On Rules and Principles 9783110321746, 9783110319255

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Nicholas Rescher On Rules and Principles A Philosophical Study of their Nature and Function

For Arnold van der Nat

Nicholas Rescher

On Rules and Principles A Philosophical Study of their Nature and Function

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PREFACE

T

his study of rules and principles was projected and executed in Pittsburgh during the spring of 2010. It forms part of my longstanding concern with issues of rational deliberation and decision. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her ever-competent aid in preparing this book for publication.

Pittsburgh, PA May 2010

INTRODUCTION

T

his is a study of the nature and function of rules and principles projected from a philosophical point of view. The role of procedural principles in human affairs is crucial and ubiquitous, and the theory of such norms is accordingly bound to play a key role in philosophical inquiry regarding matters of thought and action. Their prominent role in the conduct of human life makes the theory of rules and norms an important topic of considerations on the agenda of philosophy. How is a philosophical investigation into rules and principles to proceed? It is in order to offer a word regarding the methodology of inquiry at work in the present investigation. Basically three phases are at issue: •

The empirical, discourse oriented phase. How does the relevant range of terminology (rules, mandates, instructions, instructionfollowing, rule breaking, etc.) actually work in matters of everyday communication?

•

The analytic function-oriented phase. At what objectives does this range of discourse aim? What objectives are at issue here and what purposes are being served by the use of this language?

•

The philosophical phase. What constructive and instructive bearing upon the relevant range of philosophical issues do the linguistic and functional clarifications of the proceeding phases constitute to our understanding of the relevant philosophical issues?

Of course these three phases of deliberation do not fall into distinct sectors or chapters of the book; they become intermingled in the course of discussion. They are as it were leitmotiv themes that are recurrent throughout. But the attentive reader will have no difficulty in discerning them and will readily remark their collaborative interaction throughout. It will be helpful to foreshadow, even at this early stage, some of the key points that the present investigation will bring to view and highlight: • The procedural indispensability of rules and principles in human affairs.

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

ii

• The procedural insufficiency of rules to resolve all cases in complex matters. • The need for rules to be validated in functional principles. • The differentiation of rules into various distinct classes along many different taxomic lines. • The key rule of rules in implementation hierarchies as a linkage between functional principles geared to project teleology and the concrete rulings of particular cases. • That every rational enterprise had its characteristic body of fundamental principles that inhere in the functional and purposive nature of the enterprise at issue. • That these principles provide for a descending cascade of subordinate norms, rules and (ultimately) specific rulings—all of them unified, coordinated, and validated by subordination under the goal structure of the enterprise. • That such hierarchical subordination obtains across the board— irrespective of whether the enterprise at issue is mandatory for us (cognition, nourishment) or optional (negation, dentistry). And whether it is theoretical (philosophy) or practical (agriculture). •

The thread of purposive fundamentality that runs throughout the nomic hierarchy at issue embodies a functional and purposive rationale. The present theory is accordingly of a decidedly pragmatic orientation.

In sum, the present book develops an account of the theory of rules and norms that proceeds from a decidedly pragmatic point of view bringing into the foreground their role as instrumentalities in the management of human affairs.

Rules and Principles (A Study of the Rationality of Norms) Part I: Rules Chapter 1:

Rules

1

Chapter 2:

Rule Conflicts, Higher Order Rules, and Rules of Reason

15

Chapter 3:

Functional Hierarchies

27

Chapter 4:

Judgment and the Limited Reach of Rules

43

Chapter 5:

Rules, the Social Order, and Morality

53

Part II: Principles Chapter 6: Principles: Their Nature and Function

71

Chapter 7: Functional Hierarchies Again

83

Chapter 8: Principles of Rational Inquiry

91

Chapter 9: The Principle of Sufficient Reason

105

Chapter 10: Philosophical Principles

121

Chapter 11: Principles in Natural Philosophy

147

Chapter 12: Leibnizian Physics as a Case Study

157

Chapter 13: Moral Principles

187

Coda

207

References

209

Name Index

217

Chapter 1 RULES 1. THE NATURE OF RULES ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Rules play a crucial role in shaping our rational proceedings, alike in matters of belief and of action. (2) Rules have a categorical structure: there is a standardized register of questions one can ask about any rule. And this engenders a characteristic taxonomy of rules. (3) The ascription of rules to others is a matter of fundamentally inductive inference. ____________________________________________________________

R

ules figure importantly in our lives. And they are important for philosophy as well, because philosophy is by nature the love of wisdom, and it is invariably wise to live by the appropriate rules. Although the term rule (regula) originally functions in a primarily legal context of usage, the Stoics, who projected the idea of laws of nature, also correspondingly enlarged the use of rules into a wider range. Thus St. Augustine often spoke of the rules that function in the artes liberals (grammar, music, etc.), the ancient mathematicians put rules of mathematical demonstration on the agenda via actions and theorems, and ancient technicians—and builders in particular—projected rules of mechanical procedure. We still refer to a straight-edged measuring instrument as a ruler. And in traditional terminology a king too is a ruler. He rules by “laying down the law”—that is, by establishing the rules that prevail with respect to his subjects. Rules are generalized procedural instructions. They specify what is to be done in certain circumstances. They specify that something of a certain general sort is to be done in conditions of a certain general sort. (And sometimes they stipulate not only the that of it but also the how of it.) Accordingly they coordinate the circumstances and conditions in which an agent may find himself with a course of action that is to be followed in such a case.

2

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

Rules of conduct are often framed in the form of precepts or maxims, this being a pithely expressed rule of conduct purporting sagacious counsel. The Pocket Oracle of Balthazar Gracián1 or the Maxims of the Duc de la Rochefincauld afford typical illustrations. For Immanuel Kant a maxim is, effect, a rule that an agent sets for himself as a determinative guide for his own conduct. (In this regard he sees moral virtue as tantamount to wise self-legislation.) A universal rule has the format • In circumstances C always/never do A. And this has noteworthy consequences. For here the features of universality at issue with always/never here functions in a limited and conditional way, relations to the circumstances. The second key feature is that of imperation or command regarding the performance of the cautions A. This means that in effect a rule can be views as an injunction to truth-making: • So proceed as to make it true that: “Whenever circumstance C arise then action A is (or: is not) performed by you. A universal rule is, in effect, an injunction to truth-making with respect to generalities. So obeying a rule is something that only an intelligent agent can do. Now an individual has little difficulty in obeying a general rule like “Always salute an officer you meet” on a given occasion—or every on a given day. However, we cannot say that he has obeyed it in a temporally unqualified way until he is at the end of his military career (or perhaps his life). Rules are not obeyed in unrestricted generality, they are obeyed in particular occasions or groups thereof. Rules appertain to agents—indeed to intelligent agents who can, by willing determination, proceed to follow instructions. The generalization (1) Whenever the doorbell button is pushed, the doorbell rings. May well be true, but is not a rule. Only figuratively and metaphorically is it an instruction to the doorbell to the effect. (2) Ring whenever the doorbell button is pushed.

RULES

3

On the other hand, the instruction to the parlor-maid (3) Answer the door whenever the doorbell rings. Enjoins upon her the rule (4) To answer the door whenever the doorbell rings. And this explicit rule will, by virtue of the fact at issue in (1) carry in its wake the consequential but merely tacit rule (5) To answer the doorbell whenever the doorbell button is pushed. But such an implicit “rule is not an authentic rule, any more than a stuffed owl is an owl. Like the pseudo-rule at issue with (2) it fails to function in the agent’s motivational repertoire, as an authentic rule must do. Rules have a limited jurisdiction. They apply not necessarily to everyone at large but merely to everyone of a certain sort (practicing physicians, sea captains). Obeying a rule is thus a matter of conforming actions to generic types of conditions. Such processual uniformity is something at which machines are particularly adept. They, however, are not free agents who choose to conform to rules, but merely function “as though” they were so. Accordingly to speak of machines as “obeying” certain rules in their modus operandi is to employ a figure of speech. To be sure, rule-conforming behavior can result in various distinct ways. For example, it can be the product of: • conscious and deliberate effort • habituation, be it self-produced or externally imposed (as per Pavlovian conditioning) Who makes the rules? Where to they come from? Various agencies can be operative in the institution of rules: • Human fiat: the rule of games, for example, are instituted by those who invent or modify the games at issue.

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Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

• Personal customs: the rules of behavior that characterize a person’s habits, for example. • Social customs: the rules of fashion, for example, or of marriage ceremonial. • Legal or legislative mandate: the rules governing the transfer of real property, for example. • Hybrid cases of Legislated custom: the rules of the road, for example, or of royal succession, which give formal sanction to a preestablished custom. Rules can vary in their standing, and in point of their origination rules fall into four classes: 1. Behavior-reflective rules that reflect prevailing regularities in the comportment of people, something that is a matter of general practices and nothing more. Such rules emerge from the behavioral regularities and exhibit them to view. The individual who breaks such a rule will simply be considered eccentric. 2. Behavior shaping rules that constrain (rather than merely reflect) behavior. Such rules are stipulated as such and enforced upon the behavioral practices of people. Rules of the sort in driving are an example. They are instituted by design and their violation carries sanction of some sort—if only public disapproval. 3. Mixed-status rules which begin in merely behavioral regularities but are then impressed upon the behavior of people by various agents and agencies of social conditioning (teachers, social arbiters, etc.). The rules of orthography and grammatical usage are of this sort—as are the rules of etiquette. 4. Finally, there are also those rules, established by mere fiat, which define a certain range of practice as such. The rules of chess or of tictac-toe are of this nature. The individual who does not know such a rule is simply not “playing the game.”

RULES

5

A rule must be a stipulation for someone to do something. Even a “claim” is not a proper claim unless it is made by someone, as a “rule” is not a proper rule unless it is so for someone. Two different conditions are at issue here. The first is the matter of jurisdiction as it were—that is the range of persons to whom the rule applies. The second is the matter of situation that is, the range of circumstances in which the rule comes into operation. A rule need not specify what must be done, it can merely specify what may be done. The queen at chess can move laterally (like a rook) or diagonally (like a bishop). Again, the player has a choice for opening: he can begin play of the game by moving a pawn or a rook: both are available moves. Accordingly, two sorts of rules can be envisioned: the mandatory and the permissive. All the same, the aspect of imperfection is critical for rules. Those theses that are permissive in saying that either A1 of A2 may be done are not actual rules unless they go on to stipulate that at least one of these alternatives must be done. Jurisdictionally, a rule can be either universal and applicable to everyone or rangewise delimited and applicable only to a certain type or group of individuals. Situationally a rule can be one of: (1) unrestricted applicably in all situations (2) general and applied to all normal or ordinary situations, or (3) limited and applicable to only in situations of a certain special kind. The defining features of categorical rule is that they are both jurisdictionally universal and situationally exceptionless. It was the characteristic feature of Immanuel Kant’s ethical philosophy that he insisted that all authentic moral rules are categorical. (1) Mandatory or imperative. Throughout situations of type T when X occurs one must [or must not] do A. (2) Optional or permissive. Throughout situations of type T when X occurs one may do A or B. Rules thus envision three sorts of actions: required, prohibited, and optional. In any event, rule conformity is a matter of all or nothing: within the relevant range of procedure one either honors a rule or breaks it. In assertoric substance and format rules look to be universal: they talk in the language of always and never. But in Status or standing rules may be • categorical in broking no exceptions whatsoever

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

6

____________________________________________________________ Display 1 THE BINDING STATUS OF RULES I. CATEGORICAL Categorical rules are binding upon everyone in all circumstances. Examples are • • •

Always respect the rights of others. Never inflict needless injury. Never make factual claims without any evidence for them

II. GENERAL General rules are binding upon everyone in “normal” conditions and “ordinary” circumstances. Examples are • • •

Always keep your promises. Never kill people. Never make a claim you believe to be false.

III. CONDITIONAL Conditional rules are binding upon those those who wish to realize a certain optional end or objective • •

Always establish credibility with someone you hope to provide. Always secure the ingredients first if you plan to bake a pie.

____________________________________________________________ • general in being geared to the normal or usual course of things • conditional in specifying what an agent is to do if he aims at a certain end or objective to the elective aims and purposes of the agent. They say, in effect, “Here is how you can or should proceed if you are trying to reach a certain result (e.g., bake a pound cake, exhibit the cube root of a number). The fundamental rules of morality, rationality, and law are categorical. The situation is actually even more complicated because rules can also be quasi-mandatory. For there are two sorts of mandatory rules: the outright universal and the merely general. The former, universal rules purport invariability: they require that the agent always or never to do something:

RULES

7

The latter, general rules merely enjoin what is to be done generally, ordinarily, “as a rule,” whenever practicable, unless unusual circumstances intervene, or the like. Such general rules do not specify flat-out and adequately that something or other is always to be done, but only tentatively and provisionally that it is to be done UNLESS there is in the circumstances a good reason for not so proceeding. They require conformity only: • barring impediments • unless circumstances counterindicate • under unreal conditions • whenever practicable Note, however, that if the exceptions can be made fully explicit, the rule can still be seen as a universal mandate outside this determinate range. Rules do not offer suggestions. They do not indicate what one might possibly do but stipulate what one should or must appropriately do. Are there unbreakable rules? No—rules canalize the behaviour of free agents in situations of choice. They can conform or not confirm. However, in some cases (specifically that of games—there seem to be no others) the rules are constitutive of the practice at issue. If you violate the rules of chess you are no longer playing chess In general, however, rules are changeable. Corporate executive like to change them in their firm. Legislatures exist to change them. The drift of custom manages to change them. Such changes are sometimes for the good and sometimes not. It all depends on whether they prove effective in situations for whose management the rules are instantiated. But one significant point must not be lost sight of here. Any change in the prevailing rues is to some extent confusing as people have to reconfigure their expectation in the light of these changes. 2. REALMS OF PRACTICE All rules are rules of practice—even the so-called theoretical or cognitive rules, seeing that for inquiry and developing knowledge is itself a practice.

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

8

The various domains of thought and action—i.e., “realms of practice”— differ with regard to the sorts of procedural rules that are appropriate for the field. In mathematics, for example, one would be unwilling to accept merely general rather than exception-admitting rules. We want to have it that • Never class a number as prime except for 2. rather than • Numbers divisible by two are usually to be diversified as non-prime. And the same situation holds in natural science. In botany, for example, we want to have it that • Expect an eclipse of the sun only in those same circumstances where the moon intervenes between the earth and the sun And not • As a rule, do not expect an eclipse. The situation is, of course, quite different in an applied science such a medicine. We know how various treatments and medicaments usually function, but there is seldom anything universally invariable about such matters. The rules (Lat. regulae) enjoin a certain regularity: they exist to engender uniformity. Whenever “In circumstances C to A” is an appropriate rule we accordingly will have it that: “Whenever things run in their proper course, people always do A in circumstances C”. It is one of the objects. Rules have to form an object to provide for uniformity and predictability. Rules are exclusionary. They stipulate that certain phenomena and certain concatenations of phenomena will not (or should not) exist. Any coherent set of rules dismiss certain situations as unacceptable. Our present discussion will focus on the most familiar situation that of universal rules. Such rules purport to apply always and everywhere. They are so formulated as to admit of no exceptions, unlike those merely general rules that are porous and permeable.

RULES

9

__________________________________________________________ Display 2 RULE PARAMETERS •

Action/Operation —Do A —Do not do A (refrain from doing A)

•

Frequency —Always whenever . . . [Positive universal] —Never whenever . . . [Negative universal] —Ordinary/usually whenever . . . [Standardistic]

•

Conditionality —The circumstance/condition C obtains

•

Catchment (range of jurisdiction) —Everyone —Physicians —Parents —Etc.

•

Modality —Must/should [Mandatory] —Must not, may not, shall not [Prohibitive] —May, is allowed to [Permissive]

•

Regulative Authority

_________________________________________________________ Since a performative rule is a general injunction that something is to be one in a certain sort of way, and this raises a series of characteristic questions with regard to the descriptive parameters at issue, what? when? and above all why? These issues are outlined in Display 2. As regards the issue of regulative authority, it would be useful if there were a single term to denote someone with the power to set the rules, covering the whole spectrum form pope and dictator down to a shopkeeper vis-à-vis his employees or a lady of the house vis-à-vis her maid. Perhaps regulator will do the job— although actual usage does not in fact quite work that way. Sometimes a rule is abstracted from a certain uniformity of practice, other times this uniformity is the crucial consequence of a particular rule. Rules are a purposive device. Every appropriate rule has a rational—an ac-

10

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

count of how it is that obeying the rule is beneficial and breaking it detrimental with respect to the realization of some good. To be sure, Rules can be overdone: they too can become “too much of a good thing.” The myriad of petty Rules of court etiquette afford a classical illustration of such rulishness gone wild. At first these rules doubtless served a productive function in enhancing the mystique of royalty and creating a sense of social solidarity among the mainstay support of a ruler upon whose power the law and order of the land depended. But over the course of time the means transmuted into a pointless convoluted end in itself. Statements are evaluated in the range of true/false; actions are evaluated in the range of right/wrong; rules are evaluated in the range of appropriate/inappropriate. The appropriateness of rules—like that of any instrumentality—turns on two considerations: (1) the inherent validity of the end at whose realization this instrumentality is directed, and (2) the capacity of this instrumentality to function in an effective and efficient way in realizing this end. A rule that proves counterproductive or inefficient is for this very reason inappropriate. Rules are thus in general part of a realm of practice that is coordinated with a certain contingently determined aim or objective. Only in two cased do they relate to an aspect of our condition relating to what we inherently are (or at any rate see ourselves as being), viz. rational agents. Accordingly the rules of rationality (i.e., reason) rules of free agency (i.e. ethics) are incomparably mandatory for us all. Rules can be classified on the basis of various taxonomies. 1. by the logical nature of the rule. (Is it universal or merely general? Is it mandatory or permissive?) 2. by the nature of the agents: upon whom is it binding? (Does the rule hold for everyone or only for certified public accountants?) 3. by the nature of the situation. (Does it hold for the high seas or for territorial waters?) 4. by the nature of the relevant domain of action. (Is it cognitive [accepting, rejecting, declaiming] or is it physical [e.g. saluting an officer]?) 5. by being practical or theoretical. (Does it relate to what to think or to what to do?)

RULES

11

6. by the rule-grounding authority. (Is it a legal rule, a “rule of the game?”) Basically there are three things one can do with respect to a rule • follow/obey/honor it • break/disobey/violate it • ignore it Whenever a rule is valid and appropriate, the sensible thing is to do the first and proceed as the rule stipulates. But no always! For in a complex world the circumstances that the rule envisions may not arise in the way in which the rule envisions them. When a rule is appropriate there is always a sanction inherent in failing to honor it by ignoring or breaking. The sanction can be imposed by others or simply by “circumstances.” (See Display 3). The breaking of appropriate rules always exacts a price. Whenever it is acceptable (venial) for an otherwise appropriate rule to be broken, he have to do with an exception to the rule. And any rule that admits of exceptions will thereby be general rather than universal, seeing that such rules brook no exceptions. Strictly speaking, as Leibniz insisted, the rule that admits exceptions is no rule at all, any more than a statement that contradicts itself qualifies as a proper statement.2 He saw the common precept that “Every rule has its exceptions” as a fraud and delusion. It generally takes some effective authority to institute a rule and put it into operation. And a considerable range of possibilities arises here: • the social system (e.g. moves such as rules of etiquette) • the political system (e.g. legislation) • the legal system • a society of practitioners (e.g. the league of chartered accountants) • an employer

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

12

__________________________________________________________ Display 3 THE SANCTIONS OF RULES Types of rule

Sanctions

Rules of law

Civil or civil penalties

Rules of etiquette

Social disapproval

Rules of safety

Rules of injury to self or others

Rules of games

Self-exile from the game at issue

Rules of custom

Being considered eccentric or even crazy

Rules of language

Risk of failed or flawed communication

_________________________________________________________ • a club or organization • etc. Moreover, an individual person can—and should!—set certain rules for his own conduct. • By law (e.g., the rules for voting eligibility) • By custom (e.g., the rules of etiquette) • By convention (e.g., the rules of chess) • By institutional mandate (e.g. rules of saluting in the military) • By collective agreement (e.g., the membership vales of a club) • By personal decision (e.g., self-imposed rules of diet) • By functional requirements (e.g. the rules for extracting square roots)

RULES

13

There are many possibilities here. These include: • House rules for a hotel or dormitory • Rules of a firm or company • Rules of a game • Rules of etiquette • Rules of a club, organization, or society • Rules of grammar However, some rules have no specific authorizing source. Like the rules of morality or rationality they emerge into being from the world at large. No individual or group specifically institutes them. To be sure, this delimination holds only of the explicit and basic rules of operation. These may well engender tacitly rulish consequences, as when “Never do A” entails “Never do both A and B.” At this level there will of course be no finitude. Often rules are functionally limited: they apply only to those who engage in a certain particular practice or who serve in a particular role. Physicians, sea captains, and public accountant are all subject to a code of practice that enjoins particular rules or procedure on them. Rules of a game only apply to the players, rules of a profession only for its practitioners, rules of etiquette only for members of the society, legal rules only for those of a particular jurisdiction, etc. However, two sorts of rules are functionality unlimited: the rational and the moral. By their very nature they apply to everyone alike, the governing presumption being that everyone lies within their range of applicability. Those mandatory universally binding rules obtain states because they relate to what we are by nature, rather than what we choose or what rule society imposes upon us (e.g. by drafting us into the military). As homo sapiens we are by nature being and human agents—each within a wider community of similarly constituted beings. It is this universal feature of our existential condition that enjoins those universally obligations at issue in those universal rules. To be of use, a manifold of rules must be of practicable size, something one can manageably survey and employ. If the rules were vastly numer-

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Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

ous—let alone infinite in number—they would be of no use to anyone and pointless. If they are to guide our actual proceedings rules must be accessible. 3. PROBLEMS OF RULE ASCRIPTION Rules are purposive imperatives: they stipulate what must be done within a certain range of practice to possibilize or at least facilitate the attainment of its correlative objectives. Rules serve in regularities insofar as people conform to them. The realization of deniable regularities is, after all, the very reason for being of rules. However, rule attribution on the basis of observed regularities always involves a cognitive risk. For how can we ever tell which rules it is that people are following? Given that observational data are always finite and limited in scope while rules are generally open-ended we confront the classic “Problem of Induction” to the effect that finite information will always underdetermine our finitude exceeding claims.3 There are issues I have discussed at length elsewhere and I do not propose to pursue the matter here. The upshot is that in particular we keep matters as simple as possible subject to never allowing complications to arise until circumstances constrain them upon us. The key this mode of inductive reasoning—as with others— lies in rational economy. Thus the inference from a given set of phenomena to an underlying set of productive rules is always risky exactly because it involves an instructive leap from a finite body of data to a larger conclusion that reaches beyond its infinitive scope. As with any other piece of conjectural reasoning we resort to it under the due diligence of inductive inference because as best we can tell the calculations of costs and benefits stands in its favor. NOTES 1

For the Pocket Oracle of Gracián (1601-58) see Balthasar Gracián, Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, tr, by Christopher Maurer as The Art of Worldly Wisdom (New York, Doubleday, 1991).

2

G. W. Leibniz, Nova methodus discendae docendaeque iurisprudentia (1667).

3

This issue extensively preoccupied Ludwig Wittgenstein both in the case of language and in that of mathematics. Thus see especially Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Maas: Harvard University Press, 1982).

Chapter 2 RULE CONFLICTS, HIGHER-ORDER RULES, AND RULES OF REASON ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Rules can conflict, albeit not in their abstract generality but only in the setting of particular concrete cases. (2) In the event of such conflicts we must resort to higher order rules. (3) Rules are instrumentalities of appropriate procedure. (4) And in consequence thereof they are endowed with a functional and purposive aspect. (5) However, the rational basis of rules endows them with a claim to universality. ____________________________________________________________ 1. RULE CONFLICTS

S

trictly universal rules are always compatible among themselves: they are never actually inconsistent in the abstract. And this holds even though they can be contraries to one another as per • Always to to A in all situations of type T. • Never to do A in no situations of type T. For the (logical) compatibility of these seemingly conflicting theses is manifested by the prospect that no type T situations ever actually arise. In the abstract the rules are thus compatible: it takes particular contingent circumstances to bring their conflict into operation. However, actual cases and concrete circumstances, it becomes possible for rules to clash with one another. Thus • Always keep your appointments. • Always give directions to lost strangers.

Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

16

can conflict in circumstances when it transpires that, enroute to the the former, you encounter situations that instantiate of the latter. The time it takes to give those directions may prevail that appointment’s being kept. This sort of thing not only can happen but frequently does so. Yet why should it be that a “conflict of rules” is readily possible? Consider the structure of conflicting rules: • In situations of type T1 do A1 (which is incompatible with doing B2). • In situations of type T2 do A2 (which is incompatible with doing A1). Now the problem is that the realities of a complex world can all too often engender circumstances where the situation answers to both types T1 and T 2. How then is one to proceed when the relevant rules come into a situational conflict? There are, in fact, various alternatives: I.

Rule abandonment: One can simply drop one or more of the conflicting rules from the register of one’s acceptance.

II.

Rule modification. One can change one or more of those conflicting rules to read “Always/never follow rule R except in circumstances where certain specified conditions obtain.

III.

Rule reclassification. Change the rule from being universal to being merely general.

Here rule abandonment is a last resort: we always prefer modification or reclassification when at all practicable. To be sure, in circumstances where the universal rules of practice clash we make one give way to others. We resolve the matter by breaking the chain of conflict at its weakest link. Thus if social propriety clashed with safeguarding human life (as in the aforementioned conflict between keeping an appointment and aiding the victim in an accident) it will be life-protection that prevails. As regards propriety we make qualifications and adjustment and make a place for exceptions. And, analogously when different modes of interest are at issue there is generally a priority ranking that has one or the other prevail.

RULE CONFLICTS, HIGHER ORDER RULES, AND RULES OF REASON

17

2. HIGHER-ODER RULES Fortunately, there are not only rules but also higher-order rules, metarules for guidance or conflict management. To handle cases of “conflicting rules” we are driven to involving rules of a higher order—principles, they are often called—to adjudicate the matter. For example, • In cases of “conflict of rules” make the rule whose rationale is less weighty give way to the one whose rationale is more weighty. At this point we resort to giving some rules precedence over others by providing the sphere of interest at issue with the rule. For rules are coordinated to domains of practice by the circumstance that a practice is purposive—it has ends in view. It is the weight of these ends—their significance in the larger scheme of things—that determine the comparative priority of domains that encompass those rules. In such matters, our proceeding follows as a consequence or corollary of such higher-order rules as: • Whenever confronted with alternatives, choose the best. • Minimize harm: keep negativities down to a minimum. High-level rules which, like there, represent matters far-reaching and fundamental deserve to be called principles, that is, higher order rules that are categorical rules in that admit of us exceptions and moreover are paramount (dominant) and would themselves prevail in any conflicting situations. However such preeminent rules are also very abstract and themselves require supplementing standards to effect their application. (That first principle, for example, requires a measure of the weight or input of the interest that is at stake. Such principles are so far-reaching and abstract and gravely incomplete—by themselves they are schematic and indecisive. They cannot guide particular resolutions unless and until supplemented by a substantial array of implementing rules regarding the assessment of positivities and negativities. But they serve to indicate the direction in which the search for a viable conflict-resolution will have to proceed.

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Nicholas Rescher • Rules and Principles

The realm of principles encompasses all of the meta-rules that function as rules regarding the management of rules. For example we will have the meta-rule: • Never mandate inherently impracticable rules—rules that cannot possibly be honored. This would undo the appropriateness of such inherently impracticable rules as: • Never attempt the impossible • Never make mistakes For propriety, pseudo-rules of this sort would have to be reconstrued in a mitigated and attenuated form: • Insofar as possible . . . • . . . if you can avoid it This sort of mitigation is also required in the case of such selfcontradicting rules as: • Never say never • Always avoid prohibitions Rules always feature in a correlative range of praxis (game-playing, social conventions, morality, prudential self-interest such as the health and well-being of people, etc.). The prioritizing of a rule in situations of potential conflict hinges the comparative import or significance of its justificatory rational. Thus rules of morality take precedence over those of social propriety—and the like. It is one of the cardinal meta-rules of rational procedure that one should • Only ever mandate rules that contribute productively to realizing the goals or their functional domain.

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It is a cardinal meta-rule that one should • Never mandate any would-be “rule” that admits exceptions. If and when exceptions are to be accepted, we are in fact dealing with a generality rather than a strict rule—unless those exception cases are made explicit in the rule-formulation itself. To be sure, people like to think that the rules are made for others and that they themselves qualify as exceptions. But that is just not how it works. 3. THE IMPETUS OF RATIONALITY All appropriate higher-order rules are by nature rules of rationality. And while rules themselves can govern a vast range of activities and aims, the only appropriate rule governing rules are those rooted in considerations of the rationality of rule management as such. In sum, the proper management of rules is always a matter of rational reflection. Rules govern actions: by nature they enjoin doing something somewise. And as such they are purposive instrumentalities. They exist for the sake of securing a benefit of some sort to issue from their operation. And ignoring—let along breaking—a valid rule is always exacts a price or penalty of some sort. Rules are directives designed to facilitate the realization of correlative objectives, and they are purposive instrumentalities that exist for the sake of securing a benefit of some sort to issue from their operation. And ignoring—let along breaking—a valid rule is always exacts a price or penalty of some sort. A rule is always functionally coordinated with a correlative domain of operation. It must be a rule for proceeding somehow in relation to something (for constructing stone arches, for example). This circumstance endows rules with a coordinated aim (object, telos). Accordingly their validation turns on the effective or efficient realization of the objective at issue. Accordingly, any appropriate rule always has a rationale for being and its being as is. St. Thomas Aquinas envisioned a duality of rules (regulae) or proximate and mundane and the supreme or divine, coordinated by the principle of reason that pervades both levels of being.1 Nowadays one might distinguish between the deliberately man-made (such as laws and regulations) and the functionally natural, such as the rules of rationality and morality (unlike mores!).

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Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objective. And it thereby involves a basic uniformity of process, seeing that what is what is rational for someone is thereby rational also for anyone else who is in the same circumstances. Rationality is radically self-assertive. Seeing that the rational person is, by definition one who does what rationality requires, we can formulate the governing maxim of rationality—in Kantian terms its “categorical imperative”—as: Always be rational: in each and every case do the rationally appropriate thing.

The rules of rationality as such are always categorical in the sense of (1) being mandatory for everyone, and (2) admitting no exceptions in their application. In the matters of thought, rationality demands aligning out beliefs with what the available evidence indicates; in matters of inference, it demands accepting the logical consequences of what we accept in matters of action it demands our doing the circumstantially appropriate thing. It is a cardinal rule of practical rationality that: In any purposively geared situation to expend the appropriate measure of available resources to realize those objections within the greatest realizable effectiveness and efficiency.

Those high-level rules like “Always do the rationally appropriate thing” are by nature too abstract to be straightforwardly applicable to concrete circumstances. Determining just what it is that is the right, proper, rationally appropriate thing in the circumstances generally requires a close and careful examination of just what the circumstances are. Applying such a rule always calls for implementing criteria of evaluation. Of course those generic governing rules do not suffice to settle particular issues without a case-specific determination of what rationality demands. But thereupon rationality so functions as to enforce a procedural uniformity. For rationality is no respecter of persons. Whatever is rational for one is so for anyone else in those same conditions. To be sure, the rules of rationality must not be overstretched. And in particular the rules of rational inquiry cannot be so restrictive as to serve the sceptic’s aim of constructing the limits of available knowledge within an unrealistically narrow scope. For example, René Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind (ca. 1645) designed to offer general rules for rational inquiry, actually embod-

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ied suggests a hypercautious and conservative view of rational inquiry that is reluctant to carry us beyond the reaches of pure and applied mathematics.2 4. THE FUNCTIONALITY OF RULES Rules are only operative with respect to intelligent agents who act by the use of thought in the light of aims and objectives. They are purposive instrumentalities that exist with a view to realizing some intended result. Even the mere rules of what seems to be arbitrary custom—rules of etiquette, for example—come into being in order to facilitate communal solidarity and to smooth the path of social interaction. (In this light it is certainly possible, however, for rules to outlive their usefulness.) A rule of comportment is valid and appropriate only when—and insofar as it has a cogent rationale of justifactory validation. However a great deal depends on the context of operation. The rules for moving chess pieces are valid only when you are playing the game—you need not move them that way when putting them in the cupboard. Rules serve functions. The rules of cooking are grounded in the desideratum of preparing safe and palatable food. The rules of morality root in the desideratum of safeguarding the interest and well-being of people. The rules of carpentry are geared to the successful products of wood products, and so on. Rules are always functional and purposive in nature. With rational people we standardly presume that their deliberate actions results from a deployment of rules (be they overt or unavailing and covert). Accordingly with respect to the systematically patterned action of humans we standardly presume that these are the fruit behavioral rules (overt or unavailing). Individuals free acts standardly issue from particular decisions, systemically standard policies or actions standardly root in systemically structure) decisions—i.e., in a commitment of rules, be they adopted deliberately or by custom or otherwise unwilling deliberate function. It is this factor of functional efficacy that supposes a certain uniformity of thought the realm of rational procedure. It means that what it is rational for X to do in certain particular circumstances is also rational for Y whenever this individual is similarly situational. Functional uniformity is thus a salient feature of the rules of reason. They require treating like cases alike. There is one seeming exception to the principle of rational uniformity that what is rational for someone is to also for anyone similarly circumstanced. This arises in situations of interpersonal action where unpredict-

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ability happens to be a significant factor. The commander who always uses the same tactics is given circumstances will soon find himself outguessed. Those rules which are universally binding and mandatory—to wit, the rules of rationality and ethics—are of particular interest and significance. Any theorist since the days of Kant have argued that rarely only are claims of rules is at issue here because the rules of ethics and inability are encompassed in and covered by those of rationality.3 Rule infringements are not created equal. Some categories of rules automatically have precedence over others. The rules of reason should prevail over those of games; the Rules of morality over those of etiquette. The rules that represent fundamental principles of comportment have precedence over those of lesser standing. It all depends on the mitigation of the interests that are at stake. 5. RATIONALITY AND UNIVERSALITY The impetus to universality lies in the very nature of reason. An isolated Robinson Crusoe may well act in a perfectly rational way. But, he can only do so by doing what hypothetically would make sense for anyone in similar circumstances. He must be in a position to persuade other people to endorse his course of action by an appeal to impersonal general principles to show them that his actions were appropriate in the circumstances—either uniquely or no less so than the alternatives. Rationality is thus something inherently universal in its operations. The demands of rationality are indeed subject to person-relativity—but one that proceeds in an impersonally universal way in taking personal conditions and circumstances into account. Consider an example. I am hungry; I go to the restaurant; I order a meal. Have I acted rationally? Of course. But why exactly? Well—because a long story can correctly be told about what I have done, a story in which all of the following play a significant role: My well-evidentiated beliefs that eating food alleviates hunger pangs and nourishes the body; my appropriate conviction restaurants provide food; my sensible preference for physical health and for the comfort of satiation over the discomfort of hunger; my custom of doing what I effectively can to alleviate discomfort and promote well-being, and the like. The whole chain: “alleviate discomfort— proceed to secure food—go to a food supplier—order food” is part and parcel of the rationality-dictated rationale of my action. If the chain were severed at any point (if, for example, I realized that the restaurant had run

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out of food last week), then my action in proceeding to the restaurant to order that meal would cease to be rational in the circumstances. One only proceeds rationally when one’s actions are “covered” by way of subordination under a universal principle of rationality that holds good generally and for everyone. In the restaurant I study the menu and order steak. Was it rational of me to do so? Of course—because I was hungry, came to eat something at the restaurant, and found steak to be the most appealing entry on the menu, thus proceeding on the principle “Presented with various options for food (and other things being equal), select that which one deems the tastiest.” (To be sure, other things may not be equal—my choice of beef might deeply offend my dinner guest, who deems cattle sacred.) Here we have a strictly universal principle—one that it makes perfectly good rational sense for anyone to act on. Though clearly not every sensible person would order steak, I nevertheless could be said to have done—under the aegis of the indicated principle—something that any sensible person would do. Similarly, any rational choice must be “covered” by a universally valid desideratum. It must implement, in its particular context, a principle that is of strictly universal validity—although, to be sure, one that is of a conditional nature. Again, some things we desire for ourselves (“Mary as a wife”), others we see as universal desiderata that hold generally and for everyone (“having a good spouse if married”). Now, the crucial fact is that a personal want or preference qualifies as rational only insofar as it can be subordinated to something that is an unrestrictedly universal desideratum (all else being equal). Only insofar as I am convinced that Mary will prove to be an instance of something that everyone can acknowledge as desirable at a sufficiently high level of generality (having one’s marriage partner be “a good spouse,” “a caring helpmeet,” “a desirable mate,” “a delightful companion,” or some such) will my own personal desire to have her for a wife be a rational one. Only those acts which instantiate in this way something that deserves the rather pompous title of a “universal principle of reason” can qualify as rational. It is not “being the last to cross the bridge safely” that would be rationally advisable for anyone and everyone to opt for in relevant circumstances but only something like “gaining one’s way to safety from a dangerous situation.” Only those acts whose salient characterization is universally rational at some level of abstraction are rational at all. The ground of the universality of reason is not far to seek. It is rooted in the nature of human interests. Something can only be in my (real) interests by being an item of a generic type that is in everyone’s (real) interests. It is

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in my interest to take a particular medicine because it is generally in anyone’s and everyone’s interest to care for their health. Any valid interest— any that merits the acknowledgement of reason—must subordinatively inhere within a universal interest (as the validity of an interest in tennis rooted in a generic need for exercise or skill development). And the very raison d’être of reason is as a servant of our interests, both in being the ultimate arbiter of what those interests are and the appropriate guide to their realization. The contention “What’s rational for you need not be right for me” is certainly correct—within limits. But there are limits of explicit specificity. Consider the medical analogy. You might do well to eat chocolate to provide the calories needed for the strenuous outdoor life you lead; for me, with my diabetes, it would be a very bad thing indeed. And so, low-level recommendations like “Eat chocolate” indeed fall into the range of the just-stated dictum. But with “Eat the foods conducive to maintaining your health” the matter stands very differently and we have moved to a much higher level of generality. And finally with “Do what best furthers the realization of your real best interests we have reached a level where there is no variability. What is right and proper here in point of rationality is right and proper for everybody. And, similarly, at the higher level of governing principles, rationality is increasingly compelling and universal. The uniformity of overarching rational principles transcends the variability of their particular cultural implementations. Different cultures do indeed implement a rational principle like “Be in a position to substantiate your claims” very differently. (For one thing, there are culturally or historically different standards as to what constitutes a proper “substantiation” for claims.) But, they cannot simply abandon it. If they convert to “It’s all right to maintain anything that suits your fancy” they do not have a different mode of cognitive rationality but rather, in this respect at any rate, are simply deficient in cognitive rationality. The characteristic nature of the cognitive enterprise as such imposes limits in its appropriate pursuit. To be sure, the question “What is the rational thing to believe or to do?” must receive the indecisive answer: “That depends.” It depends on context and situation—on conditions and circumstances. At the level of the question “What is rational; what is it that should be believed or done?” a manysided and variegated response is indeed called for. The way in which people proceed to give a rational justification of something—be it a belief, action, or evaluation—is unquestionably variable and culture relative. We mortal men cannot speak with the tongues of angels. The means by which

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we actually pursue our ends in the setting of any major project—be it rationality, morality, communication, or nourishment—are “culture dependent” and “context variable.” But nevertheless, those projects themselves— in terms of the objectives and ideals that define them and of the basic principles that implement these objectives, aims and ideals—have a uniform and universal validity. Greek medicine is something very different from modern medicine. But, the governing aims of the mode of endeavor at issue—”the maintenance of health,” “the relief of distressing symptoms,” “the prolongation of life,” and the like—are similar throughout. It is, after all, these aims that define the issue—that indicate that it is medicine we are talking about rather than, say, basket weaving. And this is so with rationality itself as well. Rationality is, after all, a definite sort of enterprise with a characteristic goal structure of its own—the pursuit of appropriately adopted ends by intelligently selected means. The defining principles that determine rationality’s particular nature as the sort of thing it is make for universalistic uniformity. NOTES 1

“Regula proxima est ratio humanis, regula autem suprema est lex aeterna . . . quae est quasi ratio Dei.” Summa Theologiae, I-II, 71, 6e; 2121, 1c.

2

Thus consider Rule VIII: “If the matter to be examined involves a step of which our understanding cannot achieve an intuitively clear cognition, we must stop short there. We must make no attempt to examine what follows, so as to spare ourselves superfluous labor”.

3

On Kant’s position see his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals as well as the Critique of Practical Reason.

Chapter 3 FUNCTIONAL HIERARCHIES ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Rules take their place within a hierarchically structured manifold of norms. (2) Medicine affords an instructive illustration here. (3) As also does the case of morality. (4) The functional hierarchy at issue descends from a purposively defined project through its increasingly specific procedures of implementation. (5) This means (inter alia) that morality is uniform, unlike mores which are highly differentiated. ____________________________________________________________ 1. CULTIVATION HIERARCHIES

R

ules exist to guide free agents when operating within the wider setting of a functional project. The normative structure of such a project takes the hierarchical format of a decent from fundamental principle at the top of the scale to the realization of particular acts at the very bottom. The tabulation of Display 1 depicts such a descending hierarchy of principles, norms and standards, rules and (finally) rulings. A certain particular chain of reasoning is at issue here, moving from general principles to particular cases. For at the top of such a rulish hierarchy stand the categorically universal “first principles” that inhere in the nature of the enterprise, preeminent among them those fundamentals correlative with the very definition of the project at issue. Thus in the case of rationality itself we have at the top the defining principles of some larger project as such. Take rationality, for example: the giving of good reasons for what we do, the provision of a reasonable account, the telling of a sensible story (lógon didónai, rationem reddere). The characteristic mission of rationality is that of providing an account of our dealings, of committing ourselves to “making sense” in the conduct of our affairs of rendering our dealings intelligible, of conducting our affairs intelligently. At the next level down, the governing norms and standards are our yardsticks of rational procedure: basic

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___________________________________________________________ Display 1 STRATIFICATION LEVELS OF NORMS OF RATIONALITY 1. Defining principles of rationality. The basic principles that determine the nature of the enterprise and specify what rationality is all about. (For cognitive rationality, for example, the project at issue turns on the pursuit of truth and the achievement of correct answers to our questions: “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”) These principles provide our criteria for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of rational norms and standards of rational procedure. 2. Governing standards and criteria of rationality. Standards for appraising the “rules of the game” governing the rational transaction of affairs. (For cognitive rationality these norms are afforded by desiderata such as coherence, consistency, simplicity, and the like.) These norms provide our criteria for assessing the acceptability and adequacy of our rules of rational procedure. 3. Rules of rational procedure. Rules for the rational resolution of choices. (In the cognitive case, rules like modus ponens in deductive inference or trend extrapolation in inductive inference.) These rules constitute our criteria for assessing the rational acceptability and adequacy of particular resolutions. 4. Rationally warranted rulings. Resolutions with respect to particular issues arising in particular concrete cases, such as: “Do (or accept) X in the existing circumstances.”

___________________________________________________________ principles of logic, canons of inductive reasoning, standards of evidence, and the like, which already admit of some variation. Then, descending further, we encounter the “rules of the game” that specify the procedures through which we implement ends and objectives of the enterprise in the concrete context of particular cases. Finally, at the bottom level, come the specific resolutions for particular cases achieved through the subsumption of concrete cases under the rules. (It is clearly these last that vary most of all.) Such a functional hierarchy of goal cultivation characterizes any purposively oriented human endeavor. It takes the format: • governing “finalities”: the characterizing aims of the enterprise (governing principles) • implementing policies (guiding norms and standards; basic values and desiderata)

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• methods of procedure (operating rules) • specific rulings The top-level purpose is itself “ultimate” in that it is determinative for its own domain: it defines and specifies what is at issue in the venture under consideration, the concerns that make it the sort of project it is (be it science or horticulture). The subsequent descending levels each address the matter of implementing the previously fixed aims and objectives. Justification at each subordinate level is thus purposive and turns on questions of efficiency and effectiveness in serving the needs of the next, superordinated higher level. There is a step-by-step descent from principles that reflect the characteristic aims inherent in the very definition of some valid purposive enterprises through norms to rules and eventually down to specific rulings. For as we move down from level to level, there is also some variable adjustment to the linked condition of increasing specificity. But rules always figure meditatively at the very core of such a normative hierarchy. 2. PRUDENTIAL HIERARCHY: THE CASE OF MEDICINE It is instructive in this regard to consider the particular mode of prudential hierarchy that obtains in the special case of medicine. Here too there is an “implementation hierarchy” that leads from a fixed “top level” characterizing aim, health, through governing norms and values (like “wellnourished,” “well-rested,” “mentally balanced”) to particular rules (“Eat and drink adequately!”, “Get enough rest”; etc.). Finally, we move via moderating injunctions (“Three meals a day”) down to the particular decisions and rulings of medical practice (particular diet-plans or prescriptions). The top levels of such a normative hierarchy are “ultimate”—they define and specify what is at issue in the venture under consideration. But variation arises at the lower levels of implementation. How a principle like “Do not drive in a way that needlessly endangers the lives of others” gets implemented will depend on a great many factors of situational variation (neither conditions, visibility conditions, the expectations of others as defined by local speed limits, and on and on). As one moves downwards the successive strata of such a hierarchy, there is a “slack” that leaves room for increasing variability and dissensus. Specific rules and guidelines will vary with situations and circumstances—different experiential contexts. “Main-

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taining an alert mind” is in anyone’s medical interest, but “Getting eight hours regular sleep” is only appropriate for some. 1. Finalities (defining principles): “Maintaining health,” “curing illness and disease,” “restoring and maintaining normal bodily functioning,” “removing painful symptoms.” (Note that if these things are not at issue, then medicine is not at issue. An enterprise not concerned with any of these, whatever it may be, is not medicine.) 2. Implementing norms, standards, and criteria: “How is one to assess ‘health’?” “How is one to construe a satisfactory ‘normality’?” “How is one to identify a ‘symptom’?” “Just what constitutes an ‘illness’?” (Note that for the Greeks, unlike ourselves, the idea of an illness without subject-experienced symptoms was scarcely conceivable. At this level there is already some room for variation.) 3. Rules or procedures: the modus operandi of medical practices—surgery or chiropractic treatment, drugs or psychotherapy, and the like. (These of course differ drastically from age to age and culture to culture.) 4. Rationally warranted rulings: the specific interventions, prescriptions, and medical measures adopted in particular cases. (“Take two aspirin and get some rest.”)

At the top level there is a fixity and uniformity based in conceptual constraints inherent in the very definition of the nature of the enterprise. But, uniformity is achieved here at the price of an abstractness and generality that endows the principles at issue with a conditional or hypothetical character. As we move downwards towards the level of particular cases, the situation is increasingly one of concrete detail, and this detail brings increasing scope for variation in its wake. Thus, while the top level is itself absolute and constant—defined by the very project at issue—there is “slack” at each step down the ladder, leaving (appropriate) room for an increasingly large element of variability and differentiation. At each successive step in the process of subordination there is some degree of underdetermination—scope for diversity and some degree of contextual variability. (In the cognitive case, variability arises with such issues as: What sorts of rules best implement the demands for cogent deductive and inductive reasoning? What sorts of solutions do schematic rules like “Adapt theories to the data as well as possible” lead to?) As we move down this hierarchic ladder there emerges an increasing looseness of fit that provides for the dif-

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ferential adaptation of general principles to the specific characteristics of particular settings and circumstances. The principles of medical prudence exhibit to some sort of universality as do those of reason. The bearing of that fixed, topmost—universally valid—desideratum of rational practice transmits itself all down the line, albeit with ever-increasing qualifications as the situation gains in concrete particularity. In the medical case, for example, we will have the sequence: (1) maintaining health (2) maintaining health through nourishment (eating) (3) getting nourishment by eating healthy foods that one also happens to like Observe, however, that all of these are also universally appropriate modes of operation: Doing the things involved is rational for everybody. But, this universality becomes increasingly qualified in its conditions of application when one proceeds down the ladder by appropriate steps.1 (Clearly, not everyone happens to like meat in general or steak in particular.) And so, there is much room for variation in the concrete implementation of universals. As regards (2), different things are nourishing for different people, given their particular biomedical make-up. And as regards (3) it is clear that different people like different things. In being prudent, we pursue universal desiderata in person-differential ways—ways that we have good reason to deem effective in the peculiar conditions of our particular case. Not all of us eat what Tom does. But we can, all of us, (i) explain and understand his eating kumquats once we realize that he happens to like them and (responsibly) believes them to be both hunger-removing and healthful, and (ii) agree that the modus operandi involved in his case (“eating what one likes and responsibly believes to be nourishing”) is one to which we ourselves do (and should) subscribe. 3. THE MORAL HIERARCHY AS A FURTHER ILLUSTRATION The functional project that stands at the top of a cultivation hierarchy can range across a specification ranging from the unqualifiedly mandatory to the totally optimal. Mandatory goals are those thrust upon us in order of the sorts of beings we members of homo sapiens in fact are, viz. intelligent

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free agents as such inextricably enmeshed as such in the projects of rationality, morality, and self-preservative prudence. Our wholly optional project include, for example, games and diversions of various sorts. Inbetween are such as Italian cuisine or Yoga exercise—each of them optimal implementation of a larger mandatory project (i.e. eating and exercise). The case of morality is of particular philosophical interest. Morality differs from mores. The mandates of morality are universal. All modes of morality have important elements definitively in common simply in view of what is at issue is morality with its characteristic orientation to action that safeguards the interests of others. All modes of morality will thus be bound to encompass such fundamental considerations as the following: 1.

What people do matters. Some actions are right, others wrong, some acceptable and some not. There is an important difference here.

2.

This is not just a matter of convention, custom, and the done thing. Violations of moral principles are not just offenses against sensibility but against people’s just claims in matters where people’s actual well-being is at stake.

3.

In violating the moral rules we inflict injury on the life, welfare, or otherwise legitimate interests of others—either actually or by way of putting them at unjustifiedly at risk.

Attunement to consideration of this sort is by definition essential to any system of “morality,” and serves to provide the basis for imperatives like: • Do not simply ignore other people’s rights and claims in your own deliberations! • Do not inflict needless pain on people! • Honor the legitimate interests of others! • Do not take what rightfully belongs to others without their appropriately secured consent! • Do not wantonly break promises!

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• Do not cause someone anguish simply for your own amusement! In the context of morality, principles and rules of this sort are universal and absolute. Their reach and range is universal. They are of the very essence of morality; in abandoning them we would withdraw from a discussion of morality and would in effect, be changing the subject. What we say might be interesting—and even true—but it would deal with another topic. From the moral point of view, the empirical search for “cultural invariants” as it has pursued by some ethnologists is thus entirely beside the point.2 When such investigations embark on a cross-cultural quest for “moral universals” or “universal values” amidst the variation of social customs, they are engaged in a search which, however interesting and instructive in its own way, has nothing whatever to do with the sort of normative universality at issue with morality as such. Moral universality is not a matter of cross-cultural commonality but of a conceptually constrained uniformity. (It would be just as pointless to investigate whether another culture’s forks have tynes.) “But how can you pivot the issue on ‘the very idea of what “morality” is all about’? After all, different people have different ideas about this?” Of course different people think differently about morality, even as they think differently about dogs or automobiles. But that’s basically irrelevant. What is at issue with “morality” as such does not lie with you or with me but with all of us. What is relevantly at issue is how the word is actually used in the community—in the linguistic culture in which our discussion of the issue transpires. It is a matter not of what people think about the topic, but of how they use the terminology that defines it. 4. THE DEFINITIVE PROJECT VS. ITS IMPLEMENTATIONAL PROGRAM How can this fixity of the conception of morality and of the basic principles that are at issue within it—inherent in the monolithic uniformity of “what morality is”—be reconciled with the plain fact of a pluralistic diversity of (presumably cogent) answers to the question: “What is it moral to do?” How can such an absolutism of morality’s fundamentals coexist with the patent relativity of moral evaluations across different times and cultures?

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________________________________________________________ Display 3 THE STRATIFICATION LEVELS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHY FOR MORAL NORMS Level 1

CHARACTERIZING AIMS

“due care for the best interests of others”

Level 2

GOVERNING PRINCIPLES AND VALUES

“honesty,” “candor”

Level 3

GOVERNING RULES

“Do not lie,” “Speak truthfully”

Level 4

OPERATING DIRECTIVES (GROUNDRULES OF PROCEDURE)

“When declaring what you believe do not, do so misleadingly”

Level 5

PARTICULAR RULINGS

“Answer Jones truthfully (as best you can)”

________________________________________________________ The answer lies in the fact that several intermediate levels or strata inevitably separate those overarching “basic principles of morality” from any concrete judgments about what it is moral to do. We have, in fact, to deal with a descending hierarchy of characterizing aims, fundamental principles and values, governing rules, implementing directives, and (finally) particular rulings. (See Display 3.) At the topmost level we have the defining aims of morality, the objectives that identify the moral enterprise as such by determining its nature and specifying the aims and objectives that characterize what morality is all about. (Example: “Act with a view to safeguarding the valid interests of others.”) These characterizing aims of morality represent the overarching “defining objectives” of the entire enterprise that characterize the project as such. They explicate what is at issue when it is with morality (rather than basket weaving) that we propose to concern ourselves. In spelling out the fundamental idea of what morality is all about, these top-level norms provide the ultimate reference points of moral deliberation. And they are unalterably fixed—inherent in the very nature of the subject. And these fundamental “aims of the enterprise” also fix the basic principles and controlling values that delineate the moral virtues (honesty,

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trustworthiness, civility, probity, and the rest). Such values define the salient norms that link the abstract characterizing aims to an operational morality of specific governing rules. The norms embodied in these basic principles and values are “universal” and “absolute,” serving as parts of what makes morality the thing it is. (Examples: “Do not violate the duly established rights and claims of others.” “Do not unjustly deprive others of life, liberty, or opportunity for self-development.” “Do not tell self-serving falsehoods.” “Do not deliberately aid and abet others in wrongdoing.”) Accordingly these high level principles also lie fixedly in the very nature of the subject. At these two topmost levels, then, there is simply no room for any “disagreement about morality.” Here disagreement betokens misunderstanding: if one does not recognize the fundamental aims, principles, and values that characterize the moral enterprise as such, then one is simply talking about something else altogether. In any discussion of morality these things are simply givens. But this situation changes as one moves further down the list and takes additional steps in the descent to concreteness. At the next (third) level we encounter the governing rules and regulations that direct the specifically moral transaction of affairs. Here we have the generalities of the usual and accustomed sort: “Do not lie,” “Do not cheat,” “Do not steal,” etc. At this level we come to the imperatives that guide our deliberations and decisions. Like the Ten Commandments, they set out the controlling do’s and don’ts of the moral practice of a community, providing us with general guidance in moral conduct. Here variability begins to set in. For these rules implement morality’s ruling principles at the concrete level of recommended practices in a way that admits of adjustment to the changeable circumstances of local conditions. A generalized moral rule on the order of the injunction • Do not steal! = Do not take something that properly belongs to another! is in itself still something abstract and schematic. It still requires the concrete fleshing out of substantive implementing specifications to tell us what sorts of things make for “proper ownership.” And so the next (fourth) level presents us with the groundrules of procedure or implementing directives that furnish our working guidelines and criteria for the moral resolution of various types of cases. (Example: “Killing is wrong except in cases of self defense or under legal mandate as in war or executions.”) At this level of implementing standards and criteria, the variability of local practice comes

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to the fore, so that there is further room for pluralistic diversification here; we ourselves implement “Do not lie, avoid telling falsehoods,” by way of “Say what you believe (to be the case),” but a society of convinced sceptics could not do so. The operating groundrules of Level 4 thus incorporate the situation-relative standards and criteria though which the more abstract, higher level rules get their grip on concrete situations. Those general rules themselves are too abstract—too loose or general to be applicable without further directions to give them a purchase on concrete situations. They must be given concrete implementation with reference to local—and thus variable—arrangements.3 Finally, at the lowest (fifth) level we came to the particular moral rulings, individual resolutions with respect to the specific issues arising in concrete cases. (Example: “It was wicked of Lady Macbeth to incite her husband to kill the king.”) In such an “implementation hierarchy” we thus descend from what is abstractly and fixedly universal to what is concrete and variable. Level 2 is contained in Level 1 simply by way of exfoliative “explication.” But as we move downwards past Level 3 to the implementing specifications of Level 4, there is—increasingly—a looseness or “slack” that makes room for the specific and variable ways of different groups for implementing the particular higher-level objective at issue. (Further examples are given in Display 4.) The entire hierarchy comes to a head in a ruling imperative (“Support the interests of people!”) that stands correlative with an enterprisedeterminative value (“the best interests of people”). This over-arching concern does not itself stand subordinate to further moral rules. After all, it is only possible up to a certain point that we can have rules for applying rules and principles for applying principles. The process of validating lowerlevel considerations in terms of higher-level ones must come to a stop somewhere. And with these implementation hierarchies it is the overending controlling teleology of “the aim of the entire enterprise” that gives at once unity and determinatives to the justificatory venture. Overall, then, we have to deal with a chain of subordination-likages that connect a concrete moral judgment—a particular moral actrecommendation or command—with the ultimate defining aim of the moral enterprise.

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____________________________________________________________ Display 4 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHY OF MORALITY Level 1: Characterizing Aims •

To support the best interests of people and to avoid injuring them.

Level 2: Basic Principles (Controlling Values) • • • • •

Do not cause people needless pain (GENTLENESS) Do not endanger people’s lives or their well being unncessarily (CARE FOR SAFETY) Honor your genuine commitments to people; in dealing with people give them their just due (PROBITY) Help others when you reasonably can (GENEROSITY) Don’t take improper advantage of others(FAIRNESS)

Level 3: Operating Rules • • •

Don’t hurt people unnecessarily Don’t lie; don’t say what you believe not to be so Don’t cheat

Level 4: Operating Directives • • •

Be candid when replying to appropriate questions Do not play with unfair dice Where possible use anesthetics when operating on people

Level 5: Concrete Rulings • • •

Return the money you borrowed from Smith Don’t pollute this river, dispose of your sewage elsewhere Don’t let these children play with those matches

____________________________________________________________ 5. IMPLICATIONS FOR MORALITY At the level of basic principles morality is absolute; its strictures at this level hold good for everyone, for all rational agents. And lower-level rules and rulings must—if valid—preserve a “linkage of subsumption” to those highest-level abstractions, a linkage mediated by way of more restrictive

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modes of implementation. These implementing rules involve contextual relativity—coordination with contingently variable (setting-dependent and era- and culture-variable) circumstances and situations. Thus while moral objectives and basic principles—those top levels of the hierarchy of moral norms—are absolute and universal, “slack” arises as we move further down the ladder, leaving room for (quite appropriate) contextual variability and differentiation. “Do not unjustifiably take the property of another for your own use” is an unquestionably valid principle of absolute morality. But it avails nothing until such time as there are means for determining what is “the property of another” and what constitutes “unjustified taking.” “Don’t break promises merely for your own convenience” is a universal moral rule, and as such is global and absolute. But what sorts of practices constitute making a valid promise is something that is largely determined through localized social conventions. “Do not inflict needless pain on others” is a sound rule of moral universality, but its implementation will be circumstantially conditioned—working out quite differently in an era of medical anesthetics. Local context—variable history, tradition, expectation-defining legal systems, and the like—thus makes for substantial variability at the level of operational rules and codes, of moral practices. But a linkage of subordination is maintained throughout. The validity of concrete rulings is always a matter of their attuning global (and abstract) prescriptions to local (and concrete) conditions. Without that linkage to the fixed highest-level absolutes, the linkage to morality is severed. For a particular ruling to be a proper moral ruling at all, there must be a suitable moral rationale for the action—a pathway of subordination linkages that connects it in a continuous manner all the way up to the characterizing aims of the moral enterprise. Varying practices and codes of procedure only possess moral validity insofar as they are implementations of a fixed and determinate set of moral requirements. Moral validity must always root in a moral universality that is constrained by a conceptual fixity. Morality’s characteristic universality is thus inevitably mediated through factors that are variable, conventional, and culturally relative. The rules of hospitality towards strangers, for example, do and cannot but differ drastically in European and in Bedouin culture. Still, the deeper moral principles that underlie the moral rules and practices of a society (“Even strangers have their due—they too are entitled to respect, to courtesy, and to assistance in need”) transcend the customs of any particular community. As concerns morality, culture is indeed a localizing and differentiating

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agent—but one that merely conditions to local circumstances those fundamental invariants that are inherent in the very conception of morality as such. For the universality of fundamental moral demands does not mean that all moral agents must proceed in exactly the same way at the level of concrete detail. Different societies operate with different moral ground-rules at the procedural level. Some societies deem it outrageous for women to expose their faces, their breasts, their knees; others view this as altogether acceptable and perhaps even mandatory. But behind this variation stands a universal principle: “Respect people’s sensibilities about the appropriate and acceptable appearance of fellow humans by conforming to established rules of proper modesty.” This overarching principle is universal and absolute. Its implementation with respect to, say, elbows or belly buttons is of course something that varies with custom and the practices of the community. The rule itself is abstract and schematic—in need of implementing criteria as to what “proper modesty and due decorum” demand. The matter is one of a universal principle with variable implementations subject to “locally established standards and criteria” that are grounded in the particular customs of the community. And so, while the concrete strictures of morality—its specific ordinances and procedural rules of thumb—will of course differ from age to age and culture to culture, nevertheless the ultimate principles that serve to define the project of “morality” as such are universal. The uniform governing conception of “what morality is” suffices to establish and standardize those ultimate and fixed principles that govern the moral enterprise as such. At the level of fundamentals the variability of moral codes is underpinned by an absolute uniformity of moral principles and values. At the highest levels alone is there absoluteness: here an impersonal cogency of acceptance prevails—the rejection of appropriate contentions at this level involves a lapse of rational cogency. But at the lower levels there is almost always some room for variation—and dispute as well. (How concern for the well-being of one’s fellows can be brought to effective expression, for example, will very much depend on the institutions of one’s society—and also, to some extent, to one’s place within it.) But an analogous story holds not just for morality, but for any inherently goal-oriented human project—medicine or dietetics or science or whatever. In every case, such a hierarchical series descends from the overarching defining objective of the enterprise at issue down to the specific

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resolutions of concrete cases. The same structure of practical reasoning by subordination under higher-level norms obtains throughout. *** As this chapter’s survey indicates, all domains of rationally-managed purposive endeavor exhibit the same fundamental structure of a hierarchy of functional mandates. In making the transit form the defining telos of a rational enterprise to the particular concrete cases that fall within its scope, reason demands not just generality but universality as well. It involves universality of application since what is rational for the goose must be rational for the gander as well. The demands of reason are universal and pervasive—no one is exacted from doing that which, all considered, is reasonable in the circumstances for someone situated as he is.4 NOTES 1

Note that it is not homogeneously a means-end hierarchy. (Steak is not a means to food, it is a kind of food.)

2

See Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture and Behavior (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1962); idem, “Ethical Relativity; Sic et Non,” The Journal of Philosophy, 52 (1955): 66377; R. Redfield, “The Universally Human and the Culturally Variable,” The Journal of General Education, 10 (1967): 150-160; Ralph Linton, “Universal Ethical Principles: An Anthropological View” in R. N. Anshen (ed.), Moral Principles in Action (New York: Harper, 1952); idem, “The Problem of Universal Values,” in R. F. Spencer (ed.), Method and Perspective in Anthropology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954).

3

The analogy of natural law is helpful: “Theft, murder, adultery and all injuries are forbidden by the laws of nature; but which is to be called theft, what murder, what adultery, what injury in a citizen, this is not to be determined by the natural but by the civil law. . . .” (Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, chap. IV, sect. 16). St. Thomas holds that appropriate human law must be subordinate to the natural law by way of “particular determination”; with different human laws, varying from place to place, nevertheless representing appropriate concretizations of the same underlying principle of natural law. (See Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, questions 95-6.)

4

The idea of a procedural system under the aegis of the demands of reason was first made clearly manifest in Kant’s idea of a universal overarching principle (categorical imperative) followed by rules of precedence (under the aegis of maxims). For Kant, the human mind has an inherent tropism to rationality and thereby to rational systematization. To realize ourselves fully as what we are called upon by our nature to pursue in point of cognitive aspirations, we must heed this call to system. And so we should try in our actions to institute a system of moral laws, in our inquiries to establish a system of logical laws, and in our evaluations to institute a

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NOTES

system of evaluative laws (of aesthetic and teleological principles). What is basic throughout is the cultivation of rational order that is part of the self-realization of a rational creature. Kant’s theory of reason and his theory of ethics were the first clear manifestations on the linking or philosophy of the conception and application of its nature of collaboration hierarchies.

Chapter 4 JUDGMENT AND THE LIMITED REACH OF PROCEDURAL RULES ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) The rules alone will never afford us wholly adequate guidance throughout our dealings in any complex purposive enterprise. (2) Accordingly for adequate guidance a mastery of the rules will need to be supplemented and augmented by good judgment regarding the purposive nature of the enterprise.(3) Such judgment is an indispensible requisite for the management of complex affairs when the rule cannot suffice. ____________________________________________________________ 1. THE LIMITED REACH OF RULES

T

he insufficiency of rules to meet our needs in various areas of deliberation is one of the key themes of twentieth century thought. Kurt Gödel managed to demonstrate that no set of proof-rules in an axiomatic system can ever succeed in demonstrating the entirely of arithmetical truth. Kenneth Arrow managed to demonstrate that no set of preferential voting rules can ever provide an appropriate resolution to questions of collectively social preferability. Ludwig Wittgenstein argued at length that no set of rules can provide a workable basis for our use of language. All in all, it seems safe to conclude that no sector of complex real-life practice can be adequately managed on the basis of rule-following alone. A manifold of rules is adequate with respect to a range of cases C and a family of actions A when it manages to specify for every action of A and every case of C whether in this case action is mandatory, prohibited, or optional. And it is determinative if it always suffices to determine specifically what is to be done. (This is never the case with respect to the rules for games.) Would it be feasible to manage the affairs of life wholly and entirely by following some elaborate set of universal rules? Is a manifold of universal rules conceivable on whose basis it would be possible—at least in theory—

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to live algorithmically by having all of one’s decisions resolved with reference to the rules. What is in contemplation here is a “Handbook of Life”— a “Guide for the Perplexed,” as it were—whose strictness provides a decision procedure for resolving all the choices of life. Now while there have certainly been thinkers for whom this prospect represents an ideal, it is clear on the surface of it that what is being asked for is unrealizable. For the reality of it is that in any substantial range of endeavor—be it theoretical or practical, mandatory or optimal, significant or insignificant—we cannot function in a wholly rule-directed way. Be it in manners or morals, productive work or diverting games, we cannot successfully conduct our real-life endeavors by the rules alone. We cannot do without them—the valid rules must by their very nature be honored. But while indispensably necessary they are invariably insufficient. We cannot rely on the rules alone to arrive at proper decisions throughout: there are simply too many possible complications—too many permutations and combinations of possibility—for a finite set of rules to cover every contingency. Even purely abstract and theoretical practice of a comparatively uncomplicated nature cannot be managed by rules alone. It is instructive in this context to take note of an important development in the history of 20th century mathematics. The determination of truth in mathematics is a matter of deploying analytical judgment upon particular postulated conditions. And the salient question here arises whether this entire complex business of determingin mathematical truth can be subjected to rules. The relevant rules in this case are those that specify steps in the process of axiomatic proof and demonstration. Now the crucially important finding obtained by Kurt Gödel in the 1930s is that the answer here is negative. For what Gödel established with respect to arithmetic is that irrespective of the particular (finite) set of rules of proof that one may fix upon, there will always be arithmetical truths that cannot in fact be proved by their merit. The task at issue providing a synoptically complete set of rules for truth-determination via the instrumentality of axiomatized demonstration is one that cannot possibly be achieved even in so simple and straightforward a discipline as ordinary arithmetic. The reason why the rules alone completely never suffice for the guidance of any complex practice inheres in their very nature as universalities. For a rule has the fact • In circumstances C, always/never do A.

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And the problem here lies in the fact that the circumstances at issue must always be described in schematic incompleteness. Now consider a rule as seemingly straightforward and unproblematic as • When you make a promise, always keep it. The problem is that things can always go wrong with the circumstances. For suppose you make a perfectly appropriate promise, and now consider: • circumstances beyond your control prevent you from keeping it • the individual to whom you promised insists on releasing you • someone comes along with a threat of catastrophic harm if you keep the promise This sort of list can, of course, be prolonged indefinitely. Since any viable manifold of rules must be comparatively modest in size, the rules governing any activity must be of a limited scope. This means that they can address only a limited number of situations. And so in a complex word whose phenomena can exhibit a virtually unending diversity, the rules will never be adequate to address all possible situations and circumstances. They can never be complete in providing guidance in all possible cases. Consider the ten commandments with their “Thou shalt not . . . .” injunctions. It is obvious that they will prove insufficient at grounds to the credit-worthy life. One may never infringe them and nevertheless manage to live a pretty discreditable life. The point is that even rules that are reasonable and appropriate in their schematic generality, can come to grief in extraordinary circumstances and countervailing conditions. Again, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations went to some length in an endeavor to show that understanding a language is not simply a matter of following rules. Put in a form so brief as to approximate a caricature, Wittgenstein’s argument is that understanding on language cannot be a product of rule-following because rulefollowing itself presupposes understanding. And in fact, rule-following as such have to be acquired by imitative habitation: it and cannot itself be the product of following rules. To be sure, this is a matter of indulging the human penchant of conjectural generalization from limited experience. But if

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this process were not pretty generally successful, evaluation would not have managed to bring us where we are. For the most part, rules have to be seen as subject to a ceteris paritus qualification of “other things equal.” It is frequently unreasonable to follow a universal rule blindly, irrespective of the exceptional circumstances that can arise when matters go wrong. The implementation of rules in the complex conditions of a complicated world is something that invariably calls for good judgment and common sense. Martin Luther echoed the Plato-Aristotle-endorsed view that there are no rigidly universal truths about this imperfect sublunary world. But while for the ancients the reason for this lay in the inherent imperfections of materiality, for Luther the reason lies in the claims of divinity as an allpowerful creator, refusing to be caught unrestrictively in the trammels of uniformity. As he saw it, any rigid universality would limit it God’s freedom to readjust and rearrange matters as he might see fit. Yet both accounts agree that in mundane matters there are no rigidly universal rules. And there is so much to be said for such a position. As embodied intelligences we function in the three realms: of fact, possibility, and value. The domains of physical actuality, of speculative possibility and evaluative discernability which we access via observation, speculation, and evaluation. The two later realms admit of rigid universalities and we accordingly encounter strict rules in mathematics and in ethics. But—as Plato saw—the nature’s physical domain does not admit of rigid universalities. For a good case can be made for saying that nature knows nothing of rigid, exceptionless universal laws with respect to the exact detail of its modus operandi. The quantum theoretic functioning of very small objects and processes at the level of the extremely small is invariably probabilistic. And while such probabilistic fluctuations may engender stabilities at the larger levels of scale, the fact remains that at every lever from the biological to the astrophysical chance and variability continue to make themselves felt. In nature and human affairs alike no generalization of rigid universality that dispenses with any and all emendation and quantification can manage to survive a collision with the world’s phenomena perfect intact. With respect to the world’s phenomena every rule has its exceptions. And nature’s inherent recalcitrance in relation to rigid universalities saw that the modes of conduct that guide out decisions and actions in the world cannot achieve rigid universality and are always such that exceptions must be reckoned with.

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On the other hand, exceptionalism must not be overdone. Already G. W. Leibniz analogized the thesis that “Every rule has its exceptions.” to the classical Paradox of the Liar thesis “Everything I assert is false.” For in each case we have a claim that is patently self-contradictory. The resolution here lies in the aforementioned distinction of rule types. In the realm of theory (including rational reflection of all sorts) we do indeed encounter exceptionless rules. But in the mundane realm of practical activity, by contrast, the idea that all practical rules admit exception is not only not selfcontradictory, but substantially plausible. 2. JUDGMENT In no complex domain of practice are the rules ever determinative for actions—they will fail to decide how we must, should, or indeed even can plausibly proceed. In a complex and volatile world, we cannot mange without rules, but nevertheless cannot manage to function via the rules alone. In the management of human affairs they require the supplementation of judicious judgment. Both the theoretical and the practical domain are subject to rules. In the former case the focal issue is that of forming the right convictions—of answering our questions in an appropriate manner. In the later case the focal issue is that of making the right decision—of choosing our actions in an appropriate manner. Yet in neither case will the rules alone be sufficient to the purposes at hand. In each case a recourse to rules must be supplemented by the use of sound judgment proceeding in the light of the objects of the enterprise. Consider the impetus to “love they neighbor as thyself” which Jesus held to encompass the whole of law and prophetic teaching. It is a splendid injunction and sets an admirable standard for us all. But it is also rather abstract. As any parent knows, determining the obligations of people can be a difficult and painful business that requires good judgment. Rules specify what is always to transpire in circumstances of a certain sort. They accordingly enjoin structure upon the realm of occurrence, and all rules correspond to some feature of phenomenal structure. But if the phenomena at issue are not only actual situations but encompass hypothetical ones as well, then the resulting infinite manifold of phenomena is potentially so vast as to admit of more structures than any finite collection of rules is able to accommodate. Working out the ramifications of rules is

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never a merely mechanical process but always requires the use of judgment. It is instructive in this contest to take into view the example of games and to distinguish between (1) the rules of the game that define a game as such, and (2) the rules of game that are conducive to winning. The “rules of the game” will identify the moves that a player can possibly make within its sphere. The rules of strategy will identify those moves that a player is well advised to make—those that afford the best promise of success. Games being what they are, the former (“rules of the game”) are encompassed in a limited and manageable manifold. But the latter is judgmental and will outrun the prospect of a manageable inventory of rules. A list of the game-defining rules can only rarely provide the basis for determines an optimal move at every stage and under all conditions. Most games strategically undecidable—no finite set of rules can provide a basis for determining the appropriate more at any given juncture. We may characterize as rule-underdeterminate any situation of sequential choice where deciding upon the next move or step or act, albeit subject to rules is nevertheless not adequately guided—let alone determined—by them. (The production of the chain of successive words and symbols in a linguistic text is clearly an example of this.) Only with an extremely simple game like tic-tac-toe can one possibly provide a comprehensive inventory of the rules of play. With more complex games—even games of so simple and “mechanical” a nature as chess or ges—there is no prospect of providing a comprehensive inventory of rules of successful play. And all the more, rules cannot completely characterize such things as the use of a language, the duties of a parent, or the successful conduct of a business. In many contexts of operation the rules underdetermine the phenomena: they restrict them but only with considerable slack, just as the rules of chess as a game do not go far in determining how an actual game will proceed. 3. MORE ON JUDGMENT The function of “judgment” is to adjudge cases when the rules prove insufficient to provide adequate guidance, to do this effectively we must proceed in the light of the purposive setting that provides the rationale of the relevant range of rules. It requires judgment, appraisal of fitness, assessment of suitability, in short the exercise of an evaluatively oriented skill.

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Rationality itself is one of those complex ventures that cannot be managed by rules alone. Granted there are many rules of rationality. But these rules themselves do not—cannot—exhaust the whole of the field. For new circumstantial combinations and concatenations can always arise that will outreach in the reach of any finite set of rules because additional complications can always muddy the picture. Suppose we have a set of rules telling us what to do in situations T1, T2, . . . Tn. But what now of combinations, say when T1 and T2 are both realized? It can all too easily happen that some adaptation is now needed: that neither R1 predicated T1, not R2 predicated in T2 is properly applied. Suppose, for example, that you owe an X to each of two friends but have only one to give back because one was stolen. Now is X is a sum of money, say $100, you can divide it. But if X is a rare postage stamp, you can do no such thing. If X is a six-pack of beer you can easily make amends, but if it is a rare postage stamp you cannot. The ethical rules can tell you to do what you can to make amends, but no rule can contemplate about all of the possible ways in which this can and should be done. In any real-life context of functioning (law, nature, etc.) there are more types of situations that explicitly formulated rules can possibly envision. A finite number of rules can only cover a finite number of situation-types. But a complex world always provides for endlessly many situation types— more than any finite register can possibly encompass. The laws can never live up to their ultimate purpose of “keeping people honest”. For honesty is a matter of ethics and morally appropriate behavior. And such a mode of behavior is too complex ever to be captured in toto by a finite body of rules (which, after all, is all that a body of laws can ever manage to achieve.) The “letter of the law” can never fully encompass its spirit, Rules trade in generalities, but the possibilities outrun the reach of generalities. The language-oriented philosophers of the current era have be inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein to embark on an elaborate array of deliberations about what linguistic understanding based on the idea that sees language use as a matter of following rules.1 The upshot of this elaborate literature is a need to recognize that while various rules do partially describe our language-use, the understanding of language cannot be said to consist entirely in a mastery of rules. After all, no performative skill—be it speaking English nor playing tennis—can be reduced without residue to a mastery of

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rule. Linguistic competence is a sui genesis phenomenon that is not derivable from the generic capacity to conform one’s behavior to explicit rules. Again, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations went to some length in an endeavor to show that understanding a language is not simply a matter of following rules. Put in a form so brief as to approximate a caricature, Wittgenstein’s argument is that understanding cannot be a product of rule-following because rule-following itself presupposes understanding. Settling complex cases goes beyond the reach of the rules. Roberts Rules of Order leave the issue of outcome resolution in matters of indeterminacy by the preceding officer, sporting events allot the same role to the referee. Judgment needed in two very different ways (1)

For implementation: to decide how the rules apply to specific cases.

(2A) For supplementation: To decide matters either where there is an insufficiency of rules (i.e., where the availability rules so not meet address can issue adequately. Or (2B) For application/Articulation: To decide matters where there is a super-sufficiency of rules (i.e., where there is a conflict of rules some of them settle matters in one way and other in another. These different situations can all arise in the management of public affairs. And case (1) explains why legislative bodies always have a parliamentarian. Case (2B) explains why legal systems based on statutory law have a superior court or similar constitutional want to settle difficult cases of lawapplication. Case (2A) reflects the need for a legislative body to extend the reach of the residing rules into areas where they do not as yet address matters adequately. The lesson here is clear. In many or most real-life situations, the rules themselves provide only insufficient guidance. Not only do to they fail to determine how we must proceed in various cases, but they do not sufficiently delimit the range of alternatives regarding how we are well advised to proceed. What they yield is neither mandating nor advisory. For satisfactory guidance the rules need to be supplemented by judgment. And suitable advice is only acceptable through experience—if then.

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On whom can we rely for good advice in such matters of judgment? It is clear that the advisor must be: • Properly motivated in having have a strong interest in and incentive for offering advice that can be relied upon. • Experienced in dealing with the range of phenomenon at issue. • Reliable by having a good track-record with respect to giving good advice in the past. • Knowledgeable by being extensively informed with regard to the range of phenomena at issue. When we propose to rely on someone’s judgment in cases where we do not see our way clear on our own, rational procedure requires us to have reasonable assurance on all of these counts. A judgmental ruling is no more cogent than the credentials of its source. NOTES 1

On this issue see Alexander Miller and Crispin Wright (eds.) Rule Following and Meinong (Montreal: McGill University Press. 2002).

Chapter 5 RULES, THE SOCIAL ORDER, AND MORALITY ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) The rules that configure the mores of a society—though often complex—can in principle be learned at mother’s knee. (2) They too have a purposive rational n the function of group solidarity and collective support. (3) The moral rules go well beyond this. Morals do not have the limitedness of mores. (4) But morality too has a cogent rationale. And this rationale accounts for the mandatory force of the moral rules. (5) Enmeshment in the moral project is crucial to ourselves as rational beings. (6) But here too “living by the rules” is not enough. ____________________________________________________________ 1. THE NATURE OF SOCIAL RULES

I

ndividuals have habits, groups have customs, both of them modes of rule-conforming behavior. However, in both cases alike such rule affinity is generally unplanned and non-deliberate. In the circumstances, people behave as though they subscribe to a rule: their behavior is ruleconforming but not rule-motivated. Still, the general sanctions of human community is often the product of explicitly adopted rules. Thus in commercial and financial transactions we speak of irregularities as violations of propriety. Conformity to the rules of social practice in these domains is a crucial demand placed upon its practitioners by their clients and their colleagues alike. Respect for the rules established by custom or convention finds a deep routing in biological and cultural evolution. People have a natural and instinctive contempt for those who think of themselves as exceptions and think and act as though the rules were made for others. Rules exist to canalize behavior. They exist only where free agency is at hand. All elm trees are deciduous but seeing that they are not free agents,

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they are not subject to a rule to the effect “Be deciduous—i.e. shed your leaves in the autumn.” We, however, who acknowledge this law of nature are within the range of communicative practice subject to the rule: “Do not call something an elm tree unless it is deciduous.” Intelligent agents could not manage their affairs without rules. Life is too short for us to decide upon all our our actions on a case by case basis— and too interactive to decide all our dealings with others on an individual to individual basis. Both natural and cultural evolution so functions as to make the adoptions of rules an unavoidable aspect of human affairs. We might not like the demands of the rules but we could not lead our lives without them. Which came first, the chicken of rules or the egg of rule-conforming behavior? For example, are the rules of grammar fundamental engender the regularities in consequence, or is grammatical speech the basic reality and the rules a merely descriptive abstraction from the empirical patterns. The answer here pivots on several considerations. There are situations of a basic regularity of phenomenal proceedings from which descriptive abstraction alone is able to secure the superimposable rules. (A given author’s stylistic peculiarities or a given individual’s idiosyncratic habits will be of this sort.) The code of Justinian has it that the rules are mere convenient summaries of the actual legal rulings: the later being determinative: non ex regula ius sumatur, sed ex jure quod regula fiat.1 So viewed the practice of legal process comes first, rulishness being a derivative emergence thereafter. But this is not always so. There are certainly top-down situations where the rules themselves are clearly basic, while those ruleconforming phenomena are the derivative result of their operation. (Example: the rules of chess constrain those rule-conforming plays of the game.) However, the rules of language—of grammar, say, or orthography—are interesting as a mixed or hybrid category of these two modes. Initially they were unquestionably obtained by descriptive abstraction from empirical regularities, but then they enforced top-down by such arbiters as teachers, editors, and other purveyors of linguistic propriety. For in general the rules of social practice are not stable. Language, mores, and technological processes change—and the rules of procedure change with them. Customs—rules that emerge by spontaneous generation, as it were, and persist by acculturation rather than official enforcement, are the most benign sort of social rules. A society supported by an underpinning of constructive, productive, and communally benign customs is fortunate indeed.

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Do customs admit of codification? Could we write a sort of operating manual for a real-life society? Alas, no. The book would need too many chapters. Birth, death, marriage, hospitality, each sector of life would require a chapter—perhaps a volume—unto itself. However no chapter could go in indefinitum. Those customs have to be learnable by finite creatures. How can one manage to tell that a certain group (perhaps of one) has made it a rule to proceed in a certain way? Perhaps they tell us that it is so, which makes thing easy. (To be sure, we must then already know a great deal about the group’s rulish behaviour, seeing that this calls for linguistic communication.) Or perhaps our ascription of rulishness is an individually based imputation (like our belief that your container contains milk because the label says so). We constantly make inductive leaps in life on the basis of evidentiation that is plausible but inconclusive. The inductive projection of rulishness from behavioral patterns and regularities is of much the same sort. People being what they are, we standardly adopt a policy of presumption that—barring evidence to the contrary—behavioral regularities betoken a subscription to rules. We standardly presume that people that, barring individuals to the contrary, people have reasons for the things they do, so we standardly presume that their behavioral regularities result from a subscription to rules. There are virtually no substantial domains of human endeavor that are not governed by rules. Artistic creation is one of the few exceptions that come to mind. The violation of any appropriate rule always carries a sanction of some sort. These differ in nature. Violate rules of custom and you commit disapproval, violate rules of diet and you invite health problems. The proverb has it that: “Rules are made to be broken.” And, in fact, life being what it is, we cannot avoid occasionally breaking the rules. And when this unfortunate circumstance occurs, we better have a good excuse for it. “Never breaking the rules without having a good excuse for it” is a salient meta-rule. (Yes—the rules themselves are subject to rules.”) 2. THE FUNCTION OF SOCIAL RULES One of the salient functions of social rules is to render the actions of people predictable by and intelligible to others. Benign social interaction demands predictability. For interpersonal coordination and collaboration and communal cooperation is clearly facilitated by this circumstance. Of course by the same token if surprise and impredictability is sought in situa-

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tions of competition—and especially of outright conflict—this rulishness is to be avoided. But cooperation is another story. A society without rules is not stable as such—it is a self-destructive anarchy as a society. At the very minimum law and order must be established via the rule of law. However, a society with a vast profusion of rules is an unbearable tyranny. It takes a judiciously contrived middle way to qualify as a utopia of sorts. The most effective and efficient way to provide for a communally productive and constructive society order is not through an externally enforced “rule of law,” but by the internally imposed “rule of ethics” engrained in individuals through teaching and custom. It behooves any society to institute a manifold of sanctions—legal if need be, but preferably social—to canalize the behavior of its members into communally constructive and productive directions. Still, the social rules are certainly not above criticism—there is nothing automatic about their legislation. Like all rules they exist in a functional context—specifically to render social interactions possible and positive— constructive and workable (if not actually pleasance). Only insofar as the rules serve this inherent objective do they qualify as appropriate. People who do the right—the communally constructive thing not because they have to but because their want to provide the basis for a healthy society. And an internalized sense of appropriateness is the crux here. A society whose agents ask “Is it right?” rather than “Is it legal?” is indeed fortunate. 3. THE MORAL RULES What are those moral rules that implement the requisites of ethics? They are simply what you learned at mother’s knee. If you do not know those rules by now—at an age when, dear reader, you actually read about ethics—then forget about ethics. But practice is governed by theory, and there things are quite not so simple. Ethics deals with that sector of personal behavior in which the interests of others are implicated. The rule: • Never act in such a way as to cause unnecessary harm to the interest of others.

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Is one of them. Ethical behavior accordingly requires following the subordinated rules that implement this injunction. But is this all that there is to it? Two pivotal questions must be distinguished: (1) what does morality require of us; what must one do to count as a morally good person?, and (2) why should we do that which morality requires; why be a morally good person at all? The former question is one that can (nay, must) be addressed by essentially linguistic/conceptual means, the problem being one of determining whether an agent conforms to the specifications of “moral agency” in the light of the conception that is definitionally at issue here. The latter question, however, presses beyond this conceptual level to pose the substantive issue of why it is that people should act in this sort of way. As already noted, the answer to the first question is relatively straightforward. In briefest outline it is that the very nature of morality as such requires that we should always and everywhere heed and give due weight to the interests of others as significant factors in our practical deliberations regarding issues of action.2 But the second issue as to just why is it that one should proceed in this way wears a more substantive aspect: Does morality have a justificatory rationale which ensures that everyone has good reason to act on moral principles? We come to the sixty-four dollar question of moral theory: Why be moral? Why should something’s protecting your interests count as a reason for me to do it—especially when this is inconvenient? The case for morality is most straightforward and cogently developed by taking its relationship to rationality into account. The cause of reasoning that would unfold as follows: 1. I see myself as a rational person—an agent who can make decisions on the light of what he takes to be good and sufficient reasons. 2. I see my rationality as a paramount value—I would rather lose my right hand than my reason. 3. A rational person will only value something that he sees as being valuable—that is actually having value in and of itself. 4. I am therefore committed to seeing rationality as having value.

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5. But of rationality is of value in and for me, it is by parity of reasoning (as actuality demands it!) also of value in and for others. 6. In consequence, situation requires one to value the interest of other rational beings and take them into appropriate account in making our decisions. 7. But actuality is nothing other than the prospect of taking the authentic interests of others into appropriate account in the course of one’s own decision making. 8. The very rationality of rational beings carries a commitment to morality in its wake. Rational agents are accordingly bound by virtue of that very rationality to the view that valuing something commits one to seeing it as valuable, as worthy or deserving of being valued—by themselves or anyone like them in the relevant respects. One can, quite properly, like things without reasons, but for a rational agent to value them involves seeing them as having value by generalized standards. And thus to see value in my status and my actions as a rational agent I must be prepared to recognize this in others as well. For reason is inherently impersonal (objective) in this sense that what constitutes a good reason for X to believe or do to value something would automatically also constitute a good reason for anyone else who stands in X’s shoes (in the relevant regards). So if I am to be justified in valuing my rationality (in prizing my status as a rational agent) and in seeing it as a basis for demanding the respect of other agents, then I must also—from simple rational self-consistency—stand prepared to value and respect rationality in others. I may desire respect (be it self-respect or the respect of others) for all sorts of reasons, good, bad, or indifferent. But if I am to deserve respect, this has to be so for good reasons. Respect will certainly not come to me just because I am I, but only because I have a certain sort of respectevoking feature (for example, being a free rational agent) whose possession (by me or, for that matter, anyone) provides a warrant for respect. And this means that all who have this feature (all rational agents) merit respect. Our self-worth hinges on the worth we attach to others-like-us: we can only have worth by virtue of possessing worth-engendering features that operate in the same way when others are at issue. To claim respect-

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worthiness for myself I must concede it to all suitably constituted others as well. The first-person plural idea of “we” and “us” that projects one’s own identity into a wider affinity-community is a crucial basis of our sense of worth and self-esteem. And so, in degrading other persons in thought or in treatment, we would automatically degrade ourselves, while in doing them honor we thereby honor ourselves. When someone acts immorally towards me—cheats me or deceives me or the like—I am not merely angry and upset because my personal interests have been impaired, but am also “righteously indignant.” Not only has the offender failed to acknowledge me as a person (a fellow rational being with rights and interests of his own), but he has, by his very act, marked himself as someone who, though (to my mind) a congener of mine as a rational agent, nevertheless does not give us rational agents their proper due, thereby degrading the entire group to which I too belong. He has added insult to injury. And this holds more generally. One is also indignant at witnessing someone act immorally towards a third party—being disturbed in a way akin to the annoyance one feels when some gaffe is committed by a member of one’s own family. For one’s own sense of self and self-worth is mediated by membership in such a group and can this become compromised by their behavior. As rational agents, we are entitled and committed to be indignant at the wicked actions of our fellows who do not act as rational agents ought because our own self-respect is inextricably bound up with their behavior. They have “let down the side.” The upshot of such considerations is that to fail to be moral is to defeat our own proper purposes and to lose out on our ontological opportunities. It is only by acknowledging the worth of others—and thus the appropriateness of a due heed of their interests—that we ourselves can maintain our own claims to self-respect and self-worth. And so, we realize that we should act morally in each and every case, even where deviations are otherwise advantageous, because insofar as we do not, we can no longer look upon ourselves in a certain sort of light—one that is crucial to our own self-respect in the most fundamental way. Moral agency is an essential requisite for the proper self-esteem of a rational being. To fail in this regard is to injure oneself where it does and should hurt the most—in one’s own sight.

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4. THE PROBLEM OF DEONTIC FORCE Still another far-reaching difficulty inheres in basing the validation of morality on its derivative benefits. For it is part of the very idea of morality that one ought to be moral—that acting morally is a matter of duty or obligation. The core idea of morality is that someone who culpably fails to do the morally appropriate thing (wittingly and deliberately and without a good and sufficient excuse): i.

does something bad—not just something unwise or counterproductive or unconventional, but actually something wicked;

ii. is blameworthy by way of deserving of the disapproval of others and the reproach of one’s own conscience To default callously on one’s moral obligations is to act in a way that by its very nature invites and deserves condemnation. The aspect of “requiredness” is something that is crucial to morality as the thing it is. Any adequate theory of morality must accordingly recognize the deontological aspect of moral judgments. It must account for the “deontic force” or dutycoordinated requiredness that is an ineliminable feature of such moral precepts as “Stealing is wrong.” The sanctions of morality are thus stronger than those that mere considerations of self-interest can underwrite, seeing that they can ground not merely what makes people better off but what makes them better people. To be sure, there are many different sorts of bases for obligation—many different sorts of grounds that a must/ought contention can have: selfinterest, legality, religion, social custom, and others. But morality is yet another—different from and irreducible to these others. Moral judgments are normative in a characteristic way with respect to good/bad and right/wrong. A deliberately performed immoral act—the wanton infliction of needless pain on someone, for example, or hurting another’s feelings simply for one’s own pleasure of Schadenfreude—is not just foolish or antisocial or prudentially ill advised, but wicked. Categories, like wise/foolish, customary/eccentric, prudent/imprudent, lawful/illegal, simply do not capture what is at issue in moral/immoral. No theory of morality can lay claim to adequacy which fails to provide for this characteristic de-

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ontic force and somehow papers over the wickedness of moral transgressions. It is important in this connection to distinguish the question of motivation (“what induces us to be moral—what considerations of personal advantage impel us in this direction?”) from the question of obligation (“what obliges us to be moral—what considerations of impersonal advantage—of value-enhancement—are at work here?”). Matters of the former, not irrational sort will doubtless hinge on our prudential concerns. But matters of the latter sort, of the compulsion of duty, must inhere in deontological considerations. Even if, contrary to fact we actually did always and invariably have a stake of prudential interest in doing the morally right thing—say because a benign “hidden hand” showed us with benefits for so acting—this would not accomplish adequately the job of accounting for the obligational, duty-bound aspect of morality. Advantageousness by itself only shows why we are well-advised to be moral (why we should be so), but cannot show that we are dutifully obligated to be so (why we ought to and indeed deontically “must” be so.) If morality rested wholly on selfinterest, and personal advantage, then “X ought to do A” would, in the final analysis, come to “X ought to do A for prudential reasons.” And then, try as we will, we cannot validate the obligatoriness of moral duties. In the case of default we could not get beyond X’s being imprudent to its being actually wicked. Any strictly prudential validation of morality is thus inherently unsatisfactory because the problem of the ground of obligation remains untouched. A reductionist moral theoretician, say of utilitarian or egoistic persuasion, may perhaps insist: “I am quite prepared to let moral deliberations rest on an appeal to values other than utilitarian (or egoistic) ones— provided those values are themselves in turn legitimated by utilitarian (or egoistic) considerations. My theory calls for the two-step approach of first adopting morality en gros as a general program that itself pivots ultimately on reasons of utility (or self-interest), and then proceeding to address all concrete issues on classical moral principles.” But this line of approach will simply not do. It is like saying “I’ll sell my allegiance to the highest bidder and from there on out I’ll be a loyal follower.” No real loyalty (or real morality) is to be had along these lines. Where the foundations are unsatisfactory, the whole enterprise is vitiated. A validation of morality that rests its ultimate justificatory appeal upon any inherently amoral factor such as social solidarity or personal advantage cannot achieve a fully satisfactory result because its justificatory basis is insufficiently linked to the

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value system of morality itself. Accounting for the deontic force of moral judgments is a job which must be accomplished by other and very different means. In a classic paper of pre-World War I vintage, the Oxford philosopher H. A. Prichard argued that it makes no real sense to ask “Why should I be moral?”3 For once an act is recognized as being the morally appropriate thing to do, there is really no room for any further question about why it should be done. “Because it’s the moral thing to do” is automatically, by its very nature, a satisfactorily reason-presenting response. The question, “Why do the right thing?” is akin to the question “Why believe the true thing?” On both sides the answer is simply: “Just exactly because it is, by hypothesis, right/true.” When rightness or truth have once been conceded, the matter is closed. According to Prichard, then, the question “Why should one’s duty be done?” is simply obtuse—or perverse. For duty as such constitutes a cogent moral imperative to action—automatically, as it were, of itself and by its very nature. To grant that it is one’s duty to do something and then go on to ask why one should do it is simply to manifest one’s failure to understand what the conception of “duty” involves. Duty as such constitutes a reason for action—albeit a moral reason. But, clearly, this line of reflection, though quite correct, is probatively unhelpful. Self-support has its limitations as a justificatory rationale. The question still remains: “What makes reasons of moral appropriateness into good reasons?”; “Why should I be the sort of person who accepts moral grounds as validly compelling for his own deliberations?” If being moral indeed is the appropriate thing to do, there must be some sort of reason for it—that is, there must be some line of consideration, not wholly internal to morality itself, that renders it reasonable for people to be moral. We must probe yet further for a fully satisfactory resolution to the question “Why be moral?”—one that improves on the true but unhelpful answer, “Because it is the (morally) right thing to do.” There has to be more to it than that. But where are we to look? The most promising prospect is to look deep into the nature of personhood itself, to the ontological duty of self-realization which appertains to any rational agent whatsoever—the fundamental obligation of endeavoring to make the most of one’s opportunities for realizing oneself as fully as possible, a duty which, insofar as one “owes” it to anyone at all, one owes no less to the world at large than to oneself. For any reason-endowed agent is thereby under an obligation to use its reason to capitalize on its potentialities for the good.

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After all, we humans can, do, and should see ourselves as free rational agents. And as such we are in substantial measure self-made: we are the sort of creatures we are by virtue of the sorts of aspirations we have, the sort of creatures we see ourselves as ideally being. What we aspire to is, after all, an important aspect of what makes us what we are: in part we are what we are because of what we claim to be and what we wish to be. In particular, we class ourselves as members of the special category of persons—of rational agents. Homo sapiens is a creature capable of at least partial self-construction—one able to make himself into the being he ought (ontologically considered) to be, given the opportunities afforded him in the course of the world’s events. And in this regard, wastefulness is wicked. If we are creatures who can realize certain goods, then we ought, for that reason, to work towards their realization—when this involves foregoing even better opportunities elsewhere.4 And so, in the final analysis, one ought to be moral for the same sort of reason for which one ought to make use of life’s opportunities in general— one’s intelligence, for example, or one’s other constructive talents. For in failing to do this we throw away chances to make something of ourselves by way of contributing to the world’s good, thereby failing to realize our potential. The violation of moral principles thus stands coordinate with the sanctions attaching to wanton wastefulness of any sort. The crux is not so much self-realization as self-optimization. And what is at issue with failure is throughout not merely a loss but a violation of duty as well. For to recognize something as valuable or, with the rational person, to enter into certain obligations in its regard (such as favoring it over contrary alternatives, other things equal). 5. A MATTER OF SELF-IMAGE “But what if I just don’t happen to be the sort of person who attaches value to self-respect?” Then, alas, the rest of us have cause to feel sorry for you in your impoverishment, and, moreover, we would be justified in seeing your view of the matter as deeply mistaken. For your position is like that of someone who says: “Appropriate human values mean nothing to me.” Such a stance is profoundly unintelligent—and irrational as well, since it runs afoul of the most basic of rational imperatives: to realize oneself as the sort of creature one can and should see oneself as being. (The crux is that of the injunction of Polonius: “To thine own self be true.”) And this ontological obligation to self-development is the ground of the deontic

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force of the moral imperatives. It is the rope by which rationality pulls morality in its wake. But how can there be such a thing as an ontological obligation, an objector may ask, complaining: “I can understand how it can be that our nature (our drives and needs) motivates us to act in a certain sort of way. But how can you say that our nature obligates us to act in a certain sort of way (viz. morally)?” The response is that the reasoning at issue is based on two considerations: (1) We are so constituted as to see ourselves as having at our disposal certain opportunities for the realization of value (opportunities from bringing about something of value for oneself and for the world at large), and (2) a creature that is situated in this way (one that sees itself as a free rational agent placed in a position to act for the good) in virtue of this very fact stands under a moral obligation to endeavor to realize this opportunity. (“Promote your good where you can do so without running afoul of countervailing interests” is effective the operative principle here.) A rational agent that fails in endeavoring to realize its best or real interests is ipso facto failing to exercise that rationality to optimal effect. After all, working for the benefit of oneself and those with whom one’s own interests are interconnected is of the very essence of rational competency. The overall line of the preceding reasoning may thus be summarized as follows: 1. Since rationality commits us to the cultivation of value, every rational agent ought (ontologically) to make the best and most of its opportunities. 2. To be on good terms with oneself—having a proper sense of selfworth—is a crucial part of making the most of one’s opportunities. (Indeed, without self-respect, rational agents cannot lead satisfying lives.) 3. Our self-worth is inevitably mediated through membership in a wider affinity group. To deem itself worthy as an individual, a rational creature must see itself as being of a type that is inherently worthy. Specifically such beings must see themselves as persons (rational agents) and must value themselves as such.

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4. Since our self-worth hinges on our membership in the category of persons, we must also recognize and acknowledge the inherent worth of the others who belong to this category. 5. But if in our thought and action we tread the interests of other persons underfoot, then we effectively deny that these interests should be duly respected. We degrade and devalue personhood as such. In denying or downgrading the claims of other persons to a due respect for their interests we ipso facto downgrade or deny the claims of the entire type—a type to which we belong and should see ourselves as belonging, and claimed membership in which is essential to our sense of self-worth. In acting immorally we deny ourselves the benefit of reflective self-respect. This line of reflection shows how it is that our obligation to be moral agents derives from and is encompassed within the fundamental ontological duty to self-realization that is incumbent on rational agents. Our own best interests are deeply engaged via the requisites of our self-image as the sorts of beings we can and should be. Such a position aligns closely with that which Plato attributes to Socrates in the Republic: that being unjust and immoral—regardless of what immediate benefits it may yield—is always ultimately disadvantageous because of the damage it does to our character (or psyche) by making us into the sort of person we ourselves cannot really respect.5 (“What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”) On such a view, it is not the case that the rationale of morality consists in its rewards—either intrinsic (“virtue is its own reward”) or prudential. The justificatory impetus at issue is of a very different sort. We should be moral not because of its benefits for what we have, but because of its benefits for what we are—the sort of creature we can then appropriately see ourselves as being.6 It is a key aspect of our nature that we see ourselves as rational agents who do what they do for reasons. Our reason is the last thing we would want to lose. And rationality requires us to recognize the claims that it has upon us—both in relation to ourselves and in relation to other rational beings. Morality, in sum, is a part of rationality, but of practical and thus of judgmental/evaluative rationality. In failing to care for your real interests you are being irrational, but by way of poor judgment rather than poor in-

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ferential reasoning. An immoral person errs not (necessarily) in calculation, but certainly in evaluation, in failing to assess at their proper value the ends which people ought (metaphysically or otherwise) to set for themselves. And so whether or not you do care about your best interests, you ought (qua rational agent) to care about them as a matter of your ontological obligations. The point is best put in normative terms: every rational (reason-possessing) creature should and every fully reason-exercising creature does have such a tendency towards realizing its opportunities for the good. This normative impetus creates the bridge leading from rationality to morality, and grounds the deontological force of appropriate moral injunctions in an ontological aspect of the human condition, namely in our selfclaimed (and self-image essential) status as free rational agents.7 The commitment to rationality is itself an integral part of our best interests. No gain in goods or pleasures can outweigh its value for us rational beings. (The “happiness pill” hypothesis suffices to show that it is not pleasure of happiness per se that ultimately matters for us, but rationally authorized pleasure of happiness.) The goods we gain through deception (or other sorts of immoral conduct) afford us a hollow benefit. This is so not because we are too high-minded to be able to “enjoy” illicit gains, but because inasmuch as we are rational thinking beings—creatures committed by their very nature to strive for reflective contentment (as opposed to merely affective pleasure)—it is only be “doing the right thing” that we can maintain our reflectively based sense of self-worth or deserved merit. The imperative “Act as a rational agent ought” does not come from without (from parents or from society or even from God). It roots in our own self-purported nature as rational beings. (In Kant’s words it is a dictamen rationis, a part of the “innere Gesetzgebung der Vernunft.”) Its status as being rationally appropriate roots simply and directly in the fact of its being an integral part of what our reason demands of us. And because being moral is a part of being reasonable, morality too is part of this demand. Morality is accordingly geared to rationality in a dual way: (i) morality is a matter OF rationality—of acting for good reasons of a certain (characteristically moral) sort, and (ii) morality is an enterprise that exists FOR rationality—for the sake of protecting the legitimate interests of rational agents. And it is precisely this gearing of morality to the interests of rational agents that renders an ontological validation of morality in terms of the inherent requisites of rational agency thoroughly consonant with the value structure of morality itself.

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We cannot implement the meta-rule: “Always follow the rules” because the circumstances of a difficult world my make this impracticable. We have to follow the mitigated precept “Always follow the rules to the greatest extent that is realizable overall in the circumstances.” This means that the adaptation to circumstances becomes a cardinal consideration for applied ethics—and brings the project that Kant characterized as “casuistry” into the foreground. Excuses matter because in difficult circumstances we must exercise damage control in regard to rule-breaking, and the ruling principle here is to minimize the extent of our resort to excuses. The resort to excused in ethical matters is governed by several principles. Perhaps foremost among these excuses relating to issue of selforiented prudence carry no weight at all. No appeal to personal inconvenience or cost can carry any weight whatsoever. The only consideration that can provide an effective excuse for a failure to meet as ethical objects is that meeting of requires default or yet another, even more pressing ethical obligation. And even here there are further complications and qualifications. For if my incapacity to know both obligations A and B is due to a culpable fault or failure on my part—for example if my incapacity to meet my fiscal obligations both to X and to Y has been in due to my guilting funds away— then the “excuse” will carry no weight at all. 6. SUPEREROGATION AND THE QUESTION: IS “LIVING BY THE RULES” ENOUGH? The overall project at issue in morality—viz. deciding one’s actins in a way that takes the best interest of others into appropriate account—is sufficiently complex and variegated that no set of explicit rules can accommodate every need of the situation. And the fact of it is that living by the rules is simply not enough? Certainly not as long as the rules as those basic prohibitions of the Commandment type “Thou shalt not . . .” The morally worthy life does not consist solely in the avoidance of transgression: for its realization we must not only avoid the bad but promote the good. Granted, at a minimum ethics requires us to live within the rules. Prohibitive rule conformity is a basic and appropriate demand. But true ethical excellence demands more—it requires works of supererogation that to

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above and beyond mere negativity. Just as successful chess calls for more than averting a violation of the rules of the game, so also does success in matters of ethics. Being deserving calls for a good deal more than merely being blameless: to qualify as a morally good version it does not suffice to avoid being a bad one. Granted, the first and most minimal divide of ethics is to avoid doing wrong. But ethical excellence is something supererogatory: it asks for more than mere rule conformity at issue with having those fundamental prohibitions. The injunction to love our neighbors goes beyond the reach of “thou shalt not” commandments. NOTES 1

Digest of Justinian, ed. Paulus, Bk. 50, sect. 17, par. 1.

2

This does not mean that we must weigh the interests of others equally with our own? After all our responsibility for ourselves and our own actions is at a different order. But we must accord them a substantial weight in line with the inherent value of personhood, and so must be prepared, in principle, to subordinate our interests to theirs if circumstances should so warrant.

3

H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind, vol 21 (1912): 21-37.

4

What is at issue here is not the “Mill's fallacy” inference from being valued to being valuable, but the unproblematic move from being appropriately valued by a creature of a certain constitution to being something that objectively has value for this creature.

5

Francis Hutcheson saw morality as a matter of so acting that we can reflectively approve of our own character. (See The British Moralists, ed. by L. A. SelbyBigge, Vol. I [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897], which contains Hutcheson's Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil [London: Publisher?, 1725].) But even more fundamental is the matter of so acting that we can reflectively approve of our own nature, in prizing the kind of creatures we are—or see ourselves as being. And this requires one to act in such a way that one can reflectively approve of oneself. To maintain my sense of self-worth, I must act in such a way that I need make no excuses for myself towards myself. (The linkage of morality to self-respect—the maintenance of a positive self-image and a proper sense of self-worth—shows why limiting the scope of “real persons” to an in-group of some sort is so conducive to moral wickedness. If slaves or barbarians or enemies in war are not seen as being persons just like oneself, then their maltreatment is nowise impeded by any threats to one’s self-image.)

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NOTES 6

Even David Hume is drawn towards such a view. As he sees it, even if those “sensible knaves” whom he imagines as taking improper advantage of their opportunities for selfish gains in a moral society would, even “were they ever so secret and successful,” nevertheless still themselves emerge as “in the end, the greatest dupes,” because they have “sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws.” (“An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” in Enquiries, ed. by L. A. Selby Bigge [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985], Pt. II, P. 283.) The sensible knave automatically foregoes the pleasure of “peaceful reflection on one's own conduct” (ibid.). Moreover, because he cannot then sustain even his own critical scrutiny, the knave also renders himself unable to enjoy membership in an organized society (which, as Hume sees it, is perhaps no lesser loss). Prudence here reinforces self-respect.

7

The ontological-obligation response to the question “Why be moral?” exactly parallel the similar responses given in Chapter One to the question “Why be rational?”, and this is only fitting and proper, seeing that morality is simply one sector or subdomain of rationality.

Chapter 6 PRINCIPLES: THEIR NATURE AND MISSION ____________________________________________________________ Synopsis (1) Principles provide for a basis for the rational development of a field of purposive endeavor. (2) They exist to provide directive guidance to the conduct of its proceedings. And different sorts of principles will be operative in different domains: every mode of rational endeavor has its own manifold of appropriate principles. (3) Their standing reflects the functional orientation of domain at issue and reflect its purposive nature. (4) The generality of principles means that they can come into conflict in particular cases. Metaprinciples are needed to assure rational consistency in the concrete application of principles. (5) The most demanding principles are those that bear upon practices that are not optional but mandatory for humans at large. (6) The justification of principles lies in the appropriateness and effectiveness of their guidance within the realm of practice at issue with their operation. ____________________________________________________________ 1. BACKGROUND

I

n rational deliberation about matters of thought and action we cannot depend on the rules alone: they are necessary alright, but not sufficient. And when the rules do not enable us to settle matters, we must use judgment to address the underlying principles that lie behind them. We must, that is to say, assess circumstances of the situation at hand in the light of the basic principles of the relevant range of purposive concern. And precisely because in many contexts the rules are of only limited scope for guidance must, on occasion, have recourse to judgment in referring cases to the underlying principles at stake. In straightforward cases, subsumption under rules can suffice to determine particular-case resolutions. But in more complex cases, judg-

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mental alignment with principles is called for. And the reasoning involved here is almost invariably complex and convoluted. For while the rules, where applicable, fit the circumstances and conditions of the case at hand the approach to principles is something more complex and problematic. For difficult cases always fall apart into a multitude of aspects and circumstances, some pulling in one direction and others in another. The guiding assessment of the weight and bearing of such discordant features is exactly what good judgment insists on. And to achieve such judgment one must have a firm grasp on the principles at issue. Like so much else, the idea of principles (archai) was put on the agenda of Western thought by the ancient Greeks. They employed the idea alike in the sense of temporal origins and spatial foundations. But in due course the idea comes to focus more abstractly on the foundation (basis, fundament) of a body of knowledge, and in instantiating this idea the axioms of geometry served as a model. Its ever-expanding role means that the idea of principles is a virtually indispensible instrument of the theory of human practice. Conformity to principles is often pivotal in assessing the acceptability of injunctions to action—acts of claim-acceptance included. To put it in Kant’s terminology they set the conditions under which alone a certain body of claims or of actions can be warranted.1 As a typical example in this regard, consider the logical Principle of Contradiction: “Avoid contradictions: keep your commitments consistent: never assert both p and not-p.” Or again, it is, no doubt, a worthy and appropriate principle not to put the lives of people needlessly at risk. But the issue of what should concretely be done to realize this generalized desideratum is left subject to complex and circumstantially variable conditions. Accordingly, principles provide as guides to understanding what it is that one should think and do in matters of rational procedure. They are sign-posts that point us in the direction of the demands of reason. The reality of it is that we do not really achieve mastering of a domain of investigation on the deliberation until we have delivered its operative principles. The salient question that is answered by a knowledge of the principles of a domain is that of the most fundamental facts that determine that most crucial and portentous features of the field. The theory of principles—principology as it might be called—belongs to the larger field of praxiology—the rational investigation of human practice.2 Principles govern processes and procedures—the doings of agents—

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and in general such doings fall into three main categories: thought, action, and evaluation. Correspondingly, there will be cognitive principles, practical principles, and normative principles. Every sphere of purposive endeavor will be subject to principles. The taxonomy of principles will accordingly be endlessly complex. There are principles of arithmetic, of chess, of gardening, etc. To deal with principles in detail one will, accordingly, have to limit one’s horizons to one or another of these definitive and delimited domains. Sometimes, to be sure, there are transcategorematic principles that reach across such classificatory divides. Take the principle: “Proceed with greater care and caution in matters when the stakes at issue are greater.” Not only does this principle hold good in all three domains of thought, action and evaluation, but it fuses two of them tighter, namely action (“proceed”) and evaluation (“greater of lesser stakes”). It is thus easy to find illustrations of cogent principles of various kinds. For example: Cognitive principles: “Align your belief with the best available evidence.” “Keep your beliefs compatible with one another.” Ethical principles: “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” “Never decide your actions with reference to your interests alone (“what’s in it for me?”), without heed of their potential impact on the interests of others.” Communicative principles: “Do not waste your interlocutors time.” “Do not put forth misleading or deceptive messages.” Principles of Common Courtesy: “Do not needlessly offend the sensibilities of your interagents.” “In any multilateral effort, do your fair share.” 2. RULES VS. PRINCIPLES Principles serve to structure our deliberations regarding appropriate thought and action. We say that someone is a person of principles if their behavior is subject to rational guidelines rather than being erratic, inconsistent, capriciously variable.

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Why should there be principles? Why not get by with particularized rules alone? Because in a complex world the range of cases and circumstances is so vast and variegated that no set of explicit rules could adequately cover the range of possibilities. There are exceptions to all or at any rate most rules and without the guidance of principles we would not be able to proceed appropriately on the basis of rules alone. But why not do without principles and just make ad hoc decisions on the basis of the specifics of the case? Mainly because of certain salient features of cases themselves. And here three considerations are paramount: 1. Cases often share commonalties, and where one can be made to do for money there is no point in reinventing the wheel. (Economy of investigation.) 2. Rationality (let alone fairness) calls for treating like cases alike. (Rational and ethical uniformity.) 3. Cases are frequently complex and in handling them we need the guidance of principles that establish analogy and uniformity. (Explanatory economy.) Principles do and must exist to provide appropriate guidance throughout the realm of rational endeavor. Unlike rules, principles do not prescribe particular actions or courses of action but mandate directions of procedure. They do not specify concrete steps but generalized objectives, indicating the necessity or desirability of a certain generalized tendency. Principles alone will in and by themselves never suffice to decide issues of practice. Mastering of the principles of medicine will not make one a good doctor, nor will knowledge of the principles of cooking make one a good chef. The transit from the principles to competent practice is mediated through multiple layers enroute to detailed adequacy. Thus take the following principle of rationality: “Treat like cases alike.” Suppose two cases of thought or action, A and B. Are they alike in the issue-relevant respects? That all depends—the principles certainly won’t tell us. And even if they are, what are we to do in case A? Again the principle does not tell us what to do; all it says is that whatever it is appropriate to do in case A will then also be appropriate in a similar case B. The principle does not dictate a course of action: it serves to delimit the range of appropriateness. Principles certainly do not settle matters of detail.

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But they serve to emplace them within a framework of normative adequacy. Principles are accordingly more abstract and general than ordinary rules. When rules they are, they are rules of a higher level. And every mode of practice has its principles inherent in the very aims of the enterprise at issue. For everything that can be done can be done better and worse in more or less effective ways. And principles provide our guidance here. Accordingly, principles are guidelines for doing well rather than specifically for doing good. For even modes of practice that are inherently negative—burglary, for example, or forgery—will be subject to principles. The value standing of principles depends on that of the practice at issue. Whenever the competent/in-competent distinction can take hold, there will be room for principles. Principles are directives in nature. They serve to provide orientation for successful understanding and action. Principles will thus invariably be subject to the teleology of the particular practice involved, be it intelligible communication, philosophical deliberation, or read construction. In every case the mission and reason for being of principles will root in their capacity to possibilize and/or facilitate realization of the objectives of the enterprise. Principles are thus instrumentalities and as such their rationale is always pragmatic (in the broader sense of this term). Their nature makes manifest the goal-status of the particular domain at issue. And this is so even for “theoretical” principles, seeing that their role is fundamentally explanatory. For such principles serve to organize and structure our grasp of things with respect to what is basic and fundamental and what is subordinate and denotative. The medievals tended to equate principles with the fundamental rules of reason prevailing in different disciplines. For example: • The principles of dialectics as to procedural rules and maxims. • The principle of rhetoric are the compliances (loci communes) that provide for proof-texts. • the principles of ethics in the consensual judgment universally shared in human communities. • The principle of mathematics as its axims and demonstrated propositions (theogemata).

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• The principles of theology (that superooelestis scientia are the truths of revelation.3 To be sure, a knowledge of its fundamental principles is indispensible for the adequate mastery of any domain. However, it is never enough—but only makes a beginning. (Which is why those basic principles are often characterized as “first.”) For until one is able to apply and implement those principles, they stand apart in splendid isolation—inert and ineffective. Their useful work is a matter of invitation to application, but such application is not something they achieve in and of themselves it always requires further work. While principles are in essence a procedural instrumentality they must square with the realities of the domain at issue, so that their nature is two sidedly both cognitive and substantive.4 The traditional distinction between cognitive (informative) and ontological (factive) principles is doubtless appropriate and infinitive. However a coordination and indeed fusion of the two is established through the role of systematization. For exactly those theses which play a foundational role in the systematization of knowledge regarding the phenomenon at issue in a sector of reality are definitive fort that sector itself. The classical view of truth as fact-correspondence (adequatio ad rem) assures as coordinative alignment between the two. Some principles are at bottom procedural and regulative, their justificatory basis fundamentally functional and pragmatic. Even seemingly ontologically descriptive principles like the Principles of Least Action (“physical processes minimize the expenditure of ‘action’”) or the Principles of the Conservation of Energy (“physical processes conserve ‘energy’” are at bottom tantamount to procedural injunctions such as “Endeavor so to devise your concepts of ‘acts’/‘energy’ that the quantitative at issue are minimized/preserved.”) What looks to be a rule for nature’s ontology can in effect be seen as a regulative injunction for devising a suitable theory of nature. A person who ignores the principles of thought is irresponsible with regard to issues of truth and falsity. A person who ignores the principles of practice is heedless in regards to matters of prudence. And someone who is unprincipled in matters where the interests of others are concerned is thereby immoral.

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3. WHENCE PRINCIPLES? There will certainly be principles of a higher order that can trump the applicability of others. The leading principle of the Hippocratic Code wears its motto on its sleeves. “First do no harm” The “Prime Directive” for the space explorers of the fictional Starship Enterprise was “Do not interfere with an alien civilization’s development.” Most moralists (though doubtless not all) would agree that “Do not endanger the lives of people” trumps “Do not tell falsehoods.” Principles are not created equal. They can function at different levels of generality or fundamentality. Some relate to situations where greater issues are at stake than is the case with others and accordingly have greater weight. While “first principles” are basic and foundational in nature, they may come to light only after the structure at issue has been erected. They are “first” not necessarily in the order of investigation but rather in the order of fundamentality in rational systematization. Developmentally this may emerge only at the proverbial end of the day. Some theorists propose to reject principles on grounds of their generality. They reason as follows: Principles postulate a uniformity of treatment. But this is not appropriate. One should be flexible and pragmatic. The different is that between codified law and common law, between regulating particular cases to fit under general rules, and letting the cases themselves be decisive by having them be resolved independently and allowing the generalities to fall where they may.

Now whether this line of thought may seem plausible and attractive, it does not really accomplish the work into advocates have in mind. The fact is that even a case-oriented approach is deeply enmeshed in a commitment to principles. The way these cases are addressed and the kinds of assessment to which they are subject is deeply committed to principles of procedure throughout. It is just that those principles are not set out at the outset of the proceeding. Rather they emerge into cleaver view only as the process unfolds. The quarrel between the “principalist” and the “pragmatics” does not really relate to the whethers of principles, but only to their when. Principles issue from two styles of reflection: top-down and bottom-up. The top-down discernment of principles is a matter of reflecting on the general aims and principles of the enterprise at issue and noting—be it through analysis or intuition—that these require conducting the business of

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the domain in a certain sort of way with certain ends and objectives kept in view. This is ultimately a matter of functional analysis because teleological considerations will be paramount here. By contrast the bottom-up discernment of principles proceeds by looking at the manifold of available rules and scrutinizing them for commonalties, consonances and convergences. The justifactory process here is based on the second for a general thread of tendency and direction that is universal or at least widely common among the rules. The variant of approaches accordingly engender three rather different styles of justifactory procedure: The Top Down Model Principles come first in the order of logical priority. They get established on the basis of abstract and general considerations. Specific rules are thus articulated to implement the principles. And concrete decisions and actions are then generally aimed at by following the rules. The Bottom Up Model Concrete cases have priority it is they that come first. We make decisions concrete specific cases on the basis of their specific features, and the lack of commonalties. Rules and principles emerge by inductive generalizations from concrete cases: they simply reflect discernible patterns among concrete cases in a particular realm of practice. The Dialectical Model The relation between particular decisions and actions and the rules and principles that govern them is not one of priority at all, but one of interdependence. There is no order of fundamentality here: any realm of rational practice involves both: it does not matter where we begin, sooner of later we arrive both at concrete actions and decisions and a group of the manifold of rules and principles that guide them. 4. THE ISSUE OF CONSISTENCY The fact that principles can be based upon different modes of justifactory consideration has significant implications for modes of the consis-

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tency and compatibility of principles. With the top-down process of principle validation essentially subsumptive approach to principles it is essential that everything be kept consistent. The generality of principles thus means that they can come into conflict only in particular cases. Again with the bottom-up process of principle validation consistency is once again established—but now as a matter of methodological and procedural strategy. That is we carry in the process of abstraction and generalization in such a way that consistency is assured. Finally, the dialectical approach with its emphasis on reciprocal interdependence works itself out differently, however. It looks to a more complex interrelationship where different and potentially conflicting principles may best and most smoothly accord with different sorts of cases and situations. Accordingly it contemplates the prospect that a variegated body of practice may well involve a variety of principles that stand in a relationship of reciprocal tension and conflict. On this basis, however, the principles that canalize a practice need not be consistent. Take proverbial wisdom as an illustrative example. Proverbs are replete with principles intended to provide us with guidance for life. But like is complex. No simply rules are satisfactory; an approach or procedure that works in some cases will fail miserably in others. So proverbial wisdom has to be attuned to move in either direction in line with the almost infinitely complex and ramified character of different circumstances and situations. If there is to be any body of simple rules at all, it must, if adequate, be prepared to move in opposite directions subject to the indications of diversified circumstances. One striking and significant feature of proverbial wisdom is its inconsistency. It is Janus-faced in its tendency to look in opposite directions at once, reminiscent of Newton’s first law, in that for every proverb of one tendency there is another with equal force of the opposite tendency, as attested by the following pairs: A stitch in time saves nine/Look before you leap; Beware of Greeks bearing gifts/Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves/You can’t take it with you; Plus ça change, plus c′est la même chose/Tempora mutantar, nos et mutatur in illis. Proverbs that point in opposite directions mark the complexity of human life: that there is time to hurry (“A stitch in time saves nine”) and a time for being slow (“Haste makes waste”); that “depending on conditions,” both ways of proceeding are proper and will advised. In all such contexts where principles can come into conflict we re-

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quire or at least desire metaprinciples, that is to say principles for deciding which principles are priority in situations of the type at issue. In the absence of the guidance of such principles we have little alternative but to have recourse to informal judgment to effect a resolution as to comparative primacy and priority. Some specific examples of sensible meta-principles are: —Don’t ignore relevant principles —Apply only relevant principles —Always refer your rules of action to the appropriate principles —Never act in defiance of the pertinent principles —Conflicts among principles are settled not by compromise (partition) but by prioritization (dominance) —Economy: don’t bring in more than you need The reality if it is that meta-principles are needed to assure rational consistency on the application of principles. 5. OPTIONAL VS. MANDATORY PRACTICES The very idea of ethical comportment is such as to require people to keep their actions in consonance with the principles that are inherently filling and appropriate. Characterizing someone as “a man of principles” is thus seen as an approbation and characterizing them as “unprincipled” as a derogation. The here-operative distinction between optimal and mandatory practices is reflected in the difference between categorical and conditional principles. A principle of chess such as “Protect your king” is a conditional one: it holds for those who play chess when engaged in doing so, which they may or may not choose to do in a particular place and time. By contrast the principles of maintaining health or acting morally or thinking rationally are categorical. Since the processes and justice at issue (living, interacting, thinking) are not optimal for us but inherently programmed into the human situation, the principles involved are categorically mandatory for us. The

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principles of competent skating or lawyering or gardening apply only to those who choose to engage in the endeavor. But the categorical principles at issue with the activities that are meritable for members of our species are unconditionally categorical. Accordingly, what makes moral principles binding is that ethically appropriate behavior is mandatory for rational agents at large. Most sorts of principles are only conditionally and continently applicable. The principles of chess only apply for chess players, the principles of seamanship only for seamen. By contrast the principles of ethics or of logic do not admit of suspension. Thinking and acting are practices we cannot opt out of. And so the more demands are those that relate to practices that are not a matter of personal option. 6. HOW ARE PRINCIPLES JUSTIFIED? How are principles justified? How do we determine their appropriateness? Principles are means to an end. They come into operation whenever a goal-directive practice is at issue with respect to some appropriate objective. And they serve to canalize the step by which we prove this ground in the direction of appropriate procedures and effective practice. There are basically two routes to the validation of principles: reasoning and experience. Since principles function in the guidance of practice, they are teleological in their bearing. Practices and procedures are always purposively endoriented: they are designed with a view of realizing some objective or other. And herein lies the key to the validation of principles. The validation of principles roots in the fact that they have work to do. For they are functional resources: scientific principles ground explanations, practical principles guide actions and so on. And the validation of a principle turns on the efficacy and adequacy with which it is able to discharge its functional mission. The ultimate test of principles is a pragmatic one with request to the specific teleology involved in the particular enterprise at issue. In the end, then the validation of principles lies in their efficacy as guidance in relation to the aims of the realm of practice at issue in their operation. The process of systematization that validates those seemingly axiomatic starting points also envisions something ultimate. But what is ultimate here does not lie in the range of axioms, theses, or propositions, but rather is

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something methodological—the “dialectal” process, as it were, by which such purported starting points become validated through cyclic and retrospective considerations. Paradoxical though it may seem, the determination of what is basic in philosophy does not come at the start of an inquiry but at its end. What is operative throughout is the impact of pragmatics—of functional or purpose-oriented validation. The validation of principles proceeds through their giving useful guidance through promoting efficacy and efficiency in goal realization. Appropriate principles achieve this status in the first instance through their role in fostering the picture at issue, and there is the second, higher instance through considering the capacity of that practice itself to foster the realization of the human good. NOTES 1

Immanuel Kant, CPuR, A146=B187.

2

The term was coined by the Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbinsky to designate the theory of rational action in general.

3

See Ritter-Gründer Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 8.430a.

4

As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, principles are oriented aut in fiere rei aut in rei cognitio (STI 22 1C). In the technical terminology earlier philosophizing they address both principiae cognoscendi (Wissensgründe) and principiae essendi (Seisgründe).

Chapter 7 FUNCTIONAL HIERARCHIES AGAIN ______________________________________________________________

SYNOPSIS (1)Actual principles are universal throughout a field of rational endeavor, while mere rules are generally of circumstantially limited applicability. However, while the fundamental principles are indeed universal, their implementation descends via standards and rules to case-specific applications. (2) This sort of cascading of validation illustrates what is here called a functional hierarchy. (3) Subsumptive validation along hierarchical lines—albeit with increasing “slack” in the course of descent—is a salient feature of rational proceedings in general. It combines high-level uniformity with lower-level flexibility. ______________________________________________________________

1. THE UNIVERSALITY OF REASON

P

rinciples function at the level on universality: a principle is a universal regularity of comprehensive and effectively unrestricted scope. The socalled Principle of Rationality—“Accept no claim without a reason”—is a good example. By contrast, a rule is a regularity of clearly restricted scope. “Only eat your table food with cutlery implements, never locate it with our hands” is of limited application. It holds in Europe but not in Central Asia. Principles are substantially involved, the generality of rules is of conditionalized limitation. Or contrast the precept “Conform to the customs of the country” which hold unrestrictedly with its cognate “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” which affirms a rule of a limited application. The impetus to universality lies in the very nature of reason. An isolated Robinson Crusoe may well act in a perfectly rational way. But, he can only do so by doing what hypothetically would make sense for anyone in similar circumstances. He must be in a position to persuade other people to endorse his course of action by an appeal to impersonal general principles to show them that his actions were appropriate in the circumstances—either uniquely or no less so than the alternatives. Rationality is thus something

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inherently universal in its operations. The demands of rationality are indeed subject to person-relativity—but one that proceeds in an impersonally universal way in taking personal conditions and circumstances into account. Consider an example. I am hungry; I go to the restaurant; I order a meal. Have I acted rationally? Of course. But why exactly? Well—because a long story can correctly be told about what I have done, a story in which all of the following play a significant role: My well-evidentiated beliefs that eating food alleviates hunger pangs and nourishes the body; my appropriate conviction restaurants provide food; my sensible preference for physical health and for the comfort of satiation over the discomfort of hunger; my custom of doing what I effectively can to alleviate discomfort and promote well-being, and the like. The whole chain: “alleviate discomfort— proceed to secure food—go to a food supplier—order food” is part and parcel of the rationality-dictated rationale of my action. If the chain were severed at any point (if, for example, I had realized that the restaurant had run out of food last week), then my action in proceeding to the restaurant to order that meal would cease to be rational in the circumstances. One only proceeds rationally when one’s actions are “covered” by way of subordination under a universal principle of rationality that holds good generally and for everyone. In the restaurant I study the menu and order steak. Was it rational of me to do so? Of course—because I was hungry, came to eat something at the restaurant, and found steak to be the most appealing entry on the menu, thus proceeding on the principle “Presented with various options for food (and other things being equal), select that which one deems the tastiest.” (To be sure, other things may not be equal—my choice of beef might deeply offend my dinner guest, who deems cattle sacred.) Here we have a strictly universal principle—one that it makes perfectly good rational sense for anyone to act on. Though clearly not every sensible person would order steak, I nevertheless could be said to have done—under the aegis of the indicated principle—something that any sensible person would do. Similarly, any rational choice must be “covered” by a universally valid desideratum. It must implement, in its particular context, a principle that is of strictly universal validity—although, to be sure, one that is of a conditional nature. Again, some things we desire for ourselves (“Mary as a wife”), others we see as universal desiderata that hold generally and for everyone (“having a good spouse if married”). Now, the crucial fact is that a personal want or preference qualifies as rational only insofar as it can be subordi-

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nated to something that is an unrestrictedly universal desideratum (all else being equal). Only insofar as I am convinced that Mary will prove to be an instance of something that everyone can acknowledge as desirable at a sufficiently high level of generality (having one’s marriage partner be “a good spouse,” “a caring helpmeet,” “a desirable mate,” “a delightful companion,” or some such) will my own personal desire to have her for a wife be a rational one. Only those acts which instantiate in this way something that deserves the rather pompous title of a “universal principle of reason” can qualify as rational. It is not “being the last to cross the bridge safely” that would be rationally advisable for anyone and everyone to opt for in relevant circumstances but only something like “gaining one’s way to safety from a dangerous situation.” Only those acts whose salient characterization is universally rational at some level of abstraction are rational at all. The ground of the universality of reason is not far to seek. It is rooted in the nature of interests. Something can only be in my (real) interests by being an item of a generic type that is in everyone’s (real) interests. It is in my interest to take a particular medicine because it is generally in anyone’s and everyone’s interest to care for their health. Any valid interest—any that merits the acknowledgement of reason—must subordinatively inhere within a universal interest (as the validity of an interest in tennis rooted in a generic need for exercise or skill development). And the very raison d’être of reason is as a servant of our interests, both in being the ultimate arbiter of what those interests are and the appropriate guide to their realization. The contention “What’s rational for you to do need not be right for me” is certainly correct—within limits. But there are limits of explicit specificity. Consider the medical analogy. You might do well to eat chocolate to provide the calories needed for the strenuous outdoor life you lead; for me, with my diabetes, it would be a very bad thing indeed. And so, low-level recommendations like “Eat chocolate” indeed fall into the range of the just-stated dictum. But with “Eat the foods conducive to maintaining your health” the matter stands very differently and we have moved to a much higher level of generality. And finally with “Do what best furthers the realization of your real best interests we have reached a level where there is no variability. What is right and proper here in point of rationality is right and proper for everybody. And, similarly, at the higher level of governing principles, rationality is increasingly compelling and universal. The uniformity of overarching rational principles transcends the variability of their particular cultural implementations. Different cultures do indeed implement a rational principle like “Be in a position to substantiate your claims”

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very differently. (For one thing, there are culturally or historically different standards as to what constitutes a proper “substantiation” for claims.) But, they cannot simply abandon it. If they convert to “It’s all right to maintain anything that suits your fancy” they do not have a different mode of cognitive rationality but rather, in this respect at any rate, are simply deficient in cognitive rationality. The characteristic nature of the cognitive enterprise as such imposes limits in its appropriate pursuit. To be sure, the question “What is the rational thing to believe or to do?” must receive the indecisive answer: “That depends.” It depends on context and situation—on conditions and circumstances. At the level of the question “What is rational; what is it that should be believed or done?” a manysided and variegated response is indeed called for. The way in which people proceed to give a rational justification of something—be it a belief, action, or evaluation—is unquestionably variable and culture relative. We mortal men cannot speak with the tongues of angels. The means by which we actually pursue our ends in the setting of any major project—be it rationality, morality, communication, or nourishment—are “culture dependent” and “context variable.” But nevertheless, those projects themselves— in terms of the objectives and ideals that define them and of the basic principles that implement these objectives, aims and ideals—have a uniform and universal validity. Greek medicine is something very different from modern medicine. But, the aims of the enterprise—”the maintenance of health,” “the relief of distressing symptoms,” “the prolongation of life,” and the like—are similar throughout. It is, after all, these aims that define the issue—that indicate that it is medicine we are talking about rather than, say, basket weaving. And this is so with rationality itself as well. Rationality is, after all, a definite sort of enterprise with a characteristic goal structure of its own—the pursuit of appropriately adopted ends by intelligently selected means. The defining principles that determine rationality’s particular nature as the sort of thing it is make for universalistic uniformity. 2. FUNCTIONALLY GEARED CULTIVATION HIERARCHIES But how can the absolutistic universality of the defining principles of rationality—rooted in the very idea of “what rationality is”—be reconciled with the pluralistic diversity of appropriate responses to the question: “What is it rational to do?” The answer lies in the fact that various intermediate levels, or strata, of consideration separate these “basic principles of rationality” from concrete

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decisions about what it is rational to do in the various particular conditions that prevail. Overall, it is this descending hierarchy of principles, norms and standards, rules and (finally) rulings, which comprises the structure of rationale development. The structure of such a hierarchy mirrors the format of a specification sorites along the the following lines: (1) Begin with a salient feature that holds across the board in a certain domain: a “first principle” of the domain. (2) With this beginning, form a chain of increasingly limited generalization. (3) Ultimately achieve a manifold of specifying detail that suffices to characterize a specific individual. (4) Effect the subsumptive inclusion of this individual within the individually completed descriptive range (Y). The shift to individuality at that penultimate subsumptive step is a matter not of reasoning but of judgment—specifically of making a judgment about the descriptive constitution of some particular individual. Here there is a distinctively hierarchical continuum of levels throughout. And at the top of the hierarchy stand the categorically universal “first principles” that inhere in the nature of the enterprise, preeminent among them those fundamentals correlative with the very definition of the project at issue. Such a hierarchy of rationale-furnishing levels always plays a crucial role in providing for the rational legitimation of what we do. At its pinnacle there is some rationally valid (appropriately interest-serving) desideratum like health (or rationality itself) to furnish the “ultimate” pivot point, but moving down the line we encounter the increasingly more concrete factors of rationalization, until ultimately we arrive at specific determinations about concrete items. Here, there is increasing room for contextsupplied variation and dissensus. For as the cascade of rational subordination descends from level to level, there is also some variable adjustment to the correlative condition of increasing specificity. All the same, for a particular resolution to qualify as rationally valid, the entire ascending chain of subordination that links it to those topmost de-

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terminative principles of reason must thus be appropriately validated. The whole rationale developed in terms of such an implementation hierarchy must be cogent “all the way up” for the ruling itself to be rationally cogent. Irrationalism does not follow from the presence of hierarchical slack. The fact that one can only implement the call to rationality in the particular way that one’s historical context puts at one’s disposal does not mean that rationality as such is something so protean and variable as to lose any meaningful identity altogether. People must feed themselves and shelter themselves—what is at issue here are universal human needs. But, of course nature does not dictate any one single process for meeting them— we must proceed to make the best we can of the materials that the conditions of place and time put at our disposal. And the same holds good for reason. We need to build a cognitive home for ourselves in this world—to create a viable thought structure for our beliefs, choices, and evaluations. Here too one must simply do the best one can. Neither the project nor its implementation is irrelevant, immaterial, or indifferent. A sensible relativism of situational variability is certainly not at odds with the fundamental and altogether absolute demand of rationality: that we pursue our ends intelligently—that we do the best we can with the limited means at our disposal in the restrictive circumstances in which we labor. 3. THE DEFEASIBILITY OF PRINCIPLES The top rank of a normative hierarchy will not necessarily be occupied by a principle that is single and unique. For a rational enterprise can be complex and its goal situation can encompass a variety of fundamental principles. The fundamental “first principles” of a domain are always stably and unchangingly fixed by its definitively characteristic goal structure. However there is always slack along the hierarchical route downwards towards increasing concreteness. And all of those lower-level operative norms and rules are potentially defeasible in principle, subject to revision in the light of their efficacy in relation to fostering the ruling aims and objectives of those “first principles” that stand at the top of the hierarchy to define the goal structure of the enterprise at issue. And so the fixed stability of those hierarchically “first” principles does not preclude the defeasibility of lower level situating principles and norms in the light of experience.

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What is thus at issue in the legitimation of lower-level principles is an indirect (oblique) justification with reference to the goal structure of the domain. The validating process is as of pragmatic validation—in terms of its “working out”—its capacity to conduce efficiently and effectively toward the realization of the relevant domain’s definition objectives. And the legitimating process at issue here is not a matter of a static circular pattern in which the movement around the cycles occurs in a merely logical rather than temporal order. It reflects an historic process of successive cyclic iterations where all the component elements become more attuned to one another and pressed into smoother mutual conformation. But this sort of justification proceeds through experience, through trial and check; it is empirical, and contingent. This point cannot be overemphasized. The “first principles” on which our factual knowledge of nature hinges are themselves ultimately of an a priori and functional standing. But lower level principles—norms and rules included—are something else again. Their validation is not a matter of abstract theoretical principle but of experience.1 The result of this evolutionary process (with the readjustment of first principles as a source of “variation” and pragmatic test as a source of “selection”) is—ultimately—to make the adequacy of our principles and the success of their functioning seem only natural and “inevitable”. But their aprioricity and necessity is in fact a conditional one—it has no absolute and theoretical guarantee at all but is conditional because founded on an ultimately actual basis, that of the pragmatic adequacy of successful praxis. As far as subsidiary principles are concerned, they do not mark the dead-end of a ne plus ultra. The question” Why these principles rather than something else”? is not illegitimate here—it is indeed answerable, even if only complexly so, in terms of the complex dialectic afforded by the cyclic structure of legitimation as described above. This approach yields a metaphysic erected on a contingent and ultimately factual basis. The regulative principles and their correlative substantive metaphysical principles are seen as defeasible and defensible: they can and need to be legitimated—a process that proceeds in the light of empirical considerations. (Recall Hegel’s thesis that metaphysics must follow experience and not precede it.) The very circumstance that many of our principles are in theory vulnerable is the source of their strength in fact. They have been tried in the history of science—tried long, hard, and often—and yet not found wanting. They are founded on a solid basis not of arbitrary convention or logical

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legerdemain, but of trial in the harsh court of historical reality. Forming, as they do, an integral component of the cognitive methods that have stayed the course of difficult experience. Viewed in such a perspective it emerges that in the validation of first principles we draw near to the Hegelian idea that the actual history of the world in its court of justice “die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht”.2 All in all, then, principles stand coordinate with the basic goal structure of any rational endeavor. The functional and purposive nature such enterprises pivot them all on some overacting aim or telos. And the considerations that define this aim thereby determine those overarching stable “first principles” that stand topmost in the implementation hierarchy of increasingly concertized rational endeavor. NOTES 1

Compare N. Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell 1976).

2

“The world’s history is its court of justice.” This chapter is drawn from the author’s paper “On First Principles and their Legitimation,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 2 (1976), pp. 1-16.

Chapter 8 PRINCIPLES OF RATIONAL INQUIRY ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Knowledge is a resource of indispensable importance for us humans. (2) But it is acquired only with effort and the expenditure of limited resources. (3) And its acquisition is subject to a manifold of principles. Above all, these must reckon with the fact that the risk of error is everpresent in our inquiries—a manifold whose structure is hierarchical. (4) The circumstance that our cognitive efforts are always consistent in the face of a risk of error represents one of the basic principles of rational inquiry. ____________________________________________________________ 1. THE RATIONALE OF INQUIRY AND THE BENEFITS OF KNOWLEDGE

T

he ancients saw man as “the rational animal” (zoõn logon echõn), set apart from the world’s other creatures by the capacity for speech and deliberation. Following the precedent of Greek philosophy, Western thinkers have generally deemed the deliberate use of knowledge for the guidance of our actions to be at once the glory and the duty of homo sapiens. Humans have evolved within nature to fill the ecological niche of an intelligent being. This human intelligence of ours is the product of a prolonged process of biological evolution. There are many ways for an animal species to make its way in the world. Diverse alternative modes of coping within nature present themselves to biological organism: the routes of multiplicity, toughness, flexibility, and isolation, among others. But one promising evolutionary pathway is afforded by the route of intelligence, of adapting by the use of brain rather than brawn, of cleverness rather than power, of flexibility rather than specialization. A fertile ecological niche lies open to a creature that makes its way in the world not by sheer tenacity or by tooth and claw, but by intelligence—by coordinating its own doings and the world’s ways through cognitive foresight. Man’s possession of in-

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telligence and capacity for reason are readily understandable on evolutionary principles. For these resources are clearly a means to adaptive efficiency, enabling us—sometimes at least—to adjust our environment to our needs and wants rather than the reverse. It is not all that difficult to visualize how intelligence—with its characteristic pursuit of cogency, efficiency, and optimality—can facilitate advantageous arrangements. Reasondeploying intelligence—the use of our brains to guide action by figuring out the apparent best—is the survival instrument of our species in much the same way that other creatures ensure their survival by being prolific, or tough, or well-sheltered. Intelligence constitutes our particular “competitive advantage” in the evolutionary scheme of things. As Darwin himself already stressed, in a competitive Darwinism world a creature that can understand how things work in its environment and exploit this understanding in action thereby secures an evolutionary edge. Intelligence has evolved not because the emergence of intelligence is an inherent purpose of nature, but because intelligence aids the survival of its possessors within nature (at any rate, up to a point, since a benign outcome to the nuclear arms race is not yet a foregone conclusion). Intelligence 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. The long and short of its is that we rational animals would not be here as the sorts or creatures we are and could not long continue in existence as such if our rationality were not survival-conducive. Intelligence is not an inevitable feature of conscious organic life. Here on earth, at least, it is our peculiarly human instrumentality, a matter of our particular evolutionary heritage. Man is homo quaerens. With us, the imperative to understanding is something altogether basic; we cannot function, let alone thrive, without information regarding what goes on about us. The knowledge that orients our activities in this world is itself the most practical of things—a rational animal cannot feel at ease in situations of which it can make no cognitive sense. The demand for understanding, for cognitive accommodation to one’s environment, for “knowing one’s way about,” is one of the most fundamental requirements of the human condition. The need for knowledge is part and parcel of our nature. A deep-rooted demand for information and understanding presses in upon us, and we have little choice but to satisfy it. Once the ball is set rolling it keeps on under its own momentum—far beyond the limits of strictly practical necessity.

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The great Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen put it well. What drives men to the polar regions, he said, is: the power to the unknown over the human spirit. As ideas have cleared with the ages, so has this power extended its might, and driven Man willy-nilly onwards along the path of progress. It drives us in to Nature’s hidden powers and secrets, down to the immeasurably little world of the microscopic, and out into the unprobed expanses of the Universe. . . . . it gives us no peace until we know this planet on which we live, from the greatest depth of the ocean to the highest layers of the atmosphere. This Power runs like a strand through the whole history of polar exploration. In spite of all declarations of possible profit in one way or another, it was that which, in our hearts, has always driven us back there again, despite all setbacks and suffering. 1

The discomfort of unknowing is a natural component of human sensibility. To be ignorant of what goes on about us is almost physically painful for us—no doubt because it is so dangerous from an evolutionary point of view. As William James observed: “The utility of this emotional effect of [security of] expectation is perfectly obvious; “natural selection,” in fact, was bound to bring it about sooner or later. It is of the utmost practical importance to an animal that he should have prevision of the qualities of the objects that surround him.”2 It is thus not particularly surprising that men should succeed in acquiring information about the world. This is something only natural and to be expected because if we did not succeed in this cognitive venture we wouldn’t be here as the sort of creatures we are. The rationale for our cognitive resources is fundamentally Darwinian. Indeed, the conception of knowledge as a tool for survival—cognitive Darwinism—is as old as biological Darwinism. The master himself put forward the idea that man’s capacities and competences in the area of language, reasoning, and theorizing are part and parcel of his biological endowment, emerging because these abilities were biologically advantageous in the struggle for survival. And after Darwin this idea burst like a Roman candle across the firmament of 19th century thought. Man has evolved within nature into the ecological niche of an intelligent being. In consequence, the need for understanding, for “knowing one’s way about,” is one of the most fundamental demands of the human condition. Man is Homo quaerens. The requirement for information, for cognitive orientation within our environment, is as pressing a human need as

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that for food itself. We are rational animals and must feed our minds even as we must feed our bodies. It is a situational imperative for us humans to acquire information about the world. We have questions and we need answers. Homo sapiens is a creature who must, by his very nature, feel cognitively at home in the world. Relief from ignorance, puzzlement, and cognitive dissonance is one of cognition’s most important benefits. These benefits are both positive (pleasures of understanding) and negative (reducing intellectual discomfort through the removal of unknowing and ignorance and the diminution of cognitive dissonance). The basic human urge to make sense of things is a characteristic aspect of our make-up—we cannot live a satisfactory life in an environment we do not understand. For us, cognitive orientation is itself a practical need: cognitive disorientation is actually stressful and distressing. The benefits of knowledge are twofold: theoretical (or purely cognitive) and practical (or applied). The theoretical/cognitive benefits of knowledge relate to is satisfactions in and for itself, for understanding is an end unto itself and, as such, is the bearer if important and substantial benefits— benefits which are purely cognitive, relating to the informativeness of knowledge as such. The practical benefits of knowledge, on the other hand, relate to its role in guiding the processes by which we satisfy our (noncognitive) needs and wants. The satisfaction of our needs for food, shelter, protection against the elements, and security against natural and human hazards all require information. And the satisfaction of mere desiderata comes into it as well. We can, do, and must put knowledge to work to facilitate the attainment of our goals, guiding our actions and activities in this world into productive and rewarding lines. And this is where the practical payoff of knowledge comes into play. 2. THE COSTS OF KNOWLEDGE Knowledge has benefits, but its acquisition has costs as well. These will, of course, vary with people’s conditions and circumstances. Time is of the essence here. The medical knowledge of the twentieth century was not available to patients in the eighteenth century—”not for all the tea in China.” In pursuing information, as in pursuing food, we have to settle for the best we can obtain at the time. We have questions and need answers— the best answers we can get here and now, regardless of their imperfections. We cannot wait until all returns are in. Our needs and wants impel us

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to resolve our questions by means of the best available answers we can get. What matters for us is not ideal and certain knowledge in the light of complete and perfected information, but getting the best estimate that is actually obtainable here and now. The impetus to inquiry—to investigation, research, and acquisition of information about the world we live in—can accordingly be validated in strictly economic terms with a view to potential costs and benefits of both theoretical and practical sorts. We humans need to achieve both an intellectual and a physical accommodation to our environment. The ancients saw man as the rational animal (zoõn logon echõn), set apart from other creatures by capacities for speech and deliberation. Under the precedent of Greek philosophy, Western thinkers have generally deemed the use of thought for the guidance of our actions to be at once the glory and the duty of homo sapiens. To behave rationally is to make use of one’s intelligence to figure out the best thing to do in the circumstances. Rationality is a matter of the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives; it consists in the use of reason to resolve choices in the best feasible way. Above all, it calls for the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends, for the effective and efficient cultivation of appropriately appreciated benefits. Rationality requires doing the best one can with the means at one’s disposal, striving for the best results that one can expect to achieve within the range of one’s resources, specifically including one’s intellectual resources. Be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, it mission center about the deliberate endeavor to secure an optimally favorable balance of benefits relative to expenditure. Accordingly, rationality has an ineliminable economic dimension. The optimal use of resources is, after all, a crucial aspect of rationality. It is against reason to expend more resources on the realization of a given end than one needs to. And it is against reason to expend more resources on the pursuit of a goal than it is worth—to do things in a more complex, inefficient, or ineffective way than is necessary in the circumstances. But it is also against reason to expend fewer resources in the pursuit of a goal than it is worth, unless these resources can be used to even better effect elsewhere. Cost effectiveness—the proper coordination of costs and benefits in the pursuit of our ends—is an indispensable requisite of rationality. The economy of effort that is a cardinal principle of rationality helps to explain many aspects of the way in which we transact our cognitive business. Why are encyclopedias organized alphabetically rather than topically? Because this simplifies the search process. Why are account of peo-

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ple’s doings or a nation’s transactions standardly presented historically, with biographies and histories presented in chronological order? Because an account that moves from causes to effect simplifies understanding. Why do libraries group books together by topic and language rather than, say alphabetically by author? Because this minimizes the difficulties of search and access. We are in a better position to understand innumerable features of the way in which people conduct their cognitive business once we take the economic aspect into account. Rationality and economy are inextricably interconnected. Rational inquiry is a matter of epistemic optimizations, of achieving the best overall balance of cognitive benefits relative to cognitive costs. Cost-benefit calculation is the crux of the economy of effort at issue. The principles of least effort—construed in a duly intellectualized manner—is bound to be a salient feature of cognitive rationality.3 A version of Occam’s Razor obtains throughout the sphere of cognitive rationality: complicationes non multiplicandae sund praeter necessitatem. Efforts to secure and enlarge knowledge are worthwhile only insofar as they are cost effective in that the resources we expend for these purposes are more than compensated for through benefits obtained—as is indeed very generally the case. But not always. We are, after all, finite beings who have only limited time and energy at our disposal. And even the development of knowledge, important though it is, is nevertheless of limited value—it is not worth the expenditure of every minute of every day at our disposal. The standard economic process of cost-effectiveness tropism is operative throughout the cognitive domain. Rational inquiry is rigorously subject to the economic impetus to securing maximal product for minimal expenditure. Concern for answering our questions in the most straightforward, most cost-effective way is a crucial aspect of cognitive rationality in its economic dimension. The long and short of it is that knowledge acquisition is a purposive human activity—like most of our endeavors. And as such it involves the ongoing expenditure of resources for the realization of the objectives— description, explanation, prediction, and control—that represent the defining characteristics of our cognitive endeavors. The balance of costs and benefits becomes critical here, and endows the scientific enterprise with an unavoidably economic aspect.4 And this fast sets the stage for the principles that govern our cognitive endeavors.

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3. SOME EPISTEMETRIC PRINCIPLES It is not generally recognized that epistemology is subject to formally structural—and sometimes even quantitative principles. An instance of this phenomenon is the important consideration that: A less powerful intellect cannot comprehend the operations of a more powerful one. A fundamental law of epistemology is at issue here, to wit, that a mind of lesser power is for this very reason unable to understand adequately the workings of a mind of greater power. To be sure, the weaker mind can doubtless realize that the stronger can solve problems it itself cannot. But it cannot understand how it is able to do so. An intellect that can only just manage to do well at tic-tac-toe cannot possibly comprehend the ways of one that is expert at chess. And it is not simply that a more powerful mind will know more facts than a less powerful one, but that its conceptual machinery is ampler in encompassing ideas and issues that lie altogether outside the conceptual horizon of its less powerful compeers. Consider in this light the vast disparity of computational power between a mathematical tyro like most of us and a mathematical prodigy like Ramanujan. Not only cannot our tyro manage to answer the number-theoretic question that such a genius resolves in the blink of an eye, but the tyro cannot even begin to understand the processes and procedures that the Indian genius employs. As far as the tyro is concerned, it is all sheer wizardry and magic. No doubt once an answer is given he can check its correctness. But actually finding the answer is something which that lesser intellect cannot manage—the how of the business lies beyond its grasp. And, for much the same sort of reason, a mind of lesser power cannot discover what the question-resolving limits of a mind of greater power are. It can never say with warranted assurance where the limits of question-resolving power lie. (In some instances it may be able to say what’s in and what’s out, but can never map the dividing boundary). Of course, a lesser intellect can know various things about what questions a more powerful intelligence can answer and may even come to be informed about what those answers are. (After all even someone who has no clue about how to extract the square root of a number will generally be able to check that another’s answer affords a correct solution.) But what an ineptling cannot do is to perform that feat of discovery on his own. The weaker intellect can certainly know that the stronger can accomplish some-

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thing and yet will be unable to form even crudely any correct conception as to how. Yet another fundamental feature of inquiry is represented by the following observation: Insofar as our thinking is vague, truth is accessible even in the face of error. Consider the situation where you correctly accept P-or-Q. But—so let it be supposed—the truth of this disjunction roots entirely in that of P while Q is quite false. However, you accept P-or-Q only because you are convinced of the truth of Q; it so happens that P is something you actually disbelieve. Yet despite your error, your belief is entirely true.5 Consider a concrete instance. You believe that Mr. Kim Ho is Korean because you believe him to be a North Korean. However he is, in fact a South Korean, something you would flatly reject. Nevertheless your belief that he is Korean is unquestionably correct. The error in which you are involved, although real, is not so grave as to destabilize the truth of your belief. This example illustrates a more far-reaching point. There is, in general, an inverse relationship between the precision or definiteness of a judgment and its security: detail and probability stand in a competing relationship. Increased confidence in the correctness of our estimates can always be purchased at the price of decreased accuracy. We estimate the height of the tree at around 25 feet. We are quite sure that the tree is 25±5 feet high. We are virtually certain that its height is 25±10 feet. But we can be completely and absolutely sure that its height is between 1 inch and 100 yards. Of this we can be “completely sure” in the sense that we are “absolutely certain,” “certain beyond the shadow of a doubt,” “as certain as we can be of anything in the world,” “so sure that we would be willing to stake your life on it,” and the like. For any sort of estimate whatsoever there is always a characteristic trade-off relationship between the evidential security of the estimate, on the one hand (as determinable on the basis of its probability or degree of acceptability), and on the other hand its contentual definitiveness (exactness, detail, precision, etc.). A situation of the sort depicted by the curve of Display 1 obtains with the result that a complementarity relationship of sorts obtains here as between definiteness and security.6

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And this state of affairs has far-reaching consequences. It means, in particular, that no secure statement about reality can say exactly how matters ____________________________________________________________ Display 1 THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEFINITENESS IN ESTIMATION

increasing definiteness

increasing security

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

____________________________________________________________ stand universally always and everywhere. To capture the truth of things by means of language we must proceed by way of “warranted approximation.” In general we can be sure of how things “usually” are and how they “roughly” are, but not how they always and exactly are. The moral of this story is that, insofar as our ignorance of relevant matters leads us to be vague in our judgments, we may well manage to enhance the likelihood of being right. The fact of the matter is that we have: By constraining us to make vaguer judgments, ignorance enhances our access to correct information (albeit at the cost of less detail and precision). Thus if I have forgotten that Seattle is in Washington State then if “forced to guess” I might well erroneously locate it in Oregon. Nevertheless, my vague judgment that “Seattle is located in the Northwestern US” is quite correct. This state of affairs means that when the truth of our claims is critical we generally “play it safe” and make our commitments

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less definite and detailed. Consider, for example, so simple and colloquial a statement as “The ____________________________________________________________ Display 2 THE COST OF RISK MANAGEMENT APPROACHES number of significant misfortunes

Misfortunes of kind

misfortunes of kind 2

0 50 100 error-of commission tolerance Risk Cautious avoiders calculators

Risk seekers

____________________________________________________________ servant declared that he could no longer do his master’s bidding.” This statement is pervaded by a magisterial vagueness. It conveys very little about what went on in the exchange between servant and master. We are told virtually nothing about what either of them actually said. What the object of their discussion was, what form of words they used, the manner of their discourse (did the master order or request, was the servant speaking from rueful incapacity or from belligerent defiance) all these are questions we cannot begin to answer. Even the relationship at issue, whether owner/slave or employer/employee is left in total obscurity. In sum, there is a vast range of indeterminacy here—a great multitude of very different scenarios would fit perfectly well to the description of events which that individual statement puts before us. And this vagueness clearly provides a protective shell to guard that statement against a charge of falsity. Irrespective of how matters might actually stand within a vast range of alternatives, the statement remains secure, its truth unaffected by which possibility is realized. And in practical matters such rough guidance is often altogether enough. We need not know just how much rain there will be to make it sensible for us to take an umbrella. In view of the preceding consideration we also have:

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In practice our beliefs are generally overdetermined by the evidence. In order “to be sure,” we generally “overdesign” our beliefs in matters that are important to us by keeping them comparatively indefinite. Engineers standardly overdesign their productions. They build the bridge to bear more weight than will conceivably ever be placed upon it; they build the dam to withstand far more pressure than the reservoir is expected to exert. Analogously, our beliefs—especially in matters of importance—are generally such that the relevant evidence at our disposal would in fact support something far stronger. Where error avoidance is an issue our beliefs are usually so “overdesigned” that the evidence actually at our disposal would, in fact, support weightier and more content-laden claims. All the same, it is clear that risk avoidance in matters of belief stands coordinate with scepticism. The sceptic’s line is: Run no risk of error; take no chances; accept nothing that does not come with totally ironclad guarantees. And the proviso here is largely academic, seeing that little if anything in this world comes with ironclad guarantees—certainly nothing by way of interesting knowledge. 4. COGNITIVE HIERARCHY There are, it would seem, some significant principles of metaknowledge: facts that one can know about the nature of knowledge itself. And the principle of hierarchic opacity—of the incapacity for lesser intellects to secure adequate insight into the workings of more powerful ones—would seem to qualify as a vivid example of this. As Display 3 indicates, cognition and its correlative project of inquiry is subject to a hierarchical situation of the same type as we have been considering throughout. For the impetus to the rational systematization of cognition is pivotal for natural science, and its general structure exhibits hierarchical format in moving from fundamental principles via laws of nature to the explanation of specific phenomena. The crux of the enterprise is the process of explanatory subsumptions of the phenomena under the aegis of the laws. The methodological imperative of natural science is accordingly encapsulated in the idealized vision of a grand unified “theory of everything” that coordinates the manifold of nature’s acting forces in the explanatory aegis of a systematic account of the modus operandi of forces at work.

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What is at issue here is not a theory of nature itself but a methodological/procedural imperative: “So develop the theory of nature as to provide ________________________________________________________ Display 3 THE IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHY FOR COGNITIVE NORMS Level 1: CHARACTERIZING AIMS

“seek to acquire reliable information to answer your questions”

Level 2: GOVERNING PRINCIPLES

“informativeness” “reliability” cogency

AND VALUES

Level 3: GOVERNING RULES

“Strive for accurate and well-established Answers to your questions”

Level 4: PROCEDURAL

“Survey the range of possibilities,” “Test your conjectures”, “per your claims”

GROUNDRULES

Level 5: SPECIFIC EXPLANATORY ACCOUNTS

Factual statements of well-established bias

________________________________________________________ for a hierarchically structured manifold of generalizations that account for the phenomena.” On this basis, it is clear that in such “theory of everything” in natural science we encounter once more the by now familiar triadic pattern of: universal principles—general rules—particular cases. And owing to the methodological basis of this state of affairs it is also clear that we are dealing here with principles of procedure. The pragmatic/practicabilistic dimension of maxims/injunctions regarding ways of proceeding is once more in evidence. 5. RISK OF ERROR It must, however, be recognized that in general two fundamentally different kinds of misfortunes are possible in cognitive situations where risks are run and chances taken: 1. Omission errors: We reject something that, as it turns out, we should have accepted. We decline to take the chance, we avoid running the risk at issue, but things turn out favorably after all, so that we lose

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out on the gamble. 2. Commission errors: We accept something that, as it turns out, we should have rejected. We do take the chance and run the risk at issue, but things go wrong, so that we lose the gamble. If we are risk seekers, we will incur few misfortunes of the first kind, but, things being what they are, many of the second kind well befall us. On the other hand, if we are risk avoiders, we shall suffer few misfortunes of the second kind, but shall inevitably incur many of the first. The overall situation has the general structure depicted in Display 3. Clearly, the reasonable thing to do is to adopt a policy that minimizes misfortunes overall. And this means that a rigid policy of avoiding all errors of a given type (be it omission or commission) will, in general, fail to be rationally optimal. Both approaches engender too many misfortunes for comfort. The sensible and prudent thing is to adopt the middle-of-the-road policy of risk calculation, striving as best we can to balance the positive risks of outright loss against the negative ones of lost opportunity. The rule of reason calls for sensible management and a prudent calculation of risks; it standardly enjoins upon us the Aristotelian golden mean between the extreme of risk avoidance and risk seeking. Turning now to the specifically cognitive case, it may be observed that the sceptic succeeds splendidly in averting misfortunes of the second kind. He makes no errors of commission; by accepting nothing, he accepts nothing false. But, of course, he loses out on the opportunity to obtain any sort of information. The sceptic thus errs on the side of safety, even as the syncretist errs on that of gullibility. The sensible course is clearly that of a prudent calculation of risks. As William James stressed, the only sensible attitude is that of the stance: “Certainly the cognitive enterprise has its risks, but we must be prepared to run them.” Ultimately, we face a question of tradeoffs. Are we prepared to run a greater risk of mistakes to secure the potential benefit of an enlarged understanding? In the end, the matter is one of priorities—of safety as against information and of an epistemological risk aversion as against the impetus to understanding. The ultimate issue is one of values and priorities, weighing the negativity of ignorance and incomprehension against the risk of mistakes and misinformation. But for each mistake avoided, we would lose much information. Safety engineering in inquiry is like safety engineering in life. There must be proper balance between costs and benefits.

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All the same there is only so much that we can do by way of controlling cognitive vistas. In all departments of life—cognition included—we must come to terms with the fact that we live in a world without easy options— and without guarantees.7 NOTES 1

Fridtjof Nansen as quoted in Roland Huntford, The Last Place on Earth (New York, 1985), p. 200.

2

William James, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York and London, 1897), pp. 78-79.

3

On this theme, see the important investigations of George K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (Boston, 1949). Zipf’s investigations furnish a wide variety of interesting examples of how various of our cognitive proceedings exemplify a tendency to minimize the expenditure of energy.

4

Some of this chapter’s themes are also examined in Chapter 8 of the author’s Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).

5

Examples of this sort indicate why philosophers are unwilling to identify knowledge with true belief.

6

This circumstance did not elude Niels Bohr himself, the father of complementarity theory in physics: In later years Bohr emphasized the importance of complementarity for matters far removed from physics. There is a story that Bohr was once asked in German what is the quality that is complementary to truth (wahrheit). After some thought he answered clarity (klarheit). (Stephen Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory [New York: Pantheon Books, 1992], p. 74 footnote 10.)

7

On further issues relating to this chapter see the author’s Error: On our Predicament when Things go Wrong (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).

Chapter 9 THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) The Principle of Sufficient Reason has it that all facts are explicable. (2)It thus represents a more generalized version of the Principle of Causality is the effect that every fact regarding nature has an explanation in terms of its causal origination. (3) The classical rationale of the Principle of Sufficient takes a theological form. (4) Kant proposed shifting the principle from such a substantive footing to one that is procedural and methodological in purport. (5) Later, post Darwinian theorists saw the principle as part of our evolved manifold of thought procession. (6) It would, however, be better to see it as an aspect of cultural rather than biological evolution—the product of rational rather than natural selection. (7) On this basis, the justificatory rationale of the principle is ultimately pragmatic in nature—its validity rests on its utility as an instrumentality of understanding. ________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION

H

omo sapiens is a rational animal not only because we humans possess the capacity for reasoning but also because we are actively reasonseeking, looking for reasons in everything, major or minor, that goes on about us. In essence the Principle of Sufficient Reason asserts that for every fact there is a reason for its being as is rather than otherwise.1 A different way of putting the principle is simply to assert that the realm of fact is intelligible—that every fact has a cogent explanation. The governing idea is that every fact whatever has as an appropriate explanation for being as is rather than otherwise. This is in fact the supreme grounding principle that underlies all of our cognitive endeavors. In its stipulation that the facts of this world have a cogent explanation the principle has provided one of the theoretical mainstays of old-line rationalistic idealism.

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The Principle of Sufficient Reason is not only itself a principle, but it is, in a way, a principle of principles. Of itself it claims merely that there is a reason for whatever is the case. But behind this lies the idea that: Any and every reason is grounded in a principle. The idea is that whenever some fact actually qualifies as a reason for another facts being so there is an underlying validating principle that provides for this circumstance. Reasons, that is, are actual and authentic reasons because of the operation of a grounding principle that establishes this. The linkage between a reason for doing or thinking something and the actions or beliefs at issue is always mediated by a generality of some sort: there are no item-specific reasons. And this generality either is a principle, or else is itself rendered effective and case-applicable through the operations of a principle of some sort. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is central to the philosophy of Leibniz and marks the cross-road at which, beginning with Kant, subsequent European philosophy decisively parted ways from him. But notwithstanding much distinguished antecedents, the question arises: What is living and what is dead with regard to the Principle of Sufficient Reason? The fact is that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is alive and well— that even now people have a natural inclination in its favor. A visceral sense of this is conveyed by an illustration. Suppose there is a plane crash, to give an only too familiar example. An investigating team is sent out to inquire into the disaster. In anticipating its ultimate report, we are prepared for a response ranging across a wide spectrum: • mechanical failure, • sabotage (by a disgruntled employee), • bombing (by a terrorist of some description), pilot error, • maintenance inadequacies, • support-personnel deficiencies (On one trans-Mediterranean flight in the 1960s, E1 AI’s ground personnel neglected to put fuel in the plane). The range of possible explanations is extensive and varied. Now we might even be steeled for an epistemically negative report to the effect that investigators have in the circumstances found themselves

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unable to identify the cause of failure. But we are not prepared to look with favor on a a report that says: “There just is no answer to the explanatory question. This simply happens to be one of those crashes that has no explanation at all.” We are simply not willing to accept such a category as: • crashes that occur for some sort of reason; • crashes that are inherently inexplicable—that have to be attributed (at most and best) to “the general cussedness of things.” This line of thought clearly indicates that the Principle of Sufficient Reason continues to exert a strong appeal. But its status and character have changed a great deal since Leibniz’s day, and it is this aspect of the matter with which the present discussion is concerned. This issues is perhaps best broached by looking to philosophy’s “big questions” about reality which seem on first—and often second—sight to be virtually irresolvable. In this regard, a great deal of milk has been spilled (by the present writer among others) over the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”. But it now seems to me that the merely fundamental question is not that but rather “Why are things as they are rather than otherwise?”. It would seem that there are only three practicable responses here: 1. The very question is meaningless. There just is no reason. The question is one of ultimate absurdity in erroneously supposing a rationality that just isn’t there. 2. The question is intractable. There just is no rhyme or reason here. The issue represents a break-down of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. More figurative: there was a random lottery among possibilities and the actual result just happened to win out. The substance of reality is a matter of sheer random contingency. (Lucretius and Hume) 3. The question is superfluous. The reason is that there are no alternatives in the actual situation. Reality is a matter of necessitation somehow constrained by the inner necessity of things. (Spinoza) 4. The question is to be resolved pluralistically. For while there indeed are various possibilities, each and every one of them is actual. But

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there actually exists a vast meta-space that encompasses all the alternative possibilities, each of them actual within its own realm. Those possibilities are not really alternatives; they are to be conjoined. (Leukippos and Demokritos, contemporary multiverse theorists.) 5. The question is to be resolved optimistically. There indeed are alternatives, but one of them is actual and this is co because it is for the best. The actual state of things exists owing to its evaluative superiority to the alternatives. Reality is a matter of optimization. (Leibniz) None of these positions have a knock-down drag-out conclusive argument in its favor. Each has its assets and its liabilities. And in specific each exacts a price. For: (1) involves a suspension of disbelief, since that question looks to be not only meaningful but important. (2) demands a sacrifice of rationality, (3) demands a sacrifice of contingency, (4) calls for a suspension of credibility—acceptance vast existential realm that cannot possibly be evidentiated, and (5) requires accounting for a puzzling linkage of value to existence. Nothing here is most free. But it does seem, to the present writer at least, that that first, Leibnizian alternative (5) represents the best bargain.2 However, what is critical for present purposes is that even then tended by the most challenging of difficulties, the Principle of Sufficient Reason comes out sell. For even here the points represented by its rejection is not only difficult to substantiation but controlled with a variety of more cogent alternatives. 2. THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON AND THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY With Descartes (who spoke of causa sive ratio), and Spinoza (see Ethics, II, 7), earlier philosophers did not in general sharply distinguish between causes and reasons. Leibniz, however, insisted on maintaining a sharp distinction (New Essays, IV, chap. 17, sec. 1). And such a distinction is, in fact, crucial, because the principles “all facts can be explained” and “every event has a cause” stake decidedly different sorts of claims. And it deserves note that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is nowadays in better health than the Principle of Causality. Consider the thesis:

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Every occurrence (event, development) in nature has a cause: in each and every case there is always a cause or explanation that accounts for matters being so rather than otherwise.

It is clear that this principle is in difficulty. The discovery of stochastic processes that involve the element of “real chance” suffices to indicate the breakdown of causality. An unstable atom of a transuranic element (with a half-life, say, of two hours) might decay into other elements after (say) one second or many hours later. When this decay occurs there is (in the very nature of the situation) no causal explanation for its occurring just then rather than at some other time. But of course we can perfectly well rationalize the occurrence through the sort of probabilistic explanation that the quantum theory provides. We can give a perfectly good account for it in view of our understanding of nature’s modus operandi. It accordingly deserves emphasis that we do not require a Principle of Causality to maintain the Principle of Sufficient Reason. For causal explanation does not estimate the range of explicability as such. Probabilistic explanations, for example, are still altogether viable. “This aspect of the process is pure chance and that’s just how it chanced to turn out” is a perfectly cogent explanation of a stochastic outcome. The occurrence at issue in the preceding example may lack a cause, but given the resources of quantum theory we can bring it into the domain of rational explanation. The salient point of this considerations is simply that the break-down of causal explanation in modern physics does not include the Principle of Sufficient Reason. For even statistic phenomena fall within the explanatory range of quantum-theoretical accounting. Even with statistic eventuating there is an explanatory normative that resolves the question of why this sort of outcome arises, how it arises, and how its occurrence fits within the framework of relevant natural law. Only the question of why it arises then and there is improbable, and this is so not because there is a perfectly good explanation bafflement, but because there is a perfectly good explanation of why—in these circumstances—that question is indeed inappropriate. Yet why should we recognize such statistical “explanations” as genuine explanations? Why dignify such “weak” reasonings with this proud name. Basically for two reasons—one theoretical and one pragmatic. The theoretical reason is simply this, that given the entry of stochastic rather than deterministic laws, the pattern of reasoning involved in probabilistic explanation is strictly parallel to the pattern of reasoning involved in classically causal explanations—except for the differences in the types of laws. We continue to get plausible and intellectually helpful answers to questions

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of the type: Why did X rather than Y occur? The second, pragmatic consideration lies in the recognition that in contexts where stochastic laws alone are operative, probabilistic explanation is the only type of explanatory reasoning which is possible in the very nature of things. To refuse to accord to such explanatory reasonings the title of “explanation” is to set up so narrow a concept of explanation that many of the reasonings ordinarily socalled in modern scientific discussions are put outside the place of explanations proper by what is in the final analysis, a fiat of definition buttressed solely by nostalgic memories of what explanation used to be like in nineteenth century physics. However, these deliberations are getting us ahead of our story. Let us back up and examine the historical dimension of the matter. 3. THE RATIONALE PROBLEM: LEIBNIZ Like any other philosophical thesis, the Principle of Sufficient Reason invites two questions: its what? and its why? In dealing with the principle, we face both the issue of its substantive content and that of its rationale, the grounds for its acceptance. In both these regards, there have been major changes since Leibniz’s day. Not only have theoreticians changed their mind about how the PSR is to be understood, but even more drastically, they have come to take a radically different view of why such a principle is to be accepted at all. For Leibniz, the Principle of Sufficient Reason was, in effect, a principle of optimality, pivoting on the idea that the real is exactly that possibility among the possible alternatives whose reasons for being the case outweigh the reasons against. As Leibniz puts it in sec. 32 of the Monadology: [A principle] of sufficient reason [obtains], in virtue of which we consider that no fact could be true or actual, and no proposition true, without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although most often these reasons cannot be known by us.

The idea is that all truths have a sufficient reason for being as they are, where one fact contributes a sufficient reason for another if it represents a pro-reason whose weight is not outweighed by any con-reason. The principle is tantamount to a proposition that for every fact there exists a cogent explanation for its being exactly as it is. What is at issue here is an ontological principle that, in Hegelian terminology, asserts the rationality of the

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real. It is this view of things which, above all, marks Leibniz as a rationalist. To be sure, when Leibniz says that every truth has its sufficient reason, he nevertheless accepts that a rather different explanatory account must be given for each of two fundamentally different classes of truths. On the one side, there lies the domain of the truths of reason—of logic and mathematics and concept explication (such as, “Man is an animal”). The sufficient reason for these truths resides in the operation of the Principle of Contradiction. For—as Leibniz sees it—all these truths are finitely analytic. A process of replacing defined terms by their definitions would ultimately reduce all such truths to explicit tautologies—to explicit trivialization. Accordingly, to deny them would be to become enmeshed in selfcontradiction. However, the situation stands differently with truths of fact. They are not determined by the Principle of Contradiction; they are not demonstrable from principles of reason alone. Their necessity is not absolute, but rather is entirely conditional on God’s commitment to creating the best of possible worlds. Their sufficient reason resides in a Principle of Perfection that codifies God’s commitment to the optimization of his creation. As Leibniz himself puts it: All contingent propositions have sufficient reasons, or equivalently have a priori proofs which establish their certainty, and which show that the connection of subject and predicate of these propositions has its foundation in their nature. But it is not the case that contingent propositions have demonstrations of necessity, since their sufficient reasons are based on the principle of contingence or existence, i.e., on what seems best among the equally possible alternatives. (Discourse on Metaphysics, sec. 13.)

On this basis, the occurrences and characteristics of this world all have a rational explanation, because the world is in all its arrangements the product of an all-powerful and totally benevolent rational creator. The Principle of Sufficient Reason obtains with regard to the contingent arrangements of this world because any breakdown in the explanatory order—any gaps or rents in the fabric of rational explicability would reflect adversely on the supreme being who has created it. The status of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Leibniz is accordingly that of an ultimately theological principle. For it is due precisely to God’s choice of the best of all possible worlds, and therefore to the Principle of Perfection, that those propositions

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dealing with the best possible universe deal with the actual one, and thus are true. This Leibnizian perspective on the rationale of the Principle of Sufficient Reason was soon abandoned in the mainstream tradition of European philosophy. It was rejected not so much because people did not believe in God anymore. Rather, it was abandoned because people no longer deemed it appropriate to make God an instrumentality of philosophical explanation. After the Baroque era, the mainstream tradition of European philosophy took up the medieval dictum: non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum. Atheists would have no truck with the invocation of God. Theists inclined to believe that he had more important work to do than help philosophers out of difficulties (as in the systems of Descartes or Berkeley). 4. THE RATIONALE OF SUFFICIENT REASON IN KANT The person who shepherded the Principle of Sufficient Reason into the new era was Immanuel Kant. He too was squarely committed to a Principle of Sufficient Reason. Not only do we insist on finding reasons for things, but we are committed by the very nature of our intellect to a never-ending search for the reason why behind the reason why. As Kant puts it in one key passage: The principle of (sufficient) reason is thus properly. . . a rule, prescribing a regress in the series of the conditions of given appearances, and forbidding it (viz., reason) to bring the regress to a close by treating anything at which it may arrive as absolutely unconditioned (CPuR, A508-9 = B536-7).

As this passage indicates, the Principle of Sufficient Reason for Kant is not a principle that asserts the findability of a sufficient reason, but, on the contrary, a principle that asserts that our reason, in its inherent commitment to this desideratum, embarked on a never-ending quest. He puts the matter as follows: For a given conditioned, reason demands on the side of the conditions . . . absolute totality. . . . For only by carrying the empirical synthesis as far as the unconditioned is it enabled to render it absolutely complete; and the unconditioned is never to be met with in experience, but only in the idea. Reason makes this demand in accordance with the principle that if the conditioned is given, the entire sum of conditions, and consequently the absolutely uncondi-

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tioned (through which alone the conditioned has been possible) is also given (CPuR, A409 = B436).

Such then is the purport of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Kant. But what is its basis? As Kant sees it, this lies not in God, but in an inherent demand of our reason: [The] unconditioned is not, indeed, given as being in itself real. . . ; it is however, what alone can complete the series of conditions when we proceed to trace these conditions to their grounds. This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us, even the least reflective, to adopt (CPuR, A584=B612).

Kant’s system of critical philosophy needs a Principle of Sufficient Reason every bit as much as that of his “dogmatic” predecessors. To be sure, however, he can and does place this ongoing commitment within the aegis of his Copernican Revolution, by grounding sufficient reason “critically,” in the modus operandi of reason itself, rather than “dogmatically,” in that of an ontologically independent reality that it endeavors to know. In Kant, accordingly, the Principle of Sufficient Reason represents an inbuilt commitment of our reason to persevere undismayed in the pursuit of an effectively incompletable project: our reason stands committed to the pushing ever onwards in the exploratory project, undeterred by the recognition of its inherent incompletability. Thus Kant maintains: [Q]uestions never ceasing—its [reason’s] work must always remain incomplete; and it therefore finds itself compelled to resort to principles which overstep all possible empirical employment, and which yet seem so unobjectionable that even ordinary consciousness readily accepts them. But by this procedure human reason precipitates itself into darkness and contradictions; and while it may indeed conjecture that these must be in some way due to concealed errors, it is not in a position to be able to detect them (CPuR, Aviii). Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer (CPuR, Avii).

For Kant, the Principle of Sufficient Reason reflects our reason’s commitment to an ongoing process—unceasingly to seek the reason why behind

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the reason why. For Kant, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not, as in Leibniz, a guarantee of the ultimate completability of the project of explanation. Rather, it marks human reason’s inherent commitment to an unachievable perfection in the scientific quest. Our explanation of natural phenomena can always be augmented, improved, deepened. In no realizable evidential setting is the move from “we have no full explanation” to “there is no full explanation” rationally warranted. With Kant, then, the rationale of the Principle of Sufficient Reason does not lie in the inherent rationality of nature as the creation of a rational agent but in the very modus operandi of our human rational faculties. An operative principle of reason implanted in the mode of operation of the human mind as a rational cognizing faculty. The situation accordingly differs from what we have in Leibniz. With Leibniz, we know, a priori, that every aspect of the world has a cogent explanation. In Kant, however, we have no such guarantee at all. What we do have is a rational faculty whose inherent make-up leaves it with no alternative but to proceed as if the explanatory project were ultimately destined to succeed, recognizing all the while that this is no more than a hopeful projection of the mind—an intellectual mirage of sorts. The ultimate responsibility of the rationality of the real still continues to be attributed to the operation of a mind, but it is now the human mind rather than the mind of God. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is in place in consequence of the operating principles of the human intellect. It is a feature of the hardwiring of the human mind, to put the point somewhat anachronistically. 5. PEIRCE, RUSSELL, AND THE RATIONALE OF NATURAL SELECTION The next step in the development of thought about the Principle of Sufficient Reason carries it forward into the framework of the Darwinian revolution. Let us consider the situation in the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, the last of the Victorians. As Russell sees it, the idea that our experience is evidentially indicative of a causal order that provides the explanatory basis for the experience we have is a fundamental presupposition of all of our scientific and commonsensical knowledge of the world: That there are such more or less self-determined causal processes is in no degree logically necessary, but is, I think, one of the fundamental postulates of science. It is in virtue of the truth of this postulate—if it is true that we are

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able to acquire partial knowledge in spite of our enormous ignorance. That the universe is a system of interconnected parts may be true, but can only be discovered if some parts can, in some degree, be known independently of other parts. It is this that our postulate makes possible (Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits [London and New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948], p. 459).

What validates such a postulate of causal explicability? We do not—cannot—learn it from experience, for only subscriptions to such a principle makes learning about reality through experience possible in the first place. Rather—so Russell contends—its basis is biological: Knowledge of connections between facts has its biological origin in animal expectations. An animal which experiences an A expects a B; when it evolves into a primitive man of science it sums up a number of particular expectations in the statement” A causes B.” It is biologically advantageous to have such expectations as will usually be verified; it is therefore not surprising if the psychological laws governing expectations are, in the main, in conformity with the objective laws governing expected occurrences. We may state the matter as follows. The physical world has what may be called “habits,” i.e., causal laws; the behavior of animals has habits, partly innate, partly acquired. The acquired habits are generated by what I call “animal inference,” which occurs where there are the data for an induction, . . . [For] even in animal induction there are elements of validity. The inference from smell to edibility is usually reliable, and no animal makes any of the absurd inductions which the logician can invent to show that induction is not always valid. Owing to the world being such as it is, certain occurrences are sometimes, in fact, evidence for certain others; and owing to animals being adapted to their environment, occurrences which are, in fact, evidence of others tend to arouse expectation of those others. By reflecting on this process and refining it, we arrive at the canons of inductive inference. These canons are valid if the world has certain characteristics which we all believe it to have. The inferences made in accordance with these canons are self-confirmatory and are not found to contradict experience. Moreover they lead us to think it probable that we shall have mental habits such as these canons will on the whole justify, since such mental habits will be biologically advantageous (Ibid., pp. 495-96).

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And so the Principle of Sufficient Reason, in its gearing to the causal order of nature, represents for Russell an inherent tendency in the human mind that is fixed as a part of the natural programming of its operation through its operation of Darwinian principles of natural selection. Where Kant saw a simply fixed feature of the faculty-structure of human reason, Russell sees an evolved instrumentality, developed through biological process on the basis of its evolutionary ability. This view of the matter was not original with Russell. It is already found in C. S. Peirce who, like Russell, sees the capacity of the human mind to transport its inductive affairs to root ultimately in the operation of Darwinian natural selection. If you carefully consider with an unbiased mind all the circumstances of the early history of science and all the other facts bearing on the question . . . I am quite sure that you must be brought to acknowledge that man’s mind has a natural adaptation to imagining correct theories of some kinds, and in particular to correct theories about forces, without some glimmer of which he could not form social ties and consequently could not reproduce his kind. In short, the instincts conducive to assimilation of food, and the instincts conducive to reproduction, must have involved from the beginning certain tendencies to think truly about physics, on the one hand, and about psychics, on the other. It is somehow more than a mere figure of speech to say that nature fecundates the mind of man with ideas which, when those ideas grow up, will resemble their father, Nature (CP, 5.591 [1903]).

The key here is that the scientist is a member of the species Homo sapiens which is the product of an evolutionary development proceeding within nature: We now seem launched upon a boundless ocean of possibilities. We have speculations put forth by the greatest masters of physical theorizing of which we can only say that the mere testing of anyone of them would occupy a large company of able mathematicians for their whole lives; and that no one such theory seems to have an antecedent probability of being true that exceeds say one chance in a million. When we theorized about molar dynamics we were guided by our instincts. Those instincts had some tendency to be true; because they had been formed under the influence of the very laws that we were investigating (CP, 7.508 [c. 1898], italics added).

As this picture of the situation makes clear, these later philosophers agree with Kant in locating responsibility for one committed to the Principle of

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Sufficient Reason in the human mind. They differ, from him, however, in no longer attributing it to the inherently inevitable structure of a given faculty of reason, but rather as a matter of the contingent, evolutionary developed modus operandi of the human mind. For many post-Darwinian thinkers, then, our commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason formed part of the evolved manifold of human thought-possession. 6. CULTURAL PRAGMATISM AND RATIONAL SELECTION But this is not yet the end of the story. For developments over the past quarter century carry the matter one step further in shifting the burden of accounting for the Principle of Sufficient Reason from a biological to an essentially sociological level. For it could, in fact, make better sense to see our commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a feature not of biological but of of cultural evolution—the product of cultural rather than biological selection. On the basis, the issue can still be viewed in an evolutionary perspective. But with one very important change. For while biological evolution undoubtedly accounts of our possession of intelligence, accounting for the way in which we actually go about using it largely calls for a rather different evolutionary approach—one that addresses the development of thought-procedures rather than of the thinkers themselves. Our cognitive capacities and faculties are part of the natural endowment we owe to biological evolution by natural selection. But our cognitive methods, procedures, standards, and techniques are socio-culturally developed resources that evolve through rational selection in the process of cultural transmission through successive generations by teaching, simulation, and the like of those processes and procedures that manifest a purposive efficiency. This newer approach proposes to see our commitment to the rational explicability of nature’s features as the product not of biological but of cultural evolution, and thus not of natural but of social selection. From this perspective, our endorsement of a Principle of Sufficient Reason is based on the idea that it has been tried and found helpful, and therefore transmitted to succeeding generations of intelligent inquirers. Its epistemological status is thus that of a pragmatically validated belief—one that initially was a working assumption and eventually metamorphosed into a standing presumption through its retrospective revalidation as a successful instrument for furthering the process of inquiry. Its rationality is accordingly such as to give it the status of a pragmatically effective methodological instrumen-

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tality to which we become committed by a culturally based process of rational selection rather than a biologically based process of natural selection. 7. RETROSPECT A brief retrospect is in order. Our deliberations took their starting-point in the remark that more recent thinkers endorse the Principle of Sufficient Reason as emphatically as did Leibniz himself, but that the grounding of the principle has undergone a marked sea change since his day. And what needs to be stressed is that the story of this change has a discernible and, indeed, straightforward plot line. For consider the salient stages of rationalization: Leibniz: inherent in the nature of things as programmed by the mind of God; Kant: implanted by nature in the faculty-structure of the human mind; Peirce and Russell: implanted by biological evolution in the operating process of the human mind; Latter-day pragmatism: implanted by cultural evolution in the operational code (the “standard procedures”) of our thinking. Even at a glance, this succession tells a story of domestication, of a descent from Mt. Olympus, of being reconceptualized from an inescapable imprinting on the human mind to the status of a useful methodological instrument—from hardware to software. A succession of distinctive stages can be discerned. With Leibniz we have a theocentric position, exactly as in various other great philosophers of his era: Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley. With Kant we have the Copernican inversion that has the mind of man accomplish work that heretofore was done by the mind of God. With Peirce and Russell we have the Victorian era of philosophy when the philosophical impact of Darwin was at its apogee. With the present generation we reach a stage where philosophers are increasingly inclined to look to the social sciences for their sources of inspiration.

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But if one assigns the Principle of Sufficient Reason such a pragmatic rationale as the product of a process of cultural selection, can one still see it as an inflexible commitment of ours to a certain view of how matters must be—as something absolute and, as it were unavoidable? (Think again of the plane crash example with which we began.) The answer is that origin is one thing, and achieved condition another—and that a recognition of the contingency of the former need not affect the necessity of the latter. No doubt it is only acculturation that leads us to see W as a symbol, a letter of the alphabet, but that does not mean that we can now manage to see it as a mere squiggle. Analogously, the inherent necessity we see in the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not removed by the external contingency of its origin in a pragmatically based process of cultural selection at whose there stands rational commitment to the scientific project of rational inquiry in its effort to provide us with secure cognitive grip on the world’s actualities. In concluding, one further point deserves emphasis. Our commitment to the rationality of the real—to a principle that stipulates nature’s explicability on scientific principles—is an input into our investigation of nature rather than an output thereof. It does not represent a discovered fact, but a methodological presupposition of our praxis of inquiry; in Kantian terms, it is not constitutive (fact descriptive) but regulative (praxis-facilitating). The Principle of Sufficient Reason is not a factual discovery, but a practical postulate justified by its utility or serviceability in the context of our cognitive aims. But the circumstance that what is at issue is a principle of cognitive practice endows the Principle with a special standing. It represents an essentially factual commitment to which we stand committed a priori not so much because of its evidentiations but because of its serviceability. And in this regard, the Principle of Sufficient reason exhibits and typifies the circumstance that in the final analysis the validation of principles is functional in that it pivots on their capacity to foster the particular enterprise of their focal concern in an effective and efficient manner. NOTES 1

On this principle see Alexander Pruss, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

2

The grounds for this view are set out in detail in the author’s Axiogenesis (Landham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010).

Chapter 10 PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES ___________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Like any other purposive enterprise, philosophy embodies a manifold of principles. (2) The situation can constructively be viewed in an historical perspective. (3) A variegated manifold of principles of philosophical thought can be exfoliated. (4) Here too, while principles cannot conflict in the abstract their application can do so. (5) Even in so theoretical an enterprise as philosophy, the principles are to be assigned on a pragmatic, functionalistic basis relates to the aims of the enterprise. (7) Objections to this pragmatics view of the matter can be rebutted. ___________________________________________________________ 1. PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES

F

or Plato, principles were the root-source (archai) of being or of knowledge.1 For Aristotle, they were the “first cause” of being, of becoming, or of being known (hothen hê estin hê gignetai hê gignôsketai).2 Here principles invlove things of some sort and not theses. However, by the time of St. Thomas Aquinas the conception had broadened. For him, a principle (principium) was something primary in the being of a thing, or in its becoming, or in knowledge of it (quod est primum aut in esse rei. . . aut in fieri rei, . . . aut in rei cognitione3). As standard philosophical usage has evolved in the light of these ideas, a principle is as something basicas a fundamentum (Latin) or archê (Greek)—either in relation to being or to understanding. And in the latter role it is either axiomatic and admits no proof or it needs not proof by reason of fundamentality, through being obvious and self-evident. Moreover, it must be universal in its application through a large field of consideration. Thus all concerned seem agreed that principles are fundamental generalities governing our understanding of the modus operandi of some knowledge-accessible domain. Against this background, a specifically philosophical principle, in the sense of the term that is to be at issue here, represents a general condition

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upon cogent philosophizing, a maxim that lays down a methodological rule for philosophical practice. It is not a philosophical thesis or doctrine that purports to answer to some substantive philosophical question. Instead, it provides for a rule of practice that specifies a modus operandi, a way of proceeding in the course of philosophizing. A methodological principle of this sort is thus to philosophy what a maxim like “always keep your promises” is to morality. It represents a guideline to be followed if error is to be avoided a general rule of procedure.4 Scientific theorists from G. W. Leibniz to Kurt Gödel have maintained that a proper understanding of nature requires knowing not just its laws but also the underlying principles that canalize the operation of these laws and that such progress consists not just in having more laws but in extending our knowledge of the higher principles at issue. Now be this insistence on the primacy of principles as it may in the context of scientific knowledge, there is certainly good reason to think it correct in philosophy. For here our understanding clearly hinges not simply on the instruction of theses and doctrines, but on grasping the underlying principles within whose frame of reference such substantive dealings are articulated in the first place. Principles of philosophical deliberation have played a prominent role throughout the history of the subject.5 Such principles of philosophizing should be seen as a general instruction for cogent deliberation, a maxim that lays down a methodological rule for reflections in philosophical issues. This will involve such contentions as: “Never characterize something as a (concrete) identifiable thing if you are not prepared to claim that it admits of identification, and also classification, and beyond this even of description.” This sort of principle is not a philosophical thesis or doctrine that purports to answer to some substantive philosophical question. Instead, it is a rule of procedure that specifies a modus operandi, a way of proceeding in the course of philosophizing. Examples would be “Ask questions that are important for understanding man’s place in the world’s scheme of things” and “Answers your questions cogently.” Such a methodological principle will represent a guideline to be followed if effective praxis in the field is to be realized. Such methodological principles are general rules of procedure, framed in terms of maxims that prescribe the appropriateness or inappropriateness of different ways of proceeding in philosophizing. To be sure, it also transpires that within philosophy one also encounters a profusion of principles of a natural or substantive nature. In ethics there is the “Principle of Utility” holding that the rightness of an action lies in its

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capacity to conduce to the greatest good of the greatest number, in natural philosophy we have the “Principle of Causality” holding that every event has a cause, or in epistemology the “Principle of Truth” that only what is true can ever be said to be known to someone. Such principles are principles IN philosophy not principles OF philosophizing, that is, they are not procedural principles of philosophical deliberation as such.6 But can process and product be separated in this domain? Must reality itself not cooperate in the methodological enterprise by being such that these concepts apply to it in some ontologically fundamental way? Since scholastic times, philosophical deliberations have traditionally dealt with principles under two headings: principles of being (principia essendi) and principles of knowing (principia cognoscendi). The former are those that relate to existence and coming to be.7 But it is the latter alone— the basic principles of cognition—that will concern the present discussion. However, there is actually always something ontological that underlies those procedural principles, namely the factor of functional efficacy. Philosophical principles have long played a role in this discipline. Let us consider some examples, duly grouped into three categories according as the issue concerned is one of informative adequacy, rational cogency, or rational economy.8 2. AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE It is instructive to survey the historical situation regarding philosophical principles, seeing that the history of the subject has pretty well canvassed the spectrum of available possibilities. PLATO The basic idea at issue with first principles goes back to the very dawn of speculative thought about the nature of explanation—to Plato’s discussion in the Republic (at Book VII, 510 BC). In studying geometric matters, the mind is compelled to employ assumptions, and, because it cannot rise above these, does not travel upwards to a first principle; and moreover the mind here uses diagrams as images of those actual things. However, this mathematical domain contrasts with the [philosophical] domain of the intelligible world which unaided reasoning apprehends by the power of dialectic. This treats its assumptions, not as first principles, but as hypotheses in the literal sense, things “laid down” like a flight of steps

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up which it may mount all the way to something that is not hypothetical, the first principle of all. Then, having grasped this, the mind may turn back and, holding on to the consequences which depend upon it, descend at last to a conclusion, never making use of any sensible object, but only of Forms, moving through Forms from one to another, and ending with Forms. [And so we must] distinguished the field of intelligible reality studied by dialectic as having a greater certainty and truth than the subject-matter of the ‘arts’, as they are called, which treat their assumptions as first principles. The students of these arts are, it is true, compelled to exercise thought in contemplating objects which the senses cannot perceive; but because they start from assumptions without going back to a first principle, you do not regard them as gaining true understanding about those objects, although the objects themselves, when connected with a first principle, are intelligible.

As such deliberations indicate, Plato was the first of many to find the idea of unexplained explainers unpalatable. His complaint regarding Euclidean style geometry, for example, is just exactly this—that it proceeds from first principles that are laid down as arbitrary stipulations (“absolute hypotheses”) and not themselves fitted out with an explanatory rationale. As Plato saw it, even with mathematical truths proof as such is not of itself sufficient. Mathematics alone, he holds, can yield certain knowledge independently of experience. But what is its basis? Proof—deductive demonstration—does no more than to trace validation back to the first principles—to the axioms, possibilities, and definition. But what is it that justifies these?—so Plato asks in book VII of the Republic. And his answer is effectively this: that while theses are usually justified by retrospection, by deduction from first principles,9 these first principles themselves are validated nor deductively by demonstration from something yet more basic, but rather by dialectic, by pro-spection, by looking forward towards the overall system of established results. And while the deduction of a theorem is always a finite process of a number of discrete steps, the latter, the dialectical utility of axioms and first principles in their wider rational context, is essentially an unending process of looking forward towards the overall merit of the entire system that results. By contrast, the great merit of philosophy—as he saw it—is that it treats its first principles not as absolute but as provisional hypotheses and that it proceeds not deductively but dialectically, looking backwards along the chain of consequences in order to substantiate the principle from which they derived their credibility. With regard to mathematical first principles Plato is in effect a coherentist.

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Overall, Plato’s position stressed the idea that for thoroughgoing rationality one must take the dialectical approach of justifying one’s beliefs cyclically, so to speak, by looking initially to self-recommending first principles which themselves are then subsequent evaluated with reference to their consequences and ramifications. As Plato thus saw it, the standard process of mathematical justification of terms of absolute hypotheses that themselves remain unjustified—however customary in geometry or arithmetic—is ultimately unsatisfactory from a rational point of view because it leaves off at the point where a different, dialectical methodology is called for. And Plato carries this line of thought further in the Timaeus by shifting matters from mathematics to natural philosophy. Here too fitness—value, systemic order, harmonious coordination—is once more the governing standard—only now for the arrangements of nature rather than in the realm of mathematical abstraction. Our understanding of nature must be predicated on “the principle that this universe was fashioned from the beginning by the victory of reasonable persuasion [i.e., lawful order] over mere force [i.e., necessity] [as it is here in the fortuitous machinations of brute matter].”10 For Plato then the ultimate arbiter of truth—as in mathematics and natural philosophy alike—is fitness, harmony, rational coordination, systemic order. And so for Plato, paradoxical though it may seem, the determination of what is basic in philosophy does not come at the start of an inquiry but at its end. Here, at the level of fundamentals, it is systemic fitness that is the deciding factor. Merit, rational order—the Platonic conception of “the Good”— becomes the supreme arbiter. And so with respect to first principles Plato was effectively a coherentist. ARISTOTLE Aristotle maintained that a science is defined as the discipline it is by the manifold of its characteristics problems, and that its first principles are those theses that must be accepted if those problems are to be meaningfully and cogently addressed.11 We thus cannot expect to realize an answer (let alone substantiate the answer) to a scientific problem if we fail to accept the first principles of the science at issue. Overall, Aristotle holds a complex position with regard to first principles. (1) The characteristic first principles of special sciences come either on loan from other special sciences, or from experience via intuition, or

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from dialectical analysis of commonalities among the such relevant theory (endoxa). And (2) the characteristic first principles of general science (logic and metaphysics) are based on a dialectical analysis of the sine qua non requisites of rational thought and discourse.12 In the Posterior Analytics (72a14-24), where Aristotle has in view the role of “Euclidean” geometry as a paradigm science, he divides first principles into theses and axioms, the former being in turn divided into hypotheses and stipulations (horismoi). However, in metaphysics, the science of being qua being, the only first principles are axioms—there is no place for hypotheses or stipulations, these being encountered in its special science alone. Accordingly, as Aristotle sees it, the first principles of universal science are those rules which—like the avoidance of selfcontradiction—are determinative for meaning and meaningfulness at large while in the special sense they will also include the stipulative specifications that characterize the range of issues definitive of the particular science at hand.13 And so Aristotle effectively adopted versions of different approaches with respect to different issues: Domain Relativism with regard to the special sciences; Self-evidentism in matters of general science (metaphysics as the science of being qua being); Processism with regard to our natureendowed cognitive faculties (sense and memory); and finally, a Coherentism of sorts in relation to our ordinary knowledge of everyday commonsense matters. THE STOICS The Stoics held that the first principles of factual knowledge issue from particularly clear and telling “cataleptic perceptions”—from truth-certifying experience of a certain sort. They regarded the normal everyday judgments of sensory experience under favorable conditions as paradigmatic, with illusion and delusions dismissed as aberrant abnormalities. And they also credited the human mind with an analogous insight, with the basic judgments of simple mathematics, for example, being secured along comparable lines. AQUINAS Aristotle set the stage of medieval philosophizing, and throughout the Aristotelian tradition, first principles of knowledge function to countervail

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the idea that demonstration requires demonstrable premisses via the availability of theses known non-inferentially as a matter of immediate insight via their “evident” or “self-evident” nature.14 The Aristotelism of the middle ages accordingly emphasized in particular the Self-evidentism adopted by the master himself in relation to matters of metaphysics. And so Aquinas, along with much of the subsequent neo-Aristotelian tradition, endorsed the idea of an “immediate” (inferentially unmediated knowledge of the fundamentals that are evident in the very nature of things in themselves—per ipsas).15 Principles thus become cognitively available through a suitable course of experience and perceived faithfully (“clearly and distinctly” in Cartesian terminology) by an attentive reason.16 DESCARTES Descartes has it that the first principles of knowledge come from “clear and distinct perceptions of the mind”, as provided by the human intellect’s divinity endowed capacity for the immediate apprehension of basic truth. On this effectively Evidentist approach, knowledge of first principles thus emerges from the exercise of a particular (God-given) capacity for intellectual insight. LEIBNIZ For Leibniz, the first principles of factual (phenomical) knowledge are rooted in cognitive systematization. Leibniz treats this epistemological issue in one of his most powerfully seminal works, the little tract De modo distinguendi phaenomena realia ab imaginariis. How does the golden mountain I imagine differ from the real earthern, rocky, and wooden mountain I see yonder? Primarily in two respects: internal detail and general conformity to the course of nature. Regarding the internal detail of vividness and complexity Leibniz says: We conclude it from the phenomenon itself if it is vivid, complex, and internally coherent [congruum]. It will be vivid if its qualities, such as light, color, and warmth, appear intense enough. It will be complex if these qualities are varied and support us in undertaking many experiments and new observations; for example, if we experience in a phenomenon not merely colors but also sounds, odors, and qualities of taste and touch, and this both in the phenomenon as a whole and in its various parts which we can further treat according to causes. Such a long chain of observations is usually begun by

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design and selectively and usually occurs neither in dreams nor in those imaginings which memory or fantasy present, in which the image is mostly vague and disappears while we are examining it.17

And as regards coherence, the second key aspect of cognitive reason, Leibniz says: A phenomenon will be coherent when it consists of many phenomena, for which a reason can be given either within themselves or by some sufficiently simply hypothesis common to them; next, it is coherent if it conforms to the customary nature of other phenomena which have repeatedly occurred to us, so that its parts have the same position, order, and outcome in relation to the phenomenon which similar phenomena have had. Otherwise phenomena will be suspect, for if we were to see men moving through the air astride the hippogryphs of Ariostus, it would, I believe, make us uncertain whether we were dreaming or awake.18

Leibniz proceeds to elaborate this criterion in considerable detail: But this criterion can be referred back to another general class of tests drawn from preceding phenomena. The present phenomenon must be coherent with these if, namely, it preserves the same consistency or if a reason can be supplied for it from preceding phenomena or if all together are coherent with the same hypothesis, as if with a common cause. But certainly a most valid criterion is a consensus with the whole sequence of life, especially if many others affirm the same thing to be coherent with their phenomena also, for it is not only probable but certain, as I will show directly, that other substances exist which are similar to us. Yet the most powerful criterion of the reality of phenomena, sufficient even by itself, is success in predicting future phenomena from past and present ones, whether that prediction is based upon a reason, upon a hypothesis that was previously successful, or upon the customary consistency of things as observed previously.19

Thus Leibniz laid down two fundamental criteria for the distinguishing of real from imaginary phenomena; the vividness and complexity of inner detail on the one hand and the coherence and lawfulness of mutual relationship upon the other. Thus Leibniz, Platonist that he self-avowedly was, followed the master’s coherentist lead in this connection. Over and above the manifold of provable truth in mathematics he envisioned a further domain of factual rather than formal truth grounded in general principles of rational order

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(“systemic fitness”)—a realm which encompasses the fundamental principles of natural philosophy. C. I. LEWIS C. I. Lewis maintains that the first principles of our knowledge emerge as such through retrospective certification by considerations of pragmatic efficacy. They are first not in a developmental sense but rather in order of fundamentality and importance with respect to the range of application at issue. And this emergence only with the wisdom of hindsight after we have seen how useful in matters of systematization and—especially—of application and implementation those principles prove to be. On this basis, the approach of C. I. Lewis to first principles was essentially one of Pragmatism. GÖDEL As Kurt Gödel saw it, the first principles of mathematics are certified by a conceptual (rather than sensory) mode of intuitive insight (cataleptic conrather than perception) into an absolute realm of mathematical truth and reality. And, on this basis, for Gödel, as for Leibniz before him, there is a Platonic realism of theoretical fact based not on human preferences but in inherent harmonization within the rational economy of the larger scheme of things. And so Gödel’s line of thought took the essentially Platonic line: Mathematics/arithmetic is a matter not of abstract necessity—of (axiomatic provability/demonstrability) but sometimes requires rational explicability (on grounds of fundamental principles of harmony/elegance/rational economy), thereby becoming a matter of validation through considerations of rational harmony rather than axiomatic demonstration. In her stimulating book on Gödel, Rebecca Goldstein has it that “Gödel like so many lovers of abstraction, has found in Plato a vision of reality that amounted to intellectual love.”20 But there is simply too much spincontrol going on here. What drew Gödel to Plato was his belief not merely in the reality of the abstract but in the rationality of what is real—abstractions included. The pivot of Gödel’s outlook was not intellectual love (the amor intellectualis of Spinoza) but rather a Leibnizian faith in the harmonious order of reality—in the paramount role of mathematical rationality in the larger scheme of things. As regards the presently contemplated tax-

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onomies of approaches to first principles, Gödel was a coherentist of a Platonic stamp. 3. A SAMPLING OF PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES Given philosophy’s overarching aim to provide a cogent basis for our understanding of the real a variety of subordinate imperatives provide for a manifold of interesting regulations. These can be grasped in three ways classes which address, rewardingly infinitive adequacy, cognitive cogency, and rational economy. Let us examine these in turn. PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATIVE ADEQUACY

The principles arising under this rubric address the problem of providing adequate informationof facilitating the business of understanding and enabling us to get a secure cognitive grip on the issues at hand. NEVER BAR THE PATH OF INQUIRY (C. S. Peirce). Peirce envisioned a correlative range of application for this principle which turns on the following line of thought: Never adopt a methodological stance that would systematically prevent the discovery of a certain fact if should it turn out to be true.

What can and should prevent one’s acceptance of a certain factual claim is the discovery of its falsity, the ascertainment of some other factual claim that is incompatible with it. But only facts should be able to block the route to the acceptance of a factual thesis, and never purely methodological/procedural general principles. For one thing, radical scepticism“Never accept anything” would fall immediate victim to this principle. For if we adopt this line all progress is blocked from the very outset. Again, if one systematically refused to give credence to reasoning by analogy, then any prospect of discovery facts about other minds would be precluded: even if it were the case that other people have a mental life akin to our own, we could never warrant a belief in this circumstance if we could not somehow evidentiate that which is inaccessible to our senses on the basis of that which is. Or again, a Cartesian insistence on absolute certainty precludes any sense-based access whatsoever to information about the world’s arrangements since sensory experience can never conclusively validate objective

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claims. (There is always an epistemic gap between the subjective phenomenology of how things look or feel (etc.) to us and what features they actually and impersonally have.) ALL AFFIRMATION IS NEGATION: omnis affirmatio est negatio (Spinoza). A positive claim always stands correlative to a corresponding negative. To characterize something in some way or other is to contradistinguish it from that to which that characterization does not apply. There is no communicative point in ascribing a feature to something when this does not effectively separate and distinguish what this feature involves from what it omits. Now for philosophy in specific this means that we can only clarify what a doctrine asserts and maintains if the same time we become clear about what it denies and rejects. Any thesis or position must take on its particular substance in the setting of a contrast with the various rivals that contest the doctrinal ground at issues. NO ENTITY WITHOUT IDENTITY (W. V. Quine). This is a modern version of the medieval principle ens et unum coincidunt (or: convertuntur): “Entity and unity are the same (or ‘are interchangeable’)”: anything properly characterizable as a thing must be a unit, that is be specifiable (or identifiable) as a single item. This is not merely a principle of ontology and should not be so understood in the present context. For here it does not concern the question: What is a thing like? Rather, it is a principle of communicative coherence: Whatever is to be meaningfully discussed needs to be identifiedthat is, specified in such a way as to distinguish it from the rest. Without specifying something as the particular item it is you cannot put it on the agenda of consideration. The ruling precept is: “You cannot communicate successfully about something that you have not yet identified.” The principle in view is closely bound up with another: nihil sunt nullae propietates (everything has some properties), seeing that identity stands coordinate with identifiability and requires descriptive specifiability which in turn requires the possession of properties. (Observe, however, that the principle E!x → (∃φ)φx does not entail or require the converse: (∃φ)φx → E!x. Pace the Bertrand Russell of “On Denoting,” there is no good reason to deny properties to nonexistentsto deny that Pegasus, the winged horse, is winged.21)

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PROBATIVE PRINCIPLES OF RATIONAL COGENCY

The principles at issue under this rubric are concerned to provide for cogency in regard to philosophical evidentiation, demonstration, substantiation. Some classical instances are as follows: NOTHING IS WITHOUT A REASON. Nihil sine ratione (G. W. Leibniz). This has become known as The Principle of Sufficient Reason. With regard to principles in general, the medieval schoolmen distinguished between an epistemological principle of knowing (pricipium cogoscendi) and an ontological principle of being (principium essendi). In this regard the present principle exhibits a typical duality. For it permits two very distinct constructions. It can be read in the light of Hegel’s doctrine that the real is rationalthat every aspect of the world’s arrangements has its reason why. This, of course, is, as it stands, a very debatable bit of metaphysics. But it can also be construed as a methodological precept from the practice of philosophy: MAINTAIN NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE WITHOUT GOOD REASON. Here its general effect would be that of the conjunction: “Be in a position to give a cogent reason for every doctrinal contention that you maintain. Refrain from making philosophical claims that lack a basis of a cogent rationale. Be in a position to support your contentions.” This methodological (rather than ontological) construction of the precept clearly has the benefit of having much good sense on its side. After all, the object of a philosophical discourse is: to enlist the assent of (reasonable) interlocutors to a certain line of thought which can only be done through substantiating a position. NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING: Ex nihilo nihil or de nihilo nihil. This was an ontological principle espoused by all the early Greek nature philosophers according to Aristotle (Physics, I 4) Lucretius ascribed the same idea to his master Epicurus who (according to Diogenes Laertius X, xxiv, 38) based his physics on the principle: ouden ginetai ek tou mê ontos. But this doctrinal principle of natural philosophy is also a methodological principle of philosophical reasoning. For, as happens readily in these matters, a principle of physical production comes to be transferred into one of cognitive production. And so, just as substance must come from substance in the material world, so substantive conclusions cannot be rationally supported save by invoking substantive contentions in their support.

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This principle is closely related in its general import to the legal precept: Qui exsequitur mandatum non debet excedere fines mandati (He who executes a commission [charge, mandatum] must not go beyond its terms”). In the context philosophizing this in effect says: When you draw implications and lessons from something already granted or established, do not exaggerate what this actually means. Do not go beyond the warrant of what has been established or conceded to you. (Even in reasoning) A CHAIN IS NO STRONGER THAN ITS WEAKEST LINK. Non fortiter catena quam anulus debilissimus. This too is true in the rational as in the physical realm. The idea was operative in the principle of Theophrastus in relation to modal syllogisms: the status of the conclusion is that of the weakest premiss: Peiorem sequitur semper conclusio partem. The conclusion always follows the weaker part, not only the weaker in point of modality (as with Theorphrastus),22 but also the weaker in quality and quantity, with the negative understood to be “weaker in quality” than the affirmative and the particular “weaker in quantity” than the universal. This weakest link principle thus holds not only in the material world but in the realm of reasoning as well. A conclusion whose derivation requires a mixture of premisses will itself be no more plausible than the weakest premiss needed for its derivation. The obvious lesson is that in substantiating our contentions we must strive to provide the strongest and bestestablished reasons we can manage to come by. In a way this principle is akin to ex nihilo nihil. For that principle requires that the premisses must be strong enough to yield the conclusion. And this principle stipulates that the conclusion must be weak enough to be sustained by the premisses. OPT FOR THE LEAST UNACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE. It is a familiar principle of moral philosophy that one should chose whatever course represents the least evil as per the dictum of the Roman poet Horace: ex malis eligere minimia (De officiis, III i 3). But this idea obtains not just in ethics but in rational methodology as well. It finds an echo in the “Sherlock Holmes Rule” that “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however impracticable, must be the truth.”23 And in philosophical contents it has the application that you never established a position by showing that its alternatives encounter problems and difficulties. Forand this is the critical principle:

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A position which, in comparison with its alternatives, encounters fewer and lesser difficulties than they do thereby deserves to be adoptedat least provisionally, until something better comes along. PRINCIPLES OF RATIONAL ECONOMY

The principles at issue under this present rubric are concerned to assure efficiency in philosophizingto prevent the wastage of energy and effort. Some paradigm instances are: THE IMPOSSIBLE IS NEVER TO BE REQUIRED. Ultra posse nemo obligatur. No one is obliged to go outside the bounds of possibility: So taken, the principle is a variation on the legal dictum of Celsus the Younger: impossiblium nulla obligatio est. By its very nature, that which is impossible cannot be realized. In consequence, its realization cannot reasonably be demanded of anyone, the philosopher included. To show that it is impossible to solve a certain problem on the terms in which it is posed suffices to release the philosopher of any obligation to deal with it. This principle is closely linked to another: IT IS ABSURD TO DEMAND THAT WHICH CANNOT BE HAD. Est ridiculum quaerere quae habere non possumus (Cicero, Pro Archia, IV 8). To insist on the realization of something acknowledged as in principle unrealizable is clearly irrational. This principle has numerous philosophical applications. Scepticism affords one example. If, as Descartes insisted, the human senses cannot, as a matter of principle, ever yield certainty about how matters stand in the world, then it would be absurd to insist on a concept of sensory knowledge by which certainty is a requirement. Again if we agree with those moralists who maintain that moral perfection is something that it is in principle impossible for humans to achieve, then it will become absurd to insist on a conception of “a good man” that requires perfection for its applicability. NEVER EXPLAIN WHAT IS OBSCURE BY SOMETHING YET MORE SO: non explicari obcurus per obscurior.

A satisfactory explanation must, of course, render matters clearer than they were to begin with. An explanation that violates the principle at hand will succeed at nothing other than obscuring the matter. The principle at issue implements the injunction: Never defeat your own purposes. This principle has an obvious corollary: NEVER MAKE MATTERS MORE COMPLICATED THAN THEY HAVE TO BE. This is obviously a sound policy of procedure in philosophy as

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elsewhere. And this principle has the obvious corollary: NEVER EMPLOY EXTRAORDINARY MEANS TO ACHIEVE PURPOSES YOU CAN REALIZE BY ORDINARY ONES. What is at issue here is a principle of ra-

tional economy: non multiplicandae sunt complicationes praeter necessitatem. This principle has the further corollary: ENTITIES ARE NOT TO BE MULTIPLIED BEYOND NECESSITY: Entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitatem. To all surface appearances, this looks to be an ontological principle, akin to, and perhaps even derivative from, “Nature does nothing in vain” (Nihil frustra facit natura: hê phusis ouden poiei matên)24 and even “Nature makes no leaps” (Natura non facit saltus). However, an ontological contention is not at issue here. For the principle at issue should be construed methodologically. A brief look at its historical context is instructive in this regard. This principle is widely attributed to William of Ockham. Such an assumption is highly problematic, however. For what Ockham himself actually had in view was a contention not with regard to existent entities, but rather a principle of rational procedure along the lines of • Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.25 Do not posit a plurality where a single item suffices. • Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per paucioria. It is inappropriate to do with more what can be done just as well with fewer.26 Again this is a principle of rational economy in relation probative processes that is at issue. NECESSITY KNOWS NO LAW: necessitas non habit legem. This common law maxim applies in philosophy as well. In proverbial wisdom it has such cognates as: “Desperate times need desperate measures” or even “Any port in a storm.” Disaster in the present context is preeminently the catastrophe of contradiction. The history of philosophy is accordingly shot through with the use of distinctions to avert aporetic difficulties. Already in the dialogues of Plato we encounter distinctions at every turn. In Book I of the Republic, for example, Socrates’ interlocutor quickly falls into the following SelfAdvantage Paradox: (1) Rational people always pursue their own best interests.

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(2) Nothing that is in a person’s best interest can be disadvantageous to their happiness. (3) Even rational people willand mustsometimes do things that prove disadvantageous to their happiness. Here, inconsistency is averted by distinguishing between two senses of the “happiness” of a person—namely the rational contentment of what agrees with one’s true nature and what merely redounds to one’s immediate satisfaction by way of pleasure, in sum, between real and merely affective happiness. With real happiness, (2) is true but (3) false, while with merely affective happiness, (2) is false, but (3) is true. However much we would like to see happiness as a unified conception the necessity of the situation construes us to effect a partition. DO NOT BELABOR THE OBVIOUS. This too is also a principle of sound philosophizing, and indeed of rational procedure in general. We find it in law (de minimis non curat lex), as well as in ordinary life: “Quit while you’re ahead.” Once your point is made or once your argument is developed with sufficient cogency for all practical purposes, call it a day. All this sort of thing is of course also simply a matter of sound practice in regard the conservation of (intellectual) energy. Closely related to this sensible prescription is yet another. NEVER FLOG A DEAD HORSE. Do not argue against that which nobody maintains. Let sleeping dogs lie. Or, as Chauncer more eloquently put it, “It is naught good a sleeping hound to wake” (Troilus and Creseyde, I 764). It is their heed of this consideration that accounts for the fact that sensible philosophers seldom trouble to refute such doctrines as panpsychism or solipsism. 4. THE PROBLEM OF CONFLICT Can principles conflict with one another? Are there mutually incompatible principles? The answer, in briefest form, is NO! There cannot be conflicting principles at the level of generality. But they can conflict so their application to specific instances. It lies in the nature of the thing that where conflict occurs there cannot be acceptability on both sides.

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But, of course, we must, here as elsewhere, distinguish what is from what seems to be. The truth is self-consistent and conflict free, but this is not so with what people think to be the truth. And the same holds for principles as well. The salient point, then, is that insofar as we propose to maintain various maxims as principlesjust as insofar as we propose to maintain various contentions as truthwe must make sure the consistency is preserved. And here lies an important consideration. For there are not just principles but also metaprinciples that govern how one should operate with principles. And perhaps the most crucial of these is the (meta-) principle: KEEP YOUR PRINCIPLES CONSISTENT. The “principle of noncontradiction” that is to say, holds just as decidedly at the level of principles as at the level of assertions. And it too is in the end a principle of rational economy that holds up the interests, facilitating the purposes that are definitive of the rational enterprise at issue. 5. THE ISSUE OF VALIDATION Philosophers are supposed to be reflective and exhibit care and concern for what they themselves are doing. Nevertheless, the fact is that they actually only seldom consider the nature and basis of the methodological principles that govern their practice. They debateand notoriously disagreeabout the substantive issues, and thereby about how such methodological principles are to be applied in particular cases. But to judge by their practice, at any rate, they seem to be substantially agreed about the principles of appropriate procedure. (To be sure, some philosophers chose to refrain from argumentation altogether, but those that do present reasons and arguments for a positionthis one includedall pretty much adhere to the standard principles.) Why should this be? This question at once leads to another. How is the correctness or acceptability of philosophical principles to be established? How is one to evaluate a philosophical principle? The first thing to note is that a philosophical principle is at bottom not a statement of fact but a rule of procedure. As such, its proper evaluation lies not in the range of true-false but rather in the range appropriateinappropriate. The question of evaluation accordingly falls within the scope of a rule of what is itself a rule of practice:

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Any rule of practice or procedure is to be evaluated not in the range of truefalse but in the range of effective-ineffective with respect to its efficacy in relation to the purposes of the practice at issue.

Now the proper way to assess the merits of anything that is procedural or methodological in nature is in terms of its efficacy in realizing the objectives at issue, that is in terms of its capacity to achieve the purposes of the procedural context at issue. The underlying idea is that if coming to the realization that to isolate the rule is to risk (and perhaps even assume) failure to achieve the objectives of the enterprise. A functional approach to assessment is thus in order here. The validation of philosophical principles that are philosophically first must in the final analysis rest on its promise and performance in fostering the aims of this enterprise. They are to be validated pragmatically through the consideration of this utility and efficacy on the particular domain at practice that is at issue. After all, philosophizing is a purposive enterprise. It has an aim or mission—to enable us to orient ourselves in thought and action, enabling us to get a clearer understanding of the big issues of our place and our prospects in a complex world that is not of our own making. Consider a specific case. As Aristotle already insisted, the Principle of Contradiction—to the effect that one should never accept logically incompatible theses—clearly illustrates the pragmatic basis of philosophical first principles. After all, the endorsement of truths and the rejection of falsehoods as one of the prime objectives of the entire venture of rational inquiry. And in asserting mutually contradictory theses we at once ensure that our body of accepted information will include falsehoods. And more generally, we do well to accept that reality conforms to the fundamental principles of logic, not because this is somehow predetermined as a basic ontological fact (though in some manner it undoubtedly is), but because without making this supposition from the outset we doom the enterprise of rational inquiry to impotent failure. There is something a bit ironic about this. For it means that in the end the fundamentals of our philosophizing—the most theoretical enterprise of all—are to be essential and legitimated by the essentially practicalistic standard of purposive efficacy (though, to be sure, the purposes at issue will themselves relate to matter of theorizing). To the content of the pragmatists, it transpires that even here, in this most theoretical of domains, the issues of function and purpose cannot be left aside. As this perspective indicates, the validation of a procedural principle turns on the issue of purposive efficacy. And in this light, the process of

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validating a methodological principle turns on a line of reasoning of the following format: If you violate the principle in question, then you impede the realization of one of the characteristic aims of the enterprise at issue.

This circumstance explains why principleslike the ten commandmentscan always be cast or recast as negative injunctions: “Thou shalt not . . .” In some of the preceding cases this may not be obvious at first glance. For example “A chain is not stronger than its weakest link” does not look like a negative proscription. But, of course, it is. For it effectively comes to: Do not ask a chain to support more than its weakest link can bear.” On this basis, the issue that is evaluatively pivotal for those philosophical principles is that of the aim and mission of philosophizing. And here we have itat least in first approximationthat the aim of philosophy is to provide cogent and convincing answers to “the big questions” that we humans have regarding ourselves and our place in the world’s scheme of things. The given inherence on the characteristic aims of philosophy the following injunctions are accordingly bound to figure prominently in the field: 1. Provide answers to those domain definitive questions, that is, propound and communicate information that conveys these answers. (We want answers.) 2. Seek for cogency, that is, fit those answers out with a rationale that attains cogency and conviction by way of evidentiation, substantiation, and demonstration. (We want not just answers but answers worthy of acceptance.) 3. Strive for rational economy, pursuing the tasks at issue in points 1 and 2 in a way that is rationally satisfactorythat is, in an efficient, effective, economical manner. It is with respect to these three prime goals of philosophizing that there came into operations the principles at issue in the preceding threefold cate-

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gorizationcommunicative adequacy, probative cogency, and rational economy. Against this background it emerges that the validation of a philosophical principle will proceed along the following lines: If the principle is violated, then: 1. It becomes if not impossible then at least more difficult than it should be to obtain any answer at all to our philosophical questions. 2. The answer we obtain will plunge us into actual self-contradiction; or else 3. The answer we obtain, even though averting self-contradiction, is incoherent and fails to provide for cogent understanding of the issues. In briefest sum, then, to validate of a philosophical principle it suffices to argue that violations will plunge us into • ignorance • inconsistency • irrelevancy • incoherence • extravagance (in either sense of that term) And it is exactly on this basis that the validation of the previously enumerated principles has proceeded. As in other contexts, those philosophical principles all form part of a functional hierarchy that implements in successive stages the pursuit of those fundamental goals that we define the philosophical enterprise as such. To be sure, someone might be tempted to complain about such a pragmatic approach to the matter: There is little or nothing that is characteristic of the philosophical enterprise at issue in the justifactory factors you have just canvassed. After all commu-

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nicative adequacy, probative cogency, and rational economy of process are desiderata we have in view with the constraint of virtually any rational enterprise.

The response is simply that this “complaint” is entirely correctthe situation is just as it states. The only fly in its ointment is that this is no occasion for complaint or objection. For the validation of those methodological principles of philosophizing lies exactly and precisely in the consideration that they involve the application to the characteristic mission of philosophizing of fundamental principles of general principles of rational procedure that are applicable across the whole range of our intellectual endeavors. To be sure, this also delimits the utility of these principles. Philosophical principles resemble the ten commandments in that they too provide for essentially negative injunctions. What they do is to specify impediments to cogency. Their message is something to the effect: if you wish your efforts to substantiate a philosophical thesis or position to achieve rational cogency, then you must avoid doing certain sorts of things (inadequate grounding, needless complication, and the like). Due heed to appropriate principles will accordingly not assure good philosophizing, but will do no more than help in averting poor philosophizing. To do the work well it is certainly necessary but by no means sufficient to avoid the specifiable sources of error. Philosophical principles do not produce an issue-resolving algorithm for this domain. Heed of those relevant principles will not solve those philosophical problems: it will do no more than prevent one’s efforts at problem-resolution from going awry. It must also be acknowledged that in philosophy as elsewhere, principles, like general rules of any sort, do not encorporate the conditions of their own application. The application and implementation of such a principle hinges neither on the principle itself, nor on yet further (presumptively higher-level) principles, but is a matter of good judgment that takes the detailed features of particular cases into account. The substantive and establishment of appropriate principles is something that may itself involve other principles of higher order and can therefore be a matter of practical reason. But the application or implementation of a principle in a particular case will always be a matter that to some extent involves not just cogent rationality but good judgment. Exactly through being general, principles cannot avoid entry into the grey region of borderline cases and controver-

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sial implementations (which does not, of course, alter the reality of a much larger area of clearly conforming and clearly violating cases). In concluding one salient point remains to be emphasized. It is thisthat even in so theoretical and reflective an enterprise as philosophy it transpires that functional and thus essentially pragmatic considerations have a critical role to play. 7. DEALING WITH OBJECTIONS To be sure, someone might be tempted to complain as follows in reacting to the preceding suggestion of functionalistically pragmatic approach to the matter: There is little or nothing that is characteristic of the philosophical enterprise at issue in the justifactory factors you have just canvassed. After all communicative adequacy, probative cogency, and rational economy of process are desiderata we have in view with the constraint of virtually any rational enterprise.

The response is simply that this “complaint” is entirely correctthe situation is just as it states. The only fly in its ointment is that this is no occasion for complaint or objection. For the validation of those methodological principles of philosophizing lies exactly and precisely in the consideration that they involve the application to the characteristic mission of philosophizing of fundamental principles of general principles of rational procedure that are applicable across the whole range of our intellectual endeavors. To be sure, this also delimits the utility of these principles. As noted, philosophical principles resemble the ten commandments in that they too provide for essentially negative injunctions. What they do is to specify impediments to cogency. Their message is something to the effect: if you wish your efforts to substantiate a philosophical thesis or position to achieve rational cogency, then you must avoid doing certain sorts of things (inadequate grounding, needless complication, and the like). Due heed to appropriate principles will accordingly not assure good philosophizing, and will do no more than help in averting poor philosophizing. To do the work well it is certainly necessary but by no means sufficient to avoid the specifiable sources of error. Philosophical principles do not produce an issueresolving algorithm for this domain. Heed of those relevant principles will

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not solve those philosophical problems: it will do no more than prevent one’s efforts at problem-resolution from going awry. It must also be acknowledged that in philosophy as elsewhere, principles, like general rules of any sort, do not encorporate the conditions of their own application. The application and implementation of such a principle hinges neither on its self-evidence, nor on yet further (presumptively higher-level) principles, but is a matter of good judgment that takes the detailed features of particular cases of application into account. The substantive and establishment of appropriate principles is something that may itself involve other principles of higher order and can therefore be a matter of practical reason. But the application or implementation of a principle in a particular case will always be a matter that to some extent involves not just cogent rationality but good judgment. In concluding one salient point remains to be emphasized: Even in so theoretical and reflective an enterprise as philosophy it transpires that functional and thus essentially pragmatic considerations have a critical role to play. For philosophy, like any other rational endeavor, has its definitive aims and goals, and these can unquestionably be pursued in ways that are more effective and in ways that are less so. And it is in just this regard that the rules and principles of philosophy come to stake claims to justifactory validation as facilitating the realization of the enterprise at issue.27 NOTES 1

Plato, Phaedrus, 101E and 107B.

2

Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, i, 1012b34ff.

3

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 33, 1.

4

Recall that to be a “man of principles” is to honor the rulesto “play it by the book” and not to see oneself entitled to count as an exceptionentitled to have things one’s own way irrespective of the rules that hold for others.

5

For more details see the author’s essay “Principia Philosophiae” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 56 (2006), pp. 3-17.

6

Logic is something of an exception here since it is (traditionally seen as) a part of philosophy as well as a guide to its conduct. Because the principles of logic represent requisites of cogent communication in general, they hold ubiquitously in all domainsand accordingly govern sensible philosophical discourse as well.

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NOTES 7

See Aristotle, Metaphysics ∆1, 1013a16-18. Pre-eminently something akin to Aristotle’s prime mover will be at issue here.

8

For historical aspects of the topic see: •

P. Aubenque et al., “Prinzip.” Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. by J. Ritter (Basel & Stuttgart: Schwabe), Bd. VII (1989), pp. 1336-37.

•

A. Lumpe, “Der Terminus ‘Prinzip’ von den Vorsokratikern bis auf Aristoteles,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, vol. 1 (1955), pp. 104-16.

•

W. Wieland, “Die Aristotelische Physik” Untersuchungen über die Grundlegung der Naturwissenschaft und die sprachlichen Bedingungen der Prinzipienforschung bei Aristoteles (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962).

•

Jan P. Beckmann, Wilhelm von Ockham (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995).

9

Plato, Republic, VII, 533-34.

10

Plato, Timaeus, 48A.

11

On the relevant issues see James Lennox, “Aristotle’s Problems,” Ancient Philosophy, vol. 14 (1994), pp. 53-77.

12

Compare T. H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

13

On the relevant issues see Alan Code, “Aristotle’s Investigation of a Basic Logical Principle,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16 (1986), pp. 341-58.

14

On the medieval context at large see the excellent discussion in John Longeway’s article on “Medieval Theories of Demonstration” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

15

Sententia super Posteriora analytica, I, 4.

16

This sort of thing is a vivid illustration of Edmund Husserl’s Wesensschau.

17

G. W. Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften,ed, by C. I. Gerhardt, Vol. VII, pp. 319-20.

18

Ibid, VII, p. 329.

19

Loc. cit.

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NOTES 20

Rebecca Goldstein, p. 260.

21

Bertrand Russell, “On Denoting,” Mind, vol. 14 (1905), pp. 479-93. On the larger issues see the author’s “The Concept of Nonexistent Possibles” in his Essays in Philosophical Analysis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 73109.

22

On Theophrastus’ dictum and its role in the theory of modal syllogisms see I. M. Bocheński, La Logique de Theophraste (Fribourg en Suisse, 1947; Publications de l’Université de Fribourg en Suisse, N.S., No. 31). On Aristotle’s position see N. Rescher, “Aristotle’s Theory of Modal Syllogisms and its Interpretation,” in M. Bunge (ed.), The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy (London and New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 152-177.

23

Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four” (1890).

24

Aristotle, De incessu animalium, I, iii, 8; Politica, I, 2; De caelo, I, 4.

25

G. de Ockham, Opera Philosophica, Vol. I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Editiones Instituti Franciscani Universitatis S. Bonaventurae, 1974), pp. 185 et. passim. See also Beckmann 1995, pp. 42-47.

26

See Beckmann 1995, pp. 42-47.

Chapter 11 PRINCIPLES IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ___________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Principles are also at work in the realm of empirical inquiry. (2) They correspond to methodological processes for developing our knowledge regarding the world’s facts. (3) Accordingly they implement the idea of the rational intelligibility of nature. (4) In the cultivation hierarchy at issue the topmost first principles are those that reflect the teleology of the scientific enterprise as such. They are fixed in place, unlike the facilitating with lower-level norms that are subordinate to them. ___________________________________________________________ 1. PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE: SOME EXAMPLES

N

atural philosophers have generally understood by a principle of natural science the most fundamental laws regarding “how things work in the world.” This specifically encompasses those generalizations so basic and so pervasive that, in their absence, it would be effectively impossible for inquiring creatures such as we humans to obtain the information needed to build up a natural science worthy of the name. The traditional examples are the Principle of Causality, as well as such principles as those of nature’s regularity, uniformity, simplicity, consistency, coherence, and unity. Principles of this sort relate to the orderliness and to the lawfulness of nature—to its conformity to systemic desiderata of various sorts. Rulishness is a precondition for the very possibility of our developing science. If nature did not exhibit regular modes of comportment—if it were “unruly” in its ways—a viable scientific account of the world in terms of its lawful aspects would riot be possible, seeing that such rulishness is basic to the very possibility of natural science. For the aims of science—viz., the description, explanation, prediction, and control of nature—would be altogether unrealizable without rulishness at issue in the first principles we have adduced (causality, regularity, coherence uniformity and the rest).

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 A HIERARCHY OF CONCERN Level of Taxomic Order

Mode of Lawful Order

nature at large the cosmos organisms animals humans cultures/societies individuals

scientific principles laws of nature laws of biochemistry biological laws medicine, psychology social customs individual habits

____________________________________________________________ As Display 1 indicates, various modes of lawful order are operative at different levels of natural taxonomy. As a high level of order, laws increasingly comprehensive aggregations are in force. But at each step up in the ladder new modes of lawfulness comes everything into operation. At each level there is a specification and concretization that is not simply derivable from what lines above. As we move down the side, contingency is always at work in the process of alternative-selective concretization. And the whole functional hierarchy at issue is unified and coordinated by the fundamental principles that are positioned at the top. 2. THE FUNCTION OF PRINCIPLES: THEIR REGULATIVE STATUS Of course, we never observe generalities, we observe only particularities. Those particulars suggest or invite generalizations. An element of conjecture—of sheer presumption—infects all of our generalizations. The Humean factor of expectation infuses all of our attempts at maintaining generalities and regularities with respect to the world’s course of things. And this circumstance underlies the role of principles. For while the “laws of nature” reflect observed regularities, the principles of natural science rather possibilize the explanation of the phenomena than constitute such explanations. Nature’s rulishness stands coordinate with regularities that are essential to the prospect of a “rationally adequate account” or for an “intellectually satisfactory picture” of what goes on in the world. They represent condi-

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tions of adequate understanding—for assessing whether we might conceivably have “got it right” in describing the workings of nature. They are not so much the products of as the preconditions for a rationally adequate account of nature. This explains the firstness of “first principles” of scientific explanation. They are “first”—that is, prior to what we understand of the workings of the world, because they represent defining conditions of the circumstance that we actually might understand it aright. They play a regulative role in constituting qualifying preconditions for an acceptable theoretical picture of the world. That is, they regulate and control the claims to rational acceptability of our explanatory-descriptive accounts of the world. They represent a check on the validity of our pretentions to understand how things work in the world. In sum, they serve as regulative conditions of understanding. And so those principles—considered in this, their fundamental role—(1) are procedural rules (i. e., relate to what to do), and (2) serve as controls in a qualificatory, normative function in relation to the acceptability of descriptions or explanations. If a characterization of the workings of nature were to violate these principles—if it somehow abrogated the unity or the consistency or the lawfulness of nature—then it would eo ipso thereby blazon forth its own inadequacy. One could not rationally rest content with such an account because (ex hypothesi) it contravenes what is in fact one of the very characterizing conditions of an adequate account. Consider, for example, the principle of the Uniformity of Nature, construed to the effect that if the particular case C is subject to law L and the circumstance of case C′ are sufficiently like those of C, then C′ must also be explained with reference to L.1 It is clear on the very surface of it that this is a procedural principle governing the acceptability of explanations. Much the same holds for the principle of the simplicity of nature (“of alternative and in most other respects comparable accounts, accept the simplest”), the principle of the consistency of nature (“mutually inconsistent accounts cannot be accepted”), and the various other principles at issue here. Those regulative first principles of empirical knowledge are justified on functions grounds. We endorse them because if we did not it would become somewhere between difficult and impossible to achieve scientific knowledge. They serve to render scientific understanding practicable. To be sure, one can (and should) give a metaphysical or cosmological “deduction” of these principles that assures their validity on the basis of

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how things usually work in the world. But it is not aprobatively sufficient procedure to seek to derive them from theses about the nature of the world (that nature is one comprehensive whole, that nature is everywhere consistent, etc.). For such a way of proceeding is largely circular. If the decision to accept a certain account of nature is indeed controlled by the criterion of the conformity of this account with such principles as those of unity consistency, etc.—then there can be no probative advance in scrutinizing such an account, once accepted, and remarking “Lo! Nature is unified (consistent, etc.)”. This way of proceeding would clearly involve a vitiating circularity. Nevertheless there is yet another aspect of circularity that is not vicious but actually benign. For something would clearly be amiss if the cosmologico-metaphysical ideas we invoke to justify our inquirymethods were not themselves revalidated by the results obtaining by putting these methods into operation. The principles basic to our scientific understanding are, as we have said, at bottom regulative; their basic task is to provide certain acceptabilityconditions for a “rationally adequate account” of what goes on in the world. But this is only how the matter stands in the first instance. In the final analysis, these principles will clearly also have a descriptive job to do. This is readily shown by an illustration, say with respect to the principle of the uniformity of nature. This has two aspects. On the one hand we have the regulative principle: Any acceptable account must treat some issue in different settings along uniform lines; explain similar in similar ways. But coordinate with this there also stands a Constitutive counterpart: Nature is uniform—whenever something happens in accordance with certain laws in one place (time, context) then something similar will happen in accordance with these selfsame laws in another place (time, context). The two are opposite sides of the same coin. It is clear that subscription to a regulative principle will limit our horizons of acceptability to those (substantive) accounts in which the “constitutive counterpart” to this regulative principle obtains. Accordingly, such adhesion assures that whatever account one in fact accepts will conform to the specifications of the constitutive counterpart of the regulative principle at issue. If those principles provide the preconditions of acceptability of descriptive or explanatory accounts then these (correlative) factors must be operative within the account. The result here is a substantive transmutation of a fundamentally regulative principle. Such regulative principles accordingly become the locus of a priori features of the world. Certain features must inevitably obtain of the

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world because only those descriptive and explanatory accounts which are consonant with these features are to be regarded as qualified for rational acceptability. 3. THE RATIONAL INTELLIGIBILITY OF NATURE The Principle of Sufficient Reason receives a special reinforcement in the present context, thanks to the particularly vital role played by the regulative first principles at issue in setting the very conditions of intelligibility for an explanatory understanding as based on its descriptive constitution of nature. In the first instance or approximation (but only in the first instance or approximation), the seemingly ontology-oriented question “Why is the world lawful” can be answered epistemologically. Instead of a ratio essendi (causal reason) we can adduce a ratio dicendi (reason for claiming). Why does our account of the world provide for the prevailing operation of natural laws? Because lawfulness represents a regulative first principle of scientific cognition. We wouldn’t accept an account as “an adequate account of the world” if it didn’t have a proper place for laws. Why is the world uniform? Why does our account of the world provide for a prevailing uniformity of mechanism and process? Because uniformity is a regulative principle. One wouldn’t (be entitled to) accept an account as “an acceptable account of the world” if it did not proceed along uniform lines. And the same sort of account holds for consistency, coherence, and all the other elements of intelligibility. They function regulatively with respect to rationality and intelligibility. Suppose (for sake of discussion) a thesis that is not a principle of unity/uniformity of nature, but a principle of diversity/disuniformity of nature (nature never repeats, never does the same thing the same way twice, etc.). Then, of course, adoption of this principle at the regulative level (“Never accept an account which has it that. . .”) means that to the substantive level nature will be disuniform. But a drastic incongruity would now result seeing that nature would then be uniform in an avoidance of uniformity. We are enjoined to avoid uniformity, and yet enjoined to accept uniform results. Such a condition is perhaps not actually self-contradictory, but incongruous and dissonant. The theory does not support or substantiate itself.

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However, the very opposite is actually the case with regard to those regulative principles that we in fact espouse: coherence, consistency, unity, uniformity, etc. They assure a unity of approach, a uniformity between the methodological groundwork of the account and its actual content, a parallelism of the internal aspects of result and the external aspects of method. The theory substantiates itself as it is only congruous that it’ should. Coherence thus plays a special role in self-substantiation; indeed, selfsubstantiation is simply an aspect of coherence/uniformity.” Self-substantiation is accordingly a crucial part of intelligibility. It represents a very general desideratum. Even as logic should be developed logically on its own showing (autodescriptively), so should an account of nature be developed systematically—its productive principles should be consonant with its productions, its practice should accord with its teaching. Such self-substantiation or functional isomorphism between the tenor of the developing principles and the developed structures to which they lead is clearly a fundamental desideratum. This points to the crucial metatheoretic aspect qualifying of first principles as principles of intelligibility. This sort of self-substantiation is here necessary but is clearly not sufficient: it is an indispensable requisite, but it does not provide the external quality-control of a sufficiently rigorous reality-principle. For such an external quality control is clearly necessary to lay totally to rest the charge of vitiating circularity (as mooted in Section 3 above). The legitimation of the methodological tools of inquiry lies in justifying the whole framework of “ordinary inquiry”—the entire methodological modus operandi of which the tools at issue are a part. The legitimation of the methodology of inquiry will naturally carry along with it that of the various components and constituents of the methodology. But how is an entire framework of inquiry to be legitimated? Clearly by its results—by that dialectical feedback process that validates the workings of the method in terms of its products. With the validation of fundamental systemic coherence becomes the crux. The most promising course is thus to approach the issue from a methodology oriented point of departure. Given the regulative, procedural, in short, methodological character of first principles, the question can be handled in the standard way by which a method is justified—namely by the pragmatic route of the questions “Does it work?” “Is it successful in conducing to the realization of its correlative objectives?” This is patently the right approach to the legitimation of tools, instrumentalities and all other

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sorts of methodological devices. It seems also to be the right way to tackle the issue of first principles. The fact is that their ultimate justification is not discursive at all—it does not proceed by the theoretical route of a derivation from supporting factual premisses. Rather, their foundation is pragmatic, for their legitimation resides in the fact that we men can function effectively in the world, acting on the “knowledge” generated in the context of these regulative principles. Their legitimacy thus does not derive from a theoretical sphere of the applicative success of implementing (basing our actions upon) the world-picture built up on this basis. Not a theoretical demonstration of correctness but the sheer element of pragmatic efficacy is the controlling factor of the legitimation of these first principles. The structure of the over-all justificatory relation is set out in Display 2. The whole process of legitimation involves the closing of two cycles: Cycle I, the theoretical-intellectual cycle of consistency between regulative first principles and their substantive counterparts, and Cycle II, the practical-applicative cycle of pragmatic efficacy in implementing the substantive results of the first principles. Cycle II renders the whole framework of first principles vulnerable and subject to defeat in the light of “recalcitrant experience” arising in applications. Its operation means that first principles have a basis that is only seemingly a priori, but ultimately a posteriori and controlled by a theory external “reality principle”. The principles of natural science represent essential facets of the enterprise as we know and understand it (in the sense of the opening paragraph of this paper). But that natural science as we know it and understand it is as we know and understand it—that the left hand box of the theoretical cycle I of Figure 1 is as it is—this is itself a fact which is, in the final analysis, contingent (being contingent upon the pragmatic controls of cycle II). And so first principles are “necessary” from one specific angle of consideration only—namely internally to the theoretical framework within which they function in a role that is a priori and regulative. But from a wider perspective, one that introduces the further issue of the legitimation of this entire framework (an issue, to be sure, that presses outside the cycle of purely theoretical considerations into the area of praxis and pragmatic implementation), we face a situation in which the first principles themselves become subject to abandonment or revision. They have no claims to “necessity” at this stage. Conceivably things might have eventuated differently—even as concerns the seemingly a priori “first principles of scientific understand-

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ing”. (Why didn’t they so eventuate? We can only answer this by the metaphysical component of the “great cycle” of validation.) The cyclic structure of the justificatory account this becomes of paramount importance.

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____________________________________________________________ Display 2 THE DUAL CYCLE OF VALIDATION FOR “FIRST PRINCIPLES” Retrospect Reappraisal of Consonance and Fit

Pragmatic Validation or Invalidation Cycle I

First Principles In Substantive Form Metaphysical Assumptions

“Metaphysical Deduction”

Cycle II Factual Theses Constituting a Theory of Nature

First Principles in Regulative Form Cognitive Implementation

Action and Appraisal of of Success Practical Implementation

____________________________________________________________ For its operation reflects the fundamental commitment of the scientific enterprise to ensure the overall intelligibility of its products. NOTES 1

The old universalistic construction of this thesis is naive and runs afoul of stochastic processes.

Chapter 12 LEIBNIZIAN PHYSICS AS A CASE STUDY ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Leibniz sought to depict the laws of physics as a rationally designed system. (2) And he implemented this thesis in mechanics, in optics, and elsewhere. (3) As he saw it, nature was a great optimizer, (4) with its operation exhibiting a grand design of rational architectonic. (5) For Leibniz, preeminently, the real is rational. (6) Leibnizian physics was an exercise in optimization subject to principles of rational systematization. (7) And its subsequent development in “rational mechanics” was one of the great success stories of modern physical science.” ____________________________________________________________ 1. THE LEIBNIZIAN PROJECT

L

eibniz regarded physics as an applied mathematics—or perhaps better, an enriched mathematics—one that is enlivened by its enmeshment with matters of existence in the real world. He writes: “There is nothing which is not subordinate to number; Number is thus like a metaphysical figure (numerus quasi figura metaphysica est) and arithmetic is a kind of statics of the universe by which the powers of things are discovered.”1 And as Leibniz saw it, the mathematicizing of nature is subject to certain basic principles. Nature has problems to solve in the determination of her modus operandi. She must display lawful regularities rather than provide a playground for haphazard and random eventuations. For to settle what-next questions nature needs to establish laws in relation to the question format: “Given an occurrence-situation of such-and-such a sort, what response is to ensue?” Nature must make a determination here. And, as Leibniz saw it, this determination will have to align with an array of fundamental parameters of rational merit as encapsulated in certain basic principles geared to an idea of rational systematization.2

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The Leibnizian program in physics thus sought to dig through to a stratum deeper than that of the Newtonian synthesis. For Newton’s own program in physics was essentially that of the ancient Greek mechanicians and astronomers. With Archimedes and Ptolemy, it asks “What laws of nature can we stipulate to ‘save the phenomena’ by providing an adequate accounting for why our observations are as they are?” And it addresses this question as per Display 1.3 But Leibniz took another line here, one which in effect says: “Fine. Let’s give this program our best shot. But let’s suppose we are successful in getting our minds around a goodly sector of nature’s laws. There still remains the question: “Now viewing these laws themselves as our ‘phenomena’ how can we best ‘save’ them—how can we account for the fact that these laws are as they are?” And so even as standard physics studies nature’s phenomenon in observational experimentation to discern the laws governing nature’s phenomenal modus operandi, so Leibnizian physics studies nature’s laws in thought-experimental deliberation to discern the “architectonic” principles of rational economy and factual efficacy governing nature’s lawful modus operandi. He wrote: We can see the wonderful way in which metaphysical laws of cause, power, and action are present throughout all nature and how they predominate over the purely geometric laws of matter themselves, as I found to my astonishment (admiration) when I was explaining the laws of motion.4

As Display 2 shows, Leibnizian physics augments classical physics by superimposing upon it an added cycle of systematization consisting in a meta-inductive step to a set of explanatory principles that render it possible to account for the laws of nature. Even as classical physics seeks to “save the phenomena” by asking and answering the question of why the observations are as they are, so Leibnizian physics seeks to provide a rationally cogent answer to the question of why the laws of nature are as they are.5 As Leibniz saw it, such principles of rational design as those of continuity, of conservation, and of least effort can both guide our researches into nature’s laws and provide a framework for understanding an explaining the results of our investigations: they both furnish a ratio essendi for nature’s mode of operation and furnish us with a ratio cognoscendi that provides quality-control for our investigative hypotheses. And it is on this basis that Leibniz says such things as:

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 CLASSICAL SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMATIZATION Laws of Nature Inductive Inference

Causal Explanation Observations

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Display 2 LEIBNIZIAN SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMATIZATION Principles Metainductive Inference

Functionalistic Explanation Laws of Nature

Inductive Inference

Causal Explanation Observations

____________________________________________________________ All natural phenomena could be explained mechanically [i.e., scientifically] if we understood them well enough, but the principles of mechanics themselves cannot be so explained . . . since they depend on more substantive

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[i.e. deeper] principles. (Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 271 (Loemker 478).)

Leibnizian physics is thus a two-tier affair. It sees the world’s phenomena as explicable by the laws of nature, but has it that these laws themselves are to be explained with reference to fundamental principles. As Leibniz himself put it: All particular phenomena in nature would be explained mechanically if we were capable enough . . . But I hold, nevertheless, that we must also consider how these mechanical principles and general laws of nature themselves arise from higher principles and cannot be explained by quantitative and geometrical considerations alone.6

Considerations of rational intelligibility (“sufficient reason”)—broadly understood to encompass was rational economy (mini-max, conservation, uniformity, continuity, and symmetry [e.g., of action [reaction])—provide the driving source of Leibnizian physics. For what Leibniz emphasized in his physics was not just the lawfulness of nature, but the lawfulness of nature’s laws—their systemic harmonization within a systemic order as geared to principles of rational intelligibility. Accordingly, as Leibniz saw it, the prime principles here are those listed in Display 3. For him, the “laws of nature” are nature’s rules of operation, and these are subject to certain fundamental principles that possibilize the overall design of a rational science nature. The salient and characteristic goal of Leibnizian physics is accordingly oriented to the discovery of principles for grounding Nature’s laws. Its key aim is not just the discovery of laws via phenomena but preeminently the explanation of laws via principles. And he set out to deploy such roughly aesthetic principles to address the following question: Given that certain sorts of problems must be faced and resolved by any possible “world” (propelling itself through time, coordinating the doings of its constituents, propelling its processes through space, creating natural kinds of things that can also do this, etc.) what sorts of natural laws can best achieve these ends within the framework of those principles (i.e., most economically, harmoniously, elegantly, etc)? That is—What natural laws can most effectively resolve nature’s problems subject to realizing the factors at issue with those basic principles?

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In standard science, the relationship of observation to laws is twofold in that it seeks: (1) to use observation evidentially for the confirmation of ____________________________________________________________ Display 3 LEIBNIZIAN PRINCIPLES • Fertility (variety, abundance, diversity, complexity)7 • Economy and Simplicity (least effort, ease of operation, greatest efficiency, least time, least action) • Continuity (gaplessness, amplitude) • Definiteness (specificity, precision, mini-max determinacy) • Uniformity (regularity) • Consonance (simplicity, uniformity, consistency, regularity) • Conservation (equivalence of action and reaction and generally of the causa plena and effectus integer)8 • Elegance (symmetry, harmony, balance) ____________________________________________________________

laws to account for the observations. (The overall adequacy to the project lies in getting appropriate harmonization here.) And then (2) use these laws to account explanatorily for the explanation of observation. Leibniz thus has it that “One can see that final causes in physics not only produce admiration for God’s wisdom [in the arrangements of Nature] but also facilitate the knowledge of things.9 In Leibnizian science, then, the situation is that, first, the laws as best we can discover them can be used as launching-platform for the discovery of appropriate principles, and then that these principles can and should be deployed to explain how and why it is that those laws are what they are.10 And so Leibniz has it that: Although all the particular phenomena of nature can be explained mathematically or mechanically . . . it becomes increasingly apparent that never-

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theless the general principles of corporeal nature and of mechanics are themselves of metaphysical rather than merely geometrical form.11

The insistence not just on the lawfulness of nature but on the higher-order lawfulness of nature’s laws is the hallmark of Leibnizian physics. As Leibniz saw it, the laws of physics are subject to constraint—and perhaps even to full determination—by metaphysical principles of rational systematicity. Rational economy lies at the core: even sufficient reason has its economic dimension. (Why have something be so if one can losslessly dispense with it—i.e., if there is no good reason for its being so?) Leibniz thus envisioned such principles as constraints on the laws of nature. And all of these conditions are interconnected in the thought of Leibniz. For they are not merely or only matters of mathematical elegance but manifest the workings of rational economy. Given this gearing to the modus operandi of intelligence, the metaphysics of optimality and the epistemics of rational intelligibility stand coordinate with one another. Many thoughtful people have over the years taken much the same line. Thus in addressing a university convocation in the late 1800’s Joshua L. Chamberlain (Civil War hero, Governor of Maine, and Bowdoin University president) said: Sooner of later . . . .they [our men of science] will see and confess that these laws along whose line they are following, are not forces, are not principles. They are only methods . . . Laws cannot rightly be comprehended except in the light of principles . . . .Laws show how only certain [limited] ends are to be reached; it is by insight into Principles that we discover the great, the integral ends . . . Now the knowledge of these Laws I would call Science but the apprehension of Principles I would call Philosophy, and our men of science may be quite right in their science and altogether wrong in their philosophy.12

The perspective at issue here is in much the same spirit as the more profoundly developed ideas of Leibniz, who did, however, see Principles as still belonging to natural philosophy and thus to science itself. Let us now consider how Leibniz himself put this program of Leibnizian physics to work.13

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2. LEIBNIZ’S IMPLEMENTATION OF HIS PROGRAM A. THE MECHANICS OF REBOUND Bouncing. Consider the issue of ball-bouncing in mechanics. And let us start with a billiard-table cushion here. Nature faces the following problem: To propel a ball from point X to point Z by bouncing it off the cushion. Which path is Nature to choose? What impact-point Y is to be appropriate here?

The most “convenient” path is of course the shortest—which is also the fastest when the ball moves at a constant velocity. And it is exactly this path—the one which, as it were, maximized the economy of effort that Nature in fact chooses, with its characteristic feature that the angle of incidence equals the angle of rebound. Rebound. Let it be that a suspended moving elastic object meets a suspended standing one as per the diagram of Display 4. First let it be that the moving object (1) has greater mass then the standing one (2). Then on Cartesian principles if they will both move in the direction of the heavier, and (ii) if the moving object has less mass then the standing one, then the later will remain in place while the former bounces back in the direction from which it came. But now, so reasons Leibniz, if the difference in masses be only a minuscule amount (∈) in object (1)’s favor then the motion of object (1) after impact will be →, but if object (2) even minimally the more massive object (1)’s motion after impact will be ←. An infinitesimal difference in input will have a substantial difference in result. This violates Leibniz’s principle of continuity thereby also violates simplicity in specifying a significantly different modus operandi in fundamentally analogous cases. For Leibniz the Principle of Continuity is means to the end of a uniformity of result that insist on the same coming outcome from different directions of approach. Leibniz states the Principle of Continuity as follows: When two hypothetical conditions or two different data continuously approach each other until the one at last passes into the other, then the results sought for must also approach each other continuously until one at last passes over into the other, and vice-versa.”14

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____________________________________________________________ Display 4 IMPACT INTERACTION

(1)

(2) ____________________________________________________________

This Principle of Continuity was the Archimedean fulcrum that Leibniz used to dislodge the principles of Cartesian physics.15 B. THE OPTICS OF REFLECTION AND REFRACTION The same principle of efficacy governs the motion of light. Leibniz himself puts the matters as follows in his Discourse on Metaphysics: The way of final causes is easier, and is not infrequently of use in discerning important and useful truths which one would be a long time in seeking by the other, more physical way; anatomy can provide significant examples of this. I also believe that Snell, who first discovered the rules of refraction, would have waited a long time before discovering them if he first had to find out how light is formed. But he apparently followed the method which the ancients used for catoptrics, which is in fact that of final causes . . . That is what I believe, Snell and Fermat after him (though without knowing anything about Snell) have most ingeniously applied to refraction. For when, in the same media, rays observe the same proportion between sines (which is proportional to the resistances of the media), this happens to be the easiest or, at least, the most determinate way to pass from a given point in a medium to a given point in another. And the demonstration Descartes attempted to give of this same theorem by way of efficient causes is not nearly as good.16

And so the same principle of time minimization obtains in refraction when rays of light travel from one medium into another—say from air to water. Here nature’s modus operandi obeys “Snell’s Law” which proportions the angles of resistance and refraction to the density of the medium at

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issue, a relationship that once again maximizes efficacy by minimizing transit time.17 Leibniz ardently espoused this principle, and he reproached Descartes with having used (in accordance with the Cartesian program) a more clumsy mechanical method in the derivation of Snell’s law, instead of the more elegant a priori principle of least time or distance.18 C. MINIMAX DEFINITENESS AND CONTINUITY Inspired by its success in optics, Leibniz was eager to extend the applicability of minimax principles. Accordingly, he generalized Fermat’s principle of least time (or, equivalently in the case of a constant speed, of least distance) to the effect that there need not be, in the usual transmission phenomena, a minimization of time. He pointed out, there might be a maximization, as may happen in the case of a concave mirror.19 Summarizing the situation, Leibniz writes: In the absence of a minimum it is necessary to hold to the most determined [alternative], which can be the simplest even when it is a maximum.20

But this does not undermine the general principle, for Leibniz remarks that the general mathematical method for finding maxima and minima which he developed—finding a zero of the first derivative—yields both maxima and minima without discriminating between them.21 And so Leibniz saw this as an idea which cuts across the particular laws of physics in mechanics and regarded it as a clear determination of the general interconnection of things. Here was a powerful unifying rule for the multitude of particular natural laws, giving coherence to natural science and showing clearly the economy in nature. The work from which these deliberations have been drawn, the Tentamen Anagogicum of ca. 1696, draws upon pure mathematics, mechanics, optics, and dynamics for illustrations of Leibniz’s minimax principle. Summarizing the situation Leibniz wrote: The principle of perfection is not limited to the general but descends also to the particulars of things and of phenomena and that in this respect it closely resembles the method of optimal forms, that is to say, of forms which provide a maximum or minimum, as the case may be—a method which I have introduced into geometry in addition to the ancient method of maximal and minimal quantities. For in these forms or figures the optimum is found not only in

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the whole but also in each part, and it would not even suffice in the whole without this. For example, if in the case of the curve of shortest descent between two given points, we choose any two points one this curve at will, the part of the line intercepted between them is also necessarily the line of shortest descent with regard to them. It is in this way that the smallest parts of the universe are ruled in accordance with the order of greatest perfection; otherwise the whole would not be so ruled22.

Throughout problems of this sort, the object is to find one among an infinite number of alternatives that achieves an extremization (minimization or maximization) of some parametric characteristic—time, distance, or the like. What is at issue in such physical problems is an infinite comparison process leading to the clarification of an optimal resolution. Thus Leibniz writes: This principle of nature, that it acts in the most determined ways which we may use, is purely architectonic in fact, yet it never fails to be observed. Assume the case that nature were obliged in general to construct a triangle and that for this purpose only the perimeter or the sum of the sides were given, and nothing else; then nature would construct an equilateral triangle. This example shows the difference between architectonic and geometric determinations. Geometric determinations introduce an absolute necessity, the contrary of which implies a contradiction, but architectonic determinations introduce only a necessity of choice whose contrary means imperfection . . . Since nature is governed architectonically, the half-determinations of geometry are sufficient for it to achieve its work; otherwise it would most often have been stopped. And this is particularly true with regard to the laws of nature [which] . . . cannot be derived from their sources without assuming architectonic grounds. One of the most important of these, which I believe I am the first to have introduced into physics, is the law of continuity, which I discussed many years ago in the Nouvelles de a république des lettres, where I showed with examples how it serves as the touchstone of theories.23

D. CONSERVATION AND LEAST ACTION: FORCE & ENERGY Consider the problem of propagating any sort of physical “influence” through space—illumination, say, or gravitation (or heat?, or energy?). As it moves out ever further from the center this influence will have to speed itself over an ever-enlarging surface area that grows with the square of the distance from the center. An inverse square law of “influence” will accordingly maximize its conservation in the diffusion process. This modus oper-

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andi then best meets the efficiency interests of a Nature in point of constancy and preservation. Leibniz’s critique of Descartes’ idea of the conservation of “quantity of motion” (= momentum) and insistence that what is involved instead is “live force” or “action” was published in the 1686 Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes.24 The criticism involved represented one of the set pieces of Leibnizian physics. For, as he saw it, The laws of motion are the best adjusted and most fitted to abstract or metaphysical reasons. There is conserve the same quantity of total and absolute force or of action, also the same quantity of relative force or of reaction, and finally, the same quantity of directive force. Furthermore, action is always equal to reaction, and the entire effect is always equal to its full cause.25

Leibniz defined action as that physical quantity associated with displacements which is measured by ∫ mv2dt.26 Since mv2 is Leibniz’s measure of force or vis-à-vis, it follows that for Leibniz action is the time integral of the expenditure of force. Since Leibniz takes over from Christiaan Huygens the law of conservation of mv2, it follows that for him there obtains a principle of the conservation of action in mechanics, with the expenditure of force minimized in mechanical processes.27 Both in Leibniz’ thought and in subsequent physical theory, the principle of least action was intimately connected with a principle of the conservation of energy (or of Leibniz’ equivalent vis-à-vis). In classical dynamics the two principles of least action and of conservation of energy are, in a sense, equivalent. In a conservative system (in which the work done in transporting a particle from any point to any other is the same regardless of the path taken, i.e., in which the total energy is preserved in any motion) the law of least action can be established. Conversely if the law of least action applies for all motions within a system, then the total energy remains constant. Here minimization and conservation go hand-in-hand.28 3. NATURE: THE GREAT OPTIMIZER As Leibniz saw it, Nature does not take half measures; she does not transact her business in comparatives but deals only in superlatives. A Principle of Saliency thus obtains; when Nature solves her problems she does so in an extremal way—like general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who sought “to git thar firstest with the mostest”—she opts for the fastest, largest, most economical and effective way. Asked to send a light say from

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point A to point B via a mirror, she will select the quickest route, asked to package a given blob of mercury, she will select the smallest package etc. As Leibniz himself puts it, “[Nature so acts that there will be] more bodies in a given space, more motion in a given time, more focus in a given position or matter, and more qualities in a given subject [than any other possible arrangement affords]”.29 Nature’s specific determinateness within a field of alternative possibilities leads it to an insistence on superlatives and casts it in the role of the great maximizer. Leibniz amplifies this position as follows: The method of optimal forms, that is to say, of forms which provide a maximum of minimum, as the case may be—a method which I have introduced into geometry as supplement to the ancient method of maximal and minimal quantities. For in these forms or figures the optimum is found not only in the whole but also in each part, and it would not even suffice in the whole without this. For example, if in the case of the curve of shortest descent between two given points, we choose any two points on this curve at will, the part of the line intercepted between them is also necessarily the line of shortest descent with regard to them. t is in this way that the smallest parts of the universe are ruled in accordance with the order of greatest perfection; otherwise the whole would not be so ruled.30

As Leibniz saw it, Nature is subject to a fundamental principle of determinacy. Whenever it functions in some particular way, this will have to be so on the superlativistic basis of this proving ultimately to be the most economical and sparing in the expenditure of some limited resource (space, time, energy, complexity, etc). It is this idea of rational economy in nature that lies at the core of this commitment to naturalistic teleology. As he himself puts it: [In optics] Order demands that curved lines and surfaces be treated as composed of straight lines and planes, and a ray is determined by the plane on which it falls, which is considered as forming the curved surface at that point. But the same order demands that the effect of the greatest ease be obtained in relation to the planes, at least those which serve as elements to other surfaces, since it cannot be obtained with regard to these surfaces also. This is all the more true since it thus satisfies, with respect to these curves, another principle which now supersedes the preceding one [of ease of transit] and which holds that in the absence of a minimum it is necessary to hold to the most determined, which can be the simplest even when it is a maximum.31

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And again: There is always a principle of determination in nature which must be sought by maxima and minima; namely, that a maximum effect should be achieved with a minimum outlay, so to speak. And at this point time and place, or in a word, the receptivity or capacity to the world, can be taken for the outlay, or the terrain on which a building is to be erected as commodiously as possible, the variety of forms corresponding to the spaciousness of the building and the number and elegance of its chambers. The case is like that of certain games in which all the spaces on a board are to be filled according to definite rules, but unless we use a certain device, we find ourselves at the end blocked from the difficult spaces and compelled to leave more spaces vacant than we needed or wished to. Yet there is a definite rule by which a maximum number of spaces can be filled in the easiest way. Therefore, assuming that it is ordered that there shall be a triangle with no other further determining principle, the result is that an equilateral triangle is produced. And assuming that there is to be motion from one point to another without anything more determining the route, that path will be chosen which is easiest or shortest. Similarly, once having assumed that being involves more perfection than nonbeing, or that there is a reason why something should come to exist rather than nothing, or that a transition from possibility to actuality must take place, it follows that even if there is no further determining principle, there does exist the greatest amount possible in proportion to the given capacity of time and space (or the possible order of existence), in much the same way as tiles are laid so that as many as possible are contained in a given space.32

And again: We must also say that God makes the maximum of things he can, and what obliges him to seek simple laws is precisely the necessity to find place for as many things as can be put together: if he made use of other laws, it would be like trying to make a building with round stones, which make us lose more space than they occupy.33

4. MINIMAX AND ARCHITECTURE

THE

GRAND

DESIGN

OF

NATURE’S

In the interesting and very important little 1696 essay entitled Tentamen Anagogicum Leibniz wrote:

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[T]he principles of mechanics themselves cannot be explained geometrically, since they depend on more sublime principles which show the wisdom of the Author in the order and perfection of his work. The most beautiful thing about this view seems to me to be that the principle of perfection is not limited to the general but descends also to the particulars of things and of phenomena and that in this respect it closely resembles the method of optimal forms, that is to say, of forms which provide a maximum or minimum, as the case may be—a method which I have introduced into geometry in addition to the ancient method of maximal and minimal quantities. For in these forms or figures the optimum is found not only in the whole but also in each part, and it would not even suffice in the whole without this. For example, if in the case of the curve of shortest descent between two given points, we choose any two points on this curve at will, the part of the line intercepted between them is also necessarily the line of shortest descent with regard to them.34

In taking as measure of perfection the combination of two, in principle, separable factors, Leibniz unquestionably drew his inspiration once again from mathematics. Determining the maximum or minimum of that surfacedeforming equation which represents a function of two real variables specifically requires those problem-solving devices for which the mechanisms of the differential calculus were specifically devised. And for Leibniz this process is realized on a cosmic scale as well: As the design of a building may be the best of all in respect to its purpose, cost and situations, and as the arrangement of given statues (corps figures) may be the best one can find, so it is readily conceivable that a particular structure of the universe can be the best of all.35

Thus in summarizing his cosmological approach, Leibniz wrote: This principle of nature, that it acts in the most determined ways which we may use, is purely architectonic in effect that yet it never fails to be observed. Assume the case that nature were obliged in general to construct a triangle and that for this purpose only the perimeter or the sum of the sides were given, and nothing else; then nature would construct an equilateral triangle. This example shows the difference between architectonic and geometric determinations . . . If nature were brutish, so to speak, that is, purely material or geometrical, the above case would be impossible, and unless something more determinative were given than merely the perimeter, nature would not produce a triangle. But since nature is governed architectonically, the half-determinations of geometry are sufficient for it to achieve its work;

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otherwise it would most often have been stopped. And this is particularly true with regard to the laws of nature. Perhaps someone will deny that what I have said above applies to the laws of motion and will maintain that an entirely geometric demonstration can be given of them. I reserve the proof of the contrary for another discourse, where I shall show that they cannot be derived from their sources without assuming architectonic grounds. One of the most important of these, which I believe I am the first to have introduced into physics, is the law of continuity, which I discussed many years ago in the Nouvelles de la république des lettres, where I showed with examples how it serves as the touchstone of theories. It serves not merely to test, however, but also as a very fruitful principle of discovery, as I plan to show some day. But I have also found other very beautiful and extended laws of nature, quite different, however, from those usually employed, yet always depending on architectonic principles.36

Nature generally fills space within minerals or within organic bodies solidly with crystals. Were she to use spherical constituents this would not maximize the filling of available space: it would insufficiently leave unfilled gaps: We must also say that God makes the maximum of things he can, and what obligates him to seek simple laws is precisely the necessity of finding a place for as many things as can be put together: if he made use of other laws, it would be like trying to make a building with round stones, which make us lose more space than they occupy.37

In fixing the detail of Nature’s arrangements, “God acts like the greatest geometer who prefers the best construction of problems”.38 Leibniz’s fundamental idea that the world maximizes existence in that it encompasses the greatest possible variety of beings: We can now understand in a wonderful way how a kind of divine mathematics or metaphysical mechanism is used in the origin of things and how the determination of the maximum takes place. So the right angle is the determined one of all angles in geometry, and so liquids placed in a different medium compose themselves in the most spacious figure, a sphere. But best of all is the example in ordinary mechanics itself; when many heavy bodies pull upon each other, the resulting motion is such that the maximum possible total descent is secured. For just as all possibilities tend with equal right to existence in proportion to their reality, so all heavy objects tend to descend with equal right in proportion to their weight. And just as, in the latter case, that

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motion is produced which involves the greatest possible descent of these weights, so in the former a world is produced in which a maximum production of possible things takes place.39

The world is, as it were, like a well filled balloon: add something to it, it bursts; change something in it, it punctures. 5. THE RATIONALITY OF THE REAL Where do those governing optimality principles of Leibnizian physics come from? The fact is that Leibniz himself viewed them all as having one common rationale. For they pivot on two main factors, namely processual economy and contextual fitness: 1. Orderliness or lawful coherence which encompasses and unifies economy, singularity, definiteness, consonance, and elegance. 2. Fertility or abundance which encompasses variety, diversity, complexity. And these two factors in turn come together in cohesive focus in the conception of harmony which accordingly constitutes the standard and substance of perfection. That world is the most perfect ... which is at the same time the simplest in its hypotheses [i.e., its laws] and the richest in phenomena.40

And again: God has chosen the best possible plan in producing the universe, a plan which combines the greatest variety together with the greatest order; with situation, place, and time arranged in the best way possible; with the greatest effect produced by the simplest means.41

It is, accordingly, perfection that synthesizes and coordinates the totality of positivities represented by the fundamental principles of physical cosmology. The best possible world is the one which optimally realizes the overall combination of orderliness and variety that are definitive of cosmic harmoniousness.

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Accordingly, Leibniz facilitates this overall position as follows: In realizing a viable universe Reality with a capital R must provide for sufficient complexity to possibilize the existence of intelligent beings—creatures who find in the operations of that universe grist for the mill of their inquiring intelligence and at the same time have sufficient simplicity. If the world’s modus operandi were too simple intelligent beings could not function successfully, if it were too complex they—finite intelligence that they are—could not manage to wrap their minds around it. A proper balance must be negotiated between complexity and simplicity. The guiding idea of Leibnizian physics is that there is only one single optimal way of solving nature’s problems via its basic laws once the governing principles that set the conditions for an adequate solution are fixed. The principles that govern Nature and canalize its laws are principles of rationality. They all pivot on the question: How would a rational intelligence wants to proceed in designing Nature’s modus operandi. God could not have failed to establish laws and following rules [in relation to Nature] because laws and rules are what make order and beauty; and to act without rules would be to act without reason.42

But why this prioritization of rationality? In the final analysis, to ask this question is effectively to answer it. The only sort of resolution of any issue that is worth having is a rational resolution: ask a serious question, and you want a rationally cogent answer. Rationality is self validating. Virtually alone among desiderata it needs not further, self-external validation. The only principles that reason will acknowledge as not being in need of further explanation are those principles that characterize the operation of reason itself—principles on the order of efficacy, effectiveness, simplicity, uniformity, etc. As Leibniz himself put it in writing to Pierre Bayle in 1702 “the metaphysico-mathematical laws of nature that represent the order of things best conformable to intelligence and reason.”43 And he went on to insist that “the more one examines things, the more the intellect is satisfied” (quanto res disautiuntur magis tano magis intellectui satisfiat.44 As Leibniz sees it the real is profoundly and pervasively rational. And so to summarize the theses that characterize Leibnizian physics are 1. Nature is not anarchic but transacts its affairs in a way that is orderly and lawful and mathematically elegant.

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2. The laws of nature themselves are constituted in a way that is orderly, principled, constituted in a way that is subject to certain fundamental principles of natural philosophy. Specifically, the principles that govern nature’s lawful modus operandi are principles of economy, efficacy, uniformity, etc. 3. These principles are, in effect, principles of rational comportment. Their concern for harmonious variation reflects the way in which any intelligent being would address matters of creative design (be it in music, architecture, landscape gardening, or whatever). 4. The fundamental superprinciple that governs the constitute of these principles is thus that of rationality. The real is rational: Nature composites herself as though a governing intelligence were in charge of designing its modus operandi. In a tradition ranging from Plato to Einstein, Leibniz is committed to the fundamental rationality of nature’s design. 6. SITUATING LEIBNIZIAN PHYSICS IN ITS IDEOLOGICAL SETTING Leibnizian physics is predicated on the idea that there are certain fundamental principles that impose constraints upon the range of acceptable laws of nature. These principles represent necessary conditions for acceptability. But are these conditions also to be deemed sufficient? Do they determine a unique set of laws? Suppose for the moment that the principles at hand underdetermine the laws in leaving open several sets of alternative possibilities. What would the proper reaction to such a situation be? Three distinctive sorts of reactions are possible here, and they reflect distinctive orientations that have been present throughout intellectual tradition of the West. (1) The Democritean tradition. The ancient atomists deliberated the question: Why are the world’s generalizations as is? Why do dogs not have horns like cows, and cows come hornless like dogs? And their response here was that these generalities are merely local regularities: that in the infinite vastness of Euclidean space there are innumerable other world in which all of the possible variations on these themes are played. The situa-

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tion of our cows and dogs simply reflect the locally parochial situation of our particular world. On such a view, reality is in fact a multiverse with a plurality of worlds emplaced in a megaspace in which all possible alternatives are realized. Confronted with seemingly contradictory alternatives, reality somehow manages to embraced all of them at once.45 (2) The Platonic tradition. When the principles we have in hand do not resolve the issue of alternative possible arrangements uniquely, then so much the worse for them—something is wrong with those putative principles: they just are not rightly and properly conceived. For the real is rational: it does and must achieve at one unique—and uniquely qualified— resolution among alternative possibilities. Reality is such that its overall modus operandi is optimalized relative to an appropriate corpus of principles. Nature is so organized as though a rational intelligence were at work in its design—a Platonic demiurge, as it were, who induces it to the best realizable outcome so as to have it operate on lines of rational optimality. (3) The Epicurean tradition. There is an element of uneliminable surdity in the make-up of the world. Its fundamental principles of process, such as they are, are product-underdeterminate and do not suffice to constrain the actual course of events—any more than is the case with the rules of chess. To be sure, there has to be a unique resolution within the wider manifold of incompatible alternatives, but this is a matter of strictly random and arbitrary chance. When such alternatives arise, reality throws the dice as it were. It resolves matters one way or another by pure haphazard. When there is a gap of determination by principles, chance fills the gap. At this stage the real is not rational here, reality simply resorts to resolving matters by pure haphazard. There is, accordingly, no rhyme or reason whatever for the world’s specific concretization of those indecisive principles. Let it be that with respect to physical possibility, the alternatives A1, A2, . . . An are all possible, with A1 as that one which in fact actually realized with the other Ai as mere might-have-beens. We here construe “physical possibility” in terms of compatibility with all of the laws of nature that govern this world of ours. We can now ask: Why is it that A1 is realized and the other Ai not? There are three theoretically available approaches here. I. Surd contingency. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. It chances by sheer contingency that that’s how it is. There is no reason for it: the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” must be abandoned. The idea that scientific explanation can explain every occurrence doesn’t hold up.

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Sometimes the question “Why did X happen rather than Y?” is simply inappropriate: its presupposition of the rationality of the real is just plain false. Sometimes reality is fundamentally stochastic; the alternatives drew straws, so to speak, and the actual one won out. (On this perspective, things sometimes happen spontaneously—without any causal or productive explanation. It is not that science is incomplete— unable to explain something that has an explanation. Rather, reality is such that certain facts are inherently inexplicable. Reality is not irrational (reason contravening), but rather such that certain facts and situations are arational in being outside explanatory reach). II. Hyperphysical explanation. This applies in specific to the issue of alternative laws and the question of why it is that the existing laws obtain. Why not different laws altogether? Granted, science (specifically physics) cannot afford a cogent explanation here: being at issue themselves, its laws have no explanation to offer. But other modes of explanation, distinct from law-subsumption, present themselves (e.g., theological [God choose to have it that way], or optimalistic [things are that way because that’s for the best in the light of metaphysical principles—i.e., Leibnizianism.] III. Multiverses: It is wrong to think that this world of ours—laws and contents included—is alone and uniquely actual. In fact, all of the alternative possibles are realized. None of these supposedly alternative Ai are non-actual. It just so happens that we ourselves belong to this particular one—this universe of ours. Reality has different sectors which differ from one another not in point of existence but only in terms of descriptive constitution. Our universe is merely one compartment of a broader manifold that encompasses all possibilities—the one to which we happen to belong. This trio pretty much spans the spectrum of available possibilities, seeing that when confronted with a plurality of alternatives one can either seek to combine and conjoin the whole lot, or else proceed to adopt a single one of them—either for good reason or else arbitrarily. Which way is one to go here? It depends. What it depends on is one’s inclinations towards

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1. the rationality of the real (PSR)—the idea that there always is a cogent explanation for things being the way they are. 2. the ontological profligacy of universes above and beyond the one we ourselves occupy. If you are ontologically conservative, you give up III (multiverses). If you are fundamentally rationalistic, you give up I (bare surdity). If you are both, you are led to II and incline to take the hyper-physical or metaphysical route pioneered by Leibniz—or else turn to theology. Is a naturalistic neo-Leibnizianism rationally viable? The reconciliation of optimalism and science can be motivated by the following line of consideration. Consider the following four propositions: (1) The fundamental constants of nature are fine-tuned to the emergence of life. (Were they significantly different, life could not develop.) (2) There is a cogent reason for every feature of reality. Every fact regarding the world is in principle explicable. (Principle of Sufficient Reason.) (3) Science (as standardly envisioned) does not and cannot provide a cogent reason for the fine tuning at issue in (1). (4) Science (as standardly envisioned) is complete: whatever fact about nature is explainable at all has a scientific explanation. Once it is granted that (1) is a matter of established fact, there are only three ways of exiting from the inconsistency engendered by this aporetic quartet. (2)-abandonment. And in its wake to accept (1) as a surd (inexplicable) fact of life. (3)-abandonment. To regard science as incomplete—and accordingly, when retaining (2), to envision an extra- or supra-natural explanation for (1).

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(4)-abandonment. To hold that in principle science can and does provide an explanation for (1)—and thereupon to reconceptualize science, enlarging it to include some such non-standard mode of explanation as anthropic theory, teleology, or optimalism). One may or may not like the range of options that are available here, but something simply has to give for the sake of mere consistency. And(4)abandonment is perhaps the best prospect here. Recall that it speaks of science as standardly envisioned. But a naturalistic Leibnizianism affords a different way of envisioning it. Accordingly one could take a less narrowly construed view of “science” and concede plausibility to accepting neoLeibnizianism as acceptable to science in a larger sense rather than as inherently unscientific. However, in this larger sense, science makes some accommodating concessions to what I characterize as “hyperphysicalism” above. Of course there are those other alternatives. But as the preceding reasoning indicates, they are not cost free. *** Leibnizian physics takes its characteristic stand firmly within the second of these alternatives. With Leibniz himself, it nails its flag to the mast of neo-Platonism, insisting that nature functions altogether on rationally designed principles. It accordingly insists with an earlier Plato and Plotinus and a later Hegel and Einstein that the real is rational—that in the final analysis how things actually are can be accounted for on principles that implement the idea that reality is so structured as if a rational intelligence were at work in its constitution in a way that renders its operations totally amenable to intelligent comprehension and cogent explanation. To be sure, the prospect of a negative and malign “selector”—the idea of the universe as a bad joke of some sort—can also be contemplated. Perhaps we cannot say with justifiably confident assurance what sort of answer to the question of why reality is as is in fact correct. But what we can say with assurance is that a definite spectrum of possible responses can be identified, specifically including —rejectionism: the question itself must be discussed as improper —brute fact: there just is no reason or cogent explanation

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—multiverses: every possibility co-exists concurrently in an equal footing —unsolvability: resolving the question is simply beyond our powers —resolvability: • the question finds a viable answer • in some positive resolution • in some arbitrary (rationally indifferent) factor • in some negative factor Interestingly enough, that it speaks volumes about that psychology of individual to which of these alternative issues resolution he feels most strongly drawn. The question, it would seem, is just as illuminating with regard to types of theorist as it is with regard to types of metaphysical theory. 7. THE FATE OF LEIBNIZIAN PHYSICS The value of the principle of least action lies in its unifying effect; it provides a basis for axiomatic development the axiomatic development of large sections of physical theory. Here Leibniz’s insights were extended by Maupertuis, and in Lagrange’s Méchanique analytique the principle of least action was shown to be a sufficient basis for the deduction of the laws of mechanics, and the work of Hamilton extended this result to optics and dynamics. Some idea of the power of this principle can be gained from the following except from a paper in which Hamilton presented his results on optics to the Royal Irish Academy in 1824: Those who have meditated on the beauty and utility, in theoretical mechanics, of the general method of Lagrange, who have felt the power and dignity of that central dynamical theorem which he deduced in the Méchanique analytique . . . , must feet that mathematical optics can only then attain a coordinate rank with mathematical mechanics . . . , when it shall possess an appropriate method and become the unfolding of a central idea ... It appears that if a general methods in deductive optics can be attained at all, it must follow

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from some law of principle, itself of highest generality, and among the highest results of induction . . . , (This) must be the principle, or law, called usually the Law of Least Action.46

Hamilton’s ideas were further amplified by Ernst Mach. And it was as a unifying principle of just this nature that Leibniz envisaged his general minimax principle, from which his principle of least action was obtained. But as the 19th century moved along, other ideas and other paradigms came into prominence and by its end principles like manimax, economy, simplicity, and least action were not greatly in vogue. Moreover, a surprising revival has transpired in the later years of the th 20 century. Scientists of the first caliber found their way back into a Leibnizian state of mind. Simplicity, fertility, and lawful order are back in rogue. Einstein wrote that “experience justifies one belief that nature is the realization of the simplest mathematical ideas that are reasonable.”47 The astronomer Mario Livio proposes a “cosmological aesthetic principle” encompassing such functions as simplicity, symmetry, continuity. The physicist Anthony Zee has the universe continuing in creative terms such functions as “unity and diversity absolute perfection and boistrous dynamism, symmetry and lack of regularity”.48 The physicist Freeman Dyson maintains that nature’s simple laws appear to be designed to “make the universe as interesting as possible”.49 The astronomer Carl Sagan has it that the universe exhibits a fertility that is “lavish beyond imaging”.50 Cosmologists Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin see the universe as exhibiting “extremal variety”.51 In fact, towards the end of the twentieth century the idea of a physical domain combing that salient feature of Leibnizian physics came into fashion again.52 POSTSCRIPT Leibniz himself, to be sure, saw the world’s rational design as obtaining thanks to the creative choice of God: The real is rational because God made it that way: A fundamental analysis of the laws of nature leads us to the most sublime principles of order and perfection, which indicate that the universe in the effect of a universal intelligent power.53

So there is no question but that Leibniz’ own development of what is here called Leibnizian physics was deeply rooted in his theology, and in particu-

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lar in his view of creation as a matter of God’s choice among an infinitude of discordant alternatives. But there is no reason why this theistic dimension cannot be factored out and the entire project naturalistically detheologized. To say that Nature comports itself rationally—that its modus operandi is so combined as though it were the product of a creative intelligence is one thing—and a purely descriptive one at that. And going on to say that this is so because an intelligent creator has so ordained it is yet another sort of thing that is something else again, additional and quite different. The former is simply a venture in determining how nature in fact works—on all fours with any other. And it is the former, strictly naturalistic project that is at issue with Leibnizian physics as we propose to conceive of it here. After all, even for Leibniz the fact that the world is as it is is not just due to the fact that God make it that way. For what is crucial here is the question of why? And here the root of all matter is presumably that a rational God wants it that way because it is the rational thing to do, where rationality nails its flag to the masts of economy, efficiency, order, continuity, factuality variety and the like. Three quite different questions are on the agenda. (1) What sort of arrangement for a possible world deserves to be characterized as meritorious or even optimal? How is the idea that one world-arrangement is superior to another to be understood? How (if at all) can the intrinsic merit of worlds reasonably be assessed? (2) Is the world as we have it of such a sort that its arrangements answer fully or partially to the conditions of optimality as determined by (1). And if this is indeed so, then (3) What explanation is there for this being so? So there are three distinctly different questions: (1) What does wordoptimality mean? (2) Are its requisites in fact realized? And (2) How can this be explained: Why is this so (if it indeed is)? What we have here are three decidedly different issues: meaning, facticity, and explanation. And these issues belong to three very different domains of inquiry and deliberation. The first is strictly analytical and philosophical in its purport. The second is entirely scientific in its concern simply for what the world is like. And the third—and it alone—is theological. Each depends on what

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has gone before in the sequence. Yet they are functionally distinct: none even addresses—let alone accomplishes—the work of the others. Now the crucial fact for present purposes is that the second, central issue is entirely scientific in nature. Once the preliminary and purely conceptual matter of meaning-resolution has been resolved, the questions of whether the world’s constitution is such as to meet the conditions at issue become a question that science—and science alone—is in a position to resolve. What we have here called “Leibnizian physics” may be rational in its orientation but there need be nothing super-natural about it. NOTES 1

Philosophische Scriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, (7 vols; Berlin: Weidemann, 1875-90), Vol. VII, p. 184. This work is henceforth cited as GP.

2

The principal secondary sources bearing upon Leibniz’s physics include: Martial Gueroult, Dynamique et métaphysique Leibniziennes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934); George Gale “The Physical Theory of Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana vol. 2 (1970), pp. 114-127; Diogenes Allen, “Mechanical Explanations and the Ultimate Origin of the Universe Accordingly to Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft 11 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983); Hans Poser, “Apriorismus der Prinzipien und Kontingenz der Naturgesetze: Das Leibniz-Paradigma der Naturwissenschaft” in A. Heinekamp (ed), Leibniz’ Dynamica (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1984; Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 13), pp. 164-79; Herbert Breger, “Symmetry in Leibnizian Physics” in Anonymous (ed.), The Leibniz Renaissance (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1989), pp. 23-42; and Francois Duschesneau, Leibniz et la méthode de la science (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993).

3

The given schematic enfolds, sight unseen, the crucial stage of applicative testing of the laws leading either to confirmation or replacement/revision.

4

GP VII 305. Also Leroy Loemker (ed.), G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Lettters (Dordrecht: Reidel. 1969), pp.. 488-89. This work is henceforth cited as: Loemker.

5

Leibniz himself then took the further step of adding yet another cycle of systematization that proceeds in theological terms to provide a rational explanation of the explanatory principles themselves. As he put it in a 1679 letter to Christian Philip: For my part I believe that the laws of mechanics which serve as foundation for the whole system [of physics] depend upon final causes, that is to say, on the will of God determined to do what is most perfect . . . (GP IV 281-82 (Loemker 273).)

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NOTES

As Leibniz saw it, the world exists as is because God has chosen to create it that way. And God has so chosen it because that particular world design is optimal. Now here one could, in theory eliminate the middle man and move directly from optimality to existence. In a post-Kantian, not to say post-Nietzechean world, such a sidelining the deity may have a certain appeal. But this view of the matter just was not Leibniz’s—no matter how insistently Bertrand Russell thought it should have been. A purely naturalistic Leibnizianism could of course refrain from taking this further, theological step, and we shall in fact, leave it aside here. However, for Leibniz himself it was crucial. 6

GP IV 391 (Loemker 409).

7

The duly balanced combination of all of these factors is what Leibniz calls harmony, which is for him, the hallmark of perfection.

8

On this principle see especially Leibniz’s letter to de l’Hôpital of 15 January 1696. G. W. Leibniz, Mathematische Schriften, ed. C I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Ascher, 184959), Vol. II, p. 308. This work is henceforth cited as GM..

9

GP IV 340.

10

Although Leibniz holds that it lies in our power to see how the fundamental principles of natural philosophy can, at least in principle, account for the laws of physics, it is beyond our power to see how they account for nature’s particular detail. This insight is reserved for God alone. On this issue see Hans Poser, “Apriorismus.”

11

Discours de métaphyique §18; GP IV 444 (Loemker 315).

12

Quoted in W. M. Wallace, Soul of the Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960), pp. 232-33.

13

On the conceptual structure of Leibniz’s physics see George Gale “The Physical Theory of Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 2 (1970); Diogenes Allen, Mechanical Explanations and the Ultimate Origin of the Universe According to Leibniz (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983; Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft II). Both authors, however, have a view of Leibniz’s project rather different from that of the present discussion. Thus Diogenes Allen, for example, complains that Leibniz is at a disadvantage in comparison with . . . [20th century thinkers] because his physical theory has no predictive import and does not explain particular natural phenomena. (Op. cit., p. 27.)

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NOTES

However, from the angle of the present analysis this complain is totally inappropriate. 14

GP IV 375 (Loemker 397-98). See also Leibniz letter to Varignon of [? Feb 2, 1702?]. And much the same statement (accompanied by a more general formulation) is found in an earlier paper published in the Nouvelles de la république des lettres, July, 1687. (GP III 51-55 and 351-54).

15

See in particular his Critical Thoughts on the “Principles” of Descartes, GP IV 354-92, esp. p. 375 (Loemker 397-98).

16

Discours de métaphyique §22, GP IV 447-48 (Loemker 317-18).

17

The law in question was stated by Willebrord Snell in 1621.

18

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 274 (Loemker 478).

19

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 274-75 (Loemker 479).

20

Ibid.

21

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 275 (Loemker 479).

22

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 272-3 (Loemker 478).

23

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 279 (Loemker 484).

24

GM VI 117-19 (Loemker 296-8). The idea recurs at DM §18 reference and later in his 1692 Critical Thoughts on the “Principles” of Descartes (GP IV 354-92 (Loemker 383-412), as well as in the Specimen dynamicum.

25

“Principles of Nature and of Grace” § 11.

26

See the Dynamica, GM VI 345 ff; and the Essai de dynamique, GM VI 220 ff.

27

See Gueroult, op, cit., p. 11 as well as p. 7 of the article Dynamics in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. For Leibniz’s arguments see the Dynamica, GM VI 441ff and the Essai de dynamique, GM VI 222ff.

28

On Leibniz’s ideas regarding least action and their relation to those of Maupertuis who followed in his wake see Chapter 4 of Duschesneau, op. cit.

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NOTES 29

G. W. Leibniz, Textes inédits, ed. G. Grua (2 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), Vol. I, p. 12.

30

Tentamen anagogicum, G VII 273 (Loemker 478).

31

Tentamen anagogicum, G VII 274 (Loemker 479).

32

“On the Radical Origination of Things.” GP VII 303-04 (Loemker 487).

33

To Malebranche July 2 1629; G I 331 (Loemker 211).

34

Tentamen anagogicum, GVII 272 (Loemker 478).

35

Theodicy, II §200; GP VI 235 (Huggard, p. 200).

36

Tentamen anagogicum, GOP VII 279 (Loemker 484).

37

To Malebranche on July 2, 1679; GP I 331 (Loemker 211).

38

GP VII 310.

39

“On the Radical Origination of Things,” GP VII 304 (Loemker 488).

40

Discours de métaphyique §6.

41

“Principles of Nature and of Grace,” §10.

42

Théodicy, III §360; GP VI 328 (Huggard 351).

43

GP III 72; to Boyle 1702.

44

GP II 168; to De Volder 1699.

45

The present-day counterpart version of this line of thinking is the Everett-Wheeler hypothesis in cosmology. Consider also the idea of versions in Before the Beginning by Martin Rees (Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley, 1997).

46

Quoted from the article “Light,” Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edition.

47

Quoted in Mario Livio, The Accelerating Universe (New York: John Wilem, 2000), p. 34. Einstein speculates that considerations of simplicity alone may determine the laws of nature: “What really intrigues me is whether God could have created the world any differently; in other words; whether the demand for logical sim-

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NOTES

plicity leaves any freedom at all.” (Quotable Einstein ed. by Alice Calaprice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 221. When Einstein said “I believe in Spinoza’s God” he committed a not altogether uncommon act of selfmisperception, seeing that the God to which his views committed him was in fact Leibniz’s. 48

Anthony Zee, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 211.

49

Quoted in John Horgan, Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment (New York: Haughton Mifflin, 2003), p. 172.

50

Carl Sagan and Ann Drurjan, “On Earth as it Is in Heaven: The Origin of the Earth and the Solar System,” Omni, October 1992.

51

Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin, “Extremal Variety as the Foundation of a Cosmological Quantum Theory” published on the web at http: arxiv.org/hep-th/9203041.

52

I owe some of the preceding references to William C. Lane.

53

Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII 270 (Loemker 477).

Chapter 13 MORAL PRINCIPLES ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) The precepts of morality lay claim to represent universal duties; any genuinely moral obligation by its very nature to be seen as universally incumbent upon everyone alike. Yet whence does morality obtain this deontic deontological force of universal obligation? Neither utility nor consensuality (social contract) can do the job—let alone crass self-interest. (2) Ultimately, the demands of morality root in an ontological obligation of the same sort that we have already seen to be at issue with cognitive rationality. (3) Indeed morality—seen in proper perspective—is simply an intrinsic sub-sector of rationality at large. (4) The absoluteness of moral rules is part and parcel of the absoluteness of the requisites of reason. And not only are moral obligations inherently universal, but moral benefits also accrue universally; everyone has a stake in morality. (5) In consequence, a well-ordered society will strive for political arrangements that coordinate morality with self-advantage. ____________________________________________________________ 1. THE PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY ARE UNIVERSAL

M

oral principles are universal and absolute, rooted in the very goal structure of the moral enterprise. And morality transcends mere prudence. It deals in the things that are not just well advised to do because they are advantageous with regard to our (or somebody’s) interests, but in the things we are obligated to do because they are right. The core idea of morality is that someone who culpably fails to do the morally appropriate thing wittingly and deliberately and without a good and sufficient excuse thereby: • does something wrong—not just something unwise or counterproductive or unconventional, but something actually bad, and accordingly

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• is blameworthy by way of deserving of the disapproval of others and the reproach of one’s own conscience To default callously on one’s moral obligations is to act in a way that by its very nature invites and deserves condemnation. And the inherent “requiredness” of moral comportment is something that is crucial to morality as the thing it is. Any adequate theory of morality must accordingly recognize the deontological aspect of moral judgments. It must account for the “deontic force” or duty-coordinated requiredness that is an ineliminable feature of such moral precepts as: “Stealing is wrong.” The sanctions of morality are thus stronger than anything that mere considerations of selfinterest can underwrite, seeing that they must be able to ground not merely what makes people better off but what makes them better people. In this fundamental regard Kant had it right. Moral worth or credit pivots not just on acting as morality demands but doing so because of the considerations that ground the appropriateness of this demand. In theory, one can contemplate many different sorts of bases for obligation—many different sorts of grounds that a must/ought contention might concernably have: self-interest, legality, religion, social custom, and others. But morality is yet another—different from and irreducible to these others. Moral judgments are normative in a characteristic way with respect to good/bad and right/wrong. A deliberately performed immoral act—the wanton infliction of needless pain on someone, for example, or hurting another’s feelings simply for one’s own pleasure of Schadenfreude—is not just foolish or antisocial or prudentially ill advised, but wicked. Categories such as wise/foolish, customary/eccentric, prudent/imprudent, or lawful/illegal simply do not capture what is at issue in moral/immoral. In a classic paper of pre-World War I vintage, the Oxford philosopher H. A. Prichard argued that it makes no real sense to ask “Why should I be moral?”1 For once an act is recognized as being the morally appropriate thing to do, there is really no room for any further question about why it should be done. “Because it’s the moral thing to do” is automatically, by its very nature, a satisfactorily reason-presenting response. The question, “Why do the right thing?” is akin to the question “Why believe the true thing?” On both sides the answer is simply: “Just exactly because what is at issue is, by hypothesis, something that is right/true.” When rightness or truth have once been conceded, the matter is closed. According to Prichard, then, the question “Why should one’s duty be done?” is simply obtuse—or

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perverse. For duty as such constitutes a cogent moral imperative to action—automatically, as it were, of itself and by its very nature. To grant that it is one’s duty to do something and then go on to ask why one should do it is simply to manifest one’s failure to understand what the conception of “duty” involves. Duty as such constitutes a reason for action—albeit a moral reason. But, clearly, this line of reflection, though quite correct, is probatively unhelpful. Self-support has its limitations as a justificatory rationale. The question still remains: “What makes reasons of moral appropriateness into good reasons?”; “Why should I be the sort of person who accepts moral grounds as validly compelling for his own deliberations?” If being moral indeed is the appropriate thing to do, there must be some sort of reason for it—that is, there must be some line of consideration, not wholly internal to morality itself, that renders it reasonable for people to be moral. We must probe yet further for a fully satisfactory resolution to the question “Why be moral?”—one that improves on the true but unhelpful answer, “Because it is the (morally) right thing to do.” There has to be more to it than that. But where are we to look? Perhaps to prudence and personal advantage. Perhaps to the bad things that are likely to ensue if we are not moral— people will dislike us and similar negativities. However, this utilitarian tactic still cannot provide a satisfactory rationale for authentic morality. It yields no more than a sham morality, because it does not go to show that we ever actually are obligated to moral action, but only that we are prudentially well-advised to think ourselves (and others) to be so obligated. Accordingly, it does not provide for a real morality of actual obligation, but only for a play-acting morality of “as if.” (To be sure, its play-acting morality is that of the “method actor” who endeavors to “live the role,” but it remains play-acting all the same.) Such a prudential impetus may perhaps take a step in the direction of morality, but certainly does not reach morality itself. No explanation, analysis, or interpretation that conjures away the deontic aspect of morality can be adequate to this conception as we actually have it. Utilitarianism lacks the machinery for building a bridge from social demand to personal obligation. Morality cannot be reduced to social utility. (Punishing the group for the transgressions of individuals may, in some circumstances, be a policy of great social utility—and thus be urged plausibly on political grounds—but it cannot appropriately be recommended on moral grounds. A variant approach to the validation of morality—one based on the idea of consensuality—might be attempted along the following lines:

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Admittedly, a prudential validation of morality does not establish the deontic force of moral obligation all by itself. However, that duty itself inheres in a “social contract” or public agreement of some sort (presumably of an implicit or tacit nature). The prudential argument goes no further than to show that we are well advised to enter into this contract. But actual obligatoriness stems from the contract itself—the consideration that once we have entered into it, then we must see ourselves as bound by it, since this is what such entry consists in.

In this vein, one recent theorist maintains that “morality arises when a group of people reach an implicit agreement or come to a tacit understanding about their relations with one another.”2 Now this may well be part of the story, and perhaps even an important part, but it certainly cannot be the whole of it. For an “agreement” or an “understanding” (however tacit or implicit) cannot come to exist in vacuo—in a context where people have as yet no morality in place. It is the sort of commitment that by its very nature is possible only in pre-existing moral framework. Anything worthy of the name of “agreement” (compact, mutual understanding) can only subsist within a preexisting morality, where the binding force of agreements is accepted by those concerned. The very idea of an “agreement” involves a deontological relationship that cannot exist in a moral vacuum: “making an agreement,” in the standard sense of the term, is already a moral act that can only be performed in a setting where “agreements should be honored” is accepted by those concerned. A mere alignment or coordination of action is no agreement in the absence of an acceptance of actual obligation by the parties involved: an “agreement” in which there is no acknowledgment (at least tacit) of the undertaking of an obligation is not even so much as an agreement in name only. The reach of a moral code can indeed be expanded by agreement, but its specifically moral aspect cannot altogether originate in them, because “agreement” as such already has a moral status. The long and short of it is that the proposed shifting of the burden of obligatoriness to a contract does not really solve the problem of explanation. It merely focuses the overall difficulty on one particular point, reducing the obligatoriness of morality in general to that of contracts (agreements, compacts, promises, and the like). The fundamental issue thus remains unresolved. For the question now arises as to just why we ought always to honor such agreements—as opposed to merely finding it prudentially advantageous to abide by them much of the time. The question has in fact been begged. What is so special about contracts? Why not just break an

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agreement in those particular cases where, all considered, it meets our selfish purposes to do so? In the context of the particular matter of agreements we are now still left with just exactly that initial problem of accounting for the obligatoriness of morality. And so, even if it is supplemented by the postscript of a “social contract,” the prudential validation of morality cannot account satisfactorily for the deontic force of moral obligation. The Hobbes-Rousseau approach of basing morality on social consensus—taking it to root in agreements or acquiescences among people based solely on mutual advantage for the interests of the parties involved3—has the crippling defect that it affords no way to explain why people should ever by obligated to be moral. So even though it is doubtless the case that we are eminently well-advised to honor contracts and agreements in this prudential mode, this does not show that we are obliged to do so. Morality as such accordingly cannot be validated on this basis either.4 Again, can the principles of morality be grounded in human nature—in some special facet or feature of our condition as rational beings such as conscience or benevolent sentiment? Not really! For this sort of thing might explain why people do behave morally, but does not establish that they ought to do so—that some sort of obligation is at issue. Clearly, morality does not inhere in the realization of human potential as such, no questions asked. For every person has a potential for both good and evil—in principle, each has it in him to become a saint or a sinner. Discerning our specifically good potentialities requires more than a knowledge of human nature as such; it requires taking a view of the good of man—a normative philosophical anthropology. Of course, other things being anything like equal, it is better to be healthy, to be happy, to understand what goes on, and the like. But this still leaves untouched the pivotal question of what endows life with worth and value—what are the conditions that make for a rewarding and worthwhile life? This issue of human flourishing will inevitably involve such things as: using one’s intelligence, developing (some of) one’s productive talents and abilities, making a constructive contribution to the world’s work, fostering the good potential of others, achieving and diffusing happiness, and taking heed for the interests of others. The good potentialities, in sum, are exactly those in whose cultivation and development a rational agent can take reflective selfsatisfaction, those which help us most fully to realize ourselves as the sort of being we should ideally aspire to be. And it is here that morality’s insistence on a concern for the legitimate interests of others can find a grip. The

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crux is simply the matter of cultivating legitimate interests. And we cannot do this for ourselves without due care for cultivating our specifically positive potentialities—those things which are inherently worthwhile. 2. ONTOLOGICAL OBLIGATION AS THE SOURCE OF THE DEONTIC FORCE OF MORALITY But if utility, consensuality, and humanity do not ground the principles of morality, where are we to look? The answer lies in axiological rationality—in the directive impact of values. The approach to deontology thus ultimately grounds the obligatoriness of moral principle in axiology—in considerations of value. For what ultimately validates our moral concern for the interests of others is just exactly this ontological commitment to the enhancement of value, a commitment that is inseparably linked to our own value as free rational agents. We are embarked here on a broadly economic approach—but one that proceeds in terms of a value theory that envisions a generalized “economy of values,” and from whose standpoint the traditional economic values (the standard economic costs and benefits) are merely a rather special case. Such an axiological approach sees moral rationality as an integral component of that wider rationality that calls for the effective deployment of limited resources. (Observe that such a deontological approach contrasts starkly with a utilitarian morality, in that the latter pivots morality on happiness or “utility,” but the former on valueenhancement.) Heeding the strictures of morality is part and parcel of a rational being’s cultivation of the good. For us rational creatures morality (the due care for the interests of rational beings) is an integral component of reasons commitment to the enhancement of value. Reason’s commitment to the value of rationality accordingly carries a commitment to morality in its wake. The obligatoriness of morality ultimately roots in an ontological imperative to value realization with respect to self and world that is incumbent on free agents as such. On this ontological perspective, the ultimate basis of moral duty roots in the obligation we have as rational agents (towards ourselves and the world at large) to make the most and best of our opportunities for self-development. Moral obligation ultimately inheres in this ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own life. (Q. Why cultivate the things that certainly have value? A. Because it is the rational thing to do.)

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And so, in the final analysis, one ought to be moral for the same sort of reason for which one ought to make use of life’s opportunities in general— one’s intelligence, for example, or one’s other constructive talents. For in failing to do this we throw away chances to make something of ourselves by way of contributing to the world’s good, thereby failing to realize our the potential inherent in our own nature. The violation of moral principles thus stands coordinate with the sanctions attaching to wanton wastefulness of any sort. The crux is not so much self-realization as self-optimization. And what is at issue with failure is throughout not merely a loss but a violation of duty as well. For to recognize something as valuable or, with the rational person, to enter into certain obligations in its regard (such is favoring it over contrary alternatives, other things equal). The imperative “Act as a rational agent ought” does not come from without (from parents or from society or even from God). It roots in our own self-purported nature as rational beings. (In Kant’s words it is a dictamen rationis, a part of the “innere Gesetzgebung der Vernunft.”) Its status as being rationally appropriate roots simply and directly in the fact of its being an integral part of what our reason demands of us. And because being moral is a part of being reasonable, morality too is part of this demand. In the final analogy, the obligation to morality, like the obligation to rationality, accordingly roots in considerations of ontology—of our condition as the sorts of rational beings we are (or at any rate see ourselves as being). If one is in a position to see oneself as in fact rational, then once one recognizes the value of this rationality one must also acknowledge the obligation to make use of one’s rationality. And if one is a rational free agent who recognizes and prizes this very fact, then one ought for that very reason to behave morally by taking the interests of other such agents into account. For if I am (rationally) to pride myself on being a rational agent, then I must stand ready to value in other rational agents what I value in myself—that is, I must deem them worthy of respect, care, etc. in virtue of their status of rational agents. What is at issue is not so much a matter of reciprocity as one of rational coherence with claims that one does—or, rather, should—stake for oneself. For to see myself in a certain normative light I must, if rational, stand ready to view others in the same light. If we indeed are the sort of intelligent creature whose worth in its own sight is a matter of prizing something (reflective self-respect, for example), then this item by virtue of this very fact assumes the status of something we are bound to recognize as valuable—as deserving of being valued. In seeing

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ourselves as persons—as free and responsible rational agents—we thereby rationally bind ourselves to a care for one another’s interests insofar as those others too are seen as having this status.5 To be sure, it deserves stress that the obligation to morality—to conduct our interpersonal affairs appropriately by heeding the interests of others— is our only ontological obligation. The epistemic obligation to conduct our cognitive affairs appropriately—to inquire, to broaden our knowledge, to pursue the truth by believing only those things which ought (epistemically deserve) to be believed in the circumstances—is another example and the Kantian duty to develop (at least some of) one’s talents yet another. The scope of ontological obligation is thus substantially broader than that of morality alone. I may desire respect (be it self-respect or the respect of others) for all sorts of reasons, good, bad, or indifferent. But if I am to deserve respect, this has to be so for good reasons. Respect will certainly not come to me just because I am I, but only because I have a certain sort of respectevoking feature (for example, being a free rational agent) whose possession (by me or, for that matter, anyone) provides a warrant for respect. And this means that all who have this feature (all rational agents) merit respect. Our self-worth hinges on the worth we attach to others-like-us: we can only have worth by virtue of possessing worth-engendering features that operate in the same way when others are at issue. To claim respectworthiness for myself I must concede it to all suitably constituted others as well. The first-person plural idea of “we” and “us” that projects one’s own identity into a wider affinity-community of rational beings is a crucial basis of our sense of worth and self-esteem. And so, in degrading other persons in thought or in treatment, we would automatically degrade ourselves, while in doing them honor we thereby honor ourselves. When someone acts immorally towards me—cheats me or deceives me or the like—I am not merely angry and upset because my personal interests have been impaired, but am also “righteously indignant.” Not only has the offender failed to acknowledge me as a person (a fellow rational being with rights and interests of his own), but he has, by his very act, marked himself as someone who, though (to my mind) a congener of mine as a rational agent, nevertheless does not give us rational agents their proper due, thereby degrading the entire group to which I too belong. He has added insult to injury. And this holds more generally. One is also indignant at witnessing someone act immorally towards a third party—being disturbed in a way akin to the annoyance one feels when some gaffe is committed by a

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member of one’s own family. For one’s own sense of self and self-worth is mediated by membership in such a group and can this become compromised by their behavior. As rational agents, we are entitled and committed to be indignant at the wicked actions of our fellows who do not act as rational agents ought because our own self-respect is inextricably bound up with their behavior. They have “let down the side.” The upshot of such considerations is that to fail to be moral is to defeat our own proper purposes and to lose out on our ontological opportunities. It is only by acknowledging the worth of others—and thus the appropriateness of a due heed of their interests—that we ourselves can maintain our own claims to self-respect and self-worth. And so, we realize that we should act morally in each and every case, even where deviations are otherwise advantageous, because insofar as we do not, we can no longer look upon ourselves in a certain sort of light—one that is crucial to our own self-respect in the most fundamental way. Moral agency is an essential requisite for the proper self-esteem of a rational being. To fail in this regard is to injure oneself where it does and should hurt the most—in one’s own sight. The ontological imperative to capitalize on our opportunities for the good carries us back to the salient issue of philosophical anthropology— the visualization of what man can and should be. “Be an authentic human being!” comes down to this: Do your utmost to become the sort of rational and responsible creature that a human person, at best or most, is capable of being.6 The moral project of treating of other people as we ourselves would be treated is part and parcel of this. What we have here is in fact an evaluative metaphysic of morals. 3. MORALITY AND RATIONALITY It deserves to be recognized and stressed that when one’s commitment to morality is emplaced within an ontological obligation to achieve one’s greatest potential as a free rational agent, then morality is also rendered consistent with (though, to be sure, not based upon) a rational concern for one’s prudential advantage—at any rate at the level of real or best interests. Being moral is an integral part of self-optimization. To bring this out more clearly, it is necessary to consider the inherently ramified nature of rational action. Every free act of an intelligent agent has wider ramifications. The issue with which we are confronted in our action choices is never just a matter of

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deciding what I want to do in this case: it is always also in part a matter of deciding what sort of person I am to be. For my self-respect is (or ought to be) of such great value to me that the advantages I could secure by immoral action cannot countervail against the loss that would be involved in this larger regard. For in acting in a way that I recognize to be wrong, I sustain a grave moral injury exactly where it should count the most—in my own sight. In setting morality aside for the sake of selfish personal advantage, for example, we would shift our guiding principle of action in the case at hand from “Always do the morally appropriate thing,” to “Always do the morally appropriate thing unless it is more beneficial in the prevailing circumstances for you not to do so.” But in making this shift in the determinative rationale of our action we ipso facto affect a change in our very nature, transforming ourselves from type (1) to type (2) agents. Such a shift is obviously not justifiable on moral grounds whenever a violation of moral principles is at issue. Moreover—more surprisingly—it is, in general, not even justifiable on prudential grounds. For in becoming type (2) agents, we would exchange a limited and temporary advantage for a large and perduring loss. For the long and short of it is that we have a paramount stake (a real interest) in being moral agents, because this is needed to maintain proper self-respect. In this regard, morality is eminently rational and prudent—geared to the efficient achievement of appropriate ends. For it is quintessentially rational to seek to provide for one’s own best and real interests. And the commitment to rationality is itself an integral part of our best and true interests. No gain in goods or pleasures can outweigh its value for us rational beings. (The “happiness pill” hypothesis suffices to show that it is not pleasure of happiness per se that ultimately matters for us, but rationally authorized pleasure of happiness.) The goods we gain through deception (or other sorts of immoral conduct) afford us a hollow benefit. This is so not because we are too high-minded to be able to “enjoy” illicit gains, but because inasmuch as we are rational thinking beings—creatures committed by their very nature to strive for reflective contentment (as opposed to merely affective pleasure)—it is only be “doing the right thing” that we can maintain our reflectively based sense of self-worth or deserved merit. Morality is accordingly geared to rationality in a dual way: (i) morality is a matter OF rationality—of acting for good reasons of a certain (characteristically moral) sort, and (ii) morality is an enterprise that exists FOR rationality—for the sake of protecting the legitimate interests of rational

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agents. And it is precisely this gearing of morality to the interests of rational agents that renders an ontological validation of morality—in terms of the inherent requisites of rational agency—thoroughly consonant with the value structure of morality itself. But what of the person who is indifferent to the matter of real interests, the person for whom the only acceptable rationale is that of selfish advantage—someone who simply refuses to be moved by impersonal reasons and will respond to motives of selfish advantage alone? Such a person will say: “But I just don’t accept that purported ontological obligation at issue in morality. I propose to assert myself as a free rational agent by rejecting the validity of moral claims.” So be it, if that is what you want. The acknowledgment of a claim is up to you. However, its appropriateness does not lie in its being accepted—any more than the validity of an argument does—but lies in the fact that it ought to be accepted. No obligation—be it moral or rational—is undermined by the fact that people are disinclined to accept it. The crux of the issue of moral appropriateness is not what we want or desire but what is in our best interest—not motivation but rationalization. “Even if being moral is in my best real interests, that means nothing to me. I don’t care about my real interests—for me these just don’t matter, wants are what counts.” Given the inherent connection of rationality with enlightened self-interest, such a view—however widespread—is simply irrational. A position of this perverse sort may indeed explain why someone acts immorally, but it cannot even begin to justify him in doing so. For it is the quintessence of irrationality to be immoral to value things at their true worth. Morality is thus not at odds with rationality but is part and parcel of it. Only someone who mistakenly thinks that selfish reasons alone can qualify as good reasons can see an irreconcilable conflict between morality and rationality. And this would indeed be a gross mistake. For a rational commitment to morality inheres in the (ontologically mediated) circumstance that other-concerned reasons for action constitute perfectly good rational reasons because of their undisoluable link to the real interests of the agent himself. The consonance of morality with rationality is established through the fact that the intelligent thing to do and the right thing to do will ultimately agree because acting morally is the intelligent thing to do for those who have a proper concern for their real self-interest. There is nothing irrational about being moral, and there is nothing imprudent about it either, as long as we understand “true prudence” aright. (Though to say this is em-

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phatically not to say that it is in its consonance with prudence that the validation of morality should be sought.)7 4. ARE THERE ABSOLUTE MORAL RULES? THE UNIVERSALITY OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS Morality demands our conformity with a categorical impervious. It issues commands on the order of: “You must not inflict needless pain on people.” Morality insists upon what should be done with an urgency and authority that transcends the requirements of conformity to locally established practices—the mere custom of the tribe. The requirements of morality are universal: what morality asks of us is something which it would, in similar conditions, ask of anyone and everyone. Indeed, as Kant rightly insisted, if a principle is to qualify as a moral one, it must hold not for humans alone, but for rational agents in general. All the same, the controversy about absolute moral rules has been bedeviled—like many another philosophical controversy—by the absence of agreement about what its salient term actually means. For “absolute” is a highly equivocal word, used by different discussants in rather different ways. In particular, it has been used in the discussion of moral rules to mean that such a rule: (1) is of unrestricted and altogether universal application with respect to (potential) obligatees. (For example, honoring one’s promise is a practice incumbent on everybody.) (2) is of unrestricted and altogether universal application with respect to (potential) beneficiaries. (For example, not hurting people’s feelings needlessly is a practice from which everyone gains.) (3) is objectively valid (as a moral rule); holding good as a matter of objectivity determinable fact that can be established as such by impersonal standards. (4) is categorical in form and devoid of any hypothetical or conditionalized qualifications of the sort present in “Keep promises,” that is, “Once you have given a commitment, honor it.”

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(5) is overriding and all-decisive in being of a weight that sweeps all other considerations aside, overruling and outweighing all other factors. Our deliberations here have arrived at rather mixed results in this regard. Absoluteness is senses (1)-(3) has been maintained for morality: it lies in the nature of the case that any appropriate moral rule must, as such, be both obligatee-universal and beneficiary-universal, and that its inherent rationale (in terms of the protection of people’s interests) is such that its validity as a valid moral rule represents a genuinely objective issue. But, on the other hand, we have rejected flatly claims to absoluteness in senses (4) and (5). As regards (4), we have insisted on the conditional character of all lower-level moral rules (even as “Help other in need” comes to “When someone needs your help, and you are so circumstanced as to be able to give it, then do so.”) And as regards (5), we have noted that lower level moral rules are never totally decisive because their violation may be unavoidable, in context, to avert some yet greater misfortune. The upshot is that while moral rules are indeed absolute in some pertinent senses, they are not so in others. On this perspective, then, the question of moral absolutism is an equivocal one. All the same, the cardinal point for present purposes is that a cogent case can be built up for a moral realism that sees appropriate moral judgments as deontically universal and objectively valid, thus placing morality squarely within the domain of rationally cogent endeavors. Valid moral principles are obligation-universal—binding (in principle, at least) upon all persons alike. It lies in the very conception of a moral rule that such a rule must be universal in its potential obligatees. Addressed to sea-captains and airplane pilots, the imperative “Care for the safety of your passengers” is not as such a moral principle, save insofar as it can be subsumed under “Care for the safety of those for whose well-being you have assumed responsibility,” which clearly encapsulates a duty incumbent on everyone. Universality is crucial to morality. If there are no absolute moral principles on this universalistic stamp, then there is no valid morality at all. (This alone presents moral values—unlike political values—from rooting altogether in a “social contract.”) Consider: “John ought to repay Henry (because he promised to do so).” This obligation is as particular as can be. But it bear moral weight only because it subsumptively concretizes the strictly universal principle: “Everyone ought to honor a freely undertaken commitment.” A valid moral obli-

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gation must always inhere in a universal principle in this sort of way. It lies in the nature of the concept at issue that one can have a moral obligation o entitlement only insofar as it transpires that, in the particular circumstances at issue, anyone would have this obligation or entitlement. If there are to be any valid obligations at all, there must be some universal ones that bind all rational agents. For subsumption under such a universal higher-level principle that applies to everyone is the only way in which moral obligations can be validated as such. For there to be morality, it is not enough for there to be people (members of the biological species Homo sapiens.) There must also be persons—intelligent creatures who see themselves as rational free agents, able to chose among alternatives in the light of a reasoned evaluation of their merits. Purposeful behavior as an individual agent is the crux. Initially in the history of the race, people doubtless fell short of attaining the individuality needed for actual personhood. They saw themselves in terms of their roles in a group, acting and interacting with others through the mediation of their environing group and its structures. Who they were—who they and others saw them as being—hinged on their place in a clan or tribe. Morality was not yet upon the scene, because the crucial factor of personhood was lacking, and with it the idea of a responsibility for people as people. To be a person is to be an individual, to see as an intelligent free agent, to be in some substantial degree independent and autonomous (a “law unto oneself”). Personhood in this special sense requires the capacity of define one’s won projects (rather than derive them from a preexisting group structure) and to make one’s own choices about some important matters in life—or at any rate to purport to do so. It involves a sense of self-identity and self-autonomy—planning one’s own activities to at least some extent and assuming responsibility for them. It is to see oneself as a free rational agent acting for reasons one oneself accepts as valid and claiming certain rights for oneself. In effect one becomes a person by viewing oneself as such, being prepared to treat others as such, and demanding like treatment by them in return. Much more than simply being a member of Homo sapiens is involved. To be sure, the obligation-universality of moral principles is generally conditional. “Everyone ought always to keep valid promises” has the conditional form, “Whoever makes a valid promise, ought to keep it.” The moral universality of injunctions like “Don’t break promises” and “Don’t steal” does not hinge on the absolute universality of promising or ownership, but merely on the relativized universality of the principles

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themselves: where there are genuine promises they should be kept, and where there is proper ownership it should be respected. Moral universality is thus a conditional universality. This conditionality abrogates the inherent universality of such principles no more than the laws of biology are abrogated in a region of nature which, like the interior of the sun, lack organic creatures. Its conditionality does, however, limit the effective range of a moral rule’s immediate application. To say that “lying is wrong” is certainly true. Nevertheless, it is sometimes morally excusable to lie—to prevent an enraged madman intent on murder from finding his victim, for example. Lying as such can sometimes be the lesser of two evils. One can thus conditionalize the application of the rule. But the matter is very different if we formulate the rule in a suitably qualified form: “Wanton lying is wrong,” “Malicious lying is wrong,” “Merely convenient lying is wrong,” “Pointless lying is wrong,” etc. Once the injunction at issue is itself suitably conditionalized—qualified to preclude the presence of strong and cogent excuses—the moral rules we arrive at are indeed exceptionless and absolute. “Killing is morally wrong” has its difficulties, but since “murder” is tantamount to “unjustified killing,” the rule “Murder is wrong” is in the clear. When formulated in a duly qualified form, moral rules admit of no exceptions. “Never mislead another” is one thing; “Never mislead another merely for your own advantage” is quite another. This aspect of the present account is thoroughly Kantian. The governing idea of Kant’s moral theory is that of universality—that when an action is wrong or right it is so always and for everyone. The objection urged by various philosophers from Kant’s own day to ours is that this overlooked the issue of circumstances—that a certain morally improper act, albeit inherently wrong, may in the prevailing conditions serve to avert a yet greater evil. But what people forget (Kant himself occasionally included) is that this very circumstance changes the descriptive nature of the act—that telling a falsehood to protect someone’s feelings is not adequately described as “lying” but needs to be characterized as “telling a white lie,” or that a policeman’s shooting someone to avert his killing others is not adequately described as “murder” but rather as “justifiable homicide.” The crux is getting the characteristics of that universalizable act right. Those purported counterexamples that critics offer against a Kantian view do not really go to show that lying or murder (that is, what is properly characterized as such) are not always wrong. From the moral point of view, the mat-

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ter of motivation is crucial: not every instance of telling a falsehood is a lie not is every killing a murder. Its obligation-universality—its inherent claim to binding stringency on all alike—is thus part of the very conception of a moral principle. Morality is inherently absolutistic in imposing its demand. If there indeed are any valid moral principles at all, then they will have to stipulate obligations or entitlements foe everyone alike. If it is wrong for me to betray the trust of another for my own selfish advantage, then this is wrong for you also—and anyone else as well. Morality binds everyone. And its benefits are universal as well. A moral rule is appropriate as such only when the mode of action it enjoins is something that is in everyone’s interest—even as not being lied to by others is something from which everyone benefits. Morality is inherently universal not only as regards those whom it obligates but also as regards the scope of its beneficiaries; the range of its proper concern includes all of us. If stealing is indeed morally wrong, then it is wrong for anyone to steal from anyone. The “others” at issue in morality’s inherent concern for “the interest of others” must be people in general. The “discovery” that women (say) or people of another society (“outsiders,” “barbarians”) are also moral agents—that differences of gender or skin pigmentation or culture are irrelevant from a moral point of view— lies at the very heart of the matter. The operative principle regarding recognition as moral agents is: “When in doubt, don’t rule them out.” When it is only “one’s own” family, clan, or class that is involved, then we are dealing with a parochial tribalism and not with morality. Morality is not only obligation-universal, it is beneficiary-universal as well. And what renders morality beneficiary-universal is accordingly the combination of two circumstances: that the crux of the moral enterprise lies in protecting or enhancing the valid interests of persons, and that validity in this context turns on universality. For example, everyone has an interest in: not being physically harmed, not being lied to or deceived, not beings unjustly discriminated against, not being deprived of opportunities for self-development. Such universal desiderata through this very fact represents morally valid interests. And this illustrates the general situation. The demand of morality are inherently beneficiary-universal because in heeding them we commit ourselves to benefiting people indiscriminately, seeing that they appertain to universal interests that all persons—indeed all rational beings—share alike.8

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5. MORALITY’S IMPERATIVE

LINK

TO

SELF-INTEREST:

THE

SOCIAL

The contention that if one acts so as to advance the general welfare of the social group, one thereby furthers one’s personal advantage is simply not a descriptive truth—it is not a statement of actual facts. But if the thesis of a reciprocal coordination of personal and social advantage is not an inescapable fact (and it is not), it is at any rate a regulative ideal. What is asserted may not actually be so, but this is indeed how things ought to be arranged, and how, in a morally well-ordered society, they actually would be. In an ideal state of affairs, it would indeed serve the self-interest of people to promote the general good: someone who exerts himself for the welfare of his fellows ought not to find his own abridged thereby, and someone who consults his own best interests ought to find that in serving them he advances those of others as well. We thus arrive at a socially oriented demand of individual morality, an injunction to act so as to realize a social order in which action for prudential self-advantage is—at least by and large—also coincidental with action for the common good. From the moral point of view we ought to strive individually to realize a morally well-ordered society. And in a morally wellordered society the correlation of action for individual advantage and for the social good ought to obtain; that is, the society ought to be so organized that this coordinative principle is operative. We must recognize the social-engineering aspect of shaping a social order that has an “adequate moral economy” in this sense of coordination between action for both personal advantage and the general good. The particular circumstances of a society will dislike the nature of the customs and practices that make the channels of life flow smoothly (keeping an orderly queue versus a free-for-all, to take a very simpleminded example). But the general direction of the task is clear: the shaping of a pattern of social incentives and sanctions (rewards and punishments) to assure balance between individual and general advantage by rendering socially benign action personally rewarding and antisocial action personally counterproductive. The development of institutions that both conduce toward the socially advantageous and deter individuals from socially deleterious behavior is a crucial desideratum. And on this basis so is the coordination of the demands of other-concerned morality with personal self-interest. Its merits stress that the nonutilitarian morality that underlies this position shares the characteristically attractive feature of utilitarian morality

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that sees moral obligation not simply in the negative terms of avoidance of wrongdoing (the essentially negative morality of the Old Testament injunction “Thou shalt not . . . “) but also as enjoining the creative effort needed to forge the conditions of an adequate moral economy. A properly ordered society has not only the right but also the duty to foster a socially minded modus operandi by which its individuals are motivationally constrained to act for the common good.9 Thus while there is unquestionably a significant gap between individual and general advantage, there is a moral imperative to work toward narrowing it as much as possible so as to create a public order that ensures an adequate moral economy: a coordination of individual and social advantage within the framework of a calculus of interests. The forging of an adequate moral economy is also a crucial social desideratum. It is in everyone’s interest to create a social system in which it is in everyone’s interest to act morally in a manner advantageous to the social benefit. Thus a relationship between interest and morality indeed exists, not at the first level but at the second remove: Everyone has a personal interest in so arranging matters that it comes to be in everyone’s interest to act as morality demands. It thus it emerges as a duty—albeit one seldom stressed by moralists—to work for a society in which both moral virtues and the virtuous themselves can thrive. At this point—that is to say in the final accounting—morality and personal advantage come into coordination. Morality calls for working toward a social order where moral comportment is advantageous. And in the operative setting of a really well-ordered society, self-advantage—even brute, crass self-advantage—will call for working toward exactly the same end. Accordingly, the moralist should not condemn self-interest but should recognize a duty to ennoble it—a duty, that is, to foster circumstances in which personal advantage is brought into coordination with the public interest, so that actions from these two very different ethical motivations should come to the same thing in practical effect.10 In the final analysis, the principles of morality are rooted in the inherent goal structure of the moral enterprise. They are, one and all, subordinate to the paramount principle of morality: To aid in such a way that a retrospective assessment of what we do will authorize us to take rational contentment in our performance. All the reasoning principles, norms and rules of morality are subordinate to this and represent one or another way of implementing a pragmatic move toward this objective.

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NOTES 1

H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind, vol. 21 (1912), pp. 21-37.

2

Gilbert Harman, “Moral Relativism Defended,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 84 (1975); pp. 3-22 (see page 3). See also his The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press 1977).

3

The most recent and cogent articulation of this position is David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

4

To be sure, one can develop the idea of a hypothetical contact that it would (in idealized circumstances) be sensible to enter into as a device for assessing what is morally appropriate. This may indeed provide a way of invoking morality (as inherent in altogether sensible contracts) to validate social appropriateness. But it does not afford a way of using wholly nonmoral factors (such as “prudentially advantageous contracts”) to determine morality—let alone to validate it. Even a compact that advantages all participants (but only, say to the detriment of their eventual descendants) is not ipso facto a morally appropriate one.

5

To be sure, someone may ask: “Why think ourselves in this way—why see ourselves as free rational agents?” But of course to ask this is to ask for a good rational reason and is thus already to take a stance within the framework of rationality. In theory, one can of course “resign” from the community of rational beings, abandoning all claims to being more than “mere animals.” But this is a step one cannot justify—there are no satisfactory rational grounds for taking it. And this is something most of us realize instinctively. The appropriateness of acknowledging others as responsible agents whenever possible holds in our own case as well.

6

Immanuel Kant portrayed the obligation at issue in the following terms: First, it is one’s duty to raise himself out of the crudity of his nature—out of his animality (quoad actum) more and more to humanity, by which alone he is capable of setting himself ends. It is man’s [paramount] duty to . . . supply by instruction what is lacking in his knowledge, and to correct his mistakes. . . .[T]his end [is] his duty in order that he may . . . be worthy of the humanity dwelling within him. (Metaphysics of Morals, p. 387, Akad.)

7

The general line of these deliberations has been to ground morality in rationality, while at the same time denying that it is appropriate to ground morality in prudence. In simple self-consistency then, a validation of rationality that proceeds wholly in terms of prudential self-interest alone is automatically denied us. Instead, consonance and consistency require a validation of rationality that is itself ultimately ontological and axiological (value-oriented), validating rationality too in terms of its ontological fitness. And this is indeed the line of the author’s book, Rationality (Oxford, 1988). Relevant considerations are also presented in the author’s Moral Absolutes (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989).

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NOTES 8

Some of the themes of this discussion are also touched upon in Chapter 12 “Moral Rationality” of the author’s The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

9

Of course, an “adequate moral economy” in which people will do the right thing, if only for prudential reasons of self-interest, is not yet a “morally superlative order” in which they do the right thing for morally cogent reasons (e.g., from a Kantian “sense of duty”). And, of course, we must recognize an obligation to work to this sort of system as well (by fostering moral education, etc.). But this (perfectly valid) point transcends the scope of our present concerns.

10

The ideas of this section are elaborated more fully in chapter 6 (“The Social Rational of Benevolence”) of the author’s Unselfishness (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975).

AGENCY AND THE FUTURE

207

CODA Only a few philosophers have given explicit attention to the general theory of rules and of principles, with Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, and Kant standing in the forefront, and perhaps half-a-dozen other thinkers following behind. As with most any other philosophical concern, rule principles can be the focus of problems and disputes. Why are they necessary? How can they be validated: How do we come to know about them? What useful role do they play in the wider framework of our deliberations? It has been the aim of these deliberations to address such questions. The result has been a pragmatic theory of such theoretical resources, predicted in the idea of viewing them in a functional and goal-oriented light. Rules and principles are accordingly seen as operative instruments designed to orient human actions towards constructive and productive goals. The core idea is thus of a quintessentially rational and fundamentally pragmatic concern for the effective pursuit of positive ends. In particular this discussion has argued that principles are crucial any and every mode of rational endeavor, serving to unify and harmonize the separate component items of a field and conjoin them into a coordinated whole. To this end, principles furnish the grounding ideas of operative procedure that prevail throughout a purposive domain and give expression to its unifying conception. The principles of a field serve to keep its defining aims in view and keep us mindful of what we are doing in any realm of purposive endeavor. Without principles we grope about in the dark.1 Granted, different domains are defined and governed by different rules and are subject to different principles. But the role of rules and principles as such is ubiquitous and of course the fundamental principles of rationality are pervasive throughout. And this pervasiveness rational endeavor marks the conception of these procedurally normative resources as one of the salient ideas of Western philosophical thought. NOTES 1

The classic injunction respice finem (“Keep the end in view”) is a cogent admonition that represents a principle of principles.

207

References Allen, Diogenes, “Mechanical Explanations and the Ultimate Origin of the Universe Accordingly to Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft 11 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983) Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa theologiae. Aristotle, Metaphysics. Aubenque, P., et al., “Prinzip.” Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. by J. Ritter (Basel & Stuttgart: Schwabe), Vol. VII (1989), pp. 1336-37. Barbour, Julian and Lee Smolin, “Extremal Variety as the Foundation of a Cosmological Quantum Theory” published on the web at http: arxiv.org/hep-th/9203041. Beckmann, Jan P., Wilhelm von Ockham (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995). Bocheński, I. M., La logique de Theophraste (Fribourg en Suisse, 1947; Publications de l’Université de Fribourg en Suisse, N.S., No. 31). Breger, Herbert, “Symmetry in Leibnizian Physics” in Anonymous (ed.), The Leibniz Renaissance (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1989), pp. 23-42. Code, Alan, “Aristotle’s Investigation of a Basic Logical Principle,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16 (1986), pp. 341-58. Collaprice, Alvine (ed.), Quotable Einstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Descartes, René, Principles of Philosophy (Amsterdam: Elzevir, 1650). Doyle, Arthur Conan, “The Sign of Four” (1890). Duschesneau, Francois, Leibniz et la méthode de la science (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993).

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Gale, George, “The Physical Theory of Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana vol. 2 (1970), pp. 114-127. Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Goldstein, Rebecca, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006). Gracián, Balthasar, Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, tr, by Christopher Maurer as The Art of Worldly Wisdom (New York, Doubleday, 1991) Gueroult, Martial, Dynamique et métaphysique Leibniziennes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934) Harman, Gilbert, “Moral Relativism Defended,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 84 (1975); pp. 3-22. ———, The Nature of Morality (New York: Publisher?, 1977). Hegel, G. W. F., Einleitung zu seinem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (Jena und Leipzig: Bey Christian Ernst Gabler, 1799). Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive (Paris, 1646). Horgan, John, Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment (New York: Haughton Mifflin, 2003). Hume, David, “An enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” in Enquiries, ed. by L. A. Selby Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Hutcheson, Francis, The British Moralists, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), which contains Hutcheson's Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil (London: Publisher?, 1725). Irwin, T. H., Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). James, William, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York and London, 1897).

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Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason (1781-1787) ———, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Kluckhohn, Clyde, “Ethical Relativity; Sic et Non,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 52 (1955), pp. 663-77. ———, Culture and Behavior (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1962). Kripke, Saul A., Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Maas: Harvard University Press, 1982). Krueger, Paul, Digest of Justinian (Berlin, 1882). Lambert, Johann Heinrich, Anlage zur Architectonic oder Theorie des Einfachen und des Ersten in der philosophischen Erkenntniss (Riga: Hartknoch, 1771). Leibniz, G. W., Nova methodus discendae docendaeque urisprudenta (1667). ———, Mathematische Schriften, ed. C I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Ascher, 1849-59). ———, Philosophische Schriften, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Weidemenn, 1875-90). ———, G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Lettters, ed. by L. E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel. 1969) ———, Textes inédits, ed. G. Grua (2 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948). ———, Theodicy (1710). Lennox, James, “Aristotle’s Problems,” Ancient Philosophy, vol. 14 (1994), pp. 53-77.

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Linton, Ralph, “The Problem of Universal Values,” in R. F. Spencer (ed.), Method and Perspective in Anthropology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954). ———, “Universal Ethical Principles: An Anthropological View” in Ruth Nanda Anshen (ed.), Moral Principles in Action (New York: Harper, 1952) Livio, Mario, The Accelerating Universe (New York: John Wilem, 2000). Longeway, John, “Medieval Theories of Demonstration” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Lumpe, A., “Der Terminus ‘Prinzip’ von den Vorsokratikern bis auf Aristoteles,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, vol. 1 (1955), pp. 104-16. Miller, Alexander and Crispin Wright (eds.) Rule Following and Meinong (Montreal: McGill University Press. 2002). Nizolius, Martin, De veris principiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra pseudophilosophos libri IIII (Parmae, 1553). Ockham, William, Opera Philosophica, Vol. I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Editiones Instituti Franciscani Universitatis S. Bonaventurae, 1974). Pietsch, Christian, Prinzipienfindung bei Aristoteles (Stuttgart, Teubner, 1992). Plato, Phaedrus. ———, Republic. ———, Timaeus. Poser, Hans, “Apriorismus der Prinzipien und Kontingenz der Naturgesetze: Das Leibniz-Paradigma der Naturwissenschaft” in A. Heinekamp (ed), Leibniz’ Dynamica (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1984; Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 13), pp. 164-79. Prichard, H. A., “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind, vol. 21 (1912), pp. 21-37.

REFERENCE

213

Pruss, Alexander, The Principle of Sufficient Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). ———, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Redfield, Robert, “The Universally Human and the Culturally Variable,” The Journal of General Education, vol. 10 (1967), pp. 150-60. Rees, Martin, Before the Beginning (Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley, 1997). Reinhold, K. L. Ueber das Fundament philosophischen Wissens (Jena: J. M. Mauke, 1791). Rescher, Nicholas, “Aristotle’s Theory of Modal Syllogisms and its Interpretation,” in M. Bunge (ed.), The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy (London and New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 152177. ———, “On First Principles and their Legitimation,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 2 (1976), pp. 1-16. ———, “Philosophical Principles,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 56 (2002), pp. 3-17. ———, “The Concept of Nonexistent Possibles” in his Essays in Philosophical Analysis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 73-109. ———, Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). ———, Cognitive Systematization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). ———, Complexity (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998). ———, Error: On our Predicament when Things go Wrong (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).

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———, Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford, 1976). ———, Moral Absolutes (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989). ———, Principia Philosophiae” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 56 (2006), pp. 3-17. ———, Rationality (Oxford, 1988) ———, The Primacy of Practice (Oxford, 1973). ———, The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). ———, Unselfishness (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975). Russell, Bertrand, “On Denoting,” Mind, vol. 14 (1905), pp. 479-93. Sagan, Carl and Ann Drurjan, “On Earth as it Is in Heaven: The Origin of the Earth and the Solar System,” Omni, October 1992. Spencer, Herbert, First Principles (New York, De Witt Revolving Fund, 1958). Suarez, Francisco, Disputationes metaphysicae (Moguntiae [Mainz, Germany]: Excudebat Balthasar Lippius: Sumptib. Arnoldi Mylij, 1605). Weinberg, Stephen, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992). Wieland, W., “Die Aristotelische Physik” Untersuchungen über die Grundlegung der Naturwissenschaft und die sprachlichen Bedingungen der Prinzipienforschung bei Aristoteles (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962). Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, ed. by G. E M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford, Blackwell, 1969).

REFERENCE

215

Wolff, Christian, Philosophiia prima sive ontologia (Francofurtum, 1730). Zee, Anthony, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Zipf, George K., Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (Boston, 1949).

Name Index Allen, Diogenes, 182n2, 183n13 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 19, 84n4, 121, 207 Aristotle, 46, 103, 121, 125-126, 128, 132, 138, 143n2, n3, 144n7, n11n13, 145n22, n24, 207 Aubenque, Pierre, 144n8 Augustine, St., 1 Barbour, Julian, 180, 186n51 Bayle, Pierre, 173 Beckmann, Jan P., 144n8, 145n26 Berkeley, George, 112, 118 Bocheński, I.M., 145n22 Bohr, Niels, 104n6 Boyle, Robert, 185n43 Breger, Herbert, 182n2 Bunge, Mark, 144n22 Burris, Estelle, preface Calaprice, Alice, 186n46 Chamberlain, Joshua L., 162 Cicero, 134 Creseyde, 136 Darwin, Charles, 92-93, 105, 114, 116-118 Demokritos, 108 Descartes, René, 20, 112, 118, 127, 134, 164-165, 167, 184n15, n24 De Volder, Burcher, 185n44 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 144n23 Drurjan, Ann, 186n50 Duscheneau, Francois, 182n2 Dyson, Freeman, 180 Einstein, Albert, 174, 178, 180, 186n47

218

Epicurus, 132 Fermat, Pierre de, 165 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 167 Gauthier, David, 205n3 Gödel, Kurt, 43-44, 122, 130 Goldstein, Rebecca, 129, 145n20 Gracián, Balthasar, 2, 14n1 Gueroult, Martial, 182n2, 184n27 Hamilton, William R., 179-180 Harman, Gilbert, 205n2 Hegel, G.W.F., 89-90, 110, 132, 178 Ho, Kim, 98 Hobbes, Thomas, 40n3 Horgan, John, 186n49 Hume, Davis, 69n6, 107 Huntford, Roland, 104n1 Husserl, Edmund, 144n16 Hutcheson, Francis, 68n5 Huygens, Christiaan, 167 Irwin, T.H., 144n12 James, William, 103, 104n2 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 5, 20, 22, 25n3, 40-41n4, 66-67, 72, 82n1, 105106, 112-114, 116, 118-119, 183n5, 188, 193, 198, 201, 205n6, n9, 207 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 40n2 Kotarbinsky, Tadeusz, 82n2 Kripke, Saul, 14n3 Laertius, Diogenes, 132 Lane, William C., 186n52

219

Leibniz, G.W., 11, 14n2, 47, 106-108, 110-112, 114, 118, 122, 127129, 132, 144n17, 157-158, 160-163, 165-170, 172-174, 176-182, 182n2, n5, 183n5, n7, n8, 10, n13, 184n14, n28, 185n29, 207 Lennon, James, 144n11 Leukippos, 108 Lewis, C.I., 129 Linton, Ralph, 40n2 Livio, Mario, 180, 185n47 Loemker, L.E., 160, 182n4, 183n6, n11, 184n14, n16, n18-19, n20-24, 186n30-34, n36-39, 186n53 Lucretius, 107, 132 Luther, Martin, 46 Mach, Ernst, 180 Miller, Alexander, 51n1 Mill, J.S., 68n4 Nansen, Fridtjof, 93, 104n1 Newton, Isaac, 158 Occam, William of, 96, 145n25 Peirce, C.S., 116, 118, 130 Philips, Christian, 182n5 Plato, 46, 65, 121, 123-125, 128-130, 135, 143n1, 144n9, n10, 174175, 178 Poser, Hans, 182n2, 183n10 Prichard, H.A., 62, 68n3, 188, 205n1 Pruss, Alexander, 119n1 Quine, W.V., 131 Redfield, R., 40n2 Rees, Martin, 185n45 Ritter-Gründer, 82n3

220

Russell, Bertrand, 114-116, 118, 131, 145n21, 183n5 Sagan, Carl, 180, 186n50 Smolin, Lee, 180, 186n51 Snell, Willebrod, 164-165 Socrates, 65, 135 Spinoza, 107-108, 118, 129, 131, 186n47 Varignon, Pierre, 184n14 Verlag, Franz Steiner, 183n13 Wallace, W.M., 183n12 Weinberg, Stephen, 104n6 Weiland, W., 144n8 Wilem, John, 185n47 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 14n3, 43, 45, 49-50 Zee, Anthony, 180, 186n48 Zipf, George K., 104n3

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Autobiography Second Edition

This revised edition of his Autobiography brings up-to-date Rescher’s account of his life and work. The passage of years since the publication of an autobiographical work makes for its growing incompleteness. Moreover, the passage of time is bound to bring some new perspectives to view. This new edition comes to terms with these circumstances. Since the publication of the previous version Rescher’s philosophical work has made substantial progress, betokened by the publication of over a score of new books that mark an ongoing expansion of his philosophical range. Then too, the internet has brought to light interesting new information about Rescher’s family background and antecedence. Overall the book affords a detailed, vivid, and highly personalized picture of the life and work of someone who counts as one of the most prolific and many-sided contemporary thinkers.

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NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Free Will An Extensive Bibliography With the Cooperation of Estelle Burris

Few philosophical issues have had as long and elaborate a history as the problem of free will, which has been contested at every stage of the history of the subject. The present work practices an extensive bibliography of this elaborate literature, listing some five thousand items ranging from classical antiquity to the present.

About the author 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 Americna 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 six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. 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. In November 2007 Nicholas Rescher was awarded by the American Catholic Philosophical Association with the „Aquinas Medal“

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NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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