Idealism and Praxis: The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher 9783110329117, 9783110328691

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Michele Marsonet Idealism and Praxis The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher

READING RESCHER Volume 3

Michele Marsonet

Idealism and Praxis The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher

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

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected]

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2008 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 13: 978-3-938793-99-2 2008 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work

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CONTENTS Foreword by Nicholas Rescher

i

Preface

iii

Abbreviations for Rescher’s Main Works

vii

Chapter 1: The Historical Background 1. 2. 3.

The Significance of Pragmatism for Contemporary Philosophy Logical Positivism and Analytic Philosophy The Decline of Pragmatism and Its Resurgence

1 7 11

Chapter 2: Between Pragmatism and Analysis 1. Nicholas Rescher’s Life and Work 2. The Rise and Fall of Analytic Philosophy 3. Objective vs. Subjective Pragmatism

21 25 36

Chapter 3: The Primacy of Practice 1. 2. 3.

The Path to Ontological Objectivity The Theory of Rationality The Coherence Theory of Truth

45 52 58

Chapter 4: The Idealistic Stance 1. 2. 3. 4.

Whose Theory of Knowledge? Biological and Cultural Evolution Naturalism and Metaphysics Conceptual Idealism

69 75 82 89

Chapter 5: Science and Its Limits 1. Ontology and Epistemology 2. The Problem of Scientific Realism

99 107

Nicholas Rescher • Project Name

3. The Limits of Science

114

Chapter 6: Social and Natural Reality 1. 2. 3.

A Pragmatic Philosophy of Logic The Defence of Conceptual Schemes Metaphilosophical Issues

123 130 140

Chapter 7: Social and Political Philosophy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Philosophical Anthropology Political Pluralism Justice and Fairness What Is Morality? Morality and Rationality Relativism and Absolutism

151 157 162 165 170 173

Chapter 8: The Contemporary Debate 1. 2. 3.

Rescher, Quine, and Sellars Rescher and Today Neopragmatism Final Overview

181 192 201

Chapter 9: Bibliographical Sources: Chronological List of Rescher’s Books 1. Books by Nicholas Rescher 2. Writings About Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophy 3. Other Sources Index of Names

209 222 223 239

FOREWORD By Nicholas Rescher

O

ver the years I have written a good many books on a considerable variety of philosophical topics. In my own mind, they combine to tell a coherent story, so that something of an integrated overall system emerges among varied details of more specialized studies. But this circumstance may not be apparent to the casual reader, and the very proliferation cries out for synthesis. Here I see Michele Marsonet’s book as a tour de force. For it manages to present in one single volume a cogent and informative overview of my position in theoretical philosophy. In accomplishing this task, Marsonet has succeeded admirably in making my philosophical theses and theories accessible to colleagues who have neither the time nor the patience to pursue them across many diverse books. Moreover, his work provides an ample apparatus of references to the relevant literature produced by myself and by my critics to enable the reader whose interest is piqued by a particular idea to find the way to further details. A particularly valuable feature of Marsonet’s book lies in its provision of context. His wide ranging and deeply informed knowledge of American philosophy enables him to position my work in the wider setting of its relationships with various contemporary American and other colleagues. For the fact is that my philosophical views have often been stimulated by reaction to and opposition against the writings of others. I have had bones to pick with Davidson on conceptual schemes, with Feyerabend on rational inquiry, with Habermas on consensus, with Popper on objectivity, with Putnam on evolutionary epistemology, with Kripke on possible worlds, with Rorty on the task of philosophy and the nature of pragmatism, and so on. Marsonet throws an instructive and interesting light upon most of these conflicts and controversies. Highly interesting, too, is his analysis of my views as a launching-pad for a telling critique of analytic philosophy in its traditional guise. If this book induces its readers to look directly into some of my own—as I expect it will—there is one aspect of my writing that they should be aware of, namely that it has unfolded over the years in an essentially exfoliative way. A few chapters—or even paragraphs—in ear-

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

lier books have provided the ideational basis from which an entire subsequent book developed. This process has made for an element of redundancy which (as it seems to me) is in any case inevitable in a writer whose ideas are systemically interconnected across diverse topics. Repetition across different books is the price that a systematic expositor must pay to secure the interdependent readability of his works. In science things are not simple, nor yet in life. And so we cannot expect simplicity in philosophy either. Philosophers are always struggling to manage complexity. They strive—not always successfully—to do justice to complicated issues in language that is accessible and easily understood. In this regard, I think that Michele Marsonet has succeeded admirably and I am greatly in his debt. I heartily recommend his book as offering readable, accurate, and highly informative introduction to my philosophy.

Nicholas Rescher Pittsburgh PA April 2008

ii

PREFACE

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his volume is meant to be a natural continuation of my book The Primacy of Practical Reason: an essay on Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophy, published in 1996. In that context I dealt with almost all aspects of Rescher’s thought, with the exception of ethics and value theory. I then felt that this was a serious lack and decided to write a new volume in order to provide the reader with a more complete account. The reader will then find, in the seventh chapther, three new paragraphs on Rescher’s ethical views: “What Is Morality?”, “Morality and Rationality”, and “Relativism and Absolutism” I heard first about Nicholas Rescher while writing my dissertation on many-valued logics at the University of Genoa in the 1970’s. The literature on the subject was then—as it is now—rather fragmentary, and a teacher from another university pointed out to me that Rescher had actually written a comprehensive survey—just what I badly needed. However, getting an American book in Italy in those years was no easy task, and I remember being rather desperate because of the long delay (after all, my graduation was at stake). Subsequently I met Rescher personally, the first time when I was a graduate student in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pittsburgh, and then as a Visiting Fellow at the Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science. Given his kindness and generosity, it comes now to my mind that it would have been better to write directly to him explaining my situation: for I would surely have received the volume in a much shorter time. So Many-Valued Logic was the first book by him that I read, and it is thus even too natural that I keep a sort of special “affection” for it. Rescher is certainly different from the average American philosopher, who is (or at least was, until quite recently) usually interested only in technical issues. One undoubtedly detects a “continental” flavor in his writings, which display a great concern for wholeness and system. In this respect, he reminds me of Wilfrid Sellars, a great philosopher whose lectures I had the good fortune to attend in Pittsburgh. It seems to me that Rescher’s system provides an interesting way out from the crisis of analytic philosophy (a crisis that really exists, despite many colleagues’ firm denials in this regard). In my opinion, the evolutionary-pragmatic type of explanation has acquired in the more recent phase of his thought a prominent role, and this is why his latest writings differ to a certain extent from the previous ones. A development, which is both historical and theoretical, can thus be clearly

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

detected in Rescher’s speculative evolution, where the importance of the pragmatist elements (especially related to C.S. Peirce and C.I. Lewis) has continued to grow with the passing of time. This explains why, in my book, the quotations from Rescher’s latest works are more numerous than those drawn from the former ones. For Rescher has of late both put forward various new insights and addressed objections that were previously raised against his theses. In writing the book, it frequently happened to me to find that objections raised in the 1970’s or early 80’s were addressed and satisfactorily answered in subsequent works of his. It should be clear from the onset that this is not meant to be a “critical” essay on Rescher but, rather, an introduction to his philosophical system. The readers interested in deepening its knowledge will find in the present book all the bibliographical references necessary for carrying this job out at best. The three miscellaneous anthologies that have been published, respectively, in the late 1970’s, in the early 80’s and in 1998, provide already such a critical account1. What is still missing, however, is an introductory book to Rescher’s philosophy, i.e. a volume that could lead the reader to understand what our author really claims by giving a schematic—but comprehensive—account of his views on the various philosophical topics. Naturally Rescher published A System of Pragmatic Idealism,2 but this work is made up by three distinct (and large) volumes, and so I thought that a much shorter book was needed in order to achieve the objective stated above. The most common objection raised against Rescher is the following: “He writes too much” (it is, indeed, a leitmotiv of all those unwilling to discuss his ideas). But is it a serious philosophical objection? After all, it was analytic philosophy that set up the paradigm according to which philosophers must write as little as possible. Whoever knows history of philosophy understands that, up to the beginning of past century, things were quite different, and we have plenty of philosophers of the past who wrote more extensively than Rescher himself. The fact is that the analytic paradigm is not going to be eternal. Nothing is eternal in human affairs, not even philosophical paradigms (let alone the scientific ones), and we can certainly expect that it will be replaced as well at some point. As a matter of fact, many philosophers—including several who had held an analytic position early on in their careers—claim that it has already been replaced to a certain extent. Richard Rorty is perhaps the best known among them, but we have other cases like Richard Nozick and even Hilary Putnam, whose attitude towards analytic philosophy and the linguistic turn has

iv

PREFACE

changed a great deal in the last two decades.3 Many others, however, manifest bewilderment or even indignation if someone starts talking about the crisis of analytic philosophy. They seem to be living and working in a sort of Kuhnian paradigm, albeit in philosophy and not in science. A philosopher of this kind totally lives inside a paradigm, and the thought that there might be something else outside does not even come to his mind. I repeat here the amusing story about Rescher that Ernest Sosa and Robert Almeder have already reported in the anthologies they edited: behind the name of Nicholas Rescher there is no single person, but a whole committee of philosophers, similar to the committee of French mathematicians behind the name of Bourbaki. But this is not true, of course, and Rescher himself explains how he can manage to write so much in his autobiography. However, most of the authors contributing to Sosa’s anthology, and some of those included in Almeder’s, deal with Rescher as if he were a full-fledged analytic philosopher. But this is not correct, as I hope this book will show. Rescher maintains—to a certain extent—the analytic style of writing and addressing the issues, but is at the same time very far away from what he defines as the “analytic ideology.” This simply means that, if one approaches his philosophy by using an exclusively analytic viewpoint, he will not be likely to get a good comprehension of the whole picture. This is a book on Rescher’s philosophy, and so I tried to be as neutral and objective as possible. But “absolute” objectivity, as Rescher himself teaches, is not something which we humans can attain, so that some personal opinions clearly transpire from the text. In particular, I regard his pragmatism and naturalism as more important than his idealism. His idealism is mild because his pragmatist outlook is so strong, and the “primacy of practice” is the motto that, in my view, best captures the essence of his thought. The tradition where he really belongs is the American pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and Clarence I. Lewis, which of course does not mean to deny that other traditions, like the idealistic one of Hegel and Bradley, have had a strong influence on him. If the book will succeed in convincing its readers that this is really the case, what I take to be its basic task will be accomplished.

Genoa April 2008

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Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

NOTES 1

E. Sosa (ed.), The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher: Discussion and Replies, Reidel, Dordrecht-Boston, 1979; R. Almeder (ed.), Praxis and Reason: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, University Press of America, Washington, D.C., 1982; Axel Wüstehube, Michael Quante (eds.), Pragmatic Idealism. Critical Essays on Nicholas Rescher’s System of Pragmatic Idealism, Rodopi, AmsterdamAtlanta, 1998.

2

N. Rescher, SPI.1, 2 & 3, 1992-4.

3

See G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher. Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Kuhn, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London, 1994. The interviews with Putnam and Nozick run from p. 55 to p. 85.

vi

Chapter 1 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAGMATISM FOR CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

T

raditionally, pragmatism deems the quest for absolute truth or certainty meaningless. It takes into serious account, instead, the question of objectivity, i.e. the possibility of finding a method for ascertaining which, out of many plausible solutions to a particular problem, is objectively the best one. Think, for example, of the very way in which we acquire our beliefs. Our convictions about the structure of reality and, consequently, our representations, perceptions and theories, form a complex and articulate system. How do we behave, however, when a new belief enters our cognitive horizon, especially if it cannot be easily reconciled with other—and older— beliefs? Pragmatism’s traditional answer is Darwinian in character, and is based on the concept of the “fight for survival.”1 In other words, when a new belief arises we try to accomodate it into our system. If the attempt is successful everything looks fine. Sometimes, however, radical changes take place, and we prefer to keep the new belief even though this move is likely to cause the abandonment of many beliefs previously held. We have, thus, an endless war for survival among theories, ideas and worldviews, and this war will eventually be won by the most suitable theories (that is to say, by those theories that give us a better explanation and comprehension of the surrounding reality). And why are certain beliefs thought to be more decisive than others? Why is it that some levels of reality are commonly held to be important, while others are not? The reply is provided, once again, by the theory of natural selection. For instance, those people claiming that the phenomena of magic and witchcraft are “more real” than scientific ones are inevitably likely to have practical problems in the course of their daily life. Utility on the one side, and practice on the other are thus the two key-concepts on which the speculative building of pragmatism is founded. An interesting and controversial fact regarding primarily the social sciences may at this point be noted. A consistent pragmatist would say that even in the political-social domain an endless fight for survival takes place, so that a politi-

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

cal, economic or social theory’s validity relies only on its explanatory power and practical utility. In the economic sphere, for instance, the fall of the Berlin’s Wall shows that the free market theories, notwithstanding their many limits, give rise to social and political structures that work, while the theories based on the so-called collective property of productive means do not (and this despite the permanent fascination such theories continue to exert on many intellectuals). It can hardly be denied, however, that the pure free-market process is not able to run, just by itself, highly complex societies such as the ones in which we live today. This would show, according to some detractors of the free market theories (and of pragmatism as well), that the two key-concepts mentioned above—utility and practice—cannot be the only foundations of human social and political life. An obvious answer to these criticisms is: It all depends on what you take utility and practice to be, and on how you choose to connect them to the primary human interests. We shall examine in a successive chapter the reply that Rescher’s particular brand of pragmatism gives to objections of this kind.2 The pragmatists assume that all men qua men share a certain portion of reality, that is to say a common set of perceptions and representations; this common set in turn produces shared beliefs which form a reasonably objective basis to implement action. Naturally we have here an objectivity that is quite different from the classical one, conceived of as faithful representation of a reality independent from the knowing subject. But this “weak” objectivity is, according to the pragmatists, all that we have at our disposal, and this means that it must be our starting premise.3 What is, then, the best theory of which the representatives of the pragmatist tradition keep talking? It is nothing but the theory that allows us to organize in the best possible way the sensory perceptions that all men qua men share, and which give in turn rise to beliefs that are both firm and difficult to be abandoned. The relatively recent rediscovery of the pragmatist tradition in the United States has given new strength to the aforementioned theses, which are—at least to a certain extent—compatible with the general views maintained by analytic philosophy. The decline of the analytic tradition4 might thus be contrasted just by intensifying its dialogue with pragmatism, as Rescher has proceeded to do starting from the late 1960’s. There is undoubtedly some truth in the vision—indebted to T.S. Kuhn’s theses—of analysis conceived of as a philosophical paradigm which, following a quite long blooming period, is bound to be replaced by other and newer paradigms.

2

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The process of replacement, however, need not be total and violent. Rescher’s own work shows that analytic philosophy can protect its precious methodological heritage by interacting with other—and substantially compatible—trends of thought. Rescher has in fact consistently developed insights contained in some papers of Quine published in the 1950’s and 60’s5, combining a pragmatist background with analytic methodology. Other authors—like Putnam, Rorty and, within certain limits, Davidson— have subsequently followed the same path, even though the common label “neopragmatism” hides more often than not deep disagreements.6 One of the main reasons why analytic philosophers in general maintain a suspicious attitude towards pragmatism is the alleged pragmatist underevaluation of modern formal logic. Of course, this argument does not apply to Charles S. Peirce, whose contributions to modern logic are undeniable7; but Peirce is somehow distant in time, and the memory is more likely to go to John Dewey. As a matter of fact, it must be recognized that a contemporary formal logician may find many—and, from his point of view, unpleasant—surprises by reading Dewey’s masterpiece Logic: the Theory of Inquiry 8. This work in fact criticizes the basic assumptions of modern symbolic logic as it developed from Boole on, and which found an explicit and precise formulation in the Vienna Circle’s manifesto. Since the meaning of any scientific statement must be ultimately specifiable by having recourse to assertions concerning empirical data, even the meaning of scientific concepts, no matter what scientific field they belong to, must be ultimately reduced to concepts of the lowest possible level, i.e. concepts related to elementary empirical data themselves. In this full-fledged reductionist approach logical analysis plays a fundamental role, because it is geared to the neopositivist scientific world-view. Dewey’s Logic is a forerunner of the criticisms that post-empiricist thinkers subsequently addressed to this kind of scientific world-view. If this vision is seen from an historical perspective it soon turns out to be a style of reasoning among others, and its philosophical roots can be easily traced back to Ernst Mach’s theses and to the logical atomism endorsed by Bertrand Russell and by the early Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. This means that even logic lives in history. Neither is its formulation established once and forever, nor can it be superimposed as a paradigm that must be accepted without discussion. Contrary to nepositivism and the majority of the analytic tradition, Dewey—like all pragmatists—does not draw a clear and rigid boundary line between subject on the one side, and object on the other. Such a line is a functional distinction that we adopt in

3

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

our daily life for utility purposes, but it should not hide the much more important fact that our knowledge arises within a unitary process, in which stimuli and responses always refer to concrete situations. Knowledge is, thus, transactional: Transaction is a process which does not involve terms that are fixed and established from the beginning, but terms whose structure and nature is determined by the process itself. No immutable substances are present in nature. A feature of Dewey’s Logic which openly differentiates it from our common logic textbooks is the total absence of symbolic formulations. To someone who was trained in the analytic style of philosophizing this certainly is the worst of all possible sins, and he would probably be inclined to regard Dewey’s book as a work not pertaining—despite its title—to the field of “real” logic. He would be wrong, however, in equating it to the idealistic logic manuals thriving especially in the second half of the past century and in the first two decades of ours; Dewey did not want to do that because he opposed the main tenet of those idealistic logics, i.e. the attempt to draw a neat separation between natural sciences and the so-called “sciences of the spirit.” He points out in the Preface that the absence of symbolic formulations in his book is meant to prevent some misunderstandings brought in by formal logic, because in his view the mere use of symbolization does not automatically guarantee the scientific dignity of the process of logical reasoning. Logical (and psychological) atomism is Dewey’s great enemy; he always denounced the abstractness and unreality of the absolutely fragmentary character of human experience as foreseen by empiricist doctrines. But we should not forget either that there is a strict link between the development of modern formal logic and the alleged presence of “atoms” of experience, or elementary data, which must in turn be translated into “atomic propositions.” It is clear that for Dewey (and for the pragmatist tradition at large, both old and new), scientific viewpoint does not mean positivistic viewpoint. Pragmatism in all its various subtrends always rejected any kind of dichotomy between judgements of fact and judgements of value (the neopositivists, as is well known, placed the latter in the purely interior sphere of emotions and feelings9). But this rejection is quite different from that endorsed by positivistm (which adopts, in this regard, a typically reductionistic approach). From a pragmatist point of view, the logical dimension is simply part of the practical dimension of our life, because logic on the one hand and practice on the other cannot be artificially separated with a clear cut. In this sense there are some similarities between a pragmatist

4

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

view of logic (and language) and the theses put forward by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the last part of his life, when he claimed that any inquiry concerning sense or non-sense belongs to logic, which means that logic itself is much less simple than traditional logicians usually believe.10 Dewey’s critical attitude towards mathematical logic can thus be traced back to a basic element: he thought that this kind of logic was just unable to capture the enormous complexity of the real world. Logic is meaningful only in the wider context of a methodology of research, and in this context it has an instrumental role. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry is, thus, the attempt to reinterpret and to reordinate the structures of logical thought by having basically in mind the function they play in experience conceived of as research. Experience is a whole, and we can talk of a universe of experience within which a universe of discourse is processually articulated (recalling, however, that the first controls the latter). Dewey’s influence on formal logic has been rather scanty, even though “scanty” is different from “null.” We can easily find many Deweyan insights in two famous Quinean papers: “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” where Willard Quine carries on Dewey’s battle against atomism (both logical and sensory) and the aprioristic distinction between analytic and synthetic, and “Ontological Relativity,” in which references to Dewey are continuously brought up11. Dewey’s influence is then evident in the writings of other, more recent authors such as Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom12. As for Rescher, we shall see in the following chapters that, although he likes Peirce more than the other two noble fathers of pragmatism, Deweyan ideas are constantly at work in his own writings. A few words must at this point be said on the relations between our author and Clarence I. Lewis, an author whom is barely mentioned by Richard Rorty and other contemporary neopragmatists. Although he shares Lewis’ basically pragmatist stance, Rescher emphatically rejects his foundationalism, i.e., his seeking to secure everything on the unshakable basis of an indubitable “given.” Siding with Quine, he also rejects Lewis’ surgical analytic/synthetic dichotomy. Rescher also differs from Lewis on the justification of induction, which—more consistently for a pragmatist—he sees as a fundamentally practical rather than theoretical device. What they really share is a recourse to pragmatism as a means of addressing, rather than by bypassing (as in Rorty’s case), questions of validity. Formal logic, notwithstanding the opinion of many contemporary logicians, is based on some strong philosophical assumptions, which may ultimately be traced back to: (a) Russell’s and the early Wittgenstein’s logical

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Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

atomism; (b) the neat separation between logic and psychology envisioned by Frege and thereafter endorsed by the large majority of the analytic tradition13; and (c) the reduction of ontology to a purely linguistic dimension adopted, with just a few exceptions, by neopositivist and analytic thinkers. Only in this context do Dewey’s criticisms to formal logic make sense, and only taking into account his constant battle against any kind of dualism: mind-body, concept-perception, theory-practice, sensation-thought, valuescience, analytic-synthetic, may we give a precise meaning to his philosophical insights on this issue. Distinctions are indeed necessary, but we should at least try to avoid those which lack a sufficient ground. It may also be noted that, in a book published in 199414, Tom Burke claims that John Dewey might have achieved more recognition for his logical conceptions had Bertrand Russell not so fervidly attacked him on this issue. The story is too well known to be told once again here; we just wish to point out that modern formal logic has largely grown up as a logic of mathematics, and this fact convinced most logicians of our day that mathematical reasoning should be assumed as the paradigm to which all other kinds of reasoning are to be reduced. This explains, for instance, why it is often so difficult to explain to students why is it that formal logic takes material implication, with its rather anti-intuitive truth-table, to be the standard type of implication (the answer being, of course, that classical formal logic assumes the mathematical reasoning as the standard type of reasoning). Dewey—and the pragmatists in general—could not uncritically accept this situation, which prompts Burke to note that: [. . .]It is not insignificant that Frege, the founding father of twentiethcentury logic, was a mathematician. His interest in logic was primarily motivated by an interest in analyzing fundamental mathematical concepts. In much the same way that Newton devised a formal calculus from scratch in order to be able to properly talk about certain aspects of the physical world, Frege designed his own “formula language” just to be able to properly talk about mathematical concepts [. . .] it is important to keep in mind Frege’s original motivations as a mathematician when one reads his material bearing more directly on natural-language semantics.15

Now, it is extremely important to bear in mind that, no matter how weird his logic may seem to neopositivists and analytic thinkers, Dewey’s concerns were much wider than Frege’s. After all, why should we uncritically endorse the thesis that philosophy must conform itself to the standards of mathematical rigor?16 Given the growing diffusion of such trends of

6

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

thought as the naturalistic turn, the epistemology of complexity and neopragmatism, the “exact philosophy” still endorsed by large sectors of the analytic tradition looks more a myth than a concretely feasible project. So, to a scholar who tries to set his sight over and above the analytic fence, it is no surprise to hear that “many of the ideas that Dewey developed in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry are surprisingly relevant to current developments in logic and the cognitive sciences. Though published in the early part of the twentieth century, the ideas which Dewey explored are only now starting to be sufficiently appreciated.”17 Later on in the present book we shall explore, with particular reference to Rescher’s work, the consequences that a pragmatist conception of logic can have on philosophical and scientific methodologies at large. But even in this first section we may note an important fact. In the late 1930’s John Dewey and the pragmatist tradition looked completely outdated, while the Fregean paradigm, promoted by a witty Bertrand Russell, promised the delights of a newer and better era, in which a rigorous philosophy would eventually have been able to get rid of nonsense and to merge with mathematics and science. In the following section we shall verify why those promises could not be kept. 2. LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Moving beyond pragmatism in our journey through Rescher’s philosophical system, we must take into account a second school of thought which has been central in his intellectual formation. We are talking of that tradition which, starting with Frege, has taken linguistic analysis to be the main—and, in many cases, the exclusive—task of philosophy. This explains why we put logical empiricism and analytic philosophy together, despite their evident differences. It should be recalled, however, that in this context our purpose is not to give a history of linguistic philosophy; we simply want to make clear what the bases of Rescher’s conceptions are.18 Logical empiricism, thus, can be seen as part of a larger trend of thought which we define “analytic philosophy”, while this expression is often equated to the ordinary language school which originated from the second Wittgenstein’s teachings, and subsequently thriving for a long time in Oxford and Cambridge. But just what is analytic philosophy? As we shall see in the next chapter, Rescher has rightly noted that there is an “analytic ideology” as distinct from an “analytic methodology”. At this preliminary level, however, we do not need such a distinction and we shall only be concerned with the ideo-

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Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

logical stance of this school.19 The adjective “analytic” suggests, first of all, that this trend of thought endorses a basic form of reductionism, since its main aim is reducing complex elements to simpler ones, in order to arrive at the simplest blocks which allegedly form the ultimate components of reality itself. According to the pioneers of the school, exactly this method is used in natural sciences, which are therefore taken to be the model to which philosophy should conform itself. So we may note at first sight that this canonization of the natural sciences is much more questionable today than it was in the decades between the end of the past century and the beginning of the 1900’s. A large part of the recent philosophy of science tends, instead, to give a holistic picture of scientific enterprise, and many scientists are currently claiming that holism, and not reductionism, is the best suit for the scientific world view.20 Nevertheless, there still are analytic thinkers who deem reduction to be the principal aim of the philosophical work. A good case is a recent book by Peter F. Strawson, in which the Oxonian philosopher takes reductive analysis to be the core of the analytic tradition.21 This by no means is the only ideological tenet of analytic philosophy (even because not all analytic representatives endorse it). Equally, and perhaps even more important, is the assumption that analysis of language is the best way we have for getting a comprehensive understanding of reality at large. Obviously “language” in this case cannot be neatly separated from “thought,” since the former just becomes the open manifestation of the latter. We can notice immediately that the conception of “language” at stake here is quite different from the one put forward by the pragmatists (and by Rescher as well). While for pragmatism language is something geared to human evolution, that is to say an instrument devised by mankind for essentially practical purposes, the analytic tradition endorses instead a more abstract idea of language, which becomes something whose presence can hardly be explained but that, on the other hand, is able to explain the presence of anything else. When wearing these clothes, in sum, language is a sort of a priori element which allows us to understand the world, a Kantian-like precondition that unables us to categorize reality as such. Starting from premises like these, it should not be difficult to understand why relevant sectors of linguistic philosophy ended up endorsing a “linguistic idealism” which is just the opposite of the strongly empiricist theses of its founding fathers.22 And this fact can be better understood if we remember that both logical positivism and the analytic tradition have always been ambiguous on the real nature of the relationship between lan-

8

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

guage on the one side and the world (reality) on the other. The standard interpretations of logical positivism and of the analytic tradition claim that linguistic analysis is the best way we have for getting rid of both metaphysics and any non-empiricist interpretation of reality. But this picture, although still widespread and successful nowadays, is both inaccurate and misleading. For it does not take into account the essential fact that the linguistic turn, despite the strong empiricist commitments of its founding fathers, has increasingly viewed language as an a priori element which, in turn, determines and even builds up reality. Many analytic thinkers— especially in the last few decades—have taken an even bolder stance, proclaiming that reality is language, so that, for instance, it is our conceptual schemes that determine reality as such (and not only reality as-weconceive-it). In other words, in the model of philosophical inquiry envisioned by the analytic tradition at large, analysis of language (both scientific and natural) becomes something similar to a metaphysical endeavor which is meant to establish the bounds of sense—a stance that may easily be traced back to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. If so, logico-linguistic analysis becomes something which is much more important than the mere scrutiny of terms and sentences. It turns out to be, instead, a sort of prior philosophy, i.e. a super-discipline which establishes the conditions that make all knowledge possible. But this is by no means the end of the story. A work by Peter Hylton23 has shown that, for understanding the real historical development of analytic philosophy, it is necessary to take into account the idealistic formation of some of its forerunners (and of Bertrand Russell in particular). Russell, along with George E. Moore, was largely influenced in his youth by Bradley and other representatives of British idealism. But this idealistic background continued somehow to be present in the analytic tradition, even though, in most cases, it was carefully hidden. It is also worth noting in this respect that Rescher, in the Preface of his book Conceptual Idealism, so speaks about the relations between idealism and analytic philosophy: [. . .] This book endeavors to formulate and defend a form of idealism of the ‘Hegelian’ type in the tradition of Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce, McTaggart, and Blanshard [. . .] I hope (for certainly it is a mere hope rather than an actual expectation) that this development of the idealist case will militate against the facile dismissal of idealism that has become virtually standard in Anglo-American philosophy since the early part of this century,

9

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

leading one influential writer [Bernard Williams] to speak disparagingly of ‘the temporary and untypical influence of Idealism on British thought’.24

The early analytic philosophy put forward various realistic theses that were directly opposite to the idealistic ones. For instance, the world, which was clearly mind-dependent for Bradley and the other British neoidealists, was instead seen as mind-independent by Russell and Moore; furthermore, reality, which was essentially one for the neoidealists, was conceived as formed by a multitude of separate objects by the new analytic thinkers. But the ambiguity already noted above, i.e. the real nature of language, was still there, because the differences between the “language” of analytic philosophy and the “thought” of idealism were indeed scanty. What sense should we thus give to the analytic axiom, according to which linguistic analysis is the best (or even the unique) way we have at our disposal for understanding reality? Of course we could agree with the early Russell’s metaphysical views, according to which reality is essentially composed by terms which, in turn, combine together in order to form propositions (and let us note that this by no means is an empiricist view of reality). But a more genial and elegant formulation of analytic philosophy was soon to be given by the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose masterpiece, the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, we assume to be already known by the readers of the present book. Incredible as it may be, the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle read the Tractatus as if it were a positivistic and anti-metaphysical milestone.25 However, a book claiming that the world is the totality of facts, not of things, and that things in turn must combine together and form facts in order for the world to exist, is anything but positivistic and antimetaphysical. The early Wittgenstein even talked of the essences of things, which give rise the form of the world. And this logical form of the world is what lies behind its contingent features. Instead of the death of metaphysics, we have here one of the most fascinating metaphysics produced by twentieth century philosophy, even though, obviously, a fascinating metaphysics needs not be endorsed uncritically. It would certainly be quite hard to claim that the early Wittgenstein was an empiricist. The logical form of the world is the determining element here, and physical objects play a purely subsidiary role. In the Wittgensteinian essences of the objects one can find, if the text is read without ideological prejudices, evident traces of idealism. And his famous picture theory of propositions, according to which propositions (that—it should

10

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

never be forgotten—are “objects of thought”) represent possible state of affairs located in the world, does not change the situation. It should be noted, at this point, that Wittgenstein’s framework offers no way for ascertaining the truth or falsity of propositions and, following some hints contained in the Tractatus, the neopositivists of the Vienna Circle developed their own brand of linguistic philosophy, i.e. logical positivism. Their famous principle of verification offers a way out, claiming that only those propositions are meaningul which can be empirically testable. By this they meant that sensory experience determines the bounds of sense, and that metaphysics is meaningless because its propositions do not pass the screening of the principle of verification. We shall not report here when and how it was discovered that the principle of verification could not be maintained, thus leading to Popper’s rehabilitation of metaphysics as meaningful discourse. It is sufficient to note that, upon becoming one of the dominant paradigms of twentieth century philosophy, the analytic tradition progressively developed a piecemal style of philosophizing, a general “minimalistic” attitude which cares for small details (analysis for its own sake) and despises any kind of synthetic achievement. As we shall soon see, Rescher’s reaction against this state of affairs is very important for understanding the deeper meaning of his philosophical work. 3. THE DECLINE OF PRAGMATISM AND ITS RESURGENCE Many thinkers in the English-speaking world nowadays react against the strictures of the analytic tradition by reviving the American philosophy par excellence: pragmatism. We shortly hinted at this fact in the previous paragraph, and the issue will be raised again later on. The forenunner of this trend of thought in the second half of past century is obviously Quine,26 even though he has never been a full-fledged pragmatist: his stance is better pictured by saying that he inserted pragmatist elements in a largely analytic (and even logical empiricist) stance.27 Following Quine we find Rescher, who began reevaluating pragmatism in the late 1960’s.28 Rescher’s work, however, has been less popular than other, more recent neopragmatist endeavors, essentially due to Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam.29 According to the present writer’s opinion, the reason may mainly be found in Rescher’s particular brand of idealistically flavored pragmatism. As we just noted above, in fact, idealism has never been popular in this century’s analytic philosophy thriving in the Anglo-American world, and this despite the (by now) well known connections between British idealism

11

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

and early analytic philosophy, and the unconscious linguistic idealism endorsed by prominent representatives of the analytic tradition. If we go back to the previous quotation from CI,30 it is clear that Rescher did not expect his position to be particularly popular; he was writing those words in the early 1970’s, i.e. a period when the crisis of analytic philosophy was far less evident than it is today. Apart from the bad reputation that idealism continues to have in the Anglophone world, it may also be noted that Rorty (whose present distance from analytic philosophy is far greater than Putnam’s) took advantage of the growing challenges that the analytic paradigm began to face in the late 1970’s and early 80’s to launch his more hermeneutically inspired critique. In any event, the revival of pragmatism has been for several years a typically American phenomenon. In Europe31, all those thinkers who were previously trained in the analytic tradition and subsequently got tired of it, are generally more interested in the so-called epistemology of complexity or in the naturalistic turn. Only in the last few years has neopragmatism become popular in continental Europe, mainly thanks to Rorty’s writings which were extensively translated into many European languages other than English.32 No doubt the neopragmatism that is currently fashionable is closer to James (and to the early John Dewey) than it is to Peirce, Lewis and to the most mature of Dewey’s writings.33 The central tenet of pragmatism is then viewed in a Jamesian fashion: the pragmatic method is primarily devised for settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable, and to interpret philosophical notions by tracing their practical consequences. And if there is no practical means to settle disputes between philosophical systems, then the alternatives will generate the same consequences and all dispute is idle. As we shall see in the following chapters, Rescher’s pragmatism is quite distant from theses like these. Because, if we say that we are only justified in believing that which is useful to us, and if we add that the sole task pertaining to philosophy is helping to improve humankind conditions, we will have serious problems in definining just what these improvements are supposed to consist in. In other words, if we give up any kind of objective standard, it will become impossible just to know which theories are useful to obtain the aforementioned improvements in human life.34 Clearly we need some kind of standard, even though admitting that “truth” is somehow a human artificact, and not a metaphysical idea living its own life in a Platonic world of eternal forms. Rescher’s pragmatism is even more inter-

12

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

esting because, as we shall see soon, it purports to give clear answers to these problems. Prior to the present revival, pragmatism was never really popular in Europe; most European thinkers, in fact, took it to be a typical expression of the American utilitarian spirit (where the adjective “utilitarian” was given a negative meaning). The deep sense of the pragmatist stance was thought to be given by one of William James’ most famous sentences: True is what is good in the way of belief and, needless to say, a parodistic version of pragmatism was the one reported in philosophical textbooks. Only now that the cultural climate is changing Europeans come to understand that pragmatism is the forerunner of several theses made popular by the “post-empiricist turn.” For instance, many affinities were discovered between pragmatism and the thought of the later Wittgenstein, and the same is true even for the Popperian fallibilism. Hilary Putnam has published a book titled Pragmatism: An Open Question.35 But why—one might ask— should pragmatism be an “open question” for an American philosopher like Putnam? It makes sense to speak of the reevaluation of pragmatism in Europe, but this should not be the case in the United States, given the fact that pragmatism is taken to be the typical American philosophy. In order to answer this question, we need to take a short historical detour which, in the final analysis, will turn out to be useful even for understanding Rescher’s own thought. Starting from the late 1930’s, the United States became the major center of activity for analytic philosophy and logical positivism. Up to that time pragmatism was by large the philosophical trend dominating American universities. Following the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Austria’s annexation and the subsequent German occupation of Poland, most representatives of logical positivism—and of scientifically oriented philosophy in general—emigrated to the U.S. (a few of them, among whom Karl R. Popper, chose England instead). Rudolf Carnap, Alfred Tarski, Hans Reichenbach, Carl Gustav Hempel, Herbert Feigl and many others were given chairs in American universities. The reasons for this philosophical diaspora is perfectly clear: racial persecution apart, none of these thinkers could indeed stand Nazi anti-intellectualism and irrationalism. American pragmatists largely favored this exodus, and a pivotal role was then played by Willard V. Quine, who was at that time a young instructor of logic at Harvard University. He had in fact met personally many analytic philosophers—including the main representatives of the Vienna Circle and of the Lvov-Warsaw School—during a trip he made in Europe in 1933. Sup-

13

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

ported by C.I. Lewis,36 a pragmatist who was particularly sensitive to logical, linguistic and scientific issues, Quine worked hard to bring the European thinkers to the American continent. Here is how he describes those heroic years: [. . .] I returned in the fall of 1933 [from the trip to Europe] and was appointed junior fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard. In 1938 I became an instructor, and I’ve been here ever since. Carnap came over on the occasion of Harvard’s tricentenary, in 1934. I had given several public lectures on Carnap, and I hoped that Harvard would hire him, but we didn’t swing it; he was hired by the University of Chicago. But we had good times when Carnap was in this part of the world. Tarski arrived in 1939 and we found him a job at City College in New York. Thirty-eight to ‘41 were splendid years.37

At this point two facts may be noted. In the first place logical empiricism and pragmatism certainly are compatible philosophical outlooks on the world, and this greatly helped the European thinkers to settle in the new environment. Secondly, American analytic philosophy was, in its early period, much closer to neopositivism than to the everyday language analysis which was thriving in the British universities. The Tractatus Logicophilosophicus was well known, while some decades will be necessary to get the Americans interested in the theses of the second Wittgenstein. Pragmatism on the one side, and analytic philosophy on the other (particularly in its logical positivist brand) present many similarities: both are interested in scientific results and methodologies; both trust human reason and its capacity to comprehend nature; both request that philosophers give serious and rigorous reasons to support their assertions. Intersubjectivity plays in sum a key role in both traditions, and this marks their difference from all those trends of thought which, instead, exalt intuition and pure subjectivity. As was already hinted before, however, the neopositivists deemed formal logic fundamental and, after a little while, they began to attack an alleged lack of rigor on the part of the pragmatists. Today we can summarize the situation in a few words: the neopositivists endorsed scientism while the pragmatists did not. According to pragmatism scientific knowledge is indeed central, but by no means the only kind of knowledge important to mankind; according to neopositivism, instead, all kinds of knowledge must be reduced to the scientific one. On the one side we thus have monism and reductionism (neopositivism), and on the other pluralism and antireductionism (pragmatism). From a purely historical viewpoint it is worth

14

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

noting that, while the neopositivists assumed Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to be their reference work38, the pragmatists look to be closer to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and to the key theses subsequently put forward by post-empiricism. As always happens, the young scholars were fascinated by the more radical and newer (in those years, of course) approach of neopositivism, so that the pragmatist hegemony in the American academic institutions soon vanished. Despite the appearances, however, the neopositivists did not score a total victory. Pragmatist ideas continued to influence, like an underground river, the brightest representatives of the American analytic philosophy. Carnap himself adopted a somehow pragmatist stance in his later works, while W. V. Quine’s thought can be defined as a brilliant synthesis of analytic, neopositivist and pragmatist tendencies (think again of his famed paper “Due Dogmas of Empiricism”). Today neopragmatism can thus be traced back to this permanent—even though not always visible—influence of traditional pragmatism on American philosophy. Quine’s refusal to set up a precise border-line between analytic and synthetic propositions, and his image of the field of force where all propositions are subject to revision, is one of the key theses endorsed by neopragmatist thinkers in the last few decades. Quine’s thought became, thus, a sort of bridge between the old and the new. But, while the Harvard philosopher never threw neopositivism away, some of his pupils—Donald Davidson, for instance—go well beyond his benevolent criticisms to endorse more radical positions. And some striking similarities between Quine and Popper’s academic destinies can here be noted. Both Quine and Popper, even though attacking logical empiricism, never broke the bridges with it in a total manner; their respective disciples, instead, went well beyond and unhesitantly used the attacks set up by the masters in order to declare the death of logical positivism. In the aforementioned book, Hilary Putnam rightly underlines the importance of some beautiful remarks by William James concerning the relationships between theory and observation. According to James, in fact, “[...] the knower is not simply a mirror floating with no foothold anywhere, and passively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing. The knower is an actor, and coefficient on the truth and registers the truth on one side, while on the other he registers the truth which he helps to create.”39 If we recognize that the theoretical and the observational dimensions cannot be neatly separated, we are no longer sticking to a neopositivist view of the mind’s working, but endorse, to the contrary, a view which

15

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

was made popular by post-empiricist authors. It might even be said—but a posteriori, of course—that despite the appearances pragmatism was more “modern” than neopositivism, even though “modernity” is a concept bound to be always tied to the particular period of time in which is put forward. The principle of the primacy of practice led the pragmatists to deny a milestone of logical empiricism, i.e. the existence of the true method to be adopted in both philosophical and scientific inquiry, a method obviously based on the tools offered by mathematical logic. John Dewey understood—well before the post-empiricist turn—that such an unified method, conceived of as an algorithm able to solve any problem, is only a philosophical utopia. And even pragmatism’s intuitions about the relationships between science and ethics deserve to be mentioned at this point. This theme is, nowadays, at the center of the philosophical stage, while the logical positivists did not deem it really important. Dewey, for instance, used to claim that the primary purpose of science is not that of creating abstract and formal models, but to solve human problems. In his view any rigid dichotomy pure/applied science is meaningless: they are interdependent activities, so that scientific research must be “democratized” to some extent in order that human community at large can control its actual goals. The last fact to be noted in this paragraph is that pragmatism, thanks to its broader speculative perspectives, is likely to favor a greater influence of philosophers on political, social and ethical issues. The best example is, of course, given by John Dewey, who became the official ideologist of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. But pragmatism as a whole is certainly far distant from the analytic tradition, whose hyperspecialization has almost always isolated it from the rest of society. The following words depict well this situation: [. . .] If it is true that, starting with Quine and continuing with Davidson, Nozick, and Danto, the analytic project has been hollowed out from the inside using its own tools, with Rorty and Cavell it finds itself attacked from the outside. Cut off from its ties with the present, it is embalmed as a museum piece, its scientific hypotheses seen as one system among many when rechanneled into a historicist world view. The analytical movement is accused of a tangle of faults, such as canonizing a philosophical discourse that remains within rigid disciplinary and professional confines, bleakly isolating philosophy from history, culture, and society. This knot was created by the analytical isolation, but it is untied with the recovery of two crucial traditions of thought in the intellectual history of the United States, pragmatism and transcendentalism. Rorty was the first to resurrect in a new key that distinc-

16

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

tively American line of thought inaugurated at the end of the nineteenth century by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Thanks to the long life of John Dewey, that tradition grew throughout the first half of the twentieth century, only to disappear, swallowed up by the Viennese emigration between the two world wars.40

So the almost exclusive emphasis on formal logic and the analysis of language—be it scientific or ordinary—caused the isolation of analytic philosophy from the other sectors of culture. What we need to do now is to illustrate Rescher’s position, since it happens that Rorty was not the first philosopher to resurrect the tradition of American pragmatism. NOTES 1

It may be noted that a rather similar “pragmatic Darwinism” has been endorsed, at the cognitive level, by Karl R. Popper.

2

It is worth mentioning that similar objections have often been addressed to Popper’s political and social theories.

3

We shall verify later on that this common point of departure does not prevent substantial disagreement within the pragmatist field. Rescher, in particular, distinguishes between a more flexible “pragmatism of the left” and a more conservative “pragmatism of the right” (see chapter 2, section 2.3, of the present work).

4

It should be mentioned that many analytic thinkers deny that such a decline is currently under way. We will take up again this issue in the next paragraph.

5

We refer, in particular, to such works as “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and “Ontological Relativity,” in which the pragmatist influence is evident.

6

More will be said on this issue in chapter 8, section 8.2.

7

Think, just to single out one example, of Peirce’s pioneering work in the field of many-valued logics. See N. Rescher, MVL, pp. 3-5.

8

J. Dewey, Logic: the Theory of Inquiry . H. Holt and Company, New York, 1938.

9

The best document of this trend of thought still is the classical essay by A.J. Ayer Language, Truth and Logic, Macmillan, London, 1936 (reprinted by Penguin Books, London, 1990).

10

See L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Harper & Row, New York, 1972.

17

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

NOTES 11

The first paper can be found in W.V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1980, 4th ed.; the second in W.V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia University Press, New York, 1969.

12

See for instance R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1979, and Consequences of Pragmatism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1982; and R. Brandom, “Truth and Assertibility,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 73 (1976), pp. 137-149.

13

As P. Kitcher has stated: “Frege’s investigations are commonly viewed as a decisive turn, one that dethroned epistemology from its central position among the philosophical disciplines and that set the philosophy of language in its place. In retrospect, we can trace a great lineage from Frege, leading through Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap to the professional philosophy practiced in Britain, North America, Australasia and Scandinavia in the postwar years [...] Frege’s opposition to what he perceived as intrusions from psychology or biology is evident from celebrated passages in the Grundlagen. The methodological stance he inspired becomes explicit in propositions of the Tractatus” (P. Kitcher, “The Naturalists Return,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 101 (1992), pp. 53-55).

14

T. Burke, Dewe’s New Logic. A Reply to Russell, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1994.

15

T. Burke, Ibid., pp. 3-4.

16

But note, furthermore, that even the “standard of mathematical rigor” has been questioned by Imre Lakatos and other post-empiricist philosophers of mathematics.

17

T. Burke, Ibid., p. x.

18

A short philosophic-historical account of the linguistic tradition has been given by the present writer in Science, Reality, and Language, State University of New York Press, Albany (NY), 1995.

19

Once again, let us stress that the term “school” has here mere explanatory functions. We know very well that, from a purely historical viewpoint, the plural term “schools” should rather be used.

20

See for instance P.C.W. Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint. New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1988.

18

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

NOTES 21

P.F. Strawson, Analysis and Metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York, 1992.

22

A more detailed account of the emergence of linguistic idealism may be found in M. Marsonet, “Linguistic Idealism in Analytic Philosophy of the Twentieth Century,” in: D.J. Hutto, P. Coates (eds.), Current Issues in Idealism, Thoemmes Press, Bristol (U. K.), 1995.

23

P. Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990.

24

N. Rescher, CI, p. xi. Rescher here refers to B. Williams’ review of a book by A.J. Ayer in The Observer, 16 May 1971. It is rather significant, however, that 23 years later he quotes Williams as writing disdainfully of “linguistic analysis, that now distant philosophical style” (N. Rescher, APT, 1994, p. 40).

25

The neopositivists’ misunderstanding of the Tractatus is well shown in R. Monk’s monograph Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, J. Cape, London, 1990.

26

It should not be forgotten, however, that Quine owes much to C.I. Lewis, who was one of his teachers at Harvard. D. Davidson claims in this regard that “Lewis had a tremendous influence on Quine” (G. Borradori, The American Philosopher, cit., p. 43).

27

See M. Marsonet, Science, Reality, and Language, cit., especially chap. 2.

28

See, for instance, his substantially pragmatist philosophy of logic in MVL, chap. 3.

29

A particular case is that of Donald Davidson who, as we shall see, refuses to define himself as a pragmatist. Davidson’s alleged pragmatism has instead been constantly underlined by Rorty. See chapter 8, section 8.2, of the present book.

30

See section 2, note 7.

31

We mean continental Europe, since Britain still now maintains, as usual, peculiar characteristics.

32

Putnam’s case is different, because his criticisms of the analytic tradition are certainly milder and less destructive than the ones put forward by Richard Rorty. This is why Putnam is still considered to be an analytic philosopher by many European interpreters.

19

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

NOTES 33

This is one of the main problems posed by Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism. He keeps quoting the later Dewey in his works, giving of him a typically relativistic interpretation whose correctness is questionable. But it is also worth noting that Rorty always pursues this strategy: Dewey becomes, in his writings, “Rorty’s Dewey,” just as Davidson turns out to be “Rorty’s Davidson.”

34

These are exactly the problems that Rorty’s political and social philosophy does not address. See M. Marsonet, “Richard Rorty’s Ironic Liberalism: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. 21, January 1996.

35

H. Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question, Blackwell, Oxford-Cambridge (Mass.), 1995. This volume includes the text of three conferences delivered by Putnam at the University of Rome.

36

It should be noted, however, that “[...] basically, from speech and personal deportment to political sympathies, Lewis was a conservative New England individualist” (E. Flower, M.G. Murphey, A History of American Philosophy, Capricorn Books, New York, 1977, vol. 2, p. 891). He thus viewed with suspicion the leftist political inclinations of many of the European refugees.

37

G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher, cit., p. 33.

38

Even though, as it was previously pointed out, they misunderstood by and large the deepest meaning of the early Wittgenstein’s masterpiece.

39

H. Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question, cit., p. 17. Putnam’s quotation is drawn from James’s essay “Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence,” in W. James, Essays in Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1978, p. 21.

40

G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher, cit., p. 20.

20

Chapter 2 BETWEEN PRAGMATISM AND ANALYSIS 1. NICHOLAS RESCHER’S LIFE AND WORK escher has written an autobiography1 which, besides being a pleasant reading, constitutes a useful source of information on the development of both contemporary American philosophy and the author’s own achievements. The reader wishing to get more acquainted with all the details of our philosopher’s life is accordingly invited to read that book. Here we just want to place Rescher’s personality and work in the larger context of the philosophical thought thriving in the United States from the late 1940’s on, focusing in particular on the developments of his academic career.2 An obvious question, however, needs to be considered just at the onset: why writing an autobiography at a relatively young age? The following is the author’s answer:

R

[. . .] Autobiographies are generally produced by septuagenarians reviewing the course of their lives in distant and detached retrospect. It is a matter of looking back with seemly pride at one’s achievements, offering plausible excuses for one’s failures, and perhaps settling a few old scores. One shortcoming of this procedure is that whatever wisdom might come from such a scrutiny of one’s self and one’s doings can no longer be put to active us. The hour is late, the sun is setting, the work of the day is done—it is too late to do or undo. In writing the present book too early, as it were, I hope to avoid this shortcoming. This premature autobiographical exercise will, I trust, enable me to obtain whatever useful lessons of self-knowledge can be extracted at a stage when some profit can still be drawn from its deliberations.3

Nicholas Rescher was born on July 15, 1928, in the German town of Hagen, Westphalia. He is thus one of the many contemporary American philosophers whose life began in foreign countries, and who then managed to pursue a successful career in the United States. Rescher’s family moved to North America in 1938, when the young Nicholas was 10 years old, and this fact is quite important, for it means that early on he attended the Ger-

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

man schools and had a German childhood. This heritage has never been forgotten by Rescher (and neither could have been), because the years of childhood are formative for every human being: they largely form our character and set up the foundations of our world-view and life-style. He has remained since then an American with a strong European heritage, and this is reflected by the fact that German was his mother tongue. Reading his prose, a person who knows English well senses a difference from the standard style of American philosophers, since the German heritage is clearly still at work in Rescher’s mind when he thinks (and writes). The reasons prompting the Reschers to leave Germany for good were essentially political. His father, Erwin Hans Rescher, was an attorney not precisely sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism, and this is how Rescher himself describes his father’s growing difficulties: [. . .] Increasingly after 1933, the shadow of National Socialism lengthened across Germany—and across my father’s career. The Nazi movement made itself felt on every side. No opportunity was lost for holding a parade or rally [. . .] Uniforms sprouted forth everywhere—the makers of brown shirts and leather straps and jackboots must have made a fortune. It was known in legal circles that father was decidedly not a Nazi [. . .] After 1933, my father’s law practice was increasingly moribund as members of the bar who were known to be cool to the regime found fewer and fewer clients.4

We can omit Rescher’s first years on the American soil (with all their inevitable problems) to approach instead his university education, which took place first at Queens College, in New York, and then at Princeton. At Queens College, which our author attended in the period 1946-1949, he met some teachers of great capability, among whom Herbert G. Bohnert (a disciple of Rudolf Carnap), a young Donald Davidson just beginning his academic career and, above all, Carl Gustav Hempel, a famous representative of logical empiricism, one of the founders of the Berlin Circle and himself a German immigrant. Rescher carried a joint major in mathematics and philosophy, and from 1949-1952 he was a graduate student at Princeton’s Philosophy Department. The most impressive figure in Princeton was Alonzo Church, whose logic courses—taught in the Department of Mathematics—strengthened Rescher’s interest in the field. No wonder, then, that Leibniz became his favorite philosopher because “[. . .] his many-sidedness and especially his genius for the utilization of logic and mathematics towards philosophical ends exercised a powerful appeal for me.”5 Such an high appreciation of Leibniz marks Rescher’s difference

22

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from Dewey who, as we saw in the preceding chapter, despised symbolic tools; he writes in this respect: [. . .] The inspiration of Leibniz is crealy present in some of my books, and is discernible in my general approach to the conduct of philosophical work. I do not view myself as an adherent of his teaching or doctrine, but rather of his mode of philosophizing. Leibniz is to my mind the master of us all in the use of the formal resources of symbolic thought in the interest of the clarification and resolution of philosophical issues [. . .] Many of my books accordingly exhibit the Leibnizian tendency to use some formal notational or symbolic mathematical or logical or diagrammatic, device for the elucidation of philosophical issues.6

It should be noted that Rescher received a typical analytic training, with teachers like Hempel and Church leaning towards the logical empiricist brand of the analytic tradition. On the other hand, already at the beginning of his career he tended to see formal logic not as an objective per se, but rather as an instrument for pursuing larger, philosophical purposes. Meanwhile the Ph.D. work was completed very early, i.e. in 1952, and in the preceding year Rescher still had the fortune to attend the lectures of a master of “ordinary language” analysis, James O. Urmson from Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, then a visitor at Princeton. Following the military service and some years spent at the Rand Corporation in California, Rescher’s professorial career started in 1957 at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he taught philosophy undergraduate courses until 1961. In that setting our author also met for the first time Adolf Grünbaum, another European-born philosopher—a few years older than he—whose family, too, had previously fled Germany following the Nazi rise to power. In this same period Rescher laid the foundations of his first well known published works, all of them in these early years regarding the history of Arabic logic and philosophy,7 rejecting at the same time the hyperspecialization which is so popular among analytic philosophers. He writes in this regard: “I was unwilling or unable to settle down to one particular speciality. (Even now, twenty years later, I keep more irons in the fire than most.) In fact, I believe this is why philosophy had such an appeal for me—it can accommodate, nay even to some extent demand a diversified spread of interests and competences.”8 In 1960 Adolf Grünbaum, who had in the meanwhile accepted the Andrew Mellon chair in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, convinced the Pitt administration that Rescher’s services were needed there. And so,

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in May 1961, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been ever since. In the Pennsylvanian city, Grünbaum and Rescher formed the originating nucleus of a Philosophy Department which was destined to become world famous within a few years. A notable effort to recruit well known philosophers was soon started, and the first result was attained in 1962, when the Austrian-born specialist in ethics Kurt Baier, the third refugee from Europe to end up in Pittsburgh, joined the Department becoming its Chairman. In the following three years four first-rate thinkers—all coming from Yale—were recruited: Alan R. Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jerome Schneewind and, above all, Wilfrid Sellars, probably one of the most creative philosophers of the twentieth century analytic tradition (and even of the post-analytic one, according to Richard Rorty and many others). From then on, Rescher’s life and work was largely identified with that of the Philosophy Department of the University of Pittsburgh. In 1964 he founded the American Philosophical Quarterly (of which he served as editor up to the end of 1993), and was also the founding editor of the History of Philosophy Quarterly. Subsequently he served as Chairman of the Philosophy Department and as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science, established by the University of Pittsburgh in 1960. Outside Pittsburgh, Rescher was awarded honorary degrees from Lehigh University, from the Loyola University of Chicago and from the Argentina National Autonomous University of Cordoba, while in 1977 he was elected an honorary member of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, where he has been a frequent visitor. With the passing of time, Rescher’s interests shifted from logic and analytic philosophy of science to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and a philosophy of science conceived in much broader terms; ultimately his work has been largely (which does not mean exclusively) devoted to issues pertaining to social philosophy, political philosophy and metaphilosophy. It should not be forgotten, however, that contrary to the tendencies dominating American contemporary thought, Rescher always maintained, up to the present day, a constant interest in the history of philosophy. This is how he describes his broad vision of the philosophical work: [. . .] The period after the First World War had seen the diffusion of a more and more narrowly constricted view of the task of philosophy [. . .] The spread of the logical positivist ideology so trenchantly articulated in A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic typifies the culmination of this narrowing of views. Though I myself was largely reared in the ethos of this perspec-

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tive, it gradually dawned on me that the mission of those of us who began to be active in philosophy after World War II was to reverse this impoverishment of our subject by the inter-war generation. Our task—as I saw it—was to work for a widened conception of the field, to effect broader synthesis, and to restore active concern for the historic problems of the traditional range of philosophical deliberation. We were to restore a concern for wholeness and system—not by abandoning the penchant for exactness and detail of the pre-war generation, but by fusing details into meaningful structures [. . .] Those who followed in the footsteps of Moore and Russell and Carnap often lost sight of the real problems—as these masters never did. I viewed this tendency with increasing distaste, and felt that while detailed technical studies were indeed indispensable, their utility was purely instrumental, and lay wholly in their bearing on the large traditional issues of the field.9

With this short—but, hopefully, faithful—account of Rescher’s scientific biography completed, we turn now to themes which are more central to the present book, namely the discussion of the main tenets on which his philosophical system rests. But first, a look at the philosophical background. 2. THE RISE AND FALL OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY In Europe many people believe that American philosophy is still dominated by logical empiricism on the one side, and by the analytic style of philosophizing on the other. In the last few decades, however, other schools and different thinkers have become increasingly popular in the United States, especially hermeneutics and Martin Heidegger, an author whom Richard Rorty, for example, very often quotes in his works.10 It is thus important to understand the reasons underlying this change of cultural climate. In part, the crisis which came to afflict the analytic paradigm was due to the weariness that any long hegemony brings with it. This is something that Europeans know very well: think, for instance, of the crisis of structuralism in France and of neo-idealism in Italy. Such a weariness, however, cannot explain—just by itself—the crisis of the analytic paradigm in the United States. We must rather go back to the years of the Vietnam war if we really want to understand why such a crisis took place. It grew up, essentially, in two sectors that the analytic tradition never considered to be very important: ethics and political philosophy.11 The representatives of philosophical analysis face the problems arising in these two contexts by adopting a purely linguistic approach: they are only interested in the lin-

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guistic analysis of terms and expressions. Quine’s famous criterion of semantic ascent pictures this situation very well: the philosopher must not be concerned with facts and observations but, rather, with the sentences which talk about facts and observations.12 This means that the analytic philosopher is not supposed to take into account ethical and political problems as such, but should confine his concerns to the sentences which express those problems at the linguistic level. The Vietnam War, however, raised questions that could hardly be answered maintaining an exclusively linguistic viewpoint: they rather pertained to the domain of facts and values. For example, the public opinion began asking whether it was really justified to have American soldiers killed in a conflict which, after all, was of interest to a foreign people. And was it correct, furthermore, to bomb a country like North Vietnam that was not officially at war with the United States? No answers to such dramatic question could be provided by the sophisticated linguistic tools of the analytic tradition. At that point there began a process which, in opposition to the aforementioned semantic ascent, may be defined as “semantic descent.” Slowly—but constantly—linguistic analysis lost its primary importance and was confined to such specialized sectors as formal logic and the philosophy of language, while its significance began to decrease even within philosophy of science. In the meanwhile a growing number of American philosophers rediscovered authors and trends of thought belonging to the so-called “continental” philosophy. It may thus be said that the linguistic specialization of the analytic tradition has increasingly been viewed as a fault rather than as a virtue. And, as we saw in the preceding chapter, this marked the end of American philosophy’s social and political commitments: [. . .] These rigorous techniques of exposition and argumentation, with their stylistically aseptic writing that strove to be as objective as possible, brought to an end the public era of American philosophy. That era had been inaugurated in the middle of the nineteenth century by Ralph Waldo Emerson [. . .] and it had reached its high point in the first decades of the twentieth century with the multi-sided pragmatism of John Dewey [. . .] From the point of view of the sociology of knowledge, the fracture introduced by the analytical movement into the body of American philosophy had two concomitant outcomes: it isolated philosophy from interchange with the world of humanistic reflection, and it channeled a portion of philosophical interests in the direction of other disciplines.13

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We must of course bear in mind that American philosophy has always been intrinsically pluralistic, since the hegemony of logical empiricism and of linguistic analysis at large never prevented the flowering of different schools of thought within the vast American philosophical establishment.14 The true novelty brought in by the post-analytic thinkers is the growing consciousness that history is important at any level: not only in philosophy, but even in science and in the social domain, while logical empiricists and the representatives of the analytic tradition endorsed (and still do) a nonhistorical vision of the philosophical work. At the same time many links were discovered between analytic and continental philosophies. Wittgenstein and Heidegger, for instance, are no longer taken to be totally disparate thinkers and, on the contrary, authors like John Haugeland and Richard Rorty himself stress the many analogies hidden in their theses.15 So the vision—still popular nowadays in Europe—of American philosophy dominated by mathematical logicians, philosophers of language and analytic philosophers of science must be abandoned. The growing interest for hermeneutics, existentialism and phenomenology has made philosophy in the United States both more pluralistic and more similar to the European one, while the great philosophy departments which have maintained an exclusively analytical tendency are, nowadays, much less numerous than they used to be; the large majority of them manifests a substantial pluralism in their choices, and Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and Habermas are at least as studied and quoted as the classical representatives of the analytic traditions like Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, etc. As we hinted before, the main reasons which brought in this change are: (i) the need to rebuild the bridges with all those cultural sectors that are not somehow identified with formal and natural sciences; (ii) the “coercive force” that Robert Nozick attributes to the formalistic emphasis of the analytic tradition16 ; (iii) the reduction of philosophy to a sheer science of argumentation; and (iv) the analytical refusal to take into account and to interpret the historical-social dimension of both science and reality at large, where, after all, even philosophy belongs. The first thing to be observed taking into account Rescher’s thought is that he is, and openly purports to be, a systematic philosopher: he built, in fact, a comprehensive philosophical system.17 But, obviously, the expression “philosophical system” already gives a good hint of Rescher’s originality, because we all know that analytic philosophy is the anti-systematic tradition of thought par excellence. As we verified in the previous section, he received a typical analytic training whose methodological legacy tran-

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spires from all his works. Nevertheless Rescher is not even a post-analytic thinker like Richard Rorty: a post-analytic thinker, in fact, is one who was for years totally faithful to the analytic tenets and then suddenly decided to abandon them. Rescher’s complete faithfulness to the ideological side of the analytic tradition, instead, was never complete.18 There is a clear historical development in Rescher’s thought, and this explains why the good collections of essays on his thought edited by Ernest Sosa and Robert Almeder look a little outdated today.19 We can roughly distinguish three periods in Rescher’s philosophical development: an early stage, 19531970, in which the influence of analytic philosophy is still evident; a middle period, 1971-1982, in which the pragmatist and idealistic elements become predominant; and a mature period, 1983 up to the present day, in which Rescher’s system acquires its completed form. For obvious reasons, in the present book we are mainly concerned with the mature period; it should be noted, however, that the division lines mentioned above, and in particular the border-line between the second and the third period, are somehow artificial and valid from a mere chronological viewpoint. There are in fact some key texts that, although belonging to the two previous periods, contain decisive insights for understanding Rescher’s philosophy as a whole: for instance, MVL, CTT, CI, MP, and EI. Practically all the subsequent texts are relevant to our present analysis. Michael Dummett was quite right in defining Frege as the “grandfather” of analytic philosophy. The German mathematician-philosopher set the analytic paradigm up (for this reason we may also call it “Fregean paradigm”), and Russell and Wittgenstein, important as they are, came only later. But Dummett also claims, with great clarity of mind, that the analytic tradition largely rests on two basic assumptions. The first says that only understanding the nature of thought can we unveil the nature of reality. The second—and even more specific from an analytic viewpoint— assumption claims that the nature of thought may only be revealed by the analysis of its linguistic expression.20 Rescher, following his growing detachment from the ideological premises of this important tradition of thought, eventually explained at full length what he thinks about it in a recent essay which will constitute the basis of our present analysis.21 His position stands roughly as follows: Properly appreciated, AngloAmerican analytic philosophy is not so much a philosophical stance as an approach, an “ideology” as how work in the philosophical field should be properly done. Now, “ideology” is indeed quite a strong term, a word that immediately recalls omnipervasive political and existential commitments

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like the ones that, for instance, Marxist orthodoxy used to request to its faithful adherents. This fact, on the one side, seems to contradict the official view of analytic philosophy as a substantially weak philosophical approach to the issues, i.e. one only concerned with small and unrelated details: an approach, in sum, which is by large metaphysically indifferent. On the other hand, however, Rescher’s use of the term “ideology” does not seem to fit the remarks by Robert Nozick that have been previously quoted, where he rejects the “coercive force” of the formalistic emphasis of the analytic tradition,22 and this happens because Rescher does not question the analytic style of philosophizing. The ideological aspect of the analytic approach can best be verified during discussions with its adherents, because there indeed is an analytic orthodoxy whose fundamental tenets cannot be challenged if the discussion with them is to be kept on a rational path. But let us now see what these tenets are. Rescher holds that, in order to understand the real nature of analytic philosophy as a doctrinal stance, a consideration of the theses and theories which provided its initial impetus is in order, and so he takes into account a series of particular theses, among which: Russell’s theory of non-existent objects, Moore’s remarks about the meaning of goodness, the early Wittgenstein’s remarks on logical form, the late Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning, and Austin’s ideas about knowledge. What do all these theses have in common, and how do they lead us to specify the doctrinal views of analytic philosophy? Rescher’s reply is that they all point to five alleged (and, according to analytic philosophers) deep doctrinal lessons23: (1) The enchantments of language: our natural languages deceive us, in the sense that most philosophical doctrines “are predicated on an insufficient appreciation of the linguistic properties and sophistications.” (2) Linguistic analysis as a philosophical anodyne: linguistic analysis, especially through the tools offered by formal logic, can indeed remove philosophical perplexities (and, we add, only linguistic analysis can do that). (3) Reduction to scientific residues: if linguistic analysis, via formal logic, cannot dissolve an alleged philosophical problem, “such

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analysis will reduce it to a residue that can and should be resolved by scientific means.” (4) The prioritizing of science: the various sciences, be they formal (logic and mathematics) or factual (natural and social), give us the only knowledge which is both meaningful and worth being pursued. (5) The end of philosophical theorizing: so, no serious and distinctively philosophical job remains to be done. “Traditional philosophy is based on misunderstanding; its problems will either be dissolved through appropriate analysis or else transformed into issues that appropriately belong to the formal or factual sciences. All those timeworn philosophical disputes can be laid to rest in the light of analytical clarification of the relevant issues.” An important—and even ironic—fact should at this point be noted. Strangely enough, the representatives of the orthodox analytic tradition reach a conclusion which is fully shared by the most famous representative of the post-analytical turn: Richard Rorty. It must be said, of course, that this conclusion has a different meaning in the two cases. The orthodox analytic tradition means at dissolving philosophy into science (which it still takes as a unitary enterprise), so that language analysts have no specifically philosophical residue to take into account. On the other hand Rorty openly proclaims the need to dissolve philosophy into general culture,24 so that, even in this case, the Rortyan intellectual faces no residual and typically philosophical problem. Needless to say, the roads are quite different, but the final outcome is just the same. How should this strange similarity be explained? We think that it can be ultimately traced to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influence, but just which Wittgenstein? And is there such a strong difference between the early and the later Austrian philosopher, as many interpreters claim? If we read the Tractatus superficially, it can really be taken as the main source of inspiration for the orthodox analytic philosophy whose tenets are exemplified by the points (1)-(5) above. But we also know that in the early Wittgenstein’s masterpiece there are many propositions that challenge this common interpretation, such as the claim that “at the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.”25 On the other hand, the Witt-

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gensteinian anti-scientific stance is even more evident in the works of the later period, where we can for instance find strong statements like this: [. . .] It is all one to me whether or not the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work, since he will not in any case understand the spirit in which I write. Our civilization is characterized by the word ‘progress’. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an even more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself [. . .] So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs.26

The early Wittgenstein, when read in a neopositivist fashion, can be taken to be the inspirator of the orthodox analytic philosophy (but only taking into account the fact that strong anti-scientific elements are already present in the Tractatus). The late Wittgenstein, instead, is the main inspirator of Richard Rorty’s post-analytic turn; even though he keeps mentioning Dewey, the second Wittgenstein’s influence on his present conceptions seems to us much stronger than the one exerted by the American pragmatist. When Rorty questions science’s claims to superiority within philosophy and Western culture at large,27 he is consistently following the path traced by Wittgenstein. Rescher, however, is as distant from analytic orthodoxy as from postanalyticity a la Rorty. While criticizing analytic ideology, he maintains that the analytic “style” is still the best we have at our disposal and, as we saw in the first chapter, he never denied the utility of logical formalism, although attributing to it a mainly instrumental character. “As is so often the case with philosophical doctrines”—Rescher continues—“its [analytic philosophy’s] prospect and teaching is most usefully clarified by considering the views and doctrines that it opposes.”28 The analytical movement thus saw its principal “enemies” as follows: (1a) System builders: that is, all those thinkers who believe that philosophy’s task is to defend large-scale systems and broad (comprehensive) pictures of reality. (2a) Philosophical autonomists: i.e., those who stress philosophy’s autonomy from both the sciences and other fields of human inquiry, so that philosophy itself becomes a cognitive enterprise, whose contributions add to, but are not replaced by, scientific results.

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(3a) Respecters of history: namely, those who deny radical discontinuity between the great philosophers of the past and today thought, deeming history of philosophy a serious and important subject.29 (4a) Sentimentalists: that is to say, those philosophers and humanists who “concede cognitive utility and probative authority to sentiment, feeling, tradition—indeed to anything outside the realm of the specifically conceptual and evidential sphere.” (5a) Edificationists: viz. those who deem issues of wisdom as important as specifically cognitive arguments. For our present purposes it is fundamental to note that Rescher defends—although to different extents—the views endorsed by all philosophers identified with points (1a)-(5a) above. First, as we already remarked, he is a system-builder and thinks that conceptual reduction is not as important as analytic philosophers deem it to be. Second, he always stressed philosophy’s autonomy and cognitive tasks. Third, beginning with his college years, he constantly managed to keep in touch with the great philosophers of the past (Leibniz is his “philosophical hero”). Fourth, he never ignored the role of sentiments, feelings and traditions when dealing with philosophical issues. And, fifth, he has always been interested in issues of wisdom, although they are not at the core of his professional interests.30 Analytic philosophy, therefore, favored science in the struggle between the humanistic and the scientific culture: [. . .] Analytic philosophy thus inclined towards a positivistic bias that regarded knowledge as the sole legitimate guardian of intellectual culture. As the movement’s major adherents saw it, the task of the present is to bring in a post-philosophical era that does away with philosophizing as traditionally conceived and at last puts philosophy onto “the secure high-road of a science.”31

As it always happens with radical philosophical—as well as with political and social—programs, however, all those promises could not be maintained. In the first place, as Rescher notes, the fundamental ideas put forward by analytic philosophy were rather fuzzy, and in a few decades they became outdated.32 Not only Popper and his pupils, but even analyticallytrained thinkers like Hempel, Quine and Davidson, came to realize that no

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clear border-line can be settled between science/non-science, analytic/synthetic, formal/factual, etc. Quine’s famous thesis of the indeterminacy of translation clearly showed that natural language, as Rorty noted many years later, is not, pace Frege and the early Wittgenstein, “a clearly shared structure.”33 Also the work of Kurt Gödel and Alfred Tarski suggests that natural languages contain many inconsistencies that formalized languages can remove only at the price of incompleteness. Moreover, even such key-terms as “philosophy” and “language” resist any serious attempt at explanatory specification of their meaning, a thesis already present in the writings of the second Wittgenstein. And what about logic itself, a discipline that analytic philosophers endowed, unlike Rescher, with ontological potency? Instead of the beauty and solidity of classical logic as codified by Russell and Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica, a whole cluster of non-standard systems emerged, each with its own modus operandi. “Diverse instruments”—Rescher notes—“yield diverse products. Analysis does not provide the guideposts of a fixed conceptual pathway. There are virtually as many modes of analysis as there are analysts.”34 And, as we noted before, the crisis of the analytic paradigm runs even deeper in the ethical field, because “in the end, what actually interests us is what is right and not what people say is right. Analytical meta-ethics’ exclusive focus on the explication of usage leaves us with the grim choice between sidelining our ethical [i.e. normative] concerns.”35 So we are left with a difficult situation indeed. In the first place, it is not simply true that, by analyzing the issues from the linguistic viewpoint, problems will be solved (or dissolved): they tend, instead, to stay firm on the scene. Secondly, the extreme flexibility of our natural language’s resources prevents any universal and one-sided analysis of it. And, eventually, there is a deep disanalogy between philosophy and science because when philosophical issues are at stake, analysis strengthens disagreement rather than dissolving it. Given these facts, it is even more surprising that some orthodox analytic philosophers keep equating their philosophical endeavors with scientific ones. This is the case with some thinkers who maintain that analytic research has grown increasingly similar to research pursued in scientific professional circles. If this were so, one is inclined to answer, we should by now be witnessing an increasing consensus on many issues; Tarski’s theory of truth, for instance, should be accepted by almost everybody as the correct theory, and Russell’s theory of definite descriptions should be widely recognized as the only, valid way for dealing with

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the so-called nonexistent objects. But this is not the case, as any supporter of coherence theories of truth or of a Meinongian strategy for dealing with nonexistents would be certainly ready to argue. So we are entitled to claim that these belated attempts at equating philosophy and science are more wishful thinking than real accomplishment. And this is even truer if we recall that the post-empiricist turn has buried the previously standard view of scientific enterprise as a gradual, ever growing cumulation of results and successes. Rescher is thus one of the many contemporary thinkers who deem analytic philosophy more or less dead, just like Rorty who wrote in this respect: “The controversies which I discussed with such earnestness in 1965 already seemed quaint in 1975. By now [1990] they seem positively antique.”36 As we hinted several times before, however, there is a strong difference between Rescher and Rorty. According to the latter, nothing in analytic philosophy deserves to be saved: it has just become an interesting issue for the historians of twentieth century thought. Rescher, instead, speaks of the “death and transfiguration” of the analytic tradition, which obviously means that there is indeed something to be saved there. After noting that “Analytic philosophy did not die of old age but was laid low in its prime. And it was not killed off by its opponents; its demise was selfinflicted—in effect, the program committed suicide,” he goes on wondering: “What does it mean for philosophy at large that analytic philosophy has faded from the Anglo-American academic stage where it only yesterday played so dominant a role? Does it mean a return to the status quo ante with business as usual and going back to things the way they were before?.”37 The answer is negative, because Rescher neatly separates analytic philosophy’s doctrinal stance—the “ideology”—from its modus operandi (the methodology), which he sums up in the following motto: “Strive to inject precision and clarity into your philosophical work.” We should always try to get rid of fuzzy ideas, of unexamined assumptions, in order to render our philosophical commitments as precise as possible. Acting this way, then, the tools offered by modern logic, including both classical and nonclassical systems, play a precious instrumental role because the allow us to use a perspicuous and clean language. It should never be forgotten, however, that the use of a precise language gives no guarantee of solution for philosophical problems. The moral that Rescher draws from these reflections is interesting:

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[. . .] The collapse of analytic philosophy has left in its wake a heritage of logico-linguistic sophistication that has transformed the way in which many academics nowadays do their work [. . .] Insofar as the situation of analytic philosophy and logical empiricism may be seen as paradigmatic for ventures in “exact” philosophizing, this may foreshadow the fate that awaits the currently fashionable programs of “scientific” philosophy (based on the inspirations of artificial intelligence, computational theory, virtual reality, and the like). Here too we may plausibly expect an analogous course of developments, with such “movements” ultimately disappearing from the scene as viable doctrinal/ideological positions, but nevertheless leaving in the hands of working philosophers certain methodological instruments and intellectual resources that represent a permanent gain for the discipline.38

Concluding this section we would like to observe, however, that if the contribution of the analytic tradition to general history of philosophy is only methodological, then it is not very original. Let us pause for a moment and see what happened in the past. Aristotle can certainly be deemed to be an analytic philosopher by adopting these broad methodological standards, because the use of logical tools is pervasive in his own work; his language is clear and precise enough as to comply to our analytic standards, and fuzzy ideas or unexamined assumptions are rarely present in his writings (no philosopher is perfect, after all). Obviously Aristotle’s logic was less powerful than ours, but this simply is a contingent factor due to the passing of time. Now, it is rather important to notice that the same can be said of many great philosophers of the past including, for example, Aquinas, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, etc. But the story has by no means ended. On what grounds could we deny the status of “analytic” philosophers to such thinkers as, for example, Brentano, Meinong, or Husserl? Are we allowed to exclude Meinong because he endorsed an overcrowded (in the Quinean sense) ontology? In order to do this, we must clearly resort once again to the “ideological” side of the analytic tradition, which thus keeps its importance. Twentieth century analytic philosophers (in the narrower sense of the term) look somehow like “normal” scientists who work in a Kuhnian paradigm: they live within their paradigm, and are not able to see, from within, what lies outside. When someone comes up telling them that times have changed, and that their basic premises no longer seem to hold, they do not even understand what all that means and keep going with their old business. The Fregean/analytic paradigm must then be challenged radically, otherwise no significant change is likely to take place. And “radical challenge” means, here, “linguistic challenge,” because orthodox analytic

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philosophers still think that language is an a priori element that determines and builds up reality.39 Analytic philosophers, in other words, built a sort of linguistic toy which must be dismantled if we really want to get rid of the above mentioned analytic ideology. There are many “enigmas” in analytic philosophy40 that can be dissolved just by resorting to a naturalistic and evolutionary conception of language and its origins. 3. OBJECTIVE VS. SUBJECTIVE PRAGMATISM As already remarked, pragmatism is currently gaining new strength in the American philosophical circles and in European philosophy as well. In the first chapter, section 3, of the present work, some reasons were put forward to explain this resurgence from both the theoretical and the historical viewpoints. As a matter of fact, however, the contemporary neopragmatism actually thriving in the United States has a largely Rortyan flavor, while Putnam’s rediscovery of William James’s philosophy and of pragmatism in general is rather recent, and the comments on it are still scanty. We can thus begin to note that Rescher’s pragmatist stance is less well known than Rorty’s even though it is older,41 the reason being, in our opinion, that Rescher’s thought is essentially perceived as a form of idealism.42 His American colleagues seem to believe that Rescher’s conceptual idealism is more important than his methodological pragmatism, while, in our view, neither may they be distinguished by a neat border-line, nor can any of the two deemed to be more important than the other. Rescher’s philosophy is, after all, a sort of holistic system: you are not allowed to keep one part rejecting the others. In the first chapter43 we hinted at Rescher’s distinction between a more flexible “pragmatism of the left” and a more conservative “pragmatism of the right,” and now the time has come to explain what our author means by these definitions. Referring to a famous article by Arthur Lovejoy44 he notes, first of all, that there seem to be as many pragmatisms as pragmatists. Usually, however, those who are interested in pragmatism from an historical point of view tend to forget that, from the beginning, a substantial polarity is present in this tradition of thought. It is a dichotomy between what Rescher calls “pragmatism of the left,” i.e. a flexible type of pragmatism which endorses a greatly enhanced cognitive relativism, and a “pragmatism of the right,” namely a different position that sees the pragmatist stance as a source of cognitive security. Both positions are eager to assure pluralism in the cognitive enterprise and in the concrete conduct of human affairs,

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but the meaning they attribute to the term “pluralism” is not the same. Rescher sees Charles S. Peirce, Clarence I. Lewis45 and himself as adherents to the pragmatism of the right, and William James, F.S.C. Schiller and Richard Rorty as representatives of the pragmatism of the left, with John Dewey standing somehow in a middle of the road position. Here is how he depicts his opinion on the issue: [. . .] In understanding the practical dimension of cognitive quality-control, it is critically important to distinguish between a subjective and an objective pragmatism. For there indeed is an objective pragmatism: “What works impersonally” (is efficient and effective) for the realization of some objective purpose, in an altogether impersonal way (e.g., “successful prediction,” “control over nature,” “efficacy in purpose attainment”), which looks to impersonal validation of objective standards for the conduct of cognitive or practical affairs. But this position contrasts with a subjective pragmatsm that pivots on “what works for you” (or for us)—that is, is successful and satisfying to individuals (or limited groups) for the realization of their particular wishes and desires. With the latter, pragmatism is not a venture in validating objective standards but in deconstructing them through dissolution into the variegated vagaries of personal positions and individual inclinations [. . .] Looking at James, Peirce himself saw this particularization as a corruption and degradation of the pragmatic enterprise. (And looking at Rorty, Rescher thinks somewhat the same.)46

Now, the position of the so-called pragmatists of the left is rather clear: one just has to read Rorty’s works to see where it ends up, from both a cognitive and a socio-political viewpoint.47 But what does the “pragmatism of the right” really come to? In order to answer this question, which is indeed essential for understanding the Rescherian brand of pragmatism, we shall follow, once again, a via negativa; in other words, we will try to discover what is not acceptable in the socalled pragmatism of the left and subsequently we purport to give, using a subtractive method, what the views of objective pragmatism are on some key philosophical issues. Since Rorty is a constant target of Rescher’s criticisms48, a few words of his will splendidly serve our present purposes, just by highlighting a bunch of theses that a conservative pragmatist could never accept: [. . .] Let me sum up by offering a characterization of pragmatism: it is the doctrine that there are no constraints in inquiry save conversatonal ones—no wholesale constraints derived from the nature of the objects, or of the mind,

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or of language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow inquirers [. . .] The pragmatist tells us that it is useless to hope that objects will constrain us to believe the truth about them, if only they are approached with an unclouded mental eye, or a rigorous method, or a perspicuous language [. . .] The only sense in which we are constrained to truth is that we can make no sense of the notion that the view which can survive all objections might be false. But objections—conversational constraints— cannot be anticipated. There is no method for knowing when one has reached the truth, or when one is closer to it than before.49

As we shall see in chapter 8, there are in this passage some points of contact with what Rescher claims (why, otherwise, would they both define themselves as “pragmatists”?). But the differences are much more striking than the similarities, and they regard the ideas of “truth” and “objectivity” in the first place. Parochial diversity is something that a post-modern pragmatist like Richard Rorty gladly accepts in order to achieve results which are, at the same time, subjectivistic and relativistic. On the other hand, even a Rescherian pragmatist sees practical efficacy as the cornerstone of our endeavors, but at the same time he takes efficacy to be the best instrument we have at our disposal for achieving objectification. What does this term mean? Let us first imagine a natural reality out of which a social-linguistic world slowly—but constantly—evolved. And let us imagine, furthermore, that this social and linguistic world acquired an ever growing independence, to the extent that its ontological autonomy from its natural ancestor has become, with the passing of time, so evident that many philosophers have been led to question the very existence of natural reality itself. If we bear all this in mind, we are on the right track to understanding Rescher’s philosophical system. Because the social world that men themselves create requests that we constantly live having some purposes in mind, and objective pragmatism is just concerned with the effective and efficient achievement of purpose (what works). At this point we must be very careful, because the fundamental border-line between objective and subjective pragmatism is approaching at great speed. The purposes that Rescher talks about are not mine, or yours: they are not, in a word, correlated to the particular tastes of individuals or particular social groups. They can be rather taken to be all collective human endeavors whose rational roots are ultimately reducible to the nature of human condition as such. This means that all men qua men happen to share a natural environment to which they give order resorting to their rational-

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intellectual capacities. Of course the largely autonomous social world which we mentioned above assumes different shapes according to the different cultural traditions; but, still, we are somewhat compelled to assume a broad “principle of correspondence,” according to which human purposes match the inputs that are set by the conditions of homo sapiens, as biological evolution on this planet and social evolution in our cultural environment have shaped us.50 So Rescher’s kind of pragmatism leads to objectivity, in the sense that objective constraint, and not personal preference, is the fundamental premise of our cognitive goals. What we mean to achieve in starting the process of empirical knowledge is control over the natural environment of which we are ourselves essential part, and this control, in turn, may be both active (interactionistic) and passive (predictive). Although he openly declares his idealistic stance, Rescher recognizes the presence of a “reality principle” that is practically forced upon us just in view of our belonging in the natural world, and despite the fact that we play, in that same world, a very special role (quite different, that is, from the role played by stones, stars or animals). Our control over nature, in turn, can never be total, because whether mushrooms nourish or kill us, or whether an asteroid will hit the Earth tomorrow or not, does not depend on our tastes or desires, but on the way nature itself is made. All this can be summarized by a short—but important—statement: We create the social-linguistic world, but not natural reality. It can—or, rather, it “must”—be admitted that we have access to natural reality only through social and linguistic tools that evolution has made more and more sophisticated and complex, but it is fallacious to draw, from this premise, the conclusion that men create the whole of reality, both social and natural. If we accept this line of reasoning, any clear border-line between the social and the natural world is illusory. We can in other words claim that nature imposes inescapable constraints upon us (we cannot detach ourselves from nature and live, so to speak, in a void); but, at the same time, we are allowed to stress the fact that men always see nature from their point of view, this being their condition of accessibility to nature itself. However, there is no need to conceive of this condition in purely individualistic and solipsistic terms: it rather pertains to the human species at large, and any attempt meant at denying this built-in condition turns out to be a sort of wishful thinking, which may only produce thrilling (and fashionable) theories at the level of pure philosophical speculation.

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Leaving aside the essential question of the relationships between the men-created social world and natural reality, we may now turn to the consideration of the social-linguistic world in itself. Even at this level, it is not the case that human purposes are only and exclusively determined by the desires of single individuals: this may be true only if we take small and unrelated issues into account. However, shifting our attention to a much broader context, where the survival and the essential interestes of mankind are at stake, we see that purposes are geared to the need for efficient means for the satisfaction of general human desiderata inherent in the very nature of our situation here on Earth. Communal projects, and not individual attitudes, are the factors with which the objective pragmatist is mainly concerned (we stress the word “mainly” because no one denies, of course, that personal desires indeed play an important function in our daily life). We all know that different human groups categorize reality in different ways, even though these differences are never so great as to prevent a reasonably good communication among them.51 So we are bound to ask: How are these communal projects set up, given the inevitable difference among the many groups that actually form humankind? Can we really find a common basis which is shared by all human beings as such, so preventing the risk that talk about communal projects is just wishful thinking? According to Rescher we certainly can, and the basic reason pivots, once again, on the view of human social life as a rational reaction of self-adaptation to the natural environment from which social groups themselves evolved. And this position is clearly explained by the following words: [. . .] Our ventures into communication and inquiry are undergirded by the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of objectively existing things, a world of “real things” among which we live and into which we inquire, yet about which we do and must assume that we have only imperfect information at any and every particular stage of the cognitive venture. This commitment to an objective reality that underlies the data at hand is indispensably demanded by any step into the domain of the publicly accessible objects essential to communal inquiry and interpersonal communication about a shared world. We could not establish communicative contact about a common objective item of discussion if our discourse were geared to the substance of our own idiosyncratic ideas and conceptions of things.52

Let us then see where we actually stand. Objective pragmatism—or the pragmatism of the right, as Rescher calls it—claims that (a) our sociallinguistic world evolved out of natural reality; (b) this social-linguistic

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world acquires an increasing autonomy; (c) between the social and the natural worlds there is no ontological line of separation, but just a functional one; (d) however, the accessibility to natural reality is only granted by the tools that the social-linguistic world provides us with; (e) this means that our knowledge of natural reality is always tentative and mediated by our conceptual capacities; (f) there is no need to draw relativistic conclusions from this situation, because the presence of “an objective reality that underlies the data at hand” puts upon personal desires objective constraints that we are able to overcome at the verbal level, but not in the sphere of rational deliberations implementing actions. What we need to do now is giving a sketchy picture of the Rescherian concept of objectivity, and this we shall do in the first section of chapter 3. NOTES 1

N. Rescher, OJ, 1986. It must be noted, however, that OJ is just an updating and continuation of a preceding book, Mid-Journey: An Unfinished Autobiography, University Press of America, Lanham-New York-London, 1983.

2

For this reason we will not take the details of his personal life into account.

3

OJ, cit., p. ix.

4

Ibid., pp. 21-22.

5

Ibid., p. 65.

6

Ibid., p. 70.

7

Among them: Studies in the History of Arabic Logic, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1963; The Development of Arabic Logic, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1964; Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic, Reidel, DordrechtBoston, 1966; and Studies in Arabic Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1968.

8

OJ, cit., p. 118.

9

N. Rescher, “Curriculum Operis.” In: A. Mercier, M. Svilar (eds.), Philosophers on Their Own Work, Vol. 9, Bernard and Frankfurt am Main, 1982, pp. 199-236.

10

See for instance R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, 2nd pr.

11

In a conversation I had with him in Pittsburgh in 1993, Rescher pointed out to me the importance of the Vietnam war for understanding the decline of analytic philosophy.

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NOTES 12

A sharp criticism of Quine’s criterion of semantic ascent may be found in I. Hacking, Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 180-185.

13

G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher, cit., pp. 8-9.

14

See the article by N. Rescher, “American Philosophy Today,” first published in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 46 (1993), pp. 717-745, and then reprinted as chapter one of APT, 1994, pp. 1-30.

15

See, for example, R. Rorty, “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language,” in C. Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 337-357.

16

“The language of analytic philosophy ‘forces’ the reader to a conclusion trough a knock-down argument [. . .] I never wanted to force people to believe things, I wanted to help them understand things better. Therefore, I thought that it would be better to structure the enterprise of philosophy around the activity of understanding, rather than interpersonal activity of argument.” Robert Nozick in: G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher, cit., pp. 74-75.

17

A short account of this system may be found in PSPI, 1994, and a more detailed one in the three volumes SPI1, SPI2, SPI3, 1992-94.

18

And this despite the fact that some interpreters, both in Europe and in the U.S., insist in defining him as a typical analytic philosopher.

19

E. Sosa (ed.), The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher: Discussion and Replies, cit.; R. Almeder (ed.), Praxis and Reason: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, cit., 1982. A third reader on Rescher’s philosophy, which will be published by Vanderbilt University Press, is currently in the process of being assembled.

20

Dummett elaborates on these basic assumption in his work Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Duckworth, London, 1993.

21

N. Rescher, “The Rise and Fall of Analytic Philosophy,” in APT, pp. 31-42.

22

See note 17 of the preceding section of this chapter.

23

N. Rescher, APT, pp. 34-35.

24

See for instance R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, cit.

25

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, cit., 6.371.

26

L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, transl. by P. Winch, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 7e.

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NOTES 27

See, for example, R. Rorty, “Is Natural Science a Natural Kind?,” in R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge-New York, 1991, pp. 46-62.

28

APT, p. 35.

29

Which, of course, is rather different from the positions held by German historicism and Italian neoidealism, that both equate philosophy with its history.

30

This is shown, for instance, by his interest in Blaise Pascal, a thinker who was never popular with analytic philosophers. See N. Rescher, PW, 1985.

31

N. Rescher, APT, p. 36.

32

However, the movement became so popular that its adherents often refused (and many still do today) to recognize the substantial failure of the program. Analytic philosophy in sum became, especially in Britain and in the United States, a powerful source of academic power.

33

R. Rorty, “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language,” in C. Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, cit.

34

APT, p. 38.

35

Ibid.

36

R. Rorty, The Linguistic Turn: Essays, Philosophical Method. With Two Retrospective Essays, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992, p. 371.

37

APT, pp. 39-40.

38

Ibid., p. 41.

39

As we shall see in chapter 8, section 8.2, even a philosopher like Davidson, who is generally considered to be “post-analytic,” sometimes sees language as an inexplicable element.

40

Truth, for instance, is an enigma for Michael Dummett, and the presence of language is, as we have just said, a mystery for Donald Davidson. But even Quine looks unable to endorse a more “relaxed” view of language and of language analysis.

41

See, for instance, three recent works on pragmatism in which Rorty is quoted while Rescher is not: C. West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1989; J.P. Murphy, Pragmatism: From Peirce to Davidson (with an Introduction by R. Rorty), Westview Press, Boulder-San Francisco, 1990; and L. Langsdorf, A.R. Smith (eds.): Recovering Pragmatism’s Voice. The Classical Tradition, Rorty, and the Philosophy of Communication. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1995.

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NOTES 42

With all the unpleasant consequences that this may have in a philosophical context which is still greatly influenced by the analytic tradition. See chapter 1, section 1.2, note 24.

43

Note 3.

44

A.O. Lovejoy, “The Thirteen Pragmatisms,” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 5 (1908), pp. 5-12 and 29-39. But even the wellknown History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston is still useful for evaluating the differences among pragmatism’s main representatives. See F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy. Vol. VIII (Modern Philosophy: Empiricism, Idealism, and Pragmatism in Britain and America), Doubleday, New York-London, 1994.

45

It must be noted that an important thinker like C.I. Lewis is not popular with the Rortyan neopragmatists. His name is mentioned a very few times by Cornel West, only once by John P. Murphy, and not even once in the anthology edited by L. Langsdorf and A.R. Smith (see note 42 above).

46

N. Rescher, PSPI, 1994, p. 378.

47

We insist on a point that was raised already in the first chapter of the present book: the later Wittgenstein’s influence on Rorty is even stronger than that exerted by James and Dewey.

48

This does not mean, obviously, that they are “total enemies” from a philosophical point of view. Our opinion instead is that, at least on some specific issues, Rorty is closer to Rescher than to most orthodox analytic philosophers.

49

R. Rorty, “Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism,” in: R. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, cit., pp. 165-166.

50

We shall verify, in the eighth chapter, that Donald Davidson puts forward a similar thesis in his latest works, even though his point of view is more strictly tied to linguististic factors. While Davidson’s approach is semantic in character, Rescher’s is explicitly pragmatic and envisions no particular supremacy of language over other constituents of human behavior. It should be noted that, just for this reason, one is entitled to question Rorty’s definition of Davidson as a “post-analytic” thinker.

51

This important issue, which is connected to the problem of the “conceptual schemes,” will be discussed in fuller detail in chapter 6, section 6.2.

52

N. Rescher, SPI.1, 1992, p. 259.

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Chapter 3 THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 1. THE PATH TO ONTOLOGICAL OBJECTIVITY

R

escher’s definition of ontological objectivity is, on the one hand, strikingly clear and, on the other, highly problematic. Here are his own words: [. . .] Objectivity is not something we infer from the data; it is something we do and must presuppose. It is something that we postulate or presume from the very outset of our dealings with people’s claims about the world’s facts— our own included. Its epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery but that of a presupposition whose ultimate justification is a transcendental argument from the very possibility of the projects of communication and inquiry as we standardly conduct them.1

The specification at stake here is just the opposite of objectivity conceived of as something that we merely infer from empirical data (maybe with a little abstractive effort). But, on the other side, nor can it be equated with a classical idealistic viewpoint, according to which objectivity is something that our mind simply creates in the process of reflection. Objectivity is, in this case, a sort of cross-product of the encounter between our mind-shaped tools and capacities, and a surrounding reality made of things that are real in the classical meaning of the term: they are there and in no way can be said to be mind-created. But a final—and quite important—qualification is in order: the very mode in which we see these real things, and conceive of (and speak about) them is indeed mind-dependent. Science itself gives us some crucial insights in this direction, since it shows that we see, say, tables and trees in a certain way which, however, does not match the image that scientific instruments are able to attain. Does this mean that our commonsense view of the world is totally wrong and that nature likes to deceive us? Those who adopt such a stance do not really understand what is at issue here. The difference between the commonsense and the scientific image of the world is explainable by the fact that we are evolutionary (and, thus,

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

fully natural) creatures. Nature has simply endowed human beings with tools and capacities that enable them to survive in an environment which— at least in remote eras—was largely hostile. Our way of seeing tables and trees is what is requested for carrying on a successful fight for the survival of the species: nothing more—and nothing less—is needed for achieving this fundamental goal.2 Subsequently our conceptual capacities have grown to such an extent that science was made possible, and with science our consciousness of the gap between what we see and what really is, acquired an ever increasing speed. But how should the presence of peculiar creatures like ourselves within the natural realm be explained? Rescher puts forward some interesting replies to this crucial question.3 Needless to say, they are metaphysical answers and, as such, they will be taken into due account later on.4 Turning once again to the problem of ontological objectivity, the picture has now gained both strength and clarity. If we recall that human endeavors, although occurring in a largely autonomous social and linguistic world, are nevertheless limited by the constrainsts that natural reality forces upon us, we begin to understand that the social-linguistic world itself is not a boat freely floating in the big ocean without directions. If the boat is there, it means that an explanation of its presence is likely to be obtained if only we are patient enough to look for it. Some kind of hand must be on the wheel, giving the boat indications on where to go and how the destination should be reached. The fact of the matter is that we human beings are not only evolutionary creatures, but also communicative ones. In order to shape our image of the world into which we find ourselves thrown (and without having chosen to do so, as Martin Heidegger often remarked), we need to have communicative intercourse with other human beings. This image comes thus to be shaped in the social-linguistic environment. The fact is that the construction itself of the image does not take place freely, but according to standards that must somehow be objective. Objective in which sense, though? Certainly we do not want to assume that such standards were there from eternity, so that all we have to do is to discover them, just like mathematical objects wait to be discovered by us according to Bertrand Russell’s Platonistic philosophy of mathematics: such a conception is exactly opposed to the one endorsed by Rescher. Objective standards are indeed a product of human mind, and their production responds to essentially practical needs. Whenever we want to create a communal life,5 we need to establish standards and rules that determine, for instance, what is right and what is wrong within our community in ways that go be-

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yond our personal wishes of the moment. There has to be an impersonal determination of what qualifies being accepted as a member, what kind of commitments are required of its members for assuring the community’s safety, and so on. Here we have, thus, a first kind of objectivity, because it is obvious that in the community those standards must be held as objective; if this is not the case, the emergence and survival of the group would be jeopardized. Let us note, however, that this type of objectivity is strong from some points of view, but weak from others. History, sociology and anthropology teach us that the communities or social groups are many, and not just one. A standard which is undeniably objective for a group may turn out not to be so for a second or a third one, and in most cases we do not even need the help of the social sciences to ascertain this fact: our travelling and practical experiences are more than sufficient for this purpose. Naturally the degrees to which the “socially” objective standards vary are quite diverse in different contexts. If I am Italian and travel to the United States, I may find some slight differences between the standards that are held objective in the social groups that live in the two countries, but it is in any event obvious that those differences are just matters of detail, so that we are allowed to claim that Americans and Italians share a basic set of objective standards. Needless to say, the situation gets much more complex if an Italian (or an American) decides to spend a period of time with a primitive tribe of aborigenes in Australia, because most of the objective standards, in this case, are likely to change a lot, and for sure the so-called “civilized Western person” will have to undergo a great effort if only to get along reasonably well with the members of the tribe. Notice that we said that most standards will change, but not all of them, and this will turn out to be important. However these considerations, even though highly plausible, leave us with a sense of dissatisfaction. What kind of objectivity is this, that changes not only with the passing of time, but also according to the transformation of the social and political institutions and, last but not least, with the modification of cultural values? Are we allowed to use the respectably old term “objectivity” even in this case? Rescher’s reply is that it is indeed legitimate to do so because, starting from this socially limited kind of objectivity, we can find our path towards a broader type (never forgetting, however, that the quest for absolute objectivity is deemed to failure, just like Dewey used to say about the quest for certainty).

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To address the problem in the proper way, it should be understood that it manifests two main aspects. On the one side, when pronouncing claims purported to be objective we want to understand whether such claims deal with real things in the real world rather than with mind-constructed phenomena. On the other there is an epistemic meaning of objectivity, that addresses the question of whether the claims we pronounce hold for (a) single individuals, (b) particular groups of people, or (c) for every man qua man. Rescher defines (a) as “egocentric” objectivity, (b) as “parochial” objectivity, and (c) as “impersonal” or “interpersonal” objectivity. In the first two cases our personal or locally social preferences are at work, while in the third case a “generalized impersonal cogency” is present which assimilates cognitive objectivity to rational cogency at large. Of course we have no strictly empirical methods for determining that, say, in case A impersonal objectivity is at work, while in case B it is not. All we can do is to arrange our own commitments so that the largest possible number of people would just act the same way if they possessed the same relevant information and found themselves in the same situation. So we are compelled to assume that these people are “rational”, in the sense that they share with us some basic insights on how to pursue their action. But what does “rational” mean in this context? Rescher claims that in our social world two distinct kinds of values are present: (A) Those at work in rational inquiry (of which science represents the main—but not unique—asset) like truth, accuracy, verifiability, rational economy, etc.; and (B) such self-promoting values as power, influence, reputation, personal enrichment, and so on. Obviously both types of values influence our lives: after all, this is a crucial characteristic of our nature of human beings. The self-promoting values are person-centered, in the sense that they take our individual interest as the only objective worth pursuing. The values at work in rational inquiry, instead, have an interpersonal character: They take individuals to be components of a larger net. So it turns out that the A-type values are essentially holistic, while the B-type ones are essentially atomistic. Arguing that the first ones are superior, Rescher does not mean to claim that the B-values should be eliminated. This task is an unachievable one and, moreover, B-values play their own role in the cognitive endeavor. Think of a society where individuals are both prevented from taking care of their personal interests and compelled to pay all their attention to collective goals; however fascinating such a perspective may be for collectivistic philosophers, no doubt it is frightening for those

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of us who tend to see the collapse of the Soviet Union as an instructive historical lesson. The values of the first type are superior from the cognitive point of view, because they are indeed necessary tools for our comprehension of the world, be it natural or social. Without those values, we have no hope of transcending our strictly personal, individualistic and atomistic sphere in order to ascertain that we are just part of a much larger environment. And the fact of the matter is that this environment could never be known by us by resorting to the B-values alone, simply because this is not their job. The real meaning of objectivity, thus, is that it calls for our commitment to Avalues. It is interesting to note, at this point, that Rescher’s position is quite different from Rorty’s, although both claim to be inspired by the American pragmatist tradition. At the heart itself of Rorty’s post-analityc and postmodern stance lies a typically relativistic view of the world. Both Rescher and Rorty would agree that, ultimately, our belief system is nothing but a product of the natural and cultural environment in which men happen to live. But from this premise Rorty draws the conclusion that we, persons living in the liberal-democratic societies of the Western world, are only luckier, and not more intelligent, than the people holding different points of view. This in turn means that, when we want to defend a democratic vision of the political and social order from the attacks of any kind of fundamentalism, we can invoke neither ultimate values nor an objective order of things; those values and that order do not exist, but are just products of the particular “form of life” (taken in a Wittgensteinian sense) in which we chose to organize our political institutions and our personal lives. Nevertheless, as anyone can verify reading his works, Rorty defines himself as a “liberal democrat.” He is really convinced that Western liberal thought has produced the best form of political and social life which has ever appeared on our planet. The problems show up because he explicitly refuses to put forward any rational argument in favor of this kind of life. Our ethics—he states—really is better than any other, even though there are many people we will never be able to convince about this fact. It is thus mistaken, in his opinion, to say that there is nothing that makes our ethics better than the moral conception endorsed by the Nazis; but we are right in claiming, instead, that there is no common and neutral ground of discussion between a liberal democrat and a Nazi philosopher in which the differences can be brought to the surface.6

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Rescher strongly opposes Rorty’s relativism, and their differences may be reduced to the fact that the former endorses the “pragmatism of the right” while the second is the best known representative of the “pragmatism of the left.”7 The contrast here is not between a personal vision of things and an impersonal vision of them because—as we hinted several times before—Rescher does not argue in favor of a person-free and mindindependent conception of values. Personal views are always at stake, because our view of reality is bound to be personal: This is the very way in which the world is accessible to us. The contrast is, rather, between those personal views that should be compelling for rational people and those who are uniquely prone to personal preferences. But it is important to remember that being “rational” means here being practically so. We are not talking of an abstract kind of rationality that has nothing to do with the concrete world in which we happen to live. The rationality here at issue is practical in the sense of obeying to rules and standards that—in the mainstream of the American pragmatist tradition—are likely to improve the quality of our life. Speaking of something stronger, i.e. of a rationality totally detached by the men who give rise to it and endorse it, is simply wishful thinking. Rescher and Rorty would certainly agree on the latest statement (and this is due to their common pragmatist heritage), but they split precisely when one asks what kind of values can validate this pragmatic rationality. Rorty’s answer is that we only have subjective values, whose importance can be traded having recourse to conversation with other human beings. Rescher’s reply, instead, is that we have both subjective and cognitive values at our disposal, and that both are important indeed. But when we embark ourselves in some type of cognitive enterprise, the only useful values are the cognitive ones, because the others do not have the indispensable force needed to transcend our subjective dimension.8 Another important point to be noticed is the following. Rescher would say that Rorty can deny the presence of the cognitive values only by using his fertile philosophical imagination, i.e. at the purely theoretical level. In his daily life, however, even Rorty is forced to use A-type values to conduct his cognitive enterprise, and this means that, in the practical dimension, his reasoning turns out to be untenable. So we are left with the fundamental conclusion that the A-values are built in the structure of our social world: we need them in order to give shape to our social existence, and only a dreamer may think that they can be got rid of. This takes us back to what was said at the beginning of this section: “Objectivity is not something we infer from the data; it is something we do and must presuppose. It

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is something that we postulate or presume from the very outset of our dealings with people’s claims about the world’s facts—our own included.” The concept of “presupposition,” then, plays a key role in this context, because now we are able to understand in a fuller sense what Rescher means by claiming that the epistemic status of objectivity is not that of an empirical finding, like Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the American continent, but, rather, that of a presupposition whose justification may be inferred from “the very possibility of the projects of communication and inquiry as we standardly conduct them.” To put it in more down-to-earth terms: men would not even be able to construct the social world as we know it, were they have not to follow since the beginning the path of objectivity and rationality. Objectivity and rationality are connected to social and linguistic practice, but they are essentially geared to some basic features that all men qua men share in view of their common evolutionary heritage. We know, furthermore, that human beings differ a great deal insofar as their particular skills are at issue. The goals that a bright atomic physicist sets up for himself are not the same goals likely to be achieved by an employee of an insurance company or by a blue collar worker of a steel factory. Rescher considers these common facts of our experience as rationally inherent in the objective circumstances of our differential situations. In other words, the fact that society developed according to largely impersonal standards does not mean that all members of society share the same existential and social situation. They share only some common features, which are in the last analysis tied to the necessity of granting the survival of each social group present on our planet, and these common features, in turn, must be such as to permit the life of the individuals within the net of a communally structured group. Rescher explains his stance regarding the relationships between objectivity and rationality as follows: [. . .] To say that matters of rationality are objective is not to say that people will reach agreement about them—it is to say no more than they would reach agreement if they proceeded in a totally adequate way. Rationality is a matter of idealization. It gazes towards idealities and away from the actualities of an imperfect world. Different cultures will no more agree about the world’s character than different eras will agree about the factual truths of science. And the reason for this in both cases is much the same—different groups have different bodies of experience. But, the evidential relativity of our contentions does not show that there are no facts of the matter on the topics to which they relate, and no objectively rational decision to be made. The different views of those who have different data at their disposal no more de-

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stroy factuality and objectivity than the fact that different associates have different opinions of him annihilates a person.9

So we come to the conclusion that the typically relativistic stance, which holds that “what is objective for someone may not be so for someone else,” can indeed be accepted if it simply means to point out that the objective circumstances of our differential situations vary a great deal. It must instead be rejected if its purpose is to claim that no objective standards explain why we can find some basic constants in the evolution of all social groups. In order to show this, in fact, the relativist must give the picture of a world quite different from our actually existing and shared world. 2. THE THEORY OF RATIONALITY How is rationality conceived of in Rescher’s philosophical system? We have already seen10 that rationality is for him a matter of idealization, and this is really important for understanding his views on the issue. Although we must admit our natural origins and evolutionary heritage, we must give way as well to the recognition that there is indeed something that makes us unique. Only human beings are able to to “gaze towards idealities” and to somehow detach themselves from “the actualities on an imperfect world.” Just like objectivity, rationality is the expression of mankind’s capacity to see not only how things actually are, but also how they might have been and how they could turn out to be if we were to take some course of action rather than another. The concept of possibility plays, thus, a key role here, and it should be noted that there are similarities—as well as differences— between Rescher’s stance and that endorsed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. As is well known, the Austrian-born philosopher claimed, in his first masterpiece, that we always think of an object in the framework of some possible state of affairs; furthermore, the thought of an object that exists independently of every possible state of affairs is something that goes beyond our very capacity of thinking. The objects in turn, just due to their nature, determine the way reality is, but it is in any event clear that they underwrite many different possibilities (or possible worlds). The difference is, of course, that while the early Wittgenstein envisions the so-called “logical form of the world” behind the contingent manifestation of it that lies before our eyes,11 in Rescher there is nothing of that sort and, in particular, no fixed and unchanging “logical form of the world.” But it is any-

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how clear that the notion of “possibility” is very important indeed for both thinkers. Rescher’s opinion on the status of possibility is precisely stated in a work of his that belongs to the middle period of his speculation: [. . .] Giambattista Vico said somewhere that we men only understand what we have made ourselves, and in my view this dictum applies with full force to possibilia; possible worlds and possible individuals being most properly viewed as actual or potential conceptual artifacts [. . .] The domain of the possible plays a prominent part in our thought about the affairs of nature and of man, deliberation about alternatives, contingency planning, reasoning from hypotheses and assumptions, and thought-experiments are but a few instances of our far-flung concern with possibility. The rational guidance of human affairs involves a constant recourse to possibiities: we try to guard against them, to prevent them, to bring them to realization, etc. The theory of possibility thus represents a significant part of our understanding of man’s ways of thought and action.12

The agent is thus an inevitable point of departure for Rescher, in the theory of rationality and in all the other philosophical issues as well. To someone charging his philosophy with being essentially anthropocentric, he would answer that we are compelled to adopt such a stance, because this is the only way we have at our disposal for gaining accessibility to the world. No one denies that it would be good to transcend our conceptual machinery— if only for a moment—to glimpse at how the world really is, independently of any view we can hold about it. This, however, we cannot do because of the very way men happen to be made. Unlike many classical idealists, Rescher never claims that our conceptual world is the only one that exists, the natural one being merely appearance or illusion. He always recognizes the presence of things that are real in the sense of being mind-independent but, on the other hand, he constantly hastens to specify that human beings have access to them via their conceptual apparatus (which, in turn, has nothing mysterious about it, since it is a product of natural evolution). Rescher’s dictum that “What is rational for me must, in like circumstances, be rational for all of us” cannot be properly understood without having recourse to the notion of idealization. Certainly such a dictum cannot be referred to the actual, particular circumstances in which we conduct our daily affairs because, in that case, it would be patently false. On the other hand, recall what was said before. Should we characterize human beings at large as creatures that can only think of what they actually see and touch, it would become impossible to understand what makes the differ-

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ence between men and all other beings who, after all, share the world with them. No track of positivism, however weak, is present in Rescher’s philosophical system. The fact is that, following the recognition that rationality is always tied to interests, we must proceed to specify what kind of interests we are talking about in each particular context. Bearing this in mind, it is not difficult to recognize that interests are, so to speak, located in a sort of ladder where the most personal ones (which are the large majority) lie at the bottom, and the most universal ones (a tiny, but very important, minority) lie at the top. Rescher himself puts forward an example concerning what doctors usually recommend to their patients for maintaining a good health. Clearly there are recommendations like “Eat chocolate” whose specific value is tied to the kind of patient they are addressed to. Since many people are better not to take that advice, this is an example of a very personal type of interest. Then more general recommendations follow, like “Eat vegetables at least once a day,” which seems reasonably good for most of us. Yet, contraindications are at work even in this situation, and specifically for persons afflicted with some kinds of desease. So this is a border-line case: the interest at stake is still individualistic, but to a much lesser extent than before. However, if a doctor says: “Eat the foods conducive to maintaining your health,” we have the instantiation of an interest located at the top of our ladder, because its validity can be accepted by every man qua man. What, then, if the objection is raised that not all human beings comply to this recommendation? There certainly are persons who love a dangerous food so much that they will take the risk of health damage in order to satisfy their greediness. Or we may find someone who is really tired of living and decides that eating unhealthy foods may abbreviate his existence. The answer to this objection is that we have not said that rationality is compelling in the sense of logical necessity: after all, a human being is free, in normal circumstances, to choose the course of action that he prefers. What we stressed, instead, is that humankind at large has sorted out, during its natural evolution, some rational standards that have proven to be effective for the survival of the species. No extramundane realm of Platonic values convinced men to do so, but just the discovery that some actions are useful and others are less or not useful at all in enabling us to satisfy the needs that nature has legislated for us. This is most likely the origin of the typically human capacity to idealize: by observing the results that a certain action produces, we are able to predict that it will continue to do so in the same or very similar circum-

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stances. Ideals, however, become with the passing of time more and more autonomous, to the extent that they exert a feed-back reaction. The same happens in the field of political and social institutions. They are certainly not self-originated: any reasonable evidence leads us to assume that they were created by men. But, after a little time, they both begin an autonomous life and start having influence on their creators (feed-back effect). Just like objectivity, thus, rationality is not something we find out there ready to be used. It is, rather, “something that we postulate or presume from the very outset of our dealings with people’s claims about the world’s facts—our own included.” The rationality here at issue is essentially practical, and has nothing to do with values that conduct their eternal life in a perfect world of which our imperfect one is just a bad and shallow copy. This is probably one of the most puzzling facts for Rescher’s interpreters, because, on the one hand, he defines himself as an “idealist” (even though “pragmatic”), but soon after hastens to specify that he denies any clear separation between man and nature, gearing both his conceptual idealism and his methodological pragmatism to natural evolution. As we shall see in the next chapter of the present book,13 there are indeed good grounds for defining Rescher’s position as a sort of “idealized naturalism.” As we just hinted, however, more traditional idealists may find some of his theses puzzling (and, from the viewpoint of a classical type of idealism, they are right). A good example is given by some recent comments by Timothy Sprigge on the first volume of Rescher’s trilogy A System of Pragmatic Idealism. Sprigge argues as follows: [. . .] After describing cognitive idealism as (roughly) the thesis that every truth is knowable by mind, or that every existing thing is in principle accessible to a knowing mind, he [Rescher] says that the difference between this and realism is essentially a matter of emphasis. The reason for this assimilation is that any reasonable form of realism will allow that, in the case of every item in the world, it must be possible in principle for there to be or have been a ‘physically embodied’ mind capable of registering it in some manner. This being so the realist can join the idealist in agreeing that there can be no reality in principle opaque to mind. This, however, seems to me to favour a too easy entente between opposing positions. For surely there are two quite different grounds on which it may be insisted that nothing can exist (or alternatively no proposition can be true) which is not in principle accessible to mind. The first, the idealist, view is that this is because to be precisely is to be in principle presentable in some stable fashion to mind (or in the case

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of truth to be in principle verifiable by a mind). The second, the realist version of the claim, affirms the intrinsic incapacity of mind to open itself to whatever there may be.14

All this points to some critical issues arising in Rescher’s account of the relationships between ontology and epistemology, a theme we will deal with in the following chapter.15 It should, however, be said at once that our author’s effort to combine a conceptual sort of idealism with the recognition that our mind’s mechanisms are a product of natural evolution is precisely what makes his brand of idealism more “modern,” and more interesting to twentieth century readers, than other, more classical (but even more oldfashioned) idealistic stances. As we shall verify later on, it is just this insistence of a reality principle to characterize his idealism that allows Rescher to shed light on some key topics of metaphysics, philosophy of science, epistemology and—last, but not least—political and social philosophy. The following quotation will help to explain why it is so: [. . .] The fact that we are animals places us squarely within the order of nature. But, the fact that we deem ourselves rational means that we see ourselves as exempted from the absolute rule of external forces and as endowed with some measure of self-determination. A rational creature is one capable of making its idealized vision of what it should be determine at least in part what it actually is. Our claim to rationality means that our nature is not wholly given—that we have the ability to contribute in at least some small degree to making ourselves into the sorts of creatures we are.16

If there is anthropocentrism in these words, certainly it is a very mild form of it. Rescher purports to pay homage to both the majesty of nature, out of which, after all, we came, and to our intellectual resources, that give us a prominent role in the order of nature itself. On the other hand reason, however important she may be, can issue no absolute guarantees. It is true that we have access to the world only via conceptual mechanisms, but from this premise the conclusion that the conceptual apparatus is the world cannot be legitimately drawn. Naturally one is inclined to wonder how the absolutistic universality of what Rescher calls the “defining principles of rationality,” and the pluralistic differentiation that stems from the many, appropriate answers to the question: “What is it rational to do?” can be combined. The answer is that the sphere of rationality is not a single, undifferentiated block; it is, rather, a flexible structure formed by many intermediated levels or strata, with the

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basic principles on the top and the concrete decisions at the bottom. So we have a “hierarchy of levels.” The upper levels give the most general account of what it is to conduct our affairs intelligently (i.e., rationally). Then we have a set of governing norms which, although they are still general, admit of some variation (among these Rescher places the basic principles of logic, canons of inductive reasoning, standards of evidence, etc.). Subsequently the “rules of the game” are found, which provide the procedures for implementing our objectives in any particular context. And, at the bottom, there are the specific resolutions which are used in concrete cases. Obviously the degree of variation increases as soon as we begin descending the ladder. Rescher defines this structure as “cultivation levels of principles of rationality,”17 and articulates it in the following manner: (A) Defining principles of rationality: The basic principles that determine the nature of the enterprise and specify what rationality is all about. These principles in turn provide the criteria for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of rational norms and standards of procedure. (B) Governing norms and standards of rationality: They are the standards for appraising the “rules of the game” that govern the rational transaction of our affairs. They also provide the criteria necessary for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of our rules of rational procedure. (C) Rules of rational procedure: Rules for the rational resolution of choices, which constitute our criteria for assessing the rational acceptability and adequacy of any particular resolution. (D) Rationally warranted rulings: Resolutions with respect to particular issues arising in the concrete cases of daily life. It should be understood, however, that (A)-(D) form a system. It is true that we have a series of descending levels but, just as the D-rationally warranted rules could not exist without the presence of the A-defining principles of rationality, so the latter have no meaning if taken in isolation. In other words, the defining principles exist as long as they can be instantiated in the particular cases, because no abstract/Platonic realm of rational

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principles is devised in Rescher’s thought. Rationality rests, in any case, on praxis. Contrary to other pragmatist-flavored positions popular nowadays, Rescher also maintains that universality has a fundamental and unavoidable function in our rational endeavors. This is due to the fact, already mentioned before, that “presupposition” and “hypothetical reasoning” are key ingredients of our very capacity to rationalize the world in which we live. Indeed, there can be no rationality without universality. All those authors—like Rorty—who draw irrationalist conclusions from the pluralism that any pragmatist-flavored stance endorses, do so just because they see universality and pluralism as opposing principles, while Rescher’s approach shows that—and why—this is not the case. 3. THE COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH When Rescher in the early 1970’s published his essay on the coherence theory of truth, such a theory was not certainly popular in the American philosophical circles (and actually it is not all that popular today either). Moreover, his project was explicitly committed to an idealist outlook on this issue, and this fact did not help for the reason already stated in the second chapter of the present book, that is to say the traditionally “bad” relations between analytic philosophy and idealism. As Rescher himself recognizes at the beginning of the aforementioned essay: [. . .] This book [. . .] seeks to transform a defunct and discredited philosphical theory into a significant instrument of epistemology. Its purpose is to articulate a coherence theory of truth at once faithful to the historical spirit of British idealism and adequate to present-day standards of philosophical rigour in all matters relating to logic and the theory of knowledge. The central task is to develop a workable formal theory of coherence, free from the objections which have traditionally been advanced against the earlier versions of the theory [. . .] Unfortunately, the idealistic coherence theorists themselves have generally eschewed formalization—and for this paid the price of imprecision and obscurity.18

These words remark the difference between our author’s approach, and that endorsed by both the traditional idealistic theorists like A.C. Ewing and a noble father of pragmatism like John Dewey who, as we have seen,19 deemed formalization to be a dispensable element in conducting logical inquiries. Despite his basically analytic and neopositivistic training in his

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university student years, Rescher’s sympathy for idealism grew slowly, but constantly, following the attendance of a graduate seminar on Bradley’s Appearance and Reality taught by Walter T. Stace in Princeton. The vestige of an earlier era, Stace was an exception, of course, because in the early 1950’s logical positivism was triumphant in the United States, and Bradley was precisely one of those philosophers whom Carnap derided in a famous article of his.20 But it should also be recalled the situation has even now not changed totally, because Bradley is still held to be an “unpresentable” thinker by many American and British philosophers of our day.21 Why does Rescher endorse a coherentist approach to truth? The answer is, first of all, systemic and holistic: he needs a coherence theory because the older and more classical correspondence theories do not fit into the comprehensive philosophical system he managed to build. But there is also a more theoretical reply, because our author thinks that a coherence theory has a great number of fertile applications in many areas, among which: the methodology of the use of historical sources, the analysis of counterfactual conditionals, and the problems of inductive logic. As he recognizes in CTT, the first impetus towards developing a coherentist approach to truth came from a theory of inference from inconsistent premises constructed for the analysis of counterfactual conditionals, and presented in a previous book of his.22 Rescher’s point of departure is the distinction between “definitional” and “criterial” theories of truth. The definitional theories try to provide a definition of the expression “is true” as a characteristic of propositions. The criterial ones aim, instead, at specifying the test-conditions which allow us to determine whether (or not) there is warrant to apply “is true” to propositions. Rescher obviously prefers the second alternative and, once again, the reasons for such a preference are typically pragmatic: [. . .] The criterial approach to truth is decision-oriented: its aim is not to specify in the abstract what ‘is true’ means, but rather to put us into a position to implement and apply the concept by instructing us as to the circumstances under which there is rational warrant to characterize or class something (i.e. some proposition) as true. Why bother with a criterion once a definition is at hand? [. . .] To know the meaning of a word or concept is only half the battle: we want to be able to apply it too [. . .] It does little good to know how terms like ‘speed limit’ or ‘misdemeanour’ are defined in the abstract if we are left in the dark as to the conditions of their application.23

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It is important here to understand that the so-called “coherence theory of truth” has had both many historical varieties and many meanings: it is not, in other words, a monolithic doctrine. It may assume, for instance, the metaphysical form of a doctrine claiming that reality as such is a coherent system, or the form of a logical doctrine according to which truth is to be defined in term of the coherence of propositions. But there is indeed even a third and mixed (both logical and epistemological) meaning, to the effect that the ultimate criterion of truth consists in assessing the mutual coherence of specified propositions. In CTT Rescher first concentrates on the last two meanings ruling out the metaphysical one (which, of course, is not intended to deny that the metaphysical side of the issue is essentially connected to the logical and epistemological ones), and then clarifies an important point. Neither coherence theories’ intent is to give a definition of truth, nor they purport to claim that coherence is the meaning of truth. Rescher, in fact, cites Bradley’s contention that “Truth to be true must be true of something, and this something itself is not truth.”24 As we already hinted, instead, a coherence theory purports to provide a criterion (or test) of truth. So, accepting the suggestions of an idealist like Ewing, we might even say that correspondence and coherence theories are not such traditional “enemies” as the philosophical tradition usually depicts them to be. If correspondence is the nature of truth, coherence can be held to be its criterion, so that: [. . .] Thus construed, the two doctrines are fitted to very different works. The matter of ‘correspondence to facts’ tells us a great deal about what truth is, but can fail badly as a guide to what is true. On the other hand, the factor of ‘coherence with other (suitably determined) propositions’ does not really provide a definition of truth, but is most helpful as a tool in the process of deciding whether given propositions qualify as truths [. . .] Coherence must be accorded some role, however partial or subsidiary, on any approach to the criteria of rational acceptance.25

In one of his books, Richard Kirkham claims that Rescher, along with many other contemporary philosophers, gives us a theory of justification, and not of truth.26 This may even be correct, but why so? It seems to us that one needs to take the whole picture into account if he wants to make sense of Rescher says. As we shall see in the next chapter and later on discussing his notion of “scientific realism,” our author endorses a very mild form of realism at the ontological level, according to which there really exists a reality which is mind-independent and formed by things that our con-

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ceptual machinery does not create. About this reality, however, we can say very little, because we always gain access to it via the working of our conceptual scheme. What are we allowed to say about “truth,” the things being so? No doubt Rescher is not a relativist like Rorty, and this notion plays an important role in his speculation. But just which role? Rescher is ready to admit that, despite what some philosophers of science nowadays still believe, we are unlikely to attain definitive truth in scientific matters (nor can we say with confidence that truth is approached more and more closely).27 Nevertheless, he thinks that truth continues to play a pivotal role in our deliberations, and the reason for this state of affairs is—as usual in his thought— that such a role is justified from a pragmatic viewpoint: in other terms, the notion of “truth” performs indeed a precious work in our conceptual schematization of reality. The thesis that science is unable—just like any other human endeavor—to get at the actual truth of things, is certainly correct. But, on the other hand, science constantly tries to accomplish that task. After all, its mission is to obtain answers to our questions about the world. These answers, in turn, are always tentative, and scientific theories are nothing but estimates of the true answers that nature provides to the questions we pose. Thus truth, like objectivity and rationality, is tied to our capacity of idealization and has an essential role in the scientific enterprise. The so-called “pursuit of truth” is the final object of the project of scientific inquiry, even though it must be admitted that a highly idealized game is being played here. It should be clearly understood in fact that, in Rescher’s comprehensive system, the notion of truth conceived of ontologically is certainly present, because he never makes the classical idealists’ step of claiming that reality-as-such and reality-as-we-see-it are just one and the same thing. On the other hand, however, very little can be said on the first kind of reality, so that even the notion of ontological truth plays a precious regulative function, but cannot be explicated beyond a certain level. Things change a great deal if we shift from the ontological to the epistemological dimension because, as a matter of fact, in the latter case the working of our conceptual machinery makes us feel a little (but not totally) safer. And right at this point Rescher’s coherence epistemology of truth comes back upon the stage. He openly recognizes that the standard criticisms of the coherence theories, to the effect that they give us a description of how the truth or falsehood of propositions come to be known, rather than an analysis of the meaning of “true,”28 have some good ground. And

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we just saw that another objection can be raised against a fact that Rescher readily admits and assumes to be the starting point of his own endeavor: i.e., that coherence can indeed be a criterion for being true, but not a definitional standard of truth. But it should be recalled—and emphasized—that idealization is the key-word for understanding what goes on in the many storeys of Rescher’s speculative building. In this case, most interpreters would take him as saying that the coherence at stake is the actual, manifest coherence that stems from the manifest, actual data at our disposal here and now. But this is not quite so, because, although obviously taking actual coherence into account, he sees it as a platform for going further. In other words, if one wants to fully understand Rescher’s theory and its original insights, one must be prepared to consider as well an ideal type of coherence, that is to say coherence in an idealized perspective. And this is precisely the path that takes from coherence to truth. Only ideal coherence—Rescher claims—is able to guarantee real truth. But note that we are talking, as a matter of fact, of “ideal coherence,” while the actual, down to earth coherentist methods give us no categorical assurance in this regard, tied as they are to our cognitive limits and to our imperfect and conceptual-based knowledge of the world. History of science, strong scientific realism notwithstanding, shows that our discoveries constantly (i.e. always) need corrections and, more often than not, replacements of theories. No “final” truth, thus, comes out from this process, but just a much more modest truth, which is linked to the theory-of-the-day and simply provides us the “best estimate” that is achievable given the concrete circumstances in which we happen to conduct our inquiry. Recall, however, what we previously said with regard to objectivity and rationality. The main characteristic of human beings, that is to say the feature that distinguishes them from all other products of natural evolution, is their capacity of idealization and their ability to see things not only as they actually are, but also as they might be, or even as they ought to be. This explains why, for example, our evolution is not only natural and biological, but also cultural and normative. What we have in hand, in each particular historical period, is a limited kind of knowledge, where the adjective “limited” refers to all circumstantial conditions—historical, cultural, sociological, political, technological, etc.—that determine both the objectives of our inquiry and the very manner by which we take these objectives to be. Is there a “definitive” knowledge? Rescher’s answer to this question is negative with regard with our particular circumstantial situations (which is, by

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the way, the only type of situation with which we deal in our concrete lives). On the other hand, however, the so-called definitive knowledge is geared to the idealized notion of “perfected science.” It is not something that we have here and now and, as we shall verify in detail in a successive chapter, Rescher argues that it is reasonable to expect that we will never get at it. Nevertheless, both the ideal of perfected science and that of definitive truth are indeed necessary to the practical pursuit of our inquiry. We cannot help but recognizing the gap between the “real” on the one side, and the “ideal” on the other. But, at the same time, by using the above mentioned capacity of idealization and of constructing “possible worlds”, we somehow manage to bridge such a gap projecting ourselves in the “ideal circumstances” that would make such an operation possible. It is worth mentioning, of course, that we would have no science without this typically human capacity to idealize and to foresee possible circumstances and states of affairs. The striking fact, as we shall see in the seventh chapter of our work, is that the same line of reasoning can be applied to the social and political fields as well. So, given the general framework we have sketched thus far, it can be easily seen that Kirkham’s statement is to some extent correct; however, what he assumes to be an error is rather a mainstay of Rescher’s account of truth. The latter is in turn connected to his comprehensive system, of which the coherence theory of truth is just a part (however important it may be). One might even be tempted to ask why Rescher talks of “truth”, rather than of “warranted assertibility,” which is, after all, a typically pragmatist notion. Let us quote in this regard some clear statements by Robert Brandom: [. . .] On the one hand, a tradition influenced by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, Tarski, and Carnap takes truth to be the basic concept in terms of which a theory of meaning, and hence a theory of language, is to be developed. According to this view, the essential feature of language is its capacity to represent the way things are [. . .] On the other hand, there is an approach to language, shared by Dewey and the later Wittgenstein, which attributes little or no importance to the notion of truth. According to this view, language is best thought of as a set of social practices. In order to understand how language works, we must attend to the uses to which its sentences are put and the circumstances in which they are used. Dewey claimed that everything useful that could be said about language with the notion of truth could

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also be said with a more general and methodologically unproblematic notion of justified utterance or “warranted assertibility.”29

Brandom goes on noting that, according to the master of twentieth century pragmatism, the notion of truth should be discarded altogether. Dewey, in fact, argued that this notion, although deemed to be so fundamental in the Western philosophical tradition at large, cannot be reconstructed, so that its use in any theory of language is, to say the least, useless: it only prompts confusions and answers that cannot possibly be addressed.30 But, as we remarked before, truth is for Rescher an idealization, a sort of Kantian regulative idea, whose importance lies in the pivotal function it plays in his scheme of ideal coherence. Thus Dewey’s warranted assertibility is, in his opinion, too linked to the views of particular social groups: something stronger is needed if we want to understand why the social world developed the way it actually did. Certainly endorsement, in the coherence theory of truth, always means someone’s endorsement. No absolute endorsement is at stake here, since we are not gods, and no God’s eye view—in Putnam’s sense of the expression—is available to us. But it should been stressed once more that it is our capacity of idealization, of projecting ourselves beyond the actual, concrete and circumstantial situations, that explains why the notion of truth cannot be dispensed with. Noting that Rescher’s coherence theory implements Bradley’s dictum that system (i.e., systematicity) provides a test criterion most appropriately fitted to serve as arbiter of truth,31 one might even be induced to conclude that he is akin to Quine, who at least apparently made the same statement in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” This is not quite so, however, as we will able to verify later on by comparing Quine’s and Rescher’s systems.32 Now we would like to put forward, instead, some concluding remarks. As Rescher himself points out, the injunction governing the characteristic procedure of a coherentist position is the following: [. . .] “Maintain as best you can the overall fit of mutual attunement by proceeding—when necessary—to make the less plausible competitors give way to the more plausible.” On this approach, a truth candidate comes to make good its claims to recognition as a truth through its consistency with as much as possible from among the rest of such data [. . .] The process of deriving useful information from imperfect data is a key feature of the coherence theory of truth, which faces (rather than, like standard logic, evades) the question of the inferences appropriately to be drawn from an inconsistent set of premises. On this approach, the coherence theory of truth views the problem

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of truth determination as a matter of bringing order into a chaos comprised of initial data that mingle the secure and the infirm. It sees the problem in transformational terms: incoherence into coherence, disorder into system, candidate truths into qualified truths.33

Although Rescher elaborated his theory in the early 1970’s, it bears a striking resemblance to those positions that subsequently gave rise to the socalled “epistemology of complexity,” and of which the physicist Ilya Prigogine actually is the best known representative.34 From a purely philosophical point of view, however, the most interesting fact to be noted is that Rescher’s approach is deeply Hegelian in character since. As he puts it, “ [. . .] cognitive coherentism pivots on what we have called the Hegelian Inversion—the transition from system as organizer of what is accepted to that of system as arbiter of what is acceptable.”35 Recalling that Hegel was—along with Heidegger—the main target of analytic philosophers’ mockery throughout Rescher’s formative years, we can appreciate even more his independence of mind. It should eventually be noted that, in a more recent article,36 our author has added some new insights to his coherence theory of truth. Taking advantage of Brand Blanshard’s comments on a previous work of his,37 Rescher came to the conclusion that truth is tantamount to ideal coherence. Thus, a proposition’s being true is in fact equivalent with its being optimally coherent with an ideal data base. There is even in this case an element of idealization that prevents us from attaining—through coherence— the so-called unqualified truth in current practice: all we can do is to provide our best (and available) estimate of the real truth. We must understand, in fact, that in the circumstances of our everyday life a gap between “presumptive” and “certifiable” truth always shows up, and only ideal (i.e.: non-attainable in practice) circumstances are able to close it. Once again, this situation “[. . .] reflects the fact that we must pursue this cognitive enterprise amid the harsh realities and complexities of an imperfect world. In deliberating about the truth of our scientific claims, as elsewhere, the gap between the real and the ideal must be acknowledged.”38 NOTES 1

N. Rescher, SPI.1, p. 259.

2

These issues are obviously connected with the problem of scientific realism, with which we shall deal at length in chapter 5, sections 5.2 and 5.3. In the eighth chapter, section 8.1, a comparison will be established between Rescher’s views on these

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NOTES

matters and Wilfrid Sellars’ well known distinction between the “manifest” image of the world and the “scientific” one. 3

See, for instance, his essay “The Intelligibility of Nature,” in RE, 1984, pp. 83-99.

4

Chapter 4, sections 4.2 and 4.3.

5

It is important to note that the term “communal,” in this context, does not refer necessarily to large communities. For our present purposes, we may even take into account a community formed, say, by only three people.

6

See for instance R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. A more detailed critique of Rorty’s views may be found in M. Marsonet, “Richard Rorty’s Ironic Liberalism: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Philosophical Research, cit.

7

Chapter 2, section 2.3 above.

8

The political outcomes of Rescher’s and Rorty’s views will be confronted again in chapter 7.

9

N. Rescher, R, 1988, p. 173.

10

See the first section of the present chapter.

11

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, cit., 2.022.

12

N. Rescher, TP, 1975, pp. xi and 1.

13

Chapter 4, section 4.1.

14

T. L. S. Sprigge, “Idealism contra Idealism,” in PSPI, 1994, pp. 409-410.

15

See also M. Marsonet, “On Rescher’s Conceptual Idealism,” Idealistic Studies, vol. 24 (1994), pp. 147-161.

16

N. Rescher, R, cit., p. 225.

17

N. Rescher, MA, chapter 2, pp. 41-62.

18

N. Rescher, CTT, 1973, p. vii.

19

See chapter 1, sections 1.2 and 1.3 above.

20

R. Carnap, “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,” in A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, The Free Press, New York, 1959, pp. 60-81. The original German version, “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache,” was published in Erkenntnis, Vol. II, 1932, pp. 219241.

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NOTES 21

Let us mention a personal episode in this regard. In 1994 the present writer was invited to deliver a speech on “Linguistic idealism in analytic philosophy” during the congress “Current Issues in Idealism,” held at the University of Hertfordshire, England. Needless to say, Bradley was very often mentioned during the three-days meeting. Some months later he had a conversation with a British analytic philosopher who kept asking: “How is it possible to deliver a talk or write a paper on an author like Bradley in the second half of the twentieth century?.” This is a perfect example of how analytic philosophy has become a paradigm that prevents its adherents to see what lies outside their specific range of interests.

22

N. Rescher, HR, 1964.

23

CTT, cit., p. 2.

24

Ibid., p. 23.

25

Ibid., p. 24.

26

R. L. Kirkham, Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction, The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.)-London, 1992, pp. 27-28 and 33-34.

27

Rescher’s arguments against these theses will be examined in chapter 5, sections 5.2 and 5.3.

28

See, for instance, A. Pap, Elements of Analytic Philosophy, Hafner, New York, 1972.

29

R. Brandom, “Truth and Assertibility,” cit., p. 137.

30

Obviously Dewey put forward these arguments in his Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, cit. As we pointed out in the first chapter, subsequently Bertrand Russell attacked him in a rather bitter manner, and this fostered Dewey’s unpopularity within analytic philosophy.

31

N. Rescher, SPI.1, p. 159.

32

See chapter 8, section 8.1.

33

SPI.1, pp. 158-159.

34

See for instance I. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and complexity in the Physical Sciences, Freeman, San Francisco, 1980; and I. Prigogine, I. Stangers, Order Out of Chaos, Heinemann, London, 1984.

35

SPI.1, p. 157.

36

N. Rescher, TIC, 1985.

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NOTES 37

B. Blanshard, “Reply to Nicholas Rescher,” in: P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.), 1980, pp. 589-600.

38

TIC, p. 806.

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Chapter 4 THE IDEALISTIC STANCE 1. WHOSE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE?

I

t is, clearly, a requisite for an acceptable theory of knowledge to be adequate to the real cognitive situation in which human beings find themselves. In this connection, it must be noted that empiricism in general, and logical empiricism in particular, have never been able comply to such a task. As we observed in the previous chapters, a sort of “linguistic idealism” has grown up within a tradition of thought that—at least theoretically—is supposed to be geared to strong empiricist assumptions, so that the logico-linguistic dimension has acquired with the passing of time a growing predominance. And this outcome should occasion no surprise. If we start from the assumption that language is not a tool among others whose evolutionary base can be explained, but rather an a priori element that categorizes reality and whose origins cannot be rationally traced back, then we are likely—as indeed actually happened—to think that the world has a logical structure, or that our knowledge (if any) of the so-called external world is somewhat mysterious. Let us now display some metaphysical tenets which, although unconsciously endorsed by most analytic philosophers, are usually not taken into explicit account. If we examine the famous distinction between pseudoproblems (which are, more or less, all those problems addressed to by traditional philosophy) and the true ones, it is easy to observe that, according to neopositivism, the difference between philosophy and science is the same difference holding between language on the one side, and the world described by language on the other. Our thesis is that we can identify here a clear Kantian descent. Kant’s work, while showing that metaphysics— conceived of in scientific terms—is impossible, linked science to the perceptual and conceptual characteristics of human experience. In this way, the philosopher of Königsberg hoped to avoid both the skeptical doubts put forward by David Hume and the metaphysical excesses often endorsed by the rationalists. It may be noted, however, that by limiting scientific discourse to a domain explicitly identified with appearance, Kant’s writings

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prompted a growing interest in the transcendent domain which, if we take his approach seriously, must exist somewhere beyond appearance itself. The neopositivists, on the other hand, sought to solve this problem by rejecting the Kantian ‘synthetic a priori’, and by reducing all knowledge to (i) purely empirical and (ii) purely linguistic factors, with nothing else left behind. The founder of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick, claimed that between philosophy and science there is no conflict, but just a differentiation of their respective fields of inquiry: philosophy looks for meaning, and science is interested in truth. It follows that philosophers must only concern themselves with clarifying the meaning of scientific sentences, thus reconstructing the language of science in a clear and rigorous manner. Scientists, in turn, use language to characterize the truth (or falsity) of those sentences concerning the world, and build theories which must be empirically verifiable. What happens, then, if physicists want to clarify the meanings of the assertions that are made within their discipline? According to the neopostivist doctrine, they then ipso facto become philosophers. But philosophers, in determining both the nature and the extension of meaningful discourse, set up the the boundaries of scientific inquiry, and this means, more or less, that philosophers themselves establish the conceptual limits of scientific inquiry. Nobody can deny that this is an extremely important job: the philosopher, in fact, becomes a kind of super-scientist. He bestows meaning, and any operative scientist is practically compelled to ask for his opinion. And what becomes of does logico-linguistic analysis become if it is conceived of in these terms? The answer is that it becomes something which is enormously more important than the mere scrutiny of terms and sentences. As already noted, it turns out to be a sort of first philosophy, i. e., a superdiscipline which is meant to establish the conditions that make all knowledge possible. If we, for some reason, do not want to call it “metaphysics,” a different name may still be found for it. But it is quite clear that the substance of the argumentation does not change. Someone might be willing to state that analytic philosophy nowadays has changed a great deal, so that the preceding analysis only refers to the past. The substantial incorrectness of such a statement is indicated in the following recent remarks by Michael Dummett: [. . .] It has until recently been a basic tenet of analytic philosophy, in its various manifestations, that the philosophy of thought can be approached only through the philosophy of language. That is to say, there can be no account of what thought is, independently of its means of expression; but the

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purpose of the philosophy of thought can be achieved by an explanation of what it is for the words and sentences of a language to have the meanings that they bear, an explanation making no appeal to an antecedent conception of the thoughts those sentences express. This approach to thought via language has certainly contributed to the alienation from analytic philosophy of the lay public, which superstitiously stigmatises all discussion of linguistic matters as trivial, through a psychological association as tenacious and irrational as that which causes all interest in playing cards or card games to be stigmatised as frivolous.1

Dummett, it should be immediately noted, is the most faithful contemporary representative of what we have previously defined as the “Frege’s paradigm,” stressing it is just the core of orthodox analytic philosophy.2 What Dummett rules out as mere superstition on the part of the lay public is, instead, part and parcel of a critique of linguistic analysis’ basic tenets that even many professional philosophers nowadays feel inclined to advance. Recalling, in particular, what was said about Rescher’s distinction between the doctrinal views of analytic philosophy (analytic “ideology”) and its methodological stance,3 it is clear that Dummett is no methodological analyst, but just a full-fledged ideologist of the linguistic turn, as his subsequent words show: “In recent years, a number of analytical philosophers [. . .] have rejected the assumption of the priority of language overt thought and have attempted to explain thought independently of its expression [. . .] On the face of it, they are overturning the fundamental axiom of all analytical philosophy and hence have ceased to be analytical philosophers.”4 Rescher, as we shall see very soon,5 avoids this reductionistic and purely linguistic approach by proposing an evolutionary epistemology in which the general environment where men belong is duly taken into account. He sees this environment as being both natural and cultural, and language becomes in his picture one of the many factors that help us explaining the cultural evolution that characterizes our presence on the Earth. Unlike Dummett, in sum, Rescher thinks that “logico-linguistic analysis, far from being a problem-resolving device provides a telescope that reveals the inescapable complexities in greater detail. The further the program [of the linguistic turn] was developed and extended, the less substantiation it provided for the doctrines it was designed to validate [. . .] Analysis simply proves impotent as a problem-slayer and issue-resolver in philosophy [. . .] As its adherents pressed the analytical program forward with ever intensifying dedication and energy, they were impelled into a range of findings

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that made a mockery of the program’s initial motivating doctrinal commitments.”6 We may certainly agree with empiricist and neoempiricist epistemology that, in order to accept the assertion that there are physical objects like tables and stars, an analysis of what such assertions mean must be provided. The problem, of course, is to ascertain whether physical objects like those exist independently from our mind, or if, instead, the assertions that talk about them can be “reduced” to statements which, in the last analysis, only concern the workings of our conceptual apparatus. Obviously, the claim that we know that men live in a material environment which is independent from their mind is not sufficient in this case. What we need is a strategy that allows us to justify our cognitive claims about human beings and the environment in which they live, given the unavoidable fact of our cognitive limitations. And the problem is that, wherever we turn our attention, there always seems to be “something” in our cognitive outcomes which cannot be justified on a pre-selected basis. Sense data will not do the job because, starting from them, it becomes quite difficult to justify our commonsense beliefs in mind-independent objects. If we start with observable behavior, on the other hand, we soon face the problem of other minds (and this is the difficulty that Quine’s behaviorism, for instance, must face). And if we eventually make of observable entities the ultimate ground for justification, then we are forced to deal with theoretical entities. This means that any preselected basis chosen from the onset is likely to cause us serious problems, because in the last analysis we will find it too weak for serving our justificatory purposes. If we now recall what was said before about Rescher’s coherence theory of truth, it is clear that here it is precisely what he defines as the “foundationalist approach” that is at stake. Let us then see how our author depicts the situation: [. . .] The essential difference between the coherence theory and any foundationalist approach to truth lies in the fact that on such an approach every discursive (i.e. reasoned) claim to truth requires truths as inputs [. . .] The foundationalist approach in epistemology is deep-rooted throughout the western tradition from Aristotle through Descartes to C.I. Lewis and R.M. Chisholm. It implements an ancient and enduring idea—based ultimately on the Greek concept of science as a Euclidean system—that truth is a structure that must have foundations. There must be a starter set of primitive (ungrounded, immediate, ‘intuitive’) truths and, outside this special category, truths can only

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be established from or grounded upon other truths. We are given an essentially recursive picture of the epistemic process of truth establishment.7

But this recursive picture, as we have just seen, raises more problems than it was meant to solve. Quine’s intuitions, of course, could be mentioned here, although it is often hard to combine many essentially pragmatist insights put forward by the Harvard philosopher with his persistent faithfulness to logical empiricist criteria.8 Quine’s anti-foundationalist stance is clearly shown by the use that he makes of Otto Neurath’s famous metaphor: “Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat. If we improve our understanding of ordinary talk of physical things, it will not be by reducing talk to a more familiar idiom; there is none.”9 On the other hand, however, we also know that, for Quine, physical objects are nothing but what he calls “posits”, which are needed from the human point of view because they offer us both a way for organizing our multisided experience, and for providing us with the “smoothest and most adequate overall account of the world.”10 We can clearly see, at this point, the danger of “linguistic idealism” in Quine’s position. If physical reality is nothing but a posit, i.e. an essentially theoretical device that is supposed to give rise to a—possibly—coherent system of beliefs, it means that our beliefs form a sort of barrier that we cannot overcome.11 But how do we express our beliefs? By having recourse to language, of course, and so language becomes, rather than a natural tool, a sort of a priori (and inexplicable) element that permits our categorization of reality. Needless to say, the very existence of such a natural reality becomes, within this framework, highly problematic. The notion of “belief” plays indeed a fundamental function even in Rescher’s approach, as can be easily seen by reading the following remarks: [. . .] The coherentist [Rescher’s] approach unhesitatingly espouses the historic thesis that knowledge is “true, justified belief”, construing this as tantamount to claiming that the known is that whose acceptance as true is adequately warranted through an appropriate sort of systematization. However, since the systematization at issue is viewed as being of the network type, the impact of the thesis is drastically altered [. . .] Now “justified” comes to mean [. . .] “appropriately interconnected with the rest of what is known”. Philosophizing thus consists in a rational rebuilding of the structure of our beliefs in the effort to do what we can to erect a solid and secure structure

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out of the ill-resolved materials placed at our disposal by our initial inclinations to beliefs.12

A heedless reader might even think that only a difference of degree (or of wording) separates Quine and Rescher, but this is not so. The starting point is for Quine—and for Davidson as well—observable behavior and its linguistic expression. Rescher instead adopts a systems-theoretic approach to the theory of knowledge, where the existence of real (i.e. non mindcreated) physical things is never questioned, and the attention shifts to the processes through which we get to know them. This is, as Rescher himself states, the problem of the legitimation of factual knowledge regarding what goes on in the world.13 In other words, Rescher addresses a question operative in Western thought since the times of the pre-Socratics thinkers: that of the “intelligibility of nature”. And this question, in turns, has two interconnected sides: (A) Why is mind so well attuned to nature? (B) Why is nature so well attuned to mind? We shall shortly verify that Rescher construes his answers to (A) and (B) within an evolutionary pattern that is both biological and cultural. But we can anticipate them now by observing that, according to the model oF explanation he puts forward, “mind must be attuned to nature because it is an evolved natural product of nature’s operations. And nature must be accessible to mind because it must be so if mind is to arise at all [. . .] If mind and nature were too far out of alignment—if mind were too ‘unintelligent’ for the complexities of nature or nature too complex for the capacities of mind—the two just could not get into step. It would be like trying to rewrite Shakespeare in a rudimentary language with a 500-word vocabulary.”14 It is eventually interesting to note that this strategy leads Rescher to declare unfounded the famous “epistemology without a knowing subject” proposed by Karl Popper, a thesis that has enjoyed a certain popularity within our day philosophy. Popper somehow envisions a realm of Platonic objective thought-contents which bears a striking resemblance to Gottlob Frege’s “third realm”. The father of falsificationism claims in fact that there exists a:

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[. . .] knowledge or thought in an objective sense, consisting of problems, theories and arguments as such. Knowledge in this objective sense is totally independent of anybody’s claim to know; it is also independent of anybody’s belief or disposition to assent, or to assert, or to act. Knowledge in the objective sense is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject.15

As is well known, this conception took Popper to envision a complex Platonistic ontology where, besides the (a) physical world, there are also (b) a mental world, and (c) a world of intelligibles (i.e. ideas “in the objective sense”). In a Rescherian mood, however, we are bound to ask at this point: whose knowledge is Popper’s “objective” knowledge? Clearly, a plausible answer may be provided only if one adopts a Platonic-flavored ontology, claiming that ideas or theories have a life independent from the people who created them, but this thesis is hardly tenable. We can certainly imagine that, should humankind disappear from the Earth, intelligent creatures (like the ones created by Isaac Asimov) coming from outer worlds could subsequently land here and reconstruct some of our ideas and theories with a patient archaeological-linguistic work. But this simply shows that our body of knowledge possesses an intrinsic relational character: it needs, in other words, the presence of intelligent persons not only for coming into being, but also to be activated and acquire a plausibly meaningful dimension. Knowledge as such cannot live a life separated by any knowing subject because its relational nature makes it a product, and not an ontologically autonomous entity. 2. BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION In developing at length some insights that were already present in the former stages of his philosophical development, the later Nicholas Rescher came to endorse an epistemology which is fully evolutionary. It must be noted, however, that his approach is endowed with elements of originality that make it somewhat different from similar stances that have been recently become popular. The term “evolutionary epistemology”, as Rescher points out, has [. . .] two distinct, albeit interrelated, traditions. One, recently exhibited in K. R. Popper and more explicitly in Stephen Toulmin, is a matter of a cultural development involving an evolution-analogous approach according to which ideas battle for selection by the way of adoption and perpetuation in the hu-

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man community through a process in which the fittest are likely to prevail. This, in effect, is cultural evolution by rational selection. The other, originated by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin and carried forward in C. S. Peirce, Karl von Frisch, and Konrad Lorenz, holds that the human mind has certain genetically determined innate dispositions to manage things in a particular way because this is conducive to survival. This represents paradigmatic biological evolution through natural selection.16

As a full-fledged approach to the theory of knowledge, however, the term has been brought to the fore by more recent works, among which those by Donald Campbell deserve a special mention.17 As such, evolutionary epistemology presents a cognitive approach which is very different from that endorsed by orthodox analytic philosophy, and has instead strong links with the so-called “naturalistic turn.”18 To understand the significance of Rescher’s stance, we must address a basic question: which kind of evolution are we referring to when talking of evolutionary epistemology? If we take evolution to be an undifferentiated concept, such that no useful distinction can be found in it, we are— according to our author—on a wrong track. The evolutionary “pattern” is certainly one, but for sure this should not lead us to assume that the specific characteristics of mankind must be left out of the picture, either because they are not important or because no specifically human characteristic is admitted. Rescher’s evolutionary framework, as it always happens in his philosophical system, is pluralistic and multi-sided. The evolutionary pathway provided by the route of intelligence is one of the alternative ways of coping within nature that are available to biological organisms (among the others, we may for example mention toughness, multiplicity and isolation). Human beings, thus, can be said to have evolved to fill a possible ecological niche left free for intelligent creatures. There are, however, many ways to look at the evolution of mankind. Rescher stresses that, after all, “intelligence has evolved not because the emergence of intelligence aids the survival of its possessors within nature [. . .] It arises through evolutionary processes because it represents one effective means of survival. Intelligence is our functional substitute for the numerousness of termites, the ferocity of lions, or the toughness of microorganisms.”19 So, it might even be said that this is our specific manner of fighting the battle for survival: we would not be here if our intelligence-led rationality were not survival-conducive. But does all this mean that intelligence is an inevitable feature of conscious organic life? The answer to such a question is crucial and, as long as Rescher is concerned, is negative. So it

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is interesting to note that his position differs—although not totally—from that endorsed by a well-known theoretical physicist like Paul Davies, who claims in this respect: [. . .] An increasing number of scientists and writers have come to realize that the ability of the physical world to organize itself constitutes a fundamental, and deeply mysterious, property of the universe. The fact that nature has creative power, and is able to produce a progressively richer variety of complex forms and structures, challenges the very foundation of contemporary science [. . .] there is a growing dissatisfaction with sweeping reductionism, a feeling that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts [. . .] Especially in physics, the synthetic or holistic approach is becoming increasingly fashionable in tackling certain types of problem [. . .] many scientists would still reject the idea of a cosmic blueprint as too mystical, for it imples that the universe has a purpose [. . .] Perhaps the apparent unity of the universe is merely an anthropocentric projection [. . .] These deep issues of existence have accompanied the advance of knowledge since the dawn of the scientific era. What makes them so pertinent today is the sweeping nature of recent discoveries in cosmology, fundamental physics and biology.20

Note how distant Davies is from the anti-metaphysical attitude endorsed by logical positivists and most analytic philosophers. And, as a matter of fact, he is not an isolated case within the scientific community, since many other scientists of our day openly question the widespread analytical attitude to proclaim metaphysical issues meaningless (or useless) by shifting instead the attention to questions of detail.21 Another interesting fact to be noted is that Davies deems important the theses—even though he does not share them completely—of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a thinker who was more or less banned by the Catholic Church in the first half of past century and whose ideas have for a long time held to be, to say the least, bizarre by many philosophers of any tendency. Now several signs indicate that a “Teilhard revival” is under way, and this is just another example of how wrong the logical empiricists were in believing that philosophy can be rebuilt ab initio, making tabula rasa of what was said and done in the past. In the philosophical field, the motto “never say never” should be a constant reminder for discouraging any millenarian project. In any event, for our actual purposes it is important to explain why Rescher could not totally endorse what Davies states, even though accepting the holistic and synthetic impetus of his assertions. He does not take intelligence to be the inevitable outcome of organic life, the reason being that

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no purposive motive can be attributed to nature in this respect. Rescher really thinks that, taking this path, we risk either to run into an anthropocentric projection of the universe, or to adopt some kind of pantheism in which Nature (whose name should be written with a capital “N”) assumes the role that God plays in Christian theology.22 Intelligence must instead be endowed with functional characteristics: it is not the outcome of some hidden necessity but, rather, it arises out of practical needs. The “primacy of practice”, which is one of the key maxims for understanding Rescher’s philosophy, is indeed at work even in his evolutionary epistemology, as his own words clearly show: [. . .] We have questions and need answers: the best answers we can get here and now, regardless of their imperfections. It is this basic practical impetus to coherent information that underlies the two fundamental imperatives of cognitive intelligence: (1) Do the best you can to obtain adequate answers to your questions, (2) Feel free to accept these answers, to deem them worthy of credence, at least for the time being, proceeding on the principle that we must make do with the best we can get as good enough for present purposes.23

As we previously saw with regard to his theory of truth, even in this case Rescher avoids any foundationalist explanation: the process of acquiring information about the world that surrounds us has nothing “mysterious” about it because, if we did not succeed in our cognitive endeavors, then we would not be here as the creatures that we actually are. At this point, however, a crucial question must be posed: does biological Darwinism give us a sufficient rationale for our cognitive resources? As a matter of fact, Darwinism can be not only biological, but also cognitive. And this is because we need to explain not only the evolutionary development of the cognitive faculties of which men are provided, but also the fact that it affects the content of knowledge. A materialist thinker may believe that the two explanations are just one, being the content of knowledge reducible to the cognitive faculties. This, however, would be true only if humans were to transmit to their progeny nothing but genetic traits, and it can indeed be shown that real situation is rather different. We constantly transmit, in fact, both as individuals and as members of a socio-linguistic community, such intellectual instruments as concepts, beliefs and methodologies, which simply means that a selective process operates at both the physical and the ideational levels.

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The scheme we get by adopting this stance is, thus, more complex than the reductionistic one endorsed by materialist philosophers, since any element of the biological sphere is matched by an analogous element located in a sphere that may be defined as “sociological-intellectual”, according to the following lines. At the biological level we have: (A) Biological mutation; (B) Reproductive elimination of traits through their non-realization in an individual’s progeny; and, eventually, (C) One’s physical progeny. The same steps can be traced at the sociological-intellectual level: (A1) Procedural variation; (B1) Reproductive elimination of processes through their lapsed transmisions to one’s successors (for example, children or students); (C1) Those individuals whom one influences. The differences between (A)-(C) and (A1)-(C1) are clearly visible but, no doubt, the same process is at issue in both cases, since both involve structures that are maintained over time. No one denies, of course, that the biological side precedes the other from a chronological viewpoint, because no cultural development would ever be possible in absence of biological evolution. But, on the other hand, the problem of the development of thoughtprocedures within humankind needs something beyond natural evolution, provided we wish to grant to the phenomenon of thought the importance it undoubtedly deserves. So we have both a biological evolution which is Darwinian, “with teleologically blind natural selection operating with respect to teleologically blind random mutations”, and a cultural evolution which is Teilhardian, “governed by a rationally-guided selection among purposefully devised mutational variations.”24 All this prompts Rescher to remark that: [. . .] Our cognitive capacities and faculties are part of the natural endowment we owe to biological evolution. But our cognitive methods, procedures, standards, and techniques are socio-culturally developed resources that evolve

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evolve through rational selection in the process of cultural transmission through successive generations. Our cognitive hardware (mechanisms and capacities) develops through Darwinian natural selection, but our cognitive software (the methods and procedures by which we transact our cognitive business) develops in a Teilhardian process of rational selection that involves purposeful intelligence-guided variation and selection. Biology produces the instruments, so to speak, and culture writes the music—where obviously the former powerfully constrains the latter. (You cannot play the drums on a piano).25

It is worth noting at this point how and why Rescher’s evolutionary epistemology differs from the one delineated in a famous (and previously quoted) book by Karl Popper.26 The Austrian-born philosopher based his approach on the “random conjectures and refutation” model. A scientist, for example, faces the problem of explaining nature’s doings by one of the endlessly many hypotheses that he has at his disposal. Subsequently he chooses to endorse a conjecture from this infinite range, and the testing itself, via falsification, furnishes the necessary selection. According to Popper’s picture we have, in sum, a sort of blind and random mechanism: his famous “trial-and-error” search procedure. Rescher’s opinion about this issue is that, on such Popperian grounds, scientific progress becomes more or less inexplicable. In particular, the “success in furnishing explanatory theories that perform well in prediction and the guidance of applications in a complex world is now an accident of virtually miracolous proportions, every bit as fortuitous as someone’s correctly guessing at random the telephone numbers of someone else’s friends.”27 Furthermore, on these bases it becomes quite hard to explain Popper’s recourse to truth conceived of as “regulative ideal”, just because his random strategy gives us no warrant whatsoever for the conviction that we are indeed approaching ideal truth (and, in fact, Popper clearly states that our cognitively successful endeavors are “miraculously improbable, and therefore inexplicable.”28). The difference in Popper’s and Rescher’s approaches lies, in our view, in their extremely different opinions about two key philosophical issues. The first is induction and the methods for justifying inductive reasoning. In this regard the former adopts, as is well known, a destructive stance: inductive reasoning cannot be justified from the logical point of view and, thus, nothing like induction exists.29 The stance of the latter is, instead, much more articulated, and credits the human intellect with a sort of inductively oriented heuristic skill, that allows us to single out those alternative hypotheses that are likely to prove more

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promising candidates than the others. Rescher’s concept of “induction” is thus rather broad and flexible and, just for this reason, more useful than the narrower notion of induction—like that put forward by J. S. Mill— conceived of as a method for reasoning to a universal generalization from its supportive instances: [. . .] induction is understood to include all of our rational devices for reasoning from evidence in hand to objective facts about the world. Induction, thus understood, will encompass the whole of “the scientific method” of reasoning, and in treating of the justification of induction we take in hand the validation of the processes of reasoning in the sciences [. . .] induction becomes a process of plausible reasoning from the “data” of experience, with the parameters of systematicity themselves playing the role of standards of plausibility. All the familiar modes of inductive inference can be fitted into this general pattern of reasoning.30

The second issue, over which Rescher and Popper are at odds, is holism. This is one of Popper’s main critical targets (especially in his political philosophy writings31), while a general holistic attitude is present in Rescher’s works. So, while for Popper useful hypotheses emerge as a result of somewhat haphazard combinations, for Rescher this is the outcome of the detection of patterns in empirical data. An analysis of the strong differences that separate the two authors could of course be pushed much further, but we refrain from doing so because, after all, this is not the task of the present book. What should instead be noted is that many people nowadays look with a certain surprise to the “methodological anarchism” which seems to have many followers in contemporary philosophy of science. They usually heap all the blame on Paul Feyerabend, just forgetting that he was for many years a pupil of Popper (even though, later on, he began attacking his former master). Feyerabend consistently developed some elements contained in Popper’s philosophy,32 taking some of the master’s assertions at their face value. So, when we read statements like these: [. . .] A second idea that plays an important role in the defense of Western civilization is the idea of Reason or rationality [. . .] To be rational in the material sense means to avoid certain views and to accept others [. . .] it would be hardly fruitful to let statements such as ‘this is rational’ or ‘this is irrational’ influence research [. . .] The notions are ambiguous and never clearly explained, and trying to enforce them would be counter productive [. . .] Strictly speaking we have here two words, ‘Reason’ and ‘Rationality’, which

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can be connected with almost any idea or procedure and then surround it with a halo of excellence.33

It is thus important to bear in mind that Feyerabend could indeed find in Popper’s own theories useful insights for developing his anarchical view of science and of human cognitive procedures in general.34 Rescher answers this kind of remarks by noting that it must certainly be admitted that the scientific approach—unlike what the logical empiricists used to say—is simply one alternative among others; but this fact should not lead us to the wrong conclusion that it develops according to largely irrational standards. Let us conclude this section with a few remarks concerning Rescher’s critique of any kind of materialistic epistemology. Our author is, in fact, neatly opposed to all those scientifically-minded epistemologists whose main objective is to explain the workings of the mind uniquely in terms of the operations of the brain.35 He, in fact, distinguishes between the (a) possession of intelligence, which can be accounted for in a satisfactory way by biological evolution, and (b) our use of it, which calls for a different sort of evolutionary approach. As we hinted previously, we need to address the development of thought-mechanisms, which Rescher equates to a kind of “software” (the “hardware” being the aforementioned possession of intelligence). Once again, here the concept of “possibility” plays a very important role, since he states that “biological evolution reacts only to actually realized changes in environing conditions: cultural evolution in its advanced stages can react also to merely potential changes in condition through people’s capacity to think hypothetically and thereby to envision ‘what could happen if’ certain changes occurred.”36 In other words, we need to distinguish methods from faculties, in order to give a satisfactory explanation of why man is the kind of creature that he actually is. 3. NATURALISM AND METAPHYSICS Rescher only rarely uses the terms “holism” and “holistic”, which have become so fashionable today, preferring instead the words “systematicity” and “systemic”. Speaking of holism the mind goes to Quine’s approach contained in some famous statements of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, where he claimed that: [. . .] the totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs [. . .] is a man-made fabric, which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are

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experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustements in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Reevaluation of some statements entails reevaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections—the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field [. . .] But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experience is linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.37

In the 1950’s Quine rejected the theoretically asceptic analytic/synthetic distinction insisting, instead, on language conceived of as a tool created by mankind for practical purposes, and this move allowed him to overcome the strictures of a purely analytic conception of language by resorting, instead, to the pragmatist tradition represented by thinkers like James, Peirce and Dewey and C.I. Lewis. In the subsequent phases of his philosophical development, however, his commitment to pragmatism became looser, maybe because, as we hinted in the first chapter of the present book, Dewey and the other main figures of American pragmatism always stress the practical side of the scientific enterprise, thus not giving too much importance to the construction of artificial languages. In other words, Quine had to choose, and his choice eventually favored a narrow vision of formal logic and logical analysis of language. No doubt things would have taken a different course had he pursued in the later years his early pragmatist inclinations. Quine deserves the great merit of having underlined the importance of pragmatism in a period which saw a large predominance of logical positivism, but it is correct as well to note that subsequently he somehow betrayed the refreshing insights of the “Two Dogmas.”38 Before turning our attention to Rescher’s metaphysical positions, it is worth to mention that his philosophy is indeed holistic, although, as already, he does not use this term frequently. The following words clearly confirm our remarks: [. . .] In philosophy we cannot erect a viable structure one brick at a time, putting each element into place step by sequential step so that it is secure, irrespective of what comes later. Even as one cannot really produce a wellwrought story one sentence at a time without worrying about what is to come [. . .] so too, a tenable philosophy must be systematically dovetailed whole. For in the end, the range of our philosophical concern is a network where everything is interconnected with everything else. A philosopher who

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achieves his or her proximate, localized ends at the cost of off-loading difficulties onto other sectors of the wider domain is simply not doing an adequate job. To be acceptable, a philosophical problem-solution must form an integral part of a wider doctrine that makes sense overall [. . .] For better or for worse, viable philosophizing has to be a matter of systematization.39

The question to be addressed now is the following: What kind of metaphysics, if any, can a pragmatically oriented philosopher like Rescher consistently endorse? The answer is not as difficult as it might seem at first sight. All we have to do is to envision a more modest (or, if you prefer, less pretentious), concept of metaphysics. A pragmatist metaphysics can indeed be construed, provided we recall that metaphysics—just like science— evolves with the passing of time. Contemporary metaphysicians are no longer supposed to detect the structure of reality by using mere thought and pure deductive reasoning: they must instead take into serious account both scientific results and the metaphysical views that today scientists constantly put forward.40 It may be noted, in this regard, that Richard Rorty has insisted that John Dewey himself had his own, naturalistic, metaphysics.41 Let us then ask ourselves: Is there any rational motive for feeling uneasy about that? And why is a pragmatist thinker supposed not to endorse a metaphysics? As a matter of fact, it would be easy to show, just by reading carefully his writings, that even Rorty has his own broad picture of the world, a sort of “conversationalist” view which is in turn indebted, to a certain extent, to Donald Davidson’s ideas. It is an unconscious metaphysics, as was the case with the logical empiricists, whose original (but hidden) “global” world-perspective was subsequently brought to light by some clever interpreters.42 Indeed, this situation is not totally new. If we consider the classical positivism of the past century, it is easy to verify that mechanism was a sort of new metaphysics—stemming from natural science—which was enormously successful not only with practicing scientists, but also with many scientifically oriented philosophers. A mechanical physicalism offered to the positivists the opportunity to build up a unified synthesis of scientific knowledge taken as a whole, thus pursuing the project of explaining any natural fact by means of the mechanistic model. But this, of course, was metaphysics, since the positivists thought that they were able to reach the first principles of a reality conceived of in purely material and observable terms. Since, according to the positivists, reality is formed only by matter, science is able to get a complete knowledge of it, and so we had a

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metaphysics which was both unconscious and monistic. Logical positivism, in turn, was just an updated version of classical positivism. The positivists of past century no longer viewed philosophy as the elaboration of metaphysical world-visions but, rather, as a technical and linguistic activity meant to clarify the meaning of concepts: as we noted previously, a pivotal role is played, in it, by formal logic. No doubt, however, even the metaphysical commitments of logical positivism (and of contemporary linguistic analysis at large) were quite strong, as it was shown when their philosophical success began to fade away. The fact is that no skilled philosopher takes the world as it is (why bothering to do philosophy, in that case?), but always interprets it. And interpretation means to construct a world-view, which may be narrow (as in Davidson’s case) or broad (as it happens with Rescher). Those who see a neat difference between the terms “metaphysics” and “world-view” are still tied to the pretentious conception of metaphysics which made sense in the past centuries, when philosophers could think that they were entitled (or even compelled) to say the last word in practically every field of human knowledge. Today the situation is different, if only because the need exists to make the philosophical world-view compatible with the scientific one. We think that John Dewey got things right when he observed: [. . .] The generic insight into existence which alone can define metaphysics in any empirically intelligible sense is itself an added fact of interaction, and is therefore subject to the same requirement of intelligence as any other natural occurrence: namely, inquiry into the bearings, leadings and consequences of what it discovers. The universe is no infinite self-representative series, if only because the addition within it of a representation makes it a different universe. By an indirect path we are brought to a consideration of the most far-reaching question of all criticism: the relationship between existence and value, or as the problem is often put, between the real and the ideal.43

This means to endorse a world-view which, unlike the classical metaphysical systems of the past, is a sort of “working hypothesis” open to revision just like scientific hypotheses are. Dewey was able to endorse such a position because, by following the path of the best pragmatist tradition, he took thought (and language) to be not an a priori factor that creates reality but, rather, an extremely sophisticated form of the active relationship between a living organism and the environment in which the organism lives, so that thought becomes a natural activity among many others. And, by adopting

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such a stance, he avoided both the strictures of classical idealism and of twentieth century analytic philosophy. It is important here to stress that Rescher follows just the same path, which explains the meaning of a statement we made in the Preface of the present book: The tradition to which he really belongs is the American pragmatist tradition of Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and Clarence I. Lewis. Nowhere of his works does Rescher endorse a relativistic “take it or leave it” stance. His broad view of reality is, like Dewey’s, a working hypothesis which is supported by a cluster of tidly expressed arguments. Nowhere he presents his own system as giving the “final” answer to all metaphysical, epistemic or ethical interrogatives, also because this would be inconsistent with his views on scientific realism.44 After all, if science is no longer held to give the ultimate answers, why should such a burden be put on the philosopher’s shoulders? Rescher is, thus, both a consistent pragmatist and a thinker who never hides his interest in classical metaphysical issues. He characterizes his own position as a “naturalistic idealism”,45 and this definition deserves to be explained at length. Naturalism and idealism, in fact, usually look like incompatible positions, and their successful merging is indeed one of the most original traits of his philosophy. Let us start with a basic question: Is Rescher a naturalistic thinker? The answer is not bound to be a plain “yes” or a simple “no”. It is only conditionally affirmative, where “conditionally” means that he can be deemed to be a naturalistic philosopher from some viewpoints, but not from others. As regards the philosophy of mind, for example, naturalism implies that mental phenomena can be reduced to the neurophysiological processes located in the brain, and we already see before that our author strongly opposes this perspective. In elaborating his naturalistic idealism, Rescher resorts to his favorite image of the mind which is both placed in nature’s scheme of things and gives a fundamental creative contribution towards shaping the world-aswe-actually-see-it. Wondering how is natural science possible at all, and how is it that mathematics can be effectively used to characterize the modus operandi of nature, he purports to face the respectably old problem of the “intelligibility of nature”. Interestingly enough, however, he picks up a typically Kantian theme treating it in a non-Kantian fashion, claiming that “[. . .] the present deliberations will not be addressed, a la Kant, to certain a priori principles that supposedly underlie physics. Rather, our concern is with the factual (a posteriori) principles that consitute physics—the laws of nature themselves. Moreover, the issue is not one of understanding these

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laws completely in the large or perfectly in detail, but of understanding them sufficiently to facilitate (reasonably) effective prediction and control with respect to (some sectors of) natural phenomena.”46 It is worth noting that this strategy is frequently adopted by Rescher. The presence of Kantian themes is in fact widespread in both his early and mature writings, but the spirit of his solutions is somewhat distant from the one put forward by the philosopher of Königsberg. First of all we must understand that, in dealing with the relations between the natural world and our conceptual apparatus, we need to have recourse to a two-sided story involving not just one, but two actors. This is because “the circumstance that X and Y stand in a condition of mutual affinity and consonance [. . .] is a two-sided affair in which both sides must be expected to have a part.”47 An obvious question arises at this point: Is Rescher endorsing some kind of dualism, placing a wedge between nature on the one side and our mind on the other? The answer is bound to be negative because, as we already verified before, nowhere he suggests a non-natural origin of the mind. Along with all other human faculties, the intellectual capacities stem from the natural environment, and their presence can be explained in evolutionary terms. We also know, however, that biological evolution by no means is the only kind of evolution: a sociological-cultural type of evolutionary framework is called for if we want to get a complete picture of humankind’s history. Within the context of the relations between ourselves and the world, man’s side of the aforementioned bilateral story is not so difficult to understand. As Rescher has it: [. . .] After all, man is an integral part of nature—connected into its scheme of things as an intrinsic component thereof [. . .] The intellectual mechanisms we devise in coming to grips with the world—in transmuting sensory interaction with nature into intelligible experience—have themselves the aspect of being nature’s contrivances in adjusting to its ways a creature it holds at its mercy. It is no more surprising that man’s mind grasps nature’s ways than it is surprising that man’s eye can accommodate nature’s rays or his stomach nature’s food. Evolutionary pressure can take credit for the lot.48

So far we dealt with man’s contribution to the scheme, but what about nature itself? Our author has recourse to the case of mathematics, whose applicability to nature has often been seen as a sort on unexplainable mystery lying beyond our capacity of comprehension. This was the opinion of such prominent scientists as Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein, who thought that the intelligibility of the world is a miracle or an

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eternal mystery. This kind of reasoning, however, stands only if we do not take into account the holistic picture which is instead called for here, and descends from viewing man (and his mind) as opposed to nature. Rescher thus points out that the two-sided story can be stated this way. On the one hand, we can take the applicability of mathematics to the description of nature to be due to the fact that we devise our mathematics to fit nature.49 On the other, however, it is clear that this fitting would not possible if nature were not somewhat cooperative (“any more”—he adds— “than we could paint scenes accurately with three colors of paint were the physics and optics of color-mixing not suitably cooperative.”50). Not only nature allows the evolution of intelligent beings: it must also provide them with environmental patterns that make coherent experience possible. In other words, the information we gather from those patterns has nothing “miraculous” or “mysterious” about it, but simply is the cross-product of a constant interaction between mind and nature. Given this fact, it should not be surprising to find out that mathematical representation is indeed possible and useful: [. . .] The development of life in the world and thereupon of intelligence in the world may or may not be inevitable; the existence of intelligent creatures in the world may or may not be surprising in itself and as such. But once they are there, and once we realize that they got there thanks to evolutionary processes—it can no longer be seen as surprising that their efforts at characterizing the world in mathematical terms should be substantially successful [. . .] A world in which creatures who possess a high level of intelligence can evolve by evolutionary means must be one whose law structure is sufficiently benign to admit of effective characterization through mathematical instrumentalities.51

Intelligence and intelligibility, in sum, must be taken to be mutually correlated if we want to make sense of the intelligibility of nature itself, leaving aside miracles and mysteries that admit no philosophical (and let alone scientific) explanation. Once this is granted, the question of why have intelligent creatures evolved in the natural framework remains unaddressed. We have seen before that Rescher does not favor the classical teleological answer, according to which there is in nature a fundamental tendency to produce beings endowed with growing complexity. In Leibniz’s philosophy this amounts to saying that nature brings forth beings capable of mirroring the world from an intellectual viewpoint, while Hegel and his followers saw in nature a built-in impetus to “realize itself in thought”. Then we have

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previously recalled that a similar perspective, although expressed in essentially theological terms, was revided in past century by Teilhard de Chardin. Mutatis mutandis, even some professional scientists of our day, like Paul Davies,52 seem to endorse a similar position. Rescher’s answer is that: [. . .] The true explanation—the evolutionary response—is much more prosaic, sober, and unromantic. It begins by noting that there are various different ways of coming to terms with nature [. . .] the routes of multiplicity, toughness, flexibility, isolation, etc. But one prospect is afforded by the route of intelligence—of adapting by the use of brain rather than brawn, of cleverness rather than force [. . .] in a competitive Darwinean world the creature that best understands how things work in its environment has the evolutionary edge [. . .] Once life evolves and proceeds to search out various routes to survival under the auspices of a second mother nature, it is only natural that intelligence should evolve [. . .] Intelligence evolves not because nature favors intelligence but because intelligence favors the survival of its possessors within nature.53

In developing his theses about the intelligibility of nature, Rescher also sketches an interesting philosophy of mathematics. Needless to say it is a pragmatist-flavored philosophy of mathematics which, as such, stands in opposition not only to the classical approaches thriving in past century like Bertrand Russell’s Platonism and David Hilbert’s formalism, but even to the post-empiricist trend made popular nowadays by the works of Imre Lakatos, who equated mathematics to the empirical sciences like physics or chemistry. We cannot develop this theme in the present context, but Rescher’s idea that our mathematics is a theory of hypothetical possibilities, which are in turn conceived by us within an evolutionary scheme, deserves serious attention. Be it as it may, the fact remains that on the basis of the metaphysical views described in this section, Rescher looks like a convinced naturalist, prompting someone to ask: If so, where is his selfproclaimed idealism located? This important question will be addressed in the next section. 4. CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM The idealistic component of Rescher’s thought should not be overestimated, but just given its proper weight within his philosophical system taken as a whole. No one can seriously doubt that there are strong idealistic features in his philosophy. For example, he never tires of stressing that the

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conceptual apparatus we employ itself makes a creative contribution to our view of the world, and his holistic (or systemic, if you prefer) stance is clearly influenced by Hegel and Bradley, i.e. thinkers who have long been quite unpopular within American philosophy. But idealism is just one element in a broader framework where pragmatism plays the key role, and other important components are detectable as well in his thought (for instance: naturalism, as we just saw in the preceding section). No doubt Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and Bradley are all philosophers who deeply influenced his outlook. But, still, we think that the central figure in Rescher’s personal Olympus is (and will remain) Charles S. Peirce.54 Here is how Rescher recalls how the idealistic perspective became a central feature of his comprehensive philosophical outlook: [. . .] I recall well how the key ideas of my idealistic theory of natural laws— of “lawfulness as imputation”—came to me in 1968 during work on this project while awaiting the delivery of Arabic manuscripts in the Oriental Reading Room of the British Museum. It struck me that what a law states is a mere generalization, but what marks this generalization as something special in our sight—and renders it something we see as a genuine law of nature—is the role that we assign to it in inference. Lawfulness is thus not a matter of what the law-statement says, but how it is used in the systematization of knowledge—the sort of role we impute to it. These ideas provided an impetus to idealist lines of thought and marked the onset of my commitment to a philosophical idealism which teaches that the mind is itself involved in the conceptual constitution of the objects of our knowledge.55

It should be noted that Rescher immediately tied these idealistic insights to the philosophy of science, a sector that has always been at the core of his interests. The aforementioned statements, in fact, led him to the conclusion that scientific discovery, Galileo notwithstanding, is not a matter of simply “reading” what is written in the book of nature, but is rather the outcome of a process we have already mentioned several times: the interaction between nature on the one side, and human mind on the other. We are back, once again, to the two-sided story with which we dealt in the preceding section, since the contribution that mind gives to the construction of “our science”56 is at least as important as that provided by nature: no science— as we know it—would be possible without the specific contribution of the mind. Since Rescher openly proclaims his idealistic stance, let us ask: What is the source of our ideas according to his philosophical outlook? Locke, for

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instance, remarked that we can only think about ideas, their source being either sensation or observation of the internal operations of our mind. Taking this path we can certainly avoid the problems connected to metaphysical skepticism, but ideas become our only “real” point of reference, which is not such a wonderful solution from an empiricist point of view. According to the verifiability principle held by the logical empiricists of past century, on the other hand, the meaningfulness of a statement is strictly tied to the existence of some possible set of observations that, were they to be ever made, would determine the truth of the statement itself. In this case metaphysical skepticism could be avoided by equating metaphysics with non-sense, but the verifiability principle created other, unexpected problems. Scientific laws, in fact, clearly resist the application of the verifiability principle, and the price to be paid for the elimination of metaphysics seemed, to say the least, too high. So the problem of demarcating science from metaphysics, which has been deemed tremendously important by some sectors of twentieth century philosophy, remains pressing. Detaching himself from the mainstream of American philosophy which, under the influence of the logical positivists who emigrated to the United States in the 1930’s, had been largely dominated by empiricist and positivist trends of thought, Rescher in the early 1970’s launched his project of rehabilitating idealism. Taking notice of the fact that idealism had been effectively dead in Anglo-American philosophy for more than a generation, he tells us that “this eclipse of an important sector of philosophical tradition seems to be entirely unjustified on the merits.”57 In order to avoid possible misunderstandings, however, we must clarify a basic problem from the onset. “Idealism” is a sort of umbrella-term that covers a large variety of trends and sub-trends. Each of them is somehow connected to the others, but disagreements within the idealistic field have always been strong. Rescher readily recognizes this fact, providing a general scheme where all the various idealistic trends can be accomodated.58 The fundamental distinction to be made is between the “ontological” versions of idealism and the “epistemic” ones. The former claim, in general, that everything there is arises causally, or is supervenient upon, the operations of mind. The latter’s commitment is less strong because they rule out the thesis that mind creates the world in toto, be it natural or social, and content themselves to point out the intimate correlatedness between our mind and the world-aswe-know it. Rescher says explicitly that his conceptual idealism belongs to the epistemic version of the theory, and he characterizes it as follows:

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“Conceptual idealism [states that] any fully adequate descriptive characterization of the nature of the physical (‘material’) reality must make reference to mental operations; some recourse to verbal characteristics or operations is required within the substantive content of an adequate account of what it is to be real.”59 To understand why Rescher is less popular than other philosophers (such as Rorty) who came to rediscover pragmatism later than he did, we must acknowledge that this is largely due to the idealistic vein that he adds to his pragmatist stance. For the anti-idealistic attitude of Anglo-American philosophy has by no means disappeared, even though it is weaker now than it used to be in the period when logical positivism and orthodox analytic philosophy dominated the scene. The objection that Rescher’s idealism is, after all, quite a mild one does not help, just because most philosophers in the United States have been trained in an environment which taught them that idealism, as such, is the main enemy of the scientific outlook on the world. The influence of such classical authors as Russell, Reichenbach and Carnap is still decisive in this regard, and our previous remarks about the “linguistic idealism” that many analytic thinkers unconsciously endorse today are not yet accepted. Most current philosophical dictionaries affirm that idealism, all across the many trends into which it is divided, can be reduced to a very few shared basic propositions. which are common in various degrees to all those who define themselves idealists. From one well-known philosophical dictionary60 we may extract a limited set of such propositions: (1) matter is somehow the manifestation of Spirit, however Spirit is defined; (2) matter can never be independent of mind and thought; (3) physical objects can have no existence apart from a mind which is conscious of them; (4) we could not possibly know unexperienced physical objects; (5) the existence of physical objects coincides with our perceiving them, because we could not conceive as existing in abstraction from our sense-experience any of the qualities we ascribe to them;

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(6) object implies subject, but subject also implies object (though subject is ultimately prior). To what extent does Rescher’s conceptual idealism fit into this general picture? First of all, if we take idealism to be defined by proposition (1), Rescher is hardly an idealist. If (1) is endorsed, idealism becomes a typically monistic philosophy, in the sense that it chooses to dissolve the matterelement of the couple matter/spirit into the spirit-element, thus prompting evident doubts about the origins of matter itself. But Rescher is not a supporter of monism in the sense previously mentioned, because he never claims in his writings that thought creates reality as a whole or that reality may be completely reduced to thought. These remarks of ours can be furtherly clarified by the following quotation: [. . .] realism and idealism are general orientations pointing in directions that can lead to diverse destinations. In consequence of their generality, both approaches have many diverse versions, and some forms of either doctrine are perfectly compatible with some forms of the other. In particular, a conceptual idealism maintaining that we standardly understand the real in somehow mind-invoking terms of reference is perfectly compatible with an ontological materialism that holds that the human mind and its operations ultimately root (be it causally or superveniently) in the machinations of physical process.61

If we do not take this declaration seriously, we will misunderstand Rescher’s position completely. For his philosophy will not be appreciated if one sticks to the widespread (and, to some extent, well-founded) opinion that, as far as philosophy of science and more generally scientifically oriented philosophy are concerned, idealism has a “bad” story. Since labels, in philosophy as anywhere else, are often much more important than they should be, philosophers of science still tend nowadays to consider the idealists at large as their natural adversaries. The problem is that the history of modern philosophy offers good ground for claiming that they have at least some good reasons for thinking that way. To many of us, Hegel’s classical idealism (or even more recent forms of neo-idealism) has a very precise meaning. It means claiming that reality depends—or is created by—human thought which in turn is a manifestation of a superior Spirit, and that science is a secondary and less important kind of knowledge, because only “pure” philosophical speculation tells us how the world really is. The holistic approach that he left to us as a precious heritage is, usually, deemed less important than the aforementioned features. Rescher’s use of the term

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“idealism” (although he always adds “conceptual” to it), thus, can be somehow misleading, because there is no trace of anti-science in his works. As a matter of fact, for him the role of science in human knowledge is, as we shall verify in the next chapter, absolutely central. Another important consideration relates to Rescher’s attitude towards Kant and his transcendental idealism. We already noted before that Kant’s presence is clearly perceivable in our author’s writings, but his Kant is always Kant viewed—and interpreted—through the lenses of pragmatism (which in this case are, in particular, Peircean lenses). On the one hand Rescher accepts the Kantian view that our knowledge is strongly determined by the a priori elements present in our conceptual schemes, and that they indeed have an essential function as long as our interpretation of reality is concerned. On the other hand, however, he tends to see these aprioristic elements as resting on a contingent basis, and validated on pragmatic— rather than necessitarian—considerations. The mind certainly makes a great contribution towards shaping reality-as-we-see-it, but the very presence of the mind itself can be explained by adopting an evolutionary point of view, as it was remarked in the previous sections of this chapter. It can indeed be said that Rescher’s work is meant at both reviving the idealist perspective within contemporary analytic philosophy and making it compatible with a scientifically oriented outlook on reality (since, as we observed before, this compatibility must be shown, and not just taken for granted). Someone might argue that Rescher’s conceptual and pragmatic idealism cannot be defined as a true idealism because, while adopting an idealist stance at the epistemological level, he nevertheless endorses a mildly realist position at the ontological one, and this means that a nondogmatic realism can actually be compatible with his position (as he readily recognizes). To this objection he replies that all depends on what we take idealism to be. Our opinion is that what he defines as the “ontological” versions are more diffused than the “epistemic” ones, to which his particular brand of idealism belongs. And, no doubt, philosophical dictionaries and the histories of philosophy tend to confirm this impression. Still, Rescher can effectively argue that an interpretation which is largely prevalent in the philosophical community needs not be taken as a truth of faith. He distinguishes such epistemic versions of idealism as cognitive idealism (“To be as a truth is to be knowable”), or fact idealism (“To be as a fact is to be a language-formulable fact”), or, again, explanatory idealism (“Any adequate explanation of the existence of physical reality must proceed in terms of verbal questions”). But in all these cases what is at stake is

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not the ontological dependence of reality as such from the operations of the mind but, rather, the fact that mind determines in some way or another our view of reality.62 To what extent, however, is the mind able to do so? This is indeed an important question for evaluating Rescher’s idealistic stance, and we shall address it in the course of the following chapter. NOTES 1

M. Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1994, 3rd pr., p. 3.

2

See chapter 1, section 1.2 above. The central role that Frege plays in Dummett’s thought can be especially ascertained by reading his famous book: Frege: Philosophy of Language. Duckworth, London, 1973.

3

Chapter 2, section 2.2.

4

M. Dummett, Ibid., p. 5.

5

See the third section of the present chapter.

6

N. Rescher, APT, cit., p. 39.

7

N. Rescher, CTT, p. 207.

8

Some basic inconsistencies of Quine’s thought are dealt with in other works of the present writer. See, for example, M. Marsonet, “Is Philosophy of Language Really Important for the Foundation of Scientific Realism?,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 30 (1993), pp. 283-301; and Science, Reality, and Language, cit., chapter 2.

9

W. V. Quine, Word and Object, The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1960, p. 3. Similar remarks may be found in Quine’s earlier article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” cit.

10

W. V. Quine, Ibid., p. 4 and 22.

11

It is interesting to note that Donald Davidson, who was in his youth a pupil of Quine, arrives at the same conclusion, although his position differs from that of his master. A comparison between Rescher and Davidson will be sketched in chapter 8, section 8.2, of the present book.

12

N. Rescher, SPI.3, 1994, pp. 46-47.

13

N. Rescher, MP, 1977, p. xiii.

14

R, p. 186.

15

K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, p. 109.

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NOTES 16

N. Rescher, UI, 1990, p. 11.

17

See, for instance, D.T. Campbell, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.), 1974, pp. 413463.

18

See W. Callebaut (ed.), Taking the Naturalistic Turn, or How Real Philosophy of Science Is Done, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London, 1993.

19

UI, pp. 2-3.

20

P. C. W. Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint. New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe, cit., pp. 5-8.

21

See again M. Marsonet, Science, Reality, and Language, cit., chapters 3-5, for a more detailed account of the growing gap between analytic-oriented philosophy of science and the scientific community.

22

It must be noted that this was the main objection that the Catholic Church raised against Teilhard de Chardin’s philosophical system.

23

UI, pp. 3-4.

24

We would like to stress that here Rescher is paying homage to the many fascinating insights contained in the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, without espousing, however, his essentially theological perspective.

25

UI, p. 8.

26

K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, cit.

27

UI, pp. 17-18.

28

K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, cit., p. 204.

29

Popper’s main views about induction may be found in his masterpiece The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York, 1959.

30

N. Rescher, I, 1980, pp. 2 and 87-88.

31

See especially K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2 vol., 4th ed.: 1963; and The Poverty of Historicism, Harper & Row, New York, 1964.

32

For further details see, for example, the book by D. Oldroyd, The Arch of Knowledge. An Introductory Study of the History, Philosophy, and Methodology of Science, Methuen, New York, 1986.

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NOTES 33

P. K. Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, Verso, London-New York, 1994, 4th pr., p. 10.

34

Obviously, we do not mean to deny Feyerabend’s precious role in overthrowing the standard conception of scientific knowledge (“received view”) endorsed by the logical empiricists.

35

An interesting perspective of this type has been put forward by Paul Churchland. See, for instance, P.S. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.)-London, 1984 (Revised ed.: 1988); and, by the same author, Neurophysiology: Towards a Unified Science for the Mind-Brain, The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.)-London, 1986.

36

UI, p. 40.

37

W. V. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in: From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953, pp. 42-43.

38

More details on Quine’s “middle-of-the-road” position between pragmatism and logical positivism may be found in M. Marsonet, Science, Reality, and Language, cit., chapter 2.

39

N. Rescher, SPI.3, p. 35. This theme is also treated in SS, 1985.

40

We have briefly dealt before with the metaphysical stance of a well-known physicist like Paul Davies. He, however, is not an isolated case, since other famous scientists like Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg often address metaphysical issues in their works.

41

R. Rorty, “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” in: R. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, cit., pp. 72-89.

42

See especially G. Bergmann, The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, Longmans, Green & Co., New York-London, 1954.

43

J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, Open Court, Chicago & La Salle (Ill.), 1994 (2nd ed., 9th pr.), pp. 335-336.

44

See chapter 5, section 5.2 below.

45

N. Rescher, RE, 1984, pp. 83-99.

46

Ibid., p. 84.

47

Ibid., p. 87.

48

Ibid., p. 89.

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NOTES 49

Note how distant Rescher is from any Platonistic conception of mathematics.

50

RE, p. 90.

51

Ibid., pp. 91-92.

52

See again the second section of the present chapter.

53

RE, p. 96.

54

We would like to add John Dewey, too, but it must be honestly recognized that Rescher is not very sympathetic to this eventual addition. The reason is that he tends to view Dewey as a “pragmatist of the left,” along with James and Rorty.

55

OJ, p. 152.

56

We will see in chapter 5 what the expression “our science” means for Rescher.

57

CI, p. 1.

58

SPI.1, p. 305.

59

Ibid.

60

J .O. Urmson, J. Ree (eds.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy & Philosophers, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, new edition, pp. 146-149.

61

SPI.1, pp. 304-305.

62

It is interesting to note that even the “linguistic” idealism with which we dealt in other parts of the present book might be considered as a form of epistemic idealism.

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Chapter 5 SCIENCE AND ITS LIMITS 1. ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY

I

s there any neat distinction between ontology and epistemology in Rescher’s works? He somehow refuses to draw a clear border-line between the two, and one of the reasons for that lies—as we soon shall verify—in the holistic character of his philosophical system. The separation between factual and conceptual (synthetic/analytic) is not sharp and clean, but rather fuzzy. Yet there is another reason, which is connected to the ontological opacity of the real world (whose existence, it should be stressed once again, Rescher never denies). A few years ago he wrote an article in which some of the objections to his previous book on conceptual idealism are addressed and replied,1 and this testifies the importance he attributes to this theme. It is clear, in fact, that the issues raised by Rescher in his works on conceptual idealism are important for both a correct understanding of the current realism/anti-realism debate in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, and for the clarification as well of the manifest (although often undeclared) idealistic turn which took place within analytic philosophy in the last few decades. It may be noted that, for our author, a distinction between things-inthemselves and things-as-we know-them really exists, since he claims that: [. . .] it is not ‘the thing itself’—whatever that might be—that is mindinvolving, but ‘the thing as we think of it’, that is ‘the thing under a certain characterization’. For a careful distinction must be drawn in the present connection between (1) the mind-involvement of a specified item X, and (2) the mind-involvement of a specification of the item X. If Henry Higginbottom is the most generally disliked member of the group then it is clear that the specification or identification represented by the definite description ‘the most generally disliked member of the group’ is mind-involving [. . .] But this, of course, would not of itself mean that the man Henry Higginbottom is somehow mind-dependent.2

However, Rescher would reply to the above question with a further query: What do we really know about the man Henry Higginbottom, besides the

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fact that he is disliked, that he is married (or not), that he likes to go fishing, etc.? Of course we know a great many facts about him; some are questions of detail, and some are very general features that he shares with all men qua men. Still, it is hardly deniable that all those features, including the most general ones, are explicitly mind-involving. Nothing, in mere natural reality, identifies Henry Higginbottom and the rest of us as men. We identify ourselves that way and, in order to do that, the involvement of our mind is indeed mandatory. To put it in other words, it is only when the socio-linguistic world emerged from the natural one that we began to identify ourselves, and these identity criteria are largely social. So we can indeed draw a distinction between ontology and epistemology, but it must also be noted that, as far as we are concerned, this distinction turns out to be less important than it is usually thought. The reason is, obviously, that we can have access to the unconceptualized world (which is there) only through conceptualization. And conceptualizaton is, in turn, the key feature that characterizes our cultural evolution. Rescher, as we have seen previously, never diminishes the importance of biological evolution, which is specifically geared to the natural world and, after all, is supposed to precede our cultural development from the chronological point of view. The fact is, however, that it is cultural evolution that distinguishes us from all other living beings that happen to share our planet with us. Just for this reason Rescher claims that “Idealism, broadly speaking, is the doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlative or mindcoordinated. However, the specifically conceptual idealism which concerns us here stands in contrast to an ontological doctrine to the effect that mind somehow constitutes or produces the world’s material.”3 Scientists, thus, will not find in his philosophy the basic anti-scientific attitude endorsed by the classical idealists and some contemporary neo-idealist thinkers, who deem natural science unimportant because it deals with a secondlevel reality, i.e., with a reality that is “secondary”, being merely a creation of the human (or divine) mind (or spirit). According to this view, only philosophy can actually reveal to us the real “essence” of the world, given the fact that the mind/spirit creates reality as a counterpart to itself. Rescher, instead, claims that natural science gives us a fairly adequate picture of reality, although warning against the diffused temptation of conceiving our actual science as anything like a perfect and final representation of reality itself.4 No doubt Bradley is a philosopher who has had a great influence on him but, as long as the evaluation of scientific knowledge is at stake, he cannot deemed to be his main source of inspiration.

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Now, if we admit that the real (i.e. mind-independent) world exists, a distinction may be drawn between: (A) Nature-as-we-understand-it, and (B) Nature itself. Is this distinction ontological or epistemological? To answer this question, we should be able to trace a line of separation between ontology and epistemology neater than the one Rescher is inclined to accept. One is entitled to claim, for instance, that ontology aims at discovering what kind of entities make up reality (“what there is,” to use a Quinean expression), while epistemology’s task is to discover the principles by which we get to know reality. Rescher’s suggestion, however, would be that our conceptual machinery is at work even when we try to gain access to (B) because, as it was said before, our access to the world is always mind-involving. Going back to the aforementioned distinction between (A) and (B), it might even be said that it is a real distinction, because we know that our history is both biological and cultural, although our cultural life needs a preexistent biological basis in order to develop. However, not much can be said about (B). By using our scientific instruments and theories we are able to shed some light on the natural history of the Earth (and of the universe at large), but this natural history is always ours, because it is conducted by following our mental patterns and categories and by using the scientific instruments and theories that we build. We can push our sight so far as to imagine an era when no categorization of the world took place because no men were around. Still, even in this case we must have recourse to categorization just to imagine a situation of this kind (which can be presumed to have been real because, after all, evolutionary epistemology gives good reasons for assuming that humankind was not present on our planet since the beginning). This means that we are entitled to claim: Yes, (B) is neither created by the human mind nor dependent on it. We can understand nature itself in a great number of different ways, and the history of astronomy and cosmology gives us a clear picture of this situation. It shows that at every stage our conceptual apparatus puts heavy constraints on our understanding of the issues. It must also be stressed that conceptualization is not an optional choice, that we can make in certain circumstances and discard in others. We are practically forced to have access to the world through conceptuali-

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zation because we are just made that way. This picture explains why nature-as-we-understand-it keeps changing. Our vision of it is quite different from the vision held in ancient Greece, in the Middle Ages, or in the age of the French revolution. Obviously it would be wrong to state that, since our visions of nature change, nature-in-itself changes too: No relation of logical consequence can be drawn in this case. The only plausible strategy that can be adopted is to say that, in this particular moment, we rely on the specific scientific instruments and theories that we have at our disposal for getting to know nature. It should be recalled, though, how fast scientific theories that were deemed to be almost perfect a few decades ago are now seen as totally outdated. So we face the following picture. On the one hand, mind does not produce nature but, on the other, we need the analogy of mind for conceiving nature itself. Our reference to the external world is always mind-correlative: [. . .] The contention is that reality-as-we-think-of-it (= our reality) is the only reality we can deal with, and that this is not mind-independent, but construed in mind-involving terms. And here ‘mind-involving’ does not imply ‘idiosyncratic’ or anywise subjective differing from one individual to another, like matters of opinion of taste or preference. For on the sense of ‘objectivity’ now in view, the appropriate equation is not objective = mind independent (transcendental), but objective = interpersonally valid. On this view, ‘reality’ is not an absolute, but a universally accessible foundation framed within a communal conceptual scheme. Its conception is based on the publicly shared and interpersonally accessible determinate conceptual scheme [. . .] and resides in such common conceptual resources as, preeminently, science.5

As we verified in the first section of the preceding chapter, Rescher fits this creative human capacities in the order of nature (via evolution). These capacities, thus, are not a violation of the previous natural order, nor they present the rather mysterious air they have in the Kantian system. Their presence can rather be explained by resorting to the previous considerations we made about the two-sided relationship between nature and man (who is part of nature itself), so that “a world in which high-order intelligence [. . .] can evolve through the process of rational selection in cognitive evolution that supplement the process of natural selection in biological evolution, must exhibit a high order of structure.”6 This kind of picture is indeed consistent with a scientific outlook on reality. The human capacity of conceptualization becomes something natural and explainable. And al-

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though our comprehension of its historic origin and concrete evolution is by no means complete, there is no cogent reason for claiming that we will never be able to understand when and how mankind acquired the above mentioned capacity. Rescher’s conceptual idealism takes the key properties we ascribe to physical things to be relational, in the sense that our conceptual scheme works in such a way that the properties we ascribe to those things always involve some type of reference to mental operations. His stance is thus quite different from that endorsed by the representatives of classical idealism, who recognized that ontological idealism must—just to be consistent with itself—eliminate any separation between ontology and epistemology. Only by claiming that physical reality is a product of some kind of mind/spirit will it avoid the tension between a realist ontology and an idealist epistemology, and this is exactly what Hegel did by getting rid of the Kantian noumena. Our author, instead, distinguishes between “conceptual mind-involvingness” and “explicit mind-invokingness” and picks up two different items in order to illustrate this distinction: books and dreams. A dream is mind-invoking because dreams can only exist where there are mind-equipped beings to do the dreaming, while books, being physical objects, seem at first sight entirely non-mental. Nevertheless books are mind-involving, because there could be no books in a world where minds had never been in existence. And he goes on claiming that “Even if there were no mind-endowed beings, there could certainly be naturally evolved book-like objects, objects physically indistinguishable from books as we know them [. . .] A book is, by definition, an artifact of a certain purposive (i.e. communicative) sort [. . .] To be a book is to have writing in it, and not just marks [. . .] To explain adequately what a book is we must thus make reference to writing and, in turn, ultimately to minds.”7 We can summarize his distinction by saying that there are immaterial objects like dreams and worries—let us call them O1—which are clearly mind-invoking, and material objects (human artifacts) like books—let us call them O2—that are clearly mind-involving. Are we authorized, however, to state that a third kind of object is needed to have a complete picture of the situation, and to justify any separation between ontology and epistemology?. This third kind would be formed, for example, by physical objects—we may call them O3—which are neither human artifacts nor mind-dependent like trees. If we take a typical O2 object like a book, in fact, it is easy to see that it is made of paper (another O2-kind human artifact), but in order to produce paper we need a physical O3-kind object like

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a tree which can hardly be deemed to be mind-dependent. Certainly, we might say, we do not create trees, stones, atoms, planets, etc. At this point Rescher would stress that it is correct not to cancel the distinction between the world-itself and the world-as-we-know-it. However, he would add something of the following sort. First of all, the ontological structure of the world that contains our O3 objects like trees is obtained via conceptual scheme users, that is to say, we who specify what ontology is at issue. Does this mean that the world becomes essentially dependent on, or internally connected to, thought and conceptual schemes? By paraphrasing a famous statement by Quine, who says that “Which ontology to ascribe to a man depends on what he does or intends with his variables and quantifiers,”8 so that ontology is, so to speak, “internal to language,” we might as well ask: Is ontology internal to thought? Rescher’s answer would be, once again, two-sided. On the one hand it is inevitable that our ontology be internal to thought, because only through conceptualization we have access to the world. On the other, nothing prevents us from speaking of a natural ontology which is the referent of our conceptual apparatus, since Rescher explicitly rules out the thesis—typical of other idealistic thinkers—that the mind creates reality-as-such. The risk, here, is that of giving rise to an ontology which is complex because it is “stratified.” Quine would probably say that we must resist the temptation to adopt an “overcrowded” ontology, thus inviting us to use Ockham’s razor as much as we can. However Ockham’s razor is not such a good ontological criterion, because we cannot decide to simplify a reality which is itself complex. So, when Rescher claims that “Conceptual idealism sees mind not as causal source of the materials of nature, but as furnishing some of the interpretative mechanisms in terms of which we understand them. It maintains that we come to cognitive grips with nature on our own terms—that is, in terms of concepts whose makeup involves some reference to minds and their operations,”9 he is simply ruling out, on the one hand, any causal production of nature by the mind, and on the other he strongly underlines the autonomy of mind as such, which is thus supposed to give a central and creative contribution to the construction of the world-as-we-see-it. This is evident during his discussion of space and time, when he claims that “all positioning of things (be it in relating them to one another observationally or with reference to a coordinate-placement scheme of some sort) involves a mental process. The very idea of location and placement in particular identifiable positions is conceptually mind-invoking.”10

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Rescher’s ontology is in sum characterized by the fact that the things of nature are standardly seen by us in terms of a conceptual apparatus that is substantially imbued with mind-involving elements. He defines as “tempting” the prospect of imagining an an sich reality, i.e. a natural world conceived of in ways totally deprived of mind-involving concepts. But he also notes that: [. . .] The key factor here is the distinction between noumenal (= extraphenomenal) reality, about which a great deal can be known in scientific theorizing, and an sich (= ‘purely objective’, altogether mind-independent) reality, about which precious little can be known from the point of departure of the standard conceptual scheme we deploy in science and everyday life alike [. . .] While the idea of a ‘mind-independent reality’ is not wholly vacuous in import, it represents a via negativa that does not take us very far, and is in any case irrelevant for any information regarding ‘our reality’ (because radically discontinuous with it). But just what is involved in such a reorienting of ‘reality’ from the sphere of the altogether mind-independent towards that of an at least partly mind-conditioned truth? More must be said regarding the nature and the credentials of such a concept of reality not an sich but for us.”11

Any “absolutely objective” ontology is then left in the background, because precious little can be known about it and it represents a via negativa that does not take us very far. No matter how “real” the O3-kind objects like trees may be, he claims that the conception of “trees” that defines them as such is always (and inevitably) based on human ideas, which in the last analysis depend on how we “botanize” nature in our conceptual scheme. In other words, Rescher is far from denying that in our experience we have two sorts of “there is a tree” responses: (1) those which are delusional (i.e., misimpressions, optical illusions, etc.), and (2) those which are veridical, which occur when we are really confronted by a tree (because we touch it, we cut it down, and so on). He stresses, however, that the sentence “There actually are trees in the real world” is an oversimplified formulation for something which would—more correctly—stated as follows: There occur (and, thus, exist) processes in the real world, which do not depend on the existence of minds, and of which we humans can have an imperfect knowledge through natural science. Such processes, in turn, nondelusionally provoke the “here is a tree” response in duly prepared minds. It follows that the trees we experience are “something” which do not exist as such (i.e., as conceived of by us), but rather as something analogous

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to the bearers of Locke’s secondary properties. Once again, we find here the outcome of the interaction between mind-independent natural processes on the one side, and human minds on the other. These processes go along their own (realistic) way, and causally provoke our beliefs. But—Rescher claims—what really goes on are certain physical, physiological, and psychological processes (partly, but only imperfectly, understood by us) which cooperate to produce in us the (veridical) conviction that there are “trees” over there. The result is that Rescher’s ontology is realistic sub condicione, because it is an ontology of—imperfectly grasped rather than an sich—processes in the world, which in their imperfection and interaction with human minds produce an intellectual manifold of thingcharacterizations. It should not be forgotten, however, that this causal production is always mediated by the brain-physiological basis for a conceptual scheme. All this means that the processes that lead us to the conviction that “there is a tree” operate independently of us, but the “botanizing” of these processes—i.e., the tree-envisioning response to them—always requires the intervention of the mind. Rescher’s ontology, then, is structured in the following way: (a) Mind independent processes; (b) Minds; (c) Causal products in those minds produced by the impacts of these mind-independent processes. Rescher neither rejects things nor denies their reality, but views them as ontologically subsidiary and derivative in a way that involves items (b) and (c), which renders them mind-dependent. We have, in sum, (1) a realistic ontology of physical processes that are somewhat amorphic because only imperfectly understood, and (2) an idealistic ontology of substances or things. So it is the issue of how we think of the world that paves the road to mind-dependence, which is compatible with the thesis that the mental functioning, after all, has its material basis and causal origins in the realm of physical processes. Just for this reason, as we said before, a clear demarcation between ontology and epistemology cannot be established in Rescher’s thought. If the only possible way to get in cognitive touch with the world is through the mediation of conceptualization, then it is obvious

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that the world is, as long as we are concerned, the “world-as-we-conceiveit”. What are, then, the relations between mind and matter in conceptual idealism? We have a sort of “holistic circle”, in which mind is causally dependent on matter, while matter is conceptually dependent on mind. To use Rescher’s own words, “[. . .] the circle is harmless because it breaks in two, with matter hinging on mind in the conceptual order of understanding (of rationes conoscendi, or rather concipiendi), and mind hinging on matter in the explanatory order of causation (rationes essendi).”12 Rescher’s holism (which is strongly indebted to Hegel’s thought) surfaces very well in this case, since he explicitly claims that mind and matter are coordinated and interrelated concepts. This means that, in order to understand the aforementioned “hermeneutic circle,” a systematic (holistic) explanation is needed, and not a sequential one. 2. THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC REALISM It is only too natural that when the man of the street reads about the results of scientific discoveries he takes them to be descriptions of “real” nature. Why should different thoughts come to his mind, given the impressive results that science was able to attain in the last few centuries? It should be noted, however, that not only philosophers, but even many professional scientists have often denied the validity of the picture that the man of the street takes more or less for granted. Many examples could be provided in this regard, as any standard text on the history of science or the philosophy of science might easily confirm.13 In past century uncertainty about the content of our theories has grown fast, together with the feeling that there are alternative theories that can account equally well for all possible observations. Clearly the threat of relativism arises at this point, even though many authors nowadays no longer take relativism to be a threat, but just a fact of the matter. A good definition of it has been given by Larry Laudan, who writes in this regard: “Relativism [. . .] can be defined, to a first order of approximation, as the thesis that the natural world and such evidence as we have about that world do little or nothing to constrain our beliefs. In a phrase, the relativists’ slogan is ‘The way we take things to be is quite independent of the way things are.’ It is this view that many current writers take away from the study of philosophy of science.”14 Obviously things were different when logical positivism still was the the dominant—and, in many cases, even the only—doctrine in philosophy of science (i.e. the “received view” about which something was said in the

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first chapter of our work). In that case the main purpose was to individuate the immutable models that lie beyond concrete scientific practice, because it was commonly held by the main representatives of neopositivism that science is objective and progressive in the cumulative sense of the term. Intersubjectivity was granted through recourse to the scientific language, purportedly believed to be neutral, free of errors and misunderstandings and, thus, available to every observer. Formal logic became then something much more important than a simple instrument, since its task was supposed to be that of “capturing” intersubjectivity by means of a language constructed in the purest form possibly available to human beings, leaving aside all the unpleasant distortions that our natural languages bring with them. Today we see many pitfalls in this conception, but it is worth noting that we came to see them only a posteriori. Logical empiricism gave rise to a powerful paradigm and it took some decades to overthrow it, even though we believe that it should be judged respectfully since, after all, philosophy of science and logic as we know them stemmed from that ground. The basic assumptions on which the paradigm of the “received view” rested are essentially the following. In the first place, verificationism seemed almost a truth of faith, while it is indeed difficult to equate meaningfulness with what can be verified from a perceptual viewpoint. Secondly, logical empiricists never offered good arguments in support of their thesis that assertive discourse must be preferred to more pragmatic forms of language. Thirdly, they too easily assumed that something like “objective truth” really exists and, moreover, that it can be transmitted by using the aforementioned logical language (supposedly pure and neutral). Last but certainly not least, the logical empiricists did not fully recognize the historical dimension of the scientific enterprise, which subsequently turned to be something different from the “universal science” they were talking about. At this point we can note that scientific realism (and the nature of scientific knowledge at large) is a theme where the originality of Rescher’s position clearly emerges. Certainly he is very distant from the received view of logical empiricism. Looking back to the years of his philosophical formation, he says: [. . .] I was thus led back to take a rather different view of the technical preoccupations in the minutiae of formal analysis which came to the forefront in the postwar years. It seemed to me that the passion for the detailed analysis of small-scale side-issues was getting out of hand. All too often, philosophers were using their technical tools on those issues of detail congenial to their

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application, rather than concentrating them on inherently important matters. Technical questions became preoccupations in their own right, rather than because of any significant bearing on the central problems of the field.15

Rescher’s increasing distance from the neopositivist model, however, should not lead one to think that he got closer to the more recent—and more fashionable—post-empiricist trend of thought. Our author argues, against any form of instrumentalism and many postmodern authors as well, that natural science can indeed validate a plausible commitment to the actual existence of its theoretical entities (and we shall see soon what “plausible” means in this context). Scientific conceptions aim at what really exists in the world, but only hit it imperfectly and “well off the mark”. What we can get is, at most, a rough consonance between our scientific ideas and reality itself. This statement should not sound surprising, if only one recalls what was said before about Rescher’s conceptual idealism and his unwillingness to trace a precise border-line between ontology and epistemology.16 Furthermore, Rescher’s aim is to replace Charles S. Peirce’s “long-run convergence” theory of scientific progress by a more modest position geared to increasing success in scientific applications, especially in matter of prediction and control. This dimension of applicative efficacy is something real, and can hardly be denied from a rational point of view. He goes on arguing that the connection between adequacy and applicative success in questions of scientific theorizing leads, in turn, to a pragmatist-flavored philosophy of science. Unlike traditional pragmatists like Peirce and Dewey, however, Rescher shifts the attention from a concern for theories to a concern for methods. And this also marks the difference between his ideas and the approaches endorsed by other contemporary thinkers—like Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty—who deem a pragmatist outlook in the philosophy of science important. Throughout his works, and particularly in the latest ones, Rescher insists that in matters of practical and applicative control we can always achieve significant improvements. But he also states very clearly that “perfection” (i.e.: the completion of the project) is, in principle, unfeasible. This means that his ideas are opposed to all those scientific projects whose aim is the search for a “final theory,” a good case in question being that of the physicist Steven Weinberg.17 So we have a general picture of this kind: [. . .] In attempting answers to our questions about how things stand in the world science offers (or at any rate, both endeavors and purports to offer) in-

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formation about the world. The extent to which science succeeds in this mission is, of course, disputable [. . .] The theory of sub-atomic matter is unquestionably a “mere theory”, but it could not help us to explain those all too real atomic explosions if it is not a theory about real substances [. . .] Only real objects can produce real effects. There exist no “hypothetical” or “theoretical entities” at all, only entities—and hypotheses and theories about them which may be right or wrong, well-founded or ill-founded. The theoretical entities of science are introduced not for their own interest but for a utilitarian mission, to furnish the materials of causal explanation for the real comportment of real things [. . .] Thus our inability to claim that natural science as we understand it depicts reality correctly must not be taken to mean that science is a merely practical device—a mere instrument for prediction and control that has no bearing on describing “the nature of things”. What science says is descriptively committal in making claims regarding “the real world”, but the tone of voice in which it proffers these claims always is (or should be) provisional and tentative.18

Many authors have claimed in this regard that the unobservability of scientific entities rests on contingent facts, which depend on both the nature of the unobserved thing and the features of our perceptual mechanisms. For sure, they go on, things which were in the past unobservable became observable later on, because we were able to artificially extend our perceptual capacities by means of such technologically advanced scientific instruments as microscopes and telescopes. Given this fact, any neat demarcation between observables and unobservable entities is not significant from an ontological point of view: if we reject the realist perspective as long as scientific unobservable entities are concerned, even realism in general must be abandoned. Following this line of thought unobservable scientific entities are just contingently unobservable, so that their unobservability (due, for instance, to smallness of size) presents the same—resolvable— difficulties that one has to deal with when far distant celestial bodies are taken into account (in this case, spatial location is the problem at issue). Rescher would accept the preceding arguments with some reservations. He is ready to admit the reality of the so-called theoretical entities because of his aversion for any instrumemtalistic conception of scientific knowledge. In his view, in fact, “instrumentalism puts the cart before the horse. As far as the working scientist is concerned, scientific theories do not exist for the sake of prediction and control, but the other way round—prediction and control are of interest because they serve to monitor the adequacy of our theorizing about objective reality. Accommodation of the phenom-

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ena—‘empirical adequacy’ as it were—is not the be-all and end-all of scientific theorizing; it is merely a part of the test criteria for the adequacy of this theorizing.”19 In other words, while it is correct to state the fallibility and continuous corrigibility of science, starting from these premises we are not allowed to draw the conclusion that no existential and descriptive claims about the “real world” should be made in scientific theorizing. Existential and descriptive claims can indeed be made, but the spirit of these assertions must always be provisional, tentative and, above all, hypothetical. All we are entitled to say is that if the science of the day (our science) is correct, then the so-called theoretical entities exist and possess the characteristic features that it envisions. No science would be possible without this basic realistic attitude, because its very aim is to provide an ontologically founded picture of reality. In understanding this fact, a philosopher of science has to recognize, on the one side, the descriptive and explanatory role that science purports to play, while, on the other, he must also stress that science is bound to be imperfect and fallible in its execution of such a role. Rescher even notes that the supporters of instrumentalism usually endorse their position on grounds of a commitment to empiricism. But the type of empiricism they espouse is quite uncommon, because traditional empiricism is known as the doctrine that any type of descriptive knowledge of the world must be grounded in experience. Since instrumentalists, instead, claim that experience is impotent to provide any descriptive knowledge of the real (extraphenomenal) world, their doctrine may be characterized as a full-fledged anti-empiricist stance. It is worth recalling that we met a similar situation in the first two chapters of the present book. There, in fact, it was argued that most representatives of the linguistic turn geared their positions to a strong brand of empiricism, while their real stance may instead be depicted as a sort of anti-empiricist linguistic idealism. At this point we are confronted by a crucial question: Given the fact that Rescher opposes instrumentalism and stresses the necessity that substantive existential and descriptive claims are appropriate in the scientific context, what kind of realism is he actually endorsing? The question becomes even more important if we recall what we previously verified, i.e. that Rescher (1) is a conceptual idealist, and (2) thinks that no neat border between ontology and epistemology can be outlined. If someone objects to him that, in order to provide realism with a solid foundation, we need recourse to a reality that is totally independent of thought (and let alone of language), his reply runs roughly as follows. What can we possibly think

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about this reality, and how can we say what it is like? Even for imagining a world totally devoid of human presence, we must use human concepts. As we said previously, conceptualization is not an optional we can get rid of, but a built-in component of our nature of human beings. According to our author, then, we must distinguish between the that and the what of this purported mind/thought independent reality. In this case, we are sensibly entitled to claim that it exists, while simply rejecting the challenge to specify what it is like. Going back to the example of science once again, we know for sure that there are errors in present-day science, but cannot say what they are. So we can never assume that a particular scientific theory—for instance, Einstein’s relativity theory—gives us the true picture of reality, since we know perfectly well from the history of science that, in a future we cannot actually foresee, it will be replaced by a better theory. And it should be noted, moreover, that this future theory will be better for future scientists, but not the best in absolute terms, since its final destiny is to be displaced by yet another theory. All this prompts Rescher to claim that: [. . .] The current state of “scientific knowledge” is simply one state among others that share the same imperfect footing of ultimate correctness or truth. The “science of the day” must be presumed inaccurate no matter what the calendar says. We unequivocally realize there is a strong prospect that we shall ultimately recognize many or most of our current scientific theories to be false and that what we proudly flaunt as “scientific knowledge” is a tissue of hypotheses—of tentatively adopted contentions many or most of which we will ultimately come to regard as quite untenable and in need of serious revision, or perhaps even abandonment. It is this fact that blocks the option of a scientific realism of any straightforward sort. Not only are we not in a position to claim that our knowledge of reality is complete [. . .] we are not even in a position to claim that our “knowledge” of reality is correct [. . .] Such a position calls for the humbling view that just as we think our predecessors of a hundred years ago had a fundamentally inadequate grasp on the “furniture of the world”, so our successors of a hundred years hence will take the same view of our purported knowledge of things.20

Rescher’s conception of scientific realism is thus strictly tied to his distinction between reality-as-such and reality-as-we-think-of-it.21 He argues that there is indeed little justification for believing that our “present-day” natural science describes the world as it really is, and this fact does not allow us to endorse an absolute and unconditioned scientic realism. In other

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words, if we claim that the theoretical entities of current science correctly pick up the “furniture of the world,” we run into the inevitable risk of hypostatizing something—i.e. our present science—which is only an historically contingent product of humankind, valid in this particular period of its cultural evolution. Rescher’s view is, instead, that “a realistic awareness of scientific fallibilism precludes the claim that the furnishings of the real world are exactly as our science states them to be—that electrons actually are just what the latest Handbook of Physics claims them to be.”22 But what about future science? We might in fact be tempted to say that, since present-day science is really bound to be imperfect and incomplete, perhaps future science will do the job, thus accomplishing that project of “perfected science” that the logical positivists loved so much. Even in this case, however, many problems arise. First of all, just which future are we talking about? There is indeed no reason to believe that tomorrow’s science will be very different from ours as long as its capacity of providing the “correct” picture of reality is concerned. The fact is—our author argues—that scientific theories always have a finite lifespan. This is so for every human creation (and science is a human product, in any possible sense of the term), so that, “as something that comes into being within time, the passage of time will also bear it away.”23 While we can certainly claim that the aims of science are stable, it should honestly be recognized that its questions and answers are not. Science, in sum, is not a stable system, but a dynamic process, and this fact leads us to view as problematic all those conceptions that place on the shoulders of future science the burden of perfection. Not even the fascinating theses of Charles S. Peirce—Rescher’s favorite mentor—escape this fate.24 According to Peirce’s “convergent approximationism,” the scientific results we are able to reach with the passing of time grow increasingly concordant, and the results consequently become less and less differentiated. So, “in the face of such a course of successive changes of everdiminishing significance, we could proceed to maintain that the world really is not as present science claims it to be, but rather is as the ever more clearly emerging science-in-the-limit claims it to be [. . .] We increasingly approximate an essentially stable picture.”25 Although such an optimistic picture cannot be rejected from a logical point of view, our historical experience, based on what the history of science teaches us, shows that the reverse is much more plausible. Ideal science, even when its realization is referred to the future, looks more a philosophical utopia than a feasible accomplishment (even though

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utopias, as Rescher often recognizes, are indeed useful when they are viewed as essentially “regulative” ideas). Perfected science, thus, is not “what will emerge when,” but “what would emerge if,” and many— realistically unachievable—conditions must be provided in order to obtain such a highly desirable result. This means that our cognitive enterprise must be pursued in an imperfect world, and the strong realistic thesis that science faithfully describes the real world should be taken for what it is: a matter of intent. The only type of scientific realism that looks reasonable to Rescher is a scientific realism viewed in idealistic perspective, in which what is at stake is a sort of “ideal science” that nowise men can claim to possess. The mixture of idealistic and pragmatist themes thus emerges again as one of the characterizing features of his project: [. . .] Seeing that a pragmatic line of approach pivots the issue on what is useful for us and productive for us in the context of our evaluatively legitimated aims and purposes, we return to the characteristic theme of idealism—the active role of the knower not only in the constituting but also in the constitution of what is known. To be sure, this sort of idealism is not substantive but methodological. It is not a denial of real objects that exist independently of mind and as such are causally responsible for our objective experience. Quite the reverse, it is designed to facilitate their acceptance. But it insists that the justificatory rationale for this acceptance lies in a framework of mindsupplied purpose. For our mind-independent reality arises not from experience, but for it—i.e. for the sake of our being in a position to exploit our experience to ground inquiry and communication with respect to the objectively real.26

So we have a realism which is initially founded on a fundamentally idealistic basis, and this happens because the dichotomy realism/antirealism assumes that we are able to see the world from an external point of view. The strong version of scientific realism ignores a basic fact: we can never trust completely and in detail what our actual scientific theories claim, since history shows that, sooner or later, they will be dislodged. 3. THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE In the preceding section we saw that, instead of speaking of “science as such” (perhaps with a capital “S”), it is better to make our discourse more precise, dealing for instance with the science made by twentieth century scientists, or with the scientific conceptions held by scientists living in the

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seventeenth century, and so on. In other words, at least a couple of questions always arise in this context: Which science, and whose science, are we talking about? There is indeed no reason to deem our particular scientific outlook on the world absolute from the cognitive viewpoint: [. . .] Scientific “knowledge” at the level of deep theory is always purported knowledge: knowledge as we see it today. In our heart of hearts, we realize that we may see it differently tomorrow—or the day after. We must stand ready to acknowledge the fragility of our scientific theorizing. All we are ever able to do in natural science is to select the optimal answer to the questions we manage to formulate within the realm of alternatives specifiable by means of the conceptual machinery of the day. And we have no reason to doubt—nay, we have every reason to believe—that the day will come when this conceptual basis will be abandoned, in the light of yet unrealizable developments, as altogether inadequate.27

This means that the scientific knowledge at our disposal in any particular moment of the history of mankind must be held to be “putative,” while its relations to the truth (i.e. how things really stand in the world) should be conceived in terms of tentative and provisional estimation. Even the optimistic visions that see science as growingly approaching the “real” truth have, at this point, to be rejected. It is natural to assume that later science is better than the previous one, and this fact seems to be confirmed by our common standards of evaluation. Once again, however, the history of science shows that “better” and “truer” are not the same thing: if, in fact, truthfulness can be predicated of later science, how come it is bound to be eventually rejected, just as it happened with its predecessors? At a more general level, we have indeed no reason to think that our particular scientific outlook on reality is absolute from the cognitive viewpoint, because it must be relativized to the interaction which obtains between the world on the one hand, and men who investigate it on the other. The two-sided story which should by now be well known to the reader explains why it is so. The outcome of our investigation of nature is something in which both our inputs and those by nature play a fundamental role; they cannot be separated or, at least, we are not able to do so. For this reason Rescher notes that “[. . .] the query ‘What is the discoverable character of nature—what are the detectable components of physical reality, and what are the discernible regularities that govern them?’ remains incomplete and defective unless we first resolve the question: ‘Detectable and discernible by whom?’ For the issue is one that is inevitably relativized to the nature-

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interactive resources and instrumentalities at the disposal of investigators.”28 In order to understand the mere character of estimation that the relations of our knowledge to truth always have, another important factor to bear in mind is what Rescher defines as the “cognitive inexhaustibility of things.” Does this expression mean that the world is inexhaustible in itself, or that it is so in relation to us, cognitively imperfect beings? Or, to put it in a different way, is this an epistemological or an ontological thesis? We can get at once a partial answer by recalling, as it was already done several times in this work, that in our author’s view it is practically impossible to draw a clear line of demarcation between ontology and epistemology (even though such a task may be feasible at a purely theoretical level). The fact of the matter is that the natural limits we face in investigating nature are built in our own ability to create non-standard situations. Rescher claims that, even taking into account a world formed by finitely many objects, the process of reflecting on them can, at least in principle, go on unendingly. For instance, we can not only inquire about the features of those objects, but also on the features of these features and, as long as relations are concerned, one can consider not only the relations among objects, but also the relations among those relations, and so on. So, he claims, “thought [. . .] is an inherently ampliative process. As in physical reflection mirror-images can reflect one another indefinitely, so mental reflection can go on and on. Given a start, however modest, thought can advance ad indefinitum into new conceptual domains. The circumstance of its starting out from a finite basis does not mean that it need ever run out of impetus (as the example of Shakespearean scholarship seems to illustrate).”29 The situation we have to deal with in our investigations on nature is, thus, more complicated than it is usually held to be. For, given what we just said, the number of the true statements that we can pronounce about things (even the simplest ones) turns out to be theoretically inexhaustible. It should be noted that this happens when a thing (a physical object whatever) enters in contact with our conceptual machinery: another side of the two-sided story mentioned before. So we may also say that (1), in principle, no theoretical limit is available when we purport to put forward descriptive truths about a thing; and (2) the totality of facts about a thing is, always in principle, inexhaustible. What is, however, the distinction between a truth and a fact? The standard conception tells us that a truth is something which can be expressed in linguistic terms or, as Rescher has it, “the representation of a fact through its statement in some actual lan-

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guage.” But a “fact,” instead, is not a linguistic entity, since it may rather be characterized as a circumstance (or state of affairs). A fact does not need to be statable in an actual language: all that its definition requires is that it is statable in some possible language. It is quite evident that there are more facts than truths, and in order to see this we need to have recourse to our imagination. We know that there are many facts in the universe that we do not know. It certainly must be presumed that there exist facts which will be never formulated— linguistically—as truths, even though Rescher adds correctly that we are not in a position to provide concrete examples of this phenomenon. The two-sidedness of our cognitive enterprise becomes even clearer at this point, because, on the one hand, we need truths to represent facts but, on the other, facts outnumber truths. To learn about nature, we must for sure interact with it, but this interaction will never take us to the perfect resting point where we could feel sure to know all there is to be known. No matter how uneasy we feel about this picture, it is evident from what we just said that any perspective that sees science as a “potentially bounded venture” must be discarded. There is no hope in fostering the idea that scientific inquiry—like geographical exploration—is bound to arrive at the end of the road. Rescher, however, states very clearly that he is not placing the burden of inexhaustibility on the shoulders of nature alone: [. . .] neither unending structural nor operational complexity is required to provide for cognitive inexhaustibility. The usual recourse to an infinity-ofnature principle is strictly one-sided, placing the burden of responsibility for the endlessness of science solely on the shoulders of nature itself. In its view, the potential endlessness of scientific progress requires limitlessness on the side of the objects, so that the infinitude of nature must be postulated either at the structural or at least at the functional levels. But this is a mistake. Science, the cognitive exploration of the ways of the world, is a matter of the interaction of the mind with nature—of the mind’s exploitation of the data to which it gain access in order to penetrate the “secrets of nature”. The crucial fact is that scientific progress hinges not just on the structure of nature itself but also on the structure of the information-acquiring processes by which we investigate it.30

For this reason it is not correct to claim that the limits of our science are just the same limits of our conceptual apparatus and cognitive machinery. However important their role may be, we must also take into account what Rescher calls “the cognitive opacity of real things” (which, once again, dif-

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ferentiates his position from any type of ontological idealism). When we talk about our “experience” of things or their “manifestation”, it should never be forgotten that men can only experience those features that things actually manifest. We think about things by using a conceptual framework which is essentially fact-oriented, and physical objects have more facets than they will ever manifest in experience. Take the desk I am actually writing on—Rescher says—and see that “it has a limitless manifold of phenomenal features of the type: ‘having a certain appearance from a particular point of view’. It is perfectly clear that most of these will never be actualized in experience.”31 So it turns out that there is a “hidden” sector of features that our conception of a real thing must take into account, if we want to have a cognitive picture that is at least tentatively complete. Here Rescher agrees with C.I. Lewis’ conception of our objective factual claims as “non-terminating.” For it is clearly absurd to state that, say, an apple has only those features that it actually manifests: once again we must have recourse to hypothetical reasoning, claiming that the apple would manifest such-and-such features if such-and-such conditions were realized. Empiricism and materialism, for example, both assume that it is only mere experience, and not the holistic process of experience, conceptualization and judgment, which puts us in touch with the world. Knowledge, according to these trends of thought, is just a matter of “taking a look” at what is there, rather than of inquiring and using reflection and intelligence. It should be noted, in this regard, that contemporary science speaks freely of unobservable entities, which makes a purely empiricist approach to scientific knowledge even more problematic than it was in the past centuries. If by naturalism we mean the thesis that “the most privileged and reliable methods for acquiring an understanding of the world are the methods that are used by science,”32 then surely Rescher is a naturalist (and this fact differentiates him from such classical idealistic thinkers as Hegel and Bradley). He is not, however, if naturalism is taken in a strictly empiricist or materialist sense, which still is the most popular meaning of this term. On the other hand, however, it should be honestly admitted that scientists themselves, nowadays, tend to view the old notion of “matter” like a myth: [. . .] There is no doubt that the Newtonian world view, with its doctrine of materialism and the clockwork Universe, has contributed immensely to the advance of science [. . .] But there is equally no doubt that it has also contributed in large part to alienating human beings from the Universe they inhabit [. . .] It is fitting that physics—the science that gave rise to material-

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ism—should also signal the demise of materialism. During this century the new physics has blown apart the central tenets of materialist doctrine in a sequence of stunning developments [. . .] Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less “substance” than we might believe. But another development goes farther by demolishing Newton’s image of matter as inert lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently gained widespread attention.33

Until a few decades ago, materialists were able to charge their philosophical adversaries with endorsing an “anti-scientific” view of reality but, as the words just quoted clearly show, today they would not receive from professional scientists the support they previously enjoyed. Rescher’s view of the limits of scientific knowledge might seem, at first sight, very pessimistic. At a closer look, however, it seems less so, since its essentially antipositivistic character means at freeing science from all the impossible tasks that the scientifically oriented philosophy prevailing in the first half of past century, at least in the English-speaking world, attributed to it. Rescher’s approach, in other words, makes us reflect on the fact that, in order to be scientifically oriented, there is no need to take science to be the regulatory paradigm of our lives, and here the teaching of the pragmatist masters is clearly at work. Something must be said, eventually, on the realist side of Rescher’s proposal, which most interpreters tend to undervaluate in favor of his basically idealistic stance. It is a fact that he never claims to be an anti-realist as long as the traditional questions of scientific realism are at issue. As we saw at the beginning of the preceding section, he argues that natural science can indeed validate a plausible commitment to the actual existence of its theoretical entities. The basis for realism—which, in any event, cannot be too “strong” because of the constraints provided by our conceptual apparatus—must be found elsewhere than in the present-day natural science. Our historical experience, in fact, warns us that the latter’s hard claims “will not move down the corridors of time untouched,”34 so that their universality and exactness deserves a closer scrutiny. The relations between the commonsense claims and those made by frontier-science are, according to our author, rather complex, and we should get rid of the neopositivist conception according to which the scientific world-view is in any possible sense better than that put forward by common sense. In particular, the exactness of technical scientific statements make them quite vulnerable while, in ordinary life, assertions are indeed vague, but on the other hand acquire security through inexactness.

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This situation can be explained well enough recalling that common sense has the fundamentally practical aim of providing the framework in which our daily life is to be conducted, and at this level we do not need great degrees of precision. Natural science’s aim, instead, is that of looking for maximal definiteness, and thus for maximal informativeness and testability. Doing so, the vulnerability of scientific statements becomes quite obvious: it is just the inevitable other side of the coin of definiteness. What Rescher purports to do, at this point, is to find a middle-of-the-road position between a strong and untenable form of scientific realism claiming that natural science correctly describes physical reality, and the instrumentalists who want any descriptive task to be abandoned by science in order to endorse the thesis that scientific theories merely coordinate the phenomena. He individuates this halfway house in what he defines as “school-book science,” i.e. the elementary science of popularizations and school texts, which provides a realism weaker than the one which takes science to be a correct description of physical reality. If one for instance wonders about the existence of atoms, he has to face a situation of the following kind. On the one hand, we know that today nuclear physics gives us no definitively correct picture of the atom. But, on the other, the concept of atom at large is pretty safe, and there is no danger that it will cease to play a key role in natural science. So, Rescher argues, [. . .] The looser and detail-suppressive knowledge of popularized science— indebted though it is to technical science—is not itself scientific knowledge. Technical science scorns imprecision and operates at the outer limits of exactness and accuracy [. . .] But it is just this sort of popularized “schoolbook science” that is the focus of our confident assurance that we know how things stand in the world [. . .] We can—and doubtless, will—come to think these things very differently from the way in which we conceptualize them today. But given the conceptual plasticity and flexibility of what is at issue with “electrons”, “genes”, etc., the prospect of their total disappearance is on the same level as the total disappearance of Julius Caesar [. . .] Absolutely definitive knowledge of nature being unattainable, we can and should be content to let our realism operate within the limits of the attainable represented by the middle range of the security/definiteness curve.35

Needless to say, neither traditional scientific realists nor instrumentalists will be content with such a picture, but Rescher’s reply is that this is the only way to save a reasonable realism or, to put it in other terms, the only

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realism that we are allowed to endorse. And this leads us back to what was said at the onset of the preceding section: The overall picture that emerges from our science is doubtless correct, but only in its rough outlines. In the final analysis, this stance does not force us to choose between a naive scientific realism and a skeptical scientific fallibilism. NOTES 1

N. Rescher, “Conceptual Idealism Revisited” (CIR), The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 44 (1991), pp. 495-523.

2

CI, p. 15.

3

CIR, p. 495.

4

See his book SR.

5

CI, p. 169.

6

RE, pp. 91-92.

7

CIR, pp. 496-497.

8

W. V. Quine, “Existence,” in W. Y. Yourgrau, A. D. Breck (eds.), Physics, Logic and History, Plenum Press, New York-London, 1970, p. 94.

9

N. Rescher, CIR, pp. 499-500.

10

Ibid., p. 512.

11

CI, pp. 161-167.

12

SPI.1, p. 320.

13

See for instance D. Oldroyd, The Arch of Knowledge. An Introductory Study of the History, Philosophy, and Methodology of Science, cit.

14

L. Laudan, Science and Relativism: Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London, 1990, p. viii.

15

N. Rescher, “Curriculum Operis,” cit., p. 204.

16

See the fourth section of chapter 4 and the first of the present chapter.

17

See S. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, Pantheon Books, New York, 1992.

18

N. Rescher, SR, pp. 38-39.

19

Ibid., p. 41.

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NOTES 20

Ibid., p. 6.

21

See again, the first section of the present chapter.

22

SR, p. 7.

23

Ibid., p. 8.

24

See N. Rescher, PPS, 1978.

25

SR, p. 23.

26

Ibid., pp. 147-148.

27

N. Rescher, LS, 1984, pp. 77-78.

28

UI, p. 78.

29

SR, p. 111.

30

LS, p. 54.

31

SR, p. 116.

32

J. H. Fetzer, R. F. Almeder, Glossary of Epistemology/Philosophy of Science, Paragon House, New York, 1993, pp. 96-97.

33

P. Davies, J. Gribbin, The Matter Myth, Simon & Schuster, New York-London, 1992, pp. 13-15.

34

SR, p. 55.

35

Ibid., pp. 60-62.

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Chapter 6 SOCIAL AND NATURAL REALITY 1. A PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC

A

s we have noted repeatedly, in Rescher’s thought there is a strict connection between logic and an essentially pragmatist conception of the philosophical enterprise. As he himself observes, the fundamentals of his methodological pragmatism were implicit in the last chapter of ManyValued Logic (a text written in 1967, and published in 1969).1 Most of Rescher’s early works were devoted to logical themes. With the passing of time, however, his attention slowly shifted towards other sectors of philosophy, with a prevalence of philosophy of science, metaphysics and the theory of knowledge in the middle period, and of social philosophy, ethics, and metaphilosophy in the later years. Logic has increasingly been viewed in his work as a tool of rational inquiry rather than an objective to be pursued per se, and we would like to underline the pragmatist roots of this conception (indebted to both Peirce and Dewey). No doubt there are also many Hegelian insights at work: for instance, inconsistency is no longer seen as something that must be eliminated (like in standard logic) but, rather, as “the question of the inferences appropriately to be drawn from an inconsistent set of premises.”2 Furthermore, Quine’s opinion notwithstanding, Rescher thinks that quantification theory concerns not ontology per se, but the linguistic formulation of our ontological statements.3 What differentiates our author’s approach to logic from the stance commonly shared within the analytic tradition is the refusal of the program of so-called “logical constructionism.” Such program is based on two basic commitments: (a) the appeal to “privileged” ontological and epistemological items like Platonic ideas, logical and physical atoms, physical objects, sense data, protocols, etc.,4 to which everything else can be reduced. Secondly, it is commonly thought that the process of reduction of the secondary items to the basic ones can be carried out only by using the coherent and “perfect” language provided by contemporary formal logic. As we already noticed in the first chapters of the present book, starting from these premises mathematical logic becomes a sort of condicio sine qua non for carrying on any philosophical project that purports to be meaningful. Many

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misunderstandings occurred because of this tight requirement. For instance, the theses of prominent representatives of other philosophical traditions have often been charged with being “non-sensical” because they saw no need to formulate their ideas in the rigorously formal language of standard logic, and only recently some thinkers trained in the analytic tradition have come to realize that those charges are indeed narrow-minded. Philosophy and logic cannot be linked that closely, and today the idea that the analytic style of philosophizing is just one style among many others, and not the only good one, is gaining increasing acceptance.5 It might be objected to these remarks that Rudolf Carnap, one of the best representatives of logical reconstructionism, put forward in this regard his famous “principle of tolerance.” But our argument remains untouched because, after all, he maintained his commitment to distinguish the socalled pseudo-questions from the scientific ones, and the only way he envisioned to accomplish this task was by having recourse to the rigorous language of logic. It was already noted before that the logic used by the analytic philosophers is not as neutral and objective as they claim it to be. In particular, it is strictly dependent upon the doctrine of “logical atomism.”6 Instead of neutrality, we find here the endorsement of a very strong principle (shared by many representatives of the linguistic turn), viz. that there is a correspondence between the ideal language of formal logic on the one side, and the structure of the world on the other. The basic distinction between molecular propositions, whose truth or falsity depends uniquely on that of the atomic propositions that compose them, and the related concept of “truth function ” are too well-known to be treated here. Our only purpose is to remark that, more often than not, students are taught that the fundamentals of logic are absolutely neutral and objective, while, at a closer analysis, they are tied to a particular metaphysical view of reality (which, as such, has no title to be proclaimed neutral and objective). But this also sheds a new light on the Carnapian program of eliminating metaphysics through the logical analysis of language, which has been so successful for many decades (and still is in some sectors of analytic philosophy). The preceding considerations are crucial for understanding Rescher’s conception of logic. Not only he clearly rejects the picture sketched above; he also detaches himself from the second phase of the program of logical constructionism, when Carnap (and others) began to realize that their eagerness to find perfect languages could not deal with a continuously evolving scientific practice. Still, the way out was thought to be a typically em-

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piricist reconstruction of scientific knowledge starting from the so-called data of immediate experience, which our author cannot share because of his basic holistic attitude. Rescher’s position holds that, even in logic, pluralism must be the keyword if one does not want to be locked in the cage of conceptions that become rapidly outdated. Dealing with the dichotomy Absolutism/Relativism in logic,7 he observes that the enterprise of logic may be considered in several—and substantially different—perspectives, among which we find (1) the psychologistic, (2) the Platonistic, and (3) the instrumentalistic viewpoints. According to (1) logic is viewed as fundamentally descriptive, and its task is taken to be that of outlining a “theory of reasoning,” i.e. a systematic account of how we humans proceed when reasoning successfully. According to (3), instead, logic’s task is that of constructing rigorous systems codifying not only actual, but also possible instrumentalities for conducting valid inferences, and “these would be available (should someone want to avail himself to them) for adoption as an organon of reasoning, but no empirical claims are made that anyone has (or will) avail himself of this opportunity. The logician devises a tool or instrument for correct reasoning, but does not concern himself about the uses of this instrument.”8 As for (2), the Platonistic position is well known even to beginners in philosophy. Here too logic is taken to be descriptive. What it describes, however, are not human endeavors, but rather an extra-human realm of abstract entities that are located in a different world and give rise to a different ontology, so that logical truths are in no way dependent upon our way of thinking or speaking of them. It is interesting to note that, in dealing with the instrumentalistic point of view, Rescher traces a distinction between two poles that are both present within it: [. . .] At the formalist pole the construction of logical systems is regarded as a free exercise in creative ingenuity. We have to do with the unfettered construction of abstract procedures systematizing possible inferential practices. At the pragmatist pole, however, there is a strong injection of normative considerations, and great emphasis is placed on the convenient and efficient usability of some of these instruments as opposed to others. The case for pragmatism was clearly argued by C.I. Lewis [. . .] On this instrumentalistic approach, there is no danger of irrationalism, because one postulates at the metalogical level a clear, nonrelative criterion of validity of inference principles in an acceptable logic [. . .] the choice between alternative systems is purely arbitrary for the formalist, but is for the pragmatist heavily hedged

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about by considerations of a functionalistic sort. With either mode of instrumentalism logic [. . .] is conceived [. . .] as something in the direction of the manufacture of intellectual tools.9

Rescher is clearly committed to the pragmatist field, although he does nothing to hide the interesting features of the other perspectives. In noting that psychologism and Platonism are both absolutistic and monistic, he recognizes the pluralist choice of the formalistic kind of instrumentalism but, on the other hand, he remarks that a more restrictive (or conservative, if you wish) way of looking at logical matters is needed. Our author, in fact, does not deem correct the basic thesis of the formalists, who take the choice among different logics to be purely arbitrary and conventional. To admit pluralism in logic is indeed necessary, but the pragmatist’s choice is restricted by many considerations that can be functional or purpose-relative (or both), and they obviously relate to effectiveness, economy and efficiency given the objectives that each logical system is supposed to reach. Not surprisingly, just as in all other fields of inquiry Rescher here chooses a middle-of the-road-position, this time geared to the functionalistic side of the instrumental perspective. It follows that, in logic, we are not allowed to rely on some kind of metaphysical superiority, but only upon the instrumental one. To the traditional question: “Which is the correct logic?,” we should always answer: “Your query makes sense only if you specify what concrete objectives each logical system is supposed to achieve.” The difference between Rescher’s position and Quine’s is thus clear, as the following remarks show well enough: [. . .] To turn to a popular extravaganza, what if someone were to reject the law of non-contradiction and so accept an occasional sentence and its negation both as true? An answer one hears is that this would vitiate all science. Any conjunction of the form ‘p . ~p’ logically implies every sentence whatever; therefore acceptance of one sentence and its negation as true would commit us to accepting every sentence as true, and thus forfeiting all distinction between true and false [. . .] In answer to this answer [. . .] it is suggested, we can so rig our new logic that it will isolate its contradictions and contain them [. . .] My view is that [. . .] they think they are talking about negation, ‘~’, ‘not’; but surely the notation ceased to be recognizible as negation when they took to regarding some conjunctions of the form ‘p . ~p’ as true, and stopped regarding such sentences as implying all others. Here, evidently, is the deviant logician’s predicament: when he tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject.10

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These famous sentences denote a certain fixity of mind, and fully justify a previous statement of ours, according to which Quine at a point somehow abandoned his pragmatist insights of the 1950’s and turned into an orthodox analytic thinker. The history of Western thought, however, shows that philosophers have been far less unanimous on the theme of inconsistency than the Anglo-American analytic tradition, typified in this case by Bertrand Russell, takes them to be. Rescher mentions in this regard the “phobia of inconsistency”11 that most logically concerned thinkers belonging in the mainstream of the Western tradition have endorsed. But how should we judge, then, Heraclitus, Hegel, and Marx, to mention only three examples out of many? If one takes Russell’s history of philosophy,12 a ready answer may be found in the parodistic interpretation that he provides of the Hegelian thought (and it is worth mentioning that Russell adopts the same strategy when dealing with Dewey’s philosophical system). It should be stated that one need not agree with Bertrand Russell’s assertions, because he so obviously gives, in most cases, a highly partisan and one-sided interpretation of what the philosophers he disliked really said. Even the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction may in some cases be challenged and, after all, the modern historians of logic have shown that Aristotle himself was less categorical on this issue than he was for a long time supposed to be. So, Rescher argues, when we are told that the consequences of the rejection of the law of non-contradiction are too horrendous to contemplate, we should, instead, contemplate them anyhow, so that “[. . .] it just is not an indispensable requisite of rationality to follow those— from Plato to Bradley—who consign whatever has an admixture of inconsistency to the realm of mere Appearance and rigidly exclude it from the sphere of Reality.”13 The choice between more or less alternative logical systems, in the long run, cannot be based on merely theoretical (i.e. purely abstract) considerations, but on practical ones. The real alternative at stake here is accordingly the following: logic as “doctrine” vs. logic as “instrument.” Rescher does not deny that logic has, in this particular regard, a dual nature. From the doctrinal point of view it is clearly a body of theses or, even better, a systematic codification of those special propositions defined as “logical truths.” At the methodological level, instead, it must be seen as an operational code for conducting sound reasoning. Having once again recourse to historical considerations, our author observes that “[. . .] the distinction at issue carries back to the old dispute—carried on throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages—as

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to whether logic is to be considered as a part of knowledge or as an instrument for its development. The best minds of the day [. . .] insisted that the proper answer is simply that logic is both of these—at once a theory with a body of theses of its own and a tool for testing arguments to determine whether they are good or bad.”14 A pragmatic conception of logic, however, leads us to view its instrumental-methodological character as primary with respect to the doctrinal features. All this follows quite naturally from what we said above, because for a pragmatically oriented thinker logic’s task lies, first of all, in systematizing and rationalizing the practice of reasoning in all the contexts (theoretical included) where human beings usually draw inferences. Logical rules, in turn, are not supposed to have an abstract and formalistic character, because in that case they cannot be attuned to human practices (be they theoretical or instrumental). It is interesting to note that this approach is not distant from some insights contained in the works of the second Wittgenstein, where language is no longer taken to be an ideal entity endowed with some sort of “essence,” but rather a set of social practices that are used in order to satisfy men’s concrete needs. Our models of inference thus become the products of social practices, while the social dimension pertains to language in each of its many characteristics and features. In other words, our rules for drawing inferences are essentially practical—and not formal; they are rules that allow (or do not allow) us to perform a certain kind of action. What distinguishes our author’s stance from that of those who follow in the footsteps of the later Wittgenstein, is the refusal to “dissolve” logic (and philosophy at large) into the social dimension, because his conceptual idealism prevents him from adopting an exclusively sociological interpretation in all sectors of philosophical inquiry.15 However, when Rescher claims that “[. . .] logical theses must consequently be grounded in practice, for such theses effectively formulate the import of the inferential rules that characterize the practice of reasoning,”16 his proximity to the later Wittgenstein is hardly deniable. And we could even ask, as Hilary Putnam did,17 “Was the second Wittgenstein a pragmatist?.” But such a question, interesting as it may be from an historical viewpoint, would lead awry from the main aims of our work. As concerns the problem of “alternative” systems of logic, we may also note that while the standard question: “Which is in fact correct?” makes sense at the doctrinal level, but it does not from an instrumental point of view. In the latter case, in fact, we must reformulate the question as fol-

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lows” “Which is optimally effective for the specific purposes one has in mind?.” And this happens because we gave priority to logic conceived of as inferential practice, viewing in turn logical theses as attempts aimed at translating the practical functioning of such a practice in articulated propositions. In other words: [. . .] the systematization of logic does not proceed in vacuo, free from implicit restraints inherent in the teleology of the subject. For in the case of the formalization or codification of logic, one must satisfy the demands imposed by the prior existence of a relatively well-defined presystematic practice with rules and requirements of its own. The present approach to logic sees this teleological and purposive nature of the enterprise as central. To be what a logis is is to do as a logic does [. . .] The existence of a basic practice is crucial, for its nature exercises a significant determinative influence throughout the entire process of systematization.18

It should be clearly understood from what we said thus far that, for Rescher, relativism in logic (and in all the other sectors of philosophical inquiry as well) is never absolute. Carnap’s “principle of tolerance,” although valid to a certain extent, is mitigated in his system by the specific constraints that the considerations of purposive efficiency and effectiveness put upon it. Instrumentalism, for sure, does endorse a relativistic position as long as the justificatory rationale of logic is at work. On the other hand, however, we can expect “a relatively definite resolution of the underdeterminism of the theoretical situation by an instrumentalistic and functionally teleological narrowing of the range of alternative choices.”19 In Rescher’s philosophy, unlike the situation in all philosophical positions influenced by the linguistic turn, logic does not—and cannot—stand on its own feet, because the basic idea is that practical life is the ultimate arbiter of cognitive adequacy. But in our view there is even more to say in this respect, because Rescher, ever since the late 1960’s, put at the center of his theoretical speculation a concept of language quite different from the analytic one. We know that, today, the development of the so-called cognitive sciences led to a radically new approach in the study of meaning. The anti-psychologistic mood which dominated the analytic tradition from Frege on, and still endorsed by a prominent author like Michael Dummett, has been openly questioned. In particular, many contemporary philosophers began to ask why should the philosophy of language taken to be a sort of “prima philosophia” which is entitled to provide foundations for

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everything else. To question this assumption is in effect to deny any a priori foundation for philosophy itself. So, the symbolic-linguistic perspective endorsed by analytic philosophy began to be considered as an historically determined perspective, rather than the correct way for dealing with meaning and the functioning of our reasoning. It was noted that the absolutistic emphasis put on the linguistic aspects of cognitive phenomena could not explain the behavior of such “intelligent systems” as, say, animals and infants, who have no or little recourse to linguistic communication. In other words, knowledge as such is not reducible to its logico-linguistic form. Once again, the abstract and aprioristic mode of dealing with these issues must be substituted by a more pragmatic approach, pivoting on the biological and cultural evolution of humankind. By adopting such a strategy, it is possible to understand that both language and the capacity to use linguistic-symbolic representations of the world evolved rather late. A naturalism such as Rescher’s which takes into due account not only a Darwinian type of evolution, but also its cultural-social side, can indeed overcome the strictures placed upon the theory of knowledge by the analytic stance prevailing until a few decades ago. Apriorism must thus be abandoned, and “the rational selection of methods and procedures is a complex process that transpires not in a ‘population’ but in a culture. It pivots on the tendency of a community of rational agents to adopt and perpetuate, through example and teaching, practices and modes of operation that are relatively more effective than their available alternatives for the attainment of given ends.”20 If we keep this in mind, the foundations of language and logic must be linked to domains quite different from those envisioned by the analytic tradition and, pace Dummett, Frege turns out to be one of the many classical authors whose contributions must be historicized. 2. THE DEFENSE OF CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES The existence of the so-called “conceptual schemes” is one of the most controversial issues in today philosophy. Its importance lies in the fact that, depending upon what strategy one chooses to foster, this theme has a very important bearing on many related questions, among which the problem of scientific realism, the relations between ontology and epistemology, and the role that our conceptualization of the world plays in a realist vs. idealist outlook on reality. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the issue is fundamental only for philosophy. According to Niels Bohr’s “principle of

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complementarity” we have, on the one side, a sort of Kantian “world in itself” which is both unknowable and undescribable, and on the other side an “us” which, unlike in Kant’s picture, is not stable and determined. This means that, in our inquiries about the world, different questions can all receive coherent answers, with the disquieting effect that a comprehensive and coherent image of reality cannot be achieved. It is as if, conducting different experiments, we were to change conceptual schemes: the world experienced will in any case be diverse, and there is no way to combine the world of our experience with the various, differing conceptual schemes. As the physicist Henry Stapp has it: [. . .] Quantum theory is sometimes regarded as merely a theory of atomic phenomena. However, the peculiar form of quantum effects entails that ordinary classical ideas about the nature of the physical world are profoundly incorrect in ways that extend far beyond the properties of individual atoms [. . .] The historical and logical setting for these developments is the elucidation by William James, at the end of nineteenth century, of the clash between the phenomenology of mind and the precepts of classical physics [. . .] James makes a positive argument for the efficacy of consciousness by considering “the particulars of the distribution of consciousness”. He says that the study made throughout the rest of his book21 “will show that consciousness is at all times primarily a selecting agency”. It is present when choices must be made between different courses of action [. . .] James’s ideas about mind and its connection to brain accord beautifully with the contemporary laws of physics.22

Let us note once more that the contributions of pragmatism look particularly attuned to contemporary science, which vindicates Rescher’s early rediscovery of this tradition of thought. So conceptual schemes are neither born out of nothing nor established on aprioristic (and substantially unexplainable) bases. Their aim is to provide us with means for thinking about—and for speaking of—a reality which includes ourselves: in a word, we are not outside the picture. They are tissues of beliefs socially codified, so that their nature is not aprioristic, but a posteriori. In 1974 Donald Davidson published an influential paper on the problem of conceptual schemes which stirred a great deal of discussion and called for many challenges and replies (among which, as we shall see soon, one by Rescher).23 He formulates the aforementioned problem in an original manner, even though, as it always happens with Davidson’s writings, it is often difficult to understand what he is really up to. And this is not (or, at

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least, not only) a personal opinion of ours, since many authors candidly confess that they do not fully understand his arguments. Michael Devitt, for instance, claims that “Davidson’s view of the mind is obscure. He has much to say about what psychological states are not, but is rather coy about what they are,”24 while John Passmore, in a recent volume of his, observes that “It is part of Davidson’s general theory that in order to understand a particular belief, we have to look at the general system of ideas and attitudes of which it forms part. This is certainly true in Davidson’s own case. While he is not, in the ordinary sense, an obscure writer—‘elusive’ is a better description—one is not surprised to find that expositions and criticisms of his views are so often prefixed by ‘if I understand him aright’.”25 Davidson begins his paper by challenging the scheme-content dualism, and mentions both “a dualism of total scheme (or language) and uninterpreted content”, and “a dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content.”26 However, this is simply the analytical (or post-analytical, if we trust Richard Rorty) way of dressing the Kantian distinction between the contents that the noumenal world sends to us and the forms that we alone—as human beings—place upon them thanks to the particular structure of our caregorial system. Kant did not stress particularly language’s role, but it can be easily seen that the problem is essentially the same. In Davidson’s approach, as in Kant’s, there is a real dichotomy between these two elements, in the sense that the (conceptual) scheme is “other than” the (non-conceptual) content that is practically opposed to it. This conception, obviously, is subject to the same criticisms that Sellars, Quine, and other contemporary authors addressed to the so-called “myth of the Given.” Now, Davidson’s rejection of the scheme-content distinction is supported by a whole set of arguments purporting to reject, first of all, the thesis that totally different conceptual schemes can actually exist. To put things in a very sketchy manner, he resorts to a typical analytic move (which casts doubt on the Rortyan characterization of Davidson as a “postanalytical” thinker), and equates having a language with having a conceptual scheme, so that: [. . .] Here we have all the required elements: language as the organizing force, not to be distinguished clearly from science; what is organized, referred to variously as “experience”, “the stream of sensory experience”, and “physical evidence”; and finally, the failure of intertranslatability (“calibration”). The failure of intertranslatability is a necessary condition for difference of conceptual schemes: the common relation to experience or the evidence is what is supposed to help us make sense of the claim that it is lan-

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guages or schemes that are under consideration when translation fails. It is essential to this idea that there be something neutral and common that lies outside all schemes. This common something cannot, of course, be the subject matter of contrasting languages, or translation would be possible [. . .] The idea is then that something is a language, and associated with a conceptual scheme, whether we can translate it or not, if it stands in a certain relation (predicting, organizing, facing, or fitting) with experience (nature, reality, sensory promptings). The problem is to say what the relation is, and to be clearer about the entities related.27

If this is the situation, Davidson goes on, then we could say that conceptual schemes that are different in a radical way from each other correspond to languages that are not intertranslatable. How can we, however, make sense of a total failure of intertranslatability among languages? For sure, then, “we could not be in a position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our own.”28 Davidson’s well-known conclusion is that, if one accepts his arguments and gives up the dualism of scheme and world, he will not give up the world, but will instead be able to “reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true.”29 Before turning to Rescher’s critique, it is worth noting that Davidson’s solution looks very akin to the famous “Christopher Columbus’ egg ”: since we got this notion of the scheme-content distinction that bothers us a great deal, because it places a wedge between us and the “real world,” let us simply get rid of it. But, for sure, we must ask at this point what “real world” means for Davidson. Sometimes he seems inclined to identify it with the world of common sense which, as he states, is formed by the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. And, in turn, these familiar objects are nothing but tables, chairs, houses, stars, etc., just as we perceive them in our daily life. Davidson cannot ignore, however, that all current discussions on the problem of scientific realism arise just because there is a strong asymmetry between the commonsense view of the world and the scientific one (the “manifest” and the “scientific” images, to put it in Sellarsian terms). For instance, the table that we see with our eyes is not the same table that we “see” with the eyes of scientific instruments, and this fact is much less trivial than Davidson (and Rorty with him) seems to think. It is rather easy to reach a high level of inter-subjective agreement among the individuals present in a room about the color, size and weight of a table, and it can also be granted that we form our beliefs in this regard by “triangulating”—as Davidson says—with our

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interlocutors and the surrounding environment. Such an agreement, however, becomes rather problematic (to say the least) when we try to reconcile our commonsense vision with what science tells us. So, being in touch with such familiar objects as tables, chairs and stars all the time has indeed little bearing on our ontology, since science shows that a completely different representation of those same objects can actually be provided. Naturally, one can always resort to an objection of the following kind: Why should we deem the table viewed as a collection of subatomic particles more important than the chair that our eyes see in daily life? After all, we can conduct our life well enough even ignoring what science discovers (just like our ancestors did for many thousand years). To us, this looks like a serious underevaluation of the scientific enterprise, and the statements by the physicist Henry Stapp, quoted at the beginning of the present section, make us rather think that Davidson is wrong in dismissing the importance of conceptual schemes in shaping our image of reality. If we now turn to Rescher’s defense of conceptual schemes, it may at once be noted that he takes the complexities of the relations between human mind and the world into serious account, without looking for short cuts. Neither Ockham’s razor nor any sort of reductionism are given a prominent place in his philosophical outlook, but just the respect for the complex world in which we happen to live. In 1980 Rescher replied to Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” by publishing an article in which his former teacher’s30 ideas are strongly questioned.31 He begins by noting that the problem of the conceptual schemes is nothing but the contemporary formulation of an old question, i.e. that of cognitive adequacy from the standpoint of an entirely different sort of cognitive beings. George Simmel, for instance, put forward interesting ideas in this regard, while William James wrote that “[. . .] Were we lobsters, or bees, it might be that our organization would have led to our using quite different modes from these of apprehending our experiences.”32 Needless to say, in twentieth century analytic philosophy this same problem receives a linguistic formulation, of which the “Translation Argument” that Rescher individuates in the aforementioned paper by Donald Davidson is a clear example. First of all Davidson, as we saw before, associates conceptual schemes with languages, and then he adopts “linguistic intertranslability” as the identity criterion for conceptual schemes themselves. Subsequently comes the key passage, because we are told that, in order to call something “a language,” say L0, we must be ready to accept the idea that the statements of L0 can be translated into those of our own

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language (let us call it L1). It easily follows from this line of reasoning that, if this cannot be done, L0 is not a language at all: while we assumed it was, it turns out to be something different (but we are not told “what” L0 could be, given that it is not a language). So, Davidson goes on, [. . .] We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement [. . .] Where does this leave the case for conceptual relativism? The answer is, I think, that we must say much the same thing about differences in conceptual scheme as we say about differences in belief: we improve the clarity and bite of declarations of difference, whether of scheme or opinion, by enlarging the basis of shared (translatable) language or of shared opinion. Indeed, no clear line between the cases can be made out. If we choose to translate some alien sentence rejected by its speakers by a sentence to which we are strongly attached on a community basis, we may be tempted to call this a difference in schemes; if we decide to accommodate the evidence in other ways, it may be more natural to speak of a difference of opinion. But when others think differently from us, no general principle, or appeal to evidence, can force us to decide that the difference lies in our beliefs rather than in our concepts. We must conclude, I think, that the attempt to give a solid meaning to the idea of conceptual relativism, and hence to the idea of a conceptual scheme, fares no better when based on a partial failure of translation than when based on total failure. Given the underlying methodology of interpretation, we could not be in a position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our own.33

At this point Rescher observes that it would be much better to focus on “interpretation” rather than on translation in this context because, whenever we assume that some sounds or writings represent the use of a language, we actually engage in some sort of theory building, i.e. we need a good deal of interpretative reconstruction. He provides some examples in this respect: “We knew well from the factual context that cuneiform inscriptions represented writing well before we had decoded them. As any cryptanalyst knows, we can tell that a language is being used, and even a good deal about how it is being used, short of any ability to translate.”34 The fact is that Davidson resorts to a sort of “pansemanticism” which sees linguistic behavior as the only behavior that really counts, while Rescher’s approach is more articulated. For example, what qualifies all kinds of currency, included the ones which can no longer be used as the Roman denarius, as “money,” is their functional role, i.e. the way they are used. Just the same thing is valid for languages. It is not translatability as such

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that really matters but, rather, their functional equivalency, and the latter, in turn, is both a semantic and a sociological issue. The above mentioned pansemanticism endorsed by Davidson clearly transpires when he tells us that “[. . .] if all we know is what sentences a speaker holds true, and we cannot assume that is language is our own, then we cannot take even a first step towards interpretation without knowing or assuming a great deal about the speaker’s beliefs. Since knowledge of beliefs comes only with the ability to interpret words, the only possibility at the start is to assume general agreement on beliefs.”35 Here we have another good reason for claiming that Davidson is far less “post-analytic” than Rorty depicts him to be. This overemphasis placed upon linguistic behavior is, in fact, a typical trait of the analytic school, which tends to forget the fact that, after all, man came first and language later. Language is a relatively recent factor in the history of our evolution, as science shows us, and many parts of our behavior are guided by non-linguistic criteria. We can avoid the aforementioned analytic overemphasis only by recognizing that language is not the whole of reality, but a social product created essentially for practical purposes. However, no overevaluation of linguistic behavior is present in Rescher’s system, which early on abandoned what he defines as the “ideological” tenets of analytic philosophy.36 He notes in fact that data concerning non-verbal action and behavior can, in suitable circumstances, lead us to ascribe beliefs in quite a plausible way. No doubt translatability helps a great deal, but certainly it is not an a priori condition for ascribing beliefs, so that: [. . .] Our languages accordingly qualify as such not necessarily because what they say is invariably something that we can say in our own terms, but because what they do—their communicative job or function in conveying information and coordinating behavior—is something we can understand as a linguistic process, something that can be made intelligible to us on sufficiently intimate analogy with our own language-using process. What is at issue is a matter of different ways of going at a common job. To make a go of the idea of functional equivalency, we must, of course, have some conception of the functions at issue: some insight into the relevant structure of purpose and teleology.37

These words really pave the way towards understanding what conceptual schemes are. They are a sort of practical metaphor which is supposed to convey the outcome of our categorization of reality. One should always be careful not to ascribe to them any metaphysical or self-subsistent feature:

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In other words, we must produce no reification of conceptual schemes, because their real nature is practical and functional. In order to understand what a conceptual scheme, is we must not have recourse to abstract idealizations, because the comprehension of its nature can only be achieved by looking at what it does and how it works. Conceptual schemes are inherent in the modus operandi of concepts, but concepts, in turn, are themselves laden with factual and empirical commitments. And right in the article on conceptual schemes we find one of the most anti-Kantian statements ever to be found in Rescher’s writings: [. . .] For at this time of the day it seems plausible to adopt the no longer novel idea—argued by all the American Pragmatists against Kant—that all the categories of human thought are empirical and none a priori. Our taxonomic and explanatory mechanisms are themselves the products of inquiry; the fundamental concepts in terms of which we shape our view of nature are a posteriori and not a priori. And schemes differ in just this regard—in undertaking different sorts of factual commitments. On such a view—and it is surely correct—it transpires that all our concepts are factually committal— i.e., theory-laden—and that language is not an empirically neutral vehicle for making substantive commitments but itself reflects such substantive commitments.38

The deeply Deweyan idea that our explanatory mechanisms are themselves the products of inquiry, in turn, opens the door to another key concept in Rescher’s argumentation: “conceptual innovation.” If we look at the history of science, for instance, it is easily understandable that we, men living in the twentieth century, form our conception of the sun in quite different terms from those of Aristotle, or our conception of the heart in terms very different from those of Galen. Julius Caesar—Rescher goes on—did not know a great deal of facts regarding his sword that we now know, such as the facts that it contained carbon or conducted electricity. The ignorance of Julius Cesar in this regard was due to the circumstance that those very concepts had not yet been formulated in his days. The presence of different conceptual schemes may thus be explained by the process of conceptual innovation which—at least thus far—never came to an end in human history. And so we can see that “[. . .] a conceptual scheme for operation in the factual domain is always correlative with a Weltanschauung—a view of how things work in the world. And the issue of historical development becomes involved at this juncture, seeing that such a fact-committal scheme

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is clearly a product of temporal evolution. Our conceptions of things are a moving rather than a fixed target for analysis.”39 The startling conclusion is that there are assertions in a conceptual scheme A which are simply not available in another conceptual scheme B, because no equivalent in it may be found. This view also allows us to challenge Davidson when he says that “we get a new out of an old scheme when the speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range of sentences they previously took to be false.”40 The point at stake, in fact, is different, since Rescher answers that a change of scheme is not just a matter of saying things differently, but rather of saying altogether different things. In other words, a scheme A may be committed to phenomena that another scheme B cannot even envisage: Galenic physicians, for instance, had absolutely nothing to say about bacteria and viruses because those entities lay totally beyond their conceptual dimension. Where one scheme is eloquent, Rescher says, the other is altogether silent. This means, moreover, that our classical and bivalent logic of the True and False is not much help in such a context. Some assertions that are deemed to be true in a certain scheme may have no value whatsoever in another scheme, so that we need to formalize this truth-indeterminacy by having recourse, say, to a manyvalued logical system in which, besides the classical T and F, a third (Indeterminate) value I is present. We have, in sum, a much more complex picture than the one contained in Davidson’s paper, and Rescher rightly observes that “[. . .] In brushing aside the idea of ‘different conceptual schemes’ we [. . .] incur the risk of an impoverishment in our problemhorizons. There is, after all, something a bit eccentric about rejecting the idea of alternative conceptual schemes—something that smacks of the unrealism of one who closes one’s mind toward what people are actually saying and doing.”41 Rescher forgets, however, that eccentric ideas (not only in the philosophical arena) are often more popular than those which try to picture how things really stand: the people like to be told shocking stories. So, to deny that different conceptual schemes exist is a little absurd. Of course, as we said previously, the expression “conceptual schemes” is a metaphor: we cannot see or touch them as we do with physical objects. Their presence, however, is detectable from human behavior, and this means that they are tied to the dimension of human action. Conceptual schemes, in sum, evolve, because they are processes, and not immutable structures. It is worth noting that Robert Kraut, in criticizing Rescher’s article, makes the following remarks:

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[. . .] We may grant that Caesar neither held true nor held false the sentence ‘Swords contain carbon, and they conduct electricity’, or any translational counterpart. One might try to explain this important difference between Caesar and ourselves, by claiming that his conceptual scheme is interestingly divergent from our own [. . .] But in saying that his conceptual scheme is distinct from ours, what do we thereby add to the bare behavioristic claim that he fails to hold true (or false) any such sentences? We may grant that Caesar lacks the concept of molecular structure, of electricity, of voltage potential. But this is only to say that there is a range of sentences toward which he is disposed to offer neither acceptance nor rejection [. . .] It is incumbent upon Rescher to show that the scheme idea can turn any explanatory wheels in connection with Davidson’s data base: i.e., the class of sentences held true by a person.42

The first reply is, of course, that there is indeed no need to be a behaviorist, since to most contemporary philosophers behaviorism looks more an outdated and naive trend of thought than an article of faith. Davidson’s database is much indebted to that held by his master Quine, with whom he shares a characteristic mixture of analytic and behavioristic features. Kraut’s remarks may thus be addressed by posing a further question: If we fully endorse Davidson’s program, what are we likely to achieve? The answer is that we obtain a picture of reality in which all we know is that the (radical) interpreter gets to understand, just by watching the behavior of another person, when she holds true some sentences. Perhaps someone may deem this kind of explanatory model satisfactory, probably judging that we can come to know nothing else about our social world and its relationships with the natural one. It is quite obvious, however, that if one wants to offer a serious criticism of Rescher’s positions, he must take into account his system as a whole, and not just small and unrelated details. Rescher, for instance, argues that the objects we think of as actually existing in the world are conceptualized by us as having features that transcend experience. If we do not take this view of his into account, trying to understand how he reaches the aforementioned conclusion, our criticisms risk to be, at best, useless. Kraut’s points strictly recall those put forward by Richard Kirkham against Rescher’s coherence theory of truth43: none of these authors seems to have a clear comprehension of Rescher’s philosophical system taken as a whole. Following the typical analytic path, they both care only about matters of detail, losing sight of the larger picture in which the details are inserted.

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Furthermore, when Kraut claims that “this is only to say that there is a range of sentences toward which he [Caesar] is disposed to offer neither acceptance nor rejection,” it should be noted that he seems to miss an important point. We must in fact bring the distinction “actuality vs. potentiality” into the picture, and namely the difference between sentences actually dealt with, and those which a person would deal with if certain circumstances occurred. In the example at issue, Caesar does not know the truthstatus of some sentences because they fall outside his conceptual horizon, and this is the conceptual scheme difference with which Rescher is concerned. For our part, we deem Davidson’s model interesting in certain respects, but also greatly unsatisfactory and much too narrow in scope. We previously hinted, for instance, that it is incapable to deal with the problems raised by the current debates on scientific realism. But this is not its only shortcoming. In the eight chapter, when comparing Rescher’s system with Davidson’s,44 we shall see that the Davidsonian approach cannot address the important issue of the origins and development of our natural language either, thus resorting to the old analytic vice of viewing it as an unexplicable—and, maybe, even a priori—factor. 3. METAPHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES Rescher has always been interested in metaphilosophy: he is a thinker who often reflects on philosophy, i.e., on its methodologies and epistemological status. This interest is particularly evident in his latest works, where metaphilosophical issues frequently become the main subject of inquiry. One of the main reasons is that he strongly opposes the so-called “postphilosophical” stance which is becoming so popular nowadays, with prominent thinkers like Richard Rorty proclaiming that philosophical inquiry should be abandoned altogether. The fact is that every time we hear some philosopher talking about the “end of something”: the end of metaphysics, for instance, or the end of philosophy itself, we should grow suspicious. We can be sure, in fact, that his theses will be popular and successful for a limited span of time, but are destined to be overcome in a few decades (as it happened with Carnap’s and Ayer’s elimination of metaphysics through logical analysis of language, proclaimed in the golden years of logical empiricism). What Rescher has in mind by writing about metaphilosophy is to show the practical (and not only theoretical) untenability of statements like these:

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[. . .] A postmetaphysical culture seems to me no more impossible than a postreligious one, and equally desirable [. . .] This process of coming to see other human beings as “one of us” rather than as “them” is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnography, the journalist’s report, the comic book, the docudrama, and, especially, the novel [. . .] That is why novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of moral change and progress [. . .] That recognition would be part of a general turn against theory and toward narrative. Such a turn would be emblematic of our having given up the attempt to hold all the sides of our life in a single vision, to describe them with a single vocabulary.45

By writing against this vision, Rescher sticks to the classical conception of philosophy as a meaningful problem-solving enterprise. Philosophy still is for him the attempt to bring together the whole range of human experience, using the resources of reason in order to solve—as best as we can—the traditional issues about our place in the world. Philosophy is, thus, both a rational and a cognitive endeavor which constantly tries to provide the best answers at our disposal to the aforementioned big issues. But, as we shall see in the present section, those same issues must be reformulated in a different, less ambitious manner, and their solution is based not on abstract and a priori principle but, rather, on a more modest—empirical and tentative—approach. In 1985 Rescher published a book whose title—The Strife of Systems46—clearly recalls Wilhelm Dilthey’s Der Streit der Systeme. Like the representative of German historicism of the past century, in fact, he wants to address the question of the multiplicity of philosophical systems bitterly (and endlessly) fighting each in the history of Western thought. It is all too easy to draw from this ascertained fact skeptical conclusions, like the Rortyian ones previously quoted. But Rescher rightly observes that the “end of philosophy” thesis, after all, is not as new as many nowadays believe. The founder of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick, wrote in this regard: “Silent scepticism and resignation seem to be the only appropriate attitudes. Two thousand years of experience seem to teach that efforts to put an end to the chaos of systems and to change the fate of philosophy can no longer be taken seriously.”47 This was the basic reason that led the logical empiricists to deny any validity to the way philosophical work has been carried out in the past centuries, and to view it as well as an exclusively logico-linguistic activity aimed at clarifying scientific propositions. The philosopher’s job,

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in sum, is to clarify the concepts used within the empirical and formal sciences, so that philosophy becomes linguistic analysis. As we remarked several times in the course of our work, however, Rescher’s distance from this kind of conclusions is very great. He follows Dilthey (and Kant) in asking: “Why are philosophers chronically incapable of reaching agreement regarding the problems they have debated for well over two millennia? Why is philosophy locked into a condition of endless and apparently irresolvable controversy?”;48 but, on the other hand, he does not want to give any skeptical reply to such question. The skeptical stance is always turned down in his writings, although he recognizes that skepticism cannot be refuted from a purely logical point of view.49 Our author views the history of philosophy at large as an unending series of attempts aimed at reorganizing the body of knowledge held true in each particular historical period; such a reorganization, in turn, takes place through the “elimination” of the contradictions present in the aforementioned body of knowledge. Let us make the example of a group of assertions endorsed by Presocratic philosophers: (1) Reality is one: real existence is homogeneous. (2) Matter is real (self-subsistent). (3) Form is real (self-subsistent). (4) Matter and form are distinct (heterogeneous). Clearly, the assertions (2)-(4) claim that reality is heterogeneous, so contradicting (1). This situation—Rescher goes on—is typical, and philosophical issues commonly center about what he defines as an “aporetic cluster” like the one just shown. What are philosophers supposed to do, given this situation? They have four alternatives at their disposal, and namely: (1.1) To reason from (2)-(4) to the denial of (1). (2.1) To reason from (1), (3), (4) to the denial of (2). (3.1) To reason from (1), (2), (4) to the denial of (3). (4.1) To reason from (1)-(3) to the denial of (4).

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So we are confronted with an apory and, usually, it is very difficult to discover where the source of difficulty lies. In other words, experience provides us with a disordered and potentially contradictory bunch of assertions, and none of them can be confirmed in a probatory way. According to Rescher, “[. . .] we are plunged into such dilemmas by cognitive overcommitment. Too many jostling contentions strive for our approbation and acceptance. And this state of affairs is standard in philosophy—indeed the standard impetus to philosophical reflection.”50 In philosophy as anywhere else, however, we need to be presented with a coherent system, and only by discarding some of these theses—and by fostering others—may we hope to achieve the coherence we look for. These are, in the last analysis, the roots of the strife of philosophical systems, and Rescher adopts this explanatory scheme for reading in a totally unconventional manner the whole history of the Western philosophical thought. The key word for coping with this—apparently—irresolvable difficulty is “pluralism.” He recalls that “[. . .] A.O. Lovejoy urged the American Philosophical Association to organize its annual programs into structured controversies on well-defined, clearly delineated issues, anticipating that by the end of each convention a consensus would emerge as to the winning side of the debate.”51 But this is just a philosophical utopia, akin to the logical positivists’ thesis that logical formalism is able to settle disputes, or to the stance endorsed nowadays by the representatives of “exact philosophy.” Doctrinal diversity—Rescher insists—reflects a diversity of values. This means that abstract rationality per se cannot resolve the issues: when we evaluate arguments (not only in philosophy, but also in politics), our norms and criteria already reflect our cognitive-value orientations. The reader will easily understand, at this point, that Rescher’s holistic stance is coming once again to the center of the stage. The development of any philosophical position, in fact, is a matter of “systematization,” by which he means “placing distinct facts within a network of order.” As contemporary philosophers know even too well, however, the same facts can be accommodated into different systemic structures. So system-building seems bound to failure, and it is important to note that the anti-systematic feelings so widespread today are also (but not only) due to considerations of this sort. To objections like these Rescher replies that:

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[. . .] System building is always a matter of “evaluation” of what is central and what is peripheral, of what is important and what insignificant. Leibniz rightly distinguished between eruditio, the knowledge of merely aggregated fact, and philosophia, the knowledge of fact as normatively coordinated and systematized. System building always reflects the significance of particular ideas through their interrelations in a wider “nomic” framework that embodies principles of cognitive value that we bring to the process of systemic organization [. . .] the “rational network of facts” is itself a creature of our devising that reflects our interests and concerns—our cognitive values.52

So metaphilosophical pluralism is not a free and optional choice, but something that is practically forced upon us by the very nature of philosophical inquiry: as a matter of fact, conflicting positions are always available when we set up to discuss philosophical issues. An “orientational” pluralism goes even further, maintaining that we are constantly faced with different cognitive-value schemes which, in turn, can validate discordant alternatives (recall our previous discussion of the actual presence of different conceptual schemes). We will now see that Rescher’s solution to these problems lies in what he defines as “philosophical standardism.” Before shifting our attention to this subject, however, it is worth stressing that, for our author: [. . .] Orientational pluralism does not plunge us into the feckless subjectivity of arbitrary taste. To reemphasize: relativity is not tantamount to subjectivity. The cognitive values we hold are not arbitrary and unrationalizable—subject only to psychological or sociological explanation and incapable of rationally articulated grounding. They can be fitted out with a perfectly viable rational defense. It is just that this grounding is never itself free from some element of self-evidencing evaluativeness. (This circumstance would be a basis for appropriate objection, though, only if the situation could possibly be otherwise—which it cannot).53

Previously, he have already dealt both with Rescher’s conceptions of objectivity and rationality, and with the essential bearing that his conceptual idealism has on them (and this confirms, once more, that all parts of his system are strictly—i.e., holistically—interconnected). Dispensing ourselves with useless repetitions, we thus invite the readers to go back to the chapters of the present book where these issues are extensively coped with.54 Now the time has come to speak briefly of his latest doctrine: philosophical standardism.

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By defining it as his latest doctrine we do not mean to claim that it is something totally new, as if Rescher had recently changed his mind on some issues and abandoned his former positions. Philosophical standardism simply is a sharpened development of ideas already implicit in his methodological pragmatism and conceptual idealism. It goes with the pragmatic approach to logic and the rejection not just of analytic/synthetic, but of comparable epistemic dichotomies (such as scientific/nonscientific). If surgical precision is not achievable in discourse because language as a practical resource is not that precise, then standardism follows. No absolute novelty may thus be found there, but just an ever growing emphasis on one of Rescher’s key concepts: the primacy of practice (or, if you prefer, the primacy of practical reason). Let us then look at the definition that Rescher himself provides us with, saying that philosophical standardism is: [. . .] an unorthodox approach to philosophical doctrines that is predicated on the idea of standardism, namely, the policy of interpreting the generalizations of the field not as making their claims universalistically (i.e., exceptionlessly), but rather as making them standardistically, that is, as stating how matters stand “normally” or “as a rule” [. . .] Such a standardistic approach to its generalizations abandons the necessitarian pretentions of traditional philosophizing in favor of a more modest and cautious perspective that looks to what our experience of the world indicates to be its normal course of things. The enterprise now assumes a far more tentative and empirical demeanor than has been its traditional wont, gearing our understanding of the world to its experienced realities rather than to supposedly abstract necessities of general principle.55

The basic aim, then, is to abandon once and for all the old dream fostered by some many thinkers—from Plato to Frege—of solving philosophical problems a priori. No abstract general principles that obtain with universality and necessity are at our disposal. So, when we are confronted with traditional general statements of the form “A’s are (or are not) B’s,” one way of constructing them is the classical universalistic reading: “Invariably (without exceptions) all/no A’s are B’s.” But this by no means is the only possible construction, since Rescher argues that we have at our disposal the standardistic reading: “Standardly (and ordinarily), A’s are/are not B’s.” Obviously, a crucial role is here performed by exceptions which, unlike what happens with the universalistic reading, are not viewed as something that upsets an otherwise perfect order. Exceptions, in other words, are both

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a key and permanent feature of the imperfect world in which we live, so that it is better to construe general statements in a permeably universal way of qualified generalization: they should simply state how things stand normally. We have, in sum, imperfect generalizations that are not literally universal, but are subject to qualifications of various kinds. The presence of exceptions is accepted from the beginning, and the objective is not their total “elimination” but, rather, the achievement of a cogent and non-circular explanation that can account for them. As Rescher has it, “[. . .] With standardism, exceptions are a matter of identifiable and explicable failures to conform to well-defined rules [. . .] Someone who asserts ‘American newspapers are published in English’ in its standardistic vein should thus be in a position to explain why this is not the case with El Diario of Miami, and can discharge this obligation by noting that this daily is aimed at the Hispanic clientele of a city with an extensive population of Latin American refugees. (Note, however, that we may or may not be able to inventory all of those exception categories in advance).”56 One should be careful not to confuse standardistic linkages with merely statistical correlations about what happens to be the case predominantly. Statistical evidence can just support—to various degrees—standardistic generalizations. In the latter (statistical) case, in fact, we have purely extensional relationships, while in the former (standardistic) a key role is played by normative considerations. And this happens because standardism is essentially geared to a normative orientation which ultimately rests on standards or rules. What are the consequences of endorsing this line of reasoning? Rescher answers by noting that, first of all, standardism is very useful where clear-cut exceptions to general rules may be found. In the second place, it also provides us with a good perspective when we are forced to choose among different lines of explanatory approach, such as: (A) Universalism, which only adopts strictly universal criteria for dealing with issues. (B) Standardism, which uses instead general criteria that are geared to the normal circumstances of the ordinary course of things. (C) Particularism, which forsakes any general criteria and proceeds in a totally “case-by-case” way.

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In his opinion, thus, “[. . .] standardism adopts a metamethodological stance intermediate between a rigoristic universalism that sees everything as subject to universal rules and a fragmented particularism that rejects rules altogether and treats everything on a custom-made, case-by-case basis. Its stance is that of a middle-of-the-road position emplaced between two opposed extremes.”57 Let us note that the intermediate position that our author always adopts in the philosophical arena is reproduced, this time, at the metamethodological level. We will also verify, in the course of the next chapter, what bearing standardism has on Rescher socio-political philosophy. We would like to conclude this section by taking into account the applications that standardism may have in such a traditional philosophical field as ontology. Standardism has a useful role to play even in this context, because it can provide us with an efficient means for conceptualizing the things present in the world. We already know that Rescher’s system calls for quite a soft “realism,” geared to the fact that our view of real things is bound to be incomplete and full of gaps. It follows that we are practically compelled to shape our statements about the nature of experientable reality in standardistic terms. He wonders: “[. . .] Why should one abandon the universalist/necessitarian line of traditional philosophizing in favor of the generalistic/normalistic formulations of an empirical approach? Primarily because we ought to be realistic [. . .] Philosophy, after all, takes its departure from a concern for human affairs, and this focus upon the human dimension has important ramifications. For universal generalizations in human affairs are almost invariably undermined by their essentially chaotic aspect.”58 As we know from our discussion of conceptual idealism, we standardly think about things in the world by having recourse to our conceptual machinery which is, in turn, fact-oriented. But it should not be forgotten that, within our conception of a real thing, a key role is played by the existence of a latent (i.e. invisible from the observational viewpoint) sector of merely dispositional features. So things are always conceptualized by us as having features that transcend experience, and the conceptual scheme of daily life views real things “as objects endowed with such inherent depth and complexity that the information we acquire never will, and never could, exhaust the realm of pertinent fact.”59 This means that, unlike dogmatic realists (be they scientific or not), we would better to consider things-as-weknow-them as the best possible estimate of the “true nature of reality.” Since standardism rejects any apriorism and any claim to unqualified uni-

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versality, and adopts instead a provisional view of reality, it can be claimed that it represents the best suit for Rescher’s cognitive and limited realism. NOTES 1

OJ, p. 152.

2

SPI.1, p. 158. See also N. Rescher, R. Brandom, LI, 1979.

3

See EE, 1978.

4

Note that Richard Rorty, too, critizes this foundationalism in many of his works. See for instance his article “Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and the Reification of Language,” cit.

5

This theme has already been dealt with, in a sketchy manner, in the first two chapters of our work.

6

See B. Russell, “Logical Atomism,” in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, Free Press, New York, 1959, pp. 31-50.

7

MVL, pp. 220-235.

8

Ibid., p. 220.

9

Ibid., pp. 220-221.

10

W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Logic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.)London, 1986, 2nd ed., p. 81.

11

LI, p. 1.

12

B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1945, 5th printing.

13

LI, p. 2.

14

N. Rescher, MP, 1977, p. 250.

15

Which, of course, does not mean to deny that the social dimension is indeed one of the key features to be taken into account when one does philosophical work.

16

MP, pp. 250-251.

17

See H. Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question, cit., chapter 2, pp. 27-56.

18

MP, p. 259.

19

Ibid., p. 271.

20

UI, pp. 40-41.

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NOTES 21

W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Dover, New York, 1950.

22

H. P. Stapp, Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag, BerlinHeidelberg-New York, 1993, pp. 4 and 9-12.

23

D. Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 47, 1974, pp. 5-20. The paper has been subsequently included in D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985, pp. 183-198. Our quotations are drawn from the latter source.

24

M. Devitt, K. Sterelny, Language and Reality. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990, 2nd pr., p. 242.

25

J. Passmore, Recent Philosophers. A Supplement to A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Duckworth, London, 1988, 2nd pr., p. 63.

26

D. Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” cit., pp. 187 and 189.

27

Ibid., pp. 190-191.

28

Ibid., p. 197.

29

Ibid., p. 198.

30

As we said in chapter 2, section 2.1, Donald Davidson was one of Rescher’s teachers at Queens College in 1948.

31

N. Rescher, “Conceptual Schemes” (CS), in P.A. French, T. E. Uehling, H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume V: Studies in Epistemology, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1980, pp. 323-345. The article was subsequently reprinted as chapter 2 of EI, 1982, pp. 27-60. Our quotations are drawn from the original paper (CS).

32

W. James, Pragmatism, Longmans, Green & Co., 1907, p. 171.

33

D. Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” cit., p. 197.

34

CS, p. 327.

35

D. Davidson, Ibid., p. 196.

36

See chapter 2, section 2.2, of the present book.

37

CS, p. 329.

38

Ibid., p. 330.

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NOTES 39

Ibid., p. 330-331.

40

D. Davidson, Ibid., p. 188.

41

CS, p. 324.

42

R. Kraut, “The Third Dogma,” in: E. LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Blackwell, Oxford-Cambridge (Mass.), 1993, 2nd pr., pp. 403-404.

43

See chapter 3, section 3.3 of the present book.

44

Chapter 8, section 8.2.

45

R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, cit., p. xvi.

46

N. Rescher, SS, 1985.

47

M. Schlick, “The Turning Point in Philosophy,” in: A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, cit., p. 54.

48

SS, p. 6.

49

See N. Rescher, S, 1980.

50

SS, p. 23.

51

Ibid., p. 116.

52

Ibid., p. 119.

53

Ibid., p. 168.

54

See chapter 3, sections 3.1 and 3.2, and chapter 4, section 4.4.

55

N. Rescher, PS, 1994, p. 3.

56

Ibid., pp. 10-11.

57

Ibid., p. 17.

58

SPI.3, p. 116.

59

PS, pp. 120-121.

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Chapter 7 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 1. PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

A

closer look closely at the philosophical anthropology of Nicholas Rescher, and in particular at his construction of a pluralist theory of consensus, conveys the impression that it is nothing but the coherent development of mehodological pragmatism—and of its latest formulation: philosophical standardism. This idea also harmonizes with a theme already stressed several times in our work: methodological pragmatism is a greatly flexible system, and Rescher construed it so as to apply its basic theses to all sectors of the philosophical inquiry. Meanwhile, with such books as Cognitive Economy, Baffling Phenomena, Pluralism,1 and the previously mentioned A Useful Inheritance and Philosophical Standardism, his attention shifted mainly towards themes dealt with today by the so-called “practical philosophy,” a trend of thought which is popular nowadays in continental Europe (and especially in Germany). This slow, but constant, shift to practical issues, on the other hand, was already detectable in many works of Rescher’s middle period, as already indicated in the second chapter of our book. A clearer picture of our author’s posture on philosophical anthropology (and on socio-political matters as well) emerges from a synthetic overview of his ideas about the relations between the natural and the social worlds. Rescher’s philosophical story tells us, first of all, that man has evolved within nature as a creature that solves its survival problems through intelligence. The emergence of intelligence, on the other hand, must not be seen as a purpose of nature itself, but rather as our functional version of survival mechanisms such as physical force or numerousness.2 The systematic use of this intelligence in a context which is eminently social and communicative creates—through cultural evolution—a methodology of rational inquiry that enables us to develop, and test, cognitive models of the real to explain the structure of our experience. No doubt our science is the best instantiation of these cognitive models, but Rescher, unlike the positivists old and new, by no means claims that it is also the completion of this work. Other responses are always required. In particular, we must create a sort of

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“superstructure” made up of values, many of which (i.e., cognitive values like coherence, comprehensiveness, simplicity, etc.) are useful instruments within the cognitive project itself. This explains why, for instance, economic considerations are certainly important in the conduct of our cognitive affairs.3 However, when it comes to conducting our socio-political affairs,4 these values, which can always be tested pragmatically, are also underdeterminative. In other words, as we have verified many times and in different contexts, they do not lead to a specific and exact resolution of the issues, but leave rather room for alternative and competing ways of conducting our inter-personal affairs. This means that abstract rationality alone is insufficient to enforce a consensus on social issues, and on a larger scale, ideological and political issues as well. The problem is that, on the purely theoretical side, such dissonance has no dramatic consequences. But on the practical side of public policy, any attempt to achieve resolution on these issues can have—and many times actually has—unfortunate consequences by way of producing conflicts. This should explain well enough to the reader why the criticism of all theories based on consensus is the starting point of Rescher’s social and political philosophy. Our author, in fact, deems the idea that social harmony must be predicated in consensus to be both dangerous and misleading. Rather, he argues that an essential problem of our time is the creation of political and social institutions that enable people to live together in peaceful and productive ways, despite the presence of uneliminable disagreements about theoretical and practical issues. These remarks, in turn, strictly recall what was said in the preceding chapter about the practical impossibility of settling philosophical disputes by having recourse to abstract and aprioristic principles. In the circumstances, the social model of team members cooperating for a common purpose is unrealistic. A more adequate model is, instead, that of a classical capitalism where—in a sufficiently well-developed system— both competition and rivalry manage somehow to foster the benefit of the entire community (theory of the “hidden hand”). Certainly the “scientific community” is one of the best examples of this that we have, although even in this case we must be careful not to give too idealized a picture of scientific research. Rescher, eventually, finds many similarities between the scientific and the business communities: [. . .] The pursuit of knowledge in science can play a role akin to that of pursuit of wealth in business transactions. The financial markets in stocks or commodities futures would self-destruct if the principle, my word is my

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bond, were abrogated, since no one would know whether a trade had actually been made. In just this way, too, the market information would self-destruct if people’s truthfulness could not be relied upon. Thus in both cases, unreliable people have to be frozen out and exiled from the community. In cognitive and economic contexts alike, the relevant community uses incentives and sanctions (artificially imposed costs and benefits) to put into place a system where people generally act in a trusting and trustworthy way. Such a system is based on processes of reciprocity that advantage virtually everyone.5

Let us ask: why Rescher thinks that the idea of consensus may—and in many cases does—cause dangerous consequences? After all consensus, i.e. the uniformity of belief and evaluation, has been considered by many prominent philosophers of the Western tradition as an ideal both good and worth being pursued. Consensus—our author argues—is essentially a matter of agreement, and the fact is that people sometimes agree on various sorts of things and sometimes (or, maybe better, most of the times) do not. At this point we are faced with two basic positions. On the one side (a) the “consensualists” maintain that disagreement should be averted no matter what, while, on the other, (b) the “pluralists” accept disagreement because they take dissensus to be an inevitable feature of the imperfect world in which we live. A pluralistic vision, therefore, tries to make dissensus tolerable, and not to eliminate it. Rescher clearly sides with the pluralistic field, and his pro-pluralism arguments pivot on the following remarks: “[. . .] the long and short of it is that consensus appertains to rationality as an ideal, not as a realizable ‘fact of life’. [The] points of ‘universal agreement among rational people’ are not a matter of an ultimately discovered de facto universal consensus people independently predetermined as rational. It is simply a matter of the meaning-standards that we who use this notion impose upon the idea of ‘rationality’ in the first place.”6 It follows that we use the concept of “consensus” in a rather circular way. Someone might bona fide believe that he or she is using it in a perfectly neutral manner but, actually, we always use predetermined standards in order to define who a “rational person” is. Things being so, all theories of idealized consensus present us with serious setbacks. This is the case, for instance, with his long-term philosophical mentor, the pragmatist Charles S. Peirce. As is well known, Peirce takes truth to be “the limit of inquiry,” i.e. either what science will discover in the (idealized) long run, or what it would discover if the human efforts were so extended.7 By taking this path, thus, truth is nothing but the ulti-

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mate consensus reached within the scientific community. We can be sure that, once a “final” answer to a question has been found which is thereafter maintained without change, that is the truth we were looking for. As indicated before, however, this fascinating theory has various unfortunate consequences, some of which were previously dealt with in our discussions on scientific realism and the limits of science.8 What concerns us in this context is that, for Peirce, there really exists a an ultimate method of questionresolution which produces results acceptable by everyone and that, furthermore, equates factual truth with a sort of “long-run” consensus. Rescher rightly notes that “for Peirce, science is effectively a latter-day surrogate—a functional equivalent—for the medieval philosopher’s conception of the ‘mind of God’.”9 Given what was established in the preceding chapters of our work, the reader should easily understand why Rescher disagrees with Peirce in this regard, even though he constantly recognizes his intellectual debt to Peirce’s thought at large. In our day the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has in a way revived these Peircean insights, putting forward an influential theory to the effect that consensus indeed plays a key role in human praxis, so that the primary task of philosophy is to foster it by eliminating the disagreement which we constantly have to face in the course of our daily life. In his “communicative theory of consensus,” furthermore, he claims that human communication rests on an implicit commitment to a sort of “ideal speech situation” which is the normative foundation of agreement in linguistic matters. Consequently, the quest for consensus is a constitutive feature of our nature of (rational) human beings: rationality and consensus are tied together. A very strong consequence derives from Habermas’ premises: were we to abandon the search for consensus we would lose rationality, too, and this makes us understand that he views the pursuit of consensus as a regulative principle (rather than as a merely practical objective). Rescher thus opposes both Peirce’s eschatological view and Habermas’ regulative and idealized one.10 To all those authors who contend that science, for example, is a typically consensus-seeking enterprise, he replies that, even in this context, consensus remains an aspiration. Agreement is usually achieved on issues of concrete particularity, but never extends to broader, theoretical domains, because controversy is all too common in the scientific domain. If we recall Rescher’s stance about scientific realism, it may be easily verified that, for him, there is no scientific knowledge as such, but just our scientific knowledge, which turns out to be relativized to the kinds of experience we have. As we already know, science always is a

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two-sided enterprise, in which both nature and experiencing subjects have a fundamental role to play. We may not plausibly assume, our author goes on, that the science of different civilizations will significantly resembles ours. But we can proceed even further, by supposing that the very topics of an alien (extraterrestrial) science could differ dramatically from our own, probably due to the fact that they experience nature in quite different ways. After all, we developed electromagnetic theory because our environment provides us with lodestones and electrical storms, but this is not a necessary feature of all natural environment present in the Universe at large. To sum up, we have the following kind of picture: [. . .] To what extent would the functional equivalent of natural science built up by the inquiring intelligences of an astronomically remote civilization be bound to resemble our science? [. . .] to begin with, the machinery of formulation used in expressing their science might be altogether different. Specifically, their mathematics might be very unlike ours. Their dealings with quantity might be entirely anumerical—purely comparative, for example, rather than quantitative. Especially if their environment is not amply endowed with solid objects or stable structures congenial to measurement—if, for example, they were jellyfish-like creatures swimming about in a soupy sea—their “geometry” could be something rather strange, largely topological, say, and geared to flexible structures rather than fixed sizes or shapes [. . .] One’s language and thought processes are bound to be closely geared to the world as one experiences it.11

This sort of mental experiment, as distant as it may seem at first sight from the issues we were discussing above, is instead likely to tell us something important about the problem of consensus. For it is clear that, as we may assumedly “scan” nature in a way partially or totally different from that of hypothetical alien creatures, so we normally “scan” the social world in a way partially or totally different from the other intelligent beings with whom we share it. And this simply is a fact of life that everybody can personally verify, and not a mere theoretical assumption. Right at this level of analysis Rescher finds a good confirmation of a basic thesis of his: conceptualization (and value-endowment as well) is always with us, and forms part and parcel of the world-as-we-know-it. To put it in a slightly different way, cognitive usage of different bodies of experience takes naturally different inquirers to achieve diverse results, so that cognitive dissensus is an inevitable outcome of the experiential diversity among inquirers.

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At this point, a theorist of consensus like Jürgen Habermas might as well reply that, after all, he never meant to deny the presence of disagreement and cognitive dissensus in human society. But it is just because dissensus leads to the enhancement of disorder in the social body that we must try to overcome it, thus transcending the actual course of things. Rescher’s position in this regard is that such a transcending step entails the presence of a privileged viewpoint that we do not have at our disposal, so that “truth and consensus converge only in the ideal limit—only when we can contemplate the sort of agreement that would be reached by ideally rational inquirers working under ideally favourable conditions.”12 But such conditions are never given in practical life. In science our discoveries, although theoretically “secured” by the scientific method, constantly need corrections, adjustments and, often, even replacements. Just the same is valid in the practical conduct of our cognitive affairs, where the “ideal inquiry” would require an “ideal rationality” on the part of the inquirers and the absence of limitations on our resources: neither of these two conditions are practically achievable in the concrete world of our actions and deliberations. To use an all-encompassing slogan: We must learn how to live with dissensus, because this is what the normal course of things forces upon us. Before turning our attention to the social and political consequences that can be drawn from Rescher’s theses about the unavoidability of dissensus, an important question still needs to be addressed. One is in fact entitled to ask: Does pluralism lead to skepticism or syncretism? No doubt this is one of the possible outcomes of a pluralistic theory like Rescher’s, and our author points out that this possibility has often been exploited in the history of Western philosophy. Leaving aside the ancient skeptics, it is interesting to note that Rescher takes Richard Rorty to be a good representative of the skepticism of our day, since he claims that the standards of the community are the only subjectivity-transcending resource at our disposal. As for syncretism, Rescher observes that Paul Feyerabend’s famous motto “anything goes” is the best contemporary example of this trend of thought, according to which men must endorse the whole set of cognitive alternatives they meet in everyday life. Our author, instead, sees no direct linkage between pluralism on the one hand, and skepticism or syncretism on the other. Certainly we have no direct access to the absolute Truth, the only path at our disposal being determined by what we conscientiously believe. But the fact that other people may think differently from ourselves is no reason for preventing us from having confidence in the correctness of our views; in other words, neither

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the others’ agreement with us nor their disagreement shows that we are actually holding false beliefs. We do not need here reiterate the points already stated before; the reader can return to the third chapter of the present book13 to find a sketchy exposition of Rescher’s theory of rationality. Let us only recall that in his system no contradiction shows up between the “defining principles of rationality” and the pluralistic differentiation that stems from the many available answers to the question: “What is it rational to do?.” The sphere of rationality, in fact, is a flexible structure formed by what Rescher calls a “hierarchy of levels.” We have thus a pluralism without indifferentism, in the sense that “the absence of consensus simply is not—in the very logic of the situation—a decisive impediment to rational validity and impersonal cogency.”14 As long as we see our own position as rationally appropriate and are able to argue in its favor, we must have the courage of our convictions. As we previously saw discussing Rescher’s conceptions of objectivity and rationality, if one accepts the basic tenets of his system it is all too natural to think that personal positions can indeed by supported by standards of impersonal cogency. Those who take relativism to be a logical and natural consequence of pluralism erroneously think that, given the diversity of the various positions, we cannot choose among them. To the contrary, [. . .] a pluralism of potential basis-diversity in rational inquiry is altogether compatible with an absolutistic commitment to our own basis [. . .] one can certainly combine a relativistic pluralism of possible alternatives with a monistic position regarding ideal rationality and a firm and reasoned commitment to the standards intrinsic to one’s own position [. . .] Rational is as rational does—it hinges on the norms, standards, and criteria that we ourselves can endorse as rationally appropriate on the basis of what best qualifies— from where we stand—as a well-considered position as to what is appropriate for anybody.15

Pluralism is, in sum, compatible with rational commitment, and in the next section we will verify the political bearing of such a statement. 2. POLITICAL PLURALISM We have noted in the preceding section that for Rescher contextrelativization (“contextualism”) means neither arationalism nor indifferentism. For sure we must recognize the presence of different perspectives, but on the other hand our experiential indications provide us with criteria for

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making a rational choice. The fact that no appropriate universal diet exists does not lead to the conclusion that we can eat anything, and the absence of a globally correct language does not mean that we can choose a language at random for communicating with others in a particular context. For these reasons he concludes that “an individual need not be intimidated by the fact of disagreement—it makes perfectly good sense for people to do their rational best towards securing evidentiated beliefs and justifiable choices without undue worry about whether or not others disagree.”16 So we are left with the question: To what extent are Rescher’s doubts about consensus applicable to the real social and political situations? As it was remarked before, in fact, consensus is deemed by many authors to be a sine qua non condition for achieving a benign political and social order, while its absence is often viewed as a premonitory symptom of chaos. Needless to say the feelings are usually strong in this regard, because political and social philosophy has a more direct impact on our daily life than other such traditional sectors of the philosophical inquiry as, say, metaphysics or epistemology. It might be argued that these latter disciplines’ importance for our life is as least as great (although less visible) than that of political philosophy, but this is not our task in the present context. What deserves to be pointed out now is that the search for consensus has many concrete contraindications, which can mainly be drawn from history. Think, for instance, of how Hitler gained power in Germany in the 1930’s. As a matter of fact he obtained a resounding victory through democratic election, because he was able to make the political platform of the Nazi party consensusally accepted by a large majority of citizens. It would be foolish, however, to draw the conclusion that Hitler and the Nazis were right just because they were very good consensus-builders. On the contrary, the United States is a good example of a democratically thriving society which can dispense with consensus, and where dissensus is deemed to be productive (at least to a certain extent). Another striking fact is that the former Soviet Union was, instead, a typically consensus-seeking society. Dissensus there was severely banned a punished, and that situation matches well Rescher’s words: [. . .] Not only is insistence on the pursuit of general consensus in practical matters and public affairs unrealistic, it is also counter-productive. For it deprives us of the productive stimulus of competition and the incentive of rivalry. In many situations of human life, people are induced to make their best effort in inquiry or creative activity through rivalry rather than conformity [. . .] Productivity, creativity, and the striving for excellence are—as often as

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not—the offspring of diversity and conflict. Dissensus has this to be said for it, at least, that it is at odds with a stifling orthodoxy. A dissent accommodating society is ipso facto pluralistic, with all the advantages that accrue in situations where no one school of thought is able to push the others aside.17

By adopting this line of reasoning, the commonsense view about the subject is practically reversed. Homogeneity granted by consensus is not the mark of a benign social order, since this role is more likely to be played by a dissensus-dominated situation which is in turn able to accommodate diversity of opinions. It follows, among other things, that we should be very careful not to characterize the consensus endorsed by majority opinion as intrinsically rational. In the industrialized nations of the Western world the power of the media (especially TV) in building up consensus is notoriously great. It may—and does—happen sometimes, however, that the power of the media in assuring consensus is used to support bad politicians, who repay the favor by paying attention to sectorial rather than to general interests. It is thus easily seen that consensus is not an objective that deserves to be pursued no matter what. All this seems plausible and reasonable, despite the fact that many theorists nowadays continue to view consensus an indispensable component of a good and stable social order. It is the case, once again, with Jürgen Habermas. The Marxist roots of Habermas’ thought18 explain why the German philosopher is so eager to have the activities of the people harmonized thanks to their interpersonal agreement about ends and means. The basis of agreement is thus both collective and abstractly universal. Consensus, in Habermas’ view, is a pre-requisite for cooperation and, as we verified in the preceding section, the fundamental task of philosophy is to foster it by eliminating the possibility of disagreement. The quest for consensus is so important that its abandonment would make us lose our rationality. What type of consensus, however, are we talking about in this context? It must clearly be a sort of ideal whose pursuit is more a highly idealized and regulative principle than a practical goal. Interestingly enough, Rescher both sees many points of contact (mutatis mutandis, of course) between the aforementioned stance and John Rawls’ well-known social-contract theory, and many points of difference between Habermas and Rawls on the one side and himself on the other: [. . .] A theory geared to utopian assumptions can provide little guidance for real-life conditions. What is needed is, clearly, a process attuned to the suboptimal arrangements of an imperfect reality [. . .] a perfectly sensible

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approach to the rational legitimation of the political process can substitute for the contractual-idealization approach of social-contract theory (Rawls), or ideal-consensus theory of ‘discourse ethics’ (Habermas and Apel), the older and better-known mechanism of rational decision [. . .] And against the ‘utopian unrealism’ of the contractarian and consensus theorists, the present [Rescher’s] approach takes the more ‘realistic’ line of hard-nosed costbenefit economics.19

Another key word—“acquiescence”—needs at this point be introduced. Given that the insistence on the pre-requisite of communal consensus is simply unrealistic, we must come to terms with concrete situations, i.e. with facts as real life presents us with. If, according to contractarian lines of thought, we take justice to be the establishment of arrangements that are (or, even better, would be) reached in idealized conditions, then we cannot help but noting that justice is not a feature of our imperfect world. “Life is unjust” is bound to be our natural conclusion, together with the acknowledgement that real-life politics is the art of the possible. It is obvious as well, however, that even in real-life politics we constantly need to make decisions and to take some course of action. How should we behave, then, given the fact that the so-called communal consensus turned out to be unachievable? The answer is that a modern and democratic society looks for social accommodation, which means that it always tries to devise methods for letting its members live together in peace even in those—inevitable—cases when a subgroup prevails over another. As Rescher as it, “the choice is not just between the agreement of the whole group or the lordship of some particular subgroup. Accommodation through general acquiescence is a perfectly practicable mode for making decisions in the public order and resolving its conflicts. And, given the realities of the situation in a complex and diversified society, it has significant theoretical and practical advantages over its more radical alternatives.”20 The reader will not find it difficult to recognize that this is just the strategy constantly adopted within the democratic societies of the Western world, which, in turn, distinguishes them from all forms of tirannies and monocratic forms of government still thriving nowadays on our planet. Acquiescence is not geared to the necessity of finding agreement with others: its characteristic feature is, rather, the willingness to get on without agreement. Daily life teaches us that, when conditions of reciprocal respect are maintained and enforced by law, we are able to go along with other people even though we do not share their views (and, obviously, vice-

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versa). We have, in sum, an acquiescence of diversity that makes toleration of others’ opinions possible. Unlike John Stuart Mill, Rescher does not take the merit of such tolerance to be a requisite for progress towards the realization of ultimate Truth, but, rather, as a pre-condition for pursuing in peace our own projects. It should be clear, thus, how distant he is from the positions of Francis Fukuyama, who claims that the end of Marxism means the end of history as well, accompanied by the foreseeable “final triumph” of Western democracy over any other form of political/social organization.21 However appealing this kind of democratic messianism may be to the media and the large public, it resembles too closely the Marxist brand of messianism which it took such a long time to defeat. Acquiescence is thus a matter of mutual restraint, a sort of “live and let live” concrete politics that permits to any individual or subgroup belonging in a larger group to avoid fight in order to gain respect for its own position. Rescher cites in this regard an historical episode that is more helpful than any theoretical definition for understanding the difference between acquiescence and consensus: [. . .] Shortly after the end of the Civil War, in early 1866, Robert E. Lee, generalissimo of the just-defeated Confederacy, was asked to testify before a hostile Joint Committee on Reconstruction of the US Congress. Interrogated about the stance of the former secessionists towards Washington’s plans and programmes for them, Lee was pressed on whether the Southeners agreed with these and whether [. . .] ‘they are friendly towards the government of the United States’? Choosing his words carefully, Lee replied, ‘I believe they entirely acquiesce in the government’. The difference between acquiescence and agreement cannot be shown much more clearly.22

Thus acquiescence, and not consensual agreement, turns out to be the key factor for building a really democratic society. In a situation like that of the former Yugoslavia, for instance, it would be foolish to ask for consensus given the historical and ethnical roots of today war. But a search for acquiescence would be much less foolish, with all factions giving up something in order to avoid even greater damages and losses. If we want to be pluralists in the true spirit of Western democratic thought, we must abandon the quest for a monolithic and rational order, together with the purpose of maximizing the number of people who approve what the government, say, does. On the contrary, we should have in mind an acquiescence-seeking society where the goal is that of minimizing the number of people who strongly disapprove of what is being done. We

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should never forget, in fact, that the idea that “all should think alike” is both dangerous and anti-democratic, as history shows with plenty of pertinent examples. Since consensus is an absolute unlikely to be achieved in concrete life, a difference must be drawn between “being desirable” and “being essential.” All in all, it can be said that it qualifies at most for the former status. The general conclusion is that “consensus is no more than one positive factor that has to be weighed on the scale along with many others.”23 It is worth stressing the similarity between Rescher’s epistemology and political/social philosophy: they both rest on his skepticism about idealization. In neither case we can get perfect solutions to our problems, short of supposing an—actually unattainable—idealization. As we saw previously, we have to be fallibilists in epistemology because we are emplaced in suboptimal conditions, where our knowledge is not (and cannot be either) perfected. In other words, we have to be realistic and settle for imperfect estimates (that is, the best we can obtain). In politics, however, the situation is similar. Since we cannot (for the aforementioned reasons) realize a Habermas-style idealized consensus, we must settle for what people will go along with, i.e. “acquiesce in.” This may not be exactly what most or many of us would ideally like but, in any case, if we insist on “perfection or nothing,” we shall get either nothing or a situation very far away from our ideal standards. In the socio-political context, “realism” means settling for “the least of the evils” because, as history teaches, disaster will follow if we take the line that only perfection is good enough. 3. JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS The neo-contractian theory of political justice became popular in the American philosophical circles (and, later on, also in the European ones) thanks to the well-known book by John Rawls A Theory of Justice,24 published in the early 1970’s. In the preceding sections of the present chapter we saw that Rawls’ “idealized” social-contract version of the theory of justice is one of Rescher’s main critical targets, along with Jürgen Habermas’ idealized communicative-contract version of it. Our author charges both Rawls’ and Habermas’s approaches with a sort of aprioristic rationalism that makes their application to the concrete political and social issues debated in everyday life rather difficult. This leads him to consider idealization in these matters more dangerous than useful. Rescher flatly states that “[. . .] John Rawls’s notorious supposition [. . .] that rational agents will

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ipso facto respond uniformly in hypothetically identical conditions (and in particular in the ‘original position’ of a social contract made ‘behind the veil of ignorance’) simply ignores the realities of the human condition. The adult human mortal is not—cannot be—a tabula rasa.”25 Between the late 1960’s and the early 70’s, Rescher gave some contributions to the theory of justice26 which, although they remained relatively isolated in the growing corpus of his writings, are nevertheless relevant nowadays. He addressed in particular the themes of distributive justice and welfare. Anyone who follows the current political debate in both the United States and Europe knows the great bearing that such issues today have in the political agenda of both the various national governments, and such international organizations as the United Nations. In several European countries, for example, rising neo-conservative political parties have opened a still thriving debate on whether the welfare costs should be curtailed for favoring economic growth. Rescher’s approach, even in this case, is quite pragmatic. He observes that not only different distributions, but also different procedures for effecting them can be more or less just. If we take into account, say, two patterns of distribution, the first perfectly just and the second unjust, and then make our choice between them by tossing a coin, we are not using a procedure that can reasonably be relied on. Even if we get by chance the proper distribution, the deep interests of distributive justice have not been adequately respected. It follows that the respective merits of distributions and distribution procedures cannot be assimilated. Naturally the best choice at our disposal is the idealized one: “just distributions justly arrived at.” But we already know about Rescher’s bad feelings on idealization. In the real circumstances of real life the ideal is never attainable, so that we must look for alternative strategies. Instead of discussing the ideal (abstract) nature of distributive justice, one should therefore verify the total amount of goods to be distributed. For it is clear that the problems will be rather different according to whether we face, say, a situation of scarcity or one in which unsharable goods are at stake. As Rescher has it: “Any theory of distributive justice that fails to make provision for a principle of production of goods and merely insists upon the fairness and equity of distribution of such goods as lie at hand is gravely deficient, because the very notion of justice itself [. . .] alters its workings with the special circumstances—such as those of indivisible goods, of an economy of scarcity, and of an economy of abundance.”27

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Thus we can say that production plays indeed a key function, since the problem of just distribution are fundamental in an economy of scarcity and less important in one of abundance, while they do not even arise when a superabundant good—like the air for breathing—is at issue. Rescher distinguishes in this regard (1) a narrow concept of justice and (2) a wider one. (1) is simply “fairness,” while (2) is justice that takes the “general good” into account. The problem is that (1) and (2) can clash. Suppose, for example, we have three individuals equal in point of merit: John, Peter and Jerry, and two patterns of distribution: (α) and (β). By choosing the pattern (α), John, Peter and Jerry would be entitled to share exactly the same amount of goods. By choosing the pattern (β), instead, John and Peter would receive an identical share, while Jerry would be entitled to a larger one. However, the total amount of goods provided by (β) is much greater than the one envisioned by (α), so that, in the final analysis, all three individuals would gain if (β) is adopted. Which pattern is better? In Rescher’s view there is no unconditional answer. (α) is better as long as justice in the narrower sense (fairness) is concerned, but (β) is preferable from the standpoint of the general interests of all three individuals’ involved (justice in the wider sense). No doubt an orthodox Marxist would prefer (α), deeming absolute equality the most important objective to be pursued. Rescher is however distant from ideological prejudices of this kind, and thus claims that fairness must—at least in general—give way to justice that takes into account the general advantage. The conclusion to be drawn from this argument is the following: our conception of justice must recognize that a proper evaluation of distributions cannot take fairness alone into account. So we face a possible state of tension between the two concepts of justice formulated above, which in turn leads to the tension between freedom on the one side, and equality on the other—a common situation indeed in both academic discussions and everyday life. This explains why it is so difficult to achieve Justice (with a capital “J”). Its actual realization, in fact, would require the fusion of considerations pertaining to utility and the common good with those of fairness. Every time one of the two concepts defeats the other we are likely to cope with unpleasant consequences, as the case of the “real socialism” countries clearly shows. Once again Rescher stresses the fundamental importance of the “Principle of Production” for the theory of distributive justice:

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[. . .] If we are willing—as we surely must be—to permit considerations of justice in the narrower sense of fairness to be overshadowed by considerations of justice in a wider sense that takes into account the common good, then we have to be prepared to recognize the superiority of “unfair’ distributions whose unfairness “pays for itself” by bringing greater advantage to most or to all. Where everyone—or a substantial majority—would have to sustain major losses in moving towards a greater equality of condition that makes small gains for a small minority, it becomes questionable whether “fairness” (equality of condition) should be seen as the ruling factor. It is unquestionably the case that justice in the narrower sense of fairness is an important element of justice in the wider sense, but it is here only one element among several others, among which “the general good” is the prominent if not predominant consideration.28

What kind of moral should we draw from considerations of this sort? First of all it should be understood that the workings of the theory of distributive justice are a function of scarcity. Only in that context, in fact, the problems of distribution may become really dramatic. This also means that the “just distribution” is not an issue that can be addressed in an idealized and abstract manner, because it makes a great deal of difference whether we deal with an economy of scarcity, of sufficiency, or abundance, or even of superabundance. This is the reason why Rescher claims that the attention of economists and justice theorists should shift from distribution to the production of goods. The economical context where the distribution of goods takes place makes a crucial difference, and any theory of distributive justice which does not take this fact into account is destined to practical impotence. The advance of production makes the problems of distribution less pressing, so that social theorists would do well to subordinate issues of distributive fairness to those of productive fertility. 4. WHAT IS MORALITY? Nicholas Rescher is a philosopher who has never been afraid of endorsing unpopular positions. In the 1960s he openly declared to be a pragmatist and an idealist, just in a period when—at least in the American philosophical circles—pragmatism was almost forgotten and idealism was deemed to be a deeply flawed philosophical stance.29 The same is true for ethics, social and political philosophy, fields in which Rescher challenges relativism claiming that:

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A relativism of indifferentist if not altogether nihilist tendency has become a pervasive part of the cultural ethos of the age. To oppose it with mere argumentation seems akin to King Canute’s endeavor to oppose the sea’s tides with a mere broom. Yet the philosopher has no choice but to follow his arguments where they lead him, and they happen to lead this philosopher to support the almost lost cause of absolutism. The aim [. . .] is accordingly to defend the view that morality makes certain binding claims on all rational agents, claims that are universal, invariable, and changeless. While moral pluralism is indeed a fact of life, it merely consists in the application of these fixed fundamental principles through a variety of changeable contexts. Absoluteness thus characterizes the fundamental moral principles, while variability is merely a feature of subsidiary rules.30

One should realize at once that our Author is tracing here an important distinction between “pluralism” on the one side and “relativism” on the other. More often than not these two terms are assumed as having more or less the same meaning, or, at least, many philosophers tend to think that the first simply is the necessary background of the second. Rescher’s works in the last few decades has constantly criticized this stance. Moral pluralism is, in his view, a fact a life: we can detect his presence in the common practice of our Western societies. Not only that: if we purport to eradicate it, the Western world would be likely to lose those features which distinguish it from other manners of organizing society. And it goes without saying that, in a period when liberal democracy has become a sort of unchallenged common worldview, no one feels inclined to run such a risk. What Rescher wants to point out, however, is that there is no need to derive relativistic consequences from pluralism. For this reason he insists on the importance of the distinction between “morality”—absolutistically interpreted—on the one side and “mores” on the other. The first is strictly tied to “rationality” and can be recognized at once by all rational agents. As such, morality “requires our so acting as to respect the true needs and interests of other people”, and this kind of preoccupation is an integral part of the very meaning of “morality.” Quite an important consequence follows from this fact. We can imagine social groups in which no moral commitments are made, but this simply means that, in those groups, morality is absent. In other words, morality is one and there to be cannot be “alternative” moralities. Since morality’s essence is given by the concern to

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the needs and interests of other persons, indifference to these needs and interests denotes its mere absence. As Rescher himself notes, “The overall orientation of this position is Kantian in its universalism, but it avoids handicapping itself with Kant’s metaphysical views.”31 There can be for sure alternative moral codes, in the sense that history tells us that there are—and have been—different ways of dealing with the needs and interests of others. Such difference, however, is merely accidental and does not involve the level of fundamental principles. Our author goes on claiming that: Admittedly, this absolutistic approach is controversial. It runs counter to relativism, subjectivism, scepticism, and nihilism about morality. And it also opposes what has emerged as the dominant view in the social sciences, namely, that morality is a matter of local customs and practices. Nevertheless, there are cogent reasons far such an absolutism, seeing that its requirements are rooted in the very meaning of “morality.”32

The outcome of this strategy is a justification of morality in which both Kant’s and Aristotle’s influence are at work. The justification we are dealing with in this case is ontological, and not merely social or historical. In the background we find the idea of a “common human nature”, against which many other philosophers today—and in particular Richard Rorty— argue with force.33 According to Rescher’s approach the requirements of morality itself are what is at stake for living an authentically human life, and “authentically” here amounts to the realization of human potentialities. “This sort of legitimation”—Rescher notes—“grounds morality in the very nature of the human condition [and] bridges the supposed gap between description and prescription, facts and values, or is and ought.”34 We need, at this point, a definition of “morality”. Finding such a definition may prove to be difficult, however, because morality is something strictly tied to (a) practice and (b) to the dimension of human action, i.e. contexts in which absolutely precise definitions often are more dangerous than useful. Let us start, then, with the definition of “moral code”: A moral code is a body of norms of right and wrong governing people’s actions in matters where the legitimate interests of their fellows are at stake. It is, first and foremost, a matter of living “by the rules”—of acting rightly and refraining from modes of behavior that conscientious people have discouraged since time immemorial: “Don’t lie!”, “Don’t steal!”, “Be honest,” “Don’t break promises!”, “Don’t inflict needless pain on others!”, “Help

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people in need!”, and similar do’s and don’ts [. . .] The fabric of morality consists of such familiar precepts and prohibitions regarding appropriate or unacceptable behavior. It is the quintessential demand of morality that we rational agents act “responsibly” by taking due account of the interests of others in what we ourselves do—giving them what is their just and proper due and, going beyond this, protecting their interests and fostering them in a positive way.35

Such body of norms is what permits a regular development of any social group, distinguishing it from a chaotic collection of individuals pursuing their own, particular interests. The problem is that explaining what moral codes are is not sufficient for defining morality itself. For sure morality is a matter of proceeding with a view to considerations of right and wrong when interacting with other people in matters involving their interests. The good of others is essential in this respect, and our actions must take account their needs. In other words, we must constantly ask ourselves how we would react if the roles were reversed. This prompts Rescher to claim that “the core of morality is benevolence: the moral agent’s preferences and actions are conditioned by considerations regarding how others are affected by his doings”.36 The problem, however, cannot be settled unless we find out what morality requires of us and what one must do in order to qualify as a morally good person. One is practically compelled to wonder “what” is so bad about breaking moral rules, which means to find out what validates morality. To answer that “men ought to be moral because this is the right thing to do” is clearly not enough because this kind of reply is simply circular and, therefore, useless. “Right and wrong”—naturally referred to human action—constitute the context of morality, which in turn presents two sides: (a) the promotion of the right and (b) the avoidance of the wrong. So we face both a negative and a positive side of morality. The first refrains us from doing certain things and has therefore a “minimal” character. The second side encourages us to seize our opportunities in order to deserve moral approval. It is important to note in this regard that: The morally meritorious (praiseworthy) is coordinate with the positive matter of promoting the good of people, but the morally mandatory (requisite) is specifically bound to the negative matter of avoiding injury to their interests. Thus many acts are morally praiseworthy without being morally mandatory.37

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In other words, although morality is indeed formed by both sides, we need to understand that obligation by itself is not sufficient: values must be added to obligations if we want a comprehensive definition. Rescher is a pragmatist, and this explains why for him morality is a “functional enterprise cultivated by rational agents for the achievement of certain beneficial results: the protection and advancement of the real interests of people.” But not all virtues are moral virtues; for example, helpfulness and forbearance are, while courage, fortitude and patriotism are not. This prompts him to claim: At the heart of morality lies benevolence—a due care for the interests of people-in-general. This benevolence involves a concern for others, be it motivated by way of affective sympathy or by way of a dispassionate intellectual recognition of the inherent rational appropriateness of such a stance towards other agents like oneself. The former mechanism of motivation proceeds by an emotive involvement through the sentiment of human solidarity and fellow-feeling; the latter proceeds by a cognitive appreciation of the inherent appropriateness of a care for others. The one engages the emotions in the affective valuing of other people; the other involves an intellectual recognition of something in them that is valuable and thus deserves being valued—a recognition that a care for their interests is rationally appropriate. (As Kant over-emphasized, care for others can rest on a strictly rational basis, namely that the claims of rationality deserve to be acknowledged and respected in others—and indeed must be so acknowledged if we are to take the stance that rationality is something that can rightfully be prized in ourselves.) From the standpoint of morality, however, these two concerns are simply distinct paths to a common destination. Either way, care for the interests of others—benevolence—is the controlling value for morality.38

Not only: the central feature of the moral domain is given by the fact that we must take into account the interests of our fellow rational beings, so that respect for the good of “persons as such” is, from the moral viewpoint, mandatory. Because morality pivots on people’s interests, a moral code or system is not just a series of injunctions and prohibitions, of do’s and don’ts. It must go beyond this to encompass a rationale for such imperatives—an account of why certain things are to be done and others shunned. And not just any rationale will do here; it has to be a rationale in terms of specifically moral values—one which proceeds with reference to the inherent worth and dignity of our fellows and their legitimate rights and claims to a consideration of their interests in out deliberations. Morality is thus a fundamentally

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normative domain. For an action to qualify as morally appropriate, the rationale of its performance must pivot on considerations of a very particular sort—those which address the worth of persons as such (i.e., as rational agents) and highlight the need to protect and promote their interests.39 5. MORALITY AND RATIONALITY In Rescher’s view rationality is essentially a matter of idealization.40 We must for sure deem our natural origins important but, at the same time, the recognition that there is something that makes us unique should always be kept in mind. As our Author often stresses, only human beings are able to “gaze towards idealities” and to detach themselves from “the actualities on an imperfect world.” This explains why rationality is the expression of our capacity to see not only how things actually are, but also how they might have been and how they could turn out to be. All this is in turn tied to the concept of “possibility”. He once again quotes Giambattista Vico as claiming that men only understand what they have made themselves, and in his view such dictum applies to all kinds of “possibilia”. The point of view of human subjects acting in the world is thus the initial step, which means, inevitably, the endorsement of an anthropocentric perspective. Such perspective is practically mandatory because our accessibility to the world is granted through it. Starting from these premises, the meaning of Rescher’s statement that “What is rational for me must, in like circumstances, be rational for all of us” can be better grasped. In other words we must take into account the notion of idealization. We cannot characterize human beings as individuals who can only think and talk of what they actually see, since in this case it would be impossible to understand the difference between men on the one side and the other living beings on the other. Rationality is for sure connected to interests of any sort, and it thus becomes important to clarify what kind of interests are at stake in each particular context. Interests are located in a ladder where the personal ones lie at the bottom, and the most general ones lie at the top. Rescher’s example with specific reference to morality is the following: There can, of course, be creatures with requirements very different from ours, creatures, say, who need argon as we need oxygen or who react to ice as we react to strychnine. In this event “Don’t cut off someone’s argon supply” or “Don’t put ice in the beverage” have a bearing very different from that in our present context. But higher-level principles like “Don’t preclude

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people from getting what they require to live” or “Don’t poison people” continue in operation in their context as well as ours. It is only at the (lowly) level of highly particularized injunctions that “morality is relative to human needs”, and not at its basic, more abstract levels. Morality is oriented towards persons-at-large: its range of concern is with all of us persons. Being inherently universal with respect to rational agency the principles of morality do and must hold good for .”all rational beings.” (Though excluding the lower animals, the purview of morality will include whatever rational “aliens” there may be.)41

What we are interested in speaking of morality are the interests located at the top of the aforementioned ladder, i.e. those because whose validity can be recognized by all rational human beings. But an additional factor should be noted. Rationality’s compulsory force is not that of logical necessity but, rather, a force which grew up during natural, social and cultural evolution; some standards have proven to be rational because their constant application has led to the survival of the species. By following this path we can explain our capacity of idealization. First we check the results produced by a certain action, and subsequently we are in a position to predict that such action will most likely continue to produce the same or very similar outcomes in analogous circumstances. However ideals tend to become more and more autonomous and are able to exert a feed-back reaction on our lives. Rescher’s opinion in this regard is that rationality is not something we already find out there ready to be used. He says, rather, “[Rationality] is something that we postulate or presume from the very outset of our dealings with people’s claims about the world’s facts—our own included.” What is here at issue is an essentially practical rationality: [. . .] The fact that we are animals places us squarely within the order of nature. But, the fact that we deem ourselves rational means that we see ourselves as exempted from the absolute rule of external forces and as endowed with some measure of self-determination. A rational creature is one capable of making its idealized vision of what it should be determine at least in part what it actually is. Our claim to rationality means that our nature is not wholly given—that we have the ability to contribute in at least some small degree to making ourselves into the sorts of creatures we are.42

Some problems may arise when one tries to combine rationality’s absolutistic universality of which Rescher writes and the pluralistic differentia-

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tion that originates from the many possible replies to the question: “What is it rational to do?”. According to this view, however, the sphere of rationality is not a single block, but a movable structure formed by many levels, with the basic principles on the top and the concrete decisions at the bottom. The upper levels provide us with the most general explanation of what it is to conduct our affairs rationally. Subsequently we find general norms which can vary. Finally, there are the specific resolutions which are used in concrete cases. The following is Rescher’s articulation: (A) Defining principles of rationality: The basic principles that determine the nature of the enterprise and specify what rationality is all about. Such principles in turn provide the criteria for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of rational norms and standards of procedure. (B) Governing norms and standards of rationality: They are the standards for appraising the “rules of the game” that govern the rational transaction of our affairs. They also provide the criteria necessary for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of our rules of rational procedure. (C) Rules of rational procedure: Rules for the rational resolution of choices, which constitute our criteria for assessing the rational acceptability and adequacy of any particular resolution. (D) Rationally warranted rulings: Resolutions with respect to particular issues arising in the concrete cases of daily life.43 These levels form a system, which means that each level is tied to the others. D-rationally warranted rules could not exist without the presence of the A-defining principles of rationality, but the latter have no meaning if taken in isolation. The “defining principles” exist insofar as they can be instantiated in particular cases, and rationality is founded on practice. Contrary to Rorty and his symphatizers, Rescher claims that universality cannot be eliminated and plays a fundamental role in rational endeavors. “Rational presupposition” and “hypothetical reasoning” are indeed essential ingredients of men’s ability to rationalize the world in which they live. To put it into a slogan: “no rationality without universality”. Some contemporary neopragmatists draw irrationalist conclusions from plural-

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ism, while Rescher maintains that universality and pluralism are not opposing principles. 6. RELATIVISM AND ABSOLUTISM No doubt cultural, social and ethical diversity are a fact of life rather than a mere hypothesis. Social scientists have always stressed the elements of differentiation across social groups, and especially sociologists are ready to pick up strong differences as long as moral beliefs of various social groups are concerned. From this most social scientists and even several philosophers draw the conclusion that cultural relativism is unavoidable: since each group has a different way of dealing with beliefs, relationships, etc., it follows that there is no unique criterion for evaluating actions. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, we are provided with no “transcultural standard” which can be deemed to be valid for all conceptual schemes. Social scientists and philosophers who find the hermeneutic stance congenial will most likely be in favor of the aforementioned conclusion, because it shows that cultures are unique and cannot be investigated from a general viewpoint. There are, of course, many different versions of cultural relativism, but in this context we are especially interested in its moral brand, i.e. normative relativism. Its main thesis is that the various cultures possess value systems which are radically different from each other; there is—so the story goes—no common structure of norms and values that can be identified and lead one to the conclusion that, after all, there is a common human nature. It goes without saying that the ethical side of relativism is strictly connected to all its other branches (conceptual, epistemological, etc.), since the real problem at stake here is the search for cross-cultural “universals” which could explain the fact—often denied by relativists—that we share as rational beings many common features (which, of course, does not mean to deny that there are many and important differences, too. So we must wonder about the real nature of norms and values: are they something that can be only referred to particular social groups, in the sense that we can only speak of norms and values as referred to group A, or B, or C? Or are we authorized to talk about kinds of “moral universals” that—as such—are the true foundations of any normative system? Let us admit that our behavior is not only influenced, but even constrained, by moral factors. The problem is that normative commitments are

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never fixed and immutable, but tend instead to vary much from one social group to another. Moral relativism seems to stem as a natural consequence from this state of affairs. Many claim in fact that different groups hold different—and even incompatible—sets of moral values, while it has become common nowadays to say that “there is no rational basis for choosing one rather than another”. Those who endorse such a stance say that each group embodies a particular set of norms and values, while the conceptual schemes through which human beings see reality are marked by any sort of radical diversity. Thus Rorty—to mention just one author—maintains that we can for sure prefer one system to another, but such preference can only be based upon the viewpoint from which one starts. The point is, in sum, that we can never achieve what Putnam defines as the “God’s eye view.” There are some aspects of these considerations that cannot be denied. For example, the norms ruling daily life are clearly subject to great variation across social groups. This fact, however, only shows that most social norms are highly variable, and nothing more than that. But is it true that all norms are highly variable, or is there an (however restricted) set of norms which remain more or less the same? It could be argued, for example, that a set of norms promoting security, welfare, etc. is likely to be adopted by any group. If so the scope of normative relativism can be narrowed a great deal, since there would be a set so general as to be applyable to all social groups. It should however be noted that we have here no purely rational basis for founding the set: it is based, instead, on practical circumstances. The same is true if we turn our attention to the evolutionary history of humankind. From an evolutionary viewpoint there is no need to trace a neat border line between moral behavior on the one side and all other forms of human behavior on the other. Sociobiology attempts to show in this regard that behavioral regularity is grounded on a genetic basis. Even in this case, we can get some kind of explanation of human capacity for moral behavior, but no set of moral principles. Let us turn then to the question of the relativism of moral standards. This form of moral relativism amounts to a claim that there is no such thing as moral truth. Rather there are a variety of moral systems that are incompatible or incommensurable, and there is no rational basis for preferring one to another. According to Gilbert Harman, for example, moral obligations are constituted by an implicit agreement among members of a social group, 44 so that moral principles are akin to social conventions that regulate individual

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action through the individual’s acceptance of a norm, in the recognition that most or all other members of the social group do so as well. In this account the moral requirement that one should treat other persons with respect derives from the fact that this principle is embodied in the actions of members of a social group; therefore, in societies in which this norm is not conventionally respected, there is no such obligation. These views represent various forms of philosophical moral relativism, a position that has acquired a great deal of support from the general climate of anti-foundationalism in contemporary philosophy. Many philosophers are inclined to agree that there is no ultimate foundation for moral belief; instead systems of values are inherited within a moral culture, and moral theory serves to articulate and rationalize these culturally specific values. Even John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) attempts to show that his principles of justice are superior to specific alternatives (utilitarianism and perfectionism), on the ground that rational persons would choose his principles over the alternatives in specified circumstances of choice. Rawls recognizes that there is no absolute foundation or justification for his theory of justice; there may be other as yet unformulated principles that would be chosen over his, and, more fundamentally, one may reject the idea that the best principles are those that would be chosen by rational persons. In his latest writings Rawls comes to the conclusion that moral argumentation serves to establish consensus within a community’s moral culture, and that we have no reason far supposing that moral disagreements across cultures are resolvable. It would seem that anthropology—and social science in general—has a message for us concerning human variability, but it is not exactly the one endorsed by radical cultural relativism. Rather, the correct conclusion appears to be that there is both uniformity and diversity across human cultures at the level of concepts, beliefs, and norms. Diversity shows the creativeness of human capacity for developing cultural instruments. Uniformity, instead, reflects both the biological constants in human life and the common features of the human existential situation. As we noted before, relativists of all sorts try to solve the problem by equating “morality” on the one side and “mores” on the other. Rescher notes in this regard that: Cultural relativism is the doctrine that societies and cultures have their own customs and folkways, which are so many different and in principle equally valid ways of transacting their business of everyday life. Moral relativism is the theory which holds, analogously, that there are different and discordant

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but in principle equally valid moralities. It is one of the widely pervasive convictions of our day that the former, plausible mode of relativism somehow entails the latter, that one group’s moral goodness is another’s moral wickedness—it all simply “lies in the eyes of the beholder.”45

Rescher goes on noting that social scientists are especially drawn to this sort of approach, which in his opinion amounts to “imperialistic power grabbing”. Thus anthropologists, who study norms and customs, claim that morality belongs to their discipline because moral rules are nothing more than norms and customs. The same happens with the economists, who study the operations of rational self-interest in the production and distribution of goods; they, too, claim that morality belongs to their discipline, because moral rules are no more than procedures that maximize social utility and serve “the greatest good of the greatest number”. Our author just wishes to call this sort of view into question. There is in his view a “wide gulf” that separates morality from mere mores. In the past century and up to now, many social theorists have endorsed relativism from a variety of anthropological, sociological, and ideological perspectives. Relativism has become so successful that it is often seen as a sort of truism that does not even need a defense. For Rescher, however, the rejection of relativism and the articulation of plausible arguments for absolutism are indeed essential to “any meaningful legitimation of the moral project”. They represent his main task, meaning that the moral project must itself be legitimated “in terms of morality-external values”, i.e. values which, like personhood and responsibility for self-realization, are fully in agreement with moral concerns. Instead values as social conformity or personal advantage are not consonant with such concerns. Rescher’s strategy is twofold. On the one side he is ready to admit that moral rules “are frequently part of the customs of a community or that moral behavior advances the welfare interests of the social group or the individual agent”. On the other, however, he firmly rejects the view according to which morality consists in conformity to mores or in benefitmaximization. In other words, morality cannot adequately be accounted for in terms of values that imply no characteristically moral bearing. For this reason Rescher claims that: The anthropological route to moral relativism is, to say the least, highly problematic. There is no difficulty whatever about the idea of different social customs, but the idea of different moralities faces insuperable difficulties. The case is much like that of saying that the tribe whose counting practices

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are based on the sequence: “one, two, many” has a different arithmetic from ourselves. To do anything like justice to the facts one would have to say that they do not have arithmetic at all, but just a peculiar, and very rudimentary way of counting. And similarly with those exotic tribesmen. On the given evidence, they do not have a different morality, but rather their culture has not developed to a point where they have a morality at all. If they think that it is acceptable to engage in practices like the sacrifice of firstborn girl children, then their grasp on the conception of morality is—on the face of it— somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent.46

The conclusion is thus clear. Anti-absolutism must take a flexible and nondogmatic stance if it wants to be coherent enough, while what it does today often is the opposite. The global rejection of absolutes has gone too far, and a middle of the road position is indeed mandatory. As Rescher himself claims: [. . .] the very antipathy to dogmatic uniformity that characterizes the era’s sensibilities will—or should—militate against an absolutistic position in relation to philosophical absolutes [. . .] there is good reason to see the anti-absolutism of 20th Century thought as itself absolutistically misguided and in need of replacement by a position that is far less doctrinaire.47 NOTES 1

N. Rescher, CE, 1989; BP, 1991; P, 1993.

2

UI, pp. 2-3.

3

CE, pp. 4-11.

4

It should be noted that no clear and neat border-line exists between the social and the political realms.

5

CE, p. 44.

6

P, pp. 9-10.

7

See N. Rescher, PPS, cit., and C. J. Misak, Truth and the End of Inquiry. A Peircean Account of Truth, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991.

8

See chapter 5, sections 5.2 and 5.3.

9

P, p. 24n.

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NOTES 10

It should be observed that Peirce and Habermas are not the only two authors Rescher deals with in his book on pluralism. For instance, he takes John S. Mill to share the eschatological view, and Josiah Royce the regulative one. See P, pp. 2226.

11

LS, pp. 176-178.

12

P, p. 54.

13

Chapter 3, section 3.2.

14

P, p. 101.

15

Ibid., p. 109.

16

P, p. 125.

17

Ibid., p. 158.

18

Obviously the non-traditional Marxism of the Frankfurt School is different from other, more familiar brands of the same doctrine which have been so popular in Europe for many decades. But, no doubt, the typical Marxist utopian quest for perfection and homogeneity is still there.

19

P, pp. 178-179.

20

Ibid., p. 166.

21

See F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, New York, 1992.

22

P, pp. 164-165.

23

Ibid., p. 199.

24

J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1971.

25

P, p. 10n.

26

See especially N. Rescher, DJ, 1966, and W, 1972.

27

DJ, p. 89.

28

Ibid., p. 93.

29

See for further details chapters 1 and 2 of the present book.

30

N. Rescher, Moral Absolutes. An Essay on the Nature and Rationale of Morality, Peter Lang, New York-Bern, 1989, p. ix.

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NOTES 31

Ibid., pp. ix-x.

32

Ibid., p. x.

33

R. Harré, M. Krausz, Varieties of Relativism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.

34

N. Rescher, Ibid.

35

Ibid. p. 3.

36

Ibid., p. 4.

37

Ibid., p. 5.

38

Ibid., p. 6.

39

Ibid., p. 7.

40

See N. Rescher, Rationality. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale of Reason, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988.

41

N. Rescher, Moral Absolutes, cit., pp. 15-16.

42

N. Rescher, Rationality, cit., p. 225.

43

N. Rescher, Moral Absolutes, chapter 2, pp. 41-62.

44

G. Harman, “Moral Relativism Defended”, Philosophical Review, 1975, 84, pp. 3-22.

45

N. Rescher, Moral Absolutes, pp. 1-2.

46

N. Rescher, A System of Pragmatic Idealism (Vol. II: The Validity of Values), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993, p. 188.

47

N. Rescher, Value Matters. Studies in Axiology, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt-Lancaster, 2004, p. 126.

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Chapter 8 THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE 1. RESCHER, QUINE, AND SELLARS

T

he preceding chapters have made many comparisons between Rescher’s theses and those held by other contemporary thinkers. The reader should thus already be acquainted with both similarities and differences between our author and philosophers like Quine, Popper, Davidson or Rorty. This section will offer some additional remarks along these lines in order to make Rescher’s global position even more comprehensible. For comparisons are often useful for clarifying statements which, taken in isolation, do not lend themselves to easy interpretation. Let us then start with Willard Quine, to whom Rescher often pays homage in his works. As is well known, according to the logical empiricists a proposition may be defined as “analytic” if its truth is granted by definition, while on the other hand synthetic propositions are directly related to some available experience. Reductionism naturally follows from these premises, since the meaning of factual statements resides in the capability of ultimately reducing them to synthetic ones. Quine rejects the thesis that there actually are “neutral” synthetic observations which are supposed to give meaning its ultimate ground, and added that experience—in and by itself—can make no statement true. In other words, observation and background beliefs are not separated by a neat border-line, and no statement is immune to revision. As we already remarked, his famous article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” marked the end—at least for many contemporary philosophers—of the so-called analytic/synthetic distinction which played a key role in the logical empiricists’ speculation, and on the other a resurgence of holism within the analytic tradition. It should not be difficult, at this point, to understand the similarities between Quine and Rescher, who agrees in rejecting the analytic/synthetic distinction. As we pointed out previously, there is a common pragmatist heritage shared by the two authors. But differences soon come to light because, while Rescher clearly endorsed a full-fledged pragmatist stance starting from the late 1960’s, Quine always tried to reconcile its pragmatist insights with some of the main tenets of the analytic tradition, viewing

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formal logic and the philosophy of language as the milestones of any significant philosophical enterprise. This explains why it is possible to find some inconsistency in Quine’s thought. A pragmatist would be expected to endorse logical pluralism and to maintain that the choice among alternative systems ultimately rests on practical considerations. As we saw in the preceding chapter, however,1 Rescher made this step, while Quine did not.2 From a purely historical viewpoint it is interesting to note that they just went in the opposite direction with the passing of time. In the 1950’s Quine shocked analytic philosophers by saying that “[. . .] The totality of our socalled knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges [. . .] Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections—the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field.”3 No doubt this is full-fledged pragmatism in the best tradition of Peirce, James, Dewey and C.I. Lewis. Starting with the 1960’s, however, Quine slowly turned back to logical positivism and linguistic analysis, with the final outcome that a sort of logical monism opposing all kinds of “deviant” logics replaced the pluralistic stance implicit in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” On the one side, the Harvard philosopher ends up supporting a strong version of empiricism, according to which reality is simply (and only) what we can have experience of from the sensory viewpoint; while, on the other, he endorses a sort of logical and linguistic realism, according to which reality is simply (and only) what we are able to express within our language adequately modified by recourse to logical formalization (i.e., first order logic). He does not seem to have a clear perception of the difficulty of putting together the two alternatives just mentioned. His neopositivist legacy led him to a form of radical empiricism, while his logical realism took him in quite a different direction. To all this we must add a strongly behaviorist stance. In the end, this means that Quine only takes into account language on the one side and human behavior on the other. But, of course, we need something else to explain how our language really works. If all that one has to work with is observable behavior and language use—and nothing else—then one is driven into perplexity by the problem of other minds. In contrast, Rescher’s evolutionary approach is distant from both behaviorism and linguistic absolutism. In noting that man is an integral part of nature, he claims that “[. . .] The intellectual mechanisms we devise in

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coming to grips with the world—in transmuting sensory interaction with nature into intelligible experience—have themselves the aspect of being nature’s contrivances in adjusting to its ways a creature it holds at its mercy. It is no more surprising that man’s mind grasps nature’s ways than it is surprising that man’s eye can accommodate nature’s rays or his stomach nature’s food. Evolutionary pressure can take credit for the lot.”4 Theoretically, Quine would have nothing to object to such statements, but his rigid behavioristic stance, coupled with the overestimation of the role of language in human knowledge, prevent him from providing a picture broad enough to sustain his self-proclaimed empiricist and naturalistic attitude. However, some inconsistencies (or tensions, if you prefer) may also be detected in Rescher’s writings. This is particularly evident in the way he deals with the distinction between factual and logical truths. As we previously remarked,5 in the late 1960’s he provided a pragmatic philosophy of logic where, endorsing a functionalistic instrumentalism, the choice between various systems of logic is taken to be guided by purpose-relative considerations of effectiveness, efficiency, convenience and economy.6 Logic, thus, is neither a descriptive discipline nor a Platonic-style search for abstract objects located in a world different from ours, but a man-made manufacture of intellectual tools. Needless to say, this stance agrees with Quine’s pragmatist position in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” A few years later, however, one finds in The Coherence Theory of Truth a rather different kind of remark: [. . .] Our difference from Quine [in “Two Dogmas”] lies in our refusal to combine logical with factual considerations so as to throw everything at one go into the melting-pot of simultaneous re-evaluation. We are prepared to retain the traditional distinction between logical and factual theses [. . .] The validation of logical machinery [. . .] is to be resolved first with primary reference to the non-empirical domain of mathematical, semantical, and logical considerations [. . .] Only after the mechanisms of logic are secured can we press on [. . .] to deploy coherence mechanisms in the factual domains [. . .] Our own theory envisages a multi-stage process, within each phase of which the logical and the factual sectors are kept separate and treated differently, although, to be sure, there can be feed-back effects going across sector boundaries as one moves from one stage to the next.7

Such statements are by no means isolated in Rescher’s works. Thus in 1977 we were told that “[. . .] Without logic to guide us we might conceivably be in a position to describe how people do reason, but we are

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muzzled on the topic of how they ought to reason so as to resolve beliefconflicts.”8 In these and the preceding remarks logic is still held to have a slightly aprioristic character, which establishes its ultimate superiority over praxis. However, considering what has already been said, the reader can at once recognize that the later Rescher no longer endorses such a thesis. Like mathematics, logic is the cross-product of a two-sided story in which nature and our evolutionary-endowed conceptual apparatus play a conjoint game. Surely nature is always the same, but the conceptual machinery places heavy constraints on nature-as-we-see-it (which, in turn, is the only nature to which we have direct access). This being the situation we face in everyday life, it would be quite misleading to say that logical theses have some kind of priority over the factual ones. We must instead resort once again to the “holistic circle” with which we already dealt before.9 A causal dependence of logical theses from factual ones can be envisioned, whiteout forgetting, however, that a conceptual dependence of factual from logical theses may be detected as well. Rescher’s holistic attitude has it that the realms of logic and factuality are indeed coordinated and interrelated. Some similarities can, however, be found between Quine’s and Rescher’s approaches to the problem of the relations between ontology and epistemology. Quine’s thought reflects an unexpressed Kantian influence, in the sense that a distinction between linguistic-experiential “phenomena” and non-linguistic “noumena” often surfaces. We can find there two different concepts of reality. According to the first, reality is composed by commonsense objects that we perceive through our sensory apparatus. Language differentiates reality into particular objects, which means that, whenever talking about reality, we do it relatively to language. In a second sense, reality is less determined, because it resembles a sort of raw material that produces the flux of experience (a substratum). In Quine’s view (but it should be recalled that often he seems to endorse different positions in this regard) ontological talk rises when the human mind—which cannot be clearly distinguished from language—gives an order to the disordered fragments of raw experience which, in turn, are provided to us by the just mentioned “substratum.” And, needless to say, this notion closely recalls a concept of non-differentiated reality similar to the Kantian one. Quine’s ontological criterion does not reveal “what there is,” but is built in order to let us understand what a certain assertion or theory “claims” about reality. From this it would seem to follow that we can never reach reality-in-itself, but only reality-as-we-(humans)-say-it-is. If we now switch the attention from language to thought, and from philosophy of lan-

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guage to the theory of knowledge, Quine’s and Rescher’s pictures do not appear to be very distant. In both cases we have no hope of getting to an absolute ontology, and must therefore admit that an ontology-for-us is the only choice which is available to human beings. Two main differences can at this point be found. In the first place, Rescher never assumes that language has a sort of priority and sees it as one (out of many) forms of human activity. Secondly, in Rescher the creative role of our conceptual machinery is both argued for clearly and supported by his doctrine of conceptual idealism. In Quine, instead, it never transpires in a neat way, probably because an admission of this sort would clearly be at odds with his selproclaimed empiricist behaviorism. It should be clear from what we just said why the current characterization of Quine as a champion of empiricism can be seriously doubted. To sum up, we arrive at the following overview: Quine abandoned his pragmatism of the 1950’s turning into a basically analytic philosopher who keeps some pragmatist elements in his speculative building. Rescher, by contrast, tried for several years to reconcile pragmatism with the ideological tenets of linguistic analysis, turning eventually into a full-fledged pragmatist, whose basic theses are at odds with the aforementioned ideological tenets of logical empiricism and the analytic tradition at large. Both of them are faithful to analytic “methodology” and, finally, Rescher’s system is more comprehensive than Quine’s because the latter’s interests have always been confined to formal logic, philosophy of language and analytic metaphysics. This observation brings us to the second philosopher we will shortly take into account in the present section, i.e. the late Wilfrid Sellars, who was for many years a colleague of Rescher’s in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pittsburgh. The major link between Sellars and Rescher is given by the fact that they are both systematic thinkers. For example, we read with respect to Sellars that: [. . .] While much of recent philosophy has been of the piecemal variety, one contemporary philosopher who has carried on the tradition of philosophy in the “grand manner” is Wilfrid Sellars. His work not only ranges over the various systematic areas of philosophy but unifies the various areas in terms of a distinctive perspective. As a result, while the corpus of most contemporary philosophers is simply the sum of self-intelligible atoms of inquiry, in Sellars’ case the result is a systematic unity. Moreover, his synoptic vision involves not simply a theoretical unification of scientific understanding with

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our ordinary conception of the world but also embraces the practical dimensions of human existence.10

Exactly these same words could apply to Rescher, who often declared his distaste for piecemal philosophy and expressed a determination to “restore a concern for wholeness and system—not by abandoning the penchant for exactness and detail of the pre-war generation, but by fusing details into meaningful structures.”11 However, while Sellars was not a typically orthodox analytic philosopher, nevertheless, even in his case the dictum that analysis of language provides the best (and, in most cases, the only) way for understanding the world applies. As was the case before with Quine, then, this overevaluation of language analysis marks a first and significant difference between Sellars and Rescher. A second, more specific difference is given by the fact that Sellars held a typically “representationalistic” (and, thus, nonpragmatist) theory of knowledge. In other words, we get to know the objects of the world through representations which, in turn, must share with them at least some of their features. A representation is a partial reproduction of “similar” features belonging to the object that we purport to known. Thus Sellars maintained that knowledge is no replica or reproduction, but a sort of “projective” relation between the structure of reality on the one side, and mental states and practical activities on the other. Things must be that way because, otherwise, physical reality would be unknowable to conscience. The main job of conscience is in turn translation, especially with regard to physical events. It follows that it is incorrect to claim that conceptualization prevents our knowledge of an external world. Language truly “describes” the world in the sense that linguistic expressions are nothing but linguistic projections of non-linguistic objects, even though the key notion of “projection” is always given, in Sellars’ writings, a metaphorical meaning, so that it is not completely clear what he really intended it to be. Rescher’s holistic and evolutionary epistemology is rather different, since he argues that conceptualization is not a veil that hides the real world, but our way for dealing with it. While in Sellars there seems to be a neat separation between the knowing subject and an amorphous world that waits to be known, in Rescher the relation subject/object has a dynamically interactive character (as in Dewey, for instance). Our capacity to know, as we previously saw, is not an inevitable feature of conscious organic life, but a peculiarly human instrumentality that can—and must—be explained in terms of evolutionary heritage. So knowledge is not an abstract picturing

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relation holding in only one direction (i.e., from us to the things), but is itself praxis, stemming from the fact that a rational animal, as such, is practically forced to explain what goes on around him. To put it in another way, knowledge is the outcome of a practical impetus to “coherent information,” so that “[. . .] information represents a deeply practical requisite for us humans. A basic demand for understanding and cognitive orientation presses in upon us, and we are inexorably impelled towards (and are pragmatically justified in) satisfying that demand.”12 Turning once more to Rescher’s “hermeneutic circle,” we cannot oversimplify a process that is intrinsically very complex. The causal dependence of mind from (physical) reality is balanced by the conceptual dependence of reality from the mind. As long as we are concerned, we are bound to conceive the world along peculiar lines, which are in turn dictated by the particular niche we have come to occupy in the history of evolution at large. As we saw previously, we “scan” the world in ways that may be very different from that of other living beings. Nothing prevents us from imagining alien intelligent creatures whose image of reality is totally different from ours, because they gear it to physical parameters to which we pay no attention or that we may even be unable to perceive with our sensory apparatus.13 In a word, Sellars is still tied to the typical—and abstract—theory of knowledge of the analytic tradition, while evolutionary epistemology takes Rescher into a radically new path. A third and major difference has to do with the problem of scientific realism, which plays a pivotal role in both Sellars’ and Rescher’s systems. This happens because these two authors take science seriously, deeming it the best instrument for getting to know reality. On his part, Sellars put forward a constant effort to define the proper place of science in his global view of the human situation. This is his famous “synoptic vision,” defined as follows: [. . .] The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under ‘things in the broadest possible sense’ I include such radically different items as not only ‘cabbages and kings’, but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death [. . .] It is therefore, the ‘eye on the whole’ which distinguishes the philosophical enterprise [. . .] the philosopher is confronted [. . .] by two pictures of essentially the same order of complexity, each of which purports to be a complete picture of man-in-the-world, and which, after separate scrutiny, he must fuse into one vision. Let me refer to these two perspectives, respec-

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tively, as the manifest and the scientific images of man-in-the-world [. . .] by calling them images I do not mean to deny to either or both of them the status of ‘reality.’ I am, to use Husserl’s term, ‘bracketing’ them, transforming them from ways of experiencing the world into objects of philosophical reflection and evaluation.14

Sellars then depicts what he calls the “manifest image” in terms that might even recall Rescher’s theses, since he claims that the transition from preconceptual patterns of behavior to conceptual thinking had an holistic character, a sort of jump which determined the coming into being of man.15 All the great speculative systems of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy have been built around the manifest image of man-in-the world. As for the second kind of image we mentioned above, Sellars admits that it is an idealization, because there are as many scientific images of man as there are sciences that have something to say about man. Nevertheless, he thinks that there is the scientific image that stems from the many ones which it is supposed to integrate. And we must also note that a typical theoretical image like the scientific one is a construction whose foundations are always provided by the manifest image. This means that the latter has a methodological priority over any theoretical construction. Now, it happens that the two images advance conflicting claims concerning the true and complete account of man-in-the-world, so that any serious philosophy must, nowadays, take such conflicting claims into account in order to evaluate them. Sellars’ conclusion is that the dualism of the two images must be transcended (if only in imagination), because “[. . .] the conceptual framework of persons is not something that needs to be reconciled with the scientific image, but rather something to be joined to it. Thus, to complete the scientific image we need to enrich it not with more ways of saying what is the case, but with the language of community and individual intentions, so that by construing the actions we intend to do and the circumstances in which we intend to do them in scientific terms, we directly relate the world as conceived by scientific theory to our purposes, and make it our world and no longer an alien appendage to the world in which we do our living.”16 No doubt there are many elements of this picture that can be reconciled with Rescher’s general perspective. But we also believe that Rescher would cast many doubts about the possibility of construing the scientific image (however idealized) as Sellars has it. The Rescherian question in this regard would most likely be: Which scientific image are we talking or thinking about? He would deem a stable synthesis like the envisioned by

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his former colleague practically unachievable. Unlike the logical positivists, Sellars indeed takes history into account, but he does that only to a limited degree. In other words, one has often the impression that Sellars wrote as if scientific research could come to a resting point, while Rescher argues that we have no evidence that this is the case (or, even better, evidence goes in just the opposite direction). To shed more light on the two perspectives at issue, we may note that, according to Rescher: [. . .] one cannot move from scientific knowledge-claims to the objective characterization of reality without the mediating premiss that these claims are substantially correct. And this mediating premiss is not available with respect to existing science—science in the present state-of-the-art—but only with respect to ideal science. Only in the idealized case of an unrealistic perfection can we unproblematically adopt the stance of a theory-realism that holds that the world actually is as theorizing claims it to be. The canonization of the theory-claims of science as reality-descriptive requires the idealized stance that science is substantially correct.17

This we cannot claim for the reasons given in the fifth chapter of the present work, so that one is also bound to ask: What kind of account of manin-the-world can an image—which admittedly is an idealization—provide? It should be noted, furthermore, that even the manifest image cannot be taken to be stable. As a matter of fact it continuously evolves, bringing within its framework elements that come from the scientific image. A good example is given by the following statement by Ludwig Wittgenstein who, criticizing Moore’s views on skepticism and common sense, claimed: “I could imagine Moore captured by a wild tribe, and their expressing the suspicion that he has come from somewhere between the earth and the moon. Moore tells them that he knows etc. but he can’t give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of human ability to fly and know nothing about physics.”18 Wittgenstein, however, wrote these remarks in the early 1950’s, and the fact is that man subsequently flew to the moon and landed on it, thus adding a new and important element to the account of man-in-the-world. Sellars’ and Rescher’s points of departure in philosophy are ultimately different. Sellars’s reference point has always been the “received view” of the logical empiricists. Of course he criticized at length their conclusions,19 but this, after all, remained his conceptual horizon. His criticisms of logical empiricism, in fact, are more internal modifications—sometimes even radical—than real upsets of the neopositivists’ global account of the rela-

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tions between philosophy and science. In Rescher’s case, instead, we already noted that the initial, juvenile fascination with neopositivism was soon replaced by an ever growing critical attitude towards all brands of analytic philosophy. By the end of the 1960’s Rescher’s turn to pragmatism and conceptual idealism was already on its way, to be completed a few years later. So the different conceptual horizons of the two authors explain, eventually, their diverse attitude toward the problem of scientific realism, although some similarities are also detectable. Significantly enough, Sellars’ analysis takes first into account the standard (i.e., logical empiricist) subdivision of science into a theoretical framework and an observational one, which are somewhat supposed to be tied by “correspondence rules.”20 The ultimately linguistic approach that he endorsed is testified by a question that he took to be essential for his own inquiry: Do the terms of scientific theories have a reference or not? The reader will, at this point, realize that Rescher’s viewpoint is very different, since he does not deem such questions crucial. In fact he claims: [. . .] Some writers on scientific realism make the issue pivot on reference rather than truth—on the applicability of the terms that figure in scientific theories rather than the acceptability of the theories themselves. On this approach, the pivotal question is not whether one can make true statements about electrons (“Electrons carry a negative charge”), but whether that term at issue, “electron,” actually designates [. . .] in our present context—that of physical realism—this distinction is ultimately one without difference [. . .] In the case of a theory about physical object thing-kind (electrons, black holes, magnetic fields), the “truth of the theory” and “the existence of its objects as described by the theory” are simply different sides of the same coin. To accept a scientific theory about little green men on Mars is ipso facto to accept little green men on Mars [. . .] We cannot, in the case of natural science, be realists about theories [. . .] and yet fail to be realists about the objects at issue in the theories. From the standpoint of realism, scientific theories and their objects stand or fall together.21

Sellars has then recourse to quantification theory. If we suppose that “molecules” are the theoretical entities at issue, he says that “to know that molecules exist is to know that ‘(There is an x) x is Φl, ... Φn,’ where Φl, ... Φn is the sufficient condition in the framework of the theory for somebody to satisfy the concept of a molecule.”22 Under what circumstances, however, can we be said to know this? He answers that “[. . .] To know

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that molecules exist is to be entitled to the observational premises, and to be entitled to the licence to move from this premise to the theoretical conclusion. To be entitled to this licence is for the theory to be a good theory.”23 At this point, obviously, one is bound to ask what the expression “good theory” means, and Sellars’ answer is rather traditional, since he states that a theory is good when it gives us a proper explanation of the phenomena that we observe. Proper explanation must not be understood in logical empiricist terms, because he holds instead that “[. . .] theories explain laws by explaining why the objects of the domain in question obey the laws that they do to the extent that they do.”24 Theories, in sum, are able to explain phenomena because they explain why they conform to empirical generalizations. The existence of theoretical entities is thus explained post facto, since, in their absence, we could not explain phenomena altogether. It follows that only having recourse to theory may we hope to get valid explanations, and the scientific image is indeed necessary because the manifest one cannot account for a large amount of facts. The superiority of the scientific image over the manifest one is granted by the fact that: [. . .] ‘Physical objects are not really coloured’ makes sense only as a clumsy expression of the idea that there are no such things as the colured physical objects of the common sense world [. . .] This rejection need not, of course, be a practical rejection. It need not, that is, carry with it the proposal to brain-wash existing populations and train them to speak differently. And, of course, as long as the existing framework is used, it will be incorrect to say—otherwise than to make a philosophical point about the framework— that no object is really coloured, or is located in Space, or endures through Time. But, speaking as a philosopher, I am quite prepared to say that the common sense world of physical objects in Space and Time is unreal—that is, that there are no such things. Or, to put it less paradoxically, that in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that is not.25

As clearly indicated, the perspectives of our two authors reflect both similarities and differences. Rescher and Sellars agree, for instance, on the fact that the objects we experience are “something” which do not exist as such , but rather as something like John Locke’s secondary properties.26 However, Rescher pushes the issue farther than Sellars, because he gives us a theory (conceptual idealism) to the effect that the causal production of the objects-as-we-see-them is always mediated by the brain-physiological ba-

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sis for a conceptual scheme, so that our conceptual machinery plays an absolutely central role in the so-called manifest image of the world. In Sellars, instead, the connection between the scientific image and the manifest one remains, all in all, rather mysterious. A final remark is needed at this point. While Sellars most of the time speaks of science as if it were something “neutral” (and here the influence of logical empiricism is clearly at work), Rescher always treats it as our science. As we already know, this happens because “[. . .] Science is always the result of inquiry into nature, and this is inevitably a matter of transaction or interaction in which nature is but one party and the inquiry being the other. We must expect alien beings to question nature in ways very different from our own. On the basis of an interactionist model, there is no reason to think that the sciences of different civilizations will exhibit anything more than the roughest sorts of family resemblance.”27 Given this fact, science is not something altogether independent from the scientists which practice it and from their peculiar proceedings. Our picture of nature’s workings is itself retrospectively justified because science must— and can—retrovalidate itself: in other words, it provides the materials (in terms of a science-based world-view) which justify the methods of science. For this reason, “[. . .] the world-picture that science delivers into our hands must eventually become such as to explain how it is that creatures such as ourselves, emplaced in the world as we are, investigating it by the processes we actually use, should do fairly well at developing a workable view of that world.”28 Rescher, then, would never accept Sellars’ Protagorean statement that “science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that is not.” He would rather say that it can indeed justify a plausible commitment to the existence of its theoretical entities. Scientific conceptions thus aim at what exists in the world, but only hit it imperfectly and “well off the mark.” All we can get ever appropriately lay claim to is a rough consonance between our scientific ideas and reality itself. 2. RESCHER AND TODAY NEOPRAGMATISM The previous chapters of this book, and especially the first two, have dealt extensively with both the rediscovery of pragmatism in contemporary thought and Rescher’s specific contribution to it. It was noted, for instance, that there are many pragmatisms, so that it is a little misleading to present this variegated trend of thought as if it were a monolithic doctrine. The

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founding fathers, too, were all but unanimous. Peirce was not in agreement with James on many issues. Dewey, in turn, did not like various aspects of both Peirce’s and James’ philosophy, while C.I. Lewis’ views on logic were quite different from those held by Dewey. It should not be surprising, then, to find the same amount of disagreement in today neopragmatism, where Rescher and Rorty, who both define themselves pragmatists, display different opinions on many (if not most) subjects. In the present section we shall draw some sketchy comparisons between the ideas of Rescher, Rorty and Davidson. At this point a puzzling question may well arise in the mind of our readers: Is it correct to define Donald Davidson as a neopragmatist? Even though Rorty answers with a plain “yes,” we ourselves have many doubts in this regard for reasons that will shortly be explained. We chose to follow—sub condicione—Rorty’s classification because some pragmatist insights are indeed detectable in Davidson’s speculation, which in our view are mainly due to the influence of his master Willard Quine. At best, Davidson may be defined as an analytic philosopher who does not despise pragmatism, and this is certainly different from saying that he deserves a leading role in the contemporary neopragmatist resurgence. It is worth noting that Davidson himself seems to confirm our interpretation. When asked: “Don’t you consider yourself a pragmatist?,” he gave the following answer: [. . .] No. I don’t disbelieve in it, but I don’t particularly understand what Rorty means by that, because for him that’s a special kind of antimetaphysical attitude. At one time, he actually had a pragmatic theory of truth, and then dropped it. I remember one of his articles, called “Truth, Pragmatism, and Davidson,” in which he explains what he means by calling me a pragmatist. But part of what he has in mind is just that I seem to have dropped the attempt to get a certain definition of the notion of truth. I’ve certainly dropped the idea that philosophers are in charge of a special sort of truth. But I don’t think of that as being any more pragmatic than a lot of other positions.29

The second characterization that is usually associated with Davidson’s philosophy is that of “post-analytic.” Here the agreement seems to be rather widespread, and this explains why Quine, when requested to indicate a typical post-analytic philosopher, mentioned Davidson without hesitation.30 Even in this case, however, we do not feel perfectly comfortable with such a classification. In our view a thinker can be defined as post-

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analytic if he has abandoned the ideological tenets of analytic philosophy (both Rescher and Rorty, for instance, did that). And this means, first of all, to relinquish the view of language conceived of as an a priori element which, although itself unexplainable, can in turn explain anything else. If we now have recourse to two quotations which state, respectively, Rescher’s and Davidson’s conceptions of language, a strong difference will be seen. Let us start with Rescher, who claims: “[. . .] After all, the teleology of language is nothing mysterious and occult. Language is primarily a purposive instrument whose cardinal aims are the transmission of information for the sake of implementation in action. Language is geared to afford us the mechanisms of information storage and to provide for the exchange of information that facilitates the programmatically coherent pursuit of individual goals and the coordination of effort in the pursuit of common goals.”31 This clearly is a pragmatic philosophy of language, to which the qualification “post-analytic” can be legitimately attached. And now compare what Davidson says: [. . .] In communication, what a speaker and the speaker’s interpreter must share is an understanding of what the speaker means by what he says. How is this possible? It would be good if we could say how language came into existence in the first place, or at least give an account of how an individual learns his first language, given that others in his environment are already linguistically accomplished. These matters are, however, beyond the bounds of reasonable philosophic speculation. What as philosophers we can do instead is to ask how a competent interpreter [. . .] can come to understand the speaker of an alien tongue. An answer to this question can reveal essential features of communication, and will throw indirect light on what makes possible a first entry into language.32

The fact of the matter is that, unlike Rescher, Davidson too figures among those who deem language to be the only feature of human activity worth being investigated. This is indeed a dogma of analytic philosophy, even though Quine never recognized it as such and did not add it to his famous two dogmas of empiricism. In our opinion, then, Davidson’s place is still inside the analytic tradition. Rorty thinks that Davidson has overcome the linguistic turn by giving up the dualism of scheme and world,33 but we already saw, in dealing with the problem of conceptual schemes, that such an overcoming can hardly be claimed if we assume, with Davidson, that “knowledge of beliefs comes only with the ability to interpret words.”34 And our opinion is confirmed by another passage: “In sharing a language,

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in whatever sense this is required for communication, we share a picture of the world that must, in its large features, be true. It follows that in making manifest the large features of our language, we make manifest the large features of reality.”35 The very existence of language, in sum, cannot be explained. This means that language itself is probably viewed as a transcendental condition of our experience, which takes us back to the “linguistic idealism” unconsciously endorsed by many analytic philosophers. The difference with Rescher’s functional and evolutionary view of language, which he takes to be just one out of many practical instrumentalities at our disposal, should now be clear. The overcoming of the linguistic turn is neat and convincing in Rescher’s works, while Davidson’s conception of language can be considered, at best, an internal variation to be located in the mainstream of the analytic tradition. As we said before, however, Rorty is not totally wrong in detecting pragmatist elements in Davidson’s thought. In one of his latest essays devoted to the concept of truth, for instance, Davidson explicitly mentions John Dewey several times, noting that: [. . .] Nothing in the world, no object or event, would be true or false if there were no thinking creatures. John Dewey [. . .] drew two conclusions: that access to truth could not be a special prerogative of philosophy, and that truth must have essential connections with human interests [. . .] Dewey’s aim was to bring truth, and with it the pretensions of philosophers, down to earth [. . .] the idea of ensuring that the domain of truth can be convincingly brought within the scope of human powers by cutting the concept down to size is hardly unique to Dewey; Dewey saw himself as sharing the views of C. S. Peirce and William James in this matter [. . .] the problem the pragmatists were addressing—the problem of how to relate truth to human desire, beliefs, intentions, and the use of language—seems to me the right one to concentrate on in thinking about truth. It also seems to me this problem is not much nearer a solution today than it was in Dewey’s day.36

However, if one wants to follow the pragmatist path in a coherent way, he must abandon any temptation to view language as a transcendental factor. In other words, the functional and evolutionary road chosen by the classical pragmatists (and by Rescher as well) must replace the analyticlinguistic path that Davidson still refuses to leave. It may well be, as Davidson says, that “few philosophers are now tempted by Dewey’s swinging, sweeping formulations,”37 but this certainly does not show that

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contemporary philosophy is in good shape. It is, rather, simply another indicator of Davidson’s essentially analytic attitude: he seems to prefer anyway linguistic precision to good arguments formulated in a “sweeping” way, as if the linguistic formulation were more important than philosophical substance. However, in the latest period of his writing, Davidson shifted from the pansemanticism he previously endorsed to a sort of “pancausalism,” in which the causes of our beliefs—i.e., the objects and events of the physical world—play the central role. We observe speech behavior in relation to the environment, and from this certain attitudes towards sentences can be inferred. In other words, a speaker is caused by certain kinds of events to hold a sentence true. It has been noted in this regard that the fundamental function assigned to causality is at odds with the transcendental approach to language that Davidson, although unadmittedly, adopts. How is causal talk reconcilable with a view that sees language as a transcendental condition of experience?38 The reason why Davidson assigns such a great role to causality is that he wants to avoid any idealistic conclusion: his (although modest) realism prompts him to maintain that mind and world are not the same thing. However—and this is another pragmatist element—he does not foresee any clear border-line between isolated subjects on the one side, and the world on the other. The only kind of objectivity we can get is intersubjectivity, and this for a very simple reason: being language a transcendental pre-condition of experience, it is prior to anything else. Ideas come only when a subject begins to share a world-view that has been socially established, “triangulating” with other human subjects and the events of the world. He claims in fact that “[. . .] it is not the speaker who must perform the impossible feat of comparing his belief with reality (i.e., what caused it); it is the interpreter who must take into account the causal interaction between the world and speaker to find out what the speaker means and hence what he believes.”39 And again: “[. . .] My approach is externalist: I suggest that interpretation depends (in the simplest and most basic situations) on the external objects and events salient to both the speaker and the interpreter, the very objects and events the speakers’s words are then taken by the interpreter to have as a subject matter. It is the distal stimulus that matters to interpretation.”40 We may note at this point that Davidson is right in stressing that the idea of intersubjectivity is tied to pragmatism, but it is not correct to put on pragmatism’s shoulders the thesis that language has a transcendental nature. The standard pragmatist is better pictured by saying

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that we can have access to the mind-independent world only through our participation (as Dewey put it) or conceptual machinery (in Rescher’s terms), and this is different from giving to language a sort of priority over any other human instrumentality. It seems to us that, just like Quine, Davidson aims at making simple a reality which is inherently complex. His model takes into account only some features of social reality, leaving the natural one wrapped up in a thick fog, which prevents us from seeing what really lies behind. In a typically Kantian vein, Davidson claims that objects and event are the causes of our beliefs, but this is all we can say about natural reality. As Kant would have claimed, we know that the things-in-themselves are there, but there is nothing else to say except for the rather obscure notion that after all things-in-themselves are the “raw material” which is the source of our perceptions. Just by substituting “beliefs” to perceptions we get the Davidsonian picture, where the causes strictly resemble Kant’s noumena of which, as such, we know nothing. Giovanna Borradori has argued that, in Davidson, both language and the mind are part, along with world, of a single conceptual scheme or intersubjective matrix, so that all reality, social and natural, is uniformly constituted and nourished by language.41 For sure, Rescher would note in this regard that such a model can hardly explain “cognitive diversity.” As we have verified several times, he stresses that there is no simple and unique framework for describing the world. The same thing can be described in different terms by people who operate from diverse cognitive point of view, and no description is bound to be more correct or more adequate than the others, simply because each description is inherently geared to the purposes and the aims of its user. And this also explain why scientific knowledge itself is always relativized to the kinds of experiences that we can have. The experiences, however, are many, and Rescher would deny that there actually is an intersubjective matrix which can accommodate all of them. If we now recall what was said previously about the RescherDavidson quarrel over conceptual schemes,42 the differences in their respective approaches should be quite clear. Let us finally turn our attention to Richard Rorty, an author whose different perspective from Rescher’s has been indicated many times in the course of our work. As we saw in the second chapter, Rescher views the contrast between himself and Rorty as a continuation of the struggle between an objective pragmatism (or pragmatism of the right) which includes the triad Peirce-Lewis-Rescher, and a subjective one (or pragmatism of the

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left) which comprises James, the early and middle Dewey, and Rorty. The later Dewey assumes, in this picture, a middle-of-the-road position. While Rorty must certainly be praised for both overcoming the linguistic turn and making pragmatism popular again in American philosophy following several decades of relative forgetfulness, Rescher argues that the Rortyan interpretation of pragmatism is too partial. In particular, by taking Rorty too seriously one is led to believe that pragmatism implies relativism. On the contrary, Rescher insists that relativism is practically absent in the writings of Peirce and C.I. Lewis, so that Rorty ends up with providing an image of pragmatism which is substantially misleading. All these remarks are important especially for the historians of contemporary thought. The contrast between the two authors, however, is not only (or even better: not mainly) historical, but theoretical. Although sharing some basic opinions, among which the reevaluation of pragmatism and the overcoming of analytic philosophy’s ideological tenets play a key role, they go in opposite directions as long as many and fundamental philosophical issues are concerned. Rorty for instance claims that logical positivism and, in general, the whole kind of philosophy which stems from Russell and Frege—i.e. analytic philosophy—was not a revolutionary mode of thought, but a reactionary movement. It is: [. . .] like classical Husserlian phenomenology, simply one more attempt to put philosophy in the position which Kant wished it to have—that of judging other areas of culture on the basis of its special knowledge of the “foundations” of these areas. “Analytic” philosophy is one more variant of Kantian philosophy, a variant marked principally by thinking of representation as linguistic rather than mental, and of philosophy of language rather than “transcendental critique,” or psychology as the discipline which exhibits the “foundations of knowledge.”43

The emphasis on language, according to Rorty, although important in itself, does not change the Cartesian-Kantian problematic, and thus does not really give philosophy a new self-image. Analytic philosophy is (or was) still committed to the construction of a permanent, neutral framework for inquiry, and thus for all culture. This idea amounts to saying that there are “non-historical conditions of any possible historical developments,” and that we can escape from history. Instead we should totally adhere to Dewey’s dictum that philosophers “are parts of history, caught in its movement; creators perhaps in some measure of its future, but also assuredly creatures of its past.”44

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According to Rescher, instead, the overcoming of analytic philosophy’s ill-based foundationalism means neither the end of philosophy itself, nor the refusal to recognize its cognitive value. He agrees with Rorty’s assertion that philosophers cannot detach themselves from history or forsake the everyday and scientific conceptions that provide the stage setting of their discipline, but nevertheless contends that the dissolution of philosophy is a deeply wrong answer. Skeptics of all sorts—and Rescher takes Rorty to be one of them—would like to “liberate” humankind from the need of doing philosophy, pointing out that it has thus far been unable to answer our questions in a proper way. Rescher, to the contrary, invites us to take sides because “abandoning philosophical subjects is a leap into nothingness.”45 Of course we can escape into the history of philosophy conceived of in merely philological terms, or into technical minutiae, but this is tantamount to cognitive vacuity. The need to philosophize stems from our very nature of inquiring beings and is, so to speak, built in the cultural evolutionary heritage that we all share. We might even say that we need intellectual accommodation at least as much as physical accommodation is requested in our daily life. So, when the skeptics invite to forget about abstract thinking and philosophy in order to focus on practical needs, it may be answered that: [. . .] they overlook the crucial fact that an intellectual accommodation to the world is itself one of our deepest practical needs—that in a position of ignorance or cognitive dissonance we cannot function satisfactorily. We are creatures for whom intellectual comfort is no less crucial than physical comfort. The human condition is such that we are going to have some view (after all, scepticism itself is just one such). The question is simply whether we are going to have one that is well thought out or not.46

Even someone like Rorty who claims that no philosophical position at all should be endorsed, himself in the end puts forward what is simply another view among many in the spectrum of possibilities at our disposal. The problems that Rorty faces by adopting such a stance emerge very well in his political philosophy (“ironic liberalism”), with which we already dealt before. In this context let us only note that his tenet, according to which philosophy is more or less harmless, is hardly tenable if we recall the enormous practical consequences that the rise and development of a doctrine like Marxism has had on the contemporary world. The vicissitudes of the Soviet Union have been nothing but the attempt of carrying out practically some philosophical ideas. So, when Rorty says that we should never

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judge the philosophical theses of a thinker according to their political utility, because this is a variant of the wrong Platonic idea that justice will be attained only when philosophers will be kings and kings will be philosophers, we may as well reply that he misses the point. No devotee of the Western democratic thought is inclined to deny that the image of the “philosopher-king” is dangerous and, as a matter of fact, Popper has given us some illuminating analyses in this respect.47 The real point at stake, however, is not this one. Rorty claims—correctly—that any absolute view of reality, which aims at subordinating praxis and history to some philosophical a priori axioms in order to build an ideal social order, is bound to failure. Not only that: it even threatens to create more problems than it was meant to solve, as the example of “real socialism” in past century taught us. But why should we draw, from this correct premise, absolutely relativistic conclusions like Rorty’s? We perceive, in sum, a sort of intellectual jump between his basic assumptions and the results he deduces from them. We do not need to shift from the refusal of any totalitarian view of reality to a complete relativism which—as such—threatens to lead the democratic societies of the Western world to a dangerous nihilism. And such an internal nihilism—we would like to stress—is much more dangerous than the external challenges posed to Western societies by their openly declared enemies. Some years ago, dealing with Rorty’s thought, Ian Hacking remarked that “[. . .] Rorty’s version of pragmatism is yet another language-based philosophy, which regards all of our life as a matter of conversation. Dewey rightly despised the spectator theory of knowledge. What might he have thought of science as conversation? In my opinion, the right track in Dewey is the attempt to destroy the conception of knowledge and reality as a matter of thought and of representation. He should have turned the minds of philosophers to experimental science, but instead his new followers praise talk.”48 This is in our opinion a very good point. In the first place it reminds us that Rorty’s reading of Dewey is certainly original, but also problematic: in other words, we should be careful not confuse “Rorty’s Dewey” with the real one. Secondly, it is correct to claim—as we did several times—that he overcame the ideological tenets of analytic philosophy. Nevertheless, language keeps in his thought a paramount importance. To be sure, it no longer is the ideal language of logical empiricism, but the language as envisioned by the second Wittgenstein with his theory of the linguistic games.

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The outcome is that Rorty dissolves reality within a concept of “sociolinguistic practice” that is too loose to explain anything (and this move is not a pragmatist one). Bearing all this in mind, we may now understand why Rorty does not see favorably Davidson’s contention that there is a public and objective world which is not created by us and is the ultimate source of our beliefs. Rorty’s daring move is, instead, to make that world coincide with our beliefs, which once again puts him at (serious) odds with Rescher’s philosophy. In fact Rescher, who is a self-declared (conceptual) idealist, turns out, on this matter, to be much less idealistically inclined than Rorty. We believe that the preceding analysis shows well how distant from each other are two authors both of whom take themselves to be pragmatists. 3. FINAL OVERVIEW This concluding section will offer a brief overview of Rescher’s theses that provides a compact outline of what has been said thus far. (1)

Against the analytic movement, we have stressed that analysis is an instrument for clarifying the issues and sharpening the disputes—not for resolving them or reducing philosophical issues to a scientific core.

(2)

The methodological and procedural side of analytic philosophy is separable from its ideological-doctrinal side. While the latter is no longer tenable, the former is very much alive.

(3)

Linguistic behavior, i.e. language use in general, is simply one (particularly important) factor of the whole complex of instrumentalities at our disposal. Linguistic activity (in all its forms: communication, storytelling, etc.) is just a form of human praxis, and the praxis-geared genesis of language means that semantics is not an autonomous project, independent of all other human activities.

(4)

In its origins, this praxis is tied to the realization of various purposes (such as: conveying information, issuing instructions, etc.). Linguistic behavior is accordingly one element of our overall behavior system, that must be taken into account in holistic terms.

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And this means that any form of linguistic behaviorism is bound to failure. (5)

This practical connection also means that language is a tool, that is to say an ends-oriented and purposive instrument. As such, it cannot be made totally detailed and precise as many analytic philosophers would like.

(6)

Philosophers must be content to take language as they find it and treat it from a “standardistic” point of view. The analytic precisification of meaning looked for by some many thinkers of past century is a misconceived project from the very outset. Language is not fitted for too a precise theoretical characterization.

(7)

The practical connection envisioned above leads us to conclude that there will be alternative linguistic/conceptual schemes because there are alternative modes of praxis. Schemes can neither be eliminated, nor reduced to a single one.

(8)

We give different sorts of priorities (and weights) to different human projects. Since human beings hold different values (particularly in the cognitive context), like prizing simplicity and generality over closeness of fit to the data, they are also led to different evaluations of systemic adequacy.

(9)

Evaluations, in turn, are always underdetermined by the facts, so that different individuals may—and do—have different priorities. This can be explained rationally, because such differences reflect their personal experience. These are also the roots of the “strife of systems.”

(10) The same practical connection means that the analytic/synthetic dochotomy is in trouble. The adequacy and validity of our linguistic instruments turns on their practical efficacy/efficiency in doing their job. Then we are bound to conclude that the languageinternal “analytic” relationships are ultimately themselves legitimated as viable on empirical bases (in that they provide comparatively efficient instrumentalities).

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(11) Apriorism in epistemology should thus be rejected. We operate with a priori (i.e. not empirically learned) assumptions—because such assumptions are needed for empiricism to work—i.e., for experience to provide correct (world-descriptive) information. But these presumptions are retro-justified in the pragmatic order. Unlike what happens in Quine’s thought, the rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction is not based on semantical reasons, but on epistemological ones. Our “analytic” commitments rest (in the justificatory, though not the analytic/hermeneutic order) on matters of fact (viz. pragmatic efficacy). (12) Semantical holism (systematic interrelatedness, rather than autonomy or primacy of semantics); philosophical standardism (instead of analytic precisification and “logical reconstruction”); and linguistic pragmatism (language viewed as a functional system), are all interconnected doctrines. (13) The old-fashioned view that the traditional philosophical issues are meaningful, important, and rationally tractable, can be defended against the post-modernism, the Heideggerians, the logical positivists, the late Wittgenstein, Rorty’s subjective neopragmatism, and the representatives of scientism. (14) Philosophical problems can neither be dissolved nor deconstructed. We simply have to do the best we can to deal with them. The view that logic, or language-studies, or physics, or neuroscience (or anything else) is a substitute for philosophy can be shown to be untenable. (15) Methodological coherentism—in the tradition of Leibniz— prevents one from thinking that philosophy is either an isolatable discipline or a super-science. Philosophy, instead, calls for telling a complex, many-sided story that puts all the pieces together with reference to the whole spectrum of what we take ourselves to know. (16) The key instrument of philosophy is not speculation (a la, say, Whitehead), but harmonization. Its objective is to produce a comprehensive account that is unified and coherent overall, and that

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addresses the questions involved through the construction of a best-attainable over-all systematization. (17) This, however, is a matter of ongoing effort, and not something that we can finish off and wrap up in a neat package, either today or tomorrow. We cannot achieve a finished system in the classical manner. We can only sketch its rough outlines. Thus, systematic coherentism is not a philosophy for people who want definitive and ready answers. It is prepared to deal in rough approximations. (18) All forms of reductionism (physicalism, mind-brain identity theories, restrictions of morality to enlightened self-interest, etc.) should be rejected. Reductionism is not the sort of position we should endorse ab initio on general principles. In the end, we may conceivably wind up there in the course of scientific progress. But we can make no prejudgment at this early time of the day. (19) Naturalized epistemology is a sound project, but it should not lead us to substitute naturalism (mostly neuroscience) for epistemology (the understanding of how information is used by humans). (20) It is crucial to differentiate between a causal (experienceextended) account of intellectual phenomena, and a conceptual (experience-internal and conceptualized) account to them. This is the core of a conceptual idealism which is sympathetic with a causal naturalism. How the mechanism of mind works is one thing, what we do with it is another. (21) The critics of the so-called “folk psychology” are wrong in wanting to abandon concept-scheme internal deliberations. It is precisely at this level that our questions arise, and—unless we simply dismiss them—it is at this level that they must be addressed. (22) Most recent philosophers want either to reject philosophical issues as embedded in an outmoded conceptual scheme that should give way to positive science, or else, at the opposite extreme, to protect philosophy against any and all intrusion from science by having it emplaced in—and entirely within—a separate conceptual world. This world, in turn, should be secure against (because totally apart

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from) the whole range of scientific considerations. Neither of these two strategies, however, works. We should instead bring the two into a (theoretical) negotiation that optimally accomodates the requirements of each. (23) There is a reality principle at work in coherentist philosophizing. We are creatures whose beliefs condition their actions. Theory impinges on what men do in the real world because they use it in the pursuit of aims and goals. And here the crucial test of pragmatic efficacy enters in. Even purely abstract considerations (like the logical ones) have their uses (applications). And such claims to legitimacy as they have will be based on the efficiency and effectiveness with which they can accomplish their intended work. This leads back to the intellectual heritage of Peirce and C.I. Lewis. (24) What sets pragmatic idealism apart from various other forms of pragmatism is that it sees the spectrum of human purposes as very diversified, with no one single governing goal. The issue of pragmatic efficacy thus becomes pluralistic and local, rather than monolithic and global. (25) For example, science aims at prediction and control, and the adequacy of scientific method lies in its realization of those particular objectives. The atomic bomb is thus a triumph of science: its status as such is not impeded by the fact that it may, in the end, wipe out human life on the planet. Science is concerned in the first instance with human understanding, not human happiness (which is not to say that happiness is unimportant). And it is with reference to this limited local objective that the adequacy of its methods as such must be addressed. (26) Thus, Rescher is not a global summum bonum pragmatist (as he takes the mid-period Dewey to be), but a local functional efficacy pragmatist (as he takes Peirce to have been—at least some of the time). (27) A certain degree of rationalism in philosophy is unavoidable, because we need “rationally warranted presumptions”. The warrant

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at issue, however, is provided ex post facto by considerations of pragmatic efficacy. This has nothing to do with the old-style rationalism of innate ideas, a priori rules of the mind, etc. Pragmatic idealism implies indeed fallibilism. (28) The crux for progress (both cognitive and scientific) is applicative efficacy—i.e., enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness with what our ways of proceeding (our methods) enable us to achieve our purposes (ends, values). The driving force of progress is thus goal-satisfaction, and not systematic elegance per se (which is itself merely a means to an end). (29) Both Rescher’s epistemology and political/social philosophy rest on a basic skeptical attitude towards idealization. In neither case we can give perfect solutions to our problems, short of supposing an unattainable idealization. Human beings are always emplaced in suboptimal conditions, where their knowledge is not perfected. In other words, we must do the best we can in circumstances where perfection is unachievable. (30) Philosophy is, essentially, the attempt to understand our own place in reality’s scheme of things. For intelligent creatures like ourselves, the need for knowledge is at least as pressing as the need for food. Our evolutionary heritage, therefore, makes us understand that it is only via the former that we can meet the demands of the latter. This means that, in the last analysis, we face an inescapable challenge to achieve cognitive accommodation to the world. NOTES 1

Chapter 6, section 6.1.

2

See again W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Logic, cit., chapter 6, and N. Rescher, MVL, chapter 3, for opposed views about this issue.

3

W. V. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” cit., p. 42.

4

RE, p. 89.

5

Chapter 6, section 6.1.

6

MVL, chapter 3, section 4.

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NOTES 7

CTT, pp. 362-365.

8

MP, p. 280.

9

Chapter 5, section 5.1.

10

C.F. Delaney, M. J. Loux, G. Gutting, W. D. Solomon, The Synoptic Vision. Essays on the Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre DameLondon, 1977, p. ix.

11

See chapter 2, section 2.1.

12

UI, p. 4.

13

See Rescher’s defense of conceptual schemes in chapter 6, section 6.2, of the present work.

14

W. Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 1-5.

15

Ibid., p. 6.

16

Ibid., p. 40.

17

SR, p. 148.

18

L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, 264, pp. 34-35e.

19

Many authors, among whom Richard Rorty and John McDowell, take Sellars to be one of the forerunners of post-analytic thought, mainly due to his critique of the “Myth of the Given.”

20

See W. Sellars, “The Language of Theories,” in Science, Perception and Reality, cit., pp. 106-126.

21

SR, p. 2.

22

W. Sellars, Ibid., p. 117.

23

Ibid., p. 117-118.

24

Ibid., p. 123.

25

W. Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Science, Perception and Reality, cit., p. 173.

26

See chapter 5, section 5.1, of the present book.

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NOTES 27

UI, pp. 90-91.

28

SR, p. 142.

29

G. Borradori (ed.), The American Philosopher, cit., pp. 43-44.

30

Ibid., p. 37.

31

CS, p. 329.

32

D. Davidson, “Three Varieties of Knowledge,” in: A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), A.J. Ayer: Memorial Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge-New York, 1991, p. 157.

33

R. Rorty, “Twenty-Five Years After,” in: R. Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn, cit., p. 372.

34

D. Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” cit. p. 196.

35

D. Davidson, “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics,” in: D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, cit., p. 199.

36

D. Davidson, “The Structure and Content of Truth,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 57 (1990), pp. 279-280.

37

Ibid.

38

See S. Evnine, Donald Davidson, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 175.

39

D. Davidson, “Empirical Content,” in: E. LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, cit., p. 332.

40

D. Davidson, “The Structure and Content of Truth,” cit., p. 321.

41

G. Borradori, The American Philosopher, cit., p. 41.

42

Chapter 6, section 6.2.

43

R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , cit., p. 8.

44

J. Dewey, Philosophy and Civilization, Capricorn Books, New York, 1963, p. 4.

45

SS, p. 248.

46

Ibid., p. 249. See also S for Rescher’s position toward skepticism.

47

K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, cit.

48

I. Hacking, Representing and Intervening, cit., p. 63.

208

Chapter 9 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES (Chronological List of Rescher’s Books) 1. BOOKS BY NICHOLAS RESCHER 1960 On the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences. Santa Monica, CA (RAND Corporation) 1960; RAND Research Monograph R353. Coauthored with Olaf Helmer. 1962 Al-Farabi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh Press), 1962.

Pittsburgh (University of

1963 Al-Farabi’s Short Commentary on Aristotle’s “Prior Analytics.” Translated from the Arabic, with Introduction and Notes. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. Studies in the History of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. 1964 Al-Kindi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964. The Development of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964.

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

Hypothetical Reasoning. Amsterdam (North-Holland Publishing Co.; “Studies in Logic” series edited by L.E.J. Brouwer, E.W. Beth and A. Heyting.), 1964. An Introduction to Logic. New York (St. Martin’s Press), 1964. 1965 The Refutation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of Galen’s Treatise on The First Mover. Karachi (Publications of the Central Institute of Islamic Research), 1965. Co-authored with Michael E. Marmura. 1966 Distributive Justice. New York (Bobbs Merrill Company), 1966. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). Galen and the Syllogism: An Examination of the Claim that Galen Originated the Fourt Figure of the Syllogism. Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Press), 1966. The Logic of Commands. London (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1966. 1967 Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1967; Supplementary Series of Foundations of Language. The Philosophy of Leibniz. Englewood Cliffs (Prentice Hall), 1967. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. Press), 1967.

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1968 Topics in Philosophical Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1968; Synthese Library.

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1969 Essays in Philosophical Analysis: Historical and Systematic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1969. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.) Introduction to Value Theory. Englewood Cliffs (Prentice Hall), 1969. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). Many-Valued Logic. New York (McGraw-Hill), 1969. Reprinted: Aldershot (Gregg Revivals), 1993. 1970 Scientific Explanation. New York (The Free Press), 1970. 1971 Temporal Logic. New York and Vienna (Springer-Verlag), 1971. Coauthored with Alastair Urquhart. 1972 Welfare: The Social Issues in Philosophical Perspective. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1972. 1973 The Coherence Theory of Truth. Oxford (The Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press), 1973. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). Conceptual Idealism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). The Primacy of Practice. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. Translated into Spanish as La Primacia de la práctica, Madrid (Editorial Tecnos), 1980.

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1974 Studies in Modality. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1974. (American Philosophical Quarterly, Monograph Series.) 1975 A Theory of Possibility. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1975. Co-published in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1975. 1976 Plausible Reasoning. Amsterdam (Van Gorcum), 1976. 1977 Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1977. Translated into Japanese as Taiwa No Roni Tokyo: Kinokuniya Press, 1981. Methodological Pragmatism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1977. Copublished in the USA by the New York University Press. 1978 Peirce’s Philosophy of Science. Dame Press), 1978.

Notre Dame (University of Notre

Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1978. Copublished in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Translated into German as Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt (Berlin: De Gruy-

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ter Verlag, 1982). Translated into French as Le Progrès Scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaries de France, 1993). 1979 Cognitive Systematization. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979. Copublished in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Translated into Spanish as Sistematización cognoscitiva (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1981). Leibniz: An Introduction to His Philosophy. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979; APQ Library of Philosophy. Co-published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Reprinted in 1986 by the University Press of America (Lanham, MD). Reprinted in 1993 by Gregg Revivals (Aldershot, UK). The Logic of Inconsistency: A Study in Nonstandard Possible-World Semantics and Ontology. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979; APQ Library of Philosophy. Co-authored with Robert Brandom. Published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ; 1979). 1980 Induction. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1980. Co-published in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Translated into German as Induktion (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1986). Scepticism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1980. Co-published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Unpopular Essays on Technological Progress. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1980. 1981 Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Nature: A Group of Essays. Dordrecht and Boston (Reidel), 1981.

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1982 Empirical Inquiry. Totowa, N.J. (Rowan & Littlefield), 1982. Copublished in Great Britain by Athlone Press (London, 1982). 1983 Kant’s Theory of Knowledge and Reality: A Group of Essays. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1983. Mid-Journey: An Unfinished Autobiography. Lanham MD (University Press of America) 1983. Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1983. 1984 The Limits of Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles (University of California Press), 1984. Translated into German as Grenzen der Wissenschaft. Dietzingen: Reclam Verlag, 1985. Translated into Spanish as Las Limites de la Sciencia (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1994). Translated into Italian as I limiti della scienza (Rome: Armando Editore, 1990). Second (revised and enlarged) edition (Pittsburgh: Unviersity of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). The Riddle of Existence: An Essay in Idealistic Metaphysics. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1984. 1985 Pascal’s Wager: An Essay on Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame (University of Notre Dame Press), 1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1985. Translated into Italian as La Lotti dei Sistemi (Genoa: Mari-

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etti, 1993); into German as Der Streit der Systeme (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1997); into Spanish (in progress). 1986 Ongoing Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. Lanham MD (University Press of America) 1986. 1987 Ethical Idealism: A Study of the Import of Ideals. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London (University of California Press), 1987. Forbidden Knowledge and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Cognition. Dordrecht (Reidel Publishing Co.), 1987. (Episteme Series, No.13). Scientific Realism: A Critical Reappraisal. Dordrecht (Reidel Publishing Co.), 1987. 1988 Rationality. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1988. Translated into German as Rationalität (Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen & Neumann, 1993); into Spanish as La Racionalidad (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1993); into Italian as Razionalità (Rome: Armando Editore, 1999). 1989 Cognitive Economy: Economic Perspectives in the Theory of Knowledge. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1989. Moral Absolutes: An Essay on the Nature and the Rationale of Morality. New York (Peter Lang Publishing Co.), l989. A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective. Savage, MD (Rowman and Littlefield), 1989. Translated into German as Warum sind wir nicht klüger (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 1994).

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1990 Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology. Stanford (Stanford University Press), 1990. 1991 Baffling Phenomena and Other Studies in the Philosophy of Knowledge and Valuation. Savage, MD (Rowman and Littlefield), 1991. Frank Plumpton Ramsey: On Truth, ed. by Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991). Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1991. Leibniz’s Monadology: An Edition for Students. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1991. Co-published in the United Kingdom by Routledge (London). 1992 The Validity of Values: Human Values in Pragmatic Perspective. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1992. 1993 Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1993. Standardism: An Empirical Approach to Philosophical Methodology. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1993. Reissued in paperback, 2000. 1994 American Philosophy Today, and Other Philosophical Studies. Savage, MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 1994.

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Animal Conversations: A Collection of Fables. Verona PA (NAP Publications), 1994. Metaphilosophical Inquiries. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1994. 1995 Essays in the History of Philosophy. Aldershot, UK (Avebury), 1995. Luck. New York (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), 1995. Translated into German as Glück (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1996); into Spanish by Carlos Gardini as Suerte, azard destino: Aventuras y desaventuras de la vida cotidiana (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1997). Also translated into Japanese and Korean. Process Metaphysics. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1995. Satisfying Reason: Studies in the Theory of Knowledge. Dordrecht (Kluwer), 1995. 1996 Instructive Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. Lanham MD (University Press of America), 1996. Priceless Knowledge? An Essay to Economic Limits to Scientific Progress. Savage, MD (Rowman and Littlefield), 1996. Public Concerns: Philosophical Studies of Social Issues. Lanham, MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 1996. Studien zur naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnislehre. (Königshausen & Neumann), 1996.

Würzburg

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1997 Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame (University of Notre Dame Press), 1997. Predicting the Future. Albany NY (State University of New York Press), 1997. Profitable Speculations: Essays on Current Philosophical Themes. Lanham MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 1997. 1998 Communicative Pragmatism: And Other Philosophical Essays on Language. Lanham MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 1998. Complexity: A Philosophical Overview. (Transaction Publishers), 1998.

New Brunswick NJ.

1999 Kant and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 1999. Razón y valores en la era cientifico-tecnológica. Barcelona (Editorial Paidos), 1999. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1999. 2000 Inquiry Dynamics. New Brunswick, NJ (Transaction), 2000. Nature and Understanding: A Study of the Metaphysics of Science Oxford (Clarendon Press), 2000.

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2001 Cognitive Pragmatism. 2001.

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Minding Matter and Other Essays in Philosophical Inquiry. Lanham, MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 2001. Paradoxes. Chicago, Ill. (Open Court Publishing Co.), 2001. Philosophical Reasoning. Oxford (Blackwell), 2001. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2001. 2002 Enlightenting Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. Lanham MD (Lexington Books, 2002). Fairness. New Brunswick, NJ (Transaction Publishers), 2002. Rationalität, Wissenschaft, und Praxis. Würzburg (Konigshausen & Neumann), 2002. 2003 Cognitive Idealization: On the Nature and Utility of Cognitive Ideals. Uxbridge, UK: (Cambridge Scholars Press) 2003. Niagara-on-the-Lake as a Confederate Refuge. Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada (Niagara Historical Society Museum), 2003. On Leibniz. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2003. Sensible Decisions On the Ways and Means of Rational Decision. Totowa, N.J. (Rowman & Littlefield) 2003.

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Rationality in Pragmatic Perspective. Lewiston, N.Y. (Mellen Press) 2003. Epistemology: On the Scope and Limits of Knowledge. Albany NY (SUNY Press) 2003. Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unrealized Possibility. Chicago, Ill. (Open Court Publishing Co.) 2003. 2004 Value Matters: Studies in Axiology. Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2004. 2005 Cognitive Harmony. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2005. Common Sense. Milwaukee, WI (Marquette University Press) 2005. [Aquinas Lecture] Cosmos and Logos: Studies in Greek Philosophy. Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2005). Epistemic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2005. Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2005. Reason and Reality: Realism and Idealism in Pragmatic Perspective. Lanham, MD. (Rowman & Littlefield), 2005. Scholastic Meditations. Washington, DC (Catholic University of America Press), 2005. What If? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy. New Brunswick, NJ. (Transaction Books), 2005.

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2005-2006 Nicholas Rescher: Collected Papers, 10 vol’s; Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2005: Studies in 20th Century Philosophy, Studies in Pragmatism, Studies in Idealism, Studies in Philosophical Inquiry. 2006: Studies in Cognitive Finitude, Studies in Social Philosophy, Studies in Philosophical Anthropology, Studies in Value Theory, Studies in Metaphilosophy, Studies in the History of Logic. 2006 Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realistic Perspective. Amherst, N.Y. (Prometheus Books), 2006 Essuis fur les fondements d’ontologie du procès. Edited by Michel Weber. Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2006. Process Philosophical Deliberations. Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2006. Presumption and Tentative Cognition. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 2006. Philosophical Dialectic: An Essay in Metaphilosophy. Albany, NY. (SUNY Press), 2006. Epistemetrics. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 2006. Error. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2006. 2007 Is Philosophy Dispensable? And other Philosophical Studies . Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2007. Conditionals. Boston (MIT Press), 2007. Interpreting Philosophy: The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics. Frankfurt (Ontos Verlag), 2007.

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2. WRITINGS ABOUT NICHOLAS RESCHER’S PHILOSOPHY Ernest Sosa (ed.), The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979). [A collection of critical essays with brief replies by N.R. [The contributors include: Annette Baier, Stephen Barker, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., Laurence BonJour, Robert E. Butts, Roderick M. Chisholm, L. Jonathan Cohen, Jude J. Dougherty, Brian Ellis, R.M. Hare, Hide Ishiguro, George Von Wright, and John W. Yolton.] Heinrich Coomann, Die Kohaerenztheorie der Wahrheit: Eine kritische Darstellung der Theorie Reschers von Ihrem historischen Hintergrund (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1983). Robert Almeder (ed.), Praxis and Reason: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.) [A collection of critical and expanding essa ys with brief replies by NR. The contributors include: Timo Airaksinen, Robert Almeder, Antonio Cua, John E. Hare, Risto Hilpinen, John Kekes, Gerald J. Massey, Jack W. Meiland, Mark Pastin, Friedrick Rapp, James Sterba, and Dennis Temple.] Andrea Bottani, Verità e Coerenza: Suggio su’ll epistemologia coerentista di Nicholas Rescher, (Milano: Franco Angeli Liberi, 1989). [A systematic study of NR’s coherence theory of truth.] Michele Marsonet, The Primacy of Practical Reason: An Essay on Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995). Axel Wüstehube and Michael Quante (eds.), Pragmatic Idealism: Critical Essays on Nicholas Rescher’s System of Pragmatic Idealism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998). [Critical essays on NR’s “Pragmatic Idealism” trilogy by eighteen contemporary philosophers in Europe and the USA.] Martin Carrier et. al (eds.), Science at the Century’s End: Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science (Pittsburgh and Konstanz: University of Pittsburgh Press and University of Konstanz Press, 2000). [Pp. 40-134 contains a symposium devoted to NR’s work on the

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Sellars, W.: —“Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” In: H. Feigl, M. Scriven (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. I, Minneapolis, 1956. Reprinted in W. Sellars, 1963, chapter 5, pp. 127196. —Science, Perception, and Reality. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1963. —Science and Metaphysics. Variations on Kantian Themes. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968. —“Language as Thought and as Communication.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 29 (1969), pp. 506-527. —Philosophical Perspectives. Metaphysics and Epistemology. Ridgeview, Atascadero (Ca), 1979. —Naturalism and Ontology. Ridgeview, Atascadero (CA), 1979. Skolimowski, H.: —“Quine, Ajdukiewicz, and the Predicament of 20th Century Philosophy.” In: L. E. Hahn, P.A. Schilpp (eds.), The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.), 1986, pp. 463-491. Stapp, H.P.: —Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics. Springer-Verlag, BerlinHeidelberg- New York, 1993. Strawson, P. F.: —The Bounds of Sense. Methuen, London, 1976. —Analysis and Metaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992.

236

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES

Teilhard de Chardin, P.: —The Phenomenon of Man. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1959. Tiles, J. J. E.: —Dewey. Routledge, London-New York, 1990. Urmson, J.O.: —and J. Ree (eds.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy & Philosophers, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, New edition. Weinberg, S.: —Dreams of a Final Theory. Pantheon Books, New York, 1992. West, C.: —The American Evasion of Philosophy. A genealogy of Pragmatism. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1989. Williams, B.: —“Wittgenstein and Idealism.” In: J.V. Canfield (ed.), The Philosophy of Wittgenstein. 8: Knowing, Naming, Certainty and Idealism, Garland, New York-London, 1986, pp. 318-337. Winch, P.: —The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relations to Philosophy. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1958. Wittgenstein, L.: —Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (ed. by D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974. —Philosophical Investigations. Macmillan, London-New York, 1968.

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—On Certainty (edited by G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright). Harper & Row, New York, 1972. —Culture and Value (edited by G. H. von Wright and transl. by Peter Winch). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London, 1984. Wolpert, L.: —The Unnatural Nature of Science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1994, 2nd pr.

238

INDEX OF NAMES Airaksinen, Timo, 222 Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz, 223 Almeder, Robert F., 28, 122n32, 222-223 Anderson, Alan R., 24 Anscombe, G. E. M, 223 Apel, Karl Otto, 160 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 35 Aristotle, 35, 72, 127, 137, 167 Asimov, Isaac, 75 Austin, J. F., 29 Ayer, A. J., 17n9, 19n24, 24, 140, 223-224 Baier, Annette, 222 Baier, Kurt, 24 Barker, Stephen, 222 Barrett, R. B., 224 Belnap, Nuel D. Jr., 24, 222 Bergmann, Gustav, 97n42, 224 Blanshard, Brand, 9, 65, 68n37 Bohnert, Herbert G., 22 Bohr, Neils, 130 BonJour, Laurence, 222 Boole, George, 3 Borradori, Giovanna, 19n26, 197, 208n41 Bosanquet, Bernard, 9 Bottani, Andrea , 222 Bradley, F. H., 9-10, 59-60, 64, 67n21, 89, 100, 118, 127 Brandom, Robert, 5, 18n12, 63-64, 67n29, 148n2, 213, 224 Brentano, Franz, 35 Burke, Tom, 6, 18n14, 18n15, 18n17, 224 Butts, Robert E., 222 Caesar, Julius, 120, 137, 139-140 Campbell, Donald T., 76, 96n17, 225 Carnap, Rudolf, 13-15, 18n13, 22, 25, 27, 59, 63, 66n20, 92, 124, 129, 140, 225

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

Carrier, Martin, 223 Cavell, Stanley, 16 Chisholm, Roderick M., 72, 222 Church, Alonzo, 22-23 Churchland, P. S., 97n35 Churchland, P.M., 97n35, 225 Coffa, J.A., 225 Cohen, L. Jonathan, 222 Coomann, Heinrich, 222 Copleston, Frederick, 44n44, 226 Cua, Antonio, 222 Danto, Arthur C., 16 Darwin, Charles, 76 Davidson, Donald, 3, 15, 16, 19n26, 19n29, 20n33, 22, 32, 43n39, 43n40, 44n50, 74, 84-85, 95n11, 131-136, 138-140, 149n23, 149n26, 149n33, 149n34, 150n40, 181, 193-197, 201, 208n32, 208n34, 208n35, 208n36, 208n39, 208n40, 226 Davies, P. C. W., 18n20, 77, 89, 96n20, 97n40, 122n33, 226 Delaney, C. F., 207n10 Derrida, Jacques, 27 Descartes, René, 72 Devitt, Michael, 132, 149n24, 226 Dewey, John, 3-7, 12, 16, 17n8, 20n33, 23, 26, 31, 37, 44n47, 47, 58, 6364, 66n30, 83-86, 97n43, 98n54, 109, 123, 127, 182, 186, 193, 195, 197-198, 200, 205, 208n44, 227 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 141-142 Dougherty, Jude J., 222 Dummett, Michael, 28, 42n20, 43n40, 70-71, 95n1, 95n2, 95n4, 129-130, 227 Einstein, Albert, 87, 112 Ellis, Brian, 222 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 26 Evnine, Simon, 208n38, 227 Ewing, A. C., 58, 60 Feigl, Herbert, 13 Fetzer, J. H., 122n32, 223

240

NAME INDEX

Feyerabend, Paul K., 81, 97n33, 97n34, 156. 227 Flower, Elizabeth, 20n36, 227 Foucault, Michel, 27 Frege, Gottlob, 6-7, 18n13, 28, 33, 63, 71, 74, 95n2, 130, 145, 198 Fukuyama, Francis, 161, 178n21, 228 Galen, 137 Galilei, Galileo, 90 Gödel, Kurt, 33 Green, T. H., 9 Gribbin, J., 122n33, 226 Grünbaum, Adolf, 23-24 Gutting, Gary, 207n10 Haack, Susan, 228 Habermas, Jürgen, 27, 154, 156, 159-160, 162, 178n10 Hacking, Ian, 42n12, 200, 208n48, 228 Hare, John E., 222 Hare, R. M., 222 Harman, Gilbert, 174, 179n44 Harré, Rom, 179n33 Haugeland, John, 27 Hegel, G,. W. F., 27, 65, 88, 90, 93, 118, 127 Heidegger, Martin, 25, 27, 46, 65 Helmer, Olaf, 209 Hempel, Carl Gustav, 13, 22-23, 32, 228 Heraclitus, 127 Hilbert, David, 89 Hilpinen, Risto, 222 Hitler, Adolf, 22, 158 Hooker, C.A., 228 Hume, David, 35, 69 Husserl, Edward, 35 Hylton, Peter, 9, 19n23 Ishiguro, Hidé, 222 James, William, 15, 17, 20n39, 36-37, 44n47, 83, 86, 98n54, 131, 134, 149n21, 149n32, 182, 195, 229

241

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

Kant, Immanuel, 35, 69, 86, 90, 94, 131-32, 137, 142, 167, 169, 197-98 Kekes, John, 222 Kirkham, Richard, 60, 63, 67n26, 139, 229 Kitcher, Philip, 18n13, 229 Kornblith, Hilary, 229 Krausz, Michael, 179n33 Kraut, Robert, 138-140, 150n42, 229 Kuhn, Thomas S., 2, 229 Kulp, Christopher B., 230 Küng, Guido, 230 Lakatos, Imre, 18n16 Laudan, Larry, 107, 121n14, 230 Leibniz, G. W., 22-23, 35, 88, 90, 203 Lewis, Clarence I., 5, 12-13, 19n26, 20n36, 37, 44n45, 72, 83, 86, 118, 125, 182, 193, 197-98, 205 Locke, John, 90, 106, 191 Lorenz, Konrad, 76 Loux, Michael J., 207n10 Lovejoy, Arthur O., 36, 44n44, 143 Mach, Ernst, 3 Malcolm, Norman, 230 Marmura, Michael E., 210 Marsonet, Michele, 19n22, 19n27, 20n34, 66n6, 66n15, 95n8, 96n21, 97n38, 222, 231 Marx, Karl, 127 Massey, Gerald J., 222 McDowell, John, 207n19, 230 McTaggart, J. M. E., 9 Meiland, Jack W., 222 Meinong, Alexius, 35 Mill, John Stuart, 80, 161, 178n10 Misak, Cheryl J., 177n7, 231 Mittelstrass, Juergen , 223 Monk, Ray, 19n25, 231 Moore, George E., 9-10, 25, 29, 189 Moutafakis, Nicholas J., 223

242

NAME INDEX

Murphey, Murray G., 20n36, 227 Murphy, John P., 43n41, 44n45, 231 Murray, Paul D., 223 Nabavi, Lotfallah , 223 Nagel, Thomas, 231 Neurath, Otto, 73 Newton, Sir Iaasac, 119 Nietzsche, Friedrich W., 27 Nozick, Robert, 16, 27, 29, 42n12 Ockham, William of, 104, 134 Ogden, Charles K., 232 Oldroyd, D. R., 96n32, 121n13, 232 Orenstein, Alex, 232 Pap, Arthur,67n28, 232 Pascal, Blaise, 43n30 Passmore, John, 132, 149n25, 232 Pastin, Mark, 222 Pears, David Francis, 232 Peirce, Charles S., 3, 5, 12, 17, 17n7, 37, 76, 83, 86, 90, 109, 113, 123, 153-54, 178n10, 182, 193, 195, 197-98, 205 Plantinga, Alvin, 233 Plato, 127, 145 Popper, Karl R., 13, 15, 17n1, 17n2, 32, 74-75, 80-82, 95n15, 96n26, 96n28, 96n29, 96n31, , 181, 208n47, 233 Prigogine, Iiya, 65, 66n34, 233 Putnam, Hilary, 3, 11, 13, 15, 19n32, 20n35, 20n39, 36, 64, 109, 148n17, 233-234 Quante, Michael, vi n1 Quine, Willard V. O. , 3, 5, 11, 13-16, 18n11, 19n25, 27, 32-33, 42n12, 43n40, 64, 72-74, 82-83, 95n8, 95n9, 95n10, 95n11, 97n37, 97n38, 104, 121n8, 123, 126, 127, 132, 139, 148n10, 181-206, 206n2, 206n3, 234 Rapp, Friedrick, 222 Rawls, John, 159-160, 162, 175, 178n24, 234 Richards, I. A, 232

243

Michele Marsonet • Idealism and Praxis

Reichenbach, Hans, 13, 92 Rescher, Erwin, Hans, 22 Romanos, George D., 234 Roosevelt, Franklin, D., 16 Rorty, Richard, 3, 5, 11-12, 16-17, 18n12, 19n29, 19n32, 20n33, 20n34, 24-25, 27, 30-31, 33-34, 36-38, 41n10, 42n15, 42n24, 43n27, 43n33, 43n36, 43n41, 44n47, 44n48 44n49, 44n50, 49-50, 61, 66n6, 66n7, 84, 97n41, 98n54, 109, 132-133, 136, 140, 148n4, 150n45, 156, 167, 172, 174, 181, 193-195, 197-201, 203, 207n19, 208n33, 208n43, 235 Royce, Josiah, 9, 178n10 Ruetsche, Laura , 223 Russell, Bertrand, 3, 6-7, 9-10, 18n13, 25, 27-29, 33, 46, 63, 67n30, 89, 92, 127, 148n6, 148n12, 198, 235 Schiller, F. S. C., 37 Schlick, Moritz, 70, 141, 150n47 Schneewind, Jerome, 24 Schrödinger, Erwin, 87 Sellars, Wilfrid, 24, 66n2, 132,181-206, 207n14, 207n19, 207n20, 207n22, 207n25, 236 Simmel, George, 134 Skolimowski, Henry, 236 Solomon, W. David, 207n10 Sosa, Ernest, 28 Spencer, Herbert, 76 Sprigge, Timothy L. S., 55, 66n14 Stace, Walter T., 59 Stangers, Isabelle, 67n34, 233 Stapp, Henry P., 131, 134, 149n22, 236 Sterba, James, 222 Sterelny, Kim, 149n24, 226 Strawson, Peter F., 8, 19n21, 236 Tarski, Alfred, 13, 33, 63 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 77, 89, 96n22, 96n24, 237 Temple, Dennis, 222 Tiles, J. J. E., 237 Toulmin, Stephen, 75

244

NAME INDEX

Urmson, James O., 23 Urquhart, Alastair, 211 Vico, Giambattista, 53, 170 von Frisch, Karl, 76 von Wright, George, 222 Weinberg, Steven, 109, 121n17, 237 West, Cornel, 43n41, 44n45, 237 Whitehead, Alfred North, 33 Wigner, Eugene, 87 Williams, Bernard, 10, 19n24, 237 Winch, Peter, 237 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 3, 5, 7, 9-12, 14-15, 17n10, 18n13, 20n38, 27-31, 33, 42n25, 43n26, 44n47, 52, 63, 66n11, 128, 189, 200, 203, 207n18, 237-238 Wolpert, Lewis, 238 Wüstehube, Axel, vi n1 Yolton, John W., 222

245

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ReadingRescher Nicholas J. Moutafakis Rescher on Rationality, Values, and Social Responsibility A Philosophical Portrait ISBN 978-3-938793-63-3 251pp., Hardcover, EUR 89,00

Nicholas Rescher stands as a major figure in American Philosophy today. His philosophical contribution, ranging over fifty years, is marked by a profound respect for the fate of the human condition in a world of unparalleled scientific and technological innovation. This work brings under the centrally unifying theme of “rationality” some of the issues on values and personal responsibility he has addressed during his long and distinguished career. The book is intended to illustrate the synthesis of Rescher’s thinking relative to these ideas, as expounded upon for many decades. 2

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

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