where these answers cannot possibly be provided. Let us first address the issue of conditionally unknowable facts. To begin with, consider that if (as is surely the case!) you do not know that some fact or other obtains, then you cannot know that there is a fact that you do not know. For in order to know that it is a fact that is unknown to you, you would have to know that it is indeed a fact—contrary to hypothesis. You can certainly know that you do not know something—that, for example, you do not know what Caesar ate for breakfast on that fatal day. But it lies in the logic of the situation that you cannot know what that fact is that you do not know. But of course the fact that is at issue here is something knowable. I can certainly know that you do not know that I was born on a Sunday. But this—namely that you don’t know it for a fact that I was born on a Sunday—is something that you cannot know. It is beyond the limits of possibility for anyone to know the details of their ignorance. Indeed even the question “What is a specific example of a fact that X knows but you don’t?” is something which, given the general principles of the matter, you will be unable to answer (unlike the question “What is the example of a question to which X knows the answer but you don’t?”). Given that you don’t know that p is a fact, this very circumstance itself constitutes a (conditionally) unknowable fact for you. Of course you are not alone here: the situation generalizes. If no intelligent being in the cosmos happens to know that a certain fact obtains, then nobody can know that this particular circumstance is so. Our personal ignorance lies outside our personal ken, and our collective ignorance lies outside our collective ken as well. If altogether unknown facts there are, then nobody can know this in detail. There are bound to be regions of our ignorance to which knowledge can gain no access.

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To be sure, if there indeed are in-principle unknowable facts—then such a limiting of our knowledge does not entail a limitation on our part, if this is to be regarded as the sort of thing that yields a basis for regret or complaint. For it is, of course, not very sensible to regret, deplore, or otherwise complain about that which cannot possibly be helped. The inability to do that which is in principle impossible is no ground for any reasonable regret or reproach; being inevitable, it bespeaks no defect or disability. One final preliminary. In one sense there are no statements whose truths-status is undecidable and no questions that are unanswerable. For you can of course decide for or against any statement by merely flipping a coin. And you can answer every question by a simple algorithm. If the question asks why? you answer “Because God wants it that way”; if the question asks when? you say “yesterday,” if the question asks where? you say “In Paris,” and so on. You need never be at a loss for words. But of course what is wanted in these matters is not just a decision but a rationally tenable decision and not just an answer that happens to be correct but one whose correctness can be made manifest. The crux throughout is a matter of rational cogency. It is clear against this background that the question “What is an example of a fact that you do not know?” is one that you cannot possibly answer correctly (though others will have no difficulty with it).2 And there are many illustrations of this phenomenon. For example: • What is an instance of a truth you do not know? • What is an instance of an idea that has never occurred to you? And here too we can readily pass from particularity to universality: • What’s an example of a truth no-one whatever knows? • What is an instance of an idea that never has or will occur to anyone?

2

There is, of course, no earthly reason why you cannot know that F is a fact that I do not know. It’s just that I cannot possibly manage it. And this is so not for factual reasons relative to my stupidity but for conceptual reasons relating to the nature of the knowledge-claim that would be at issue.

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Questions of this kind are inherently unanswerable. To be sure, a being outside the range of finite intelligences—the Recording Angel, say—can certainly know things of this sort. But it lies in the logic of the situation that we ourselves cannot. As far as we humans are concerned, such a question constitutes an irresolvable conundrum. Accordingly, identifying unanswerable questions is no problem. But given that such questions will indeed have an answer—that there actually is a fact of the matter—these questions indicate a realm of unattainable knowledge. But how far can one go in detailing human ignorance, considering that while we must suppose reality’s complexity to be such that there indeed are unknowable facts, we nevertheless cannot possibly provide any specific examples of them? 2. TIME AND PREDICTION The temporal aspect of knowing comes to the fore at this point. One need not be a very profound metaphysician to realize that the things of this universe exist in time. And our imperfect access to cognition regarding the future is a fertile source of unknowable facts and intractable questions. Consider, for instance: • What is an example of a truth that will not be discovered until next year? • What is a fact that no-one will realize until the next century? And here too generalization is possible: • What is an example of a truth that no-one will ever state? • What is an instance of an idea that will never occur to anyone? With all such questions we are once again in the realm of cognitive bafflement engendered by intractable questions. And one cannot evade this by claiming that the reasons for one’s incapacity is that such questions just are not answerable at all—that they inherently have no answers and that there is no fact of the matter here. The crux here is that in cognitive matters, at least, the present cannot speak for the future. There are questions no-one can answer before their

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time. Prediction is thus a fertile source of unanswerable questions. And predictors are—of necessity!—bound to fail even in much simpler self-predictive matters. Thus consider confronting a predictor with the problem posed by the question: P1: When next you answer a question, will the answer be negative? This is a question which—for reasons of general principle—no predictor can ever answer satisfactorily. For consider the available possibilities: Actually Answer given correct answer YES NO NO YES CAN’T SAY NO

Agreement? NO NO NO

With this question, there just is no way in which a predictor’s response could possibly agree with the actual fact of the matter. Even the seemingly plausible response “I can’t say” automatically constitutes a self-falsifying answer, since in giving this answer the predictor would automatically make “No” into the response actually called for by the proprieties of the situation.3 This example presents a question that will inevitably confound any conscientious predictor and drive him into baffled perplexity. But of course the challenge at issue poses a perfectly meaningful question to which another predictor could give a putatively correct answer—namely, by saying: “No—that predictor cannot answer this question at all; the question will condemn a predictor (Predictor No. 1) to baffled silence.” But of course the answer “I am responding with baffled silence” is one which that initial predictor cannot cogently offer. And as to that baffled silence itself, this is something which, as such, would clearly constitute a defeat for our initial predictor. 3

My colleague Jessica Moss points (in conversation) to the prospect of replying “Not exactly” or “Not decidedly” or some such. However, it seems plausible to insist that “Not X-ly” constitutes a negative response, so that this reply is not in fact a correct answer. And even if that third option was “Indecisively” one could argue that even this is not correct, seeing that a decision for indecisiveness is still a mode of decisiveness.

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Moreover, there are other questions that indeed are predictor insolubilia for predictors-at-large. One of them is: P2: What is an example of a predictive question that no-one will ever raise? The long and short of it is that every finite predictor—ourselves included—is bound to manifest versatility-incapacities with respect to its own predictive operations.4 And this generalizes into such predictively undecidable contingent propositions as: • For as long as intelligent life continues to exist somebody will always pose a question that will go unresolved for at least 1000 years. Here we have a clear instance of an undecidable factual proposition. For here a decisive resolution becomes unpracticable in such cases where generality mixes with particularity so that both assertion and denial involves an unsurveyable universality. These deliberations carry us back to some medieval ruminations about God’s knowledge. For they mean that in deliberating about the limits of knowledge we have to distinguish between completion and perfection in relation to the cognitive project. Perfected knowledge is a matter of knowing everything that is knowable; consists knowledge consists in knowledge of everything (period). Insofar as it is possible to establish the existence of facts that are in principle unknowable one has to accept this distinction as making a real difference. For example, if knowledge about future contingencies is in principle impossible—as many have thought to be the case (beginning with Aristotle), then an incapacity to secure such knowledge, while indeed precluding completeness, cannot qualify as an imperfection. After all, doing the impossible is not a rationally appropriate demand.

4

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On the inherent limitation of predictions see the author's Predicting the Future (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

3. NONINSTANTIABLE PROPERTIES AND VAGRANT PREDICATES The cognitive intractability of certain temporalized issues has wider implications. Thus consider such questions as the already mentioned: • What is an example of a problem that will never be considered by any human being? • What is an example of an idea that will never occur to any human being? However, we can also contemplate the prospect of globally intractable questions—questions which, despite having correct answers, are nevertheless such that nobody (among finite intelligences at least) can possibly be in a position to answer them (in the strict sense described at the outset). There are, indeed, many instances of this, seeing that no-one can meet the challenge of providing examples of such things as: • being an idea that has never occurred to anybody? • being an occurrence is there that no-one ever mentions? • being a person who has passed into total oblivion. • being a never-formulated question. • being an idea no-one any longer mentions. While there undoubtedly are such items, they of course cannot possibly be instantiated so that the corresponding example-demanding questions are inherently unanswerable insolubilia. In all such cases, the particular items that would render a contention of the format (∃u)Fu true are referentially inaccessible: to indicate any of them individually and specifically as instantiations of the predicate at issue is ipso facto to unravel them as so-characterized items. And so, noninstantiability itself is certainly not something that is noninstantiable: many instances are available along the lines of:

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being an ever-unstated (contention, truth, theory, etc.). being a never-mentioned topic (idea, object, etc.). being a truth (a fact) no one has ever realized (learned, stated). being someone whom everyone has forgotten. being a never-identified culprit. being an issue no-one has thought about since the 16th century. In the light of these considerations, the positivist dogma that a question can qualify as empirically meaningful only if it is in principle possible for a finite knower to answer it (correctly) becomes decidedly problematic. Cognitive positivism is not a plausible prospect. The conception of an applicable but nevertheless noninstantiable predicate comes to the fore at this point. Such predicates are “vagrant” in the sense of having no known address or fixed abode. Though they indeed have applications, these cannot be specifically instanced—they cannot be pinned down and located in a particular spot. Accordingly we have it that: F is a vagrant predicate iff (∃u)Fu is true while nevertheless Fu0 is false for each and every specifically identified u0. For the sake of contrast, consider such further uninstitutable predicates as being a book no one has ever read. being a sunset never witnessed by any member of homo sapiens. Such items may be difficult to instantiatebut certainly not impossible. The former could be instantiated by author and title; the latter by place and date. In neither case will an instantiation unravel that item as described. Being read is not indispensably essential to books, nor being seen to sunsets: being an unread book or being an unwitnessed sunset involves no contradiction in terms. By contrast, however, with actual vagrancy epistemic inaccessibility is built into the specification at issue. Here we have

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predicates of such a sort that one can show on the basis of general principles that there must be items to which they apply, while nevertheless one can also establish that no such items can ever be concretely identified.5 The existence of vagrant predicates shows that applicability and instantiability do not amount to the same thing. By definition, vagrant predicates will be applicable: there indeed are items to which they apply. However, this circumstance will always have to be something that must be claimed on the basis of general principles, doing so by means of concretely identified instances is, by hypothesis, infeasible. While vagrant predicates are by nature noninstantiable, we can nevertheless use them to individuate items that we can never identify. For instance with regard to “the youngest unknown (i.e., never-to-be-identified) victim of the eruption of Krakatoa,” one can make various true claims about the so-individuated person—for example that he-or-she was alive at the time of Krakatoa’s eruption. One can certainly discuss that individual as such—that is, as an individual—even though, by hypothesis, we cannot manage to identify him. Predicative vagrancy thus reinforces the distinction between mere individuation and actual identification and casts a deep shadow of doubt over Quine’s thesis that “to be is to be identifiable.”6 If F is a variant predicate, then Fx has no true substitution instances: Fa is in fact false for every specifiable value of a. But nevertheless (∃x)Fx is going to be true. (The logic of vagrant predicates is emphatically not “intuitionistic,” and the substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers is certainly not going to work.) It will not have escaped the acute reader that all of the demonstrably unanswerable questions and unknowable facts at issue in the present discussion are such as to deal with issues of cognition and knowledge themselves. Clearly if—as indeed seems the case—this is the best that can be done in this direction, then an interesting conclusion follows, namely that unknowability automatically arises with the emergence of knowers. In a universe without them there could possibly be a total absence of inprinciple unknowable facts. But once finitely intelligent beings emerge in 5

Reference, to be sure, does not require identification. A uniquely characterizing description on the order of “the tallest person in the room” will single out a particular individual without specifically identifying him.

6

“To be is to be characterizable” is in a different boat. As the medievals said: Nitul sunt nullae proprietates: Whatever there is must have some characteristic or other—albeit not necessarily one that we cannot manage to specify.

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the world, unanswerable questions and unknowable facts emerge inexorably in their wake. All of those vagrant predicates involve some limitation of knowledge. For an omniscient God, the phenomenon of vagrancy vanishes. But we, of course, cannot claim to be in this position. 4. THE ROLE OF NUMERICAL DISPARITY IN VALIDATING CLAIMS OF INAPPLICABILITY: THE MUSICAL CHAIRS PERPLEX But how can the idea of vagrancy ever take hold? What is the rhyme and reason for the unknowability that arises here? A key instrumentality at work is what may be called the Musical Chairs Principle. For consider the game of that name. There will here be no player who is inherently unseatable: individually considered: any player could be seated. But matters stand otherwise collectively. It is not possible—and impossible as a matter of necessity—that every player can be seated. While seatability is distributively universal among the individuals involved, the collective inevitability of unseated individuals is inescapable. Consider a more interesting example of this sort of situation. There are infinitely many positive integers. But our planet has a beginning and end in time and its overall history has room for only a finite number of intelligent earthlings, each of whom can only make specific mention of a finite number of integers within their finite lifespan. (They can, of course, refer to the set of integers at large via generalizations, but they can only take note of a finite number of them individually and specifically.) As far as we humans are concerned, there will accordingly be some ever-unmentioned, everunconsidered integersindeed an infinite number of them. But clearly noone among us can give a specific example of this. Or consider yet another illustration. The inevitability of unproven facts in any axiomatic system of real-number arithmetic has been clear ever since the work of Georg Cantor in the nineteenth century. For consider: • The recursive nature of axiomatization means that the totality of theorems that can be proven in any formal axiomatized system is denumerable. • The real numbers are trans-denumberable.

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• Every real number has a characteristic identity, so that there is always some fact that holds for it alone. Accordingly, there are at least as many distinct arithmetical facts as there are real numbers. This situation of universal disparity obviously means that the totality of facts in real-number arithmetic can never be completely axiomatized— though, of course, the consequent unavoidability of ever-unproven facts in this domain does not entail the existence of unprovable ones. And the situation as regards the knowledge of facts at large is strictly analogous. Even if any and every fact were inherently knowable, the reality of unknown facts is nevertheless inevitable because there are more facts than can ever be stated. For here too there is a numerical discrepancy as per Musical Chairs. With finite knowers, the number of items that can be specifically and individually considered is finite. But the range of knowable fact is—so we cannot but suppose—infinite in scope. Clearly, the domain of fact-at-large extends beyond our horizons. Let us consider this state of affairs from the point of view afforded by language. 5. TRUTHS ARE ENUMERABLE When one construes the idea of an “alphabet” sufficiently broadly to include not only letters but symbols of various sorts, it transpires that any expression that can be formulated—and thus any contention that is stateable in a language—can be spelled out in print through the segmented combination of some finite register of symbols.7 And with a “language” construed as calling for development in the usual recursive manner, it ensues that the statements of a language can be enumerated in a vast listing— one that is a doubtless infinite but nevertheless ultimately countable listing. Moreover, since the languages that emerge in the cosmos, even if not finite in number, are nevertheless at most enumerable, it follows that the set of all statements—including every linguistically formulable proposition to the effect that something-or-other is so—will be at most enumerably infinite. For the reality of it is that a universe of granular atomic composition can—

7

Compare Philip Hugly and Charles Sayward, 'Can a Language Have Indenumerably Many Expressions?' History and Philosophy of Logic, Vol. 4, 1983.

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even if its history is infinite—encompass only at most countable number of language-deploying societies—and thus of languages. As a matter of principle, then, we have: The Enumerability of Statements. Statements (linguistically formulated propositions) are in principle enumerable and thus (at most) denumerably infinite. And therefore since truths (unlike facts) are bound to textuality and correspond to statements, it follows that truths cannot be more than countably infinite. And on this basis we have: The Denumerability of Truth. Even if the manifold of truth cannot be finitely inventoried, nevertheless, truths are no more than denumerably infinite in number. 6. TRUTHS VS. FACTS It serves the interests of clarity at this stage to heed the importance between truths and facts. Facts are states of affairs, constellations of objective conditions in the realm of reality. Truths, by contrast, are symbolically formulated facts, correct statements, which, as such, must be framed in language (broadly understood to include symbols systems of various sorts). A “truth” is something that has to be cast in linguistic/symbolic terms—the representation of a fact through its statement in some language, so that any correct statement formulates a truth. Facts and truths accordingly, belong to very different categories: objective arrangements and linguistic complexes. “But surely there is something awry here;” it might be objected, “Surely this linguistic view of truths is untenable because even if there were no languages—if the universe had evolved without intelligent creatures—then there would still be truths.” Well . . . yes and no. For one thing, verbalizing intelligence as such would actually not vanish, since we ourselves, who deliberate not in but about that depopulated world would still figure upon the scene. Moreover, there would certainly still be facts which, if (hypothetically) claimed as such in language, would lead to truth. But truths proper— along with claims, statements, and analogous verbalizations—would no longer be there, seeing that all this sort of thing is inherently languagecorrelative. But facts, on the other hand, would still be safe and secure. For

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a “fact” is not a linguistic item at all, but an actual aspect of the world’s state of affairs. A fact is thus a feature of reality.8 Facts correspond to potential truths whose actualization as such waits upon their appropriate linguistic embodiment. Truths are symbolically articulated statements and thereby language-bound, but facts are truth-makers that outrun linguistic limits. Once stated in some language, a fact yields a truth, but with facts at large there need in principle be no linguistic route to get from here to there. After all, reality, so we must suppose, is inexhaustibly complex, with its detail (as Leibniz called it) effectively unending. Thus while statements in general, and therefore true statements in particular, can be enumerated, so that truths are denumerable in number—there is no reason to suppose that the same will hold for facts. On the contrary, there is every reason to think that, reality being what it is, there will be an uncountably large manifold of facts. And so we also arrive at: The Inexhaustibility of Fact. Facts are infinite in number. The domain of fact is inexhaustible: there is no limit to facts about the real. What we come to here is, in effect, a metaphysical fact of life. For it is a reality has features beyond the range of our current cognitive reach—at any juncture whatsoever. The range of fact about anything real is effectively inexhaustible. There is, as best we can tell, no limit to the world’s everincreasing complexity that comes to view with our ever-increasing technologically mediated grasp of its detail. The realm of fact and reality is—so we must suppose—endlessly variegated and complex. And this of course means that facts will be nondenumerably infinite. any attempt to register-fact-as-a-whole will founder: the list is bound to be incomplete because there are facts about the list-as-a-whole which no single entry can encompass. (There will always be a fact about any set of facts that is not a member of that set itself.) We thus arrive at what is perhaps the principal thesis of these deliberations:There are quantitatively more facts than truths seeing that facts are too numerous for enumerabilty. 8

Our position thus takes no issue with P. F. Strawson's precept that “facts are what statements (when true) state.” (“Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 24, 1950, pp. 129-156; see p. 136.) Difficulty would ensue with Strawson's thesis only if an “only” were added.

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7. THE TRANSDENUMERABILITY OF FACTS. A brief excursion into ontology is needed at this point. For we can now take into view a very fundamental principle of ontology, namely: The Holistic Complexity of the Manifold of Individuals: For every set of objects (finite or infinite) there is at least one holistic (structurally geared) fact that can only be established by considering the individual and idiosyncratic details of every individual member of the set. There always is, that is to say, some detail about a whole that roots in and emerges from the detail of the totality of its parts. And this circumstance has far-reaching ramifications. For we know (via the Power Theorem of set theory due to Georg Cantor) that there will be an uncountably infinite number of subsets of any countably infinite number of items. Now if each of these subsets of an infinitely complex world’s objects gives rise to a fact uniquely characteristic of that particular subset set, and if the number of such subsets is more than countably infinite, then too must the number of facts be uncountably infinite. Other routes to this destination are also available. The idea of a complete listing of all the facts is manifestly impracticable on grounds of self-contradiction. For there will always be a fact about that list that is not a member of that list itself. This can be seen as follows: let f1, f2, . . . be the putative list at issue. And now consider the fact that: (∀i)fi is true By our hypothesis regarding the constitution of that list, this thesis states a fact. So where would it be in our suppositionally complete list? Suppose it were at the jth place. Then we would have to have it that Fj = (∀i)fi is true But this is impracticable because fj cannot both be its own fact and additionally a fact regarding the factability of other contentions. Again, consider the following statement. “The list F of stated facts fails to have this statement on it.” But now suppose this statement to be on the list. Then it clearly does not state a fact, so that the list is after all not a list

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of the facts (contrary to hypothesis). And so it must be left off the list. But then in consequence that list will not be complete since the statement is true. Facts, that is to say, can never be listed in toto because there will always be further facts—facts about the entire list itself—that a supposedly complete list could not manage to register. This conclusion can be rendered more graphic by the following considerations. Suppose that a certain list F: f1, f2, f3, … were to constitute a complete enumeration of all facts. And now consider the statement (Z) the list F of the form f1, f2, f3, … is an all-inclusive listing of facts. By hypothesis, this statement will present a fact. So if F is indeed a complete listing of all facts, then there will be an integer k such that Z = fk Accordingly, Z itself will occupy the k-the place on the F listing, so that: fk = the list L takes the form f1, f2, f3, . . . fk, . . . But this would require fk to be an expanded version of itself, which is absurd. With the k-th position of the F listing already occupied by fk we cannot also squeeze that complex fk-involving thesis into it. The point here is that any supposedly complete listing of facts f1, f2, f3 . . . will itself exhibit, as a whole, certain features that none of its individual members can encompass. Once those individual entries are fixed and the series is defined, there will be further facts about that series-as-a-whole that its members themselves cannot articulate. Moreover, the point at issue can also be made via an analogue of the diagonal argument that is standardly used to show that no list of real numbers can manage to include all of them, thereby establishing the transde-

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numerability of the reals. Let us begin by imagining a supposedly complete inventory of independent facts, using logic to streamline the purportedly complete listing into a condition of greater informative tidiness through the elimination of inferential redundancies so that every item adds some information to what has gone before. The argument for the transdenumerability of fact can now be developed as follows. Let us suppose (for the sake of reductio ad absurdum argumentation) that that aforementioned fi represents our (nonredundant but yet purportedly complete) listing of facts. Then by the supposition of factuality we have (∀i)fi. And further by the supposition of completeness we have it that (∀p)(p → (∃i)[(fi → p]) Moreover, by the aforementioned supposition of non-redundancy, each member of the sequence adds something quite new to what has gone before. (∀i)(∀j)[i < j → ~[(f1 & f2 & . . . & fi) → fj)] Consider now the following course of reasoning. (1) (∀i)fi

by “factuality”

(2) (∀j)fj → (∃i)(fi → (∀j)fj) from (1) by “completeness” via the substitution of (∀j)fj for p (3) (∃i)(fi → (∀j)fj)

from (1), (2)

But (3) contradicts non-redundancy. This reductio ad absurdum of our hypothesis indicates that the facts about any sufficiently complex object will necessarily be too numerous for complete enumeration. In such circumstances, no purportedly comprehensive listing of truths can actually manage to encompass all facts because any such listing will itself bring more facts into being.

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8. A SURFEIT OF FACTS As the preceding deliberations indicate, the domain of realitycharacterizing fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvas it completely. In the description of concrete particulars we are caught up in an inexhaustible detail: There are always bound to be more descriptive facts about the world’s real things than we are able to capture explicitly with our linguistic machinery. Given that concrete reality is—so we must suppose—endlessly complex, detailed, and diversified in its make-up, the limitedness of our recursively constituted linguistic resources means that our characterizations of the real will always fall short. This discrepancy between fact and truth is perhaps not as ominous as first thought suggests. To be sure it indicates that given the recursive nature of language, we can at most and at best deal with denumerably many possibilities in the specific/particular/ individualized mode of dealing with possibilia. But there is of course no comparable limitation as regards dealings in a generic/schematic, generalized mode. We can unproblematically 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. The situation at issue pivots on the distinction between particular facts that one specifically identifies as such, and the generic and group-coordinate facts to which one merely alludes with generality. To clarify the matter of the difference between mentioning specific real numbers such as ,2 or π, and alluding to real numbers at large via such statements as “For any real number x we have it that x + 1 = 1 + x,” or “some real number it represents the length of yonder rod (to the nearest millimeter).” Given the recursive nature of symbolism, only a denumerable number of reals can ever be specifically identified and individually considered. And facts are in exactly the same boat. As particular individual items with their characteristic identity we must deal with them via the descriptive resources of language. And here we are limited to the denumerable range of recursive mechanisms. But there is no reason whateverto think that facts as such will be denumerable. Given the recursive nature of language we can never deal specifically and individually with more than a denumberable infinite multitude of

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items. Linguistic expressability is limited to a denumerable range. Accordingly, we have it that 1. There is a uniquely characteristic fact about each and every individual object. 2. Linguistic expressability is limited to a denumerable range. 3. Various ranges of fact (those regarding the real numbers for one and most likely also the spatiotemporal loci of the cosmos) are transdenumerable in number. It then follows that there are inexpressible facts—facts about various kinds of things with respect to which the resources of language cannot possibly keep up. 9. MUSICAL CHAIRS It is instructive at this point to consider the analogy of the game of Musical Chairs. Of course any individual player can/might be seated. And the same goes for any team or group of them with one exception; namely the whole lot. But since the manifold of knowable truth is denumerable and the manifold of fact in toto is not, then (as in our Musical Chairs example) the range of the practicable will not, cannot encompass the whole. With regard to language too we once again confront a Musical Chairs situation. Conceivably, language-at-large might, in the abstract, manage to encompass nondenumerably many instances—particularly so if we indulge the prospect of idealization and resort to Bolzano’s Saetze an sich, Frege’s denkerlose Gedanken, and the like. But given the granular structure of a universe pervaded by atoms and molecules, only a denumerable number of language-using creatures can ever be squeezed into the fabric of the cosmos. And so the realistically practicable possibilities of available languages are at best denumberable. Even if there are no inherently unstatable or unknowable facts, nevertheless when reality and language play their game of Musical Chairs, some facts are bound to be left in the lurch when the music of language stops. The discrepancy manifests itself in the difference between any and every. Any candidate can possibly be accommodated. (We have (∀x)◊(∃y)Syx.) But it is not possible to accommodate every candidate. (We do not have

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◊(∀x)(∃y)Syx.) The limits of knowledge are thus in the final analysis quantitative. The crux of the problem is a discrepancy of numbers. They root in the Musical Chairs Perplex—in the fact that the realm of fact is too vast for the restrictive confines of propositionalized language. And this situation has important cognitive ramifications that are brought to view by the following line of thought: (1) Everything there is—(and indeed even presumably everything there possibly can be)—has an idiosyncratic property, some feature, no doubt complex and perhaps composite, that holds for it and it alone. (Metaphysical principle) (2) The possession of such a unique characteristic property cannot obtain in virtue of the fact that the item at issue is of a certain natural kind or generic type. It can only obtain in virtue of something appertaining to this item individually and specifically. (3) Accordingly, for anything whatsoever, there is a fact—viz., that that thing has that particular idiosyncratic property—that you can know only if you can individuate and specify that particular thing. (4) The inherent limitations of language mean that there are more things than it is possible to individuate and specify. The inevitability of unknown facts emerges at once from these considerations of general principle. The reality of it is that the domain of fact is ampler than that of truth so that language cannot capture the entirety of fact. We live in a world that is not digital but analogue and so the manifold of its states of affairs is simply too rich to be fully comprehended by our linguistically digital means.9 The domain of fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it,

9

Wittgenstein writes “logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world” (Tractatus, 6.13). This surely gets it wrong: logic is one instrumentality (among others) for organizing our thought about the world, and this thought is (as best and at most) a venture in describing or conceiving the world and its modus operandi in a way that—life being what it is—will inevitably be imperfect, and incomplete. And so any talk of mirroring is a totally unrealistic exaggeration here.

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and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvass it in overt detail. Truth is to fact what moving pictures are to reality—a merely discretized approximation. To be sure, the numerical discrepancy at issue with this Musical Chairs Perplex does no more than establish the existence of unknown facts. It does not go so far as to establish the existence of facts that are inherently unknowable and cannot, as a matter of principle, possibly be known. To see what can be done in this line one will have to look at matters in a different light. There clearly is, however, one fact that is inaccessible to language and thereby unknowable by creatures whose knowledge is confined to the linguistically formulatable. This is the grand mega-fact consisting of the conjoint amalgamation of all facts whatever. For language-dependent knowers can at most and at best have cognitive access to a denumerable number of facts, whereas factuality itself is bound to constitute a superdenumberable manifold. An important point is at issue here. With Musical Chairs we know that there will be someone unseated, but cannot (given the ordinary contingencies) manage to say who this will be. And with facts, which from a cognitive point of view reduplicate the Musical Chairs situation, we also cannot manage to say which facts will be unknown. For here too there is a lot of room for contingency. But there is one very big difference. With Musical Chairs the totality of individuals does not combine to form a single unseatable mega-individual. But the totality of facts—which cannot possibly be known—does indeed combine to form one grand unknowable megafact. So here indeed we have managed to individuate a particular unknowable fact, namely the all-encompassing megafact. But of course while we know that it is unknowable, we do not know what it is. We have individuated but not identified it. So here, as elsewhere, the details of out ignorance are hidden from our sight. Just what does this mean in the larger scheme of things? Wittgenstein’s Tractatus has it that: There are indeed facts that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (Tractatus, 6.5222.) There is no arguing with the first sentence here: there are doubtless more facts than can be verbalized. Given the limitations of language, there will of course be things that have to go unsaid so that fact outreaches truth.

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11.

DOES INCOMPLETENESS ENTAIL INCORRECTNESS?

The incompleteness of our knowledge does not, of course, ensure its involvement in incorrectness—after all, even a single isolated belief can represent a truth. But it does strongly invite it. For if our information about some object is incomplete then it is bound to be unrepresentative of the objective make up-as-a-whole so that a judgment regarding that object is liable to be false. The situation is akin to that depicted in John Godfrey Saxe’s splendid poem about “The Blind Men and the Elephant” which tells the story of certain blind sages, those Six men of Indostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the elephant, (Though all of them were blind). One sage touched the elephant’s “broad and sturdy side” and declared the beast to be “very like a wall.” The second, who had felt its tusk, announced the elephant to resemble a spear. The third, who took the elephant’s squirming trunk in his hands, compared it to a snake; while the fourth, who put his arm around the elephant’s knee, was sure that the animal resembled a tree. A flapping ear convinced another that the elephant had the form of a fan; while the sixth blind man thought that it had the form of a rope, since he had taken hold of the tail. And so these men of Indostan, Disputed loud and long; Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong: Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong. The lesson is clear. The incompleteness of object-descriptive statements certainly does not entail their incorrectness. However, the incompleteness of our information cannot but be presumed to carry incorrectness in its wake about things-at-large. At the level of generality, there are bound to be gaps that need filling in. And there simply are too many alternative ways in which reality can round out an incomplete account to warrant confidence in the exclusion of error.

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12.

CODA: AGAINST COGNITIVE NOMINALISM

Twentieth century philosophers of otherwise the most radically different orientation are agreed on prioritizing the role of language. “The limits of my language set the limits of my world” (Die Grenzen meiner Spache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt”) says the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus at 5.6. “There is nothing outside text” (Il n’y a pas de hors de texte”) say the devotees of French deconstructionism. But already centuries earlier Leibniz had taken the measure of this sort of textualism.10 For the reality of it is that if we are going to be realistic about it—in both the ordinary and the philosophical sense of this term—then we still have to resist the temptation of a nominalistic textualism. There is more to reality than can possibly be said about it. Philosophers since classical antiquity have been preoccupied with the beautiful, the good, and the true. And they long ago accustomed themselves to the idea that we humans are creatures of limited capacity with regard to the cultivation of beauty and of goodness. The key point of deliberations regarding the limits of knowledge is that in this regard too will truth stand alongside its partners in this classical triad. Granted, given the limitations of language, there will of course be things that have to go unsaid—facts regarding whose words literally fail us. But this itself affords no reason to join with Wittgenstein in characterizing this as “the mystical” (Tractatus, 6.522). For there is no assurance in our line of reasoning that the unsaid is going to be significantly different in kind from the things one can say, no reason need to see them as somehow strange and different—any more than those individuals who go unseated in Musical Chairs need be strange and different.11 What makes for the unsayability of

10

On Leibniz’s position see G. W. Leibniz: De l’horizon de la doctrine humaine, ed. by Michael Fichant (Paris: Vrin, 1991). The quotation is from a partial translation of Leibniz’s text in “Leibniz on the Limits of Human Knowledge,” by Philip Beeley, The Leibniz Review, vol. 13 (December 2003), pp. 93-97 (see p. 95). The relevant issues are analyzed in Nicholas Rescher, “Leibniz’s Quantitative Epistemology,” Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 37 (2005).

11

The mystics themselves do not disagree with this. The substance of their experience is, so they insist, something that is ineffable—something that a language attuned to the experiences of everyday life cannot come to grips with, so that the resources of ordinary discourse are inadequate to its characterization. Still, an impor-

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these unsaid things is not their inherent ineffability but merely that there just are too many of them. It is a matter not of their nature, but of their quantity. No doubt reality is stranger than we think. But the ground of this circumstance will ultimately lie in the nature of reality and not necessarily in the limitedness of language. 13.

POSTSCRIPT: A COGNITIVELY INDETERMINATE UNIVERSE

This brings our story regarding the limits of knowledge to an end. But by way of postscript it is instructive to consider one further important consequence of cognitive imperfection. Suppose that there are (fully) rational agents in the world. And here we shall prescind from the issue of whether these rational agents are or are not also free agents; all that matters for present purposes is that they be rational—i.e., that they make their decisions (when decide they must) in line with the optimal use of the information available to them. However, we shall also assume that our otherwise rational agents are imperfect intelligences for whom a great deal of information is pretty much off limits, and who simply have to respond with “I don’t have a clue” with respect to various eventuations. Now consider a rational albeit cognitively limited agent placed in a situation of choice between two alternatives in circumstances where this agent’s information is exactly and completely the same with respect to both. In this Buridan’s Ass-style situation of cognitive symmetry it transpires that however much or little the agent knows about each of the alternatives, what he knows about one is exactly the same as what is known about the other. More specifically, consider the situation of someone who must choose ODDS or EVENS in a game where the difference between a reward and a penalty turns on their “opponent” making the opposite choice. Since rational agents will (by definition) align their choice with the evidence and information at hand, the proceeding of such an agent is bound to be unpredictable. And of course when two rational agents are pitted against each other in such conditions of total informative symmetry, neither will be able to tell tant difference is at issue, seeing that the present argumentation takes the line of quantity where the mystics take that of quality.

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what the other will do. And, not less importantly, we ourselves as situation-external deservers will certainly not be able to tell what the two of them will do.12 Accordingly, it lies in the nature of things that a world with (fully) rational agents who at the same time are finite and imperfect knowers cannot possibly be (strongly) deterministic. For where the choices being made by agents are unpredictable, the physical phenomena correlative with the actions of such agents are bound to be unpredictable as well. Unpredictabiltiy is unavoidable here. It is widely maintained that there is a significant difference between indeterminacy that is “merely epistemic” and indeterminacy that is ontologically grounded in the reality of things. But the crux of the present deliberations is that in a realm of rational but cognitively limited agents cognitive indeterminacy entails ontological undeterminacy. And this conflict between rationality and determinism confronts us with a stark alternative. It means that in a world of finite knowers either we must abandon determinism or we must rule rational agency out of existence. For cognitive imperfection means that the universe itself is unpredictable. It is generally held that there is some sort of inherent conflict between determinism and free agency. But the present deliberations indicate that this is every bit as much the case with rational agency, be it free or not. Since mind and its operations are themselves an integral component of nature, unpredictability regarding the operations of mind is pretty much bound to engender a form of natural or physical unpredictability as well. And as long as cognitively imperfect rational agents continue to exist within it, a world will be unavoidably unpredictable and thereby not deterministic. The extinction of intelligent agents would be required to make a world with underinformed rational agents predictable. Put in a nutshell, the position of affairs is this. Since all of the doingsactual and potentialof intelligent agents are themselves a part or aspect of the constitution of the universe, then insofar as our cognitive doings are inherently impredictable, so also will this be the case with the cor12

36

But what if our indifferent agent delegates the selection at issue to some nonrational random device (a coin toss, say, or a random-number table)? Then (1) this device, if truly random, would itself introduce unpredictability into the world. But, more crucially yet, (2) no such delegation is possible because recourse to the device itself requires the antecedently random choice of outcome assignment to device performance. (Heads for YES, tails for NO, or odds for YES, evens for NO, and the like.)

LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

relative aspects of physical nature itself. To be sure, if our cognitive efforts stood outside nature, things might be different in this regard, since physical predictability might then be combined with a “merely epistemic” mental unpredictability. But this, of course, is a prospect that is implausible in the extreme. However, what we have on our hands here is the incompatability of rational agency and determinism. Admittedly, this is in itself a rather indefinite result. It does not determine what way to go. If you are a card-carrying determinist, you are free to reject rationality. If you accept the prospect of intelligent agency, you have to give up on determinism. You can have it either way—but not both ways at once.13

13

This chapter is based on an address given under the same title to the annual meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association in London, Ontario in May of 2005. It was originally published in H. B. Hansen and R. C. Pinto (eds.), Essays in Honor of Anthony Blair and Ralph Johnson (Windsor, Ontario, 2005).

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Appendix MORE ON NUMERICAL DISPARITIES AND THE MUSICAL CHAIRS PERPLEX ___________________________________________________ Display 1 NUMERICAL DISPARITIES VERBALIZATIONS OF AS MOST ENUMERABLE INFINITUDE

ONTOLOGICAL MANIFOLDS UNCOUNTABLE INFINITUDE

Names

— entities

Descriptions

— features

Rational numbers

— real numbers

Statements

— possibilities

Truths (true statements)

— facts

Thoughts (language formed)

— states of affairs

Differential equations

— processes

Measurements

— quantities

Distinguishable colors

— actual colors

Novels

— plots

Instructions

— actions

Explanations

— phenomena

Inferences — implications ___________________________________________________________

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Various cases of numerical disparity instantiating a situation of Musical Chairs Perplex are given in Display 1. Here the same quantitative discrepancy between the verbal and the ontological occurs throughout. In each case, the former is a verbalized indicator for the latter. And there just are not enough of the former to go around, so that there is a recurrence of the Musical Chairs situation touched upon above: any one of these “players” can find a seating accommodation in language, but not every one. The problem is that of deficient accommodation for an oversize group of candidates. The point overall is that the things we can accommodate and manipulate in our human representations are elements of a totality that is at most and at best denumerably infinite, whereas the reality that we address is (so we do and must suppose) of uncountably infinite complexity and detail. Seeing that reality is represented by the totality of fact, we have to acknowledge its being bound to exceed our efforts to domesticate it at in language. Its linguistic characterization is bound to be inexact and approximate. In effect we have to conduct our business of thinking by digital means within the setting of an analogue world. In particular, consider names. Of course everything is capable of being named. Nothing is name-resistant. We could (as someone has quipped) simply name everything Charlie? The real question is if everything could have a unique name characteristic of itself alone: an identifying name. Are there enough verbal/textual identifiers to go around? Can everything that has an identity be individuated by a verbalized formula? And the answer here is negative. Select any language you please—take your pick. As long as it is—like any other human language—produced recursively it will only have countably many expressions (words, sentences, texts). But we cannot but believe that the number of actual objects is transdenumerable: uncountably infinite. (Think of the real numbers for example.) So there just are not enough names for everything. In musical chairs not everybody gets to be seated. In reality not everything gets to be named. And so while nothing is name-resistant and everything is namable in the sense of admitting, in principle, of bearing a name, the possibility of realizing this prospect across the board—with everything whatsoever that there is bearing a name—is precluded by the general principles of the situation. Of course, matters would stand differently if we radically revised the concept of language as a manifold of objects rather than one of symbolic artifacts. For if we are prepared to countenance a thing language (rather than a word language) then we could adopt the rule that everything

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names itself. And then of course everything is named. But this sort of thing is clearly cheating. Substantially factual cognition that-p, being bound to real-life language, is digital and sequentially linear. Reality, by contrast, is analogue and replete with feed-back loops structured in nonsequentially systemic interrelations. It should thus not be seen as all that surprising that the two cannot be brought into smooth alignment. But of course the aspect of the situation that is paramount for present purposes is the inexorable discrepancy of numbers that obtains here. Things and names also engage in a game of Musical Chairs in a way that renders it unavoidable that some of the former must loose out.

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Chapter Three ON CONCEPTUAL CHANGE 1. HEGEL VS PLATO

P

lato’s conception of the domain of thought envisioned a manifold of ideas that are fixed and unchanging—exempt from the mortality that afflicts everything in the domain of nature. By contrast, the Hegelian view of concepts and ideas saw them as human artifacts, historical products that constantly mutate to accommodate themselves to ever-changing historical setting in which they must function as resources of human thought. To all appearances the historical realities speak on behalf of the latter, Hegelian perspective. Consider just a few examples. Anaximander of Miletus regarded of the moon not as a planet but as a hole in the firmament through which one saw the great cosmic fire beyond. Aristotle thought of a star as a font of luminosity affixed to a grand cosmic sphere. Newton viewed gravitation as a power of attraction exercised by material objects, rather than as an Einsteinean deflection in the shape of space caused by material masses. Along such lines, all of our ideas of things seem to be subject to alteration and development in the light of ongoing inquiry and increasing information. And for Hegel, the structure and content of thought were coordinate correlatives, much as is the case with scientific taxonomy in biology or chemistry. On this basis Hegel rejected the Kantian doctrine of categories, for as he saw it, the categories of thought are revisable with the development of knowledge in the light of expanding experience. Where Kant regarded the categories as fixed preconditions for objective knowledge, Hegel saw them as changing products emergent from the progress of knowledge itself. Profound though it is, the Hegelian position seems to emerge from a rather straightforward line of argument:

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• Concepts stand coordinate with beliefs • Beliefs change with cognitive progress over the course of time Ergo: Concepts change with cognitive progress over the course of time This eminently plausible reasoning appears to validate seeing change as pervasive throughout the realm of our ideas and conceptions of things. Accordingly, Hegel clearly defeats Plato. Or does he? For the Hegelian vision does have its difficulties. To see this clearly we must look back to certain basic considerations regarding the foundation and function of concepts. For one thing, the preceding argument involves a substantial oversimplification. This comes to view against the background of the following apory: (1) Words are to be defined by what logicians call a “contextual definition”: their meaning is determined via the statements in which they figure that are accepted as true. (2) Statements are analytic when their truth obtains on logico-conceptual grounds alone—which is to say, on the basis of the meanings of the terms involved. (3) Some true statements are not analytic: their truth roots in other than logico-conceptual considerations. The collective inconsistency of this triad of seemingly plausible contentions means that there is a problem here. If concepts obtain their meaning via true statements, then the contentual substance of a meaningful statement stands coordinate with its truth and thereby all statements will become analytic. And this just is not acceptable. So (3) can stay but something has to go with (1)-(2). The issue of what comes first—the chicken of meaning or the egg of truth—has to be resolved one way or the other in a way that leaves room for contingent truth. The most promising way out of this difficulty lies in rejecting (1). It is not the totality of its coordinate family of true statements that determines the meaning of a concept, but merely the truth of a core in-group of concept-determinative statements. The issue-relevant truths thus divide

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into two sectors, namely an analytic in-group and out-group of clearly synthetic (non-analytic) statements, both being sufficiently large and diversified as to preclude ready surveyability. And moreover there will in general be no clear line of division between the two groups but rather a region of fuzzy indeterminacy. So only some truths about the matter will have an operative role with regard to meaning determination. And as concerns the question of which ones, issues of meaning will have to be in the driver’s seat. 2. THE WAY OF CONCEPTS Let us then return to square one. What are concepts and what do they do? In addressing this issue it is instructive to see concepts in a decidedly instrumental light and thereby exploit the analogy of machines. On this basis concepts come to be regarded as instruments and instrumentalities: tools and machines for formulating and processing information. This analogy can serve us to good effect. For actual machines are devised for the accomplishment of a variety of fundamental tasks: cutting, smoothing, joining, gearing, etc. And while our means for accomplishing these tasks change and (generally) improve over time, the tasks themselves remain fixed. No matter how differently we bake bread or coin coins from the way in which Romans did—the processual function at issue—making coinage—is one and the same. And exactly the same story holds with respect to our conceptual machinery. No matter how our concepts alter (and hopefully improve) over time in the wake of cognitive progress, their instrumental functioning in terms of the sorts of tasks at issue— distinguishing, explaining, identifying, inferring, counting, etc.—remain the same. There is no question that in general our substantive concepts change and the procedural mode of their communicative manipulation changes with them. But the ways we operate with them in functional concepts that characterize the teleology of the conceptual enterprise with regard to its cognitive products making assertions, presenting descriptions raising questions—and the like—remains one and the same. Operation varies but function remains stable. Regarded in this perspective, concepts represent the machinery of thought, constituting instrumentalities for the formulation of ideas and the processing of information. And here, as elsewhere, there are not just ordinary machines, but also machine tools—machines used in the manufacture of machines. In the case of concepts these machines tools are,

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first and foremost, afforded as by the “formalistic” mechanisms of language, logic, and mathematics as used in articulating propositions and in specifying relationships among them. Now even as actual machines—machine tools included—are subject to the forces of change and grow more sophisticated, diverse and powerful in the course of progress over time, so this too is the case with our conceptual machinery. But at this point something very important has to be recognized, namely the distinction between process and function. Machines in general create a product by means of a process of some sort (both of which generally alter and improve over time). But the functions that are at issue can and often do stay stable and invariant. For even when one changes the ways of doing something, the something that is being done may well remain the same. (The time indication once handled as per “three of the clock” is now elided to “three o’clock.”) At the functional level of governing teleology there is fixity and stability—timetelling in the present example—gets handled by very different means as processes develop over the course of the ages. And so, generic function is one thing and specific process another. The former is fixed but the latter historically variable. That we eat is a constant, but what and how and when is changeable. And this sort of thing holds itself across the board. Thus the issues that preoccupy us in medicine (injuries, debilities, aches and pains, etc.) are the same throughout the history of the field, but how one addresses them is changeable. And this purposive fixity and stability also carries over to the functionalistic concepts by whose means that level of basic teleology is itself conceptualized. So here the Platonic vision of changeless concepts, Ideas with a capital I, comes into play. At the purposive level of the governing conceptual functions (stating, distinguishing, explaining, qualifiying, etc.) there is the invariant stability of fixed ideas. The aims at issue with conceptual manipulations remains fixed irrespective of the changes in modus operandi. The tools change but the purposive function at issue remains invariant. We interpret Biblical texts differently from the way it was done in the days of Maimonides and handle their translation differently from the way it was done in the days of King James. But the functions at issue—text interpretation and text translation—are essentially still the same. And at the higher levels that characterizer the project at issue there is functional constancy and invariance across changing conditions. It should be noted and indeed stressed that these functional concepts relate to the purposive

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teleology of what we do. They are the stable machine tools we use in producing more transiting concepts. And this reference to our doings of things embed them firmly within the stagesetting of this world of ours. There is nothing other-worldly, nothing detached and heaven-bound about these functional conceptions. And this circumstance is crucial for the scorekeeping as between Plato and Hegel. For what we appear to have here is Platonic fixity within Hegelian historicity. In particular, we do not load our everyday-life empirical terms with the full freight of their theoretic-technical and scientific involvements. and this renders them substantially immune against cognitive progress and sometimes altogether inert. For example, Aristotle did not understand the concepts of hand or tree differently from ourselves, despite all the intervening changes in informed opinion about the biological nature and natural history of such basic sortalizations. Hegel was right in this, that all our ideas and concepts are products of human minds operating within the order of time and history. But once a functional concept is full-formed, its place in the order of ideas is immortally fixed. Here Plato is right—not because such ideas are timelessly transcendent, but because once they are made, then at that point their temporality has no further bearing. Admittedly, concepts, like tools, are man-made artifacts. We produce them and do not discover them through intellectual intuition into some world-separate realm of Platonic ideas. But though we make them, we do not have any power over how they work. We can abandon and replace those factual concepts, but we can not change them. 3. CONCEPTUAL CHANGE Conceptual necessity is a very real and significant phenomenon but by its very nature depends on and inheres in how our concepts work, which itself is ultimately a contingent matter, seeing that how we use concepts is a contingent fact. But there is nothing contingent about how this usage must properly function once those concepts are in place. After those concepts have been (contingently) made there is no further contingency in their conceptual interrelationships. At that point necessity takes over and comes into its own. How we shape the ideas of “square” and “circle” is up to us. But once they are in place we cannot have a circle exhibit four sides and manage to be more similar to a square than to an oval. Whether and how we make

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hammers and screwdrivers is up to us, but once made they have a life of their own: you cannot make a hammer do the work of a screwdriver or vice versa. And the same with concepts. Concepts are like children: Once born, they take on a life of their own. To be sure, concepts change. We understand something very different by an “element” then did the ancient Greeks. We understand a “greeting” differently from the Wazonga of Ubba-tubba. But of course even as we can understand one another amongst ourselves, so if we put enough effort into it can we understand them. And that understanding, insofar as correct, is going to be a timeless fact geared to stable underlying functionalities. That understanding was, of course produced in time (along with everything else that ever gets produced). But the fact of its temporal production does not mean that it is temporally conditioned. Once a conceptual relationship is there—once one realized that by “moon” Anaximander did NOT mean “a large rock-like agglomeration of matter circulating about the Earth as a satellite”—then this is fixed in place with timeless rigidity as always and everlastingly true. In the end, the issue of how our once-formed ideas and conceptions interrelate is something that belongs to an essentially timeless order of conceptual interrelation. Here the structure of an abstract logico-conceptual correlation is determinative. We are now indeed in a realm of considerations that are Platonically extra temporal—not because they are extra-mundane but just because temporal issues have no further relevancy. For with a formed and established concept the desires, wishes, and thoughts of the concept-maker are no longer relevant. Once a concept is there, its relationships to other pre-existing ideas is going to be determined in the abstract order of concept-connections. And this being so, the artifice at issue does not countervail against fixity. 4. SCIENCE VS COMMON SENSE The contrast between the world-view of science and that of common sense repays revisiting in regard to this matter of durability. For it brings to light the comparative fixity of the cruder concepts of everyday life. Increased confidence in the correctness of our judgments 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

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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.) in the other hand. Now the exactness of technical scientific claims makes them especially vulnerable, notwithstanding our most elaborate efforts at their testing and substantiation. Science declares not merely that roughly such-and-such occurs in roughly certain circumstances, but exactly what happens in exactly what circumstances. In science detail is everything: here we always aim at the maximum of universality, precision, exactness, etc. The lawclaims of science are strict—wholly explicit, precise, exceptionless, and unshaded. They involve no hedging, fuzziness, or incompleteness. In making the scientific assertion that “the melting point of lead is 327. 7°C”, we mean to assert that all pieces of (pure) lead will unfailingly melt at exactly this temperature. We certainly do not mean to assert that most pieces of (pure) lead will probably melt at somewhere around this temperature. In natural science we deliberately court risk by aiming at maximal detail definiteness, and thus at maximal informativeness and testability. Aristotle’s view that science deals with what happens ordinarily and “in the normal course of things” has long ago been left by the wayside. The theories of modern natural science take no notice of what happens usually 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 circumstances. And in consequence we have no choice but to accept the vulnerability of our scientific statements relative to the operation of the security/definiteness trade-off. Its cultivation of informativeness (definiteness of information) entails the risk of error in science; its claims are subject to great insecurity. And for this very reason frontier theories of natural science have a relatively short half-life. By contrast when in ordinary life we assert claims like that “peaches are delicious” we are as maintaining 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 such as

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“more or less,” “in ordinary circumstances,” “by and large,” “normally,” “if all things are equal,” and so on. They are not really universal laws at all, but rather rules of thumb, a matter of practical lore rather than scientific rigor. This, however, enables them to achieve great security. For there is safety in vagueness: a factual claim can always acquire security through inexactness. Take “there are rocks in the world” or “dogs can bark”. It is virtually absurd to characterize such everyday-life contentions as fallible. Their security lies in their indefiniteness or looseness—it is unrealistic and perverse to characterize such common-life claims as “defeasible.” They say so little that it is “unthinkable” that contentions such as these would be overthrown. Their indefiniteness assures their security—and their stability as well. The salient point is this. Conceptual instability results from fine-grained detail. And just this is missing when functions are at issues—because functions are by nature generic, open ended, broadly inclusive. Where we insist upon exactness and detail for cognitive commitment—our concepts are unstable. Where we prioritize stability and fixity (as in everyday life) we settle for imprecision. And where we propose to deal at the functional level with the fundamentals of human practical and intellectual purpose (such as eating and dressing, explaining and describing) we accept a looseness and generality that effectively obliterates difference in time and culture. Plato saw his stable Ideas as fixed and experientially transcendental, located outside of the Heraclitean flux and change of the historical process of the world. Hegel, by contrast, saw conceptual mechanisms as everchanging and inextricably caught up in the ebb and flow of world-history. But in this regard the present analysis will have to score the contest as a draw. Its view of the stability within history of the wider, functionally governed concept of everyday life, in comparison to the more detailed nature of technical concepts we do well to award one point each for and one point each against the fundamental positions of Plato and Hegel, and see the contest between them as pretty much of a stand-off.

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Chapter Four POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM (AN ESSAY IN 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, with entity and nonentity, what is actually real and what is merely possible. However the present discussion will focus specifically upon this last item, the ontology of possibility. The real (and the real alone!) is accessible to experience—to observation and other ways of interacting causally with ourselves. Reality stands correlative to the domain of fact-oriented inquiry. Our cognitive dealings with it are rooted in our experiential encounters. The actual world is that 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. By contrast, our cognitive dealings with the domain of the merely possible are a matter of unfettered thought—of imaginatively freefloating 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 fancy—to supposition, hypothesis, and speculation. How, then, are we to regard the realm of irreality and non-being? Here the present discussion takes an approach that deserves the name

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.

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“actualism”2 in that it sees any and all identifiable possibilities as coordinate with what is accessible in theory to intelligences existing in the actual world.3 It is a doctrine that grounds the ontology of possibility at large within the domain of specifically epistemological possibility, coordinating all possible objects with possible object-conceptualizations. On such a view, only identifiable existents have being in their own right, all else is in some way or other a product or feature of the capacities and operations of the real. The principle at issue here is in the final analysis the rational economy of the Occamist idea that avoidable complications are to be avoided. Paying the ontological cost (as one recent writer puts it4) of accrediting mere possibles as somehow existing (or even merely “subsisting”) objects of some sort is accordingly something to be avoided insofar as practicable. On such a view 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. 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 need not and should 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 2

See Armstrong 1989. The term was used by him in characterizing the position of Adams 1974. (See the appended bibliography for such references.)

3

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.

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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 actualitynecessitarianism nowise follows the abandonment of nonexistent worlds. For to reject nonexistent alternative worlds is emphatically not to reject unrealized alternative possibilities: it is merely to deny that explicating alternativity to how things stand in the world (this real and actual one!) requires recourse to alternative nonexistent worlds. It commits the Fallacy of Improper Locationism by insisting that other possibilities be placed sometimes, viz., in other worlds, instead of seeing possibilities, as simply locationless, like other abstractions such as numbers, statements, and worries. 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. It is certainly not the case that alternative possibilities (de dicto) are inseparable from alternative possibilia (de re). Possible states are here to stay but merely possible individuals are something else again. It is, after all, plausible to hold, with the author of the Critique of Pure Reason, 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, and rejects the hypostatization of possibilities as a step that is advantageous alike on ground of intelligibility and rational economy. It is, or should be, clear that a statement like • There might have been fewer kangaroos. does not 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. 5

Adams 1974, p. 201.

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but rather to • This world of ours might somehow produce 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. need not and should not be construed as • There indeed 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. In all such cases one can refer directly to the possibilities at issue rather than bringing in as such the possibilia that they purport to involve. 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 their characterizing properties by 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 persons (Julius Caesar) or physical objects (Mt. Everest) or this world (Mundus) or such concrete of abstract artifacts as the Eiffel Tower of Shakespeare’s Hamlet). 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).

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Such a strategy of 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, 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 that make suppositions by means of concepts available to them. However here “devisable” must be construed generally in terms of the capacities and capabilities that are in principle and in theory at the disposition of actual minds. • 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. If confines our modal horizons to de dicto possibilities and propose to get by with this for all purposes— practical and theoretical alike. To be sure, there is—and is bound to be—a vast gap between possibilities of which we can and do conceive, individually and specifically, and those that could in principle be at our disposal. Of course those theoretically “available” ampler conceptual resources lie outside the manifold of practicability for us. They relate to an ampler domain of what one could realize in principle, but not realize in practice. The distinction at issue marks the significant difference between effective conceivability and conceivability-in-principle. But either way, it sees the conceivability of possibilities as the crux of the matter. 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].”6 6

Rescher 1974, p. 197.

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On such a view, then, possibilities are unproblematically acceptable but possibilia are not. 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 following claim (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. And, 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. 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 foot their claims to qualify as such. It is important to note, however, that this approach does not 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,

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no earthly reason why one cannot discuss nonexistent objects and talk as though they were real. Talk is cheap!—we can talk as though anything is the 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. 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 occurs here is not reference but mere pseudoreference. The crux 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. Accordingly, the rejection of merely possible worlds nowise precludes 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, or worlds. 2. POSSIBILITY CONCEPTUALISM The presently advocated modal conceptualism rests on two theses:

7

•

There just are (be it exist or “subsist”) no possibilia, no de re possibles—merely possible objects, individuals, or worlds. Instead, all that “there are” (in any ontologically geared sense of this term) are de dicto possibilitites.7

•

These 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. For possibilities to be is to be conceivable. Their mind-dependence is thus less ontological and performatory than conceptual and potentialistic.

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

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What we thus have is, in effect, a reductive theory of possibility that reduces possibility-in-general to what minds could (in principle or theory) manage to do. Accordingly, 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: their being is a matter of being available as conceptual constructions. Possibility conceptualism envisions a critical difference between possible-world descriptions and possible world-descriptions and endorses only the latter idea. A cynic might thus perhaps 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 president-biographer and a defunct-president biographer. At this point, however, 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 mindcorrelative in a way that incurs that there are no unthinkable-of possibilities. Mere inexistent possibilities are not existentially minddependent by way of a dependency upon what actual minds actually do. But 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. A modal conceptualism of this sort thus represents a middle way intermediate between two alternatives: •

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Realism. Unrealized possibilities (de re) exist—or, rather, subsist as possibilia (possible objects, individuals, and worlds) that function—

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in and of themselves, in a realm wholly separate from and independent of human thought and language.8 •

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.9

Both of these views have problems. Realism, despite its name, is not particularly realistic in its problematic commitment to the reality of unreals. Its ontological profligacy is its undoing. 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.10 In the end, the fatal flaw of possibilia—of merely possible objects, 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.11 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. 8

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

9

Carnap 1947.

10

See A Theory of Possibility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), Imagining Irreality (Chicago: Carus Publishing Co., 2003), and Conditionals (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). See also John Divers “Agnosticism About Other Worlds” A New Antirealist Program me in Modality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 69 (2004), pp. 660-85.

11

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

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Nominalism, on the other hand, ties matters too closely to the world’s contingent realities. After all, 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. And so, 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. Accordingly, what is clearly needed is a middle way between these two unsustainable extremes. Here 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.12 In this regard, however, the presently contemplated conceptualism is less radical not less restrictive. It does not confine its horizons to what actuals are and do, but allows an ampler recourse to what can in theory be done. 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 12

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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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but) conceivable. Accordingly, modal conceptualism takes logicoconceptual tenability as the crux of possibility, coordinating possibility with cogent and coherent thinkability. Taking a conceptualistic position does not, of course, mean that if mindendowed beings had not evolved, there would be no possibilities. Such causal dependency is not at issue. Rather, those inexistent possibilities are conceptually mind dependent in that the very meaning of the ideas relate to what minds can in principle do—namely, think about them.13 And so, when one commentator writes that “Rescher’s emphasis on the discussable, rather than the discussed, does not give his position only a “fairly realistic coloration: it gives his position a thoroughly saturated realistic hue,”14 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 mindgeared discussability rather than to an ontology of quasi-substantial 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. In telegraphic outline, then, the possibility conceptualism being advocated here takes the following position overall: 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). 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. 13

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

14

Bradley, 1992, p. 197.

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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 outright construction. 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) themselves correspond to possible descriptive performances of actual intelligences). These theses instantiate the position of possibility conceptualism, sometimes also referred to as modal conceptualism. On this approach, concrete substances and worlds in effect disappear without trace, and all that remains in being is the Cheshire cat smile of certain abstacta, viz., propositions. But what of the alternatives? 3. DISPENSING WITH POSSIBILIA Many contemporary theorists in the fields of semantics, logic, and metaphysics are deeply attached to possible worlds and individuals. They see such things as useful, nay virtually indispensable, resources 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 accepting something on the order the contention (C) ~(∃x)◊Fx & ◊(∃x)Fx to the effect: “While it is indeed possible that something should F, nevertheless there is nothing actual that possibly Fs” or equivalently: “A

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feature that everything actual necessarily lacks might nevertheless be exhibited by something.” But appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, even this does not require that there be anything subsisting or quasiexisting that realized the possibility at issue. The possibility of an F just does not require the quasi-being of 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 (as the Bibliography shows) devoted several books. What will be undertaken here is something far more modest, namely to describe how a theory of possibility that confines its horizons to de dicto possibility can be constituted, and set out what a plausible version of such a theory would look like, and to show that it is able to accommodate the necessary work. 4. ON THE LOGIC OF POSSIBILITY At the root of any logico-conceptual construal of possibility (◊) lies the idea that there are no merely possible worlds as such, but rather mere (incomplete) state-of-affairs characterization descriptions. For such a contention p to be meaningfully comprehensible 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 comes to ~├ ~p, where ├ represents logico-conceptual demonstrability. Against this background, then, the present approach proposes to explicate and analyze propositional possibility at large in terms of what is or is not logicoconceptually demonstrable. Such an approach effectively coordinates a proposition’s possibility (de dicto) with the nonrealizability 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. One critic of this sort of 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.15 Granted, 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 (or is) round and that it looks (or is) square is an absurdity. The issue, in sum, is one of logico-conceptual incongruity.16 On this basis, then, 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.) 15

Bradley, p. 195.

16

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 possible-world semanticists who, like Adams 1979 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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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 establishment 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 nonoccurrence of E-lessness is certain does not render it (logico-conceptually) necessary. Certainty and necessity are decidedly different things. 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. Now it has been urged as a fatal objection to the coordination of possibility with demonstrability that Kurt Gödel has shown that arithmetical truths (which, as such, are of course necessary) are not all demonstrable, so that we become enmeshed in a contradiction as between on the one hand (∀t)□t and so (∀t)├ t, where t ranges over arithmetical truths and on the other the Gödelian result: (G) ~[(∀t)├ t] However this objection is predicated on a 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

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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 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 provable 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 mode of thesis establishment that is larger/wider/ampler than ╞ itself, 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 for Gödel’s argument to succeed the truth-establishing demonstration at issue with ├ must transcend the axiomatic provability at issue with the recursive/effective demonstrability of ╞. A larger sort of logico-conceptual demonstration that reaches beyond mathematical provability is of the essence here. 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 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 example 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.17

17

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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. The pitchedness of audible sound and the non-redness of green does not lie in this (or any other) world’s arrangements but in the concepts at issue. We would not—and coherently could not—characterize as green something we deemed to be red or as a sound something to which we deemed any and all pitch. And the inpracticabilities as issue here lie in the ground rules of language rather than in the nature of reality’s make-up. The exclusion of greenness by redness or the exclusion of pitchlessness by tonality does not really have any de re foundation in the nature of things (objects) at all, but is 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 one another. The issue—surely—is one of the de dicto incongruity of making of incompatible attributions, rather than one of the de re constitution of things and kinds of things. 5. OVERCOMING THE INSUFFICIENCY OBJECTION But does possibility conceptualism not 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 discourse works. But as long as the language one uses is developed recursively—as all languages are—there will never be more than denumerably many things one can possibly express. And this limits the whole range of the sayable/thinkable to a denumerable magnitude. 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

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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 at the generic level the consideration of possibilities is not restricted to denumerability by the recursive limitations of language. We can allude to nondenumerable totalities generically and collectively even though we cannot discuss them specifically and distinctively. 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.18

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., “Modal Fictionalism: A Reply to Rosen,” Mind, vol. 102 (1993), pp. 14750. 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. 18

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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: Some Further Problems,” Analysis, vol. 57 (1997), pp. 415-29. 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). Linsky, Bernard, Review of Chihara 1998. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 63 (2001), pp. 483-86. Loux, Michael, The Actual and the Possible: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979).

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Nicholas Rescher • Collected Papers IV 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, 1950, 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. Stalnaker, Robert, “Possible Worlds,” Noûs vol. 10, (1976), pp. 65-75; rptd. in Loux (1979), pp. 225-34 and in a somewhat expanded version as chapter 9 of Laurence & MacDonald (1998), pp. 103-16. ———, “Possible Worlds and Situations,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 15 (1986), pp. 109-123.

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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 Five THE FALLACY OF RESPECT NEGLECT 1. RESPECT NEGLECT

T

he error at issue with what is here characterized as The Fallacy of Respect Neglect is particularly common among philosophers. It is, moreover, a prominent instance of the broader Fallacy of Illicit Amalgamation which consists in treating as a single uniform phenomenon something that in fact involves a diversified plurality of separate issues. Specifically, respect neglect has the form of treating a feature F as an unified property that things do or do not have, where in fact F is a matter of various respects, so that things can have F in one respect and lack it in another. There are many instances of this sort of mis-reasoning, for example in relation to the simplicity of scientific theories, the preferability of objects of choice, the goodness of persons, the fairness of decision processes, and many others. The common practice among philosophers notwithstanding, any attempt to treat these matters in a uniformly synoptic way is bound to come to grief. Clearly some features of things are monolithic and categorical, a matter of yes/no and on/off. And act is either legal or not, a task either feasible or not. But, equally clearly, this is not always the situation that prevails. Many features disaggregate into respects. Now when features do have respects, then some of them are maxirespectival: To have F at all you must have it in all respects: if something fails to be F in even a single respect, then it is not F at all. Perfection is like that, as is the justice of an action—or its legality or its honesty or its courtesy. Other features are mini-perspectival: To have F it suffices to have it in some respects: if something has F in even a single respect, then it has F flat-out. Imperfection and injustice are like that, as is the ineptness of an act or its foolishness. Now when dealing with features that are maxi-perspectival or in ascribing features that are mini-perspectival, one can give respects a short

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shift since here differences of respect do not afford an overall case verdict. But of course not all features will be like that; for example, astuteness is not, nor is generosity—one can be generous with one’s time but penurious with one’s cash. In such cases, differences in respect will matter greatly. And the fallacy of respect-neglect can then arise in ways that can do damage to a philosophical position. Let us consider some examples. 2. SIMPLICITY Simplicity has certainly played a prominent role in twentieth century philosophy of science—especially in methodologically geared discussions of inductive reasoning. From C. S. Peirce to Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach and beyond, philosophers of science have seen the simplicity of theories as a key factor in favor of their acceptability. All the same, it is clear on even casual inspection that the idea of simplicity in relation to theories splits apart into a proliferation of respects: • expressive simplicity: syntactical economy in the machinery of formulation. • conceptual simplicity: semantical economy of exposition, avoidance of complex ideas and presuppositions that require elaborate explanation. • instrumental simplicity: in terms of the amount of mathematical apparatus needed for formulating the theory (mere algebra, calculus, complex function theory, etc.) • computational simplicity: how easy it is to compute results and outcomes by use of the theory, • pedagogical simplicity: how easy it is to teach the theory and to learn it. The salient point is that we here encounter a diversified manifold of perspectives of consideration from which one theory can be seen as simpler than another. And these different modes of simplicity are not necessarily harmonious. They need not go hand in hand and can in fact, come into disagreement.

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Consider an analogy: the simplicity of automobiles. One can be simpler than another in point of: • being easier to manufacture • being easier to maintain • being easier to start • being easier to drive And these can and actually do conflict with one another. A car that is easier/simpler to manufacture is not necessarily one that is easier/simpler to drive. Moreover, even these factors themselves proliferate further. The “easier to drive” will split apart into “in dry conditions,” “in wet conditions,” “on smooth and well maintained roads,” etc. With automobiles simplicity is critically respectival. And the simplicity of theories is in much the same boat. What is simplest to teach need not be easiest for implementation and so on. To say that one object—be it a theory, an auto, an action, idea, belief, or whatever—is simpler than another is perfectly proper and meaningful—but only when one indicates some very specific particular respect or aspect. Here one cannot appropriately speak of simplicity tout court. Failing to acknowledge that simplicity is subject to fission into a plurality of respects that may potentially even be at odds with one another is exactly what is at issue in succumbing the Fallacy of Respect Neglect. The fallacy of respect neglect leads straightaway to a cognate philosophical pitfall, that of what might be called a desideratum perplex. This arises when things can be desirable in many different respects which unfortunately, however, cannot all be combined at once, even as a house that is large enough for extensive entertaining will not be small enough for ease and economy in matters of cleaning and maintenance. And just the same sort of situation is going to obtain in the case of such concepts as similarity or preferability or the like. All of them dissolve into a plurality of respects which will themselves have yet further respects. And—most relevantly for our present purposes—this is going to hold for simplicity as well. For most any respect-involving notion like those just mentioned is going to be inherently diversified, subject to different aspects that cannot simply be forced together in smooth coordination because in such cases

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there will always be trade-offs where more of one of them will be obtainable only at the price of less of another. And whenever internal diversity creates tensions of this sort an insuperable obstacle stands in the way of amalgamation even as the inner tension among the various rational aspects of simplicity precludes one thing’s being simpler than another in every potentially relevant respect. There will be no way of fusing the different aspects into one unified overall result. For seeing that the simplicity—in our present case—is inherently respect-localized it fails to admit a global, symphatically unified version. There will be simplicity (or preferability, or similarity, etc.) in this or that respect, but no such thing as an all-in, unrestrictedly global realization of the idea. It would be futile to seek to avert this fallacy by seeking to have it that real simplicity is a matter of being simpler in every respect, so that differences become sidelined. But this is decidedly impracticable. For whenever different respects are mutually conflicting—as in the case of simplicity—there will be no workable way of taking this step. And this situation is only too common. 3. FURTHER EXAMPLES OF RESPECT NEGLECT Political theorists of democratic inclination have often maintained that in matters of social decision the preferability of alternatives is to be decided by the respective preferential choices of separate individuals. Philosophers of science maintain that in matters of theory choice the overall preferability of alternatives is to be decided by the explanatory capacity of theories. But the reality of it is that the separate aspects at issue just do not combine into one single overall result. Take something as simple as a house. Clearly one dwelling may be superior to another in part of location, roominess, circulation, solidity, etc. And there is no way of effecting an all-embracing overall amalgamation of these factors. And this sort of situation obtains all across the landscape. Take equality—another theme that is currently popular with political theorists. Equality can be a matter of opportunity, of rights, of access, of regard, of treatment, of shares in the distribution of goods and bads, etc. And here too there can be conflicts. In giving each holder of a lottery ticket an equal chance at the whole prize we preclude their sharing it equally. For consider another example. Hermeneutic theorists occasionally embark on the quest for “the correct” interpretation. But clearly the real

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question is not “Is there a single right interpretation?” as per a recent book of that title.1 For to ask if there is one single right interpretation (of a literary or philosophical text, a painting, etc.) is to invite the Fallacy of Respect Neglect. After all, interpretations can be superior to one another in terms of faithfulness to an originator’s intention, of consonance to the context of their origin, of conformity to the traditions at issue, of the significance of the lessons they convey, etc. To pose a genuinely meaningful question one would have to ask “Is there one single interpretation that is optimal in a certain particular specified respect.” And here the correct answer is that rather uninteresting response—sometimes Yes and sometimes No. After all, that original question is muddled through the fact that interpretations have different aspects, different respects. Interpretation can be geared to the intentions of the author, to the general understandings and expectations of the audience, to the issue of utility for our own problems, and so on. And it is effectively impossible—in principle as in practice—that one single interpretation should be correct or optimal in every respect. Such deliberations point to a general conclusion. Committing the Fallacy to Respect Neglect invites the unhappy consequences of confusion if not outright self-contradiction in the treatment of the relevant issues. And this is not only in the case of these particular issues that presently primarily concerns us—such as simplicity and preferabiltiy—but is a whole host of other cases as will (similarity, utility, predictability, importance, testability, etc.). 4. PERSPECTIVAL DISSONANCE AND NON-AMALGAMATION In situations of respect neglect, the realities of the situation block the prospect of integrative fusion, of overall unification. And there are various vivid illustrations of this in various philosophically significant contexts. One of them arises in relation with what is called the “Arrow Paradox” in matters of economic rationality. In his Nobel prizewinning work on the 1950’s, Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that in their pursuit of economic optimality, the afficionados of preference-based welfare economics stood committed to a manifold of idealized desiderata which (in the very logic of the situation) just were not conjointly satisfiable. So here too is no prospect 1

Is There a Single Right Interpretation?, ed. by Michael Krausz (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

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of amalgamating aspects. In this regard the Arrow paradox is particularly significant because its analysis of preference is an object lesson in respect neglect. For different perspectives on a common issue are, in effect, voters each stating their own personalized preferences and in the circumstances there may well be no coherent way to combine this into an overall preferability.2 And so in such instances there is, it can cogently be argued, no such thing as an all-in, everything considered mode of simplicity, utility, etc. any more than there is a cogently unified conception of all-in preferability. All such issues are never absolute but merely respectival and dissolve into incoherence in the wake of a pervasive aspectalism. Again, a further illustration of this phenomenon roots in what might be called Milnor’s Paradox in the theory of economic rationality. When an individual faces problems of choice in conditions of uncertainty, there are various standards of rational choice, each looking to the matter from the angle of a different aspect of desirability. But as John Milnor showed in 1954, a conjoint realization of these different aspects of desirability is a logico-mathematical impossibility.3 It might be thought that an amalgamative fusion of perspectives might be the cure for respect-proliferation. It is not. Thus suppose some good or bad is to be allocated among several equally deserving parties. Then there is • fairness of opportunity • fairness of result • fairness of process But there are problems here. For consider, in point of result it seems unfair to allocate the entire item to X rather than Y, yet if this was determined by the toss of a coin then there was fairness of opportunity. On the other hand, if the good was divisible and could have been shared out in equal portions then it was processualy unfair to allocate it by lot. But of course the case of 2

See Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choices and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1963).

3

On these issues see Paul Diesing, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Aldine, 1982), pp. 44-47.

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indivisible goods shows that one cannot regard (categorical) fairness as simply a of being fair in every respect, seeing that here realizing fairness is one respect may preclude the prospect of realizing it in another. Whenever a positivity—such as that of simplicity or economy or convenience—fissions into a plurality of different respects or aspects, these will often, and perhaps even generally, prove to be combination-resistant. Consider an illustration. Ease and convenience in the context of food management is clearly something that is subject to respect-proliferation: • easier to produce • easier to prepare • easier to digest • easier to acquire A food that is easy to prepare for eating (e.g., a ripe banana)—will not be easier to come by if we don’t live in a banana-growing region. A food may well need more complicated preparation (e.g., cooking) if it is to be easier to digest, etc. there is no way in which one food can be easier overall than another because the various respects of ease may be—and indeed are—in conflict with one another. 5. RESPECTIVAL PROBLEMS OF ANALOGY Philosophical expositions frequently resort to analogies to make their points (exactly as has repeatedly been done here). But this proceeding very much requires due caution. Analogies are based on similarity, and similarity, like simplicity is inherently perspectival. Even as there is no overall, bottom-line, all-in simplicity, so too is this the case with similarity. And this means that analogy must always be used with caution, with due care has to be exercised to assure that the particular respect in which the analogy obtains constitutes a saliently relevant factor as regards the particular conclusions that is being drawn. Respect neglect represents one of these cases where the standard distinction between errors of omission and error commission does not apply because here both sorts of error are inseparably interlocked. To neglect respectival differences is obviously to err by omission. But of

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course in committing this error we concurrently open a door to the error of treating as one homogeneous unit things or phenomena that actually differ in significant ways, that an error of commission will arise as well. 6. SUMMARY The fallaciousness of respect neglect roots in the fact that we cannot in general make categoricals out of respectivals. A sentence may be awkward in the this or that respect but it cannot be unrestrictedly awkward. A tool may be useful in this or that respect, but it cannot be unqualifiedly useful. And even so, one thing can be simpler than another only in this or that respect, but not only will not but cannot be categorically (unrestrictedly, unqualifiedly, and unavoidably) simple. To seek unity in such respectively differentiated matters is to enter upon a Quixotic quest. The long and short of it is that respect neglect is an ominous pitfall in philosophical deliberations. And unfortunately a very grave one. After all, no fault and flaw is more ominous in philosophy than falling into selfcontradiction. And when matters stand one way when something obtains in one respect but not in another, then (as Aristotle already insisted4) in neglecting respects and riding roughshod over the differences involved, we all too readily fall into contradiction, thereby becoming unable to do that to which philosophers must always aspire: talking good sense.5

4

Aristotle, Metaphysics III, 296b 28ff; On Interpretation VI, 17a33ff. On the issues see R. M. Dancy, Sense and Contradiction: A Study in Aristotle (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975).

5

This chapter is a slightly revised version of my “Respect Neglect,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 70 (2005).

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Chapter Six ON DISTINCTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 1. HOW DISTINCTIONS WORK: SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

I

n noting that cognition is re-cognition, psychologists have long stressed the pervasive role of distinctions in human cognition. In the nineteenth century, Alexander Bain proclaimed in his “Law of Relativity” (actually, “Law of Contrast” would have been much better) to the effect that all awareness—all human consciousness and thought—consists in the noting of differences, with the concepts at issue in distinctions providing the requisite instrumentalities.1 However, it is specifically the role of distinction in philosophy that will be the focus of concern in the present discussion. Distinctions are concepts used to effect a descriptive division among items in line with real or perceived significant differences among them. Accordingly, a truly meaningful distinction should not merely reflect a difference but a real or genuine difference: in the language of Plato’s Phaedrus and Sophist, a distinction (dihairesis) should “cut nature at its joints.” Medieval thinkers were extensively preoccupied with distinctions concerning distinctions. In particular, the distinction between real or substantive distinctions and the merely conceptual distinctions imposed by ways of thinking and talking—the so called rational distinctions—became increasingly prominent, particularly in the wake of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. On its basis, the distinction between the long days of summer and the short days of winter is real—encorporated in the solar system’s modus operandi. But the distinction between holy days and

1

See Alexander Bain, Mental Science, (1868; reptd. New York: Arno Press, 1973), Vol. 2, pp. 82ff, and compare William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1890), pp. 242 ff.

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ordinary days is purely conceptual—inherent not in the phenomena themselves but only in the ways people think and act about them. Ideally a distinction would thus reflect a significant contrast in how matters work in the scheme of things—in the operational or functional nature of the items at issue. In the scholastic terminology still used by Francisco Suarez (d. 1617), it should be real (distinctio realis) rather than merely mental (distinctio rationis), representing a difference in the things themselves rather than merely in how we think and talk about them. On this basis Suarez contemplated three principal types of distinctions. 1. real distinctions that hold between substantial things independently of the mind’s activity. (The distinction, say, between our two ears.) 2. distinctions of reason that hinge on the perspective that a mind takes upon things are a bit necessarily wishing a difference in the things as such that are at issue. (The distinction, say, between Socrates as the master of Plato and as the historian of Xantippe.) 3. modal distinctions that hold between a substantial thing and some real item whose being consists entirely in encompassing in it. (The distinction, say, between the trinity and its three persons.) As Suarez saw, distinctions will always come into operation when there is at least the prospect of separation; for “if two things are actually separated in such a way that one continues in existence but the other does not, they must be at least modally distinct.”2 Now going beyond Suarez, it is worth noting that fundamentally there are two sorts of distinctions identifying distinctions and classifying distinctions. Identifying distinctions are those that dichotomously distinguish the X’s from the non-X’s. Classifying distinctions are those that sortally distinguish the X’s from the Y’s (and possibly from the Z’s and W’s as well.) Classifying distinctions presuppose identifying distinctions. For if we cannot even identify the X’s by distinguishing them from the non-X’s, we obviously cannot confidently hope to be successful in distinguishing the X’s from the Y’s. 2

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ON DISTINCTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY

From a logical point of view, distinctions are closely bound up with generalizations. For one thing, to succeed in counterdistinguishing the X’s from the Y’s we must have it that “All X’s are non-Y’s” (and conversely). Moreover, there is no point to and no prospect of a generalization of the form “All X’s are Y’s” if we cannot distinguish the X’s from the non-X’s or the Y’s from the non-Y’s. The Aristotelian categories, for example, that differentiate the sorts of question one can raise about things (What? When? Where? Why?, etc.), will only make sense if we have the means for distinguishing one relevant type (e. g., when-questions) from the rest. In view of their dichotomous nature, identifying distinctions are synoptic thanks to their aspiration to exhaustiveness: with respect to such a distinction, an item, whatever it be, is either an X or a non-X. However, classificatory distinctions are generally drawn with respect to a limited range of objects. Even so basic a distinction as animal/vegetable/mineral is drawn only with respect to physical objects: numbers say, or colors do not fall within its scope. But only rarely are classificatory distinctions synoptic; that is, drawn with respect to things or items in general, irrespective of kind. In general, classification proceeds by kinds. The identifying distinction between X’s and the non-X’s can accomplish its intended work in being smoothly and unproblematically applicable only when the world is duly cooperative. The essentially ontological requirement that is at issue here means that the X’s constitute a natural kind in that nature affords a descriptively determinate manifold of items, a natural category as it were, to which the X’s belong. A proper distinction must have a rationale to provide appropriate ground for the distinction, traditionally characterized as its basis, its fundamantum divisionis. A meaningful distinction can only be drawn with regard to some respect (even as sameness—the opposite of difference—is differentiated in point of respect as per “the same age” or “the same shape”). Thus we can draw distinctions between, say, animals in point of construction (backbone or non-backbone), in point of habitat (wild or domesticated), in point of diet (meat-eating or non-carnivorous), in point of use (beast of burden), etc. To be sure, the domain of a distinction, its range of intended applicability, comes to play a key role here. With respect to colors, for example, it is crucial to distinguish green from non-green. But in distinguishing materials there is little point in insisting on distinguishing the green from the non-green: classing green objects together—frogs, lawns, unripe apples, etc.—would be a pointless exercise.

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In this context, one particularly important distinction was initiated by the philosophers of ancient Greece, who divided the range of fact into two components: those that obtain by nature (phusis) and those that obtain by convention (nomos). And this classical distinction between facts in general bears specifically upon distinctions as well. Their being drawn by people is a matter of artifice, of convention with respect to some purpose or other. But their efficacy for the purpose at hand is an objective, naturedetermined fact that exerts the objective impetus of quality control over our conventional proceedings. The later medieval philosophers exfoliated elaborate classificatory schemes regarding distinction and revelled in drawing ever more complex distinctions between distinctions of different sorts. And the scholastic theory of distinctions was taken over into the Renaissance neo-scholastian and figures significantly in such philosophers as Descartes and Spinoza.3 Leibniz with his Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles taught that the items are different when they cannot be intersubstituted—that is, cannot be interchanges in our claims without sometimes affecting their truth status (salva veritate).4 But this idea that items are different when different things can be said about them needs to be qualified and sophisticated. For when mere thought-distinctions are at issue in modal claims regarding the same object, this claim is falsified. Take Frege’s example: Venus the Morning Star is also the Evening Star as well. But while “The Morning Star is necessarily the Morning Star” is clearly true, “The Morning Star is necessarily the Evening Star” is not. And when “John liked thinking about the Morning Star” is true, “John liked things about the Evening Star” may not be. There is no distinction of reals here, but the mere mode of reference effects a distinction of reason. 2. HOW DISTINCTIONS CAN FAIL In drawing distinctions, we confront the fact that whenever the phenomena reflect a continuous series of shadings, any point of division is 3

See, for example, René Descartes, Principia philosophiae, I 60ff.

4

On Leibniz’s views on distinctions see Stafano DiBella, “Mullun interest inter terminus et res: On Leibniz’s Theory of Distinctions,” in M. Carrear, A. M. Nunzcante, and G. Tomasi (eds.), Individuals, Minds and Bodies: Theories from Leibniz (Munchen: Franz Steuer Verlag, 2004), pp. 15-47.

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bound to be arbitrary, failing to provide for the clear separateness needed for effective distinctions. Furniture ages one day at a time, so when does it begin to be “antique”? A person ages and develops one year at a time, so when does he suitably develop to qualify as being “of age” in point of maturity for marriage or for voting. An aggregation of grains of sand grows one grain at a time, so when does it qualify as constituting “a heap”? Just this phenomenon of continuity engenders difficulty for distinctions thanks to what might be called applicative variability. After all, one individual is mature at age twelve while another fails to be so at twentyfour. One individual is an old man at fifty while another is quite spry and youthful at seventy. In such cases there is no natural line of separation, no clearly appropriate way of effecting distinctions. Here nature just does not afford convenient joints for our distinctions to cut. All the same, a society must often make artificially separating determinations in the interests of an efficient and effective conduct of its business. For reasons of administrative convenience it must resolve by the artifice of lawful fiat that which nature does not decide in a natural and principled way. Voting age, drinking age, age of consent for contracts or for marriage, and the like, all effect an essentially Procrustean determination that determines by conventional fiat that which nature leaves undetermined. So here distinctions are defective because they do not strictly abide by the rules. In general, distinctions can fail either through formal flaws of definition or through material flaws of application. With distinctions, as with so much else, it is possible to fall into error. Ideally, of course, we seek lawless distinctions to do our work. But in philosophy there are real problems here. This important circumstance invites closer inspection. Formal flaws of definition arise when the very meaning of what is involved in being an X is indecisively determined and the concept itself fails to be well-defined. The principal flaws of this sort are imprecision, nonexclusivity and nonexhausitiveness. They arise as follows: FORMAL FLAWS OF DISTINCTION • Imprecision: An attempt to distinguish X’s from other items is bound to fail when the X’s are not delineated with precision. For example, a distinction between fated and non-fated occurrences or between usual and unusual occurrences will be virtually useless until such

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time (if ever) when the conditions of being fated or of being usual are appropriately specified. • Nonexclusivity. The classifactory distinction between X’s and Y’s is nonexclusive when there are items that are—or seem to be—both X’s and Y’s. Thus the distinction between sea-creatures and mammals is vitiated by the existence of whales which are both. The very fact of nonexclusiveness shows that the distinction is flawed in failing to “cut nature at the joints.” • Nonexhaustiveness. Classifictory distinctions can also fail through lack of exhaustiveness. For example, the distinction between random and lawfully necessitated occurrences is nonexhaustive because occurrences that are governed by probabilistic laws are neither lawfully necessitated nor random. The distinction between works of fact vs. fiction is vitiated by works that purport to be factual but have substantial fictional components or vice versa. By contrast, the material flaws of distinction in point of applicability are mainly three: vacuity, triviality, and pointlessness. They arise as follows: MATERIAL FLAWS OF DISTINCTION • Vacuity. The distinction between X’s and non-X’s—or between X’s and Y’s—fails in point of applicability when there just are no clearly identifiable X’s so that the group is vacuous. For example, the distinction between spectral and substantial beings or between witches and non-witches. • Triviality. A distinction between X’s and Y’s is trivial if there just are no substantially significant differences between the two. When this happens and whatever differences there are are insignificant, then the distinction is also said to be “merely virtual,” “quibbling,” and, more picturesquely, “pettifogging.” • Pointlessness. A distinction between the X’s and Y’s is pointless when even though there is some notable difference between the two, this difference serves no further explanatory or instructive function (as, for example, the contrast between days whose dates are prime

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number and those that are not). Such a distinction has no larger implications in point of cognitive utility. There is a significant difference in color between red things and green things (between tomatoes and sunsets on the one hand and lawns and unripe apples on the other). But no further purpose is served by drawing this distinction which lumps together objects that have no further significant features in common. Occam’s razor had it that “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity: entia non praeter necessitatem multiplicanda sunt.” And just this also obtains for distinctions. Distinguishing is a rational project, and our distinction must have an ultimately magnetic rationale: we should only distinguish where it makes a difference. Distinguishing is only a meaningful measure where a significant context-relevant advantage results. The lack of functional utility typified by pointlessness is among the principal ways in which distinctions can fail. 3. MISASSIMILATION While distinctions can establish errors of commission through being flawed and inappropriate, there is also the other side of the coin—the errors of omission arising through a failure to draw appropriate distinctions in not discriminating between things that are significantly distinct. This sort of error of putting together things that should be kept apart is generally characterized as confusion or conflation. What then occurs is a fallacy of misassimilation—of running together things that should be kept apart. This of course is one of the gravest errors that can be made in regard to distinctions. To misassimilate is to ignore a necessary distinction by unifying into a single item (kind, entity, process, idea, or whatever) things that are different in kind and distinct in character, treating significantly distinct things uniformly in riding roughshod over significant differences. Misassimilation is an invitation to error. For it underwrote the mistaken idea that a uniform account—a monolithic analysis or explanation—is possible where quite different situations actually prevail. We become enmeshed in a confusion—a mistaking of what is a mere analogy or a mere similarity as a ground for claiming an identity of nature. A fallacy is then at issue because one is led to say of one thing what only holds for another.

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To assimilate—to co-sortalize under one common rubric—is to presuppose the idea of significant commonalities, of a sameness or identity of condition. And when there is mis-assimilation this requisite is simply not fulfilled because critical distinctions have been overlooked or neglected. In clarifying this idea it helps to think of what is going on here as a kind of cognitive myopia. Thus someone who is unable to distinguish (say on an eye chart) between E and H might as a result of this visual deficiency impose a spurious order on the random series EHEEHHHEH... by seeing this as EHEHEHEHEH... Or conversely he might inadvertently impose upon an orderly series of the latter sort the randomness reflected in the former. Cognitive myopia, just like visual myopia, can create confusion. Mis-assimilation occurs when things that are distinct become confused with one another. In particular, at the conceptual level at issue in philosophical deliberations misassimilation can result whenever there is in fact insufficient discrimination between distinct concepts or ideas. Specifically, this will result where • there is only an imperfect analogy among the items at issue that is insufficient to warrant their assimilation. • there is only a family resemblance among the items at issue rather than a pervasive unity of aspect. • the coordination between the items at issue is the product of mere connection rather than an uniformity of nature. Uniformity of treatment is appropriate only where there is a uniformity of nature—a functional sameness based on an uniformity (isomorphism) of comportment or constitution. When this fails, uniformity is simply an optical illusion and misassimulation links together items that are fundamentally disparate. Such misassimilation emerges the deeply

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mistaken idea that in the case at hand a one-size-fits-all account is practicable. Regrettably this sort of thing occurs all too often in philosophy. One instance relates to the idea of causality. Many philosophers talk as though “X causes Y” would be accommodated through a uniform explanatory account, perhaps along the lines of “X happened in the wake of Y and without Y’s happening, X would not have happened.” But a myriad of scenarios can be constituted that would falsify this. (Example: “The dropping of water from the trees during the rainstorm cause he patio to get wet.”) The idea of causality is just too many sided for any one account to hold good. There is, after all, • The causality of physical process. (The sunshine caused the water to evaporate.) • The causality of psychological reaction (“The insult caused his cheeks to flush.) • The causality of intention. (The dog’s growling brought the cat to stop in her tracks.) • The causality of problematic connection. (His drinking caused the chances of an accident to increase.) There are just too many fundamentally different ways in which one process or level or state can be bound up with various results for any single account of causation to be viable across the board. That one word “cause” is simply too flexible and versatile for one single uniform account of its modus operandi to be viable. Another noteworthy example lies in the tendency of philosophers to operate with the putatively dichotomous distinction between concreta like tables and chairs and abstracta like numbers and shapes. It would, however, be far more appropriate to operate with the fourfold distinction based on the following schema regarding the status of items:

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Particular Placement in Space?

Specific Beginning in Time

Status of the Issue

yes yes no no

yes no yes no

concreta aeternata typica abstracta

On this basis, concretes (concreta) would be objects such as rocks, tables, and electrons that do or can have a placement in the world’s spatiotemporal scheme of things. Eternals (aeternata) could be those aspects of physical reality which, like nature’s fundamental laws and fields, exist throughout time but have no particular position in space but are (at best) seen as allpervasive. Type-kinds (typica) would be items which—like the letter A, the Roman numeral III, the word dog, or Shakespeare’s play Hamlet— have no position in space but do originate in the course of time. Finally, abstracts (abstracta) would be items like the number three or the color blue that in and of themselves lie entirely outside the spatiotemporal realm (although they may be instantiated within it.) The obvious and significant consequence of such a more elaborate (and realistic) form-part classification lies in its implicit denial that a dichotomy is at issue here. After all, that something is not concrete does not mean that it is abstract, nor does not being abstract make something concrete. In this context to dichotomize is not just oversimplify but to distort gravely a complex reality. Typica occupy a halfway house with respect to temptuality. Like concreta they have an origination in time. But like aetermata they are never-ending and immortal: once there they are there forever. This situation is illustrated by such items as ideas, plots, poems, and mathematical theorems. What about facts? What is their status? It all depends. Facts regarding abstracta—such as the arithmetical fact that 2 + 2 = 4—are themselves abstacta. But facts about concreta—e.g., that I was born on a Sunday—are typica. (That instanced fact does not antedate me: but once there it is there for good.) The idea of knowledge affords another example of a problematic philosophical integration that invites misassimilation. To begin with, there is the obvious distinction between performative how-to knowledge (how to open a can with a can-opener; how to hit a backhand in tennis) and factual

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knowledge (that Paris is the capital of France; that the Empire State building has more than 60 floors). But even with just the latter there are problems. Various theorists to the contrary notwithstanding, there just is no one uniform account to explain “X knows that p,” which, after all, could be used for any one of the following sorts of things (among various others): • Would answer affirmatively if asked “Is p the case?” • Is likely to think p to be the case if and when appropriate occasions arise. • Will, when duly stimulated entertain thoughts from which p can be derived (or from which it readily follows). Misassimilation generally comes into play via a problematic synthesis that inheres in speaking of “the X” where what is actually at issue is a complex and diversified plurality. Thus it makes no sense in philosophy to ask for “the rationale of morality” or “the meaning of life” this is to get the discussion off to a wrong start from the outset by prejudging the issue via a problematic presumption of uniformity. All the same, we encounter in contemporary philosophy a widespread proliferation of “the”—locutions. “The sceptic maintains X,” “The empiricists holds Y,” etc. There is a plethora of sceptical and empirical positions, and only some of them maintain X or hold Y. The flaw of insufficient specificity manifested in such locutions is yet another way in which the fallacy of misassimilation arises. To be sure, it is understandable why misassimilation should occur in cases of the preceding kinds, seeing that what is at issue instantiates the grammatical phenomenon of polysemy that occurs when a single word is asked to do considerable variety of (generally interrelated) jobs. But understandability does not constitute validation. 4. APORIES AND THE ROLE OF DISTINCTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY Distinction is a prime instrument of damage control in philosophy. For this enterprise aspires to answer “the big questions” regarding the place of man in the world’s scheme of things. And in doing so it begins by framing its questions in the ordinary concepts of everyday communication. In view of this, it is only reasonable and proper to provide answers within the same

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conceptual framework seeing that those answers (if answers they are) must address those questions. But here the difficulty begins. For reality’s complexity is such that we are never able to achieve a perfect fit with everyday language because the world’s phenomena are so complex and variegated that there will always be problem cases that just do not fit smoothly into the concepts and patterns that characterize the general run of things. And so in their striving for generality, the claims of philosophy are virtually always over-generalizations involving a certain amount of oversimplification. And whenever “All X’s are Y’s” is an oversimplification, then it will transpire that some X’s—certain extra-ordinary ones—will not be Y’s. And when such cases come to view an inconsistency is bound to result. And now dialectic comes into it. Restoring consistency among incompatible beliefs calls for abandoning some of them as they stand. However, philosophers resist consistencyrestoration with the brute force of outright rejection. When a philosophically plausible contention runs into problems through the emergence of counterexamples, philosophers generally will not simply abandon their theories. Rather, they have recourse to modification, replacing the problematic thesis with a duly qualified revision thereof. They salvage their theses by introducing distinctions. The history of philosophy is shot through with distinctions introduced to avert the aporetic difficulties inherent in oversimplification. Already in the dialogues of Plato, the first systematic writings in philosophy, we encounter distinctions at every turn. In Book I of Plato’s Republic, for example, Socrates’ interlocutor quickly falls into the following apory: (1) Rational people always pursue their own interests. (2) Nothing that is in a person’s interest can be disadvantageous to him. (3) Even rational people sometimes do things that prove disadvantageous. The evident inconsistency that arises here was averted by distinguishing between two senses of the “interests” of a person—namely the real and the apparent, what is actually advantageous to the individual and what he merely thinks to be so. Again, in the discussion of “nonbeing” in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic stranger entraps Socrates in an inconsistency from which he endeavors to extricate himself by distinguishing “nonbeing” in

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the sense of not existing at all from not existing in a certain mode, that is , between absolute and sortal nonexistence. Throughout, the Platonic dialogues present a dramatic unfolding of one distinction after another in this sort of way. Again, there is a potential conflict between the socio-political requirements of welfare utilitarianism and those of a doctrine of individual rights. The former calls for measures serving the greatest good of the greatest number (“the public good”) and the latter for respecting the fundamental rights of individuals. Yet on occasion the best interests of many will call for riding roughshod over the just claims and rights of a few. Reconciling matters here calls for introducing distinctions. For instance, we might now no longer measure the good of individuals in terms of a materialistic “standard of living” but look also to the quality of life in a larger sense which includes living in a society that respects individual rights and secures the legitimate claims of individuals. Distinctions enable philosophers to remove problems of inconsistency not just by the brute negativism of thesis abandonment, but rather by revising an untenable thesis into something positive that does the job better. For they are the instruments we use in the (potentially never-ending) work of rescuing our assertoric commitments from inconsistency while yet salvaging what we can. By way of example, consider the following aporetic cluster of individually tempting but collectively inconsistent theses: (1) All events are caused. (2) If an action issues from free choice, then it is causally unconstrained. (3) Free will exists—people can and do make and act upon free choices. Clearly one way to exit from inconsistency is simply to abandon thesis (2). We might well, however, do this not via the qualification of way of outright abandonment but rather by speaking of the “causally unconstrained” only in Spinoza’s manner of externally originating causality. For consider the result of deploying a distinction that divides the second premise into two parts: (2.1) Actions based on free choice are unconstrained by external causes.

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(2.2) Actions based on free choice are unconstrained by internal causes. Once (2) is so divided, the initial inconsistent triad (1)-(3) give way to the quartet (1), (2.1), (2.2), (3). But we can resolve this aporetic cluster by rejecting (2.2) while yet retaining (2.1)—thus in effect replacing (2) by a weakened version. Such recourse to a distinction—here that between internal and external causes—makes it possible to avert the aporetic inconsistency and does so in a way that minimally disrupts the plausibility situation. And this is typical in philosophy. For whenever aportetic inconsistency breaks out, one can in theory manage to salvage one’s philosophical commitments by complicating them, by making revisions in the light of appropriate distinctions, rather than abandoning them altogether. To be sure, distinctions are not needed if all that concerns us is averting inconsistency; simple thesis abandonment, mere refusal to assert, will suffice for that end. But such sceptical refrainings leave us empty handed. And it is here that distinctions come to the rescue. For rather than abandonment, distinction provides for a mere concession that preserves some element of acceptability in the thesis that is being rejected. However, distinctions are always complications that bring new concepts upon the stage of consideration and thus put a new topic on the agenda. And they thereby present invitations to carry the discussion further, opening up new issues that were heretofore inaccessible. Distinctions are the doors through which philosophy continually moves on to new questions and problems. The natural dialectic of problem solving here drives us even more deeply into drawing distinctions, and in the course of doing so managing to bring new, more sophisticated concepts upon the scene. 5. HOW PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTIONS CAN FAIL In philosophical contexts our distinctions frequently fail us in the end because the issues of this domain are so vast, far reaching, and convoluted that even our most sophisticated explanatory generalizations are actually over-generalizations.5 The scale of philosophy’s explanatory ambitions are

5

“[Language embodies] the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men. But then, that acumen has been concentrated primarily upon the practical business of life. If a distinction works well for practical purposes in ordinary life

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such that overstatement—untenable overgeneralization—is not just common but virtually unavoidable. With frustrating regularity, our contention in this field eventually come to require qualification and refinement. For the sake of promoting clarity, philosophers often introduce distinctions that sunder in theory what the contingent arrangements of this world (as we see them) have in fact conjoined. However, this produces not insight but problems. For when we set facts aside, the concept at issue itself disintegrates in a destructive fission. For in the end the only rigid regularities in human affairs are those that are superimposed in a Procrustean manner upon the complex variations and fluctuations of human affairs. When is a person mature enough to enter into contracts, to vote for candidates for public office, to drive an automobile? In point of fact and reality it all depends—some are ready at thirteen others just barely at thirty. But administrative convenience impels the artifice of law to fix on particular age here, be it 18 or 21 or 25. The distinctiveness of things at the level of social complexity fails to provide for neat distinctions so that the only regularities are conventional regularities, and the only effective distinctions are those that are to some extent arbitrary and conventional. However, in matters of philosophy, where conceptual diversity and complication also prevail, such artificiality is not at our disposal. At the level of substantial complexity at which we operate throughout the realm of human affairs we do not, cannot achieve the systemic uniformity of lawful process required for surgically elegant distinctions. 6. THE SHIFT TO STANDARDISM The difficulty for philosophy is that its issues arise in the setting of ordinary-language usage that is attuned to the prosaic, workaday practicalities of everyday life and not to the universalizing requirements of a theorizing enterprise. The variety of its phenomena and the complexity of its issues means that no matter how far we go in philosophy in trying to explain, to specify, to qualify, we all too generally manage only to decrease difficulties, but not to eliminate them. Reality proves is be too diverse to (no mean feat, for even ordinary life is full of hard cases), then there is sure to be something in it, it will not mark nothing; yet this is likely enough not to be the best way of arranging things if our interests are more extensive or intellectual than the ordinary.” (J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers [Oxford, 1961], p. 133.)

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admit of conceptual tiredness. The processes of exposition never achieve the idealized maximum of conceptional clarity. Problems, puzzles, perplexities arise at every stage and—try as we will—they can never be eliminated altogether. The contradictions to which this leads feed the engines of philosophizing. In the endeavor to do this work properly, philosophers are constantly constrained to make rough-approximation statements—“promise breaking is morally wrong,” for example—indulging in (over-) generalizations that eventually need further qualification and amendment since what is claimed is not strictly and unexceptionably so (here, in certain cases of incapacity or of conflicts of duty), but will at best represent how matters stand in the normal course of things. Standardism has its basis in the fact that exact and rigidly universal generalizations cannot meet the needs of the situation. As noted above, distinctions are correlative with universal generalizations. If the X’s are to be distinguished from the Y’s then we must have it that: All X’s are non-Y’s. But when the concepts at issue lack neat boundaries that can be delineated with surgically severed precision, then we will only have it that The X’s are usually (or typically normally, ordinarily, generally, etc.) non-Y’s. Such a distinction then is based on a standardistic rather than literally universal generalization. Accordingly, general statement of the form “X’s are (are not) Y’s” admits of two alternative constructions. One is the universalistic reading: “Invariably and exceptionlessly, all/no X’s are Y’s.” The other is the standardistic reading: “Standardly and ordinarily, X’s are (are not) Y’s.” To say the latter is tantamount to saying that X’s are (are not) Y’s as a rule, recognizing that this rule, like most, may admit of exceptions. On this sort of reading, statements that are general in form are not to be construed with strict universality, but in a permeably universal way of a qualified generalization that states merely how matters stand normally, standardly, and “in the usual course of things.” So taken, the acceptability of those standardistic generalizations is not at odds with the recognition of exceptions of various kinds. The generality of standardistically construed generalizations is an imperfect one: they are not literally and strictly universal, but are subject to a qualification on the lines of standardly/customarily/as a rule as opposed to holding always/invariably/exceptionlessly. Whenever we generalize in human affairs we make a collectively amalgamated claim regarding a group G which is actually composed of a plurality of varying subgroups g1, g2 . . . gn. However, these subgroups themselves never exhibit a rigid uniformity in their characterizing features.

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For situations and circumstances differ, and generally that collectivity G is simply not strictly homogeneous. Whatever generalization we offer does not apply in rigid uniformity all across the board. It holds “on balance,” “in general,” “on the whole,” and “generally speaking,” and “in the ordinary course of things.” there is always some degree of variation that we flatten out in the interests of getting matters averaged out overall so as to render that generalization tenable. But when significantly different circumstances infect an amalgamation process, we have once more a replay of the same story. With a situation that is once again not strictly uniform and homogeneous. We amalgamate more categories which themselves afford ways of getting yet more as when we speak of life expectancy at birth realizing that this amalgamates very different categories of personal genetics and interpersonal sociology. In human affairs even the most plausible generalizations require a “yesbut” response. Explanatory riders and modificating ameshments are always required. All of those generalizations are no more than first-order approximations that flatten out statistical and standard complexities and variations. In human affairs every rule has its exceptions and all of our generalizations are no more than flattenings—out of a statistically bumpy landscape, whose bumps will themselves have bumps reiteratively all the way through. The proliferation of respects that is at issue here creates substantial difficulties for matters of rationality and fairness in human affairs. For with rationality and fairness alike insist that we must “Treat all like cases alike.” Our actions, so it is held, must always adhere to principles of the format: “X-like cases are to be treated in a Y-like fashion.” But the situation of human affairs is so convoluted that the question of whether that rule applies unconditionally in any one particular individual case is always open. There is thus good reason of general principle why our philosophical generalizations should be softened in the stadardistic way. As Aristotle already emphasized, we do well to acknowledge that in this domain, as elsewhere, our contentions should go no further than claiming what holds generally and for the most part. Some of the most hotly contested theses of 20th century theory of knowledge are: •

Knowledge consists of beliefs that are true and justifiedly accepted as such.

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•

Analytic propositions are statements whose truth can be established on the bases of considerations of meaning and usage alone.

•

Fact-purporting propositions are meaningful only when they can be evidentiated on the basis of observational experience.

With that “are” read as “are always and invariably” all of these theses are in trouble. But on a standardistic construal such theses are all plausible and uncontroversial. Were that pivotal “are” be replaced by “are standardly” (or “ordinarily”) a common ground of agreement between the contending parties would at once open up. This sort of standardism is in its element wherever there are bound to be exceptions to would-be general rules and anomalies and deviant cases expected. For when such nonconforming cases arise, we must bend the rules to accommodate them and accordingly confine our generalizations to the normal range. What militates for standardism is the presence of irregularity (ranging from the erratic to the chaotic) that precludes representation through theories formulated in strictly universal laws. In consequence, whenever there is good reason to think that a given range of complex phenomena contains singularities or abnormalities, one will be well advised to construe in standardistic terms whatever generalizations are made in the interests of its theoretical systematization. In particular, when we attempt—as is usual in philosophy—to generalize in conceptually complex matters, an ineluctable impetus to overgeneralization means that the only viable regularities are the standardistic regularities at issue with what is usual, normal, ordinary, or typical. For here we operate outside the realm of administrative convenience—where theoretical adequacy is cast to the winds in the interests of tidiness, and conceptualized uniformity is superimposed on actual diversity by Procrustean artifice. Our distinctions look to the realm of the usual, normal, and ordinary course of things, and all extra-ordinary, norm-aberrant cases simply left out of sight. The question of whether it is in order to apply a certain general rate to this or that particular concrete case can never be ignored. And what is needed here is a judgment of whether the specific circumstances of the case are such that the application of the general rule is appropriate. It requires resolving the issue of whether the particular facts of the case are sufficiently similar to the condition of the standardized situation of the

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general rule that applying that rule is the appropriate thing to do. But resolving this issue of sufficiency is never altogether a reading of the actual facts of the situation. A certain element of decision—of coming to the conclusion that “enough is enough” for a particular resolution—is always involved. In the rational management of human affairs there is, in the final analysis—no substantiation for common sense. For reality is too diversified, variegated and complex to allow definitive tractability via our conceptual resources.6 Accordingly, the impetus to standardism roots in the final analysis in two salient considerations: that we inhabit a world whose complexity is such that the limitations of our conceptual resources engender a dialectic of inconsistency from which we can exit only by a recourse to distinctions, but nevertheless that such distinctions almost invariably are—for the very same reason—unable to achieve the exactitude and precision to which the philosopher aspires.7

6

Some further aspects of these issues are discussed in the author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), and Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

7

This chapter is based on the Francisco Suarez lecture I gave at Fordham University in April 2005. Chapter 5 of my Metaphilosophical Inquiries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) is relevant to its deliberations.

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Chapter Seven ON PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMATIZATION: PLAUSIBILITY AND THE HEGELIAN VISION 1. THE HEGELIAN VISION

I

n contemplating the great panorama of the history of philosophical thought, Hegel conceived the interesting and ambitious prospect of encompassing the whole of it within the domain of one single, all-embracing philosophical system. In this way, he believed, all of those diverse and conflicting theses and systems could be conjoined together as so many components of one unified whole of coordinated thought. All those seemingly rival systems with their conflicting ideas could be reconceptualized not as enemies-in-conflict but rather as cooperative constituents in the development of one vast and many-sided collaborative venture. The idea of one single grand all-encompassing system was thus a siren song that lured Hegel and his followers down the primrose path of a dialectical syncretism. But appealing though it sounds, this grand program encounters substantial obstacles. For Hegel, it will be recalled, the history of philosophy is to be seen as an integral sector of general history. Accordingly, its development is not a story of a random walk of mistaken efforts leaving a plethora of ruins along the way, but a progressive journey along a rationally evolving program of inquiry gradually unfolding a coherent system of thought in increasingly vivid details. As Hegel saw it, the course of philosophical history is an organic process of natural development through incompatible stages (à la chrysalis and butterfly) producing an increasingly complex end product in which all those earlier phases are preserved and combined— albeit in a transformed manner. The task of the serious student of philosophical history is thus not a matter of antiquarian compilation, but one of philosophical creativity—to present the teachings of philosophers past in their conceptual and developmental role within a viable and coherent sys-

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tem of philosophical thought. As Hegel himself rather ambitiously put it: “The succession of philosophical systems in the course of history is one and the same as the succession of logical inference in the determination of the Idea.”1 The aim is not just to present the past as it was, but to reveal how it has come to contribute to the manifold of philosophical truth as best we ourselves can in principle manage to discern it. On such a view, it is a prime task of philosophical inquiry to accommodate, absorb, and coordinate the manifold of part philosophizing in systemic interaction.2 2. A FATAL OBSTACLE: THE PLUNGE INTO INCONSISTENCY Easier said than done! A serious obstacle confronts any simple syncretism that seeks to conjoin or compile the diversity of historical projects in the field. For from the very outset, philosophy has been conceived of as a quest for truth, and the contentions and theories offered by various philosophers have been regarded by one and all who have contemplated them as so many conflicting truth-claims—and often as not as flawed ones. And if this gearing of philosophy to truth is how one is going to proceed in construing philosophical claims, then the idea of a grand systemic compilation is destined to come to grief. For if you maintain that p and I maintain that not-p, then in conjoining those claims one has an outright contradiction on one’s hands. And so any system that takes the route of a philosophical syncretism—of cognitively combining or pooling these claims—is not going to lead us to a larger or deeper view of things, but will end in conflict and contradiction. And so, while it has always been the goal of Hegel-inspired thinkers to treat philosophy-as-a-whole as a single system—a grand unified amalgamation of theses and ideas embracing the entity of thought on fundamental issues—nevertheless something very big and powerful has stood in the way, namely: logic. Philosophy’s being replete with mutually incompatible contentions stands in the way of seeing this domain as a manifold of consistent truths. And if Aristotle was right and a system of rational cognition must—actually or potentially—constitute a truth-manifold, then philoso1

Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Introduction.

2

A good compact account of Hegel’s position regarding the history of philosophy is available in Lucian Braun, Histoire de l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1973), pp. 328-40.

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phy-as-a-whole is ruled out of contention as a rational cognitive system from the very start as a fusionary project of combining or conjoining conflicting claims that is thereby to issue in incoherence and incomprehension. And so, since the truth-at-large is (and must be) collectively consistent while incompatible claims cannot all be true, the discordancy and inconsistency of philosophical contentions constitutes a decisive obstacle to a realization of the syncretist program. It has doubtless been for this reason that the otherwise appealing Hegelian idea of an historically all-absorbing system has failed to meet with widespread sympathy among philosophers and students of the history of philosophy. 3. PLAUSIBILITY TO THE RESCUE There is, however, the prospect of a rather different and decidedly more promising approach, albeit one that calls for a radical reconceptualization of the syncretist project at issue. For what if one were to embark on a seismic shift and undertake to reconceptualize the discipline not as a classically Aristotelian quest for the actual truth but rather as more generously open-minded a quest for mere plausibility? What if it were to take up the prospect of viewing philosophy-as-a-whole as a rational system of cognition alright, but a system designed to provide not a manifold of accomplished truth but merely a manifold of beckoning plausibility? Such an approach calls for adopting the perfectly feasible prospect of viewing philosophical claims at large not as so many conflicting and incompatible truths, but rather as just so many coexisting plausibilities. Such a shift from truth to plausibility puts the whole matter in a very different light. For even as one can accept goods either “for keeps” or “on approval” so one can accept claims or contentions either by way of endorsement as true or by way of entertained as plausible. In their single-minded focus upon truth and certainty, epistemologists have long neglected the idea of plausibility. A proposition is plausible if some of the available evidence speaks significantly in its favor and the remaining evidential indications do not suffice to countervail powerfully against it. If the extent to which the evidence speaks for something is not outweighed by available counterindications it straightaway passes the test of plausibility. And so while truth/falsity is a matter of the status of a proposition in relation to the facts of the matter, its plausibil-

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ity/inplausibility is a matter of its status in relation to the state of its evidence—its relation to the known facts. 4. HOW PLAUSIBILITY WORKS But if you give up on truth, do you not thereby abandon the prospect of achieving something of cognitive significance? By no means! Plausibility, after all, is not nothing; it is closely linked to evidentiation, and while such evidentiation need not and often will not be decisive, the very fact that probability and plausibility are at issue prevents the matter from cognitive emptiness. To be sure, plausibility is very different from truth in its nature and in its logic since what is plausible need by no means be true. And there are various largely consonant ways of approaching the general idea of plausibility. First, from the angle of evidence: a proposition is plausible if there is some evidence for it and no preponderating evidence against it. Second, consider the situation from the vantage point of a specified spectrum of exhaustive but mutually exclusive possible cases. Then a proposition will be true in just exactly the one that is actual, it will be possible if it holds in someone of them, and it will be plausible if it holds in several (i.e., more than one) of them than its negation does. And a third line of approach proceeds by way of probabilities. So approached, proposition is certain if its probability equals on (= 1), it will be possible if its probability is greater than zero ( > 0), and it will be plausible if its probability is nonminimal (say > 1/10). Plausibility is thus something decidedly different from truth which, by its nature, must exhibit certain characteristic features: Conjunctivity: The conjunction of true propositions is true If Tp and Tq, then T(p & q) Consistency: A proposition and its negation are never both true Never: T(p) and T(~p) Transparency: One can see through the truth of a proposition to the proposition itself as an accomplished fact

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If Tp, then p However, some principles need not invariably hold when we move from truth to plausibility, replacing the truth operator T of the preceding conditions by the plausibility operator P. What this means is, in effect, that the domain of the plausible is ruled not so much by logical formalities as by substantive considerations, so that in dealing with plausibility one must be concerned for matters of substance as well as matters of form. 5. PLAUSIBILITY SYNCRETISM AND APORETICS The difference between truth and plausibility is crucial for present purposes because it opens up the prospect of a quasi-Hegelian system of philosophy—one concerned of not as a systematization of a domain of truth, but rather as a systematization of a domain of plausibility. After all, there is little real prospect of classing the claims of rival philosophies as acrossthe-board true, since once one sees one’s own to be so, mere logic prevents doing so with others that are incompatible with it. But there is no logical obstacle to taking the rather generous (if perhaps overcautious) step of treating all the competing alternatives as so many (merely) plausible prospects. Plausibility just does not involve the same restrictive regimentation that logic imposes upon truth. A truth-syncretism makes no sense in philosophy, seeing that a manifold of logically inconsistent propositions is simply incoherent. But a plausibility-syncretism is something else again. In admitting inconsistencies at this level we do not block the prospect of a rationally cogent systematization, but open the door to it—albeit by way of a plausibility-geared system rather than one that is unrealizable alethic (truth-geared). The prospect of seeing rival philosophical positions as plausible—and thereby endeavoring to configure philosophy-as-a-whole in the fashion of a plausibility system (rather than a truth system)—is not subject to any logical impediment. Of course the result of any such a compilation of discordant positions is not a system of philosophy but rather a systematization of philosophizing at large. The overall result is an exercise in the study of philosophy rather than a philosophy as such. As Kant clearly emphasized, the study of philosophy is neither a method of nor a substitute for philosophizing itself.3 3

See Immanuel Kant’s Polegomena to any Future Metaphysics.

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When one takes the step of seeing philosophy-at-large in the light of a plausibility syncretism, one thereby transforms the study of philosophy into an exercise in aporetics. An apory is a group of individually plausible propositions that are collectively inconsistent. When we gather together a cluster of contentions by philosophers on virtually any issue of the field, such a cluster will generally result. And the reason for the proliferation of apories in philosophy is simple. In this domain we are trying to answer large questions on the basis of small information. With these complex and ramified issues the evidence at our disposal is imperfect and incomplete in relation to the conclusions we have to draw from it. And when this occurs, the prospect of aporetic conflict is pretty well inevitable. Consider an example. The theory of knowledge of the ancient Greeks revolved about the following quartet of currently mooted albeit collectively incompatible contentions: (1)

We do have some knowledge about the world.

(2)

Whatever knowledge we have about the world must come via the senses (i.e., ultimately roots in what the senses deliver).

(3)

There is no genuine knowledge (episteme) without certainty.

(4)

The senses do not yield certainty.

Any positive inclination toward these theses—any tendency to see them each as plausible and (presumptively) acceptable—sets the stage for philosophical conflict. A (limited) variety of exits from the inconsistency is available: Deny (1):

Maintain that we cannot have authentic knowledge about the world (the Pyrrhonian Sceptics).

Deny (2):

Maintain that genuine knowledge about the world can come from reason alone (Pythagoreans, Plato).

Deny (3):

Maintain that adequate knowledge need not be based on the certain but can be based on the plausible-to pithanon (the Academic Sceptics).

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Deny (4):

Maintain that the senses do yield certainty in some cases—those that result in the so-called “cataleptic” perceptions (the Stoics).

Faced with that aporetic cluster, we must make up our minds to decide between these alternatives. Again, consider the following “Cartesian” apory regarding the nature of knowledge. (1)

Knowledge must be absolutely certain.

(2)

Absolute certainty is never available with matters of fact.

(3)

Factual knowledge is available.

Here we have a straightforward example of an inconsistent triad. Descartes and the skeptics alike agree on (1). But in the interest of consistency, Descartes sacrificed (2) to (3) while his skeptical predecessors in classical antiquity sacrificed (3) to (2). Clearly one cannot maintain all three propositions as conjointly true. Any such family of plausible-seeming but inconsistent contentions sets the stage of an aporetic situation that cries out for resolution. Many other illustrations are readily available. A metaphysical determinism that negates free will runs afoul of a traditionalistic ethical theory that presupposes it. A philosophical anthropology that takes human life to originate at conception clashes with a social philosophy that sees abortion as morally unproblematic. A theory of rights that locates all responsibility in the contractual reciprocity of freely consenting parties creates problems for a morality of concern for animals. And the list goes on and on. 6. APORY ENGENDERS A DIVERSITY OF RESOLUTIONS Whenever we are confronted with an aporetic cluster, a plurality of resolutions is always available. The contradiction that arises from the overcommitment of clashing contentions, and can be resolved by abandoning any of several contentions, so that alternative ways of averting inconsistency can always be found. Accordingly, it lies in the logical nature of things that there will always be multiple exits from aporetic inconsistency.

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For whenever such an antinomy confronts us, then no matter which particular resolution we ourselves may favor, and no matter how firmly we are persuaded of its merits, the fact remains that there will also be other, alternative ways of resolving the inconsistency. For a contradiction that arises from over-commitment can always be averted by abandoning some of those conflicting contentions, so that distinct exits from inconsistency can always be found. Accordingly, an aporetic cluster of mutually discordant doctrines (positions, teachings, doxa) sets the stage for divergent “schools of thought” and provides the bone of contention for an ongoing controversy among them. The theory of morality developed in Greek ethical thought affords a good example of such an aporetic situation. Greek moral thinking inclined to the view that the distinction between right and wrong: (1)

Does matter

(2)

Is based on custom (nomos)

(3)

Can only matter if grounded in the objective nature of things (phusis) rather than in mere custom.

Here too an aporetic problem arises. The inconsistency of these contentions led to the following resolutions: Deny (1):

Issues of right and wrong just don’t matter-they are a mere question of power, of who gets to “lay down the law” (Thrasymachus).

Deny (2):

The difference between right and wrong is not a matter of custom but resides in the nature of things (the Stoics).

Deny (3):

The difference between right and wrong is only customary (nomoi) but does really matter all the same (Heraclitus).

We have here a paradigmatic example of an antinomy: a theme provided by an aporetic cluster of propositions, with variations set by the various ways of resolving their inconsistency. The problem of the philosopher proper is not one of inductive ampliation but of systemic reduction of a

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restoration of consistency. And philosophers at large fail to reach one single uniform result because this objective can always be accomplished in very different ways. It follows by the inferential principle of modus tollens that whenever a belief is rejected, one must also call into question some of the various (collectively compelling) reasons on whose basis this belief had been adopted. For instance, if one rejects free will, then one must also reject one of the following (presumptive) intial reasons for espousing freedom of the will: “People are usually responsible for their acts,” “People are only morally responsible for those acts that are done freely.” The rejection of an accepted thesis at once turns the family of reasons for its adoption into an aporetic cluster. And apory, once present, tends to spread like wildfire through any rational system. Consider, for example, the theory of morality developed in Greek ethical thought, which affords a good illustration of an aporetic situation. It was based on three plausible considerations: (1) If virtue does not produce happiness, pleasure, then it is pointless. (2) Virtue is not pointless—indeed it is extremely important. (3) Virtue does not always yield happiness. Here the whole of the group (1)-(3) represents an aporetic cluster that reflects a cognitive overcommitment. And this situation is typical: the problem context of philosophical issues standardly arises from a clash among individually tempting but collectively incompatible overcommitments. Philosophical issues standardly center about an aporetic cluster of this sort—a family of plausible theses that is assertorically overdeterminative in claiming so much as to lead into inconsistency. To put matters to rights, in such cases, something obviously has to go. Whatever favorable disposition there may be toward these plausible theses, they cannot be maintained in the aggregate. We are confronted by a (manysided) cognitive dilemma and must find one way out or another. In particular, we can proceed: —To reason from (2)-(3) to the denial of (1), —To reason from (1), (3) to the denial of (2), —To reason from (1)-(2) to the denial of (3),

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An apory gives rise to a group of valid arguments leading to mutually contradictory conclusions, yet each having only plausible theses as premises. It is clear in such cases that something has gone amiss, though it may well be quite unclear just where the source of difficulty lies. And this example illustrates any particular way out of an aporetic conflict is bound to be simply one way among others. The single most crucial fact about an aporetic cluster is that there will always be a variety of distinct ways of averting the inconsistency into which it plunges us. However, philosophers fail to reach a uniform result because this prioritization can in theory always be accomplished in very different ways. The crux is that different philosophers implement different priority systems in effecting such determinations about what must be made to give way. Alternatives ramify because every possible resolution of a philosophical antinomy represents a distinct—and distinctly different—position, an intellectual abode that someone caught up in the underlying apory may choose to inhabit, though sometimes no one does so. And so several instructive lessons emerge: • We now see these propositions in their interrelational interconnectedness. We come to realize that they are related notwithstanding the prospect of a radical diversity of thematic subject matter. • We are confronted in a very clear and urgent way with the need for choice insofar as it is truth that is our goal. • We get a clearer view of the battlefield—and are able to pinpoint with enhanced precision and detail exactly where the discordances between alternative parties are located. Philosophical doctrines are accordingly not discrete and separate units that stand in splendid isolation. They are articulated and developed in reciprocal interaction. But their natural mode of interaction is not by way of mutual supportiveness. (How could it be, given the mutual exclusiveness of conflicting doctrines?) Rather, competition and controversy prevail. The search of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans (notably Hippias) for a universally “natural” belief system based on what is common to different groups (espousing different doctrines, customs, moralities, religions) is of no avail because no single element remains unaffected as one moves across the

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range of variation. Given that rival “schools” resolve an aporetic cluster in different and discordant ways, the area of agreement between them, though always there, is bound to be too narrow to prevent conflict. Alternative positions involve different priorities, and different priorities are by nature incompatible and irreconcilable.4 7. DIALECTICS A MECHANISM OF SYSTEM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT AND THE ROLE OF DISTINCTIONS One important idea that a resort to plausibility aporetics brings to light relates to its highlighting of developmental dialectics. To be sure, Aristotle was right in saying that philosophy begins in wonder and that securing concerns to our questions is the aim of the enterprise. But of course we do not just want answers but coherent answers, seeing that these alone have a chance of being collectively true. The quest for consistency is an indispensable part of the quest for truth. The quest for consistency is one of the driving dynamic forces of philosophy. But the cruel fact is that theorizing itself yields contradictory results. In moving from empirical observation to philosophical theorizing, we do not leave contradiction behind—it continues to dog our footsteps. And just as reason must correct sensation, so more refined and elaborate reason is always needed as a corrective for less refined and elaborate reason. The source of contradiction is not just in the domain of sensation but in that of reasoned reflection as well. We are not just led into philosophy by the urge to consistency, we are ultimately kept at it by this same urge. Accordingly, aporetics is not just a mapping of the battlefield of philosophical disputation but also a tool for understanding and explaining the dialectic of historical development. For in breaking out of the cycle of inconsistency created by an aporetic cluster one has no choice but to abandon one or the other of the propositions involved. But in jettisoning this item it is often—perhaps even generally—possible to embody a distinction that makes it possible to retain something of what is being abandoned. Consider the following example: 4

This general idea that philosophical problems involve antinomic situations from which there are only finitely many exits (which, in general, the historical course of philosophical development actually instantiates) is foreshadowed in the deliberations of Wilhelm Dilthey. See his Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VIII (Stuttgart and Göttingen: Teubner and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), p. 138.

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(1) Every occurrence in nature is caused. (2) Causes necessitate their consequences. (3) Necessitation precludes contingency. (4) Some occurrences in nature are contingent. Someone who decides to break the cycle of inconsistency by dropping thesis (3) might nevertheless retain the rest by holding that causal necessitation does not preclude contingency because the causally necessity laws are themselves contingent. To restore consistency among such incompatible beliefs calls for abandoning some of them as they stand. In general, however, philosophers do not try for consistency-restoration wholly by means of rejection. Since (by hypothesis) each thesis belonging to an aporetic cluster is individually attractive, simple rejection lets the case for the rejected thesis go unacknowledged. To avert this unproductive negation philosophers take recourse to modification, replacing the abandoned belief with a duly qualified revision thereof. And to this end their instrument of choice is distinction. Distinctions make it possible to remove inconsistencies not just by the brute negativism of thesis rejection but by the more subtle and constructive device of thesis qualification. To clarify the workings of this sort of process consider an aporetic cluster that set the stage for various theories of early Greek philosophy: (1) Reality is one (homogeneous). (2) Matter is real. (3) Form is real. (4) Matter and form are distinct sorts of things (heterogeneous). In looking for a resolution here, one might consider rejecting (2). This could be done, however, not by simply abandoning it, but rather by replacing it—on the idealistic precedent of Zeno and Plato—with something along the following lines:

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(2') Matter is not real as an independent mode of existence; rather it is merely quasi-real, a mere phenomenon, an appearance somehow grounded in immaterial reality. The new quartet (1), (2’), (3), (4) is entirely cotenable. Now in adopting this resolution, one again resorts to a distinction, namely that between (i) Strict reality as self-sufficiently independent existence and (ii) Derivative or attenuated reality as a (merely phenomenal) product of the operation of the unqualifiedly real. Use of such a distinction between unqualified and phenomenal reality makes it possible to resolve an aporetic cluster—yet not by simply abandoning one of those paradox-engendering theses but rather by qualifying it. (Note, however, that once we follow Zeno and Plato in replacing (2) by (2')—and accordingly reinterpret matter as representing a “mere phenomenon”—the substance of thesis (4) is profoundly altered; the old contention can still be maintained, but it now gains a new significance in the light of new distinctions.) Again one might—alternatively—abandon thesis (3). However, one would then presumably not simply adopt “form is not real” but rather would go over to the qualified contention that “form is not independently real; it is no more than a transitory (changeable) state of matter.” And this can be looked at the other way around, as saying “form is (in a way) real, although only insofar as it is taken to be no more than a transitory state of matter.” This, in effect, would be the position of the atomists, who incline to see as implausible any recourse to mechanisms outside the realm of the material. Aporetic inconsistency can always be resolved by introducing suitable distinctions and qualifications so as to “save the phenomena”—that is, retain the crucial core of our various beliefs in the face of apparent consideration. Once apory breaks out, we can thus salvage our philosophical commitments by complicating them, through revisions in the light of appropriate distinctions, rather than abandoning them altogether.

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The exfoliative development of philosophical systems is driven by the quest for consistency. Once an apory is resolved through the decision to drop one or another member of the inconsistent family at issue, it is only sensible and prudent to try to salvage some part of what is sacrificed by introducing a distinction. Yet all too often inconsistency will break out once more within the revised family of propositions that issues from the needed readjustments. And then the entire process is taken back to its starting point. The over-all course of development thus exhibits the overall cyclical structure depicted in Display 1: This unfolding of distinctions has important ramifications in philosophical inquiry. As new concepts crop up in the wake of distinctions, new questions arise regarding their bearing on the issues. In the course of securing answers to our old questions we open up further questions, questions that could not even be asked before. Such a view of philosophical development wears a decidedly Hegelian mien, seeing that Hegel deemed contradiction to be the driving engine for the development of thought. ___________________________________________________ Display 1 CONSISTENCY RESTORATION VIA DISTINCTIONS Detection of inconsistent commitments

Introduction of a distinction

Introduction of distinctioninduced revisions

___________________________________________________ The history of philosophy is shot through with distinctions introduced to avert aporetic difficulties. Already in the dialogues of Plato, the first systematic writings in philosophy, we encounter distinctions at every turn. In Book I of the Republic, for example, Socrates’ interlocutor quickly falls into the following apory: (1) Rational people always pursue their own interests.

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(2) Nothing that is in a person’s interest can be disadvantageous to him. (3) Even rational people sometimes do things that prove disadvantageous. Here, inconsistency is averted by distinguishing between two senses of the “interests” of a person—namely what is actually advantageous to him and what he merely thinks to be so, that is, between real and seeming interests. Again, in the discussion of “nonbeing” in the Sophist, the Eleatic stranger entraps Theaetetus in an inconsistency from which he endeavors to extricate himself by distinguishing between “nonbeing” in the sense of not existing at all and in the sense of not existing in a certain mode. For the most part, the Platonic dialogues present a dramatic unfolding of one distinction after another. And this situation is typical in philosophy. The natural dialectic of problem solving here drives us even more deeply into drawing distinctions, so as to bring new, more sophisticated concepts upon the scene. 8. DISTINCTIONS AS A MEANS TO PRESERVATION To be sure, distinctions are not needed if all that concerns us is averting inconsistency; simple thesis abandonment, mere refusal to assert, will suffice for that end. One can guard against inconsistency by avoiding commitment. But such sceptical refrainings create a vacuum. Distinctions are indispensable instruments in the (potentially never-ending) work of rescuing the philosopher’s assertoric commitments from inconsistency while yet salvaging what one can. They become necessary if we are to maintain informative positions and provide answers to our questions. Whenever a particular aporetic thesis is rejected, the optimal course is not to abandon it altogether, but rather to minimize the loss by introducing a distinction by whose aid it may be retained in part. After all, we do have some commitment to the plausibilities that we reject, and are committed to saving as much as we can. (This, of course, is implicit in our viewing those claims as being plausible in the first place.) A distinction accordingly reflects a concession, an acknowledgment of some element of acceptability in the thesis that is being rejected. However, distinctions always bring a new concept upon the stage of consideration and thus put a new topic on the agenda. And they thereby present invitations to carry the discussion further, opening up new issues that were here-

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tofore inaccessible. Distinctions are the doors through which philosophy moves on to new questions and problems. They bring new concepts and new theses to the fore. Distinctions enable us to implement the irenic idea that a satisfactory resolution of aporetic clusters will generally involve a compromise that somehow makes room for all parties to the contradiction. The introduction of distinctions thus represents a Hegelian ascent—rising above the level of antagonistic doctrines to that of a “higher” conception, in which the opposites are reconciled. In introducing the qualifying distinction, we abandon that initial conflict-facilitating thesis and move toward its counterthesis— but only by way of a duly hedged synthesis. In this regard, distinction is a “dialectic” process. This role of distinctions is also connected with the thesis often designated as “Ramsey’s Maxim.” For with regard to disputes about fundamental questions that do not seem capable of a decisive settlement, Frank Plumpton Ramsey wrote: “In such cases it is a heuristic maxim that the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both the disputants.”5 On this view, then, distinctions provide for a higher synthesis of opposing views; they prevent thesis abandonment from being an entirely negative process, affording us a way of salvaging something, of giving credit where credit is due, even to those theses we ultimately reject. They make it possible to remove inconsistency not just by the brute force of thesis rejection, but by the more subtle and constructive device of thesis qualification. Philosophical distinctions are thus creative innovations. There is nothing routine or automatic about them—their discernment is an act of creative ingenuity. They do not elaborate preexisting ideas but introduce new ones. They not only provide a basis for understanding better something heretofore grasped imperfectly but shift the discussion to a new level of sophistication and complexity. Thus, to some extent they “change the subject.” (In this regard they are like the conceptual innovations of science which revise rather than merely explain prior ideas.) Philosophy’s recourse to ongoing conceptual refinement and innovation means that a philosophical position, doctrine, or system is never closed, finished, and complete. It is something organic, ever growing and ever changing—a mere tendency that is in need of ongoing development. Its 5

Frank P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, ed. R. B. Braithwaite (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., 1931), pp. 115-16.

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philosophical “position” is never actually that—it is inherently unstable, in need of further articulation and development. Philosophical systematization is a process whose elements develop in stages of interactive feedback—its exfoliation is a matter of dialectic, in just the manner depicted in Display 1 above. 9. AN HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION The unfolding of distinctions plays a key role in philosophical inquiry because new concepts crop up in their wake so as to open up new territory for reflection. In the course of philosophy’s dialectical development, new concepts and new theses come constantly to the fore and operate so as to open up new issues. And so in securing answers to our old questions we come to confront new questions that could not even be asked before. The inherent dynamic of this dialectic deserves a closer look. Let us consider an historical example. The speculations of the early Ionian philosophers revolved about four theses: (1) There is one single material substrate (archê) of all things. (2) The material substrate must be capable of transforming into anything and everything (and thus specifically into each of the various elements). (3) The only extant materials are the four material elements: earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gaseous), and fire (volatile) (4) The four elements are independent—none gives rise to the rest. Different thinkers proposed different ways out of this apory: • Thales rejected (4) and opted for water as the archê. • Anaximines rejected (4) and opted for air as the archê. • Heraclitus rejected (4) and opted for fire as the archê. • The Atomists rejected (4) and opted for earth as the archê.

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• Anaximander rejected (3) and postulated an indeterminate apeiron. • Empedocles rejected (1), and thus also (2), holding that everything consists in mixtures of the four elements. Thus virtually all of the available exits from inconsistency were actually used. The thinkers involved either resolved to a distinction between genuinely primary and merely derivative “elements” or, in the case of Empedocles, stressed the distinction between mixtures and transformation. But all of them addressed the same basic problem—albeit in the light of different plausibility appraisals. As the Presocratics worked their way through the relevant ideas, the following conceptions came to figure prominently on the agenda:

(I)

(1) Whatever is ultimately real persits through (2) The four elements—earth (solid), water (gaseous), and fire (volatile)—do not persist change as (3) The four elements encompass all there is extant

Three basic positions are now available: (1)-abandonment: Nothing persists through change—panta rhei, all is in flux (Heraclitus). (2)-abandonment: One single elements persists through change—it alone is the archê of all things; all else is simply some altered form of it. This uniquely unchanging element is: earth (atomists), water (Thales), air (Anaximines). Or again, all the elements persist through change, which is only a matter of a variation in mix and proportion (Empedocles). (3)-abandonment: Matter itself is not all there is—there is also its inherent geometrical structure (Pythagoras) or its external arrangement in an environing void (atomists). Or again, there is also an immaterial motive force that endows matter with motion—to wit, “mind” (nous) (Anaxagoras). Let us follow along in the track of atomism by abandoning (3) through

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the distinction between material and non-material existence. With this cycle of dialectical development completed, the following aporetic impasse arose in pursuing the line of thought at issue:

(II)

(1) change really occurs. (2) Matter (solid material substance) does not change, nor does vacuous emptiness. (3) Matter and the vacuum is all there is.

As always, different ways of escaping from contradiction are available: (1)-abandonment: Change is an illusion (Parmenides, Zeno, Eleatics). (2)-abandonment: Matter (indeed everything) changes (Heraclitus). (3)-abandonment: Matter and the word are not all there is; there is also the void—and the changing configurations of matter within it (atomism). Taking up the third course, let us continue to follow the atomistic route. Note that this does not just call for abandoning (3), but also calls for sophisticating (2) to (2’) Matter as such is not changeable—it only changes in point of its variable rearrangements. The distinction between positional changes and compositional changes comes to the fore here. This line of development has recourse to a “saving distinction” by introducing the new topic of variable configurations (as contrasted with such necessary and invariable states as the shapes of the atoms themselves). To be sure, matters do not end here. A new cycle of inconsistency looms ahead. For this new topic paves the way for the following apory: (1) All possibilities of variation are actually realized.

(III)

(2) Various different world arrangements are possible. (3) Only one world is real.

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Again different resolutions are obviously available here: (1)-rejection: A theory of real chance (tuchê) or contingency that sees various possibilities as going unrealized (Empedocles). (2)-rejection: A doctrine of universal necessitation (the “block universe” of Parmenides). (3)-rejection: A theory of many worlds (Democritus and atomism in general). As the atomistic resolution represented by the second course was developed, apory broke out again:

(IV)

(1) Matter as such never changes—the only change it admits of are its rearrangements. (2) The nature of matter is indifferent to change. Its rearrangements are contingent and potentially variable. (3) Its changes of condition are inherent in the (unchanging) nature of matter—they are necessary, not contingent.

Here the orthodox atomistic solution would lie in abandoning (3) and replacing it with (3′) Its changes of condition are not necessitated by the nature of matter. They are indeed quasi-necessitated by being law determined, but law is something independent of the nature of matter. The distinction between internally necessitated changes and externally and accidentally imposed ones enters upon the scene. This resolution introduces a new theme, namely law determination (as introduced by the Stoics). Yet when one seeks to apply this idea it seems plausible to add: (V) (4) Certain material changes (contingencies, concomitant with free human actions) are not law determined Now apory breaks out once more and the need for an exit from inconsistency again arises. Here an exit was afforded by (4)-abandonment, as with the law abrogation envisaged in the notorious “swerve” of Epicurus, or by (3′)-abandonment, as with the more rigoristic atomism of Lucretius. The developmental sequence from (I) through (V) represents an evolu-

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tion of philosophical reflection through successive layers of aporetic inconsistency, duly separated from one another by successive distinctions. This process that led from the crude doctrines of Ionian theorists to the vastly more elaborate and sophisticated doctrines of later Greek atomism. And this historical illustration indicates an important general principle. The continual introduction of the new ideas that arise in the wake of new distinctions means that the ground of philosophy is always shifting beneath our feet. And it is through distinctions that philosophy’s prime mode of innovation—namely conceptual innovation—comes into play. And those novel distinctions for our concepts and contexts for our theses alter the very substance of the old theses. The dialectical exchange of objection and response constantly moves the discussion onto new—and increasingly sophisticated—ground. The resolution of antinomies through new distinctions is thus a matter of creative innovation whose outcome cannot be foreseen. 10.PHILOSOPHY IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: RECOVERING THE HEGELIAN VISION OF PHILOSOPHY AT LARGE As the preceding deliberations indicate, the turn to plausibility open up different ways of viewing philosophy-at-large and of organizing the history of philosophy on rational (or at least more perspicuous) principles. To be sure, in looking to our own philosophy we will and must see its various contentions as truths—and thereby regard the rival alternatives as falsehoods and errors. But there is also a somewhat more generous prospect. For one has the option of regarding the entire manifold of the contentions of philosophers—ourselves included—as so many (merely) plausible propositions. This of course involves a radical departure from the all too common way of looking at philosophy-at-large namely as a rather problematic venture in the quest for truth—resulting in a mixed bag that conjoins, some a small aggregate of truths (one’s own views) along with a massive plurality of error (everyone else’s). If our concept of cognitive systematization is confined to the classical, Aristotelian view, then there just is no possibility of systematizing philosophy-as-a-whole. But in according to philosophical contentions in general—even those we ourselves reject—the diminished status of plausibilities we open up the prospect of systematizing philosophy at large within one single and unified—albeit vast—non-Aristotelian system.

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Such an approach, which seed philosophical contentions as (“merely”) plausible, accordingly opens up the prospect of regarding philosophy-atlarge as a meaningful venture in rational cognition—one of constructing a non-Aristotelian system of plausible responses to the big questions comprised in the problem-agenda of the field. In adopting an aporetic approach and then exfoliating the plausible save-what-you-can distinctions we are, in effect, spelling out some component sector of the large system constitution a non-Aristotelian systematization of philosophy-at-large. And so in turning from truth to plausibility one realizes both gains and losses. The gains relate to amplitude of vision and breadth of perspective: a great many more things are plausible than are determinately true. The losses relate to tenability and reliability because questionable material becomes included and there will be much dubious dross amid the reliable gold. Accordingly, in interpreting philosophy-at-large in the light of plausibility considerations one takes a distinctive and in some ways nondoctrinal line. For while philosophy is often characterized as a quest for truth, this strategy realizes the prospect of an entirely different approach to information—one geared not to irrefragable truth but the fallible plausibility. Such an approach represents a vision that has been on the stage in German philosophy since Christian Wolff6 and prominent since Hegel. And it was in this frame of mind that the Bertrand Russell of the pre-World War I era wrote: “Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, extend our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation.”7 It must be emphasized, however, that in taking such a more generous, inclusive, and many-sided view of the subject, we are in process of addressing philosophy at large, and not deriving our own philosophy. We survey, examine, and weigh the size of possible answers to the questions with their deciding which one to accept as correct. We are, in sum, looking

6

For Christian Wolff, philosophy is scientia possibilium, quatenus esse possunt (Philosophia Rationalis, sect. 29).

7

Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, (1910; reprinted New York, Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 249-50.

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at the matter from the standpoint of the community, not from that of ourselves in propria persona. For, what we get in such a quasi-Hegelian perspective is not a system of philosophy, not a coherent and cohesive exposition of a particular philosophical position that offers specific answers to definite questions. Rather, what we get is a systematization of philosophizing-at-large, a comprehensive coordination of philosophizing in general. For a plausibility system, unlike a system of purported truth, does not provide an answer to any of the questions—or a solution to any of the problems. Instead it provides a plausibility of (incompatible) answers and a multitude of (different and distinct) solutions. It does not even pretend to offer the truth as such, but only surveys of different and discordant purported truths emanating from different purporters. Philosophy cannot abandon the quest for credible truth regarding the solution of philosophical problems and a non-Hegelian plausibility syncretism does not even attempt to provide it. Facing a plurality of contending rival answers to philosophical questions, the sceptic embargoes all of the available options and enjoins us to reject the whole lot as meaningless or otherwise untenable. A more radical option, though equally egalitarian, is to proceed in the exactly opposite way and view all the alternatives positively, embracing the whole lot of them in a grand syncretism that conjoins all of the alternatives. But neither of these approaches can provide a viable philosophy that offers a satisfactory rationale to the problems of the field. A plausibilistically aporetic approach, by contrast, does not purport to constitute a philosophical system as such. Its more modest contribution, rather lies in its enabling us to see clearly: • how our own system is related to its rivals • how our own system emerges from its antecedents • what price we are paying and what benefits we are denied from doing things our way rather than in the way of alternatives. • provide ways of elucidating how our own position stands in relation to others It would be a profound error to regard plausibility aporetics as representing a system of philosophy and to regard the synoptic stance involved

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as affording a means for philosophizing. After all, the quest for truth in relation to its questions is the very reason for being of the enterprise. To philosophize is in the end something that calls for working out our own answers to the questions—answers we can regard not merely as plausible but as correct. A canvas of possible answers—however interesting and instructive for philosophizing it may be—is in the end no way of answering the questions. The study of philosophy is not, after all, the same as philosophy itself. Philosophy, after all, is in the business of seeking to answer “the big questions” concerning man and his place in nature’s scheme of things. The object of philosophizing is to remove ignorance and puzzlement, to resolve cognitive problems—to provide information, in short. To abstain from taking a definite position, to refuse to take sides (be it through sceptical abstention or through open minded conjunctiveness) is simply to abandon the enterprise. To endorse a plurality of answers is to have no answers at all— an unending openness to various possibilities, a constant yes-and-no, leave us in perpetual ignorance. To philosophize we must figure out where we stand—we ourselves—and not just elaborate and coordinate the manifold views of philosophy at large. No matter how elaborately and sophisticated we canvas the spectrum of alternatives—of what can be thought—we must in the end make up our minds about what we propose to think on our own account. The analysis of plausibility and its ramifications is all very well in its own way, but it is neither a version of nor a replacement for the pursuit of truth. It has to be acknowledged—and stressed—that plausibilistic/cognitive approach is only a means for the study of philosophy rather than the actual practice of philosophizing. As Bertrand Russell rightly indicated in the passage quoted above, we can study philosophy to expand our horizons, to learn what sort of positions are available—what sort of stories can be told about the issues. But we engage in philosophizing because we want to have answers to the questions and solutions to the problems of the field, answers with which we ourselves can rest rationally content, even if they do not form the focus of a universal consensus. If we wish to philosophize, to arrive at answers to our questions, we cannot avoid taking a position. We must be committal and espouse views and positions in a selective, discriminating way that endorses some alternatives at the expense of others. It is, of course, instructive to explore the manifold of plausibility. But in the end we want more. Plausibility mongering is not enough: we hanker af-

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ter truth. Shift the realm of deliberation from philosophy at large to my philosophy—to what I can, on my own account, accept as true. How, then, should one see one’s own philosophy in its relation to philosophy-at-large? It is, obviously and of course, a constituent part thereof: that goes without saying. But of course one’s own attitude toward it is— and should be—very special, specific—and prejudicial. After all, the philosopher’s position at issue just would not be my philosophy if I did not think it to be correct. In taking a philosophical position of one’s own, one is bound to see it as unquestionably correct and the others as erroneous, no matter how plausible they may appear to be. Our cognitive ventures are generally preoccupied with truths or at least what we take to be such. And the manifold of truth—of genuine and authentic truth—has three salient features: it is alternative-excluding, internally coherent, and deductively closed. (Already Aristotle, the father of logic, effectively saw the matter in this light.) And developing the aporetic conception of philosophy-at-large is not a way of philosophizing. To be sure, studying the modus operandi of philosophizing will in the end prove to be a part of philosophy—who else but a philosopher is willing or able to do such a thing. But this form of metaphilosophy is at most and at best a part of philosophy—it is not and cannot be a substitute for philosophy itself. The study of philosophy at large will not—cannot—itself constitute a philosophy. To survey of what is plausible will not instruct us about what is true. To look into the plausible answers to our questions will not show us what the appropriate answers are.To engage in the enterprise of philosophizing, rather than merely to deliberate about it, we must ask, “What position shall we take?” and not merely “What position can we take?” Plausibility mongering is all very well as far as it goes. But in the end if one wants to have actual (rather than merely possible) answers to one’s questions, one must make up one’s mind. The present deliberations accordingly highlight the difference between the study of philosophy on the one hand and the practice of philosophy on the other. In the study of philosophy a neo-Hegelian plausibility systematization proves to be a highly useful and instructive resource. But of course to practice philosophy we must deal in more than mere plausibilities: to determine where we are to stand we cannot rest content with the examination of plausibilities and possible answers but must decide upon optimalities and appropriate (at least preemptively correct) answers. At this level truth systematization is the way to go.

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To say all this, however is to distinguish the two enterprises, not to detach them. For of course the quest for answers that are optimally tenable— and thus at least preemptively correct and true—require us to compare the available alternatives. And just what these alternatives are, and what ramifications they send into the wider net of related issues, is just exactly what an aporetic plausibility systematization can enable us to see.8

8

An earlier version of this chapter was published in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 43, no. 3 (2005). It represents an endeavor to link together three elements that have long governed my thinking about the historical systematics of philosophical thought, namely the theory of plausibility (see my Plausible Reasoning; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), the theory of aporetics (see my Paradox’s; Chicago: Open Court, 2001), and the theory of philosophical dialectics (see my The Strife of Systems; Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

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Chapter Eight THE UNIVERSALITY OF REASON (ON KANTIAN UNIVERSALIZATION IN MATTERS OF RATIONALITY AND MORALITY) 1. RATIONALITY AND ITS DEMANDS

R

ationality is bascially a matter of procedure, of modus operandi, of how things are done. It consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives: neither is someone being rational who pursues in unintelligent ways objectives however appropriate, nor yet is someone being rational who pursues inappropriate objectives in intelligent and effective ways.1 The prime directive of reason lies in the injunction: • Select your aims appropriately and pursue them intelligently! Where rationality is concerned, everything follows from this governing principle. And this overarching fact constitutes the rationale of the systemic unity of reason. The appropriateness of aims and objectives is clearly crucial here. And human objectives fall within large-scale projects: the project of selfmaintenance (via diet and exercise), of social interaction (through cooperation and coordinated interaction), of mind cultivation (through learning and thinking) and many others are available to us. Some of our projects are elective (e.g., the choice of one’s vocation or avocations). But others are mandatory and inherent on the human condition (securing food and shelter). And in this regard we are all in the same boat. While the specifics of the case may differ from person to person and case to case, the generic de1

On this line of thought see the author’s Rationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

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mands set by mandatory objectives are incumbent on all of us alike. They lie at the heart and core of rationality. And in particular, their very rationality itself renders it (rationally) incumbent on rational beings—and those that choose to see themselves as such—to respect and value rationality. In this way, the project of ethics (of warranting self-respect) and of morals (of interacting in benign and constructive ways with one’s fellows) are among the mandatory projects in which we humans find ourselves caught up, willy nilly. Philosophical writers sometimes talk as though rationality were a matter of logic alone—as though being coherent in what we think were the whole of the matter. But of course homo sapiens is a creature not just of thought alone but of course action and evaluation come into it as well. Rationality spreads across the whole range of our concerns. The idea that there are three principal spheres of reason relating to belief, action, and evaluation, respectively goes back to Kant and beyond. They define the sectors of what is traditionally characterized as theoretical, practical, and evaluative reason. Theoretical reason aims at correct beliefs (i.e. truths); practical reason aims at appropriate actions (i.e., beneficial conditions); evaluative reason aims as sensible evaluations (sound values). All of these branches of reason are normative: in each case there is a prospect of right or wrong, sensible or absurd, appropriate or inappropriate. And in each case there are resolutions that merit being accepted and ones that do not. 2. OBLIGATORINESS The adoption of appropriate objectives is rationally mandatory. Any being that is capable of reason—and indeed any being that merely views itself as such—thereby takes on a rationality mandated commitment to exercise that rationality as best it can. It would be decidedly irrational of such a creature to fail to do so. By virtue of its very rationality any rational being is enjoined by its reason to prize and prioritize that reason itself. Its rationality is the paramount value for any rational creature: a rational being would rather lose its right arm than lose its reason. But of course a rational being will thereby only value something it regards as having value; it would not value something that it did not deem valuable. And it will thus only value rationality in itself if it sees rationality as such as a thing of value. In valuing its rationality, rational creatures are bound to value rationality in general—whenever it may be found and will

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therefore. In valuing its own that value the rationality of any other beings it is prepared to acknowledge as such—i.e., as rational beings. There is thus a reciprocal recognizance among rational beings—as such they are bound to see themselves as the justly proud bearers of a special value. It is this feature in which the universality of rationality lies—not that all beings whatsoever are rational, but rather that all beings one is prepared to acknowledge as such must thereby be regarded as the bearers of special capabilities, special claims to consideration, special rights, and special obligations. Their very rationality requires rational beings to see themselves as members of a confraternity of a special and particularly worthy kind. Regard for rational beings and care for the real interests of such beings at large is one of rationality’s most basic commitments. 3. UNIVERSALITY AND UNIFORMITY To maintain the universality of reason is not to make the obviously overstreched claim that all people are always rational, but rather to hold that what their rationality demands of all rational creatures is at bottom universally one and the same. Not, to be sure, that what rationality requires is one and the same irrespective of the circumstances—that would be absurd!—but rather that what rationality demands of someone in particular circumstances—whatever this may be—will be exactly the same for all individuals whenever the circumstances are the same. Reason as such does not discriminate among agents: rationality is impersonal, so that whatever it is rational for someone to do would likewise be rational in the same circumstances for anybody else. Rational determinations, while circumstantially dependent, are agent-indifferent. Rationality pivots on general principles that hold for everyone alike. The only advice that reason can ever offer to you is advice that it would offer to anyone in your shoes. The thinker whose name is most decidedly associated with this insistence on rational uniformity—the advocate per excellence of the universality of the requirements of reason—is Immanuel Kant. As he rightly saw it reason is indeed universal in that its rulings must hold for anyone and everyone without fear or favor. With regard to agents too we have it that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If it is rational for X to do A in circumstances C, then it is likewise rational on anyone who is situated in the same circumstances. When a maxim of the format

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• When positioned in circumstances C, do A is rationally appropriate irrespective, it is so of the particular agent at issue. The basic principles at work in Kant’s approach are to be seen as governing rationality in general. For while Kant’s discussion of these issues focuses on the case of morality, it is clear that he sees the issue in a more general light. Indeed, it is crucial for Kant’s own thinking that his procedure of acceptability determination does not hold only in the case of morality (narrowly construed) but in general for any and every sector of rational comportment. For with Kant rational generality is not just a matter of uniformity for agents but of uniformity across projects as well: in virtue of holding across the whole spectrum of thematic settings. Actually, Kant’s emphasis on that reason as such knows no favorites has its roots in his commitment to a principle that he shared with his great predecessor and inspirer, Leibniz, namely the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR, the Satz vom Grunde which encompasses the idea that there must BE a difference (in circumstances) to MAKE a difference (in result). But of course if different results require different circumstances it then follows by conversion that the same result must ensue when the circumstances are the same. Accordingly, the same courses of actions will be rationally appropriate: when agents find themselves similarly situated. Here the appropriate course of action for the one (whatever it be) must also be appropriate for the other. Be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, a sameness of condition will then demand a sameness of response. And just exactly this is what Kant’s Principle of Universalization stipulates. And so the Leibnizian Principle of Sufficient Reason effectively entails the Kantian principle of rational uniformity. 4. THE GOVERNING MAXIMS OF THEORETICAL REASON In human affairs every sector of rational procedure has its own governing maxims in line with its characteristic objective. Thus consider the situation of theoretical/inquiring reason whose governing maxim is: • Inquire! Seek the truth! Become adequately informed about things! This overarching maxim as an orienting principle of agency provides for a host of such obviously subordinate rulish maxims as:

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• Avoid error! • Avoid contradiction! • Strive to resolve your questions with answers that are cogent and credible! • Align your commitments with the evidence! After all, if we fall into a contradiction and accept both P and not-P one is certain to have a falsehood on one’s hands. And in flying in the face of the evidence we run needless risks of error. Such maxims have operative force throughout the cognitive enterprise constituting the domain of theoretical reason. Are the injunctions represented by the maxims of reason mandates or advices, actual requirements or mere good suggestions? It depends on the context—on the nature of the teleology at issue. When mandatory objectives—real needs—are at issue (as with morality) reason’s injunctions are commands; when optional objectives are at issue (as is generally the case with prudential matters) counsels of reason are merely advisory. And so since information is a real need for any being that acts in the world on the basis of its intelligence, the injunctions of inquiring reason are mandatory. “Maintain coherence in matters of belief” is not just a good suggestion, it is a categorical demand of reason whose bearing as such is bound to be universal. Consider just one illustration. What is the proper response to the addition problem:

2 +3 ? Clearly the maxim: “Whenever asked for the sum of two and three, give the response X” is appropriate when X is 5 and not otherwise. In offering the response correlative to X = 4, for example, we would be in deep difficulty. It represents a procedure that could obviously not be sustained as a modus operandi for rational agents at large. For if everyone proceeded on

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that basis, the aim of the arithmetical enterprise—providing for viable calculations—would become unraveled in a totally counterproductive way. But of course with X = 5 all goes well. Here universal generalization is perfectly viable and the maxim at issue with the specific act in view is compatible with the overarching characteristic maxim of the wider arithmetical project that is at issue: “Manage your calculations correctly.” 5. THE GOVERNING MAXIM OF PRACTICAL AND EVALUATIVE REASON Practical reason in matters of agency is inherently teleological, pivoting on the pursuit of aims and the realization of purposes. Even idleness, rest, and recreation, though not exactly activities, nevertheless are ways of proceeding that can—and, as reason sees it, should—be entered upon with ends-in-view. The paramount governing maxim of practical reason at large is: • Optimize! Throughout your actions and inactions do the best you can to realize a beneficial result! And this governing maxim as a principle of agency has such obviously subordinate rulish maxims as: • Cultivate appropriate goals and ends! • Avoid counterproductive, harmful, wasteful actions! • Do not needlessly loose opportunities for the realization of the good! • Other things equal, opt for results of the highest quality! • Prioritize your objections sensibly (by putting needs before wants, for example)! And paramount among the maxims of practical reason are those that implement the goal of rational economy. These include first and foremost:

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• Economize! Of otherwise equally effective alternatives opt for that which is the most economical of time, effort, and resources: choose the simplest, easiest, most economical, etc. • Pursue your goals effectively and efficiently! • Avoid the pointless or needless expenditure of your resources! The Principle of Least Effort that is at issue here represents a key precept of practical rationality. It is the rational thing to do to avert a needless expenditure of effort however this is possible. Homo sapiens is a being of limited resources—limited time, limited energy, limited means and it is thus only rational for us to husband expenditures. Economy of operation is thus a critical aspect of practical reason. Norms and values do and must play a central determinative role in the modus operandi of rational beings so that evaluation too is subject to the control of reason. And this is so both as regards the evaluation of means (in point of effectiveness, efficacy, and efficiency,) and as regards the evaluation of ends in point of their appropriateness are crucial factors for rationality. The ruling maxim of evaluative reason is • Judge soundly! Proceed throughout your evaluations on the basis of sound, sensible, and rationally defensible standards! And this leads to such subordinative maxims as: • Value things at their true worth! • Don’t rest satisfied with determining merely superficial goods and bads but probe beneath the surface to determine what is actually and authentically so! 6. INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE DOMAINS Though rationality has different dimensions or aspects, it does not have distinct parts or separable components. For all of the various domains of reason are inseparably intertwined. To achieve a proper conception of ra-

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tionality properly we must view it holistically: reason disassembled is reason misunderstood. Theoretical reason is all-pervasive because deciding our actions in practical situation and our assessment in evaluative situations we need to rely on the truth of our relevant beliefs. Then too, practical reason can neither dispense with the evaluation of ends nor with the determination of effective means, and evaluative reason must look to the inherent interconnections of values and the feasibilities of value promotion. (After all, even truth is a value, and so are those factors which, like plausibility or coherence, have a bearing upon its attribution.) No sector of reason can accomplish its characteristic work without drawing upon the rest. It should be recognized, and indeed stressed, that the several sectors of reason are interconnected in a way that interlinks them indissolubly into one single pervasively integrated whole. Rationality can and should thus be seen as a systemic whole in which alethic, procedural, and evaluative considerations are interlocked into an indissoluble unity. Even the prime concerns of theoretical reason, namely consistency and coherence, are themselves simply matters of practical rationality. For information that is inconsistent or incoherent is not able to achieve the aims of the enterprise of inquiry that is at issue with theoretical reason. Answers to our questions that are inconsistent (“yes and no”) are effectively no answers at all, and information that is incoherent is “information” in name only. What is wrong with theoretical incoherence is thus ultimately something pragmaticits frustration of the cardinal aim of the practical enterprise of inquiryof securing sensible answers to our questions. After all, inquiry itself is a practice and in the pursuit of its aims the issue of efficacy and effectiveness in goal realization do and must constitute our criterion of procedural adequacy. A practicalistic perspective upon cognition is thus not only possible but eminently desirable. Ideas, convictions and beliefs, methods as cognitive conditions of cognitive affairs. They are tools we use to solve our problems: answering questions, guiding actions (both theoretical and practical). They can be viewed in their procedural, methodological, use-oriented roles.2

2

Already Thomas Aquinas accordingly saw practical reason (intellectus practicus) as an extension of theoretical reason (intellectus speculativus): intellectus speculativus per extensionen fit practicus (Summa Theologica: qu. 79, art. 11). As he saw it, practical reason is broader than theoretical reason and embraces it: cognitive practice is a special brand of practice in general, practice whose aim is the acces-

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Throughout reason’s domain, we are embarked on a broadly economic approach, albeit but one that proceeds in terms of the larger sphere of a generalized “economy of values,” from whose standpoint the traditional economic values (the standard economic costs and benefits) constitute merely one special case. Such an axiological approach sees theoretical rationality as an integral component of that wider rationality that calls for the effective deployment of our limited resources. 7. MAXIMS AND UNIVERSALIZATION As Kant constantly stressed, morality too is an integral aspect of rationality at large and while he maintained the universality of reason in general, his most elaborate and detailed application of this idea unfolded in the context of practical philosophy and morals in particular. He saw ethics morality as part and parcel of practical rationality because he saw morality as a matter of so acting as rational agents (rationally) ought and of treating rational agents as they (rationally) should be treated. Consider an example. “Is it morally acceptable to act X-wise in some matter of practice—to break an inconvenient promise, for example?” As Kant saw it, this question has to be dealt with along the following lines: I made a promise; the time for keeping it is at hand; it is inconvenient for me to do. How should I proceed? Would it be rationally defensible for me to break my promise? And the line that Kant takes here comes effectively to this: Do not concern yourself with this particular case. Rather, look at the issue from the angle of a general policy as encapsulated in the maxim: “Whenever it is inconvenient to keep a promise, then it can be broken.” And then step back and examine the matter with a view to the acceptability of such a policy at large.

Thus when contemplating whether to do X in circumstances C the rational thing to do, on Kantian principles, is to begin by looking to the generalized policy at issue: “In circumstances C to act X-wise.” And then one is to take two steps.

sion of information and the resolution of questions. And this essentially pragmatic/fundamentalistic view of the matter is surely correct.

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Step 1. Personal policy generalization (via maxims). To begin by considering adopting as a matter of personal policy the actiongeneralizing maxim: Always to act X-wise in C-style circumstances. Step 2. Universalization (of maxims into general laws). To universalize this step across the entire spectrum of rational agents by asking: What if everyone proceeded likewise, that is, what if every such agent adopted that maxim as a guide to their modus operandi. And so—what if everyone always acted X-wise in C-like circumstances? What of this in effect it became a law of nature? Would this be acceptable as a viable arrangement in human affairs? And now, as Kant has it, the moral acceptability or appropriateness of that potential action X turns on the viability or acceptability of such lawful universalization of the maxim at issue—that is, appropriateness will stand or fall on the viability and acceptability of the situation that ensues when everyone always acts X-wise in C-like circumstances. On this approach, the issue of lawful universalization becomes the touchstone for the determination of morally viability/acceptability. But just how is this supposition-consequentialism of “What if everyone always acted likewise?” to work. On this basis, the universality of morals is simply a consequence of the universal and impersonal impetus of reason. Morality is mandatory for rational beings because being moral is an integrate requisite of their rationality itself. And this of course means that morality is situationally mandated for us as rational beings that we should always act rationally. One common criticism of such Kantian generalization is what might be called the “Overkill Objection:” If everyone rushed to the same side of the boat with a life preserver they would not save that “man overboard” but would capsize the vessel. If everyone fed the starving man, they would kill him with kindness. If everyone got money from their bank account to avert somebody’s bankruptcy, they would cause a run on the bank then would bankrupt all alike. But of course Kantian generalization is not—or should not be—construed with a mindless dismissal of common sense. Its maxim is not “Do what is well-intentioned irrespective of foreseeable disaster: (Fiat bonitas ruat caelum!).” The maxim on which everyone can reasonably act on such cases is circumstantial in a way that requires a sensible look at that the circumstances are. It is not “If the man is poisoned, feed him the antidote” but “If the man is poisoned and still needs the antidote,

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feed it to him.” And all of those other overkill cases must of course be adjusted accordingly. The point is simple: If that “benevolent” action is disastrous in the circumstances, it is no longer benevolent. Another line of objection to Kant’s treatment of moral obligation relates not to overkill but to underdetermination. Thus the perfectly proper and appropriate maxim “Use some of the resources you can spare to help those less fortunate then yourself” represents no more than what Kant calls an “imperfect duty”—one whose implementation leaves certain key issues unresolved (in the case how-much? and to-whom?). No specific action is thus made mandatory. But this purported “objection” misses fire through being altogether unreasonable. After all, in human affairs general principles generally have exceptions. With a bit of ingenuity everybody—not novelists alone—can dream up scenarios in which rules such as “Never tell lies,” “Do not hurt people’s feelings,” and “Always keep your promises” open a doorway to disaster. However, when duly qualified by a limitation of scope, such a principle can be made airtight. Thus consider: “Never tell lies pointlessly,” “Don’t hurt people’s feelings just for your own pleasure,” “Always keep your promises unless doing so creates a greater harm.” So modified these general rules encounter no problems at all. So when applying on unqualified general rules in a particular case we cannot do, we cannot properly proceed without further ado. For what we have to assume is that the situation is such that • There is some duly qualified exceptionless version of the principle that in fact applies to the case presently at issue. In sum there must be a universalizing qualification to the principle at issue which applies in the present case. The transgression at issue (lying, hurting someone’s feelings, etc.) must be characterizable as being of a certain particular sort which affords a case-specific rationale for applying that general principle in this particular case. The general moral and prudential rules that govern human affairs, as they do at the level of general principles, will only be applicable in particular cases through the use of judgment. The reasoning at issue cannot simply take the form of

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• Never lie • To say p would be a lie ∴ Do not say p Given that that major premiss is not appropriate this sensing fails to establish its conclusion. To do what is needed is a different argument • Never lie pointlessly • To say p in circumstances C would be to lie pointlessly ∴ Do not say p in circumstances C Injunctions that cannot be subsumed under appropriate principles cannot justifiably be seen as properly validated. And so unless case-coordinate judgment is added to the generalities of practical and moral reason we cannot apply the general principles at issue, cannot justifiably bring them into cases specific effect. With morality as elsewhere in the realm of action the rules do not, cannot, and need not determine specifics beyond a certain point of adequacy. They serve merely to delimit and canalize the available possibilities and need not be required to reduce them to a unique determination of particular acts or courses of action. They can, do, and generally should leave upon a range of acceptable alternatives for their implementation. They provide guidelines that leave some room for choice. The life of reason is not an inflexibly pre-programmed agenda of action. The very fact of its universality means that there has to be flexibility as well. 8. AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL TURN: DEDUCTION For the sake of a further illustration of how Kantian universalization functions in matters of theoretical reason under the aegis of maxims consider the specifically cognitive situation of formal logic. Consider the following argument If the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, it is in France The Eiffel Tower is in France Therefore: The Eiffel Tower is in Paris

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Would one want to endorse this argument as rationally cogent? Clearly not: it instantiates the fallacy of affirming the consequent. But let us consider the matter from a Kantian point of view. Step 1: The personal policy issue. What is the maxim here? It would clearly go something like this. •

Whenever I confront an argument with premises of the format If P, then Q Q Then I shall assert the conclusion P. That is, we have the maxim: “If P, then Q” and Q then I am always to accept the conclusion P.

Step 2: The universalization issue. To have it be that everyone always and everywhere acts on the aforementioned maxim. But now let us look at the overall situation in the presently envisioned functionalist/consequentialist perspective. What is the aim of the enterprise at issue here—the enterprise, that is to say, of deductive logic? It is, clearly, to reason in such a way that we preclude the move from true premisses to a false conclusion. Clearly, one of the governing maxims for proceeding in logic is: • Never employ a mode of reasoning that moves from true premisses to a false conclusion. But now note that in proceeding as per the Step above we will encounter a myriad instance of reasonings of this pattern that move from true premisses to false conclusions, as per If John is in Paris, he is in France John is in France [since he is in Lyon] Therefore: John is in Paris.

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We are thus enmeshed in a contradiction—a conflict of logical compatibility between the characterizing aim of the enterprise at issue and the practice inherent in the action whose acceptability is being contemplated. A will that stands committed to these aims and yet endorses such potentially counterproductive practices is one divided against itself. The aims of rationality are defeated. And this betokens the rational impropriety of the fallacious argumentation at issue. 9. CONSEQUENTIALISM The crux of the Kantian approach to rational viability through generalization was the matter of functional suitability. For as Aristotle already noted, rational human actions occur within a purposive context. Any deliberate human action occurs in the functional setting of some human project or other. And when an act is one where the well-being and interests of people-at-large is at issue, the context will be moral. When the realization of some personal or group desideratum is at issue, the purposive setting will be prudential. When securing answers to questions is the aim, the purposive setting is cognitive. And of course there are many other purposive contexts as well. The point is that with rational agents there is always an operationally functional setting of some sort, and the determination of rational viability/conceptuality calls for asking the question: “Will that universalized modus operandi accord or conflict with a realization of these aims and purposes that are at issue with the functional objectives at issue. Is it consistent with these objectives that everyone should act X-wise or would it stand in conflict and contradiction to these function-correlative aims and purposes?” Throughout, appropriateness hinges crucially on functional efficacy and so comes down to the question: Is the characterizing maxim at issue with the contemplated action consistent with the overarching maxim characterizing the teleology of the project within whose range the action falls? Take the case of morality. In the example of the moral unacceptability of the convenient abandonment of a promise is clear (1) that the practice at issue (promising) arises in the setting social interaction among people where their interests are engaged. (2) That this places the matter into the moral context of instituting and promoting practices that conduce to the general welfare of all involved. (3) That if people break their promises whenever convenient, then the entire practice of promising (of giving and

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accepting promise) would become destabilized, and (4) that since this result would disadvantage the best interests of the community of rational beings such a result would be counterproductively inconsistent with the functional context at issue. And this irrational upshot of endorsing by one’s act a principle of agency that cannot be rationally sustained in the context of morality’s characterizing objections would, on Kantian principles, betoken the moral impropriety of the act at issue. 10. A KANTIAN MORAL As these deliberations indicate, Kantian Generalization reflects a characteristic of rationality at large and not just only of morality strictly construed. Its strictures are just as reasonable and just as effective in theoretical as in practical deliberations since the same fundamental line of reasoning is at work throughout, to wit: 1. Analyze at the particular case at issue with a view to determining (1) the general policy—the maxim—that it instantiates, and (2) the relevant context of operation into which this case falls. 2. Examine this context to determine its function thereby discern the purposive rationale at issue here. 3 Universalize the maxim at issue from being a personal maxim of conduct to an unrestrictedly universalized rule of procedure in like cases. 4. Assess whether the practice so universalized is effective or ineffective in realizing the objective at issue in the generalized context of operation as determined at step 1 above. The salient consideration here is that in views of our situation on the world’s stage we humans are numbered in a substantial variety of projects each of which turn its own definitive aim Morality: creating a modus operandi for the fruitful interaction of rational agents engaged in the pursuit of happiness.

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Prudence: prudence an efficient and effective means to desired ends (i.e., for serving our inclinations). Logic: affording an organon for reasoning that assures a secure transit from true premisses to true circumstances. Arithmetic: furnishing a mechanism of correct calculation In each case the object of the enterprise is to provide for the realization of a certain characteristic aim or objective. And throughout, the crux for determining the rationale acceptability of acts is the consonance of generalizing their inherent maxims with the characteristic teleology of the relevant enterprise. After all, the underlying rationale of rationality is essentially this: whenever you engage in an enterprise first make sure it is one that is inherently appropriate, and then—but only then—arrange your actions so as to ensue its sensible, efficient, and effective realization. The maxim at issue with the effective realization of appropriate objectives represents the supreme maxim of rationality and endows it with a decidedly pragmatic orientation. And the crux of the matter is that this way of assessing the acceptability of an envisioned proceeding emerges as appropriate all across the board—in theoretical matters of propositional acceptance as it is in practical matters of morality. It deserves to be recognized—and indeed emphasized—that a Kantian approach is viable not with morality alone but throughout the realm of rationality at large in view of its definitive nature. In the end, it is the allencompassingly universal demand of reason to unrestricted authority that is the ultimate rationale and basis for Kantian universalization.

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Chapter Nine ON THE IMPORT AND RATIONALE OF VALUE ATTRIBUTION 1. INTRODUCTION

A

re our human values such as life, liberty, and happiness something merely subjective that lies entirely “in the eyes of the beholder”? Actually, there are good reasons for thinking that this is not in fact the case. And to see why this is so one does best to begin a look at the idea of what valuation is all about. This discussion will approach the issue of value objectivity with reference specifically to the evaluation of states of affairs (actual or possible). For the positive or negative evaluation of states of affairs automatically encompasses that of objects as well since their existence is bound to represent a state of affairs. Specifically, their being involved in a certain state of affairs is a (relational) property both of the items at issue and of their context. For example, M. L. King’s assassination is a state of affairs in which both certain properties of Dr. King (viz., his mortality) and certain properties of the circumstances of the shooting-as-a-whole (viz., its occurrence on April 4, 1968) are alike involucrated. Alike objects and states of affairs—be they actual or merely possible— have such dispositional features, as, for example, those of including or excluding certain properties. Some of these properties will be dispositional— acidity or fragility for example. And among these are dispositions to evoke a certain sort of response in particular interactive situations with people. Just this will be the case with such properties as those of being pleasing to humans or repugnant or threatening—of positive or negative aspect. And just this is the crux of value. 2. TERTIARY PROPERTIES From the aspect of evaluation, it is the conjointly dispositional and relational properties of things that are pivotal. Even as physical interactions

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with material objects will evoke certain standard sensory responses in people, so mental entertainings of states of affairs can and generally do activate their dispositional features of eliciting certain characteristic responses in people. And the resultant dispositional property of a state of affairs is as “objective” a feature of it as any other can possibly be. Accordingly, it transpires that even as there are Actualities (actually existing states of affairs) that can and do have the dispositional property of evoking a certain sort of response in their perception or observation by normally constituted human organisms. (These are the secondary properties of the observed states of affairs.) so also there are Possibilities (possibly existing states of affairs—actual ones included) that can and do have the dispositional property of evoking a certain sort of response in their conception or contemplation by normally constituted and suitably informed rational (and not necessarily human) organisms. (These are the tertiary properties of the contemplated state of affairs. And of course actual states of affairs can have such tertiary properties as well.) Thus, for example, a person's “(physical) similarity to Napoleon” is undoubtedly a property of his. Yet this property represents neither a primary quality nor a sensory disposition but rather a tertiary property. Or again, consider the ink-configuration &. Its property of representing the conjunctive and is certainly not something discernible by observation alone— apparent as such to a perceptive Babylonian. Nevertheless it too is a tertiary property and as such an authentic and objective feature of that configuration. Secondary qualities are features that any suitably circumstanced physiologically normal observers can remark. Tertiary properties, by contrast, are features that any suitably circumstanced cognitively normal thinker can recognize. There is nothing mysterious about these tertiary properties, they are just something conceptually different from and more complex than secondary properties. An object's secondary properties pivot on its dispositions to evoke characteristic affective responses in the suitably responsive senses. Analogously, a state of affairs’ tertiary properties pivot on dispositions to evoke characteristic reflective responses in the suitably prepared

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mind. When a Greek vase is (truly) said to be “a typical second century BC Cretan amphora,” it is undoubtedly the case that an empirical property of some sort is ascribed to it. But that property is clearly neither primary nor yet secondary in the classical sense of that distinction. For this distinction was nowise designed to capture issues relating to features whose nature is dispositional, relational, context-bound, and attributively inferential. And it is just this that is presently the case. These tertiary properties carry us into a distinctively diferent, mindcorrelative realm. We ascribe secondary properties on essentially causal grounds, but tertiary properties on essentially judgmental ones. Here thought is pivotal and reasons come into it. And while secondary properties are specifically linked to the make-up of our human sensibility (our senseorgans), nothing inherently species-bound is involved in the reflectivity at issue with tertiary properties. The dispositional status of secondary properties loosens their connection with the actual responses of actual observers: the issue has the highly constructionalized structure of the question: if there were suitably situated observers and if their observations were properly constituted, then what sort of response would a scrutiny of the item evoke? And similarly with tertiary properties, where the issue is if these observers were duly apprised and if their evaluative endorsements were properly constituted, then what sort of response would a consideration of the item evoke? The dispositional properties at issue thus relate to the item's response-evoking capacities, and do not simply “lie in the eye of the beholder” in some arbitrary or subjective manner. 3. VALUES AS TERTIARY PROPERTIES The tertiary properties of a state of affairs can certainly be Factual: in involving the acknowledgement of descriptive facts. (For example, the state of affairs at issue in the Battle of Waterloo will evoke in any sensibility circumstanced contemplator the realization that the French side lost.) But something else can alone be at stake. For tertiary properties can also prove to be

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Evaluative: in evoking the realization of pro- or con-evaluations. (For example, the state of affairs at issue with an unprovoked act of pointless violence or destruction will evoke in any sensibility circumstanced constituted contemplator a negative or con-reaction.) The fact that states of affairs have various (tertiary) normative or value properties which, albeit dispositional, are nevertheless objective, means that objects can have such properties as well. Thus, for example, if (or, rather, since) the state of affairs of a harmonious piece of music has (say) the tertiary property of being pleasing to people, then this property can (by courtesy) be said to characterize that musical piece as well. And if the state of affairs of Smith’s boorishness has the tendency property of being offensive, then Smith’s boorishness can (by courtesy) be held to be offensive as well. Value is thus grounded in objects as much as any other dispositional feature is, and it is an authentic feature of an object that its characteristics elicit a particular sort of resource in appropriately endowed intelligent beings.1 Accordingly, value features count as tertiary properties of their bearers. Of course, the “beauty” of a vase is something which, unlike its shape, is not going to be detectable by bare observation. Like its being “a typical product of its era” the validation of its attribution is going to require a great deal of peripheral information and principled reflection. For the ascription of a value to any thing or situation involves an implicit claim about how this item would figure in the reflective thought of an intelligent, unbiased mind that is duly informed about an object and has adequately reflected on its nature and ramifications. Value reception is a matter of cognitive and not merely sensory disposition. The thesis that, if two items are descriptively the same in factual regards (as regards both their descriptively intrinsic and their relational features), then they are also of like evaluative condition—and so, by contraposition, when two items differ in value, then they will also exhibit a difference in the some factual/descriptive respect—is often characterized as a matter of value-on-fact supervenience. That is, the tertiary properties of a state of affairs or object are “supervenient” upon its factual nature and descriptive context—encompassing its descriptive make up and its descriptive embedding in the wider setting in which it figures. No doubt, if an item's primary 1

On values as tertiary properties see also the author’s The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

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and secondary qualities were different, its tertiary qualities would differ as well. For our concrete evaluations should—and when appropriate will—be rationally constrained by the underlying facts, albeit constrained in ways that involve the mediating operation of evaluatively conditioned judgment. (The beauty of a vase indeed hinges on its descriptive makeup, but to effect the derivation at issue requires an enthymeme in which general principles of evaluation are deeply implicated.) 4. VALUES AS SUPERVENIENT The idea of supervenience was initially invoked by R. M. Hare: Let us take that characteristic of “good” which has been called its supervenience. Suppose that we say “St. Francis was a good man.” It is logically impossible to say this and to maintain at the same time there might have been another man placed exactly in the same circumstances as St. Francis, and who behaved in exactly the same way but who differed from St. Francis in this respect only, that he was not a good man.2

But of course the “logical impossibility” at issue is not a matter of pure logic but rather roots in logico-conceptual considerations in issuing from evaluative principles built into the use of evaluative terms like the ethical epithet “good man.” There is, moreover, another no less critical relationship between factual description and normative evaluation: • That if two items differ sufficiently in factual regards, then they will also differ in the evaluative condition. This principle (which does not automatically follow from the preceding) to the effect that if the facts about an item were sufficiently different then the value situation too would be altered is also something essential because without it an item’s evaluative condition would obtain irrespectively of its what the descriptive facts about it are, which is absurd. After all, any evaluation can be destabilized by altering matters in the direction of “too much of a good thing”—or, alas, by effecting a plunge from bad to yet 2

See R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 145, cf. also John M. Mackie, Ethics (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 41.

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worse. All this too is a matter of value-on-fact supervenience in an enlarged sense of the term. To be sure, the “supervenient” dependency of evaluating on the “natural facts” is totally compatible with a rejection of a value naturalism that sees evaluative as derivable from matters of pure fact alone. As the present approach sees it, facts do indeed ground values, but will do so only through the intermediation of evaluative principles. G. E. Moore did not serve the interests of philosophical clarity at all well in adopting the contrast terms “natural/non-natural” to characterize a distinction for which, on his own principles, the less question-begging contrasts sensory/non-sensory or perceptual/non-perceptual would have been far more suitable.3 For, in the final analysis, all that Moore means by calling the value characteristics of things “non-natural” is that they do not represent observationally discernible features of their putative bearers, that they are, in their nature, not accessible to inspection by our senses. (However to call them “super-sensible” would introduce the wrong connotations here—what has “higher” or “lower” to do with it?) Regrettably, characterizing the evaluative features of things as non-natural—as Moore unfortunately did—strongly suggests that something rather strange and mysterious is going on—that the purported condition of things is somehow extra—or super-natural. And invoking this mystery invites the response that just as we have inner and outer senses to observe the natural properties of things, occurrences, or situations (the taste of an apple or the painfulness of a wound), so there is some extra-ordinary sense-analogous faculty to determine their value status, a mysterious value insight or “intuition” to perceive their evaluative aspects. The fundamental contrast, of course, should simply be that between what can be observed or inferred from purely observational data and that which cannot because a background of further information is needed. The age of a hammer is no more perception-accessible than is the ownership of a piece of property. But there is nothing about such matters that makes them something mysterious and “non-natural”—the special object of a peculiar detection-faculty, a value intuition. The crucial fact is that value is not sense-perceptible but mind-judgmental: something that cannot be determined solely by observation of some sort but requires reflective thought

3

G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), Chap. I.

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duly sustained by background information and suitably equipped with an awareness of principles. Forgetting the good Kantian point that evaluation is a matter of judgment on the basis of principles, much of Anglo-American moral theory followed Moorean inspirations down the primrose path of a value-insight empiricism that looked to some sort of perceptual or quasi-perceptual access to value, thereby stumbling once more into the blind alley of the older British theorists of moral sense or sensibility. This approach embarked philosophers on the vain quest for a value sensibility—with all of its inherent puzzlements, including the prospect of evaluative color blindness and the intractable problem of how value perception (of any sort) can justify rather than merely explain evaluations. 5. VALUE AS BENEFICIARY COORDINATED? With values seen as tertiary properties it emerges that they are an instrumentality of reason. Their ascription is inextricably bound up with the judgmental issue of desert and merit—with the existence of good reasons for preferring one state of affairs to another. Thus consider a realm devoid of minds—of intelligent beings. This sort of manifold can certainly exhibit value—aesthetic value such as elegance, for example, or even such cognitive values as order or harmony. And this can transpire in the absence of minds from the immediate scene—the being of a property depends on its being perceived no more than its secondary properties do. 4 But all the same, values are encompassed in the very idea of being valued. The existence of value does not require the existence of minds; but the very conception of value nevertheless invokes the conception of minds via the fact that having value is correlative with deserving to evoke a pro- or con-reaction in contemplating minds. But this sort of mind-involvement is conceptual not ontological.5 The Australian philosophers Richard and Valerie Routley have proposed to demonstrate the existence of intrinsic value wholly without reference to evaluators by means of a thought experiment, which runs essentially as follows: 4

Perceivability (rather than perception) is something else again.

5

The considerations at issue here are set out in greater detail in the author’s Conceptual Idealism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).

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Let it be supposed that the last living person has control of a Doomsday Device that would destroy all living things and ecosystems that would otherwise survive. And as a last living act this individual pushes the button. Surely the world would be worse off—evaluatively inferior—after this horrible deed is done than it would otherwise be. But yet despite our overmastering tendency to say this, no evaluator will (by hypothesis) be involved. Surely, then, those creatures and ecosystems have an intrinsic value independently of the presence of our appreciative evaluator. Value can exist independently of any evaluators.6

Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this plausible-looking argumentation is deeply problematic. Granted, there are no people in the story who can evaluatively react to that act of destruction. But that of course does not mean that human evaluators are eliminated—that in the situation under consideration, any and all evaluators are absent from the scene. For while there are indeed no evaluators IN the story, there yet remain upon the scene those who—like ourselves—are evaluators OF the story. And to approve or allow to let that vandalism go unregretted and unreproached would do irreparable harm to OUR character and OUR moral standing. The meta-story of an evaluator who countenances such a thing envisions someone who is indeed adversely affected in point of his/her moral character. (What we have here is something of a double-effect variant of Plato’s Ring of Gyges.) When we tell a story, then the limits and frame of the story are set simply by what transpires within it, and its cast of characters is set within that frame. But when we use a story to make a point we enlarge that frame and now will ourselves figure within its duly enlarged range. That otherwise absent so-called “fourth wall” is now overly erected upon the stage of our narrative drama. For now what is being said is not story internal (“The story has it that such-and-such”), but rather we now speak on our own account (“We take the story to mean that something or other holds.”). The moment the Routleys draw lessons from their story, they themselves come to figure in the now enlarged framework of consideration. After all, in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Prospero’s addressing the audience is as much a part of the play as are his opening lines—he does not step outside the frame but only functions as yet another part of it—one that is almost always left unconsidered. And so, while neither we nor anyone 6

For the Routley’s argumentation here see their “Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics,” in D. S. Mannison, M. S. McRobbie, and R. Routley (eds.), Environmental Philosophy (Cinberra: Austrailisn National University Press, 1980).

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else figures within the Routley’s story as it stands, nevertheless once we are invited to step back from the story to consider its larger meaning and an appeal is made to our normative stance with regard to it, then this introduces a new, enlarged frame that embraces us as well. For even when we think existing humans (rational agents) out of our stories and find that evaluative relations still apply we do not thereby show that values are not rational-agent correlative. For it is still we ourselves who are doing the appraisals and who transact that evaluative business on our own account. Consider the inverse proceeding—that of thinking additional sorts of rational agents (intelligent aliens, say) into our story. And let us hypothesize a society of such agents who systemically treat their fellows with a total disregard for their interests in point of welfare and well being. These beings are, of course, immoral and evil. But this is not (or may well not be) a judgment that THEY are involved in, it is OUR judgment. We are the ones who here transact that evaluative business on our own account. So clearly there is a symmetry here. Just as it is that when we think people into a story and find that our values are decisive for its evaluation in point of moral issues, so it is that when we think people out of a story and find that values continue to be applicable, it is in fact our values that are operative. But does not the coordination of value with evaluators mean that values are person-coordinately subjective? By no means! Let us consider why. 6. PARAMOUNT CONSEQUENCES OF SEEING VALUES AS TERTIARY DISPOSITIONS With values considered as tertiary properties of states of affairs and objects along the presently contemplated lines, important features of value come into view: (A) Values as Nonsubjective The nonsubjective nature of value now becomes clear. The question of whether or not (and if so to what extent) a state of affairs has value does not ask whether you or I or anybody in particular values it: it is not a question about the personal, idiosyncratic, subjective stance of particular individuals. Rather what it asks—impersonally, generally, and objectively is whether people should value it—that is whether, given the realities of the human situation, ideally reasonable and conscientious people are well ad-

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vised to value it. The issue at bottom is whether in prizing and pursuing the condition at issue people are contributing towards more effectively serving their real interests. The issue is not how people do actually react but how they should (normatively) react, how their best and deepest interests are most effectively served. The matter is emphatically not one that hinges in any way, manner, or shape on the idiosyncratic views and personal preferences of particular individuals. This line of thought immediately settles some related key issues regarding the nature of value. Does value demand an actual valuer? Does having value require being valued? By no means! Value requires an actual valuer no more than length requires an actual measurer. The issue is not what actual someone does but what anyone should do if they were duly engaged. A harmonious ecosystem has value not because its participants appreciate this—after all, all of them might function below the threshold of consciousness—but because its is the sort of thing that deserves being prized so that rational evaluators will indeed prize it. Nor do we who contemplate the value of such an arrangement create its value through the act of valuing it. It has value not because it is valued but because it deserves to be valued—because rational beings who contemplate it and get to do so with appropriation and prioritive response. Such appreciators do not create that value but rather appreciate it. Subjectivity does not come into it. The value of states of affairs is not a matter of the actual reactions of particular actual evaluators but of the appropriate (i.e., normal and natural) reactions of any possible competent evaluators. (B) Values as Factual Something has value for us humans if its pursuit and realization conduces to our capacity to thrive and flourish as the sorts of creatures we are—that is, when it facilitates our needs and appropriate wants. For example, the states of affairs ranked in meeting our need for food, shelter, clothing, friends, etc. have this character and thereby reflect legitimate values in conducing to the extent to which people are healthier and happier and generally better off. And it is simply a matter of fact that these circumstances obtain.

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(C) Values as Attributive It is tautologous that value ascriptions are evaluative and normative. But they are also attributive: that is, they address features not of the attributor, as the source of attribution but of the object as the target of attribution. They are thus also “objective” in the sense of addressing features of the objects involved—the items or states of affairs at issue. They are object characterizing precisely because if various of the relevant features of the objects at issue were different, then they would differ as well. They supervene (as the current jargon has it) upon the feature-constitution of the objects at issue. If those items were sufficiently different then the value situation too would change. (D) Values as Relational and Mind-Invoking Value-attributions are relational: they assert a linkage between the objects at issue and other elements in the environing manifold of things. Just as color ascriptions assert a relationship between an object and its viewers (actual and potential) so value ascriptions assert a relationship between an object or state of affairs and those who do (or might) contemplate it. And seeing that contemplation enters upon the state of consideration here, it transpires that that value is mind-invoking. However, minds are needed not for the existence of values but rather are invoked in their conceptualization. For we do not have • To have value is to be appreciated (or the reverse) but rather • To have value is to be such as to deserve being appreciated or the reverse. The crux here is not the situation of being prized by certain people, but rather that of prizeworthiness—of deserving to be prized by right-taking people at large.

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(E) Values as Dispositional Does the tree that falls unobserved in the forest make a sound? Are the poppies that bloom unobserved in the field beautiful? The answer in both cases is: Yes of course. A noise need not be heard to qualify as such, not need a beautiful object be appreciated. Sounds exist not just where they are heard but where they can be heard (though they need not be). And the case is the same with values. They too exist where they can be appreciated, even when this is not actually in process of happening. Of course the dispositional character of nature is clearly exhibited in the preceding exposition of the status of value as a tertiary disposition. (F) Values as Non-anthropocentric As these present deliberations see it, values inhere in features of states of affairs whose contemplation evokes a positive or negative (pro or con) reaction in their contemplation by all duly informed (normal) organisms of a particular species of rational being. Accordingly, while there indeed can be specifically human values (aromatic pleasantness, for example, or gastronomic healthfulness)—values specifically bound up with certain features of the human condition (our ability to smell, for example, or our capacity to taste food), it nowise transpires that all values need be of their highly species-specific sort—being nourishing (for example) in contrast with being tasty is a far more extensive value, and such values as informativeness or (cognitive) harmoniousness will presumably hold good for rational beings at large—alien intelligences, if such there are. As moral philosophers at least since the days of Kant have generally stressed specifically moral values (such as candor or honesty or generosity) must and do hold good for rational intelligences at large. So understood, it would be unduly parochial and narrow-minded to view values as anthropocentric. They need quite emphatically not be geared to specifically human interests and concerns. 7. THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF VALUE Given that values, seen as tertiary properties, are objective features of states of affairs (actual or possible) how are we to determine their presence? To clarify what is at issue here let us consider what has become known among philosophers as “Mill’s Fallacy.”

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John Stuart Mill argued the desirability of happiness as follows: The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself [viz. happiness] were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. (Utilitarianism, Chapter IV.) It is commonly objected against this reasoning that while visible = “capable of being seen” and audible = “capable of being heard”, nevertheless, desirable does not come to “capable of being desired” but rather “worthy of being desired.” But Mill is not guilty of such a confusion here. The linkage he (presumably) has in mind is not that being desired constitutes desirability through a meaning-relationship of some sort, but rather that it evidentiates desirability by way of confirmatory substantiation: that a good— and perhaps even the best—evidential ground we can secure to show that something is desirable is that people desire it. His reasoning is enthymematic: • People universally seek happiness • People are sensible enough not to be systematically deluded: What all or most of them desire is something that (almost certainly) is worthy of being desired Therefore: Happiness is worthy of being desired. The reasoning here is indeed from fact to value alright, but only via an enthymematic premiss that bridges the fact/value divide. For accordingly, any such inferential transition (along the lines endorsed by J. S. Mill) from what people factually desire to what qualifies as normatively desirable (i.e., deserving of being desired) hinges crucially on the availability of an enthymematically tacit premiss to the general effect: Whatever people in general, and sensible people in particular, (commonly, generally, ordinarily) desire (prefer, prize) is worthy of being desired (preferred, prized).

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Accordingly, no problematic, fact-to-value reduction is at issue here. For that crucial enthymematic premiss itself clearly has an evaluative status that prevents the approach at issue from achieving any reductive ends. To achieve cogency, the move from people's preferences or desires to something's being of value must always be mediated by some evaluative supplementation. A tacit premiss of the sort logicians characterize as enthymematic is called for. The crux of Mill’s “Fallacy” lies in its (supposedly) purporting to be an explanation of what it means to say that something has value. And, indeed, this definitional task is clearly something for which Mill’s formula is very ill suited. But criteriology—which surely is what he had in view—is something else again. One of the most cogent sorts of evidence we can have for value—for substantiating the claim that something deserves to be valued by people—is the actual circumstance that people-in-general do ordinarily and normally value it. After all, nature has emplaced us humans in the world’s scheme of things as intelligent agents who often are and generally ought to be rational in what they think and do. And values are our guide to matter of decision and action, and we use this guidance in our endeavors to satisfy our desires and above all our needs. On this basis, the very fact of the pervasiveness and endurance of values testifies to their efficacy and thereby to their deserving to be heeded. It is essentially this factor of the development and transmission of certain values through the process of cultural evolution— via a rational selection of that which is efficient and effective—that comes to the fore here. The very fact that such values are pervasive and enduring serves to constitute an evidential rationale for their appropriateness and betokens the objectivity of value and help to establish appropriate valuation as something that does not merely lie “in the eyes of the beholder.” And so, specifically, states of affairs are appropriately valued by people when this positive response that is grounded in the consideration that their realization does (or would) prove effective in meeting some need of intelligent agents emplaced in our situation in the world’s scheme of things.7

7

Issues relevant to the deliberations of this chapter are also discussed in my The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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Chapter Ten ETHICAL QUANTITIES 1. THE PROBLEM OF ETHICAL QUANTITIES

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n ethical quantity as here construed is one whose mis-specification can prove to be not so much inappropriate as incorrect or even wrong in the specifically ethical sense of these terms. For example, it is clear that if and insofar as the commandment to “honor thy father and thy mother” carries ethical weight, the number two, under the identifying description “the very least number of people one should honor,” will represent an ethical quantity. To mis-specify this quantity as “one” is to be mistaken in ethics, not in arithmetic. Thus consider the classic dictum of Sir William Blackstone to the effect that “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”1 Obviously, punishing the innocent is the wrong thing to do. But nevertheless Blackstone was a realist who doubtless realized full well that no system devised and operated by imperfect humans can be error free. And error in this sort of case comes in various kinds. No doubt we want to avoid false positives in designating the innocent as guilty. But improper negatives by way of unpunished malefactors are also eminently undesirable. Yet how many otherwise escaping guilty does it take to justify one condemned innocent? Blackstone asserted that 10 won’t do. But what of 1,000; what of 1,000,000; what of “all there are”? Here Blackstone was careful. It was surely not without thought that he picked 10 instead of one or another of those much larger available alternatives. After all, any workable system of criminal justice must strike a balance between two ethically geared desiderata: fairness and justice for individuals on the one hand, and on the other the larger public interest in maintaining the communally indispensable reign of law and order. And so, while the occasional escape of the guilty from their just deserts can be tolerated in the interest of 1

Commentaries on the Law of England, Vol. IV (Chicago: University of Chicago Press [Facsimile of the first edition of 1715-19]), p. 352.

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systemic appropriateness, nevertheless such tolerance is justifiable only up to a point—a point which reflective consideration indicates as perhaps acceptable with Blackstone’s 10, discussable with 20, but pretty clearly unacceptable at 100. Yet why just exactly 10? It is, of course, possible to say “Even one is one too many” in that it would be decidedly preferable to have none instead of even one. But in fact this could not be reasonable in circumstances where there just is not actually on offer a flawless system that avoids mishaps altogether, so that the only way to keep error free is to have no system at all. In many or most real-life situations such an “all or nothing” approach is utterly unrealistic. Here a hyperbolic perfectionism is itself something decidedly imperfect. But if not all-or-nothing then what? Just why in such cases should it be that N is incorrect? What is there about N that enables it to capture sufficiency while N ÷ 2 is too small and N x 2 is too large? But too small or too large for what? The point surely is that in such matters an ethically oriented purpose is at stake. Specify that number improperly and you have a system that on the one side tolerates the unfair and unjust treatment of individuals and on the other side risks unacceptable damage to important community interests. So the point is that with ethical qualities there is going to be an ethical stake: be “too few” will always cash out to something like “too few for the general good,” “too few for public safety,” “too few for a viable system of justice,” or some such. “Too few” that is to say, indicates a shortfall in relation to making possible the realization of some ethically requisite good. Thus consider the somewhat more dramatic situation afforded by the splendid story of Abraham’s haggle with the Lord God in the book of Genesis: And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he spoke upon him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. And he said unto him, Oh let not

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So ten righteous men would have done the trick. But why only ten? Why would not eight have served—or six? So, in the ethical purview of a society how many righteous people must there be in a town before God— or, rather more commonly, man with his missiles and bombs—should spare the wicked (or implacably hostile) from fire and brimstone? God apparently thought that as few as ten would do, perhaps because in Judaic thought it takes 10 to constitute a viable community for public working. (Humans, of course, have often been far less generous, although even here it is not irrelevant to observe that Henry Stimson struck Kyoto off the target list for the atomic bomb because of its role as a religious center.) “I say unto you,” said Jesus in the parable, “that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). But what of nine hundred and ninety nine? Is the number here an amount that can be stretched ad infinitum? Presumably not! Surely at some point numbers will tell even here. In a myriad ethically geared situations in human affairs we must fix on a number. When is someone to age to ? The lawmakers will have to decide. And sensible deliberation here has to recognize that some numbers are unacceptably too big and others too small relative to the ethically significant purposes at hand. 2. AN IMPETUS OF INEXACTNESS Yet where do these ethical numbers come from? For one thing, the specification of ethical quantities is pervasive throughout the administrative management of our everyday offers. In many American jurisdictions, people can vote at age 18. But why not already at 9—or only at 36? Presumably because the former would put public affairs at the mercy of immature judgment, while the latter would disenfranchise many otherwise qualified people from participating in the political process. Both shortfall and excess clearly run us into ethical problems here.

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The ethical aspect of the number-specification at issue in such matters roots in two considerations: (1) The quantities at issue are coordinate with an ethically valid goal and objective—a correlative ethically appropriate aim or telos. (2) How the quantity at issue is specified can be facilitative or counterproductive with respect to the realization of this ethically valid goal. But if this is how the matter indeed stands, then ethical quantities will generally be inexact. The situation is somewhat akin to that of the ancient puzzle of the heap: “How many grains of sand does it take to make a heap?”2 Clearly three are too few and three hundred more than enough. But the boundary between sufficiency and insufficiency cannot be fixed with precision. But here the analogy ends and crucial disanalogy comes to the fore. For nothing moral—and certainly nothing ethical—turns on whether or not we qualify a certain rate of sandgrains as a heap. Or again “One swallow does not make a summer.” Fine! But just how many does it take? Well, it really just does not matter—from an ethical point of view, at least. On the other hand, the issue of how large an assemblage of rowdy people it takes to turn an unruly crowd into a riot—thus bringing in play the legal mechanism of a Riot Act or its equivalent—is an issue that is, in the circumstances, fraught with ethical ramifications. To be sure, some ethical qualities are (arguably) determinate. Noteworthy here—perhaps—is the specification of 2 as—in our society, at least— the number of individuals who can form a marital unit. (Coincidentally, in the evolving condition of things this may well eventually come up for discussion and debate.) But such determinacy is the exception to the rule. In general, a “grey” area prevails with ethical quantitatives. And thus important implications. For throughout these cases the Goldilocks Principle applies: some numbers are clearly too little and others too big, while some appear to be right, perhaps, but yet not altogether precise and fixed. In such matters there is bound to be an indeterminate, indecisive region. And what is at issue here is not a matter of mere cognition: it is not that there really is an exact number that we just cannot manage to determine with precision. Rather, there is an inherently penumbral range of indefiniteness within 2

On this puzzle and its ramifications see the author’s Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution (Chicago: Open Court, 2001).

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which a precise determination is in principle impossible. Within a limited range there is no inherent priority but only what one might characterize as scope for “administrative efficiency.” It is important, however, to distinguish between quantitative determination and quantitative specification. With determination there is an antecedently well-defined quality at issue, and one is endeavoring to measure or estimate it. How many 1-inch diameter spheres can one fit into a 1-foot sided cubic box? Clearly 5 is too few and 5000 too many. Inbetween there is going to be a number that is just right, and with a bit of mathematics one can determine its value. But just how many years suffice to yield an “age of consent” is something quite different. It is not that there are no limits here (six is clearly too young and sixty too old). But in fixing upon 16 (or 18)—or indeed anything in the 12-21 range—one is not discovering an antecedently defined quantity but rather making a specification for the purposes of the legal and administrative management of public affairs. There indeed are preexisting facts relevant to the determination (viz., those that render that 12-21 range plausibly discussable in this context). But a society’s fixing upon 16 (or 18) is a matter of specification, not determination. Here there is no preexisting numeric fact of the matter that has us discover (rather than postulate) the correctness of 16 or 18. Ethical numbers are thus bound to be somewhat problematic—and for good reason. Consider such generalities as: • A criminal justice system is ethically unacceptable that punishes the innocent too frequently. • An educational system is unacceptable that does not permit persons of mature years a substantial latitude in shaping their studies. These percepts are unproblematic, clearly acceptable, virtually tautalogous. But then too they are vague and indefinite. For in such case how many cases constitute “too often,” how many years does it take to be “mature” how much latitude is “substantial?” When we apply such precepts we give a presumptive concreteness to those unspecified quantities. And yet there are real problems here. “In human affairs rules generally admit of exception categories.” Yes—but how many can there be before that “rule” ceases to be such? Some there will be, but too many will qualify that rule away into nothingness. And this sort of situation is pervasive in ethics.

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Consider, for example, the aforementioned idea of communal prayer and worship in the context of establishing religious group solidarity. Jewish law stipulates that it takes a quorum (minyan) of ten adult men to constitute a congregation sufficient for a valid religious service.3 The underlying idea in adopting this specification of ten seems to be that this plausibly qualifies as the minimum for a viable communal unit. Christianity contemplates a more sociable God, prepared to join in “where two or three are gathered together in my name. . .” (Matthew 18:20). Either way, however, the basic idea is much the same, namely that in making things right with God—or if you prefer, to be ethical creatures in good standing as such— we cannot act alone but must proceed in concert with our fellows. But of course principles of this sort do not issue in specific numbers. In regard to the mandates of ethics and morality, zero is the favorite number and “thou shalt not” the favorite formula. (Even “Honor thy father and thy mother”—the sole commandment that dispenses with “thou shalt not”—might be rephrased as “Thou shalt not treat your father or mother disrespectfully.”) After all, there is no free pass in ethics—“Feel free to do this or so X times but no more” does not sound right in ethics: positive law does sometimes look at such questions in a different light, but in ethics there is no “three strikes and you’re out.” Philosophical deliberation regarding ethics is a matter of theory—of general principles. Morality and ethics as standardly practiced deal in generalities and injunctions with never and always rather than in “often” or “not more that 3 times.” Accordingly, zero would seem to be the only number well known to ethics. Beyond this, ethical quantities will generally not be precise: we cannot pin them down to particular numbers. 3. GENERALITY CREATES DIFFICULTIES The general rules determinable on ethical principles alone are almost unavoidably numerally indefinite. “Share your wealth with those in need.” But to what extent? “Do not take more than your fair share!” But just what is that? To implement such precepts we must transmute generalities into specifics—and these specifics need to be aligned to the particular circumstances of the case. Something over and above honoring general principles is requisite to achieve these numeral specifics. 3

So the Talmudic dictum that when ten men pray together God is with them (Ber. 62). See the Encyclopedia Judaica, art MINYAN.

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Is this good enough? Macaulay wrote in his essay on Machiavelli the “Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.” But this bit of selfrefutation itself needs qualification and amendment. We can and should add the proviso: “in the absence of further guidance for their implementation in concrete circumstances.” The salient point here is that on the path downwards to specifics from the thin atmosphere or governing rules and general principles there is always a certain amount of slack. Strategic principles are one thing and technical guidelines another; there is always some looseness in the linkage that obtains here, some flexibility that leaves room for variability.4 And in view of this, it should occasion neither surprise nor discomfort that the general principles of ethical deliberation cannot constrain quantitative precision at the level of concrete procedural injunctions. They can certainly detect flaws of egregious shortfall or excess. But quantitative specificity is generally beyond their grasp. And so here as elsewhere we have to settle for the best we can possibly get, an abstract rationality supplemented by sensible reasonableness.

4

On this issue see also chapter two of the author’s Moral Absolutes (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) and chapter three of Value Matters (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2004).

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Chapter Eleven THE SCOPE AND IMPORT OF PRAGMATISM (ON THE METHODOLOGY OF PRACTICAL REASON) 1. PRAGMATISM AND PURPOSE

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ragmatism is an approach to philosophy that puts practice at center stage and sees efficacy in practical activities as a prime goal of human endeavor. There are, however, two markedly different ways of implementing this sort of program. One way is to regard theory and theorizing as incidental and secondary in importancea “merely intellectual” concern that has a less significant role in human affairs than do matters of action and praxis. This version of the pragmatist position might be characterized as practicalism. However, a quite different version of pragmatism sees theory as subordinate to praxis not in point of importance but rather in point of validation. This approach does not relegate theory to a secondary status in significance or importance but, rather, takes success in guiding matters of practical implementation as the adequacy criterion of successful theorizing. This criteriological version of the theory might be designated as functionalism. Functionalistic pragmatism finds purchase whenever there is a purposive enterprise. Its salient idea is that efficacy in practical application— the issue of “which works out most effectively in practice”—is normatively pivotal in that it somehow provides a standard for the determination of truth in the case of statements, rightness in the case of actions, and value in the case of appraisals. Such an approach to issues of validation and substantiation sees practical rationality in terms of purposive efficacy, taking the line that those ways of proceeding are appropriate in any purposive context to the extent that they are efficient and effective in realizing the purposes at issue. Accordingly, functionalistic pragmatism can come into

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operation wherever and whenever people act under the aegis of purpose and with a view to the realization of various ends and objectives. So understood, pragmatism looks to a program of rational validation that envisions the probative primacy of practical reason. At the center of its deliberations stands the ruling imperative of practical rationality: Meet your needs and wants in the way which (ideally) accomplishes this objective overall in the most efficient and effective way that is practicable in the circumstance—or (minimally) achieves this end to an extent that represents a satisfactory practical compromise. Pragmatism’s historic concern has generally focused not on the descriptive characteristics of things but on their normative appropriateness. And here its logical starting point is with the uncontroversial idea that the natural and sensible standard of appraisal for something that is in any proceduralanything that has an aspect that is methodological, procedural, instrumentallies in the question of its successful application. Anything that has a teleologythat is an instrumentality for the realization of certain purposeswill thereby automatically stand subject to a standard of appraisal that looks to its efficacy. After all, something is in any way purposively oriented to the realization of certain ends, the natural question for its evaluation is that of its serviceability in relation to such end-realization. The rational substantiation of functionalistic pragmatism can accordingly proceed along comparatively simple and straightforward lines. For the approach at issue is validated via the principle “In all matters of purposive actionselect that among alternative processes and procedures which, as best you can tell, will enable you to reach the objective in the “most effective and efficient way.” On this basis functionalistic pragmatism views effective praxis as the arbiter of appropriate theorizing, taking considerations of purposive effectiveness to provide the test-standard for the adequacy of the operative principles of human endeavoralike in theoretical and in practical matters. Effective implementation is its pervasive standard of procedural adequacy. And this covers a great deal of ground. As a rational creature homo sapiens is a purpose-driven being. Some of these purposes are situationally mandatory for us as the sort of creature we are within the world setting we occupy. After all, human beings not only have wants wishes and desires but needs as well. Individually we require nourishment, physical security, and congenial interaction if physical and our psychological well-being is to

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be achieved and maintained. Collectively we require social arrangements that maximize the opportunities for mutual aid and minimize those for mutual harm. After all, we humans live subject to a manifold of processes: physical, chemical, biological, social, economic, and so on. Each such processual realm imposes various purposes upon us, subjecting us to needs, requirements, and desiderata of various sorts. The meeting of these purposes involves us in a wide variety of projects each with its own manifold of purpose-accommodating processes. We are thus committed to such projects as the pursuit of nourishment, or physical security, of comfort, of education, of sociability, of rest and recreation, etc., designed to meet our requirements for food, shelter, clothing, knowledge, companionship, realization, etc., and equipment with its own complex of needs and desiderata. And throughout this manifold we encounter the same rationale of endrealization with its inherent involvement with issues of effectiveness and efficiency. For in any context where the meeting of needs and/or the realization of goals is at issue, a rational creature will prefer whatever method process or procedure willother things equalfacilitate goal realization in the most effective, efficient, and economical way. 2. THE RAMIFICATION OF PURPOSE Pragmatism’s concern for function efficiency, for success in the realization of ends and purposes, reflects an intelligent being’s commitment to making its way in the world by means of reason-guided agency. In such a purposive setting the pragmatic approach with its concern for functional efficacy is a critical aspect of rationality itself. After all, our larger projects in the realm of human endeavor are one and all purposive: inquiryto resolve doubt and to guide action. ethicsto encourage modes of conduct in human interactions that canalize these into a generally satisfactory and beneficial form. lawto establish and enforce rules of conduct.

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educationto acculturate the younger generation so as to enhance the prospect that young people will find their way not personally satisfying and communally beneficial lifestyles. artto create objects or object types exposure to which engenders personally rewarding and enlightening experiences. And on this basis a functionalistic pragmatism can encompass the entire range of human concern. It is not (and should not be) a mainly materialistic doctrine concerned only for crass payoffs. For a pragmatic approach to validation can of course be implemented in any purposive setting. Given any aim or objective whatever, we can always provide a correlative validation in terms of effectiveness and efficiency its realization. However, a really thorough pragmatism cannot simply take purposes as given—as gift horses into whose mouths we must not look. For purposeadoption too has to be viewed in a pragmatic perspective as an act or activity of sorts that itself stand in need of legitimation. Accordingly, a sensible pragmatism also requires an axiology of purposes, a normative methodology for assessing the legitimacy and appropriateness of the purposes we espouse. 3. OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES To be sure, a pragmatism of “working out effectively” cannot sensibly gear itself to individual cases (to individual claims, acts, etc.) because the world’s complexity and contingency means that we cannot in general foresee how matters will play out here. Accordingly, pragmatism will have to orient itself to policies, programs, ways of proceeding, practices, etc. For even as one rose does not make a summer, so a one-time success does not give much indication of efficiency and effectiveness. Pragmatic consideration perfecting bear not on items but on general tendencies: they address type not tokens, and bear not upon acts but upon modes of action. The rational appropriateness of individual acts must be accessed via the generic procedures and processes they instantiate rather than of particular cases. Rules, instructions, maxims, principles are the proper foci of pragmatic concern, not individual decisions and actions. Accordingly, the justifactory impetus of functionalistic pragmatism will apply:

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not directly to truths as such but to processes of truth validation. not directly to acts but to act-recommending norms. not directly to question-resolving answers but to processes to answerdetermination. not directly to scientific hypotheses but to the methods and procedures by which the endorsement of such hypotheses is validated. The deliberations of functionalistic pragmatism thus have a systemic bearing that focuses upon methods rather than results, upon process rather than product. But, of course, since the processes at issue are product-productive processes, these deliberations will have an important indirect bearing on issues of product as well, albeit at the level of statistical generality. However, there is no sense in pursuinghowever effectivelyan end that is absurd, counter-productive, harmful. And it is far from being the case that all ends are created equalthat giving people needless pain, say, is every bit as appropriate as helping them avoid injury. But this is clearly an issue that a thoroughgoing pragmatism, one which is altogether true to itself, can and should address on strictly pragmatic terms. And the terms of reference at issue here will in the natural course of things have to be those of philosophical anthropology. We are humans, members of Homo sapiens—that is an inescapable given for us. And given along with it are the conditions needed by us humans to lead not just survivable lives (requiring air, food, and shelter) but also those conditions needed by us to live satisfying lives (requiring self-respect, companion-ship and a feeling of belonging, and a sense of control over major elements of our life, and the like). After all, the pragmatic validation of aims and purposes can be established pragmatically in point of their efficiency and effectiveness in the realization of such life-maintaining and life-enhancing requirements that are mandated for us by our position in the world’s scheme of things. And this serves to endow functionalistic pragmatism with the aspect of objectivity. For on the one hand it is perfectly objective and nowise a matter of unconstrained preference what sorts of means are effective in the realization of specified objectives. And on the other hand it is analogously perfectly objective and nowise a matter of preference that humans have certain needscertain requirements that must be satisfied if they are to exist, perdure, and function effectively as the sorts of creatures they have evolved as

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being on the world’s stage. 4. EPISTEMIC PRAGMATISM The epistemic concern for meaning and truth has historically been the most prominent concern of pragmatism. With Immanuel Kant, pragmatism insists that, since our limitedly human efforts in inquiry can never achieve totality, we must settle for sufficiency, which is ultimately a practical rather than theoretical matter so that prioritizing practical over theoretical reason is an inescapable part of the human condition. In line with this perspective, a realistic cognitive pragmatism will insist upon pressing the question: “If A were indeed the answer to a question Q of ours, what sort of evidence could we possibly obtain for this?” And when we obtain such evidence—as much as we can reasonably be expected to achieve—then pragmatism results that we see this as good enough. (“Be prepared to regard the best that can be done as good enough” is one of pragmatism’s fundamental axioms.) If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, (and so on) then—so pragmatism insists, we are perfectly entitled to stake the claim that it is a duck—at any rate until such time as clear indications to the contrary come to light. It is not that true means warrantedly assertable, or that warranted assertability entails truth. What is the case, rather, is that evidence here means “evidence for truth” and (methodologically) warranted assertability means “warrantedly assertable as true.” After all, evidentiation is here a matter of truth estimation, and where the conditions for rational estimation are satisfied—ipso facto—rationally warrant for letting those estimates stand surrogate for the truth. Once the question “Well what more could one reasonably ask for?” meets with no more than hesitant mumbling, pragmatism says: “Feel free to go ahead and make the claim.” The very idea that the best we can do is not good enough for all reasonable purposes is—so pragmatism and common sense alike insist—something that is simply unrealistic, a thing of unreasonable hyperbole. In matters of cognition and inquiry, pragmatism calls for heed to the operative injunctions. If that is indeed how realities stand, then what would be the best sort of evidence for it that we could expect to achieve? Realizing that we have no access to matters of fact save through the mediation of evidence that is often incomplete and imperfect. What is the best we can do here? For one must be ever mindful of C. S. Peirce’s cardinal pragmatic imperative never to bar the path of inquiry.

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5. PRAGMATISM AND VALUE Can pragmatism’s seemingly crass prioritization of utility possibly provide grounds for ever acknowledging the significance in human affairs of higher, less crassly utilitarian sorts of values? Can it ever reach beyond the sphere of the bare basic necessities of life? To resolve this question we must go back to basics. Pragmatism pivots the validation of our instrumentalities of thought and action on their effectiveness in goal realization. But goals are certainly not created equal; they clearly have different degrees of merit. There are impersonally valid modes of evaluation by which goals themselves can be assessed, so that the rational evaluation that pragmatism envisions can be implemented in an objectively cogent way. The capacity for intelligent choice makes us humans into rational agents, but it is only through our having appropriate values that the prospect of intelligent choice becomes open for us. The human situation being what it is, existential circumstances spread a vast range of possibilities out before us. At many junctures, life confronts us with alternative directions in which to proceed. And only through the evaluation of such alternatives can we effect a sensible (rationally appropriate and acceptable) choice among them. On this basis, values are instrumentalities that serve to make the satisfactory conduct of life possible. And a commitment to values not only aids in making our lives as intelligent agents possible but make it meaningful. For the life of the human individual is brief: here today, gone tomorrow. It is through our commitment to values that we can reach out beyond the restrictive limits of the space and time available to us as individuals in this world, moving towards the realization of something larger and more significant. As this perspective indicates, pragmatic rationality involves two sorts of issue—means and ends. The rationality of means is a matter of factual information alone—of what sorts of moves and measures lead efficiently to objectives. But the rationality of ends is a matter not of information but of legitimation. It is not settled just by factual inquiry, but involves appraisal and evaluative judgment. And in the larger scheme of things both aspects are needed: ends without requisite means are frustrating, means without suitable ends are pointless. Accordingly, rationality has two sides: an axiological (evaluative) concern for the appropriateness of ends and an instrumental (cognitive) concern for effectiveness and efficiency in their cultivation. The conception of rationality fuses these two factors into one integral

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and unified whole, seeing that the inherent purposiveness of values makes them part of the rational enterprise. Evaluation is not at odds with reason but is a crucial component of its work. People’s ends and purposes are certainly not automatically valid: they can be self-destructive, self-defeating impediments to the realization of their true needs and best interests. For ends do not lie outside the domain of value but rather serve to define it. To be sure, it is often said that values are just matters of taste—of mere personal predilection. If this were indeed the case, then any and all claims to evaluative rationality would at once become untenable. But is it actually so? Evaluation certainly is not—and should not be—a mere matter of taste. People who are not prepared to back an option of X over Y by cogent reasons of some sort are merely evincing a preference and not actually making any sort of meaningful evaluation at all. Tastes, as usually understood, represent unreasoned preferences and purely subjective predilections. There is consequently no disputing about them: de gustibus non disputandum est. If one prefers X to Y, then that’s that. But values are something quite different. They are by nature functional instrumentalities since their mission is to canalize our action via our rational choices. They have objective impact, relating not to what we do prefer but to what we can and should appropriately deem preferable—that is, worthy of preference. And preference worthiness is something that is always discussible, something that needs to be reasoned about. To be in a position to maintain—in a manner that is sensible and reasonable—that X is preferable to Y, one must be in a position to back one’s claim up with some sort of rationale. And this reasonboundedness of sensible evaluations carries them outside the range of mere matters of taste. Moreover, our values themselves are not—and should not be—arbitrary and haphazard. For in the final analysis, they pivot not on mere wants and the vagaries of arbitrary choice in fortuitous preference, but on our best interests and real needs—on what is necessary to or advantageous for a person’s well being. We humans, being the sorts of creatures we are, have need-based interests which as such should (insofar as we are rational) control the validation of our wants and preferences. Validating an evaluation thus is not and cannot be a matter of mere subjectivity. The projects into which our nature impels us—the medical project, say, or the alimentary, or the cognitive—obviously carry a whole host of value commitments in their wake. Just here is where the pragmatic impetus comes into play. For once a goal is given, other connected goals can come to be validated with reference to it. It is thus a grave mistake to think that one cannot reason about

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values on the supposed ground that values are simply a matter of taste and thus beyond the reach of reason because “there’s no reasoning about tastes.” Such a position founders on the distinction between mere wants and real needs. For the fact is that values are valid just exactly to the extent they serve to implement and satisfy our needs and our correlatively appropriate interests. (The seeming harshness of this view is mitigated by the circumstance that for us humans the satisfaction of a nontrivial number of our mere wants—seen not in specific but in statistical generality—is itself a need.) 6. A HUMEAN EXCURSION David Hume drew a sharp contrast between “reason,” which he construed narrowly as concerned solely with means and wholly indifferent to ends, and a very different, entirely reason-detached faculty of motivation that concerns itself with ends—namely the passions. As Hume saw it, the exposition of formal relationships in logic and mathematics apart, reason merely deals with experiential information about the world’s states of affairs and the associative relationships that lie at the root of cause and effect. Accordingly, reason is strictly instrumental: it can inform me about what I must do if I wish to arrive at a certain destination, but only “passion”—desire or aversion—can make something into a destination for me. Hume thus regarded an impetus toward or away from some object—any sort of pro- or con-reaction—as simply the wrong sort of thing to be rational or sensible, an autonomous force operating entirely outside the realm of reason. And he accordingly considered those directive passions as entirely arational. Rationality is totally disconnected from matters of evaluation. When one asks what is to be done, reason as such has no instructions—in its exclusive concern for rationally arbitrary ends, it is wholly a matter of what one happens to want. As Hume thus saw it, reason is a “slave of the passions” where evaluation is concerned. Its modus operandi is strictly conditional: it dictates hypothetically that if you accept this, then you cannot (in all consistency) fail to accept that. But, all this is a matter of the hypothetical if-then. The categorical “accept this!” is never a mandate of reason, but of those extrarational passions. And so Hume insisted that reason herself initiates no commitments; it is inherently conditionalized, never saying what one should (or should not) opt for, but only what one is consequentially committed to if one already stands committed to something else. The assess-

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ment of fundamentals, be they cognitive or evaluative, lies beyond the reach of reason. On this basis, Hume wrote: It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin... It is as little contrary to reason to refer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and to have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.1

But all this is obviously very strange stuff. Any conception of reason that has these consequences is somewhere between problematic and absurd. For a “rationality” that excludes the critique of harmful affections and desires is no rationality at all. On any plausible view of the matter, reason cannot simply beg off from considering the validity of ends. Our motivating “passions” can surely themselves be rational or otherwise: those that impel us towards things that are bad for us or away from things that are good for us go against reason, those that impel us away from things that are bad for us and towards things that are good for us are altogether rational. There is certainly such a thing as evaluative, appraisal-oriented reasoning. A good way to exhibit the inappropriateness of the Humean view that where values begin reason is at an end is thus through a pragmatic appraisal that regards values as practical instrumentalities, tools that aid us in the best approach to understanding what valuation is, is to proceed by examinating what valuation does. This purposive aspect of evaluation renders it part and parcel of the pragmatic enterprise, thereby making room for value deliberation within the sphere of practical rationality. And this means that a rational critique of values is not only possible but necessary. In particular, values that impede the realization of a person’s best interests are clearly inappropriate. A priority scheme that sets mere wants above real needs or sets important objectives aside to avert trivial inconveniences is thereby deeply flawed from the rational point of view.2 And even as with needs and interests in general, so even great values may well have to yield to the yet greater. (Some things are rightly dearer to sensible people than life itself.) And, to reemphasize, the rationality of ends inheres in the simple fact 1

David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, bk. II. pt. iii. sect. 3. For Hume, the only inappropriate desires are those that depend on logically irrational beliefs.

2

And what other view point would it possibly make sense for us to adopt here?

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that we humans have various valid needs—that we require not only nourishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information (“cognitive orientation”), affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without such varied goods we cannot thrive as fulfilled human beings. The person who does not give these manifold desiderata their due—who may even set out to frustrate their realization—is clearly not being rational. Meeting people’s needs is (by hypothesis) an imperative necessity. And even meeting their mere desires is a rationally warranted desideratum as long as no larger obstacle stands in the way (their very real vicarious interests in the interests those of others, for example). But some such sort of qualification is always necessary in adjudging the role of preferences. Evaluation thus lies at the very heart and core of rationality. For, rationality is a matter of best serving our overall interests. the person who expends more effort in the pursuit of ends than they are worth is not just being wasteful but foolish, which is to say irrational. The rationality of our actions hinges critically both on the appropriateness of our ends and on the suitability of the means by which we pursue their cultivation. Both of these components—the cogently cognitive (“intelligent pursuit”) and the normatively purposive (“appropriate ends”)—are alike essential to full-fledged rationality. To be sure, the springs of human agency are diverse. We frequently act not for reasons alone, but from “mere motives”—out of anxiety, cupidity, habit, impulse. In such cases we also have ends and purposes in view—but generally not appropriate ones. If rationality were merely a matter of unevaluated goals and purposes as such—if it were to consist simply in the “technical rationality” of goal-efficient action—then the established line between the rational and the irrational would have to be redrawn in a very different place, and its linkage with what is intelligent and well advised would be severed. But where there is no appropriate and thus no meaningful end, rational agency ceases. (There may, of course, still be room for goal-directed action, but without goals it is bound to be problematic from the rational point of view.) And of course while all people are (hopefully) capable of reason, no well-informed person thinks they invariablyor even generallyexercise this capacity. By virtue of their very nature as purposive instrumentalities, value claims can and generally do fall within the domain of reason. For values are functional objects that have a natural teleology themselves, namely that of helping us to lead lives that are personally satisfying (meet our individ-

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ual needs) and communally productive (facilitate the realizations of constructive goals to the community at large). This state of things has farreaching implications because it indicates that our assessment of values themselves can and should be ultimately pragmatic. Our evaluations are appropriate only insofar as their adoption and cultivation are efficiently and effectively conducive to the realization of human interests—the rationally appropriate endspersonal and communalthat root in our place in the scheme of things. Accordingly, a pragmatism that is consistent, coherent, and selfsustaining will not just proceed pragmatically with respect to achieving unevaluated ends and purposes but must also gear its pragmatic perspective to the issue of validating ends and purposes themselves in terms of their capacity to facilitate the realization of those considerations which, for us humans, are simply “facts of life.” But the fact remains that the rationality of values is an indispensable component of rationality at large. After all, rationally valued ends must be evaluatively appropriate ones: if we adopt inappropriate ends we are not being rational, no matter how efficiently and effectively we pursue them. The sensible attunement of means to ends that is characteristic of rationality calls for an appropriate balancing of costs and benefits in our choice among alternative ways of resolving our cognitive, practical, and evaluative problems. Reason accordingly demands determination of the true value of things. Even as cognitive reason requires that in determining what we are to accept we should assess the evidential grounds for theses at their true worth, so evaluative reason requires us to appraise the values of our practical options at their true worth in determining what we are to choose or prefer. And this calls for an appropriate cost-benefit analysis. Values must be managed as an overall “economy” in a rational way to achieve overall harmonization and optimization. Economic rationality is not the only sort of rationality there is, but it is an important aspect of overall rationality. Someone who rejects such economic considerations—who, in the absence of any envisioned compensating advantages, deliberately purchases for millions benefits he recognizes as being worth only a few pennies—is simply not rational. It is just as irrational to let one’s efforts in the pursuit of chosen objectives incur costs that outrun their true worth as it is to let one’s beliefs run afoul of the evidence. And the evaluative rationality at issue here is the pragmatic one of the efficient pursuit of appropriate ends.

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7. MORAL VS EPISTEMIC CREDIT: A CASE STUDY OF HOW THE DIFFERENCE OF AIMS EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PRINCIPLES AT WORK WITH MORAL AND WITH EPISTEMIC CREDIT But what of morality? It might will be deemed cynical in the extreme to see moral principles as finding their validation on pragmatic considerations. But such a negative predisposition would reflect a (very common!) misunderstanding of the pragmatic enterprise. For what is actually at issue with the “success” on which pragmatism provides is not something of crass materialistic sort that is commonly attached to the term. Rather is—as insisted above—a matter of success in realizing the characteristic aims of a human enterprise and the characteristic aim of the enterprise of morality is the creation of a framework of principles for human interaction that best serves the real interests of the community at large—the whole community of interactive individuals who must come from the general interests of all of the individual best interests of each is to be served properly. It is thus the very aim of the moral enterprise—the teleology of the entire project as the venture it is—which, from the very outset, will prevent a sensible pragmatic approach to morality from being something crass, materialistic, and selfish. It is clear that markedly different policies and procedures are at issue with epistemic and moral credit. They have a different rationale, seeing that very different aims are at issue in the moral and the epistemic enterprises. Functionally different enterprises are at issue. With inquiry we prioritize results: our epistemic concerns are product oriented. With morality, by contrast, we prioritize good procedure: our moral concerns are process oriented: we want people to comport themselves properly. Moral credit is process driven because the aim of morality lies in inculcating actions that safeguard the real interest of people by way of serving the best interest of the community. Morality seeks to canalize and direct the actions of people by guiding and goading them into doing what is right by way of assuring the general interest of the group. The crux is that process (what people do) is paramount here with the issue of outcome (how things work out) pretty much irrelevant. When you entrust your money to me, I am morally bound to return it to you when the time comeseven were I to believe or suspect that you will squander it or use it for an illicit purpose such as bribery.

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Of course, inquiry too is a purposive enterprise. But it has a very different sort of goal-structureone that prioritizes knowledge as such. For the discomfort of unknowing is a natural component of human sensibility. To be ignorant of what goes on about us is almost physically painful for us— no doubt because it is so dangerous from an evolutionary point of view. It is a situational imperative for us humans to acquire information about the world. The requirement for information, for cognitive orientation within our environment, is as pressing a human need as that for food itself. The basic human urge to understandto make sense of thingsis an integral and characteristic aspect of our make-up—we cannot live a satisfactory life in an environment we do not understand. For us intelligent creatures, cognitive orientation is itself a practical need: cognitive disorientation is physically stressful and distressing. And inquirythe means by which we satisfy this needis accordingly product driven. The advancement of knowledge is the paramount for the enterprise of inquiry. As such a perspective shows, morality and inquiry are different enterprises with very different aims and purposes in view. Let us survey this situation more closely. With morality it is effort rather than achievement that is paramount. With the effects of moral action success is in the lap of the gods. The paramount aim of the enterprise is to analyze people’s actions into appropriate dialectics. So here effort gets prioritized over success. For in human affairs the ultimate consequences of an individual’s actions are “in the lap of the gods”—in substantial degree imponderable, dependent in unforeseeable eventuations and complex interaction with many agents. Accordingly, morality and ethics which seek to canalize an individual’s actions in generally benign directions focus upon process and prioritize it over product. (In this regard ethics contrast with law whose prime concern must be for outcomes.) On the other hand, in cognitive affairs and in correlative ventures of inquiry and investigation it is results that matter. An E for effort in the second is all very well, but it is the finding that counts. So here we mentally prioritize product over process. A process replete with the ethical virtues is all very well, but if nothing comes of it, the whole effort is in vain. In matters of knowledge and inquiry we prioritize product over process. The difference between the goal-structure of the cognitive and of the moral enterprises provides the rationalethe explanatory basisthat accounts for the difference in the principles of credit allocation that are operative in these two domains. Thus consider:

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1. Moral credit is always individual; epistemic credit need not be so, for while it is individual with distributive cooperation, it is collectivized and indivisible with teamwork. In point of moral credit (or discredit) individuals stand on their own feet. Strictly speaking in moral matters there is no group credit/discredit! the moral credit/discredit of groups is always that of the individuals that belong. But epistemic credit can belong to a group holistically and resist a distributive breakdown to individuals. And the rationale of this difference is straightforward. Where individual effort is paramount we want to maximize personal incentives. But where interactive collaboration counts we want to sink individual self-preoccupation in the interests of cooperation towards the common goal. And so from the angle of investigative teamwork we need a disincentive to “I’ll keep my share, thank you” egoism as counterproductive to the enterprise. With the interactive collaboration at issue in investigative teamwork it makes sense to sink individual self-preoccupation in the interests of cooperation towards the common goal. And so from the angle of investigative teamwork there is good reason for establishing a strong disincentive to the idea “I’ll do my separate bit and will keep my separate share, thank you.” But in moral matters individual action and inaction are the crux. So here, where individual effort is paramount, it is advantageous to maximize personal incentives. With individual responsibility credit must be treated on a strictly personal, individualized basis. 2. With moral credit intention is paramount but with epistemic credit intention is immaterial since results are paramount. With moral credit/discredit intentions counts: from the moral point of view, intent is critical. The wicked nephew poisons rich Aunt Agatha’s tea. In the last moment the clumsy chambermaid knocks it over, and a fresh, harmless cup of tea is produced in its place. Legally the nephew is, of course, guiltless, but morally he is guilty as sin. The drowning child cries for help. You plunge into the raging waters to save him. When you are on the verge of taking hold of the infant, a great wave comes along and sweeps you both onto the shore. Your brave and selfless actions had no effect. But from the moral point of view you are still a hero. From the angle of moral appraisal outcome is generally subordinate to intent.

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But with epistemic credit the matter stand otherwise. Here accomplishment is all and intent stands irrelevantly on the sidelines. And the rationale is again straightforward. In the moral case, where what matters is canalizing the smooth interaction of individuals in the promotion of the common interest, we put paramount emphasis on process and therefore on motivation with respect to goals and intention. In the epistemic case where product is paramount; where purely epistemic credit is concerned, we do not care about intention; here product is pivotal. 3. With moral credit inadvertence is credit-annihilative but with epistemic credit serendipity counts Doing the right thing unwittingly and by accident, gains you little if any moral credit, though as far as moral blame goes, this sort of thing helps to serve as exculpation. But things stand otherwise with epistemic credit. Accidental discoveries are still discoveries and deserve full marks as such. Again, the difference clearly lies in the fact that with moral credit motivation and hence process is paramount, while with epistemic credit product is paramount. The different aims of the two enterprises are once more determinative. There is, moreover, another significant point of difference between the moral and the epistemic situation. In the case of collaborative discovery only a fixed amount of credit is availablenamely the value of the discovery at issueand the participants share it altogether. But in the case of moral right- or wrong-doing, in specific, there is no fixed amount of discredit to be shared by the group as a whole. All the individuals concerned stand on their own footing, and each culprit, severally and individually, becomes saddled with the whole of the reprehension at issue. Thus if two miscreants join in deceiving or mistreating someone, each deserves blame for the whole of the misdeed: they do not divide it between them, nor would they each get half as much if there were twice as many. (And the same holds for morally creditable actions as well.) And there is good reason for this. The policy at issue is designed to serve as a maximally effective deterrent. Collective misdeeds redound upon all alike in the case of moral transgression even as collective achievements redound upon all alike in cases of collaborative discovery. In the latter case we seek to maximize the incentives for action that is appropriate and in the former to maximize the incentives against action that is inappropriate. Three paramount lessons emerge from such comparisons:

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• Epistemology and morality are both normative enterprises, but they differ sharply in point of teleology. Their functional or purposive dimension is very different. • In consequence of this, epistemic credit and moral credit work on very different principles. • This difference of principles rests on the fact that a very different rationale is operative with respect to credit allocation in these two cases. Moral credit pivots on process and intention; epistemic credit on product and accomplishments. But note that this whole business of evaluative policy does not exist for the sake of its own illumination or elegance. It is functionally driven, controlled by the teleology of the aims and purposes of the enterprise. The principles at issue—however high minded—derive from the teleology of the fundamentally pragmatic purposes definitively inherent in the aims and goals of the respective enterprises at issue. 8. THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF INTERESTS AND NEEDS: WANTS AND PREFERENCES ARE NOT ENOUGH As the preceding deliberations indicate, our values themselves can and should be assessed on a pragmatic basis with reference to the needs mandated to us by the circumstance of our existence. And functionalistic pragmatism’s concern for success and effectiveness in matters of goal attainment is therefore something very different from mere preference utilitarianism. Economists, decision theorists, and utilitarian philosophers often maintain that rationality turns on the intelligent cultivation of one’s preferences. But this is problematic in the extreme. We cannot extract judgmental rationality from preferences because mere preferences as such are unevaluated wants, and there is no such rationality without evaluation. After all, what I want or merely think to be good for me is one thing; what I need and what actually is good for me is another. To move from preferences and perceived interests to genuine benefits and real interests I must engage in a rational critique of ends—to examine in the light of objective standards whether what I desire is desirable, whether my actual ends are rational ends, whether my putative interests are real interests. The genu-

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inely rational person is the one who proceeds in situations of choice by asking not the introspective question “What do I prefer?” but the objective question: “What is to be deemed preferable? What ought I to prefer on the basis of my best interests?” Rational comportment does not just call for desire satisfaction, it demands desire management as well. The question of appropriateness becomes crucial here. And this is an issue about which people can be—and often are—irrational; not just careless but even perverse, self-destructive, and crazy. We pursue mere will-o’-the-wisps when we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have. The rationality of ends is essential to rationality as such; there is no point in running—however swiftly—to a destination whose attainment conveys no benefit. It is pointless to maintain “rational consonance” with what we believe or do or value if those items with respect to which we relativize are not themselves rational in the first place. The issue of the rationality of ends is pivotal. Wants per se (wants unexamined and unevaluated) may well provide impelling motives for action, but will not thereby constitute good reasons for action. To be sure, it is among our needs to have some of our wants satisfied. But, it is needs that are determinative for interests, and not wants as such. A person’s true interests are not those he does have but those he would have if he conducted his life’s affairs properly (sensibly, appropriately). A person’s welfare is often ill served by his wishes—which may be altogether irrational, perverse, or pathological.3 This distinction of appropriateness of real, as opposed to merely seeming, wants and interests—is crucial for rationality. The latter turns on what we merely happen to want at the time, the former on what we should want, and thus on “what we would want if”—if we were all those things that “being intelligent” about the conduct of one’s life requires: prudent, sensible, conscientious, well-considered, and the like.4 Clearly, there is nothing automatically appropriate—let alone sacred— about our own ends, objectives, and preferences as such. We can be every bit as irrational and stupid with the adoption of ends as with any other choice. Apparent interests are not automatically real, getting what one 3

See the author’s Welfare (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972). Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 421. Rawls traces this line of thought back to Henry Sidgwick.

4

The contrast goes back to Aristotle’s distinction between desire as such and rational preference. Many aspects of Aristotle’s ethical theory bear usefully on the present discussion.

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wants is not necessarily to one’s benefit, goals are not rendered valid by their mere adoption. People’s ends can be self-destructive, self-defeating impediments to the realization of their true needs. For rationality, the crucial question is that of the true value of the item at issue. What counts for rational validity is not preference but preferability—not what people do want, but what they ought to want; not what people actually want, but what sensible or right-thinking people would want under the circumstances. The normative aspect is ineliminable here. Rationality calls for objective judgment—for an assessment of preferability, rather than for a mere expression of preference, no questions asked. The rationality of ends, their rational appropriateness and legitimacy, is accordingly a crucial aspect of rationality. More is at issue with rationality than a matter of bare instrumentality— mere effectiveness in the pursuit of ends no matter how inappropriate they may be. When we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have, we pursue mere will-o’-the-wisps. There is an indissoluble connection between the true value of something (its being good or right or useful) and its being rational to choose or prefer this thing. Being desired does not automatically make something desirable, nor being valued valuable. The pivot is how matters ought to be—a region where needs come to dominate over wants. And so, the crucial question for evaluative rationality is not that of what we prefer, but that of what is in our best interests—not simply what we may happen to desire, but what is good for us in the sense of fostering the realization of our needs. The pursuit of what we want is rational only in so far as we have sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. For it is not just beliefs that can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational—but ends as well. Valuation can be sensible or perverse, well-oriented or ill-advised, interest-enhancing or interest-retarding in sum, rational or irrational. The fact is that we can be every bit as irrational in the adoption of ends as in any other choice. Apparent interests are not automatically real, getting what one wants is not necessarily to one’s benefit, goals are not rendered valid by their mere adoption. Rationality accordingly calls for critical judgment—for an assessment of preferability, rather than for a mere expression of preference.

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9. THE IMPETUS OF INTERESTS But just what is it that is in a person’s real or best interests? Partly, this is indeed a matter of meeting the needs that people universally have in common—health, satisfactory functioning of body and mind, adequate resources, human companionship and affection, and so on.5 Partly, it is a matter of the particular role one plays: co-operative children are in the interests of a parent, customer loyalty in those of a shopkeeper. Partly, it is a matter of what one simply happens to want. (If John loves Mary, then engaging Mary’s attention and affections are in John’s interests—some sorts of things are IN a person’s interests simply because he TAKES an interest in them.) But these want-related interests are valid only by virtue of their relation to universal interests. Mary’s approbation is in John’s interest only because “having the approbation of someone we love” is always in anyone’s interest. Any valid specific interest must fall within the validating scope of an appropriate universal covering principle of interest legitimation. (The development of my stamp collection is in my interest only because it is part of a hobby that constitutes an avocation for me and “securing adequate relaxation and diversion from the stress of one’s daily cares” is something that is in anyone’s interests.) But what of those “mere whims and fancies.” If I have a yen for eating crabgrass then is my doing so not a perfectly appropriate “interest” of mine? Yes it is. But only because it is covered by perfectly cogent universal interest, namely that of “Doing what I feel like doing in circumstances where neither injury to me nor harm to others is involved.” A specific (concrete, particular) interest of a person is valid as such only if it can be subordinated to a universal interest by way of having a basis in people’s legitimate needs. It is these higher-level principles that are the controlling factors from the standpoint of reason. Only through coming under the aegis of those larger universal needs can our idiosyncratic want come to be validated. The person who does not give such manifest desiderata their due—who may even set out to frustrate their realization—is clearly not being rational. This certainly can—and does—happen. Like various beliefs, various 5

The issue goes back to the specification of the “basics” (principiae) of the human good in the Middle Academy (Carneades)—things like the soundness and maintenance of the members of the body, health, sound senses, freedom from pain, physical vigor, and physical attractiveness. Compare Cicero, De finibus, V. vii. 19.

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evaluations are palpably crazy.6 Reason, after all, is not just a matter of the compatibility or consistency of pre-given commitments, but of the warrant that there is for undertaking certain commitments in the first place. An evaluative rationality which informs us that certain preferences are absurd—preferences which wantonly violate our nature, impair our being, or diminish our opportunities—fortunately lies within the human repertoire. Xenophanes of Colophon was doubtless right. Even as different creatures may well have different gods so they might well have different goods. But no matter. For us humans the perfectly appropriate sort of good is our sort of good—the human good inherent in the manner of our emplacement within the world’s scheme of things. In this regard, Aristotle did indeed get to the heart of the matter. For us, the human good is indeed an adequate foundation for substantive, practical rationality. Given that we are what we are, it is this that is decisive for us. We have to go on from where we are. It is in this sense alone that there is no deliberation about ends. The universally appropriate ends at issue in our human condition are not somehow freely chosen by us; they are fixed by the (for us) inescapable ontological circumstance that—like it or not—we find ourselves to exist as human beings, and thus able to function as free rational agents. Their ultimate inherence in (generic) human needs determines the appropriateness of our particular, individual ends and thereby endows a functionalistic pragmatism with a broadly humanistic value orientation. We humans are so situated that from our vantage point (and who else’s can be decisive for us?) various factors can and should be seen as goods— as aspects or components of what is in itself a quintessentially good end in its relation to us. Without achieving such goods we cannot thrive as human beings—we cannot achieve the condition of well-being that Aristotle called “flourishing” (eudaimonia). Flourishing as humans, as the sorts of creatures we are, patently is for us an intrinsic good (though not, to be sure, necessarily the supreme good). It “comes with the territory” so to speak, being mandated for us by our place in nature’s scheme of things. And this desideratum is itself many-faceted in serving as an umbrella goal that can carry others in its wake. It must, after all, come to be particularized to the 6

For strict consistency, a rigorous Humean should, by analogy, hold that cognitive reason too is only hypothetical—that “it only tells us that certain beliefs must be abandoned if we hold certain others, and that no beliefs are contrary to reason as such, so that “it is not contrary to reason to think one’s finger larger than the entire earth.”

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concrete situation of specific individuals and thereby becomes complex and variegated. On this basis, the rationality and objectivity of evaluative ends inheres in the simple fact that we humans have various valid needs— that we require not only nourishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information (“cognitive orientation”), affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without achieving such varied goods we cannot thrive as human beings. To be sure, a person’s “appropriate interests” will have a substantial sector of personally individualized relativity. One person’s self-ideal, shaped in the light of his own value structure, will—quite appropriately— be different from that of another. And, moreover, what sorts of interests a person has will hinge in significant measure on the particular circumstances and conditions in which he finds himself—including his wishes and desires. (In the absence of any countervailing considerations, getting what I want is in my best interests.) All the same, there is also a large body of real interests that people not only share in common but must pursue in common—for example, as regards standard of living (health and resources) and quality of life (opportunities and conditions). And both sorts of interests—the idiosyncratic and the generic—play a determinative role in the operations of rationality. And both must accordingly figure in a sensible pragmatism’s concern for the efficacious realization of our valid objectives. All in all, then, pragmatism is a program of rational validation whose realm of appropriate operation runs throughout the entire domain of human endeavor. It is, in its fundamentals, coextensive with the realm of practical rationality at large with its special focus on the collection of our best and true interests.7

7

This chapter draws on my essay “Pragmatism and Practical Rationality” in Contemporary Pragmatism, vol. 1 (2004), pp. 43-60. The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) also touches on some of the themes of these deliberations.

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Chapter Twelve REFERENTIAL ANALYSIS IN PHILOSOPHY (A FORAY IN METAPHILOSOPHY) 1. REFERENTIAL ANALYSIS

A

n interesting and informative aspect of any philosophical discourse lies in the make-up of its references to other contributions to their subject. A good deal of information can be obtained about the tendency and position of a philosophical discussion simply by knowing this sort of thing about the authors mentioned or cited. And such referential analysis can lead to interesting typological groupings with adjectives coming to play a special role. To be sure, few philosophers nowadays share Nietzsche’s penchant for personally abusive characterization. (He spoke, for instance, of “the malicious Schopenhauer” and “that Prussian apostle of vindictiveness, Eugen Dühring”.) But even today philosophers do not hesitate to characterize the beliefs and theories of others as “absurd,” “foolish,” or “utterly untenable.” And so what matters when philosophers invoke the contentions of others is not just the consideration that they are mentioned but also the question of how. Most basically, the following cross-classification can be brought to bear in this connection: mere mentions vs. actual discussion favorable vs. critical stance With some philosophers, the majority of citees are sanctified and those considered great and good predominate; with others the role of the citee is to populate a demonology. Some authors refer only to opponents, others only to congeners. Even writers on justice often do not always trouble to do justice to those of their fellow theorists to whom they are indebted.

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Some writers refer solely to the great dead. (A. N. Whitehead broke this rule only for personal friends.) Others refer only to contemporaries—or sometimes only to countrymen. Of course, references are not—or should not be—something merely decorative: they ought to be there because they serve a communicative function. The matter can thus be viewed from the perspective of Display 1. And in this light it is instructive to see where an author’s citations fall within this schema. For example, the philosopher whose citations are predominantly positive betrays a tendency of mind and thought quite different from one who makes mention of others only to reject and condemn. ___________________________________________________ Display 1 A FUNCTIONAL TAXONOMY OF REFERENCE I. Evaluatively neutral citations A. To acknowledge a source of factual information B. To serve for the purpose of illustration, explication, or clarifactory analogy II. Evaluatively positive citations A. To acknowledge doctrinal indebtedness B. For confirmation, substantiation, support for a view being maintained. C. To indicate follow-up by way of further ramifications or extensions of an approach being articulated. III.

Evaluatively negative citations A. To clarify or bolster one’s own points by a favorable contrast. B. To bolster one’s own position via the rejection and refutation of alternatives (e.g., by indicating their unfortunate consequences). ___________________________________________________

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It is a fact of life that the philosophical literature has become too large in recent years to permit anything like a comprehensive scrutiny of discussions relevant to most significant problems. But surely the author who does not make even a modest effort in this direction is thereby delinquent. In particular, if he avoids any mention of the sources of his inspiration, he is an ingrate (if not worse). Such people hang themselves on the horns of a dilemma. If simply unaware of relevant discussions, then their professional competence can be called in to question. If they deliberately omit mention of relevant discussions because they do not originate from members of their own school or group, then they manifest pettiness and provincialism. All such failings betoken a regrettable betrayal of sound standards. One of the most characteristic and in some ways revealing features of philosophical authorship is the way in which these writers take account of the views of others in their own deliberations. For while philosophers almost always pursue their own work in relation to that of others, it is clear that all have their own way of operating in point of explicitness in this regard. It is thus bound to afford instructive insight into the tenor and tendency of a philosopher’s mode of thinking to see what he takes notice of and what he ignores, whom he respects and whom he ignores. After all, every philosophical writer has what might be called a referential horizon of others whose work is taken into account. The structure of this field and the nature of its composition afford an illuminating view of this philosopher’s stance on the issues. Accordingly, it would be a salutary and illuminating exercise for any philosophical author who regards a paper (or book) as completed to take up the manuscript once more, and carry out a referential analysis to see if what has in fact been done in this regard reflects the actual intentions at work. From this standpoint it transpires that the information afforded by the Name Index of a philosophical book reveals its author in an illuminating and not always flattering light. (That, perhaps, is why various philosophical writers do not trouble to have one.) Different philosophers have different—and sometimes rather eccentric—views on the subject of name indexes. For example, F. H. Bradley in the prefatory note to the Index of his classic Appearance and Reality asserted that if one did not find the Index helpful one should simply ignore it. His Index then went on to offer no entries whatever for proper names—a circumstance that manages to obscure the fact that virtually half of the personal mentions in the book refer to Bernard Bosanquet.

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A striking example of an author with an idiosyncratic personalreference policy is G. F. W. Hegel. Thus in the opening section (“Consciousness”) of his Phenomenology of Mind, a segment of some 60 pages, there is not a single mention of any philosophical author (unless we are willing to regard a somewhat oblique reference to Goethe as an exception to this rule). At the other extreme stands the G. W. Leibniz of the Theodicy, who was always painstaking in taking note of the relevant works of his predecessors and contemporaries, and moreover also correctly noted that it was the points of agreement rather than disagreement that enlisted his particular attention. Yet another interesting aspect of citation analysis from philosophical authors relates to the periodization of the authors cited, that is, the extent to which they are people • yet living • of the recent past • of long bygone days. The first group represents contemporaries, the second antecedents, and the third classical figures. Of course a great deal here again depends on the particular topic being discussed, and hinges on a comparison with what is the norm there. The writer who is disproportionately given to dealing with contemporaries is trying to be fashionable or (with a more positive spin) “state of the art.” By contrast one who overstresses the classical figures is being traditionalistic, “old fogey-ish,” or —with a more positive spin— striving to go back to fundamentals and first principles. Then too there is the issue of geography—with respect either to political or cultural geography. The author who is over-inclined to deal with his own political or ideological fellow-critique is parochial, while one who more than ordinarily crosses national or cultural boundaries is being urbane. Such distinctions too can play a significant role in referential analysis. In this regard eccentricity can prove to be illuminating. And here even absence can be significant. For in matters of learning and relationship absence does not make the heart grow fonder. The author on a given topic who fails to cite someone cited by virtually everyone else produces not so much silence as the very audible grinding of an axe.

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2. SOME NOT-SO-IDEAL TYPES Against this backdrop it becomes clear that the referential horizons of different philosophers will be very differently constituted. Some authors only refer to those they deem congenial, others are more “objective” and mention everyone who has something to say on their subject. A great deal will, of course, depend on just what sort of philosophical work is under consideration. Obviously, an historical study—and in particular one devoted to the life and thought of a single philosopher—is bound to have a rather narrow referential horizon with comparatively few individuals being the target of a substantial proportion of the references. But our main concern here will not be with such works of history-ofphilosophy scholarship but rather with works of creative philosophizing. More specifically, then, in wandering along these referential byways we could encounter: • The Loner This is the author who pretends to a spurious self-sufficiency, mentioning neither predecessors whose cognate ideas should be acknowledged, nor opponents whose views are being opposed. (In the extreme there is also The Solipsist who cites no-one but himself.) • The Cultural Chauvinist This author will mention only fellow countrymen or cultural congeners, seeing no need to take account of the views of national or ideological foreigners. (A special case of this is The Rewarder who mentions others only when giving a pat on the back to those whose views are highly approved of.) • The Complainer This author only mentions the people who, as he sees it, get it all wrong. Only opponents are ever taken into account. • The Olympian

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This is the author who deems only the great—and in general only the late great dead—worthy of mention. The lesser individuals who deal with the issues under consideration are seen as unworthy of being taken into account. • The Bibliophile This is the author who aims at bibliographic completeness. Virtually anyone who has said anything on the subject at issue—be its importance and relevance great or small—will receive mention. (This sort of thing is pretty much par for the course with German habilitation theses.) • The Classicist This author deems only the greats of classical antiquity to be worthy of mention. • The Avant Gardist This author is fixated on le dernier cri, and will mention only the latest contributors whose works are hot off the press. • The Necromancer This is the author who deems only the dead as worthy of mention, while living contemporaries are strictly off limits. The reach of referential analysis becomes extended when one also looks more closely into the context of a reference by asking such questions as whether the reference is made for the purposes of substantiation or rejection: is the individual cited being treated as a friend or as an enemy. The idea of an enemies list is not the exclusive prerogative of politicians— philosophers have their pet peeves as well. An author can, of course, use different reference strategies in different contexts. In the logical works, where he sees himself treading virgin ground, Aristotle cites no predecessors but begins with definition and classifications: while in the Physics where much earlier work exists he begins by making a survey of it.

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The ensuing Appendix looks at a handful of important philosophical books in the light of referential analysis. Fortunately, none of these conform rigidly and altogether to any one of these various extreme types, which nevertheless provide useful points of reference. To be sure, author-citations are not created equal—and certainly not so in the case of philosophy. Admittedly, it lies in the nature of statistics to blur differences, and in the present case as in so many others statistical information can—despite real shortcomings—nevertheless prove to be informative, in providing instructive insights into the modus operandi of different philosophical expositors. APPENDIX The following statistical parameters will be invoked. P = the total number of pages of the text at issue.1 N = the total number of authors referenced in the text. These authors constituted part of the writer’s overall authorial horizon. The authorial range that reflects the referential horizon of a work is accordingly larger or smaller in line with the magnitude of N. n = the total number of author-referencings (some authors will of course be mentioned more than once). The reference rate of a work can be measured either by the average authorreference per page (N/P) or by the average number of referrings per page (n/P). As the data given below indicate, some writers (e.g. Cassirer, Gadamer, Schopenhauer, Whitehead) do not let a page get past them without a reference, while others (Goodman, Dewey) are happy to go along for three or four pages before referring to some philosopher or other. Other things equal, the ratio N/P will give an indication of the depth of a philosophical writer’s historical scholarship. (Observe that Schopenhauer and Leibniz top our list in this respect while Kant stands at the bottom, illustrating his own contempt for those who commit the error of mistaking the history of philosophy for philosophy as such.) 1

Of course with printed books there are large pages and small pages. For present purposes a page is normalized to 400 words.

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Another informative parameter is a text’s referential concentration (C) defined as follows: C = the percentage of the authors referenced that accounts for half of all referrings (that is, for a total of at least n/2 referrings). The authorial reference focus of a work is broader or narrower in line with the magnitude of its C. With most philosophical writers (particularly those where C-values are less than 20%) a comparatively small number of authors occupy the bulk of their range of concern. Overall, it emerges that in general less than one-fourth of the authors cited yield more than one-half of the citations. In compiling the characteristics of Table 1 below, individual citations have been counted indiscriminately, irrespective of whether they represent a favorable or an unfavorable invocation. Admittedly, it would be revealing to make a discrimination here. For example, while Aristotle receives six mentions in Russell’s Human Knowledge, in every case his name is associated with what Russell condemns as an erroneous belief. However, some philosophers are eager to situate themselves in a tradition and accordingly go out of their way to cite its representatives. (In this vein, books with comparatively small C-values (less than 10%) include those by Ayer, Dewey, Whitehead.) Other philosophers try to be widely encompassing and touch many bases. (Writers of books with comparatively large N values (over 150) include Gadamer, Cassirer, Leibniz, and Rawls.) Thus how a philosopher conceives of the nature of his project and how he chooses to pursue its execution will clearly influence the constitution of his referential horizon. Those who view themselves as radical innovators may well proceed in the manner of the Loner (e.g., Wittgenstein), while those who see themselves as standard-bearers of a vast tradition (e.g., Gadamer) are likely to incline to being something of the Bibliographer. Let us designate as an α-referent (read: “alpha-referent”) those authors who constitute the core of a book’s authorial reference focus by receiving over twice the average number of mentions. We can then define it as follows: A = the number of a book’s α-authors, that is, the number of authors who received over twice the average number of mentions, thus having more than 2n/N references.

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The attached tabulation sets out these several statistical parameters for some baker’s dozen of philosophical classics. If the total number of authors (N) cited in a work is an index of scholarly breadth, then Gadamer wins the race, with Leibniz as a distant second (and Goodman the loser). And if the number of authors cited per page (N/P) is an index of scholarly depth, then Schopenhauer wins the race with Leibniz again a distant second (and Whitehead and Kant tied for losers). It seems worth observing that the following philosophers make the appearance on the α-lists of at least three of our sixteen authors: Aristotle (11), Carnap (3), Descartes (6), Goethe (3), Hegel (6), Hume (7), Kant (11), Leibniz (4), Locke (5), Newton (3), Plato (10), Russell (3), Spinoza (5). It is thus clear that Aristotle and Kant are tied for the title of α-list champion with Plato close behind. It is particularly noteworthy that Kant figures on the α-list of every one of these philosophers after his own day save for two, namely Goodman and James. It might be observed that the books of various philosophers have no contemporary α‘s whatsoever: Bergson, Collingwood, Dewey, Kant, Schopenhauer, Whitehead. Others have no non-contemporary ones (Goodman,Wittgenstein). Doctrine apart, there is also the matter of the constitution of the questions agenda—the issue of what problems are to be addressed and what ideas are to be at work in addressing them. And it is just here that a philosopher’s referential horizon proves to be an informative factor. Moreover, a useful lesson for academic instruction in philosophy is also inherent in these referential statistics. After all, in coming to understand a philosopher it cannot but help to have some knowledge of the works that impel this thinker to approbation or refutation. In this light it would appear that a basic program in the history of philosophy would do well minimally to offer instruction in: 1. Ancient philosophy: Plato-Aristotle 2. Continental Rationalism: Descartes-Leibniz-Spinoza 3. British Empiricism: Locke-Hume 4. Kant

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5. 19th century—and especially Hegel 6. 20th century—and especially Carnap and Russell The principal surprise afforded by the statistics is that perhaps Goethe should be on the required list of the 19th century philosophers.2

2

This chapter draws upon two editorials written for the American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 25 (1988), p. 225 and vol. 40 (2003), pp. 169-74.

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___________________________________________________ Table 1 SOME REFERENTIAL STATISTICS Philosopher/ Book

P

N

n

N/P n/P

Ayer 184 49 129 .27 (Language, Truth and Logic)

C

0.70 8%

A

7

α‘s: Berkeley, Carnap, Hume, Kant, Moore, Popper (38), Russell (Note: all of these α-lists are alphabetic.) Bergson 300 102 259 .34 (Creative Evolution)

0.86 11% 11

α‘s: Aristotle, Darwin, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Leibniz, Plato, Plotinus, Spencer, Spinoza Cassirer 308 165 393 .53 (Essay on Man) α‘s:

1.27 22% 46

Aristotle (14), Kant (14), plus 44 others

Collingwood 290 80 (Essay on Metaphysics)

186 .33

0.74 15% 10

α‘s: Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, Hume, Kant (17), Mill, Newton, Plato, Russell, Spinoza Dewey 164 35 54 .21 (Reconstruction in Philosophy)

0.33 6%

7

α‘s: Aristotle (17), F. Bacon, Bentham, Hegel, Kant, Locke, Plato

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Gadamer 640 358 1197 .56 (Truth and Method)

1.87 10% 26

α‘s: Aristotle (61), Betti, Descartes, Dilthey, Droysen, Fichte, Goethe, Habermas, Hegel, Heidegger, W. Humboldt, Husserl, Kant, Leibniz, Nicholas of Cusa, Nietzsche, Plato, Ranke, Schelling, Schiller, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Socrates, Vico, Winckelmann, Yorck Goodman 85 13 27 .15 (Fact, Fiction , and Forecast)

0.32 23% 2

α‘s: Carnap, Hempel (7), M. White Heidegger 440 61 (Being and Time)

216 .14

0.49 11% 9

α‘s: Aristotle (35), Augustine, Dilthey, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Plato, Scheler James 135 42 (Pragmatism)

66

.31

0.49 26% 4

α‘s: FSC Schiller (7), Bradley, Papini, Royce Kant 343 30 45 (Critique of Judgment)

.09

0.13 30% 3

α‘s: Epicurus (5), Hume, Spinoza (5) Leibniz 472 316 615 .67 (Theodicy)

1.30 23% 27

α‘s: Aquinas, Aristotle, Arnauld, St. Augustine (20), Calvin, Cicero, Descartes, Epicurus, Grotius, Hobbes, Jaquelot, Jurien, Lactantius, LeClerc, Locke, Luther, Malebranche, Molinus, Nicole, Plato, Pliny, Duns Scotus, Strato, Vergil, Wyclif

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Rawls 560 280 628 .50 (Theory of Justice)

1.12 11% 24

α‘s: Aristotle, K. J. Arrow, B. Barry, W. Baumol, Bentham, Brandt, Edgeworth, Foot, Hardy, Hart, Hume, Kant (23), Luce, Marx, Mill, Perry. Raiffa, Ross, Rousseau, Sen, Sidwick (23), A. Smith, Urmson, B. Williams Russell 610 79 204 .13 0.33 15% 14 (Human Knowledge) α‘s: Aristotle, Carnap, Descartes, Eddington, Einstein, Hegel, Hume, Kant, Keynes, Laplace, Leibniz (16), Newton, Plato, Reichenbach Schopenhauer 191 149 279 .78 (On the Basis of Morality)

1.45 11% 14

α‘s: Aristotle, Fichte, Goethe, Horace, Kant (20), Locke, Plato, Pythagoras, Schelling, Schiller, Seneca, Spinoza, Voltaire, Wolff Whitehead 502 45 (Process and Reality)

534 .09

1.06 7%

7

α‘s: Aristotle, Descartes, Hume (126), Kant, Locke, Newton, Plato Wittgenstein 56 10 57 .18 (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)

1.02 10% 2

α‘s: Russell (28), Frege __________________________________________________

197

Name Index Adams, R. M., 50, 51n5, 58n12, 62n16, 66 Anaxagoras, 116 Anaximander of Miletus, 41, 46, 116 Anaximines, 115, 116 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 79, 132n2, 196 Archimedes, 2, 3 Aristotle, 18, 41, 45, 78, 78n4, 95, 100, 109, 123, 138, 180n4, 183, 190, 192-93, 195-97 Armstrong, David, 50n2, 55n7, 66 Arnauld, Antoine, 196 Arrown, Kenneth, 75, 76n2, 197 Augustine, Saint, 196 Austin, J. L., 93n5 Ayer, A. J., 192, 195 Bacon, Francis, 195 Bain, Alexander, 79, 79n1 Barry, Brian, 197 Baumol, William, 197 Beeley, Philip, 34n10 Bennett, Jonathan, 66 Bentham, Jeremy, 195, 197 Bergson, Henri, 193, 195 Berkeley, George, 195 Blackstone, Sir William, 155, 156 Bolzano, Franz, 30 Borges, Jorge Luis, 4n6 Bosanquet, Bernard, 187 Bradley, F. H., 187, 196 Bradley, Raymond, 59, 62n15, 64n17, 66 Brandt, Richard, 197 Braun, Lucian, 100n2 Brock, S., 66 Butler, Joseph, 7 Calvin, John, 196 Cantor, Georg, 22, 26 Carnap, Rudolf, 57n9, 66, 72, 193-97 Carneades, 182n5 Cassirer, Ernst, 191-92, 195 Chihara, Charles S., 66

Cicero, 4n6, 182n5, 196 Collingwood, R. G., 193, 195 Comte, Auguste, 10n13, 13 Couturat, Louis, 4n7 Currie, Gregory, 66 Dancy, R. M., 78n4 Darwin, Charles, 195 Deeley, Philip, 3n2 Descartes, René, 4, 82, 82n3, 105, 193, 195-97 Dewey, John, 191-93, 195 DiBella, Stafano, 82n4 Diesing, Paul, 76n3 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 109n4, 196 Divers, John, 50n4, 57n10, 67 Droysen, J. G., 196 Dühring, Eugen, 185 Duns Scotus, 197 Eddington, Arthur, 4n6,197 Edgeworth, Francis, 197 Einstein, Albert, 6, 197 Empedocles, 116, 118 Epicurus, 118, 196 Felt, James, 67 Fichant, Michael, 34n10 Fichte, J. G., 196-97 Fine, Kit, 68 Foot, Philippe, 197 Forbes, G., 67 Frege, Gottlob, 30, 82, 197 Gadamer, Georg, 191-93, 196 Galileo, Galilei, 195 Gödel, Kurt, 63, 64 Godfrey, John, 33 Goethe, Wolfgang von, 188, 193-94, 196-97 Goodman, Nelson, 191, 193, 196 Grim, Patrick, 67 Grotius, Hugh, 196 Habermas, Juergen, 196 Hagen, J., 67 Hardy, G. H., 197

200

Hare, R. M., 145, 145n2 Hart, H. L. A., 197 Heath, T. L., 2n2 Hegel, G. F. W., 41-43, 45, 48, 99, 100, 100n2, 112, 120, 188,193-97 Heidegger, Martin, 196 Hempel, C. G., 196 Heraclitus, 106, 115, 116, 117 Hintikka, Jaakko, 67 Hippias, 108 Hobbes, Thomas, 196 Horace, 197 Hugly, Philip, 23n7 Humboldt, Wilhelm, 196 Hume, David, 171, 172, 172n1, 193, 195-97 Husserl, Edmund, 196 Huxley, T. H., 3n6 Jaquelot, Isaac, 196 James, William, 79n1, 193, 196 Jubien, Michael, 67 Jurien, Pierre, 196 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 10n13, 13, 41, 57n11, 103, 103n2, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 135, 152, 168, 191,193, 195, 197 Keynes, J. M., 197 King, Martin Luther, 141 Kripke, Saul, 67 Lactantius, 196 Laplace, P. S. de, 197 LeClerc, Jean, 196 Legendre, A. M., 10n13, 13 Leibniz, G. W., 2, 2n3, 3, 3n4, 3n6, 4, 5, 6, 6n8, 25, 34, 34n10, 49, 49n1, 82, 82n4, 128 188, 191-93, 195-97 Lewis, David, 57n8, 67 Linsky, Bernard, 67 Locke, John, 193, 195-97 Loux, Michael, 67, 68 Luce, R. Duncan, 197 Lucretius, 118 Luther, Martin, 196 Macaulay, T. B., 161 Machiavelli, Nicólo, 161 Mackie, John M., 145n2

201

Maimonides, Moses, 44 Malebranche, Nicolas, 196 Marx, Karl, 197 Melia, Jeseph, 67 Menzel, Chris, 68 Mill, John Stuart, 153, 154, 195, 197 Miller, R. B., 68 Milnor, John, 76 Molinus, Miguel de, 197 Moore, G. E., 146, 146n3, 195 Moss, Jessica, 17 Newton, Isaac, 41, 193, 195, 197 Nicholas of Cusa, 196 Nicole, Pierre, 197 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 185, 196 Papin, Denis, 196 Parmenides, 117, 118 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 10n12, 13, 13n1, 72, 168 Perry, R. B., 197 Place, Ullim T., 68 Plato, 41-43, 45, 48, 79-80, 104, 110-12, 148, 193, 195-97 Pliny, 197 Plotinus, 195 Popper, Karl, 195 Prior, Arthur N., 68 Pythagoras, 116, 197 Quine, W. V. O., 21, 55n7, 68 Quintus Ennius, 4n6 Raiffa, Howard, 197 Ramsey, Frank Plumpton, 54, 114, 114n5 Ranke, Leopold von, 196 Rawls, John, 180n3, 192, 197 Reichenbach, Hans, 72, 197 Rescher, Nicholas, 34n10, 53n6, 55n7, 59, 64, 66, 68 Rosen, Gideon, 68 Ross, W. D., 197 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 197 Routley, Richard, 147, 148n6, 149 Routley, Valerie, 147, 148n6, 149 Roy, Tony, 68 Royce, Josiah, 196

202

Russell, Bertrand, 120n7, 122, 192-97 Saywards, Charles, 23n7 Scheler, Max, 196 Schelling, F. W. J. von, 196-97 Schiller, Friedrich von, 196-97 Schlegel, A. W. von, 196 Schleirmacher, Friedrich, 196 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 191, 193 , 197 Sen, Amantya, 197 Seneca, 197 Shakespeare, William, 4n6, 148 Sidgwick, Henry, 180n3, 197 Skyrms, Brian, 68 Smith, A., 197 Socrates, 80, 112, 196 Sosa, Ernest, 69 Spencer, Herbert, 195 Spinoza, 82, 193, 195-97 Stalnaker, Robert, 62n16, 68 Stimson, Henry, 157 Strato, 197 Strawson, P. F., 25n8 Suarez, Francisco, 80, 80n2, 97n7 Thales, 115, 116 Urmson, J. O., 197 Van Fraassen, Bas C., 69 Van Inwagen, Peter, 69 Vendler, Zeno, 69 Vergil, 197 Vico, 196 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 197 White, Morton, 196 Whitehead, A. N., 186, 191, 193, 197 Williams, Bernard, 197 Winckelmann, J. J., 196 Wittgenstein, 32n9, 33, 34, 35, 62, 64, 69, 192-93, 197 Wolff, Christian, 120, 120n6, 197 Woods, John, 699 Wyclif, 197

203

Xenophanes of Colophon, 183 Yagisawa, Takashi, 69 Zeno, 110, 111, 117

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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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