Categorial analysis: Selected essays of Everett W. Hall on philosophy, value, knowledge, and the mind

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Categorial Analysis

Categorial Analysis SELECTED ESSAYS OF EVERETT W. HALL On

PHILOSOPHY, VALUE, KNOWLEDGE, AND THE MIND

Edited by

E. M. ADAMS

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL

Copyright

©

·1s there is a true descriptive declarative or a legitimate valuative in which it occurs in the argument place. A supposed linguistic expression, '/', cannot name a property unless there is a true descriptive declarative in which it occurs in the predicate place if '/' be simple in character; if complex, 'f' names a property only if there is a true descriptive declarative i n which the predicate is the name of a simple constituent of the char­ acter of '/' for every such constituent of 'f'. A supposed linguistic ex­ pression 'F' cannot name a similarity-dissimilarity pattern of characters unless there is a grounded revelatory declarative in which it occurs in the predicate place. There is a character named by '/' only if there is a property named by 'f'. Similarly for normal forms, though this is harder to state. There is a normal form '- (. . . ) ' only if there is a true sentence of this form, etc. Since our "truth-values'' differ for different forms it is difficult to generalize this. Perhaps I should say, there is a normal form '-' only if there is a sentence of this form having a positive value analogous to truth in the case of descriptive declaratives. Meaningless expressions are not linguistic, do not refer at all. But I cannot say this for false expressions. A complete symbol, that is, a sentence, is meaningful if it is made of meaningful incomplete symbols in the proper combination, that is, with the proper sort of names for the normal form involved. If it is not meaningful it is not a sentence. But it may be meaningful yet false. Thus all meaningful expressions, i.e., every linguistic expression what­ ever, even false sentences, name or refer, in their incomplete constituents at least, to entities in or dimensions of the world. A semiotic sentence, predicating something about this reference, is thus in every case partially objective, partially concerned with extra-linguistic matter. This existential aspect of semiotic sentences is most obvious in existential sentences proper, which are a subclass of semiotic sentences. Usually existential sentences 1 2. I say nothing about the fact that reference occurs or that the symbols we can use for referring occur and have certain characters. All this is true, but does not concern reference as such, and thus is not revealed by '-/ . . . / .'

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are formulated as though in the object language. I think that this is improper and that they should be formulated as in the metalanguage. Thus instead of saying 'There is a color green' I would say "There is a referent for 'green.' " In the semiotic normal form this would be ' ( E t") G/x/ ', where 'G' is the name of green. 1 3 A particularly interesting case of the tacitly existential character of semiotic sentences is that of identity sentences. 'Green is the color on the spectrum between blue and yellow' is an example. Every identity statement is semiotic. The sentence just given should, for clarification, be translated into something like: " 'Green' refers to the same color as does 'the color on the spectrum between blue and yellow.' " Against this it might, I think properly, be objected that 'the same . . . as . . . ' is itself an identity assertion. (The sentence might have read, "The referent of 'green' is identical with the referent of 'the color . . . etc.' ") So I submit that the above sentence should be translated into an existential sentence of the form ' (3 x) A,B/x/' -"there is an x such that 'green' and 'the color . . . etc . . . ' both name it." Such existential sentences are bootless when the predicate names a linguistic element or form (though not bootless when it names a com­ plete symbol), since then they must be referentially valid simply by virtue of the occurrence in the object language of the expression they name. That is, the fact that the expression they name is a (meaningful) expression is sufficient to guarantee this validity. But that does not destroy their extra-linguistic reference. Consider a more controversial case. I wish to say that there is a normative dimension to reality. I would formulate this ' ( 3x) N /x/,' where N names the normative form, i.e., '- { . . . }.' This is referentially valid for the sort of language I am advocating in this paper. Does it follow that the issue is merely lin­ guistic ? Surely not if 'merely linguistic' means 'of no extra-linguistic significance.' Granted that relative to my language ' (3x) N/x/' must be referentially valid. The objective question (I do not say 'non-linguistic' since it is a linguistic question) now becomes, is what I call my language a language ; specifically, is the form named by 'N' linguistic, does it refer ? This leads to my third remark on the categorial significance of semiotic sentences. Reference is not in the world. The world would be just what 13. I t should be obvious that there is a type of existential sentence corresponding to each of the non-semiotic normal forms. All that is necessary is to change the type of name occurring in the predicate place in the formulation as given in the text

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it is were it never meant or referred to by any language. 1 4 Yet reference is always to something in the world. Now the significant thing for categorial analysis generally is that in many important cases it is ap­ parently impossible ( the world being as it is) to refer clearly to certain sorts of entities or aspects of the world and to distinguish them from others save through some reference to references. The important cases I have in mind are precisely those most general aspects of the world which are of categorial significance. The reason for this is not far to seek. Everyday language, which is that upon which the philosopher must rest in any attempt to talk clearly about all the main aspects of the world, does not itself, directly, talk about anything so general and abstract as the categories. The categories must thus be reconstructed from the modes of saying much less abstract things in common speech. To refer to the categories assumed in every­ day language it thus becomes necessary to talk about the forms of every­ day language, especially the types of predication. Thus the only mode of talking about matters of philosophic concern that is actually open is semiotic. Thus philosophy is linguistic analysis. But there is no logical necessity in this. It is due to the nature of our world, particularly of the laws of linguistic behavior of humans.1 5 And the linguistic analysis which is philosophy is, when successful, i.e., when issuing in referentially valid sentences, a knowledge of the world. 14. I am not here talking about any behavioral events which may, misleadingly, be termed linguistic. 15. I am now talking of events, not of language qua language, i.e., as referential.

Part II. Ethics and Values

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The Grounds of Ethics

. . . It seems only reasonable to suppose that before agreement can be attained on the appropriate objectives for a course in college algebra or college physics there must be at least substantial agreement within the subject itself.* Is it not equally reasonable to make a similar assump­ tion in the case of college ethics? Any agreement on objectives for such a course would be superficial and indeed misleading if there were no agreement as to what we know in ethics. But where is the philosopher today who can honestly claim agreement between ethicists even as to the very fundamentals of that subject? It may be gratifying to the teacher of a course in ethics to be told that he has the responsibility for the molding of his students' values, the directing of their life courses, in his hands. I think this is largely hokum, though very ego-satisfying to the ethicist. However, to the degree that it contains truth, should it not be terrifying? Who would undertake the navigation of the Queen Elizabeth across the North Atlantic without a knowledge of celestial mechanics? Should we ethicists be any more foolhardy in attempting to guide the lives of our students or in accepting the "tremendous responsi­ bility" of helping to give "a sense of direction in our complex civiliza­ tion," to use the challenging phrases of Chancellor Williams? Not that our civilization does not need a little guidance. We are living pretty close to moral chaos. And, as we are only too keenly aware, the enormous increase in our powers of effecting almost any purpose serves to accentuate the lack of basic agreement as to which purposes, out of the many conflicting ones that individuals and groups pursue, are really justifiable and which are not. It is not merely that we differ on what values should be put first and what others in subordinate position. • This paper was read at the University of Mississippi in the spring of 1949 ; not previously published.

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What is more disconcerting is that we do not agree on a principle or au­ thority or method of establishing and ranking various values, or, if we are approaching, as there is some evidence to believe, such an agree­ ment, its character is eve n more shocking than the disagreement out of which it is arisi ng, for it seems to be precisely an agreement that there is no foundation for any value, no justification for ranking any purpose as morally better tha n any other. It has been customary to find the basis for a given set of values, expressed as a moral pattern, in a religious world view. For our Western civilization this has meant, almost exclusively, some form of Christian theology and philosophy. God, the creator and maintainer of the universe, has a basic plan and purpose, culminating in man and man's destiny as revealed in the life drama and the teachings of Jesus. Everything be­ speaks this purpose, if we had but eyes to see it. The whole universe thus stands behind the right values; only man's ignorance and, perhaps, viciousness obstructs their complete and immediate achievement. This religious basis of values has of late increasingly lost its effective­ ness. I think that Professor W. T. Stace, in a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, has correctly indicated a major cause. It is the growth of the scientific outlook. In this connection the really important warfare of science with theology lies not in the area of particular explanations of particular phenomena, so ably traced by President Andrew D. White. It lies rather in the fact that science everywhere has been successful in finding laws and in controlling nature precisely by dropping all assump­ tions as to purposes in nature. Lecomte du Nouy may still make a valiant attempt to discern the outlines of human destiny by reading the book of nature, but such attempts are ever rarer and more obviously out of harmony with the trend toward a scientific outlook, an outlook which sees nature as value-free or neutral. If there be a God with special purposes, giving backing to some definite way of life, it would seem he must reside in some supernatural realm, contacted perhaps only rarely by some spiri tually gifted soul and not visible to the unaided intellect, no matter how successful the latter in ferreting out the secrets of nature. But this failure of a God-saturated universe to point out the good life is just the prelude to a deeper unsettlement. Suppose a different out­ come. Suppose a scientific outlook thoroughly teleological-the scientist only succeeding in finding laws and predicting events as he posits divine purpose everywhere and in detail. Then we would perhaps all agree that

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a certain set of values dominate natural processes. But the insidious questions still arise : Are these the right ones? Perchance not a Good Spirit but a Devil has everything in his power? Is the mere fact that every event is determined by some plan itself sufficient to show this plan to be good? However powerful God is, is his power his goodness, or does it, by itself, furnish any warrant of his goodness? There is a simple and definite answer to this, if one is bold enough to make it. It was given back in the fourteenth century by William of Ockham. It says that God's plan for things must be right since to be right is j ust to be, as a matter of fact, willed by God. Ockham's premise is God's omnipotent and arbitrary will. Whatever is, is and is as it is because that is God's good pleasure. Likewise whatever is good and noble or again vicious and base is so simply because God so willed. God's will itself needs and can have no further determinant nor j ustification. "God cannot be obligated to any act," says Ockham; "with Him a thing becomes right solely for the reason that he wants it to be so." The consequences for ethics of such a view are rather startling, as the church was not slow to see. The whole content of morality becomes contingent, dependent upon an arbitrary matter of fact. Since God as a matter of fact has decreed against stealing, adultery, and hatred directed against Himself, these acts are evil. Had He decreed in favor of them, however, they would have been good, without any other change in their nature or consequences. Moreover, God has decreed for all men equally that these acts should be avoided. But this again is simply an arbitrary fact as to his free choice. Had he willed that Tom, Dick, and Harry abstain from them but that George, John, and Henry perform them, then they would be evil for Tom, Dick, and Harry, but good for George, John, and Henry. Again, God decrees abstention from them at all times, but had he decreed avoidance on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays with indulgence in them on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, then they would be evil if performed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, or Saturdays but good if performed on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fri­ days. Let us also consider the future. God's past will does not bind him for the future. Just because he has in the past decreed the evil of stealing, adultery, and hatred of God it does not follow that these will be evil in the future. He may change His mind. If so, these same sorts of acts that were evil may become good. But the most astonishing consequence is still to come. Goodness is harmony with what God wills. This is so

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because God wills it. Suppose God willed that goodness be in conflict with what he wills, that harmony with his will be the essence of evil. In that case, to do what God would have us do would be evil, and to do what he opposes, good. This, to put it mildly, is a rather paradoxical view for a theological ethics to countenance, but it is the logical outcome of the position that makes God's arbitrary free choice the absolute and sole ethical basis. The modern world has seen the gradual atrophy of the belief in God. Yet the basing of ethics upon an arbitrary act of will is still a current alternative of thought. God's arbitrary will, however, has been replaced by man's. In the late nineteenth century the voice of Friedrich Nietzsche was shouting forth this change. God is dead. His place is taken by the superman-a being whose power, in Nietzsche's conception, makes the exploits of that comic-strip character who has recently usurped his name, seem childish indeed. For Nietzsche's superman does not knock down buildings; he overthrows entire systems of values. The whole Christian way of life is superseded by a new morality, the morality of power. Our interest, however, is not in the specific set of values made supreme but in their grounding. The basis here is of exactly the same sort as in the case of William of Ockham-the creative act of an arbitrary will. What the superman wills is good, just because he wills it. There is one differ­ ence of factual assumption, which serves, I think, to bring out the char­ acter of this foundation of ethics. Ockham supposed that though nothing hinders God's changing his will as to what shall be good and what bad, he has not to date reversed himself, nor has he as a matter of fact willed that what is right for some to do shall be wrong for others in the same circumstances. But Nietzsche's superman glories in inconstancy, nor will he tolerate a good for himself that is common to others. The twentieth century has witnessed this ethics of the arbitrary will extended from Nietzsche's culturally and volitionally superior superman to every man. I refer to the current fad of existentialism. "When we speak of folornness," writes Jean-Paul Sartre, "we mean only that God does not exist . . . if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. . . . We are alone with no excuses." This is a very serious sort of responsibility, Sartre tells us. We are not merely responsible for our acts, which, of course, are the result of our own free choice. We are also responsible for the way of life they commit us to. It is our decision which makes one way of life right,

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another wrong. There is nothing further to appeal to, no more ultimate ground that can furnish any security. To realize this is to feel that deep anguish which, says the existentialist, characterizes contemporary man. But there are those today who would irreverently ask, "Just why the anguish ? Aren't you suffering simply from your inability to give up what you claim to have completely superseded ?-refuge in a God who will do your choosing for you ? " Nay, this inquirer, in the form of the logical positivist, would press further. "Isn't your trouble," he would ask the existentialist, "precisely due to the fact that you have not fully embraced your own position ? You say there is no further grounding necessary or possible for a given way of life as right than just one's own free decision. Why not escape your anguish then by just admitting that that is all there is to it ? There is no question of rightness or wrongness, there is only the fact of decision itself ! " This drastic method, which destroys the whole problem of the grounding of ethics by denying there is any ethics to be grounded, is, of course, much more elegantly presented by the logical positivist than through the psychiatric advice I have just portrayed him as offering the existentialist. His key tool here is what he calls a "meaning criterion." To put it in the words of Hans Reichenbach : " A proposition has meaning because it is verifiable, and it is meaningless in case it is not verifiable." Applied to ethical propositions, this cri­ terion makes them one and all meaningless. There is no rightness nor wrongness to any act that can be seen, heard, or otherwise observed. There is just the act, and of course its causes and consequences. So Rudolph Carnap can conclude that ethics "is not an investigation of facts, but a pretended investigation of what is good and what is evil, what it is right to do and what it is wrong to do. . . . It does not assert anything and can neither be proved nor disproved . . . . (It) is not verifi­ able and has no theoretical sense." Supposed ethical statements are nothing but disguised commands, acts of will that would impose a line of behavior on others without any justification. "Stealing is wrong," is, for example, just a subtle form of the imperative : "Do not steal ! " But now let u s scrutinize the logical positivist's meaning criterion. Does it have meaning ? Clearly not. It is not verifiable. It is not an as­ sertion of fact. It is, indeed, nothing but a disguised command. It in effect says, "Do not make statements, such as ethical judgments, that cannot be verified." So when Rudolph Carnap says, "The only proper task of philosophy is Logical Analysis" we are to understand that he

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is not uttering a meaningful sentence. He is simply commanding phi­ losophers to confine their activity to logical analysis. Or when Professor John Irving predicts that positivism by contributing to the clarification of the meaning of propositions in ethics will add weight to the maxim, "the unexamined life is not fit for human living," we will see that this is just a polite way of expressing the complex imperative: "Examine your life ; and in order to do so effectively, use the positivistic method of clarification." What then is the outcome of that whole point of view that would found ethics on an arbitrary act of will, whether on the part of God or man ? The outcome is the recognition that there is nothing but this act of will itself, no goodness or rightness created by it and attached to specific sorts of behavior. But what of this outcome itself? It is at heart nothing but another act of will; on the grounds that value-attributes cannot be sensibly observed, we are commanded to deny their occurrence, their very nature. We are faced with the imperative: deny there is any goodness or badness and thus anything good or bad. But what are we to do if an older voluntarist returns and commands: "Deny the denial. Will that there be values, whether they can be observed or not? " And in this deadlock we must, I fear, leave all those who would reduce the issue of the grounds of ethics to some arbitrary act of will. What other alternative is available? The history of ethics shows un­ mistakably another tradition, as ancient as the voluntaristic and ever in conflict with the latter. We may name it the rationalistic, but must be on our guard. It differs essentially from the voluntaristic not so much in the human faculty basically involved (though its advocates were not always too clear on this) as in its whole conception of the function of any faculty or mental power in the grounding of ethics. The voluntarist held that a mental power, the free will, of God or man, itself created values; without it there would be no value, nor any distinction between right or wrong. The rationalist, on the contrary, held that the function of reason (or any other mental power deemed appropriate) was simply to apprehend values and value distinctions already in the world. The distinction between good and bad is embedded in the very nature of things, and not even God can abrogate or change it. To see this in its theological form, let us go back to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. It is true that Aquinas made God himself the good of all else ; he was the goal or apex of all natural processes, and a

The Grounds of Ethics

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perfect knowledge of him defined the highest good for man. Yet this was not because God willed it so. Rather, it sprang from the very nature of God. Anything is good, argued Aquinas, to the degree to which it attains its characteristic mode of being; it is evil to the degree in which it is defective in i ts kind. Thus a roofless house and a man whose reason does not govern his appetites are evil in that they show a defect in their kind; they do not achieve the essence of a house or a man; they are in part only potentially a house or a man. Now God, says St. Thomas, and we will not try to follow his ingenious arguments for this conclusion, is pure actuality; in him is no unfulfilled potentiality. Hence God is not merely good; he is perfect. He, in fact, is perfection itself, and the good of all else is defined ultimately as some degree of approximation to this union of what might ideally be and what factually is whose complete achievement just constitutes the divine nature. However superior this grounding of ethics in the nature of God may seem, as contrasted with Ockham's use of an arbitrary act of deity as the foundation, it, like the latter, is no real alternative for our thinking today. Skepticism as to whether there is a perfect being is too wide-spread and too deep-going to allow any ethicist who is sensitive to the realities of his culture to make this the cornerstone of his system. Moreover, there is a serious internal difficulty in the Aquinian type of rationalism. Perhaps I can approach this through a reductio ad absurdum of the ontological argument furnished by a colleague of mine. St. Anselm's ontological argument runs, in substance, as follows. I have an idea of an absolutely good being. Such a being must exist, for if it did not, I could conceive something better, namely, a being that actually had all these good fea­ tures; but this would be a contradiction, namely that I have an idea of an absolutely good being and also of one better than it. My colleague's argument runs : I have an idea of an absolutely evil being. Therefore, such a being must exist. If it did not, I could conceive something worse, namely a being that actually had all these evil properties. And so on. Now, although St. Thomas did not accept Anselm's ontological argument, something like my colleague's reductio ad absurdum could be directed toward his conception of God. Aquinas says God is perfect since in him are no unrealized potentialities. But now let us think of the Devil. He is not merely evil, like you and me-he is perfectly evil. In him are no unrealized potentialities of greater evil, no might-have-been-worse. I am sure you see the point. 'Perfection,' in St. Thomas' usage, really

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Categorial An alysis

covers two distinguishable concepts : complete actualization of the nature of anything and absolute goodness. The rationalist in ethics, finding values and value distinctions written into the very nature of things, must resolutely deny that good and evil are anything else than just good and evil. If good is allowed to be actualization of potentialities, the rationalist is no better off than had he capitulated directly to the voluntarist and allowed good to be any object of will or desire. For whether something is all that it can become is just as much a fact, though perhaps not quite such a local and arbitrary fact, as whether something is commanded by someone. Values must then be there in the nature of things as values. This insight was ably developed by the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century, and particularly by Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth's interest was directed largely toward a refutation of voluntarism, but his position is easily generalized into a refutation of any reduction of value to fact. The voluntarist supposes that an object is made good simply by being willed or desired. But this fails to see that the unique property, goodness, is in nature eternally j ust what it is and is related to other properties just as it is entirely independently of anyone's act of willing. Equality, to use a different example, is always and exactly equality and never becomes greater-than-ness or anything else, no matter who wills what. Moreover, if two things are equal, say in length, their being equal is a matter of their displaying this property of equality in length. A man may make one board equal to another in the sense of sawing it off until it equals the other, but the equality resides in the having of this unique relation, and the latter is not made by anyone. So likewise for goodness and other moral properties. My will may cause me to perform an act, but that that act is good is a matter of its having the property of goodness, and this is not in any degree created by my will. And we must not be fooled here by our power over names. We can call any act, even an evil one, 'good.' This does not give us the power to change evil into good, no more than does the power to call inequality 'equality' give us the capacity to change the nature of inequality into that of equality. This intuitional point of view, as it has come to be called, has been ably defended and developed in the present century by another Cam­ bridge philosopher, G. E. Moore. The contribution of Moore to this school of thought amounts in my estimation to two clarifications. Though required by their position, the Cambridge Platonists were not too con-

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sistent in distinguishing the "immutable nature," as they called it, of value from the attachment or exemplification of value by particular things or acts. Moore is rigorously consistent in distinguishing good, as a property, from things that are good. This allows him to contend forcibly for the position that good is a simple, unique quality, not to be confused with any other quality whatsoever. Though it may be the case that only those things that possess some other property as well, say pleasantness or being an object of desire or free choice, are good, their goodness is not to be confused with these other properties. I am told there is a perfume called "My Sin." To my knowledge, I have never experienced its odor. So I am excluded from the range of the following hypothesis. Suppose every male upon smelling this perfume on the person of some member of the fair sex has succumbed to its enticement. Still one would not want to say that the perfume, potent though it may be, j ust is the sin it induces. This, I take it, is saying for a particular evil what Moore wishes to say generally concerning good. And this leads to the second important clarification. To use Moore's own terminology, good is a "non-natural property." Though Moore has not been too successful in defining the term, 'non-natural property,' it seems clear he means by it roughly a real property irreducible to any thing else which nevertheless cannot be observed by the senses or by introspection. Thus Moore is one of the clearest exponents of the position that value j ust is value, and the possession of value is not to be confused with the possession of anything else whatever, and particularly not with anything that can be sensibly observed. This position, by its very clarity, raises forcibly questions every rational­ istic ethics must face. How can we know what things possess this unique, non-natural property of goodness ? How can we know that anything possesses it? How can we know there is such a property at all ? Moore's answer is to appeal to intuition, by which he means not any special faculty of cognition but a certain character of our knowledge which he calls its "self-evidence." A proposition is self-evident if it is certainly true, and if it is not derived from any other proposition. I personally believe Moore has also another characteristic in mind, though I do not find that he says so: A proposition is self-evident when we are directly acquainted with its object and apprehend it to be as the proposition asserts. Thus 'I am seeing some human faces' and 'I love my wife' are self-evident to me now. The difference of ethical j udgments from these propositions

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Categorial Analysis

is that they assert some value with which, on Moore's view, we cannot be acquainted either through the senses or by introspection. This brings us squarely up against the most serious question of all, yet one which is most abstract. I shall try my best to put it lucidly. In its first form it is not so difficult. What can Moore say to those who object: ''I'm j ust not acquainted with any simple, non-natural q uality of good, nor with anything as possessing it" ? To this, Moore might no doubt answer, "But I am, therefore there must be such a quality." Or the objection might be put, "None of your propositions about good or what possesses it is self-evident to me. All are false (or mere non­ sense) ." And I think Moore would reply, "But they are self-evident to me. Therefore you haven't understood what propositions I am entertaining. You must have confused them with something else or simply failed to grasp th em. " But now the going gets harder. We jump over the quibbling that Moore's answer might elicit, such as : "How do you know I'm mistaken or confused rather than yourself ? " and turn to the heart of the issue. Moore's ethical system is based on the proposition that there is a simple, non-natural quality of good that some things possess. All else depends on this and derives from this (in conjunction with certain further definitions and factual assumptions). Moore can rightly claim that within his system this proposition is self-evident: it is certain, it is derived from nothing else. But now the old skepticism arises in a refined form. Not, what is the basis, the first principle, within the system, but, how is the whole system grounded ? Why should any intelligent man accept it ? For after all it has rivals, having their own first principles which, within themselves, must be taken as self-evident. It is precisely in this dilemma that we can turn with profit to a reappraisal of the argument for hedonism in Bentham and Mill. Moore never really faced this issue, but Bentham and Mill did. Yet to get back to their answer we must clear away gross misinterpretations of their argument, due in no small measure to Moore himself. Let me give an example that has become classic. Mill argued: "The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it : and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that

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people do actually desire it." 1 To this Moore responds, and is followed therein by a host of subsequent critics, by saying, "Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill failed to see it. The fact is that 'desirable' does not mean 'able to be desired' as 'visible' means 'able to be seen.' The desirable means simply what ought to be desired or deserves to be desired. . . ." 2 The reason Mill fell into this obvious fallacy is, on Moore's analysis, that he confused desirable in the sense of good with desired, whereas good is just good, and must not be confused with any other property, such as being an object of desire. Now I contend that Mill committed no such blunder. Moore made the serious mistake of supposing that Mill was trying to prove something within his ethical system. Mill was, however, trying to do something quite different, something every ethicist must do, either consciously and explicitly or unconsciously and thus in a hidden manner. He was trying to show how his whole system, namely, utilitarianism, could be shown to be acceptable to thoughtful men. He is quite explicit on this. "Ques­ tions of ultimate ends are not amendable to direct proof. What ever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof. . . . We are not, however, to infer that (utilitarianism's) acceptance or rtj ection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary choice. . . . Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine . . . ."3 Mill is not trying to give a strict proof of utili­ tarianism-he sees that such proofs only occur within a system; he is simply presenting some considerations that should lead intelligent men to accept the system as a whole. Let us put the passage criticized by Moore in this context. Mill is saying : Any theory of knowledge that had the consequence that there are visible things that are never seen would be rejected by sensible men as nonsense. Similarly any ethical theory that had the consequence that certain ends are desirable (i.e., good in themselves) which, nevertheless, no one has ever desired, just is unacceptable to honest and thoughtful men. If no one ever appealed to the greatest happiness of the greatest number to justify in theory his ethical j udgments, nor ever in practice actually sought to promote it, no I . Utilitarianism ( "Everyman's" Edition ) , Chap. IV. Principia Ethica (Cambridge, Eng. : Universi ty Press, 1903) , p. 6 7. 3. Utilitarianism, Chapter I.

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considerations capable of getting reasonable people to accept that prin­ ciple as ethically ultimate could be presented. Not only, argues Mill, does utilitarianism meet this test. It is the only ethical system that does. For when other ethical first principles are challenged they are justified by showing their consonance with the greatest happiness principle. And in practice, the only thing any one ever seeks for its own sake is happiness. In short, only utilitarianism, of all ethical systems, squares with the way people think about moral matters and with people's actual motives when outside the philosopher's study. If this is, as I think it is, quite explicit i n Mill, it is beyond all doubt the framework of Bentham's argument, whom Mill was simply following in this matter. "Is ( the utilitarian first principle) susceptible of any direct proof ? It should seem not; for that which is used to prove every­ thing else, cannot itself be proved; a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it is needless."4 In place of such proof, Bentham is content to show that people actually appeal to the greatest happiness principle in seeking to justify their ethical judgments and they do so even when they attempt to overthrow that principle. He points out that some ultimate and thus unprovable ethical principle is implicit in any reasoning on moral or political matters. He shows that a subjective principle, such as that which would make the individual's choice or approval the ultimate ethical criterion, would have as a consequence that people's disputes on questions of value could never be reasonably resolved, that is, that neither party i s in the right nor is either in the wrong, which, he suggests, is absurd to common sense. But perhaps his most weighty consideration is that no ethical first principle that conflicts with the greatest happiness prin­ ciple squares with men's actual motives. What it sets up as desirable appeals to no real motive. Personally, I am not a hedonist. I do not accept a first principle that allows only pleasant experiences to be good in themselves. This is irrelevant, however, to the subject of the present paper. We have been seeking the grounds of ethics. Bentham and Mill have given us sig­ nificant help in this quest. They belong to the rationalistic tradition. Value is not created by arbitrary fiat. It has its own immutable nature. Good is just good. What things possess it ? This we cannot determine 4. Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chap. I.

Th e Grou nds of Ethics

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1 05

by sense perception. We must set us a first principle which states uni­ versally what things are good. This, in conjunction with factual laws, gives us an ethical system. Within this system we can prove that certain things are good, others not. But what of the whole system ? Here, as with every philosophical system, we must give up any pretense of strict proof. However, this does not force us into chaos or sheer relativism. Our method, once our whole system has been clarified and consistently developed internally, is to turn to common sense. Does our ethical sys­ tem designate as desirable something that people actually seek, and does it make sense of people's everyday judgments and reasoning on moral matters? True, common sense needs to be freed from many contradic­ tions and confusions. But unless our ethical system can in some broad fashion square itself with the way people actually think and behave morally, our ethical system is just unrealistic and will never be accepted. And so we can set up acceptability to common sense as the ultimate grounds of ethics-in the sense not of the basic principle within an ethical system from which other ethical truths can be derived, but as the only reason why, in the last resort, this ethical system rather than that ( supposing each to be internally self-consistent) should be accepted. This may sound weak. But I am convinced it is the only intellectually honest and unconfused approach. I do not think that any form of hedon­ ism will measure up to this test, but the question as to what ethical system best satisfies it is one that must await another occasion. . . .

7 · Critical Discussions on

Utilitarianism} EmotivismJ and uGood-Reasons Ethics

(1 ) · THE ' 'PROOF" OF UTILITY IN BENTHAM AND MILL

The ostensible object of the present paper is to correct an in­ terpretation that, in the author's estimation, involves a grave historical injustice.* Frankly, however, this would never have been undertaken had there not been a supporting motivation-the desire to bring to the attention of contemporary ethicists a basic, yet simple, methodological distinction, a distinction imbedded, so it will be contended, in the writ­ ings of Bentham and Mill but almost completely neglected up to the present. One need not be a worshiper at the shrine of one's intellectual an­ cestors to feel a slight sense of distaste at the sight of every author of an elementary textbook in logic or ethics scurrying to Chapter IV of Mill's Utilitarianism, "0£ What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Sus­ ceptible," for examples of fallacies sufficiently blatant to be grasped at a glance by the untrained mind. It is just too obvious that the relation of "desirable" to "desired" is only suffixally similar to the relation of "audible" to "heard" ("audited"). And who cannot spot the error of • This article was published in Ethics, Vol. LX, No. r ( October, 1949) , r-r8.

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deriving "everyone desires the general happiness" from "each desires his own happiness? " And so we might go down through the traditional list. But were we to try to understand Mill's argument as a whole and in the simple and obvious sense in which, when viewed, it seems only fair to take it, we might find a core worth serious consideration. We must charge this tendency to force Mill's proof of the principle of utility into a set of the most patent fallacies to really first-line philos­ ophers. For example, F. H. Bradley, in Ethical Studies,1 excuses himself for taking time to point out the tissue of inconsistencies that, so he claims, is Mill's argument. "I am ashamed," he writes, "to have to examine such reasoning, but it is necessary to do so, since it is common enough." 2 I shall, however, be mainly concerned to scrutinize the criticisms of another first-line philosopher, partly because I think he is probably the most influenlial source of the traditional disparagement of Mill's argu­ ment and partly because he has stated the supposed case against Mill's proof most clearly and cogently. I refer to G. E. Moore, and specifically to Chapter III of Principia Ethica. Moore here admits, candidly enough, that his analysis derives from Sidgwick. This is entirely true, but the tone is quite different, for Sidgwick believed he was simply explicating certain hidden, but necessary, intuitionistic assumptions in utilitarianism, whereas Moore is an avowed, even an aggressive, opponent of that position. Let us see what Moore's criticism is. For purposes of analysis It 1s well to have Mill's argument before us, familiar as that argument is. For the moment we shall note only what Moore calls the "first step" and, in fact, only the first half of the first step, which I shall designate "1A": "The only proof capable of being given that a thing is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it; and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any . was so. ,,3 person th at It 1 . (2d ed. ; Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1927) , pp. 1 1 3-24. 2. Ibid., p. 1 1 5 n. 3. Quoted in G . E. Moore, Principia Etlzica (C1. mbrid ge, Eng. : University Press, 1 903) ' p. 66.

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Of this, Moore says: "Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill failed to see it."4 What fallacy ? A fallacy Moore calls "the naturalistic fallacy." "Mill has made as nai:ve and artless a use of the naturalistic fallacy as anybody could desire. 'Good,' he tells us, means 'desirable,' and you can only find out what is desirable by seeking to find out what is actually desired. . . . The important step for Ethics is this one just taken, the step which pretends to prove that 'good' means 'desired.' "6 And just what is this naturalistic fallacy that Mill committed so nai:vely and artlessly ? Let me quote one or two passages, as I fear I can­ not find a single straightforward answer : "It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actual!y defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not 'other,' but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the 'naturalistic fallacy' and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose. 6 "If I were to imagine that when I said 'I am pleased,' I meant that I was exactly the same thing as 'pleased,' I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.7 "It is a very simple fallacy indeed. When we say that an orange is yellow, we do not think our statement binds us to hold that 'orange' means nothing else than 'yellow,' or that nothing can be yellow but an orange. Supposing the orange is also sweet ! Does that bind us to say that 'sweet' is exactly the same thing as 'yellow,' that ' sweet' must be defined as 'yellow' ? 8 " . . . There is no meaning in saying that pleasure is good, unless good is something different from pleasure."9 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9. Ibid.,

p. p. p. p. p. p.

67. 66.

IO.

13. 14. 14.

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Professor Frankena, in an article on "The Naturalistic Fallacy," 1 0 has taken these and similar passages in Principia Ethica to mean that the naturalistic fallacy is a species of the definist fallacy, which "is the process of confusing or identifying two properties." 1 1 Mr. Frankena rightly points out that this fallacy can occur only within a system that dis­ tinguishes the properties said (by him who claims a commission of the naturalistic fallacy) to be confused or identified. Thus a naturalist who denies any property of goodness or desirableness as different from desiredness has not committed the definist fallacy in saying, "The desir­ able just is the desired." This seems so obviously correct that one wonders how Moore could have failed to see it or how he could have made the equivalent error, "that 'good is indefinable,' and that to deny this involves a fallacy, is a point capable of strict proof: for to deny it involves contradictions." 1 2 I think the truth is that Moore had in mind, as well as the definist fallacy, and confused therewith, two others, which are strictly fallacies and which, if committed, would involve one in the commission of the definist fallacy or would easily lead to it. The passages already quoted seem to bear this out. First, there is the confusion of the predicative with the identity "is." Let us call this the "predicative fallacy." To go from "the orange is yellow" to "the orange is nothing but yellow," or from "I am pleased" to "I am identical with having pleasure" would be to commit the predicative fallacy. Second, there is what, for lack of a rec­ ognized name, I might call the "extensionalist fallacy." This goes from the extensional equivalence of two predicate terms ( whenever either is truly predicated of a particular, the other is also) to their identity ( they designate the same property). Of course, an extensional language could be set up such that this implication holds. But it does not hold in ordinary language. Moore makes frequent appeal to its invalidity. To go from "Properties A and B always accompany goodness" to "Goodness just is A and B " would be to commit the extensionalist fallacy. Now to return to the issue. When Moore says that Mill, in step 1A, has committed the naturalistic fallacy, what does he accuse him of ? I think it is the definist fallacy. In any case, he does nothing to show that Mill committed the extensionalist fallacy. For example, he does not r n. Mind, XLVIII, N.S., No. 1 92 ( October, 1 939) , 464-77. Ibid., p. 471 . 1 2. Moore, Prin cipia Ethica, p. 77. 1 1.

no

Categorial Analysis

accuse Mill of going from "Whatever is desirable is desired and vice versa" to " 'Desirableness' and 'desiredness' designate the same property." And, were he to do so, Mill's actual statement would not bear him out; for that statement simply is the sole evidence that anything is desirable is that it is desired. This does not claim extensional equivalence of "x is desirable" and "x is desired," nor does it go from this to an identifica­ tion of the two predicates. Nor does Moore show that Mill has committed the predicative fallacy, that, for example, he has gone from "Desirable­ ness is desired" to "Desirableness j ust is desiredness." So I think that Moore simply means to accuse Mill of identifying two properties that are different, viz., desirableness and desiredness, and this, perhaps, as a step toward identifying goodness with pleasure. Now we have seen that the definist fallacy is no fallacy unless the predicates definitionally identified are also taken to refer to different properties. So here, if Mill is saying that there is no property of desirable­ ness or goodness different from the property of desiredness, that it is consonant with common usage to suppose that the word "desirableness" just refers to desiredness, he has committed no fallacy whatsoever. I happen to believe, however, that Mill does mean to accept desirableness and desiredness as different properties and that his argument makes this clear and that he does not commit the definist fallacy. Turning back to step 1A, we find Mill saying: "The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people actually do desire it." Moore himself correctly paraphrases this in one place : " . . . you can only find out what is desirable by seeking to find out what is actually desired." But then, later, he makes the astounding assertion, without any foundation, that Mill has pretended "to prove that 'good' means 'desired' " ! I can only account for this flagrant reading into Mill of the definist fallacy by supposing Moore could not grasp any other sense to Mill's argument and so thought that Mill must have committed this fallacy. But there is another and an obvious sense to any interpreter not debauched with verbal casuistry, as I hope to show. To proceed: Moore continues his attack as follows: "The fact is that 'desirable' does not mean 'able to be desired' as 'visible' means 'able to be seen.' The desirable means simply what ouglit to be desired or deserves to be desired; just as the detestable means not what can be but what ought to be detested and the damnable what deserves to be damned. Mill has, then, smuggled in, under cover of the word 'desirable,' the very notion

Utilitarianism , Emotivism, and "Good Reasons" Ethics

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III

about which he ought to be quite clear. 'Desirable' does indeed mean 'what it is good to desire'; but when this is understood, it is no longer plausible to say that our only test of that, is what is actually desired." 1 3 This passage is a classic. Does it not show the complete bankruptcy of Mill's proof of utility? But there is one small question. What reason is there to suppose that Mill was not perfectly aware that "desirable" does not mean "able to be desired" and so, in this respect, was not at all analogous to "visible?" Could there be no other way in which the evidence for desirability must be like the evidence for visibility than in the suffixes of the adj ectival designations? I think a glance at the whole argument shows that there is. And on what grounds does Moore so peremptorily continue : " 'Desirable' does indeed mean 'what it is good to desire'; but when this is understood, it is no longer plausible to say that our only test of that is what is actually desired?" Does he mean to make the astounding assertion which he seems to make, that anyone who says that the only test of the occurrence of A is the occurrence of B must be identifying A with B? This would force everyone who admits the extensional equivalence of two properties into a commission of the extensionalist fallacy ! Let us continue with Moore's criticism: "Is it merely a tautology when the Prayer Book talks of good desires? Are not bad desires also possible? Nay, we find Mill himself talking of a 'better and nobler ob­ j ect of desire,' . . . as if, after all, what is desired were not ipso facto good, and good in proportion to the amount it is desired." 14 Heaven forbid that any English philosopher should espouse a posi­ tion that makes anything in the prayer-book a trivial tautology ! I shall not undertake to defend Mill in general against such a serious charge, but on the particular point at issue I think I can clear his name. Apparently Moore's argument ( which is here mostly suppressed, which perhaps ac­ counts for its mounting vehemence) is that, since the desirable just is the desired for Mill, every desire must be good (desirable). Note, first, that this again assumes that Mill has committed the definist fallacy. Now, even supposing that he had, Moore's argument breaks down; for this fallacy would identify the desirable with the desired, not with desire. A desirable desire would be a desired desire, and not every desire is desired (in fact, even if it were, to state this would require a synthetic 1 3. Ibid., p. 67. 14.

Jbid.

II2

•

Categorial Analysis

sentence). And, still on the assumption that the definist fallacy has been committed, it would be appropriate to define "bad" as "being the object of an aversion," so that it could be plausibly held that there are bad desires. However, all this is out of the whole utilitarian framework of ideas. That framework requires that a motive be judged good or bad not by the goodness or badness of its object but by the goodness or bad­ ness of its tendency, that is, of its total probable consequences if its object be realized. I t is true that Mill rejects the hedonic calculus of Bentham (if that means that the morally good man must calculate the probable effects of every alternative in every choice-situation) in favor of living by traditional moral rules in most situations, but this is only a concession as to a tool for ascertaining probable consequences and does not entail giving up the position that desires can be judged good or bad only by the test of their total probable consequences. This leads immediately into a consideration of Moore's next thrust : "Moreover, if the desired is ipso facto the good ; then the good is ispo facto the motive of our actions, and there can be no question of finding motives for doing it, as Mill is at such pains to do. If Mill's explanation of 'desirable' be true, then his statement . . . that the rule of action may be confounded with the motive of it is untrue : for the motive of action will then be according to him ipso facto its rule ; there can be no dis­ tinction between the two, and therefore no confusion, and thus he has contradicted himself flatly." 1 5 The reference here is to the following passage from Chapter II of Utilitarianism : Some objectors to utilitarianism " . . . say it is exacting too much to require that people shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty ; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them." 1 6 This is in manifest contradiction with the definist fallacy of identify­ ing good with desired ( on the assumption, probably correct, that "motive 15. Ibid. 16. Utilitarianism ( "Everyman's" ed.) , p. 17.

Utilitarianism, Ernotivism, and "Good Reason s" Ethics

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rr3

of action" refers to the obj ect desired)-so much so, in fact, that it should have at least raised the suspicion that Mill's argument for the principle of utility does not reduce to a commission of that fallacy. Finally, Moore formulates his criticism of Mill's step rA in the form of an accusation that Mill has committed the fallacy of ambiguous middle : "Well, then, the first step by which Mill has attempted to establish his Hedonism is simply fallacious. He has attempted to establish the identity of the good with the desired, by confusing the proper sense of 'desirable,' in which it denotes that which it is good to desire, with the sense which it would bear if it were analogous to such words as 'visible.' If 'desirable' is to be identical with 'good,' then it must bear one sense; and if it is to be identical with 'desired,' then it must bear quite another sense. And yet to Mill's contention that the desired is necessarily good, it is quite essential that these two senses of 'desirable' should be the same." 1 7 I take it Moore is saying that Mill's argument can be formulated as a syllogism in Barbara : The good is identical with the desirable. The desirable is identical with the desired. Therefore, the good is identical with the desired. And in this syllogism, says Moore, the middle term, "desirable," is ambiguous. Here the definist fallacy would appear as the conclusion of a fallacious line of proof. But what evidence is there that Mill meant to use such a syllogism? I find none. Of the whole syllogism, it is clear only that Mill would accept the minor premise, that the desirable and the good are identical. It is now time to turn to the second half of Mill's first step, which I shall name " rB" : "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being the fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggre­ gate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality." 1 8 17. Moore, Principa Ethica, pp. 67-68. 18. Quoted in ibid., p. 66.

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Moore does not speci fically criticize this passage, though 1t 1s easy to guess how he would criticize it by reference to his method of dealing with step 1A and his discussion ( without special reference to this passage) of egoistic hedonism. 1 0 But there is no need to construct a hypothetical criticism ; we can fill in the lacuna in Moore by turning to Bradley, who, in this particular conflict, is clearly an ally. Referring to step 1 B, Bradley writes: "Whether our 'great modern logician' thought that by this he had proved that the happiness of all was desirable for each, I will not under­ take to say. He either meant to prove this, or has proved what he started with, viz. that each desires his own pleasure. And yet there is a certain plausibility about it. If many pigs are fed at one trough, each desires his own food, and somehow as a consequence does seem to desire the food of all ; and by parity of reasoning it should follow that each pig, desiring his own pleasure, desires also the pleasure of all." 20 And in a footnote he adds : "Either Mill meant to argue, 'Because everybody desires his own pleasure, therefore everybody desires his own pleasure'; or ' Because everybody desires his own pleasure, therefore everybody desires the pleasure of everybody else.' Disciples may take their choice. "2 1 Somehow the warning that Mill put right into step 1B-"all the proof that the case admits of"-did not make any impression. Bradley, like Moore, is assuming that our "great modern logician," as he derisively characterizes Mill, must be presenting in his "proof" of the principle of utility a strict, logical deduction. It is high time that this whole interpre­ tation be fundamentally and decisively challenged. If we turn back to Chapter I of Utilitarianism, we find Mill un­ equivocally rejecting any such interpretation: "On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to con­ tribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is suscep­ tible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amen­ able to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof. . . . If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, 1 9. Cf. ibid., pp. 96-105. His obj ect of condemnation here is Sidgwick. 20. Ethical Studies, p. I 1 3 . 2 1 . Ibid., pp. 1 1 3-14 n.

Utilitarianism , Em otivism , and " Good Reasons" Ethics

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I IS

including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rej ected, but is not a subj ect of what is commonly under­ stood by proof." 22 And the very first sentence of Chapter IV reverts to this disavowal of any strict proof of the principle of utility : "It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not admit of strict proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term." 23 Not only does Mill thus explicitly disavow any attempt to give a strict proof of the principle of utility, but he makes it clear that the "proof" which he offers is quite another sort of thing. Returning to Chapter I, we find him continuing: "We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of philosophy. The subj ect is within the cognizance of the rational faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way of intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof. "We shall examine presently of what nature are these considerations; in what manner they apply to the case, and what rational grounds, there­ fore, can be given for accepting or rej ecting the utilitarian formula."24 The very title of Chapter IV is illuminating, "Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible." Apparently, Mill considered that he was not so much giving a proof of the principle of utility as discussing the question of the meaning of "proof" when applied to an ethical first principle. So we find him asking, concerning the principle of utility, "What ought to be required of this doctrine-what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfil-to make good its claim to be believed? "25 So much, then, is obvious. Mill utterly disavows any attempt to give a strict proof of the principle of utility. Thus steps 1A and 1B cannot be interpreted as Moore and Bradley have interpreted them; for then they would be simply attempted strict deductions that, unfortunately, are Mill, Ibid., 24. lbid., 25. Ibid., 22. 23.

Utilitarianism, p. 4.

p. p. p.

32. 4. 3 2.

u6

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Categorial Analysis

failures because of the commission of fallacies that any schoolboy can detect. 26 This result is final and quite unassailable. We now come to the more interesting and hazardous task of trying to ascertain j ust what is the nature of those considerations which, Mill thinks, are capable of de­ termining the intellect to give assent to the principle of utility. And first let us call to mind the well-known, but not on that account wholly irrelevant, fact that Mill was an empiricist, an opponent of all forms of intuitionism and a priorism. That Mill himself thought this relevant is clear from Chapter I of Utilitarianism, which is devoted precisely to its reiteration in application to ethics : "According to the one opinion, the principles of morals are evident a priori, requi ring nothi ng to command assent, except that the meaning of the terms be understood. According to the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood are questions of observation and experience."27 Yet Mill is clear that a peculiar problem marks off ethical questions from factual. It is not possible to determine what is right or wrong in individual cases by direct perception. It i s necessary, in making ethical j udgments, to apply general principles that go back to an ethical first principle : " . . . the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case." 28 Thus thi s serious question faces the ethical empiricist : How can one's ethical first principle ( such as the principle of utility) be established ? Self-evidence i s not available, for appeal to it would be an embracing of intuitionism ; nor is inductive generalization, since the rightness or wrong• ness of individual acts is not open to direct perception. In this situation Mill makes use of two considerations, both of which he got from Bentham, not to prove the principle of utility but to make it acceptable to reasonable men. One of these is essentially an appeal to men's honesty. When ordinary men try to j ustify their moral j udgments rationally, they do so by the tacit use of the principle of utility. When an 26. I t would do no good were the cri tic of Mill to say that Mill's disavowal of strict proof applies only to his whole proof, that this latter includes step 2, which is inductive, and that therefore i t is permissible to treat steps IA and IB as attempts at strict deduction. First, Mill would call such a combination of deduction and induction a strict proof "in the ordinary acceptation of the term." Second, his disavowal of strict proof is re-emphasized within both step IA and step IB. 27. Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 2. 28. Ibid.

Utilitarianism , Em otivism, an d "Good Reasons" Ethics

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I I7

ethicist attempts to show why his ethical first principle (if it differs from that of utility) should be accepted, he does so by utilitarian arguments.29 This is not, I am convinced, the old consensus gentium argument, nor does it rest on a social-agreement theory of truth. If it were, a strict proof of utility would be possible. It is rather, as I have said, an appeal to intellectual honesty. It says : "My dear ethicist, whenever you are caught off guard, either in everyday situations or in arguing for some ethical principle, you find your reasons go back to a tacit assumption of utility as the first principle of ethics. What more does the utilitarian need to do than to bring this clearly to your attention ? " I do not, however, think that this was the main consideration that Mill wished to present in developing a favorable attitude toward the principle of utility. In the first place, it is not in any special sense em­ pirical. In the second place, he adverts to it briefly in Chapter I, but not at all in Chapter IV, which, as we have seen, is devoted to the task of showing "of what sort of proof the principle of utility is susceptible." Chapter IV is, I wish to urge, simply an explication of a certain sort of

becomes ambiguous. When I negate the imperative, 'Close the door,' I may mean to command its opposite, 'Leave the door open,' or I may mean to cancel its imperative element, i.e., to command 'Do as you please about the door."20 To deny that a valuative is legitimate may mean either to assert that it is illegitimate (a valuative with contradictory con­ tent is legitimate) or to assert that it is non-legitimate (a valuative cancel­ ling the valuative element is legitimate). If a logical or formalized language is to be adequate to say the main sorts of things said in common speech, there must be rules for the forma­ tion of valuative sentences and for compounding sentences into valuatives that are different from the rules of declarative logic. More than this, such a valuative logic must not be wholly independent of declarative logic. There must be rules for combining declaratives and valuatives if the proposed logic is to be adequate in formalizing common language. Let us consider a single case. In common speech we frequently have such commands as 'If he strikes you first, then hit him back.' Here we have a valuative form, analogous to 'if - - - then . . . ' in declarative logic, which unites a declarative antecedent with a valuative consequent. 21 With such an inclusive formalized language it would become possible to say things clearly that otherwise can not be so stated. I shall give two examples. The first is rather trivial, since it adds little to common speech, yet it does formulate clearly a frequently appearing concept in common speech which cannot be put in the standard forms of traditional logic at all. I refer to the concept of an extrinsic, as contrasted with an intrinsic, 20. On this point see Alf Ross, "Imperatives and Logic," Philosophy of Science, Vol. I I , No. 1 (January, 1944) , 39. 2 1 . Mr. Thomas Storer, in "The Logic of Value Interpretatives," Philosoph y of Science, shows by using both the matrix and the postulational techniques, how such a general logic, including both valuative and declarative connectives, could be developed.

Analysis of Value Sen tences

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good. An extrinsic good, in common parlance, is something not good in itself but productive of what is good in itself. Clearly to express this we need to combine an empirical law with a valuative. That which is extrinsically good is united by an empiri cal law ( which will take the form of a declarative) with that which is intrinsically good ( which must be expressed as a valuative). This can be stated as a quasisemantical defi­ nition of the syntactical form '- - - { . . . } '' (which may be read 'it were extrinsically good that . . . be - - -') : for any f, 'f { x } '' is legitimate for all x if and only if there is a g such that whenever 'f(x) ' is true 'g (x)' is true and 'g{x} ' is legitimate. The other example is not trivial, but permits a real clarification of common speech. I think it is possible to formulate value standards in a way which brings out their nature unambiguously, and shows them to have a certain analogy to empirical laws. Let us take for our illustration, 'Pleasure is the standard of good.' We must first note that this is clearly not equivalent, in common usage, to " 'Pleasure' and 'good' are synonymous terms." 22 It is frequently thought that 'Pleasure is the standard of good' must mean that pleasure is the only intrinsic good, all other goods being extrinsic. This was tra­ ditionally the position of hedonism. But it resulted in the hedonic para­ dox, which is simply an expression of the empirical fact that people seek other things than pleasure as ends. The older hedonists failed to recognize that a standard can be used to evaluate ends or intrinsic goods. What, then, does 'Pleasure is the standard of good' mean, and how can we formulate it clearly ? It means, I think, that anything is good if and only if it is pleasant (this of course should be extended to include things that are only extrinsically good, but we can omit this extension for our present purpose). If good were a simple quality, we could express the hedonic standard as follows : (x) (pl(x) == g(x) ) , where 'pl' is an ab­ breviation for 'pleasant' and 'g' for 'good.' It should be emphasized that this equivalence would not be definitional. It would in some sense be 22• To say that nevertheless they are really synonymous (gran ting that pleasure is the standard of good, and therefore that everything good is pleasant and every­ thing pleasan t is good) is to commit the "naturalistic fallacy." See the excel lent article by W. K. Frankena, "The Naturalistic Fallacy," Mind, Vol. XLVIII, N.S., No. 192 (October, 1 939) , 464-77. The decisive point is that 'pleasure' is a descriptive predicate, referring to an observable quality ; 'good' is not, it ind icates that we are in the valuative dimension.

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empi rical, expressing the fact that wherever there is a particular that is pleasant that particular is also good, and conversely. Pleasantness and goodness would then be strictly analogous to coloredness and extended­ ness. But I have argued that 'good' does not refer to a quality. It is a pseudo-predicate, and sentences containing it should be translated into valuatives having as predicates the properties whose exemplification is the specific object of valuation. With this change, it might seem that 'Pleasure is the standard of good' should be formulated : for every x, 'pl(x) ' is true if and only if 'p/{x}' is legitimate, However, this would require that every occurrence of pleasure be intrinsically good, which is not required of pleasure as the standard of good. It also omits the im­ portant consideration that standards of value are applied to possible as well as to actual situations. That is, we want to say that 'pl{x} , can be legitimate when 'pl ( x) ' is false. Furthermore, and this is important in avoiding the sort of fallacy involved in the hedonic paradox, our formula­ tion should allow for the case where the exemplification of some other property than pleasure is the specific object of valuation, yet it must retain the notion that only as this is associated with pleasure is it valuable. Thus we must bring in an empirical law. I suggest the following as a formulation of the hedonic standard of value: for any f, if there is an empirical law such that whenever '/ (x) ' is true 'pl(x) ' is true, then 'f {x}' is legitimate for all x. This may be read : 'if anything's exemplification of any property is asso­ ciated regularly with the exemplification of pleasantness by that same thing, then it were good that that thing exemplify that property.' It should be noted that this formulation does not require that pleasure be good, i.e., that 'pl{ x } ' be legitimate. Thus pleasure as a standard or universal mark of good is to be distinguished from pleasure as an end or good in itself. Also, pleasure as a standard is not to be confused with plc-asure as goodness i,tself ( that is, 'pl' i s not '- - - { . . . } ') . There are two interesting aspects of the formulation of the hedonic standard given above to which I would like to call attention. On the one hand, it is a valuative, though it includes a declarative (in the form of an empirical law) . On the other hand, it itself resembles an empirical law. It is clearly not a definition or logical truth (since it is a valuative) . Yet it is universal in form. This means, it seems to me, that if anyone

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accepts pleasure ( or satisfaction of desire, free choice, self-development, or what not, since 'pl' can be replaced by any other descriptive predicate one wishes) as the standard of value, he has accepted a valuative which in some sense says something about the world, something analogous to an empirical law. This last statement naturally introduces my last topic in this paper, upon which I can make only a few rather unsatisfactory remarks. I refer to the basic question: To what in the extra-linguistic world do valuatives refer ? My whole approach leads me to say that this question cannot be answered directly. We are here dealing with a categorial feature of the world which can be indicated only indirectly by talking about language. The language feature of significance for us is the way in which valuatives differ from declaratives. They do not differ as to content. Their terms are the same-proper names and predicates of various degrees and levels. This is categorially significant. Values are not individuals. Nor is value a quality or relation. There are no special value entities in the world. But though valuatives contain the same sorts of terms as declaratives, their syntactical union of these terms is different and this difference has referential significance. Analogous to the truth-condition for declaratives, '/(a) ' is true if and only if / (a) (supposing '/' designates / and 'a' designates a) , we have the legitimacy-condition for valuatives, 'f { a } ' is legitimate if and only if / { a } .23 Immediately, of course, the question arises as to what it is in the extra­ linguistic world that must obtain if the legitimacy-condition of a valu23. The connective, 'if and only if; in this legitimacy condition is analogous to, but not identical with, the 'if and only if' of the truth condi tion. The latter con­ nects two declaratives (albei t a seman tical and an object-language declarative) , whereas the former connects a declarative and a valuative. Simply as illustrative of the character of this analogy, I suggest the following as being true in a broad way to ordinary language ( where 'L' is an abbreviation for 'legitimate,' 'N' for 'non-legitimate,' and 'I' for 'illegitimate') :

p q p if and only q T T F F

T F T F

T F F T

p v p if and only if v T L T N T I

T F F

F N F I

T T

FL

F

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Categ orial Analysis

ative is to be satisfied. It cannot be the sort of thing that will satisfy the truth-condition of a declarative : viz., an individual or set of individuals exemplifying one or more qualities or relations, i.e., a fact or state of affairs. What is necessary is a different dimension of reality, a different way in which individuals and their properties are bound together. I shall call it the normative tie, 24 and distinguish it from the characterizing tie which obtains between individuals and their properties when empirical declaratives are true. To say that the normative tie is in the world, or that the world has it or includes it, must not be taken to mean that the world is a particular exemplifying, as one of its properties, the normative tie. A tie is not a property that can be exemplified by anything. In some sense, however, the normative tie is "in" the world; it obtains between certain individuals and certain properties. The best way to put it, however, is simply to say that some valuatives are irreducible to declaratives and are legitimate. I am painfully aware that I have done no more in this paper than throw out a few hints as to what seems to me to be involved in a philo­ sophical analysis that "takes value seriously." I can only plead that the approach here indicated is, to my knowledge, radically new and will require a great deal of labor for its development and space for its ex­ position before it can be presented in any thorough-going and systematic fashion. In particular, I am aware that before this approach can claim a hearing it will be necessary to develop a general account of the j ustification of valuatives comparable to the principle of the observational verification of declaratives.25 All this must await a future occasion. However, I do believe that merely pointing out a direction in which non-naturalistic ethics may be developed without a commitment to value qualities or relations is of some worth . Furthermore, I hope that the possibility of using lan­ guage analysis not for a denial of philosophical problems but as the most fruitful instrument of categorial analysis may be seen to offer promise 24. The suggestion comes from W. E. Johnson's term, 'characterizing tie' ( cf. Logic [Cambridge, Eng. : University Press, 192 1 ] , I, I O ff.) , but there is no inten­ tion of following Joh nson in holding th at ties are simply forms of thought. 25. In an article on "Value Propositions and Verifiability," /ournal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXIV, No. 22 ( October, 1937) , 589-602, Wilbur M. Urban speaks of the "authentication" of an evaluative judgment and says that it is quite different from the verification of a factual judgment. But beyond saying that values can be "shown forth" and thus experienced and acknowledged in their own right, Urban does not make authentication and its relation to verification clear.

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for future philosophical endeavor, especially in the highly amorphous field of axiology.

(3 ) · HO W VALUE INCLUDES EXISTENCE

In an earlier anicle 1 I argued that valuative sentences-such as imperatives, hortatives, optatives, and value statements proper-should be admitted to have a distinctive nature of their own, as contrasted with declarative sentences, and in their distinctive character should be taken to reveal something about the world, something that may be called its normative dimension.* This may, I suppose, be taken as a revival of the position that value is a form of being, distinct from that of existence. I have tried to make that position more definite however by contending that the analysis of such categories as those of value and existence must proceed through an analysis of important features of common speech, not for its own sake, but as revealing very general aspects of the world. In this connection, I made the suggestion that valuative sentences may be taken as a group to differ fundamentally from declaratives, not in their content, i.e., their subjects or predicates, but in their form of union. This can be represented by a difference in syntactical design. A declarative can be represented as a type by '/(a) ,' to be read, "a is /"; a valuative, by '/ {a },' to be read, "it were good that a be f.'' One way of bringing out the distinction between these forms is to point out that declaratives have only two truth-values : true and false; whereas valuatives have at least three analogous legitimacy-values, as I shall call them: legitimate, illegiti­ mate, and non-legitimate. This indicates that an expansion of logic, with new connectives and new rules of derivation for valuatives, might well be developed. The article referred to, however, may have been misleading in stress­ ing too much the difference between valuatives and declaratives. In the r. "A Categorial Analysis of Value," Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIV, No. 4 (October, 1 947) , 333-44, included in this volume pp. 1 77--93. * This paper was written in 1 947 ; not previously published.

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present article I wish to clarify an intimate connection between them. It is perfectly true that any sentences with the same content, one being a declarative and one a valuative, are independent of each other in the obvious sense that whatever the truth-value of the declarative, the valu­ �Hive may have any legitimacy-value, and conversely. For example, the truth-value of 'The communists and the national govern ment of Ch i n a are fighting' is not determined by, nor does it determine, the legitimacy­ value of 'It were good that the communists and the national government of China be fighting.' 2 Without giving up this obvious independence of corresponding3 valuatives and declaratives, it is necessary to point out an intimate con­ nection between them. The connection I have in mind is in some sense semantical, a matter of meaning. In some peculiar way, a valuative is more complex in its meaning than is its corresponding declarative ; its meaning embraces the meaning of the l atter. The valuative, 'The factions in China ought not to be fighting' does somehow in its meaning include, without asserting it, the meaning of 'The factions in China are not fight­ ing.' A command always commands a state of affairs; a wish desiderates a fact ; an ought-statement is a statement of what ought to be, and so on. To put it differently, a valuative is not wholly indifferent to the truth­ value of its corresponding declarative, since what is valued in it is the state of affairs which, if it obtained, would make the corresponding de­ clarative true, not false. The converse however does not obtain. A declarative does not embrace in its meaning the meaning of the cor­ responding valuative.4 'The factions in China are not fighting' does not 2. The radical optimism of the Hegelian 'Whatever is is right' and the radical pessimism of the Schopenhauerian 'whatever is is evil' are so out of line with com mon sense that no serious consideration of them is necessary. 3. A valuative and a declarative sentence are said to correspond where they have the same content, differing only in their forms of union. 4 . There are two views that would oppose this statement. The first 1s a common but obvious confusion. I t points out that no one would assert or even entertain a declarative unless to him there were some value to be achieved in so doing. Therefore, it is argued, what he really asserts is not simply a declarative but also a (hidden) valuative. The confusion here is of the motivation of a sentence-user with the meaning of the sentence used . The other view is the neo­ Platonic position th at existence is value, and degrees of existence are degrees of value. Thus when one asserts th at God supremely is, one is evalu ating God as supremely worthfu l. A more modern form is the position that 'being,' the most inclusive of the categories, is a value-term, and thus existence, being one of several forms of being, includes value, as genus, in its specific form. This view raises a host of problems into which I ca nnot go at present. I can simply say dogmatically

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include in its meanmg the goodness, badness, or indifference of this state of affairs. I think it is this intimate connection which makes one feel intuitively a certain appropriateness in Hofstadter and McKinsey's "satisfaction­ values" of imperatives.5 An imperative is satisfied, they say, if the de­ clarative corresponding to it is true ; it is unsatisfied if the latter is false. However, to put such satisfaction-values in the place of what I call legit­ imacy-values, i.e., as the distinctive values of imperatives, is to develop a scheme that is logically redundant in that the logic of imperatives thus exactly duplicates the logic of declaratives (as these authors themselves point out). Worse, it is epistemologically misleading, for it tacitly denies the basic fact that there are legitimacy-values of imperatives which are independent of the truth-values of corresponding declaratives. Thus it allows the complete reducibility of imperatives to declaratives, which, as I argued earlier, is fundamentally incompatible with common speech. As I have said, the purpose of the present paper is to attempt a clarifi­ cation of this close connection of any valuative sentence with its corre­ sponding declarative. This clarification is not conceived as a linguistic exercise, but as a continuation of the categorial analysis of value. It is based on the conviction that categorial features of the world cannot be studied direct!y, as one would observe empirical properties of particulars, but only indirectly, through the analysis of the most pervasive features of everyday language. By saying that the connection to be explored is one of meaning, I have already intimated that the clarification to be offered will make it semantical or quasi-semantical. But in order that the issue be not begged, it is desirable to explore several possibilities, as follows :6 a valuative emthat the neo-Platonic tradition is based on a set of subtle confusions, an important one being, I am convinced, the very one mentioned earlier in this note. The position I am attempting to develop does require that there be a category-say being, I have spoken of dimensions of reality-including both value and existence. But dimension of reality is not value, and it is not asserted in our ordinary declaratives, rather it is revealed in them (and in v aluatives-particularly in the way declaratives and valuatives differ) . 5. Albert Hofstadter and J. C. C. McKinsey, "On the Logic of Imperatives," Philosophy of Science, Vol. VI, No. 4 ( October, 1939) , 446-57. 6. The following analysis is couched in language coming from Charles Morris, "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," International Encyclopedia of Unified Science ( Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1938) , Vol. I, No. 2, and now fairly traditional in semiotical discussions.

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braces its corresponding declarative ( 1 ) as a more complex sentence syntactically includes one of its components, (2) as a syntactical sentence may include a sentence of which it is making a syntactical assertion, (3) as a pragmatic sentence includes a sentence to which it refers, or (4) as a semantical sentence includes a sentence in its object-language. By ( 1 ) I mean the sort of inclusion that obtains, for example, between (a) 'It is warm and I am hungry' and (b) 'I am hungry.' Thus a molec­ ular proposition, (a), may be said to include one of its atomic components, (b). In order to make this relevant, it is necessary to have a molecular proposition which itself is a valuative but one of whose components is a declarative (for we are trying to clarify the way valuatives embrace declaratives). That this should be possible in a clarified language com­ patible with common speech I have already argued. For example, ' I f he strikes you, turn the other cheek' is, as a whole, a valuative, but its ante­ cedent, 'He strikes you,' is a declarative. That this is not the solution should be evident. In the first place, iit would apply to a restricted class of valuatives only, not to all, as is re­ quired. Not all valuatives are molecular. 'He ought not strike you,' e.g., is atomic. Furthermore, not all molecular valuatives include a declarative as one component. For example, 'Either be still or leave the room' is com­ posed of two valuatives. In the second place, where a declarative is one component in a molecular valuative, by the nature of the case it cannot be the declarative that corresponds to (has the same content as) the valua­ tive. The declarative corresponding to the valuative given above would be 'If he strikes you, you will turn7 the other cheek.' It might be thought that Mr. Bohnert8 could use solution ( 1 ). He suggests that an imperative be treated as an elliptical, declarative disjunctive. For example, 'Fix the car' is translated by him into, 'You will fix the car or you will go without its use.' This declarative disjunction includes as one of its declarative components the atomic sentence which corresponds to the imperative in its elliptical form. In the example given, 'You will fix the car' corre­ sponds to 'Fix the car,' yet is a component of the latter when that i s translated into its full disjunctive form. This solution, however, is entirely unacceptable to anyone, like myself, who wishes to maintain the irreducibility of valuatives to declaratives. 7. 'Will turn' is merely the future tense, not a disguised imperative. 8. Herbert G. Bohnert, "The Semiotic Status of Commands," Philosophy of Science, Vol. XII, No. 4 ( October, 1945) , 302-18.

Analysis of Value Sen tences

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19 7

Valuatives on this view would become a sub-set of declaratives, with the truth-values of those declaratives. Thus 'Fix the car' would be true or false.9 And its truth or falsity would be wholly determined by what state of affairs actually obtains. This is quite out of line with common sense and everyday language. In solution ( 2) use is made of the way in which a syntactical, metalinguistic sentence may be said to embrace an object-sentence about which it makes a syntactical predication. For example, "In 'Roses are red,' 'red' is a predicate of the first degree" includes 'Roses are red' ( more ac­ curately, it refers to the latter, but includes only its name). Here again to make it seem plausible that this sort of inclusion is the kind of embracing ,of a declarative by a valuative that we are seeking, it is nececssary to take a case of an including sentence that is a valuative and which includes a declarative. The only relevant case would seem to be a syntactical rule about declaratives. Suppose we have the rule of translation "English sentences of the form 'A is between B and C' should be written in formal symbolism in the form 'Between (A,B,C) .' " This rule in some sense in­ cludes ( refers to, by name) the sentence 'A is between B and C.' 1 0 In considering this solution it is first necessary to decide whether syntactical rules are properly classified as valuatives. It might be held that as rules ( under which aspect they would seem obviously to be valua­ ti ves)1 1 they are misleadingly psychological, being tacitly directed to a language-user who is permitted or required to do certain things under certain conditions. It might be thought that their proper formulation is . · . trans 1 ated by ' - - -' " or " ' - - -' 1s . d enva ble £ram : " ' . . . ' 1s as d ec1 arat1ves ' . . . '," etc. On such a view, of course, ( 2) could not be a solution of our problem, for there would be no syntactical sentences that are valuatives. However, if this objection to (2) is not well-grounded 12 we face others 9. It might of course be true when its corresponding declarative is false, though it could not be false when the latter is true. It would seem, however, that com­ mon speech would require the possibility th at 'Fix the car' is not legitimate even when 'You have fixed ( or will fix) th e car' is true. rn. The rule is general, but from it could be inferred the particular imperative, "Write 'A is between B and C' as follows : 'Between ( A,B,C) .' " 1 r . Namely, conditional valuatives of form : 'If you use this language ( or play this game) , you must ( or may or must not) . . . . ' 1 2. I do not myself accept it. I t would seem to me that the acceptance of a syntactical assertion about, say, a non-denumerable class of expressions either involves one in a platonic realism concerning symbolic expressions or is a dis­ guised hypothetical imperative.

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Categorial Analy sis

that are. First there is the fact that the declarative that may be said to be embraced in the meaning of a syntactical rule is not the corresponding declarative. This should be clear by virtue of the nature of a syntactical rule; besides the name or names of one or more expressions it includes a syntactical predicate, such as 'translated by,' 'derivable from,' or so forth. Thus it could not have the same content as any expressions it names. 13 Second, the connection we are looking for is universal, obtains between any valuative and its corresponding declarative. But clearly syntactical rules, if they are valuatives at all, are only one very limited class thereof. By no stretch of the imagination could such a material imperative as 'Close the door' be interpreted as a syntactical rule. In (3) a somewhat analogous inclusion is appealed to. A pragmatic metalinguistic sentence may be said to include the sentence or sentences it is about ( more strictly, it makes a psychological assertion about a sentence by including the name of the latter) . Th us "Jones believes 'I am lying' " may be said to include, in its meaning, 'I am lying.' Here again for relevance to our problem we must seek a valuative sentence including a declarative. Examples of the opposite type are easy to find. For example, "Stalin is convinced 'Russia ought to be granted a warm sea-port.' " This type, of course, will not help us, si nce the in­ cluding (pragmatic) sentence is a declarative. 1 4 The sort of sentence that would be relevant is fairly common in ordinary speech, but it is questionable whether those who talk about pragmatic metalinguistic sentences would be willing to accept it as an example. I refer to such sentences as, "You ought to have said, 'The butter is used up.' " Personally, however, I am not in a position to object to this. If one accepts the class, pragmatic sentences, as a sub-class of semiotic sentences, 15 and if one 1 3. Cases of self-referral for which this might seem not to be true, would be cancelled by a type-rule, necessary to avoid the logical paradoxes. 14. One school of thought would attempt to reduce valuatives to declaratives by the procedure ( they do not state it thus explicitly) of enclosing the valuatives in quotes and then putting them in pragmatic metalinguistic sentences. That is, every value-statement, 'V,' is immediately replaced by " 'X believes 'V.' " They fail to notice that " 'V' " is a name ( of 'V') . Thus they presu ppose that there are valu­ ative sentences. To pu t it more in their language : to try to reduce values to facts by replacing them by the fact that so and so accepts such and such values, tacitly presupposes values th:1t are not reducible to fact (i.e., to this sort of fact) . 1 5. This would be the point I would seriously question. I am inclined to believe that all reference of one expression to another is seman tic, that all semiotic predi­ cates are, strictly, seman tic.

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admits the basic division of all sentences into valuatives and declaratives, i t becomes plausible (though not necessary) to admit that there are pragmatic valuatives. Here again, however, the same two sorts of obj ections urged against the first two solutions are relevant and conclusive. In the first place, the sentence named in a pragmatic valuative could never be its corresponding declarative. A pragmatic sentence contains a pragmatic predicate not contained in the sentence or sentences it names; and the arguments for such predicates are the names of sentences (not the arguments of those sentences) . Thus, the declarative corresponding to "You ought to confess 'I stole the sugar' " is not 'I stole the sugar' but "You do confess 'I stole the sugar.' " In the second place, the connection we seek holds for all valuatives, whereas (3) would restrict it to pragmatic metalinguistic valuatives. It is absurd to treat 'Turn on the light' as a semiotical sen­ tence. 1 6 Thus we come to (4), which has seemed more promising from the start, since the connection sought is one of meaning. A semantical sen­ tence may be said to include another when it names the latter and as­ serts some semantical predicate of it. Thus " 'The sky is blue' asserts that (or designates the fact that) the sky is blue" in some sense embraces in its meaning the meaning of 'The sky is blue.' Here again we must face the requirement that our embracing sentence must be a valuative. I have already 17 indicated that the position I am developing requires declarative semantical sentences embracing valua­ tives, as in the legitimacy-condition : " '/ { a } ' is legitimate if and only if f {a}." But now something more radical is necessary. It is necessary to admit the possibility of semantical valuatives. To solve our problem by means of (4) it is necessary to accept as a meaningful sentence such a valuative as " 'You have confessed your crime' ought to be true." If we can allow such sentences, then the following addition to the generally ac­ cepted truth-condition (of Tarski's) would seem to be possible : " 'f (a) ' ought to be true if and only if /{a }." Thus in our example, " 'You have confessed your crime' ought to be true if and only if you ought to have confessed your crime." It is by means of this truth-condition that I believe our problem can be solved. It should be noted first that it is an 16. The only position with which I am acquainted that would in any sense attempt such a treatmen t is that criticized in note 14 above. 1 7. Cf. "A Categorial Analysis of Value," this volume, pp. 1 77-93.

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equivalence of two valuatives, viz., " 'f (a) ' ought to be t rue" and 'f { a } '. Secondly, it should be pointed out that one of these valuatives, that on the left side, includes by name a declarative. In the third place, it should be observed that this declarative has the same content, that is, corresponds to, the valuative on the right side. Since this truth-condition as a whole should probably be treated as a declarative, since it asserts an equivalence (of two valuatives), we cannot use its inclusion of a declarative for our purpose of clarifying how valuatives embrace declaratives. Rather, we must take the valuative on its left side: " '/ (a) ' ought to be true." The function of the eg ui valence, for us, is to show that any valuative, which I represent by '/ { a } ' as typical, can be replaced by a valuative whose subject is the name of the declarative corresponding to it. This gives us what we lacked in the other solutions : universality. Every valuative is replaceable by an equivalent valuative that refers to the declarative corresponding to the former. And it should be pointed out that this will not involve us in the logical paradoxes, even without a type-rule, since the subject of our semantical valuative, viz., '/(a)' in " '/ (a) ' ought to be true," is a declarative, therefore self-substitu­ tion in it is prohibited ; i.e . , we cannot say " 'V' ought to be true" where 'V' represents this whole valuative in which it occurs, since 'true' can be (normatively) predicated only of names of declaratives. Yet this does not destroy the universality of our equivalence. We can substitute for the subject of the left side not the left side itself, but its corresponding declarative: that is, for the valuative, " 'f (a) ' ought to be true" we have the equivalent valuative ' " '/ (a) ' is true" ought to be true' which includes, by name the declarative, viz., " 'f (a) ' is true, " corresponding to the left side of our original equivalence. Our semantical solution thus avoids one of the objections common to the other three, viz., that they applied to a restricted class of valua­ tives only. Another objection was that in these other solutions it was not the corresponding declarative that was in some sense embraced in a valuative. Does not this objection apply in the case of our semantical solution? In particular, does it not apply in a form parallel to that raised under (2) and (3) ? Clearly the sentence " 'f (a) ' ought to be true" does not have the same content as '/(a).' Its subject is not 'a' but '/ (a)'; its predi­ cate is not '/' but 'true'. I think that this objection can be quite easily avoided. It is true that " 'f(a) ' ought to be true" does not have the same content as 'f (a) ,' but

Analysis of Value Sentences

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20 1

'/ { a } ' has the same content as 'f (a) ,' and 'f {a } ' is equivalent to " 'f (a) ' ought to be true." Just as " 'p' is true" means the same thing as 'p,' so " 'f (a)' ought to be true" means the same thing as '/{ a } .' Hence we may say that '/ {a} ' in its meaning embraces 'f (a).' Just how it embraces the latter without asserting it or without being itself reduced to a declarative is shown simply by pointing out that it is equivalent in meaning to saying that its corresponding declarative ought to be true. Now this seems in an obvious sense to square with everyday lan­ guage. When we say 'Russia ought to give up her veto power on the Security Council' we are entirely satisfied (apart from stylistic cumber­ someness) to be quoted as saying " 'Russia gives up her veto power on the Security Council' ought to be true." 'It were good that OPA be im­ mediately abolished' is equivalent in common speech to "It were good that 'OPA is immediately abolished' be true." 'Let there be light' means the same to common sense as "Let 'There is light' be true." I have said that this paper is not a merely linguistic analysis. It is an attempt to carry further a categorial analysis of value through or by means of a clarification of our ordinary valuative language, which, while re­ maining true to the general sense of that language, makes explicit and unambiguous certain deeply embedded common assumptions about the world to be found there. Value presupposes, embraces, or is about existence in a way that can only be stated precisely via some sentence that seems to be merely linguis­ tic, e.g., by such a sentence as our ' " 'f(a)' ought to be true" if and only i£ /{a} .' This does not mean that in the real world there are equivalences or names of sentences or an attribute designated by the predicate, 'true.' It means that in the normative or value-dimension of things there is an intimate connection with the existential ; that in the normative way (as valuable) in which particulars may "have" properties there is embedded a connection with the way in which those particulars may be actually characterized by those properties. Just what that connection is can I think be stated precisely only indirectly, in some such way as I have indicated. 1 8 1 8. This solution is radical in requmng the possibility of an extension of semantics beyond its present purely declarative form. In such an extended semantics there would be needed : ( 1 ) the definition of such semantical predicates as 'legiti­ mate,' 'il legi timate,' and 'non-legitimate,' which must satisfy, e.g., such conditions as: " '/{a}' is legitimate if and on ly if /{a}," etc ;

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(2) rules for the occurrence of these predicates in sentences ; e.g., 'legitimate' can be predicated only of the name of a valuative (just as 'true' can be predicated only of the name of a declarative) ; (3) rules for the formation of valuative sen­ tences containing semantical predicates, e.g., the name of any sentence may be normatively combined with an appropriate semantical pred icate (as in " '/(a) ' ought to be true" or " '/{a} ' ought to be il legitimate.") Such a semantics migh t have at its zero level expressions of the following two kinds only : '/ (a) ' and '/{a} '. At level one, it might then have four kinds: " '/( a) ' is true," " '/(a) ' ought to be true," " '/{a} ' is legi timate," " '/{a} ' ought to be legiti­ mate." At level two it would then al low eight kinds ; at three, sixteen, and so forth. A semantics satisfying ( 1 ) and (2) but not (3) could be constructed. This would allow valuatives to occur at zero level only. Such a semantics would fit the requirements for an idealized language as found in a "A Categorial Analysis of Value" but would not be sufficient for the present article.

9

The Empirical justifiability of Valuative Sentences

Everyday bng u2ge is composed of tw J sorts of sentences: declara­ tive and valuative.* 'Your boat has a weather helm' is declarative. 'Trim your jib-sheet flatter' is valuative. Declarative sentences are true or false. Valuatives are neither. Yet they have a property that is analogous, which I shall call their legitimacy. 'Trim your jib-sheet flatter' is legitimate if you ought to trim your jib-sheet flatter. 1 A central question for epistemology concerns the nature of verifica­ cation of empirical, or factual, declarative sentences. A declarative sen­ tence is verified when its truth is established. There is an analogous ques­ tion concerning the j ustifiability of valuative sentences. A valuative sen­ tence is justified if its legitimacy is established. Empiricists claim that factual declarative sentences can be verified only by some sort of correlation with particular, immediate, sensory or perceptual experiences. This leads to problems as to the verifiability of generalized sentences (as in the case of scientific laws) and of thing­ sentences (if one is an empirical realist). The justification of valuative sentences raises similar problems. But in this case a prior question must • Written in 1 947 ; not previously published. 1 . It may be said th at th is command is a hypothetical imperative and thus may be treated as equivalent to a conditional declarative. 'Trim your jib-sheet flatter' might thus be equivalent to 'If you would overcome your weather helm, trim your jib-sheet flatter,' which in turn would be equivalent to 'If the jib-sheet is trimmed fla tter, it ligh tens the weather helm.' To this I would answer that every hypothetical valua tive presupposes an unconditional or categorical valuative, and in that aspect is not true or false bu t legitimate or not legitimate. In the example given, the categorica l valuative is 'You ough t not have a weather helm.' For a fuller discussion of this distinction between valuative and declarative sen­ tences, see "A Categorial Analysis of Value," this volume, pp. 1 77-93.

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be faced . Is an empirical position at all possible here ? That is, is i t pos­ sible to have an empirical j u stification of any val uative sentence ? The history of ethics is replete with instances of the faith that valua­ tives can be given empi rical j ustification. In the great maj ority of cases, however, this faith is based on an egregious mistake. It is supposed that mere matters of fact, that is, the very sort of thing that serves to v erify an empirical declarative sentence, can justify a val uative sentence. The mis­ tak e rests on a failu re, ultimately, to distinguish val uative from declara­ tive sentences .:.! A recent instance is Ray Lepley's Th e Verifiability of Value. 3 It should however be obvious that no decl arative, however subtle and complex, can adequately tran slate a val uative, for the declarative as­ serts that certain properties are exemplified by certain particulars, the valuative, that it were good that certain properties be exemplified by cer­ taiu1 particulars. And the fact of the exemplification of certain p roperties by certain particulars cannot show that the claim that certain properties ought to be exemplified by certain particulars is legitimate. The realization of this truth has led some philosophers ( Kant being the outstanding example) to claim that the legitimacy of valuative srn­ tences can be established only a priori. The concept of the a priori is dangerously ambiguous, especially when used in connection with values. I do not intend to criticize it here but rather to try to show that an em­ pirical j ustification of valuatives is not an impossible idea, however im­ plausible it may appear. What is necessary here 1s the admission that immediate experience includes "oughtings" as well as "havi ngs" of properties. Personally, I believe it is an indisputable phenomenological fact that we have di rect ex­ periences of value in the sense of a direct grasp of an ought- or it-were­ good-that-relation obtaining between certain possible particulars and cer­ tain possible properties thereof.4 That these experiences have their causal conditions, that we can formubte laws concerning their occurrence, does 2 . That is, valuative sentences are tacitly replaced by declaratives, and the verification of the latter is taken to be a justification of the former. 3. Throughout this book v aluative sentences are confused with sentences stating the behavioral function of the utterance or formulation of such valuatives. These behavioral sentences predict satisfactions consequent upon action in harmony with the valuatives and thus (since predictions are empirical declaratives) are easily shown to be verifiable. 4. 'Possible' does not imply non-actual. It is an inclusive term covering both actual and non-actual instances.

The Em pirical fustifiability of Valuative Sentences

20 5

not m the least reduce them, in their nature, to mere facts, i.e., to ex­ periences of mere havings of properties by particulars. The statement that a value-experience occurs is, of course, a declarative statement, but it ob­ viously is, in some se nse, a high er level statement tha n the valu ative sen­ tence that expresses the nature of the value-experience; it does not formu­ late the value-experience. 5 Let it be granted, then, that there are val ue-experiences which, in their value-component, are phenomenologically, that i:s in their char­ acter as experienced, irreducible to what may be called factive ex­ periences, such as sensory or perceptual experiences.6 Such value-experi­ ences can perform the function of justifying the legitimacy of specific valuative sentences. But what must their character be if they are to per­ form this function ? In another place 7 I have tried to state clearly the way in which value may be said to include existence. For every valuative sentence there is a corresponding declarative which asserts as fact the same content desiderated, commanded, or otherwise val uated is the valuative sentence as good, as "oughting" to be. What is valuated in some state of affairs, actual or possible, which in language would be designated by a declarative. This can be stated by the equivalence: 'f {a}==T { 'f (a) ' } ' which can be read, 'It were good that a be f' is equivalent to "It were good that 'a is f' be true." Thus the first requirement for value-experiences if they are to perform the function of j ustifying valuative sentences is that they somehow embrace or include a £active component with the same content. This leads immediately to the second requirement. This £active ele­ ment must be so included that it is not asserted; as far as the value-ex5. 'Everett is experiencing a desire for cucumbers' is a declarative sentence about a value-experience which, to be formulated in its own righ t, needs some such expression as 'It would be good to have some cucumbers' (spoken by Everett) . This is comparable to the rel ation between 'Everett is now having a perceptual experience of a yel low pencil' and 'Th is pencil is yellow' (as said by Everett now) . Statements concerning the occurrence of immediate experiences only indirectly reveal the nature of these experiences. They must be distingu ished from statements directly formulating immediate experiences. Thus we must not assume that simply because all the former are declaratives all the latter must be declaratives. It is my con ten tion that many of the latter are only properly formulated as valuatives. 6. I would hold that every total experience as it concretely occurs is both valuative and £active. Hence instead of speaking of the £active experiences and value experiences it might be better to refer to the factive and the value aspects of immediate experience. 7. "How Value Includes Existence," this volume, pp. 193-202.

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perience is concerned, the facti ve element is suspended.8 This is neces­ sary because the legitimacy of valuatives is independent of the truth of thei r correspond ing declaratives. The legitimacy of the command 'Trim you r jib-sheet ' is independent of the truth of the declarative, 'You have (or will have) trimmed your jib-sheet.' A third req uirement grows out of the nature of what I shall call the legitimacy-values of valuative sentences. A declarative sentence has one and only one of two possible truth-values, viz., truth or falsity. Anal­ ogously, a valuative sentence has one and only one of three9 legitimacy­ values, viz., legitimacy, illegitimacy, or non-legitimacy. A valuative is legitimate if what it commands (desiderates, or so forth) ought to be ; illegitimate if it ought not to be; non-legitimate if it not ought to be (i.e., if there is no ought in the matter) . To serve as verifiers of declarative sentences, £active experiences must have something corresponding to the two truth-values of such sentences. This is to be discovered in the fact that in any given £active experience some properties are present, some are absent. 10 In this matter, however, there is no third possibility, no neutral point. Value-experiences, on the other hand, must display an opposition (correlated with the opposition between legitimacy and illegitimacy) but also a third possibility, a neutral point between these (correlated with non-legitimacy). The fourth requirement is simply the obvious one that the value ex­ perience must include a distinctively normative or value component over and above the facti ve. In what class of immediate experiences will we find these requirements met ? The answer is that they are satisfied by any emotional experience whatever. 1 1 8. As my language indicates, I am a realist and assume the realistic viewpoint that immediate experience does not merely occur, it also refers. 9. Or more. To square with common sense as revealed in common speech there must be at least three. The admission of more than three hardly brings in any new issue of principle. That there must be at least three permits one sharp dis­ tinction between valuatives and declaratives. I O. This is a view rejected by those who make the negative merely a logical connective. For them the non-exemplification of a property by a particular can never be a fact. I h ave cri ticized this in "The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Lan­ guage, I," Mind, Vol . LII, N.S., No. 207 ( July, 1943) , 238 ff. ; this volume, pp. 282-3 1 0. I 1 . Since every emotional experience is to some degree volitional, and vice versa, I shall use 'emotional' and 'motor-affective' as equivalent.

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Every emotion is centered in some image or percept of an exciting object. The child fears the thunder ; the wife is angry with her husband. Every motor-affective state is directed toward some actual or possible state of affairs. 1 2 Thus the first requirement is met. Emotions embrace a £ac­ tive component-an image or percept of the very thing toward which the emotion is directed. The second requirement is satisfied in that the emotion need not be centered in a percept. It may be centered in an image, which is not taken to be of anything actual. Thus a memory image may be the center of an experience of remorse, an anticipatory image of an experience of anxiety. The third requirement can also be easily seen to be satisfied by emo­ tional experiences. Motor-affective states can be readily classified, without too much distortion, in pairs of opposites (love-hate, desire-aversion, etc.), such that neutral states or zero-conditions, between these opposites, are possible. And in each of these pairs it is possible, without too much forc­ ing, to identify one as positive (in its relation to its obj ect) and the other as negative. Serious doubts will probably arise in connection with the fourth re­ quirement only. Is there a distinctively normative or value component in motor-affective experiences, irreducible, phenonemologically, to £active elements? I believe there is. I believe that in hatred, disgust, fear, and other negative emotions there is a negatively normative claim or reference. They literally include an immediate experience of their obj ects as ought­ ing-not-to-be. Love, joy, desire, and other positive motor-affective states are literally immediate experi-.ences of their objects as oughting-to-be. Similarly, there is a not-ought element in states of indifference. This seems to me to rest on sound phenomenological analysis which is quite independent both of physiological theories as to the etiology of emotions and of theories as to the psychological elements that function as constit­ uents in the total patterns of emotions. My argument is simple. On the one hand, in my own experience I find that motor-affective states do thus involve £active and valuative com­ ponents. And there are no other experiences that do. In particular, there 1 2. The recogni tion that there are such conditions as general anxiety does not overth row this contention. In the first place, it is to be noted that such states are recognized as being morbid, that is, non-normal. But more important, such generalized emotions are characterized not by the absence of all centering upon percepts or images of exci ting objects, but by a tendency to attach to and center in any occurrent percept and to engender a large number of unstable central images.

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is no special class of value-experiences, such as might be due to some special moral sense or val ue-faculty, distinct from everyday emotions. On the other hand, the wide-spread use of val uative sentences in every culture by every individual indicates that they must express something in immediate experience common to all humans. I know of no likely possi­ bility other than the emotions. Does this require me to adopt a form of naturalism in value-theory ? The answer of course depends on one's definition of naturalism. But I am not forced to accept a naturalism that would make valuative sentences meaningless (that is, having no objective reference) or that would reduce them (in the sense of making them equivalent ) to d ecla rative sentences. Sentences expressing emotions are not declarative assertions of the oc­ currence of those emotions. They are valuatives, valuating the possible matter of fact toward which the emotion is directed and they have some legitimacy-value: legitimate if the emotion is negative and the matter valuated ought not to be or if the emotion is positive and its object ought to be, etc. Thus they do say something, though what they say is some­ thing claimed in the emotions they express. For emotions do make claims about their objects-negative emotions that their objects are bad, i.e., ought not to be, positive, that they are good, i.e., they ought to be, neutral, that there is no ought in the matter. It may perhaps be appropriate at this place to elucidate further the realistic position underlying the point of view here stated. The units of immediate experience phenomenologically, i.e. as experienced, are percep­ tions. Perceptions not only occur; they refer. This referential character of direct experience is the basis for the realist's claim that there are physical things and events existentially different from experience. Sentences mak­ ing assertions concerning physical things are (incompletely) verified by the occurrence of perceptions referring to those things. Some perceptions however have more confirmative weight than others. 13 Turning to emotions or motor-affective states, we find they are more complex than perceptions. They include, as I have said above, a central percept (or image), which has its occurrence- and its reference-aspects just as does any other percept. Besides this there is a confused, massive 1 3. This is more fully developed in Everett W. Hall, "A Realistic Theory of Distortion," The Philosophical Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5 (September, 1 939) , 525-3 1, and "Perception as Fact and as Knowledge," The Philosopl1ical Review, Vol. LIi, No. 5 ( September, 1 943) , 468-80; in this volume pp. 262-70 and 242-6r, respectively.

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perception of bodily changes, furnishing what has been called (by Knight D unlap) the dynamic background in the emotion. 1 4 This somatic ex­ perience is peculiar in that it is centered in or directed toward the ex­ citing object, the object of the central perception. In fact, this directed­ ness and subordination is so important that, when the somatic component is made the specific object of attention and analysis, the emotion disap­ pears. In the emotion, then, there is the tendency to refer the massive somatic experience to the object of the central percept. We speak of hor­ rible accidents, lovable persons, etc. It is of course a commonplace to point out that the horror, love, etc., are only in us. I believe this common­ place is correct. There are no "tertiary qualities" characterizing physical things and events. Such supposed qualities are really confused perceptions of events in the experiencer's body. The somatic component of an emotion, like the central perception, is referential. Taken by itself it refers to (is a perception of) bodily processes. It is a mistake to suppose it is a perception of the exciting object. But here analysis usually ends. There is no exploration of a third possible referential function of an emotion, viz., that the emotion as a whole refers. I t is precisely this idea of a reference by the total emotion that I wish to develop. This total reference of an emotion is to the exciting object. This should be clear since common experience and psychological analysis agree that emotive experience is directed toward the exciting object, not toward the experiencer's body . But the analysis which, correctly, points out that the dynamic background is a somatic perception fails to press further. It fails to ask : What, in the case of emotions, is the character of the somatic back­ ground as backg round, i.e., how is it related to foreground, what is its function or place in the total pattern, what is the nature of its directed­ ness toward the foreground? There is no doubt a reason for this failure. I t is tacitly supposed that any reference is factive, i.e., to the exemplification of properties. Now the only properties to be found referentially present in an emotion are 14. It should be obvious that I am accepting a form of the Jamesian theory of emotions, but translated into the language of a realistic epistemology. The trans­ lation of a cen tral theory, such as Cannon's, into epistemological terminology suitable to my purpose ( of showing that there is an irreducible value-claim in every emotional experience) might be more plausible. I migh t even make the thalamus the organ for apprehending the value-dimension of things ! But I am personally convinced of the soundness of the peripheral account.

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the properties of the object, as found (referentially) in the central per­ cept, and the properties of the experiencer's body, as found (referentially) in the somatic background. It is the contention of this paper, however, that another sort of refer­ ence is to be found in direct experience-not £active but valuative. Factive reference is reference to the actual exemplification of properties by par­ ticulars. Valuative reference is reference to the normative, to the ought­ to-be-exemplified, connection between properties and particulars. My suggestion is that every emotion, as a whole, refers valuatively to its ob­ ject (the object of its central percept or image) . A positive emotion claims that the object ought to have the properties it is perceived to have; a negative, that it ought not have these properties ; neutral or indifference states (which are definitely motor-affective and exemplify the pattern of central percept and somatic background) , that there is no ought either way. The massive somatic component in an emotion when taken by itself is simply a confused perception of bodily changes. But taken in its directed­ ness toward the exciting object and as giving emotional coloring to the percept or image of that object, it carries a value-reference, a normative assertion. Thus though it is absurd to suppose the horror we experience is in the accident, it is not absurd to suppose the negative value to be in the accident and to be experienced through our horror. On this view it is possible to find in emotions the occurrence of valua­ tive references which may be taken as evidence for (i.e., as incomplete justification of) the legitimacy of specific valuative sentences. Just as the occurrence of perceptions may be taken as verification of the truth of relevant declarative thing-sentences, so the occurrence of emotions may be taken as justification of the legitimacy of relevant valuative sentences about their objects. And analogously the occurrence of different emotions under different conditions may offer different degrees of justification. I am then saying that any positive motor-affective experience of any actual or possible state of affairs is some justification of the legitimacy of the valuative which says that the state of affairs ought to be. Similarly for negative and indifference-experiences. It is now important to state however that occurrences of different motor-affective states are not all equal in justificatory weight. If there occur more perceptions of a physical object as having certain properties, we feel that there is better evidence that it has those proper­ ties. This is due ultimately, I think, to the conviction that perceptions

The Em pirical /ustifiability of Valuative Sentences

2I I

that agree in their referential or belief-aspect but differ in their occurrence­ properties add confirmation to the thing-sentence expressing their com­ mon beli ef. This I have called the criterion of supplemental agreement.1 5 There is, I think, something analogous in the case of valuative sen­ tences. If there occur different motor-affective experiences of the same object, differing in their occurrence-aspects ( e.g., as to who experiences them, when they are experienced, under what general bodily conditions, etc.) but agreeing in thei r valuative reference (i.e., having essentially the same central percepts and being all positive-or negative or indifferent­ in relation thereto) , they add to one another's j ustification of the legit­ imacy of the valuative sentence expressing their common claim. And the greater the difference in their occurrence-aspects the more justifica­ tory weight is given to their supplemental agreement. This rests on the realistic assumption that their common object does have a normative di mension, a nd that its normative character is epistemically independent of our various emotive experiences of it. Besides supplemental agreement there is another variable determining the weight or degree of j ustification afforded by a motor-affective ex­ perience. It is the degree of value-sensitivity furnished by conditions of the experience or by the occurrence-properties of the valuative claim included in an emotive experience. We have an analogous criterion in perception, viz., degree of per­ ceptual discrimination. 16 If under certain conditions more properties of a given type can be perceptually discriminated than under others, we generally admit that perceptions under the former conditions confer greater confirmation than those under the latter. Similarly for value-experiences. If under certain conditions a greater variety of emotions is experienced towards objects of a given type, then, in any given case of emotions experienced under those conditions, the value-belief so occurrent has greater justificatory weight. By 'greater va­ riety of emotions' is meant not merely a greater variety in somatic com­ ponents of emotions having the same value-significance, e.g., positive emo­ tions such as love, desire, joy directed toward some object (this would really fall under supplemental agreement), but also emotions having different value-components (i .e., positive, negative, neutral), as well as different somatic components, so far as directed toward different objects. 15. Cf. "Perception as Fact and Knowledge," this volume p. 253· 1 6. Cf. ibid., pp. 25 3 -54.

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When this greater variety of emotions is directed toward the same individual object, not merely objects of the same type, the criterion of value sensitivity confl icts with that of supplemental agreement. I know of no way in general of resolving such conflicts. The criteria however are essentially different in that supplemental agreement is based on motor­ a ffective experiences di rected toward the parti cu lar object whose value i:.s to be ascertained, value-sensitivity upon experiences directed toward ob­ jects of the general type of that whose value is to be ascertained. To make this more concrete and to show what is meant by 'objects of the same general type' I give a few illustrations of the use of the criterion of value-sensitivity. Suppose Jones and Smith hear the same rendition of Brahms' Fourth Symphony and that they are comparable hearers except that Jones has a slight headache, Smith, however, feeling fine. We shall then say that Smith's motor-affective experiences have more justificatory weight as re­ gards any valuative sentences concerning the symphony than do Jones's. We say this because generally people are more sensitive to musical values when feeling well than when suffering from slight headaches. Headachy people tend to experience mostly negative emotions such as disgust, irri­ tation, annoyance, etc., when listening to music, as contrasted with hearers who feel well, the latter tending to have a larger variety of emotions. Again, suppose two white men, Brown and Lord, are thrown into contact with a Negro, Dow. Brown has grown up to treat Negroes as individuals, without general prejudice; Lord is filled with bitter racial animosity toward Negroes. We shall then say that Brown's emotional reactions toward Dow have more justificatory weight relative to an evaluation of Dow's moral character than do Lord's. We say this be­ cause emotional reactions toward Negroes on the part of people like Brown are far more varied than are those on the part of people condi­ tioned in the way Lord has been. So far, in treating of the way emotive experiences differ in the justifi­ cation they confer upon valuative sentences, I have stressed their simi­ larity to perceptions and the way perceptions give confirmation to declarative sentences, on the realistic account I have espoused. Now I should like to point out a difference. As already indicated, my analysis of emotions makes them more com­ plex than perceptions. They include a number of percepts. They are

The Em pirical fustifiability of Valuative Sentences

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centered in one, however, the percept of the exciting object, the object of the emotion as a whole. This central percept in an emotion, like any percept, may be more or less discriminative. As such, it has more or less verificatory weight in relation to thing-sentences about its object. We are not now concerned with the truth of declarative sentences but with the justification of the legitimacy of valuative sentences. However, valuative sentences, in a peculiar way, embrace corresponding declaratives. They include them without asserting them. Now, it follows that the larger the number of different declarative sentences the larger the number of possible valuatives (viz., valuatives embracing these declaratives). Thus conditions conducive to greater perceptual discrimination tend to pro­ duce more different perceptual beliefs and thus (so far as these are ex­ pressed) more declarative thing-sentences. Hence the number of emo­ ti ve ex periences of a given type of object tends to increase a.s conditions promote greater perceptual discrimination in the area of this type of object. That is, value-sensitivity is promoted by increase of perceptual discrimination. This lies behind the widely accepted educational principle that art appreciation is promoted by knowledge of art forms and art history. This knowledge (if concretely tied in with perception) increases the ability to perceive properties present in the work of art, and thus tends to in­ crease the number and variety of emotive experiences toward works of art in the area involved. One who can perceptually trace all the voices in a Bach fugue and perceive how they develop, in polyphonal harmony, the same theme, is at least capable of a greater variety of emotive reac­ tions to the fugue than is one who is unable to recognize the most familiar melody even where occurring alone. Since we are not here concerned with verification of the truth of declaratives, but with a necessary condition for value-sensitivity, the above holds good where the emotive experience centers in an image rather than a percept. Th u s a col or-bli nd ind ividual cannot be as emotionally sensi­ tive to color phenomena (whether in imagination or in the perception of a painting) as can a normal person. Likewise, an individual who, dominated by some ego-compulsion, cannot make fine perceptual dis­ criminations as to other people's emotional reactions, is of necessity, even in imagining possible situations, morally insensitive. Any statement to the effect that the truth of a declarative sentence

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is verified itself presupposes a principle of verification. Such principles of verification, I have argued, 1 7 are factual in a broad sense ; they state a categorial assumption about the world. This assumption is not narrowly factual, i.e., it cannot itself be verified. A similar statement can be made concerning the justification of valua­ tive sentences. Any use of 'justified' presupposes a principle of j ustifica­ tion which is categorial. Such a principle, although it is about the value­ aspect or normative dimension of things, cannot itself be j us.tified. It is ultimate. It is to be judged by its fruits, not in a pragmatic or practical sense, but in terms of the sort of account of the world it allows, in rela­ tion to the broadest features of common sense (or everyday language), science, and one's own direct experience. My justification-principle, which lies at the basis of what I have tried to say in this paper, makes certain assumptions which, ultimately, I can simply elucidate. In the present context, I cannot even do this. I must be satisfied with a bald statement of them. First, it assumes t• hat valuative sentences are objective. They say something about the world which in some sense obtains of the world. I would like to be more explicit. Again the analogy to declarative sen­ tences may be helpful. The objectivity of declarative (factual) sentences simply means ( 1) that there are true sentences of this sort, (2) that any true sentence of this sort asserts (by names) a property of a particular, which property is concretely together in that panicular with indefinitely more properties than are asserted in the sentence, and ( 3 ) that any given property exemplified by anything is either present in or absent from the totality of properties constituting the concrete togetherness of any par­ ticular. The objectivity of valuative sentences simply means ( 1 ) that there are legitimate sentences of this sort, (2) that any legitimate sentence of this sort evaluates (by names) the exemplification of a property by a par­ ticular, which property would stand in that normative relation to that particular if actually exemplified, i.e., when ( and if) actually concretely together with indefinitely more properties, and (3 ) that any given prop­ erty stands in a normative relation to every possible concrete togetherness including it. By 'normative relation' I mean that it ought to be present, ought not to be present, or not ought to be present in the concrete to1 7. "On the Nature of the Predicate, 'Verified,' " this volume, pp. 271-8 1 .

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getherness. 1 8 By 'every possible' I mean to exclude only contradictions (presence and absence of the same property in a given particular) and absurdities. By absurdities I mean to exclude properties of higher type (only the lowest type are concretely together) and semiotic properties (only factual properties, i .e., properties designated by description predi­ cates) are concretely together. With this view as to the way in which valuative sentences are objec­ tive, it is possible to tie in the criteri a of j ustifiability outlined above. I assume that the occurrence of an emotion is itself some justification of the valuative sentence that expresses the valuative claim in that emotion. But since the emotion (in its central percept or image) does not include all the properties of its object, yet its valuative claim is objective, that is, is a belief that the properties it takes as normatively together (i.e., as oughting, oughting not, or not oughting to be together) are so in ;the total concrete togetherness involved, the criteria of supplemental agreement and of value sensitivity are relevant as means of weighting the justificatory significance of various emotional experiences. Supplemental agreement is expressive of the realistic assumption that the normative tie is there in the object-to be found (in this case emotionally) not created by the experiencer. Thus value-agreement under different conditions is some indication that the objective value has been found. Value-sensitivity rests on the assumption that more normative connections are in the object than ever experienced. Hence the greater the sensitivity or value­ discrimination, the closer the experience is to the normative nature of the obj ect. This explicit statement of my own realistic principle of j ustification is meant here to be of illustrative value only . It seemed well to show concretely what I meant by 'principle of justification.' Other principles of justification are of course possible. In particular, I think it entirely possible for a positivist to accept a principle of justification. He could for example hold that in each emotive experience we have the very value that obtains. That is, since there is no referential aspect here but there is a value-component, we simply have in each experience the value that obtains. Just as there are no facts other than those of immediate experi­ ence, so there would be no values save those of immediate experience, 1 8. I do not insist that there are on ly three possible forms of the normative tie. There are at least three. If there are more, then, as I have stated in the text for the case of three, they are exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

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yet these values would be real values, j ust as real as are the facts of im­ mediate experience. And j ust as we may properly desire to discover factual laws so we may just as properly wish to assert value-laws or value­ standards. E.g., we may wish to say that all positive value is associated in some specified way with pleasure, negative with pain. Such a value-law would then be justified by appropriate emotive experiences. But it would be a value-law, i.e. a valuative. It might say, e.g., that any experience of pleasure is good, that pleasure ought to occur. It should not be con­ fused with the declarative that all pleasure produces positive emotional experience. Similarly, realistic positions different from the one outlined above could have a place for principles of justification. This I think need not be specifically illustrated. It is, then, the contention of this paper that an empirical position as to the justifiability of valuative sentences is possible. This implies that valuative sentences are a unique kind, irreducible to declaratives and yet having meaning. It also implies that there are experiences which include value-components, experiences that are of something as having value. This means that there is a unique dimension of experience, irreducible to its £active aspect, namely its value-dimension. I think this is so. And if it is, the subject of the empirical justification of valuatives merits analysis equally as careful as that devoted to the empirical verification of declaratives. And such analysis can be of philosophic ( i.e., categorial) , not merely psychological, significance.

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Response to Criticisms

(1) · MR. HARE ON WHAT IS VALUE? In the Preface to his gratifyingly simple lit:tle book on the lan­ guage of morals Mr. R. M. Hare referred to a forthcoming review by him of Wlzat Is Value? in a manner that caused the author of the latter some apprehension.* The appearance of this review1 has confirmed the impression that Mr. Hare conceived the book as an examination "on a more ambitious scale" of the subject of his own work. This I fear is a serious misorientation. If one's subj ect is the language of morals, it is well-nigh inevitable, if one has any sensitivity to ordinary usage and freedom from systematic prejudice in describing it, that one will portray moral language as prescriptive or commendatory in character. Mr. Hare has added insights to Mr. Stevenson's explorations in this field. J,Vhat Is Value? in no sense challenges these nor does it formulate a rival interpretation. However, if one's subject is the ontological status of value, discussion of the language of morals (and of value-experience generally) if intro­ duced at all has quite a different purpose and must be judged on quite a different basis. This holds even if one's position on the matter is skeptical, if one holds, for example, that there are no values, but only facts (in­ cluding human linguistic behavior influencing other activities), or again, that there are neither values nor facts and that metaphysical inqui ry should be avoided as a snare (provided one is trying to say or show this). • Written in the spring of 1954 ; not previously published. 1. Mind, Vol. LXIII, N.S., No. 250 (April, 1954) , 262-69.

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It is in the latter context that What Is Value? must be viewed. It is true that Mr. Hare credits the book with an attempt to "defend" the obj ectivistic standpoint, but this itself is decidedly misleading. A kind of linguistic analysis is finally adopted in it not to defend objectivism but simply to try to state a form of it quite different from those that have been in recent debate, to specify, in brief, in what way value is in the world. (This should indicate how such expressions as the rhetorical question, "But would any of the commoner sorts of objectivist be satis­ fied with any ethical theory which did not hold that value-judgments were statements of fact?" show how completely Mr. Hare went astray.) Moreover, in the task undertaken the book admitted}y ended in failure. The author did not "fight his way out of the j ungle" and cer­ tainly did not come out on the open desert of a study of linguistic usage. His claim, and he probably did not substantiate it, was simply that some light may have been allowed to filter through the tangles of non-naturalistic positions by the use of the cutting edge of linguistic analysis. However, the new light, if such there was, was on the extra­ linguistic problem with which he started-"What is value ? " Since the answer to this question if given at all must be phrased in language, a critical appraisal of value-language and meta-language seemed advisable and an appeal to everyday usage appeared not out of place as some sort of test of answers once formulated. But this must not be allowed to shift the grpund to a study of the language of morals simply as an empirical undertaking, nor even to such an enterprise supplemented by the use of models. Nevertheless there is an overlapping of subject matter insofar as What Is Value? did test the adequacy of certain suggested standard forms for a logic of valuative sentences by appeal to the ordinary lan­ guage of morals. Here again, unfortunately, the reviewer missed or in any case omitted entirely the main desideratum, which was a sentence form that would in some fashion include a reference to corresponding fact (as that which is or would be valuable) without asserting it. He concentrated his fire on what must be considered an outpost, but, though this runs the danger of making the issue appear central, the defender wishes to come to the aid of this position ( though he is confident it really needs no help at least at the moment). Here again the outcome is obscured by differences in objective. Mr. Hare for example contrasts imperatives with indicatives taken in a broad

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sense (as differing in " mood" according to a schoolman's grammar book). What Is Value?, on the other hand, quite explicitly contrasted them with a certain set of indicative sentences variously denominated 'descriptives' and 'declaratives.' The current phrases, 'indicative logic' and 'logic of indicatives,' were used but I think this should not have been misleading · since they ordinarily do not refer to modal logics and in any case do not demand such reference. Thus when What Is Value? contended that commands differ from descriptions in ordinary usage in a fashion indi­ cated by saying they are more properly set up in a three-valued logic, the latter in a two, or, again, that they have irreducibly two k inds of nega­ tive, the latter only one, nothing whatever was asserted about the most appropriate logical standardization of modal sentences. 5uch an enter­ prise is a complicated task (as Mr. Hare suggests), and not free from the danger of serious error (as he exemplifies when he says that 'must' may be used to cancel 'may' when he should have said 'must . . . not - - -' may be used to cancel 'may . . . - - -') . To my knowledge, What Is Value? nowhere said nor implied that a double kind of negation nor certain idiosyncrasies in connectives suffi­ ciently mark off the differences of imperatives from (non-modal) declara­ tives even in the sheer matter of syntax; indeed, it explicitly urged going on from propositional logic to functional, and exploring the peculiarities of quantifiers in coming to some sort of acceptable formalization of ordinary speech. Nor did it contend that nowhere would an adequate imperative logic exhibit similarities with traditional declarative. It did however contend that there would be vital differences, and neither Mr. Hare's review nor his book have furnished the writer cause for modifying his views on this. A case in point is furnished by Mr. Hare. He asserts that "singular imperatives are as 'two-valued' as singular indicatives" as shown by con­ sidering the appropriate answers to the questions, "Tell me, am I to wear my rubbers? " "Tell me, am I going to wear my rubbers? " In neither, he says, is 'neither' an appropriate answer; the only legitimate answers are 'yes' and 'no.' I agree it would be a shock to answer the first by 'neither' for we cannot sensibly tell a person "neither to wear his rubbers nor not to," but this is precisely because 'neither' would here seem to retain the positive command element, 'Do as you please' would indicate a third alternative open in answering the first for which there is no analogue

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in the second. This can be indicated by the atrocious locutions: 'I can es­ cape the yes or no of the first if there is no / am to in the situation at all, but I cannot escape similarly in the second since / am going to (do some­ thing) willy nilly; not even suicide would release me from this, only the possibility of annihilation of futurity itself would furnish an ana­ logue.' I must omit reference to Mr. Hare's "trivialization" of the logic of imperatives ( which characterization incidentally was technical, not pej ora­ tive, a matter Mr. Hare failed to note), which progresses by the device of adding appropriate sentence-makers from a logic of participial phrases to completely isomorphic logics of declarative and imperative sentences. I am frankly quite suspicious of it, but must leave its appraisal to logicians. But, to repeat, these matters of detail should not get in the way of the major point. Mr. Hare has not in his review criticized, stated, nor hinted at the major objective of What Is Value?-viz., an attempt to state what, supposing there is value, it is. It may well be that the whole undertaking is futile, just as this particular attempt is ultimately un­ successful. Indeed, perhaps it was just the obvious futility of it plus Mr. Hare's desire to spare the author's feelings that led him to omit all reference to it. But I at least would like to see the matter considered and Mr. Hare has not done so.

(2) · EXISTENTIAL NORMA TIVES

Professor E. M. Adams has pointed out1 a distinction in every­ day language between two forms of what I shall call the existential, normative sentence.* An instance would be the contrast between 'There r. In "Hall's Analysis of 'Ought'," The Journal of Philosophy� Vol. LV, No. 2 (January, 1958) , 73-75. * Published in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LV, No. 2 (January, 1958) , 75-77.

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is a man [ you know who ! ] who ought to marry Jane' and 'There ought to be a man [but I suspect there is none] to marry Jane.' Let us designate these "species 1 " and "species2 " respectively. Mr. Adams finds trouble in constructing species2 (by "existential generalization") from a paradigm of the elementary normative I suggested in Wh at Is Value? 2 which, for the case j ust given, would be 'Harry ought to marry Jane' or, abbrevi­ ated, 'M {H, J} .' I share his concern but extend it to species 1 as well. Just how we should handle existential operators in a normative logic and remain faithful (by and large) to ordinary speech is a puzzle-though not such an absolutely baffiing one that I would advocate the complete abandonment of clarification via model languages.3 The difficulty about species 1 as an existential generalization from 'Harry ought to marry Jane' probably cuts pretty deep, and involves the whole business of existential operators in traditional (declarative) logic. ' ( 3 x) M (x, J)' is ordinarily rendered into English as 'There is an x such that x is M to J.' But 'there is' as so used generally performs two functions: one is simply to bind what would otherwise be a free vari able, viz., 'x' ; the other is to make an existential assertion about matter of fact. The former is formal and can be thought of, so to speak, by it­ self (' ( 3 x) ' binds 'x' in any expression within its scope) . The latter is different : the assertion that x exists, that there is an x in the world, is empty until we put the x in some descriptive context, predicating some­ thing of it. This built-in equivocation comes out strikingly in trying to put species2 into a sort of normal form with existential operator, in the way for example Mr. Adams suggests, viz., ' { '3 x } M (x, J) .' Here again, I suppose, the existential operator is to bind the variable following it. But now in addition it says that something ought to exist. What ? Surely not just an entirely unspecified x ! Even with existential normatives of species 2 we mean, I think, to assert that some fact including a specified property ought to be ( and in addition, as against species1, that no actual particular is appropriate for the exemplification of that property) . Recur to our instance; we might assert a normative of species2 (as against 2. I criticized it myself on different grounds and pointed out that other models were much better than it in some respects though worse in others. 3. I am still convinced that no one model language as yet envisaged will clear up all philosophical problems-we have to use a battery of them set in a matrix of common speech.

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species1) because a man to marry Jane ought to have a combination of characteristics we j ust do not think can be found, at least in her circle. To put it informally, I am still convinced that in everyday thought the basic normative is predicative : what is demanded is some fact, some case of such-and-such. But how, then, retain and "clarify" the distinction Mr. Adams points out? I am at a loss to do this in any final, definitive way, but I do have one suggestion. Another paradigm for our basic normative which I proposed in What Is Value? was '"M(H,J )' ought to be true." Let us try an existential generalization within the subject of this : " ' ( 1 x) M ( x,J) ' ought to be true," to be read " 'Somebody is married to Jane' ought to be true." This would be the generic existential normative. It does not assert or deny that there actually now is somebody who ought (being properly qualified otherwise) to marry Jane. Now species 1 and species2 can be obtained by the appropriate differentiation in this respect. Suppose we also can have sentences like " ' ( 3 x)M{x, J } ' is true" and " ' (� x) M { x, J } ' is false." 4 Then if we conjoin the first with our generic sentence we get a normative of species 1 , if the second, a normative of species2 . On this proposal, 'There is someone who ought to marry Jane' is analyzed " 'Someone is married to Jane' ought to be true and 'There is someone who ought to marry Jane' is true." Likewise, 'There ought to be someone to marry Jane' is clarified by " 'Someone is married to Jane' ought to be true but 'There is someone who ought to marry Jane' is false." 5 This suggestion remains true to what I think is a characteristic of everyday talk, namely, that basically we speak of facts or exemplifi­ cations as the obj ects of our normative demands of existence, and of par­ ticulars only derivatively and as constituents of facts (and similarly for universals). 4 . In the lingo of What ls Value? the truth-values would need here to be re­ placed by legitimacy-values. 5. In Wfiat Is Value? I tried to show my dissatisfaction with 'S ought to be true' ; I shall not repeat it here. To any reader who does not sec the clarification involved in the proposal ou tlined above, I recommend, with some misgivings, that he l ook into What Is Value?

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(3) · FURTHER WORDS ON uoUGHT"

I would like to say three things in response to Professor Adams's paper, "The Nature of Ought." 1 * It does not present a criticism of a position I was exploring in What Is Value? so much as an alternative. The alternative, as it stands, does not seem to me too promising, for it does not face up to a central problem with which I was wrestling. But it does suggest to me a related and very exciting possibility which, how­ ever, is somewhat bewildering in its implications and can be here given only a hasty glance. To say that his paper is not a criticism of my views may seem highly paradoxical, for it purports to be such and he does give an eminently fair representation of the ideas he is ostensibly attacking. It would be easy for me to make my case by simply saying that, from my standpoint, he has confused the normative use of 'ought' with the logical, and that if he wishes to hold that there is no normative use distinct from the logical he is just not operating within, nor can he do justice to, the objectivist's framework. Of course 'ought' is frequently used as a conclusion-indicator like 'therefore,' 'hence,' and frequently 'must,' particularly when some one or more premises in the argument lie unstated (as in 'The weather ought to clear by tomorrow,' 'Solving for x, you ought to find it less than 2') . And this would seem to be unaffected if the argument is "practical," i.e., if the conclusion is an imperative and at least one of the premises is so too (as in 'If you adhere to the Sermon on the Mount then you ought always to turn the other cheek and do good to those who despitefully use you'). That this is not the normative use of 'ought' is, it would be admitted by almost everybody, obvious, particularly where the conclusion involved is tautologically related to its premises. But Adams draws a distinction between a natural and a tautological argument. In the former, I take it, the conclusion, though strictly conse­ quent upon its premises, is not related to them tautologically. U nfortuPhilosophical Studies, Vol. VII, No. 3 (April, 1 956) , 36--42. • Published in Philosophical Studies, Vol. VII, No. 5 (October, 1956 ) , 74-78.

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nately, his examples of practical arguments are of the tautological variety (being cases of simple subsumption).2 Not myself accepting the view that there are such natural arguments, I find little comfort in his distinction. If, not being an obj ectivist, he did not mean to give me much, then my reply is to that degree the easier. It just is not consonant with common parlance to treat normative statements as merely disguised conclusions of arguments even if one restricts them to cases where the premises are suppressed. Suppose I ask, "Don ,t you think people ought to try to make one , another happy? , and you respond, "Go on; your question isn,t complete," and I, somewhat bewildered, continue, "What's missing ? , , and you reply, "Why, the premises, of course," I think I would say, "But rm not aski,ng this in terms of any premises-don't you think, quite apart from any proof, that they ought?' , If in this situation you press on with "But 'People ought to try to make one another happy' is just a cryptic way of drawing the conclusion, 'Consequently, good people, try to make one another happy,' so that any question about 'ought' is really a question about 'consequently,' ,, I think, if I were not too nonplused to retort at all, I would answer, "You're simply wrong-that's not what I mean by 'ought' nor what anyone else would understand my question to mean." Whatever attractiveness Adams's proposal that we treat supposedly normative 'oughts , as conclusion-indicators may have is due, I think, to its restriction to practical arguments. It does seem admissible to reformu­ late his argument I in the formula, 'Therefore, be kind to the poor' be­ coming 'Therefore, you ought to be kind to the poor.' But would not it be even more acceptable if we also changed the imperative premise, so that in place of 'Be like your father' we had 'You ought to be like your father'? And if we did so, would we have thereby committed ourselves to treating this premise as itself a conclusion (of some other, suppressed, practical argument)? The truth is that in popular discourse almost any imperative is readily replaced by a normative ( though not conversely, for imperatives are restricted in person and tense whereas normatives are not). Imperatives are curiously parallel to declaratives; just as the latter are equivalent to sentences stating that what they assen is true, so the former are equatable with propositions saying that what they command ought to 2. I refer to his arguments I and 1 a. He does give an example of a declarative natural argument: "If this is a cube then it has twelve edges."

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be done. 'Be kind to the poor' is thus in common idiom supplantable by 'You ought to be kind to the poor.' This remark leads me to my con­ tention that Adams has not really faced up to the problem with which I was struggling. When I said that 'ought' as appearing as the auxiliary verb in norma­ tive sentences demands an infinitive or other verbal expression indicative of being or having or exemplifying, I was trying to show how normative statements bear reference to their corresponding declaratives without as­ serting them. They normatively demand or require that some state of affairs be or occur (without stating that it does or will). I was grappling with this fundamental semantical embedment (of declaratives in norma­ tives) when I said that we must avoid the mistake of saying that a normative has two components-the demand and the exemplification de­ manded. Perhaps this is not a mistake (if handled in the right way), but Adams' proposal as it stands does not even touch the issue. For he would have the normative 'ought' express the consequentiality of the con­ clusion in a practical argument, but practical arguments have impera­ tives as elements (as the conclusion and at least one of the premises in each case). Now, imperatives themselves, like normatives, embody this peculiar reference to, without assertion of, states of affairs, namely, the one in each case commanded, the one, that is, that would be stated by a declarative describing an act of obedience to the command. Thus the very problem I was trying to solve reappears in the constituents of Adams' practical arguments where he does not see it, otherwise how could he suppose it in some way was taken care of by a relation between them or by the whole of which they are pans ? But now to the associated suggestion that leaves me excited yet be­ wildered. Let us drop the practical argument and return to the theoretical or factual. Let us here think of 'ought' as analogous to 'therefore.' Further, let us take 'therefore' to indicate not a tautological consequentiality but a synthetic or "natural" one, expressive of an objective must or necessary connection (the fact or facts asserted in the conclusion are not affirmed in the premises taken together but are required by those that are). The analogy we seek would be a normative demand of a fact or facts granted certain others (similar to the supposed objective necessity of a fact or facts granted certain others). To adapt a symbolism I suggested in What Is Value? (not without qualms, for it did not show the unasserted presence of the corresponding

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declarative in a normative), instead of 'A {a } ' (to be read, a ought to exemplify A ) , we would have 'B (a) } A (a) ' (to be read, if a exemplifies B then it ought to be the case that it exemplify A ) . As this is designed to show, "oughting" or normativity would hold not between a subject and an attribute but between one fact and another, or, put linguistically, it would appear not as a copula but as a connective (of a non-indicative variety). This would have some decided advantages over 'A {a }.' It would show how reference to fact is included in a normative statement without the fact's being asserted or named ( there is no separation rule for the "con­ sequent" built so to speak into the form itself-it might be noted that the consequent is in the subjunctive in the English transliteration). But this brings out a certain queerness. Granted the "truth" (legitimacy, validity -call it what you will) of 'B (a) } A (a) ,' this should have no implications whatever for the truth or falsity of either of its declarative components. The most astonishing possibility arises when 'B (a)' is true; for the total "entailment" would still be satisfiable with 'A (a)' false. If this were not the case, the whole normative would involve a ( contingent) assertion of fact and thus not square with ordinary talk (which does not require the optimism of 'Whatever ought to be is'). For example, from 'If you prom­ ised him, then you ought to do it' and 'You did promise him, you know' there does not follow 'You actually have done (or will do) it.' Thus it is really quite improper to speak of ' } ' as a connective ; it does not form molecular sentences from its consituents. 'B (a) } A (a)' is thus a simple sentence and cannot be correctly described as "combining" declara­ tives normatively. Specifically ' }' must not be put in the same boat with what really are connectives in an imperative or normative logic, for example, with the imperative analogue of the indicative 'if . . . then . . . ' in either of the cases 'If John is your neighbor then love him' or 'If you are to love your neighbor then you are to love John.' For these analogues do form molecular sentences whose values ("truth-" "legitimacy-" or what not) are determined by the values of their elements. Another advantage of this suggested symbolism in point of articulating the structure of normatives in common use is that it makes it improper unqualifiably to ascribe normatively a single property to anything. That anything ought to have some property would thus inherently depend upon its having , or something else's having, some property. (Paren­ thetically, the last alternative is easily expressed by 'B (a) } A (a)' ; how-

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ever, by using constants here we again limit ourselves. If all letters are taken as variables then we can get the form clear : ' (x) } 'F (y)' unless we wanted to exclude 'A (a) } A (a) ' as a possible value.) In ordinJ.ry thought normatives are thus, by and large at least, contingent. 'George should keep his promise' is elliptical for 'If George promised so and so, he should do it, and as a fact he did so promise.' Incidentally, this con­ tingency is not the same thing as Ross's "resultant property." Ross was thinking of rightness or obligatoriness as an ethical property whose exemplification is dependent upon that of a natural one. We are thinking of two natural properties, one's exemplification being normatively re­ quired or "entailed" by the other's. Ross would have 'George should keep his promise' short for 'George's keeping his promise is, by its very char­ acter, a doing of what is right.' I think the feature we are now noting is an adventure, for it ties normativity in with fittingness or appropriateness. But in point of fineness of analysis this may be a disadvantage, for does it not overcommit us? Do we want to make it impossible to say ,that something ought to exemplify some specified property simpliciter, i.e., quite apart from whether we find the property to be particularly appropriate to others that that or some other thing actually does exemplify? After all, is ought­ ness or normativity the same thing as the fitting together of several prop­ erties? If they go hand in hand, may this not be-in a very broad sense­ an empirical fact about our universe which we would want to establish by an investigation, not by the structure of our language? And can we not express the son of contingency required by means of the symbolism I preferred in What Is Value? That is, can we not do what is wanted by 'If B (a) then A { a } ' (where of course the 'if . . . then . . . ' is a normative not an indicative connective)? In closing, let me say that though 'B (a) } A (a) ' does have attrac­ tions as suggesting the basic syntax of normatives in everyday speech, ' (x) B (x) } A (x) ' (from which any singulars would have to be established by subsumption) does not equally. I cannot say anything here about Adams' provocative discussion of singular normatives, but I would wish to avoid the view that they are meaningless or even that they are in­ herently unverifiable or unj ustifiable except as substitution instances of universal principles. For such a commitment would exclude the pos­ sibility of empiricism in the epistemology of values, and this I would not

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want to do. But this is a long story whose telling must await another occasion.3

(4) · HOCHBERG ON WHA T IS "FITTING " FOR EWING AND HALL

I am at a loss in trying to determine what Dr. Hochberg is up to in a recent discussion1 of a suggestion in my book, What Is Value ? • I can and do admire his forbearance : "We may, on occasion,,, he writes, "certainly want to say that it is fitting to utter ( or not to utter) a certain sentence; but to contend that sentences are fitting (as well as true or false) does seem odd." 'Odd' here is indeed too gentle a characteri­ zation, especially when it is recalled that 'fitting' is to be identified not as a stylistic adjective but as Ewing's basic ethical predicate. Moreover, the queerness of my speculation is partly obscured by the misleading example that Hochberg chooses, abbreviated in " ( 1 ) (F ('R (Jones, B, X')" which spelled out is " ( r ) the sentence, 'Jones is related by attitude B to object X,' is fitting." This is misleading because, in introducing it. Hochberg ap­ pears at first to attach the fittingness to Jones's attitude, and thus to some­ thing in the objective situation to which the whole sentence "refers" (in the assertive not naming sense), whereas I was trying to read Ewing as treating attitudes as themselves a kind of statement or valuatively assertive reference ( thus named not by 'B' in Hochberg's example but by 'R (Jones, B, X)'). Thus, with the elimination of all references to attitudes by sen­ tences said to be fitting, my analysis of Ewing seems even more bizarre than Hochberg makes out. Now it just may be that Hochberg is bent upon defending Ewing 3. This discussion was continued by Adams in " 'Ought' again," Philosophical Studies Vol. VIII, No. 6 (December, 1957) , 86-89. (ed) I . " 'Fitting' as a Semantical Predicate," Mind, Vol. LXV, N.S., No. 260 (October, 1960) . * Published in Mind, Vol . LXVII, N.S., No. 265 (January, 1958) , 104-6.

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against an interpretation that would reduce him to such nonsense. If so, I would like to compliment his liberality (for I suspect he is not a disciple of Ewing) and even to accept his contention ( that such an interpretation is strained at best) , only pointing out that in the same section of my book as that to which he refers I did worse by R. B. Perry and nearly as badly by Franz Brentano, and that I did not hide this from uninformed or un­ wary readers but frankly adopted the device (of a somewhat unnatural reading of these men) to get on with my own investigation.2 But the whole tenor of Hochberg's remarks leads me to discard this rendition and, reluctantly, suppose that their author is intending to challenge something in my position. I really am reluctant to do this since it forces me to conclude that he did not read my book. In the book, E wing's use of 'fitting' as the basic value-predicate (relating an attitude to its obj ect) was introduced as the second of three views which might be, with a little forcing, read as taking value to be the referent of a semantical predicate. The third was the least strained in this interpreta­ tion, so the inherent worth of the whole approach was not discussed until it appeared in this last case, namely that of Brentano's 'right' in the idea of a "right love" or "right hatred" (corresponding to my interpretation of Ewing's "fitting pro attitude" and "fitting anti attitude") , Brentano explicitly treating love and hatred as intentional. Criticizing this I said, "Such a view takes value out of the world entirely. Value becomes simply a feature of certain references to thing. Obviously this is incompatible with the objectivism within which the present essay in analysis operates,"3 and again, ''The truth is that in the last few pages we have left the realm of good common sense entirely. Everyday usage demands that we treat value-sentences as being as directly about the extra-linguistic world as are existential or descriptive sentences. . . . Thus it would seem that no clarification of 'A is good' is permissible that would substitute for this sentence a sentence with the name of a sentence or of a truth-value of a sentence a s its subject."4 I can understand how Hochberg could have been amazed at this outcome and asked himself, "How can Hall justify the devotion of better than thirty pages to the exposition of a view he finally rejects as out of 2. What Is Value? (New York : The Humanities Press, 1952) , pp. x, 66, 8r, and passim. 3. Ibid., p. r oo. 4. Ibid., p. r o9.

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the realm of good common sense ? " But I am sure this did not happen, first because the grounds of this rejection are j ust those, as I read him, that led Hochberg to say, so mildly, that the position is "odd," second because he then would have been stimulated to look back at how I got into an exploration of this view and what I was after, and the evidence shows he was not. The trouble had been from the stan that all our everyday valuative language has embodied in it some sort of reference to fact without how­ ever the assertion of it. What is taken to be good is always some state of affairs; what we think ought to be is broadly always some exemplification of a property or a relation by one or more individuals, or (if this is different) some performance of an act by someone. But in so thinking and talking we are not at all committed to an assertion of the existence of the state of affairs, the occurrence of the act, or the actuality of the exemplification of the property. Thus we cannot represent our ordinary value-thinking by Hochberg's 'F e)' even if we allow 'a' to name a fact ('F' being a value-predicate, '.fitting' i n Hochberg's discussion), for we would by this device be forced to name facts that we do not claim (in our value-language) ever occur.5 In this predicament I tried to assay, at the end of the section preced­ ing the one to which Hochberg refers, the use of subjunctive contrary­ to-fact conditionals, but I found that this would not remove the trouble. Suppose I wish to assert that somothing, which I take not to be , ought to be. This cannot be rendered, 'It would be good or as it ought if it did exist,' because this would not say what I want. In this predicament ( un­ able to accomplish my purpose by saying that a, the fact that ought to be, exemplifies F nor even if there were to be a it would exemplify F, to use Hochberg's symbolization-I cannot .find any meaning i n the first ele­ ment in his conjunction (2"), viz. " 'R (Jones, B, X)' (a)," which is per­ haps what he aimed at in putting it there), I turned to the possibility which he has joined with me in rej ecting. But our rejections are different. Hochberg's is outright and .final. Mine retains the sense that Brentano's suggestion gives us some i nsight into our ordinary value-language and value-thinking. And this in turn shows that Hochberg was unaware of my method. I could find no one model or fragment of an ideal language that could properly render into clarified form the sense of our everyday value-talk, nor any but what 5. See ibid., pp. 5 1 -52 or entries in Index under 'Facts, value as independent of ?'

Resp onse to Criticisms

·

23 1

required ordinary speech to state its appropriateness ( of whatever degree this might be) . Hence my position was that a whole battery of such models must be used, embedded in everyday English talking about them, to get as far as one can in answering properly such questions as, What is value ? 6 Thus I justify devoting some thirty pages to a suggestion finally found inadequate and in one respect even absurd. This sort of "eclec­ ticism," if you will, may be unattractive and even untenable, but I regret that Hochberg treats it as non-existent. There are several other things in his discussion that indicate that he had not read What Is Value? Let me pick out just one. "On the lighter side, in view of Hall's comparison of anti attitudes with negative proposi­ tions, one is tempted to ask, 'Is the negation (or perhaps antiation) of an anti attitude logically equivalent to a pro attitude ?' " If anyone is inter­ ested in the answer to this he can find it in numerous places throughout the book, several of which are referred to under 'Contradiction' and 'Negatives' in the Index. I may have sounded harsh in saying that Hochberg could not have read What Is Value? I have not meant to be; indeed, any other plausible explanation of his remarks would sound even more unpleasant. And in any case, why should one read it all and as a whole ? We are living in a period when philosophic contributions, like scientific, are short, definitive, and quite neutral on all issues save those under immediate scrutiny or debate. Hochberg is surely not to be singled out for specific censure for what is so clearly au courant. 6. Ibid., pp.

222-23

and passim.

Part III. Knowledg e, Languag e, and the Mind

11

Knowl edg e as Knowledg e and as Social Fact

In Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats, the cats which the very old man brought home to his lonesome wife fell to fighting one another over the question as to which was the prettiest.* This ended disastrously for the cats; each ate the others up; not one could the old couple see. We are often told -that philosophical controversies end in the same catastrophe, that, at least for the non-philosophical bystander, each contestant has eaten all the others, leaving not one to be seen. We seem to be presented with such a mutual ingestion in the case of the conflict between what might be called epistemological relativism and epistemological absolutism. The relativist is always able to point out wherein any supposed absolute truth is relative to some historical, social situation in which it was formulated. The absolutist, on the other hand, i s always able to fall back on the dialectical argument that relativism really claims to be itself an absolute truth, not relative to any special social con­ text. As indicative of what I mean by relativism let me take the sociologist of knowledge. 1 As Karl Mannheim states it: " . . . every assertion can only be relationally formulated."2 And he applies ,this specifically to the • Read at the meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association at Madison, Wisconsin, April 24, 1942 ; not previously published. 1. The sophisticated sociologist of knowledge might say that he is a descriptive sociologist, therefore not a relativist, since relativism is an epistemological position. This amounts to the third resolution of the conflict given below. Mannheim actually repudiates the designation, 'relativist; apparently because of the dogmatic skepticism it seems to suggest, and calls his position 'relationism." 2. Ideology and Utopia ( London : Rou tledge and Kegan Pau l, Limi ted, 1936) , p. 270.

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concept of truth: ". . . the utopian pattern of correctness, the idea of truth, arises out of the concrete modes of obtaining knowledge prevailing at a given time." 3 To point what I mean by the absolutist, let me take the realist, such as G. E. Moore. "It seems to me," says Moore, "that there is a sense in which it is the case with every true idea that, if once true, it is always true. That is to say, that every idea, which is true once, would be true at any other time at which it were to occur. . . . "4 This is easily developed so that it reads, "The truth of an idea is independent of the time and social context of the idea's occurrence." This would of course apply to the idea of relativism, just as to any other idea. We may well imagine the relativist saying to the absolutist, "My dear absolutist, you're really a relativist, for your absolutism is relative to your social and historical standpoint," and the absolutist saying to the relativist, "My dear relativist, you're really an absolutist, for your relativism, if true at all (and you claim it to be true) , is true absolutely, without reference to your social and historical standpoint." Each has ingested, if it has not digested, the other. What are we to do ? Let us use the well-known and overworked philo­ sophical maxim, "When in danger, draw a distinction." Let us say that there are two sorts of beliefs : beliefs about complex, sociological matters, usually involving value ; and beliefs about directly observable facts. Then we can allow the former to be merely relative, but claim that the truth of the latter is absolute. But this does not satisfy our relativist. He wants to get his fingers on the latter as well as the former. Not only is our selection of observed facts determined by our value-standpoint, but the very notion of 'facts' and the distinction of facts from theories and from values, as well as the concept of the validating power of faots-one's whole epistemology, in short, is relative to one's historical and social standpoint, he would claim. As Mannheim says, "The theory of knowledge takes over from the con­ crete conditions of knowledge of a period (and thereby of a society) . . . its ideal of what factual knowledge should be. . . . " 5 "The par­ ticularity of the theory of knowledge holding sway to-day is now clearly 3. Ibid., p. 262. 4. Philosophical Studies (London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, Limited, 1922) , p. 30. 5. Ideology and Utopia, p. 261.

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demonstrable by the fact that the natural sciences have been selected as the ideal to which all knowledge should aspire.' 76 So our first attempt to arbitrate the issues is frustrated. Let us try again. Let us say, with the absolutist, "Of course my epistemology is from a certain historical standpoint. That does not bother me as long as I am, within my epistemology, able to give an ::iccount of my own his­ torical context, and show how it is compatible with t· he occurrence of my epistemology. I can still claim absolute truth for the ideas in this point of view-though I can never pull myself by my own bootstraps out of my actual historical situation." But this, I fear, will not prove very satisfactory to our relativ ist. "Granted," he will say, "that from your standpo int whatever truth there is is absolute, that on this basis you are able to give a self-consistent ac­ count of your standpoint, and of how your beliefs naturally would occur in such a context, and finally, that no one can avoid having an historically conditioned standpoint, still the question arises, is your standpoint the cor­ rect one ? Must you not admit it is correot or legitimate only for one having that standpoint ? And doesn't 1that cast suspicion on any absolute truth in it, especially when you find yourself criticized from other points of view ? " Our second effort has failed. But let us try again. "When i n dan .1: er, draw a distinction." Let us say that the sociologist of knowledge is talking about the conditions of the occurrence of knowledge, the realist about its validity. Thus, since our supposed antagonists are really talking about different things, the calamity of their mutually devouring one another is fortunately avoided. The occurrence of a belief is relative to (in the sense of casually determined by) the belief's social context, but the truth of a belief is not; its truth is wholly a function of, since a relation between, the content of the belief and the obj ective fact to which it refers, and depends in no sense upon anything else. This m ight seem to be a wholly satisfactory solution, as most realists seem to feel. But the sociologist of knowledge has had a taste of blood and cannot be calmed. He desires not merely to describe assertions, in rela­ tion to their standpo ints, but to modify ,them, to get people to restrict them, to see their partiality. ". . . it would be incorrect, " wri tes Mann­ heim, "to regard the sociology of knowledge as giving no m ore than a 1

6. Ibid.

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description of the actual conditions under which an assertion arises . it attempts not merely to establish the existence of the relationship, but at the same time to particularize its scope and the extent of its validity." 7 Another attempt at pacification has failed. What to do ? Let us try again. "When in danger, draw a distinction." Let us grant that the sociologist of knowledge, as truly as the realist, is concerned with the truth of beliefs, not merely with a description of their occurrences. Let us suppose, then, that the sociologist of knowledge means simply to point out the partiality of our assumed truth, the realist, its absoluteness. But 'the partiality of truth' is ambiguous. What the sociologist of knowledge seems to mean is that no belief asserts everything that can be truly asserted about its object. The realist admits this, but adds that the truth of what­ ever is truly asserted, however meager the assertion, is quite independent of the social context; however partial the belief, its truth is absolute. But again our relativist remains belligerent. The social genesis of our ideas is relevant not merely to their occurrences, meaning, and scope, but to the ascertainment of their truth as well, though j ust how is not clear. "The function of the findings of the sociology of knowledge," says Mannheim, "lies somewhere in a fashion hitherto not clearly understood, between irrelevance to the establishment of truth on the one hand, and entire adequacy for determining truth on the other."8 lf we are not utterly discouraged, let us take up our peace-making again. "When in danger, draw a distinction." Let us grant that both our contestants are concerned with the truth of beliefs, but that the sociologists of knowledge is concerned with a different aspect of their truth than is the realist, viz., with its ascertainability by us rather than its nature as such. He is concerned with verifying a belief, not with its verity. He is concerned with methods that will produce the greatest assurance that we have found true beliefs, not with the truth of such beliefs. So my suggest­ tion is that we can resolve our conflict by granting that truth is in itself absolute, but its ascertainability is relative to human procedures and per­ spectives. But even this will not quiet our relativists. They cannot bear the thought of any truth in itself or as such. Mannheim insists, "we must reject the notion that there is a 'sphere of truth in itself' as a disruptive and 7. Ibid., p. 255. 8. I bid., p. 256.

Knowledge as Knowledge and as Social Fact

· 2 39

unj ustifiable hypothesis." 9 We Gm imagine the relativist asserting, "I cannot find any truth as such ; I can only find actual, empirical procedures for selecting some beliefs as more probably true than others. And what these procedures are is determined by the social context. Let the realist have his absolute truth. What difference does it make to me ? For, he cannot show which beliefs possess it and which do not." Again we have failed. But again, in desperation, let us attempt to pull our .contestants from each other's jaws. "When in danger, draw a distinc­ tion." The relativist, I suggest, is interested in the total, concrete human situations in which beliefs occur, and in total, connete procedures of as­ certaining the probability of their truth. The absolutist is interested in one extremely abstract property of such total situations : the truth or falsity of the beliefs involved. Every property of a concrete event, as exemplified by that event, is relative, in fact is relative to every other property of that event; that concrete event requires all and just its prop­ erties to be that event. So even the truth of a belief, as exemplified, is relative to, is existentially dependent upon, the whole event. But every property of an event is also a somewhat, a character, which can be ab­ stract! y considered in its own nature. So the truth of a belief can be considered abstractly; in its nature it is independent of everything but the belief-content and its object. But here the sociologist of knowledge will again object, for he i s an Hegelian at heart, clinging to the concrete universal and forsaking the abstract. " It is necessary," writes Mannheim, "to raise the question time and again whether we can imagine the concept of knowing without taking account of the whole complex of traits by which man is char­ acterized, and how, without these presuppositions we can even think of the concept of knowing, to say nothing of actually engaging in the act of knowing." 1 0 This seems to lead us to the final impasse. But there may still be a way out. Let us explore the position of the relativist a bit further. We shall find that he is willing to admit that some social prospectives are, from the cognitive standpoint, to be preferred to others. Writes Mannheim, "As in the case of visual perspective, where certain positions have the advantage of revealing the decisive features of the object, so here pre-eminence is gi ven to that perspective which gives evidence of 9. Ibid., p. 274. I O. Ibid., p. 267.

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the greatest comprehensiveness and the greatest fruitfulness in dealing with empirical materials." 1 1 The suggested way out is, then, that we can improve our social per­ spectives, and thereby approach, though perhaps never attain, the identifi­ cation of absolutely true beliefs. In the first place, this can be done simply by finding and utilizing more suitable social perspectives. Mannheim, as we have seen, suggests that a more comprehensive perspective is more reliable. 12 He also extols the socially detached perspective, and his whole discussion of the rise and standpoint of the intelligentsia is significant here. A point he does not properly stress is that the same social standpoint may be cognitively trustworthy to quite different degrees in determining the truth of different sorts of beliefs. Besides this possibility of a simple or linear cognitive progress in the social determination of beliefs, there is another, similar to that of suc­ cessive approximation in the physical sciences. Stripped to its essentials, it is this. We can come to recognize and correct our own social biases in ascertaining truth if we are observant of the effects of biases in other people and then, by generalizing, apply this knowledge to our own case, which, in turn, will correct our first judgment as to the biases of others. Now, the relativist might agree to all this but say that it only sets up practical criteria for ranking social standpoints according to their cog­ nitive reliability, that it does not require any abstract, absolute truth­ property. "Isn't such a truth-property," he would ask, "an otiose entity, to be cut off by Ockham's razor? " "No," the absolutist would reply, "for, these very criteria of cognitive trustworthiness themselves presuppose it. Without it, the criteria would be arbitrary. In general, they all result in rating as cognitively better those social perspectives which are neutral toward, or loosened from, the beliefs involved. A detached perspective, a self-corrective perspective, a perspective including contact and clash of many perspectives-why are these more dependable cognitively? Is it not because in these cases there is greater probability that methods of ascertainment of truth will be relevant to the truth or falsity of the l I. Ibid., p. 271 . 12. Edgar Zisel gives a good illustration of such a comprehensive stand point in his analysis of "The Sociological Roots of Science," American /ournal of Sociology, Vol. XLVII, No. 4 (January, 1942) , 544-62. One of the chief of these sociological roots of science was the contact and unification of the procedures of the university scholars and literati with that of the craftsmen and instrument makers toward the close of the sixteenth century.

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241

beliefs? If we were convinced there were no truth to be approximated, these criteria would simply be odd ways in which the occurrences of beliefs might be arranged, and there would be no reason for preferring them as against many other methods of arrangement. And finally," the absolutist would stolidly maintain, "do you not, Mr. Relativist, suppose that your own view, that there is no absolute truth, but only degrees of trustworthiness of relative truths, do you not suppose that this is absolutely true ? If not, are you not launched on an infinite regress of rankings of trustworthiness?" I fear I have not saved the contestants. I fear each has gone too far down the throat of the other to be retrieved. But if so, like the old couple in Wanda Gag's story who found a puny cat that somehow had avoided the combat, so I, at least, have found a view that seems to me to escape the carnage. Absolutism is correct in saying that truth is a property of some beliefs, and that abstractly, in its nature, it is wholly independent of its concrete, existential context. Relativism, on the other hand, is correct in asserting that, in its concrete exemplification, this property is always dependent upo n an existential (in part social) context, and furthermore that no ascertainment of what beliefs exemplify this property can be instituted save in the form of a set of concrete processes whose determination by their contexts is always to some degree an un­ known, and hence uneliminable, factor. And though this leaves us with skepticism, it is a retail, not a wholesale, skepticism. For, improvement, self-correction, is possible; cognitively better existential social determina­ tions of our beliefs can be recognized and in some cases instituted by us.

12

Perception as Fact and as Knowledg e

Though frequently quoted, Bishop Butler's homely truism, "Everything is what it is, and not another thing," is not in serious danger of being overworked in specific applications.* It has a rather restrictive effect upon certain types of explanation that may be called "reductive," that hate to see the world cluttered up with a number of things. A case in point is the causal theory of perception. By 'causal theory of percep­ tion' I refer to any theory which, admitting that in perception we have knowledege, 1 claims that a complete account of the causes ( and effects) of a percept furnishes an adequate theory of the cognitive nature and cogni­ tive reliability of the percept. A rather crude form of this theory is found in the (usually tacit) identification of the object perceived ( cognoscendum of the percept) with one of the causes of the percept, viz., the external physical stimulus. Another form of the theory tacitly identifies the perceptual object with certain effects of perception, particularly in the overt behavior of the percipient, especially when this affects the physical system functioning as stimulus of the perception.2 The difficulty in all forms of the causal theory of perception is the same. They are based on the elimination of an important distinction. The cognitive value of a percept is not the same thing as the occurrence • Published in The Philosophical Review, Vol. LII, No. 5 ( September, 1943) , 4 68-89. 1 . Or reputed knowledge : I should like to say assertion or truth-claim. As will be seen, I admit perceptual illusion, i.e., percep tual error. 2. Usually in this sort of theory there is a further complication. Besides the effects (and causes) of the percept, an evaluative criterion is brought in, e.g., "apt­ ness," "adj ustment," "satisfactoriness." But this evaluative criterion is not i tself cognitive ; thus Bishop Butler's adage is sinned against in a new way.

Perception as Fact and as Knowledge

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243

of the percept, or of any condition or effect of its occurrence. For different percepts have different degrees of cognitive worth,3 but all percepts equally occur, and ( at least if causal determinism is true) equally are caused and equally cause further effects. Another instance of the reductive fallacy is the sense-datum theory of consciousness. By 'sense-datum theory of consciousness' I refer to a view which, finding that by analyzing perceptual consciousness into sensory elements it is possible to attain a higher degree of cognitive reli­ ability, forthwith asserts that such sensory elements occur and, in fact, compose perceptual consciousness. This view reduces questions of oc­ currence to questions of cognitive reliability (of perceptual factors). If we may call the investigation of the occurrence-aspects of percep­ tion "the psychology of perception," and the investigation of the cog­ nitive reliability of percepts "the epistemology of perception," then I am claiming that the psychology and the epistemology of perception are irreducible, and neither should suppose that it can solve the problems of the other. This, however, is not an advocacy of a complete separation of the two disciplines. Such a separation, if it means that no assumptions concerning one should be allowed to function in any investigation of the other, seems undesirable if not impossible. Consider what would happen to the psychology of perception if all assumptions concerning the cog­ nitive status of percepts were ruthlessly ruled out. All distinction be­ tween illusions and normal perceptions (here 'normal' is equivalent to 'veridical') would be destroyed. Thus all theories of illusions (as different from normal perception) would be illegitimate. All experimental use of illusions to determine factors in normal perception would likewise be eliminated. Such concepts as the perception and correction of errors would be taken away from the theory of learning. The whole concept of discrimination and of limen of discrimination would be destroyed. The notion of a physical stimulus (as different from the perceptive re­ sponse, and thus as determined by the experimenter's percepts, contrasted with those of his subjects) would have to be thrown overboard. The complete separation of the two disciplines would likewise have disastrous results in the epistemology of perception. It is quite possible, it seems to me, to avoid confusion and the reductive 3 . For the present paper I accept this as ultimate. Anyone admitting perceptual distortion or illusion, or the value of training for scientific observation (as in the use of microscope) , will agree with me.

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fallacy in this matter without requiring an impossible segregation of the psychology and epistemology of perception. I make two suggestions. First, let each discipline be clear when it is making assumptions in the field of the other, and let it state these assumptions explicitly. Second, let these assumptions so far as possible be of a broad, uncontroversial sort ; where this is impossible, where it is necessary to take sides in a contro­ versy within the other discipline, let the outcome of the controversy in the other discipline be the final judge. The sketch of an epistemology of perception which follows may be viewed as an attempt to put these prin­ ciples into practice. First, I make certain assumptions concerning the psychology of per­ ception which I do not take to be controversial. Perception is a discrimina­ tive response of living organisms to features of their environment. It is a form of behavior involving selective inhibition. There are two im­ portant aspects to this phenomenon which we may refer to as the sens� tivity of the organism and the organism's learning capacity. 'The sensi-­ tivity of the organism' refers to the range of features of the environment to which the organism can differentially respond. 'The learning capacity of the organism' refers to the organism's ability to respond to features of the environment where those features are not immediately present to (stimulating) the organism, but certain other features are present and act as signs or cues. Second, I make certain assumptions concerning the psychology of perceptions that probably are controversial, though a great body of psy­ chologists would, I hope, find them unobjectionable. They amount to the admission of consciousness as a fact or occurrent. 4 At the human level, perception occurs not merely in the form of selective bodily re4· The view I am suggesting is closely allied to that of E. G. Boring, Physical

Dimensions of Consciousness ( New York : The Century Co., 1 933) , that conscious­

ness is discrimination. The basic difference lies in Boring's identification of dis­ crimination with its neural basis ( essen tial ly, spatial differentiation of neural paths) . This results in a very attractive theoretical purity. I think, however, it has the draw­ back of denying a distinction of fact : discrimination has a neural basis, but occurs in its own right as a conscious fact. Boring, it would seem, tacitly recognizes this when he admi ts that at the present stage we must largely rely upon introspection to determine the specific forms of discrimination (really, what properties are dis­ criminated) , though in an ideal future we can gain adequate knowledge by physi o­ logical observation alone. The fact that at some time a knowledge of one ( conscious discrimination) is correlated with ignorance of the other (neural differentiation) seems to me adequate proof that the two are not identical (however regular we may find their correlation in occurrence) .

Perception as Fact and as Knowledge

24 5

sponse, but as a set of selected features of the environment, occurrent as a selected set in their own right, viz., as a percept. Somewhere, coming up the evolutionary scale, increase in the repertory of selective behavior is accompanied by awareness 5 of the environmental features selectively responded to. The two aspects, noted above, of all selective behavior are found in heightened form in conscious perception. Sensitivity, whereby certain features of the environment are differentially responded to, may here be spoken of as "discriminability." A percept may be said to discriminate those features of the environment to which it is a selective response, i .e., which together make it up.6 Learning capacity, whereby an immediately stimulating environment which lacks certain features may (through the efficacy of discriminated features acting as signs or cues) be responded to as though those features were present, may here be spoken of as "com­ pletiveness." This "completiveness" of a percept is, I think, a confused awareness of the body's readiness to react in a number of different, in­ compatible ways. Thus it is possible within the realm of percepts to define the two main directions of cognitive reference. On the one hand is the everyday refer­ ence of percepts to the physical world. This occurs through the com­ pletiveness of a percept, whereby, though composed of a comparatively few discriminated environmental features, it carries with it a sense of more. Here is the psychological core of perceptual reference to concreta. On the other hand there is the more recondite and intellectual reference to ab­ stracta. We shall concern ourselves only with sensory abstracts, as these alone are immediately relevant to perception. In the psychological labora­ tory and under the phenomenological attitude it is possible to approxi­ mate an experience of a single sense-quality. Strictly this is not achievable. Complex percepts occur, but never simple sense-elements. However, symbols come to our aid in perceptual analysis. Suppose the word 'red' to be uttered in conj unction with many percepts differing in the properties 5 . I shall waive questions as to the nature of awareness, except to assert that when it occurs we have a new type of event, an event where the features selectively responded to occur not merely as properties of the environment ( causally related to organic responses) but also as properties of a new enti ty, in fact as together con­ stitu ting that enti ty, viz., the percept. 6. Strictly the percept has two sets of properties : properties of the environment discriminated in it, and properties (all of which are relations) due to the occurrence together of the former as a percept.

246

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they discriminate save that they all discriminate red. Then in a new per­ ceptual experience including red and the word 'red,' the total experience may refer to one aspect of itself, viz., its redness.7 Here the symbol which aids in abstractive reference need not be a word. It may be a confused per­ ception of a bodily set. This tendency of a percept to refer to some aspect of itself I shall call Its "abstractiveness." So much for assumptions regarding the psychology of perception. We have postulated certain features of percepts as actual occurrents, and though these features include reference (through completiveness to con­ creta and through abstractiveness to sensory abstracta), we have taken such reference simply as fact. We now turn to the question of the relative reliability of percepts, i.e., to the epistemology of perception. An epistemology of perception must include (a) a theory of truth and (b) a theory of evidence. Broadly, the epistemology I here sketch is founded on a correspondence-theory of truth and an empirical theory of evidence. This may be put somewhat paradoxically by saying that to be true, percepts must correspond to extra-empirical fact; but all evidence for such correspondence is itself perceptual. This position can, perhaps, be best understood by dealing separately with the two types of perceptual knowledge we have distinguished : knowledge of concreta and knowledge of (sensory) abstracta. And, first, knowledge of concreta. A percept is true (in its concretive reference) if there is a concretum constituted as the percept takes it to be. This means that, if the percept is true, there is something exemplifying the set of properties discriminated in the percept and an indefinite number of further properties (referred to by the completiveness of the percept). This requires the literal presence of properties of the concretum in a veridical percept of it. Thus in a sense it is an espousal of the supposedly defunct "copy-theory" of truth. It should be noted, however, that in a very important respect the percept is not a copy of its object. In its completiveness the percept refers to properties of the obj ect not present in the percept, e.g., visual percepts lack depth (really a complex relation of other properties), but refer, through their completiveness, to physical objects that are three-dimen­ sional. 7. This is really a development of James's "law of dissociation by varying con­ comitants" (Principles of Psychology [New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1 890] , I, 506) . The difference is in the requirement, as I see it, of the occurrence of a symbol ( though it may be a "natural symbol", i.e., a perception of associated body­ process) to direct the attention to the element whose other concomitants are varied.

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This view clearly presupposes the objectivity of (sensory) qualities and might be opposed on this score. I cannot here meet all objections to the objectivity of qualities, but will confine my remarks to the "epis­ temological" variety. They all seem to be based on a confusion of epistemology and psychology. They may be summed up in the phrase, 'the relativity of qualities to the percipient.' The apple is perceived as red by me, as gray by you (who are color-blind) . Thus, it is supposed, the apple cannot be colored at all. An amazing argument ! Let us try to find what is at the back of it. First, 'the percipient' need not refer to any­ thing mental or subjective. In the case just instanced, 'relativity to the percipient' means relativity to the visual mechanisms of the percipient. But we can dispense with the percipient entirely. The following would no doubt be accepted as simply a different application of the same argu­ ment: the color of the apple is different when perceived at noon, at twi­ light, at night; therefore the apple cannot be colored. Here the relativity is clearly not to different percipients, but to different light-conditions. So apparently what is meant is simply that perceived qualities are relative to causal conditions of perception. But what does this 'relative to' mean ? In the first place, it must have epistemological significance, or the whole position ceases to be an objection to the objectivity of qualities. If 'perceived qualities are relative to causal conditions of perception' simply means that there are regularities obtaining between conditions of percep­ tion and perceived qualities, this would be wholly a psychological matter irrelevant to the question of the cognitive reliability of percepts as regards the qualities they discriminate. It might be taken to mean that the physical objects of percepts really do have, in every case, the qualities they are perceived to have, but they have them relative to the conditions of per­ ception in each case. But this cannot be the correct interpretation in the present case, for it would involve the admission of the objectivity of sensory qualities, the very thing opposed. The only interpretation that seems to make sense is the following. 'Perceived qualities are relative to their causal conditions' means that, since all perceived qualities are equally caused ( i.e., are equally regular in their occurrence) , therefore, if any one is erroneous, they are all equally erroneous, and, since there are percepts of the same object that are incompatible in qualities they dis­ criminate, and therefore all but one of which are false, it follows that all percepts are equally false in their qualitative aspects. Even this would not logically require that physical objects exemplify no sensory qualities;

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it would only require that if a physical object exemplify a sensory quality it be one which is never perceived as a quality of that object. Let us waive this. The difficulty with the objection as last interpreted should be clear. It supposes that si nce percepts are equally regular in occurrence, in a certain respect, they are eq ually reliable cognitively. This fallacy is one this whole paper is designed to oppose. Suppose, now, the sort of copy-theory of truth which is indicated above is accepted. The serious question arises how we are to evaluate the cognitive reliability of percepts, for we must insist that there are incompatible percepts of the same object, not more than one of which can be veridical. This leads us from theory of truth to theory of evidence; and after all it should be remarked that the best test of a theory of truth lies in the theory or theories of evidence it will allow. No correspondence-theory of truth can admit selfevidence. For selfevidence would allow the determination of the truth of cognition through the nature of the cognitive occurrent alone, i.e., without refer­ ence to any corresponding object. Thus, if selfevident truth is possible, then clearly truth without correspondence is possible. Obviously, then, I must deny that any percept is selfevidently true ( or false). Further­ more, I am an empiricist. There is no way of knowing the physical world save through percepts. Thus the only possible evidence for the truth of a percept lies in other percepts, or, more accurately, in some relation or relations the percept bears to other percepts. What then is the criterion of evidentiality ? The copy-theory of truth I have proffered requires that a veridical percept discriminate the very properties of its object, but that it discriminate some of them only; the object is always more concrete than the percept in that it exemplifies an indefinitely large number of properties not discriminated in the (given) percept. So there is positive evidence for the veridicalness of a percept if there are other percepts of the same concretum which agree with the given percept in some properties discriminated, but differ in that these are in a context of other discriminated properties. For example, I see the 'a' as between the 'x' and the 'm' of 'example' I just wrote. My poor spelling habits impel me to look again, to get my wife to examine it, etc. If, in these di fferent perceptual contexts ( as regards other discriminated features) , the letters still are seen as in this relation, I feel I have gained positive evidence for the verid icalness of the original percept. This may be carried a step further. Suppose we have good evidence

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that a certain obj ect (or type of obj ect) has a certain structure of prop­ erties, AB, then positive evidence for a percept discriminating some of these properties, A, is found in percepts discriminating others, B, in the structure ( with or without A) , if in a context of differing discrimina­ tion. I see a notebook I thought I had lost. Can this be it? I touch it. I open it and read samples. I am convinced my original percept was trust­ worthy. It should be noted, however, that this is at a higher or derived level. It really assumes the probable truth of percepts discriminating the structure involved. And this probability is established ultimately through percepts agreeing in discriminating it but differing in further respects. Before going further it is important to observe that evidentiality at­ taches differentially to the properties discriminated in a percept. Suppose a set of percepts of the same object agreeing in a group of discriminated properties, A, and differing in other properties. And one of these per­ cepts finds positive evidence for its veridicalness in the others, but only specifically as regards A ; the supplementation furnished by differing con­ texts of further properties is part of the evidence for A as concretely ex­ emplified and thus as along with other properties in the object, but it is not evidence that the other properties discriminated in the original per­ cept are specifically part of this concrete totality, though it is not evidence against this either. Hence, strictly, it is improper to speak of evidence of the veridicalness of a percept; evidence is always of the veridicalness of a percept in a certain respect. Likewise it is improper to speak of the veridicalness of a percept. It is highly doubtful whether any percept is veridical in all respects (in all discriminated properties). A percept oc­ curs as a totality only. Its cognitive reliability however attaches to its ele­ ments differentially . A n important form of the criterion of evidentiality here suggested is that where the differences between the agreeing percepts are spread out temporally, and thus take the form of change. Here the discriminated prop­ erties common to the set are apprehended as persistent properties of the obj ect. Usually evidence of this type is in the form of temporally later per­ cepts in the same individual's experience. This form of our criterion rests on the assumption that concreta exemplify properties more persistently than our experience of them, specifically, that they exemplify .them through larger periods of time than that of any single percept. 'Persistence' here must not be restricted to mere constancy, i.e., absence of all change in the properties that persist. It must also be taken as including mvanance,

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i.e., regularity in change. Suppose I wish evidence relevant to my percept (now remembered) of lighting the fire. I would find positive evidence in percepts of a burning or burnt out fire (not in a laid fire and my lighting it) . A different but also important form of this criterion of evidentiality is found in the case where the differences between agreeing percepts are those involved in the percepts' being in the experience of different people. The reason why agreeing percepts of different people are of greater evidential significance than those of a single person is that they involve (on the average) a greater context of supplemental differences. So far as such supplemental differences are eliminated, mere number i s irrelevant t o evidentiality. We must now consider the case of di sagreeing percepts. Two percepts disagree if they have the same object (therefore agree in certain proper­ ties discriminated, which I shall call "designative properties" because they serve to identify the common object) but discriminate in it incompatible properties. Properties are incompatible if they are determinates under the same determinable8 and if they are referred to the same concretum. If I see the corner of the table as a right angle, you see it as acute, our per­ cepts disagree. If I see the mountain from a distance as bluish violet, from close at hand as brown, my percepts disagree. It is in treating of the evidentiality to be found i n disagreeing per­ cepts that any copy-view of truth is supposedly involved in insuperable difficulties. 9 I think the difficulties are by no means insuperable. We must remember first that, though equally regular in occurrence (in thei r causes and effects) , percepts are not equally reliable (equally probable on the evidence) . We must note next that, of two disagreeing percepts, one may furnish positive evidence for the other ( and the other thereby furnish negative evidence for it) in the respect in which there is disagreement. We must note, further, that it must not be required of a theory of evi­ dentiality that it be able in all cases of disagreeing percepts to determine which is more probably veridical, nor that it be able i n any case to deter­ mine a very high probability of one (coming close to certainty) as con­ trasted with an equally low probability for another disagreeing percept. 8. Cf. W. E. Johnson, Logic ( Cambridge, Eng. : University Press, 1 92 1 ) , I, 173 ff. 9. One of the motives of the sense-datum theory is the desire to escape from the unhappy predicament of allowing incompatibilities in our ( empirically) basic type of knowledge. Cf. Russell, An ln quit-y into Meaning and Truth (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1940) , 189, 190.

Perception as Fact and as Knowledge

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All that is necessary is that, on the given criterion of evidentiality, a sig­ nificant difference of probability is made out in a significant number of cases of disagreeing percepts (where 'significant' is determined by a practical decision as to requirements for pursuing the knowledge-enter­ prise) . In the first place, let us note that the criterion of evidentiality we al­ ready have will suffice in some cases of disagreeing percepts. Suppose we have a single percept disagreeing with a set, i.e., the latter agree in a respect in which the former disagrees with each of them. Then, other things being equal, 1 0 the agreeing set furnishes negative evidence for the single disagreeing percept. I perceive myself saying, "Donald, don't do that," whereas all the rest of the family perceive me to say, "David, don't do that." If I am reasonable I accept -their correction. Similarly, I see a purple stain on my plate of cherries. But it moves as I push a cherry, and finally disappears as I remove the cherry. I decide it must have been a contrast-effect of the shadow of the cherry and the cherry-juice (i.e., that the percept of it as a stain in the dish was erroneous, as evidenced by the agreeing percepts of it as a shadow) . Our criterion can be generalized beyond this rather simple case. Suppose we have two sets of percepts of the same object, each agreeing within itself in a certain respect in which, however, it disagrees with the other set. Suppose further that in one set there is appreciably greater supplementation of the properties upon which there is agreement in the set by other discriminated properties, differing for different percepts in the set. Then, other things being equal, greater evidentiality attaches to a percept belonging to the set in which there is this greater supplementa­ tion than to any disagreeing percept from the other set (in the respect in which the two disagree) . This allows us to reject the agreeing evidence of one hundred people at the same location concerning the lights and sound of a distant plane in favor of that of five people strategically dispersed. But it does not allow us to reject the evidence of the hundred in favor of that of one who is placed very near the supposed source. In many cases, I thi nk, we must admit the higher reliability of a single observation under favorable conditions than of a host of observations (even where agreeing) under unfavorable conditions. Also in many in­ stances we seem to have no appreciable difference in supplementation of 1 0. This is meant to preclude the possibility that the single percept is much more discriminative in the respect involved than is the agreeing set. See below.

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Categorial Analysis

agreeing aspects of sets of percepts disagreeing with one another where we nevertheless seem forced to admit a difference of probability. However we vary other features, distant trees are seen as bluish, near ones as green. Yet it would seem desirable to assign a high reliability to percepts of trees as green than to percepts of them as bluish violet. My suggestion is that that percept is more reliable ( i n the respect in which there is disagreement) which is more discriminative, for it (in that respect) approaches more closely the indefinitely great complexity of properties of the concretum. By 'more discriminative in a given respect' I mean that more characters which would be incompatible if referred to the same concretum are taken to be exemplified by the object differentially, i.e., different ones by different parts of the object. As I enter my study my dictionary appears as a homogeneous maroon. As I sit at my desk, I see it as having a texture of somewhat irregular checker-design of maroons differing very noticeably in brightness and even in hue (especially at ·the lower edge, which is a little dirty) . As regards color, the percept from my desk is more probably veridical than that from the door. This criterion can be direct! y applied to the color of the tree as perceived from afar and from nearby. For i n the latter case there is not merely a different color discriminated (green as contrasted with bluish violet) , but a set of different colors (greens and browns, contrasted with a homogeneous bluish violet) . But this will n ot take care of all cases of disagreeing percepts. Sup­ pose I see a room in daylight and again under artificial, colored illumi na­ tion . Here it is conceivable that each percept is as discriminative of colors1 1 as is the other, yet they disagree as to colors of objects in the room. To take care of this sort of case we must go from a comparison of two percepts to a comparison of a large number. Let us take many sets of disagreeing percepts, with many different objects, but obtaining 1 1 . Where 'discriminative of colors, means the number of distinguishable colors present in the percept. If, however, this phrase were to mean the number of just noticeable differences separating the colors discriminated in the percept, then the percept under daylight illumination would be more discriminative of color than would the percept under colored illumination. In general, I think maximum di s­ crimination, if measured in terms of the amount of difference as determined by the number of j ust noticeable differences separating the discriminated properties, would agree with what I call perception under the best available conditions for discrimina­ tion. The advantage of the l atter phrase lies in that it more clearly reveals that the basis is still actual discrimination (not merely possible) , though it must use sets of percepts rather than single pairs.

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under the following conditions : in each set, one percept is of the object under daylight illumination, others are of the obj ect under colored illumination. It will then be found that in many cases the percept of the obj ect in daylight is more discriminative of colors than is a disagreeing percept of that obj ect under colored illumination, and that in no case does the converse obtain. Thus, in general, daylight is a better condition for color-discrimination than is colored illumination. Let us then universalize this and say that in all cases a percept is more reliable than another, disagreeing, percept if it occurs under conditions which in general are better for discrimination in the respect in which there is disagreement.12 Have we here tacitly abandoned cognitive reliability and turned to a consideration of an existential aspect of perception ( the conditions of perception) ? We do here consider conditions (causes) of percepts, and these are regularities of occurrence. But we are not concerned with them as regularities. More precisely, we are not concerned with the question what regularities obtain. We suppose psychology ( and physiology) to have answered this. We ask, among the regularities which obtain, which ones on the average result in more discriminative percepts. We thus seek to evaluate epistemically the various causal conditions of perception. Let me summarize my position as to theory of perceptual evidentiality in the case of concreta. Positive evidence of the veridicalness (in a certain respect ) of a percept is offered by other percepts of the same object agree­ ing in the respect involved but supplementing this by a context of differ­ ing discriminated properties, the degree of evidence being a function of the degree ( and relevance) of this supplemental difference; positive evi­ dence is also furnished by other percepts of the same obj ect disagreeing in the respect involved insofar as in that respect they are less discrim; na­ tive than the given percept. Essentially, it is readily seen, the criterion advocated here has two parts, which may be spoken of as "supplemental agreement" and "maxi­ mum discrimination." They both arise from the assumption that the obj ect is more concrete than the percept. They differ in that one ( supple­ mental agreement ) is concerned with greater concreteness in other, con12. Consider retinal stimulation. If the image of the object falls near the periphery of the retina, discrimination of color and contour is poor. The best condition is where the image falls on the fovea. For further illustrations and a further treatment of this discrimination-criterion of evidentiality, see my "A Realis tic Theory of Dis­ tortion," The Philadelphia Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5 (September, 1939) , 525-3 1, and in this volume pp. 262-70.

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Categorial Analysis

textual properties, rather than in those for whose veridicalness there is evidence, whereas the other ( maximum discrimination) is concerned with greater concreteness precisely in the respect for whose veridicalness the evi­ dence is relevant. May there not be conflict between these two parts of our criterion? Theoretically, yes. Actually they seem to be in accord, save when pushed to extremes. Consider measurement. I compare two objects as to size, first by simply "sizing them up," then by measurement by means of a third obj ect transported from one to the other. I compare two processes as to length, first by their temporal "feel, " then by comparing them with a standard process (e.g., a clock). When these perceptual experiences disagree, both parts of our criterion would favor the per­ ception involving measurement. Measurement allows greater discrimina­ tion in the measured respect, as well as insuring greater agreement in that respect as supplemented by change or diversity in other respects. But it is possible that two or more mensurational perceptions disagree, when discrimination is pushed beyond the limits of probable error or "the personal equation." Then increase in discrimination involves loss of supplemental agreement. Here it perhaps becomes arbitrary which part of our criterion we use. It is perfectly feasible to sacrifice neither to the other, but simply to recognize that within these limits they cease to be in accord. In any case, their accord outside these limits is no arbitrary choice on our part but is a fact, a fact which, it seems to me, gives weight to a theory of evidence combining them. Let me conclude the discussion of evidentiality as regards perception of concreta with an application of our criterion to illusions. 13 As illustrative, consider the use of camouflage. I have been told that color-blind ob­ servers are better at detecting camouflaged obj ectives from the air than are people \Vith normal eyesight. This may well be the case. If so, would it not embarrass ou r criterion of evidentiality? What would be evidence that what was perceived (by a normal observer) as unbroken forest was really full of gun-placements? The perception of gunfire originating there, perception of the guns when the position is captured, etc. Thus sup­ plemental agreement would accord with the j udgment that the percept of the camouflaged guns as unbroken forest was an illusion. Likewise for maximum discrimination. The best location for discrimination of guns is a comparatively few feet away (rather than several miles in the air) . However, at a distance of several miles, color-blindness (rather than 1 3 . I have considered the traditional example of the bent stick in ibid., 529 ; this volume p. 266.

Perception as Fact and as Knowledge

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25 5

normal vision) may be part of the best conditions for perceiving camou­ flaged obj ects. Does this not conflict with our generalized form of the discrimination criterion ? I think not. Color-blindness can aid in detect­ ing camouflaged objects precisely through its failure to discriminate hues, and thus through its enhancement of discrimination of certain brightness­ contours which are generally unobserved in normal vision because of the presence of more striking hue-contours. This very fact, that color-blind­ ness is optimal for the discrimination of certain brightness-contours, is utilized in the Ishihara test for color-blindness. Finally, let me point out two instances where our criterion is unable to differentiate the reliability of two disagreeing sets of percepts. If a chlorophyl solution is formed by boiling young green leaves in alcohol, the solution has a bright green color seen by transmitted light ( as one looks through it towards a lightsource) but is seen as dull red by re­ flected light. The percepts of this solution as bright green and as dull red seem to be equally discriminative and equally substantiated by sup­ plemental agreement. Again, there is Stratton's experiment with inverted visual fields. It seemed to indicate that, with practice, the inversion (both horizontal and vertical) of all visual spatial relations could be equally well coordinated with (uninverted) muscle-touch spatial relations as is normal vision. The two spatial coordinations, however, are clearly in­ compatible. Yet (granting sufficient, widespread practice with inverted vision) they are equally discriminative and equally capable of supple­ mental agreement. It has been suggested that these instances prove that concreta cannot be colored or in spatial relations (where 'spatial' refers to the sort of relations we find in the up-down, right-left, etc., of our visual and muscle­ touch experience). I do not agree. They simply prove that, on our criterion and in terms of our present knowledge of perception, there are disagreeing percepts for whose veridicalness there is approximately equal evidence. Ideally, a theory of evidence should make it possible to deter­ mine clearly in every case of disagreeing percepts which one is more and which less probable. I know of no criterion of evidentiality which can do this, however. Space prohibits as extensive a treatment of the perception of abstracta as we have devoted to the perception of concreta. This discrepancy may in part be j ustified by the fact that 'perception of abstracta' would be con­ sidered a selfcontradictory phrase by most people. Usually 'perception'

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is restricted to perception of concreta. But, however it be designated, I believe there is as direct and qualitative an experience of certain abstracta (particularly sensory qualities and thei r phenomenologically observable relations) as there is of concreta. And I would obj ect to calling it "sensing of sensa" ( or some equivalent phrase) . For this latter phrase suggests an existential, phenomenological elementarism I do not believe accords with the observable facts. The occurrent units of our experience of colors or sounds are as complex as are those of our experience of tables and chairs. In fact, they are the same (viz., percepts) . Our (sensory) cognition of a blue table is through or by means of the same existential unit of experience as in our (sensory) cognition of the blue of the table. The difference lies in the direction of reference. In the concretive refer­ ence of percepts, completiveness is the dominant feature, and gives the direction of perceptual reference-toward a more concrete object. In abstractive reference, abstractiveness is the dominant feature, and directs perceptual reference toward a more abstract object. Every perceptive reference to an abstractum is about (has as its ob­ ject) a discriminated property (quality or relation) included in the per­ cept. I t might seem then that all perception of abstracta should be veridi­ cal, that error here is impossible. But this is not the case. In the percept the discriminated property occurs along with others ; as an abstractum it is (supposedly) to be found simply in its own nature. There is thus a truth­ claim, a cognitive faith, in any perception of an abstractum. I t is that the property in question is in its nature (independently of its occurrence in the given percept or any other percepts) as it is found to be i n the percept of it. That is, there is a claim that the existential context of the prop­ erty in this ( and other) percepts ( and of course also in any concretum) has been completely abstracted from. Since the property does not occur thus in isolation in any percept of it, it is possible to distinguish between the percept and its obj ect. Thus again, as with perception of concreta, we are led to a correspondence..,theory of truth. But instead of calling it a "copy-theory of truth," which would suggest that the obj ect (the ab­ stractum) occurs in its own right, let us call it a "realization-theory of truth"-the veridical percept realizes ( rather than copies) its obj ect. But though the object of the percept transcends experience (in being more abstract in its nature, though not as existing in isolation) , our evi­ dence for it is, ultimately, perceptual experience. Here again I advocate empiricism. Evidence for the veridicalness of the perception of an ab-

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stractum 1s m the form of relations of the percept to other percepts of the same abstractum. On the realization-view of t ruth, that percept is veridical in which the nature of one of its properties is completely dis­ tinguished from its context in the percept. The danger of error lies in the tendency to confuse, as one, several properties actually together in the percept. Hence we can set up the following criteria of evidentiality : of two percepts of the same abstractum, that one is more probably veridical in which there is greater distinction of the property in question from others with which it actually is combined in the percept. For example, I perceive the maroon of my dictionary. This is seen as one simple prop­ erty before I have become proficient in phenomenological analysis. There­ after I perceive it as complex. I perceive the quality as distinguishable from its spatial and temporal occurrence-features, viz., its extensity and duration in my perception of it. This latter sort of perception (after phenomenological training) is more reliable than the earlier. Or consider perception of tone. A note struck on the piano is heard as a single ab­ stractum by the novice, as a "clang" composed of fundamental and over­ tones (and perhaps even difference-tones) by one trained in phenomeno­ logical abstraction. On our criterion the latter's perception is more prob­ ably veridical. This criterion of evidentiality in the perception of abstracta is anal­ ogous to that of maximum discrimination in the perception of concreta. There is a difference, however, which justifies a different name. I suggest 'maximum analyticality.' The difference is essentially that in concretive knowledge our knowledge always falls short of the total nature of its obj ect, whereas in abstractive knowledge it is possible to include the total obj ect, exhaustively, in our knowledge of it. In their concretive reference percepts disagree if they discriminate incompatible properties as exempli­ fied by the same object. Neither of two incompatible properties is an analysis of the other; they are simply different characters under the same genus ( e.g., blue and green), and the disagreement lies in the question, which is exemplified by the object. But disagreement of percepts in their abstractive reference lies in the fact that one succeeds in breaking up the nature of a property whereas the other does not. The same property is in some sense the obj ect of both. In one it is perceived as simple. In the other as complex (all disagreements as to the structure of a complex property can be reduced, I think, to this form). But what do I mean by saying that an abstractum taken in one per-

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cept to be s1imple is taken in another to be complex? I mean that in the latter, though not in the former, the abstractum is taken to have "dimen­ sions," to be analyzable into aspects which are generically different from one another, and can vary independently of one another ( though they do not occur independently of one another). Thus to say that an ab­ stractum is complex does not mean that the abstractum is a confusion of two or more abstracta of the same sort (determinates under the same deter­ minable, separated by such and such a number of just noticeable differ­ ences) . It does not mean, e.g., that yellow is found to be a composition of red and green, as the Young-Helmholtz theory of primary colors might be supposed to require. In fact, in this instance we see a confusion, or the possibility of confusion, of causation and cognition. Yellow is, on this theory, said to be a compound. There are several reasons for saying this. 14 All of them, however, are concerned with conditions of occurrence of yellow-percepts, 1 5 not with the nature of yellow as an abstractum (or with the relative evidentiality of various perceptions of it). Similar potential (if not actual) confusions are found in theories concerning other sensory qualities, e.g., that heat is composed of coldness and warmth, since it can be produced by simultaneous stimulation of adjacent cold and warm spots. We must note, however, that it has been maintained that in i ts nature a given sense-quality may sometimes be analyzed into a group of sense­ qualities of the same mode: e.g., that green can be perceived as a mixture of blue and yellow. Now this must not be taken to mean that something perceived as green can on another occaS!ion be perceived as yellow and blue, e.g., a color-wheel rotating and at rest. This, of course, would be perception of concreta, not abstracta. Rather, it is maintained that green itself, however produced and whatever the concreta exemplifying i t, is perceived as a mixture of yellow and blue. To this I would simply reply that it does not seem to be the case. 14. For example, it is hard to understand how all parts of the retina can be differ­ entially sensitive to thousands of colors ; the neural mechanism would seem to be inadequate. Hence the theory is developed that there are only a few (in this case three) specific color-receptors which in combination produce all color-sensations. Also it has been found that by simultaneous stimulation of corresponding points on the two retinae, one by green light, the other by red, a sensation of yellow can be produced. 1 5. Not perceptions of ( the abstractum) yellow, but percepts discriminating yellow.

Perception as Fact and as Knowledge

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The criterion of maximum analyticality clearly presupposes that the only sort of error possible in the perception of abstracta is that a complex abstractum is taken to be simple. But is it not possible to confuse one simple abstractum with another ? For example, may one not confuse the hue of this yarn with the hue of that ( where the two skeins are slightly different in hue) ? Mistakes of this sort occur, but they are not pri­ marily errors as to abstracta. Two different properties are confused in that two concreta, one exemplifying one and one the other, are taken to exemplify the same property. Thus the error is primarily concretive and the criterion of evidentiality for perceptions of concreta is applicable. We must now, however, face a serious difficulty. Our criterion says that of two perceptions of the same abstractum that one which is more analytic is more reliable. But this supposes the perceptions are of the same abstractum, thus that the percepts contain a common property ( abstractive­ ly referred to) . But may there not be error as to this ? Particularly, if the percepts disagree, if one takes a given abstractum to be simple, another complex, how can we avert the suspicion that we are dealing with different properties ? I see only one possible escape here. It is through the perception of concreta. The nature of the property is identified through some instance of its exemplification. It thereby becomes possible to determine whether the same abstractum is the object of a plurality of percepts ( even where the percepts disagree) . But this presupposes we have already (tacitly) used our criterion of evidentiality for percepts of concreta, specifically, the criterion of supplemental agreement, in the form either of persistence in exemplification or of identity of exemplification for a plurality of per­ cipients. I may perceptually analyze further the maroon of my dictionary precisely because I take my dictionary to persist in exemplification of it. The expert's perception of a sound as a complex clang is more reliable than the novice's of it as a simple tone only on the assumption that both are hearing the same sounding piano-string. Th is brings in a complication to our theory of evidence in the case of perception of abstracta. It means that evidence for abstracta always pre­ supposes evidence for concreta. This could be avoided if we were to ac­ cept the view that there are no mistakes as to the natures of immediately experienced properties ( such as sensory qualities) or if we were to allow a phenomenological intuitionism or apriorism. But I think the view proposed above is more satisfactory, despite the complication. In the first place, it avoids ascribing certainty to our perception of abstracta. Any

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view requiri ng certainty in this matter is seriously embarrassed if not con­ futed by the fact that the literature of phenomenological analysis is filled with disagreements. 16 In fact, I think the consequence of the view pro­ posed above, that evidentiality for abstracta can never be as great as the (best) evidentiality for concreta, is quite consistent with the history of phenomenological (as contrasted with objective) research. Finally, I believe it is a fact that if we desire to communicate or to check (even subjectively) our phenomenological knowledge we must do so through our knowledge of concreta. That is, the property whose nature we are in­ vestigating must be identifiable in a plurality of percepts through its ex­ emplification by a concretum which is a common obj ect of these percepts. So our principle of evidentiality requires that percepts of abstracta be also percepts of concreta. This I think does not conflict with psycholog­ ically observable fact. The same conscious occurrent (a percept) can refer in both direct�ons at once: toward a more concrete object and to­ ward a more abstract object. It is quite possible that the concretive ref­ erence occur alone (without the abstractive) in many percepts ( though perhaps it is impossible to gain corroborating evidence without abstractive reference). But the converse does not seem to be a fact, viz., that there are percepts having abstractive but not concretive reference.1 7 Our analysis of evidentiality in the perception of abstracta has yielded a criterion analogous to part of our criterion in the case of perception of concreta. That is, maximum analyticality is ambiguous to maximum discrimination. Do we not have another part here similar to supplemental agreement in the case of perceptions of concreta ? Is not my perceptual analysis of a given abstrac tion corroborated by other percepts, mine or others,' agreeing with it? I think not, save under a special circum­ stance. Suppose I perceptually analyze a color, in two perceptual ex­ periences, into color-quality and color-extent. They agree in this. But suppose they differ in that the extent remains the same and the quality differs, or the quality remains the same but the extent differs. Then each percept does give positive evidence of the veridicalness of the other. In this case, however, it is appropriate to speak of the color as the common object. For there is a difference either of quality or extent. Agreement 1 6. It was in great part this fact which made the behavioristic revolt against in­ trospection so attractive. Extrospection of concreta seemed to be so much l ess vitiated by disagreement of observers than introspection of abstracta. 17. Even if there are, however, the abstracta involved are objects of reference, not conscious occurrents. The occurrent fact is a complex percept, not a simple sensory element or relation.

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then is not simple sameness of property, nor is supplemental difference merely a matter of context in further properties. The agreement rather lies in the degree of complexity, the supplementation in the independent variability of the elements distinguished. So, to avoid confusion, instead of speaking of 'supplemental agreement' in the perception of abstracta, let us use the phrase 'dimensional concurrence.' Two percepts dimension­ ally concur (in their abstractive reference) when their obj ects fall under the same genus (colors, visual space-relations, odors, etc.), when they agree as to the degree of complexity of their object (they distinguish the same number of dimensions), and when their obj ects are identical in one or more of their constituents but also differ in one or more of them. Dimensional concurrence is thus seen to be closely allied to maximum analyticality. There is always the danger that what is taken to be a greater perceived complexity in an abstractum is really only a greater complexity of conjoined symbols. A more complex symbolic structure may thus be mistaken for a more complex sensory abstractum. Dimen­ sional concurrence is a safeguard against this mistake. It guarantees that an instance of maximum analyticality is perceptual (not merely verbal), and thus is more reliable than a disagreeing perception of the same ab­ stractum. Thus there seems to be no possibility of conflict in the applica­ tion of the two criteria of evidentiality in the abstractive reference of per­ cepts, as there was in the two criteria of evidentiality in the concretive ref­ erence of percepts. If there is no positive evidence on the criterion of di­ mensional concurrence, then the analysis of the abstractum is not percept­ ual, and we cannot suppose that there is positive evidence for it on the criterion of maximum analyticality. In the above sketch of an epistemology of perception I have tried to do two things. I have tried to outline an epistemological view that to me seems plausible. I have also tried to illustrate what seems to me to be the proper relation between an epistemology of perception and a psychology of perception. I have attempted certain broad descriptions of percepts as occurrent facts. I have therefore crossed the boundary into the psy­ chology of perception. This, I think, is unavoidable. I hope, however, that the sort of psychology of perception I have indicated not only fits the epistemology with which it is yoked, but also that it is not untenable as psychology. It is important that the psychology and epistemology of perception, though coordinated, be distinguished, that neither be re­ duced to the other nor its questions answered solely on the basis of ex­ igencies in the other.

13

A Realistic Theory of Distortion

As a boy, I used to while away the long hour of a Sunday morning in church by fixing my eyes upon my father in the pulpit.• I got some amazing results. Gradually he would assume grotesque shapes that would float about and finally merge with the background, the whole becoming an undifferentiated bluish-gray. I do not know whether this could be termed a religious exercise on my part, though the Yoga method would seem to be a development of it. In any case, I had too much boyish na:ivete to suppose I was getting closer to the 'reality' of the situation by this procedure-in fact, it was a definite escape from a decidedly tedious reality, to which I was brought back with a jerk when my father closed the pulpit Bible (an infallible sign of approaching the end of his sermon). I have since been initiated into the mysteries of various philosophic sects, but I find myself gravitating back toward by boyish na'ivete, though I now speak of it as 'realism.' And I find that my early Sab­ bath experiment can serve as a type constituting a basic problem for every sincere realism-the problem of distortion. Let me give a very catholic definition of realism. It is the doctrine that knowledge occurs and is the discovery of what is the case about things or processes other than itself and its effects. Realism is funda­ mentally opposed to all forms of creativism and subj ectivism claiming that knowledge is confined to itself or its products or to a world as modified by it. Now the basic difficulty for realism is that we seem to discover incompatible states of affairs. What Aristotle called contraries, what Johnson calls determinates under the same determinable, what I prefer to call alternatives in existence, are incompatible as ascribed to • Published in The Philosophical Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5 (September, 1939), 525-31 . Read before the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association at Princeton, December 30, 1937.

A Realistic Theory of Distortio n

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26 3

exactly the same existent or existents. My father was not both a gentle­ man in a black Prince Albert behind the pulpit and a grayish-blue patch floating above the choir loft. The same water into which Bishop Berkeley plunged his two hands could not have been both cold and warm. And such incompatibles are to be found on the perceptual level of knowledge, which level is in some sense for realism the ultimate form or type of disclosure of external existents. This fact alone, however, viz., that per­ ceptual error occurs, is not finally destructive of the doctrine that we are to trust perception as a revelation of external ( i.e., extra-cognitive) states of affairs. But it does demand that some sort of test or mark be found whereby we can distinguish perceptual error from true perceptual dis­ covery, normal from distorted percepts, or at least the more normal from the more distorted. But here a fatal mistake, from the realistic standpoint, is easily committed. It amounts to the confusion of the test of normalcy ( or distor­ tion), which is a matter of truth and error, with the causal conditions of the percept, which is a matter of occurrence. This mistake occurs in many forms; let me briefly refer to two. They both rest on the assump­ tion that a percept is normal when ( and only when) its object is identical with its total cause. One form ( skepticism) finds that this condition never obtains; other things besides the object always act causally in producing a percept, therefore all percepts are distorted. In fact, we can say nothing of the degree of this distortion, for the same sorts of causes must operate in all percepts of a given type ( e.g., in vision : light, a medium, eyes, etc.) . The other form ( objective relativism) suggests that we should 'slightly' modify our notion of the object of a percept. Or­ dinarily the object is taken as only one of the causal conditions, but let us say that the object of a percept is the totality of the percept's causal conditions. Then we have the pleasant consequence that no percepts are distorted to any degree whatever. These consequences (for skepticism, that all percepts are distorted to an undeterminable degree; for objective relativism, that all percepts are wholly undistorted) should be sufficient, in the eyes of a realist, to condemn the positions giving rise to them. What is wanted is a test of normalcy that will result in differentiating some percepts as more distorted than others. It might be suggested that, for the realist, the more the mind or organism is active in gaining knowledge, the less likely it is to be re­ ceptive to its object, and therefore the more likely its percepts to be dis-

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tarted. Such a view, however, carries over a false assumption from the Kantians, viz., that when the knower is active in gaining knowledge he thereby is creative, rather than exploratory, of the obj ect. But that this is false is clear as soon as we note how active the processes of discovery and exploration are. In discovering the natural habits of wild animals, one must be intensely active and ingenious precisely in order that one's knowledge will be a discovery of what is the case about things other than itself and unaffected by it. Another suggestion is that the normal percept of an object is that which most frequently occurs, degree of distortion being a matter of degree of rarity. Now if normalcy be defined in terms of frequency, then the matter is wholly verbal. But if by normalcy we are thinking ( as I am) of the realistic notion of discovery or revelation, then there is no inherent connection between frequency and normalcy. Certainly in everyday experience we do not take the more frequent as, eo ipso, more normal. There is no evidence that the normal colors (as seen under white light) are those most frequently experienced in our urban civili­ zation, nor that the penny-face is most often perceived as circular. I definitely take the base of my penholder to be square, though I almost always perceive it (from my chair) as a rhombus, with two acute and two obtuse angles. Moreover, in everyday experience, and especially in scientific investigation, we attempt to get rid of distortions, to make them less frequent, which would be meaningless if their distortedness were wholly a matter of their infrequency. 1 Without considering other views further, I turn to the theory I propose. It rests frankly on a realistic-empirical faith. It says: 'Trust per­ ception (as revealing the nature of the external world) to the greatest possible extent.' It is not possible to trust both of two incompatible What might seem to be another suggestion is that given by H. H. Price, Per­ 2 1 0 ff. It is to the effect that the normal percept is the center from which various series of distortions start and this is the key from which other ( distorted) percepts could be deduced. But the only basis of deduction I can find here is that the normal is the one common member of various distortion series. But this is so only if the normal occurs in each dis­ tortion series, as base, so to speak, from which they diverge. But they could diverge from any member of any distortion series as such a base, e.g., starting with a blue curtain under white light, we can get more purplish ( under red light) , more green ( under yellow light) , etc. But we could start with a greenish curtain under yellow light, and get more grayish ( under red light) , more bluish ( under white) , etc. Thus Price's distinction would seem to reduce ultimately to frequency. 1.

ception (London : Methuen, 1932) , pp.

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percepts; but we can choose of the two the one which purports to tell us more, which is more discriminative, as more normal ; for on our faith it would disclose more concerning its object than would its rival. Let me be more accurate. A normal percept is one which occurs under the best conditions of knowledge for that sort of object. The best conditions of knowledge are those which allow (judged by past perceptions) the dis­ crimination of the largest number of qualities and relations taken as exemplified by the sort of object involved. Consider the visual perception of an object. First consider the condi­ tion of eyesight. If the percipient is totally blind, we have the worst possible condition-no visual features are distinguishable. If he suf­ fers from cataracts that allow some forms to be roughly made out, the con­ ditions are still bad. If he is totally color-blind, the conditions are worse than if he is only partially so, etc. The best possible condition is where he can discriminate the largest number of colors both qualitatively and in their contours. Consider light conditions. Absolute darkness is the worst condition-no colors or forms are discernible. As we come up through twilight or various colored illuminations to white light, the con­ ditions improve in that they allow more colors and forms to be discrim­ inated. Consider distance. The best condition here depends upon the size of the total object to be perceived. If t, he object is a watch, the best condition for the average person is a distance of about two feet. For larger objects, greater distance is better; e.g., for visual perception of a house, perhaps fifty to one hundred feet, of a ship, several hundred feet, etc. For smaller objects, a shorter distance (either actual or vicarious through magnification) is better. Consider the angle of regard. The best condition for perceiving a surface, say a penny-face, is when the surface is perpendicular to the line of regard, for then the largest number of features of the surface are discriminable. The above illustrations are all from vis,ion, but similar ones could be found for other sensory modes, e.g., in addition, the be�t distance for discriminating whistles of various steamboats is some one-fourth to one-half mile, but of watch ticks, a few inches. Factors of fatigue and accommodation are, for all the senses, important in defining the best conditions of knowledge. But I need not illustrate further. It is important, however, that I here insert a word of criticism con­ cerning a traditional error. That error is that the test of normalcy

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(especially for distance receptors, such as vision) is ultimate! y agreement with motor-touch perception, that tactile experience is, eo ipso, normal. The argument used is that whenever we suspect vis-ion of distortion we test it by touch, and, whenever touch and vision disagree, it is vision we suspect of distortion. There are such traditional examples as the visually converging rails, mirror images, and the bent stick. My answer here is twofold. Fi rst, I wish to point out that these cases are disto rtions be­ cause they occur under conditions that do not permit as great discrim­ ination as possible-and this can be made out in vision alone, without appeal to touch. The converging rails offer an instance of the fact that if, from a certain point, we increase the distance from the percipient of the object visually perceived, the conditions of knowledge are made worse. At a distance of a mile or two, the rails cannot be distinguished at all from one another, whereas close at hand they can not only be distinguished as two but much that lies between them can also be dis­ criminated. In the case of the mirror, I will waive the matter of i mper­ fections in reflection such that less can actually be discriminated in the mirror image than by a direct perception of the object. Even a perfect mirror would simply duplicate what could be directly seen at the same time. And in doing so, it would intercept, i.e., cut out of visual perception entirely, other objects that, in the absence of the mirror, would have been seen ( viz., objects behind the mirror) . Hence the use of a mirror introduces a factor of distortion precisely in that i t eliminates from vision what otherwise might have been discriminated. The case of the bent stick is slightly more complicated. I have pointed out that the best angle for seeing a surface is when the surface is perpendicular to the line of regard. This supposes that the eye and the surface are in the same light-medium. In the bent-stick case, however, the surface is only partly in the same medium as the eye (viz., air); part is under water. Now, for the part in the air, the best angle is the perpendicular, but, because the velocity of light is less in water than in air, the part i mmersed in water appears bent away from the percipient, i.e., i t appears shorter than i t would in air, or, in other words, the greatest possible visual dis­ criminability is not attained in this condition. And if this is corrected for the immersed part by changing the angle from the perpendicular, the part i n the air becomes visually shortened. Thus, no matter what the angle, the partially immersed stick does not appear as long (is not as

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discriminable for visual perception) as the stick wholly in air and per­ pendicular to the line of regard. So, even if touch is not considered, these visual distortions can still be made out to be distortions on the view I advocate. On the other hand, the view that touch is always normal and is the ultimate test of normalcy for the other senses collapses upon scrutiny. When we hold a pencil between the crossed first and second fingers, we trust the visual percept of it as a single pencil rather than the touch, which seems to be an experience of two pencils. We trust the visual percept of a mirror image (despite its element of distortion) more than the direct touch percept from our tongue as to the size of the gap after a tooth-extraction. Clearly, then, touch is not free from distortion. And I suggest that the general criterion I have formulated is applicable here. In fact, there seems to be a reason, on this criterion, why the mistake was made of supposing touch to be always normal. For at least in the factor of distance, there seems to be nothing, in the case of touch, be­ tween the worst condition of knowledge (non-contact) and the best (contact) . But even confining ourselves to the pressure component in touch, this is certainly not the case, as the education of the blind in read­ ing by touch indicates. Discriminability varies as the contact is on differ­ ent surfaces; the fingertips are much more sensitive than certain parts of the back. Also, different degrees of force in the contact allow dif­ ferent degrees of discrimination; a light touch is better than a heavy one. I do not wish to suggest by anything I have said that a percept may not be composed of sensa of different sense-modes. I can have a percept of my pen which includes both visual and tactile components. And here we find the reason why the corroboration of several senses is so important in establishing normalcy. A combined motor�tactile-visual percept of my pen discriminates more features of the pen than j ust a tactile or just a visual percept. And when such a mixed percept occurs under conditions best for each of its several components, then we have ideal conditions for knowledge. For example, the best distance for a motor-tactile-visual percept of my pen is when the pen is lightly held in my fingers about two feet away from my eyes. A normal percept, then, is one which occurs under the best conditions of knowledge for that sort of object. Percepts are distorted to the degree to which their conditions diverge from the best-ending in the worst,

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where no discrimination concerning that type of object is possible. My proposal is that realists accept normal percepts, as here defined, as revela­ tions or discoveries of components or properties in the real natures of their objects taken as unaffected by the occurrence of the perception, and that distorted percepts, in so far as dis.tarted, be taken as false, as not true discoveries concerning their objects. Of the many possible obj ections this proposal must face, I consider here only the gravest. Have we any reason to suppose we have ever, in any type of perception, attained the best conditions of knowledge ? Surely we have in the past improved what were viewed as the best condi­ tions of knowledge-may we not do so in the future ? Hence, can we claim that any of our percepts are normal ? Are they not all to an un­ ascertainable degree distorted ? Are we not thus thrown back into skepti­ cism ? I answer, we are doubtless forced into skepticism, but of a moderate type which allows real progress in our projects of explanation. First, let me point out that a distorted percept is not equally distorted in all respects. We take the percept of the penny-face as elliptical to be distorted in shape but not in color. Let me speak of that aspect of a percept in which we take it as distorted as its 'distortion respect.' Further, different per­ cepts are not equally distorted as regards a specific distortion respect. Though we may not be able to ascertain an absolute upper limit (the normal), we have an absolute lower limit (absence of discriminable features) and a serial principle of order (degree of discrimination allowed by the conditions), and we can thus arrange percepts of any particular object in what I call 'distortion series' as their degree of distortion in some distortion respect varies with a change in some condition of their occurrence. For example, let the object be a penny-face, its distortion respect its shape, and the varied condition the angle formed with the line of regard. Then we can form a distortion series which has as i:ts lower limit a percept in which there is no shape-discrimination ( when the surface is in any plane including the line of regard), and above this are less and less elongated ellipses ( as the penny-face is rotated away from the plane including the line of regard). Or again, let the object be a curtain, the distortion respect its color, the varied condition the illumina­ tion (in white light of various intensities). Here we can form a distor­ tion series whose lower limit is the percept in which there is no color-

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discrimination (in absolute darkness), and above this are more and more saturated blues, let us say (as the light becomes greater). Thus, though we may not be able to asseverate the normalcy of any particular percept, yet we may confidently accept some as more nearly normal in a certain distortion respect than others. So no matter what the future may reveal, we can be confident that the circular shape more nearly reveals an actual feature of the penny-face than does an elliptical, that the blue experienced in daylight by one of good vision more nearly discloses an actual characteristic of the cu rtain than does the color experienced at twilight. But I wish to go even funher. We have pretty good grounds for claiming that in some instances we have obtained the best conditions of knowledge. I refer to cases where, if we continue a type of variation in a direction which has resulted in increasingly discriminative perception in a certain distortion respect, we come to a place (I shall call the 'peak') where, by going further, we begin a reverse process of decreasing per­ ceptive discriminability in that respect. As the angle formed by the penny-face and the line of regard approaches a right angle, the surface becomes more discriminable for perception, but when the continued turning of the penny carries the angle beyond a right, a reverse process sets in. As we increase the intensity of white illumination, more colors are discriminable up to a certain point. Beyond that, the light becomes dazzling until presently almost all color-discrimination is lost. Likewise, we can bring objects too close to our eyes. We can even carry the process of magnification too far on our criterion. I refer to the simple fact that we have a fixed periphery to our field of vision and when an object is magnified so as to coincide with or exceed this periphery, conditions for the perception of that object (though not of parts of it) have been made worse. Now in such cases we have pretty good reason for supposing that the peak is the best condition for perception in the respect involved, and thus that the resultant percept is, in that respect, normal, that our dis­ tortion series has an absolute upper limit. Thus my skepticism is indeed moderate, for I hold that we have some percepts that in some respects are normal and thus reveal exactly (though never fully) the natures of their objects. But my grounds here are empirical. I am not a gnostic with an esoteric, a priori certitude. And so I conclude with some confidence though not with absolute

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assurance that my boyish naivete was right in feeling that the grayish­ blue patch floating above the choir loft was an entertaining escape from a tedious reality, but that actually my father was a man in a black Prince Albert behind the pulpit. And in any case, the former appearance was more distorted than the latter.

14

On the Nature of the Predicate r rverified}}

Although a great deal has been written concerning the veri­ fiability of empirical, declarative sentences, yet some further clarification in this area seems possible and desirable.I :!!= I think it is important to de­ termine what sort of property 'verified by' is. Obviously it is a semiotical property. Only sentences, never matters of fact, are verified. But where, in the area of semiotics, is it to be placed? To use Charles Morris's useful and now somewhat traditional classifioa:tion, is it a syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic (i.e. psychological) predicate? My answer is that it falls within semantics. Before developing this, however, I should like to point out why I do not place it in either of the other two subdivisions. Syntax may be thought of as concerned with the structure of sentences and with their transform.ability, that is, with the ways in which some may be derived from others by virtue of this form alone. If 'verified by' be a syntactical predicate, clearly it must be a property not of sentence­ structure but of sentence-transformahility. More specifically, it must be a relation between two (or more) sentences such that, on the rules of trans­ formation in the language, one (that which is verified) is derivable from the other (that which verifies). There is a certain plausibility in this in that we ordinarily suppose that a sentence that is verified in some sense and to some degree follows from or is implied by that which verifies it. Yet that 'verified by' is not such a syntactical predicate is made evident by at least two considerations. First, derivability (or transformability) is 1 . This paper is greatly indebted to Rudolph Carnap's "Testability and Meaning,',

Philosophy of Science, Vol. III, No. 4 ( October, 1936) , 419-71, and Vol. IV, No. I

(January, 1 937) , 2-40. I t should not be considered however as simply a cri ticism of certain aspects of that paper. It is an attempt at a positive analysis. • Published in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1 4, No. 2 (April, 1 947) , 123-3 1.

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all or none. It is analytic or tautological, and there can be no degrees of analyticality. 2 Yet notoriously verification is a matter of degree. Second derivability is a relation between a sentence and one or more other sen­ tences. A sentence is verified, however, not by another sentence but by some matter of fact. This important difference is sometimes obscured by the fact that there may be a syntactical analogue in a language to the relation of 'verified by.' In a scientific language, for example, it may be a rule or definition that sentences of the form '-' (say empirical laws) are verified by sentences of the form ' . . .' (say appropriate observation sentences). But that this is only an analogue can be made clear by asking concretely, is sentence 'p' 3 verified, i.e., are there appropriate sentences of form '. . . '? Such a question is meaningful only as we replace the form ' . . . ' by sentences having this form, and then take them as used, i.e., in the matter of fact they assert. To say here that there are appropriate sen­ tences of form ' . . .' does not mean that they can be constructed in ac­ cordance with the rules of the language nor even that someone has con­ structed them, but rather that they can be asserted, tha.t what they assert actually does obtain. This clearly takes us out of syntax, which has nothing to do with matter of fact. Nor can 'verified by' be treated as a pragmatic predicate. A sentence's pragmatic properties are those which it exhibits by virtue of its occurrence _.as stated, believed, entertained by someone. It might seem plausible to treat 'verified by' as pragmatic, since there clearly are degrees of belief or conviction, just as there are degrees of verification. And in some instances the two may roughly coincide, viz., in the case of the reasonable man whose beliefs are determined by the probabilities. But to define degree of verification as degree of psychological conviction on the part of the reasonable man would be circular, since 'reasonable' is itself (at least tacitly) defined in terms of appropriate recognition of relevant 2. It might be held that a consequence that follows analytically from a total set of premises, but from no subset thereof, follows with some degree of probability from any subset of that set. Such a view rests on a confusion. If a definition of probability is included in the premises such that the degree of probability assigned follows, then the conclusion is that such and such a sentence has such and such a probability. However, this conclusion follows strictly from the premises, and cannot be said to be verified by them to some degree only. Otherwise the conclusion does not follow at all from any subset of the original set of premises. 3. In this paper, 'p' and 'q' are not sentential variables but abbreviations for typi cal propositions of the sort made clear by the context. When i n quotes, they are the names of such propositions.

On the Nature of the Predicate " Verified"

2 73

degrees of verification,4 whereas if we drop any such qualjfication and identify verification with any conviction whatever, an unacceptable rela­ tivism is introduced into the meaning of 'verified by' ; " 'p' is verified (to such and such a degree) by . . ." is then radically ambiguous and should be replaced by " 'p' is verified (to such a degree) by . . . for so and so at a certain time," since what is meant by any such statement is that so and so is led to believe 'p' with such and such a degree of conviction by . . . at a certain time. Such a relativism would be epistemologically disastrous. It would, for example, lead to a vicious infinite regress in any question of verification. The reason for th.is is that it makes any statement of verification factual ( about someone's conviction) and therefore is itself in need of verification equally with any other factual statement. Further­ more, it would not square with the common sense of soience. It is absurd, for example, to hold that the verification of a sentence, 'p', in physics by certain observations . . . is of many different degrees, and that the relevant way of determining what it is is not to study the relationship between 'p ' and . . . but to make a psychological investigation of various people's beliefs about ' p .' And we might also here again note the common feeling that for ' p ' to be verified by . . . involves that ' p ' in some sense and to some degree "follows" from . . . (but not that belief in 'p' is caused by . . .). The fundamental point, however, is that verification has to do with the truth of a sentence, with a sentence in its meaning or reference, not with its occurrence. Pragmatic predicates, however, are predicates asser­ tive of a sentence by virtue of the sentence's being written, uttered, ac­ cepted, or otherwise occurring. It is meaningful and legitimate to speak, e.g., of the class of sentences that have never occurred (been used in any way by anyone) that are verified (to some significant degree) by some set of facts. This would not be permissible if 'verified by' were a predicate of sentences in their occurrence-aspect.5 4 . To say that the reasonable man is the scientist or one who uses scientific methods likewise is circular, unless 'scientist' is simply a professiona l class-symbol. In the latter case, however, we have abandoned epistemology entirely and embarked on irrelevant sociological considerations. That they are irrelevant can be simply indicated by the case of the individual scientist who, perhaps from senility, lowers his scientific s tandards ( allows his convictions to outrun the degree of verification obtained ) without thereby losing his social status as "scientist"-he may even add thereto in the eyes of the public and the clergy. 5. It has been suggested (G. Bergmann : "Pure Semantics, Sentences, and Proposi­ tions," Mind, Vol. LIII, N. S., No. 2 1 I (July, 1944] , 255) that pragmatics includes semantics "in the same indirect sense in which semantics can be said to contain

2 74

Categorial Analysis

Before turning to my own position, that 'verified by' is best under­ stood as a semantical predicate, another possibility should be considered. It might be said that the rej ection of the alternatives of 'verified by' being syntactical or pragmatic gains plausibility because, in most usages, it is both. Adequate clarification can be obtained by distinguishing the two components in the ordi nary usage of this predicate. In li:ne with this suggestion let us consider 'verifiable' (in the broad sense) to involve ( 1 ) reducibility to basic sentences and (2) verifiability (in the narrow sense) of these basic sentences.6 Thus to say that 'p' is verified by 'q' will mean that 'p' is reducible to 'q' and 'q' is verifiable in the narrow sense. In line with the suggestion we are exploring, 'reducible to' will be a syntactical predicate, 'verifiable' (in the narrow sense) will be pragmatic. To serve the purpose at hand, 'reducible to' cannot be a synonym for 'derivable from' or 'a consequence of,' (even where 'consequence of' includes 'P-consequence' as well as 'L-consequence,' to use Carnap's terminology). For, if it were, we could not allow such expressions as " 'p' is incompletely verified by 'q,' " which would require that 'p' be only partially or incompletely reducible to 'q,' since 'being incompletely deriv­ able from' is, as we have seen, meaningless. It will thus be necessary for our purpose to define 'reducible' in such a way that " 'p' is reducible to 'q' " is true even where 'p' is not a consequence of 'q.' To fit scientific practice, however, it would need to be required that 'q' be a consequence of 'p.' For example, we would want to say that 'p' is incompletely reducible to 'q' where 'p' has the form, ' (x) f(x) ,' and 'q' has the form, 'f(a) · f (b) . . . f( n ) ' (with a finite number of atomic componen:ts)-so that, for example, a law could be verified by particular observations. But now we desire to know the character of this predicate, 'reducible.' It would be possible to define it in a purely syntactical way, if 'syntactical' means through linguistic form. But it should be noted that 'reducible' is not syntactical in the sense of being a logical predicate ; it is not a syntax." The present is not the proper context for a criticism of the highly amorphous concept of pragmatics. However, if the inclusiveness of pragmatics is used as the b asis for asserting that 'verified by' is a pragmatic predicate my response would be that it is by virtue of its inclusion of semantics, not by anything distinctive in i tself, that pragmatics can be said to embrace the predicate, 'verified by.' 6. I realize that 'basic sentence' is an ambiguous term. For present purposes i t may b e sufficient to define it a s a non-generalized factual sentence, that is, a sen­ tence con taining no variables (free or bound) and whose predicates are descriptive.

On the Nature of the Predicate "V erifiedn

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2 75

predicate of a logical calculus ( as are for example, 'analytic' and 'con­ tradictory'). To use Carnap's terminology, it is logically indeterminate. That is, 'p' may be reducible to 'q' when its relation to 'q' is none of the following: analytic, P-valid, P-invalid, contradictory. The question then immediately arises as to why a certain type of in­ determinate predicate should be thus constructed syntactically. There clearly is no logical need. The reason, of course, is that it is desired to reflect something strictly non-logical, viz., a fundamental aspect of scien­ tific method that is based on faith in the regularity of nature. The de­ mand that this be reflected in a syntactical concept arose at a time when it was argued that all philosophical questions are synta.ctical, and that the language of science can be adequately analyzed syntactically. It is now held that this program is unrealizable, that syntax, in the broader sense in which 'reducible' is syntactical, is included in semantics. Now let us look at the contention that the verifiability (in the narrow sense) of basic sentences is a pragmatic, that is, a psychological, matter. First, it is odd to note that some who have urged this (for example, Carnap) thereby involved themselves in a paradox. They said that factual or descriptive predicates have meaning only if sentences in which they occur are verifiable, that whether a sentence is verifiable is a psy­ chological question, yet that meaningfulness is not a psychological matter but epistemological (it was even classified as logical). 7 To use such a paradox as a criticism is, however, an ad hominem argument. More objective considerations nevertheless point in the same direction. Whether a certain property, say sweet, is directly observable by some­ one is a psychological question, a question of fact. Whether a certain basic sentence is verifiable is not a question of fact, in the same direct sense. This may be expressed by saying that 'verified' is a semiotic predi­ cate (taking only names of sentences for its arguments) whereas 'ob­ served' is a descriptive or faotual predicate. Observation is an occurrence in space and time. Verification is not an occurrence; it is a correlation between a sentence ( i.e., the meaning of the sentence, what it asserts, not its own occurrence) and some occurrence or occurrences. It should be noted, however, that in popular usage 'verification' is ambiguous and is sometimes used for an occurrence-the occurrence of finding or setting up the correlation j ust referred to. This is a purely psychological matter, 7. Strictly, as a matter of "applied logic." Cf. Carnap, "Testability and Meaning," Philosophy of Science, Vol. IV, No. I (January, 1937) , 2.

27 6

Categorial Analysis

but is of no concern for epistemology or the philosophy of science. To avoid this ambiguity it might be well to speak of the occurrence of .find­ ing or setting up a verification as the verifying of the sentence involved, reserving 'verification' for the correlation so established. With this terminology it is easy to point out that the scientist is interested in the verification of sentences, not in the verifying of them, 8 though he is in the practical siituation of not being able to point out which specific sen­ tences are verified without going through a process of verifying them. Also, it becomes clear that the epistemologist is interested in the nature of verification, not in the processes of verifying. Now pragmatics is con­ cerned with the occurrence of sentences. Hence 'verified' and 'verifica­ tion,' not involving reference to such occurrence, are not pragmatic terms, though 'verifying' is. I turn, then, to the possibility that 'verified by' is a semantical predicate. A sentence's semantical properties are the properties it has by virtue of its reference or meaning, its relation to what it asserts to be the case. As a first formulation we may indicate the use of 'verified by' as a semantical predicate by such a sentence as : ( 1 ) 'p' is verified by q. 9 It is important here to note that 'p' is named or referred to (has quotes) , 'q' is, however, used or asserted (has no quotes). This indicates that 'verified by' is a relation between a sentence, 'p,' and a state of affairs, asserted by 'q'.1 0 This is exactly what we need to conform with common usage, and is my basic reason for claiming that 'verified by' is a semantical predicate. But now qualifications must be added. In the .first place, as this formu8. Except for the psychologist, and he is not interested in the verifying of his own psychological sentences but only in their verification. 9. To avoid multiplication of quotation marks with consequent difficulty in read­ ing, I have not enclosed sentences illustrative of the semantical use of 'verified' in quotation marks. Strictly this is incorrect, since I am talking about these sentences, not asserting them. 1 0. I am assuming that the relation between language and matter of fact is properly represented by such a semantical sentence as 'E designates e' where 'E' is the name of any linguistic expression and 'e' is that expression (in use) . As I have tried to indicate elsewhere, however ( cf. "The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Lan­ guage (II) ," Mind, Vol. LIII, N.S., No. 209 [January, 1944] , 25-47, and this volume pp. 300- 1 0) , I seriously doubt whether the juxtaposition of the name of an expression and the expression in use really get us outside language. However, for present pur­ poses this type of statement is adequate providing we add that it is a mere reflection in language of a relation that transcends language.

On the Nature of the Predicate " Verified"

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277

lation itself suggests, 'q' must be a factual sentence, not a semiotic sentence. Furthermore, to be in line with common usage, 'q' must be an observation-sentence or (as I would prefer to say, to avoid the narrow­ ness of space-time reference in 'observation') an immediate-experience­ sentence. Our age has, I think, become sufficiently embued with the scien­ tific spirit so that we feel it is inadmissable to say that a sentence is verified by the facts unless those facts be ultimately facts for direct ob­ servation. In any case, whether this last statement be true or not, I propose to confine myself to those views of verification that allow no verifying facts (ultimately) save those of direct, sensory or perceptual expenence. But now has not this qualification as to 'q' in our illustrative verifica­ tion-sentence, ( 1 ) , carried us outside semiotics, strictly speaking, and into a factual assertion ? ( 1) is ambiguous and may mean : (2) 'p' is verified (to some degree) if q, or it may mean : (3 ) (a) 'p' is verified (to some degree) if q (b) and q. If ( 1) means (3 ) then it is factual ( in component (b)). It is not however factual if it is interpreted as equivalent to (2) . I shall take it as equivalent in common usage to (3). Since, however, we are concerned with the radical meaning of 'verified,' I shall shift to an analysis of (2) , that is, to the predicate 'verified if' ( as contrasted with 'verified by'). The simplest case for our analysis is where 'p' is itself an observation­ sentence and the verifying evidence would simply be the occurrence of the observation it asserts. Then we would have (4) 'p' is (fully) verified if p. For example, the sentence, 'The yellow patch I now see is square,' is (fully) verified if the yellow patch I now see i s square. This case, however, immediately raises the question whether, in this interpretation, 'verified if' is not redundant, whether, that is, its definition (in harmony with the above indicated usage) would not show it to be the same predicate as 'true.' That the answer is negative is revealed by pointing out that (4) is a special case of (2) got by replacing 'q' by 'p,' and that obviously (2) is in general inadmissible if 'verified' be replaced by 'true.' This distinction between 'verified' and 'true' squares with general usage in that whereas 'verified' can have various degrees 'true' is all or none, and furthermore in that a sentence is frequently verified ( to some degree) by a state of affairs other than that which it asserts

278

Categorial Analysis

(and which would make it true). Even in the case of (4), moreover, there is a difference from an analogous truth-sentence, such as " 'p' is true if p," in that, in the latter, 'p' could be any proposition whereas in ( 4) it must be an immediate-experience-sentence. But if 'verified' is not to be identified with 'true' it nevertheless is intimately connected with 'true.' A sentence h as various properties. Obviously its verification is closely connected with its truth in a way in which it is not connected with any other properties of the sentence ( save as the latter are themselves connected with its truth). The verification (to any degree) of a sentence is a verification of its truth, a disverification of its falsity. When, in ordinary speech, we say that a sentence is verified by some observed matter of fact, we are speaking elliptically. We are thinking not of the sentence qua linguistic element but of what the sentence asserts to be a fact. We are thinking of the possible truth of the sentence. On the other hand, as already noted, it is never a matter of fact or state of affairs in the world which is verified, since such a fact simply is, and is neither verified nor disverified by itself or any other matter of fact. It is the truth of the sentence asserting the fact which is verified. A full verification is given only by the state of affairs which, if obtaining, makes the sentence true. But any lesser verification is one conferred by states of affairs which, as we say, give us some reason to suppose that the state of affairs that would make the sentence true does obtain. This close connection of 'verified' with 'true' I propose to indi­ cate by the following usage: (5 ) " 'p' is true" is verified ( to some degree) if q. That is, 'verified' is a second level semantical predicate, relating a first level semantical sentence (with predicate, 'true') to some matter of fact. But now why should a state of affairs, q, when different from a state of affairs, p, even to any degree verify " 'p' is true" ? I do not propose to give an answer to this question, but shall content myself with pointing out that in common speech, science, and almost every philosophical sys­ tem such an assumption is made. However, there is always present, at least tacitly, a restriction concerning the sort of state of affairs, q, that can serve to verify " 'p' is true" for any specific 'p.' This restriction I shall call 'V,' the principle of verification in the language involved. We thus have the following as our final clarified formulation of the way m which, in general, 'verified if' is used:

On the Nature of the Predicate "Verified"

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2 79

( 6) " 'p' is true" is verified if q, providing 'q' is a consequence of 'p' of the sort required by verification-principle V. We have already seen two characteristics that verification-principles generally have, viz., ( a) that the verifying sentence (or set of sentences), 'q,' asserting a state of affairs, must be a consequence of the sentence, 'p,' whose truth is verified, and (b) that the state of affairs asserted in the verifying sentence, 'q,' must be some immediate, sensory or perceptual experience. Further restrictions are involved in specific cases. The qualification following the comma in (6) might suggest that after all we are really back in syntax, i.e., in the area of transformability of sentences. Thus it might be thought that (6) should be formulated : "if 'q' is a consequence of 'p' in accordance with verification-principle V, then 'q' verifies 'p.' " This, however, does not square with common usage, in which 'verifies' is not simply a special, weakened form of 'consequence of,' i.e., a relation between sentences, but always involves a difference of se­ mantical level, i.e., a relation between a sentence and some fact (in gen­ eral, not the fact asserted by the sentence). Thus the verification-principle V indicated in (6) ultimately embodies an assumption about factual relations such that if state of affairs q obtains we have some reason to suppose that some further state of affairs included in p also obtains. In order to express this 'some reason to suppose' clearly, it is necessary to formulate the matter semantically, i.e., not in terms of state of affairs p, but in terms of " 'p ' is true," etc. It can perhaps now be seen what I meant when I said, some pages back, that my account of 'verified if' makes it, in some sense, a factual or descriptive predicate. The factual element is found in the assumption about the world embedded in the principle of verification. But we must be careful here. To say that verification-principles are factual is misleading. They are factual only in the broad sense in which all categorial statements are factual. This can be put clearly by saying that unlike factual sentences in the narrow sense (in which 'p' in our illustration is factual), verification-principles cannot (to any degree) be confirmed. They furnish assumptions about the world by virtue of which the truth of factual sentences that assert more than what is immediately experienced may be verified. To make this more concrete, I shall give two illustrations. The posi­ tivist seeks the most economical or restricted set of verification-principles. He would s�y that " 'p' is true" is verified if q when 'p' is a sense-datum

280

Categorial Analysis

law and 'q' asserts sense-data occurrences in conformity with that law. 11 That this involves an assumption about the world should be evident. To derive all from some is, of course, strictly invalid. To say that the ob­ servation of some verifies the truth of a statement as to all in some sense assumes what has been called the principle of the uniformity of nature. To suppose that this principle is itself factual in the narrow sense and thus verifiable by its own use involves a begging of the question which is only too painfully obvious (as, for example, in the attempt of John Stuart Mill and Karl Pearson). On the other hand, to suppose that the acceptance of such a verification-principle is simply a psychological fact about the positivist misses the point as to its systemic necessity in positivism. Without it, no verification of general laws by particular ob­ servations is possible. 1 2 The realist is less concerned than the positivist with economy in his set of verification-principles and more concerned with conforming to common and scientific use of the predicate 'verified.' Thus his set of verification-principles includes, besides the positivist's verification-prin­ ciples (or something comparable), a further principle that may be indi­ cated as follows: " 'p' is true" is verified if q, where 'p' is a complex sen­ tence, partly a thing-sentence and partly a perception-sentence, and 'q ' is a perception-sentence of the form ' . . . ' in relation to 'p,' and where ' q ' follows from 'p.' What this form must be, or how variation in it allows assignment of different degrees of verification to the thing-sen­ tence involved, differs with different realists. 1 3 The thing I should like here again to emphasize is that such a verification-principle is of philo­ sophical (since categorial) character. This means that it is not factual in the narrow sense (therefore not itself verifiable). Moreover, in the sense in which it is factual any semiotic sentence (taken in its context in a developed semiotical system) is factual. 1 1 . I omit any further mention of the theoretically uninteresting case : " 'p' is true" is verified if p. This of course would have its place in any system, the only philo­ sophical question being as to the nature of the proposition 'p.' 1 2. I hope it is clear that the above is in no sense a criticism of positivism. Every epistemological position must make categorial assumptions which are not themselves verifiable, yet on the other hand are about the world, are not formal tautologies. 1 3 . I have formulated my own view in "A Realistic Theory of Distortion," The Philosophical Review, Vol. XLVI II, No. 5 (September, r939) , 525-3 1 ( this volume, pp. 262-70) and "Perception As Fact and As Knowledge," The Philosophical Review, Vol. LIi, No. 5 (September, 1943) , 468-89 ( this volume, pp. 242-61) .

On the Nature of the Predicate "Verified"

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28 1

To make this last point clear, consider formal semantics. Whether one accepts the view that it literally embraces the relation between sym­ bols and their referents or only pictures or reflects this relation, in either case it is factual. Not in the sense of saying just what actual things ( referents or designata) are concretely in the world, but in the sense of dealing with something not arbitrarily invented, something not a mere fiction. The occurrence of particular cases of designation or reference is a fact in the narrower sense. The nature of designation, however, is also included in the world, is a fact for analysis. Now it might be said that this is true for a semantics interpreted as talking about 'designation,' etc ., in the ordinary meaning of such terms, but that pure semantics is an uninterpreted calculus, a mere pattern of marks. To this I can only reply dogmatically that, if it be true, then pure semantics is not a branch of semiotics, not a part of a linguistic study (or construction, if you please) ; it is an arbitrary game whose rules happen to produce a pattern similar to that of a semantics interpreting 'designates' in accordance with common usage. And the fact that there happens to be this "isomorphism" cannot be asserted in such a pure semantics. In some such broad sense as I have tried to indicate is 'verified if' factual. It refers to a relation between a semantical sentence and some matter of fact. This relation is not in the world in the direct way in which what have been called "natural" relations are in the world, e.g., the rela­ tion 'earlier in time.' It is i n the world only in the way 'designates' or the distinction between 'synthetic' and 'analytic' is in the world. What such terms as these refer to cannot be sensibly observed, in fact, cannot be any more clearly pointed out than by using the terms themselves (in their systemic context or as "analytically" developed).

15

The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Languag e "The purpose of words, though philosophers seem to forget this simple fact, is to deal with matters other than words." -Bertrand Russell

(1 ) · THE OBJECTI VE-LANGUA GE*

Professor Albert G. Ramsperger 1 asks us to imagine a man with a prodigious verbal memory who has completely mastered a foreign­ language dictionary but, perhaps unfortunately, has become so engrossed in the rules of verbal substitution in this foreign tongue that he has forgotten his own language and "thereby lost sight of the fact that the original purpose of words was to symoolize things." He might easily suppose that his linguistic proficiency is all there is to knowledge. I have experienced an actual case rather similar to this hypothetical one. A young chiropractor had suffered a stroke. His doctors gave little hope for his life and predicted that, even should he live, his intellectual ca­ pacities would be permanently impaired. But his wife told me confi­ dentially that she did not believe them. She took me to his room. He was absorbed in a dictionary. "For hours every day," she said, "he is oblivious to everything but his dictionary. Doesn't that prove he is not losing his intellectual grasp ? " Even amongst logical positivists i t is coming to b e increasingly recog­ nized that the nature of the relation between ( empirical) language and the matters of fact to which it refers cannot be adequately understood by • Published in Mind, LII, N.S., No. 207 (July, 1 943) , 230-40. I . Philosophies of Scien ce (New York : F. S. Crofts and Co., 1 942) , pp. 96--97.

The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Language

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a mere analysis of language.2 It is the primary purpose of the present paper to make this recognition more definite and to suggest how words can "mean" extra-linguistic facts. But before turning directly to this problem we must note that only certain sentences (empirical sentences, protocol-sentences, object-sen­ tences, sentences at zero-level) stand in any significant relation to mat­ ters of fact. Hence it might seem proper to ask, "What sentences are you concerned with in asking about the relation of language to matters of fact ? " Put generally, my answer is very simple: "I am concerned with sentences that assert something about wholly non-verbal states of affairs." But to become more specific leads into difficulties. Let me take my departure from Russell's discussion of "the object­ language"3 in his very stimulating book, An In q uiry into Meaning and Truth. I feel that Russell's discussion is confused. This confusion is repre­ sented in his ambiguous assertion that words in the object-language "must not be such as presuppose the existence of language." 4 This seems to mean a number of things. It seems to mun that object-words are genetically primitive-the first ones to be learned; they are "words which have been learnt with its being unnecessary to have previously learnt any other words." 5 Again ( and Russell seems to consider this the logical counterpart of psychological primitiveness), object-words are "words having meaning in isolation.''6 This means, at least in part, that every object-word is such that it can function as a total sentence: "in the object­ language . . . every single word is an assertion." 7 Finally, at least by 2. See Alfred J. Ayer, The Foundation of Empirical Kn owledge (New York : The Macmillan Com pany, 1940) , § 9. Someth ing of this is surely revealed in Rudolph Carnap's shift of interest from T!ie Logical Syntax of Language (London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, Limited, 1937) , to an Introduction to Semantics ( Cambridge : Harvard Un iversi ty Press, 1942) . But cf. Part II of this paper. 3. Technically, Carnap's usage is more precise than Russell's. He calls any lan­ guage an "object-language" relative to a metalanguage that talks about it. The lowest-level language, whose "designata" are non-verbal matters of fact, he speaks of as at the "zero-level." I shall follow Carnap's usage whenever precision seems to require it. I hope the ambiguity of 'the obj ect language' will not cause confusion. 4. Bertrand Russell, An In quiry into Meaning and Truth (New York : W. W. Norton and Company, 1940) , p. 70. 5. Ibid., p. 80. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 92. Another usage ( Russell seems to think derivable from the preced­ ing) is that obj ect-words designa te on ly sense-da ta. "Every single word of this ( the object-) language is capable of standing alone, and, when it stands alone,

284

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Categorial Analysis

implication, Russell means by 'object-language' any language whose designata8 are wholly non-verbal. "In the secondary language [ i.e., the language of next higher level than the object-language], we are concerned with words of the object-language . . . with the relation between object­ words and object-sentences on the one hand, and what they designate or assert on the other hand." 0 Here, then, we have at least three dis­ tinguishable uses of the terms, 'obj ect-word' and 'object-language.' For convenience in reference, I shall speak of them as the "primitivistic," the "isolationistic," and the "semantical" usages, respectively. This, I contend, conduces to confusion and should be abandoned in favor of a single, consistent usage. Russell might well contend that though there is an intensional difference in these meanings of 'object-word,' these meanings are extensionally equivalent, that is, they involve us in no con­ fusion as to just what words are object-words, for every object-word has all the attributes required to make all these definitions appropriate. To this I would object that it is not the case. A psychologically primitive word (that is a word which can be learned [ i.e., appropriately used or responded to] without , the necessity of having previously learned any other word) need not be a word which "can stand alone," or "desig­ nates non-verbal matter of fact." I have a dog whose education has been sadly neglected. She "knows" only two words: her name and 'no.' As far as I can determine, these are equally primitive in her development. 'No,' I should suppose, is in this case the imperative form of 'not.' When I say 'No ! ' Topsy understands she must not do what she has started doing. Here is a negative that is psychologically primitive. But Russell has ruled out negatives from the object-language on the ground that they are equivalent to denial and hence presuppose sentences denied i.e., they cannot stand alone)1 0 and really speak about words (viz., the means that it is applicable to the present datum of perception" (p. 92) . Any thing­ word, such as 'dog,' involves a condensed induction and a tacit prediction ; it there­ fore is really an abbreviation of a set of sentences combined by such logical connec­ tives as 'and' or 'or,' or of an existential sentence containing the logical-word 'some/ hence, on Russell's views, cannot be at the object-level. Cf. pp. 99, 189. Usually when Russell makes 'object-language' mean sense-data language, he is thinking of the epistemological desideratum of certainty. 8. 'Designata' is a term I borrow from Carnap, stemming from Morris' termi­ nology. 9. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, p. 96. IO. Ibid., p. 78 and passim.

The Extra-Linguistic Referenee of Language

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denied sentences which are claimed to be false) .11 Thus 'no' in Topsy's vocabulary is an obj ect-word in the primitivistic usage, but not in the isolationistic or semantical. Similarly, I would argue that a word which is in the object-language in the semantical sense need not be so in the isolationistic sense. There are words (or other symbols) which cannot stand alone, as sentences, which yet function in sentences (in conjunction with other words) to assert wholly non-verbal matters of fact. Take predicates and relation­ words. The adjective 'red' cannot stand alone as an assertion, but 'This book is red' can, and this sentence is at the object-level semantically; likewise for 'on' and 'The book is on the table.' In general, in any lan­ guage there are rules for the formation of sentences at the semantical object-level out of words (and other symbols) some of which, at least, cannot function in isolation as sentences in that language. In written English, for example, 'fire' is not a sentence, though 'Fire ! ' is. (Russell uses this example, but does not see that ' ! ' and the change of '£' to 'F' has conjoined 'fire' with other symbols to change the word into a sen­ tence.) More specifically, Russell says that such purely syntactical words as 'is' and 'than' cannot occur in the obj ect-language. 12 Now I admit that 'is' alone asserts nothing. But I submit that its occurrence in a sentence does not exclude that sentence from the object-language in the seman­ tical sense. Russell's isolationism should force him to deny all syntax to the object-language. However, in a note he says, "There must be syntax, but it need not be rendered explicit by the use of syntactical words, such as 'is' "; 1 3 and apparently he feels that 'yellow (A) ' is in the object-lan­ guage whereas 'A is yellow' is not, since the latter contains a word, 'is,' which cannot stand alone. But this, it seems to me, involves a confusion. All sentences have syntax. There are sentences at the obj ect-level. Whether their syntactical features occur as "words" or not is irrelevant. Obviously, however, the syntactical elements in a sentence cannot stand alone, as sentences ( without vocabulary elements) . That 'is' is called a word but parentheses are not, is an accident of English; in the two sen­ tences above, their function is the same. The real issue is whether, on the isolationistic usage, syntax can be present in the obj ect-language at 1 1 . /bid.,

p.

95 ·

Ibid., p. 78. 1 3. Ibid., p. 79. 1 2.

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Categorial A n alysis

all. Now in-so-far as isolationism destroys the difference between sentence and word at the object-level 14 and claims that "every single word is an assertion," it would at least seem to rule out syntax at the object-level. If it does not, if the object-language has syntax, then there is no reason for ruling out syntax-words but allowing syntax symbols of other sorts (order, parentheses, etc.) at this level. In any case, my contention is the same : the presence of syntactical symbols ( whether called "words,, or not) in a sentence does not, itself, require that the sentence be about language ; it may, in the semantical sense, be at the object-level. Thus there are sentences in the obj ect-language in the semantical sense which are not at that level in the isolationistic sense (since containing words or other symbols that cannot stand alone as sentences). But we must consider another meaning of 'object-word' in the iso­ lationistic usage. Every obj ect-word has meaning i n isolation, we are told. This may mean that a word may have meaning (may designate something) even when not occurring as or in a sentence. If so, it may well be Russell's intention to assert that no syntactical symbols (and specifically no syntactical words) have extra-linguistic meaning in iso­ lation. Therefore they are not included in the object-language in either the isolationistic or the semantical senses of 'object-language.' Now I would agree that no syntactical symbol has extra-linguistic meaning in isolation. 'Is,' (or . . . ' (--)' ), by itself, designates no matter of fact. But this does not exclude it from the object-level in the semantical sense. For, 'is' in isolation does not designate a linguistic property. In isolation it is not a symbol at all. It only functions symbolically (as a "word" if Russell wishes) when in conjunction with other symbols in a sentence, and when it does occur in a sentence, (and therefore is a word) neither it nor anything in the sentence, nor the sentence as a whole, need mean or assert any properties of language. Neither 'A is yellow' nor 'yellow (A),' where 'A' is a proper name for a certain surface, asserts anything about language; though neither '. . . is - - -' nor '. . . (- - -)' desig­ nates any non-verbal matter of fact. 'Syntactical words in isolation do not desi gnate matters of fact' does not imply 'Syntactical words (whether in isolation or in situ) designates verbal properties.' For, it is consistent with the first sentence in quotes above that syntactical words never desig­ nate anything, or that they designate matters of fact but only when £n 1 4.

Ibid., p. 92.

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situ. Syntactical words may simply be indications for reading , e.g., 'A is yellow' is to be read: the surface whose proper name is 'A' has the property yellow. Now this could be translated into a set of sentences , some of which are about language : e.g. , " 'A' is the proper name for a certain surface" etc. Is that what 'is,' as an indication of how to read a certain set of words containing it, really means ? I.e., is 'is' necessarily at a higher level than the objective, in the semantical usage ? No. For any group of words forming a sentence must have some indication ( syntax) of how it is to be read. It would follow that if such indications designate language-properties, there can be no sentence on the object­ level semantically. Parenthetically, this throws some light on the relativity of the concept, 'object-language' ( or better, 'language at zero-level'). Any sentence may be translated into a set equivalent to it in truth-value, one of whose members, at least, is of the form " ' . . .' (in the original sentence) means - - -," and thus is at higher semantical level than the original. E.g., 'All my sons are ill' can be translated into the ( equivalent) set : 'David is ill,' 'Donald is ill,' 'Richard is ill,' and " 'All my sons' designates David, Don­ ald, and Richard." Again, 'Here is my pen' can be translated into 'A cylindrical, brown patch is in a visual-location, 1 1,' 'A smooth , hard tactile surface is at touch-location, 1 2 ,' . . . etc. . . . and " 'My pen' desig­ nates a cylindrical brown patch related in certain ways to a smooth hard tactile surface" and " 'Here' designates a correlation of h and 1 2 " . . • , etc. Likewise, 'Here-now green' can be translated into, 'A central region of my present visual field has the color exemplified by objects a, b, c, d, . . ., etc.' and " 'Here-now' designates a central region of my visual field" and " 'Green' designates the color exemplified by the obj ects a, b, c, d . . . etc." There is thus no such thing as an absolute zero-level. ('The object­ language must be a sense-datum language' is nonsense.) There are dif­ ferent zero-levels for different semantical language hierarchies. The failure to recognize this, particularly, the argument, 'p' is translatable into " 'p' is true," therefore 'p' cannot be at the obj ect-level, I shall call "the semantical fallacy." Thus Russell's whole attempt (from a seman­ tical standpoint) of finding the object-language is mistaken. To return from this digression. I said that syntactical words may designate nothing ( whether in isolation or in situ) , but may be indica­ tions for reading. Another possibility (likewise consistent with the admission that syntactical words in isolation designate no extra-linguistic

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facts) is that syntactical words do designate matter of fact, but only when taken in situ . Consider, 'A is yellow' and 'B is blue.' The state of affairs that would make these sentences true is quite different from that which would make the following true, 'A is blue' and 'B is yellow.' Hence 'is' (in its copulative use) may designate a matter of fact, viz., what proper­ ties are exemplified by what individuals, the differential exemplification of specific properties by particular individuals. Of course the use of 'is' is not the only linguistic means of doing this : ' . . . (- - -) ' might be used, or spatial or temporal proximity of the marks or utterances, 'A,' 'yellow,' etc. But in each of these there is a syntactical feature, and it does have a designative function at the object-level, viz., designation of a differential attachment of properties to individuals. Syntactical words ( or symbols) may thus occur at the semantical object-level, though not at the isolationistic object-level (since in isolation they cannot stand as sentences nor designate extra-linguistic matter of fact) . I hope this sufficiently clarifies my contention that Russell's use of 'object-language' is confused. Next, and briefly, I want to indicate why I choose the semantical usage for 'object-language' and 'object-word.' The objection to the primitivistic use of 'object-word' is that 'object­ word' is thereby made relative to the individual; the question as to whether a word is an object-word or not would only have meaning rela­ tive to the development of a given individual's language habits. There may, of course, be certain discoverable laws about the formation of people's language habits, but these must be discovered through investi­ gation of particular instances, and this is in general the task of the psychol­ ogist, not the philosopher. The isolationistic usage is unacceptable because, strictly, it implies the absence of sentences from the object-language; i t tacitly reduces the object-language to a vocabulary. As I have argued, if the criterion of being at the object-level is capacity to assert or designate in isolation, then syntactical symbols are not at the object-level. Now of course it might be held that though syntactical symbols are not at the object-level, expressions, viz., sentences, containing them are. But this seems ruled out by Russell's contention that all words at the object-level can function, in isolation, as sentences, and (apparently) that everything that can be said about matter of fact can be stated in such single-word sentences. 15 15. Cf. ibid., p. 94.

The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Language

Against this I contend that no single word in isolation can function as a sentence : 'fire' must become 'Fire ! ' etc. The chief advantage of using 'object-language' in the semantical sense (besides avoiding the above disadvantages) is that it then functions to designate the lowest rung in a (fairly unambiguous) hierarchy. There may be an analogous hierarchy for the primitivistic usage of 'object-word' (e.g. , words of Class I can be learned without having first learned other words, those of Class II can be learned only after words of Class I have been lea.med, etc.), but if so, it would be relative to individuals, and at best its levels would be pretty vague. On the isolationistic usage, I do not see how more than two language-levels could be made out (the object-level and one other, composed of words that cannot stand alone). Freedom from confusion in the usage of 'object-language' will help us in dealing with the problem of the status of logical words. Russell asserts categorically that logical words cannot occur in the object-language, and his arguments indicate that he is using 'object-language' in all three senses we have distinguished. Our concern will be as to whether they can occur in the object-language in the semantical sense. However, we might spend just a moment on the question whether logical words can occur in the object-language in the other meanings of this term. I have already indicated that it seems to me such a word as 'not' can be psycho­ logically primitive. I can imagine a child, with greedy proclivities to­ wards candy, being taught 'not all' before other words, or a child with poor eating habits being taught to respond to 'all' before he has learned other words (such as 'oatmeal'). It would be irrelevant to object that in such instances, 'not,' 'all,' 'not all,' etc., implicitly presuppose other words (such as 'oatmeal,' 'candy'), for the primitivistic criterion is simply priority in learning (not what is implicit or presupposed). So I conclude that in the primitivistic usage of 'object-language,' the object-language may contain logical words ( whether it does is determined by observation). In the isolationistic usage, however, I would agree with Russell that logical words cannot occur in the object-language. Here however a distinction is important. When we ask whether a word can stand alone or have meaning in isolation, we may mean to ask whether people ever actually utter it and understand it in isolation. In this sense, I would say that logical words do occur as object-words ( the cases in the pre­ ceding paragraph are instances). But we may mean to ask whether the language permits it, whether cases of isolated usage are not to be treated

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grammatically as ellipses. It 1s m this sense of "cannot" (i .e., not per­ mitted by language-rules) that I would agree that logical words cannot stand alone, therefore cannot be obj ect-words. Another way of putting this is to say that logical words are incomplete symools. My real concern is as to whether, in the semantical sense of 'obj ect­ lan guage,' logical words can occur in the obj ect-language. In one sense, Russell's contention that logical words cannot occur in the obj ect-lan­ guage is the merest truism. This is the case if by definition 'logical words' refers to (certain) words which designate words ( or sentences) or rela­ tions of words (or sentences) . If, that is, we refuse to classify a word, in a given usage, as logical unless it can be shown in that usage to refer to words or word-relations, then we can be sure that no logical word can be an obj ect-word. But no problem is solved in this way. We would have to determine whether 'some,' 'all,' 'not,' etc., in various usages, are logical words. If, however, we were to define 'logical word' by enumeration; if, e.g., we were to make it synonymous (in English ) with " 'true' or 'false' or 'all' or 'some' or 'not' or . . . " etc., then it is not at all a truism that no logical word can be an obj ect-word. Probably the best case can be made out for 'true' and 'false.' But even here we would have to be on our guard. Consider an infuriated woman accusing her mate: "You have been false to me." Here 'false' (or more accurately, the whole sentence­ we need not now consider whether individual words have extra-linguistic meaning) may well be at the obj ect-level. Russell might reply that what this woman is vehemently saying is simply, " 'p' is false" where 'p' is the name of a certain sentence, viz., her husband's marriage vow. But women have been known to accuse men of falsity when those men had uttered no marriage vow. And in any case, the woman accuses the man (not some sentence he uttered) of being false. It seems clear, then, that 'false' may refer to an observable, non-verbal property, such as the property designated by 'adulterous.' Now there is, of course, a simple reply Russell could make. He could say, "When I say that 'false' cannot be an obj ect-word I am referring, by 'false,' only to a property of sentences. The letters, 'false,' may be used as other words, e.g., as referring to a certain evil tendency on the part of husbands, but this isn't the 'false' I'm talking about." If he so replies, then no one will obj ect to his in­ nocuous contention: "When used to refer to properties of sentences,

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'true' and 'false' cannot be object-words, i.e., words referring to wholly non-verbal matter of fact." We meet graver difficulties with other logical words. Consider 'not.' Frequently 'not' is used as equivalent to 'false' (' ,_, p' == " 'p' is false") . In such cases, of course, it is a truism that 'not' is not an object-word. But is 'not' always used in this sense? It seems to me not : not even, in fact, in logic. In the first place, " ,_, p == 'p' is false" presupposes (or rather is is a form of) the law of excluded middle, and so does not obtain in logical systems where that law does not obtain. 16 Even in such systems the negative is needed. What it means, it seems clear, is exclusion from a class ( or absence of a property) . Take a three-valued logic (true, doubtful, false) . It must be possible in it to say, 'It is not the case that p is true' or ' ,_, p-true' (which would be equivalent not to 'p-false' but to 'p-false or p-doubtful') . Technically this distinction between 'not' and 'false' in a multivalued logic might be avoided as follows : ' ,_,p' is either not permitted or is equivalent to 'p-false'; ' ,_, (p-true) ' == " 'p-true' is false" == 'p-false or p-doubtful'; ' ,_, (p-doubtful) ' == " 'p-doubtful' is false" 'p-true or p-false,' etc. But this, it seems to me, is simply an extensional formulation of the intensional significance of 'not,' viz., excluded from the class, . . . . And this can also be urged for two-valued logics. Without classes of mutually exclusive symbols, logical systems are impossible. 1 7 Now of course this meaning of 'not' (== 'excluded from') as occurring in logical systems is not at the object-level. But this is because the class or classes exclusion from which is expressed by 'not' are symbols (words, sentences, or their forms) . The radical sense of 'not' ( i.e., excluded from) can occur at the object level. That 'not' can legitimately occur in sentences at the object-level seems to me established by the fact that object-sentences can be false. What is meant by saying that an object-sentence is false? 1 8 We may immediately rule out the possibilities : the object-sentence is self-contradictory and the object-sentence contradicts some other sentence (at object-level) . For contradiction requires the occurrence of 'false,' or some equivalent, and hence cannot occur at the object-level. It seems to me that the only le1 6. Russell himself points this out in ibid., chap. XX. 17. Cf. Charles Baylis, "Are Some Propositions Neither True nor False ?" Philoso­ phy of Science, Vol . III, No. 2 (April, 1 936) , 156. 1 8. This anticipates the second part of th is paper, dealing with the relation of obj ect-language to fact, but it seems unavoidable in trying to answer our question as to what the obj ect-language includes.

Categorial Analysis

292

g1t1mate answer is that for an obj ect-sentence to be false means that it asserts something which is not the case, it asserts that a property or rela­ tion obtains in a situation where, as a matter of fact, it is absent. If so, then it is possible to change a false object-sentence into a true one by the introduction of 'not,' and therefore 'not' ( as asserting the absence of a property or relation from a specified region of fact) can occur at the object-level.1 9 The only way to avoid this is to deny that there can be false object­ sentences. This indicates, perhaps, one of the motives of those who claim that the obj ect-language must be a sense-datum language. For the sense­ datum theory of perceptual knowledge is basically an attempt to gain certainty, to avoid the possibility of error at the foundations of our em­ pirical knowledge. If our object-language includes thing-sentences, then it includes tacit predications, therefore possible error. If, however, it is restricted to sense-datum assertions, no error is possible. As Russell says, "When you have said 'that is a dog,' subsequent events may astonish you ; but when you have said 'that is white,' nothing in your statement gives any ground for surprise at what happens next, or for supposing that you were mistaken in saying that what you saw was white."20 Such a view has a very interesting consequence, which Russell indicates : "So long as your words merely describe present experiences, the sole possible errors are linguistic, and these only involve socially wrong behaviour, not falsehood." 2 1 Let me put it more strikingly: if the obj ect-language contains no false sentences, then all false sentences must be about lan­ guage. Furthermore, if, as some maintain, the only linguistic errors are those arising from breaking conventional rules of language ( a factual error about actual language would be about matter of fact and thus at the obj ect-level) , it would follow that the only errors mankind is subject to are transgressions of linguistic etiquette. In fact, even these would not be errors, for when you break a language-rule the result is not a false sentence but nonsense. However, we must draw a distinction here. Sup19. I seem to be borne out by Carnap. E.g., he tells us that it is important to note the distinction between a negative sentence, such as ',-Q ( c) ' and a sentence about falsity, such as " 'Q ( c) ' is false" the former being in an obj ect language, the latter in a metalanguage (Introduction to Semantics, pp. 37-38) . But cf. Part II of this paper, where I express doubt as to whether Carnap avoids the lingua­ centric predicament. 20. Ibid., p. 99. 21.

Ibid.

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pose a rule of language is broken, ( e.g., suppose ' ( x) ¢ (x) ' is asserted in place of '¢ (a) · ¢ (b) · � ¢ (c) · . . . ' etc.) . Then, in a syntactical meta­ language one could assert that the utterance was linguistically legitimate. This assertion would be false. But only this sort of error could be allowed by those who deny that an object-sentence can be false. And what this really amounts to is that 'falsity' == 'contradiction.' For a sentence that broke a rule of language would not be false, but only a sentence which asserted that a sentence which breaks a rule of language does not break a rule of language would be false. (E.g., replacing '� ( a) · ¢ (b) · � � (c) . . . ' by ' (x) ¢ (x) ' is not erroneous, unless the rule ' (x) ¢ (x) == � (a) · ¢ (b) · ¢ (c) . . . etc.' is accepted) . This results in the most vicious form of coherence theory of truth: viz., that 'truth' 'linguistic self­ 22 consistency .' Thus I maintain that 'not' can occur at the object-level. When it does, it asserts not the falsity of some sentence but the absence of some character from some region of fact. Such absence I take to be itself an ultimate aspect of matter of fact, not to be linguistic nor propositional (a matter of "propositional attitude," as Russell would say) . It might not be amiss to digress long enough to indicate why I do not agree with another view which gives existential (extra-linguistic) significance to negation. I refer to W. E. Johnson's view concerning determinates under a common determinable (stemming from Aristotle's contraries) .23 This view holds there are existentially incompatible char­ acters (properties and relations) , such that if an existent exemplifies a certain character it cannot exemplify any other character in the set in­ compatible with it (if an area is yellow it cannot be blue or red or . . . ,

=

22. Thus an obvious consequence of denying false sentences at the object-level is the impossibili ty of two sentences at that level, unless 'true' and 'false' cease to be contradictions. For, if 'false' 'inconsistency in linguistic usage,' then 'true' ( as its contradictory) 'absence of inconsistency in linguistic usage.' 23. A much more inclusive view of the significance of 'not' is that deriving from Plato, viz., that 'not' signifies any difference or otherness. This is found in such statements as 'Redness is not sourness,' 'Franklin Roosevelt is not Theodore Roose­ velt.' But I am inclined to think that the designatum here is (in part) linguistic, and therefore that 'not' in this sense cannot occur at the object-level. Fully ex­ pressed, 'Redness is not sourness' means that 'redness' names a quality different from the quality named by 'sourness.' However, it may be that there are cases of 'not' in the sense of 'other than' which involve no verbal factor in their designatum ; e.g., 'That is not the man who rubbed me.' If there are such cases, my position is strengthened. 'Not' can function as an object-word.

==

==

2 94

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Categorial Analysis

etc.). This view would say that negation, at the obj ect-leve] , is really an ambiguous or non-specific assertion of an incompatible character, e.g., 'A is not yellow' == 'A is blue or red or. . . . ' This view seems to me un­ tenable.2 4 First, there is an obj ection raised by Russell. 2 5 As regards colors, there would seem to be no question that they are existentially incompatible, but we do not have the same situation as regards sounds and odors. Yet negation as regards the latter seems to have as definite a meaning as in case of the former. 'I do not smell any roses' would seem to be on a par with 'I do not see anything red.' But although the incompatibility view can take care of the latter (by exploring the visual field and finding in each part of it some color other than red), it cannot deal with the former (for different odors may be compresent in the same olfactory region). I would add to this what seems to me a more basic criticism. Incompatibility is an empirical fact ('If the whole of a surface is red it cannot be yellow' is synthetic, not analytic).� Thus two quali­ ties that are incompatible might have been compatible ( e.g., red and yellow might have been existentially related as middle C and G above it). Therefore that two characters are incompatible must have been learned through experience, viz., through observing that where one character is present the other is not (is absent). Hence the experience of absence (non-presence) is presupposed by the assertion of incompatibility. To put it differently. The statement that two characters are incom­ patible can be analyzed into two statements : ( 1 ) the characters are dif­ ferent species under the same genus ; and (2) a minimum existent ex­ emplifying one does not exemplify the other. Thus clearly negation is more basic than incompatibility (since only part of the meaning of in­ compatibility). Against the view that 'not' can occur at the obj ect-level Russell has an interesting argument. He says it is impossible to observe the absence of anything, e.g., if upon looking into the ice-box you say, "There is no cheese here," you must have judged in the case of each thing observed, "This is not cheese." You could not see that this butter is not cheese. So what you really mean by 'this is not cheese' is " 'this is cheese' is false." 24. I accepted it at one time, cf., "Time and Causality," The Philosophical Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 4 (July, 1934) , 345. 25. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 202-3. 26. I assume, wi thout arguing the point here, that tl:ere are a priori synthetic propositions.

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You have at least an expectation, a propositional attitude (if not the sen­ tence) , 'this is cheese,' and the 'not' asserts that this is false.27 But what does it mean to say that 'this is cheese' is false? It cannot be the same as 'this is butter' is true, for if you were looking at milk 'this is cheese' would be false, likewise. I cannot see how one can avoid ad­ mitting that for " 'this is cheese' is false" to be true requires that in the designatum of ' this' there is an absence of that set of observable properties peculiar to cheese. We may not psychologically note this absence unless we are looking for cheese, and thus are at least tentatively entertaining the proposition 'this is cheese.' But along with this we must also be able to directly experience the absence of cheese-properties, say in the butter, or " 'this is cheese' is false" would be utterly without empirical founda­ tion. If this is the case, then this fact of experience ( though it may never occur alone and without an accompanying propositional attitude) is legitimately expressed by a 'not' (in 'this is not cheese') at the object-level. Thus in general I hold that though it may be a psychological fact about our use of 'not' that it always accompanies and expresses a disappointed expectation, yet it has a designative function which is non-verbal and non-attitudinal; it refers to the absence of something (which as a fact we expected).28 Another objection against the occurrence of 'not' at the object level is found in sentences of the form, 'I do not hear anything.' Such a sen­ tence may be taken to be an assertion about everything in the universe ( or in the universe of discourse) , e.g., an assertion that all sounds are unheard by me now or that everything in the universe is 'not a sound heard by me now.' 29 Since it is absurd to suppose I can now perceive everything in the universe or hear all sounds, it follows that 'I do not hear anything' cannot be a perception-sentence. Russell's interpretation of such a sentence is similar to his interpretation of 'this is not cheese.' I.e., the 'not' expresses a propositional attitude-the rejection of a proposition previously held, say as an expectation (e.g., I shall hear a 27. Cf. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 89-90. 28. We must also be on guard against the semantic fallacy. Since 'this is not cheese' is l inguistically equivalent (extensionally) to " 'this is cheese• is false," we may suppose 'this is cheese' cannot be at the object-level. But it would be j ust as legi timate to say, " 'this is cheese• is false" must be at the obj ect level, or to say, since 'this is butter' is linguistically equivalent to " 'this is butter' is true" to assert that 'this is butter' cannot occur at the object level. 29. Cf. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 203-4, n3.

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motor-car) . This would place the 'not' at a semantic (though not strictly a linguistic) 30 level above the obj ect-level. But i t seems to me no such interpretation is required. The sentence 'I do not hear anything' can be taken simply to mean that sound is absent from my present experience. It might be that I could not note this without a previous expectation of sound, but what is empirically noted is that a single region of fact (my present experience) does not contain sound, i.e., sound is absent from that reg10n. So much for 'not.' It will be quite impossible in the present paper to discuss all logical words, or even all those discussed by Russell. I should like, however, to say something about one other, viz., 'all.' My position concerning 'all' is essenti ally the same as that concerning 'not.' 'All' is often (especially by logicians) used to refer to sentences, and in such cases of course is not in the object-language. But even in such cases it is concerned not with sentences per se but with their relations to their designata, and therefore, ultimately, with matter of fact. And the matter of fact involved is of the sort often referred to by object-level sentences containing 'all' or an equivalent. 'All' is frequently used to assert that each of a set of sentences is true : ' (x) ¢ (x) ' == " '¢ (a) ' is true and '¢ (b) ' is true and . . . " This usage places 'all' above the object-level, and it is perfectly legitimate, though some­ times rather strained, for it at least gives the appearance of ontological atomism. It seems a little strained to interpret 'all the air in the room contains carbon-monoxide' as meaning "The portion of air in the room designated 'a' contains carbon-monoxide" is true and etc. But this onto­ logically atomistic suggestion can be avoided by the admission of the arbitrary character of the division of the designatum of ' (x ) ' into the designata of 'a' 'b' 'c' etc. However, there is one requirement that does not seem to be arbitrary: it is that of completeness. The designata of 'a', 'b', 'c' etc. must together completely make up the designatum of ' (x).' This is what I shall call the radical meaning of 'all' ( as exclusion or absence was the radical meaning of 'not') . It is found formally in the requirement that for " ( x) ¢ (x) == '¢ (a) ' is true and '� (b) ' is true and . . . ," to be true requires that 'a', 'b', etc., exhaust the range of values of the variable 'x'. Thus even in logic, 'all' means something more than " ' . . . ' is true and 30. Russell distinguishes sentences from the proposi tions they express. Cf. "Desig­ nation of the Obj ect Language," pp. 300- 1 0, this volume.

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' . . .' i s true and . . ." It means, as I have said, completeness of the logical summands. In logic, the completeness is a completeness of symbols and is determined by definition. But the same radical sense of 'all' is found in statements of fact, where the completeness is a completeness of non­ verbal fact, and the completeness is itself a non-verbal fact, and therefore can be properly experienced by an 'all' at the obj ect-level. Take, 'all the marbles in my hand are green' (I am supposing I have three marbles in my hand and they are all green). Now if one wishes one can translate this into " 'marble a is green' is true, 'marble b is green' is true, and 'marble c is green' is true." But such a translation would be incomplete ; one would have to add, 'marbles a, b, c are all the marbles in my hand.' And to what does this last sentence refer? Clearly to an empirical fact of totality. And that this totality is an empirical fact is in no sense in­ validated by the admission that we can designate it unambiguously only by an 'all' which is conjoined with two additional sorts of symbols, one indicative of the nature of the membership ('marbles') and one of its range or boundaries ('in my hand').3 1 Thus 'all' is very obviously an incomplete symbol. In the isolationistic usage it could not possibly be an obj ect-word. But i n the semantical usage it can and does occur at the obj ect-level. In fact I think it must in order that its occurrence at higher levels have significance. Suppose by definition 'all x' is defined as 'a, b, and c.' Then the perceptive proposition "A set of marks similar to these, 'a, b, and c,' are all the marks to be found between the marks similar to these, ' ' ' ' ' ', in a certain region on this page (ordinarily designated, 'the preceding sentence')-must be true; and it is at the object-level (it speaks of marks as visual items, not as linguistic elements). 32 It might be objected that 'a, b, c are all the marbles in my hand' is true by definition, whereas 'a is green' is true by correspondence to fact. But this would be purely arbitrary. One could j ust as easily reverse the matter and say 'a is green' is true by definition or convention,3 3 but 'a, b, c are all the marbles in my hand' is true by correspondence with fact. The 3 r . When not expressed, this range may be the universe, or may be some smaller region indicated by the context. 32. Carnap wou ld seem to agree. In any case he defines a universal predicate (in a metalanguage) in terms of a universal attribute in the object-language, and says that this latter is an "absolute concept" not relative to language (Introduction to Semantics, pp. 4 1 , 4 2) . 33. E.g., by the convention that unless an object is green, we shall refuse to call it 'a.'

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Categorial Analysis

fact of the matter is that we do directly observe completeness or totality in many instances (of small finite aggregates) , and we legitimately ex­ press this by 'all.' In such cases 'all' is as truly a descriptive relation-sym­ bol as is 'precedes' or 'to the right of.' Russell suggests another obj ection.3 4 He suggests that " 'all the marbles in my hand are green' - 'a is green, b is green, c is green' " is true if as a fact a and b and c are all the marbles in my hand, whereas I hold that to the right side of the above equivalence we must add: 'and a, b, c, are all the marbles in my hand.' 3 5 I think that Russell's suggestion is wrong because it tries to put an accidental, actual truth-equivalence in place of equivalence as to reference or designation. Suppose as a fact that a, b, c are all green, then, to apply the principle at the basis of Russell's sugges­ tion : " 'a, b, c are all green' == 'a is green' " would be true for, as a fact, both sides of this equivalence are true. But clearly here the right and left members of this equivalence (although by hypothesis equivalent in truth-value) cannot be treated as equivalent in the matter of fact they designate or assert. So likewise for 'all the marbles in my hand are green' and 'a is green, b is green, and c is green.' In what is asserted, there is a completeness in the former not present in the latter. I do not think that questions of size (finiteness, etc.) of aggregates are relevant to the present issue. It is a psychological fact that we directly observe completeness only in cases of rather small aggregates. We can only infer it for larger ones (essentially by correlations with symbols, whose completeness as observable marks is directly observed) . The im34. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 321-22. 35. This may be unfair to Russell. What he actually says is, ". . . let us suppose that, in fact, A, B, C . . . Z are all the men there are, and let us suppose that there are occurrences correctly described as A's death, B's death, C's death, . . . Z's death. Then, in fact, it is true that all men are mortal. Thus the number of occurrences required to insure the truth of 'all men are mortal' is the same as the number of men, and no more. Other occurrences are necessary in order that we may know our list to be complete, but not in order that it may be complete,, (ibid., p. 32 1 ) . The trouble here lies in the ambiguity of 'number of occurrences.' It may be taken distribu tively or collectively. Russell supposes that since, taking the phrase distributively, the completeness of a number of occurrences (whereby the number is the same as the number of some other class) is not itself another occurrence ( thereby increasing the number) , therefore there is no collective significance to the phrase, whereby, e.g., the completeness of a class may be an aspect of (but not a unit in) the number of the class. Apart from atomistic prej udices, I can see no objection to holding that aggregates have total properties as well as sets of members (with their individual properties) .

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portant point is that one can observe it, and that what is observed is ex­ pressed by 'all,' and 'all' in such cases retains its radical meaning found also in cases involving reference to symbols. So much for logical words. My contention is that if we take them as they occur, there is no general reason to suppose that they can never be at the lowest semantical level. 'True' and 'false,' at least ordinarily, characterize sentences ( in relation to matter of fact) , and thus cannot occur in the obj ect language. But other logical words, such as 'not' and 'all,' are not necessarily excluded from this lowest semantic level, and, in fact, have a radical meaning at higher levels to be found at the obj ect­ level. But my whole line of argument is open to serious attack. The critic I have in mind will say that I have woefully confused "semantics" and "pragmatics." 36 He will say that I have claimed a sentence to be at the object-level simply because it is not obviously about language or wasn't intended to assert anything about language. We must, he would say, put aside such psychological considerations and ask whether a given sentence can be translated into a sentence or sentences in which there is reference to language. Only if it cannot is the sentence at the object­ level. Or, he will say that our job ( as philosophers) is to construct ( arbi­ trarily) a language in which ( 1 ) there is no ambiguity as to semantical level and (2) every sentence of ordinary speech and of science can be translated into one or more sentences in this constructed language. In answer, our problem of the nature of the reference of zero-level expressions to extra-linguistic matter of fact cannot be dealt with by a pure semantics [ e.g., Carnap's Introduction to Sem an tics ] based on arbi­ trary rules of designation, for such a semantics is restricted to reference 36. Cf. Charles W. Morris, "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1938) . Carnap has accepted this distinction, cf. "Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, International Encyclopedia of Unified Sciences, Vol. I, No. 3 ( Chicago : The Universi ty of Chicago Press, 1939) , and Introduction to Semantics. In this last work, Carnap defines 'pragmatic' as follows : "If in an investigation [of language] explicit reference is made to the speaker, or, to put it in more general terms, to the user of a language, then we assign it to the field of pragmatics (p. 9) . " This, I think, is too narrow. Even should one use 'pragmatics' to refer to the investigation of any psychological factors in the use of language, I believe the usage would be too restricted. I suggest that 'pragmatics' refers to the study of the occurrence-aspects of language. Thus if technical symbols are not extensively used in symbolic logic because of cost-factors or because not reproducable by paper and ink, this would be a pragma tic consideration. I shall use 'pragmatics' in this wider sense.

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within a language, i.e., to reference where both sign and designatum thereof are expressions. . . . at the zero-level (but not at others) there must be elements serving both as symbols and as (in part) designata, through their conjunction, in their own occurrence, with other matter of fact. Th us pragmatics (concerned with the occurrence of symbols) is introduced into semantics (concerned with the designation of symbols) .

(2) · DESIGNA TION OF THE OBJECT-LANGUA GE*

. . . How is it possible for a word or sentence to refer to extra­ linguistic matter of fact? Pure semantics gives us no answer. On the other hand, we must not be satisfied with the merely psychological an­ swer: a word can refer to a non-verbal fact because it has been associated with the latter in the speaker's earlier experience. For, this answer begs the question, being wholly composed of words some of which, it is sup­ posed, refer to extra-linguistic fact. Perhaps the question can be put more clearly : How is it possible to say anything whatever about the extra-linguistic reference of language, for whatever you say will be con­ fined to language? My answer is simple. It is possible to say things about the extra­ linguistic reference of language because (historical) language includes a class of symbols I shall call " empirical ties." Roughly, empirical ties are the denotatives : demonstrative pronouns ('this,' 'that') , relative adverbs ('here,' 'now') , also symbols often not called linguistic, such as gestures (pointing) , etc. Such an empirical tie as 'this' serves to attach language to matter of fact. "What do you mean by 'igloo'? " " 'Igloo' designates house." "But what do you mean by 'house' ? " "This." This attaching of language to empirical fact, this empirical orientation of language, is possible because of a peculiarity of empirical ties. An empirical tie is both a symbol and (a part of, or in the context of) the designatum of that symbol. Like all symbols, empirical ties are matters of fact as well • Published in Mind, LIII, N.S., No. 209 (January, 1944) , 25-47.

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as of language, but they are peculiar in that their linguistic (symbolic) function is through or by means of their factual occurrence. To state this more clearly, let me use Carnap's distinction between sign-event and sign-design ( §3) . The sign-design is what is usually meant when we use such words as 'symbol,' 'word,' 'sentence.' It is the form or structure common to a set of actual occurrences (sounds, marks, gest­ ures) whereby they function symbolically to designate the same desig­ natum or the same kind of designatum; 1 it is thus abstract. A sign-event is any concrete occurrence of a sign-design. In " 'Igloo' is a noun," 'I gloo' designates a sign-design. When we say 'Igloo' is to the right of 'in' and to the left of 'is' in a certain set of marks (designated by 'the preceding sentence') , 'igloo' designates a sign-event. It is of course important ( as Carnap insists) that when we deal with signs we should always be clear as to whether we are concerned with them as designs or as events. Moreover, in most investigations of lan­ guage ( Carnap says in all cases in syntax and semantics) we are wholly concerned with signs as designs: we completely ignore their concrete occurrence as events. But, it is my contention, we must recognize the function of signs as events (in designation of fact by zero-level sign­ designs) if we are ever to escape the lingua-centric predicament. The peculiarity of an empirical tie, such as 'this,' lies in the fact that its occurrence is part of its designatum (or a distinguishing mark in the context of its designatum) . That is, in the case of empirical ties the common sign-design of a set of sign-events does not designate a single designatum ( as with proper names) nor designata of the same sort (as with common names or descriptive predicates) . It is radically ambiguous. In fact, the common sign-design simply is an indication that we have here an empirical tie that functions in a certain fashion to designate a designatum unique for each occurrence of the sign as an event. That is, the sign-design itself does not designate at all; it si mply indicates that an event (any event embodying it) is a sign-event, and as such does designate. What is designated by such a sign-event is something in the existential context of the sign-event. If the empirical tie occurs alone ( unaccompanied by other signs) then what it designates within its total immediate existential context is wholly ambiguous. But conjoined with 1 . This would have to be modified so as to allow us to say that, e.g., 'igloo' as spoken and as written is the same word. We might, e.g., say that two different sign­ designs are instances of the same word. But this is unimportant for the argument.

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other signs, it functions to limit their designata to the case or cases present in its im mediate existential context. 'This' or 'look' is wholly ambiguous within the region of its immediate existential context. But 'this book' or 'the color of this book' is not. 'This book ' means "The book in the im­ mediate existential context of a particular utterance I (later and by printed marks) name 'this.' " This, however, supposes that other signs (sign-designs) have meaning ( are empirically attached) independently of a given occurrence (sign-event) in conj unction with an empirical tie. In order that this be so, however, those other signs (sign-designs) must have been attached ( or must now be attachable) to matter of fact through differential existential conj unction (sign-events) with empirical ties. Let me illustrate by a hypothetically simplified case. Suppose I have a red sphere, a blue sphere, a red cube, and a blue cube. Suppose I have a subject properly conditioned so that at least one empirical-tie-design is present in this vocabulary ( such as pointing, or 'look' or 'here-now'). Then the attachment of other words becomes easy. I present the red sphere and say "Look ! red ,, then the red cube and say "Look ! red," then the blue sphere and cube, in each case saying "Look ! blue." Similar­ ly for 'sphere' and 'cube'. By multiplying the differential existential con­ j unctions it becomes theoretically possible to tie all symbols in a zero­ level language to these factual designata. This illustration may be mis­ leading, however. I do not mean to present an hypothesi s in genetic psychology. What I am concerned to assert is that however we may have learned our empirical language, the extra-linguistic reference of that language can be itself stated in that language only by the use of em­ pirical ties. Whenever challenged as to the meaning of a zero-level term (such as a descriptive predicate) our only recourse is to a statement of the form : "I mean by '- - -' this." 2 Such statements carry us outside the sphere of "pure" (non-descriptive) semiotics. For, clearly the 'this's' in them designate matter of fact. Furthermore, they must be uttered or written in the proper extra-linguistic, existential context. If it be said that this throws the consideration of them into pyschology or pragmatics, I have no obj ection. I would simply insist that without them no con­ sideration of designation at the zero-level, of the meaning of words about extra-linguistic fact, is possible-no matter how abstract or general.3 2. More a ccurately : "I niean by '- - -' thisi, this 2 , this 3, . . • " (in contrast with this 1 , this 11, th is n + i, • • • ; and this 2, th is m , th ism + 1 , . . . ; and . . . . ) . 3. I might point out an interesting parallel here to 'designation' as conceived

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My view may be clarified by a comparison of my "empirical ties" with Russell's "ego-centric particulars." 4 Clearly the general context of thought is the same. \Ve are both concerned with the problem of how it is possible to say, in language, anything about the extra-linguistic reference of language. Furthermore, we have in mind the same general group of symbols ('this,' 'I-now,' 'here,' etc.). I see several differences, however. First, the names are different. I object to 'ego-centric' for as I see it no reference to a self is essentially involved in an empirical tie. This is not so obvious with gestures or utterances as with written signs. Suppose I write : "Up to this point this paper is composed of such and such a number of words." In this sentence, two 'this's' occur. In neither is there involved any reference to myself. But Russell himself recognizes this, so the difference is one of names only. A more significant difference arises in Russell's attempt to classify ego-centric particulars. Russell asks whether ego-centric particulars are proper names or (tacit) descriptive predicates. As I see it, a proper name is a sign-design designating a single designatum, whereas a common name or descriptive predicate designates any of a number of designata of the same kind. 5 Thus proper names and descriptive predicates are not sign-events but sign-designs, and an investigation of their meaning can properly ignore their occurrence. But an empirical tie is not strictly a sign-design, therefore neither a proper name nor a descriptive predicate. It is in a sense a sign-design, but the design has, strictly, no meaning; it is a way of indicating that a particular event is a sign-event, and has just its own unique reference ( contrasted with other sign-events having the same design). It is Russell's treatment of ego-centric particulars as sign-designs, and thus as necessarily either proper names or descriptions, which gets him into his serious difficulty ( which I believe my empirical ties escape). "The word 'this' is one word, which has, in some sense, a constant meaning. But if we treat it as a mere name, it cannot have in any sense in pure semantics. In pure semantics 'this' designates this. On the view I present, 'this' (as sign-design) designates the existential region of this (as sign-event) . 4. References are to Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (New York : W. W. Norton and Company, 1940) , chap. VII. 5. It does so through a property which itself has a proper name-the substantive form of the descriptive pred icate : thus 'red' as an adjective is a descriptive predicate, 'red' as a noun is a proper name.

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a constant meaning, for a name means merely what it designates, and the designatum of 'this' is continually changing. If, on the other hand, we treat 'this' as a concealed description, e.g., 'the object of attention,' it will then always apply to everything that is ever a 'this,' whereas in fact it never applies to more than one thing at a time. Any attempt to avoid this undesired generality will involve a surreptitious re-introduction of 'this' into the definiens.'� With Russell's solution of his problem I disagree whole-heartedly. It is that 'this' "is a word which is not needed for a complete description of the world." 7 In contrast, I hold that 'this,' or some other empirical tie, is needed8 for any description of the world, however incomplete. Russell's argument, if I follow it, is that the difference in two 'this's' ( or as he puts it, between 'this is' and 'that was') lies not at all in their meaning but wholly in their causation. The only difference between 'this is a cat' and 'that was a cat' lies in the fact that between the stimulus and utterance in the first case lies a minimal causal chain, but, in the second, there is a longer chain ; there is no difference of meaning in these sen­ tences (therefore no difference in meaning between 'this is' and 'that was'). Let us apply this to the radical ambiguity of 'this' (Russell does not do so, though this ambiguity is his basic problem). It would seem to require that when I say 'this is a cat' at place-time1 and 'this is a cat' at place-time2, there is no difference of meaning but only of causation. But this is absurd, for it is possible for one of these utterances to be false, the other true. But suppose Russell means simply 'this is a cat' uttered at place-time1 is true and 'that was a cat' uttered at place-time2 is likewise true. This would simply mean that as 'this' shifts in designation, 'that' (and other ego-centric particulars) do so likewise. Thus the 'this' of place-time1 may have the same designatum as the 'that' of place-timC2. But if this is what he means, then he is simply mistaken in denying difference of meaning to 'this' and 'that.' Suppose they are both taken relative to the same existential context. Then of 'this is a cat' and 'that was a cat' one may be true and the other false; therefore they cannot have the same meaning. The case would be exactly similar for 'now' 6. Russell, An In quiry into Meaning and Truth, p. 1 36. 7. Ibid., p. 141 . 8 . I d o not mean that every descriptive sentence actua lly contains an empirical tie, but rather that its empirical attachment can be shown only by the use of an empirical tie.

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and 'then,' 'to-day' and 'yesterday,' etc. Of course it is possible to shift your point of temporal reference so that 'to-day' and 'yesterday' may be made to designate the same day, but when uttered in the same existential context their designata are different. I conclude that Russell has not shown that we can dispense with 'this' in describing the world, that 'this' and 'that' do not differ in meaning, nor that 'this's' occurring in different existential contexts have no difference in meaning. However, such words as 'that,' 'then,' 'there,' 'yesterday,' etc., call for a qualification of my account of empirical ties. They are empirical ties, but do not designate the immediate existential context of their own occurrence, but rather some other context. They designate some other existential region in contrast with the one in which they occur. This is possible through a combination of the basic empirical tie with a descrip­ tive element. 'That' (demonstrative) means : in an existential context different from that of its own occurrence as sign-event. 'Then' means : in an existential context temporally preceding that of its own occurrence as sign-event. 'There' means: in an existential context spatially different from that of its own occurrence as sign-event. 'Different from,' 'tempor­ ally preceding,' 'spatially different from,' etc., are descriptive relation­ terms. Their extra-linguistic reference like that of all descriptive predi­ cates and all proper names, can be shown only by using them in sentences including empirical ties. Thus the class of empirical ties can be indefi­ nitely enlarged by amalgamating the functions of empirical attachment and description in single words or phrases. Let me conclude this discussion of empirical ties by dealing with three alternatives. They are based on the assumption that what I have called "the empirical attachment of language" is necessary if a language is to have extra-linguistic reference, but they suggest that this can be done by other means than empirical ties. The first is that language can be at­ tached to fact through the use of proper names. Since a proper name designates an individual, it might be thought that a language can be empirically oriented through the way proper names (especially in con­ junction with descriptions) occur in it. To this I would object, in the first place, that proper names are ordinarily names of things ( such as people) having histories, thus in­ cluding change, and being spread out in space, thus including parts. This immediately opens a vast opportunity for ambiguity in the attachment

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of descriptive terms to factual properties. 9 This, however, might be avoided by the device of combining proper names with some such term as 'now'-e.g. , instead of 'John Jones' we could use 'John-Jones-now.' But this would admit empirical ties into our language. In place of this device we might try to set up a language allowing no ambiguity in proper names. Thus every point in space-time would have its own proper name. 1 0 This, however, would run up against a pragmatic diffi­ culty: no human being could learn, in fact could even enumerate, the words required in such a vocabulary. Even this difficulty might, per­ haps, be avoided by limiting proper names to some small number of names of space-time points, 1 1 selected so that other space-time points could be referred to descriptively. Granted the possibility of such a language, the basic difficulty (as I see it) remains untouched. Take any one proper name, say 'a.' Supposedly 'a' unambiguously names a certain space..time point. What space-time point ? A language without empirical ties could not say. Such a language could say a great deal. It could say that if 'a' and 'b' are different proper names, they name different space­ time points. It could say that if 'a' enters a set of different, true sentences, then some space-time point exemplifies a plurality of properties and re­ lations. But just what the extra-linguistic designatum of 'a' ( or any other term in this language) is could never be stated in this language (not through a lack of knowledge as to what 'a' names, but through a lack of linguistic means). As far as anything this language could say, 'a' could be the name of any space-time point whatever ( though of only one). This language would virtually say : take your choice, within the whole realm of space-time points, as to what is the designatum of any proper name, 'a.' This would amount to a complete and radical am­ biguity of 'a.' But if so, 'a' is not a proper name at all. It is simply a mark or utterance which is to obey certain rules of language. It names nothing. We find ourselves squarely in the lingua-centric predicament. It might be thought that this unfortunate result can be avoided if it be admitted that the designatum of 'a,' where 'a' is taken alone, cannot 9. The name of a property or relation is itself a proper name-e.g. 'red' as a noun versus as an adjective. The designata of such proper names do not change. But the designation is (in most cases) highly ambiguous. E.g., 'red' names any of a set of at least a dozen easily distinguishable colors. I O. Likewise, every distingu ishable property and relation. 1 1 . And of properties, distributed through various modes, and relations, of various kinds.

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30 7

be determined, but in the total language, with many proper names and descriptive symbols, used differentially, we have a system which unam­ biguously determines the extra-linguistic reference of each proper name within it. This is a form of the second alternative to which I now turn. The second alternative would say that the empirical attachment of a zero-level language can be unambiguously fixed through its structure. As Wittgenstein held, the structure of the language shows the structure of the world. If the structure of a language is the same as the structure of the field of its designata, then the extra-linguistic designata of various elements in the language can be determined as the structurally corre­ sponding elements in the realm of fact. To this I can see several important objections. In the first place, it would involve us not merely in actual, but in logically unavoidable, ambig­ uity if there are structures in fact which are repeated. Suppose color­ hues and tone-pitches have the same structure (one-dimensional con­ tinuum with top and bottom limits), such as is suggested by the trans­ lation of one into the other in synaesthesia and color-symphonies. Then there would be no possible way of referring to hues as distinct from pitches, or vice versa. Now I think it is highly probable that there are repetitions of structure in fact. But even if there are not, there are approximations thereto, so close that for common sense and ordinary experience we may properly speak of different regions of fact as struc­ turally identical. Thus ordinary language should not be able to dis­ tinguish these regions. But clearly it does, as the illustration of hues and pitches indicates. Second, this structural view of empirical attachment could not admit in language at the zero-level any purely syntactical structure, i.e., structure due to the language as language in contrast to what it asserts. This objection need not be based on the assumption that all structure in language is a matter of convention . In fact, it might hold that it is possible to construct a language where no structural feature is arbitrary, yet that in such a language there are two types of structural features : those required by the nature of what is asserted (fact) and those re­ quired by the nature of assertion (language). Even in such a language, however, fixing the empirical attachment of symbols could not be ac­ complished simply through the structure of the language, for there would be no way of determining what structural features in the language are to have extra-linguistic significance and what not. Simply by a knowl-

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edge of the structure of the language, it would be impossible to know that structural features L are of lingui stic signi hcance only, whereas structural features F have extra-linguistic significance. However, if we know the structure of the world and also of our language, can we not find that, in some parts or aspects, they are identical, and conclude that these are the F-features of the language, and thus be enabled to fix the empirical attachment of our language by structural correspondence of such F-features and the structure of the world ? I think even here we have an insuperable difficulty. Suppose an F-feature of our language­ structure. It then refers to whatever extra-linguistic fact has this same structure (and we here waive difficulties as to repetitive s truct ures ) . Now our question is, what does 'the same structure' mean ? We have a struc­ ture in language. It is to refer to something in fact. To show what something (a something which in a metalanguage is said to be identical in structure with the language) it is necessary at some place to indicate that the language refers to fact having the same structure. The mere fact that language and fact have a structure in common does not suffice to insure that the language will designate just the fact with such a structure. What any feature or element of any language designates is a matter either of fact or of choice ; there are no a priori neces si ties here. 'Designates' may actually be equivalent in certain languages or in all actual languages to 'having a common structure,' but to assert that it is is not an analytical proposition. But now if it is si mply a fact that the F-feat ures of our language designate fact having the same structure, then no knowl­ edge of these F-features of language is sufficient to determine what they designate, nor can we state what expressions in the language designate simply by using expressions displaying F-features. It would be necessary to attach expressions displaying F-features to fact having the same structure. This can only be done, as I see it, by language elements which, while being linguistic, are also themselves a part of the fact designated. The third alternative would say that the empirical attachment of a zero-level language occurs through a process of interpretation. Through a proper correlation of zero-level terms and empirical fact, the terms and facts get to be associated in someone's experience, or someone be­ comes properly conditioned in his language habits. This correlation it might be said requires no specific terms to indicate it ( either in general or in particular) , all it requires is a sort of isomorphism between the world of fact and zero-level non-logical terms, such that ( the simplest

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case) for each property in the world there i s a unique descriptive predi­ cate, and for each individual entity there is a unique proper name. The difficulty with this would be that in no language at any level could it be significantly said that zero-level terms are interpreted. To say that they are correlated with fact would have to be done by some correlation of terms with terms. It might be claimed that this intra-lin­ guistic correlation reflects the correlations of language with fact. But even i f it be admitted that such an isomorphism does occur, it is impossible to assert it within the limits of any language which itself can only reflect it. The argument here is essentially the same as concerning the second alternative above. Language may actually be correlated with extra-lin­ guistic fact, but to assert this correlation requires more than the fact of the correlation; it requires terms ( empirical ties) which are not merely -correlated with the facts they designate but are themselves those facts ( or parts of them) . . . . If space permitted, I should like, i n conclusion, to tie the two parts of this paper together by showing that they both advocate extensions of 'object-language.' The first part would have the object-language include certain logical words, such as 'not,' 'all' in their radical meaning. The second part would require empirical ties, such as 'this' and pointing, to occur in the object-language. In fact, it contends that only as such em­ pirical ties ( which designate through their occurrence) are in the object­ language can other words in that language have empirical attachment. Putting these two together, the implication is that the designation of logical words i n their radical meaning in the object-language can be shown by differential existential conjunction with empirical ties. Since, however, such logical words have no meaning in isolation, the answer to the question, what does 'not,' e.g., mean at the obj ect-level ? would not be, 'not' means this. It would rather be, 'not . . . ' means this1 , this2, . . . etc.; 'not - - -' means thisn, thisn + 1, . . . etc.; etc., where the meaning o f ' . . . ' and '- - -' can be shown by differential existential conjunction with empirical ties. This crude suggestion must su ffice as an indication that, at least in the author's own mind, the two parts of this paper are not in basic contradiction. However, whatever may be thought of the specific suggestions offered in this paper, it is hoped that the paper may prove a stimulus to a certain type of important but largely neglected investigation of language, falling neither in pure semantics nor in psychology ( at least as actually pursued) .

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I refer to the inquiry as to how the designation by object-language ex­ pressions of extra-linguistic fact can be significantly formulated in lan­ guage. We may, of course, be here within the realm of the ineffable. It is the conviction of the present writer, however, that there is nothing ineffable.

16

The Metaphysics of Logic

I find myself in substantial agreement with much that Nelson says m the first paper in the present symposium.1 * I would like, how­ ever, to draw a distinction. On the one hand, Nelson claims that logic "does have an ontology" and that the logician's tools "involve deep­ rooted philosophic issues." On the other hand, he ends his paper with the more modest assertion that "any interpretation of a calculus of logic assumes, it does not establish, a philosophic position." By "in­ terpretation" I take it he means what is sometimes spoken of as a metalogic, that is, a set of statements about logic, purporting to show what logic is. I wish to make some remarks in support of the latter of these two views. That is, I wish to defend the apparently uncontroversial stand that any metaphysics of logic, or less truistically, any philosophy of logic commits one to a general metaphysics. What I mean may be best disclosed by turning directly to certain views criticized by Nelson. The course of this discussion will lead gradually to the one main point I wish to make. Nelson opposes the antiontological position of Nagel. I take it that "antiontological" is an acceptable characteri zation of the position criti­ cized, for Nagel has entitled the essay in which he states it, "Logic without Ontology." 2 Nagel wishes to urge "an operational analysis of r. Everett J. Nelson, "The Rela tion of Logic to Metaphysics," Philosophical Re­ view, Vol. LVI II, No. 1 (January, 1949) , 1 - 1 1 . * Published in The Philosophical Review, Vol. LVIII, No. 1 (January, 1949) , 1 6-25. Read at the joint meeting of the Second Inter-American Congress of Philoso­ phy, the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and the As­ socia tion of Symbolic Logic, Columbia University, December 3 1 , 1947. 2 . This is Essay I O in Naturalism and the Human Spirit, ed. Y. H. Krikorian (New York : Columbia University Press, 1944) .

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formal concepts" and to "make plausible the view that the content of the formal disciplines has a regulative function in inquiry." 3 Nelson makes the point that, if logic is thus able effectively to regu­ late inquiry so that our nonlogical ends are more likely to be attained, then it must have some basis in fact. I think this point is well taken. I wish to urge another point, however. To say that logic does or can regulate inquiry is to say something about the world, something that is directly empirical. It is, in fact, simply a psychological statement about the higher mental processes. Much of what Nagel says as to the regulative use in actual measurement of irrational numbers, such as V�is thus empirical in the sense of stating how we humans can and do deal with certain sets of rational numbers. It is also empirical in tacitly stat­ ing how large sets of rational numbers obtained by mensurational oper­ ations tend to be distributed. I have no argument with Nagel on such directly empirical aspects of scientific methodology. But that logic can be and is so applied surely furnishes no argument that logic has no ontological implications, unless perchance it is already assumed that em­ pirical statements are without ontological implication. I am sure that Nagel must be aware of this. Hence I am tempted to give a far more radical interpretation of his essay. Perhaps he means to say that the only function of logic is to regulate inquiry. But in this formulation the weasel word "function" threatens to beg the issue. It is, I take it, a behavioral term, a predicate of a pragmatic metalanguage, to use the jargon of the semioticians. As such, even this last formulation would give only an empirical statement of no direct relevance to on­ tology. Let me, then, put the matter boldly. Perhaps Nagel means to hold that a logical principle simply is a way in which inquiry is regu­ lated.4 The inferential principle of ponendo ponens, for example, would be nothing but a way in which we restrict our inferential proclivities during the process of inquiry. What does this mean? Let us use Nagel's own method. First we ask, does 'logical principle' have any reference for Nagel independently 3. I bid., p. 224. 4. This extreme interpretation is at least suggested by such passages as the follow­ ing : "Does it not therefore seem reasonable to attempt to understand the significance of logico-mathematica l concepts and principles in terms of the operations associated with them in [specific] contexts and to reject interpretations of their 'ultimate meaning' which appear gratuitous and irrelevant in the light of such an analysis ?" (ibid., p. 2r r ) .

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of this sort of statement ? Or does he intend simply to specify what it is to mean by laying down the above as a proposal? Can he identify a logical principle by some test connected with the traditional use of the term before he investigates whether it is, or could effectively be, used to regulate inquiry? If not, he is simply giving his own regulation as to how 'logical principle' is to be used. On this latter basis, any answer to our problem of the relation between logic and ontology is obviously guilty of begging the question, or, more accurately, is no answer but only a set of words that looks like an answer. But now suppose there is such a test. Then it is an open, and I would say a factual, question whether every logical principle is or can be used effectively to regulate inquiry. Many logical principles, as traditionally understood, are known, and we have every reason to hold that many more are unknown, which have not been so used and apparently can­ not be (human inquiry being the sort of thing it is). An absurd but legitimate example is the syllogistic principles in the form, (p :> q) (q :> r) . . . (s :> t) :> (p :> t) , where the ellipsis abbreviates an indefinitely long series of implications such that the implicans of each is the implicate of the preceding one. However, let it be granted that on such a traditional specification of the meaning of 'logical principle' every logical principle has been or at least could be used effectively to regulate some inquiry. It still would not be the case that to be a logical principle j ust is to be a way of regulating inquiry. A logical principle might well be a tool of in­ quiry much as an axe is a tool of woodcutting-by having a positive nature of its own that fits it for its function. Nelson really presupposes this distinction between the nature of a logical principle and its fitness for regulating inquiry when he contends that to be appropriate for such a use a logical principle must have some basis in fact. My pur­ pose is less controversial, however. I do not even intend to insist that to be a logical principle is something different by its very nature from what it is to be a regulative rule of inquiry, though I firmly believe the two are different. Perhaps my point can best be made circuitously. The view I have ascribed to Nagel, that logical principles are noth­ ing but regulative devices in inquiry, is not itself a logical principle. It is clearly a metalogical statement. It expresses a philosophy of logic. And so it must be put alongside other philosophies of logic to bring out its nature. Some of these others are represented by the following

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statements: "Logical principles are extremely broad empirical general­ izations" (Mill) ; "Logical principles are necessary connections in nature i ntuited by reason" (Aristotle) ; "Logical principles are tautologies" (Wittgenstein) ; "Logical principles are L-truths established by the syntactical rules of the language" ( Carnap) . In order to make my point about all such metalogical statements as those just listed, it is well that I specify what I think such terms as 'logical principle,' 'logical truth,' and 'logic' have traditionally meant. I think we cm find two elements that are well-nigh universal. On the one hand, such terms as 'deduction,' 'consequence,' 'theorem,' 'pre­ mise,' always closely associated with 'logic' in traditional usage, seem to indicate that 'logical principle' has meant some way propositions are or can be derived, or so that some propositions imply others or follow from others ( where 'others' is not meant to exclude "the same ones") . Moreover, such terms as 'logical cogency,' 'strict deducibility,' 'necessary consequence,' likewise part of traditional usage, seem to indicate an element of necessity in the connection of propositions just referred to. I propose therefore to say that 'logical principle' shall be used to mean any general form of entailment, and 'logical truth' any case of entail­ ment. 'Logical' will refer to the character or relation of entailment, Though this is a proposal as to words, it is designed to point out some­ thing non-verbal, or, if verbal, in an object-language relative to these words. As I see it, the philosophy of logic is an attempt to understand the nature and status of the logical.5 On the interpretation suggested above, Nagel means to say, "There is no entailment in the world distinguishable from our methods of con­ trolling inquiry. The character, entailment, simply is the character, regulative-rule-of-inquiry." Such a view happens to be unacceptable to me. For one thing, I would hate to think that whenever I have relied upon an entailment to prove my case or disprove my opponent's I was relying simply upon a regulative rule of inquiry, and I rather imagine Nagel, if he should turn his attention to the question of validity as con­ trasted with psychological acceptability, would feel the same way. But apart from our feelings on the matter, entailment j ust is not the same sort of character as regulative rule-of-inquiry. However, this is not the point I want primarily to make. I rather want to urge that this view, whether tenable or untenable, is a metaphysical view. To say that en5. This is not all there is to the philosophy of logic, but it is central.

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tailment j ust is regulative-rule-of-inquiry i s not to make a n empirical statement about how inquiry is actually carried on. Nor is it simply a regulative rule in a certain inquiry . It is the categorial claim that the world does not include the character, entailment, as anything different from mere regulative-rule-of-inquiry. It may be a better metaphysics than a "Platonic" one with a "hypostatic subject matter" but it is j ust as truly a metaphysics. My point may be made clearer by comparing Nagel's position with the others I have referred to. In one rather obvious interpretation, Mill meant to assert that entailment simply is inseparable association due to an extremely large number of positive instances of occurrence together in experience with no negative ones. Here again, as a matter of fact, I would demur. The character, entailment, is not the character, inseparable association in experience, although it may well be that we come to think entailment only upon having built up an inseparable as­ sociation between the propositions so related. But again my main point is not the tenability of Mill's view. I wish rather to stress that it is a metaphysical view. To say that there is no character, entailment, in the world that is other than the character, inseparable association in human minds, is not to make an empirical statement. Yet such a state­ ment is in some broad way a statement about what is in the world. For Aristotle the necessary condition for our knowledge of entail­ ment is intellectual intuition superseding some amount of association in experience. This is so, on one interpretation of Aristotle, because for him entailment simply is necessary connection of fact. If the reader has thought up to this point that I was merely trying to revise Aris­ totelian obj ective necessity-I believe Nelson would like to revive this metaphysics-I wish now to correct any such impression. If there is obj ective necessity relating different facts, for example, if there is causal necessity, then at least some entailment could be given obj ective basis. But it would not be this basis ; in fact, its relation to this basis would be a serious problem for philosophical clarification. Let us say that a necessarily causes b. Then no doubt we would admit that p, which asserts a, entails q, which asserts b. But how the necessity in the pair of facts produces or grounds the necessity in the relation of the statements would remain a difficult question. For the connection of facts must not be confused with the connection of statements, nor the necessity of the former with the necessity of the latter. But I have gone

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too far in the direction of stating my own metaphysics. It is possible that Aristotle or some other rational intuitionist actually held that entailment just is objective, necessary connection, perhaps as apprehended by reason. In this case the metaphysical character of such a position is obvious to everyone. Similarly for the Wittgensteinian philosophy of logic. For Wittgen­ stein6 a logical truth is a tautology. A logical truth is a molecular prop­ osition that is true whatever the truth-value of its elements. This means that it is true by virtue of its form alone. This, Wittgenstein thinks, shows the completely non-empirical character of logical propositions. I am not sure that it does, save as one makes this a tautology, by assum­ ing that the formal and the empirical are mutually exclusive. To say that they are thus exclusive is to take a metaphysical stand. Nelson remarks on this point, and I shall not press the matter further. My present concern is to emphasize that in saying entailment is the same thing as tautology one is making a metaphysical claim. It is a claim I personally reject. I believe every entailment is tautologous; but the na­ ture of entailment is not simply the nature of tautology. As G. E. Moore would say, it is significant to say that entailment is tautologous; its denial would not just be absurd. It is possible that Wittgenstein did not mean to identify entailment with tautology, but rather to characterize it as tautologous. 7 But to return to my major point. To say that entailment just is tautology, that it has no nature in any way distinguishable from tau­ tology, is to make a metaphysical claim. It is surely not an empirical statement. Nor is it itself a tautology. Only molecular propositions in a language talking about the world can, for Wittgenstein, be tautologous. But this, if it could be formulated (Wittgenstein would say it could not) would be a nonmolecular, metalinguistic sentence; its truth would not be a truth-fu nction of its elements. And it may not be beside the point to indicate that Wittgenstein was himself aware that his position was metaphysical. "It is clear that it must show something about the world that certain combinations of symbols-which essentially have a definite character-are tautologies." 8 6. I am, of course, referring to the 7. Strictly, of course, Wittgenstein tautology, since this would require 8. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Co., 1922) , 6. 1 24.

Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. cou ld say noth ing abou t either entai lment or a metalanguage, whose possibi lity he denies. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Truber and

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Carnap9 has said that logical truth is analytic. A proposition is analyt­ ic if it asserts an L-consequence, that is, a consequence derived from the null class of premises by means of L-transformation rules. Since L­ tran sformation rules are simply a certain sort of syntactical rules, we may interpret Carnap as saying that entailment is a purely syntactical relation. Again I find myself in disagreement with the metaphysics involved. Of course Carnap may set up a language such that in place of entailment there is syntactical L-consequentiality. But to say that this language has an adequate place for what is traditionally called entailment seems to recognize that entailment has a character of its own, not simply identi­ fiable with L-conseq uentiality. However, to say that there is no character of entailment in the world, that there is only L-consequentiality in the syntax: of various languages, is to say something about the world, not merely about language and its syntax. And it is to say something that is not empirical. It is, I submit, categorial. I am perfectly aware of a basic objection to my method of treating these philosophies of logic. The neo-Wittgensteinians1 0 would probably accuse me of misinterpretation. They would probably say that, where­ as I claim that Nagel, Mill, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, and Carnap are saying something categorial about the status of the logical in their various ways, what these men are really doing is to recommend a new linguistic usage. In place of such a word as 'entailment,' they wish philosophers to use other words. Nagel is recommending that 'entail­ ment' be replaced by 'regulative rule of inquiry'; Mill recommended that 'inseparable association' be substituted, and so on. But on this interpretation it is perfectly legitimate to ask, what are the grounds of the recommended change? It can hardly be supposed that intelligent men would urge a change in linguistic usage that was completely groundless, for which absolutely no reason could be given. And I think a psychological analysis of why these particular men developed the language-idiosyncrasies they exhibit is not to the point 9. I am referring to Rudolph Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (London : Rou tledge and Kegan Paul, Limited, 1937) and Philosophy and Logical Syntax ( London : Kegan Pau l, 1 935) . I am not in a posi tion at present to say anything about !1-fcaning and Necessity ( Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1 947) . But if my poin t can be made as regards the earlier, more explicitly antimetaphysical stage of Cun ap's thought, I have a feeling that it could be established more readily for the later. r o. I have in mind such men as John Wisdom and Norman Malcolm.

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here. Now whatever the grounds-whether that the world is made up of atomic facts, that the world is composed of organisms-in-situations, that the world is nothing but states of mind in various sequences and coexistences, or what have you-whatever the different grounds of the recommended linguistic change, these grounds are metaphysical. I say this first because I think I can find such general metaphysical positions actually operative in their thought. In the second place, this seems definitely suggested by the fact that their controversy concerning the nature and status of the logical is not resolved by empirical techniques. They seem to have no inclination to decide the issue by observation; observation is apparently irrelevant. But the neo-Wittgensteinian might obj ect. He might say that these philosophers have grounds for their views but that the grounds are not metaphysical; they are merely linguistic. To say that 'entailment' should be replaced by 'tautology,' to use one example, is simply to point out a similarity in the way 'entailment' is ordinarily used and the way 'tautology' is defined via entries in a truth-table. ( Of course there are also dissimilarities, as Hall's dissatisfaction intimates.) The recommend:1tion is therefore reasonable, since it gives insight into ordinary usage and thereby helps remove verbal perplexities which are the source of philosophical puzzlement. I do not feel comfortable, however, about any such interpretation of these philosophers of logic. They do not seem to be recommending a change in linguistic usage, and in particular they do not seem to be recommending a therapy for the removal of puzzlement. A statement of John Wisdom's expresses my uneasiness most accurately. "This natural­ ly gives rise to the question, 'If the proper business of philosophy is the removal of puzzlement, would it not best be done by giving a drug to the patient which made him entirely forget the statements puzzling him or at least lose his uneasy feelings ?' This of course will never do. . . . The philosopher's purpose is to gain a grasp of the relations between different categories of being, between expressions used j n different manners . . . . Only such treatment of the puzzles as increase a grasp of the relations between different categories is philosophical." 1 1 I do not wish to make too much of this verbal gesture of friendliness toward metaphysics-after all, Wisdom 1s much too sophisticated to I 1. "Ph ilosophical Perplexity," XXXVII ( 1936-37) , 77-78.

Proceedings

of

tlie

Aristotelian

Society,

Vol.

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allow himself to be caught by his own words. But apart from mere verbalisms, it does seem that the neo-Wittgensteinians have a metaphysics, the metaphysics embodied in common sense or everyday language. It is only on the supposition that everyday language is completely adequate, once it is clarified, that they are satisfied in reducing philosophy to recommendations, often contradictory, that serve to bring out the simi­ larities and dissimilarities of terms in everyday discourse. Moreover, there occurs frequently in the writings of this group an assumption to the effect that controversies between philosophers can be of two kinds only: either they are controversies as to matter of fact or they are opposing recommendations as to language. 1 2 But what is the ground of this restriction ? Why may there not be other kinds of controversies between philosophers; why may there not be categorial controversies ? That there cannot be is not itself an observable matter of fact. Is it just a linguistic recommendation on their part ? I think not. I think it involves a tacit metaphysics. It is tacitly supposed that the world is made up of matter of fact and language. I am not con­ cerned to oppose this metaphysics but simply to point it out. My argument is, then, not that every logic is metaphysical but that every philosophical metalogic is; each reflects a general categorial system. Nelson speaks of categories as "organizing or interpretative notions which are not empirically given, but which transcend experience." Something like this is what I have in mind by 'category,' tho1.1gh I am not too clear what he means by it. In particular, I do not under­ stand what he means by 'interpreting,' which he gives as the function of a category marking it off from empirical description. This is not meant as a criticism, since in dealing with categories ordinary modes of communication tend to break down. I cannot here attempt to say positively what a category is. 1 8 I think, i n fact, that this is one of the most difficult of all philosophical tasks; perhaps it is the source of most philosophical perplexities. Negatively, I would say that a category is not an empirical predicate, nor is it a merely linguistic predicate. In fact, I would warn that no category 1 2. Compa re, for example, Norman Malcolm, "Moore and Ord i nary Language," in Paul Arthur Sch iepp (ed.) , The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (Evanston and Chicago : Northwestern University, 19 42) . 13. I have tried to suggest, in the case of the category of value, what I mean by 'category' in "A Categorial Analysis of Va lue," Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIV, No. 4 ( October, 1947) , 333-44 ; this volume, pp. 177-93.

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properly appears as a predicate of any kind. I realize that I have spoken of entailment as a character or relation, and this I must now rescind. Categories are features (I purposely use a loose word) of the world revealed in the maj or syntactical forms necessary to a clarified language adequate to talk about the world. I would adhere to the earlier Wittgen­ steinian position that the structure of the world shows itself in the struct ure of our language-but only in a language much richer than Witt­ genstein's. Hence I would not speak of empirical statements as having cate­ gorial or metaphysical presuppositions, as does Nelson. That is, there are properly no categorial statements, and if there were, they would not be implied by empirical sentences since they would have to be in a metalanguage. There are rather only categorial aspects of our sentences. In my own metaphysics, entailment is one such syntactical aspect of some of our sentences. The world is so made up that some proposi­ tions do entail some propositions. This feature is there, to be dealt with in some fashion, to be given some basis and status, but not to be reduced to anything else. Some philosophers of logic, among them Nagel, deny this, or so it seems. But the denial that something is a category is itself categorial and can occur only on the basis of a general metaphysics. And this after all is the sum and substance of the present paper.

17 · The Mind

(1) · GHOSTS AND CA TEGORJAL MISTAKES Not all ghosts are the offspring of categorial mistakes; some are fathered by lustier disturbances.* However, if it is possible to get rid of even a few relatively harmless ones by grammatical remedies, i t is worth the try. Professor Ryle has attempted this with the concept of mind ( considered as a ghostly substance or hidden process). Unfortunately he has himself made a serious categorial mistake in the performance. He correctly diagnoses the post-Cartesian hallucination as due to a cate­ gorial error; the trouble is that he has hit upon the wrong confusion. Mr. Ryle's point ( to formulate it definitely and therefore misleadingly) is that mentalistic terms are dispositional words which have come to be treated as though they were episodic. It is this error, he believes, that has led to the supposition that there are mental events preceding those overt actions that can be described as intelligent, which, since not separately observable, must have a veiled or occult existence. The mistake in this analysis can be easily shown. The distinction be­ tween episodes and dispositions fits as naturally our talk about mental or cognitive affairs as it does our conversation about overt behavior. This is somewhat obscured by Mr. R yle's tendency to fasten his case upon the behavior of 'to know' and its derivatives. This verb comes from the same roots as 'can,' meaning to be able, to know how in the sense of possessing the appropriate ability or sk ill. It was th us in its origi nal usage 1 -6.

* Published in Philosophical Studies, Vol. VII, Nos. 1-2 ( January-February, 1 9 56) ,

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the generic dispositional term in the area of behavior. Despite later accre­ tions, it still displays this character; it feels wrong to use it episodically. The distinction between 'knowing how' and 'knowing that' does not undercut this deeper matter. We may say "I have just now come to know how to do it" equally with "Only yesterday did I know that he was re­ sponsible," but in both cases we are not so much relating an occurrence as specifying the acquiring of a disposition. We do not comfortably de­ scribe an episode by saying, "From 9 :oo to 9 :0 5 A.M. I was knowing that the tobacco crop had been destroyed by the drought." But, though this is true for 'to know,' it is not for many other mental­ istic or cognitive terms. Except for the extraordinary definiteness of tempo­ ral boundaries, the event just recounted improperly could be satisfactorily depicted, "From 9 :oo to 9 :05 A .M. I was thinking about the fact that the to­ bacco crop has been destroyed by the drought." Indeed, 'to think,' along with such verbs as 'to experience,' 'to perceive,' 'to sense' ( both in its nar­ rower and its wider senses) , seems more naturally used as episodic than as dispositional terms, j ust as the converse obtains for 'to grasp,' 'to under­ stand,' 'to believe' as well as 'to know.' There are of course exceptions for each of these instances; my point is not that we can make any hard and fast classification of episodic and dispositional words taken out of context, but that it is wrong to file all mentalistic terms in the folder marked 'dispositional words,' and then on this basis adj udge all descrip­ tions involving the concept of mental events or acts to be grammatically wrong. My contention is as ancient as Aristotle, who made it, by distinguish­ ing, in his system, between first and second actuality and correspondingly first and second Potentiality in the area of learning-knowledge-thought. A man can acquire knowledge of mathematics whereas a stone cannot. Sup­ pose a certain man has acquired this knowledge; it is then not merely potential but actual in his case, yet he may not at a given moment actually be exercising it, so that in a second sense it may be only potential at that time. To remove this point from its Aristotelian wrappings, we have ten­ dencies to think, experience, perceive, imagine, and love but also partic­ ular, actual instances of thinking, experiencing, perceiving, imagining, and loving. In this respect our mental universe of discourse is no different from our physical. Yet, though we do distinguish dispositions from particular occurrences in both areas, there are radical differences in our manner of talk about

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them. Consider dispositional terms. I say, "The desk is movable," also, "The desk is perceivable." How do I verify these statements? Obviously by occurrences. In the first case, however, I need not see the desk being moved ; it is sufficient to find it moved. Moreover, if I do observe its being moved, I do not merely note an act of a mover, I must see the desk chang­ ing its location. In the second case, on the other hand, verification is not obtainable by looking at the desk after it has been perceived and observing that something has happened to it. Rather, I simply perceive the desk and note this fact ; nor do I need to see it as in the process of being modified by my "act" of perceiving it. Similar differences mark the usage of episodic terms in these two universes of discourse. I think I have shown that Mr. Ryle made a categorial mistake in his identification of the categorial mistake giving rise to the concept of ghostly mental acts. The misdemeanor fathering the concept is of a different breed. It comes from the fact that many of our cognitive and mentalistic verbs are descendants of action-words and still bear traces of their ancestry. 'Grasping an idea' would seem to resemble 'grasping a niblick'; 'compre­ hending the strands in his thought' might appear akin to 'seizing together the threads in the loom.' Originally 'to perceive' meant to lay hold of, 'to experience' signified to make trial of or to test. There is, I think, a reason behind this phenomenon. Cognitions are like actions in being upon or about what may be called their objects. This can be represented by saying that they are properly expressed by transitive verbs. It would be untoward to treat the following (taken as cognitive de­ scriptions) as complete sentences: "He is grasping," "I am understand­ ing," "She is conceiving." We must be careful here, however. In the ordinary sense no impropriety is involved in certain intransitive usages of mentalistic verbs. To the question "What are you doing? " it is sometimes proper to reply, "I am thinking" just as at other times, "I am j ust sitting." I do not believe it is helpful in such instances to introduce cognate accusatives, to say that "I am thinking" is elliptical for "I am thinking a thought" or "I am sensing" for "I am sensing a sensum." There are some intransitive action-verbs for which cognate accusatives are not readily available. "I am dancing a dance" may seem permissible, but what accusa­ tive could we introduce into "I am sitting" or "I am running? " Such action-verbs do not bother too much, for we (sophisticated philosophers) would correct common speech or discount it in view of our acceptance of Newton's third law: "to every action there is always opposed an equal

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reaction." My sitting is an act upon a seat ; my running, upon the ground or a treadmill. We thus feel it proper with such intransitive verbs to introduce a prepositional phrase as an oblique complement. We have nothing comparable to Newton's third law in the case of cognitive verbs. Nevertheless oblique complements or cognate accusatives seem just as much demanded when there is no direct object as they are in instances of intransitive verbs of action. This is striking and indicates, it seems to me, something very deeply characteristic of everyday thought. Cognate accusatives, I have said, do not help much. It is really a philoso­ pher's device smelling of occultism to speak of thinking a thought, per­ ceiving a percept, sensing a sensation, believing a belief, as though there were such entities as thoughts, percepts, sensations, beliefs, in their own right. These expressions cover without concealing to the nai:ve eye the fact that they really contain no object-word, that they are elliptical. In ordinary speech we would have explicit objects (whether direct or oblique), so that we would speak of .thinking about supper, perceiving the turn in the road, sensing the odor of honeysuckle, believing that the man before me is my long lost brother. In the respect in question, cognitive verbs are, I contend, like verbs of action. Thus it is easy to confuse them with the latter in another regard in which they are highly dissimilar. It always makes sense to ask, "What happened to the object as a result of your behavior ? " when we make a statement using a verb of action; this is not the case when our statement simply asserts a cognition. Our friend says, "I noticed a dangerous nail protruding from the wall and gave it a good blow with my hammer." To this it is appropriate to respond, "What effect did your blow have upon it ? " but hardly, "What did your noticing it do to it? " We smile when Johnny, coming home from school with very red ears, explains the phe­ nomenon by saying that his teacher must have been thinking about him ; we take the matter seriously, however, when he admits that his teacher boxed his ears for having pulled Susan's pigtails. We might express this by saying that although mental acts, like physi­ cal ones, have objects, they are, unlike the latter, ineffectual. Of course we often do speak as though they directly modified their objects, but these cases seem quite transparently elliptical for complex statements containing action-words proper. We may be quite satisfied when, upon asking Nell's father why she is crying in her room, he tells us that he saw her hit her baby brother over the head with his fire truck. But I surmise that our

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satisfaction is due to a sense that her father let some overt behavior on his part go unsaid. Personally, I would be unhappy about designating cognitive phe­ nomena "ineffectual acts" just as I am about describing them as "mental acts." It is better not to refer to them as "acts" at all, to save 'acts' for actions that fall under Newton's third law: ineffectual acts seem such strange creatures, having something ghostly about their make-up. Not doing anything to anything, how can they be observed? To speak of their being "lived through" or "enjoyed" doesn't help much. And if one is constituted like the present author, 'introspection' is not of appreciably greater aid. I find, like William James, that whenever I look for mental goings-on I come up with perceptions of bodily processes. It may be obj ected that mental acts are not ineffectual; the reason we do not find them doing anything is that we look in the wrong places; they modify their subj ects, not their obj ects. Now this, I think, is a mistake or in any case is a confusing and dangerous way to talk. · Actions proper do have their effects upon their agents : if I lift the pail of water I thereby depress myself; in running I push the ground back but propel myself for­ ward. On the other hand, when I see the pail or think of Newton's law of motion, I add nothing to my weight nor do I displace myself even minutely. To respond that the effects upon me are mental is surely close to begging the question. In any case ( and this perhaps is all the present context demands just as it is all it permits), the remark may be made that if there are effects of knowings, thinkings, and cognizings generally upon those who indulge in them, these are quite different from commonly ob­ servable repercussions of overt doings. I think it best not to talk of mental acts at all. I agree with Mr. Ryle that there are no mental episodes. But what then are we to do with cogni­ tive verbs? Surely not treat them as dispositional words. A clearing up of confusions in this matter calls for a more radical step. It demands that we think of cognitive verbs as in a different universe of discourse from verbs of action. It requires a shift from everyday language-a shift required by everyday language itself-in order that we eliminate the mentalistic ghost. I urge sensitivity to our context, which in the present case is theoretical, not practical; philosophical, not everydayish. The universe of discourse appropriate to cognitive expressions ( qua cognitive, as Aristotle would say) is semantical and referential, that of action-words is causal and existential. Each is abstract; each has as its basis a concrete world of

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episodes and dispositions which the one treats in one way or under one aspect, the other in another. Neither approach is occult or committed to strange and hidden entities. For everyday purposes of communication on practical affairs, these universes of discourse need not be differentiated; for philosophical purposes of critical analysis they must be kept distinct. I realize that the preceding paragraph is cryptic to a degree that must prove exasperating to the linguistic casualists and at least baffiing to many others ; I have appended it, however, to indicate that any assumption to the effect that the only alternative to Mr. Ryle's account of cognitive terms is a Cartesian ghost, an unobservable and useless mind tucked away in a bodily machine, is not necessarily valid. But whether the suggested third option be acceptable or not, the main point of this paper still stands : the ghostly concept of mind is due to a categorial mistake but not to any such error as that to which Mr. Ryle attributes it. It comes not from treating certain behavioral dispositions as episodes but from failure to note that, despite their kinship to verbs of action both etymologically and in point of demanding at least oblique complements if not direct accusatives, cogni­ tive verbs are dissimilar from them in their grammar in a larger sense. This can be intimated by saying that it is relevant to ask what happened to the object as a result of the action upon it, but not what modification it underwent as an effect of its being cognized.

(2) · THE ADEQUACY OF A NEUROLOGICAL THEOR Y OF PERCEPTION

Dr. Russell Brain, speaking about the brain in his Preface to Dr. Smythies' new book, Analysis of Perception, comments that "until recently so little was known about the brain that philosophers who wrote about perception could confine themselves to a linguistic exposition of their own introspection and a time-worn stock-in-trade of illusions and hallucinations, such as pink rats, of which they had usually no personal experience" and adds, "The philosopher who would do justice to per-

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ception today must have in addition to his philosophical training an advanced knowledge of neurophysiology, electronics, neurology, psycholo­ gy and psychiatry, and preferably should himself have taken a hallucino­ genic drug."* I do not want to pretend that I measure up to these high standards any better than the next philosopher; indeed, I have not even availed myself of Dr. Brain's last-mentioned prescription in order to write this paper knowledgeably, whatever suspicions to the contrary may arise in the reader's mind before he .finishes it. But topically, at least, I am in the clear. The subject of this paper is not the adequacy of an epistemological theory of perception but that of a neurological one. Moreover, I can ease my position a bit by making a countercharge : the neurologist's condemnation of the epistemologist's neglect of facts springs from a failure to see the difference in the jobs performed by the philosopher and the scientist in studying perception. The former is concerned with the nature of perception and of its veridi­ calness when it is veridical and its erroneousness when it is erroneous. The latter investigates conditions under which it occurs, formulates uniformities of these and states and tries to test explanations of them. Being empirical, the scientist relies .finally on observations as his bedrock. This is not circular in any logically vicious sense, but it presupposes that answers to the philosophical questions have been or can be given, or that such questions are pointless-in any case the scientist cannot qua . scientist himself answer the epistemological queries without involving himself in a circle that is vicious. To put it differently : the philosophical problems here, as elsewhere, are not empirical, not resolvable by observational procedures alone, but logical, conceptual, systematic, or ( as I like to say perhaps a trifle nostalgically) categorial. Dr. Smythies, I might add, rej ects this division of labor and makes the bold claim that "if a comprehensive scientific theory of perception can be constructed, then the philosophical puzzles about perception-together with the purely philosophical theories evoked by these puzzles-will, as it were, wither away." Unfortunately, the reader who expectantly pushes h>eyond the Introduction, in which Dr. Smythies lays down this re­ assuring proposition, finds his hopes dashed. The puzzles, instead of withering away, at least in this reader's mind, gain a new virility and Published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. XX, No. I ( September, 1 959) , 75-84.

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proliferate alarmingly. Our sanguine doctor adopts a representative epistemology and then, to avoid the traditionally recognized difficulties in this view, makes the immediate data of experience spatial entities, giving us a choice between two cosmologies, one of which is made up of m + r 4 -dimensional spatio-temporal systems and the other of one system with 4m + 4 dimensions, where m is the total number of human individuals, past, present and future. If any of my readers are intrigued by this approach I urge them by all means to look into Dr. Smythies' book, but not with any confidence that their philosophical puzzles will be cleared away, lest they discover within it a veritable Pandora's box of new ones. To more timid and orderly souls, I suggest a return to the idea of a division of labor between the neurologist and the epistemologist. We can then assign to the former the study of the neurological conditions of the occurrence of perceptions, their regularities and rival explanations thereof. We may if we wish say that neurophysiology is concerned with causal theories of perception. To do this, however, would be possibly misleading in two ways. First, it might inadvertently lead us to suppose that neuro­ physiology is to take sides in favor of a specific epistemological standpoint often called "The Causal Theory of Perception." I shall not criticize this view nor even attempt to formulate it but only characterize it as a theory which claims that perception is the causal sequence from physical stimulus through sense organ, afferent nerves to sensory areas of the brain, or possibly that sequence reversed via inference (of some strange, un­ conscious variety) . This confusion is fairly easily avoided. The other is more subtle. By saying that neurophysiology studies causal theories of perception we are tempted to say that there are causes of perceptions, that perceptions occur, that they are effects of neurological processes, that they are clearly not these processes themselves but quite different events which, to mark them off, may be designated "mental." Thus we seem to be dumped squarely in the middle of the old ontological problem of mind-body. Now I hold nothing against a problem simply because it is old. I am not of the generation that asserts with little consideration and no qualms that puzzles that are time-worn are "pseudo." Even psychologists discover occasionally that some of their questions date back of day before yester­ day, and philosophers, certainly those whose hair is turning gray, have made their peace with this disquieting kind of fact. No ; the trouble with the mind-body problem in this connection is not that it is old but that it is

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nonscientific. So, if we characterize the neurophysiologist's job as the investigation of the causes of perception we must watch out lest this lead us to suppose that he is studying the actions of body upon mind, of physical events upon mental, and thus is himself all bound up in a dual­ istic ontology. This would of course destroy the divi sion of labor we have just set up a moment since. With this in mind, one sees how inappropriate it would be for a philos­ opher to accuse any scientist of overlooking facts, of omitting actual occurrences (which of course must have causes and effects) from his account, more specifically, of charging a neurological theory of inadequacy in that it leaves out mental events. I am therefore relieved of a serious source of embarrassment that this type of condemnation would involve. How can there be theories of causes that are not iis ipsis theories of effects? Yet neurology studies neurones and nerve conductions, not mental states. It operates in a closed circuit, so to speak. If we wish to apply the cause-effect terminology, the effects as well as the causes it investigates are physiological. It is just a source of embarrassment to it to have in its otherwise orderly stock the concept of mental events that some­ how crop up in the brain or pop out of it into some extraphysical world. And this embarrassment is matched by an equally vexing frustration on the part of philosophers. If one admits a mind-body problem into one's ontology, there seems to be no satisfactory solution of it. Yet it will not do for either neurophysiologists or epistemologists to deny mind, or what might be called the fact of conscious experience, out­ right. You can look the other way if you will, put on your theoretical blinkers and concentrate on physical and bodily events, but in this field of vision you will never find what all of us are so intimately acquainted with in our own lives, namely, perceivings of physical things and events, disap­ pearing only in profound sleep and, presumably, at death. Indeed, what can the neurologist do in hunting the laws of the physiology of sense un­ less, in his own experience or through the reports of subjects, he has at hand identifications of sensory experiences not at all to be confused with electrochemical changes in the nervous system with which he attempts to correlate them? Facing this somewhat chronic yet increasingly acute disorder, I have decided to put caution aside, that is, to leave the mild therapeutics of analysis and treat our case with a dangerous dosage of speculation in the form of the following proposition :

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The neurological theory of perception is inadequate in that it omits not some set of mental events standing in relations of cause and effect to neurological ones but the intentionality or referential character of all perception. The boldness of my treatment of our common complaint lies not so much in its positive element as in its negative. I say, in substance, use a surgeon's knife ; cut out entirely rhe concept (traceable, I think, to the pernicious influence of Descartes) of the mental as a domain of existents, of occurrences or events whether or no requiring a unifying ego. This still leaves the mental as, to use an old term, a function, that of referring, cognizing, meaning. After all, this is all we need, and it was not it but rather the idea of mental events demanding causes and producing effects that was the source of our trouble. It will help us appreciate the advantage we have gained by this move if we note that even granting that there are mental events there must also be intentionality vested in them to do what is necessary: qua events in their own right they do not satisfy the requirements. Suppose we had per­ ceptions simply as occurrences, quite on a par with physical events except, let us say, that they are nonspatial and private, each one being open to observation by a single person only. They would be rather strange entities, somewhat like nonsensical doodlings one keeps locked in one's desk as too personal for either destruction or revelation to others, but never as referring to facts in the great physical world embracing us all. No; the perceptions we want must be "of" or "about" dogs or students or tobacco pi pe s or the bald spot on the head of the man seated in front of us. With­ out this referential dimension they could not serve as observations of any­ thing, thus as a basis of all our empirical knowledge ; they would only be strange entities occasionally but infrequently observed themselves, like secret charms that supposedly unsuperstitious people keep hidden upon their persons. That perceptions cannot be logically proved to be intentional may be granted ; indeed I would like to hear it shouted in a loud voice. It is one of those categorial ultimates you would show yourself absurd in trying to prove. But certain considerations may indicate ways of making it more palatable to those who, in spite of Thomas Reid and the whole school of common-sense realism, remain under the bad influence of the British empiricists who, trying to ape Newton in the region of human experience,

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set up a realm of mental particles attracting one another by laws of mental gravity. To this group I would point out that an intentionalistic account of experience is far more ancient than an existential ; the latter is indeed just an episode, an accident due to a misguided attempt to be "scientific." St. Thomas, I think , makes it quite clear that his sensible and intelligible species are not what we directly know but means by or through which we do. And in this he speaks for an ancient tradition. Moreover, the masters i n the British school, try as they would to have their "ideas" or "per­ ceptions" merely occurrent objects for our inspection, could not avoid falli ng into compromising expressions. I have space for only one citation, comi ng from Hume himself : "When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impression of one obj ect to the idea or belief of another, it is not determin'd by reason, but by certain pri nciples, which associate together the idea of these obj ects, and unite them in the imagination" (italics mine) . In extenuation one might urge that we allow Hume to speak with the vulgar while himself thinking with the learned. This calls for two com­ ments. First it admits that for the vulgar our immediate experience is intentional. Ordinary folk do not ordinarily talk about observing one's ideas, perceptions, or so forth, but of perceiving (or more usually, seeing, hearing, smelling) another tooth in baby's mouth, a new conviction in John's voice since he was elected president of his class, the odor of the hyacinths bordering the front lawn. Second, how could Hume identify his perceptions even for his learned followers and thereby make explicit his laws of association save through their obj ects? And this leads to an interrogation of our own experience. Do we perceive perceptions? Obviously not (if I may speak for all of us) : we perceive tables and chairs, knives and forks, the moon and the stars. Turning to our scientific colleagues, what are the perceptions they need, use, and have ? Clearly those which are observations of sense organs, nerve materials, meter deflections. One may, I suppose, use words as one will, but if 'perception' refers to something without built-in reference to obj ects, specifically to physical ones, then 'theory of perception' does not in turn refer to the kind of thing we worry about in epistemology or are concerned with i n this paper. I hope my mode of expression makes it transparent that I am not just offering behaviorism again in a casual style. You may call it "function-

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alism" if you will, but if you do, please associate it not with an Angel but with an Aristotle. Mind is a function of the body, a way or ways in which the body acts. But it is an odd way of acting. It operates upon its objects without doing anything to them and indeed without itself being observ­ able. If I take a hammer and hit the nail protruding from the wall I do something to it and my striking it can itself be seen. But if I just see it, the nail remains unmolested by my act, and (strictly speaking) no one can see me do it. Even more disconcerting: I can only hit a nail that is there ; yet I may "see" one (if I am subject to an hallucination) that is not. It is perhaps best not to call this an "act" at all, but a kind of referring, a cognizing, a being-about-something. Clearly then the "function" I have in mind is not muscular, not even the delicate and complex one of ad­ justing eye, head, and body generally so as to get a good view of the object, for these, though associated with seeing the protruding nail and perhaps necessary to it, are not it. I am suggesting, like the most radical behaviorist, that there are no mental events or conscious occurrences ; quite unlike him, I am admitting mind or consciousness. It is a dimension, to speak metaphorically, that some physical events have but most lack. At this point another striking difference between my proposition and that of the behaviorist appears. The physical events that have this dimension are not molar ones, of the whole body, including muscles, skeleton, and the rest, but only of nerves, particularly those in the cortex of the brain (here of course I would cross into the specialty of the neurologist were I to be more specific). Being conscious of something-as one is in perception-is not talking about it, or handling it, or getting ready to do something to or with it; it is a sort of referring to it, a meaning it of an assertive type. This is not, I am intimating, an event in its own right but a dimension, function, aspect (there really are no good words for it) of the neurological events com­ monly thought of as its immediate and necessary conditions. These latter, like all other physical events, have their quite unexceptional though com­ plex spatial, temporal, and qualitative properties. They are unique precisely in that they also are "about," or "of"-they have a semantical dimension. My way is beset with pitfalls and obstructions. What I have just said might be taken to mean that they (the appropriate neurological events) are symbols that signify the objects of perception. This, I assure you, is not what I am saying. If they were, a neurologist would be in as good a

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position to see what his subj ect is seeing as is the latter, indeed, better, since his subject, save when under the most exceptional circumstances, would not observe the appropriate symbols (his own brain-events) at all. But it is notorious that neurologists are not particularly successful in reading their patient's minds. And even if they should become so, say in 1 00 years, that would not affect my point, for they would then, I am presuming, infer the perceptions from their subj ects' neural states, not have them themselves. Indeed, perceiving neural events is in no peculiar relation to what is perceived which is not to be found in any other per­ ception whatever; for observation, neural processes are j ust obj ects like any other : they do not somehow contain or hide the perceptions which are, if you will allow me so to put it, the semantical aspect or function of some of them. To speak as though they did would be to suppose per­ ception to be an occurrence, an event, an existential entity which eludes our most powerful microscope, which is precisely what I am denying. As far back as Hobbes the physiologist has fumbled with this bother­ some yet fundamental feature of perception. We do not see things in our heads, but in the outside world. This led Hobbes to identify perception with an outgoing impulse to the sensory organs. This superstitious physiology has now been canonized into a "law of projection," as T. C. Ruch christens it : " . . . the law of projection is that stimulation of a sensory system at any point central to the sense organ gives rise to a sensation which is projected to the periphery and not to the point of stimulation." 1 There are, unfortunately, two rather conclusive obj ections against this so-called "law." First, there is no evidence whatever that such a process occurs; no trace of such a neurological activity can be found. Second, there is no reason whatever to suppose that what is presumably proj ected from the brain ever is in the brain in the form necessary ( namely, as the subject perceives it in the outer world) . Dr. Brain, my authority here, describes the cortical activity involved when one visually perceives a circle : it, he says, "is divided into two halves, one in each cerebral hemisphere. . . . Neither half is semi-circular; it is roughly the shape of [ an elongated horseshoe], the closed end lying in front and the open end behind. The right half of the circle is represented in the left cerebral hemisphere and vice versa, and the lower quadrant is represented above the upper." Moreover, since each retina sends in its impulse, "each 1 . J. R. Smy thies, Analysis of Perception (New York : Humanities Press, Inc., 1957) ' p. 1 9·

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half of the circle has a double representation. . . . '' "Thus," Dr. Brain con­ cludes, "when we perceive a two-dimensional circle we do so by means of an activity in the brain which is halved, reduplicated, transposed, inverted, distorted, and three-dimensional."2 What goaded otherwise respectable neurophysiologists into inventing this mythological process of proj ection? I take it it was the undeniable commonsensical fact that we perceive tables and chairs out in the room, not in our heads. But this is only one aspect of the things we perceive; they are also colored, frequently hard, sometimes odorous, and these properties are no more to be found in the percipient's head than the spatial ones (and the physiologist is ill-advised who invents some alchemy by which brain events, displaying only the so-called primary qualities, are transmuted into something else exemplifying secondary ones) . I perceive this sheet of paper as white, rectangular, and spotted with disfiguring black marks. Why not make the bold assumption that the only thing possessing the congeries of properties I perceive is the sheet of paper? Why look into our brains for them, or invent some unobservable mental events that display them? The answer of course is that I perceive them; this is an activity on my part now going on and is not in any sense part of the paper. In this predicament I return to my proposition, ex­ panding it to say that the occurrence of the seeing (in the sense of a referring in direct perceptual fashion to the sheet characterized as I have intimated) , is a complex neurological "act"-an act of intention. I fancy I see my reader's eyebrows raised, and I do not hold it against him. An activity that is not something occurrent in its own right ? As I said, I am unhappy about this terminology; it would perhaps be best simply to say that brain events are activities with their own properties for observation; but in some instances they are also referrings to entities other than themselves with properties quite other than theirs. Still, the act metaphor is not wholly inapropos. In every performance we must distinguish between the action, what the action is upon, and what is done to the latter. These have quite different properties. I dig a posthole for my mailbox. The action is upon the dirt. The dirt is reddish brown, hard, heavy; my behavior is not any of these. The hole dug is round, about two feet deep, wider at the top than the bottom; my action cannot be so characterized. My activity is a swinging and a strik2. Mind, Perception and Science (Philadelphia : F. A. Davis Co., 1 95 1 ) , pp. 8, 9.

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ing with a mattock to loosen the earth, and a shovelling, involving push­ ing with the right foot, li fting and throwing. One might, seeing the hole and pile of dirt, infer my action without having witnessed it, but only on the basis of regularities noted in other cases ; there are rto inherent' similarities or necessary connections between the behavior and what ' it produces ; quite other activities might have effected the same results. This analogy holds i n some ways for perception and in some not. It fails to hold because perception is a cognitive "act" and cognitive acts are· not, qua cognitive, themselves observable nor do they modify their objects ;: they are just references of the taking-to-be or sentential, as contrasted with nominative, variety. But there is a resemblance so that it is not wholly misleading to call them "acts." There is someone or something that performs them at a certain time and in a certain place even though · they are not, qua references, themselves objects for observation;· ·and they themselves have obj ects, though they effect nothing upon them. Now the properties of their objects are quite different from theirs, my perceiving the hole is not conical nor two feet deep. And even the time may be dif­ ferent. My seeing a distant star may occur appreciably later than what l see-indeed, the star may no longer even exist. This should not be the source of any apprehension ; for the cognizing or referring is not a cause­ effect relation which operates over a continuous space-time distance refusing to jump any gaps. But now I have already got myself in deep water. As referring to or meaning its obj ect, perception has no spatio-temporal or other existential properties; in this aspect all its properties are semantical : it is more or _ less abstract, veridical perhaps in some respects , not in others, and so on. Yet it does occur and in this dimension it has just the properties of the brain event "associated with it" (as we sometimes say) . The latter is the only event hut it is an activity in two senses. It is both a cause-effect sort of thing and an i ntending or referring. We (theori zers) are tempted either to confuse the two, as in behavioristic materialism, or to rei fy them i nto two occurrences. Qua physiological activity they do somethi ng, but only upon spatio-temporally adj acent material. As mental or referential they modi fy nothi ng though they have objects. These are not other neurophysiological events nor sense data but whatever is perceived. So we must distinguish between two objects of action and two ways of acting upon them in the case of every neuro-

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physiological occurrence which 1s a perception. This is, of course, a distinction of reason, not a separation in existence. I think I am as aware of the many problems this suggestion carries with it as is anyone. It is this kind of situation that makes the philosophi­ cal undertaking so interesting ( and in that respect so unlike the psy­ chological, which allows its undertakers to rest at the end of each com­ pleted job). I shall not try even to list the obviously outstanding ones, to say nothing of proposing solutions for them. But as we started with the hallucinations flung at us by the neurologists perhaps it is fitting to end with them, though I shall deal with them far more lightly than their weight would seem to demand. If in normal perceptions under ideal conditions the appropriate brain events refer (in assertive fashion) to the very exemplifications of prop­ erties constitutive of their objects, what do abnormal, particularly hallucinatory, experiences intend ? What is it that displays their properties and is pointed out by the hallucinating brain events ? My answer must perforce remain cryptic in its brevity, though perhaps it would be perplexing even if I were allowed prolixity in its exposition. It amounts to : "Nothing at all." Some of the sting may be taken out of this by noting that, despite the special emphasis upon them by our neurological friends, hallucinations are, at least from our epistemological standpoint, simply striking cases of perceptual error. Indeed, our friends bear us out by describing the hal­ lucinatory effects of taking mescal as ranging all the way from just an added beauty and splendor of the sensory qualities one would normally experience to complete dream-like sequences. But we would ourselves be under an illusion if we thought that, by showing perceptual error to be in principle a single problem, we have thereby in any sense solved it. The difficulty is, of course, an ancient one for the epistemological monist ; he has always been bothered by the question, What has the properties we misperceive something to have ? He cannot escape in the way his dualistic colleague chooses, by saying, "A mental representative has them." Now it is always open to him to shift from defense to offense and say to his colleague, "You touch me on a sore spot, but you have your own sensitive areas every bit as painful as thi s is to me"; but such a retort, though thoroughly justified, is, when resorted to, an evading of the issue. I have, in this predicament, just two lines of assistance I may cast him.

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One is to note that the position I have sketched is not, so to speak, as monistic as some. There really are referring events other than the objects in every case of perception, veridical or erroneous. If it helps, one can say, with the scholastic, that in these the properties perceived or misperceived are "inexistentially or objectively present." I am loath to do this because it may leave the false impression that they are somehow there and do in a mysterious way characterize the act or event of perceiving. The other is to give the barest hint of a general semantics that may aid us by distinguishing two radically different kinds of reference: the nominative and the sentential. The former points, names, designates and cannot occur unless the object is there for reference. The latter says, claims, states and is quite legitimate as reference, though not as truth, in the absence of the object. Perceptions refer in the second way, like sentences, not names. They differ from sentences in not referring via conventional symbols. The second way must be hedged about with restrictions lest we fall into nonsense as distinguished from falsity (the first running neither of these dangers). I would specify two. The properties asserted must be namable or composed of namable elements combined in a namable way. And th ey , or their elements, must be exemplified by something. This is, if you please, a meaning criterion. In fact, I would not hesitate to add a psychological requirement, though I may be exceedingly rash in doing so : whoever makes an assertive reference (in our context, the percipient) must be having or have had a veridical experience for each elementary property asserted. If worked out, this account would, I believe, enter misperceptions under the heading of mix-ups of objects perceived ( in most cases involving a jumble of past and present ones). But I have not worked it out and there may be insuperable difficulties in the way of doing so. If this leaves my reader unhappy (and I am not completely pleased myself), and particularly if he is uncomfortable about hallucinations, I have nothing further at the moment to offer unless it be the wise advice of our neourological friends, whom we committed at the start: take some hallucinogenic drug and see for yourself what happens . I am half inclined to partake of their enlightenment myself.

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(3 ) · ON EXORCISING MENTAL GHOSTS

. . . I turn to a brief clarificatio n of my proposal 1 suggested by some incidental criticisms offered by Professor Hartshorne. 2 * Curiously, I am accused of following Ryle along the behaviorist way, but also of hiding an even ghostlier ghost in the machine than any that that gentleman attacked . I think that I should be allowed the privi lege of choice here, so I select the lesser of two evils to be faced, namel y, the latter.:1 Now I am n�t really afraid of ghosts, and if I deny their exi stence I do i t not to destroy them but · to make clear their status, to put them i n the correct category. My suggestion is that intentions ( in the sense of refer­ ences) are the mental atoms and that they are not events but " aspects," "dimensions," "functions" of physical events, namely, of cert:J in complex neurological events. My terminology is loose because I fi nd no precise j argon available. Intentions are like properties in bei ng i ncomplete, by nature dependent for existence upon something else, and universal in the sense that the same one may belong to several events. More partic­ ularly, they are like relations in holding of or between something and something else ( a neurological event and a perceived obj ect) . But they are unlike properties in that we do not observe them in observing what "has" them. More particularly, they are unlike relation s in that they can belong to one of their terms (the neu rological event) i n the ahsence of the other (the perceptual obj ect) in cases of error. Fi nally, they are unlike prop­ erties in a certai n inherent complexity. They may be said to include ordinary properties, but neither as exemplified by themselves nor by what 1. In "The Adequacy of a Neurological Theory of Percep tion,'' th is volume, pp. 3 26-37. 2. Charles Hartshorne, "Professor Hal l on Perception," Ph olosophy and Plu:­ nomenological Research , Vol . XXI, No. 4 (J une, 1 96 1 ) , 563-7 1 . * Published i n P/1ilosoplzy and Phen omen ological Research , Vol . XXI, No. 4 (June, 196 1 ) , 572-74. 3. By way of justifica tion I refer to the first paragraph on page 80 of my original article ( "The Adequacy of a Neurological Theory of Percep tion," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. XX, No. I [Sep tember, 1959 l and in th is vol ume, p. 330) and to my "Ghosts and Categori al Mista kes," Philosophical Studies, Vol. VII, Nos. 1 -2 (January-February, 1956) , 1-6, ;:i nd this volume, pp. 3 2 1 - 26.

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" has" them but by thei r objects ; thus they ca n themselves be called signs, natural or radical signs, identical with their objects ( in veridical percep­ tion) i n the quality or character of the latter's properties but non-identical in the factor of exemplific:ition ( in place of exemplication they have ascription). They may be called "acts" ( as they were by Brentano), but this not only misleads by suggesting that they are events, but confounds when it is realized that they affect nothing ( nothing happens to the objects they "act" upon). Such "entities" may be deemed odd, and they are odd in the sense of being unique, irreducible either to properties or to substances. But they are not strangers either to our ordinary experience or to our philosophical theories, except that ( outside the intentionalist tradition) they are seldom attended to. Hartshorne himself, it seems to me, tacitly assumes them. For despite his oddities of neural events that on the one hand are directly felt and on the other display all the colors, odors, shapes and sensory properties generally of what would ordinarily be called their objects, he apparently does not accept neurological solipsism; neural events are for him signs of external occurrences, sometimes, as in hallucinations, of external events that ''aren't there" ( otherwise they would not be hal­ lucinatory). But how, on my suggestion, can we pair intentions correctly with the neurological events that "have" them ? This is not, as a similar pairing is for Hartshorne, an a priori matter; the relation is not one of necessary isomorphism of mapping; the brain physiologist is not bound by any such limitation as the one Professor Hartshorne here dogmatically sets up. On the other hand, I seem to have forbidden myself the admission of an empirical method of doing this pairing, for I have said that one does not observe intentions in observing what "has" them. Clearly it would not do to say that the brain physiologist j ust observes two sets of events, namely neural events and intentions, and correlates them by seeing which has which. Still, an indirect empirical procedure is not ruled out. First, people do have certain intentions on certain occasions and fail to have them on others. Second, the brain physiologist can attain fairly reliable empirical knowledge ( although usually demanding some inferene+ through analogy) in some of these cases about the presence or absence of certain neurological patterns of occurrences. This is sufficient for the tentative pairing which is the best we can accomplish. However, this does requi re that the physiologist accept reports of his subjects on thier experiences

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and that we (philosophers) admit the meaningfulness of such reports. Such reports can be taken as reports of observations not of brain events nor of mental events (as themselves occurrences) but of the objects perceived (or hallucinated). Such observations are themselves intentions and their report is evidence of their occurrence.

(4) · M Y POSSESSION OF M Y EXPERIENCES

My experiences are not mine in the same way in which my prop­ erties are mine or my property is mine.* My properties are mine in that I exemplify them ; I do not exemplify my experiences. My property is mine in that I am legally protected in using it as I will, providing I do no harm to others, and prohibiting others' use of it; I do not use my experiences (save metaphorically) nor, consequently, am I legally pro­ tected in their use. The possessive in the expression 'my experiences' is much closer to that whereby we ascribe parts to a whole-they are "its" parts ; we speak of the legs that belong to that table and, even more strik­ ingly for our purpose, of Tuesday of last week, of the play's first act or opening scene, of the symphony's second movement. If this last use is literally identical with that found in 'my experiences' it would follow that my experiences are parts of me. It would also follow that the possessive pronoun neither warrants nor expresses the ascription of privacy to the experiences referred to; the movements of a symphony are not private nor is the play's first act. These consequences may seem undesirable and thus lead one to say that the possessive in ' my experiences' is only analogous to that which expresses the relation between a whole and its parts. But I should like to explore the possibility that we have here a literal identity or something very close to it. The first consequence is perhaps less disconcerting. One would prob­ ably not want to say that one is wholly composed of one's experiences. Indeed, if experiences are private, and it seems to me undeniable that they • Published in Philosophical Studies, Vol. XIII No. 4 (June, 1962) , 59-62.

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are, it would be impossible to allocate them to different persons, as "mine," "yours," "his," if each person were simply a whole of his experiences-we need something "intersubjective" to make sense of the distinction between the possessives in different personal pronouns. This is a phase of the prob­ lem of solipsism, and I do not propose to go into it further here. The solution appears simple enough. I am a whole composed of other parts as well ; these include my body and the events that form its history (I shall not here ask whether it may not properly be considered as composed of the latter). The second consequence is more serious and will require a somewhat more drastic remedy. The privacy of my experiences, I suggest, lies not in their possession by me (with one unmentionable exception, I have no private bodily parts), but in their character as experiences. They are intentional and thereby mental. They are about things other than them­ selves. The obj ects of our experiences are public-we see and hear planes, love and hate people ; the experiences themselves are private-my seeing and hearing, loving and hating are never yours ; we "share" them only in the sense of having similar ones about the same objects and recognized to be so. This leads to complications and demands distinctions not suitable for brief exposition. 1 My own somewhat tentative view is that intentions are not occurrences. They are "aspects" of neurological events. As such they are to be distinguished both from properties and from parts. In ob­ serving neurological events one never observes the experiences which I have called "aspects" of them. These aspects are like properties in that they depend ontologically upon something substantial whose aspects they are ; they are inherently incomplete. This is expressed by the use of the possessive pronoun we are investigating. Experiences do not float about loose, unattached. But unlike properties they cannot be observed ; they are lived, had, and thereby private. To accept this requires a modification of what was said above. Ex­ periences are not events, not themselves existents. Therefore they are not, by themselves, parts of anything ; specifically, my experiences do not form parts of me. Yet it is not necessary to scrap the whole position suggested earlier. The neurological events of which my experiences are intentional 1 . A somewhat longer statement can be found in "The Adequacy of a Neuro­ logical Theory of Perception," this volume, pp. 326-37, and in "On Exorcising Men tal Ghosts," this volume, pp. 338-40.

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Categorial Analysi.)·

aspects are p;__irts ( :ilthough not the only parts) of me. So I have parts which have private ' \1 spects," though my h aving them in the sense of their being mine does not co n stitute their pri vacy ( my having them in the sense of their being lived th ro ugh, however, is their privacy, since what is public is obj ective) . There are many possible obj ections to this, some perhaps very serious, but one which I do not think has much weight is that I have begged the question by using a possessive pronoun to pick out the neurological and behavioral events ( which latter I would also include as parts of me) as well as the particular body which go to make me up ; they are all "mine." This is no more question-begging than to speak of a certain table's legs, top, and other parts as "its" and then to say that the table is a whole made up of these parts or to refer to a symphony's movements as "its" and then claim that the symphony is composed of those movements and is not something further that possesses them. It would not help to have a soul or self, over and above the body and its history, to serve as possessor, since to do the trick such a soul would need to be "mine" and if there is any begging of the question it would surely be found here ( who is the "I" that has the soul marking it as "mine" not "yours" or "his"? ) . This account of privacy seems to involve me in the bugbear of intro­ spection. This however can mean two quite different things ( and perhaps part of its bugbearity arises from the confusion of them) . On the one hand, I have perceptions of my own body and particularly of its interior­ pain, shortness of breath, pressure, palpitation of the heart. I do not have experiences of the interior of another's body. These may be called "private" simply because I alone have them. Their privacy lies in the fact of their being exclusively mine as far as their objects are concerned. (No neo-Wittengensteinean or other behaviorist can give a plausible account of my experience of another's pain-at best I get only symptoms of the pain, not the pain itself.) That the only pain I experience is mine, that is, is a pain in my body not another's, is an empirical fact that might have been different, might have been like the bloodied finger I see, which may on one occasion be mine, on another, yours. Indeed, it is not even a uni­ versal fact, as Siamese twins have reported. Science fiction for this space age can help us see this. Various space­ travelers, each sealed in his own capsule, can only see the instruments within his own flying prison. This then is a private visual experience for each space-traveler. But this kind of privacy is clearly a matter of fact,

The Mind

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dependent upon the nature of ou r world and of our feeble means of probing its immensities. Another sort of privacy is not, at least in the same sense, factual. The obj ects of experience are public but the experiencing of them never is. It is something lived through and precisely in this character may be dubbed "private." This is true of all experiences; pain has no special privilege-our experiencings of colors and odors and sounds are equally private. Thus my possession of my experiences can, at best, account only for their factual sort of privacy (I do not literally share the various visual aspects of the interiors of their capsules). It cannot account for their "logical" privacy. Still, this latter privacy is not incompatible with the interpretation rendered of the meaning of the possessive in such expres­ sions as ' my experiences.' So the fact that this interpretation does not make the privacy a function of the possession is not an insuperable ob­ j ection to this interpretation in the eyes of one who thinks that all experience is, in one perfectly good sense, private.

The Writings of Everett W. Hall

BOOKS

What Is Value? New York : The Humanities Press ; London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 952. 2. Modern Science and Human Values. Princeton : D. van Nostrand Company, 1 956. 3. Philosophical Systems. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1 960. 4. Our Knowledge of Fact and Value. Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 1 5)6 1 . 5. Categorial Analysis: Selected Essays of Everett W . Hall on Philosophy, Values, Knowledge, and the Mind, edited by E. M. Adams. Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 1 964. 1.

ARTICLES

1. "Some Meanings of Meaning in Dewey's Experience and Nature," Journal of Philosophy, Vol . XXV, No. 7 ( March 29, 1 928 ) , 1 69-8 1. 2 . "The Meaning of Meaning in Hollingworth's Psychology of Thought,'' Journal of Philosophy, Vol . XXV, No. 1 5 ( July 19, 1 928), 393-403.

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3. "Of What Use Are Whitehead's Eternal Obj ects ? " Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVII, No. 2 ( January 1 6, 1 930 ), 29-44. 4. "F. H. Bradley on Idea as Image and as Meani ng," Monist, Vol. XL, No. 4 (October, 1 930 ) , 598-620. 5. "Bernard Bosanquet on the Psychical and the Logical Idea," Monist, Vol. XLI, No. 1 (January, 1 93 1 ) , 9 1 - 1 1 6. 6. "Relevance and Scientific Method," Journal of Philosop!Jy, Vol. XXIX, No. 20 ( September 29, 1 932 ) , 533-42. 7. "Continuity and Identity," Monist, Vol. XLII, No. 4 (October, 1 932 ), 533-63. 8. "Greek Philosophy," The National Encyclopedia ( Colliers ), 1932. 9. "Numerical and Qualitative Identity," Monist, Vol. XLIII, No. 1 (Jan­ uary, 1 933 ) , 88- 1 04. 10. "Focalized Identity," Monist, Vol. XLIII, No. 2 ( July, 1 933 ) , 203- 1 9. 1 1 . "Time and Causality," Philosophical Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 4 ( July, I 934 ) , 333-5o. 1 2. "Of What Use Is Metaphysics ? " Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXIII, No. 9 ( April 23, 1 936 ) , 236- 45. 13. "The Arbitrary in Ethics," Journal of Philosophy, Vol . XXXVI, No. 1 4 ( July 6 , 1 939), 379-85 . 14. "A Realistic Theory of Distortion," Philosoph ical Review, Vol. XLVII I, No. 5 ( Septe mber, 1 939 ) , 525-3 1 . 1 5. "Is Philosophy a Science ? " Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXIX, No. 5 (February 26, 1 942 ), 1 1 3- 1 8. 1 6 . "Some Dangers in the Use of Symbolic Logic in Psychology," Psych o­ logical Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 ( March, 1 942 ) , 1 42-69. 1 7. "Metaphysics" in Twentieth Cen tury Ph ilosophy . New York : Philosoph­ ical Library, 1 943. 1 8. "To Strengthen, Not to Compromise," Social Science, Vol. 1 8, No. 2 (April, 1943 ), 6 1 -6 7 . 1 9. "An Ethics for Today , " A merican Journal of Econom ics and Sociology, Vol . II, No. 4 ( J uly, 1 943 ) , 433-52. 20. "Perception as Fact and as Knowledge," Ph ilosoph ical Review, Vol . LIi, No. 5 (September, 1 943 ), 468-89. 2 1 . "The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Language," "I The Object Language," Min d, Vol. LIi, N.S., No. 20 7 ( July, 1 943 ), 230-46 ; "II Designation of the Object Language," Mind, Vol . LIi i , N.S., No. 209 (January, 1 944 ) , 2 5-4 7 . 22. "The Social Function of a State University" in Wartime Approaches to Liberal Education . University of Iowa Publication, New Series No. 1 3 1 2, ( Jun e, 1 943 ), 26-28.

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23. "The Philosophy of G . E. Moore," Philosophical Review, Vol . LI I I, No. 1 ( J anuary, 1 944 ) , 62-68 . 24. "Psychology and Philosophy after the War," Journal of Higher Educa­ tion, Vol . XV, No. 2 (Febr uary, 1 944 ), 79-82. ( In slightly di fferent form, published as "Psychology and Philosophy When Peace Comes," The Baconian Lectures for 194 3, Series on Aims and Progress of Research, No. 74, State University of Iowa, pp. 35-45. ) 25. "Government and the People," in Effective Living. East Lansing, Michigan : Michigan State College, 1 94 7. 26. "Substance," Colliers Encyclopedia, 1 949. 27. "On the Nature of the Predicate 'Verified,' '' Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIV, No. 2 ( April, 1947 ) , 1 23-3 1 . 28. "A Categorial Analysis of Value," Philosophy of Science, Vol . XIV, No. 4 (October, 1 947 ) , 333-44. 29. "Stevenson on Disagreemen t in Attitude," Ethics, Vol. LVIII, No. 1 ( October, 1947), 5 1 -56. 30. "The Metaphysics of Logic," Philosophical Review, Vol. LVIII, No. 1 ( January, 1 949) , 1 6-25. 3 I . "Introduction to the History of Ideas at Iowa" in Humanities in General Education, edited by Earl J. McGrath. William C. Brown Company, Dubuque, Iowa, 1 949. 32. "The 'Proof' of Utility in Bentham and Mill," Ethics, Vol. LX, No. 1 ( October, 1 949), 1 - 1 8 . 3 3 . "On Describing Describing," Mind, Vol. LXII, N.S., No. 2 4 7 ( July, 1 953 ) , 375-78. 34. "Practical Reason ( s ) and the Deadlock in Ethics," Mind, Vol . LXIV, N.S ., No. 255 ( J uly, 1 955 ) , 3 1 9-32. 35. "Ghosts and Categorial Mistakes," Philosophical Studies, Vol. VII, Nos. 1 -2 ( January-February, 1 956), 1 -6. 36. "Further Words on 'Ought,' " Philosophical Studies, Vol . VII, No. 5 ( October, 1 956), 74-78. 37. "Logical Subj ects and Physical Obj ects," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Vol. XVII, No. 4 (J une, 1 957) , 478-82. 38. " J ustice as Fairness : A Modernized Version of the Social Contract," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LIV, No. 22 ( October 24, 1 957), 662-70. 39. "What Is It a Philosopher Does ? " Lectures in the Humanities : Thir­ teenth Series, University of North Carolina Bulletin , Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (November, 1 957), 5-1 8. 40. "Hochberg on What Is 'Fitting' for Ewing and Hall," Min d, Vol. LXVII, N .S ., No. 265 (January, 1 95 8 ) , 1 04-6.

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_)

4 1 . "Existential Normatives," Journal of Ph ilosophy, Vol . L V , No. 2 ( J an­ uary 16 , 1 95 8 ) , 75-7 7 . 42. "The Adequacy of a Neurological Theory of Perception," Philosophy and Phen omenological Research , Vol . XX , No. I ( September, 1 959 ) , 7 5 -84. 43. "Speculation on a Logical Lapse of Kurt Baier , " Philosoph ical Studiei, Vol. XI , Nos. 1 -2 ( J anuary-February , 1 960 ) , 7- 1 0. 44. "Philosophy as Categorial Analysis," in Basis of the Contemporary Philosoph y, Essays in th e Philosophical Analysis, Vol. V, edited by Seizi Uyeda. Waseda Uni versity Press, Tokyo, 1 9 60. 45. "Some Fundamentals of Ethics," Hospital Adm inistration , Vol . V, No. 2 ( S pring , 1 9 6 0 ) , 2 2- 33. 46. "My Possession of My Experiences," Philosophical Studies, Vol . XII I � No. 4 ( June, 1 9 62 ) , 59-62 .