Dialectics: A Classical Approach to Inquiry 9783110321289, 9783110321012

Citation preview

Nicholas Rescher

Dialectics A Classical Approach to Inquiry

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

Bibliographic information published by Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected]

United Kingdom, Eire, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected]

Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr

2007 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-938793-76-3

2007 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work

Printed on acid-free paper FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE Chapter 1:

Dialectical Processes: A General View

1

Chapter 2:

Disputational Dialectic

17

Chapter 3:

Cognitive Dialectic

37

Chapter 4:

Methodological Dialectic

61

Chapter 5:

Ontological Dialectic: The Hegelian Background

75

Chapter 6:

Philosophical Dialectic

87

Chapter 7:

A Brief History of Dialectic

119

BIBLIOGRAPHY

185

NAME INDEX

195

PREFACE

F

ew ideas have played a more continuously prominent role throughout the history of philosophy than that of dialectic, which has figured on the philosophical agenda from the time of the Presocratics to the present day. Almost from the outset, dialectic has led a Jekyll/Hyde existence, some viewing it as a matter of sophistry and deceit, and others as the only true and secure road to a deeper understanding. Actually, it is not particularly instructive to speak of dialectic as such. One scholar not unjustly complains that “The term [dialectic] has been used in so many different senses that it can only be employed meaningfully after one has indicated with precision in which sense it is to be taken.”1 The fact of it is that dialectic is a genus of many species. There is the Platonic dialectic, the Aristotelian dialectic, the scholastic dialectic, the Kantian dialectic, the Hegelian dialectic, the Marxist dialectic, and numerous others. The present book will not endeavor to cover this entire waterfront. Instead it explores the philosophical promise of dialectic, and especially the dialogical version associated with disputation, debate, and rational controversy. Its deliberations will endeavor to see what epistemological lessons can be drawn to exhibit the utility of dialectical proceedings for the theory of knowledge. One prime goal of this exploration is the development of a dialectical model for the rationalization of cognitive methodology—scientific inquiry specifically included. (In particular, politically oriented dialectics in the tradition of Marx and post-Marxism falls outside the scope of the book.) Why this focus on the dialectic of inquiry? For one principal reason: because it exhibits epistemological processes at work in a setting of socially conditioned interactions. This communal perspective is surely a step in the right direction through countervailing against the baneful influence of the Cartesian egocentric orientation of modern epistemology. The traditional and orthodox emphasis on the issue How can I convince myself?, How can I be certain? invites us to forget the social nature of the ground rules of probative reasoning—their rooting in the issue of: How can we go about convincing one another? The dialectics of disputation and controversy provides a useful antidote to cognitive egocentrism. It insists that we not forget the build-up of knowledge as an interactive communal enterprise subject to communal standards.

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Dialectic is an area of crossroads where many philosophical programs meet. On the one hand, a dialectical approach is congenial to and actually in a way constitutes one version of process philosophy in assigning a fundamental and indeed paradigmatic role to a certain particular, specifically dialectical mode of processes. On the other hand, a rational, reason-driven dialectic is highly congenial to and actually in a way constitutes a version of pragmatism because such a dialectic is committed to the quality control of philosophical functional efficacy—of what works out best with respect to the range of purposes at issue. Many instructive philosophical perspectives come together in the study of dialectic—and particularly so when this is viewed in its classical perspective as a process of rational inquiry. The book represents a confluence, consolidation, and extension of ideas developed over many years, some of which are scattered over various publications. The dialectical process of challenge-response-synthesis characterizes a many-sided process that is not irrelevant to the production of books. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her capable help in preparing this material for publication.

Nicholas Rescher Pittsburgh PA June 2007 NOTES 1

II

A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la philosophie (Paris: Felix Alcon, 1923; 9th ed. Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), p. 227.

Chapter 1 DIALECTICAL PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW 1. GENERAL DIALECTICS

T

he characterizing format of a dialectical process can be described in contemporary terms of reference as a feedback process with the cyclic structure sketched in Display 1, where the output of every stage serves as the starting point of a new cycle. Such effectively circular processes can be encountered in artifice and nature alike, with dialectical interactions occurring in inquiry, in history, in nature, and in social affairs. For pretty much any mode of agency or action can in principle proceed dialectically. And it does so whenever the processes involved react sequentially to or against their own prior products. A dialectical cycle accordingly consists of three phases or stages; namely those of • Initiation (positing, declaration, inauguration) • Response (counter-reaction, reply, opposition, destabilization) • Revision & readjustment (operational modification, sophistication, complexification)

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 2 THE STRUCTURE OF DIALECTICAL PROCESS

Initial state

Process-induced impact

Changed state

Once achieved these stages are then followed by a return to the initial phase. As Display 2 indicates, the result is a cyclic process of INITIATION → RESPONSE → REVISION → RETURN that moves the overall condition of things to a higher level of stability and sophistication so that one would expect a dialectical process to issue in a result that is at once ever more sophisticated and complex but at the same time more firm on its grounding. Looking at the matter from the perspective of speech-act analysis we have the analogous stages: • asserting, maintaining, affirming • challenging, denying, questioning • reaffirming, qualifying, enmeshing Such a triplet is then again followed by a return to the initial phase resulting in a succession of moves that exhibit a sequential reversal of declarative polarities as per + – +. Broadly speaking any process of interaction through a sequential and progressive exchange between two parties can be characterized as dialectical. Negotiation and “haggling” provide a good example here. The process of negotiative dialectic also carries over to the sort of interactive rivalry encountered in the competition between such “schools of thought.” One example of this is the clash between rival interpretations of a text, for example of the sequence at issue in the “When A, then B”-claim of a certain discussion is to be construed as a matter of chronological suc-

2

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

cession or of logical consequence. In the course of such a hermeneutic controversy, each party will endeavor to counter the consideration achieved by others, perhaps by way of “explaining them away” or perhaps by way of an accommodation or appropriation. In rational inquiry dialectics is generally a matter of the new and discordant findings afforded by a widening course of experience. This sort of thing is typified by disputation. And so in natural history this sort of process usually arises through the untenability under new conditions of prior resolutions reached on the basis of earlier developments. A physical process could also be characterized as one of dialectical development, and even the designing interaction between an architect and a client could be characterized in these terms. Overall, dialectic is something very diversified and many-sided. 2. DISCURSIVE DIALECTIC In the course of a discursively dialectic process the initial position becomes subject to modification and refinement through the impetus of the destabilizing pressure of counter-consideration. That initial position becomes transformed continuously through a series of successive responses to challenges that results in its revisions and refinement. An ongoing process of complexification and sophistication is set under way so as to render that position increasingly less vulnerable to challenges and impedances. Cogent counterarguments always require some concession. Whenever a plausible contention is confronted with a plausible counterargument, that original contention cannot be left intact and unqualified. It requires readjustment, qualification, sophistication. The result is a cycle of contention → counter-contention → revision or, viewed differently argument → counter-argument → harmonizing adjudication The third stage of revision/adjudication is a reworking of the original position that gives each side its own and acknowledges the separative claims and merits of both opposing tendencies.

3

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 3 DISCURSIVE DIALECTIC

Start

Thesis

Negating anti-thesis

Revised and qualified synthesis

These considerations point towards what might be called F. P. Ramsey’s Maxim of rational dialectic. For Ramsey held that with regard to disputes that seem incapable of decisive settlement we have to “split the difference” as it were: “In such cases it is a heuristic maxim that the truth is not in one of the disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, and which we can only discover by rejecting something assured as obvious by both the disputants.”1 The formal structure of a dialectical process is depicted in Display 2. However, the sort of situation at issue with dialectic is typified by the standard process of a “dialogical” interaction of a verbal exchange between two parties carried on in a context aimed at ferreting out the truth of things. At first manifested in the context of law-court exchanges, the process evolved into the more complex stylization of medieval academic disputation which itself evolved into the practice of contemporary academic debating.2 The question/answer cycle was characteristic of discursive dialectic in its original form.3 The generic format of what is at issue with such dialectic is outlined in Display 3. In the by-now classic terminology introduced by J. G. Fichte a discursively dialectical process accordingly exhibits three definitive components: • the thesis or similar position-taking • the anti-thesis or counter-position affording a reaction or response that impacts upon the thesis.

4

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

• the syn-thesis or thesis-modifactory response to the antithesis, yielding a revised position that produces the starting-point for the next interaction of the dialectical cycle. In his influential essay “What is Dialectic” Karl Popper criticized dialectic for its willingness “to put up with contradictions.”4 This is an almost perverse misunderstanding of the matter because what dialectical theorizing in all its guises has always maintained is that whenever contradictions and such-like conflicts of consistency come up this must be removed, eliminated, and transcended. The impetus of coherence and consistency is the motive force of any dialectical process. Viewed in its most general form, dialectic is a course of sequential development through a progressive succession of challenge-and-response cycles, with earlier problems and difficulties met by the successive elimination of obstacles and shortcomings. The driving mechanism of dialectic is instability—be it the instability of thought (most drastically exemplified by self-contradiction) or the instability of condition typified by the vagaries of nature or the fickleness of man. On this basis, the driving force of a dialectical process is the destabilization or discord issuing from the counter-reaction against an initial state of things that is an already achieved given. Thus on this basis a dialectical process effectively constitutes a spiral or ascending cycle of ever more elaborate renovations or revisions of that initial thesis at ever more sophisticated levels of operation. The process is one of strengthening the thesis by requiring it—or rather its duly qualified replacements—to surmount ever-increasing obstacles and to meet ever-escalating challenges. In principle a process can be hierarchically dialectical. It can see factor A as the product of a dialectical tension between A1 and A2, and also see B as the product of dialectical tension between B1 and B2. And it can then go on to see C as the product of a dialectical tension between A and B. Insofar as things can get complicated in the real world, they can get complicated in the world of dialectic as well.

5

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 4 PROCESSUAL DIALECTIC Modus operandi

Challenges to successful operation

Modifactory readjustment for effective functioning

3. DIALECTIC AND PROCESS THOUGHT The medieval schoolmen debated the question: Is dialectic a means for philosophizing or a part of philosophy, is it a procedural method or a doctrinal theory? This question still holds good here and now. And the best answer, so it would seem, is that it is first and foremost the former—a method. Philosophical dialectic is a way of doing things—of conducting philosophical inquiry. It constitutes a substantive theory only insofar as the contention holds good that this method finds a wide and diversified application throughout philosophy. Dialectic, in sum, belongs to methodology rather than doctrine, and affords a procedural process rather than a substantive product of philosophy. On this perspective a dialectical approach is congenial to and actually in a way constitutes one version of process philosophy in so far that it sees processuality of a certain particular, namely dialectical format, as fundamental and indeed paradigmatic. On this basis, the theory of dialectics can be viewed as a sector of process philosophy. For dialectics represents one particular style or mode of developmental process, specifically one of the format presented in Display 4. Process revision in the wake of applicative experience lies at the heart of the enterprise. And overall, it is sufficiently general that both natural and rational selection can in principle afford the means for a quality control which endows a developmental process with a dialectical structure. The entryway to a dialectical process should be marked NO EXIT. For the cyclic nature of the business in effect means that there is no inevitably natural end to it. The dialectical conflict between venture and reaction, claim and counterclaim, thesis and antithesis can issue in two importantly

6

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

different sorts of results. For whenever a given situation is forced to react to a succession of destabilizing challenges there will, in principle, be two sorts of reactions, adaptation or disintegration. In the later case the process will, of course, eventually vary from the historical stage. Those processes that persist and succeed in propelling themselves along the corridor of time (be it unchanged or modified), will exhibit through this very fact in general the generic structure of a dialectical development. Mere survival over time—meeting the challenges of transtemporal endurance—can be the driving force of a processual dialectic. From this perspective reason-driven dialectic is highly congenial to and actually constitutes in a way a version of pragmatism because such a dialectic is driven by the quality control factor of functional efficacy—of success with respect to the range of purposes at issue. On the one side we have a convergent dialectic where the difference between the successive thesis revisions that are required to meet proffered challenges grows ever smaller. The readjustments needed to address the difficulties that remain are continuously diminished in scope, so that the ultimate result increasingly approximates to one fixed and definitive outcome. As the dialectic proceeds there is less and less scope for effective challenge to the result arrived at. Accordingly the dialectical process develops a very strong case for the result at issue. On the other side, by contrast, we have a divergent dialectic where the difference between the positions of the proponent and opponent continue to be as wide as ever without diminishing. Here the opposing theses and antitheses never yield a convergence as the dialectical exchanges proceed, the two opposed sides continue to be as far apart as ever. The reconciliatory function of syntheses that afford some degree of mutual accommodation is unrealizable in these circumstances, and the dialectical process is effectively unproductive in its failure to uncover a viable way of “splitting the difference” between the opposed agencies through some sort of mutual accommodation. Both sorts of dialectical processes—the convergent and the divergent— in fact exist. There is nothing in the generic nature of a dialectical process as such that guarantees success in the realization of a convergent result. This can be seen clearly in what is yet another form of dialectical process, namely negotiation in matters of gain and loss as per Display 5. The hopeful aim of such a process is to reach an equilibrium where each party does as well as the circumstances allow.

7

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 5 THE DIALECTICS OF NEGOTIATION Party #1 makes an offer to Party #2

Party #2 proposes a counter-offer to party #1

Party #1 revises the offer

When a dialectical process ends, it is not because it has come to the end of the journey to a predetermined destination but rather because it has run out of steam. In the case of a man-operated dialectic this “running out of steam” will generally happen in one of two ways: (1) because we lack the means of going further because we have exhausted the requisite resource (time, energy, funding, etc.) for doing so, or (2) because we have no need for continuing because the progress achieved through successive cycles has become vanishingly small owing to a convergence of some sort. A dialectical process may or may not prove to be convergent. With dialectic as such there will be no inevitable end, no ultimate and fore-ordained distinction.5 4. DIALECTICAL DUALITY Any doctrine which, like that of the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus, envisions historical development as a matter of ebb and flow, of reciprocal accommodation between two opposing forces where the excess of one evokes an ultimately predominately opposition of the others, deserves to be characterized as dialectical. In his Dialectics of Nature Friedrich Engels enumerated three “laws” of dialectic: • the unity and interpenetration of opposites. • the negation of the negation • the transformation of quantity into quality.

8

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

Display 6 ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

tendency

reactively evoked counter-tendency

interactive resolution

In effect, however, Engels’ three laws simply restate the format of a dialectical process at large: “the unity and interpenetration of opposites” reflects the cyclic nature of dialectical processes, “the negation of the negation” reflects the aspect of revision and return, and “the transformation of quantity into quality” reflects the greater sophistication of detail reflected in the progressive impetus of the dialectical succession of cycles. In ontological perspective, a dialectical process involves the ongoing interaction of two opposed forces or tendencies in the manner of Display 6. Here the impact of a reactive counter-force or counter-tendency, and the resolution of compromise and co-adjustment resulting when these two opposing agencies have done their interactive work. On this basis perhaps the most dramatic instance of a dialectical theory is the ancient Manichaen doctrine which saw the whole of history, alike natural and human, as the interactive conflict of two co-equally potent opposing forces of light and darkness, order and chaos, good and evil. However, arriving at a synthesis is no automatic, mechanical process. It is, in general, something that requires judgment based on grasp of the casespecific particulars.6 Of course a dialectical perspective need not be carried to such an extreme but can be implemented on the more modest basis of wearing the dialectical shoe when and where it happens to fit. And even in this modest basis there will be a good deal of work for dialectics to do. Dialectical theory, insofar as there is such a thing, envisions some range of phenomena in dialectical terms, as ruled by processes whose structure is dialectical in nature. It would be absurd, however, to maintain that dialectic is a method, a procedure, an instrumentality and as such is versatile and many-sided, it matters not if those processes relate to nature or artifice, to

9

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

reasoning or to causality, to history or physics. However, dialectics is not a theory. It would be a theory if it maintained that all the problems of any and every domain can and should be addressed by the dialectical method. For, after all, there is surely no domain of inquiry or action every one of whose problems can be addressed successfully by using, and only using, one particular method or instrument. All that can be claimed for any particular tool is that it works where it works. (And of course when this is so one should be able to explain it.) And in fact dialectical processes can and often are at work in matters of inquiry, politics, history, and various other domains as well. Dialectics is very much of a two-edged sword. On the one side, it is a conceptual instrumentality for deciding and explaining the development of thought regarding the modus operandi of things. On the other, it characterizes the structure format of a vast variety of natural processes ranging across the spectrum from physical and even cosmological courses of development to the unfolding of events in social, political, and cultural history. Thus both the historical development of things and the epistemological development of thought about them can in large measure be characterized in dialectical terms. Both natural and cognitive processes and proceeding in good measure invite description and explanation in terms that cry out to be characterized as dialectical. And so the proper answer to the question “Is dialectics a perspective upon thought-and-discourse or upon nature’s processes?” is simply that it is both. 5. SPENCER’S LAW AT THE DIALECTIC COGNITIVE COMPLEXIFICATION Already well before Darwin, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) argued that organic evolution is characterized by Karl Ernst von Baer’s (1792–1876) law of development “from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous” and thereby produces an ever-increasing elaborateness of detail and complexity of articulation.7 As Spencer saw it, organic species in the course of their development confront a successive series of environmental obstacles, and with each successful turning along the maze of developmental challenges the organism becomes selectively more highly specialized in its bio-design, and thereby more tightly attuned to the particular features of its ecological context.8 Now this view of the developmental process may be of limited applicability in biological evolution, but there can be little question about its hold-

10

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

ing good in cognitive evolution. For rational beings will of course try simple things first and thereafter be led step by step towards an ever-enhanced complexification. In the course of rational inquiry we try the simple solutions first, and only thereafter, if and when they cease to work—when they are ruled out by further developments—do we move on to the more complex. Matters go along smoothly until an oversimple solution becomes destabilized by enlarged experience. For a time we get by with the comparatively simpler options—until the expanding information about the world’s modus operandi made possible by enhanced new means of observation and experimentation insists otherwise. And with the expansion of knowledge those new accessions make ever increasing demands. And this situation is attested by the course of empirical inquiry which has moved historically in the direction of ever increasing complexity. The developmental tendency of our intellectual enterprises—natural science preeminent among them—is generally one of greater complication and sophistication. For in scientific inquiry we look to the most economical theory-accommodation for the amplest body of currently available experience. Induction—here short for “the scientific method” in general—proceeds by way of constructing the most straightforward and economical structures able to house the available data comfortably while yet affording answers to our questions.9 Accordingly, economy and simplicity serve as cardinal directives for inductive reasoning, whose procedure is that of the precept: “Resolve your cognitive problems in the simplest, most economical way that is compatible with a sensible exploitation of the information at your disposal.” But we always encounter limits here. Simple solutions take us only so far. An inner tropism towards increasing complexity is thus built into the very nature of the scientific project as we have it. And this circumstance leads to what may be called Spencer’s Law of Cognitive Development: What we have here is a thesis to the effect that cognitive progress is accompanied by and can be measured in terms of the taxonomic complexity of the information manifold at hand.

Our cognitive efforts manifest a Manichaean-style struggle between complexity and simplicity—between the impetus to comprehensiveness (amplitude) and the impetus to system (economy). We want our theories to be as extensive and all-encompassing as possible and at the same time to be elegant and economical. The first desideratum pulls in one direction, the second in the other. And the accommodation reached here is never actually stable. As our experience expands in the quest for greater adequacy and

11

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

comprehensiveness, the old theory structures become destabilized—the old theories no longer fit the full range of available fact. And so the theoretician goes back to the old drawing board. What he comes up with here is— and in the circumstances must be—something more elaborate, more complex than what was able to do the job before those new complications arose (though we do, of course, sometimes achieve local simplifications within an overall global complexification). We make do with the simple, but only up to the point when the demands of adequacy force additional complications upon us. Be it in cognitive or in practical matters, the processes and resources of yesteryear are rarely, if ever, up to the demands of the present. In consequence, the life-environment we create for ourselves grows increasingly complex. The Occam’s Razor injunction, “Never introduce complications unless and until you actually require them,” accordingly represents a defining principle of practical reason that is at work within the cognitive project as well. And because we try the simplest solutions first, making them do until circumstances force one to do otherwise, it transpires that in the development of knowledge—as elsewhere in the domain of human artifice—progress is always a matter of complexification. An inherent impetus towards greater complexity pervades the entire realm of human creative effort. We find it in art; we find it in technology; and we certainly find it in the cognitive domain as well.10 6. GENERALITY As such deliberations indicate, any productive end-oriented process whatsoever is in principle subject to dialectical development in the manner indicated in Display 7. And against this background it is clear that dialectics is a general instrumentality able to serve two correlative purposes. It is a double-edged tool able to function both as descriptive of an historical course of development and as explanatory by accounting for how it has come about that developments have taken the form they did. In a dialectical process developmental history and functional teleology become intertwined. For any such process is evolutionary. The aspect of retroactive feedback that reshapes and revises an initial position into a less problematic, functionally better adapted successor means that historical development and functional improvement are declined to proceed hand in hand: history enjoins validation (the Weltgeschichte become the Weltgericht). With a dialectical process, in sum, there emerges a naturally en-forced conformity between temporal development and functional improvement.

12

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

Display 7 THE DIALECTIC OF PROCESSUAL DEVELOPMENT Retain the process

Process

Is a teleological assessment positive?

Yes No

Modify and readjust the process

This feature of competitive accommodation is illustrated with particular clarity by competitive games that invoke the alternative of move and counter-move and above all by warfare11 as per the process depicted in Display 8.

Display 8 WARFARE: THE DIALECTICS OF STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL PLANNING Deployment of forces by side #1

Counter-deployment of forces by side #2

Redeployment by side #1 in the wake of #2’s counterdeployment

Then, too, strategic planning can be viewed as a quintessentially dialectical exercise where the actual conduct of games can be simulated in a

13

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

thought-imposed modeling of the actual processes involved. On this basis methodological dialectic can function amphibiously—both in reality and in the cognitive enterprise of war games and strategic planning. All in all, then, the conceptual perspective provided by dialectics is a versatile instrument for the analysis and elucidation of a wide range of phenomena relating as well to the processes of nature and the procedural methods of human artifice. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 1 1

Frank P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics ed. by R. B. Breathwaite (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), pp. 115–16.

2

Some aspects of the process were discussed a generation ago in the author’s Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1977).

3

On Socratic/Platonic dialectic see Michel Meyer, “Dialectic and Questioning: Socrates and Plato,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17 (1980), pp. 281–89. Meyer appropriately stresses that while the Platonic Socrates practiced dialectic, he never thematized it.

4

K. R. Popper in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1963). See p. 311.

5

There is a kinship between dialectic and mysticism that is emphasized in Jonas Cohn’s Theorie der Dialektik (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923).

6

In this respect our present perspective on dialectic agrees entirely with the position of Roland Simon-Schaefer that a synthesis is not related to its antecedent thesiscounterthesis by some sort of logical derivability, but is a matter of the substantive situation in particular dialectical situations. (See his Dialektik: Kritik eines Wortgebrauchs (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1973), p. 146.

7

Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 7th ed. (London: Appleton, 1889); see sect’s 14– 17 of Part II, “The Law of Evolution.”

8

On the process in general see John H. Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Reading MA: Addison Wesley, 1995). Regarding the specifically evolutionary aspect of the process see Robert N. Brandon, Adaptation and Environment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

9

For further details see the author’s Induction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).

14

DIALECTIC PROCESSES: A GENERAL VIEW

10

An interesting illustration of the extent to which lessons in the school of better experience have accustomed us to expect complexity is provided by the contrast between the pairs: rudimentary/nuanced; unsophisticated/sophisticated; plain/elaborate; simple/intricate. Note that in each case the second, complexity-reflective alternative has a distinctly more positive (or less negative) connotation than its opposite counterpart.

11

An early observation of the relation of dialectics to the theory of games occurs in Georg Klaus (ed.), Wörterbuch der Kybernetik (Berlin: Dietz, 1968), s. v. “Spieltheorie.”

15

Chapter 2 DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC 1. FORMAL DISPUTATION

P

erhaps the clearest, and certainly historically the most prominent instance of a dialectical process is formal disputation—a procedure for conducting controversial discussions, with one contender defending a thesis in the face of objections and counterarguments made by an adversary. This was a commonplace procedure in universities in the Middle Ages, where it served as one of the major training and examining devices in all four faculties of academic instruction: in arts, law, medicine, and theology. The procedure of disputation before a master and an audience was closely akin to a legal trial in structure and in setting (the aula was set up much as a courtroom). It was presided over by a “determiner,” the supervising magister, who also “determined” it—that is, summarized its result and ruled on the issue under dispute (quaestio disputata), exactly as a judge did in a law court.1 The disputant was faced by a specifically appointed respondent (respondens), who, like a defending attorney, attempted to rebut his points in reply (respondere de quaestione).2 There had to be general rules for assigning responsibility for the conduct of argumentation and for allocating the “burden of proof” between proponent (proponens) and opposing respondent (respondens, oppenens, or quaerens). These, too, were taken over bodily from the procedure of the Roman law courts. In particular, it was a cardinal rule that throughout the dialectical process of contention and response, the burden of proof lay with the assertor (ei qui dicit non ei qui negat). Disputation was thus modeled rather straightforwardly on the precedent of legal practice.3 Transposition of various devices of legal argumentation to debate in rhetoric was already clear with the ancients (e.g., in Aristotle’s Topics and Rhetoric, and in Cicero’s De inventione).4 But it was not until 1828 that Richard Whately took a crucial further step in his Elements of Rhetoric. Though part of the law of evidence since antiquity, and though tacitly present throughout as a governing factor in disputing practice, the ideas of burden of proof and of presumptions were first introduced explicitly into

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

the theoretical analysis of extralegal argumentation in Whately’s treatment of rhetoric. And from that time on to the present day they have figured prominently in the theoretical discussions of college debating text books.5 This continuity of debating with medieval disputation has a solid historical basis. There are good grounds for holding that the extracurricular disputations of the fifteenth–seventeenth centuries—especially those between rival universities—were the direct precursors of modern intercollegiate debates.6 Disputation long survived as a testing method in universities, providing a format for viva voce examinations. In German universities it was introduced as such in the Middle Ages and long continued in standard use to examine doctoral candidates (Doktoranden), not only in humanistic fields, but even in the natural sciences.7 The candidate had to undertake a formal public defense of specified theses against designated opponents, with his professors presiding over the exercise. In later days all this became very much a formality, the candidate having arrived at a friendly understanding with his “opponents” in advance.8 In the American context such disputation continues in a vestigial form in the final oral examination for graduate degrees, when the candidate defends his thesis or dissertation before a group of his principal professors, who play a dual role: first in the public part of the examination playing out the role of opponents and thereafter deliberating in camera as evaluative judges, with the dissertation director acting as counterpart to the determiner of a medieval debate. It is worthwhile to study the process of disputation closely because it offers a clear and vivid illustration of dialectics. 2. THE FORMALITIES OF A DISPUTATION A disputation, as we have seen, involves three parties: the two disputing adversaries, namely, the proponent and his opponent (or opposing respondant), and the determiner who presides as referee and judge over the conduct of the dispute. The formal structure of the disputation is given in rough outline in Display 1. As the disputation proceeds, a sequential series of arguments and counterarguments is developed around the proponent’s initial thesis. Traditional disputation involves a rather stylized routine and was governed by as rigid an etiquette as prevailed in any royal court of the old regime. This fact makes it relatively easy to systematize (at least approxi-

18

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

mately) the formal moves and countermoves which compose the dialectical fabric of a disputation. The ensuing survey will present—admittedly in a somewhat oversimplified form—the logical structure of the debating moves in a formal disputation. (One point of oversimplification is that the present analysis traces out only one single round of a cyclic.

Display 1 THE STRUCTURE OF A FORMAL DISPUTATION The disputation ends and the determiner gives his ruling

STOP

yes Has the proper juncture been reached for terno Spokesmanship minating and determining switches to the disputation? speaker’s adversary START Proponent formulates his thesis and builds a prima point? facie case for it

Speaker yes continues Spokesmanship Has speaker completed no to develop switches to his responses to all of his his case opponent adversary’s points? with respect to the next point

19

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

INVENTORY OF BASIC MOVES IN DISPUTATION (1) Categorical assertion !P is “P is the case” or “It is maintained (by me, the assertor) that P” The proponent’s opening move of a disputation must take this categorical form. (2) Cautious assertions †P for “P is the case for all that you (the adversary) have shown” “P’s being the case is compatible with everything you’ve said (i.e., have maintained or conceded).” Moves of the !-type can be made only by the proponent, those of the †-type only by the opponent. (3) Provisoed assertion P/Q for “P generally (or usually or ordinarily) obtains provided that Q” or “P obtains, other things being equal, when Q does” or “When Q, so ceteris paribus does P” or “P obtains in all (or most) ordinary circumstances (or possible worlds) when Q does” or “Q constitutes prima facie evidence for P.”9 NOTE: This move must always be accompanied by one of the two preceding forms of assertion of its operative condition Q. Note also that corresponding forms of denial arise when -P stands in place of P. In the usual course of things, Americans learn English, fish are not mammals, men are capable of reasoning, birds can fly. And all of these linkages give rise to provisoed assertions. But none of these circumstances are inevitable. What is at issue in each case is a reasonably safe presumption rather than an airtight guarantee. If A’s are B’s in the vast majority of cases, if “the general rule” of the situation is such that X’s are Y’s, or if an F is a G “when things run their normal course,” then a corresponding provisoed assertion is generally in order. The relationship at issue is one that deals with what is “normal, natural, and only to be expected.” This is not a

20

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

matter of mere probabilities—of how things go mostly or usually—rather, it is a matter of how things go normally or as a rule. To look upon P/Q as an implication-relation is to slide into an unhelpful misinterpretation. For P/Q does not mean that Q implies (entails, assures) that P. Rather, the claim at issue is that it is sensible to suppose that P once Q is given—sensible though by no means a sure thing. Thus P/Q can be true together with ~P/(Q & R).10 The addition of a further qualification (proviso) can not only abrogate the conditionalized transition to a thesis that obtained under the status quo ante, it can render appropriate the transition to its contradictory denial. Accordingly, we cannot reason from such a relationship by invoking a rule of detachment. For clearly if P/Q Q P were an unconditionally valid deductive inference, then we could not possibly have ~P/(Q & R) Q&R ~P be equally valid, without generating a contradiction. This consideration is a decisive impediment to counting the I-relationship as an implication-relation. It represents a linkage that is presumptive rather than deductively airtight. This failure of the detachment principle means that in dialectical (as opposed to deductive) reasoning an assessment of the cognitive standing of a thesis can never leave its probative origins behind altogether. For simplicity we shall suppose throughout the present chapter that moves of the form X/Y are always “correct” in the setting of a disputation; that the disputants cannot make—or perhaps, rather, are debarred by the determiner from making—erroneous claims regarding purely evidential relationships. We thus exclude the prospect of incorrect contentions about the merely probative issue of what constitutes evidence for what. Accordingly, the disputing parties can avoid addressing themselves to the proprieties of the reasoning and need only attend to issues of substance in the development of the argumentation. (This assumption eliminates various complications that do not really matter for present purposes.)

21

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

In consequence of this supposition, certain theoretically feasible exchanges cannot arise, as for example: Proponent

Opponent

1. !P

~P/Q & †Q

2. P/Q & !Q For this exchange clearly involves a disagreement (as between P/Q and ~P/Q) of the kind that runs afoul of our assumptive proscription of error regarding evidential claims of the form X/Y. The orthodox opening of a disputation is for the proponent to formulate and assert his thesis (in the categorical mode !T). The opponent may then offer an opposing challenge (†~T as launched against !T), and the proponent thereupon proceeds to develop his supporting argument for it, offering one (or possibly more) grounding contentions such as: T/Q & !Q.11 With this survey of the basic moves needed to get a disputation started safely in hand, let us now turn to a consideration of the dialectical moves and countermoves that constitute the development of the argumentation at issue. SOME DISPUTATIONAL COUNTERMOVES (1) Countermoves to categorical assertion or counterassertion The following two responses may be offered by the opponent in reply against !P. 1. Challenge or cautious denial †~P NOTE: this is simply the qualified assertion of the contradictory of an asserted thesis. Such a challenge traditionally took the form “Please prove P” (faveas probare P).

22

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

2. Provisoed denial ~P/Q & †Q, for some suitable Q

Display 2 OPENING STEPS IN DISPUTATION Pattern I Proponent ~P

Pattern II

Opponent

Proponent Opponent

†~P

!P

~P/Q & †Q

P/Q & ~Q ____________________________________________________________ Whenever the proponent has made moves of the form !X1, !X2, …, !Xn, and some thesis Y is a logical consequence of these Xi (Xl, X2, …, Xn├Y), then the opponent can offer a challenge of the form †~Y or a provisoed denial of the form ~Y/Z & †Z. Thus if P ├ Q, the proponent’s categorical assertion !P can be met by the opponent either by a direct challenge †~Q or by the provisoed denial ~P/Q & †Q. Challenges can thus be issued not only against categorical assertions themselves, but also against their logical consequences. Such consequence-challenge is simply an extended form of a challenge issued against a thesis itself. In line with these two possibilities, a formal disputation always opens on one of the two patterns set out in Display 2: On both patterns the proponent opens with a categorical assertion (a statement of his thesis), on the lines of the traditional formula “I maintain (affirmo) that P.” With Pattern I the opponent denies this thesis—or, more strictly, denies that the proponent has any adequate entitlement for his claim: “I deny (nego) that P [can be maintained].” The proponent must then proceed (as at step (2)) with the setting out of his case. With Pattern II, on the other hand, the opponent proceeds straightaway to launch a counterattack on the proponent’s thesis (in the form of a provisoed counterassertion).

23

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

A categorical denial of the form !~P is simply the categorical assertion of ~ P. It may thus be met by the opponent by one of the countermoves to categorical assertion, viz., either by the cautious denial †P (equivalent to †~~P) or by the provisoed denial P/Q & †Q. It is worth noting that the opponent’s moves can always be put in the form of a question: the challenge “†~P” as “What entitles you to claim P?” or the provisoed denial “~P/Q & †Q” as “How can you maintain P seeing that ~p/Q and for all you’ve shown Q?” This interrogative approach is in fact always possible with opponent’s moves. Accordingly, the opponent was also often characterized as the questioner (interrogans). (2) Countermoves to cautious assertion or denial The following responses may be offered to †P 1. Categorical counterassertion !~P 2. Provisoed counterassertion ~P/Q & ~Q, for some suitable Q NOTE: (1) Because they involve components of the form !X, these moves are available only to the proponent. NOTE: (2) It is necessary to preclude the repetitive—indeed circular sequence: Proponent

Opponent

!P

†~P

!P This blockage is accomplished by adopting a special rule to proscribe the simple repetition of a previous move. The reason for such a non-repetition rule lies deep in the rationale of the process of disputation. A disputation must be progressive: it must continually advance into new terrain. Since its

24

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

aim is to deepen the grounding of the contentions at issue, it must always endeavor to improve “upon the reasoning already laid out, in the interests of achieving greater sophistication. Mere repetition would frustrate the aim of the enterprise. A cautious denial (or challenge) of the form †~P is simply the cautious assertion of the negative thesis ~P. It may thus be met either by 1. The categorical counterassertion !~~P or equivalently ~P or 2. A provisoed counterassertion of the form P/Q & !Q Cautious denial being available only to the opponent, these countermoves are available only to the proponent. The following sequence represents a typical exchange: Proponent

Opponent

P/Q & !Q

~P/(Q & ~R) & †(Q & ~R)

~~(Q & ~R) = ~(~Q v R)

[Q, ~Q v R ├ R] & †~R

!R The succession of contentions that open the way to further responses defines the developmental format of a disputational process. 3. PROBATIVE ASYMMETRIES It is worth stressing that there are certain crucial role-governed asymmetries or disparities in position between the parties in a disputation: 1. The proponent must inaugurate the disputation. And he must do so with a categorical assertion of the thesis he proposes to defend.

25

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

2. All countermoves involving categorical assertion (conditionalized counterassertion, strong distinction) are open to the proponent alone. Moreover, every move of the proponent involves some categorical assertion: he is the parry on whom it is incumbent to take a committal stance at every juncture. The “burden of proof” lies on his side throughout. 3. All countermoves involving a challenge or cautious denial (including provisoed detail and weak distinction) are open to the opponent alone. Moreover, every move of the opponent involves some challenge or cautious denial: he is the party who need merely call claims into question and carries no responsibility for making any positive claims.12 The process of disputation thus exhibits a significant dialectical asymmetry. A disparity or imbalance of probative position is built into the proponent’s role as supporter and the opponent’s as skeptical denier. Every step taken by the proponent involves a commitment of some sort, and the proponent is liable for the defense of all of these—he is vulnerable at every point to a call to make good his claims. The opponent, on the other hand, need make no positive claims at all. He need merely challenge the proponent’s claims, and his work is adequately done if he succeeds in bringing to light the inadequacy of some one of the claims on which the proponent’s case rests. In this regard, formal disputation with its opposing !T by †T differs from a symmetrically contradictory debate that opposes !~T to !T. The latter situation is typical of modern collegiate debating, where each side undertakes to defend one member of a pair of mutually contradictory theses. This situation gives rise to what is, in effect, simply a pair of concurrent and interlocked disputations: One contender is proponent for T to his adversary’s opponentship, and this adversary is proponent of ~T to his adversary’s opponentship. On each side we have an attempt to build up a cogent and persuasive case in the face of skeptical objections from the other. The situation that results here poses no theoretical innovations. It simply reflects the evolution of disputation into a variant form of controversy that makes for a situation of probative symmetry between the parties.

26

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

4. THE DETERMINATION (ADJUDICATION) OF A DISPUTATION A disputation involves a stylized sequence of moves and countermoves that locks the participants into a rigorously programmed minuet of welldetermined steps. The various combinatorial possibilities that can arise will conform in structure to a circumscribed sequence of admissible exchanges, as set out in the flow-diagram of Figure 3. Since this process is intrinsically non-terminating (as the flow-diagram contains wholly closed circuits), there must be some additional rules— extrinsic to the dialectical process itself—for fixing a stopping point to the process. Various alternatives are possible here: e.g., a predesignated total number of exchanges, a fixed period of time, surrender by one of the parties for reason of frustration or exhaustion, etc. (The rule should, however, be such that the proponent gets the last word.) But how to assess matters? The preceding analysis has stressed the fundamental disparity in the probative position of the two rival parties in a disputation. The ultimate burden of proof rests squarely with the proponent. He alone is entitled—and indeed required—at every stage of the proceedings to make moves that involve a definite commitment (and so have a component of the form !X). Accordingly, the proponent alone maintains an ever-changing variety of commitments during the course of the disputation—a shifting constellation of theses to whose defense he stands committed. The issue of such commitment needs closer scrutiny. A proponent discharges a commitment when he “exchanges” it for another through a sequence of the form: Proponent

Opponent

... & !P

†~P

P/Q & !Q Here the proponent has, as it were, exchanged his initial commitment to defend P for one to defend its supportive pillar Q instead. When the challenge to a direct commitment to X (of the form !X) is taken up and transformed into an indirect commitment to X via some Y, then the initial commitment to X is “discharged.” (Of course, all the logical consequences of discharged commitments must also be taken to be discharged.)

27

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

An opponent concedes a committed thesis—tacitly, to be sure—when he subjects it to a distinction. Thus consider the sequence: Proponent

Opponent

P/Q & ~Q

~P/(Q & R) & †(Q & R)

The opponent here concedes Q in switching the ground from considering the acceptability of P in the face of Q to considering its status in the face of Q & R, the combination of Q conjoined with some other thesis R. Again, the opponent concedes a committed thesis when he fails to attack it when given as an opportunity to do so. Thus consider the sequence Proponent

Opponent

~P

~P/Q & †Q

P/(Q & R & !(Q & R)

†R

By ignoring Q—which he had, moreover, insinuated in his initial attack— the opponent concedes it. Given the ever-shifting pattern of commitment on the proponent’s part (undertaking new commitments, discharging old ones, having others conceded), there will at each stage be a (constantly changing) group of living commitments on his part. This is illustrated in the following example: Proponent

Opponent

(1) !P

~P/Q & †Q

(2) P/~Q & !~Q

~P(~Q & R) & †(Q & R)

(3) !~(~Q & R)

†R

(4) ~R/S & !S As this illustration shows, there is a constant ebb and flow in the substance of commitment.

28

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

The “determination” of a disputation is, of course, a pivotally important issue, governing the entire process that issues in this climactic culmination. When the dispute ends, the determiner uses the following standards in adjudging the dispute with a view to assessing what adversary deserves to be counted as the victor: 1. A formal criterion with reference to the avoidance of illicit moves: Did the proponent argue in a circle? Did the opponent challenge theses which he had already called into Question before? Did anyone perpetrate formal errors in reasoning? If all’s well as to point 1 (as one would ordinarily expect to be the case), then a different criterion comes into play. 2. A material criterion with reference to assessing the extent to which the opponent drove the proponent into implausible commitments. This is a matter of assessing the plausibility (absolute plausibility or perhaps simply the plausibility relative to the initial thesis) of the proponent’s undischarged and unconceded commitments. This evaluation process serves to determine the strategy of disputation. The proponent has to cover his commitments in a maximally plausible way; the opponent tries to force him into more difficult commitments by introducing cleverly contrived distinctions that push his adversary in this direction.13 (In terminating a dispute a clear distinction must, of course, be made between those of the opponent’s concessions which represent theses he has had an opportunity to attack, those that he has declined and those which he has not yet—at this stage—had adequate opportunity to attack.) In a wellconducted disputation, one will always be able to extract by analysis of the exchanges of the pro-con tabulation a good (though certainly not necessarily a deductively valid) argument—a unilateral line of reasoning in support of a thesis. And “victory” is determined by how cogent a case the proponent manages to make relative to the possibilities at his disposal through the mechanisms of plausibility and presumption. The pivotal facet of the “determination” of a disputation is thus its crucial dependence upon a means for evaluating the plausibility (acceptability) of the theses upon which the proponent is—in the end—driven by the opponent to rest his case. This is what fixes the aim and object of the whole enterprise and indeed determines its entire strategy. For the propo-

29

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

nent is ever striving to lead his case towards the secure ground of plausible contentions and the opponent is ever seeking to prevent his reaching any such safe harbor of plausible and presumption-secured contentions. 5. THE ROLE OF PRESUMPTION Over and above the formal principles that govern the proper conduct of dialectic there are various substantive principles as well. These are generally encapsulated in various sorts of presumptions. A presumption is a claim which, in standard practice, is allowed to stand as true provisionally—until such time (if any) that sufficiently decisive counter-indications come to view.14 The concept has its origin in law (as per the presumption of innocence, or the presumption that someone missing for seven years is dead). From law it was carried over to formal disputation (as per the presumption of falsity that has contentions deemed unacceptable until due grounds emerge in their support). In cognitive matters at large a plethora of policies of presumption are at work. Thus we presume that the testimony of our senses is veridical, that normal conditions prevail, that people mean what they say, etc. In all such matters, presumptions are allowed to stand as a matter of general policy unless or until they are defeated by case-specific considerations. Presumptions have two polarities, pro or con, positive of negative. These mark the inclination of the “burden of proof” on a given issue. Some positive cognitive presumptions are • that people are trustworthy, • that professionals are competent. Per contra, some negative presumptions are • that the claims someone who has a strong beneficial interest in the matter cannot be taken at face value, • that people with a record of incompetence will not perform competently. Some presumptions that specifically govern the conduct of dialectic are

30

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

• that the considerations adduced in favor or against particular claims are the strongest available, and correspondingly • that those conclusions supported by weak or fallacious arguments are false. In disputation there is a standing presumption against any flat-out claims until such time as some substantiation is provided. When this is done, however, the polarity of presumption is reversed from negative to positive: the burden of proof now shifts to the opponent who must now come up with further counter-indications. Being a presumption is not a function of what a statement says, but rather of how it figures in the context of discussion. Thus when a statement functions as a claim/thesis/affirmation there is automatically a con-presumption that needs to be met by some sort of substantiation. But if it is put forward as a hypothesis/supposition/assumption we have no alternative but to accept it (pro tem) as true. It could, to be sure, in due course be rejected as equivocal, or too vague, or outright meaningless, but until this sort of thing is shown it stands in place on the basis of a pro-presumption. The validation of presumptions ultimately is functional, finalistic, pragmatic. An individual presumption is validated with reference to a policy. But that policy itself is in its basis validated is—and certainly will be—validated in terms of its systemic efficacy relative to the aims of the enterprise at issue. In certain key instances a shift in the thematic perspective at issue suffices to carry in its wake a polarity reversal with respect to presumption. Case 1: Actuality/Possibility With a flat-out claim to truth, the presumption is always negative. There is an automatic counter-presumption that has to be overcome. “The cat is on the mat”—well and good; but just what is it that entitled you to state this claim. (Agenti incumbit probatio as the medieval theory of disputation had it.) The affirming agent bears the burden of substantiation. However with claims of possibility rather then actuality the polarity is reversed. “The cat may be on the mat—it’s just possible.” In cases of such mere possibility claims there is a pro-presumption. We now have to counter with something like “It’s not possible; the mat is here in London and the cat was in Chicago just half an hour ago—cats just don’t travel all

31

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

that fast.” In the presence of some such story, the possibility claim is on safe ground. With merely speculated thematic possibilities, presumption takes a positive line. Accordingly, one prime instance of presumption in philosophy—and in particular in metaphysics—is the Leibnizian Presumption of Possibility to the following general effect: Possibility is always to be presumed and must be deemed true until its impossibility is established.15

In matters of truth presumption figures negatively (presumed false until the evidence indicated otherwise) but in matters of possibility the polarity of presumption is reverse: here presumption figures positively, with matters presumed possible unless and until the indications point otherwise. Case 2: Factuality/Fictionality With factual claims there is, as already indicated, a negative casepresumption and support needs to be provided to defend such a presumption. But the matter stands differently with acknowledged fictions: the sorts of claims that we project by suppositions, assumptions, and hypotheses. “The cat is on the mat.” Here we have a factual claim which, as a mere assertion, merits no credence unless something transpires in its support. (Of course if vouched for by a well-informed observer, the matter would stand otherwise and the burden of proof became discharged). But now by contrast consider “Suppose that the cat is on the mat” or “Let it be that the cat is on the mat.” With such a finalization “The cat is on the mat” becomes safe as the focus of a picture presumption. The burden of proof is now in its favor. To be sure someone can say “That’s not possible: that mat is so small the cat won’t fit.” But when something like that happens, the supposition stands secure. As this example illustrates, explicit fictionality in the form of supposition, assumption, and hypotheses also effects a reversal in presumptive polarity. Case 3: Factuality/Suppositionality Let it be that we accept:

32

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

(1) The generalization: “All A’s are B’s.” (2) The particularization: “Such-and-such is an A.” And now consider adding to this the following further, clearly inconsistent, item: (3) Such-and-such is not a B. Clearly these three theses cannot be maintained together, something has to give way. However, the conflict-creating contention (3) can come upon the agenda of consideration in either of two ways: As a factual discovery, or as a mere assumption or supposition. If the former occurs we would, clearly, abandon the generalization (1) as now being invalidated by (3). But in the latter, hypothetical case we would retain (1) and make (2) give way, now endorsing the counterfactual conditional “If such-and-such were not a B, then it would not be an A (since all A’s are B’s).” And this illustrates a general point: when cognitive commitments come into conflict then in factual contexts we concede a positive presumption in favor of specificity as against generality, while in fictional (hypothetical) contexts we concede positive presumption to generality as against specificity. Considerations of the sort canvassed in this chapter clearly indicate that principles of plausibility and presumption are a crucial factor for the entire process of disputational dialectics; with disputants who cannot agree on the fundamental ground rules that are to prevail there is little if any prospect of engaging in rational dialectic.16 NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2 1

A rather romanticized view of the basic set-up can be seen in the famous fresco “The Dispute of St. Thomas Aquinas with the Heretics” in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. It is particularly interesting that the foreground is littered with the books used by the disputants as sources for their proof-texts.

2

On medieval academic disputations, see A. G. Little and F. Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 29–56. A vivid account of the conduct of scholastic disputations is given in Thomas Gilby, O. P., Barbara Celarent: A Description of Scholastic Dialectic (London: Longmans Green, 1949); see especially Chapter XXXII, “Formal Debate,” pp. 282–293.

33

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

3

See, for example, Cicero, De inventione, I: 10–16. Cicero’s analysis of four types of disputable questions and his description of the successive stages through which a dispute passes is drawn up with a view to the legal situation.

4

A very helpful survey of issues in the theory of argumentation in general is Chaim Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, La Nouvelle Rhétorique: Traité de l’argumentation, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958). (Cf. also Perelman’s Rhétorique et philosophie [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1952].) Among the older discussions of dialectic and its relationship to logic, one which still retains a substantial interest, is Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Eristische Dialektik,” in Arthur Schopenhauer: Der handschriftliche Nachlass, ed. by A. Hübscher, vol. III (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970), pp. 666–695.

5

See, for example, A. J. Freeley, Argumentation and Debate, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1966), chap. III, sect. iii, “Presumption and Burden of Proof,” pp. 30–34. Regarding the literature of rhetoric in general, see the very full bibliography given in Ch. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, La Nouvelle Rhetorique.

6

See Bromley Smith, “Extracurricular Disputations: 1400–1650,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 34 (1948), pp. 473–476.

7

See Ewald Horn, “Die Disputationen und Promotionen an den deutschen Universitäten vornehmlich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert,” Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, No. 11 (1893); and cf. G. Kaufmann, “Zur Geschichte der akademischen Grade und Disputationen,” ibid., 12 (1894): 201–225. Compare W. T. Costello, S. J., The Scholastic Curriculum in Early Seventeenth Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).

8

See the report given by Max Planck of his own experiences at the University of Munich in 1879: The viva voce examination was followed by the ceremonial Promotion in which—according to the regulations of the day—the doctoral candidate had to defend [in disputation] certain theses which he put forward. My “opponents,” with whom—as was customary—I had already reached friendly accommodation in advance, were the physicist Carl Runge and the mathematician Adolf Hurwitz. (Max Planck, Vorträge und Erinnerungen, 5th ed. [Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1949], p. 4.)

9

34

Thus P/Q could be construed as either “P obtains in most cases of Q’s obtaining” or “P obtains in all standard (or: typical) cases of Q’s obtaining.” (Note that in either case the transitivity relation will fail to hold. This alone blocks the prospect of construing the connection at issue as an implication-relationship.) Given the dialectical function of this relationship, the second of these constructions seems more appropriate.

DISPUTATIONAL DIALECTIC

10

If the only available evidential support were via logical entailment, rather than this weaker mode of plausible substantiation, then the very reason for being of disputation would be undermined. For in a strictly deductive argument, the conclusion cannot be epistemically weaker than its weakest premise. This would preclude any prospect of building up a case for an epistemically frail conclusion from relatively firm premises (just as in inductive reasoning), and exactly this is one of the key aims of disputation. This fact constrains the grounding relationship at issue to be of less than deductive strength.

11

In the actual practice a scholastic disputation was sometimes complicated by the practice of (in effect) a role-reversal which assigned to the opponent the task of carrying the burden of proof in establishing the falsity of the proponent’s thesis. See Thomas Gilby, Barbara Celarent, pp. 282–293. The proponent would open with a statement of the disputed thesis (and perhaps some grounds for it). The opponent would then take on the probative burden of maintaining a contrary (sed contra est!) of the proponent’s thesis. But this was simply a matter of a functional roleinterchange within the same framework.

12

Such a challenge can always be put into the form of a question: “But just what entitles you to maintain …?” Disputation can thus be carried on in a question-andanswer process. Aristotle sometimes approaches the matter in this way in Book VII of the Topics.

13

This idea that a successful course of dialectical reasoning should not argue to a conclusion from less plausible premises was already stressed by Aristotle in the Topics (e.g., at 161bl9–34).

14

Compare G. W. Leibniz “Ce qu’on appelle présomption ... est plus incomparablement qu’une simple supposition, puisque la pluspart des suppositions ne doivent être admises qu’on ne les prouve: mais tout qui a la présomption pour soi doit passer pour vrai jusqu’à ce qu’on le réfute.” (To Jaquelot 20 Nov. 1792; G. P. III 444).

15

See G. W. Leibniz, Oeuvres chosies ed. by L. Prenaut (Paris: Garnier, 1940), p. 58. [To Princess Elizabeth late in 1678. Compare GP III 444 [to Jaquelot, 20 November 1702.]

16

On the wider role of presumptions in cognitive systematization see the author’s Presumption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For more on classical disputation see also author’s Dialectics (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1977).

35

Chapter 3 COGNITIVE DIALECTIC 1. THE DIALECTIC OF NATURAL SCIENCES

T

he present chapter will focus upon the role of dialectics in the cognitive methodology used for the “production of knowledge.” It will, in specific, endeavor to show how the theory of knowledge can helpfully be clarified from a dialectical angle of approach. Logic is a matter of “if-then,” of what follows from given premises (be they established or assumed). But how are premises ever established? The Western tradition of epistemology affords two answers here: induction and dialectic. Dialectic, so regarded, is a procedure of confirmation—a process for establishing factual contentions that is in a way analogous to but different from inductive reasoning from observation. Cognitive dialectics in its investigative form as an inquiry method has the structure pictured in Display 1. Overall, such a dialectical procedure seeks to canvas both the pro- and the con-consideration regarding some proposed idea or hypothesis for the sake of assessing just where in its general neighborhood the truth of the matter lies.

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

____________________________________________________________ Display 2 COGNITIVE DIALECTIC A state of knowledge K

Questions to which K gives rise

Knowledge Answers to the revision questions ____________________________________________________________ In deduction we move uni-directionally from accepted premises to a conclusion. Inquiry dialectic, by contrast, is a far more complex process. In dialectic we move cyclically, testing the acceptability of premises in terms of the acceptability of the conclusions to which they lead. The overall process is roughly as follows. We set out (experimentally-peirastically) as it were from seemingly plausible premises (viz. the endoxa on the subject). Thereupon we look (by deductive or plausible reasoning) at what sorts of conclusions follow. And then we assess the acceptability/plausibility of this conclusion in terms of coherence (harmonization) within the wider context of relevant information. And insofar as the results are not all that favorable we revise and readjust those premises in a direction that seems more promising. In deduction then we validate a conclusion relative to the premises. But dialectics, by contrast, puts us into a position to validate premises on the basis of broader considerations of systemic harmonization. In deduction we need not—nay should not—look beyond the information available in the given premises. In dialectic we have to undertake a broad canvas of relevant information. It might go without saying that the only inquiry procedures of any interest for us are those that satisfy the minimal conditions of rationality. For one thing, they must be consistent in that such a procedure must not enjoin us to accept both some thesis P and its contradictory denial not-P. Moreover, they must encompass certain minimal principles of logical cogency, especially in enjoining acceptance of anything that follows logically from

38

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

____________________________________________________________ Display 3 INQUIRY DIALECTIC IN NATURAL SCIENCE THEORISTS

EXPERIMENTALISTS

Design a body of theory to fit the available data

Make observations under heretofore unexplored conditions

____________________________________________________________ theses whose acceptance it has already authorized. They may well, however, be incomplete in being prepared to suspend judgment between a pair of contradictories P and not-P, so that non-acceptance of P does not entail acceptance of not-P. Only inquiry procedures that satisfy such minimal rationality conditions can deserve serious consideration. In specific, the dialectics of natural science unfolds as a dialogue between theorists with their speculations and experientialists with their observations. The overall process results in an alternatingly cyclic exchange between theory and observation that strives for an ever smoother attunement between the two. Display 3 offers a schematic view of this situation. Unlike demonstration which always needs previously established inputs for use as premises, dialectic is not other-dependent but self-sufficient. It reflects and deliberates without assuming or requiring anything preestablished for its determinations. Dialectic does not reason from preestablished givens but through the evaluation of plausibilities. It does not yield proofs and demonstrations but merely indicates plausibilities. Its basis is not previously secured knowledge but a fragile experience assessed by testing them against each other. Display 4 indicates the structure of this situation. Dialectics does not deduce conclusions but evaluates candidates for truth-imputation (Aristotelian endoxa) through assessing their strengths and weaknesses. In his interesting study of dialectic Roland Simon-Schaefer takes latterday dialecticians to task for imputing insufficiency and inadequacy to standard theoretical logic for cogent reasoning.1 But what is actually at issue

39

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

____________________________________________________________ Display 4 Specification of the “data” or plausible truth prospects

Revision via systematization and coordinative coadjustment in the light of internal stresses

Context enhancement and introduction of new data

____________________________________________________________ here is a division of labor. For standard logic deal with what follows IF AND WHEN certain premises are true, while dialectics is concerned with the truth-claims of those premises themselves and their substantive congeners. The job of dialectic is thus something quite different and distinctive from that of logic; they are different tools created for different purposes. Neither one can justly be criticized on grounds of dispensability through replacement by the other. 2. THE QUALITY CONTROL PROBLEM The functioning of an inquiry procedure in providing putative factual knowledge can thus be viewed in essentially system-theoretic terms, on the model of a production process. The resources of plausible supposition serve as the input, and items of (putative) knowledge constitutes the output—as shown in Display 5. Here the “initial information” would at first include a good deal of misinformation—of mere supposition, surmise, and conjecture—so that the inquiry process is not just a matter of extending the quantitative volume of information, but also one of confirmation, satisfaction, substantiation, with the result of a qualitative upgrading of what is already in some sense “available.” In this manner, the conception of an inquiry procedure implements the idea of a cognitive methodology employed in the “production” of factual knowledge about the world. This methodological perspective brings to the fore the question of quality control, that is, the problem of assessing how well a cognitive method is able to accomplish its intended task.

40

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

____________________________________________________________ Display 5 THE PRODUCTION-PROCESS VIEW OF KNOWLEDGE Initial information

Inquiry procedure Putative for extending and knowledge refining given information ____________________________________________________________ But how is one to determine that a fact-oriented inquiry procedure is adequate? What sort of check can be put on whether the procedure is indeed “doing its job”? On first thought, it might perhaps seem that one can simply employ here the standard quality-control procedure of assessing the adequacy of a process in terms of the merits of its product. Unfortunately this will not do. For we immediately run up against one of the key issues of the problem disputed in antiquity between the Stoics and the Academic Skeptics under the rubric of the criterion—the problem, that is, of the test-process that is to represent our standard of truth. Now to all appearances the question of the appropriateness of a criteriological acceptance-standard C is simply this: Does C yield truths? But how could one meaningfully implement the justificatory program inherent in this question? Seemingly in only one way: by looking on the one hand at C-validated propositions and checking on the other hand if they are in fact truths. But if C really and truly is our working criterion for the determination of factual truth, then this exercise becomes wholly pointless. We cannot judge C by the seemingly natural standard of the question whether what it yields as true is indeed actually true, because we ex hypothesi use C itself as the determinant of just this. At this point it becomes crucial that C really and truly is the criterion we actually use for truth determinations. Clearly, if the issue were that of justifying a proposed procedure C′ the preceding methodology would work splendidly well. For we would then simply check whether the C′-validated propositions are indeed truths—that is, whether they are also validated by C. But with respect to C itself this exercise is patently useless. This line of reasoning has been known from the days of the skeptics of

41

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

antiquity under the title of the “diallelus,” a particular sort of self-validating circulus in probandi. Montaigne presented this Wheel Argument (as we may term it) as follows: To adjudicate [between the true and the false] among the appearances of things we need to have a distinguishing method (un instrument judicatoire); to validate this method we need to have a justifying argument; but to validate this justifying argument we need the very method at issue. And there we are, going round on the wheel.2

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this extremely simple line of reasoning. It proves, in as decisive a manner as philosophical argumentation admits of, that our operative standard of factual truth cannot be validated by somehow exhibiting directly that it does indeed accomplish properly its intended work of truth-determination.3 The routine tactic of assessing process in terms of product is thus seemingly not practicable in the case of an inquiry procedure of the sort at issue: it is in principle impossible to make a direct check of this sort on the functioning of our truthdetermining methods. The quality control of information cannot just look to information itself—it has to be geared to application. The lesson of the Wheel Argument (diallelus) is that there simply is no direct way of checking the adequacy of an inquiry procedure—at any rate with that inquiry procedure to which we are seriously committed. So where to turn? 3. COGNITIVE TELEOLOGY: THE RECIPROCAL ACCOMMODATION OF THEORY AND PRACTICE This deceptively simple-seeming question of the quality control of our information poses profound and far-reaching issues. In particular, it constrains us to give prominence to a recognition of the tritely familiar but still fundamental fact of the amphibious nature of man as a creature of mind and body, intellect and will, reason and action, theory and practice. In keeping with this duality, our knowledge answers to two distinct categories of purpose, the theoretical and the practical. The theoretical sector of purpose is pure (action prescinding) and the practical sector is applied (action involving) in orientation. The theoretical relates to the strictly intellectual interests of man—the acquisition of descriptive information and explanatory understanding (to what and why)—whereas the practical relates to the material interests of man that underlie the guidance of human

42

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

action: avoidance of pain, suffering, frustration, etc. The functional role of our knowledge encompasses both the intellectual/theoretical aspect of the purists’ knowledge for knowledge’s sake and the activist/practical aspect of knowledge as a counsel in the conduct of affairs and a guide to life. Our acceptance or non-acceptance of factual truths, of course, has profound involvements on both sides of the theoretical/practical divide, since such acceptance furnishes a guide both to intellectual belief and to overt action in the pursuit of our practical goals.4 The crucial lesson of such considerations is that the teleology of inquiry is internally diversified and complex, and spreads across both the cognitive/theoretical and active/practical sectors. Accordingly, a truth-criterion comes to be endowed with a duality of objectives, and the relevant teleology of inquiry is both cognitive and practical.5 Truth-acceptance is on the one hand a determining factor for belief in purely intellectual and theoretical regards, and on the other a guiding standard for the practical conduct of life. The two are inseparably interrelated. And this second cluster of the goals pertinent to inquiry is by no means of a stature inferior or subordinate to the first. If anything, the reverse is the case: stress upon explanation and prediction can be viewed as derivatively subsidiary to practice. For on the one hand, explanatory adequacy is a crucial factor in guiding the practice of specifically rational beings. And on the other hand, prediction is an inevitable aspect of adequate control—even of that merely negative control of “letting nature take its course.” The correct canalizing of expectations in predictive contexts is a crucial aspect of the control over nature essential to the successful guidance of practical affairs.6 The lesson of the diallelus argument is that we cannot judge theory by theory alone. Success in matters of practice—of applicative efficacy—is something very different from “success” in the sphere of theory (viz., “being right” about something). The success of the pragmatic context is of the affective order, ranging over the spectrum from physical survival and avoidance of pain and injury on the negative side to positive satisfactions such as those attending the satiation of physical needs on the other. Merely intellectual accomplishment like “predictive success” (which, to be sure, can be attended by affectively positive satisfaction) is but a small part of the picture. After all, a world-external, disembodied spectator can make predictions about the world and utter a pleased “aha—there it is” to himself when his predictions work out. But the core factor is that of the “success” of a being emplaced in this world in medias res who must intervene in the course of events to make matters eventuate so as to conduce to his survival

43

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

and well-being. The issue here is thus not to be construed as one of cognitive success but rather in terms of the affectively satisfying and purposively adequate guidance of action, i.e., intervention in the course of events so as to make things work out “satisfactorily.” In the final analysis, then, the teleology relevant for the evaluation of cognitive methods must ultimately be located in applicative “success” in the practical area. But how is such an approach to be implemented? Let us now try to exploit in the special case of an inquiry procedure the generic process of instrumental justification as previously outlined, recognizing the specifically pragmatic aspect of the relevant teleology. Approached from this angle, the justificatory process will have the essentially dialectical structure exhibited in Display 6. ____________________________________________________________ Display 6 THE PRAGMATIC JUSTIFICATION OF A METHODOLOGY OF INQUIRY Merely Plausible Theses Presumptions

Matters of Record

Presumptively Warranted

Attributably Theses

Reassessment in the light of the products of M

M

Pragmatic Validation

M-validated Truths Applications of M

____________________________________________________________ This schema presents—at least in bare bones outlines—the process of the “pragmatic justification” of an inquiry procedure or truth-criterion. Its workings are virtually self-explanatory. The pragmatic factor of the practical success realized in applying the findings of the procedure comes to represent the governing consideration for the evaluative issue of its legitimacy. In all, then, validity a dialectical inquiry procedure is a process that itself proceeds along substantially dialectical lines.7

44

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

4. PRAGMATIC EFFICACY AFFORDS A “REALITY PRINCIPLE” One important consideration has, however, thus far been left out of view. For the preceding account shows merely how various elements are connected, but does not indicate which of these elements lie within the range of our manipulative control, and which ones merely react to variations in those determining variables which, so to speak, hold the reins in their hands. In this regard it is clear that: (1) we can alter and readjust our Weltanschauung. (2) We can change our inquiry procedure (and hence, mediately, the range of “truths” that result from its application). (3) We can modify and reorient our actions. But the one thing that we cannot control are the consequences of our actions: those results which determinate actions bring in their wake. In short, while we can change how we think and act, the success or failure attendant upon such changes is something wholly outside the sphere of our control. In this crucial respect, our cognitive and active endeavors propose, and nature disposes—and does so in presumably blithe independence of our wishes and hopes, and our beliefs and conceptions or misconceptions about the world. Here we come up against the ultimate, theory-external, thought-exogenously independent variable. Pragmatic success constitutes the finally decisive controlling factor. These considerations highlight a critically important aspect of the whole enterprise, namely that of a theory-external quality-control upon theoretical performance. The over-all process of justification thus involves the proper closing of two interlocked cycles, the one theoretical/cognitive and the other practical/applicative in orientation. We can see this most clearly by reconsidering the elements of the preceding double circle from the variant point of view presented in Display 5 above. As long as one remains in the domain of “theory”—one moves about in the realm of one’s own views and beliefs. At this level nothing precludes the whole process from being a pure idealism, confined to the realm of mind alone; the pragmatic element of action and reaction is still absent. And even when one moves on to the domain of action, one still remains within an area where we ourselves are masters, the realm of thought and action whose elements lie within our own control. Only in moving from a secure, man-dominated realm to encounter the harsh realities of a world not of our making whose workings lie in predominant measure beyond the reach of our control. The process at issue is thus a complex of two distinct but interlocked cycles—the theoretical cycle of cognitive coherence and the pragmatic cy-

45

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

cle of applicative effectiveness. Only if both of these cycles dovetail properly—in both the theoretical and the applicative sectors—can the whole process be construed as providing a suitable rational legitimation for the inquiry procedure at issue. Everyone is familiar with the occasional surfacing even today of some occult or pseudo-scientific views of the world which substantiate factpurporting theses of the strangest sort. It is always striking here how beautifully everything meshes at the theoretical level—one bit of strangeness being supported by others. The crunch comes only with the tough question: Does this world-view enable its proponents to navigate more successfully through the rocks and shoals of this world? The proof of such a theoretical pudding is its applicative eating. The pivotal element of action and reaction thus provides for the operation of a “reality principle.” And this is vital to the justificatory capacities of the whole process, because it blocks the prospect of a futile spinning around in reality-detached cycles of purely theoretical gyrations. Someplace along the line of justification there must be provision for a corrective contact with the bedrock of an uncooperative and largely unmanipulable reality—a brute force independent of the whims of our theorizing. This crucial reality-principle is provided for in the framework of the present theory by the factor of the reactive success consequent upon implementing action. There is no hors de texte says Jacques Derrida. The only validating reason for a belief is yet another belief says Donald Davidson. But this sort of “wisdom” is error. Whatever happened to experience? The world of thought is not self-contained; it is integral to the wider world of nature, part of a realm in which events happen and experiences occur. And it is the course of experience that can and does validated many of our beliefs. A perfectly good reason for believing that the cat is on the mat is that we experience (i.e., observe) it to be there. The acceptability of beliefs lies not with other beliefs but with experience—and experience must here be understood in rather general and broadly inclusive terms. On this approach, then, the linkage between pragmatic utility and the truth of theses can be broken apart, and methods are inserted into the gap that opens up. Pragmatic considerations are not brought to bear on theses directly. This mediation of methods between pragmatic considerations and thesis-acceptance is central to—and indeed definitive of—the specifically methodological pragmatism at issue here. By its very nature as such, a thesis-oriented pragmatism cannot afford to

46

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

concede possible discrepancies between success and truthfulness. But a methodological pragmatism is in a very different position here. Theses perish in unfavorable circumstances, but methods can live on to fight another day. For the success of a method is a factor whose systematic nature gives it great probative weight in spite of occasional failings. A cognitive methodology is something so general and so open-ended in its orientation that gratuitously lucky success in the implementation of its products on a systematic basis can be ruled out as a genuine prospect. After all, the systematic success of an inquiry method cannot plausibly be dismissed as a sheerly fortuitous piece of luck owing to the inherent generality of methods. After all, the applicability range of an inquiring methodology is literally boundless: no factual issue is to lie outside its intended province. Here it is effectively assured that probatively irrelevant side effects by way of fortuitous benefits or disasters will become canceled out in the larger scheme of things. That inappropriate processes might prove pervasively successful at this synoptic level of generality is theoretically possible but affectively unlikely—a prospect so farfetched that it can be dismissed with confidence. Fundamental mistakes at this level of generality are bound to have applicative repercussions across a limitless frontier that would not only be discernible but would ultimately prove catastrophic in implementation. These considerations indicate a critically important aspect of the generality of such a methodological approach to pragmatism— an approach whose generality is crucial to its capacity to overcome the shortcomings inherent in thesis-pragmatism. Precisely because the later, “progressive” stages of the application of our inquiry procedures are more fully warranted on the basis of a dialectical feedback via the ampler and more successful body of praxis that they underwrite, we can take the stance that is rational to view their deliverances as better qualified for endowment with the presumption of truth. It is on this basis alone that we can be increasingly confident that our currently accepted picture of nature affords a comparatively better estimate than our past pictures do. In valid deductive logic the premises constrain the conclusion: when and if the premises are true, the conclusion is inevitably true as well. In dialectics the situation is different. The premises invite the conclusion; they instruct it but do not constrain it. Given the impact of an antithesis upon a thesis, there are always alternatives, various options for responding with one specific alternative forced and inevitable. Dialectics does not necessitate: a certain aura of contingency is always present. Insofar as cogni-

47

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

tive dialectics determines truth it does so not with demonstrative certainty but with plausibility. Accordingly, our dialectally formed beliefs about the world should be seen as having two interrelated aspects: on the one hand, they are indeed estimates of the truth and not definitive demonstrations thereof; but on the other hand they are not mere estimates: they are responsible estimates of the truth that rest on the most amply authenticated methodological basis that it has been within our power to devise. 5. ISSUES OF MEANING Apart from the cognitive dialectic of inquiry, of truth-determination, there is also the cognitive dialectic of hermeneutics, of meaning-clarification. For dialectic can serve for clarification as well as for substantiation. After all, many if not most of our affirmations are vague and imprecise and thereby in some respect untenable so that there is something that can be said for its denial. And conversely, where we issue denials there is often not sufficient imprecision to leave some room for saying something on behalf of the continuing affirmation. One of the key tasks of dialectic is accordingly a matter of negotiation, as it were, between affirmation and denial for the sake of greater clarity and precision in our cognitive commitments. Thus consider: “The cat is on the mat.” What could be a simpler, more categorical truth than that? And yet consider the following dialogue between Proponent and Opponent: P: The cat is on the mat. O: But his left front paw is somewhat off the mat. And for that matter his whiskers aren’t on the mat at all but up on his face, which is considerably above the mat. P: But what is meant by asserting “The cat is on the mat” doesn’t claim that every part of the cat is touching the mat—paws and whiskers included. For the cat to be on the mat it need not be that all its parts are in contact with that mat, an evident impossibility; it suffices that most of the largest should be so.

This sort of exchange is clearly a matter of explanatory rather than justifactory (probative or evidential) dialectic. But this process too exemplifies the

48

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

____________________________________________________________ Display 7 TERMINOLOGICAL IMPRECISION Definite in

proposed border

Definite out Undecided ____________________________________________________________ typical dialectical format of moving from a consideration via counter-considerations to a more sophisticated re-consideration. Epistemic dialectic has a composite aim: it seeks concurrently and interactively to clarify a thesis and to establish its credentials. The object is to recast and revise an otherwise unclear claim and to do this in a way that makes it more plausible, less open to objection. Sharpening a contention in the direction of tenability is the aim of the enterprise. Such a process finds its work in the fact that many or most of our descriptive and classifactory concepts are imprecise and have some element of unclarity about them. And so, in endeavoring to provide an exact construal for an imprecise thesis there is a “dialectical” opposite between two much and too little. Any imprecise term presents us with the situation depicted in Display 7. No matter where that proposal border is placed within that region of indeterminateness, there will be some post-border outs that are actually in and some post-border ins that are actually out. So there will be errors of both types: errors of omission and errors of commission. And for this reason there will arise contradictions between what is in (according to the border) and what is out (according to fact)—or the other way around. The thesis at issue fixes a border by overgeneralization with too many errors of commission: too many OUTS included. The anti-thesis goes too far the other way: too many errors of omission, too many INS excluded. And in the next dialectical cycle the same story recurs—albeit none (hopefully) at a level of lesser severity. Potentially the process goes on and on. What Eduard von Hartman called Hegel’s commitment to the instable fluidity (Flüssigkeit) of concepts turns on the imprecision of those we gener-

49

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

ally use.8 Truly scientific categories grow more and more precise. In the ideal end (the “Absolute”) there is perfectly precise and detailed thought. No more conflicts, no more dialectic. In the face of merely imprecise rather than rationally confused and selfcontradictory concepts, dialectic can play a positive and constructive role as a clarifactory rather than a negatively deconstructive process. However given that imprecision, the achievement of perfection is in principle impossible here. But with a (hopefully) convergent dialectic—driven at each stage by the endeavors to reduce the volume of contradictions—there will in the end be a superior product, or a condition which, though still incorrect, reduces the level of totality of errors (omission plus commission) by a border drawn with increasing refinement and judiciousness. Where Hegel spoke of the instability of finite categories one can also speak of the indefiniteness of finite categories. Every taxonomy and every descriptive characterization of the real things we encounter in the course of our interactive experiences with the world is imperfect, imprecise, fuzzyedged. There will always be some excluded things that should, properly considered, ideally be included (errors of kind one), and some properly excluded things that should, properly construed, ideally be excluded (errors of kind two). In sum errors of omission and commission are inevitable. The only wholly unproblematic reality-geared category is “being an object of thought” which defined the totalistic set T. Here there can be no mistakes and there are no borderline cases: whatever the item may be that is at issue is at deliberation, it will inevitably and unavoidably be a member of this set. No dialectical staggering is needed here. But of course while we know that there are increasingly many items in this set T, we cannot hope to offer anything like a complete inverting or indication of what they are. Explicative dialectic (of the sort practical by the Platonic Socrates) is seemingly more fundamental than probative dialectic (of the sort provided by the Schoolmen) if only because any assertion above X presupposes that one has already settled the meaning-coordinate issue of just what is at issue with X. But this does not do justice to the later version of probative dialectic derived from Fichte and Hegel. For here the issue of meaning and tenability are heisted in interactive juxtaposition. The enterprise is seen as one of negotiation between meaning and tenability, with meaning seen as reconstructable and fluid in the interaction of developing a version of the initial target-thesis that is more tenable and less open to objection. Historically, this sort of dialectic has stood at the forefront of philosophy. With Plato, dialectic was often a matter of elucidation—of bringing to

50

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

light just how various misconceived and misunderstood conceptions should properly be understood—of bringing their constituting idea to light.9 However, such a clarifactory dialectic need not simply discount the earlier conception as totally mistaken and erroneous but can endeavor to find within it a level of insightful truth that can be carried forward. Since a process reconstitutes rather than discounts the conception at issue. A key element of what there was is retained (Hegel’s aufgehoben) and highlighted (i.e., raises up into the light—and in this way also aufgehoben—thus capturing both senses of the German term). In emphasizing this sort of dialectic in Hegel, H. G. Gadamer wrote that it: Restored a way of doing philosophy which is the natural inheritance from the first Greek thinkers. Hegel’s methodological principle ... [is] the requirement of an immanently developing progression in which concepts move to ever greater differentiation and concretization.10

And just this is the crux of Hegelian dialectic in its bearing on conceptual hermeneutics. 6. CONCEPT COMPLEMENTARITY AND DIALECTICAL TENSION With complementarity in physics we confront a situation of clash or conflict. There are two things about a subatomic particle that we would ideally like to know: an exact and accurate specification of the particle’s momentum and an exact and accurate specification of its position. But quantum theory teaches that one can only improve matters as regards one of these two factors at the expense of worsening them with respect to the other: greater exactness with respect to momentum enjoins less exactness with regard to position—and conversely. We thus have to come to terms with the situation of Display 8. In respect to what is at issue here one cannot improve matters beyond the limits set by the laws of nature. However, in the course of time Neils Bohr, a founding father of quantum theory, himself came to view this sort of complementarity as a very general principle with applications far above and beyond the limited domain of quantum physics. As one eminent physicist summarized the situation: In later years Bohr emphasized the importance of complementarity for matters far removed from physics. There is a story that Bohr was once asked in German what is the quality that is complementary to truth (Wahrheit). After

51

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

____________________________________________________________ Display 8 PHYSICAL COMPLEMENTARITY

specificity regarding momentum

locus of feasible combinations

specificity regarding position ____________________________________________________________ some thought he answered clarity (Klarheit). (Stephen Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory [New York: Pantheon Books, 1992], p. 74 footnote 10.)

And it would seem that here Bohr’s instinct was very much on the right track. For the situation of quantum-physical complementarity in fact exemplifies a very general phenomenon that occurs across a wide spectrum of situations, and indeed has substantial ramifications in various key areas of philosophy. In seeking to clarify this issue the subsequent discussion will focus on the presently pivotal idea of what might be called conceptual complementarity. The reality of it is that the constitutive components of our concepts are frequently competitively interactive. A conflict or competition among factors so functions that more of the one can only be realized at the expense of less of the other. Such conceptual complementarity thus arises when two (or more) parametric features are linked in a see-saw or teeter-totter interconnection, be it nature-imposed or conceptually-mandated interrelationship where more of the one automatically ensures less of the other, as per the situation of Display 9. Situations of trade-off along these general lies occur in a wide variety of contexts, and many concepts afford instances of this phenomenon. For the sake of illustration, let us begin with Bohr’s own example from epistemology. It is a basic principle of this field that increased confidence in the correctness of our estimates can always be secured at the price of de-

52

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

____________________________________________________________ Display 9 FEATURE COMPLEMENTARITY VALUES

Parameter 1 ↑ → Parameter 2 ____________________________________________________________ creased accuracy. For in general an inverse relationship obtains between the definiteness or precision of our information and its substantiation: detail and security stand in a competing relationship. 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 can be completely and absolutely sure that its height is between 1 inch and 100 yards. Of this we are “completely sure” in the sense that we are “absolutely certain,” “certain beyond the shadow of a doubt”, “as certain as we can be of anything in the world,” “so sure that we would be willing to stake your 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 detail (definiteness, exactness, precision, etc.). And so it emerges that there obtains a complementarity relationship of the same structure as that of Display 1. This was adumbrated in the ideas of the French physicist Pierre Maurice Duhem (1981–1916) and may accordingly be called “Duhem’s Law.”11 In his classic work on the aim and structure of physical theory, Duhem wrote as follows: A law of physics possesses a certainty much less immediate and much more difficult to estimate than a law of common sense, but it surpasses the latter by the minute and detailed precision of its predictions. ... The laws of physics can acquire this minuteness of detail only by sacrificing something of the

53

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

fixed and absolute certainty of common-sense laws. There is a sort of teetertotter of balance between precision and certainty: one cannot be increased except to the detriment of the other.12

In effect, these two factors—security and detail—stand in a teeter-totter relation of inverse proportionality, much as with physical complementarity. Continuing with epistemology, let it be noted that there are two significantly different sorts of errors, namely errors of commission and errors of omission. For it is only too clear that errors of commission are not the only sort of misfortune there are. Ignorance, lack of information, cognitive disconnection from the world’s course of things—in short, errors of omission—are also negativities of substantial proportionism, and this, too, is something we must work into our reckoning. Both are negativities and obviously need to be avoided insofar as possible in any sensible inquiry process. With error-avoidance in matters of cognition the trade-off between errors of type 1 and errors of type 2—between improper negatives and false positives—is critical in this connection. For instance, an inquiry process of any realistically operable sort is going to deem some falsehoods acceptable and some truths not. And the more we fiddle with the arrangement to decrease the one sort of error, the more we manage to increase the other. The familiar teeter-totter relationship obtains here once more. For unfortunately the reality of it is that any given epistemic program—any sort of process or policy of belief formation—will answer to the situation of Display 10. In discerning between the sheep and the goats, any general decision process will either allow too many goats into the sheepfold or exclude too many sheep from its purview. The cognitive realities being what they are, perfection is simply unattainable here. To be sure, agnosticism is a sure-fire safeguard against errors of commission in cognitive matters. If you accept nothing then you accept no falsehoods. But error avoidance as such does not bring one much closer to knowing how pancakes are actually made. The aims of inquiry are not necessarily enhanced by the elimination of cognitive errors of commission. For if in eliminating such an error we simply leave behind a blank and for a wrong answer we substitute no answer at all we have simply managed to exchange an error of commission for one of omission. As such examples illustrate concepts like propositional informativeness (with its conflicting components of security and detail) or erroneousness (with its conflicting components of commission and omission) are enmesh-

54

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

____________________________________________________________ Display 10 THE PREDICAMENT OF COGNITIVE ERRONEOUSNESS

errors of commission errors of omission ____________________________________________________________ ed in a situation of conceptual complementarity where two salient constitutive features are in a situation of trade-off. There is, in such cases, a dialectical tension between the concept-constituted features. With such concepts we become concerned with the situation of what might be called an estimation quandary. Estimation quandaries arise in connection with the quest for a “happy medium” between too much and too little of something in the assessment of a problematic parameter. This sort of thing is typified by the classic Heap paradox (Sorites) which pivots on the question “How many grains of sand will make a heap?” Two potential disvalues (negativities) loom here. On the one side stands the excess of too many. (A zillion grains form a sand-dune or beach, not a heap). And on the other side stands the deficiency of too few. (Two or even three grains of sand are not yet a heap.) But the corresponding merits that are at issue here pose problems: excess avoidance risks deficiency, and deficiency avoidance risks excess. Those corresponding merits or positivities at issue with over- and under-estimation avoidance stand in a condition of desideratum complementarity. For in specifying the n-value at issue with “It takes n grains of sand to make a heap” we arrive at the situation of Display 11. With overly large n and underly small n alike we unravel the tenability of our purportedly heapcharacterizing contention. As with any estimate we must negotiate between the competing merits of deficiency avoidance and excess avoidance. Let us return to our problem in the light of these generalities. In the special case of communication it transpires that the claims we assert will divide the overall realm of possibilities into two regions: those that our state-

55

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

____________________________________________________________ Display 11 ESTIMATIONAL MERITS

Deficiency avoidance Excess avoidance ____________________________________________________________ ment admits (its truth-range) and those it excludes (its falsity range). The state of things is depicted in Display 12. ____________________________________________________________ Display 12 HOW STATEMENTS COORDINATE WITH POSSIBILITIES

realm of possibilities

statement-included possibilities

statement-excluded possibilities ____________________________________________________________ And here in staking our informative claims by means of statements we in effort offer an estimate of the truth-range at issue. Adequate communication requires both the reliability and contentual informativeness. But if the truth-range is too large we have a situation of excess with its correlative demerit of compromising the informativeness of our claim. And if it is too small we incur the corresponding demerit of compromising its reliability since ampler information is required to validate greater specificity. But of course both informativeness and reliability are crucial for successful communication. A statement, however definite and informative,

56

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

whose claims to truth are weak is useless in communication, and the same goes for a statement which, despite strong claims on truth is vague and uninformative. Any cognitively useful contention must be both substantively informative and contextually well evidentiated. For be it ever so informative it is useless if we limit you from seeing it as true or at least likely and conversely, no matter how probable or certain it may be, it will be useless when vacuous. But with communication managed in the imperfect medium of language there is no boundary between the two that is at once readily specifiable and razor-sharp. On this basis the interplay of deficiency avoidance and excess avoidance enters upon the stage in such a way as to entail the desideratum complementarity at issue with the security/detail relationship, which actually is no more (but also no less) than yet another instance of an estimation quandary. Situations of concept complementarity and estimation quandaries belong to the realm of what might be called conceptual dialectics. For in applying such concepts to specific instances one must carefully weigh and balance the argument for and against in the specific case that lies before us. Validating the application of any such concept is a quintessentially dialectical process. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3 1

Roland Simon-Schaefer, Dialektik: Kritik eines Wortgebrauches (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog,1973).

2

“Pour juger des apparences que nous recevons des sujets, il nous faudrait un instrument judicatoire; pour vérifier cet instrument, il nous faut de la démonstration; pour vérifier la démonstration, un instrument: nous voila au rouet.” Essaies, Bk II, ch. 12 (“ An Apologie of Raymond Sebond”); p. 544 of the Modern Library edition of The Essays of Montaigne (New York, 1933). Francis Bacon, with the characteristic shrewdness of a lawyer, even managed to turn the diallelus into a dialectical weapon against his methodological opponents: “no judgment can be rightly formed either of my method, or of the discoveries to which it leads, by means of ... the reasoning which is now in use, since one cannot postulate due jurisdiction for a tribunal which is itself on trial.” (Novum Organon, Bk I, sect. 33).

3

Notwithstanding its intrinsic significance, this line of reasoning has lain dormant in modern philosophy until D. J. Mercier’s monumental Criteriologie generale ou theorie generale de la certitude (Louvain: Institut superieur de philosophie, 1884; 8th ed. 1924). This book gave the argument a currency in the Catholic circle—see,

57

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

for example, P. Coffey, Epistemology or the Theory of Knowledge (2 vols., London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1917). It figured centrally in my The Primacy of Practice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973), and concurrently Roderick Chisholm’s interesting lecture on The Problem of the Criterion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973). 4

This is not the place to enlarge on the problem of how knowledge and belief serve in guiding rational action. The large (and rapidly growing) literature on “practical reasoning” throws much light on the relevant issues. The crucial point is the naively elemental fact that we cannot move from the objective to quench our thirst to drinking a certain liquid save by the mediation of a belief that drinking it will (or may) conduce to this goal (without offsetting side-effects).

5

A fuller development of these considerations regarding the teleology of inquiry is given in the author’s Scientific Explanation (New York: The Free Press, 1970).

6

Though many philosophers of science maintain the primacy of prediction over retrodictive explanation in assessing the adequacy of scientific theories, others have found this puzzling. They view it as implausible that future-oriented applications should receive more weight than past-oriented ones. Thus J. M. Keynes wrote: “The peculiar virtue of prediction or predesignation is altogether imaginary. The number of instances examined and the analogy between them are the essential points, and the question as to whether a particular hypothesis happens to be propounded before or after their examination is quite irrelevant” (A Treatise on Probability [London: Macmillan, 1921], p. 305). A pragmatic point of view that stresses the centrality of control immediately rationalizes the difference between past and future in this regard: the two cases may be logically symmetric but there is a decisive pragmatic asymmetry—the past lies beyond the prospect of intervention whereas we can often still do something about the future. For an interesting treatment of some relevant issues see Alan Musgrave, “Logical versus Historical Theories of Confirmation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 25 (1974), pp. 1–2g (see especially pp. 1–3).

7

These theories are further developed in the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977).

8

Edmond von Hartmann, Über die dialektische Methode (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), pp. 95–100.

9

In thinking of himself as the founder of positive dialectic Hegel failed to do justice to the ancients. See H. G. Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), especially Chapter 1, “Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient Philosophers.”

10

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, p. 31.

58

COGNITIVE DIALECTIC

11

Here at any rate eponyms are sometimes used to make the point that the work of the person at issue has suggested rather than originated the idea or principle at issue.

12

La théorie physique: son objet, et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier and Rivière, 1906); tr. by Philip P. Wiener, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954), op. cit., pp. 178–79. Italics supplied.

59

Chapter 4 METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC 1. ASPECTS OF METHODOLOGY: THEOLOGY

O

f all the various versions of dialectics which one is correct and true? Asking this misconceives matters. Only if dialectic were a doctrine or theory this question would make sense so that we can only ask about its efficacy. But it is not so, seeing that dialectic is a process or procedure. (To be sure, something on the order of dialectical materialism will indeed be a doctrine and a theory. But this is not because what is at issue here is dialectical but because it embodies materialism.) Now if dialectics is a method or process, then for the doing of what does it function as such? At this point a multiplicity of answers crops up: • for carrying on a discussion • for assessing the truth-claim of assertions • for conducting on an inquiry into some open question • for characterizing the course of cognitive development • for the design and quality-control assessment of input-output processes • for characterizing the course of developments in social-interaction situations • for characterizing the course of developments as physical interaction situations The salient point is that dialectical processes are defined as such by their structure rather than by their substantive area of application. And exactly

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

because dialectics is not a theory but a modus operandi it enjoys a diversified bearing across a wide range of service. As these considerations indicate, the relevant question is not that of the truth or falsity of dialectics but rather that of its efficacy and efficiency in a given context of application. And since this is so, not only does dialectic itself constitute a method, but this very method itself can serve for the assessment and development of methods. Just how is a methodological “means for doing things of a certain sort” to be justified or legitimated? Clearly this will have to be done in a purposive or teleological manner. A method is never a method pure and simple, but always a method-for-the-realization-of-some-end, so that the inevitably teleological question of its effectiveness in the realization of its purposes becomes altogether central to the issue of justification. A method, after all, is something intrinsically purpose-relative. It is only to be expected that, with particular regard to methodology at any rate, the pragmatists were surely right: there can be no better or more natural way of justifying a method than by establishing that “it works” with respect to the specific appointed tasks that are in view for it. The proper test for the correctness or appropriateness of anything methodological in nature is plainly and obviously posed by the paradigmatically pragmatic questions: Does it work? Does it facilitate the realization of its intended purposes? Does it—to put it crassly—deliver the goods? Instrumentalities (methods, etc.) are invariably purposive: they are means for the realization of certain ends. And so: the natural standard for the rational evaluation of methods is that of its applicative success in relation to the aims for which this method is instituted. Accordingly, anything methodological, be it a tool, procedure, instrumentality, program or policy of action, etc., is properly validated in terms of its ability to achieve the purposes at issue—its success at accomplishing its appropriate task. And it is just here that a dialectical perspective comes to the fore because the over-all process of instrumental justification natural to a method (procedure, modus operandi, etc.) has the essentially dialectical structure indicated in Display 1. This process represents what might be characterized as a control-systems model of instrumental justification. It proceeds in terms of the key concepts of systems analysis, viz., input (the use of a method), output (the results of applying the method), and quality-control (the assessment of purpose-realization).

62

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

Display 1 STRUCTURE OF THE INSTRUMENTAL JUSTIFICATION OF A METHOD Application

Method

Implementation Product & Results

Utilization of the results and assessment of the consequences thereof in point of purposerealization

Retrospective Teleological Evaluation (validation or invalidation)

Since methods are open-ended in their bearing, the functional/instrumental justification of a method is inevitably general and, as it were, statistical in its bearing. Suppose one applies a method just once, and meets with “success” in reaching a result that fully answers to the hoped-for purposes. This would clearly cut very little ice. The “success” might have come our way gratuitously—by accident or luck or thanks to some unrecognized special feature of the particular case at hand. One swallow does not make a summer, and one success does not validate a method. Methodological efficacy is a matter of how things go generally and in the long run.1 Thus “working” on one occasion does not have sufficiently general import, and “failing” on one occasion is not necessarily invalidating. Instrumental justification is only to be sought at this generic and systematic plane.2 The preceding discussion has concerned itself with the instrumental justification for a particular method or procedure. However, particular interest and importance attach to the comparative appraisal of competing or alternative methods for realizing the specified purposes. And once we are in a position to assess the extent to which a single method is justified, we shall also be in a position to consider the relative justification of rival methods. Much the same issue—namely the comparative analysis of the various degrees of success—is the crucial factor for both sorts of problems. And so, insofar as successful performance and functional efficacy are the operative standards for assessment, the dialectic of evaluation comes upon the scene once more.

63

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 2 THE DIALECTIC OF METHOD IMPROVEMENT

Mechanism

Application or utilization

Quality-control ———— Evaluative of product

Correction of malfunctions

The generic structure of the entire process is represented in Display 2.3 Here the cyclically iterative nature of the procedure clearly manifests itself in a feedback recycling into early stages of the circuit. The over-all procedure manifests a feedback mechanism of producing at later stages materials for re-entry in later iterations into previous stages of the process.4 The structure of such a mechanism clearly exhibits the form of a dialectic that proceeds through sequential stages of refinement. And of course a rational person would only regard a revision in a method as affording an actual (rather than merely putative) improvement insofar as there is good reason to think that it is indeed better on the basis of the teleological evaluation of results. Superior performance is the key to progress in methodology, and the role of considerations regarding efficiency and effectiveness in realizing the purposive raison d’etre of the method is clearly central here. The dynamic aspect of historical replacement or revision assimilates this approach to methods to the dialectical performance-monitoring set out in Display 2. Of course such a process is not wholly self-adjusting, because the issue of finding the refinements needed to correct malfunctions is certainly not automatic nor even indeed is it always determinable through simple trial-and-error variation. In general, it requires an exogenous instrumentality, namely the intervention of creative ingenuity. The lesson that emerges from these deliberations is that the process of validating the use of dialectical methods in a certain range of application is itself dialectical in its structure. Dialectics, where productively applicable, is itself generally legitimated in this role by a fundamentally dialectical process of validation.

64

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

3. THE EVOLUTIONARY DIMENSION: RATIONAL SELECTION The dialectical validation envisioned above also has a significant historical dimension. Under suitable circumstances (preeminently including the rationality of the method-users at issue) the systematic course of theoretical amelioration and the historical course of evolutionary development both represent different views of the same basic course of events. On the one hand it can describe the essentially static process of theoretical justification that characterizes their warranting rationale, on the other hand it can be used to account for their dynamic process of historical development over time—but both of them conforming to the same underlying pattern for the teleologically guided emendation of methods. The components of an evolutionary model are principally two: variation and selection. To apprehend their mode of operation in the present case we must begin by noting certain relevant features of the community of persons that provides the setting within which methods are adopted and employed. An evolutionary process as such must involve mechanisms of mutation and of selection. Mutation is needed to arrive at a plurality of (potentially competing) alternatives. Selection then enters in to provide for the survival of the somehow “fittest” alternative. Both these processes—mutation and selection—can in theory take one or another of two very different forms, the one blind, the other teleological (purposeful). Accordingly, there are two sorts of mutations: 1) “Chance”: random variation, blindly generated alternatives. 2) “Contrivances”: purposeful variation, a somehow “designed” variation in line with some governing goal, function, or objective. Also there are two sorts of selection processes: 1) “Natural”: failure (absolute or statistical) to reproduce or replicate for physical causes. 2) “Rational”: failure (absolute or statistical) to be perpetuated for functional/rational reasons. Given this duality, four very different modes of evolution can in principle be contemplated:

65

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Darwinian: Lamarckian: Bergsonian: Teilhardian:

Mutation

Selection

random random purposeful purposeful

natural rational natural rational

We shall not have occasion here to invoke the two “mixed” modes of Lamarkian and Bergsonian evolution. For the cases that will concern us primarily are that of biological evolution which (so one may at this time of day suppose) takes the Darwinian form and that of cultural evolution which is rather different in character. As regards variation, two factors are crucial: (i) the constancy of purpose which serves to assure that, throughout the historical process, the methods at issue address themselves to essentially the same objectives, and also (ii) creative operational innovativeness in modifying existing methodological procedures in the interests of their refinement. These two factors assure the necessary element of variation in a continual effort to devise more efficient and effective methods for the realization of ongoing purposive goals. As regards selection, the crucial factor is that of critical rationality in adopting, from among competing alternatives, that method which proves in the course of applications to be more successful in point of goal-realization—and correspondingly in abandoning those methods that have shown themselves less successful. However, in our methodological case, where overtly purposive instrumentalities rather than biological organisms are at issue, the operative factor in the developmental process is not that of natural selection, but that of rational selection in the light of explicitly purpose-oriented considerations. This, of course, is a significant point of difference from evolution in its classical Darwinian form where survival alone, rather than any other more elaborately rational purpose is the operative factor. In the present case, where methods are overtly purposecorrelative, an explicitly rational teleology is called for. This difference is, however, quite basic evolutionary pattern of the present model of the historical process, given the classic form of an evolutionary pattern based on variation and selection. And so there is an analogy between the biological and the sociological situations that is both close and far-reaching:

66

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

BIOLOGY

SOCIOLOGY

• biological mutation

• procedural variation

• reproductive elimination of traits through their nonrealization in an individual’s progeny

• reproductive elimination of processes through their lapsed transmissions to one’s successors (children, students, associates)

• one’s physical progeny

• those whom one influences

On the one hand, we deal with the biological transmission of physical traits by biological inheritance across generations, on the other, with the social propagation of cultural traits by way of generation-transcending influence. But the fundamental structure of the process is the same on either side. Both involve the conservation of structures over time. It must accordingly be recognized—and stressed—that the survival-conducive role in biological evolution of man’s generic capacity for thought is not alone at issue with respect to cognitive matters. Evolution-like processes are also at work in the historical development of the concrete instruments and procedures of man’s thinking. Not only our various capacities for intelligent operation, but even the way in which we go about using them, have an evolutionary basis—albeit in rational rather than natural selection. Even though biological evolution accounts for our possession of intelligence, accounting for much or most of the way in which we actually use it calls for a rather different evolutionary approach, one that addresses the development of thought-procedures rather than of the thinkers themselves. This sort of non-biological evolutionary epistemology also figures in our present deliberations, specifically as regards the cultural development of our conceptual instrumentalities. Biological evolution is undoubtedly Darwinian, with teleologically blind natural selection operating with respect to teleologically blind random mutations. Cultural evolution, on the other hand, is generally Teilhardian, governed by a rationally guided selection among purposefully devised mutational variations.5 Taken in all, cognitive evolution involves both components, superimposing rational selection on biological selection. Our cognitive capacities and faculties are part of the natural endowment we owe to biological evolution. But our cognitive methods, procedures, standards, and techniques are socio-culturally developed resources that evolve through rational selection in the process of cultural transmission

67

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

through successive generations. Our cognitive hardware (mechanisms and capacities) develops through Darwinian natural selection, but our cognitive software—the methods and procedures by which we transact our cognitive business—develops in a Teilhardian process of rational selection that involves purposeful intelligence-guided variation and selection. Biology produces the instrument, so to speak, and culture writes the music—where obviously the former powerfully constrains the latter. (You cannot play the drums on a piano). Rational selection is a matter not of a biological but rather of a rationally selective elimination (or rationally preferential retention)—of a process of historical transmission that involves a reasoned preference based on purposive consideration. A rigorously biological eliminative model for methodological or procedural evolution is unrealistic. For what is basically at issue in this domain is the matter of historical survival based on communal behavior in transmission through teaching and example. As changes are entertained (under the pressure of necessitating circumstance), one methodological instrument may eventuate as more fit to survive than another, because extensive experience shows that it answers better to the range of relevant purposes. The ways in which we make use of our biologically given capacities are cultural resources preserved and transmitted by social preferences operative in example and teaching. There is a preferential selection at work in the perpetuation of those methods and procedures whose effectiveness is indicated by the lessons of experience. Whatever may be the shortcomings of a Lamarckian approach to biological evolution via genetic mechanisms, it is clearly useful and appropriate for the cultural evolution operative in the transmission of our intellectual resources. To be sure, natural and rational selections are deeply kindred processes. Even as in biological evolution it is a matter of the selective perpetuation through biological transmission over time within a certain population of those physical traits which are favorable to the continued existence of individuals, so in rational evolution those methods (processes) are selectively perpetuated over time in teaching and borrowing from examples which are favorable to the efficient achievement of tasks to whose accomplishment the group is committed. And a deep kinship obtains between the two evolutionary modes based on the parallelism: inherent mutation—procedural variation inherent retention—rational retention

68

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

The processes of the left-hand side combine to move the species towards superior “fitness”, those on the right-hand side combine to move procedural processes toward superior efficiency. On both sides alike, the evolutionary processes at issue exert a pressure in the direction of greater efficiency and effectiveness in niche-attunement: like the market in economics, evolution makes for an efficient and economic accommodation to the requirements of the prevailing circumstances. In natural selection, however, the matter is one of favoring certain alternatives in the transmission process because these lead more readily to preferred results. This whole approach presupposes the picture of intelligent beings acting rationally with reference to ends-in-view. Where rational selection is operative, pragmatism and evolution walk hand in hand because those processes which are inherently advantageous (more efficient, effective, economical, etc.) will be more than likely the ones that survive to make their way down the corridor of time. The crux is the matter of what is deemed fitting to transmit because of its demonstrated efficacy in the harsh school of the lessons of experience. Rational selection is accordingly a process of fundamentally the same sort as natural (biological) selection—both are devices for eliminating certain items from cross-generational transmission. But their actual workings differ, since elimination by rational selection is not telically blind and biological, but rather preferential/teleological and overtly rational. Orthodox Darwinian selection is in effect a way of removing teleology; it provides a way of accounting for seeming purposiveness in purpose-free terms, by deploying the mechanisms of a blindly eliminative annihilation of certain forms in place of any recourse to preferential considerations. But rational selection is something else again: it can operate only with respect to beings endowed with intelligence and action, with reasoning and purposes—its mechanism being the deliberate failure to perpetuate forms that are not purpose-serving. 4. THE ROLE OF REASON Once humans appeared on the scene, reproductive elimination as such no longer monopolizes the processes of development. Among rational creatures, cultural patterns that are inefficient decline from one generation to another because these processes are less effective at reproducing themselves, since people’s attachment to these patterns becomes undermined

69

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

because of this very fact of their inefficiency, ineffectiveness, avoidable cumbersomeness, or the like. The historical ontogenesis of methods will thus replicate a probatively ordered line of rational justification: the dialectical course of historical evolution reflects the unfolding of a dynamic rationale of warrant. One fundamentally isomorphic process-structure underlies both the static rational order of justification and—in its dynamic dimension—the historical course of evolutionary development. Our intelligence and our knowledge are the fruits of collective and cumulative efforts. We humans cannot all and always begin at square one; life is too short. Most of what we have—physically and intellectually—is inherited from the past, and some part of what we ourselves do is in turn transmitted to the future. The social aspect of cultural evolution is paramount for our intellectual development. And it provides for a particularly potent instrumentality. Cultural evolution can manage to achieve things that biological evolution cannot—borrowing across genealogical lines (that is, from “foreign” groups), for example, or effecting changes of operation within the boundaries of a single generation. Rational selection via a challenge/response dialectic is a complex process that transpires not in a “population” but in a culture. It pivots on the tendency of a community of rational agents to adopt and perpetuate, through example and teaching, practices and modes of operation that are relatively more effective for the attainment of given ends than their available alternatives. Accordingly, the historical development of methods and modes of operation within a society of rational agents is likely to reflect a course of actual improvement. Rational agents involved in a course of trial and error experimentation with different processes and procedures are unlikely to prefer (for adoption by themselves and transmission to their successors) practices and procedures which are ineffective or inefficient. This line of consideration does not envision a direct causal linkage between the historical survival of method users and the functional effectiveness of their methods. The relationship is one of common causation. The intelligence that proves itself normal conducive also forms functional efficacy. In consequence, survival in actual use of a method within a community of (realistic, normal) rational agents through this very fact affords evidence for its being successful in realizing its correlative purposes.6 These deliberations regarding rational selection have been altogether up to this point general in their abstract bearing upon methodologies of any shape or description. They apply to methods across the board and hold for

70

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

methods for peeling apples as much as of methods for substantiating knowledge-claims. But let us now focus more restrictedly on specifically cognitive methods and consider the development of the cognitive and material technology of intellectual production. There is every reason to think that the cognitive methods and information-engendering procedures that we deploy in forming our view of reality evolve selectively through the evolutionary dialectic of trial and error— analogous in role though different in character from the biological mutations affecting the bodily mechanisms by which we comport ourselves in the physical world. Accordingly, cognitive methods develop subject to revision in response to the element of “success and failure” in terms of the teleology of the practice of rational inquiry. An inquiry procedure is an instrument for organizing our experience into a systematized view of reality. And as with any tool or method or instrument, the paramount question takes the instrumentalistic form: does it work, does it produce the desired result? Is it successful in practice? Legitimation along these lines is found in substantial part on the fact of survival through historical vicissitudes in the context of this pivotal issue of “working out best.” This sort of legitimation has at its basis the cultural development of our cognitive resources through a process of the variation and selective retention of our epistemically oriented intellectual products.7 It is clear that there are various alternative approaches to rational cognition’s problem of determining “how things work in the world.” The examples of such occult cognitive frameworks as those of numerology (with its benign ratios), astrology (with its astral influences), and black magic (with its mystic forces) indicate that alternative explanatory frameworks exist, and that these can have very diverse degrees of merit. Now in the Western tradition the governing standards of human rationality are implicit in the goals of explanation, prediction, and preeminently control. (And thus the crucial factor is not, for example, sentimental “at-oneness with nature”— think of the magician vs. the mystic vs. the sage as cultural ideals.) These standards revolve about considerations of practice and are implicit in the use of our conceptual resources in the management of our affairs. Given the reasonable agent’s well-advised predilection for success in one’s ventures, the fact that the cognitive methods we employ have a good record of demonstrated effectiveness in regard to explanation, prediction, and control is not surprising but only to be expected: the community of rational inquirers would have given them up long ago were they not comparatively successful. The effectiveness of our cognitive methodology is thus

71

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

readily accounted for on an evolutionary perspective based on rational selection and the requirements for survival through adoption and transmission. It is accordingly not difficult to give examples of the operation of evolutionary processes in the cognitive domain. The intellectual landscape of human history is littered with the skeletal remains of the extinct dinosaurs of this sphere. Examples of such defunct methods for the acquisition and explanatory utilization of information include astrology, numerology, oracles, dream-interpretation, the reading of tea leaves or the entrails of birds, animism, the teleological physics of the Presocratics, and so on. No doubt, such processes continue in issue in some human communities to this very day; but clearly not among those dedicated to serious inquiry into nature’s ways—i.e., scientists. There is nothing intrinsically absurd or inherently contemptible about such unorthodox cognitive programs—even the most occult of them have a long and not wholly unsuccessful history. (Think, for example, of the prominent role of numerological explanation from Pythagoreanism, through Platonism, to the medieval Arabs, down to Kepler in the Renaissance.) Distinctly different scientific methodologies and programs have been mooted: Ptolemaic “saving the phenomena” vs. the hypothetico-deductive method, or again, Baconian collectionism vs. the postNewtonian theory of experimental science, etc. The emergence, development, and ultimate triumph of scientific method of inquiry and explanation invite an evolutionary account—though clearly one that involves rational rather than natural selection. The scientific approach to factual inquiry is simply one alternative among others, and is not something inherent in the very constitution of the human intellect. Rather, the basis of our historically developed and entrenched cognitive tools lies in their having established themselves in open competition with their contemplated rivals. It has come to be fated by the tribunal of bitter experience—through the historical vagaries of an evolutionary process of selection—that the accepted methods work out most effectively in actual practice vis-à-vis other tried alternatives. To be sure, such a legitimation is not absolute, but only presumptive. It does, however, manage to give justificatory weight to the historical factor of being in de facto possession of the field. The emergence of the principles of scientific understanding (simplicity, uniformity, and the like) is thus a matter of cultural rather than biological evolution, subject to rational rather than natural selection. In these conditions, history represents an evaluative tribunal for methods along lines reminiscent of Hegel’s famous dictum regarding the ration-

72

METHODOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

ality of the real. And specifically, the survival of a method over a long and varied historical course of applications thus comes to be seen as a factor on which the warrant of its rational claims to acceptance can appropriately be based. Methodological survival is—under appropriate circumstances— indicative of probatively rational justification, and evolutionary development replicates rational substantiation throughout the arena of methodological evolution in a realm of rational agents. The crux of such a methodological pragmatism is the idea that the aim of the enterprise, its purpose and objective, is crucial in any context of rational deliberation and action, and that it is functional efficacy that is the decisive monitor here. The pragmatists’ pivotal principle is this, that functional adequacy affords the quality-control for rational endeavor. But the rational dialectic of efficacy determination and the developmental dialectic of trial and error survival prove to be pivotal here in their collaborative interaction. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4 1

Thus when we turn to specifically cognitive methods of inquiry we shall be led to an essentially-Peircean perspective in coordinating cognitive rationality with the concerns of the human community in its “at large” distribution over space and time.

2

The importance for inductive considerations of the inherent generality of methods was clearly perceived by Peirce, who held that “synthetic inferences are founded upon the classification of facts, not according to their characters, but according to the manner of obtaining them.” (Quoted in Ernest Nagel, “Principles of the Theory of Probability,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955], pp. 343–422 [see p. 414].)

3

German writers on dialectic have long noted the structural kinship of dialectical processes and cybernetic processes of quality control. These include: Gotthard Günther, Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen : Eine Metaphysik der Kybernetik (Krefeld/Baden-Baden: Agis-Verlag , 1964); Peter K. Schneider, Die Begründung der Wissenschaften durch Philosophie und Kybernetik (Stuttgart, Berlin, Ko ln, Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1966); Helmar G. Frank, Kybernetik und Philosophie (Berlin, Duncker u. Humblot , 1966; 2nd ed. 1969); Georg Klaus, Wörterbuch der Kybernetik (Frankfurt am Main: Dietz , 1968); Herbert Stachowiak, Denken und Erkennen im Kybernetischen Modell (Wien, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1965; 2nd ed. 1969).

4

This latter-day idea of a cyclic feedback renders obsolete in suitable circumstances the proscription of an earlier day against what Hugo Dingler condemned as a methodological or pragmatic circle, namely “a step [in a procedure] that requires per-

73

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

forming another step that becomes possible through it.” (Die Methode der Physik [Munich: E. Reinhardt, 1938], p. 71.) What was once seen as a fault now becomes a virtue. After all, any adequate cognition method must be self-substantiating in being able to speak on its own behalf. 5

Various aspects of cultural evolutions are interestingly treated in Culture and the Evolutionary Process by Robert Byrd and Peter J. Richardson (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Their deliberations indicate that while cultural evolution is not just an analogue of biological evolution, nevertheless that both are variant forms of one structurally uniform process.

6

No recent writer has stressed more emphatically than F. A. Hayek the deep inherent rationality of historical processes in contrast to the shallower calculations of a calculating intelligence that restricts its view to the agenda of the recent day. (See especially his book, The Political Order of a Free People [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979], Volume 3 of “Law, Liberty, and Civilization.”)

7

The French school of sociology of knowledge has envisioned just such a competition and natural/rational selection among culturally diverse modes of procedure in accounting for the evolution of logical and scientific thought. Compare Louis Rougier, Traité de la connaissance (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1955), esp. pp. 426–428.

74

Chapter 5 ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND 1. HEGEL AND HISTORICO-DEVELOPMENTAL DIALECTIC

D

ialectical ontology effectively begins with Hegel. With him, the initial dialogically epistemic mode of dialectics came to be transmuted into an ontological process characterizing reality development through successive stages of self-interactive modification. Hegel’s conception of such an ontological dialectic line has roughly the structure depicted in Display 1, which encompasses a two-fold unfolding of dialectical processes, either discursively (logically) or developmentally (ontologically). In its ontological setting, dialectics can be construed as a version of process philosophy, specifically one which views dialectical development as the paramount and quintessential format for salient processes across the entire board, alike in nature, society, and thought.

While Hegel sometimes spoke as though dialectic were simply the general mode of developmental process he usually means something more specific by the term, namely the rationally determinate (Geist-managed) processual development through which Existence/Reality (das Seiende) unfolds over time. Moreover, the self-definition of anything is a matter of distinguishing

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

and distancing it from that which it is not, a certain mode of “negative dialectic” will be operative as regards historical change.1 As Hegel put it: Everything about us in this world may be viewed as a product of Dialectic. For we must realize that everything finite, rather than being stable and ultimate, is changeable and merely transient. Just this is what we mean by the Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, implicitly encompassing more than what it is, is forced by and its own immediate or natural being so as to turn suddenly into its opposite.2

Against this background, Hegel saw rational dialectic as tracking an unfolding process alike in thought (discursively) and in nature (developmentally). Such a step from cognitive to ontological dialectic was altogether pivotal for his philosophy, which saw dialectic as being concurrently and conjointly a process in the development of knowledge and in the development of the universe itself—the reality which includes the evaluation of “Absolute Thought.” With Hegel’s philosophical predecessors, and Fichte in particular, dialectic was preeminently an instrument of inquiry—for the development of rational thought about the real. With Hegel, however, insistence on the correspondence of true thought with its object dualized dialectic into a concurrently ontological and epistemological account of reality. In Greek thought, dialectic was usually an instrument of inquiry, predicated on the idea that by looking at what can be said on both of the opposed sides of a disputative question we can realize a judicious intermediation more faithful to the truth of the matter than either of those conflicting extremes. Thus ancient dialectic is a matter of the search for truth between the extremes of opposition set by an either-or. With Hegel, on the other hand, we have a position that wants it both ways—that strives for a (potentially unrealizable) both-and. As Hans-Georg Gadamer puts it: For Hegel, the point of dialectic is precisely that by pushing a position to the point of self-contradiction it [the dialectical impetus] makes possible the transition to realizing a higher truth which concurrently embraces both sides

of that contradiction.3 Hegel thus saw dialectic as a process of rationally enforced convergence in which the potential disparity between thought and truth is ultimately overcome in an ideal unity of identification that constitutes absolute knowledge.4

76

ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

Display 2 THE SHARED STRUCTURE OF NATURAL AND ARTIFACTUAL DIALECTIC Start

Initial conditions

Development in relation to specified functions

Revision to achieve greater functional efficacy

In its rational orientation the Hegelian dialectic is, in effect, the entire process of inquiry, construed two-sidedly, on the one hand in regard to the process of constituting and reconstituting our view of the world in cognition and, on the other hand, in regard to the product as the world is presented in the world-picture that results. It is thus the complex compilation of reality taken conjointly in its cognition and ontological manifestation. The sequential pattern of such a specifically dialogic process is of course readily generalized to the idea of any cyclically repetitive process of production where the end product of each cycle furnishes the starting ingredient for the next interaction. And developmentally this process yields an ever more adequate and improved revision increasingly approximating the Absolute Idea towards which the actually realized situation is tending and, as it were, striving. Viewed in this perspective it appears that there are two principal types of developmental dialectics, the one intentionally purposive and artifactual, and the other abstractly functional and impersonally natural. However, both have the same general structure set out in Display 2. Artifactual development will be as diversified and many-sided as the whole range of human purpose itself. Natural dialectic, by contrast, is always historical, geared to endurance and survival—to the projection of items at issue (be it a species or an individual) down the corridor of time. Dialectic, as Hegel sees it, is the process through which the operations of reason come to be manifest in reality. Since truth corresponds to reality (an adaquatio ad rem) this correspondence manifests itself two-sidedly— both in the character of adequate thought and in the rational investigation of nature that such thought portrays. Understood in this way, dialectic is

77

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

the interactive process through which reality comes to be not merely selfconstituted but also self-comprehended in a sense that verses in the cognitive and rational. As such, dialectic is a two-sided (epistemically rational and ontologically systemic) process. Thus, as Hegel saw matters in the Encyclopedia, developmental dialectic makes manifest two sides of the same coin: reflected in the parallel duality of physical (material) explanatory (intellectual) process. For him, dialectic is thus a process that is at once epistemological and ontological. In this way, the Hegelian dialectic is twosided, representing a parallelism in the development not just of a cognition of reality but coordinatively of the very reality that is cognized.5 This parallelism is reflected in the thesis that the real is rational—that the rational structure which inquiry brings to light in its depiction of reality concurrently represents a characteristic of the structure of that reality itself. Just as a printing press gives physical realization to the cognitive content of a text, so physical reality at once encapsulates and encodes a cognitive representation of the real. On this basis, Hegel was in effect a founding father of what the 20th century has come to know as “intelligent design” theory. For him physical reality is the material encoding of a fundamental feature of rationality with the structure of explanatory thought in rational inquiry and the structure of causal eventuation in the development of nature running in parallel. For in both cases alike that which is (the natural condition of things) and that which is not (i.e., not yet) come to terms in a process of development (“synthesis”) which itself simply sets the stage for the next iteration of the same developmental pattern. In nature, as in the development of knowledge, there is always self-transcendences. Things impel themselves forward under their own impetus, their development being a matter of selfpreservation—a process in which things change (as they must) not only for the sake of preserving something of themselves at the next stage of development. The upshot is at once a sublation (change) and a continuation (preservation) in line with the dual sense of the German expression “sich aufheben.” Moreover, Hegel saw dialectical development as having an inner logic through which the transition from one phrase to the next is developmentally or (perhaps better) historically necessitated. It is this aspect of the Hegelian dialectic that has become at once the most influential (via Marx) and the most sharply criticized. For, as Hans-Georg Gadamer has noted,

78

ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

Wilhelm Dilthey and others (Jonas Cohn, Nicolai Hartmann) object that the system of relationships of logical concepts [in Hegel’s Logic] is more various and contains more dimensions than those admitted by Hegel himself, who forces matters into the monolithically unified level of his own dialectical progression.6

In consequence, critics of Hegel from Adolf Trendelenburg onwards have rightly complained that, notwithstanding Hegel’s insistence on logical necessity in dialectic, this very feature is prominently absent in the dialectical expositions that he himself exfoliates in his Logic. In Hegel’s discussion of dialectics the that of its necessitation is clear enough, but the how of its ways and means remains decidedly obscure. 2. A NEO-HEGELIAN VIEW What, then, of Hegel’s double-edged dialectic of reason and nature? First the easy part. There is, surely, no difficulty about considering the processes of the world’s historical development (be they at the biological, social, physical, or cosmological levels) as a temporal evolution proceeding through successive phases, each of which reacts against the last and sets the stage for the next. Every such course of historical development can be viewed as a dialectical process, with an initial state of affairs or phase engendering the emergence of another under the impact of destabilizing forces, pretty much along the lines set out in Display 3. The pivotal question here is that of the driving force of such a process at the cosmological level where nature-as-a-whole is concerned. And here a tradition in philosophy that runs from the Plato of the Timeus through Leibniz and Hegel to the present writer7 that sees rationality/intelligence as ____________________________________________________________ Display 3 DEVELOPMENTAL DIALECTIC IN NEO-HEGELIAN PERSPECTIVE Start

initial stage

enforced revision

transformed conditions

____________________________________________________________

79

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

providing the key. Such a cosmological nootropism envisions a course of cosmic evolution which develops a framework of lawful stability that initially possibilizes and ultimately actualizes the emergence of intelligent beings able to grasp the modus operandi of the universe. The governing idea here is that the real is rational in that it effectively favors the emergence and the operation of intelligent beings by creating the conditions of lawful stability and complex order which both possibilizes the emergence of rational beings and provides an environment conducive to the deployment of their intelligence. (Even as the body needs digestible food and could not exist if nature did not provide it; so minds need tractable stimulation and could not be there if nature did not provide it.) Thinking in a Marxist vein, the English philosopher Maurice Cornforth wrote: Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics is not a mode of inquiry but a ... [theory] that refuses to think of things each by itself, as having a fixed nature and fixed properties ... [but as functioning] in a process of complicated and everchanging inter-relationship in which they each exist only in its connection with other things and going through a series of transformations.8

But while the emphasis on natural processes is perfectly appropriate, this proposed alternative to metaphysics is in fact little more than the endorsement of a process metaphysics of the sort that has been on the agenda virtually since Presocratic times.9 But once this is recognized, one need not be materialistic about one’s dialectically based ontology. There is, after all, more in heaven and on earth that is dreamt of in the materialist’s philosophy. The materialists’ distaste for rational order in nature is not a scientific inference but a mere prejudice. 3. A FUNDAMENTAL PARALLELISM A cognitive dialectic of inquiry is predicated on a selective pressure towards steps that facilitate realizing rationally warranted answers to the question posed by intelligent beings. And analogously an ontological dialectic of actual development is predicated on a selective pressure towards steps that facilitate realizing the interests of intelligence in a rational order of things. Either way, there is a substantially parallel process of dialectic that enables and enhances the realization of rationality be it in thought or in nature.

80

ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

In rough outline the guiding thread of thought here is predicated on the following set of ideas: 1. To constitute itself in a way that realizes a cosmos able to perpetuate itself through time a world must assume an orderly, rationally coordinated structure. (Noomorphism) 2. It must thereby constitute itself in such a way that it functions as though a supervising intelligence had created it. The processes it manifests must tend towards intelligent arrangements. (Nootropism) 3. Intelligent arrangements will favor intelligence itself. Conditions that are user-friendly for intelligent beings will possibilize and foster the eventual emergence of intelligent beings. (Noophilia) 4. Intelligent beings (cannot emerge) and thrive in a world that does not provide grist to their mill. Only in a substantially intelligible world can they emerge and flourish. (Noocosmology) This situation leads to an overall arrangement of affairs that is made graphic in Display 4.

Display 4 THE CYCLIC CLOSURE THAT MESHES REALITY’S PRODUCTION OF RATIONAL BEINGS ABLE TO GRASP REALTY’S OWN RATIONAL MODUS OPERANDI an intelligently combined nature cognitive realization

evolutionary actualization an intelligence unification creature

81

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Cognitive dialectics and ontological dialectics are thus locked together in a cycle of mutual support. The rational dialectic of inquiry is able to bring to use an intelligence-geared dialectic of development in nature. And the ontological dialectic of natural development is able to bring to realization an intelligent being capable of understanding nature’s modus operandi. From this perspective, reality manifests its rationality by bringing to realization intelligent beings able to get a cognitive grasp on its own rational design. In the ontological order, a rationally constituted world is a necessary condition for the emergence (the causal realization) of rational beings. And in the epistemological order the existence of rational beings is a sufficient condition for discerning (the cognitive realization) of a rationally constituted world. 4. WHY SHOULD IT BE SO? THE RATIONALE OF RATIONALITY But why should reality favor reason? Why should the real be rational via the parallelism of a dialectical development in ontology with a dialectic progress in epistemology? The answer here runs somewhat as follows. The crux of rationality lies in meeting circumstantially mandated requisites in effective and efficient ways. Nature has certain critical ontological problems to solve in the line of self-organization for self-perpetuation. And here the rational economy of means becomes paramount. If nature did not solve its problems of selfconstitution and self-continuation effectively, it would not be here to tell the tale. And much the same could be said for us: were our thinking not able to create a viable home for such frail creatures in a different world.10 There is, accordingly, bound to be a functional parallelism between the ontological rationality of an evolving reality and the rationality in thought of a being for whom thinking is an instrument for action within reality. As Display 5 illustrates, we and the universe must act and act comparatively— and it is rationality that is the lifeblood of effective action. It thus is—or should—become clear that epistemic and ontological dialectic are mutually reinforcing; epistemic dialectic should wholly and in answering the fundamentally epistemological question “Why is it that one should accept the idea of an ontological dialectic?” and ontological dialectic should ideally and in answering the question “How does it come about that an epistemic dialectics is practicable?” The resulting structure of reciprocal enmeshment is sketched in Display 5. The overall process so func-

82

ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

Display 5 CLOSING OF THE CIRCLES (ONTOLOGICAL EMBEDDING OF THE DIALECTIC OF INQUIRY) SUBSTANTIVE RESULTS our picture of reality and of our place within it Implementation

Application VALIDATING EXPLANATION of how and why our inquiry process should processes should succeed

RATIONAL INQUIRY

The Cycle of Epistemic Dialectic

Rationalization

NOTE: The “closing of the circle” provides a retrospective justification (“retrojustification”) from our cognitive dialectics.

tions as to the explanation of how it comes about that there evolves in nature a creature which, by proceeding rationally in its endeavor to form a view of nature, is able to achieve a reasonable degree of success in this venture. For overall validation, then, there must be a “closing of the circle” in the way that Display 6 renders graphic. An inquiry process continued through the dialectic of reason should in the end yield a view of nature that can account for the fact that an intelligent being who proceeds in this way within nature is able to form a generally effective view of it.11 The epistemology by which we constrict our world-picture does not stand entirely on its own feet. We must apply its products for the guidance of our actions in “the real world.” And here the issue of success or failure provides a thought-external quality control. It is now ontology that is in charge. And the pragmatic dialectic inherent in the processes sketched in Display 6 provides an account of this reality-based quality control over our theorizing cognition.

83

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 6 THE CYCLE OF PRAGMATIC QUALITY CONTROL

Theory Revision START

Theory

Application and implementation

Failure Success

Theory

confirmation

So in the end the rationality of the real should not be deemed surprising. With reality—even as with ourselves—if rationality were absent, neither the cosmos nor we ourselves would be there to tell the tale. 5. AN APOLOGETIC POSTSCRIPT In an informative and insightful overview of the present author’s discussions of dialectic, Wulf Kellerwessel has maintained that, with their emphasis on the epistemological side of the matter, they overlook, or at least slight, the underlying ontological underpinnings of dialectics. He writes: Rescher’s version of dialectic should be characterized as epistemlogical. By contrast ... [a more Hegelian version of dialectic] goes beyond this in being ontological and is thus decidedly more comprehensive. ... For Rescher’s dialectic lies in the setting of a conceptual idealism geared to the development of linguistic concepts and thereby without an ontological dimension ... [This contrasts with] an objective idealism concerned not purely with conceptual relationships ... but also with the ontological underpinnings of dialectic ... [Such a dialectical theory] is, in comparison with Rescher’s, rather more ambitious in its aspirations and more comprehensive in its theoretical range, albeit also more vulnerable to objections in view of its greater fertility.12

84

ONTOLOGICAL DIALECTIC: THE HEGELIAN BACKGROUND

This view of the matter is not so much incorrect as incomplete. It is indeed correct in that most of my discussions of dialectic proceed in an epistemological context to highlight the dialectics of inquiry and its conceptual ramifications. But neither in my discussions nor yet in actual fact is this the end of the matter. For any adequate accounting for the modus operandi of cognitive dialectic unavoidably demands an account of why it is that cognitive dialectic has the features it does—and first and foremost why it is that the ground rules of plausibility and presumption is rational discourse and inquiry should be as is. And here the essentially pragmatic, functional-efficacy orientation of the account (as given here and elsewhere in various publications from my 1973 Methodological Pragmatism onwards) becomes a crucial consideration. And it calls for a realistically geared dialectic of applicative testing in a way that imposes an ontologically geared quality control over the cognitive dimension of dialectic. In just this way, the fusion of a realistic pragmatism with an evolutionary epistemology geared to rational selection (as I have set it out in various earlier publications13) provide the materials for an ontologically geared dialectic of coordinated development and justification that constitutes an ontological underpinning for the epistemic dialectic at work in cognition. On this basis, the ontology of the matter provides for the developmental emergence of intelligent beings by natural selection within a cosmos evolved through physical selection. And thereupon the inquiry methods employed by these intelligent beings develop by rational selection in a way that leads ultimately to a cognitive realization of the modus operandi of reality. With these several developmental processes envisioned in essentially dialectical terms, we arrive at the threefold ontological dialectic at issue in the evolutionary process as a whole, enfolding cosmic, biological, and rational evolution in overall unification. In an intelligently contrived universe (which need not necessarily be one contrived by intelligence) there must be a fundamental parallelism— structural coordination and harmonization—between the intellect of rational inquiry and the dialectics of unfolding process. In this way the specifically epistemic dialectic that lies at the forefront of our deliberations is seen to have a grounding—at once developmental and justificatory— through the ontological mechanisms of a broadly dialectical feedback process at the foundational level of developmental ontology. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 5 1

G. W. Hegel, The Science of Logic (=Part I of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), sect. 79.

85

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

2

G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, sect. 81.

3

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

4

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

5

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

6

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, p. 11.

7

For the details of such an approach see the author’s The Riddle of Existence (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1984), and Nature and Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

8

Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method (New York: International Publications, 1971).

9

See the author’s Process Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

10

A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989); German tran. Warum sind wir nicht klüger (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 1994).

11

The story of how this comes to be so is sketched in my Cognitive Pragmatism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).

12

Wulf Kellerwessel, “Rescher’s idealistische Dialektik” in Wolfgang Neuhauser et. al. (eds.), Logik, Mathematik und Natur im Objektiven Idealismus (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), pp. 253–64; see p. 262.

13

See Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989) and Realistic Pragmatism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000).

86

Chapter 6 PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC 1. THE PERVASIVENESS OF APORIES

A

lthough dialectical philosophy has been much discussed over the years, this has transpired in such a way that the issue of process rather than product has been neglected. For the discussions have focused on concrete results in the kind of this or that practitioner while generic method of dialectical inquiry in philosophy has remained relatively underdeveloped. 1 To be sure, under Hegel’s influence various thinkers have maintained that the historical development of philosophical thinking proceeded along dialectical lines. Thus Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example, viewed dialectics as a developmental process of philosophical thinking over the ages—a matter of the unfolding of philosophical ideas through the doctrines and counter-doctrines of successive generations of thinkers. Such an approach has it that the historical development of philosophizing at large will itself exhibit the character of a dialectical process. Yet while there is much to be said for this perspective, its details have gone largely unexplained and unexamined. Philosophy begins in puzzlement. It’s starting point is the manifold of commonplace knowledge—the range of things we ordinarily take ourselves to know. But indispensably useful though they are, philosophy’s “data” constitute a plethora of fact (or purported fact) so ample as to threaten to sink any ship freighted with so heavy a cargo. The difficulty is—and always has been—that the data of philosophy afford an embarrassment of riches. They generally engender aporetic paralogisms— through involving a situation of cognitive overcommitment within which inconsistencies arise. Philosophical dialectic is, in the main, a matter of aporetics and the drive to consistency in systematizing the data—the basic material with which philosophy has to work—is one of the prime missions of the enterprise. For here the Aristotelian idea of endoxa is at the forefront once more, since we must draw not only upon the deliverances of common experience, but also the more sophisticated teachings of science and the ex-

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

planatory speculations of philosophers. It is the task of aporetic dialectics to impart systemic coherence and consistency to this body of philosophically relevant material and bring rational order into the chaos. An apory is a group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.2 This occurs about whenever the things we incline to maintain nevertheless issue in inconsistency and self-contradiction in the aggregate. An aporetic cluster is accordingly a family of philosophically relevant contentions of such a sort that: (1) as far as the “on first view” considerations go, there appears to be good reason for accepting them all—the available evidence speaks well for each and every one of them, but, nevertheless, (2) taken together, they are mutually conflicting; the entire family is collectively incompatible. Such a cluster is a set of otherwise congenial propositions that, unfortunately, happen to be inconsistent. They cannot all be right—their mutual inconsistency precludes that prospect; but they are all plausible; each of them is seemingly acceptable and to some extent appealing. Whatever may be our inclination towards the individual theses that collectively make up such an inconsistent group, simple logic demands that one of them at least must be rejected—and so its denial must be accepted. While K. R. Popper has observed, “contradictions are problematic only because we try to avoid them”3—the reality of it goes in reverse. Consider, for example, the following aporetic cluster, which sets the stage for a substantial section of seventeenth century metaphysics where the belief-inclinations of the day, formed under the inspection of Descartes, included the following ideas: (1) Extension is substantial (in constituting material res extensa). (2) Thought is substantial (in constituting immaterial res cogitans). (3) Thought and extension are coordinate items that have the same standing and status. (4) Substance as such is uniform: at the bottom it has but one type and is a genus of one single species.

88

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

Clearly, these contentions are mutually incompatible. The inconsistency can, of course, be removed by deletions, and this is obviously the appropriate course. But as always, the weeding-out needed to restore consistency can be accomplished in different ways. The following alternatives are open: Abandon (1) and (2): Metaphysical aspectivalism and, in particular, a theory that takes both thought and material extension to be mere attributes of a single all-encompassing substance (Spinoza). Abandon (1) and (3): Idealism of a type that regards extended matter as merely phenomenal (Leibniz and Berkeley). Abandon (2) and (3): Materialism in the form of a theory that sees thought as the causal product of the operations of matter (Gassendi and Hobbes). Abandon (4): Thought/matter dualism (Descartes). All of these exits from inconsistency were available at the time, and all were in fact used by one or another thinker of the period. In such situations the bare demand of mere logical consistency requires the elimination of some of these theses. Doing nothing is not a rationally viable option. Something has to give way. Some one (at least) of those incompatible contentions at issue must be abandoned. But there just is no easy way out—one that is relatively cost-free. Apories constitute situations of forced choice among alternative positions since no matter which way we turn, we find ourselves having to abandon something which on the surface seems to be plausible—some contention that we would want to maintain, circumstances permitting, and whose abandonment makes a real difference in the larger scheme of things. But how to proceed? What is our standard of priority to be? Here we face a situation very different from that of reductio ad absurdum or of evidential reasoning. And in philosophy, our guidance for making these curtailments lies in the factor of systematicity. The operative principle here is that of achieving the optimum alignment with experience—the best overall balance of informativeness (answering questions and resolving problems) with plausibility by way of accommodating the claims which, on the basis of our relevant experience, there is good reason to regard as true. We want

89

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

answers to our questions but we want these answers to make up a coherent systematic whole. It is neither just answers we want (regardless of their substantiation) nor just safe claims (regardless of their lack of informativeness) but a reasonable mix of the two—a judicious balance that systematizes our commitments in a functionally effective way.4 The situation in philosophy is accordingly neither one of pure speculation, where informativeness alone governs conflict resolution, nor one of scientific/inductive inquiry where evidential coherence governs this process, but a judicious combination of the two.5 In such a case we could, in theory, simply throw up our hands and abandon the entire cluster. But this total suspension of judgment is too great a price to pay. For taking this course of wholesale abandonment would plunge us into vacuity by foregoing answers to pressing questions. We would curtail our information not only beyond necessity but beyond comfort as well, seeing that we have some degree of commitment to all members of the cluster and do not want to abandon more of them than we have to. Our best option—or only sensible option—is to try to localize the difficulty in order “to save what we can.” Apories structure the philosophical landscape. They show how various positions are interlocked in a mutual interrelationship that does not meet the eye at first view because the topical areas at issue may be quite disparate. Consider, for example, the following apory arising in philosophical deliberation about facts and values: (1) All knowledge is based on observation. (Empiricism) (2) We can only observe matters of empirical fact. (Naturalism) (3) Knowledge about values is possible. (Value cognitivism) (4) We cannot infer values from empirical facts alone. (Axiological autonomy) On first view, these theses seem altogether disparate and disconnected because they stem from regions separated by disciplinary divisions. Thus thesis (1)–(3) are squarely epistemological, while (4) looks to be distinctly axiological. But their aporetic interrelationship puts matters into a very different light. For mere logic connects what disciplines put asunder.

90

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

Since theses (2) and (4) entail that value statements cannot be inferred from observations, we arrive via (1) at the denial of (3). Inconsistency is upon us. There are four ways out of this trap: •

Deny 1: There is also non-observational—intuitive or instinctive— knowledge of various kinds—specifically of matters of value (valueintuitionism; moral-sense theories).

•

Deny 2: Observation is not only sensory but also affective (sympathetic, empathetic). It thus can yield not only factual information but value information as well (value-sensibility theories).

•

Deny 3: Knowledge about values is impossible (positivism, value skepticism).

•

Deny 4: While we cannot deduce values form empirical facts, we can certainly infer them from the facts, by various sorts of plausible reasoning, such as “inference to the best explanation” (values-asfact theories).

In linking empiricism and fact-value separation, such an analysis can bring to light significant interrelationships that obtain among disparate topics. It makes strange bedfellows of very different philosophical doctrines in exactly the way that we have been considering above, connecting issues that appear substantively disjoint and seem to belong to different disciplines (epistemology and axiology is the example). By its very nature, an apory delineates a definite range of interrelated positions. It maps out a small sector of the possibility space of philosophical deliberation. And this typifies the situation in philosophical aporetics where several distinct and discordant resolutions to a given issue or problem are inevitably available, none of which our cognitive data can exclude in an altogether decisive way. Here any particular resolution of an aporetic cluster 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. We are not only forced to choose but also constrained to operate within a narrowly circumscribed range of choice.

91

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

2. APORY ENGENDERS A DIVERSITY OF RESOLUTIONS Consider the following aporetic cluster: 1. Some facts can be explained satisfactorily. 2. No explanation of a fact is (fully) satisfactory if it uses unexplained facts. 3. Any satisfactory explanation must be noncircular: it must always involve some further facts (facts distinct from the fact that is being explained) to provide materials for its explanatory work. Premise (3) indicates the need for unexplained explainers. Premise (2) asserts that the presence of unexplained explainers prevents explanations from being satisfactory. Together they entail that there are no (fully) satisfactory explanations. But premise (1) insists that satisfactory explanations exist. And so we face a contradiction. A forced choice among a fixed spectrum of alternatives confronts us. And there are just three exits from this inconsistency: 1-Abandonment: Explanatory skepticism. 2-Abandonment: Explanatory foundationalism. Insist that some facts are “obvious” or “self-evident” in a way that exempts them from any need for being explained and make them available as “cost-free” inputs for the explanation of other facts. 3-Abandonment: Explanatory coherentism. Accept circular explanations as adequate in some cases (“very large circles”). In such cases there is, of course, the prospect of alternative resolutions but they arise within a well-defined range of alternatives. As such examples show, any particular resolution of an aporetic cluster is bound to be simply one way among others for restoring consistency. 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. We are not just forced to choose, but specifically constrained to operate within a narrowly circumscribed range of choice.

92

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

Apories so function as to map out a small sector of the possibility space of philosophical deliberation. And this typifies the situation in philosophical problem-solving, where, almost invariably, several distinct and discordant resolutions to a given issue or problem are available, none of which our cognitive data can exclude in an altogether decisive way. Apories confront us with forced choices but not forced resolutions. Whenever we have an aporetic cluster, a plurality of resolutions is always available. Any resolution of an apory calls for the rejection of some contentions for the sake of maintaining others. Strict logic alone dictates only that something must be abandoned; it does not indicate what. No particular resolutions are imposed by abstract rationality alone—by the mere “logic of the situation.” (In philosophical argumentation one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.) It is always a matter of trade-offs, of negotiation, of giving up a bit of this in order to retain a bit of that. In situations of aporetic conflict we face a situation very different from that of reductio ad absurdum or of evidential reasoning. For in philosophy, our guidance for making these curtailments lies in the factor of systematicity. The operative principle at work here is that of achieving the optimum alignment with experience—the best overall balance of informativeness (answering questions and resolving problems) with plausibility by way of negotiating with the claims which on the basis of our relevant experience there is good reason to regard as true. We want answers to our questions but we want these answers to make up a coherent systematic whole. It is neither just answers we want (regardless of their substantiation) nor just safe claims (regardless of their lack of informativeness) but a reasonable mix of the two—a judicious balance that systematizes our commitments in a functionally effective way.6 Our best option—or only sensible option—is to try to localize the difficulty in order “to save what we can.” Let us consider some examples. 3. SOME EXAMPLES 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),

93

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

(3) Can only matter if grounded in the objective nature of things (phusei) 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 this inconsistency. The problem of the philosopher is not one of inductive ampliation but of systemic reduction—of a restoration of consistency. And philosophers fail to reach a uniform result because this objective can always be accomplished in very different ways. If we have firm confidence in our reasonings, then 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 example, if one rejects free will, then one must also reject one of the following (presumptive) initial 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. Apory, once present, tends to spread like wildfire through any rational system. This line of consideration accounts for what is, on first view, a puzzling aspect of the field, namely, the prominence in the philosophical literature of counter-argumentation and refutatory discussions. In mathematics no one troubles to argue that fourteen or thirty-two is not a satisfactory solution to a certain problem. This would be pointless because the number of incorrect answers is endless. But when there is only a limited number of

94

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

viable alternative candidates in the running, negative and eliminative argumentation will obviously come to play a much more substantial part. The Greek theory of virtue affords another example: (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. Three ways of averting inconsistency are available here: Deny (1): Maintain that virtue is worthwhile entirely in itself, even if it does not produce happiness/pleasure (Stoics, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). Deny (2): Maintain that virtue is ultimately pointless and can be dismissed as folly of the weak (nihilistic sophists, e.g., Plato’s Thrasymachus). Deny (3): Maintain that virtue is automatically bound to produce happiness (of itself always yields real pleasure)—so that the two are inseparably interconnected (Plato, the Epicureans). The whole of the group (1)–(3) represents an aporetic cluster that reflects a cognitive over-commitment. And this situation is typical: the problem context of philosophical issues standardly arises from a clash among individually tempting but collectively incompatible over-commitments. Philosophical issues standardly center about an aporetic cluster of this sort—a family of plausible theses that is assertorically over-determinative 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),

95

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

—To reason from (1), (3) to the denial of (2), —To reason from (1)–(2) to the denial of (3), 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. It lies in the logical nature of things that there will always be multiple exits from aporetic inconsistency. 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 various subgroups among the conflicting contentions, so that distinct awareness to averting inconsistency can always be found. As far as abstract rationality goes, alternative resolutions always remain open—resolutions leading to mutually contrary and inconsistent results. An aporetic cluster is thus an invitation to conflict: its resolution will be only one of a coordinated group of mutually discordant doctrines (positions, teachings, doxa). The cluster accordingly sets the stage for divergent “schools of thought” and provides the bone of contention for an ongoing controversy among them. In philosophy, any family of inconsistent theses spans a “doctrinal spectrum” that encompasses a variety of interrelated albeit incompatible positions. 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 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 position make different priorities, and different priorities are by nature incompatible and irreconcilable.

96

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

4. DIALECTICS A MECHANISM OF SYSTEM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT AND THE ROLE OF DISTINCTIONS One important insight that a resort to plausibility aporetics puts at our disposal relates to its revelation 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 cogent 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 and thereby constitutes 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. 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: (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 distinguish between a natural and a logical mode of necessitations, where only the latter would preclude contingency. On this basis the inconsistency inherent in this aporetic cluster of conflicting theses could be sidelined in such a ways that even thesis (3) is partially salvaged in a qualified form.

97

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

To restore consistency among incompatible beliefs calls for abandoning some of them as they stand. In general, however, philosophers do not provide for consistency-restoration wholly by way of rejection. Rather, they have recourse to modification, replacing the abandoned belief with a duly qualified revision thereof. Since (by hypothesis) each thesis belonging to an aporetic cluster is individually attractive, simple rejection lets the case for the rejected thesis go unacknowledged. Only by modifying the thesis through a resort to distinctions can one manage to give proper recognition to the full range of considerations that initially led into aporetic difficulty. Distinctions enable the philosopher to remove inconsistencies not just by the brute negativism of thesis rejection but by the more subtle and constructive device of thesis qualification. The crux of a distinction is not mere negation or denial, but the amendment of an untenable thesis into something positive that does the job better. By way of example, consider the following aporetic cluster: (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 to abandon thesis (2). We might well, however, do this not by way of outright abandonment but rather by speaking of the “causally unconstrained” only in Spinoza’s manner of externally originating casualty. 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. (2.2) Actions based on free choice are unconstrained by internal causes. Once (2) is so divided, the initial inconsistent triad (1)–(3) gives 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 inter-

98

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

nal and external causes—makes it possible to avert the aporetic inconsistency and does so in a way that minimally disrupts the plausibility situation. Aporetic inconsistency can always be resolved in this way; we can always “save the phenomena”—that is, retain the crucial core of our various beliefs in the face of apparent consideration—by introducing suitable distinctions and qualifications. 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. 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 carried back to its starting point. The overall course of development thus exhibits the overall cyclical structure depicted in Display 1. The 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. The historical course thus tracks an evolving process of apory resolution by means of distinctions. And this process of dialectical development imposes certain characteristic structural features upon the course of philosophical history: • Concept proliferation—ever more elaborate concept manifolds evolve. • Concept sophistication—ever more subtle and fine-drawn distinctions. • Doctrinal complexification—ever more extensively formulated theses and doctrines. • System elaborate—ever more elaborately articulated systems.

99

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 1 APORETIC DIALECTICS

Detection of inconsistent commitments

Thesis abandonment: removal of inconsistency through deletion

Introduction of a distinction to provide for thesis qualification

Thesis restoration via distinctioninduced revisions

However, this generic characterization of the matter does not do adequate justice to how things actually work. To improve matters it is advisable to look at some actual “real-life” examples from the history of philosophy. 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 skeptical 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 data that we reject, and are committed to saving as much as we can. (This, of course, is implicit in our treating those data as such 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-

100

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

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. To be sure, philosophical distinctions are creative innovations. There is nothing routine or automatic about them—their discernment is an act of inventive 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 explain prior ideas.) And this can only come from the functional setting of the enterprise—the range of purpose at issue with the particular application of the dialectical processuality that is being envisioned. 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, every growing and ever changing—a mere tendency that is in need of ongoing development. Its 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, if you will. 6. THE ROLE OF DISTINCTIONS When an aporetic thesis is rejected, the usual course among philosophers is not to abandon it altogether, but rather to introduce a distinction by whose aid it may be retained in part. In this way, dialectic is an instrument of damage control—it affords a means to salvage what we can in the face of the disaster of inconsistency. Consider the following aporetic cluster, which sets the stage for the traditional “problem of evil”: 1. The world was created by God. 2. The world contains evil. 3. A creator is responsible for all defects of his creation.

101

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

4. God is not responsible for the evils of this world. On this basis we have it that God, who is responsible for all aspects of nature, by (1), is also responsible for evil, by (3). And this contradicts contention (4). Suppose, however, that one introduces the distinction between causal responsibility and moral responsibility, holding that the causal responsibility of an agent does not necessarily entail a moral responsibility for the consequences of his acts. Then for causal responsibility, (3) is true but (4) false. And for moral responsibility, the reverse holds: (4) is true but (3) false. Once the distinction at issue is introduced, then no matter which way one turns in construing “responsibility,” the inconsistency operative in the apory at issue is averted. Thus someone who adopts this distinction can retain all the aporetic theses—(1) and (2) unproblematically and, as it were, half of each of (3) and (4)—each in the sense of one side of the distinction at issue. The distinction enables us to make peace in the aporetic family at issue, by splitting certain aporetic theses into acceptable and unacceptable parts. Chalybaeus objected to Hegel that negation is in general equivocally multi-directional. While negation indeed affirms (omnis negatio est determinatio) nevertheless it does so without definiteness. When we deny that there are three Muses we must move on to there being either more or fewer. When we deny that grass is blue we must go on to red or green or such. In denying something we must proceed to the specifics of having it by something else. If it is to advance at all, a dialectical negation must go on to move in some particular direction. And negation of itself does not accomplish this. It is this condition that renders a purely abstract “logical” dialectic “bloodless” and in need of some sort of substantive directional supplementation. And just this holds for distinctions, which represent negations that “split the difference.” 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 distinctions are necessary if we are to maintain informative positions and provide answers to our questions. We can guard against inconsistency by avoiding commitment. But such skeptical refrainings leave us empty handed. Distinctions are the instruments we use in the (potentially never-ending) work of rescuing our assertoric commitments from inconsistency while yet salvaging what we can. Accordingly, one generally does not respond to cogent counterarguments in philosophy by abandoning one’s position but rather by making it

102

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

more sophisticated—by complicating it. One can never entrap any philosophical doctrine in a finally and decisively destructive inconsistency, because a sufficiently clever exponent can always escape from difficulty by means of suitable distinctions. Faced with an inconsistent group of beliefs, it clearly becomes necessary to abandon one (or more) of them. In general, however, philosophers do not achieve this end wholly by way of rejection. Instead, they have recourse to modification, replacing the abandoned beliefs with something roughly similar yet consistency maintaining. Trying to salvage as much as one can from the shipwreck of inconsistency, one introduces distinctions. Since each thesis of an aporetic cluster is individually attractive, simply rejection lets the case for the rejected thesis go unacknowledged. Only by modifying (rather than rejecting) the thesis can we hope to give proper recognition to the full range of considerations that initially led us into the aporetic cluster. 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: (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

103

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

(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.) Alternatively, one might 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. Antinomies can always be resolved in this way; we can always “save the phenomena”—that is, retain the crucial core of our various beliefs in the face of apparent consideration—by introducing suitable distinctions and qualifications. When 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. 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 distinctions are necessary if we are to maintain informative positions and provide answers to our questions. We can guard against inconsistency by keeping from commitment. But that leaves us empty handed. Distinctions are the instruments we use in the (neverending) work of rescuing our assertoric commitments from inconsistency while yet salvaging what we can. And so the history of philosophy is shot through with distinctions introduced to avert aporetic difficulties. Already in the dialogues of Plato, the

104

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

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. 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. Distinctions enable the philosopher to remove inconsistencies not just by the brute negativism of thesis rejection but by the more subtle and constructive device of thesis qualification. The crux of a distinction is not mere negation or denial, but the amendment of an untenable thesis into something positive that does the job better. 7. DIALECTICAL DEVELOPMENT Distinctions enable us to implement the idea that a satisfactory resolution of aporetic clusters must somehow make room for all parties to the contradiction. The introduction of distinctions thus represents a Hegelian ascentrising above the level of antagonistic positions to that of a “higher” conception, in which the opposites are reconciled. In introducing the qualifying distinction, we abandon the initial thesis and move toward its counterthesis, but we do so only by way of a duly hedged synthesis. In this regard, distinction is a “dialectical” process. This role of distinctions is also connected with the thesis often designated as “Ramsey’s Maxim.” 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

105

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

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.”7 On this view, too, 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. A distinction 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 heretofore 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. Philosophical distinctions are thus creative innovations. They do not elaborate preexistent ideas but introduce new ones. They not only provide a basis for understanding better something heretofore grasped less rigorously, they 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, that revise rather than explain prior ideas.) New concepts and new theses come constantly to the fore. The continual introduction of new concepts via new distinctions means that the ground of philosophy is always shifting beneath our feet. New distinctions for our concepts and new contexts for our theses alter the very substance of the old theses. The development is dialectical—an exchange of objection and response that constantly moves the discussion onto new ground. The resolution of antinomies through new distinctions is a matter of creative innovation whose outcome cannot be foreseen. 8. FURTHER HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION The 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

106

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

answers to our old questions we open up further questions, questions that could not even be asked before. Let us consider the inherent dynamic of this dialectic. The speculations of the early Ionian philosophers revolved about four theses: (1) There is one single material substrate (arche) 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. —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 primacy 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:

107

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

(1) Whatever is ultimately real persists through change. (2) The four elements—earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gaseous), and fire (volatile)—do not persist through change as such. (3) The four elements encompass all there is by way of extant reality.

(I)

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) though 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: (1) Change really occurs. (II) (2) Matter (solid material substance) does not change. (3) Matter 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).

108

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

(3)-abandonment: Matter is 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. 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:

109

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

(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 (IV) rearrangements are contingent and potentially variable. (3) It 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. Apory now breaks out once more; the need for an exit from inconsistency again arises. And such 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 evolution of philosophical reflection through successive layers of aporetic inconsistency, duly separated from one another by successive distinctions. This process led from the crude doctrines of Ionian theorists to the vastly more elaborate and sophisticated doctrines of later Greek atomism. 9. PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTICS AT WORK As the preceding account indicates, the historical evolution of philosophy illustrates and exemplifies a dialectical process of development. As Plato already emphasized in such later dialogues as the Philebus it is a prime

110

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

Display 2 APORETIC DIALECTIC Analysis of a problem

Map out the endoxa (the relevant plausible solutions)

Survey the aporetic conflicts that arise

Resolve these conflicts through distinctions

task of dialectic to uncover the apories whose dissolution through division or distinction (dihairesis) makes out the pathway to philosophical elucidation. Display 2 presents a schematic sketch of the process involved. Throughout such a course of dialectical development, inconsistency becomes resolved by dropping one of the aporetic theses at issue, replacing it with a duly revised version on the basis of a suitable distinction. The procedure is one of subjecting an apory-engendering thesis T to an aporydissolving distinction d with the result that: T + d yields T1 and T2. where T1 is seen as tenable, but T2 is not. The “dialectical” nature of such a process is manifest in the pattern: thesis: T antithesis: not -T (since T2 is untenable) synthesis: T1 The synthesis may be seen as doing justice to both the “element of truth” in the aporetic thesis T and to the antithetical recognition that T is not tenable as such. All the classical distinctions of early Greek philosophy were in fact arrived at through just this process: —elemental/derivative —permanent/changing

111

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

—being/becoming —structure/quantity —form/matter —one/many —natural/artificial —chance/necessity —free/constrained All these concepts are signposts of the natural evolution of Greek thought toward the great synthetic systems of Democritus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle—systems where coordinated apories are resolved en masse by a handful of duly adjusted distinctions. The history of philosophy is a chronicle of distinctions introduced to resolve aporetic problems but yet not quite able to bring off the trick. All such philosophical dichotomies as objective/subjective sense/nonsense real/ideal analytic/synthetic meaningful/meaningless represent distinctions we find useful yet ultimately wanting. In the fullness of time such distinctions “go soft” on us and call for yet further qualifications and limitations to remain operable.8 Such a course of development, however, never manages to achieve a total stability and finality. Recourse to a distinction always places a new categorical topic on the agenda of explanation. And as we explore the ramifications of the new concept, apory breaks out again. The resolutions we provide for philosophical apories invariably lead to further difficulties in other sectors of the terrain. In philosophical deliberation, distinctions keep the wolf of inconsistency from the door—but, alas, always only for a limited time. As the dialectical tradition insists throughout, any formula-

112

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

tion of a philosophical thesis eventually gives rise to difficulties that compel its revision. A sort of entropy principle is at issue: the dissonance or conceptual friction we remove at one point is increased at another. All of the experiential concepts deployed in philosophy contain an element of the factually surd that we can never quite remove. Even as thermodynamic situations generally do not admit of processes that increase the overall amount of available energy, so philosophical situations generally do not admit of processes that increase the overall amount of conceptual clarity. The distinctions that reduce aporetic frictions at some points engender new ones at others. No system can provide a perfectly efficient engine for our thought about these philosophical issues. Systemic perfection lies beyond our grasp in this domain.9 Whatever we say is only a rough approximation in need of qualification and amendment. (The seeming self-contradiction of this statement illustrates rather than refutes the point at issue.) The ongoing elaboration of a philosophical position constitutes a process of expository development that brings its various aspects into clearer and sharper focus. The continuing development of conceptual machinery provides a process of ideational magnification analogous to the process of visual magnification that accompanies the ongoing development of the physical machinery of microscopy. And there is no reason of principle why this process of ongoing elaboration and sophistication need ever stop; it can continue as long as our patience and energy and interest hold out. When we stop, it is because we are sufficiently wearied to rest content, and not because the project as such is completed. 10.

DIALECTIC AND FIRST PRINCIPLES

The drive to system in philosophical inquiry embodies an imperative to broaden the range of our experience, to extend and expand the database from which our theoretical triangulations proceed. In the course of this process, it may well eventuate that our existing systematizations—however adequate they may seem at the time—are untenable and must be overthrown in the interest of constructing ampler and tighter systems. The dialectical process at work in philosophy may thus be clarified in a schematic way as follows. One begins with the presumptive “trial assumption” or “provisional hypothesis” of a certain cognitive mechanism—an instrumentality (process, method) for issue-resolution. One then proceeds to employ this instrumentality so as to determine a body of putative know-

113

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 3 ELABORATIVE DIALECTIC

Problem

Putative solution

Critique

Reformulation and Elaboration

edge—an overall system. Thereupon, one deploys this knowledge to provide a rational accommodation for our “experience”—an information at large. Then, one revises the initial “trial assumption” (provisional hypotheses) with a view to the successes and failures of these applications. And then starts the process all over again at the first step. What is at issue throughout is not just a merely retrospective revalidation in the theoretical order of justification, but an actual revision or improvement in the dialectical order of development, a cognitive upgrading of suppositions initially adopted on a tentative basis. Display 3 sketches the overall process at work here. Reflection on this process makes it clear that if this is how the first principles of inquiry in question-resolution are legitimated, then the status of such principles is defeasible in the light of “the course of experience”—it becomes a posteriori and contingent. This circumstance is one whose importance cannot be overemphasized. It means that no particular formulation of a philosophical position—no explicitly stated substantive resolution to a philosophical problem—can be altogether adequate as it actually stands, without further explanation, qualification, and explanatory exposition. Further questions will always arise that need to be addressed in the larger scheme of things. Descartes says that only physical things and intelligent beings exist. But what then of animals? Plato maintains that mathematical objects like shapes and numbers exist in a separate realm altogether apart from the material world. But how then can we embodied humans know them? Once a substantive philosophical thesis is formulated, further questions about its meaning, implications, bearing, and purport will always arise. As it stands, in its actual and overt formulation, the thesis is not complete, not quite correct, not altogether adequate to what needs to be said on the subject.

114

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

Under the pressure of an ongoing readjustment to an ever-widening context of considerations, it admits of various alternative interpretations, constructions, elaborations; it presents further issues that must be resolved; it requires explanation, exposition, qualification. Taken just as it stands, without further elaboration, the exposition is not satisfactory: it leaves loose ends and admits of undermining objections. In examining our first principles—and thus the philosophical theses that hinge upon them—we accordingly embark on a cyclic (and thus in theory nonterminating) process of elaboration and reformulation as per Display 3. Such a dialectic of contention and elaborative explanation engenders an ever more fine-graved detail the inner commitments and involvements of the initial position that was the starting point of our endeavor to answer the philosophical question at issue. With any substantive philosophical issue, the process of problem-solving and issue resolution can thus be repeated at ever more elaborate levels of sophistication. It emerges on this perspective that the first principles that are basic to philosophical understanding are “first” (and ultimate questions “ultimate”) only in the first instance or in the first analysis and not in the final instance and the final analysis. Their fundamentality represents but a single “moment” in the larger picture of the dialectic of legitimation. They do not mark the dead-end of a ne plus ultra that admits no further elaboration and substantiation. The question “Why these principles rather than something else?” is certainly not illegitimate here. It is something we cannot only ask but also answer, even if only provisionally and imperfectly, in terms of the complex dialectic afforded by the cyclic structure of legitimation as sketched above. 11.

CRITIQUE

In his classic work on The Open Society and its Enemies, K. R. Popper launched a vigorous critique of dialectics. He objected to it on grounds that its inherent generality betokens its vacuity: Dialectic is vague and elastic enough to interpret and to explain this [particular] unforeseen situation just as well as it explained and foretold the other situation which happened not to come true: Any development whatsoever will fit the dialectic scheme; the dialectician need never be afraid of any refutation by forthcoming experiences.10

115

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Surely, however, such a critique tells only against those over-enthusiastic partisans of dialectic who viewed it as an unrestrictedly universal mechanism. In actual fact, after all, the idea that dialectical explanation is appropriately applicable always and everywhere is itself refuted by experience. With regard to dialectical philosophy K. R. Popper maintains that “the whole development of dialectic should be warning against speculative philosophy.”11 But this conclusion is base on two premises: (1) that dialectic itself constitutes a version of speculative philosophy, and (2) that as such it has proven to be bankrupt and counter-productive. Both of these contentions may (arguably) be true of certain specific versions of dialectical philosophizing. But it does not hold across the board (as even Popper himself seems prepared to acknowledge).12 Popper’s critique touches only a hyperbolic version of dialectic. Curiously—and not altogether consistently—Popper accused the Hegelian dialectics as encouraging both dogmatism and indecisiveness. For on the one hand stands the idea that in a dialectical conflict there is something to be said for both sides “undermined and eventually weakened the traditional standards of intellectual responsibility and honesty.”13 And on the other hand stands the idea that the resolution of dialectical conflicts issues in a superior—“higher”—result “by contributing to historicism and to an identification of might and right, encouraged totalitarian modes of thought.”14 Ironically, there is something decidedly dialectical about Popper’s critique of dialectics. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6 1

See, for example, Wolfgang Röd, Die dialektische Philosophie der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1974). This excellent work is rather an account of modern philosophy in dialectical terms than an account of the modus operandi of modern philosophical dialectics as such. It deals rather with product than process.

2

The word derives from the Greek aporia on analogy with the derivation of “harmony” or “melody” or indeed “analogy” itself.

3

K. R. Popper, “What is Dialectic,” Mind, vol. 44 (1940), pp. 403–26.

4

To be sure, philosophers positioned in different experiential contexts will accomplish this differently because their judgments of priority are bound to differ.

5

The aporetic nature of philosophy and its implications are explored in detail in the author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). The book is also available in Spanish, Italian, and German translations.

116

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALECTIC

6

This again should not be seen as surprising since people differ in their judgments of priority.

7

Frank P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics, pp. 115–16.

8

See, for example, the interesting account in C. G. Hempel’s “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning,” Revue International de Philosophie, vol. 11 (1950), pp. 41–63, rpt. in A. J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), pp. 108–29.

9

As Friederich Schlegel stressed, following Kant, philosophy is rather a striving after scientific knowledge than itself a science (mehr ein Streben nach Wissenschaft, als selbst eine Wissenschaft). Quoted in Braun, L’Histoire de l’histoire de la philosophie, pp. 278–79. Where the old-school metaphysicians (Wolff, Baumgarten) saw an evolving science actually unfolding bit by bit under our very eyes, their post-Kantian successors saw simply the emergence of a blueprint for a possible future science (ibid., p. 228).

10

K. R. Popper, “What is Dialectic,” Mind, vol. 49 (1940), pp. 390–26 (see p. 424).

11

“What is Dialectic?,” p. 426

12

“It must be admitted that such a way of interpreting a certain development is sometimes very satisfactory”(“What is Dialectic,” p. 406).

13

“What is Dialectic?,” p. 395.

14

Ibid.

117

Chapter 7 A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC 1. INTRODUCTION

T

he history of dialectic proceeds along a road with many sharp twists and turns. As one scholar has put it,

“Dialectic” has acquired multiple, often conflicting, meanings in the history of western philosophy. It has been identified with rhetoric, sophistry, Socratic “cross-examination,” Platonic ascent from the sensible to the spiritual, late-Platonic definition by division into genera and species, Aristotelian sifting of opinions pro and con, Kantian “transcendental” illusions of the understanding, Marxian socioeconomic stages through capitalism to socialism, etc.1

Overall, dialectic has evoked so many different ideas in so many different thinkers that it is not far off the mark to claim that “The history of the term dialectic would by itself constitute a considerable history of philosophy.”2 Since the time when Kant reestablished dialectic as a significant topic in modern philosophy, various schools of thought have assigned very different sorts of tasks to this process: viewed this discipline in substantially different ways: as explanation for causal pattern of historical development, as a branch of philosophical ontology, as a means for organizing the history of thought, as a sector of rhetorical tradition, and as a way of systematizing the testing process for scientific theories.3 Thus for dialectic is, as it were, the alchemy of philosophy. It is all things to all men: to some, the most rigorous procedure for exact and cogent thinking; to others, a way of operating outside the established rules—an “anything goes” process for breaking through to unfettered innovations of thinking. For some it is the quintessential method of inquiring thought, for others the quintessential antimethod.4

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

2. PRE-SOCRATICS AND THE SOPHISTS The root idea of dialectic lies in the Heraclitean conception of an oscillation between opposing forces in a productive tension where each turning makes a constructive contribution to the effective functioning of the overall process. From the very outset, however, this idea was given a discursive or rhetorical construction. For the ancient Sophists viewed dialectic from the vantage point of disputation—of verbal challenges presented in question/answer form.5 Their substantially rhetorical version of dialectic was termed eristic by Plato (from the Greek eris meaning strife), and such argumentative gymnastics was ridiculed in his dialogue Euthydeimus. According to Xenophon, Socrates said that “engaging in dialectic (to dialegesthai)” was so called because it is an inquiry pursued by persons who take counsel together.6 The aim of this early dialectic was in the main negative. It generally proceeded by showing that in defending a thesis against objections the proponent is ultimately led ad absurdum, by being driven into self-contradiction. This is evident in the paradox mongering of Eubulides of Miletus (b. ca. 400 BC),7 an influential exponent of eristic whose discussion stand alongside the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea as early milestones of Greek dialectic as a mode of puzzle-mongering. In practical effect, this venture soon disintegrated into pettifogging and hairsplitting, turning to absurdities that gave the designation—“sophistry”—to the entire enterprise. In the hands of the followers of Euclides of Megara8—the teacher of Eubulides and, according to Diogenes Laertius, the founding father of eristic—the enterprise was an exercise in puzzlement—a negativism little beyond mere argumentative showmanship.9 Against this background the Sophists viewed their eristic version of dialectic not with the cognitive aim of establishing some thesis, but as an instrument of training (paideia), a sort of mental gymnastics, a mind meshing with mind. The object of such exercise was not inquiry into the truth but evolving ingenuity in working out the best possible case for a problematic contention. The Sophistical eristic at issue was controversy-oriented and consisted of an exchange of reciprocally conflicting theses and thesis-negations (antitheses), propositions and counter-propositions. The practice was oriented primarily to refutation—to ways of arguing that refute or confound the position of an opponent. In their hands, eristic was a kind of intellectual jousting match where some master knight stands prepared to take on all commers on either side of an issue. Its aim is merely negative and refuta-

120

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

tory. And while sensible people in general take such things as space and time, change and motion for granted, the Sophists and their followers such as Diodorus Chronus developed ingenious arguments to the contrary. Thus in the hands of the much-maligned Sophists of Greek antiquity dialectic was a process of arguing persuasively on both sides of an issue—of sheer verbal acrobatics which (as Plato has it) Protagoras used “to make the worse argument seem the better.” It constituted that part of the rhetoric of persuasion dealing with the conduct of counter-argumentation in rational debate. According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle in his (now-lost) Sophist named Zeno of Elea, the eminent paradoxer, as the true originator of philosophical dialectic in bending Sophistical practice to the needs of philosophical investigation.10 But be this as it may, dialectic as a philosophical resource was clearly at work in the endeavors of the Platonic Socrates to utilize the discursive rhetorical theory and practice of the Sophists as an instrument of rational inquiry. And Plato himself was the first philosopher who pointedly and explicitly assigned a pivotal philosophical role to dialectic as such. Hegel rightly called Plato’s Parmenides “the masterpiece of ancient dialectics.”11 All the same, the ideas of the Sophists had sufficient cogency to provide Plato and Aristotle, their proper heirs, with some constructive inspiration.12 They paved the way. For while Plato received their discussions to be the sort of mischief that was to give sophistry its bad name, he nevertheless devoted much effort to resume dialectics from such degradation. 3. THE MEGARIANS In the interests of expository convenience let us adopt the following abbreviation: A ⇒ B is to stand for “the course of dialectical discussion embodies a line of reasoning that leads from A to B” where A is to be some basis of assumption, supposition, or (ideally) conceded fact, and B is a thesis that emerges as an upshot. To be sure, a good deal of meaning is packed into this little symbol ⇒. For what is to be at issue is a rational discussion, cogently conducted by a proponent and a respondent proceeding substantially in the challenge-response manner of a question/answer interrogation, with the specific aim of assess-

121

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

ing the pros and cons of some target contention or thesis. And here it does not matter in the final analysis whether that interlocutor is someone else or is oneself in the context of a “discussion” combinated through deliberation in foro interno. Moreover, c will stand for a blank (empty, assumptionfree) starting point, and ¸ represents absurdity. Viewed on this basis, the Megarian refuting dialectic proceeded by way of a course of reasoning taking the essentially self-distinctive format: p ⇒ ~p However, the difference between the rigorously deductive reductio ad absurdum argumentation that was already familiar in Greek mathematics and a dialectical argument of this analogous format is that the former establishes the negation of denial of the contention at issue but the latter its absurdity or meaninglessness. So while the reasoning of the mathematicians’ reductio takes the truth-refuting form p → ~p ∴ ~p that of the Megarians has taken the form p ⇒ ~p ∴¸p (where ¸ betokens nullity in point of meaning). The aim here is to establish the inner incoherence (and not just the falsity) of that basic thesis p. Thus in the case of the liar paradox, we cannot merely conclude the falsity of S = “This statement (S itself) is false” For if S is indeed false, then—this being exactly what it claims—S is true, and we are caught in the web of absurdity once more. In the final analysis, the task of the Megarian dialectic was not to disprove a proposition by way of a refutatory via negativa, but rather to demolish it as meaningless. 4. SOCRATES AND PLATO In Plato’s Euthydemus the Socratic dialectic still functions in the negative manner of the Megarian eristic. Only gradually did it dawn on people that even as in wrestling it need not be the strongest but rather the most adroit

122

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

wrestler who prevails, so in argumentation it need not be the most powerful arguer but rather the party with the best case who will win out. And so in due course dialectic came to be transmuted in the hands of Socrates and Plato into a process of question/answer inquiry and investigation designed to ferret out the meaning of concepts and the truth of statements by way of best-case inquiry. Once one takes the line that truth is on the side of the best arguments rather than as that of the best arguer such an evolution is only natural. This sea-change characterized the dialectic of Socrates as discussed and practiced in the dialogues of Plato. It led to the sort of crossexamination which has come to be known as the Socratic Method whose aim is not merely the gymnastics of honing the mind’s muscles, but rather the pursuit of rational inquiry into the subsurface truth of things. With Socrates, dialectic was an erotetic—that is question-oriented— inquiry into the meaning of “ideas” conducted through discussion—the aim of the enterprise was concept-clarification. His specialty was the sort of process which Aristotle later designated epagôgê that proceeded by inducing a discussant to grant a concept-explicative general thesis by leading him there through a series of particular instances and examples. Aristotle saw general definition and epagogic reasoning as Socratic innovations,13 and he contrasted such positivity with the earlier, destructive mode of eristic dialectic. Plato’s only statement about the origin of dialectics is that it was brought down from the gods by some Prometheus (Philebus 16c). But to whom was it delivered? Presumably to Socrates who transmuted the Megarian negativity into something positive. Books VII and VIII of the Republic expound the aims of Socratic dialectic which Plato elsewhere describes as “an enquiring into the truth of things by arguments” (Phaedo 99e5). Here Plato’s Socrates has it that: “Dialectic seeks through rational discourse alone, without using sense-perception to discern the true nature of a thing” (VII 532a). It is a method of discursively interactive inquiry for grasping authentic ideas of each thing (VII 533b). And so for Plato, dialectic—based on the Socratic model of a discursive exchange between a questioner and respondent—is a rational procedure for investigating first principles of things, determining the range and substance of the basic conceptions of philosophical concern such as truth, beauty, justice, pleasure, and the like—the Platonic “Forms” in short.14 In these matters of philosophical elucidation, the consecutive interchanges of a carefully conducted rational debate between questioner and respondent can ultimately bring the truth of the matter to light, so that, as Plato saw it:

123

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Dialectic does not treat its hypotheses as first principles, but as hypotheses in the literal sense, things “laid down” as a flight of steps which mount up to something that is not hypothetical but the first principle of all. Then having grasped this dialectic turns back, and proceeding via the consequences that depend upon it, it descends to a conclusion, using no sensible objects at all, but only Forms, moving from one to another and terminating with the same. ... [In this way, dialectic is superior to the special sciences because] their students do not go back to first principles but proceed from [otherwise unexamined] hypotheses. (Republic VI, 511 b-d.)

For Plato, accordingly, dialectic—characterized in the Republic as “the keystone of the sciences”—figures as an instrument of rational inquiry in matters where, like philosophy, we are not in a position to work with predetermined fixities (along the lines of the definitions, axioms, and postulates of geometry). As he saw it, dialectic provides the methodology of rational inquiry into fundamentals: it furnishes the means for effecting a transit from the tentative and conditioned to the transcendent “Forms” that constitute the fundamental Ideas at stake in philosophical deliberation. On this basis, Plato viewed dialectic as the proper method of philosophy by providing an effective and reliable pathway to the understanding of fundamentals, and he accordingly contrasted this productive dialectic with the sophistic pseudo-dialectics of the Sophists. As Plato saw it, dialection provided the entryway to a world of Reality accessible not to everyday experience but to reflective thought alone. And for Plato it is dialectic that provides the instrumentality for effecting the transit from Appearance (the world of everyday life) to Reality (the realm of “Form” or “Ideas”, the bearers of essence). For it is only through transcending the conflicts and contradictions of ordinary thought that the mind is led to those deeper realizations that bring capital R-Reality into view.15 In Plato’s Republic dialectic accordingly came to reign supreme; constituted by “knowing how to ask and answer questions,”16 it becomes “the copying stone, as it were, placed above all the sciences.”17The idea of a philosophically constructive dialectic proper goes back to Plato’s contrast between the merely rhetorical eristic of the Sophists concern with anomalies and paradoxes, and an investigative discussion geared to a serious inquiry to ferret out the truth of things. As Plato saw it, the Sophists engaged in pseudo-dialectic abuse—a misuse of discursive reasoning (logos) that issued in sophistry and “eristic” rather than in a properly managed rational dialectic as such. For him, Sophistry represented the inappropriate mis-application of an inherently valuable and useful instrument.

124

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Proper dialectic has a constructive use, as is illustrated in the dialogue Meno. For as far as geometry goes, the slave boy of the Meno is a blank tablet. At the level of theoretical knowledge he knows nothing, and is, in effect a cognitive void (here symbolized by c). But when dialectical elaborations educe a geometric fact p from this emphasis, that is when c ⇒ p, then it transpires that p has been established dialectically (rather than being demonstrated systemically). It is not proved by deduction for axioms but established by a systemically dialectic analysis. The fact of it is that Plato envisioned two fundamental modes of rational inquiry. First there is the demonstrative and deductive procedure typified by the systematization of Euclidean geometry. And this is where dialectic comes in. Here we established our claims by subordinating them demonstratively to certain fundamental propositions (axioms, definitions) and propositions obtain because they derive from an appropriate axiomatic basis. But in philosophy there is no self-evident axiomatic basis. Here whatever we can achieve must be obtained by dialectical inquiry as a means to the paramount ideal of alignment to the idea of the good which illuminates the fundamental purpose of a thing in the light of a knowledge of the truth.18 For while falsity emerges for introduction the fundamental idea of dialectic as it functions with the Platonic Socrates seems to be that the truth is that which distinguishes itself through prevailing against counter-argumentation in a process of dialogical controversy.19 Falsity, by contrast, makes itself manifest through conflict and contradiction. On this basis, the dialectical procedure followed in Plato’s Pamenides so proceeds as to draw contradictory conclusions from a single hypothesis as a means to refutation— of establishing a certain claim’s incoherence: p ⇒ q and p ⇒ not-q ∴ not-p Its enmeshment in a self-contradiction marks that original thesis (p) as inescapably false. What we have here is once again a fundamentally refutatory employment of dialectic. Here dialectic does useful work, but still only on the negative side. Plato proposed to go much further. Plato already stresses that dialectic as method of inquiry through rational discourse (hê dialektikê methodos at Republic 533c and hê methodos tôn logôn Sophist 227a). And he sees it as the best method of inquiry and peculiarly suited to philosophy.20 But while Plato uses and praises dialectic

125

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

he nowhere argues for its efficacy: he simply affirms that dialectic is the proper method for elucidating the ideas but does not explain why.21 Although Plato’s dialectic was geared specifically to dialogue, it is nonetheless a something rather more ambitious position since “the silently occurring internal dialogue of the soul with itself is specifically given the name of thought.”22 And Plato took the matter further yet. For him dialectic is the characteristic instrument of philosophy thorough its capacity to lead thought away the imprecisions of common discourse to an apprehension and appreciation of the fundamental ideas that a proper understanding of reality demands.23 And so, as Plato saw it, dialectic is no longer merely an instrument of sophistical refutation but one of substantiation as well. For one thing, it can be used probatively as per: c ⇒ p, But there is also the prospect of reasoning as per: ~p ⇒ p ∴ p Since of course p ⇒ p we see that p is inevitable: whether you shift for p or ~p you will arrive at p either way. This dialectical way of substantiating a conclusion is clearly different from a mathematical demonstration that depends on the availability of prior premises as per q & (q ├ p) ∴ p For now the conclusion obtains on the effectively commitment-free basis of the reasoning: “If you grant p then well and good. But even if you insist on ~p you will have p also. Either way you must grant that p obtains.” This premise-free mode of substantiation is particularly significant as Plato sees it, since philosophy for Plato has no stipulative axioms and no deductive demonstrations. All in all, then, while rejecting the negativism of the sophistical eristic Plato sought to use dialectic for constructive purposes. And here distinction and differentiation (dihaireses) comes to play a prominent role. Even when a thesis must be given up in the face of something along the lines of the negative version of Socratic dialectic, nevertheless distinction can

126

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

come to the rescue to salvage something from the mishap.24 The underlying idea can be brought to light as follows. Suppose that a dialectical analysis falsifies the generalization that all M is P because some M’s just are not P’s. But let it further be that a “saving distinction” so functions that while it is indeed false that all M is P, nevertheless when we divide the M’s into the M1’s and non-M1’s, it then transpires that all the M’s of type M1 indeed are, so that All M1 is P The distinction at issue enables that situation to be rescued at least in part. The dialectical situation runs as follows: Question:

How closely are the M’s related to the P’s?

Proponent:

All the M’s are P’s,

Opponent:

But the X’s are M’s and they are not P’s.

Proponent:

But the X’s are not Y’s and all of the M’s that are Y’s are P’s.

The point is that once the proper division is effected (with the M’s divided into those that are Y’s and those that are not), the initial thesis can then be maintained against dialectical objections, albeit in a qualified form. A situation of this sort exemplifies the positive thrust of a Platonic distinction-dialectic. The introduction of distinctions thus enables dialectic to play a more far-reachingly positive role as an instrument for the explanation and precisification of concepts. 5. ARISTOTLE Aristotle took matters much further yet.25 Aristotle’s Topics is the first fullfledged account of dialectics we have, and Aristotle himself claimed that prior to his own discussions of the idea “it [dialectic] did not exist at all” but remained rudimentary, crude and unsystematic (atechnos).26 In the Topics, Aristotle undertook a systematic investigation of dialectical processes, being careful, however, to differentiate dialectical inquiry from mathematico-logical proof processes, seeing that “it is the course of wis-

127

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

dom to realize the extent to which exactness and certainty can reasonably be expected in different sphere of deliberation.” However, an acknowledgement that dialectic does not demonstrate should not be construed to mean that it is tentative and uncertain or that it fails to establish its product. Granted, since it does not demonstrate it does not produce demonstrative knowledge (apodeixis) of the sort at issue in the Analytics. But demonstration is not the only route to knowledge (epistêmê) and not the only road to the rational validation of claims. For in addition to demonstrative reasoning that establishes knowledge there is also the plausible (sub-demonstrative) reasoning that establishes mere credibility or what later philosophers called “warranted assertability.” It seems generally agreed that he distinguishes between a merely rhetorical dialectic (a training ground of sorts for engaging in critical disuse, pervasive argument, legal and political debate, etc.) and an investigative zeitetic dialectic that has a role in serious inquiry. The latter in turn seems to have two versions, a tentative, exploratory, experimental (peirastic) dialectic for seeing what can be made of an hypothesis—to test-drive it as it were27—and a probative, proto-scientific dialectic aimed at establishing some fact. These distinctions set the stage for how to coordinate what is said about dialectic with what is said in the Analytic and Metaphysic B, Γ, as well as the practice combinated in such works in the Physics. A closer look at the details of differentiation can here be waived, since what is salient for present purposes is the specifically probative sort of investigative dialectic—the use of dialectic not for training or clarification but for actually establishing something important—the undemonstrable first principles of demonstrative inquiries. While Aristotle devotes considerable attention to the former, rhetorical or discursive dialectic in the Topics and Soph. Elen., it functions prominently as a means to merely apparent wisdom (sophia).28 But he also envisions a proto-scientific and investigative and experimental (peirastic) dialectics29 as a means securing the undemonstrable first principles (archai) of the special sciences—the basic generalities upon which they are predicated and which are reflected in the shared fundamentals (koinai archai) used for exact reasoning in one or another of the sciences. Rhetorical discourse dialectic, as Aristotle conceived of it, is fundamentally erotetic—a matter of questions and answers geared to concept clarification, much as Socrates had pictured it. There is an initiator who poses a question, a respondent who suggests an answer. Thereupon the innovator proceeds to act as a critic who challenges its claim asking further questions

128

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 1 ARISTOTLE’S QUESTION-ANSWER DIALECTICS A question

A proposed response

A difficulty to the response

Question revision to meet the difficulty

that challenge its tenability. The way in which this question/answer process functions is sketched in Display 1. But as Aristotle depicted the matter in his Sophistical Refutations rhetorical dialectic was a second-best, a resource for obtaining plausible information in matters where a secure knowledge based on reasoning from uncontestable principles was not practicable. For Aristotle did not have all that much faith in rhetorical or discursive dialectic thanks to the ease with which deception and distortion can arise in colloquy with others.30 But (proto-)scientific, investigative dialectic is another matter altogether which proceeds rather differently. Dialectic so understood is not a disputational practice but an investigative procedure—a process of inquiry, a cognitive methodology or art intermediate in cogency between the suggestiveness of mere rhetoric and the discoveries of actual demonstration. However, a science cannot establish its own ultimate principles, for scientific demonstration has to proceed from premises which must ultimately come from outside the science itself. Science reasons from but never to its ultimate premises. Accordingly, Aristotle is emphatic in insisting that while the first principles (archai) of the sciences cannot themselves be demonstrated—for then they just would not be what they are—they can nevertheless be substantiated, and that it is dialectic that provides the instrumentality for their substantiation. As he sees it, the principles are prior to all else, and it is by winnowing the generally shared opinions regarding the issues that those principles have to be secured. It is just this task that falls properly and preeminently to dialectic.

129

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

And so as Aristotle saw it, dialectic is the process of sifting that provides the pathway to the principles for any [scientific] inquiry.31 Accordingly, he distinguishes clearly between, on the one hand, scientific demonstration (apodeixis) which proceeds by inference (syllogismos) from principles which, being self-evident as basic truths (prôta kai alêtha), and on the other the experimental dialectical inferences from merely plausible theses (endoxa).32 And Aristotle viewed this sort of proto-scientific dialectic as something not only proper but indeed even necessary and indispensable. The crux of Aristotelian dialectic lies in the cogency of argumentation of the format Both q ⇒ p and ~q ⇒ p, therefore p And this reasoning at once generalizes to: If for all i we have qi ⇒ p (where the qi constitute a manifold of exhaustive alternatives), then p. But Aristotle carries this idea one step further. He subscribes to the presumption that a careful canvas of all the alternative solutions that have proposed to a problem—the manifold of the endoxa, in short—effectively constitute an exhaustive survey, so that the previous principle applies. He writes: It is the craft (technê) of the dialecticians to examine the information on all sides ... For if we know that in some matter the endoxa yield a common conclusion [i.e., that each endoxon p entails some shared conclusion q, so that pi → q for all i], then we thereby have refuted the contradictory of this item [i.e., have thereby refuted ~q since q is now bound to obtain]. For refutation is the antithesis of demonstration so that what is antitheoretical to some proofs is thereby refuted.33

For if those endoxa are seen as spanning the whole range of what we are prepared to consider as the real possibilities, then certainty can be secured via the logical principle [(p → q) & (~p → q)] → q If q emerges from a dialectic that scrutinizes the consequence both of p and of not-p—that is, of each member of complete inventory of possibilities—

130

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

then we may clearly take it as something that obtains for sure. In sum, if those endoxa span the entire range of (realistic) possibilities, then dialectic argumentation in principle extracts (realistic) certainty from them. The upshot here is that, as G. E. L. Owen put it, for Aristotle dialectic is merely “a preliminary technique for clarifying and hardening those ideas in current use which they [i.e., the special sciences] can take over and put to more accurate work.”34 “Dialectic is peirastic (peirastikê = experimental) regarding those things about which philosophy is gnoristic (gnôristikê = knowledgeable).35 Whereas philosophy (like any science) proceeds on the basis of established fact dialectic we try matters out to see where those conflicting positions lead, looking to find the common ground here. Commonalities amidst conflict are a salient aim of the enterprise. To all visible intents and purposes we have it that in standard demonstrative reasoning truth is secured by inferences of the format p and p ├ q ∴ p By contrast, Aristotelian dialectic proceeds to elicit truth via reasoning in the format: q ⇒ p and ~q ⇒ p ∴ p The former is obtained by outright deduction from a previously secured premise (viz. p). But the latter proceeds by arguing to a commonality among conflicting alternatives—a process which requires no prior commitment whatsoever but only a survey of alternatives. And just here lies the reason why Aristotle has it that dialectic calls for arguing both sides of a case. For it is this feature which, as Aristotle sees it, renders dialectic peculiarly suited for establishing the elements (archai) or basic premises of scientific demonstration:36 Dialectics is useful regarding the basic principles [archai] of a science ... For the first principles [to prôta] are primary to all else. It is necessary to deal with them via the endoxa (the accepted plausibilities) of each issue. Just this belongs peculiarly and most appropriately to dialectic ... and points the way to the fundamental principles of all inquiries.37

In Aristotelian dialectic we “sweep the horizon” of plausible possibilities (endoxa) and show that something obtains irrespective of one’s commit-

131

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

ment to any particular alternative by identifying it as an implied commonality on all sides. (Note that if X and Y disagree on some matter what must be common to them to achieve such disagreement is exactly the definition of the terms involved!) It is heart and core of Aristotelian dialectic that a contention that holds in common across the manifold of issue-specific endoxa thereby qualifies for acceptance as true. And on this basis Aristotle has it that “dialectical arguments are those that reason from the endoxa (the generally accepted premises) to something [viz., a common conclusion].”38 Aristotelian proto-scientific dialectic thus involves two projects: (1) clarifying issues through a survey of the endoxa—the rival plausible answers to a question duly evaluated via their varying pro- and con-considerations, and thereupon (2) exploring (“experimentally” as it were) where these various alternatives lead by way of inferential consequences, and finally (3) accepting as an established given any commonalities that one encounters here. For in the end it is exactly those theses that are indifferent to the variation of doctrinal position in being shared by every alternative position on a particular subject that are qualified to count among the first principles of the subject at issue.39 It is this manner of dialectic which, as Aristotle sees it, renders the process uniquely fitted to determine the basic principles (archai) of a demonstrative science. For there will and must be certain commonalities to any disputed issues—namely the terms of reference that fix the issues under discussion.40 Accordingly, much of Topics Z and H is devoted to the role of definitions in dialectics of how to deal with definitions—seeing that they are (and must be) commonalities in coherent deliberations. And Physics IV 10–14 affords a particularly clear illustration of how these three stages of aporetics— namely opinion-compilation/discord-discernment/resolution analysis—will proceed in practice.41 Where Plato’s dialectic aimed at effecting distinctions and differences, Aristotle wanted to push matters further, namely to establish the principles (archai) in a science. Aristotle thus proceeded differently, surveying alternatives with a view to discerning commonalities and generally shared opinion—which in turn may of course lead to differentiation, distinction, and definition. For shared opinions will—or should—prove to be significant and decisive, namely in relation to the meaning of words—that is, in matters of definition. [While] demonstration proceeds from established (proven and demonstrated) premises, dialectical reasoning proceeds from opinions that are generally ac-

132

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

cepted [i.e., shared by all the discussants—all of the rival disputant on a given issue.]42

But what can this be, this material that is shared in common way all the rival disputants on an issue? The answer is simple: the meaning of the terms which of course explains the key role of definitionism dialectic. Instead an agreement on terms is a necessary condition for disagreement on substance. (We would not really be in disagreement in our claims about X’s unless by X’s we both mean one and the same thing.) For without a commonality of meaning there just is no dispute. And it is effectively on this basis that Aristotle maintains that: “Prior to Socrates dialectic was not yet at that time sufficiently developed to be able to examine [dialectical] contrariety and definition as separate issues.”43 And of course the prime candidate for agreement among the parties to any controversy will have to be the meaning of the terms of reference at issue. Just here lies the rationale of Aristotle’s insistence on that importance of securing commonalities among the rival positions of one’s opponent in dialectics.44 For the definitions of the key terms must be shared by proponent and opponent alike if their discussion is to establish contact. Definitions thus have an epistemological feature that is crucial for Aristotle in that they provide the fundamentals (archai) of a science, and they constitute a commonality in dialectic. And it is just this duality that renders dialectics uniquely suited to provide for the archai of the sciences. Against Plato’s idea of dialectic as a master science, Aristotle took the view of it as merely preparatory for authentically scientific work. For the principles of a science do not follow from something yet more fundamental, as the theses of a science do—for there is nothing more fundamental. Rather they obtain because they would on a presupposition-indifferent basis. Platonic dialectic aimed at fixing the boundaries between concepts via a separation (dihairesis) that put significant conceptual distinctions into place. And it sought this conceptual clarity in the interest of achieving a clear grasp of the ideas on whose basic fundamental truths becomes accessible. In this way, the Platonic dialectic was a dialectic of distinction aimed at the realization of ultimate truth. But Aristotle’s dialectic was in a way the very reverse of Plato’s. Where the Platonic dialectic aimed at ultimate truth, the Aristotelian dialectic aimed at basic or fundamental truth: the embryonic start rather than the full-grown finish of the cognitive enterprise. The aim of Aristotelian dialectic was to discern basic definitions and

133

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

postulations on whose basis a body of scientific understanding can be developed. And so, with Aristotle, too, the discernment of basic ideas—definitions and postulations—was also crucial of understanding with dialectic providing the needed instrument here. So in this regard he and Plato were agreed. But while for Plato the grasp of ideas through definitions was itself to the end, and goal of dialectic, for Aristotle it was only the starting point. Aristotle insists that demonstrative knowledge (apodexis) is unable to establish the nature (ti esti) or anything.45 This, as he sees it, is the proper work of dialectics. It is not the task of Aristotelian dialectics to justify the basic principles of the sciences—to argue for or to them—for then they would not be basic. And of course arguing from them is the work of the science itself.46 Rather, the work of Aristotelian dialectic is neither to validate these basic principles nor to employ them, but to reveal or identify them. (In point of validation they are self-evident or humanly inevitable).47 So it is not that dialectics is inferior to apodictics. To be sure, it cannot manage to do what apodictics can—viz., to afford cogent demonstrations. But then again apodictics cannot do the work of dialectics either: first principles are beyond its reach. Substantiation is indeed at issue in Aristotelian dialectic, but not demonstration. For Aristotle, science is based on demonstration. And here dialectic, its frailties notwithstanding, has a certain advantage. Thus Aristotle has it that one of the prime uses of dialectic is to establish the basic premises (foundations, ultimate premises) of the various special sciences. This sort of mission cannot, of course, be contained by (or within) the science itself.48 For since demonstration demands premises it follows that not everything can be demonstrated (without circularity at any rate). And here dialectic can come into its own seeing that it “points the way to the fundamental principles (archai) in all inquiries.”49 5. RETROSPECT: THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK DIALECTIC TO ARISTOTLE On the basis of the previous considerations, the history of Greek dialectic can be outlined in telegraphic brevity (and perhaps even in caricature) as follows, relying on the aforementioned specifications of ⇒, c, and ¸. On this basis two main factors characterize early Greek dialectic: • A course of discursive reasoning (as represented by ⇒).

134

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

• The interrelating of a thesis and its contradictory (p and ~p) The Megarians adopted a reductio-ad-absurdum analogous line of argumentation with respect to meaningfulness (instead of mere truth): p ⇒ ~p ∴ ¸p With Socrates it is truth/falsity that is the foreground rather than meaning: Socrates (Negative—or Refutatory—Dialectic) q ⇒ p and q → ~p ∴ ~p Argumentation of this format effectively destroys a thesis by exhibiting its self-contradictory character. This sort of dialectic merely establishes falsity. But Socrates moved beyond it. Thus in the Meno we have: Socrates (Ex nihilo—or Creative—Dialectic) c ⇒ p ∴ p (proof by extraction ex nihilo) However, Socrates also provided another positive version of dialectic— one that inspired by reductio ad absurdum reasoning in mathematics and running essentially as follows: Socrates (Positive Dialectic) As a variant if the preceding argumentation can manage to establish a thesis by showing that its negation self-destructs through inconsistency. ~p ⇒ p ∴ p (proof by indirection—moving from denial to concession) Here substantiation proceeds not ex nihilo, but actually from even less, namely a denial of the very thesis that is being argued for. Plato sought to find yet another, rather different positivity in negative dialectic.

135

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Plato (Rescue from inconsistency by distinctions) (p has been seriously maintained but has significant objections) ∴ (∃p′)(p′ & [p′ ⊂ p]). Here ⊂ is to mean “is a substantial part of” The idea is that with plausible falsehoods there is a kernel of truth which can be brought to view by means of distinctions. The key idea here is that of deploying a distinction to rescue a kernel of truth in a plausible falsehood. Aristotle (premise-less proof via a canvas of alternatives) Aristotle prepared to use dialectic to extract truth from a survey of alternatives. His procedure was based on the principle: q ⇒ p and ~q ⇒ p ∴ p Logicians came to call this format of reasoning a constructive dilemma. Here Aristotle insisted that “Dialectical alternatives must be exclusive and exhaustive: a yes or a no must always be applicable.”50 Such reasoning is effectively assumption free. Its point is that independently of whether or not you accept q, p is available either way. However, Aristotle extended this form of reasoning via two additional steps, first to the pluralized generalization: Throughout a range of exclusive and exhaustive alternatives qi we have: qi ⇒ p ∴ p and then having the manifold of alternatives he defined by the endoxa on the issue: For every issue-relevant endoxon e we have: e ⇒ p ∴ p The manifold of actually considered alternatives is presumed to be exhaustive. In effect this approach proceeds by seeing the endoxa as spanning the whole spectrum of real possibilities. And it is just this dialectical mode of reasoning that Aristotle views as key to the first principles of science.

136

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

*** As these deliberations indicate, Greek dialectics underwent an ongoing development in point of the “logical” modus operandi of the enterprise. The Megarians began matters with a dialectic of incoherence: yielding the negative result that something or other is untenable in point of meaningfulness. Socrates shifted such a nihilistic dialectic to a positive direction; something affirmative now emerges—even from a dialectic of refutation. Plato then added the idea of a presupposition-free dialectic where something positive emerges ex nihilo. And finally Aristotle adds the idea of a presupposition-indifferent dialectic where a certain conclusion emerges amidst the spectrum of alternative possibilities. Moreover, while Plato’s dialectic saw the clarification of ideas as and end in itself, Aristotle integrated the process into a broader theory of science as rational inquiry and gave dialectic a critical task here, namely the establishment of first principles. The history of Greek philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Aristotle accordingly saw dialectic as undergoing a steady process of transformation and thereby as assuming an ever more significant role. 7. STOICS AND EPICUREANS The Greek philosophers of the post-Aristotelian era divide into three main groups in their position with regard to dialectic. Some, mainly among the Epicureans, kept the rhetorical sector of Aristotle’s dialectic in the forefront and thereby saw it as addressing matters of plausibility and probability rather than knowledge properly speaking. On this basis the Pyrrhonian skeptics, who demanded rigorous science or nothing—and deemed the former unavailable—had only contempt and distrust for dialectic, and given to the very term a pejorative and derogatory sense. Others, mainly among the Stoics, defended dialectic against the skeptics51 and proposed to identify dialectic with rigorous reasoning at large— in two regards: (1) the determination of categorical truth, and (2) the determination of conditional truths relative to hypothetical givens. On this basis Posidonius of Apamea (b. ca. 135 BC), a Stoic of the middle period, characterized dialectic as aimed at the assessment of categorical truth and falsity,52 and distinguished it from demonstration which deals with inference and conditional truth relationships. (Logic—logikê—now came to be conceptualized as the broader enterprise that encompasses both.) Other Stoics divided logic into rhetoric and demonstration—that is, into persua-

137

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

sive and probative reasoning. They then sometimes identified dialectic with logic as a whole (rhetoric included) and sometimes as rigorously demonstrative reasoning alone. But either way, dialectic achieved a status of definite logical respectability in Stoic thought. In late antiquity, however, a demotion of dialectic to a level inferior and subordinate to logic became established, with dialectic relegated to the lesser status that Aristotle has envisioned for it in the context of plausible, sub-demonstrative reasoning. The Epicurean school inclined in this direction. Cicero’s Topica resembled Aristotle’s in its concern for the plausible answers to controversial questions.53 Cicero, however, under the influence of both Stoic and Epicurean inspirations, assumed a compromise position. He viewed dialectic as an ars judicandi designed to guide judgments in matters where certainty is not available and we must settle for plausibility and probability. (Topics, by contrast, he deemed a matter of an ars inveniendi, geared to determining the subjects and issues regarding which further inquiry can profitably be directed.) 8. PLOTINUS AND NEO-PLATONISM In keeping faith with Plato, Plotinus maintained that dialectic is not simply an instrument of philosophy but actually forms an integral part of it. He held that this must be so because the fundamental rationality of being enjoins a structural identity between the rational dialectic of intelligent thought (nous) and its processual unfolding in the ontology of being (ousía). Dialectic as such will accordingly be required for an adequate theory of reality. In this insistence that dialectic as something essential to and fundamental for philosophical deliberation Plotinus stood closer to Plato than to Aristotle. In subsequent neo-Platonism the dialectics of contrastive opposition played a prominent role. This pivots on the idea of a linking function between opposites. For example Knowledge as mediating between a knowing subject on the one hand and a known object on the other. or more ambitiously:

138

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

The Incarnate Christ as mediating between man on the one hand and God on the other. In contrast to Aristotle, this sort of neo-Platonic dialectic aimed more at mediation than at commonality. And in extending this perspective further, the contrastive triad of sub/standard/hyper or again of insufficiency/sufficiency/superfluity also came into prominence as a theme for dialectical mediation. Thus the “negative dialectic” of the neo-Platonist Proclus brought to particular prominence that contrast: nothing/something/everything (“the all-encompassing”).54 The dialectical interconnection of opposites plays a significant role in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, where it figures still in such opposite forms as being/nothing, unity/plurality, identity/difference, immanence/ transcendence, knowledge/ignorance, potentiality/causality, possibility/necessity, order/disorder. No such concept could be conceived or understood without an at least tacit grasp of its contrary. And the arrangements of reality represented a constant re-negotiation between such opposites in the affairs of their realization. Plato’s Timaeus has it that as cosmic rationality “persuades” matter to take on the form of a rationally structured lawful order. On this basis, neoPlatonism managed to forge a link between the dialectics of Plato and Aristotle and the metaphysics of reality. Dialectic now is not just a matter of rhetoric and epistemology, but of metaphysics as well. In due course this reality-conditioning view of dialectics came into prominence among the medievals and thereafter became a major force in German idealism. *** Modern discussions of dialectics often exhibit a lamentable indifference regarding exactly what is at issue here. What dialectic is; how it works; the procedural methodology of the ways and means of proceeding dialectically—all these are matters of unconcern. Instead of elucidating the process of dialectic itself, the discussion at issue often does not focus upon its results, addressing what it is supposed to accomplish and what useful work—or, as the case may be, mischief—can be wrought by proceeding dialectically. The ancients, to their credit, do not open themselves to this complaint. Plato provides ample examples of dialectical procedure—quite sufficient to indicate what he sees to be at issue. Aristotle explicitly develops a substantial theory of dialectic. And in generally identifying dialectic

139

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

with logic the Stoics unburdened themselves of the obligation to provide a separate account. Even as late as Kant we are given a detailed account of how dialectic functions and why it is fallacious. But with the post-Kantian moderns we only too often encounter exaltation or derogation of dialectic without entering into detail regarding just exactly what dialectical processes and procedures actually are. 9. THE SCHOOLMEN In Chapter IV of his De dialectica entitled “De artibus ac disciplines liber,” Boethius transmitted the idea of dialectic to the early Middle Ages in its substantially Stoic form as logic in toto. On this basis dialectics became, for the earlier medievals, the science of exact reasoning at large, and thereby encompassed both matters of language as used in formulating propositions and matters of inference as used in relating propositions to one another. Thus seen as a science, dialectic stood in contrast to mere rhetoric as a linguistic art. Dialectic consolidated its elevated status with the revival of Aristotelian teachings in the 12th century, and among various schoolmen it eventually came to embrace and encompass just about the whole of logic. Some, however, were more reserved and St. Thomas was ambivalent. On the one hand, he followed Aristotle in contrasting dialectic with demonstration. On the other hand, he accepted it as a part of logic, albeit not the logic of demonstration but of mere plausibility. Nevertheless, the very mode of exposition of St. Thomas’ magnus opus, the Summa Theologica, is dialectical in structure: posing disputed questions and assessing the pros and cons of various plausible-appearing answers. And this general policy of position assessment by a systemic pro/con survey of competing views was to become a standard practice in European philosophy until the Renaissance when this sort of dialectic shifted from philosophy proper to the realm of rhetoric.55 And because Averroes insists in his tract On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy that dialectical reasoning from plausible suppositions has a constructive role in theology whenever statements that are not certain but merely suggestive or figurative are under consideration. For many medievals, however, dialectics was in effect logic at large, the science of demonstration through which rational inquiry sought veritatis seu falsitatis discretio.56 And as such dialectic constituted a key part of the institutional trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic (i.e., logic). Thus

140

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

while the medieval treatment of “dialectic” forms an important chapter in the history of logic, a considerable part of this discussion can be left aside in the context of the history of dialectic as traditionally understood in its relation to specifically philosophical methodology.57 Many scholastics, however, viewed dialectic as the art of reasoning in general, the whole of logic—and accordingly spoke simply of logic, with the term dialectic falling into disuse. This tightening linkage of dialectic to logic, rendered the traditional link of discourse and rhetoric in danger of being broken. This was, ultimately averted alike by the widening appreciation of the Aristotelian corpus reinforced by the instructional embedding of disputation in the burgeoning university system. Insofar as dialectic is a feature of the actual practice of academic disputation, it continued to play an important role in higher education throughout the middle ages.58 Along with grammar and logic dialectics constituted one member of the medieval trivium—the basic liberal arts of the academic curriculum. The schoolmen saw dialectic as a two sided venture—an ars et via docendi that constituted a mode of rational investigation and a procedure which could, in practice, serve to teach people the process of rational inquiry. It represented the pursuit of knowledge through dialogic exchange of the sort typified by medieval academic disputations. The aim was to evaluate the probative credentials of various contentions and thereby to serve as an instrument of inquiry—a touch-stone for assessing the truth of things. In this way Boethius of Dacia (ca. 1230–1284) saw dialectic as traversing a via media between actual knowing (scientia) and blank ignorance (ignorantia),59 based not on proper reasons (rationes propriale) but on mere endoxa (rationes communes et probabiles). And as late as John Buridan (d. 1358) and William of Ockham (d. ca. 1348), in commenting on Aristotle’s Topics discussed his “dialectical syllogisms” under the title argumentatio dialectica with its establishing of a “plausible conviction” (persuasio probabilis) based on the exploitation of endoxa (opinio).60 And in the same vein late medieval neo-Scholastics such as Johannes Versor (d. 1482) drew from Aristotle’s Topics the idea of a logic of verisimilitude/probability dealing in plausible opinions, to contract with a more rigorously secured scientia demonstrative.61 Among the medievals, then, alike Muslims (Averroes) and Christians (Albert the Great), dialectic, following Aristotle, was generally seen as a method of inquiry which seeks to answer our questions on the basis of “probabilities” rather than certainties, of mere plausibility rather than cer-

141

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

tain truth. On such an approach, dialectic belongs not to science proper, but to science light, so the speak. Under the influence of Cicero and Boethius, the medievals increasingly saw the disputational dialectic of pro and con as a means of addressing problems and resolving questions in theology and practical philosophy.62 And in general they—and especially those who identified dialectic with logic—saw dialectic as a method of thinking in philosophy and not as a substantive part of the subject. But its very prominence created problems, and as dialectics became increasingly identified with rational inquiry dialectician became a term of theological derogation for those who sought to make reason and logic the ruling standard for everything—theology included.63 However, with the humanists of the 15th century, the ancient views regarding dialectic enjoyed a resurgence. Thus the Dialecticae disputatines of Laurentius Valla (c. 1402–1457) compares logic with the issues of Aristotle’s Topics, as does Rudolph Agricola (ca. 1444–1485), whose De inventione dialecticae returns the matter to its Aristotelian basis with the declaration that the work of dialectics relates to merely probable matters by way of weighing the conflicting arguments—and the rival authorities—that speak pro and con regarding the rival answers to a debatable question.64 10.

KANT AND THE DIALECTICAL MISJUDGMENT

By the time of Descartes with his quest for certainty and his contemptuous rejection of mere plausibility based on the informed opinions, the critics of dialectics won a decisive victory. And with the Renaissance’s rejection of scholasticism, European thinkers sought to a Novum Organon and dialectic became downgraded as fallacious, erroneous, and mis-reasoning (the realm of the Kantian Trugschlüsse). As Kant saw it, the work of reason is never done: it never achieves the completed totality of rational understanding which dialectical reason mistakenly claims to provide. And so for Kant analytic is, in effect, right reasoning and sound logic while dialectic is erroneous reason and mistaken logic—in matters of premature conclusionjumping. Reason, as Kant saw it, is subject to a critique because its project is caught up in a dialectical process where question succeeds question because every answer itself engenders further questions, thereby precluding the comprehensively adequate systematization of knowledge which reason demands. Paradoxical though it seems, reason is not altogether reasonable

142

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

in its demands, and opens itself to criticism on this basis, a circumstance that provided the rationale for Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. With Kant, dialectic is a pseudo-logic of error: a process of reasoning that brings to light the flaws and faults of the mis-reasoning in which we become enmeshed in taking the mis-step of letting reason go beyond its proper role in taking its own (self-postulated) instrumentalities as actual objects (given realities), thereby endowing something of merely subjective validity with objective reality. Kant accordingly saw dialectics as a matter of revealing the pathology of reason seeing that reasoning in abstraction from the sensuous condition under which alone—as Kant sees it—a knowledge of objects is possible: [Such reasoning will] always be a logic of illusion, that is, be dialectical. For abstract reason yields nothing whatever about the content of our cognition, but merely sets the formal conditions of their accordance with the understanding, which do not characterize objects and instead are quite indifferent to them. ... For this reason we have chosen to designate this part of logic Dialectic, in the sense of a critique of dialectical illusion.65

The idea of a “transcendental dialectic” is one of the centerpieces of Kant’s critical philosophy and the section of this title embodies some one-third of his Critique of Pure Reason. But for Kant, dialectic is a “logic of illusion” bringing to light the error arising through “a natural and inevitable deception that rests on subjective [i.e., supported by the mind itself] principles which pit themselves up in an objective [i.e., inherent in the existing realities with which the mind is concerned]”.66 Such illusory logic prevails where one cannot settle matters convincingly with either a yes or a nay and arises whenever we inappropriately reify (hypostatize) as an actual object that exist in reality some item which in fact is a mere contrivance of thought. We are led not merely into error but into actual self-contradiction and antinomy. The confusions and contradictions that surface through such a dialectic are only of a negative, error-revelatory-bearing. And since securing truth is not just a matter of avoiding error, dialectic just is not a proper instrumentality for inquiry into the truth of things and the very term dialectical stands for deception and delusion. As Kant saw it, dialectical thinking is thus an exercise in mis-reasoning, the product of a fallacy—the fallacy of illicit reification, inappropriate hypostatizations that arises by treating as an object (thing or substance) something that is a mere idea. Dialectic—the systematic study of this phenomenon—thus deals with “a natural and unavoidable illusion [of human

143

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

thought] which arises when subjective principles which impose themselves upon us as objects.”67 Accordingly, in dialectical situations there is a reciprocal intertwining of thesis and antithesis. Both T ⇒ A and A ⇒ T will now obtain, where A is effectively not-T. Since in standard logic the former relationship (T ⇒ not-T) means that not-T obtains, and the latter relationship (not-T ⇒ T) means that T obtains, we arrive at the self-contradiction: T and not-T. The situation that results is thus one of reciprocal annihilation, there being just as strong an argument for affirming as for denying a claim about the non-entity at issue. In dialectical situations we have a literal self-contradiction that betokens the fact that our theoretical reasoning cannot reach beyond the realm of experience into an experience-transcendent realm of things in themselves. For Kant, dialectic is thus merely a failed logic of error—specifically error that results when pure thought outreaches itself in seeking entry on its own basis into the domain of actual reality and objective fact.68 For Kant, then, dialectic is, in effect, logical thinking gone awry. He carries the conception back to Plato’s conception of the Sophists as a matter of pointless verbal gymnastic. In particular, he sees classical metaphysics as plunged into this all-destructive quicksand through the reification or hypostatization of expansibility inaccessible totalities such as my self (the ego) on the same total of my experiences, or reality-at-large (the universe) as the totality of existing things. When we endorse claims regarding such problematic “objects” we fall into contradictions of the sort typified by Kant’s antinomies where what we say either way, positively or negatively alike, can be argued for with equal soundness—or in fact unsoundness. The result is an over-reachingly “transcendental” dialectic where nothing can be resolved because the issues are such that equally cogent arguments be given on both sides of the issues. We are carried back to the destructive negativism of the Megarian dialectic and the cognitive catastrophe of Zeno’s paradoxes. 11.

FICHTE (1775–1854) AND SCHELLING (1762–1814)

The interest and to some extent the achievement of J. G. Fichte and F. W. T. Schelling was to restore dialectic to the place of pride to which it had aspired in Greek antiquity. They sought to rescue dialectic from Kantian condemnation and turn it once more into something positive and productive.

144

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

One important eventual attempt to rescue dialectic from the strictures of Kant was Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay on eristic dialectic.69 Schopenhauer, however, approached the issue from the angle of logic in specific, rather than that of philosophical methodology at large. Here the earlier post-Kantians had taken a different line. Fichte in effect turned the Kantian picture of philosophical dialectic upside down. For him, dialectical reasoning does not mark a separating boundary between thought and reality but rather a joining linkage between these two domains; it explores a boundary that does not so much separate as adjoin. With Kant the only reality there is for us—the only reality with which we finite intelligences can have any cognitive contact—is the reality at issue in our thought: the reality that we ourselves construct in the course of thinking of reality “in itself” (as such)—apart from the reality of our appropriate thinking—is an unalterable function with which we can have dealings. And dialectic is the realm of illusion and delusion that arises when we treat this unalterable irreality as part of our domain of knowledge. Dialectic, in sum, represents a domain of illusion. Fichte would have none of this. For him, dialectic is the very process by which we construct that one and only view of reality as one can ever achieve: it affords the means by which thought at once engenders and devises its view of reality. Dialectic, in short, is the process of rational inquiry that we all use—not just as individuals, but as a community of rational investigators—in determining the truth which (in virtue of being just that—namely truth) gives us our account of the real. Communally understood dialectic is a subject-transcendent (objective) process. The dialectical interchange through which one’s personal instructions-to-think (one’s “theses”) encounter and respond to the apposed difficulties and objections (the “antitheses”) arising in the intersection of oneself with others is the pathway to objectivity and rational certainly. And so the schema thesis → antithesis → synthesis formed a centerpiece of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, and for him the corresponding dialectic provides a pathway not to Kantian delusion but to certified truth. Fichte maintained that in seeking to attune our concepts to reality we are constantly faced with their inherent inadequacy. The fit between reality and concepts is always imperfect—a spade is never just exactly a spade:

145

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

there is always more to it than that. Every conceptualization of reality is in some way imperfect, and every aspect of reality A bumps up against the not-a which at once differs from (and yet serves to define) it: omnia determinatio est negatio. We must accept that reality is defined through a unity of opposites. Neither concord (unity) nor discord (multiplicity) is an ultimate principle for the mind’s dealing with reality: the two are locked in a complex union which dialectic seeks to unravel without ever quite succeeding in the process. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre accordingly endeavored to rescue dialectic from Kantian negativism, transmuting it from a device for refutation to one of investigation, converting it from the negativity of exclusion to the positivity of inclusion in matters of cognition. He geared dialectic to truth, and proposed to investigate this via commonplaces, propositions reminiscent of Aristotelian endoxa that are conceded universally without contradiction by anyone.70 The Principle of Identity, “A is A” served him as a paradigm example here. Everything is just exactly itself: self-positing is the crux. And from here Fichte moved on to the Law of Contradiction “A is not-A.” Presumably we are then to go on to “A is B” where B is something that is more informative than the merely trivial A and yet different from the falsity not-A. Accordingly, with Fichte dialectic was once more to be a methodology of philosophical inquiry rather than refutation.71 His approach roots in the ideas of self-development, broadly understood and consisting of three steps, corresponding to the just-validated dichotomy: • Self-realization, self-identification, self-assertion. This is reflected in the logical Principle of Identity, A is A. Here the item at issue (self, ego) posits or constitutes itself. • Self-differentiation, self-contrast, self-separation. This is reflected in the logical Principle of Contradiction, A is not non-A. Here the item at issue (self, ego) posits or constitutes a contrasting, self differentiated other. • Self-development through interactive engagement between the self and the self-differentiated other. This is reflected in the manifold of item-descriptive truth of the format A is B. Here the agent at issue becomes self-limiting through disfunction by interacting with and relating to that contrasting other.

146

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 2 FICHTEAN DIALECTIC Item constitution (Thesis)

Item contrast (Antithesis) Rational elaboration (Synthesis)

This self-oriented tripartite process yields Fichte’s basic dialectical principle as conveyed in the striking (though not particularly helpful) formula: “The Ego posits a limited ego in opposition to a limited non-ego.” As Fichte saw it there is a process of constructive development at work here in dialectic, properly understood. At every level of consideration for natural particulars to human instruments to human societies to the universe at large. By speaking of items rather than egos, one can delineate Fichte’s overall dialectic in the cyclic manner depicted in Display 2. To Fichte’s mind, such a process pivots on the triad: of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, a triad of which he was the first to speak in this general context. But clearly dialectic is now no longer a matter of dialogue or discussion but is transmuted into an instrument for the analytical development of thought. Schelling further extended this line of thought. With both Fichte and Schelling the transcendental ego, the thinking I, is at the center of the stage. But while Fichte focused on how the I thinks (i.e., the concepts at issue) Schelling focused upon what the I thinks (the realities its seeks to address). Fichte saw dialectics as addressing the developing of knowledge; Schelling as addressing its developed results: with Fichte mind conceived of reality, with Shelling mind constituted it. Fichte’s idealism is one of process, Schelling’s is one of product. Where Fichte held thought to reveal reality, Schelling sought to infuse reality with thought.72 But both alike saw dialectic as a crucial means for relating the two. But with Schelling that knower comes into the background in relation to what is known.

147

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

12. SCHLEIERMACHER (1768–1834) Friedrich Schleiermacher was another German idealist who took a view of dialectic more favorable than Kant. For even as for the Stoics, “dialectic” was simply logic in general, so for Schleiermacher, it was simply the process of philosophizing (of ars philosophandi: die Kunst zu philosophieren).73 Schleiermacher gave five series of lectures on dialectic at the University of Berlin during 1811–31.74 In these lectures he sought to restore dialectic to the place of pride as the characteristic and proper method of philosophy. He envisioned for it the role assigned to it in Plato’s Republic and characterizes dialectic as “the manifold of the (procedural) principles of the act of philosophizing,” in sum, the philosophical method par excellence. Dialectic, he wrote, “contains the very principles of philosophy.”75 Given that natural philosophy forms part of philosophy at large, dialectic is thus a matter of the methodology of rational inquiry in general and überhaupt, the “organon of all the sciences.” And so in much of post-Kantian German idealism dialectic became the methodology of philosophy (at least) or even Wissenschaft (at large): the rational advance of inquiry from an achieved stage of development to its successors. Given this synoptic view of the matter, it is not surprising that Schleiermacher never gave any definite view of how dialectic works as a precisely defined process. For him, dialectic was the methodology (organon) of cognitive development at large which eventuated in a systemic—or, as he says, “symphonic”— coordination within the community of inquirers at large in a way that assures the objective cogency of their findings. Like Hegel, Schleiermacher rejected the idea of a form/content separation in matters of cognition. He maintained, contrary to Kant, that constitutive and regulative principles could not be distinguished and separated from one another. And he insisted that: What have been called metaphysics and logic in modern time are nothing other than two parts of dialectic [incorrectly treated] in isolation from each other and, for this reason, robbed of their proper life.76

Dialectic is to serve as a remedy for addressing the limitations of everyday language which is not adequate for the characterization of deeper truths. Despite the obstacles created by an imperfect language, a properly managed dialectical inquiry can nevertheless, enable thought to achieve greater accuracy with imperfect concepts.

148

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

However, Schleiermacher sharply rejected Hegel’s idea of a strictly logical dialectic of pure thought and rarefied logic alone. Rejecting any sort of form/content separation, he refused to countenance the idea of “pure,” experience-abstractive thinking and saw it as the work of dialectic to adjust our concepts to the realities of experience.77 He thus viewed that thought and reality are coordinate in a dialectically interactive relationship where each coordinates with the other through language via the principle that truth is adequate to reality (adaequatio ad rem). But here reality is in the driver’s seat and thought’s pursuit of truth must accept its role as second fiddle.78 In this regard Schleiermacher was less of an idealist than Fichte and Schelling who effectively rejected the idea of a reality known but nowise constituted by thought.79 13. HEGEL (1770–1831) In the evolution of transcedentalistic philosophy in post-Kantian German idealism, dialectic underwent a transformation. After all, if the real is rational, and if rational deliberation proceeds along the lines of a dialectical process, then it becomes plausible to accept the mistaken to see dialectic not as a process of thought in thought—in experience and reasoning—but rather as a process of change and development in nature. Discursive dialectic here gives way to natural-process dialectic, a transformation vividly exemplified in G. W. F. Hegel. But regrettably, the story of Hegelian dialectic is murky. There are just about as many views of Hegelian dialectic as there are scholars who endeavor to explain it.80 Matters have so evolved that any exposition of Hegel’s dialectic is less a matter of textual explanation than one of conjectural interpretation. For the reality of it is that, as one recent author puts it, the generations of scholarship devoted to explaining what Hegel said “has not led, so far, to any satisfactory result.”81 Overall, Hegel contemplated two versions of dialectic. On the one hand stood the narrower version of the highly formalized dialectic of his Logic, whose aim was to provide a theoretical rationale for the Kantian categories. This version of dialectic is “the cognitive revelation of the lawfulness inherent in the very nature of thought.”82 Such a logical dialectic is in the first instance a theory of thought that addresses the interconnections and interlinkages of concepts in the analytical development of their meaning (in this regard not unlike the procedure of Fichte). The basic idea could be depicted in terms of a relationship of conceptual involvement

149

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

in terms of the formula: “In the endeavor to think clearly and cogently about X one will be driven to having to take account of Y.” This dialectic elucidates the relationship of ideas, with dialectical negation as a crucial factor in developing distinctions. On this approach rigorous thinking on any matter pushes the issue towards the boundary which separates it from its negative so as to make it possible to see the original issue in a clearer light. Hegel’s dialectic holds that in the elucidation of a concept we are inevitably led a contrasting understanding that brings its limits to light and thereby raises our understanding of the concept at issue to a higher level of accuracy and adequacy. Hegel accordingly praised Plato’s Parmenides as “probably the greatest masterpiece of ancient dialectic.” Supplementarily and in contrast to his logical dialectic, Hegel also contemplated an ontological dialectic of historical developments. Hegel carried the idea that truth is correspondence to fact to its logical conclusion of insisting on the structural identity of rational thought with that of reality itself. And so if a process of dialectics is to coordinate our thought to the truth of things, then a corresponding dialectic of natural process must represent the nature of reality itself even as the equation (obviously a thought-object) portrays the circle or ellipse that it represents. And so as thought unfolds dialectically, so reality itself must exhibit a dialectical process of development. Thus in the end Hegel sees the dialectical point of view as one’s only avenue towards an adequate grasp on the nature of reality. For him dialectical progress is not only a means for the comprehension of reality but a formative aspect of the reality itself that is being comprehended. On this basis, Hegel extended dialectic beyond the category-dialectic of the logic to the more full-blooded developmental dialectic of his historico-cultural concerns. For in moving beyond the formalistic dialectic of the Logic Hegel also envisioned a more loosely construed dialectic of opposed and conflicting tendencies whose working out over time characterizes the development of thought in human communities. And so he ultimately moved on to a dialectical dynamic of development as forms of historical processuality. For Fichte, our conception of things arises from the activity of personal thought: First comes the I of subjective awareness, then the objective other lying beyond our own control and then the complex reality arising through situations between the two. Here the agent of developmental dialectic is the activity of a single agent, the transcendental. With Hegel, by contrast, thought and reality are coordinate and co-equal in the larger scheme of things and it is through their coordination within a culturally formed body

150

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

of knowledge that our conception of reality emerges. The historical unfolding of the Hegelian dialectic tells a story not dissimilar from Plato’s view in the Timaeus of thought and reason (“Geist”) endeavoring to tame, domesticate and civilize the recalcitrant reality of the world’s material. And so, dialectic figures not only in Hegel’s logic-geared metaphysics but in his theory of history as well. For Hegel extended the idea of dialectics from thought and discourse to the realm of natural and social processes. The interplay of the forces and propensities at work in nature and society—rather than of theoretical thesis and counter-thesis—came to the fore in Hegel’s conception of dialectical processes. However because the real is rational, a coordinating and correlation between thematical and developmental processes was conserved, so that Hegel’s dialectic remained fundamentally rational in its orientation. Accordingly, the difference is not as large as it might seem on first thought. Thus Hegel writes the “The historical succession of philosophical systems is one and the same as the logico-deductive order in the determination of the Idea.”83 While Hegel sometimes talks as though dialectic were simply the general method of philosophizing—in his own philosophy at any rate—he generally means something more grandiose by the term, namely the rationally determinate (Geist-managed) developmental process through which Existence/Reality (das Seiende) unfolds over time with historical necessity. After all, the self-definition of anything is a matter of distinguishing and differentiating it from that which it is not, and in this mode of “negative reason” dialectic can be productive.84 As such, it is inevitably developmental because any given mode of conception—of explanatory understanding—leads to inconsistency and contradiction unless and until qualified and reconfigured through inclusion within a larger framework of understanding.85 As Hegel put it: Everything about us in this world may be viewed as a product of Dialectic. For we must realize that everything finite, rather than being stable and ultimate, is changeable and merely transient. Just this is what we mean by the Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, implicitly encompassing more than what it is, is forced by and its own immediate or natural being so as to turn suddenly into its opposite.86

Hegel thus saw dialectic as tracking an unfolding process alike in thought (discursively) and in nature (developmentally). Such a step from cognitive to ontological dialectic is pivotal for the philosophy of Hegel, which sees

151

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

dialectic as being concurrently and conjointly a process in the development of knowledge and in the development of the universe itself—the reality which includes the evaluation of “Absolute Thought.” For Hegel’s predecessors, and Fichte in particular, dialectic was an instrument of inquiry— for the development of rational thought about the real. With Hegel, however, an insistence on the correspondence of true thought with its object dualized dialectic into a process of information that also yields a conveniently ontological and epistemological account of reality. The Hegelian dialectic is, in effect, the entire process of inquiry, construed two-sidedly, on the one hand in progressively constituting and reconstituting our view of the world in cognition with, on the other hand, the world as presented in the world-picture that results. It is thus the complex composite of (as it were) the map and the terrain it maps conjoined in due coordination. Dialectic accordingly deals developmentally with the structure of reality conjointly in its cognition and ontological manifestation. And developmentally this process comes to an ever more adequate and improved revision increasingly approximating the Absolute Idea towards which the actually realized situation is tending and, as it were, striving. The sequential pattern of such a specifically dialogic process is of course readily generalized to the idea of any cyclically repetitive process of production where the end product of each cycle furnishes the starting ingredient for the next interaction. The work of Hegelian dialectic is thus two-sided, representing a parallelism in the development not just of a cognition of reality but coordinatively of the very reality that is cognized.87 This parallelism is encapsulated in the thesis that the real is realist—that the rational structure which inquiry brings to light in its study of reality is at the same time a characteristic of the structure of that reality itself. Just as a printing press gives physical realization to the cognitive content of a text, so physical reality at once encapsulates and encodes a cognitive. Hegel thus saw dialectic as a process of rationally enforced convergences of our inquiry-based question-resolution on the one hand and the world’s actual facts on the other—a convergence in which the potential disparity between thought and truth is ultimately overcome in a unity identification that constitutes absolute knowledge.88 For Hegel, dialectic is the process through the operations of reason come to be manifest in reality. Since truth corresponds to reality (an adaquatio ad rem) this correspondence manifests itself two-sidedly—both in the character of adequate thought and in the rational investigation of na-

152

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

ture that such thought portrays. And just as natural reality has an historical and developmental character, so this is trusted by the cognitive proceedings of the thinking beings whose operations—from one part of view— represents the strings of natural reality to come to cognitive terms with itself. Understood in this way, dialectic is the interactive process thought which reality comes to be self-comprehended (and this spiritualized or rationalized). As such dialectic is a two-sided (epistemically cognitive and ontologically dialectical) process. Thus as Hegel sets matters in the Encyclopedia, dialectic makes manifest two sides of the same coin: that of actual occurrence as reflected in the parallel duality of physical (material) and explanatory (intellectual) process. For him, dialectic is a two sided process that is at once epistemological and ontological, because—so he holds—the studies of explanatory understanding in the development of knowledge simply link the structure of causality in the ontological development of natural reality. Accordingly, Hegel was in effect the founding father of what the 20th century has come to know as “intelligent design” theory: for him physical reality is the material encoding of a fundamental structure of rationality in that, for Hegel, the structure of explanatory thought in rational inquiry and the structure of causal eventuation in the development of nature are simply one and the same structure. Thought encodes physical reality as a map encodes a physical terrain. In any proper causal explanation of events the structure of evolving understanding and the structure of evolving occurrence are parallel. In both cases alike that which is (the natural condition of things) and that which is not (i.e., not yet) come to terms in yielding an as yet unrealized result which, overall manifests a process of development (“synthesis”) in which these several stages (“moments”) are linked together in creating a new status quo, which itself simply sets the stage for the next interaction of the same developmental pattern. In nature, as in the development of knowledge, there is always the self-transcendences at issue when things pull themselves forward by their own bootstraps: their development is a matter of self-preservation—a process in which things change (as they must) not only for the sake of preserving something of themselves at the next stage of development so that there is at once sublation (change) and continuation (preservation), at work in the dual sense of the German expression “sich aufheben.” With Plato and to a lesser extent Aristotle, dialectic was an instrument of inquiry, by looking at what can be said on both of the opposed sides of a question we can realize a judicious intermediation that is apt to be more

153

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

faithful to the truth of the matter than either of those conflicting extremes. Thus ancient dialectic is a matter of the search for truth between the extremes of opposition set by an either-or. With Hegel, on the other hand, we have a position that wants it both ways—that strives for a (potentially unrealizable) both-and. As Gadamer puts it: “For Hegel, the point of dialectic is that precisely by pushing a position to the point of self-contradiction it [the dialectical impetus] makes possible the transition to realizing a higher truth which embraces both sides of that contradiction.”89 This idea of conceptual fluidity casts a shadow of doubt across the entire project of Hegel’s Logic. For the difficulty of a dialectical logic inheres is the very aspiration of the project. It seeks to use dialectics to define the categories of thought. But the very idea of such an inventory is problematic given the open-endedness of the questioning process. (For instance one can ask about X’s, or people’s ideas about X’s, about the relation of X’s to Y’s, and aspects of these relationships, etc. etc.) Moreover, Hegel viewed the process of dialectical development as having an inner logic through which the transition from one phrase to the next is developmentally or (perhaps better) historically necessitated. It is this aspect of the Hegelian dialectic that has become at once the most influential (via Marx) and the most sharply criticized. For as Hans-Georg Gadamer has noted, Wilhelm Dilthey and others (Jonas Cohn, Nicolai Hartmann) object that the system of relationships of logical concepts [in Hegel’s Logic] is more various and involves more distinctions than those admitted by Hegel himself, who forces matters into the monolithically unified level of his own dialectical progression.90

And as critics of Hegel from Trendelenburg onwards have rightly complained, notwithstanding his insistence on logical necessity in dialectic, this very feature is prominently absent in the dialectical expositions that Hegel himself exfoliates in his Logic where he envisions a somewhat mystical existential dialectic in which existence is first posited as “pure”— nondescript and uncategorized—Being. The very nondescriptness of such Being assimilates it to irreality, to non-Being or Nothing. (Nihil sunt nullae proprietates, as the medieval doctrine had it). But in projecting this contrast of Being/Nothing the rudiments of differentialism are set into play with the result that Becoming centers upon the scene. In developing features that heretofore were not (i.e., had non-Being), a fusion of Being and Non-Being is set in play in a way that constitutes Becoming. Hence we

154

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

have it that Being involucrates Non-being. But with these two factors in play one is bound to consider their relationship and ask how it is that the item has come to be rather than not and this confronts the issue of Becoming. In such a manner Hegel’s Logic envisions a rational dialectic that eventually brings all of the categories of thought into play. In a way the Hegel’s logical dialectic is a study of the ways in which concepts can interrelate and interact to produce others.91 This rather mysterious view of things made the Hegelian dialectic into something of a blank canvas upon which later thinkers painted very different pictures to their own liking. On this basis, Hegel’s logical dialectic is no less (but also no more!) than a venture in exploring the conceptual geography of fundamental concepts—or a grammar of thought, to invoke a different analogy. It is a point of view for looking at familiar communicative-machinery in a systematic way.92 Yet one can certainly find points of complaint about Hegel’s logical dialectic. T. W. Adorno, for example, reproved him for taking Being as his starting point, instead of Something.93 (But perhaps Adorno seems to have forgotten the scholastic principle that ens et unum convertuntur). More serious, perhaps, is the fact that the move from Being to Becoming invites a change of condition that demands a reference to time, thereby moving beyond the sphere of logic proper into that of metaphysics. The charge that the Hegelian category-dialectic is too bloodlessly formalistic for its own good is as old as that theory itself. Emblematic of its nature is the objection of Chalybaeus to Hegel that a reconciliation between thesis and antithesis, affirmation and negation can never be effected by purely logical means alone but requires a substantive addition—a specification of the purposive aim or teleos in whose light the recommendation is to be effected.94 Again Eduard von Hartman objected95 that the result of combining conflicting theses is not a deeper truth but rather the mere vacuity of mutual annihilation.)96 On this basis, the history of philosophy, or as Hegel sees it—the story of unfolding of the effects of human inquiry into the ways of the world— tracks a dialectical development of thought to ever greater sophistialism. As established knowledge clashes with new discovery and deeper reflections, destabilized conflict and contradictions emerge. Some thinkers condemn Hegel’s dialectic for welcoming inconsistency. But this is mistaken. For as McTaggart rightly observed, “so far is the [Hegelian] dialectic from denying the law of contradiction, that it is especially based on it. The contradictions are the cause of the dialectical process.”97

155

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

The circumstance that dialectic development issues on contradictions and conflicts was seen by Hegel not (as with Kant) as a token of inappropriateness and fallacy but rather as a goad to improvement. Hegel’s dialectic thus revels in paradox. As he sees it, what Zeno’s paradoxes of motion show is that the concept of motion is in its inherent nature logically selfcontradictory: it clashes with the demands of logic. But the lesson he proposed to draw from this is not “So much the worse for the concept of motion” but rather “So much the worse for logic.” Seeing that motion is a reality, a “fact of life,” its conflict with (classical) logic established the bankruptcy of that enterprise and validates the need for a new, “dialectical” logic that is prepared to take contradictions in stride and come to terms with them in a meaningful and informative way. Dialectic is, in effect, to constitute the new logic that is able to transcend the shortcomings and deficiencies of the old. Hegel accordingly expanded the idea of dialectic from an instrumentality for discourse and inquiry to one of progress development at large. Whenever earlier thinkers dwelt upon the model of controversy Hegel transmuted it into a mechanism for characterizing processive development at large. For him there is a cycle of dialectic interaction between our concepts of things and our understanding of laws. Conceptions, too, are fluid: the concepts through which our grasp of the world reality is mediated are themselves works in progress subject to ongoing revision as the advance of science proceeds. As Hegel saw it, every distinction we draw in the interests of a cognitive domestication of reality is imperfect. Even the distinction crucial to modern philosophy between subject and object must be overcome. The real categories of thought cannot be fixed in isolated separation, they are “fluid” and reciprocally interpenetrating. Not the analysis of distinction but the integration of synthesis in the setting of a dialectical engagement is the proper instrumentality of adequate understanding.98 From Aristotle to the early Hegel the idea prevailed that the categories of thought represent a priori the structure of reality as best discourse can manage to represent it. With Hegel’s late work the idea emerged to view that the categories were fluid and represented no more than a work in progress. They cannot possibly attain the ultimate definiteness by which the work of rational inquiry is completed. The Hegelian program proposes to see the history of philosophy— “philosophizing as a whole” if you will—as constructing a superphilosophy, a vast artifice of individual chapters in an overall account in which the totality of speculative thinking can be accommodated. Here logic is of no

156

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

help: logically all that p and not-p yield at a deeper truth but a confused mess. So logic can’t help. Can dialectic come to the rescue? Hegel doubtless thought so. As he saw it, the dialectically structured succession of intellectual and cultural state-of-the-art stages in the ever-changing panorama of the thought of the day makes for the march of “spirit” along the highway of history. Destabilization through opposition succeeded by accommodating revision—the “synthesis of opposites”—was taken to constitute the driving engine of change on human cognition. With Hegel the whole of human history is characterized by one overall developmental dialectic whose successive phases mark a progress from tyranny, slavery, subordination and anonymity to the personal autonomy of a state-of-law constitutionalism where free and equal citizens enjoy the privilege of rational selfdetermination within a socially integrated whole. McTaggart’s assessment of the Hegelian dialectic ended on the decidedly negative note that the Heglian dialectic is “a general principle which can be carried into particulars or used as a guide to action only in a very few [special] cases, and in those [only] with great uncertainty.”99 He seems to have been led into this misjudgment by an overly narrow focus on the logico-categorical dialectic. The broader process, the Hegelian historicocategorical dialectic, affords a fertile conceptual standpoint which, properly implemented, can throw substantial light in a considerable variety of developmental processes. 14. HERBART (1776–1841)100 Herbart’s Method of Respects (Methode der Beziehungen) is predicated on the idea that all of our concepts are experientially grounded and thereby subject to perspectival limitations that engender contradictions in the application that must be overcome by a continuously renegotiated synthesis between the original concept and the limitations that its applications bring to light. Revision in the light of ever-growing experience is the crux of such a process of conceptual dialectic.101 Accordingly, he saw the survey of rival opinions and the considerations that speak for and against them as the proper and appropriate method for addressing philosophical issues. With Herbart, dialectic provided a format for the development of concepts that makes it an instrument of elucidation and explanation in the development of ideas. Herbart thus envisioned and to some extent sketched out an approach to the dialectical integration of philosophy that pursued the project from the vantage point of Hegelian ideas.

157

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

15. J. S. MILL (1806–1873) Perhaps no modern writer has supported the importance of the classical dialectic of open discussion as an instrumentality in the pursuit of truth more eloquently than John Stuart Mill. His essay On Liberty is a prose poem in praise of rational controversy, in which Mill holds dialectic to be a perennial necessity of the rational enterprise, notwithstanding its somewhat negative aspect as an instrument of criticism: It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic—that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation.102

The present book itself can be viewed from the angle of an endeavor to explain and substantiate such a view of the utility of dialectic as an instrument of rational inquiry. 16. MARX AND ENGELS Where much of the post-Kantian traditions sought to spiritualize the materiality of physical process, Karl Marx sought to materialize the spiritual dimension of human thought and action within nature. His dialectic is not cognitive but physically developmental, somewhat in the manner of the pattern tendency → counter tendency → stable resolution somewhat in the way in which introducing a hot object into a cold environment (a mass of hot coal into a cold room) will collaboratively produce a new state of balancing things out. Thus while retaining from Hegel both the dialectical structure of natural occurrence and the historical necessitation of the process of dialectical development, Marx simply lopped off the head of the cognitive and “spiritual” involvements at issue in the Hegelian view of things, only retaining the material causality of physical process. The Marxian dialectic, accord-

158

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

ingly, is not a cognitive resource of inquiry but a characterization of the material (physical and socio-physical) processes through which (and, as he sees it, through which alone) nature’s occurrences eventuate. Marx, in sum, effectively offers Hegel without Geist. Marx and Engels set out to expunge the idealism of the Hegelian dialectic. For them dialectic was to be purely and simply the interplay of impersonal causal (and effectively physical) natural forces. Dialectic now becomes a feature of the causality of nature—in terms of various physical forces acting upon and reacting against one another. Marxist dialectic accordingly took a decidedly materialistic turn; as Marx himself put it: My dialectical method is not only different from that of Hegel, but is its direct opposite. With Hegel, thinking, the life-process of the human brain— which under the name of “the Idea,” he even makes into an independently existing object—is the creative force (demoiurgos) of the real world, which is no more than its externalized, phenomenal form. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing more than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.103

Where Hegel envisioned an historical course of dialectical development of a process through which nature’s changes can be expressed at the level of ideas, Marxist dialectical materialism sought to put physical processes themselves at the center of things. Dühring, Marx’s nemesis, saw dialectics as a processual feature of impersonal nature reflected in a “mere logic” that impels physical change through the interactive “antagonisms” of conflicting forces of nature.104 Here Marx in effect retained Dühring’s physicalism, but abolished those conflicting forces and settled for the strictly mechanical interactions of matter for realizing his dialectical materialism. (However, Engels was eventually to acknowledge that the machinations of matter were not all that straightforward either.) • the transformation of quantity into quality to the effect that all qualitative differences have a quantitative basis so that quantity becomes the determinant of all things. • the interpenetration of opposites to the effect that all hinges on there being more or less of a common parameter and differences in kind become differences in degree.

159

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

• the law of the negation of the negation to the effect that all processes become fundamentally dialectical in format. Marx asserted that one must “do away with the [idealistic] mystification which dialectic suffers at Hegel’s hands” and that “[dialectic] must be turned right side up again, if one would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”105 In Engels’ hands the dialectics in the form of “dialectical materialism” was framed as a theory of social process that was in harmony with the wave of innovation in technical physics and scientific discovery that washed over Europe in the nineteenth century. Dialectical advance and scientific progress could be represented as coordinated phases of one fundamental process. In dialectical materialism the latter was very much the senior partner. Friedrich Engels held that: An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectic with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive and anti-progressive changes.106

But in the end, this view of the matter simply comes down to identifying dialectic with the aggregate of scientific thinking and method. As Marx and Engels saw it Hegel’s philosophy is a mixed bag. He was right in discerning and emphasizing these principles of dialectic. But he was profoundly wrong in thinking the laws for the development of thought whereas in fact they are really laws for the development of nature. The dialectical materialists saw it as Hegel’s profound failing to keep dialectic within the range of metaphysics rather than branching out into protoscience on the theory of nature. They insisted that in the wake of such a change “Hegel’s mysterious principle appears not only quite natural but even rather obvious.”107 But here their opponents answered tit for tat. Engels was made livid by E. Dührings contemptuous dismissal of Marx’s “mysterious dialectical rubbish” which sought “to get behind some profound piece of wisdom where the husked kernel of abstruse things reveals at best the features of ordinary theories.”108 Engels theory of dialectic hinges on three Hegelian laws.

160

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Hegel had oriented dialectic to inquiry and viewed it as an instrumentality for understanding reality. Marx was less concerned for cognition than for politics, his aim was less to understand the world than to change it. The dialectical motivation he developed in collaboration with Engels viewed dialectic as a process of historical and above all political development rather than one of cognitive progress. Marxism dialectics is a matter of the ebb and flow of material and whose all economically (and thus material) based social and political processes. Thus Marx and Engels remained in Hegelian territory in viewing dialectics as an historical process rather than an instrumentality of thought—a matter of causal occurrence rather than rational comprehension. Engels writes: What therefore is the negation of the negation? An extremely general ... law of development of nature, history and thought; a law which ... holds good in the animal and plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history, and in philosophy ...”109

However this generality of application is purchased at the price of an inherent vagueness and equivocation that makes the idea close to vacuous. For that which holds everywhere without limits has little assertoric substance to it in the face of Spinoza’s principle that “omnis affirmatio est negatio.”110 Though Marx sought “to turn Hegel upside down” by recasting his conceptual dialectic in materialist terms, this approach in effect simply abandoned dialectic as an instrument of explanation and left the historical play of materialistically physical processes—of whatever nature things turn out to have. Dialectic disappears from the scene in any historically recognizable guise and natural causality stands in its place. In here assuming the guise of totality dialectic has, in effect, shrunk to nothing—or at any rate to nothing distinctive. Recognizing that physical change in general—dialectical or other— often proceeds in small steps and yet eager to have their favored mechanism accomplish significant work, dialectical materialist eagerly adopted the idea that (as Engels put it) “in physics change is a passing of quantity into quality.”111 As illustrations of the “quantity → quality” transition, Engels offers the process of phase transitions in chemistry such as the change of water into solid or gaseous form. A decidedly wise appraisal of Marx’s dialectic is that of the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica where we read:

161

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

He [Marx] retained in principle the Hegelian dialective method, of which he said that in order to be rationally emphasized it must be “turned upside down,” i.e., put on a materialist basis. But as a matter of fact he has in many respects contravened against this presumption. Strict materialist dialectics cannot conclude much beyond the actual facts. Dialectical materialism is revolutionary in the sense that it recognizes no [historical] fixity, but otherwise it is necessarily positivist in the general meaning of that term.112

What really interested Marx was not the abstract play of concepts and ideas but the causal machinations of the material world—especially in human well-being in the material world. The dialectic of Hegel projected a philosophical stairway to religion; that of Marx projected a physicalistic stairway to politics. To all intents and purposes the two projects were dialectical in name only, addressing two very different ranges of phenomena in somewhat the same terms. Hegel wanted to reform philosophy; Marx wanted to reform politics. As regards politics, the situation, as Marx saw it, is that the developmental dialectic of unfettered capacitive contains the seeds of its own destruction. As he remarks in the preface to Capital: “It is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” The dialectic of the negation of the negation, accordingly spells the doom of capitalism. “The capitalist mode of production ... is the first negation ... But capitalism begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation.”113 What Marx did not foresee—nor did anyone else—is this dialectical road would not—and in the wake of technological progress could not—lead to the destination he envisioned for it. Rather than presaging a proletarian socialism it actually eventuated in a renovation of capitalism albeit in a chaste and more sophisticated version. And this, after all, is really what a more thorough-going dialectic of pouring new wine into old bottles would have expected. All in all, then, Marx effectively abandoned dialectic as anything like its traditional role as a cognitive process and trades this in for the physical causality of natural process and the material productivity of human effort. His dialectical materialism is causal materialism pure and simple. Thus while Marx claims to have “stood Hegel on his head” the net effect of the violence this does to Hegel’s ideas is that (as Mure put it) “Marx’s dialectic is no more than a sham façade for his materialism.”114 At any rate, this is how more orthodox Hegelians would see it. And dialectical materialism in its later manifestation in Engels and Stalin simply becomes a variant of physicalistic scientism. To quote Stalin:

162

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Dialectical materialism in the world view of the Marxist-Leninist party. It is so called because its approach to the phenomenon of nature, of studying and apprehending this is dialectical [i.e., interactively collaborative], while its interpretation of those phenomena, its conception of them, is materialistic.115

Then too, in various Marx-influenced “postmodernist” discussion, dialectic has come to stand for any sort of interaction between opposed tendencies—social, economic, psychological or whatever.116 Here any sort of feedback process is viewed as dialectical, with a result of shifting the idea to a considerable remove from its historical roots. In its adherence to materialism, the transition from thought to action became a key aspect of Marx’s dialectic, and led him to pen the dictum, much beloved by Stalin, that “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.”117 17. POST-MARXIAN SOCIO-POLITICAL DIALECTICS Since classical antiquity, the original Greek idea of dialectic has developed through various phases: in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as initially a format for discourse and disputation and subsequently an instrumentality of discursive thought. With Kantianism dialectic became a term of derogation in philosophy. Then with Fichte, Hegel and German idealism dialectic re-engaged as a process for cultural and doctrinal development on the one side and a model of natural evolution on the other. Thereafter, matters took a very different turn and dialectics become an instrumentality of political analysis. Throughout the post-Hegelian era dialectic has thus moved further and further away from its original model in discursive dialectic until in the end the idea assumed a socio-political guise which, from any earlier standpoint, is dialectical in name only. For dialectic now moved ever further away from its original inspirations. It now became a theory of cultural and ideological development based on the idea that social and political history can and must be understood in dialectical terms—with conflicting interests creating conflicts that work themselves through to an eventual accommodation under the philosophically engendered pressures of the state—it became a hallmark feature of the work of such socio-political neo-Marxists as Kark Korsch, Georg Lukáks, and some members of the Frankfurt School. As far as Horkheimer and Adorno are concerned, when Hegel’s positive and progressive view of historical dialectic made the historical process “a totality or system and an absolute, he ... lapsed into theology.” They

163

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

wanted something quite different. Wishing “to free dialectic from any and all affirmativeness,” Adorno seeks, or at any rate purports only to disestablish rather than establish, and to create an anti-system rather than a system. Needless to say, such a venture is not ultimately practicable for a German theoretician and Adorno’s negative dialectic is in fact an elaborate contrivance for being negative about those things he feels negative about. And so when Adorno complains that “the primacy of contradiction in dialectic loses sight of the heterogeneous in unifying thought (Einheitsdenken)”118 his contention is defective both in point of clarity (“the heterogeneous in unifying thought” indeed!) and in point of fairness (since heterogeneity of conception is exactly what is at issue in the contradictions which classical dialectic sought to overcome). In projecting what might be called his dialectic of public opinion, Adorno and Horkheimer viewed dialectic in terms of the general thoughttendencies in vogue in the culture of the day as it transacts over time from one doctrinal orientation to another. In treating their treaties The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1941) they saw contemporary thought as promising liberation for the unscientific conditions of an earlier time only to impose the fellows of social contrast through to substantiation of reason to repressive tendencies of social coordination. They likened this self-defeating tendency of contemporary thought to the situation of Ulysses and the Sirens, whose call he wanted to resist while yet lacked the increasing self-control. In a frame of mind made increasingly pessimistic by the rise of Nazi power in Europe, Adorno and Horkheimer envisioned a dialectical conflict in contemporary thought between a rationality committed on the one side to a scientifically enlightened freedom and liberation from superstition, and on the other side to a scientifically coordinated and technologically enforced mass culture that blocked the path to enlightened rationality. In this pessimistic mood Adorno and Horkheimer looked to dialectical interaction of opposing cultural tendencies to that resorted the resolution of a rational synthesis. As Horkheimer and Adorno saw it, the “dialectic of enlightenment, democratic, capitalistic, mass-productive in material and cultural terms” carried the seeds of its own destruction as its development over the years set in motion a “negative dialectic” which unleashed forces of massified public opinion influenced by mass media that led from enlightenment to tyranny.119 The sort of ebb and flow of public opinion in politico-social issues that is at issue here is doubtless “dialectical” in some sense, though seem-

164

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 3 ANALYTIC DIALECTIC THESIS

ANTI-THESIS

SYNTHESIS

thesis

objections to the thesis refinement of the thesis in the light of the objections

ingly not one able to cast much light in the way of elucidation or explanation of the matters at issue. 18.

DIALECTIC IN TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

Twentieth century analytic philosophy saw a significant revival of dialectic. However this occurred not at the level of deliberations about dialectic and its methodological issues and general principles, but rather at that of the actual practice of philosophizing.120 However, what has been at issue here is neither the Aristotelian dialectic of seeking to extract conclusions from a survey of rival positions nor yet the Hegelian dialectic of seeking to derive a conclusion from the scrutiny of a course of kindred development. For the fact of it is that the conduct of much of twentieth century philosophy has involved what is in effect, an analytic employment of dialectic as per the pattern set out in Display 3. What we have here is the standard dialectical procedure of interchange between the prospect of a thesis and an opponent who contests it, the standard pattern, that is to say of contention, counter-contention, and revised (qualified, amended) contention. This process is predicated on a certain view of the problem-situation of philosophy, a view which stands roughly as follows: The phenomena with which philosophy has to deal are so complex and variegated that no unqualified generalization can actually do them justice. Moreover, the language to our disposal for philosophical dialection is inadequate for the task. The complex realities bust the boards of conceptualization

165

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

that it makes available. Thus any general philosophical thesis is over-simple to the point of inadequacy and has to be qualified and enmeshed. The task of dialectic is to reveal and mitigate the misconceptions at issue by means of what is to all intents and purposes a cyclic process of dialogical challengeand-response. Dialectic thus affords an instrumentality of inquiry that provides for an ongoing negotiation between philosophical thought and the complex phenomenon that comprised in the reality that it addresses.

The resultant practice generally conforms to a rather definite format whose structure is essentially as follows: Stage 1: Thesis → Antithetical Objections → Synthetic Revision 1.1 State the thesis. 1.2 State the counter-considerations (objections). 1.3 Qualify the thesis so as to meet (avert) the con-considerations. Stage 2: Emended Thesis → Expository Deficiencies → Synthetic Reformulation 2.1 State the duly emended thesis. 2.2 Expose its ambiguities, equivocations, evasions. 2.3 Restate the thesis in sharper/clearer form so as to eliminate misunderstandings. Stage 3:

Revised Thesis → Reappraisal → Synoptic Reevaluation

3.1 Restate the sharpened thesis. 3.2 Explain the implications that the whole process carries for the thesis. 3.3 Reevaluate the thesis in the light of these lessons.

166

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 4 DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS THESIS

ANTITHESIS Objections

START

thesis qualification

imprecisions and ramifications

reformulation

SYNTHESIS

As such an account indicates, in dialectical analysis we process a thesis in a three-fold manner: first by a revision by qualification designed to minimize it against objections; second by a reformulation designed to render it more exact and perspicuous; and third to highlight the lessons from its meaning and impact that emerge from the preceding stages of the analysis. On this basis, the overall structure of a dialectical analysis stands as per the diagram of Display 4. The overall process being one of refinement and reformulation in the face of unfolding difficulties. This sort of analytical dialectic rests on the underlying idea that the complexity of the issues at stake in philosophical deliberation is such that philosophical generalizations almost inevitably oversimplify matters in a way that demands retrenchment, qualification, revision. The aim of dialectical analysis is to implement these general ideas in concrete circumstances. And dialectical inquiry serves to refine a general thesis by constraining it to come to terms with challenges by way of objections, counterexamples, and unclarities. The goal of this process is to secure the most general principle that is capable of accommodating adequately a range of phenomena, so as to secure a continuously more adequate approximation to an adequate account of the issue at state. On its approach, the dialectical analysis of a thesis is a multistage process of reexamination and revision with a view not only to rendering the ba-

167

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

sic idea at issue more perspicuous and acceptable, but also as bringing to light the lessons of this process from an underlying of what is at issue. It is instructive to consider some concrete illustrations of a dialectical inquiry in the envisioned style of philosophical analysis. Displays 5–7 offer three schematic illustrations. Throughout such dialectical analyses as were exhibited there the ultimate aim is one whose orientation is pretty much the same, namely, to exact the larger lesson inherent in the fact that a certain philosophical thesis runs into problems and to address this circumstance by bringing into clearer view the inherent complexity of the relevant issues. One particularly common sort of context in which analytical dialectic has come to prominence in twentieth century philosophy is represented by the aporetic situations that arise when a collection of individually plausible contentions turns out to be collectively inconsistent. An instance of this is afforded by the thesis of the equality of rights. The aporetic situation at issue here is based on three contentions: (1) All people have equal rights. (Equality of rights). (2) Everyone has a right to that to which they have a legitimate claim. (Right-claim coordination). (3) The legitimate claims of people are not always equal. (“Only the victor can claim the prize.”) (Irregularity of claims). A dialectical situation: (1) as thesis, (2) & (3) as the antithesis. This situation involves a thesis-qualifying synthesis along the lines of (1*) All people have equal rights insofar as their legitimate claims are equal. At this point a further step of dialectical advance (4) The rights of people must be honored: a just system will accord to everyone that to which they have a right. (5) In situations of unavoidable scarcity the legitimate claims of people cannot all be satisfied.

168

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 5 (I) IMAGINATION AND POSSIBILITY Stage 1 Thesis (1.1): “Whatever someone imagines is possible.” Objection (1.2): People seem able to imagine all sorts of absurdities. Revised thesis(1.3): “Whatever can be cogently managed is possible.” [Qualify with reference to cogent imaginability.] Stage 2 Revised thesis (2.1): “Whatever can be cogently imagined is possible.” Clarification (2.2): The possibility at issue should be seen as logical possibility. Sharpened thesis (2.3): “Whatever can be cogently imagined is logically possible. Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1): “Whatever can be cogently imagined is logically possible.” Reappraisal (3.2): We need to shift to cogent imaginability and consider this with specifically logical possibility. Systemic reevaluation (3.3): What ultimately counts for the imagination/possibility linkage is a matter of logical considerations, not psychological ones.

169

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Display 6 (II) LYING Stage 1 Thesis (1.1): “Never tell a falsehood.” Objection (1.2): In various situations, telling the truth can lead to (morally) unacceptable results. Revised thesis (1.3): “Never tell a falsehood unless in doing so you avert a result that is, in the circumstances, morally unacceptable. Stage 2 Thesis (2.1): “Never tell a falsehood that does not avert a morally unacceptable result.” Clarification (2.2): Anything due solely for the purpose of selfsatisfaction (or indeed any discreditable motive) ... Sharpened thesis (2.3): “Never tell a falsehood save for the purpose of ...” Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1): “Never tell a falsehood except to realize ...” Reappraisal (3.2): We need to take the motivation into account. Synthetic reevaluation (3.3): In laying down a rule of action we must not only look to the status of the act (as negative or positive) but must look to the motive (rationale) of its preference as well.

170

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

Display 7 (III) KNOWLEDGE AND CERTAINTY Stage 1 Thesis (1.1) “Only what is absolutely certain can be known.” (It makes no sense to say “I know that p but very possibly it may not be so.”) Objection (1.2): One knows full well that one will not win the lottery [for which one holds one of 100 million tickets], or again one knows full well that the first first-page column of tomorrow’s New York Times will contain the word THE. But surely neither of these eventuations is “absolutely certain.” Revised thesis (1.3): “Only that of which the subject is absolutely certain can be said to be known by him/her.” We must distinguish between objective and subjective certainty, and collaterally (concomitantly) between warranted and frivolous subjective certainty. Stage 2 Revised thesis (2.1): “Only that of which someone is warrantedly certain can be designated as something this individual knows.” Clarification (2.2): The warrant at issue here is something that we credit to the individual on our own account, and not just something to which the individual lays a (possibly unjustified) claim. Sharpened thesis (2.3): “Only of that which is certain on the basis of what we (the knowledge attributions) deem appropriate warrant can this be said to be something that the individual knows. Stage 3 Sharpened thesis (3.1): Identical with (2.3). Reappraisal (3.2): The certainty of knowledge attributions is something that must appertain both to the attributor and the attributee. Systemic reevaluation (3.3): In attributing knowledge we not only credit the attributee with occupying a certain position with relation to the fact at issue but claim responsibility also on our own account. (Thus is makes no sense to say “X knows that p, but I don’t.”)121

171

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

again poses an aporetic conflict, now with (1*) as thesis and (4) & (5) as the antitheses. This situation under the yet further qualification of (1) as (1**) All people have equal rights insofar as their legitimate claims are equal and are capable of being met (equally) in the circumstances at hand. A rather common form of dialectical argument emerges in the context of a philosophical standardism which holds that philosophical generalizations should not be construed with strict universality but only qualifiedly with regard to what obtains “standardly”—that is, ordinarily, or normally. The argumentation that unfolds here has the following structure: • Thesis: “All X’s are Y’s.” • Antithesis: A series of counterexamples to the effect that the XA’s, XB’s, and XC’s constitute groups of X’s that are not Y’s. • Synthesis: An argument that since these counterexamples have features that explain their exceptionality, it transpires that: “the X’s are standardly (normally, ordinarily) Y’s. In many areas of present-day philosophizing this sort of issue-revision is not only practicable but virtually essential,122 so that here, too, dialectic is a significant service of philosophical practice. As noted above, this concept developmental dialectic rose to prominence in 20th century analytic philosophy—however not in the work of individuals but in the way the philosophical community did its work. After one author or another has propounded some thesis, others would launch into objections. Then friends of the thesis would leap to its defense by means of mere revisions, and so the whole dialectical process was well and truly launched. The net effect is a communally operated dialectic that endows 20th century analytic philosophy with its characteristic feature of an adversarially collaborative process. Canonical instances of a dialectical process unfolding along exactly these lines are afforded by the aftermath of the work of Nelson Goodman on induction,123 of Roderick Chisholm on cognitive justification,124 and of Edmund Gettier on knowledge.125 As recent anthologies amply illustrate in each of these cases there has evolved a history of challenging-response cy-

172

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

cles that exhibits overall the dialectical structure typical of analytical dialectics as characterized above. One point should, however, be noted. With Hegel, dialectic is a process of logical resolution whose unfolding proceeds by a response that is necessitated by the lineament of the situation at issue. For him (as for Marx in his wake) the resolution of the thesis and antithesis results in a synthesis that is, in effect, a forced choice and the concept of historical necessity is at work. In this regard, aporetics—and analytical dialectics in general—is quite different. To be sure, whenever there is a logical contradiction it is clear that a resolution is forced upon us. But how that resolution is to be effected is invariably a matter of a choice among alternatives—a choice whose resolution is not forced upon us by the necessities of things but is, rather, a free choice whose outcome is determined by our evaluative assessment of the costs and benefits involved.126 19.

POSTSCRIPT

Until the time of Hegel, dialectics was essentially logico-epistemic in nature. It had to do with the substantiation or invalidating of theses—and philosophical theses in particular. Hegel shunted the issue onto an ontological track; dialectic now became a process of existential development—with Hegel himself initially in general history, with his immediate successors (Herbart and Schleiermacher in the history of philosophy in specific, with Marx and Engels in the development of nature in general and the nature of political institutions in specific, and with most post-Marxists as a developmental approach to socio-ideological issues. In the wake of Marxism, various interesting things thus happened to dialectic. But they do not bear upon the metaphysico-epistemological thematic of the present book. Not until well after the era of aprionistic rigorism came to a close in the wake of World War I did dialectic in the older sense of an inquiry concerned with validating contentions spring into being once more under the impetus and within the setting of a thriving “informal logic” movement.127 Here dialectic has come to enjoy recognition as a process for validating a commitment to the truth or at least the plausibility of claims and contentions. There is also one area in which dialectic has stood at the fore in the course of the 20th century and continues to be very much alive and well, namely academic debating in the high schools and colleges of North America. Here more than in any other field disputable dialectics continues to

173

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

figure in energetic and constructive practice. It may not be exactly what the medieval schoolmen had in mind, and yet one cannot but think that on the whole they would be pleased.128 The idea of dialectic constitutes a vivid exhibit of a dialectical process of development under the pressure of new tendencies countervailing against the old. Indeed, there are few topics that exhibit the dialectical structure of the history of ideas more vividly than that of dialectic itself. It emerges that, interestingly enough, the history of dialectic itself manifests and illustrates a decidedly dialectical course of development. If, as Hegel insisted, dialectic brings to light the fluidity of ideas, then dialectic is itself one of its own most dramatic illustrations. NOTES FOR CHAPTER 7 1

Howard P. Kainz, G. W. G. Hegel: The Philosophical System (New York: Twayn Publishers, 1996), p. 1.

2

Barbara Cassin (ed.), Vocubulaire européen des philosophies (Paris: Le Robert & Seuel, 2004), p. 306.

3

For (essentially) this taxonomy of dialectical theorizing, and for reference to the literature, see Hans Friedrich Fulda, “Unzulängliche Bemerkungen zur Dialektik” in Reinhard Heede and Joachim Richter (eds.), Hegel-Bilanz (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio, Klostermann, 1973).

4

Kenneth Burke in A Grammar of Motives (published together with A Rhetoric of Motives (Cleveland and New York, 1962; Meridian paperback), pp. 403 ff) inventories the bewildering variety of meanings the word “dialectic” has been asked to bear. A constructive contribution to the history of dialectic is represented by Karl Dürr’s essay “Die Entwicklung der Dialektik von Plato bis Hegel,” Dialectica, vol. 1 (1947), pp. 45–62.

5

Diogenes Laertius (II 106) tells us that the Megarians came to be called eristics, and also said that Protogoras not only wrote a tract on “The Art (techê) of Eristics” (IX 55) but also that he “was the father of the whole host of eristicians now so much in evidence” (IX 52).

6

Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, v., 12.

7

See Diogenes Laertius, II 108.

8

Diogenes Laertius, II 107–08.

9

On the Megarian school see Nicholas Rescher, Paradoxes (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 77–83.

174

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

10

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

11

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

12

Aristotle regarded Zeno of Elea—famous propounder of the paradoxes of space and time—as the father of dialectics. (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 57.)

13

Metaphysics, 1078b 30–35. These, Aristotle maintains, provides the basis (archê) of scientifically exact knowledge (epistêmê).

14

See also Cratylus 390c, Sophist 253C–D, Phaedrus 266B–C, Philebus 52–58, and compare Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 5,12.

15

For an ample accounting for this telegraphic account see Allen Silverman, The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato’s Metaphysics (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002).

16

Republic, 390c.

17

Republic, 534b.

18

See especially Book VII of Plato’s Republic.

19

For instructive deliberation on these issues see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialique and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).

20

On these points see Richard Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941; see esp. pp. 73–79.) Of course the clearest indication that Plato saw dialectic (discussion) as the proper means for investigating issues of meaning and truth is the very fact that his own writings took the form of dialogues.

21

On this issues see Robert Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectics, pp. 86–87.

22

Sophist 263e; cp. Theaetetus 189e.

23

See Republic VI, 539. Plato’s Republic takes the stance that dialectic should not be taught to young men under 30 because the superficiality of heedless youth renders them unfit for so serious and demanding an enterprise. Regarding Plato on dialectic see G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic (London: Duckworth, 1986).

24

This line of thought is prominent in Plato’s Phaedrus and Sophist. For the early, pre-Aristotelian history of dialectics, see Gilbert Ryle, “The Academy and Dialec-

175

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

tic” (= Chapter 5) in his Collected Essays (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1971), as well as “Dialectic in the Academy” (= Chapter 6), ibid. 25

Aristotle’s position regarding the nature of dialectic is the subject of a vast and impressively sophisticated literature. See James Hogan, “The Dialectics of Aristotle,” Philosophical Studies (Maynooth), vol. 5 (1955), pp. 3–21. See also D. G. Evans, Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and G. E. L. Owen (ed.), Aristotle on Dialectic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Robert Bolton, “The Epistemological Basis of Aristotelian Dialectic” in D. Devereux et Pierre Pellegrin, eds. Biologie, Logique et métaphysique chez Aristote, Paris: CNRS, 1990, pp. 185–236 (followed by comments from Jacques Brunschwig and Dan Devereux); Robert Bolton “Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics as a Science” in T. Scaltsas, D. Charles and M. L. Gill, eds., Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 321–354. Alan Code, “Aristotle’s Investigation of a Basic Logical principles; Which Science Investigates the Principle of Non-Contradiction?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16 (1986), pp. 341–58. James Allen, “Aristotle on the Disciplines of Argument: Rhetoric, dialectic, Analytic,” Rhetorica, vol. 25 (2007), pp. 87–108.

26

See Soph. Elen, 183b36.

27

See Bolton, “Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics as a Science”, p. 7.

28

See Metaphysics, 1004b22–26.

29

While the terminology is Stoic (Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonian Hyp.. I, 7), the basic idea is substantially what Aristotle had in view.

30

Soph. Elen, 169a37.

31

Topics, 100a37–101b4.

32

Topics, 10Da25–b20.

33

Soph. Elen. 170a40–b3.

34

G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic (London: Duckworth, 1986), p. 189.

35

Metaphysics 1004b25–26. On the experimental/peirastic aspect of dialectic see Robert Bolton, op. cit., pp. 321–54.

36

Topics, 101a34.

37

Topics, 101a36–b4. The endoxa and the distinguished (esteemed, respected) theses that are generally acknowledged either by people at large or by the experts (Topics I, i, 3; cf Nicomachean Ethics, VII, i, 5; Rhetoric I, i, 11.)

176

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

38

Soph. Elen. 165b2–4.

39

Accordingly the first principles of metaphysics—the science of being qua being, will be fundamental at every inquiry whatsoever. Metaphysics, p. 3–4. On the details see especially Robert Bolton, “Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics as a Science” op. cit.

40

It is worth noting that there is thus a basic analogy between Aristotelian scientific dialectic and philosophical aporetics. In the former one seeks for what is inherently common among the plausible endoxa; in the latter one seeks for what is harmoniously systemic among the plausible data. (On this latter issue see the author’s Strife of Systems [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

41

Note the medical analogy: examination/diagnosis/therapy.

42

Topics, 100a30–31.

43

Metaphysics, 1078b25–26.

44

Topics, 158, a31–b24.

45

Anal. Post. 92b35–38. This passage summarizes a long refutation of the idea that definitions can be demonstrated (B3–7).

46

As J. D. G., Evans has it in Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic, p. 52.

47

Aristotle maintains (as Anal Post. 19) that scientifically adequate knowledge of the generalities at issue with first principles can emerge from duly systemic sense experience thanks to the fact that “the human soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process.” And if so then well and good; then this sort of thing is bound to be among the commonalities present throughout the endoxa.

48

Topics, 101a36–64.

49

Topics, 101b3–4.

50

Topics, 158a14–16.

51

Epictetus, Discourses I, vii, viii, and especially II, xx, xxv.

52

Diogenes Laertius, VII, 62. The contrast here is with Chrysippus who saw it as directed not at truth but at meaning.

53

In this regard it has the foundation for a connecting by Boethius (480–524) in which—as in his De differentiis topicis the issues of plausibility assessment were

177

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

examined. These discussions remained on the Aristotelian ground of what was acceptable to all or most on the best-respected experts. 54

This “negative dialectic” of opposing all and nothing was to play a key role in the theology of (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Aereopagite, who viewed God as at once the embodiment of all reality but nevertheless the non-bearer of all features characterizing this world’s constituents.

55

See Wöhler, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, pp. 193–98.

56

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

57

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

58

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

59

Hans-Ulrich Wöhler, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006).

60

Wöhler, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, pp. 169–80.

61

Wöhler, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, pp. 174–80.

62

Wöhler, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie gives a very informative account of the medieval theory and practice of dialectic.

178

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

63

See Toivo J. Holopainen Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (London: E. J. Brill, 1996). As late as the mid-sixteenth century it was respectfully treated in one of the first philosophical books published in the Western Hemisphere, the Dialectia: Resolutio cum textu Aristotelis of Fray Alonzo de Vera Cruz published in Mexico City in 1554.

64

For an informative account of medieval dialectics see P. von Moos, “Die angesehene Meinung: Studien zum endoxon im Mittelalter: Abelard,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, vol. 45 (1998), pp. 355–80.

65

Critique of Pure Reason, A293 = B349.

66

Critique of Pure Reason, A297 = B354.

67

Critique of Pure Reason, A298= B354.

68

On Dialectic in Kant see Michael Wolff, Die Befriff des Widerspruchs: Eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1981).

69

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

70

Grundlegung einer gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, in J. G. Fichte Werke, ed. by Fritz Medicus (Leipzig: F. Eckardt, 1911), Vol. I, p. 286.

71

Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre, (op. cit.), esp. p. 31.

72

One recent exposition thus speaks of Schelling’s “spiritualization” (Vergeisterung) of nature. Röd (1974), vol. 1, p. 112.

73

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

74

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Dialektik, ed. Rudolf Olbrecht (Berlin: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1942), and also ed. Andreas Arndt (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988).

75

Schleiermacher, Dialektik, sect. 3.

76

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Dialectic, On the Act of Doing Philosophy, tr. T. N. Tice (Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1996), p. 6.

77

On Schleiermacher’s dialectic see Ueberweg, p. 123.

179

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

78

Schleiemacher, Dialektik, sect. 43.

79

On these issues see Morfred Frank’s “A Look at Schleiermacher’s Dialectic” in Jaequeline Mariña (ed.), A Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 15–34.

80

There are innumerable books on Hegelian dialectic. Two informative treatments are J. M. E McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896) and Andres Sarleminjn, Hegelsche Dialektik (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971).

81

H. F. Fulda, “Unzulängliche Bemerkungen zur Dialecktik” in R. Heede and J. Ritter (eds.), Hegel-Bilanz (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978), pp. 33–69, (see p. 33).

82

Hegel, Encyclopedia, sect., 10.

83

Vorlesungen, p. 34.

84

The Science of Logic, sect. 79.

85

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

86

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

87

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

88

On Hegel’s dialectic see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, tr. by P. C. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Dialectic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and Michael Wolff’s Der Begriff des Widerspruchs (op. cit.). The development of Hegel’s thought regarding dialectic is examined in detail in P. Kondyles, Die Entstehung der Dialektik (Stuttgart: Kleet-Cotta, 1979), and Manfred Baum, Die Entstehung der Hegelschen Dialektik (Bonn: Boonview Verlag, 1986). See also Bernd Bratzel, „Vorzüge einer Theorie der Dialektik in Wolfgang Neuser et. al. (eds.), Logik, Mathematik und Natur im objektiven Idealismus (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004), pp. 91–111.

180

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

89

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

90

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, p. 11.

91

In his aforementioned study of dialectic, Karl Dürr explores the prospect of taking negation (N) conjunction (K) as basic here. The three classical stages of theses, antithesis, synthesis will then be construed as p, Np, N(p & Np), the third of which represents a truth irrespective of the status of its predecessors.

92

Karl Dürr (op. cit., p. 61) makes the good point that while the Hegelian logical dialectic is exfoliative and analytic in eliciting the interrelations among pre-given and fixed concepts, the Platonic discursive dialectic is progressive and synthetic in providing for the ongoing introduction of new materials.

93

Adorno, Negative Dialektik, p. 137.

94

See H. M. Chalybaeus, Historical Development of Speculative Philosophy from Kant to Hegel, tr. A. Edeisheim (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1854); especially pp 424–37.

95

Eduard von Hartmann, Über die dialektische Methode (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), pp. 94–95 and 112–23.

96

A valiant attempt to deal with Hegel’s logical dialection in contemporary terms of reference is Francescio Berton, Che Cos’é le dialettia Hegeliana? (Pactina: Il Poligrafo, 2005).

97

McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, p. 9

98

On these issues see H. G. Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976, especially Chapter 1 “Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient Philosophers.”)

99

McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, p. 253.

100

For an informative account of Herbert’s dialectic see Friedrich Ueberweg, Die Deutsche Philosophie des XIX. Jahrhunderts, pp. 167–70 in the revised edition by T. K. Oesterreich (Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1923).

101

On Herbart’s dialectic see Ueberweg, p. 167.

102

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. by Alburey Castell (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1947), pp. 44–45.

103

See Marx and Engels, Capital.

181

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

104

Eugen Karl Dühring, Natu rliche Dialektik (Berlin: F. S. Rittler und Cohn, 1865).

105

Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. I, pp. 19–20.

106

Anti Dühring, pp. 36–37.

107

Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York: International Publishers, 1940).

108

Anti Dühring, p. 169

109

Anti Dühring, Part I, “Dialectics: Negation of the Negation.”

110

A convinced dialecticism would expect little else, since when there is not negation a counter-negation cannot take hold: what totally inverses and admits no counterpressure of negation can never set in train a dialectic needed for self constructive development.

111

Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York: International Publishers, 1940.

112

Eduard Bernstein in the 11th ed. of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XVIII, pp. 807–11 (see p. 810).

113

Marx and Engels, Capital, I, Ch. 24, §7.

114

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

115

Josef Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (London: Laurence and Wishert, 1941), p. 5.

116

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

117

Marx and Engels, Capital as well as J. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism.

118

T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, ed. By C. Menke (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), p. 15.

182

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIALECTIC

119

M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabway Press, 1944). They spoke of “die rätselhafte Bereitschaft der technologisch erzogenen Massen, in den Bereich des jeglichen Despotismus zu geraten” (p. 13).

120

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

121

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

122

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

123

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

124

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

125

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

126

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

127

This development can be traced in the pages of the journal Informal Logic.

128

However, with the medievals formal disputation was not discussed under the rubric of dialectic but rather under that of the discursive art of obligation (ars obligatoria) geared to the adjudication of disputed questions (quaestiones).On the obligationtheoretic approach to dialectic see H. Keffer, De obligationbtus: Rekonstruktion einer spätmittealterlichen Disputationstheorie (Leiden: Brill, 2001); and O. Weijers, La “disputatio” dans les Faculteś des arts au moyen âge (Turnhout: Studia Artistarum, vol. 10, 2002).

183

BIBLIOGRAPHY Extensive bibliographies for dialectic can be found in the standard reference works, and in particular in Jürgen Mittelstrass (ed.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie (vol. 2 of the 2nd ed; Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2005), and Jose Ferrater Mora (ed.), Diccionario de Filosofia (Vol. 1 of the 7th ed.; Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1994). The register presented here will list only those works cited in the present text. Abelard, Dialectica. Adorno, Theodor, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt: Publisher?, 1966, 2nd ed. 1970; tr. as Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury Press, 1973). Allen, James, “Aristotle on the Disciplines of Argument: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Analytic,” Rhetorica, vol. 25 (2007), pp. 87–108. Aristotle, Metaphysics. ———, Posterior Analytics. ———, Topics. Bacon, Francis, Novum Organon. Baum, Manfred, Die Entstehung der Hegelschen Dialektik (Bonn: Boonview Verlag, 1986). Becker, Werner, Hegel’s Begriff der Dialektik und das Prinzip des Idealismus (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln: Mainz, Kohlhammer 1969). Bennett, John F., Kant’s Dialectic (Cambridge University Press, 1974). Bolton, Robert, “Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics as a Science” in T. Scaltsas, D. Charles and M. L. Gill (eds.), Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 321–354.

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

———, “The Epistemological Basis of Aristotelian Dialectic” in D. Devereux et Pierre Pellegrin (eds.), Biologie, logique et métaphysique chez Aristote, (Paris: CNRS, 1990), pp. 185–236. Braun, Lucian, L’Histoire de l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Ophrys, 1973). Bubner, Rüdiger, Dialektik und Wissenschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973). Bubner, Rüdiger and Hans-Georg Gadamer (eds.), Hermeneutik und Dialektik. Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1970). Buridan, John, Summulae de dialectica, tr. by Gyula Klima (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2001). Cicero, De inventione Code, Alan, “Aristotle’s Investigation of a Basic Logical Principles: Which Science Investigates the Principle of Non-Contradiction?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16 (1986), pp. 341–58. Cohn, Jonas, Theorie der Dialektik (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923). Cornforth, Maurice, Materialism and the Dialectical Method (New York: International Publications, 1971). Costello, W. T., S. J., The Scholastic Curriculum in Early Seventeenth Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958). Duhring, Eugen Karl, Natürliche Dialektik (Berlin: F. S. Rittler und Cohn, 1865). Dürr, Karl “Die Entwicklung der Dialektik von Plato bis Hegel,” Dialectica, vol. 1 (1947), pp. 45–62. Endres, J. A., “Die Dialektik und ihre Gegner im 11. Jahrhundert,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 19 (1906), pp. 20–33.

186

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Engels, Friedrich, Dialectics of Nature (1883) [First Published: in Russian and German in the USSR in 1925, except for “Part Played by Labour,” 1896 and “Natural Science and the Spirit World,” 1898]; translated and edited by Clemens Dutt with a preface and notes by J. B. S. Haldane, F. R. S. (New York: International Publishers, 1940). Evans, D. G., Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Fichte, J. G. Wissenschaftslehre. Frank, Helmar G., Kybernetik und Philosophie (Berlin, Duncker u. Humblot, 1966; 2nd ed. 1969). Frank, Morfred, “A Look at Schleiermacher’s Dialectic” in Jaequeline Mariña (ed.), A Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 15–34. Freeley, Austin J., Argumentation and Debate (2nd ed.; Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1966). Fulda, Hans Friederich, “Unzulängliche Bemerkungen zur Dialektik” in R. Heede and J. Richter (eds.), Hegel-Bilanz (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, Vittorio; Auflage, 1978), pp. 33–69. Gadamer, Hans-Georg , Hegel’s Dialectic, tr. by P. C. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) ———, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). Gilby, Thomas, O. P., Barbara Celarent: A Description of Scholastic Dialectics (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1949). Green-Pelensen, N. J., The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages (Munich, Philosophia Verlag, 1984). Hartkopf, Werner, Studien zur Entwicklung der modernen Dialektik, 4 vols. (Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1972–88).

187

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Hartmann, Eduard von, Ueber die dialektische Methode (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963). Hegel, G. W., Phenomenology. ———, The Science of Logic. Heiss, Robert, Die großen Dialektiker des 19. Jahrhunderts: Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1963). Hempel, C. G., “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning,” Revue International de Philosophie, vol. 11 (1950), pp. 41–63; rpt. in A. J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), pp. 108–29. Heyden, Carl Ludwig Wilhelm, Kritische Darstellung und Vergleichung der Aristotelischen und Hegel’schen Dialektik (Erlangen: Carl Herder, 1845). Hogan, James, “The Dialectics of Aristotle,” Philosophical Studies (Maynooth), vol. 5 (1955), pp. 3–21. Holopainen, Toivo J., Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (London: E. J. Brill, 1996). Horkheimer, M., and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (the book made its first appearance in 1944 under the title Philosophische Fragmente by Social Studies Association, Inc., New York. A revised version was published in 1947 by Querido Verlag in Amsterdam with the title Dialektik der Aufklärung. It was reissued in 1969 by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH. There have been two English translations: the first by John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972) and a more recent translation, based on the definitive text from Horkheimer’s collected works, by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) Horn, Ewald, “Die Disputationen und Promotionen an den deutschen Universitäten vornehmlich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert,” Centrablatt fur Bibliothekswesen, No. 11 (1893).

188

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hübig, C., Dialektik und Wissenschaftslogik (Berlin & New York: Springer, 1978). Kainz, Howard P., G. W. G. Hegel: The Philosophical System (New York: Twayn Publishers, 1996). Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason. Kaufmann, G., “Zur Geschichte der academischen Grade und Disputationen,” Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen., vol. 12 (1894), pp. 201–225. Keffer, Hajo, De Obligationibus. Rekonstruktion einer spätmittelalterlichen Disputationstheorie (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Kellerwessel, Wulf, “Rescher’s idealistische Dialektik” in Wolfgang Neuhauser et. al. (eds.), Logik, Mathematik und Natur im Objektiven Idealismus (Würzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2003), pp. 253– 64. Kondyles, Panagiōtēs, Die Entstehung der Dialektik (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979). Kulenkampff, Arend, Antinomie und Dialetik. Zur Funktion des Widerspruchs in der Philosophie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970). Little, A. G. and F. Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, Capital. McTaggart, J. M. E., Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896; rptd. New York, 1964). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Adventures of Dialectics (initially published under the title Les aventures de la dialectique) (Paris: Gallimard, 1955). Meyer, Michel, “Dialectic and Questioning: Socrates and Plato,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17 (1980), pp. 281–89.

189

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Moos, P. von, “Die angesehene Meinung: Studien zum endoxon im Mittelalter: Abelard,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, vol. 45 (1998), pp. 355–80. Mure, G. R. E., The Philosophy of Hegel (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). Owen, G. E. L., (ed.), Aristotle on Dialectic: The Topics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). ———, Logic, Science, and Dialectic (London: Duckworth, 1986), p. 189. Perelman, Chaim, Rhétorique et philosophie pour une théorie de l’argumentation en philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952). Pinkard, Terry, Hegel’s Dialectic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Pinto, R. C., “Dialectic and the Structure of Argument,” Informal Logic, vol. 6 (1984), pp. 16–20. Plato, Phaedrus. ———, Republic. ———, Sophist. Popper, K. R., “What is Dialectic,” Mind, vol. 49 (1940), pp. 403–26. ———, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Oxford: Routledge, 1962). [Contains a reprinting of the preceding.] Prantl, Carl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, 6 vols. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1855). Ramus, Petrus, Dialecticae constitutiones.

190

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rescher, Nicholas, The Primacy of Practice (Oxford, 1973) ———, Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1977). ———, Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977). ———, The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). ———, Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). ———, A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989); German transl. Warum sind wir nicht klüger (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 1994). ———, Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). ———, Process Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). ———, Nature and Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). ———, Realistic Pragmatism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000). ———, Cognitive Pragmatism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). ———, Paradoxes (Chicago: Open Court, 2001). ———, Presumption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Robinson, Richard, Plato’s Earlier Dialectic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941; 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953). Röd, Wolfgang, Die dialektische Philosophie der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1974).

191

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Ryle, Gilbert, Collected Essays: 1929–1968 (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1971). Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Dialectic: On the Act of Doing Philosophy, tr. T. N. Tice (Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1996). Schneider, Peter K., Die Begründung der Wissenschaften durch Philosophie und Kybernetik (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1966). Schopenhauer, Arthur, “Eristische Dialektik” in Arthur Schopenhauer: der handschriftliche Nachlass, ed. by A. Hübscher, Vol. III (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970), p. 666–95. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Sherratt, Yvonne, Adorno’s Positive Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Simon-Schaefer, Roland, Dialektik: Kritik eines Wortgebrauchs (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1973) Smith, Bromley, “Extracurricular Disputation: 1400–1650,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 34 (1948), pp. 473–96. Smith, Robin, “Dialectic and the Syllogism,” Ancient Philosophy, vol. 14 (1994), pp. 133–51. Stachowiak, Herbert, Denken und Erkennen im Kybernetischen Modell (Wien, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1965; 2nd ed. 1969). Stalin, Josef, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (London: Laurence and Wishert, 1941). Stenzel, J., Studien zur Entwicklung der Platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates bis Aristotles (Leipzig & Berlin: Publisher?, 1931; 2nd ed. Darmstadt: Publisher, 1974).

192

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stump, Eleonore, Dialectic and its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). Tonelli, G., “Der historische Ursprung der kantischen Termini Analytik und Dialektik,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, vol. 7 (1973), pp. 120–139. Weijers, Olga, La disputatio dans les facultés des arts au moyen âge (Turnhout: Studia Artistarum 10, 2002). Wilpert, Paul, “Aristotles und die Dialektik,” Kantstudien, vol. 48 (1956– 57), pp. 247–57. Wlodarczyk, M., “Aritotelian Dialectic and the Discovery of Truth,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 18 (2000), pp. 153–210. Wöhler, Hans-Ulrich, Dialektik in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006).

193

Name Index Abelard, 178n56, 185 Adorno, T. W. 155, 163-164, 181n93, 182n116, 182n118, 183n119, 185, 188 Agricola, Rudolph, 142 Albert the Great 141 Allen, James, 176n25, 185 Anaxagoras, 108 Anaximines, 107-108 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 139-140 Aristotle, 17, 35n12, 35n13, 112, 121, 123, 127-134, 136-139, 141-142, 156, 175n12, 175n13, 176n25, 176n29, 177n47, 178n56, 185 Averroes, 140-141 Axaximander, 107 Bacon, Francis, 57n2, 185 Baer, Karl Ernst von, 10 Baum, Manfred, 86n4, 180n88, 185 Baumgarten, A. G., 117n9 Becker, Werner, 185 Bennett, John F., 185 Berkeley, George, 89 Bernstein, Eduard, 182n112 Berton, Francescio, 181n96 Boethius of Dacia, 141-142 Boethius, 177n53 Bohr, Neils, 51-52 Bolton Robert, 176n25, 176n27, 176n35, 177n39, 185-186 Brandon, Robert N., 14n8 Bratzel, Bernd, 180n88 Braun, Julie, 117n9, 186 Brunschwig, Jacques, 176n25 Bubner, Rüdiger, 186 Buridan, John, 141, 178n56, 186 Burke, Kenneth, 174n4 Byrd, Robert, 74n5 Chalybaeus, H. M., 102, 155, 181n94

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Chisholm, Roderick, 58n3, 172 Chrysippus, 177n52 Cicero, 17, 34n3, 138, 142, 186 Code, Alan, 176n25, 186 Coffey, P., 58n3 Cohn, Jonas, 79, 14n5, 154, 186 Cornforth, Maurice, 80, 86n8, 186 Costello, W. T., S. J., 34n7, 186 Darwin, 10 Davidson, Donald, 46 de Vera, Fray Alonzo, 179n63 Democritus, 109, 112 Derrida, Jacques, 46 Descartes, René, 88-89, 114, 142 Devereux, Daniel, 176n25 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 154 Dingler, Hugo, 73n4 Diodorus Chronus, 121 Diogenes Laertius, 120-121, 174n5, 174n8, 175n10, 175n12, 177n52 Dionysius the Aereopagite, 178n54 Duhem, Pierre Maurice, 53 Dühring, Eugen Karl, 159-160, 182n104, 186 Dürr, Karl, 174n4, 181n91, 181n92, 186 Empedocles, 107-109 Endres, J. A., 178n57, 186 Engels, Friedrich, 8, 158-163, 173, 181n103, 182n107, 182n111, 182n113, 182n117, 187, 189 Epictetus, 95, 177n51 Epicurus, 110 Eubulides of Miletus, 120 Euclides of Megara, 120 Evans, D. G., 175n25, 177n46, 187 Fichte, J. G., 4, 50, 163, 144-147, 149-150, 179n70, 179n71, 187 Frank, Helmar G., 73n3, 187 Frank, Morfred, 180n79, 187 Freeley, Austin J., 34n5, 183n120, 187

196

NAME INDEX

Fulda, Hand Friedrich, 174n3, 180n81, 187 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 51, 58n9, 58n10, 76, 78, 86n3, 86n4, 86n6, 154, 175n19, 180n88, 181n89, 181n90, 181n98, 187 Gassendi, Pierre, 89 Gettier, Edmund, 172 Gilby, Thomas, O. P., , 33n2, 35n11, 178n58, 187 Goodman, Nelson, 172 Green-Pelensen, N. J., 178n57, 187 Günther, Gotthard, 73n3 Hartkopf, Werner, 187 Hartmann, Eduard von, 49, 58n8, 155, 181n95, 188 Hartmann, Nicolai, 79, 154 Hayek, F. A., 74n6 Hegel, G. W. F., 49-51, 58n8, 72, 75-79, 85n1, 86n2, 86n4, 86n5, 87, 102, 121, 148-157, 158-161, 163, 173-174, 175n11, 180n82, 180n86, 180n87, 180n88, 181n96, 188 Heiss, Robert, 188 Hempel, C. G., 117n8, 188 Heraclitus, 94, 107-108 Herbart, J. F., 157, 173, 181n100, 181n101 Heyden, Carl Ludwig Wilhelm, 188 Heyden, K. L. W., 180n87 Hippias, 96 Hobbes, Thomas, 89 Hogan, James, 176n25, 188 Holland, John H., 14n8 Holopainen, Toivo J., 178n57, 179n63, 188 Horkheimer, M., 163-164, 183n119, 188 Horn, Ewald, 34n7, 188 Hübig, C., 189 Hurwitz, Adolf, 34n8 Jaquelot, 35n14, 35n15 Kainz, Howard P., 174n1, 189 Kant, Immanuel, 117n9, 119, 140, 142-145, 148, 156, 179n68, 189 Kaufmann, G., 34n7, 189

197

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Keffer, Hajo,183n128, 189 Kellerwessel, Wulf, 84, 86n12, 189 Kepler, Johannes, 72 Keyden, K. L. W., 86n5 Keynes, J. M., 58n6 Klaus, Georg, 73n3 Klibansky, Raymond, 178n58 Kondyles, Panagiōtēs, 86n4, 180n88, 189 Korsch, Kark, 163 Kulenkampff, Arend, 189 Leibniz, G. W., 35n14, 35n25, 79, 89 Little, A. G., 33n2, 178n58, 189 Lucretius, 110 Lukáks, Georg, 163 Marcus, Aurelius, 95 Marx, Karl, 78, 158-163, 173, 181n102, 182n105, 182n113, 182n117, 189 McTaggart, J. M. E., 155, 157, 180n80, 181n97, 181n99, 189 Mercier, D. J., 57n3 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 182n116, 189 Meyer, Michel, 14n3, 190 Mill, John Stuart, 158, 181n102 Montaigne, 42 Moos, P. von, 179n64, 190 Mure, G. R. E., 162, 182n114, 190 Musgrave, Alan, 58n8 Nagel, Ernest, 73n2 Olbnrechts-Tyteca, L., 34n4, 34n5, 183n120 Owen, G. E. L. 131, 175n23, 176n25, 176n34, 190 Parmenides, 108-109 Peirce, C. S., 73n2 Pelster, F., 33n2, 178n58, 189 Perelman, Chaim, 34n4, 34n5, 183n120, 190 Pinkard, Terry, 86n4, 180n88, 190 Pinto, R. C., 183n120, 190

198

NAME INDEX

Planck, Max, 34n8 Plato, 50, 79, 95, 103-104, 110, 112, 120-127, 132-139, 144, 148, 150-151, 153, 175n18, 175n20, 175n23, 175n24, 190 Plotinus, 138 Popper, Karl R., 5, 14n4, 88, 115-116, 116n3, 117n10, 190 Posidonius of Apamea, 137 Prantl, Carl, 190 Proclus, 139 Prometheus, 123 Pythagoras, 108, 112, 121 Ramsey, Frank Plumpton, 4, 14n1, 105, 117n7 Ramus, Petrus, 178n56, 191 Rescher, Nicholas, 84, 174n9, 191 Richardson, Peter J., 74n5 Robinson, Richard, 175n20, 175n21, 191 Röd, Wolfgang, 116n1, 179n72, 192 Rougier, Louis, 74n7 Runge, Carl, 34n8 Ryle, Gilbert, 175n24, 192 Sarleminjn, Andres, 180n80 Schelling, F. W. T., 144-147, 179n72 Schlegel, Friederich, 117n9 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., 87, 148-149, 173, 179n73, 179n74, 179n75, 179n76, 179n77, 180n78, 192 Schneider, Peter K., 73n3, 192 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 34n4, 145, 179n69, 192 Sextus Empiricus, 176n29, 192 Sherratt, Yvonne, 182n116, 192 Silverman, Allen, 175n15 Simon-Schaefer, Roland, 39, 57n1, 14n6, 192 Smith, Bromley, 34n6, 178n58, 192 Smith, Robin, 192 Socrates, 14n3, 50, 105, 120-128, 133, 135, 137 Spencer, Herbert, 10, 14n7 Spinoza, 89, 98, 162 Stachowiak, Herbert, 73n3, 192 Stalin, Josef, 162-163, 182n115, 182n117, 192

199

Nicholas Rescher • Dialectic

Stenzel, J., 193 Stump, Eleonore, 193, 178n57 Thales, 107 Thrasymachus, 94-95 Tonelli, G., 193 Trendelenburg, Adolf, 79, 154 Ueberweg, Friedrich, 181n100 Valla, Laurentius, 142 Versor, Johannes, 141 Weijers, Olga, 193, 183n128 Weinberg, Stephen, 52 Whately, Richard, 17-18 William of Ockham, 141 Wilpert, Paul, 193 Wlodarczyk, M., 193 Wöhler, Hans-Ulrich, 178n55, 178n59, 178n60, 178n61, 178n62, 193 Wolff, Michael, 86n4, 117n9, 179n68, 180n88 Xenophon, 120, 174n6, 175n14 Zeno of Elea, 103-104, 108, 120-121, 144, 156, 175n12

200

Ontos

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Collected Paper. 14 Volumes Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received seven honorary degrees from universities on three continents (2006 at the University of Helsinki). Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. ontos verlag has published a series of collected papers of Nicholas Rescher in three parts with altogether fourteen volumes, each of which will contain roughly ten chapters/essays (some new and some previously published in scholarly journals). The fourteen volumes would cover the following range of topics: Volumes I - XIV STUDIES IN 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-937202-78-1 · 215 pp. Hardcover, EUR 75,00

STUDIES IN VALUE THEORY ISBN 3-938793-03-1 . 176 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN PRAGMATISM ISBN 3-937202-79-X · 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-04-X . 221 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN IDEALISM ISBN 3-937202-80-3 · 191 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF LOGIC ISBN 3-938793-19-8 . 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY ISBN 3-937202-81-1 · 206 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ISBN 3-938793-20-1 . 273 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN COGNITIVE FINITUDE ISBN 3-938793-00-7 . 118 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHYSICAL OPTIMALISM ISBN 3-938793-21-X . 96 pp. Hardcover, EUR 49,00

STUDIES IN SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-01-5 . 195 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN LEIBNIZ'S COSMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-22-8 . 229 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-02-3 . 165 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-23-6 . 180 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

ontos verlag

Frankfurt • Paris • Lancaster • New Brunswick 2006. 14 Volumes, Approx. 2630 pages. Format 14,8 x 21 cm Hardcover EUR 798,00 ISBN 13: 978-3-938793-25-1

P.O. Box 1541 • D-63133 Heusenstamm bei Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com • [email protected] Tel. ++49-6104-66 57 33 • Fax ++49-6104-66 57 34