Essays in Philosophical Synthesis 3031342860, 9783031342868

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Essays in Philosophical Synthesis Nicholas Rescher

Essays in Philosophical Synthesis

Nicholas Rescher

Essays in Philosophical Synthesis

Nicholas Rescher Department of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-34286-8    ISBN 978-3-031-34287-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Long ago, I published a volume of Essays in Philosophical Analysis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969). Now, over fifty years later—I am issuing a volume of Essays in Philosophical Synthesis. Much has changed. Over the years, the factors of linkage and interconnective systematization have come to dominate over those of distinction and case-­ specific differentiation in my thinking. The present work is a clear reflection of this changed orientation, shifting its tenor from an emphasis on analysis to one on synthesis and inter-thematic coordination. A pervasive link of these deliberations is that the rigorous instrumentalities of linguistics, logic, and mathematics continue to be indispensable to cogent philosophizing. They were indispensable resources of philosophy in Aristotle’s time and continue to render good service in the present day. I am indebted to Estelle Burris for her ever-competent and conscientious help in preparing my challenging manuscripts for the press. Pittsburgh, PA July 2023

Nicholas Rescher

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Contents

Part I Essays in Philosophy   1 1 Philosophical Guidance  3 2 Control Problems  7 3 Error 21 4 Compound Valuation in Aspectival Amalgamation 37 5 The Fairness Perplex 43 6 On the Rationale of Moral Obligation 59 7 Social Gravitation 77 Part II Essays on Philosophy  83 8 Normative Rationality 85 9 Speculation and “What If?” Thinking 91

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Contents

10 Precision as a Key Factor in Inquiry101 11 Rationalistic Philosophizing109 12 The Transcendental Impetus129 13 Ultimate  Explanation: The Principle of Sufficient Reason and Its Ramifications135 14 Contextual Metaphilosophy175 15 Apories  and the Rational Unavoidability of Philosophizing187 References191 Index193

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 11.1

The Carnot engine Elements of occurrence diagrams An occurrence program Modes of control: basic Modes of control: complex A Responsibility Problem Control/Responsibility Issues The tradeoff between the two kinds of error Social distance via interactive proximity Appraising problem resolutions: new problems raised

8 11 11 12 13 15 17 32 78 114

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List of Tables

Table 3.1  Ways of going wrong in matters of cognition Table 8.1  Factuality Versus normativity

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Introduction

Analysis proceeds by conceptual division: it distinguishes and differentiates; it looks to the details and the minutiae of idiosyncrasy. And it is only natural that, as this process proceeds, it widens the gap between incidentals and fundamentals. But increasingly, this growing gap creates a greater need for bridging linkages and relationships. For, while analysis differentiates, synthesis connects; it looks to commonalties and kinships. Even when dealing with the same objects, a synthetic approach views them in different perspective. And this requirement for interrelationship and issue-connective systematicity has increasingly come into the foreground of my thinking over the years as the links obtaining among differences and variations have engaged my attention. Increasingly I have come to see the systemic connections across philosophy’s complex landscape as critical for understanding, and this concern for synthesis is at the forefront of the studies that comprise this volume. The analogy of an ornamental garden may be helpful. Analysis is indispensable for bringing the individual flowers and the shrubs into clear view. But an appreciation of their role in others that garden as a whole requires synthesis—an overview of the whole in its harmonious entirely. It is crucial to philosophical understanding to elucidate and explain how reality works. To do this of course requires analysis to clarify the nature of the facts to be accounted for; analysis is a critical component of the venture. But unless analysis is followed by a synthesis that coordinates the separate pieces and explains how and why they fit together—that is, unless there is constructive reconstruction of the whole in its unity—there xiii

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INTRODUCTION

can be no adequate understanding at the level of philosophical engagement. In the end, the best test of the merit of philosophical analysis is its capacity to entrance the illumination provided by the subsequent synthesis that “puts it all together.” The object of the book is to exhibit how and to examine why different branches of philosophy come together in interactive cooperation in the treatment of fundamental issues. The overall lesson is that of the neo-­ Platonic insight that philosophy must be developed systematically because reality is one, a whole bound together by links of reciprocal interconnection. And so, while these essays range over the landscape of philosophy and deal with issues of logic, epistemology, technics, ethics, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy, they nevertheless combine to serve the common purpose of showing that philosophy is an inherently systemic discipline that admits of and indeed requires rational development in integrated interconnectedness. Accordingly, each essay ends with a brief postscript indicating how its deliberations manifest and implement this integrated unity of rational interrelationship. The book falls into two roughly equal parts, the first addressing some of the big issues that arise in philosophy, and the second addressing issues about the process of philosophizing itself. The result serves to illustrate how the detail of the relevant inquires implement the defining goals and procedures of the larger enterprise at issue. A pivotal theme in these studies is the role of evaluation and norms of assessment—of the contrast between what is and what ought to be and between facticity and normativity. The pivotal unifying perspective of the book is the role of reason as the arbiter of norms of providing a unifying Leitmotif throughout these diversified deliberations.

PART I

Essays in Philosophy

CHAPTER 1

Philosophical Guidance

Philosophy as Guide of Life Is philosophy “the guide of life” as the ϕBK moto has it? As with so many other complex questions, the answer is “yes-and-no.” The problem inheres in the fact that philosophy’s aim is to achieve universality in dealing with matters of unqualifiedly unrestricted truth. And with regard to human doings and dealings, this circumstance confines it to “one size fits all” at the level of general principles—of truisms. For better or worse, this means that philosophy’s life-guidance is typified by such ethereal principles as: • Be helpful to others in need. • Do something that contributes to the good of society. • Find employment that suits your talents and given you satisfaction. • Interact with other people in a reciprocally constructive way. All this is good counsel—but trite, truistic, and indefinite. Such injunctions present the directive bones without flesh to them; they stipulate generalities without details. They are direction-indications and not road maps. They indicate general goals rather than specific directives. And this results from the inherent generality of philosophical instructions and inheres in the fact that the teachings, doctrines, and precepts of philosophy must hold universally, for everyone. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_1

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So as regards these philosophical instructions the how-to-do-it specifics have to come from elsewhere: from life experience in short. Even as natural science prefers generalities to particularities, so is the condition of philosophy. Chemistry knows only carbon atoms in general and never this or that particular one. Biology knows housecats only generally as felix domesticus and does not take note of Tom or Jerry. Even so, moral philosophy deals only in humans at large and not Robert or Thomas. Thus, the advice it has to offer has to hold good for everyone at large. And this confines philosophical guidance to directionality but not to the specificity of definite directives. Accordingly, the sort of guidance that philosophy as such is able to provide for making life’s decisions the management of life is ineffectual— generic but not specific, concrete, and definite. Conformity to those philosophical truisms is necessary for the realization of a good life, but it is not sufficient. For, broad objectives do not provide resolutions for their specific implementation by particular individuals in particular circumstances. Like “Keep well” or “Travel safe,” they indicate broad desiderata without providing concrete guidance about their realization. And so in the end, philosophy only qualifies as an imperfect and guide of life, one whose efficacy in this regard is limited, incomplete, and insufficient. For general principles regarding “the bog issues”—but these alone—one can look to philosophy; for particular issue resolutions one must go beyond (to specifically relevant experience.) Philosophy cannot tell us: • What to eat, to wear, or… • How to spend our money, our time, our energy • whom to befriend, to avoid, to cultivate • What to read, to investigate, to study and a myriad of such specifics, without a great deal of us-specific input. For guidance regarding the particularities of what to do in life and help with deciding upon our actions in everyday affairs and planning our everyday activities, we must look not to philosophy but to the teachings of commonplace experience. Philosophy can provide for the strategy, but for the tactics we must look elsewhere.

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What Makes a Discussion Philosophical? What makes a discussion philosophical is thematic genealogy of issue-­ descendency. The “big questions”—relating to truth, knowledge, human conduct, social organization, etc., were already put on the agenda by the account of Greek antiquity. If a discourse deals with issues raised by issues that are raised by issues needed to address these questions, then the discussion is philosophical the theoretician of resolution requirement linked to these question-resolving discussion is philosophical. It is a matter of topical (thematic) genealogy. Connectivity to these big questions” is the crux. In working out the detailed agenda of daily action, it is not the philosophy of ends but the experience of means that becomes critical. Where philosophy can help is with such issues as: • What shall I try to do with my life? • What sort of person should I try to be? • What ultimate goal should I adopt? • What sort of role model should I emulate? These are the kinds of issues regarding which philosophical reflections can be of help—albeit in a highly general way. Philosophical advice is strategic; the doctrine of sensible living must come from the particularities with which philosophy does not come to grips. In life, as in playing chess, various generalities can come from theory, but the concrete tasks must reply on the lessons of practice. In managing life as in learning medicine, theory can be taught from books but actual practice can be mastered only by “doing rounds” to gain insight into the specifics of experience needed to implement the relevant generalities. The gap between theory and practice pervades every sector of philosophy. It is, of course, particularly present through practical philosophy. But for just this reason it is particularly significant as a contrast conception that illuminates the condition of philosophy-at-large.

CHAPTER 2

Control Problems

Part I: The Complexities of Control Control Contexts Control is an instructive conception in science and philosophy alike. The process at issue is well illustrated by that staple of thermodynamics, the classic Carnot Cycle apparatus to illustrate the Gas Law based on the equation:

T V  P

T is temperature,V is volume, and P is pressure 

(See Fig. 2.1.) Those three controllable parameters here provide for ways in which control can be exercised. With the volume constant, the temperature moves proportionately with the pressure exerted by the piston. But release the piston so as to increase volume and the temperature falls. And so on, depending on which parameter exerts control. A critical consideration lies in the distinction between dependent and independent variables throughout the different modes of experimental procedure, determining which factor is in control of what. In engineering there is an entire sub-discipline of Control Theory (“cybernetics” as it was once called) that studies control operations in systems ranging from elevators to interplanetary rockets. In economics,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_2

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T

THE CARNOT ENGINE P

V

Sensors for Three Parameters: Temperature (T), Volume (V), Pressure (P)

Fig. 2.1  The Carnot engine

we have organization theory that analyzes the structure of control within organizations. In philosophy, we have a large body of theorizing in matters of ethics and morality examining how responsibility relates to issues of control. Overall, the concept of control plays an important role throughout a great range of human affairs. In view of this, it becomes a significant consideration that—as subsequent discussion will show—the complexity and intricacy of this concept is so convoluted that our grasp of its nature and bearing becomes insecure and decidedly problematic. Control Complications The idea of controlling an outcome proliferates in point of manner and extent. Its basic paradigm is that of total control of an outcome, transpiring when the deliberate actions of the controller can decisively determine the results at issue. The everyday light switch affords an approximation to this, putting its controller in charge over the on-off condition of the light. For contrast, consider a very simple illustrative set-up: a water tub with two spigots: one operated by X which arranges the inflow, and the other operated by Y arranging the outflow. We now raise the question: Who or what controls the tank’s water level. Initially one is tempted to say that it is the team—combination of X and Y. But they may well be working at cross-purposes with X seeking to raise the level and Y to lower it, so that neither operative can decide the outcome. Granted, what those operatives each do will conjointly determine where the water level is. But one cannot really claim that either of them controls it. For, effective control requires a certain unity and coherence of functioning—and this is altogether

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lacking in the present situation, seeing that (by hypothesis) our two agents are working at cross-purposes. Instead, what we have here is shared—but one might better call it divided—control. Having Control Versus Being in Control Control is always a matter of multiple factors: by whom, over what, by what means, and in what manner? Moreover, controlling in an equivocal conception as between capacity and performance, and it is important to distinguish having control from being in control. For example, consider the person who manages the control panel for a machine, but does not know how it works. Or again, the vision-impaired individual who has control of the car but cannot exercise that control effectively. So despite having control these agents would not really be in control. You have control of an outcome if you can produce it, but you are in control of it only if you can exercise the capability effectively and with deliberation. Actually, someone may well have control of some outcome but yet be totally unaware of this. (e.g., when—unbeknownst to him—his flight instructor has transferred control of the aircraft to the learner’s position.) The light switch’s control of the bulb, and the automobile steering wheel’s control of the car’s direction, are instances of causal mediation—in controlling A (the switch or the wheel) one controls B (the bulb’s illumination or the car’s direction of motion.) And such mediated control always allows for things to go wrong through interruptions of some sort. Causal mediation allows an arsenal to be thrown into the workings of control. And in general, causal interaction can make control into something remote and problematic. Control is effective only when—in contrast to influence— exercised by a single agent or agency who does not require the collaboration of another in realizing an intended outcome. Thus if one agent’s potential control over a results can be interrupted or canceled by another—a driving instructor say or a supervising superior—then that agent is not really in effective control. In particular it is important to distinguish between something very rare, viz. absolute or total (or complete) control where the controller can decisively determine the controlled outcome, and something far more common, namely mere influence where the controller can merely affect the outcome’s probability of occurrence.

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All too often, the agent either has never actually had total control of the outcome or has somehow managed to lose it in the wake of unforeseen or untoward circumstances—as when a power outage renders the light switch irrelevant. And the fact of it is that we are seldom in effective control of eventuations. In general, man proposes and nature disposes. Usually we do not have full control of the results of our actions, seeing that the actual outcomes largely depend on the machinations of “Nature” which are not in anyone’s control. Only with such totally subjective issue as resolving what we want to achieve, or what we try and attempt to realize, are there matters where we are in complete control. Actually having full control—the capacity to intervene in the course of events deliberately so as to be able at will and with categorical assurance both to make something happen and to preclude it from happening—is something highly unusual. Purely subjective issues—such as intentions— apart, it is hard to think of examples. Influence In the ordinary course of things, we lack actual control but merely have what might be called influence. For while control hinges on the assured actualization of results, influence, by contrast, is concerned with their prospects. Influence in this somewhat technical sense thus has two main forms: • possibilistic influence: the ability to change the possibilities of outcome from what they would otherwise be. • probabilistic influence: the ability to change the probabilities of outcomes from what they would otherwise be. In relation to what actually happens in the world we—for the most part— lack control. In general, we can merely exert influence so as to make possible occurrences more likely than they would otherwise be.1 And so it seems appropriate to say that influence is not so much a mode or version of control, but a remotely related alternative to it. A Diagrammatic Approach It will be instructive to represent control situations diagrammatically. To do so let us adopt a number of conventions. (See Figs. 2.2 and 2.3.)

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ELEMENTS OF OCCURRENCE DIAGRAMS ALTERNATIVE CHOICES

ALTERNATIVE OUTCOMES

Do A

X happens

Do B

Y happens

Do C

Z happens

PROBABILISTIC OUTCOMES

p

ULTIMATE RESULTS

x happens

R

Fig. 2.2  Elements of occurrence diagrams AN OCCURRENCE PROGRAM You do A

R results R does not result

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X happens

You do not do A

.5

X does not happen

R results

Fig. 2.3  An occurrence program

A dot represents a choice point where the agent may opt for one of several of alternatives, and the ovals will represent courses of action available to the agent at issue. A small black square represents a condition of ultimate eventuation of outcome juncture of alternative eventuation—circumstances where one or another occurrence may contingently ensure, and the rectangles represent possible outcomes. These developments may be assured, or they may be subject to a specifiable, circle-indicated probability. Finally, the ultimate results of a course of events will be indicated by an arrow heading to a double box course of events, as per Fig. 2.3. Here, when X happens, you are in control of R’s occurrence. And indeed, by doing A you are here in a position to ensure that R results, whether or not X happens. In effect, you have positive control over R’s occurrence via doing A. But negative control is something else. For only if X happens can what you do possibly prevent R. In this particular illustration, the agent’s (positive) control over R is independent of any causal role in making R happen. For, if X does not happen,

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he plays no such role. And note that R’s non-happening requires that the agent not do A. (But of course, they may be totally unaware of this.) In projecting such an occurrence program, one is, in effect, sketching out a dialogue between Agent and Reality, each sequentially responding to an action of the other enroute to an ultimate result. Control Complexities It is—or should be—clear that there are many versions of control and many approximations to the idea at issue. These are illustrated in Figs. 2.4 and 2.5. An unusual situation exits when you delegate a decision to a random device, say by becoming committed to do A if a coin-toss comes heads and to do B otherwise. With this arrangement in place, the agent’s contribution effectively vanishes from sight. To all purposes (practical and theoretical alike), in delegating his choice (between A and not-A) to a random chance the agent has removed himself from the situation, so that, as regards the ultimate result nobody is in control. (But responsibility is a different matter.)

MODES OF CONTROL: BASIC Full control: Do A

R results

Do not-A

R does not result

Do A

R results

Do not-A

R may or may not result

Do A

R does not result

Do not-A

R may or may not result

Determinative control

Positive control:

Control of realization

Negative control:

Fig. 2.4  Modes of control: basic

Control of prospect

2  CONTROL PROBLEMS 

Conditional control:

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MODES OF CONTROL: COMPLEX

R happens

You have control of X

R does not happen

You do not have control of X

Influence: Do A

Do not-A

p

R happens

1-p

R does not happen

q

R happens

1-q

R does not Happen

Indirect Control: X retains control X as controller X delegates control of B

X does A

R

X does not-A

not-R

B chooses R

R

B chooses not-R

not-R

Fig. 2.5  Modes of control: complex

The point is reinforced by considering the complexities arising with the controlling of control. If X operates the switch that (independently) puts Y’s switch into operating the light, who—if anyone—is in control of the light? One may be tempted to say X and Y. Yet neither can decide the matter. Once more, the issue is one of “divided control.” But a stuffed animal is not an animal. Is such divided control actually control—and if so by whom? Again, let is imagine that a powerful genie emerges from the lamp and says, “If you meet conditions C, I will give you control over the result R.” Do you have control or not. Obviously, it all depends on your relationship to C. If C were “being John Doe,” then you are clearly not being given control at all; John Doe is. But if C is something trivial, such as the ability

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to add 2 and 2, then you are effectively being given control. The problem arises when C is a condition which, although difficult to meet, is (perhaps remotely) possible for you. On this basis, it would seem that the concept of control is just not clear enough to decide the matter one way or the other. Our return to the situation of initial that two spigot situation with inlet and outlet handled by different operations—“Who or what controls the water level”—was predicated on the presupposition that the water level is under control. “But is this actually so?” “It all depends”—on exactly how we are to understand “being under control.” Yet the boundary around the conception of control is fuzzy, and in the end, we have no clear and definite idea of what it is that constitutes control. The fact of it is that control is a complicated and problematic conception. Effective “control” would seem to require both determination AND decidability—the capacity not only to identify the result but also to implement it? But the terminology as we actually have it waffles on this issue and does not do justice to the convexities that arise. For in the end, our control talk of controlling generally fails to encompass a determinate idea since the conception of control is indecisive and problematic. It exemplifies the phenomenon of concept disintegration through application-­ indecisiveness. What is at issue here is a particular sort of equivocation where it becomes unclear over a substantial range of instances which (if any) alternative interpretation of that concept applies. Thus in in our present context does positive “control”, negative “control”, divided “control”, delegated “control”, actually qualify as control. Here complexity drives us into perplexity. When the question arises “which is the real mode of control” there is the unhappy prospect that everybody stands up while yet nobody is actually entitled to do so. And this prospect deserves to be called “unhappy” because it means that when we talk of control—and this even in philosophical contexts—we really don’t know exactly what we are talking about, simply because that concept itself is equivocal and indecisive.

Part II: Control and Ethical Responsibility Control Issues in Ethics This state of affairs has significant philosophical ramifications and consequences—especially in ethics.

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Display 6 A RESPONSIBILITY PROBLEM

•

Do A Do not do A

.9

A substantial benefit

.1

A moderate evil A small evil

Fig. 2.6  A Responsibility Problem

As the preceding deliberations indicate, the conception of control covers a considerable range of alternatives; there is positive control, negative control, partial control, conditional control, delegated control, mere influence, and so on. Can so problematic a concept actually bear the weight that ethicists want to put upon it by ethical theorists? To address this question we must look more closely at the relationship between control and the idea of responsibility. And when we do so, it transpires that we receive some very bad news. Who is responsible for the outcome resulting where one agent delegates (transfers) control to another? One would likely say that the one is indirectly responsible, and the other, directly. But how is this divided. And where lies the main responsibility? And who is in control? One simply cannot say; the concept isn’t that clear. Consider the situation of Fig. 2.6. For that moderate evil to occur, the agent has to open the door to it—it could not happen unless he does A. Accordingly, the agent clearly exerts productive control over the occurrence of a lesser evil. But we could hardly hold him culpable for the realization of that greater evil, and would certainly hesitate to offer reproach and reprehension for possibilizing it by doing A. The stark reality of it is that the idea of control lacks the internal detail and precision for any strict and unexceptionable ethical rules of responsibility attribution to be formulated by its means. The following illustrations make these clearly manifest: Illustration 1. One can only be held responsible for those outcomes over whose realization one has control.

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The fact of it is very much as odds with this contention, since one can be (morally) responsible for outcomes one does not control at all. Thus, you are not in control when misremembering something, and yet are fully responsible in misinforming your interlocutors, even with the very best of intentions. If you miss the appointment because you forgot the car-access code, you are nevertheless fully responsible even though that forgetting is not under your control. And additionally, consider the following array of cases: 1. X did not close the windows as instructed. A windy rainstorm came and soaked the room. X is clearly blameworthy. But the outcome was not controlled by X—the rainstorm managed it without him. And we cannot be sure that the outcome would have been different even if X had closed the windows. (The wind may well have blown out the window panes.) 2. Acting in ignorance of each other, Nurse A and Nurse B both gave the patient a dose of needed medicine. But a double dosage inevitably proves fatal. Neither nurse controlled the outcome. But both are blamable for the death. 3. A plane crashes due to the failure of an essential part of the control mechanism. The part was old and had reached 30% chance-of-­failure condition. It was scheduled replacement but the maintenance manager neglected arranging this. The responsibility for the subsequent crash is clearly his. Yet he did not “control” its occurrences in any plausible sense of the term. 4. The museum guard forgot to turn on the security monitors. He clearly bears some responsibility in relation to the subsequent theft. Yet he did not control it in any manner or fashion. 5. The inebriated driver had lost control of his limbs, and thereby also of the car’s movement, but he is still responsible for the accident (certainly morally and likely legally as well). 6. Your enemy Jones is a rich person who has four luxury cars which he drives more or less at random. You arranged to cut the brakes on one of them and he has a fatal accident. Here, although you were clearly responsible for this tragedy, you had no control over it—not even over the brake disconnect which you had arranged for someone else to do. Nothing you did gave you control of that misfortune. 7. A friend enlists you with care for $1000. You invest is as wisely as you can. The market crashes, and assets decline in value by 50%. You

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CONTROL/RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES

You do A

H happens

R results

H does not happen

R does not result

You do not do A

R does not result

Fig. 2.7  Control/Responsibility Issues

sustain a $500 loss for your trusting friend, and are clearly responsible for his loss. And yet you did not control the outcome. (Think here of the biblical parable of the talents!) There is clearly no close conceptual linkage between control and responsibility. For one thing, control of an outcome is certainly not necessary for responsibility. The avenger who hires a hit-man to kill his victim is responsible for his demise, but does not really control this occurrence in any plausible construal of the term. The captain is responsible for the crew’s actions but does not control them; the nanny is responsible for the safety or the child’s activities but unfortunately does not control most of them. And then too, control is not sufficient for responsibility for it may be exercised unknowingly, completely in ignorance of the eventuating outcome—or again it might be experienced under duress. And comparable problems arise with other ethical generalizations as well. Thus, consider: Illustration 2. One is responsible for a result whenever negative control gives one the power to preventing it.

But contemplate the situation of Fig. 2.7. Here you have no control over R: nothing you do can make R happen. Your doing A enables R’s happening but certainly does not control it. Illustration 3. Moral responsibility requires causal responsibility via control.

But consider a conspiracy where several people collaborate in producing a misfortune for which no one of them is causally responsible but all

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of these clearly bear moral responsibility. (And actual conspiring is not required here—think, for example, of global warming.) Illustration 4. An agent is responsible for something whenever something he controls makes a causal contribution to its occurrence.

This too is untenable. The pilot who takes the ship out of harbor makes a causal contribution to its journey, but bears no responsibility if it becomes “lost at sea.” Or again: Under the (mis)conception that cutting the wire will disarm the bomb, the bomb-disposal operative by doing so, actually sets it off—wire disconnection in fact being the only pathway of detonation (though of course our agent does not realize this). Here he controls the outcome, but really bears no moral responsibility for its realization. Moreover, we continue to encounter analogous problems when we shift from control to influence and even to enabling. Thus, it will not do to insist, Never increase the likelihood of a bad outcome. It may well be appropriate to increase slightly the prospect of a bad outcome if we could thereby increase greatly the prospect of a very good outcome. The fact is that control of an outcome is largely indecisive in its bearing on ethical responsibility. Thus, the executioner is in control of the killing, but is not responsible for it. The person who obeys the lawful order of a superiors produces the outcome and is in control of its occurrence, but is not responsible for it. In fact, one is not necessarily responsible even for what one totally controls. The mis-directed and mis-informed driver is in control of the car, but need bear no responsibility for getting lost. The instantaneous controls the information that the speaker reports but no matter how indiscrete or hurtful it is, bears no responsibility for it. Retrospect When we put together the abstract metaphysics of control with the ethics of reasonability in particular circumstances we reach a difficult conjuncture. For, the concept of control is deeply problematic and the diversity of its modes and versions blocks the way to a whole host of relevant ethical generalizations. The ultimate lesson here is that control is so complex and convoluted a conception that it just cannot accomplish the demanding work that ethicists and moral philosophers have commonly expected of it.

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–– That in philosophy in particular, a dark shadow is cast over on the common conviction that ethical responsibility for an inauspicious development requires being in control of it.

Note 1. If responsibility were to require full control, then Kant would be right: intentions (not realizations) would now be pivotal for moral appraisal, seeing that we control the intentions of our actions but not their outcomes. But this also creates challenges because outcomes can be totally detached from intentions. (As the proverb has it: “The way to hell is paved with good intentions.”)

CHAPTER 3

Error

Error Its Pervasiveness and Modes Like most everyone else, philosophers prefer to accentuate the positive. Accordingly, epistemologists—knowledge theorists—generally prefer to deal with information, truth, and fact rather than misinformation, falsity, and error. In this regard, however, the present discussion will take the road less traveled, with error at the forefront. Only fairly sophisticated beings—and in particular intelligent agents—are capable of error. An error is committed when a being capable of goal-­directed agency acts in a way that countervails frustrates the achievement of an aim or objective. When we claim that “It was an error on X’s part to do A” we in effect claim that doing A was counterproductive for X because it somehow impeded the realization of his objective. Subjective error occurs with failures to achieve one’s wants. Objective error occurs with a failure to achieve what the agent needs—irrespective of whether or not he actually wants it. There are various modes of error and innumerable instances of them all. Error can arise in every sphere of human action, be it in matters of belief, of action, of intention, or of evaluating. The prospect of mistakes is limitless. Not only beliefs and actions but all human performances are subject to error. Even our hopes, expectations, and plans can go awry. Error is a pervasive prospect; it can occur all across the vast range of human action—in matters of belief (acceptance), of action (performance), and of valuation (planning). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_3

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A person can commit to error either deliberately (e.g., by lying) or inadvertently (i.e., by being misinformed about something). Accordingly, error can be either culpable or innocent. There are innumerable modes of erring. A few examples are: forgetting confusion illusion delusion omission mistaken identity imprecision exaggeration illusion delusion misattribution (or responsibility, blame, credit) miscalculation misjudgment (or mis-conception) misremembering mis-hearing misplacing misstatement mis-quoting oversimplification under (or over)-estimation over (or under) theorizing over-(or under) valuation Erroring is a performance below normal participation due not to normal performatory fluctuation but to a lapse of some sort in the agent’s part. It is a poor reference that really should not be there but is so due not a mistake of some sort on the agent’s part. Erring is often something that is not evident at the time, becoming apparent only with the wisdom of hindsight. Error can vary in: –– extent by being off the mark, for example, in having a crowd of 1000 misrepresented as one of 10,000.

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–– consequences and implications by differing in the magnitude and seriousness of results, for example, the guard who kills the assassin who mistakes the equerry for the king. Most errors exert a cost. –– preventability and avoidability by differing in ease of avoidance, misprints are readily avoidable by more and more a careful proofreading while there is little one can do to avoid misremembering. By definition, careless errors can be diminished by taking greater care. –– culpability in relation to the extent to which the agent lessens blame for committing the error. Falling into error is generally an occasion for regret. But sometimes error will have an inexperientially welcome and fortunate result, as when a forgotten appointment leads one to miss the train that crashes.

Error Requires Agency Erring is an action-something an agent does. But the agent who commits an error is not always in a position to avoid it. Misremembering something is generally an error you could not have avoided. And the same may be the case with mis-hearing or misunderstanding something that someone says, or with mistaking someone for their twin. And error involves not only agency but intent as well. Accordingly, not only can and do our efforts in matters of cognition and action run into error, but so can the workings of our artifice: machines and devices. Printers can produce misprints, guns can jam, autos malfunction. Erroneous performance is not a prerogatives of humans alone. Suppose that for reasons of his own, X chooses to give an incorrect answer to a question or to follow the wrong route on the journey to a destination. Granted there is incorrectness. But not error. Not mistake of fact but misalignment with intention is the definitive error. It is not always unfortunate to commit an error; some errors can prove to be fortunate in their consequences. Error can turn out for the good. You inadvertently named the wrong stock when instructing your broker to sell it out. Shortly thereafter that firm collapsed into bankruptcy. Your error saved you a lot of money. A happy error that! Or again, consider, the party guest who shows up for the wrong party but there meets “the girl of his dreams.” The fortunate fault (Felix counterpart) per St. Augustine. While error requires agency, it can occur without culpability (i.e., innocently). When the agent is mistaken by no fault of his own (e.g. by having

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been mistaught or misinformed) the error is understandable and venial. But when his mistake occurs in such a way that “he should have known better,” the error is culpable. But there is no culpability to erring in matters where one is misinformed and it cannot be said that “he should have known better.” Culpability requires fault. It is tempting to say that when an error is committed the agent “should have known better” than to do this. But this is not always the case, simply because in many cases the agent just cannot possibly help it. If he misremembers the safe’s combination 1/2/33/4 as 1/22/3/4 this is something he cannot avoid or control. If he mistakes Mr. X for his twin, this too is beyond his control. If he mis-­ types “casual” for “causal”, such a slip-up is really not blameworthy. It would indeed be good in the large scheme of things for such errors not to occur, but they are not situations where it is appropriate to reprehend the agent. Something that an agent does against his own will cannot ever be counted as a mistake of his. The absence of productive responsibility through duress, conditioning, or undue influence left the onus of error from the agent’s shoulders. Error avoidance is only inconclusively beneficial. Avoiding error is never enough in and of itself: great accomplishments are not realized simply by avoiding error. Real achievement requires actual productivity as well as the avoidance of counterproductivity.

Error Situations Avoidable Error In some circumstances we are caught between the devil and the deep blue in that erring is inevitable because even the best-available option goes wrong. Thus consider a journey from A to Z. When arriving at point P we can avoid error, but at Q is it no longer possible. •Z A•

P • •X Q• •Y

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The Raging Avenger In his pursuit of Hapless Victim, and with ax in hand, Raging Avenger asks Innocent Bystander “Which way did he go?” Under the impression that he took the Lane to the Left, Innocent Bystander points to the Lane to the Right, which the victim actually took, this response was not erroneous but perfectly correct. And yet in the circumstances we would not hesitate to say that he made “a big mistake.” Complications With regard to error we sometimes have to draw subtle distinctions and introduce complications. Thus suppose that an agent has goal G* (e.g., wealth) as an intermediation to achieving an ultimate goal G* (e.g., happiness). Then we would have to say that an act which successfully functions in relation to goal G is actually an error in relation to his ultimate objective (G*). From one point of view he proceeds correctly but from another he is in error. Again, Whether or not an error is being committed will depend on the perspective from which the situation is being assessed.

Cognitive Error In principle cognitive error is limitless. It can take many forms. An erroneous expectation (e.g., that the weather would be good tomorrow) or an erroneous plan (e.g., to meet in Shanghai in two days) is in effect simply an erroneous belief. And erroneous inclination (i.e., favor tea over coffee because it is healthier) involves the same sort of error. All these are matters of doing something in the light of an incorrect belief. We can be wrong about pretty well anything. There is always the prospect of getting it wrong in the universal choice between p and not-p. Cognitive error—having false belief—is fundamentally different from ignorance, the lack of appropriate true beliefs. However, when I am ignorant of something (say that snowflakes always have six points) I am bound to make erroneous judgments of the matter (say that there might be eight-­ sided snowflakes). So the two themes have an inherent linkage. Usually when the think of error we have in view cognitive error—error in matters of belief. Cognitive error requires falsity: one is in error in claiming (let alone accepting) something that is false. In lying we deliberately maintain something erroneous. But generally our committing error is independent—we just don’t “know any better.”

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The object of inquiry is not only getting at the truth but also the exclusion of misinformation. Avoiding error so as to have “nothing but the truth,” is a critical aim of the enterprise. We count error because our limited cognitive faculties evolved in a vastly complex world by situational adequacy under the promise of immediate need. If our survival called for error-free performance as individuals we would not be here as a species. No doubt, Descartes was right in holding that it is effectively impossible that we should believe that we do not exist. But we can certainly say that this is the case. We can make erroneous claims without accepting/ believing them. Cognitive error typically consists in answering a question incorrectly. It requires action, viz. propounding an answer to a questions. Sheer ignorance—the inability to proffer a correct answer is to error because it can be purely passive. True belief can be based on error. X’s believing that yon elm is deciduous may issue from the erroneous belief that all the trees in the park are deciduous. Not only can our beliefs regarding facts be erroneous but so can our conceptions of things. We can have entirely wrong ideas about dinosaurs, or mushrooms, or beehives. In the end, however, such incorrect conceptions come down to erroneous beliefs. Table 3.1 surveys the range of the modes of cognitive error, and the various processes by which they are standardly arrived at. Here again there is an almost unending variety of modes of cognitive error, as for example.

The Corrigibility of Conceptions In deliberating about error it is necessary to distinguish between the correctness of our particular claims about things and that of our very ideas of them—between a true or correct contention on the one hand, and a true conception on the other. To make a true contention about a thing we need merely get some one particular fact about it right. To have a true conception of the thing, on the other hand, we must get all of the important facts about it right.1 With a correct contention (statement) about a thing, all is well if we get the single relevant aspect of it right, but with a correct conception of it we must get the essentials right—we must have the correct overall picture. This duality of error as between false belief and erroneous

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Table 3.1  Ways of going wrong in matters of cognition Nature of the item about which there is error

Correlative questions

Process by which the error occurs

 • Object-identity  • Quantity

what is it? how many or much?

 • Quality  • Difference  • Relation  • Posture  • Possession

what sort or kind? how different? how related? how arranged? with what accompaniments? doing what? undergoing what? where? when? with what effect?

mis-identity mis-estimation or mis-calculation mis-classification Mid-differentiation mis-relating mis-descriptive mis-

 • Action  • Passion  • Place  • Time  • Causality [processuality]

wrong activities wrong reactions mis-placement mis-timing mis-attribution of consequences

Note that all the preceding relate to the Aristotelian categories  • Facts mis-beliefs or mis-statements  • Evaluations mis-judgment  • Estimates mis-estimates  • Expectations mistaken expectations

conception (“applying to one thing the definition proper to another”) goes back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas.2 It is important to be clear about just what point is at issue here. It is certainly not being denied that people do indeed know many truths about things, for example, that Caesar did correctly know many things about his sword. Rather, what is being maintained is not only that there were many things he did not know about it (e.g., that it contained tungsten), but also that his over-all conception of it was in many ways inadequate and in some ways incorrect. To ensure the correctness of our conception of a thing we would have to be sure—as we very seldom are—that nothing further can possibly come along to upset our view of just what its important features are and just what their character is. The qualifying conditions for true conceptions are thus far more demanding than those for true claims. No doubt, in the Fifth Century, BC, Anaximander of Miletus may have made many correct

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contentions about the sun—for example, that it is not a mass of burning stuff pulled about on its circuit by a deity with a chariot drawn by a winged horse. But Anaximander’s conception of the sun (as the flaming spoke of a great wheel of fire encircling the earth) was seriously wrong. With conceptions—unlike propositions or contentions—incompleteness means incorrectness, or at any rate presumptive incorrectness. A conception that is based on substantially incomplete data must be assumed to be at least partially incorrect. If we can decipher only half the inscription, our conception of its over-all content must be largely conjectural—and thus must be presumed to contain an admixture of error. When our information about something is incomplete, obtaining an overall picture of the thing at issue becomes a matter of theorizing, or guesswork, however sophisticatedly executed. And then we have little alternative but to suppose that this over-all picture falls short of being wholly correct in various (un specifiable) ways. With conceptions, falsity can thus emerge from errors of omission as well as those of commission, resulting from the circumstance that the information at our disposal is merely incomplete, rather than actually erroneous (as will have to be the case with false contentions). The incompleteness of our knowledge does not, of course, ensure its incorrectness—after all, even a single isolated belief can represent a truth. But it does strongly invite it. For if our information about some object is incomplete then it is bound to be unrepresentative of the objective make up-as-a-whole so that a judgment regarding that object is liable to be false. The situation is akin to that depicted in John Godfrey Saxe’s splendid poem about “The Blind Men and the Elephant” which tells the story of certain blind sages, those Six men of Indostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the elephant, (Though all of them were blind).

One sage touched the elephant’s “broad and sturdy side” and declared the beast to be “very like a wall.” The second, who had felt its tusk, announced the elephant to resemble a spear. The third, who took the elephant’s squirming trunk in his hands, compared it to a snake, while the fourth, who put his arm around the elephant’s knee, was sure that the animal resembled a tree. A flapping ear convinced another that the

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elephant had the form of a fan; while the sixth blind man thought that is had the form of a rope, since he had taken hold of the tail. And so these men of Indostan, Disputed loud and long; Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong: Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong.

The lesson is clear. The incompleteness of object-descriptive statements certainly does not entail their incorrectness: incomplete information does not ensure false belief. But it does ensure inadequate understanding since at the level of generality there will be too many gaps that need filling in. An inadequate or incomplete description of something is not thereby false—the statements we make about it may be perfectly true as far as they go. But an inadequate or incomplete conception of a thing is eo ipso one that we have no choice but to presume to be incorrect as well,3 because we cannot justifiably take the stance that this incompleteness relates only to inconsequentiate matters and touches nothing important, thereby distorting our conception of things so that errors of commission result. There are just too many alternative ways in which reality can round out an incomplete account to warrant confidence in the exclusion of error. Accordingly, our conceptions of particular things should be viewed not just as cognitively open-ended, but as corrigible as well.

Oversimplification Oversimplification is of particular relevance. Oversimplification is, at bottom, nothing but a neglect (or ignorance) of detail. Its beginnings and origination lies in a lack of detail—in errors of omission. But that is not by any means the end of the matter. For such errors of omission all too readily carry errors of commission in their wake. If when confronted with

CC — C C

we conclude that the missing letter is a C instead of the A that may well actually be there. When we fill in gaps and omissions—as we all too

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generally do—we are likely to slide along the slippery slope of allowing simplification lead us into error. It might seem on first thought that, since oversimplification always roots in errors of omission, it will retain this feature overall, and at least spare us from errors of commission. This hopeful expectation is in fact disappointed. If you oversimplify ~ to—you will not be prepared for the variations you will eventually encounter in reality. Suppose, for example, that the reality of it is as per (R)

aaA aAA

And let it be that we “oversimplify” matters by failing to differentiate between a and A, viewing both alike simply as instances of one common α. We then arrive at the following model of reality: (M) a a a a a a

And now on the basis of this, we are led straightaway to conclude that “Both compartments are exactly the same in composition”—a clearly erroneous belief.

The Omission/Commission Tradeoff Cognitive error comes in two basic forms: error of commission and errors of omission. The former, errors of commission, lie in accepting falsehoods in the cognitive case, performing counterproductive actions in the practical. The latter, errors of omission, are failures to accept true facts in the cognitive case and failures to do what is circumstantially required in the practical. Errors of commission are often called errors of the first kind, with errors of omission referred to as errors of the second kind. In cognitive contexts, errors of omission consist in giving partial and incomplete answers to the questions at issue. Most serious here is the case of misleading answers which, while in themselves correct, nevertheless embody suggestions and implications that move in an entirely wrong direction in a way that could or would be corrected if only the omitted information were also supplied. There is an extensive and diversified terminology of cognitive error. There are misjudgments and misunderstandings over-and under-estimates, mis-estimates, and so on. And a comparable situation prevails on the

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performatory side, when we find mis-pronunciation in speaking, misspelling in writing, mis-hits in tennis, and mis-throws in baseball. Many errors of this general sort acquire special nomenclature—as per “double faults” in tennis, over- or under-cooking in cuisine, Freudian-slips in communication, and the like. Benjamin Franklin the printer looked on the mistakes of his life as so many errata and wished he could add corrigenda to his life-history. In practical goal-directed contexts, errors of omission consist in failing—for whatever reason—to do those things required to facilitate realization of the goal at issue. This is, of course, most serious in the case of mandatory goals, be they prudential or moral. It is—or should be—clear that errors (and sins) of omission can be every bit as serious as those of commission. The well-known controversy between William James and William Kingdon Clifford yields an instructive lesson for epistemology through leading us to recognize that as regards the theory of knowledge (as in other ways) we live in an imperfect world. The ultimate ideal of absolute perfection is outside our grasp: the prospect of proceeding in ways wholly free from the risk of error is not attainable in this epistemic dispensation where there is an inherent tradeoff between errors of commission and omission. They stand in inseparable coordination: any realistically workable mechanism of cognition can only avoid errors of the first kind (excluding truths) at the expense of incurring errors of the second kind (including untruths). The situation is as portrayed in Fig.  3.1. As the situation of point (1) indicates, if we insist upon adopting an epistemic policy that allows no type II errors and admits no untruths at all, then we are constrained to all out skepticism: we can accept nothing and are thereby involved in a total exclusion from the whole realm of truths. The situation of point (3), on the other hand, indicates that, as we insist with increasing stridency upon reducing the exclusion of truths so as to curtail type I errors, we are compelled to an increasingly gullible policy that allows the goats to wander through the gate alongside the sheep. It is the happy medium of point (2) that we must strive to realize. What we have here is clearly a calculus-like minimax problem where we strive for the optimal balance of truths attained relative to errors excluded. However, the idealized schematic of achieving the whole truth (no type I errors of omission) and nothing but the truth (no type II errors of commission) is simply not part of the achievable realities of the human situation. As we become more enterprising and reduce our involvement in

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THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN THE TWO KINDS OF ERROR Errors of Omission % if truths excluded (type I errors)

100

(1)

the characterizing curve of available cognitive mechanisms

50 y 0

(2) (3) x

100

Errors of Commission % of admitted theses that are untruths (type II errors) Fig. 3.1  The tradeoff between the two kinds of error

errors of omission, we are unavoidably bound to become involved in more errors of commission. Just where to set the bar of substantiation becomes a crucial issue. Set the bar too high and we will miss out on truths; set is too low and we will admit the wrong sheep into the fold. We have the situation of a complementary tradeoff in this matter. The feasible combinations are indicated by the diagram of Fig. 3.1. In the conduct of our cognitive affairs—as in other departments of life—we must do the best we can in the circumstances: what one might abstractly think of as the absolute ideal is simply not attainable in this mundane dispensation.

Error in Science This vulnerability of our putative knowledge of the world in the face of potential error is rather exhibited than refuted by a consideration of scientific knowledge. For this is by no means as secure and absolute as we like to think. The history of science is the history of changes of mind about the truth of things. The science of the present is an agglomeration of corrections of the science of the past. Throughout the cognitive enterprise—and above all throughout the sciences—much of what we vaunt as “our knowledge” is no more than our best estimate of the truth of things. And we

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recognize in our heart of hearts that this putative truth in fact incorporates a great deal of error. There is every reason to believe that where scientific knowledge is concerned further knowledge does not just supplement but generally corrects our knowledge-in-hand, so that the incompleteness of our information implies its presumptive incorrectness as well. We must come to terms with the fact that, at any rate at the scientific level of generality and precision, each of our accepted beliefs may eventuate as false and many of our accepted beliefs will eventuate as false. The road to scientific progress is paved with acknowledged error. But if we acknowledge the presence of error within the body of our putative knowledge, then why don’t we simply correct it? The salient lesson here is conveyed by what has become known under the rubric of The Preface Paradox whose jest is as follows: An author’s preface reads in part as follow: “I realize that, because of the complex nature of the issues involved, the text of the book is bound to contain some errors. For these I now apologize in advance.” There is clearly something paradoxical going on with this otherwise far from outlandish disclaimer because the statements of the main text are flatly asserted and thereby claimed as truths while the preface statement affirms that some of them are false. Despite an acknowledgment of a collective error there is a claim to distributive correctness. Our author obviously cannot have it both ways.4 In reading the preface, the impatient reader may want to exclaim “You silly author, if there are errors why don’t you just correct them.” But there’s the rub. The author would have to correct these errors if only he would tell where and what they are. But this is just exactly what he doesn’t know. They may be present in full view but they are not identifiable as such. As error they are totally invisible. At the bottom of our belief about things at the level of generality and precision at issue in science there is always is—or should be—a certain wariness that recognizes the possibility of error. But of course none of this unravels its legitimacy and utility.

Moral Error How does moral error differ from epistemic error? Wrongful action that results from a (non-culpably) erroneous understanding of the situation is error alright, but not moral error. In its most typical form, moral error is not just a matter of mis-understanding—a failure to get the facts straight—but rather a mis-judgment that thinks a

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certain way of acting to be acceptable that just is not. It consists in being culpably obtuse (or even perverse) rather than merely mistaken. Do people who commit errors deserve reproach and reprehension, or are they more to be pitied than censured? It all depends on the issue of culpability, which in turn depends on the source or cause of the error. Was it due to inattention, to carelessness, to reckless disregard of standard safeguards, or some such? Then blame is indeed in order. Or was it due to matters lying outside the agent’s knowledge and control—to developments he could not be expected to foresee or could not have helped even if he did so? Then that is something else again. Blameworthiness subsists only where the capacity to do otherwise is present, and error is something that we finite and imperfect creatures just cannot avoid. What is reprehensible, then, is not so much falling into error, but rather persisting in its despite ample opportunities to get “to know better.” It is not error as such but a stubborn, willful, and unthinking persistence in its grasp that is wicked and reprehensible. Only when someone commits an error that they could and should at least have tried to prevent do they merit reprehension. We often speak of erring in the interest of some positive desideratum— for instance of erring “on the side of caution,” or “of safety” or “of generosity.” Error can be committed in the name of virtue. One can be too trusting, too generous, too helpful. All too often productive practices can be overdone to the point of counter-productiveness. The error that is (by hypothesis) at issue in such cases is real enough: there indeed is an act of wrong-doing or -thinking. But of course in cases of this particular sort the good intentions that underlay the act might diminish the extent of its reprehensibility. It would serve the interests of theoretical tidiness if erroneous action arose always and only from errors of cognition, if all wrong-doing were just a matter of wrong-thinking, of misinformation. Then cognitive imperfection—foolishness and folly—would do the whole job, and sinfulness and evil in its many forms (perversity, sociopathy, pure nastiness, vandalism, schadenfreude, etc.) could be dismissed as a separate force and factor. And in fact much of Greek moral philosophy from Socrates to the Stoics moved in this direction. The philosophers of ancient Greece confronted the following apory of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions:

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(1) Man is a rational animal: We frequently do—and ideally always should—do what we do for sound reasons. (2) The only sound reason for an action is that performing it will make us better off. (3) Immoral action will never render us better off. (4) Immoral action is a fact of life: people—people do often act immorally. Inconsistency prevails here because (1)–(3) entail that immoral action will never occur, thus contradicting (4). Mere logical consistency accordingly requires that one (at least) of these theses be rejected. And here Greek philosophy rang the changes of possibility—as follows: (1) rejection. (1a): Irrationalism: People do not always act rationally: outright irrationality has a grasp on human affairs. (1b) Delusionism: We do what we do for what we see as good reasons, but we are frequently mistaken about this. (2) rejection. Hedonism: The satisfaction of mere wants—irrespective of whether this actually makes us better off—is a good reason and sufficient for action. (The Sophists) (3) rejection. Immoralism: Immorality can pay off. People can and do often achieve benefit from wrongdoing. (Thrasymachus and political “realists”) (4) rejection. Amoralism: Morality is an illusion: strictly speaking there is no such thing as right or wrong. (The Cynics) Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus transverse the ground of this apory in detail and argue in effect that (1)-rejection is the proper resolution here. For the Platonic Socrates has it that the chain of inconsistency is to be broken via the distinction that while man is indeed a would-be rational being who as such acts for what he sees as good reasons, nevertheless in the event we are often simply mistaken about this. Immorality is indeed real as per (4), and both (2) and (3) are quite correct. But man is only imperfectly rational, and we often act in the mistaken belief that an immoral action will render us better off. Accordingly, moral wrongdoing always roots in cognitive error, and (1b) represents the appropriate resolution. With the emergence of Christian theology, such a Platonic view of the world—and the moral world in particular—underwent a profound change. For while Christian thought also broke the aforementioned apory’s chain

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of inconsistency by rejecting (1), it took the yet harsher line of (1a), rejecting Platonic delusionism in favor of an irrationalism that accepted human perversity in the manner of wickedness and sinfulness. Christianity, in sum, saw the failings of human rationality in a bleaker light that grounded wrongdoing in flaws of character rather than failings of intellect. As such a position saw it, wrongdoing—practical error—is not necessarily reducible to theoretical error but is inherent in the very make-up of the human person as a sinful being. It is important to be clear about just what point is at issue here. It is certainly not being denied that people do indeed know many truths about things, for example, that Caesar did correctly know many things about his sword. Rather, what is being maintained is not only that there were many things he did not know about it (e.g., that it contained tungsten), but also that his over-all conception of it was in many ways inadequate and in some ways incorrect.

Notes 1. But “important” for whom? For anyone who wants to understand the matter properly within the general domain of deliberation at issue. And this provides a basis for multiplying conceptions—e. g., by distinguishing between the scientifically important facts and those important in the context of everyday life. Think of Arthur Eddington’s distinction between the scientists’ table and the table of our ordinary experience. See A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), pp. ix–xi. 2. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, Bk. I, quest 17, sect. 3. 3. Compare F. H. Bradley’s thesis: “Error is truth, it is partial truth, that is false only because partial and left incomplete.” Appearance and Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893), p. 169. 4. The paradox was formulated in D.  C. Makinson, “The Paradox of the Preface,” Analysis, vol. 25 (1965), pp. 205–207.

CHAPTER 4

Compound Valuation in Aspectival Amalgamation

Real Versus Apparent Valuation The pervasive difference between mere opinion and factual actuality carries over into evaluative domain. The difference between subjective and objective value—between what a person actually value, prefers, esteems and what deserves to be valued, preferred, esteemed—between what people deem of value and what deserves to be so regarded—is an ever-critical consideration An object or state of affairs is rightly valued if its realization does or would make the world a better place than it otherwise would be. And while what people actually do value generally reflects their own advantage—and reflects their wants and wishes, what they should value because it so deserves/reflects the arrangements that would make for world-­ improvement. It is a matter not of what seems good for X but what is for the good of the whole. And whether or not you think something makes the world a better place is up to you but whether or not you think so correctly is certainly not. Possessing value is an objective condition that does not “lie in the eyes of the beholder”; it is a matter of correct/incorrect and what somebody thinks about it is not a decisive consideration. Evaluation requires agency—it is something that calls for the doing of an agent. The correctness of the matter is not however and whether the agent does so correctly or not. In the agent’s power of control, it lies in the prevailing circumstances. For while valuing lies in the power of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_4

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agent: its correctness does not. Value does not lie “in the eyes of the beholder,” but is a matter of the objective realities—its crux is the general benefit. In this regard, value is not unlike pleasure. It is not up to you to decide whether or not something pleases you—be it one way or the other, this is simply a matter of fact. Yet there is an important difference. You can be wrong about whether or not something should please you, but you cannot be wrong about whether or not it does so. You can certainly be wrong about what would make the world a better place than it would otherwise be but you cannot be wrong about being pleased by it. Unlike pleasure, merit is not a matter of personal effectivity: While you do not control what pleases you, you are the final arbiter, but merit is something else again. However greatly you may welcome it, amelioration—world improvement—is something you neither control nor determine. It lies in the nature of prevailing conditions—a coincidence beyond your—or anyone’s power of control.

Conflicting Desiderata The evaluative choices we are called upon to make in life often conflict with one another. The urban dweller who seeks a home that is proximate to the town center but yet is also private will soon learn that central locations are more exposed to traffic so that these desiderata are in a conflict where one must make a compromise, seeing that more of the one comes at the price of less of the other. Or again, the automobile purchaser who wants a car that is both safe and economical confronts the fact that safety devices are costly to install and maintain. When this sort of thing occurs, and one merit requires some sacrifice in another, then one confronts a situation of desideratum conflict. How are such value-conflict choices to be resolved? How is one to proceed when “We can’t have it both ways,” but must effect a compromise among different virtues by trading some of the one off against some of the other. Some sort of approximately construed meshing of those value factors must be provided to effect an overall assessment of comparative merit. With Vi as the respective value of the i-th aspect at issue there will need to be some appropriate value-combination function F such that the overall combined value (V1  V2) is given by F(Vi, Vj). And there are, of course, a great many alternative ways of doing this. So how is this requirement to be managed?

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Illustrations: Grading, Evaluation, and Ranking Assessments can be either comparative and proceed by grounding or quantitative and proceed by measuring. The two can be coordinated with one another via matters of degree representing the extent of merit. The most basic mode of evaluation is grading, as—for example—via the categories: Maximal, High, Middling, Low, and Minimal. Or alternatively, we could grade by an ordinal score from 1 to 10, ranging from minimal to maximal. But for illustrative convenience consider the situation of merely three value categories for the desiderata involved: H-M-L for High, Middling, and Low respectively. Thus with two value-aspects—with a house, say V1 = location-convenience and V2 = maintenance-affordability—we will obtain a 3 × 3 grid work for possible overall evaluations, as for example, per the rule that the lowest rating prevails: Ease of Maintenance H M L H Convenience of M Location L

H

M

L

M

M

L

L

L

L

To realize a greater degree of evaluative sophistication here, we might rank the various outcomes by priority or rank-order of preference. With location favored over maintenance, this would yield the more elaborate evaluation schema: Ease of Maintenance H M L H Convenience of M Location L

1

3

6

2

4

8

5

7

9

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And with some possibilities eliminated on grounds of availability and others on grounds of desirability, the choice generally becomes conveniently narrowed. In more complex cases, evaluation can also proceed by a quantitative assessment: that is, by measurement. Any number of different evaluation functions Vij = F(Vi, Vj) can be contemplated for such aspectival amalgamation. For example, one might implement a weighted average favoring one particular member of the value-pair at issue, as per: Vxy = aVx + (1 − a)Vy So now, with a > ½ one would prioritize the first mode of valuation over the second.

An Epistemic Illustration of the Amalgamative Meshing Problem Evaluation also finds instructive application in matters of epistemology. Thus in situations of information-management on the basis of reports, one might employ the following evaluative schema: Source Reliability

Report Plausibility

H

M

L

H

H

M

M

M

M

M

L

L

L

L

L

Note that here boldface is used to render the response more emphatic, with V more weighty version outweighing V. Of course, other factors will also come into play with report acceptability, as for example: • the general reliability of the source’s claims • the independent evidence for what is being claimed.

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• the plausibility of the claim in view of its contextual fit into the framework of relevant knowledge. To extend such a procedure for amalgamating two value-aspects into a situation where a third aspect is introduced one can proceed as follows. First, one uses a procedure for combining two value-aspects V1 and V2 into a third combination aspect (V1  V2). And then, one uses a comparable two-item evaluation to mesh the third aspect into the resultant combination, thus arriving at (V1  V2)  V3. This process can be illustrated by supposing that in evaluating a house with respect to affordability and maintainability we might first make an assessment of Cost via Purchasing Price and Taxation, and then combine this Cost with Expense to determine the overall Affordability. In applying this procedure, it is crucial, however, that a priority ordering be established with the value-aspects at issue (V1, V2, V3) deployed in order of priority or importance. For it is significant here that the outcome will depend on this, seeing that (V1  V2) V3 will not necessarily be the same as (V1  V3) V2.

Problems The meshing problem highlights the difficulty of rational evaluation. For just how is one to determine what is for the (actual) best of the whole? Obviously, this will have to emerge from what is best for the constituent members—for their collectively best benefit. But how is this move to the collectivity from its individual members to be managed? My own consideration in the world—how I fare relative to my wishes, preferences, and discontention is something dependent on what the wishes, preferences, and discontentions are. It depends on me. But whether those wishes, preferences, and desires are appropriate or not— would make the world a better place and not just one that is more to my liking—is something that depends on the general conditions of things on the whole. But what about this “as a whole”? Is the world’s condition in terms of better/worse a matter of the extent of general approval or preference? We all make our individual contributions to that general condition, but none of us discriminately determines it as individuals. This is not a matter of subjectivity of what individuals so deem or think to be beneficial, but what is objectively and factually so.

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It must be, however, stressed that there is no one, fixed, and universally appropriate procedure for value-aspect amalgamation. The proper resolution will depend on the purposes at issue with the evaluation-proceeding at hand. The crux is the functionality with regard to the specific purposes for which the evaluation is being made. And here the realization of acceptable outcomes may require rather complex proceedings.

CHAPTER 5

The Fairness Perplex

Introduction Fairness is accounted one of the key merits in personal morality and social ethics alike. The sense of justice and fairness is deep-rooted in the human condition. Even in early childhood, the playground exclamations “But now it’s my turn!” and, “That’s just not fair!” represent a familiar, natural reaction. It is clear that the basic ideas involved with fair-playing are at the disposition of children still pursuing life “at mother’s knee.” However, while the idea of fairness is readily and commonly accessible the exact implementation of this conception is something else again. But just what is fair? Just how are we to understand this conception? While the connotation that fairness is to be honored is unproblematic, the question of how this is to be done can be difficult and puzzling. The question of what fairness is as opposed to the issue of what is fair poses substantial difficulty. This question of the nature of distributive fairness and its realizability in a complex world is an unavoidable preliminary for clear thinking about the matter. And just here, considerable difficulties arise, because we are dealing with a very convoluted conception. For starters, we must distinguish between social (or public) and individual (or personal) fairness, each by itself, being a complex and multi-faceted idea. Such complexity leads to difficulty, and in particular engenders a Fairness Paradox which arises as follows: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_5

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• Public policy deliberations, social philosophy, and personal ethics alike, all invoke fairness and accordingly require a clear account of its nature and a definitive exposition of what is at issue here. • Our general understanding of what is at issue with fairness does not square with our intuitive assessment of what is fair in specific cases, and fails to provide a definitive clarification on whose basis a cogent resolution of particular cases can be effected. To all visible appearances, fairness is not more than an unrealizable ideal in this imperfect world of ours. There is no way of smoothing over the differences among people in point of talent, physical attractiveness, family status, health-dispositions, personal congeniality, and a myriad of others factors that provide people with advantages or disadvantages in life. We may, to some extent, compel people to treat one another equitably, but it is clear that we cannot compel Mother Nature to do so. It is a regrettable but irremovable fact that unearned advantages cannot be eradicated from human life. And further difficulties emerge here because a cogent accounting of the details of fairness—a validating rationale for our particular assessments—is badly needed but not readily met. The aim of the present discussion is to show how it is that this problematic situation arises and to explore its implications.

Insufficiency Problems and the Difficult Partnership Between Fairness and Justice Fairness is not necessarily provided for by impartiality. Thus suppose I am to divide $10 among 5 equally entitled recipients and that I propose to give the whole of it to one of them chosen at random (say by drawing straws). It is certainly not fair that one should get all and the others nothing. But yet that division is afforded in an entirely impartial way, since that randomness assures that no one is favored over the other. Difficulties in squaring fairness and justice are bound to arise when there is a scarcity or shortage of the good (or bad) that is being distributed. For example, 50 people would like to go on the bus but only 30 can be accommodated. Or, two patients require an organ transplant, but only one is available. For fairness, the issue might be settled by a coin toss. But that X is treated and Y put aside is still problematic since that both are

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equally deserving. Fairness may be a necessary condition for justice, but it is hardly sufficient. Ideally, distributions should be made with even-handed justice, with each claimant obtaining just exactly what is his/her due. Often, alas, and especially in situations of scarcity, this ideal result cannot be achieved. For example, in situations of triage it might be that only two of X, Y, and Z can be accommodated. Straws are drawn and poor Z is the odd man out. The result is fair, determined by a process in which his chances were every bit as good as those of the others. But it is not just in any larger sense of the term that he should perish while they live. It cannot be said that Z has received his just due. But process of determination cannot be faulted on grounds of unfairness. The interrelation between fairness and justice is complex. A significant overall lesson emerges: In matters of distribution, fairness and justice are critically affected by the state of the resources available for distribution, with three sorts of conditions coming to the forefront. 1. Insufficiency/Poverty: Less than what is required to meet everyone’s basic needs. 2. Sufficiency/Adequacy: Generally enough to meet everyone’s needs. 3. Superfluity/Affluence: More than enough to meet everyone’s needs. Distributive fairness in an economy of scarcity poses particularly difficult issues. For here, the ever-available egalitarian distribution may put everybody below at the basic level of adequacy (and a fortiori desert-­ fairness may be unachievable). Only under favorable economic conditions can various of the desiderata inherent in considerations of justice and fairness conjointly be achieved. For sure, distributive fairness is not a matter of equality, pure and simple; there is no point in equalizing misery. If social justice calls to minimizing inequities of unfair distribution, the most effective means of its pursuit is a healthy and productive economy by whose arrangements conditions of scarcity can be averted. But of course, these considerations only relate to what can be realized in the setting of a sufficiently productive economy; what is or will actually be done in practice is an issue that remains untouched by an analysis based in general principles. And while the issue of what economy can do for its people is a question of theoretical principles, what it will do hinges on something quite different—viz. practical politics.

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Indivisible Goods and Other Complications Indivisible goods constitute a major obstacle to fairness. The problem of allocating indivisible goods justly has concerned thinkers since antiquity. The Biblical story of King Salomon’s award of a baby to competingly claimant mothers affords vivid illustration of this. First off, what are “indivisible goods”? As such, one must count items of value (or even disvalue) that cannot be partitioned into constituent components without fatal injury to their value—that bakery for example. But even the possibility of physical division does not ensure the functional individuality of goods. Half of a painting or sculpture may well be no real artwork at all; a half-dose of antidote may be useless; and half of a land-­ holding may no longer constitute a viable farm. An obvious problem—alike practical and ethical—of course arises with competing as conflicting claims to an indivisible good. Example of such a situation would be • A tie in a competition for an indivisible prize • Tied candidates for election to an office • Equally meritorious claims to a royal succession • Two victims of a poisoning with only a single dose of antidote available • A disaster in flight with two people but only one parachute This list deals only with the division of positive goods. But the reverse problem is no less real, for negativities must also sometimes be allocated. On occasion, someone has to kill the cat, take on a suicide mission, keep their finger in the dyke, and swallow the bitter pill. The complexities of life do not invariably make it possible to “split the bill.” A pile of gold coins can be split among several claimants. When this is not possible—as with a single gold coin—its value can be realized by sale and the proceeds divided. But there will be situations where neither of these equalization tricks will work. With things of substantial value—say mother’s favorite broach—the daughters would never settle for a bit of money in the wake of a sale. If there is to be fair and just division, other stratagems will have to be employed. The antidote-insufficiency case is particularly instructive. Obviously one-half of this particular good is no good at all. Just how then, can one possibly proceed with a “fair distribution” of goods when the goods at issue are partition-resistant?

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The salient consideration at this point is that there are further alternatives at our disposal. For, when the processes of partition and value division in allocating goods both fail us, we can contemplate the variant procedures of: • time sharing • use sharing Thus if two inheriting nephews are equally eligible to receive Uncle Henry’s vacation cottage, they can partition its availability by alternate years. Or two nieces can wear Aunt Mirabel’s diamond tiara during alternate “seasons.” The classic expedient of “taking turns” affords promise here. And analogously there is the prospect of establishing a condominium of use. Thus when otherwise free Uncle Henry’s sailboat could be made available to any of the nephews who want to spend a bit of time on the lake, or his shotgun to whoever wants to go ahunting. Time-­ sharing and use-sharing also afford possible routes to fairness. But there will be other, yet more difficult situations when none of the policies contemplated so far—equality of, proportionate division, or sharing—can properly do the job. Examples would be two equally qualified rivals for the kingship succession or (once again) two competitors for the poison antidote. In such matters, all of the afore-considered expedients will fail to provide satisfactory resolutions. In such cases there remains only one sort of workable equalization, that of opportunity. For there then has to be a winner-take-all outcome the only allocation with a claims to fairness is that of probability. At this point one can proceed to “draw straws,” “toss a coin,” or resort to some similar way of equalizing—albeit not outcomes but chances, not product but process. However, even randomization has its problems and must be managed with care. For consider the following situation: Two (indivisible) items have to be distributed among four duly qualified persons. Each thus deserves a 50: 50 chance of an award. So let it be that for each one a coin is tossed, with “heads” succeeding and tails failing. What could be fairer than that? And yet it would not work—for it could well turn out that in this proceeding only one is chosen—or possibly all four. The lesson is clear. Sometimes randomization becomes necessary, but even here it must be managed appropriately. The situation can prove very puzzling. For consider a situation of scarcity, where two patients each require two units of an antidote for survival,

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and only two are available. Three very different policies of procedure are now available: . Treat everyone equally. 1 2. Maximize the number of lives saved. 3. Maximize life-duration—that is, the number of years saved (in relating to the life expectancy of the patients). These policies lead to very different allocation procedures, and what “fairness” or “justice” requires here is decidedly problematic.

Aspects of Individual Fairness Individual fairness is a matter of how people fare in regard to their own personal claims, entitlements, and rights, and moreover also in comparison to others in the relevant respects. There are basically four modes of individual fairness: 1. Distributive fairness: to distribute benefits and burdens among people equally, with identical shares for each. Such fairness consists in treating everyone exactly alike. 2. Desertive fairness: to distribute benefits and burdens differentially in due proportion with the desert of the individual. Such fairness consists in giving everyone their appropriate shares, their “just dues.” 3. Outcome fairness: to distribute benefits and burdens so as to equalize the resultant conditions of individuals. 4. Satisfaction fairness: to distribute benefit and burden so as to equalize the satisfactions that recipients derive from them. (Unlike the rest, this mode of fairness is a matter of subjective personal reactivity.) This complexity raises the question of how such pivotal factors as shares, benefits, burdens, deserts, outcome, and satisfaction are to be assessed. Moreover, we now encounter the matter of subjective value assessment and the extent of an individual’s idiosyncratic likes, interests, and personal appeal. These personalistic subjectivities of course combat with the objective issue of interpersonal or market values, the valuation effected by the community at large. This poses the potential for conflict among between the various aspects of fairness, regardless of how these evaluative matters are handled.

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Further Illustrations of Difficulty In matters of appropriate division and distribution, fairness turns on the size of the shares allocated to those concerned, with duly claim-­ proportionate shares for those whose claims differ and equal shares otherwise. But at this point, everything hinges on the assessment of claims; and here, the complexity of value comes into play since a division of goods can be equi-valued in one mode and yet, not in another. Thus if two claimants are provided with items of equal market value, one of which is of great personal (sentimental) value to the actual recipient but of indifference to the other, are they really being treated “fairly”? Or again, let it be that a testator has three children living in different regions with different economies. His will divides 12 units among those three children, 6  units of type A, 3 of type B, and 3 of type C and it instructs this to be done fairly. However, the units are valued differently in those three regions, as per Display 1. Dividing the 12 units equally, with the three heirs (H1, H2, and H3), each getting 2 As, 1 B, and 1C, those heirs will in their respective realms obtain: For H1: 9 franks For H2: 10 franks For H3: 8 franks

By contrast, consider the A-B-C units being divided in three alternative ways, as per Display 2. What seems “fair” turns out to be unjust and unreasonable, with outcomes neither equitable nor advantageous for those concerned.

__________________________________________________________ Display 1 PRICE OF COMMODITIES IN DIFFERENT REALMS Realm I

Realm II

Realm III

A units

3 franks

2 franks

1 frank

B units

2 franks

4 franks

3 franks

C units

1 frank

2 franks

3 franks

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__________________________________________________________ Display 2 AN ALTERNATIVE DISTRIBUTION OUTCOMES A

B

C

TOTAL (in franks)

H1

1

2

3

13

H2

2

3

1

16

H3

3

1

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16

__________________________________________________________ The lesson is clear: There is a significant difference between dividing goods equally and dividing value equally, and moreover, between dividing value equally and dividing value optimally (i.e., to the advantage of most or all). Clearly, such considerations bear significantly on the question of fairness. It is also instructive to consider the following situation: X owes $100 to each of four persons. On the way to make (re-)payment, his entire fortune of $400 is reduced to $320 by theft. How should he proceed? Choice 1: Pay $90 to each. [Principle: Be fair: treat like cases alike.] Choice 2: Select one at random and then pay this person $20 only, but the other three their full $100 each. [Principle: Minimize those denied their proper share and maximize those who get their due.]

What we have here is a conflict of ethical principles holding that fairness demands the equal treatment of treating like cases alike, as against giving people their proper share. A good many different considerations are relevant to effecting a fair division in distributing goods (or bads) among otherwise equally entitled recipients: • equality and/or uniformity of recipients • insufficiency (minimization) sufficiency maximization • imponderability of treatment • possibility maximization/negativity minimization • claim proportionality

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None of these factors in or of themselves suffices to ensure fairness. And any one of them could be missing in a given situation (generally of scarcity) with distribution that still lay claim to fairness. In many situations—the election to public office included—it is standard practice to break ties in the distribution of individual goods randomly by casting lots. Such a winner-take-all proceeding is certainly fair in its equalization of chances. But is it also just? It certainly does not distribute benefits in proportion with or alignment to just deserts and reasonable claims on the classic principle that justice is a matter of antique sum trabau. In an economy of scarcity justice is by definition unachievable—there simply is not enough to given everyone their deserved share. But fairness is always available via the principle of share alike in their misfortune. It is decidedly regrettable that justice and fairness can always be in step.

Group Fairness Issues What is fair to individuals is not always fair to groups. For consider the following situation: Two individual benefits have to be distributed among four duly qualified persons. Each thus deserves a 50: 50 chance of an award. So let it be that for each one a coin is tossed, with “heads” succeeding and “tails” failing. What could be fairer than that? And yet it could well chance that on this basis no award whatsoever is made. Then the group, which deserves two awards, winds up getting none! Or again, consider the following supposition: Out of a group of 10 candidates, six qualify for flight training. But only four training slots are available in the program. So the six qualifiers are assigned numbers from 1 to 6. A die is tossed for each candidate. If 1to 4 comes up he is selected, otherwise not. Four individuals, six slots, each individual with a four-out-of-six chance of prevailing. What could be fairer? But nevertheless it could happened that this fair-to-individuals selection procedure will admit only three (out of a possible four) candidates. Clearly, it is unfair to the group.

In proceeding by authentically random selection, each claimant was given an equal chance and treated equally. Each had an equal opportunity for success. The selection process treated them alike. They were treated fairly. But fairness of process just need not issue in justice of outcome. That exactly is the predicament of situations of scarcity.

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On the contrary side it could happen that a selection process that is for the group is unfair to individuals. Suppose group 1 to have members while group 2 has 4. Of a limited member of assignment slots (say 6), four are assigned to group 1 and two to group 2 (which of course seems only fair since the former is twice as large as the latter). But if each group has exactly two unqualified individuals, then the choice of a qualified individual prevailing in group 2 is 100%, but in group 2 is only two thirds or roughly 67%. This is hardly fair to the individuals involved. Again, suppose that one dose of medicine A and one of medicine B are required to cure an ailment. When we now have one dose of A to distribute among two patients, one of whom already has taken B, it might on casual view seem only fair to distribute it by lot between the two. But is it “fair” to take the risk of depriving the other patient of effective treatment when its recipient can receive no possible benefit? Obviously not! Two lines of consideration will impact the analysis: • A distribution cannot be acknowledged as fair if it is clearly at odds with our informal sense of justice. • A specification of fairness cannot be acknowledged as acceptable if it acknowledges as fair distinctions distributions that are at odds with our informal sense of justice. The first relates to the fairness of distributions, and the second to the appropriateness of fairness rules. And their relationship pivots on the plausible requirement that the rules for fairness should always yield acceptable fairness rulings. But here group fairness also has its problems, seeing that various plausible principles prove to be inconsistently untenable, as for example: • A group distribution that allots more is fairer. No. An ampler distribution can distribute that overflow unfairly. Thus 7,1,1,1, is not fairer than 4,2,2,1. • A group distribution that gives equal chances to all is fairer. No. A division that randomly allocated the whole to one recipient and nothing to the rest is not fair, despite the fact that all have equal chances for being lucky. • A group distribution that reduces the gap between the best off and the worst off is fairer.

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No. Thus, 6,6,5,5 reduces the best-to-worst gap (to 1) in contrast to 7,6,5,5 (where it is 2). But yet the former does not look fairer than the latter (where someone gains while no-one loses). • A group distribution that would win by voting is the fairer. No. Here 4,4,0 would likely win over 3,3,2 in a majority vote, but this does not make it more fair. The literature of the subject propounds three main modes of group fairness, according as the pivotal ideal of the enterprise is regarded as being a matter of: 1. Equalizing fairness: treating all alike. 2. Threshold fairness: maximizing (or at least improving) the condition of the worst-off—especially in relation to that best off. 3. Safety-netting fairness: (deficiency-minimization) ensuring that as few as possible fall below a level of minimal sufficiency. These too all have their difficulties. For one thing, requiring like treatment raises the question of parity of shares versus outcomes versus procedures. Moreover, in conditions of scarcity the three approaches can disagree. Thus, suppose an economy of scarcity with only 18 resource units are available for distribution among 6 participants, where 5 is the level of minimal sufficiency. Equalization fairness would call for a distribution of three units apiece, resulting in an equalization of misery, safety-netting fairness would call for allocating five units to a (randomly selected) trio three of the parties—(regrettably leaving others in the lurch). And threshold justice would call for ensuring that no-one has less than five units. Not one of these seemingly plausible modes of distribution can prevail by every criterion of fairness: none gives a totally satisfactory overall result.

Conceptual Intractability The fact of it is that fairness is a conception that admits of a variety of versions F1, F2,. .. Fn each aligned to characteristic principles and procedures whose comprehensive conjunction will frequently be unrealizable on grounds of reciprocal incomparability. Since fairness has many different and sometimes incompatible modes or aspects, there is no all-purpose standard and no single coherent construal that does the job overall.

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In the abstract, to be sure, several possibilities suggest themselves for coping with this plurality; in particular, that to count as unqualifiedly fair a distribution must: . be fair in every mode 1 2. be fair in most modes 3. be fair in some mode But none of these specifications survives critical scrutiny, seeing that each of these varying modes will yield unacceptable results in particular cases. For consider: • We cannot say that a distinction is fair (unqualifiedly) if it is fair in some one of the available versions because this is too wide and admissive. It would have us qualify as fair various deliberation that obviously are not so in our pre-systematic understanding of the matter. • We cannot say that a distinction is fair (unqualifiedly) of it is fair in every one of the available versions because this is too narrow and restrictive. It would have us qualifying as unfair various distributions that obviously are fair on our pre-systematic understanding of the matter. The tangled complexity of the issue gives rise to the paradox that in various not uncommon circumstances the different aspects of fairness can come into conflict with one another, so that being fair in one way (say equal shares) requires unfair in another (equal outcomes). Any such concept is inherently problematic, because it seeks to combine under one single uniform conception a variety of ideas which, in various particular cases lead to conflicting and incompatible results. In such situations, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. No matter how we proceed, we will be unable to accommodate one or another demand of the concept as we actually employ it. The convolutions of fairness are further illustrated by its bearing on the issue of schooling. Here two conflicting lines of thought come to the fore. • fairness calls for equality of share: all children deserve the same amount and quality of schooling.

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• fairness calls for equality of opportunity: every child deserves the amount and quality of schooling suited to their capacity. Given the difference among children in point of interest and talent, there is clearly no possibility of having it both ways here. The reality of it is that in these matters no plausible fixed rule of procedure—such as maximizing equality or for that matter minimizing misfortune—is able to yield an appropriate result across the whole spectrum of relevant situations. Acceptable outcomes seem to call for abandoning all such promising principles, and resort to casuistry’s contextualized recourse to the specifics of the situation. The upshot is that rigorous rulishness simply cannot achieve alignment with our pre-­systematic understanding of fairness. It seems that there is no practicable way to align judgements of fairness with our informal sense of justice. For the pertinent generalities and the particular rulings cannot be systematically coordinated. Seemingly, we have little choice but to call into question the meaningfulness and cogency of the very conception of fairness.

The Problem of Coherence The reality of it is that the conception of fairness is multi-aspectival in such a way that in many circumstances it is simply impossible to accommodate all principles involved and concurrently do justice to every facet of the conception. In some division cases fairness is simply unattainable, so that no matter what division is effected there is room to complain “that’s just not fair.” Equal outcomes can run afoul of unequal claims and entitlements. Should the winner of the contest divide the prize with the loser, or the doctor divide his fee with the patient? Would equal opportunities not support a coin-toss allocation of pay to the chef and the dishwasher? After all, it seems only fair, just, and reasonable to have the winner of a lottery gain the prize: winning the lottery ipso facto entitles him to have it. However, there is nothing further and different that entitles him to being entitled. In wining, the victor’s claims at once become established and secure. To ask, “Is entitlement fair” is like asking, “Is justice actually just?” Justice needs no further validation to qualify as such, nor does fairness; these factors are self-authenticating.

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Conclusion But what is one to say when a concept (such as fairness) is applicatively indefinite in that various situations arise where such a multi-aspectival concept applies in one of its respects but not in another? Three principal possibilities coming to the fore here: • We can say that the concept is equivocal, that it has different versions and that what confronts us is not just one concept, but several different sorts of things. [That of the concept of a “bank” which applies both to river banks and to savings banks, but clearly not in a uniform way.] • We can say that the concept is incoherent or irrational that there are instances which the concept both does and does not apply. [Think of the analogy of a term being non-self-applicable: is “self-inapplicable” itself self-applicable?] • We can say that the concept is ambivalent in that its applicability is undecidable as between saying that it does or that it does not apply, with either way yielding unacceptable consequences. [Think of the “justice” of King Solomon’s problem.] It would appears that the concept of fairness is also of just this problematic and intractable sort, seeing that it exhibits all of these features, and that what is fair in one interpretation fails to be so in yet another. So what we have here is a condition where it often becomes problematic whether a certain conception—in this case fairness—is appropriately applicable. The concept at issue resists specification by universal and unexceptionable rules, and has to be classed as inherently unclear. (Interestingly, it can also be argued that clarity in relation to concepts is itself an unclear concept.) The idea of fairness illustrates a general situation: that of a group of principles (as per equal shares, outcomes, opportunities) that apply differently in different situations, thereby creating a conflict of applicability standards. We have the vague and equivocal idea that fairness has to be egalitarian, and that fair distributions have to equalize. But just what is it that a fair distinction has to equalize: goods, (market) value, personal satisfaction, or? It makes a great deal of difference in practice. The problem is that the concept has different aspects, that yield outcomes in different contexts, and thereby fails to be not co-satisfiable across the whole range

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of its intended applications. If we want to get at the core meaning of the concept, we are thus left empty-handed. (Think here of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s family-resemblance situation, but now in a dysfunctional family.) In the end, it must be acknowledged that a great many of the basic conceptions of political economy (e.g., democracy, or equality) are also of this problematic nature. Such concepts are bound to lead to endless and futile controversy, seeing that a group of conflicting ideas can only be rendered coherent by abandoning some of them. And since this can always be achieved in different ways no one single resolution can ever prove to be rationally compelling and universally acceptable.

CHAPTER 6

On the Rationale of Moral Obligation

Why Be Moral? What is it that moves us to do the right things? For the most part, appropriate motivating considerations can be positioned along a spectrum of decreasing self-centeredness of the expectable benefits, as per: –– Personal benefit reared to one’s self-benefit and personal best interests. –– Affinity benefit good to those in whom one takes an interest. –– Universal benefit aimed at “making the world a better place to live in.” But with regard to morality, one must here move down the scale from the personal to the public. The crux here is an expanding range of benevolent concerns. For there can be no true morality where other-oriented benevolence is entirely absent. Here, two questions arise and must be distinguished: (l) What does morality require of us in order to qualify as a morally good person? and (2) Why should we do that which morality requires and so why be a morally good person at all? In briefest compass, the answer to the first question is this: what morality asks of us is to act so as to take the best interests of others into

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_6

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appropriate account, and to do so for exactly that reason, that is, out of a respect for and acknowledgment of their status as persons whose interests deserve our recognition. And this leads straightaway to the second issue, the $64,000 question of moral theory: Why should the circumstance that something benefits your interests afford a reason for me to do it? This question forms the core of the problem of the rationale of moral obligation. In a classic paper of early twentieth century 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 this—by conceded hypothesis—is what it is: when rightness or truth have once been granted, 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, 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 by its very nature constitutes a valid reason for action—albeit a characteristically moral reason. And yet this line of reflection, though inherently correct, is dialectically unhelpful. Self-support has its limitations as a justificatory rationale. The questions still remain: “What is it that makes reasons of moral appropriateness into good reasons?” and “Why should l be the sort of person who accepts moral grounds as validly compelling for his own deliberations?” Granting that being moral indeed is the appropriate thing to do, there must be some further sort of reason for this line of consideration, one that is not wholly internal to morality itself, that renders it reasonable for people to be moral. We must thus probe more deeply for a fully satisfactory resolution to the question “Why be moral?”—one that improves on the true but unhelpful answer of “Because it is the (morally) right thing to do.” There has to be more to it than that. But where are we to look for it?

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The Social Point of View Is this perhaps simply a matter of public demand? Might morality merely be a socially construed mandate? For sure, it is strongly in the interests of society that its members should be moral, since once people are so motivated their actions will proceed along generally beneficial lines by the convenient pathway of inner impetus rather than external constraint. Insofar as society can offload onto individual initiative the analyzing of people’s behavior toward generally advantageous lines that avert social fractions and dissonance—and can accomplish this without the enforcement measures of agent-external controls—one achieves more convenient, efficient, and benign ways of providing people with a viable modus vivendi. Society, in sum, does well to operate a system of benefits and penalties—of carrots and sticks—by instituting processes that make those moral behaviors that are generally beneficial also prove to be narrowly beneficial to the “selfish” advantage of its members. It is, after all, a prime goal of rational social endeavor to create a user-friendly world order in which rational people can be content to live. Nevertheless, the standpoint of morality itself runs in exactly the opposite direction. Self-interest can provide a motive for action—and so for doing what morality demands—but it cannot provide a suitable rationale for morality by providing reasons for this. And the reason for this is straightforward: an act done for purely self-interested reasons thereby compromises its moral credentials. And yet another distinction is crucial in the present context, namely that between selfish (narrow) and enlightened (wide) self-interest. For people not only frequently do but also generally should make the interests of others a part of their own—shaping their own personal interests so as to include those of others.2 Most of us do, and all of us should, construe our best interests in such a larger way to include those of parents, siblings, spouses, children, and—perhaps in decreasing degree—friends and associates, fellow countrymen, humanity at large, and possibly sectors of the animal kingdom as well. (With real interests, something akin to a law of gravitation is operative, where the strength of attraction falls off with the “social distance” separating other individuals from ourselves.) Only on the basis of a shared morality of reliability, honesty, and concern for one another can the collaboration, mutual aid, and group solidarity essential to collaboration and collective effort find a footing. And on the shared morality of common concerns that moves from my interest and

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your interest to the commonality of our interests can we hope to progress with the larger enterprises that require a shared and collaborative ethics to secure a stable and reliable footing. Putting these two lines of thought together, we arrive at the theses: (1) Rationality requires doing what one can to cultivate one’s determinably real self-interest. (2) People’s self-interest, properly construed, also embraces the best interests of others to some extent. Now, given that due attention to the (real) interests of others lies at the heart of morality, it follows on this basis that in some degree at least, rationality carries morality in its wake. Once we recognize that the pursuit of (determinably) real self-interest in its wider, enlightened mode is an appropriate objective for people in general, it becomes clear—seeing that it is a cardinal principle of morality to safeguard and promote the real interest of people—that morality is in substantial measure not only compatible with the demands of reason, but itself constitutes an important part of them. Rationality calls on us to act for the best. But for whose best? A whole host of issues springs up at this point. Whose goods and advantages and interests are at stake with rationality? Is it just the agent’s (i.e., does selfishness lie at the core of rationality)? Or is it that of people in general, so that rationality involves morality as well? The facile either/or dichotomy of self-interest versus general interest must be transcended by recognizing that—as many philosophers since Plato have stressed—the general interest is itself a crucial part or aspect of one’s self-interest. It is in my own interest to care for the interests of others—that their interests are at one remove a part of my own because human life is communal and human welfare systemic. The boat we build through our actions is one that we must sail in together. Because of the systemic interconnectedness of the world’s arrangements, it would be a gross mistake to think that action contrary to the welfare of others is without consequences for one’s own. Yet this is not the end of the story. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons—and specifically with a view to selfish advantage—is not to behave morally. As Kant so eloquently argued, it is ultimately the nature of motives that determines the moral worth of actions. To be a moral person is to school oneself to do the right thing for the right reason—exactly because it is moral.

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The Moral Impetus of Rationality “But what’s in it for me?” This is a good question. And the answer is: it depends. If I am your “average bloke,” an “ordinary person,” “l’homme moyen sensible,” then it will depend on how society has organized itself in relation to ordinary people at large by making beneficial to the individual that which is beneficial to the community. To be sure, one has a personal interest in the moral order because being just of such an order benefits oneself also. And the most effective thing I can do on behalf of morality and maintaining such an order is to be a moral person myself. So sheer rules of interest provides a motivation to morality. But it does not go to the heart of that matter. For while self-­ interest can motivate, morality cannot validate it. As Immanuel Kant emphasized time and gain, doing what morality requires us does not suffice for moral credit. To gain such approbation—to be a morally good person—we must act out of appropriate motives—and self-interest just is not one of them. For moral credit, we must do the morally right thing for the morally right reason. This issue needs closer examination. 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 that 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, at least, 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 a 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.3 What matters for us rational agents is not simply the sort of creature we are, but the sort of creature we conceive and believe ourselves to be called upon to be—and thereby the sort of creature we purport ourselves to be. Now then, as Kant maintained,4 we take ourselves to be free rational agents if, in consequence, we must assume the inherent commitments and obligations of such beings. As intelligent beings, we rational agents have no excuse for avoiding the questions: “What sort of creature am I? What

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possibilities and opportunities does this engender? What should I do to make of myself that which I ought to be? How can I realize my highest potential?” By its very nature as such, an intelligent agent who has the capacity and opportunity for value realization ought to realize it. The principle at issue is a conceptual one, implicit in the very idea of value. One could not appropriately call something a value if it were not of such a sort that a rational agent ought to opt for it whenever the good it is available at a proportionality reasonable cost.

On Self-Interest and Selfishness But what of those situations in which doing the moral thing patently exacts a price in terms of selfish personal advantage? One must look on this issue as being much like any other conflict-of-­ interest situation. I simply have to decide on my priorities, whether they stand with morality or with selfish advantage. And this decision has larger implications: it is not just a matter of deciding for this case, but owing to the ramified nature of the situation, it is a matter of deciding what sort of person I am to be. And it is here that the crucial difference between real and seeming interests comes into play. For in acting immorally, I produce two sorts of results: –– the direct result of my action—presumably certain gains that it would secure for me; –– the indirect result of making me a person of a certain sort, viz., someone who would do that sort of thing to realize that sort of result. In so acting, I make myself into a person of a certain sort. Even if no one else knows it, the fact still remains that that’s what I’ve done—I’ve made myself into a person who would do that sort of thing in order to realize that sort of benefit. And my self-respect is (or ought to be) of such great value to me that the advantages I could secure by immoral action do not countervail against the loss of self-respect that would be involved. In acting in a way that I recognize to be wrong, I sustain a loss and if my head is screwed on aright, sustain it where it counts the most—in my own sight. A vicarious concern for others enriches one’s life and makes one not only a better but also a more fully developed person.

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There is nothing in any way inherently unreasonable or irrational about a selfless concern for others. Indeed, there is no adequate reason for calling a man unreasonable if his actions militate against his own narrowly selfish advantage. To be sure, a man will be unreasonable, indeed irrational, if his actions systematically impede his objectives. But—convenient oversimplification apart—there is no justification whatever for holding that his only rationally legitimate objectives are of the selfish or self-­ interested sort. It is a travesty of this concept to construe rationality in terms of prudential self-advantage. Neither for individuals nor for societies is “the pursuit of happiness” (construed as narrowly selfish pleasure) an appropriate guide to action; it must be counterbalanced by recognizing the importance of doing those things which we can later look back on with justifiable pride. Just as it is rational to do the prudent thing (endure the dentist’s ministrations, say) even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires, so the same story holds with doing the moral thing. Being a moral person is prominent among our best overall interests. And so, confronted with the choice between a moral action and a narrowly selfish action that only satisfies my mere desires, my real or true interest automatically lies on the side of the moral choice. Morality is indeed a matter of self-interest, but only if one is prepared to distinguish true (real) interests from merely apparent interests (“what’s good for me” from “what I want”).

The Benefit of Norms Well-intentioned people would do well to regard being antisocial—flaunting the established rules and customs of the society—as something that merits not just displeasure but also condemnation. It is a matter of doing something that is not just annoying but also harmful, not just boorish but also wrong. It deserves not just dislike and disapproval, but also reproach and reprehension. But how is it that social practice has such normative force? What accounts for the fact that we should drive on the putatively mandated side of the road, greet random strangers we encounter in the morning, or eat our food in a mannerly way? Whence comes this link between social conformity and ethical normativity? Why is social conformity not only common but also ethically mandated? The answer is straightforward. What ties social conformity to moral propriety is the factor of social benefit—of public utility and general advantage. For acting with a view to the interests of others is at the heart and core of morality, and those laws and customs have come to be established

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practices and constituted exactly because following them is to the general benefit of the community at large. To be sure, there may well be no inherent advantage to driving on the left (or right) side of the road. But once custom or law produces a coordinated generality of procedure one way or the other, keeping to the rule is obviously to everyone’s advantage in avoiding inconvenience, delay, and collisions. Accordingly, it is the factor of general advantage that mediates between mere—and often arbitrary—custom and ethical propriety, endorsing the former with the authority of the latter. In this way, what is on first view mere social practice comes to acquire the force of moral mandate. Conforming to the rule of practice is something one ought to do (with all ethically due normativity) because it effectively advantages the general benefit, making an ethical mandate out of what is inherently a mere social practice. After all, the uniformization inherent in an established social practice serves the communal benefit in many ways, specifically by: –– –– –– ––

reducing friction in social interaction, aligning conduct that makes it easier to indicate what is going on, shaping expectations in ways that facilitate social interaction, showing respect for others as individuals and the society at large.

The internalization in individual consciousness of the circumambient society’s coordination rules has a substantial social advantage. For once a mode of precedence acquires the status of an ethical and moral mandate, it becomes self-policed in the consciousness of individuals. To the extent that this acculturation process succeeds, it averts the need for the enforcement mechanisms that are artificial, expensive, and often unpleasant.

The Centrality of Reason There is nothing that we, or at any rate the rational among us, can see as a more serious loss than that of reason—we would assuredly “give our right arm” to avert its loss. We value rationality in ourselves. But being rational we value it for a reason, namely because it has value. For, valuing something is one thing and its actually having value another. And when something critically does value, then it does so whenever and wherever it exists. The matter becomes clarified by posing the question of our interest in and responsible for our

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posterity—and especially our distinct posterity. We should care for them because we have an interest in their well-being and in particular in their condition as rational agents. In disrespecting their interest and in dismissing their significance we correspondingly degrade ourselves. Clearly, one of the key obligations of intelligent beings—be they humans or extraterrestrial aliens—is to satisfy the requirement, and indeed the need, to see oneself as something higher and worthier than mere animals—as beings who, equipped with minds and spirits, occupy a place of special worth and significance upon the world’s stage. And we do (and should!) incline to see immoral action as degrading and unworthy, as diminishing us in our own sight. In the face of unethical and unworthy action, we can no longer see ourselves as the sorts of beings we prefer to think of ourselves as being. Looking down on oneself is something no one finds anything but distasteful. Psychopaths aside, those who yield to the temptation of unethical, immoral, and anti-social behavior generally devote considerable psychic effort and energy to invent excuses—excuses which, by and large, do not succeed in convincing even themselves. The upshot of such considerations is that to fail to be moral is to defeat our own aspirations 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 when 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. Accordingly, an authentically rational being will value—and consequently respect and foster—rationality in others. The very rationality of such a being will enjoin the morality of acting so as to protect and promote the best interests of other rational beings. 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 honor in other rational agents what I value in myself. In taking the view that what I do value actually has value, then I must deem others also as worthy of respect, care, and so on by virtue of their status as rational agents. What is at issue

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is not so much a matter of reciprocity as one of rational coherence with claims that one does (and 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 (e.g., reflective self-respect), then this item by virtue of this very fact assumes the status of something we are bound to recognize as valuable and deserving of being valued. In seeing 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

Rationality as the Pivot of Morality Back, then, to that original question: “Why be moral—why do what morality demands?” There is an ambiguity here that can be construed in three importantly different ways: ( 1) Why be moral—from the moral point of view? (2) Why be moral—from the standpoint of enlightened prudence, of an intelligent heed of our real interests? (3) Why be moral—from the standpoint of the selfishness of desire satisfaction? Here, as elsewhere, the answer we arrive at depends on the question we ask. If we ask (1), the answer is simply that morality itself demands it. And if we ask (2), the answer is that enlightened prudence also demands it, that our real and truly “best” interests require it for the reasons indicated above. But if we ask (3), the situation is quite different. There just is no earthly way to validate morality from the standpoint of selfishness, of self-­ interest narrowly construed, in terms of the satisfaction of mere (raw and unevaluated) desires. And this is to be welcomed, not lamented—from the moral point of view, at any rate. This is for the very reason that the being of morality lies in countervailing the siren call of immediate gratification. All considered, it is point (2) that is crucial here. And in its light, the basic question of the relation of morality and rationality may be resolved via the argument: 1. The intelligent cultivation of one’s real self-interest is quintessentially rational.

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2. It is to one’s real self-interest to act morally—even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires. Therefore: It is rational to be moral. An objector may well, at this point, remind us of Hegel’s well-known complaint that a Kantian ethic of respect for persons is empty and contentless. But such an objection is not in fact well taken. For respecting people as free agents with wills of their own also involves respect for their interests and well-being, their aspirations and projects, and even their mere wants and preferences insofar as these do not conflict with larger desiderata. And in particular, the expectations that people form of one another in their reciprocal interactions within a social community give a rich substantive concretization to an otherwise schematic notion of the claims of personhood. Our place in the world’s scheme of things—our status as self-proclaimed rational creatures—imposes on us the ontologically grounded obligation to confront issues of self-definition and self-determination, to make the most of our opportunities for realizing the good. As rational agents, we “owe it to ourselves”—and derivatively to “the world at large” by virtue of our place within it—to achieve our positive potential: to realize ourselves as the sort of beings we purport to be and indeed are, and to take our proper place in the world’s scheme of things. To stint one’s ontological potential for the good through one’s own deliberate action or inaction is fundamentally wrong. We have only one chance at life and to let its opportunities for the good slip is a shameful waste—regrettable alike from the standpoint of the world’s interests and our own. “Be the best you can be—become what you ought!”—so runs this ontological imperative for a rational agent to make the most and best use of his opportunities in this world for cultivating his potential for the good. Clearly, morality does not inhere in the realization of human potential as such, with no questions asked. Every person has a potential for both good and evil—in principle everyone has the potential of being a saint or a sinner. The pivotal question is what endows life with worth and value— what are the conditions that make for a rewarding and worthwhile life? 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 it involves seeing them as

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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 or 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 myself, but only because I have a certain sort of respect-­ evoking feature (e.g., 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 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 correspondingly degrade ourselves, while in doing them honor we thereby honor ourselves. As Kurt Baier has argued cogently during many years, everyone benefits in a setting in which people regard moral considerations of right and wrong as the weightiest of reasons. Thus, prudence (due heed of my own interests) and morality (due heed of the interests of others) alike enjoin the primacy of moral considerations. And so, a rationality geared to the heed of one’s true interests is bound to add its voice to the chances of approbation. Morality is indissolubly linked to the enlightened prudence of real or true interest through the simple (Hobbesian) recognition that everyone— oneself prominently included—has a better chance of faring well in a society of moral agents. Being moral, in sum, is the sensible thing to do. There is nothing all that complex about the relationship between rationality and morality. We have, more or less by definition:

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rationality: doing the intelligent thing (in matters of belief, action, and evaluation), morality: doing the right thing (in regard to action affecting the interests of others). The alignment of morality with rationality is established through the fact that the intelligent thing to do and the right thing to do will ultimately coincide. To forego rationality is to abandon the intelligent cultivation of appropriate interests. Given the fact that we have a genuine interest in being the sort of person who cares for the interests of others, morality is part of the package. The rational person will also be morally good—conscientious, compassionate, kind, and so on—because his own best interest is served thereby, seeing that he has a real and sizable stake in being the sort of person who can take rational satisfaction in the contemplation of his own way of life. “But what if I just don’t happen to be the sort of person who gets satisfaction from contemplating the quality of my life and its constituent actions?” Then, (1) we must feel sorry for you, and (2) we are (normatively) justified in setting your stake in the matter at naught. Your stance is like that of someone who says, “Appropriate human values mean nothing to me.” Your position seems afraid of that most basic of rational imperatives: to realize oneself as the sort of creature one happens to be. In being profoundly unintelligent, such a stance is profoundly irrational as well. In the final analysis, to act immorally is to act unreasonably because it undermines one’s true interests—partly for Hobbesian reasons (fouling one’s own nest) and partly for Platonic ones (failing to realize one’s human potential). Even David Hume was drawn toward such a view. As he saw it, even if those “sensible knaves” whom he imagines to take improper advantage of their opportunities for selfish gains in a moral society “were … ever so secret and successful,” they would still themselves emerge “in the end, the greatest dupes” because they have “sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a [good] character, with themselves at least,” so that the sensible knave automatically foregoes the pleasure of “peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct.”6 And 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).

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Such a position is essentially identical with that which Socrates propounds in the “ring of Gygas” parable of Plato’s The Republic: that being unjust and immoral—regardless of what immediate benefits it may gain for us—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. (“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 impetus of morality subsists through its rewards, either intrinsic (“virtue is its own reward”) or prudential. We should be moral not because it (somehow) pays, but because we ought to be so as part and parcel of our ontological obligation toward self-realization. But do not rationality and reasonableness themselves require vindication? Let us suppose that in defending an action it is shown that (under the circumstances) it outweighed its alternatives in reasonableness. Does this put an end to the matter, or must some further champion be coaxed into the list on behalf of reasonableness itself? I do not see how we can answer otherwise than NO! It seems to me that a reasonable act or judgment requires defense no more than a good move or plan at chess does. Its reasonableness—like the goodness of the move—may require demonstration, but no additional justifications can reasonably be required. So, in the final analysis, the rationale of morality is rooted in rationality itself. I should act morally, in sum, because morality is a matter of honoring the interests of people—of rational agents in general—and in valuing rationality in oneself. As a rational being, I cannot but value rationality for itself, and am thereby bound to value it in others. And so prudential considerations do also come into play in the validation of morality. It is a crucial part of the rational cultivation of our own best interests not to deprive ourselves—and through our own actions—of that self-esteem which goes with membership in a group to which we are pleased and proud to belong: indeed, belonging to which grounds our sense of identity as the sorts of beings we are. Injury to this sense of self-­ worth is one of the very worst things that can happen to a person, since it degrades one where it counts for the most—in one’s own eyes. A feeling of self-worth as a rational being is crucial to one’s sense of legitimacy— one’s ability to see oneself as having a worthy place in the world’s scheme of things. Self-interest is indeed at work here—but also something deeper than just that. A universal obligation to morality is inextricably bound up with a fundamental ontological interest that we have, by virtue of our very

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nature, in being truly fulfilled as the sorts of creatures that we see ourselves as being—as free rational agents. Morality is accordingly geared to rationality in a dual way: (1) morality is a matter OF rationality—of acting for good reasons of a certain (characteristically moral) sort; and (2) 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 the validation of morality in terms of the inherent requisites of rational agency thoroughly consonant with the value structure of morality itself.7 The pivotal questions at issue here is: What is it that qualifies your well-being for my consideration and entitles your condition to qualify as a matter of concern for me, thus making your best interests into a component part of mine?

The line of reasoning of our present response is straightforward in hinging thus linkage on the commonality of condition. It has the format: (1) There is something crucial about me (let’s call it X) that I prize and value about me and in view of which I deem myself worthy of special consideration. (2) As a rational creature, I value this X because I see it as being inherently valuable. (3) But if I acknowledge that X does indeed have value, I am bound (as a rational being) to value it whenever and wherever present. (4) Therefore, when I recognize the presence of X in you, I am rationally bound to concede that you too—just like myself—deserve special considerations in virtue of that X-correlative status. So much for the format of the reasoning. Its substance will of course hinge on the specification of X—that pivotal factor in view of what I deem myself to merit particular acknowledgment, concerns, and concern, And as already set out at length is, this pivotal factor is my rationality, my status as a self-managing rational being. And so it emerges that rationality is the normatively crucial factor on which the present validation of morality hinges throughout.

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The Problem of Normative Force A question yet remains. If morality is a matter of (true) self-interest, then whence does it get its normative force, its obligatoriness via the stern impetration of duty? In this context, three levels of impetration need to be considered in their interactive interrelation: (1) the ontological: realize your highest potential—an obligation you owe not only to yourself but also to the world system that has brought you forth, (2) the rational: do the best you can in the circumstances in which you find yourself, (3) the moral: safeguard the interests of others in the circumstances in which you find yourself. Now, (3) can indeed be grounded in (2)—safeguarding the interests of others is part of acting for the best, including what is the best for us. But its normative force does not inhere simply in this. For, in the final analysis, it derives from (1), in which (2) itself is ultimately grounded. Morality is a matter of (true) self-interest all right. But it is not this circumstance that endows its injunctions with their normative force. That is something that comes from the ontological imperative to realize the best that is in us—to make the most of our opportunities for the good.8 But now consider the following line of objection: You have argued that rationality carries morality in its wake so that rational people ought, for their very rationality’s sake, embark on the moral enterprise. What price morality, then?

Two points merit special emphasis here. The first is that the objection comes too late. You are already engaged with us on a discussion of “Why be moral?” and what such an inquiry into the reason why all too obviously does is to look for a good reason. After all, what sort of reason beside a second, rationally cogent one could we possibly be after? Would you really prepared to set the enterprise of reason at naught? Are there really capacities that you are prepared to value more highly than your reason? Surely, the answer is a foregone conclusion here? But be this as it may, the fact

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remains that in asking for a rationale of good reasons for morality, and one is already enrolled within the ranks of rationality, an enlistment which, in its acknowledgment of the value of reason, carries a commitment to morality in its wake.

Notes 1. H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind, vol. 21 (1912), pp. 21–37. 2. Cf. the author’s Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory (Pittsburgh, 1975). 3. 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. 4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A814/B842. 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. David Hume, Enquiry, II, p. 283. 7. Some further deliberations relevant to the theses of this discussion can be found in the author’s The Validity of Value (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 8. This chapter draws upon my “Rationality and Moral Obligation,” Synthese, vol. 72 (1987), pp. 29–43.

CHAPTER 7

Social Gravitation

Social Distance and Entanglement: E ^ D2 The interpersonal or social distance (D) between two people in point of remoteness or proximity is the result of the various types of relationships obtaining between them. Specifically this distance—which is of course socio-ethical and not physical—is a product of the extent to which their lives are functionally connected and socially entangled (E) by relationship of: –– familial or clan kinship (husband/wife, uncle or nephew) –– personal affectivity or and association (as friend or professional contact) –– frequency and modes of contact (as neighbor or colleague or co-worker) –– role connectivity (as doctor/patient, student/teacher, client/ customer) All these are formative considerations in answering the question “How close are they?” with distance as a matter of the extent (amount) and the (depth) of the relationships at issue. To keep the matter cognitively manageable one could, for convenience, class the answer to this question on the scale ranging from nil to extensive on the scale indicated in Fig. 7.1.

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SOCIAL DISTANCE VIA INTERACTIVE PROXIMITY •

very close

•

close/proximate

•

middling

•

distant

•

remote

great middling small

NOTE: For present purposes it should be noted proximity is inversely proportional to distance, so that P  D, to put some abbreviative notation to work (~ for proportionality and ⌃ for its inverse). Increasing distance is a matter of going down the list, and increasing proximity one of going up.

Fig. 7.1  Social distance via interactive proximity

Reflecting the extent to which the individuals concerned are interactively engaged in interrelationship with one another, human nature has it that the greater the social distance, the less the practical opportunities for expressing personal concern for our fellows. However, such social interchange is something that falls off rapidly with the social distance between individuals. And it does so not just decrease in proportion with distance, but rather—thanks to the reticulated structure of personal interaction entanglement—decreases drastically as distance grows, namely with the square thereof: twice the distance, four times less entanglement, and so on. The upshot is thus a Newton-reminiscent Inverse Square Law of Social Entanglement Diminution: E ^ D2. (Note: here ~ stands for direct proportion 1 and ^ for inverse proportion, where X ^ y when X ~ .) y The grounding of this relationship lies in the fact that in a network of any sort—any spider-web-like interlinkage—each node is most strongly bound to those nearby. Tightness of linkage falls off in such a manner that connectivity decreases not with the distance, but rather its square with increasing distance,

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connections become diffused over multiple possibilities, growing convoluted and complex. And so in the present case also we have it that the functional entanglement of people diminishes with increasing social distance in line with the square of the distance at issue.

Socio/Ethical Concern or Responsibility: S ~ E The social obligation and ethical responsibility that people bear for care and concern for the welfare and well-being of others hinges on their social entanglement, seeing that the opportunity for giving it effective expression is greatly facilitated by entanglement so that the best prospects for effective support come “closer to home”. In consequence we have S ~ E, and since E ^ D2 as above, we also have S ^ D2. Something akin to social gravity binds people into and ethically interconnected community. But distance makes the link grow thinner.

The Ethical Dimension and the Good Samaritan Problem But should social distance so function here? What of the lesson of the Good Samaritan? The fact is that very different issues are at stake there. And it is one of the most basic teachings of epistemology that different questions require different answers. There are two very different issues since social connectivity is one thing and ethical responsibility another: (Q1) With whom are we obligated or at least well-advised to engage in positive social interaction? (Q2) With whom do we stand under an obligation to provide needed aid in difficult conditions? The questions being different, so are the appropriate answers: (Q1) Our social obligations are with whom we are socially entangled: those at relatively little interactive distance from us and thereby well within the effective range for positive interaction.

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(Q2) Our human obligations are with those in the most urgent need of our assistance irrespective to social distance not socially founded but rooted in or siblinghood as children of God. Accordingly, the parable of the Good Samaritan makes an important point. For, to reemphasize, social connectivity is one thing and ethical responsibility another. Social connectivity depends on entanglement—on interpersonal connection. Here “birds of a feather flock together” and “blood is thicker than water.” But the responsibility for aid-in-need is a matter of shard humanity, created not by connectivity but by need. Unless we are socially entangled you have no claim on me for aid in your wants, but mere humanity suffices to establish a claim in relation to actual needs. The parable stresses the crucial idea that a universal concern for those in need with whom we have an ethical entanglement via our commonality as fellow humans is something above and beyond the social entanglement of interactive relationships. It reminds us that the distance between people at issue with social entanglement is effectively annihilated by our ethical entanglement as fellow humans, where social distance becomes irrelevant and set at zero so that all our fellow humans become neighbors. The pivotal question, “Who really is my neighbor?”—becomes an ethical rather than a socio-secular issue when one’s fellows are in evident need of aid and support.

Lesson/Principles In summary, the lessons of these deliberations come to: (1) The extent of social entanglement E (connectivity) between two individuals falls off with the square of the social distance D that separates them. E ^ D2 (where ^ is inverse proportionality) Here “social distance” should be seen in its ethical rather than merely empirical dimension. (2) The social solidarity S among parties stands proportionally coordinate with their social entanglement: S~E

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(3) It follows from (1)–(2) that: S ^ D2 (A figuratively Newtonian “Law of Social Solidarity” is in operation.) Our social solidarity with others is thus not uniform and equal but falls off rapidly—that is, as per square—with social distance. (4) Accordingly, gravity-like interconnection unites us humans all in a vast manifold of social solidarity and interconnective reciprocity. (5) Ethical responsibility R is however constant: R ~ k. Unlike social distance our ethical proximity to others is something uniform. It is independent of social entanglement but roots in humanity as such.

PART II

Essays on Philosophy

CHAPTER 8

Normative Rationality

Levels of Normativity At the level of the cosmos at large, the evolution of normativity proceeds over four stages: . CAUSALITY: lawful regularity of natural occurrence 1 2. AFFECTIVITY: pro or con responsiveness by organic beings 3. PURPOSIVENESS: success or failure in agency 4. RATIONALITY: appropriateness in goal selection. The realization of level 1 began with the big bang, of level 2 with the emergence of organisms, of level 3 with the emergence of intelligent beings, and of level 4 with the development of rational agents. This fourth category hinges on the selection and cultivation of agents of those appropriate goals—viz. those realizations would effectively foster the rational systematicity of the whole. The crucial and definitive feature that comes into operation at level 4 is that of authentication. For it is here that rationality bears on the all-­ important distinction between what is actually and authentically. Table 8.1 spells out the range of relevant differentiation. Throughout this range, we have the distinction between what is factually operative and real/actual, and what is rationally appropriate and

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Table 8.1  Factuality Versus normativity Factual dimension (observationally descriptive)

Normative dimension (rationally evaluative)

appraisal opinion adopted aims seeming or appraising actual objectives seeming interests and benefits

reality judgment reasonable objectives actually being appropriate goals genuine interests and benefits

Note: The normative dimension supervenes upon the factual via rational evaluation. It emerges at Stage 4 of that initial staging of normativity

properly justified, between what is actually done and what is proper and reasonable to do. For whatever we respectively undertake to do is in principle something whose doing can be circumstantially appropriate or else not. And in matters of inquiry, this holds special emphasis with inductive reasoning about matters of fact.

The Need for Practical Reason in Induction Logic with its distinction of correct and cogent as against incorrect and improper lies at the heart of theoretical reasoning regarding matters of fact. But it is not really all that helpful in managing our inquiries. The aim and object of rational inquiry is to put us into possession of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” No doubt, this is a goal and not the destination. Logic can avert inconsistency and aim toward having “nothing but the truth.” But—save in the case of trivialities such as “Either p or not-p”—it can do nothing to ensure that we actually have the truth. After we already have truth, logic can assure us of the consequences of something general. But—again, trivialities apart—it can do nothing to get the process of truth-acceptance evaluation started. Assessment of actuality, acceptability evaluation, lies not in the sphere of logic and deductibility but in the project of inductive deliberation. How is one to validate the inductive leap from particular cases of established fact to the unlimited and inaccessible generality that is never within our determinable grasp? How is one to get a start in matter of generality and to justify moving from examined to unexamined situations?

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This (so-called) problem of induction as put on the agenda of philosophy by David Hume, centers on the validation of generalizations. How is one to justify a move from particular premises (“These As are Bs”) to obtain a general universal conclusion (“All As are Bs”), given that all the information at our cognitive disposal regards limited particularities. As logicians since Aristotle have recognized, no patently cogent mode of reasoning can certify such a venture into the realm of the yet unknown. What is needed here is a normatively cogent means of gap-filling able to effect a transit from particularity to generality—from limited experience to universal convictions. Such reasoning is unavoidably enthymematic in requiring a supplementary premiss. Evidently, demonstration cannot do the job here, since what goes is beyond the available information. It is clear that deduction cannot provide this. Nor can induction be of service here because of the patent circularity of such self-justification. The fact of it is that this cannot be realized by theoretical reason at all, but calls for something additional and different, namely practical reason. For while theoretical reason proceeds from premisses that put us into the possession of substantiating considerations, practical reason proceeds their lack; its grounding lies in need, filling a gap in information by presuming and postulating certain requisite facts. Unlike theoretical reason, which seeks to establish the actual or likely truth of its conclusions on the basis of what we already have, practical reason approaches the facts obliquely, via the reasonableness of their acceptance. A conclusion reached by practical reason derives not from inferential reasoning at all, but from a purposive doctrine of rational deliberation, grounded in functional rather than factual considerations. Its structure takes the format: • We require the realization of a certain end-result—in this case closing an information-gap. • We realize that without accepting certain contentions, achievement of this end remains somewhere between impracticable and impossible. • We heed the principle that “Necessity acknowledges no limits.” Therefore: We deem ourselves rationally entitled to accept C. This nonstandard mode of rational validation is governed not by possession but by lack. Its basis of such a proceeding is not actual evidentiation via the theoretical principle that “There are good and cogent substantiating reasons for their acceptance.” Rather, they rest on the

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practical principle that: “There are good and cogent procedural grounds for their acceptance—and no good and cogent reasons against it.” Thus while theoretical reason is based on positivity and evidentiating substantiation, practical reason is based on a negativity and unacceptable vacuity. Its grounding is drawn not on givens but on needs—specifically on the consideration that we cannot make proper sense of things overall without understanding certain commitments whose acceptance rests not on evidentiation but their justification as a sine qua non for realizing our cognitive needs. Accordingly, it justifies the acceptance of claims not via their evidential merits but via their cognitive utility in relation to the cognitive requirements of our situation. One may well ask, “Why should our need for an item of information provide evidence for its acceptance?” And of course, the answer is that it doesn’t. However, it does certainly provide rational grounds for its acceptance. Thus, consider you need to get from here (H) to there (T). The only viable route is via a bridge (at B) that may well have been washed out in the recent deluge. Should you chance it and proceed to B? You have no evidence that this will get you to T. But for aught you know to the contrary it may well do so. And it is in fact your only hope for doing so if this is possible at all. And so you place your bet and take your chances. Again, suppose the following configuration as given: 0

1

0

1

0

?

0

?

0

How is informative gap-filling to resolve those? Clearly, by filling both with 1, we maximize the symmetries of the situation, thus optimizing on our cognitive needs, hopes, and aspirations. Throughout such this-or-nothing better situations our information needs can properly provide direction in situations of insufficient evidence. (But of course, such a shift from evidence to need makes this proceeding one of practical rather than purely theoretical reason.) And in the end, the only way to legitimate inductive thought is to proceed via a course of practical reasoning. For the irony of the situation is that in the end practical reason has primacy over the theoretical. For the

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rational reason always requires premisses. And just where are these to come ultimately when we enter in the justificatory regress of looking for the reasons for reasons for premiss acceptance. In the final analysis, there is nowhere else to go, no basis on which to stand, save for the indications of practical reason. And the ultimate justification here lies in the fundamentality of practical consideration that this is the only effective avenue for meeting our cognitive needs. And so in the final analysis the expression “inductive logic” is a contradiction in terms. For inductive reasoning is not a matter of logic at all but one of ethics, as a proceeding of normatively cogent reasoning in its practical (rather than theoretical) dimension. For, logic is a matter of consequences while induction is a matter of requisites.

CHAPTER 9

Speculation and “What If?” Thinking

Speculation “What if?” is the doorway to speculative thinking. As our human position here on earth developed over the ages, our range of concern increasingly encompassed irreality, with truths and falsities no longer the virtually sole objects of its concern. We came to be in a position to afford considering situations we neither accept nor reject but simply contemplate as instructive possibilities. In cognitive regards, we have become amphibious creatures, with minds which, for better or worse, dwell not only the realm of the real, but also that of fictitious supposition. “What if” suppositions are matters of fictive pretense, of cognitive play-­ acting: they state not actual facts but mere assumptions and hypothesis. Unlike assertions and postulations the do not affirm what is or is taken to be so, but only what is taken provisionally and pro tem—not for purposes of affirmation and information but only for purposes of consideration and exploration. The response to “what if?” questions differ from “since-­ because” claims in that they suspend belief in the antecedent. Here the critical thing is mere supposition, a proceeding that dispenses with belief. The speculative wonderment of “What if?” paves the way to the imperatively conditional: “If-then.” For the proper response to what-if challenges is generally of the format if-then. (Question: “What if he misses the train?” Answer: “If he misses the train, then he’ll miss the boat.”) And

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what makes such an answer correct is the linkage between its antecedent and its consequent, be it empirical and contingent as in this train/boat example or a matter of logico-acceptability necessary. (Question. “What if one of the five people present leaves?” Answer: “If one of the five people present leaves, then only four people will remain.”) Thus in answering a “what if” question by a response of the format “If - - - then …”, we are looking to the consequences of that dash-indicated antecedent (be they necessary or contingent.) As such, speculative supposition is a resource of virtually limitless scope. One can make suppositions about virtually anything—not just matters of conceivable fact, but also questions, injunctions, instructions, actions, problems. However, we shall here focus on fact-purporting suppositions on the order of: “Suppose that … were so, then - - -,”where the antecedent need not be an accepted truth, but its truth-status may be either false or unknown and problematic. Note that the previous example shows how hypothetical questions cannot be answered without interposing further hypothesis. “How many of five people will remain after we leave?” requires assuming that no-one else leaves, that no other individual enters, that no ___ of persons enter,” and so on without number! Consider for example the following course of what-if reasoning: –– –– –– ––

The room is empty. [Fact] Because the only door to the room has been sealed shut. [Fact] Assume that someone were in that room. [Supposition] If someone were in the room, they would have had to climb in the window. [If-then consequence of supposition] –– But what if the window were also sealed shut? [Follow-up supposition] –– Perhaps they might have got in through the ductwork. [Conjecture] It is clear that once we embark on speculation there is no end to the process. Just as with facts we can contrive unendingly to seek for the reason why behind the reason why, so with suppositions we can continue to wonder along the paths of possibility, considering circumstances that become relevant once other possibilities are supposed. Suppositional “what-if” thinking provides a highly versatile instrument. In scientific contexts it is a guide to experimentation (“What if we X and Y at a high temperature?”), in everyday contexts a goal to planning (“What

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if a misfortune X were to occur, how could we protect ourselves against its consequences); or it could be an instrument of criminal investigation (“If X committed a crime, what clues and indications might yet remain to show this?”). A key issue here is that of the semantical condition and status of the conditional antecedent. It must, of course, be meaningful; otherwise, we don’t know what we are about. But it lies in the very nature of end hypotheticals that it need certainly not be true. Nor even need it even be something that is possible. There is virtually no limit to supposition. Beyond meaningfulness, assumptions are subject to no further restrictions. Not even logical self-consistency is required here, seeing that ad absurdum reasoning provides a clear counter-example.

Conditionality To bring thought to bear on reality requires perception; bringing it to bear on fictional possibility requires conception. And to navigate the conceptual realm we require logic, with its consideration of consequences. The conceptually basic mode of if-then conditionality is logico-­ conceptual inference or deducibility (├). For the main variants of if-then implication (→) can all be recast in the symbolic expression of this relationship via the implicative schema:





p  q   r  C  r  &  r & p   q  Here C is some suitably contrived condition, and accordingly we have: • For material implication (⊃) the C(r) condition is r’s factuality: r • For strict implication (-〈 ) the C(r) condition is: r’s necessity: □r • For deducibility (├) itself the C(r) condition is r’s provability: ╞ r • Moreover, r’s possibility (⋄r) and r’s probability (Πr) would also provide implicative C-variants. Here, however, modus ponens—namely: (p & [p → q]) ├ q—will no longer hold, so that only a quasi-­ implication is at issue.

Accordingly, we can for present purposes, interpret if-then implication (→) at large as a suitably reconstructed version of deducibility (├). And just this—namely logical-conceptual deducibility—is the central instrument of if-then reasoning.

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What if Situations “What if” hypothesizing is a functional proceeding that exists for a purpose. And many possibilities are at issue here: –– Consequence-exploration. Answering questions of the format: What would have to be the case if we stipulated that - - -. This in turn leads to two others. –– Indirect proof and ad absurdum refutation. Establishing that some thesis must be the case because the assumption of its negation would entail a contradiction or a vitiating infinite regress. –– Dialectical refutation. Indicating that some contention should be rejected (abandoned) because of untenable consequences. –– Explanatory harmonization. Showing that some contention should be accepted because otherwise some acceptable facts would remain un- or under-explained. And this in turn encompasses –– Thought experimentation for investigation or exploration (especially in context of scientific understanding). The only cogent basis for rejecting inherently meaningful assumptions as illicit and inappropriate roots in their failure of functionality. Meaninglessness would of course ensure this condition, but nothing is wrong with assumptions recognized and acknowledged as false as long as they serve the interests of understanding.

Historical Speculation and Contrafactuality “What if” questions are notably common in historical speculations. A plausible example of this is the fact-contravening conditional: “If Wellington had lost at Waterloo, then Napoleon would not have been forced into immediate exile in St. Helena.”

This counterfactual invites the following line of justifactory analysis: Accepted Background Facts (1) Wellington did not lose at Waterloo. (2) Wellington and Napoleon were opposed commanders at Waterloo.

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(3) Napoleon went into immediate exile. (4) Victorious commanders are not forced into immediate exile. Assumption: not-(1): Wellington lost at Waterloo. In seeking the deletions needed to restore consistency in such cases, the issue-formative assumptions are or course sacred. But even when we drop (1) in the wake of the assumption, we still have a contradiction. For this assumption together with (2) entails “Napoleon won at Waterloo,” so that “Napoleon was a victorious commander.” And this together with (4) yields not-(3). Given that (2) is not in question here, our assumption of not-(1) in effect forces a choice between (3) and (4). And when we prioritize general relationships over particular facts—as is standard in counterfactual situations—we will retain (4), so that (3) must be sacrificed. And on this basis, that initial counterfactual becomes validated. Another instructive example of an informative historical counterfactual runs as follows: “If Julius Caesar had not crossed the Rubican in revolt against the Roman republic, this republic would have endured far longer.”

Here we have: Accepted Background Facts: (1) Caesar crossed the Rubican in revolt against the Roman republic. (2) Caesar’s revolt destabilized the republic and rendered it unstable and untenable. (3) Without this destabilization, the republic would have endured far longer. Assumption. not-(1). By (2), Caesar’s actions has not (would not have) rendered the republic unstable and untenable so that by (3) it would have endured longer. So with (1) eliminated, the conditional at issue follows simply from the residual register of salient facts.

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Retention Priority Counterfactual reasoning always puts incomparable claims before us. And restoring consistency in an inconsistent group of principles demands dismissals. The choice before requires a prioritization—a “ranking order” of retention-priority to govern the process of breaking the chain of inconsistency at its weakest link. And in actual practice, this ranking is geared to the principle of fostering informativeness via the sequential prioritization of: –– issue-definitive hypotheses, suppositions, and assumptions. –– definitive concept-conceptions and meaning-correlative relationships. –– generalizations, “laws,” well-established general rules, well-­ confirmed causal and factual relationships. –– established trends, common relations among events, connections among particular eventuations. –– specific, particular, contingent facts and concrete eventuations. Thus, the priority situation in these speculative cases is exactly the reverse of the order of evidential security that obtains in the factual setting of our inductive reasonings, where theory must give way to facts and more far-reaching theories to those that are more particular in their bearing. And in this regard specifically historical counterfactuals are in the same boat as others in that they pivot on considerations of rational economy via a Principle of the Conservation of Information that insists on optimizing our understanding of things in the face of assumed incongruities. Even patently false suppositions can function meaningfully in matters of counterfactual reasoning. Consider a simple example. We take ourselves to know that: ( 1) Bizet was French. (2) Verdi was Italian. (3) Compatriots belong to the same country. (4) [Assume that] Bizet and Verdi were compatriots. Obviously, we now have a logical inconsistency on our hands. What do we do? In the very logic of things, something has to give way: the chain of inconsistency must be broken. But where, when, and how?

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To restore consistency we must clearly abandon one of (1)–(2). The other premisses are safe. In arriving at this position the following priorities are in place: –– Thesis (4) is secure as the postulated assumption at issue –– Thesis (3) is secure as a terminological definition Accordingly, one of (1) or (2) must be abandoned. But since both have exactly the same claims to retention, we are led to the conditional: “If Bizet had Verdi had been compatriots, then either Bizet would have been Italian or Verdi would have been French.”

As this example shows, a cogent line of reasoning leading to a clearly acceptable conclusion can result from a patently false and contradiction-­ generating supposition, by suitable principles of cognitive damage control. Instructive and informative cognitive work can be accomplished under the auspices of “what if” reasoning. For in the end, the task of rational deliberations and inquiry is to extract the maximal amount of useful information from the data at our disposal—to answer our questions by means of the most informative alternative available in the circumstances. A crucial difference emerges when new data are introduced by way of discovery (finding and observing) rather than by way of supposition (hypothesis and assuming). For in the former case if the data fail to fit, then it is they themselves that will need readjustment. But assumptions are sacrosanct: other, preexisting materials have to be revised to make room for them. An optimal landscape of reciprocal accommodation has to be achieved one way or another via principles of rational economy. Paradox analysis affords another illustration of this situation. Thus suppose we adopt the underlying principle at issue in the classic “Paradox of the Heap”: “If n sand-grains do not constitute a heap, neither do n + 1.”

And in the wake of this supposition, we are confronted with two further concepts: –– One or two sand-grains do not constitute a heap –– A million sand-grans constitute a big heap

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It is clear that the sequential addition of sand-grains will engender a contradiction here, seeing that we realize full well that eventually a heap is before us. So we arrive at the puzzle: “What if to a single grain of sand we keep adding more. Just when do we arrive as a heap?”

Retrospect As already noted, the priority order of claims on retention in the face of counterfactual supposition runs as follows: (1) the assumptions and suppositions whose postulations are at issue, (2) definitions and terminological explanations, (3) general laws, rules, principles, (4) speculative contingent factualities, (5) plausibilities and probabilities. Such a hierarch of epistemic-tenscity status obtains and serves to determine the weakest link at which to break the cycle of inconsistency that counterfactual suppositions engender. In the wake of such considerations, we have to reject that seemingly plausible grain-addition principle in the face of more fundamental factualities. But of course the question, “At just what point in the course of other additions is the transition from non-heaps to heaps made?” is one that has no answer; it is inappropriate on grounds of resting as on mistaken presupposition. Transition there is and must be, but it will not be punctiform. In this regard, the question is based on the erroneous presuppositions of potential exactitude. One useful and very common mode of thought experimentation relates to its explanatory employment. We here reason along the lines of “If only such-and-such were the case, then something-or-other (which otherwise would otherwise be difficult to explain) now admits of a ready and satisfying explanation.” For example, Thales (sixth century BC), the very first of the nature philosophers of ancient Greece, proposed to explain the annual flooding of the Nile as the result of impeding its outflow by the opposing force of the annually recurrent Etesian winds. So if those floods did not occur, then in the circumstances, one would have it that “If those winds were absent, then the flooding would be so as well.”

Thought Experiments Knowledge is not confined to the realm of fact alone, to actuality and real existence; it also extends to the no less extensive region of mere possibility. Philosophy’s task is thus to explore also the reach of possibilities. And for

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investigating this region what-if thinking is an effective and indispensably useful instrumentality. However, the possibilities of philosophical concern cannot be allowed to transcend the limits of intelligibility. Absurdly far-­ fetched suppositions—dishonest fractions, communicating rocks, or the like, may concern the fabulist but not the philosopher. Like any other useful instrumentality, what if thinking has its productive limits. Overall, a proper thought experiment involves five stages: supposition, context-specification, commitment-adjustment, conclusion-deriving, and lesson-drawing. And at each of these stages, a mishap or malfunction can, in theory, arise: –– the supposition can turn out to be meaningless. –– the context may be set up inappropriately, in relation to the purposes of the thought experiment in particular by way of error of omission. –– the commitment adjustment may fail to be realistic, in particular by way of errors of omission that plunge matters into inconsistency. –– the course of reasoning by which the intended conclusion is drawn may be flawed and erroneous. –– the wrong lesson can be drawn for the experiment by overlooking possibilities for its interpretation. In sum, all sorts of procedural impediments can arise to vitiate a thought experiment. Like most any other tool or mechanism, if-then thinking is a productive resource brought into being for the realization of purposive aims. And all such resources are functionally limited. Instrumentalities and applications have to harmonize: one cannot sew with a hammer nor anneal with a needle. And if-then thinking—however useful in many contexts, cannot transcend the limits of meaningful application. Reasoning is by nature limited to the confines of rationality and cannot produce instructive information from nonsense. “If angels were to dance on the head of a pin, then how many of them could fit?” is a question which, while not actually meaningless, is nevertheless pointless. All in all, then, thought experimentation admits various sorts of error. Thought experiments can err by relying on background information that is misinformation. They can involve errors of reasoning to arrive at conclusions that do not actually follow from the premisses at hand. They can address questions that rest on flawed presuppositions. Exactly because they are suppositions projected with a view to answering questions and

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resolving problems. Just this is why thought experiments can fail—just as real experiments can. Not only can they do so by failing cogently to provide an answer to the question they are designed to resolve, but—equally amiss—they can provide the right answer to the wrong question. Given that real experiments belong to the natural sciences, philosophers are greatly drawn to thought experiments. And so they are drawn to strange and recherché hypotheses—suppositions on the order of brain transplants, communicating rocks, or intelligent amoebae. But here one must be very careful. The suppositions one undertakes must not be allowed to destroy the ideas one is investigating. Thus, when thought experiments are projected in the context of ethical deliberations regarding personal behavior or social practices, one has to be mindful that the ethical norms of conduct are instrumentalities designed for use in the conditions and circumstances of this world’s general and ordinary course of things. The rules and regulations of ethics and morality are everyday guidelines designed to function in everyday circumstances and conditions. Hypotheses that project overly extreme and fanciful conditions are generally not serviceable for the task in hand. And this is not just because suppositions that contemplate considerations of extreme scarcity (e.g., killing one healthy individual to use his organs and body parts for saving many) are too outlandish and far-fetched for contemplation, but because the course of their development has designed our ethical concepts and principles with very different sorts of situations in view. Their estrangement from ordinary situations makes far-fetched hypotheses unrealistic and thereby ethically irrelevant.

CHAPTER 10

Precision as a Key Factor in Inquiry

General Preliminaries Imprecision Securing appropriate answers to our questions is a cognitively demanding enterprise, seeing that to realize this end a reply must be: • intelligibly formulated • true or probable • well substantiated • adequately precise But while all of such requites for interrogative merit allow and deserve extensive treatment in their own right, for the present we shall focus on that fourth and final one: the matter of precision, accuracy, and detail. For, this too is crucial; a response that does not provide for adequate precision fails to afford a useful answer. Thus, consider the question: Q: How many persons were in the room?

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RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES X

X X

OUT IN

X X

X

X

X

This admits a large variety of possible answers, such as: A1: Some A2: More than two A3: An odd number A4: Around ten A5: As many as entered [since none left] A6: One half the number of ears in the roomAll of these answers are correct, but nevertheless all are decidedly uninformative in lacking the exactness, precision, detail that we ideally require, considerations that would pinpoint the answer within a narrower range of possibility: Display 1 illustrates the situation. The larger the subspace of IN-possibilities and indefinite in relation to the entire space of possibilities the more imprecise is the specification of the item at issue becomes. The precision or definiteness of a claim (P) decreases with the comparative extent of it IN-possibilities. Indefiniteness (imprecision) and security (probability) go hand in hand: The more indefinite a claim, the more we ensure its security.

Duhem’s Law: The Security/Definiteness Tradeoff It is a basic principle of epistemology that increased confidence in the correctness of our estimates can always be secured at the price of decreased accuracy. For in general an inverse relationship obtains between the definiteness or precision of our information and its substantiation: detail and security stand in a competing relationship. We estimate the height of the tree at around 25 feet. We are quite sure that the tree is 25×5 feet high. We are virtually certain that its height is 25×10 feet. But we can be completely and

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absolutely sure that its height is between 1 inch and 100 yards. Of this we are “completely sure” in the sense that we are “absolutely certain,” “certain beyond the shadow of a doubt,” “as certain as we can be of anything in the world,” “so sure that we would be willing to stake your life on it,” and the like. For any sort of estimate whatsoever, there is always a characteristic trade-off relationship between the evidential security of the estimate on the one hand (as determinable on the basis of its probability or degree of acceptability), and its contentual detail (definiteness, exactness, precision, etc.) on the other. And so there obtains a complementarity relationship of the sort adumbrated by the French physicist Pierre Maurice Duhem (1981–1916). He propounded what might be called Duhem’s Law” in his classic work on the aim and structure of physical theory: A law of physics possesses a certainty much less immediate and much more difficult to estimate than a law of common sense, but it surpasses the latter by the minute and detailed precision of its predictions. . . The laws of physics can acquire this minuteness of detail only by sacrificing something of the fixed and absolute certainty of common-sense laws. There is a sort of teeter-­ totter of balance between precision and certainty: one cannot be increased except to the detriment of the other.1

Quantity Can Offset Low Quality Nevertheless, a multiplicity of imprecise answers can—if true—prove to be informative in collectively providing for greater precision. Consider an illustration via the following array: 1 2 3 4 5 a b c d e And let the questions at issue be “Where is the 3 located?” Note that the following inadequate responses are all true: I. Approximation: “Not near a.” II. Vagueness: “In the top row.” III. Indefiniteness: “Alongside 4.” IV. Equivocation: “Above a consonant”

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Individually these true responses are incompletely and imperfectly informative. Each leaves room for varying possibilities: I

1 2 3 4 5 a b c d e

II

1 2 3 4 5 a b c d e

III 1 2 3 4 5 a b c d e IV 1 2 3 4 5 a b c d e And note that 3 and 4 are the only possibilities that fall into all of these ranges. However, this leads to an instructive point. For, if we added one further very indefinite contention, namely “Not above d,” then we would have that 3 pinpointed exactly. As intelligence-processers have long realized, a multitude of imprecise reports can combine to yield a detailed conclusion. Sometimes we get lucky and have a multitude of imprecisions issue collectively in a precise result. Different Fields Differ How much precision is required in our information depends on the use we propose to make of it—the need we see as fulfilling. We do not need to foresee the exact amount of rain to decide about taking an umbrella. To decide among routes to a destination, it may well be to know which is the shortest by miles rather than inches. The extent to which we require precision in cognitive matters will very much depend on the context of this issue. Every major field of rational inquiry and investigation has a precision index over the range of low-middling-high. This appraises the extent to which the significant theses of the field typically afford exactness and precision. It is generally greater in fields of abstract inquiry than with matters of empirical detail, and in the latter group generally greater with stable matters of fundamental physics than with the variability of dynamic fields like medicine, biology, or the varied vacillations of human behavior.

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The extent to which a descriptive admits of precision in its characterization is thus one of its most salient empirical features. How is it that the treatments of different branches of study admit of different degrees of precision? The answer here lies in the extent to which the relevant properties of the phenomena at issue are: • quantifiable in prevailing their description in quantifiable terms capable of effective e measurement. • functionally linked in line with rigid uniformity in their interrelationships and rigidly uniform in their processuality. These features of the phenomenon at issue do not lie in their thematic nature but in there processual interactions and emerge to view through their modus operandi. In point of fundamentals, Aristotle got the matter right on target long ago: It is the mark of a knowledgeable person to expect precision in each class of things only insofar as the nature of the subject permits. It is clearly equally foolish to accept plausible reasonings from a mathematician as to require strict proofs from a rhetorician. (Nichomachaen Ethics 1094a 24–27)

Accordingly, natural science eschews imprecision. It does not inquire into the usual melting point of lead or the approximate date of the next lunar eclipse. By contrast, given the variation on the causality of homo sapiens medicine has to content itself with prescribing approximate dosages and to forecast the usual cousins of ailment. Where does philosophy stand here? As regards philosophy, the situation is variable, depending entirely on the thematic context at issue. In some branches—the philosophy of mathematics, for example—one would expect and demand a great deal. In others—social and political philosophy, for example—one would expect and demand much less. What would reasonably be required has to be attuned to what is possible in the domain at issue. The Situation in Philosophy Philosophy’s mission is to answer “the big questions” about the world and our human place within it. These questions are big indeed—perhaps as big

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as they come—but the material we have for resolving them are very scanty. Addressing this discrepancy calls for deep forays into epistemology—the theory of knowledge. And here the focus becomes the discrepancy between reliability and detail, correctness and account precision. It is this tension, this balancing out between conflicting desiderata that comes to the fore here. Aiming as generality—a conflict between relatability and informativeness that bedevils the fate of philosophizing and renders the enterprise one of unescapable tension between the hoped-for informativeness of its conclusions and the discomforting conjecture by which we have to achieve them. Philosophers would like to have their discipline be an exact science. They would ideally like to realize the generality at issue with precision. But this ideal cannot be realized. Philosophy is rendered instable, irregular, and imprecise by the circumstance that various factors ongoingly disestablish the relationship of man to nature and to his operational sphere therein: • cognitive (and especially scientific) progress. • technological innovation. • social and cultural change. All of these factors combine together to destabilize the numerical connections and factual stabilities of the human situation whose definitiveness and consistency would be needed to realize precision in this domain. And so the philosophers of collective human affairs—social and political philosophers—have rest content with what is an aspect of the ordinary and normal course of things, and the same with the social anthropology of human interactions, “Pride goeth before a fall” is not a law of nature. But the situation varies in line with the issues on the agenda. Within the broad range of philosophical deliberations, the matter depends decidedly on the problem-field, seeing that precision must reflect the extent to which general principles coordinate among the typical thesis of the field. Philosophy has three components, viz. the formal disciplines of abstract subject (mathematics, logic, symbolics) and the material subjects (physics, organisms) and the humane subjects (ethics, social and political philosophy, substantial anthropology). They clearly differ in the extent to which precision and generality is possible according to the needs of the subject: pervasively with the abstract logic, externals with the natural, and very little with regard to the

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socio-­humane descriptions. Social philosophy has to rest content with generalities and approximations. To be sure, the situation becomes altered when we shift from theoretical to practical philosophy in the endeavor to orient practice in the affairs of life. Our standards of generality and precision can now become relaxed. Just as we do not need to know exactly how much rainfall to expect to decide about taking an umbrella, so we do not need to know just how the exact extent of harm that moral transgressing or antisocial behavior will do in order to see the wisdom of averting it. Fortunately, great precision generally not needed to guide to our practices in matters of everyday life. Precision regarding the exact extent of damage to the social fabric of various modes of unethical and immoral behavior seldom is seldom, if ever, required to recognize that society should discourage and prevent them.

Note 1. La théorie physique: son objet, et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier and Rivière, 1906); tr. by Philip P.  Wiener, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954); see pp. 178–79. This principle did not elude Neils 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.

CHAPTER 11

Rationalistic Philosophizing

Does Science Replace Philosophy? The traditional “big questions” of philosophy address the nature of Reality and of man’s place within its realm. But “Why not leave it to science? Why not look to scientific inquiry to settle these matters?” The answer here is straightforward. It is because different domains of deliberation are at work, and that science and philosophy have different areas of concern and ask a different set of questions. Science seeks for the “laws of nature” that can account of the observable phenomena. It aims to uncover the processes of natural occurrence by whose means we can explain—and where possible predict—what happens in the world. Philosophy, by contrast, concerns itself not primarily with the “explanations of occurrence” but with the “guidance of action.” The paradigm question is “What ought we do with our lives?”—Here we are, as drops in Realty’s vast sea of existence, with a limited amount of time, energy, and opportunity at our disposal: how ought we to express it? What are the things that are important and beneficial in our plan of life? In briefest form, the crux of science is to answer the question “What to think” and of philosophy “What to do.” Science pivots on observations, philosophy on action. And this means that the ultimate concern of philosophy—unlike

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science— is a matter of value, importance, significance. Science addresses, “What is Reality like?”, and philosophy addresses, “What is worthwhile for us?” To be sure, conditional questions about action are still in the domain of science. Concept questions of the format: “If, starting from position P you want to achieve goal G efficiently and effectively, what should you do? Is doing X an efficient and effective way to proceed.” Those are still effectively factual and thus, scientific issues. But whether you ought to be trying for G in the first place is just not of this sort. Questions of effective means are scientific, but questions of appropriate ends are not. What are the things that are ultimately reliable, important, and worth-while for us do not fall into the domain of natural science. It is philosophy and not science that elucidates the considerations at work in filling the blank in: “It is a good thing that….”

Two Modes of Philosophy Some philosophers deem it sufficient merely to propound their views and opinions on philosophical matters viewing the aims as an exercise in the self-presentation of beliefs. Their procedure comes to “I claim this judgment as correct because that is how I myself think to be.” For them declaration is validation. In effect, they see philosophy as a process of opinion projection. Others take a very different line. They view philosophy as a venture in problem resolution; they take the problems of its agenda to be set by “the big questions” that have concerned philosophers since its origin in classical antiquity—problems relating to the condition of homo sapiens and our place in nature’s scheme of things. And they view philosophy as a rational venture in resolving those “big questions” by finding answers and substantiating them with objectively good reasons for their acceptance. It is with the substantiation of this latter, rationalistic mode of philosophy that the present deliberations will be concerned. The first step in rational philosophizing is to provide plausible resolutions to the “big questions” that we have regarding the world’s scheme of things and our place within it, dealing with humans at large rather than particular groups thereof (farmers or doctors or Europeans or contemporaries of Shakespeare). Philosophical deliberations must have a bearing— direct or oblique—for the key essentials of the human condition—knowledge and truth, justice and mortality, beauty and goodness, and the like.

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In effect, rationalistic philosophizing is an exercise in assessment possible answers to the questions raised by the alternative possible solutions of philosophical problems. The overall process consists of the following steps: 1. Begin with the “big questions” that define the traditional problems of philosophy. 2. Survey the range of available doctrinal solutions to these large-­ scale issues. 3. Examine the significant issues problems, and difficulties that these various solutions themselves open up. 4. Assess the comparative significance of the questions answered and of the questions opened up by the various problem-solutions. 5. Compare and contrast the issue-resolving effectiveness—and thus the comparative acceptability—of the various problem resolutions by balancing out the significance of questions resolved and questions raised. It is tempting to call this philosophical proceeding the “Metternich Method” in honor of the great Imperial chancellor who adopted a political variant of it. As his principal biographer puts it, “Before taking a final decision he presented the emperor with the available options and the risks associated with them, rejecting each until only on plausible option remained.”1

The Big Questions of Universal Concern It is important in this context to distinguish between personal subjectivity and individual contextuality. What you personally like, enjoy, desire (warm baths, e.g.,) is a matter of subjectivity—of individual satisfactions and wants. But what you individually need and require—a low-sugar diet or a high-temperature environment—are nothing subjective. (One’s universally generic needs—e.g., for food, water, air, etc.,—is something else again—something even less subjective.) Now philosophy itself aims at objectivity with respect to the human situation at large. It deals with matters at universality and leaves matters of personal idiosyncrasy aside. The personal needs of individuals—let alone their wants and desires—are outside its scope. Its concern is with the human situation at large and not with the particular idiosyncratic

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condition of individuals. Philosophical counsels can indeed be grounded in facts relating to the human condition—but only insofar as people-at-­ large are concerned. All this of course relates to coherent aim and mission of the discipline— that is of philosophy as such. In working out the answers to these problems—that is, in philosophizing—individuals have to work these matters out in a person-characteristic way that reflects their own course of experience. But the product at which they arrive—the set of conditions that they purport to continue the philosophical doctrine they endorse—should be conclusions which—insofar as they relate to people at all—hold for everyone. A set of convictions that is different for males and females, for Muslims and nonbelievers, for scientists and layman is just exactly what it is—a group-geared sociology—but emphatically not a system of philosophy. In a way, philosophizing is destined for failure. For what the philosopher arrives at—what defines the very mission of the enterprise—are issue-­ resolutions in which everyone can rationally agree. But what a person can rationally agree on is only what harmonizes with the mode of their experience, and different individuals—being differently situated—are bound to have different bodies of experience. Some of us live in lives of peace and quiet, others in lives of warfare and turmoil; some of us live in medieval times, others in the age of television and supersonic flight. Our vision is limited to the range of the visible, and so different life-contexts readily present very different sides of itself for visibility: it is not surprising but unavoidable that philosophy of the churchman St. Thomas should differ radically from that of the psychologist William James. Philosophers disagree because they rationally must. They cannot but follow the instructions of the course of their experience. Philosophy is the cultivation of an objective and universal project by particular individuals. The following afford some examples of the sort of contextual variations at issue in these deliberations. • Plato’s commitment to the idealizations prominent in Greek geometry opened the door to his postulation of an ultra-mundane realm of ideas. • Spinoza’s youthful rebellion against his religious heritage made it effectively impossible for him to accept Descartes’ heavy reliance on divine guidance for resolving philosophical issues such as the validation of human knowledge.

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• Bishop Berkeley’s rejection of the materialistic approach of modern physics propelled him into the materialistic immaterialism of his own devising. • Kant’s adolescent rejection of the evangelical religiosity of his parents invited a position which was effectively that of Leibniz without God by having the arrangements that Leibniz ascribed to God instituted through the faculty-structure of the human mind. It is their very rationality that enjoins difference, because different premisses are adopted and different premisses require different conclusions. What their premisses require is a reason-dedicated fact that is available to everyone in a perfectly disjunctive way. But that those premisses they are the right ones—that they provide the appropriate and acceptable basis for philosophizing is something bound to differ for differently situated individuals. But does not such personal contextuality annihilate philosophy’s legitimacy and value? By no means! The fact that X’s philosophical position can appropriately differ from Y’s does not destroy its legitimacy for X even as the right-and-proper diet for the one is irrelevant to that for the other. The contextuality of philosophical positions is a rational demand that implements rather than impedes cognitive appropriateness.

Canvassing Possible Solutions Once a philosophical questions is identified, the next and absolutely critical step is to make a comprehensive inventory of the possible—and at least reasonably plausible—alternative problem-solutions that are available. Such an inventory is indispensably necessary because it is effectively inevitable that philosophical problems admit of varying alternative results. Setting from the very outset on one favored alternative blocks any of discovering that a different and superior alternative may well be available.

Evaluating the Alternatives The acceptability of an overall position on a philosophical matter is to be assessed in terms of its success in answering the questions and problems that arise in attempts to provide answers. Thus in assessing the merit of philosophical problem-resolutions, we must proceed on the basis of questions-resolutions that reduce the scope for puzzlement. The line of appraisal is illustrated by the following evaluative scheme of Fig. 11.1.

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APPRAISING PROBLEM RESOLUTIONS NEW PROBLEMS RAISED Few Some Many SIGNIFICANT ISSUES RESOLVED

+ meritorious combinations

Many

+

+

O

O indifferent combination

Some

+

O

–

– negative combination

Few

O

–

–

NOTE: bolding represents Intensity: as per “highly”

Fig. 11.1  Appraising problem resolutions: new problems raised

On this basis philosophical positions are assessed by the efficacy in problem resolutions regarding the significant issues. A doctrine becomes acceptable to the extent it resolves relevant questions without raising new ones. One cannot expect others to accept one’s claims on these matters simply because one favors them. The evaluations at issue should ideally be based on considerations acceptable to the wider community rather than the personal assessments of individuals. And thus in considering the alternative possible resolutions, it will not suffice simply to note that there are objections to some of them—that some are available only at the price of accepting certain negativities and lie open to certain objections, For in philosophy there is no such thing as a free pass—every problem-solution has its cost in that each has a down side and carries the negativity of some objections and difficulties. The search has to be not for an unobjectionable resolutions but for a comparatively optimal resolution—one whose balance of difficulties resolved means difficulties raised is optimal. The process is one of cost/benefit analysis, where the balance of difficulties-removed as against difficulties-posed is most favorable. The assets and liabilities of alternatives—their merits and demanding benefits and costs—must be carefully appraised. Balancing out the plusses and minuses of the possible responses to significant questions is an unavoidable requisite.

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In the end, rationalistic philosophizing cannot avoid recourse to evaluation. It must thus be able to access: 1. The significance of problems, to implement the distinction between “the big issues” of philosophy and the rest. 2. The significance (or problematicity) of the questions that arise in the setting of the problems. 3. The efficacy of issue-resolution for the relevant questions enabling a balance of the significance of questions resolved versus questions being raised. However such evaluations are not matters of taste or idiosyncratic preference because the efficacy at issue is something that reasonable people can—or should be able—to appraise effectively. On first look all this seems plausible. How then can it be that philosophers so seldom proceed in this way? The answer is rather simple: philosophers have their favored pet solutions to problems, and are so eager to focus on the assets/merits of their own favored pet solutions and fail to realize that their favorites too causes challenges and then its rival too will have merits that need to be examined and weighed. They generally have an instantively favored resolution of the problems and generally lack the impartially needed for a comprehensive assessment of its issues. Their inclination is to seek out advantages of their favored position and to identify weaknesses and disadvantages in its rivals. They fail to acknowledge that philosophical positions are not defeated by objections—because nothing on offer in this domain is objection-free. The object of the enterprise is not to identify question resolutions that are problem-free (because in the end there aren’t any!) but rather to identify that pose fewer and/or lesser problems than their rivals. * * * Can philosophy answer our questions decisively—that is, with uncontestable certainty? Rene Descartes certainty thought so. Indeed he thought that the only plausible certainty worth having were those of whose correctness are absolutely certain beyond the shadow of any doubt. “I think, and so I am” was his model.

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But there are big problems here. For such contentions are self-reflexive, subjective, and limited to the range of immediate experience. The Cartesian cogito ergo sum invites the response: “You sound like an interesting person, Descartes, tell me more about your present thinking.” For while “The cat is on the mat” is factual, objective, and impersonal. A statement like “I am under the impression that the cat is on the mat” is only about oneself and affirms nothing whatsoever about the object. And inevitably, with movement beyond oneself, a real prospect of error comes upon the scene. The reality of it is that in philosophy, there are no secure axioms—no starter-set of absolutely certain “givens” whose implications we can follow through without question to the bitter end. In general, we cannot assess the acceptability of our contentions solely in terms of the security of their antecedents, but must reassess their acceptability in the light of their consequences and not only locally but globally. The implicit interconnectedness of philosophical issues means that the price philosophers must pay for overly narrow specialization—for confining attention narrowly to one particular set of issues—is compromising the tenability of their position. Rational philosophizing cannot just level at the immediate locality of an issue. It has to look at the big picture.

Why Philosophy Must Be Systematic: Externalities and Negative Side Effects Economists characterize as “externalities” the costs that a given agent’s operations engender for other participants in the economic system—the expenditures that one agent’s activities exact from other agents, be it willingly or unwillingly. They are the operating costs that an agent simply off-loads onto the wider community: the expenses that one generates for others in the course of addressing one’s own immediate concerns—as for example, when a farmer’s fertilizers contaminate the drinking water of his neighbors. It is interesting to observe that substantially the same phenomenon can arise also in philosophy. For in philosophy we may, in solving a problem within some particular area, create major difficulties for the solution of problems elsewhere, even in areas seemingly far removed from the original issue. It is instructive to consider some examples of this phenomenon. Example 1: Epistemology and Ethics. Suppose that we are sailing on the open sea on a vacation cruise ship. It is dusk, and the visibility is getting

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poor. As we stroll on deck along the rail of the ship, there is suddenly a shout, “Man overboard.” Someone grabs a life preserver from the nearby bulkhead and rushes with it toward the railing. Suddenly, he comes to a stop and hesitates a moment. To our astonishment, he turns, retraces his steps, and replaces the life preserver, calmly proceeding step by step as the region of the incident slips away, first out of reach, then out of sight. Puzzled and chagrined, we turn to the individual and ask why he broke off the rescue attempt. The response runs as follows: “Of course, throwing that life preserver was my first instinct, as my behavior clearly showed. But then some ideas from my undergraduate epistemology courses came to mind and convinced me that it made no sense to continue.” Intrigued, we ask for more details and receive the following response: Consider what we actually knew. All we could see was that something that looked like a human head was bobbing out there in the water. But the visibility was poor. It could have been an old mop or a lady’s wig stand. Those noises we took for distant shouts would well have been no more than a pulsing of the engines and the howling of the wind. There was simply no decisive evidence that it was actually a person out there. And then I remembered William Kingdon Clifford’s classic dictum: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” So why act on a belief that there was actually a human being in danger out there, when the evidence for any such belief was clearly insufficient? And why carry out a rescue attempt when you do not accept that someone actually needs rescuing?

Something has clearly gone badly wrong here. We may not choose to fault our misguided shipmate as an epistemologist, yet we cannot but wonder about his moral competency. Even if I unhesitatingly accept and endorse the abstract principle that one must try to be helpful to others in situations of need, I am clearly in moral difficulty if I operate on too stringent a standard of evidence in relevant contexts—if, for example, I allow skeptical concerns about other minds to paralyze me from ever recognizing another creature as a human person. For, then I will be far reachingly precluded from doing things that, morally considered, I ought to do. William James rightly noted this connection between epistemology and morality, in insisting that the skeptic rudely treads morality underfoot: “If I refuse to stop a murder because I am in [some] doubt whether it is not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt

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whether my effort will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her…. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality.”2 There is much to be said for this view of the matter. To operate in life with epistemological principles so stringent as to impede the discharge of one’s standard moral obligations is to invite justified reproach. Where the interests of others are at risk, we cannot, with moral appropriateness, deploy evidential standards of acceptability of a higher, more demanding sort than those that are normally operative in the community in the ordinary run of cases. At this point, epistemology has moral ramifications. For morality as we know it requires a common-sense, down-to-earth epistemology for its appropriate implementation. In such a case, then, the stance we take in the one domain (epistemology) has significant repercussions for the way we can proceed in the other (ethics). The issues arising in these seemingly remote areas stand in systemic interlinkage. Externalities can come into play. A problem-solution that looks like a bargain in the one domain may exact an unacceptable price in the other. Example 2: Semantics and Metaphysics. For another illustration—one of a rather different sort—consider the semantical position urged by a contemporary Oxford philosopher who maintains that there are no incognizable facts, because there actually is a fact of the matter only when a claim to this effect is such that “we [humans] could in a finite time bring ourselves into a position in which we were [fully] justified either in asserting or in denying [the contention at issue].”3 This sort of “finite decidability semantics” holds that a proposition is communicatively meaningful—qualifies as inherently true or false—only if the matter can actually be settled, decisively and conclusively, one way or the other, by a finite effort in a limited time. But this doctrinal path issuing from semantics leads to some strange destinations. For it automatically precludes the prospect of maintaining anything like our common-sense view of things in the world about us. In this way, the wolf of a highly problematic metaphysic comes concealed in the sheep’s clothing of innocuous-looking semantical theory. For consider: As we standardly think about things within the conceptual framework of our fact-oriented thought and discourse, any real physical object has more facets than it will or indeed can ever actually manifest in experience. Every objective property of a real thing has consequences of a dispositional nature, and these are never actually surveyable in toto, seeing that the dispositions that particular concrete things inevitably have

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endow them with an infinitistic aspect that cannot be comprehended within experience. This desk, for example, has a limitless manifold of phenomenal features of the type “having a certain appearance from a particular point of view.” It is perfectly clear that most of these will never be actualized in experience. Moreover, a thing is what it does: to be a desk or an apple is to behave like one. Entity and lawfulness are coordinated correlates—a good Kantian point.4 And this fact that things as such involve lawful comportment means that the finitude of experience precludes any prospect of the exhaustive manifestation of the descriptive facets of any real thing. Some of the ramifications of this circumstance deserve closer attention. Physical objects, as we standardly conceive them, not only have more properties than they ever will overtly manifest, they actually have more than they could ever actually manifest, because the dispositional properties of things always involve what might be characterized as mutually preemptive conditions of realization. A cube of sugar, for example, has the dispositional property of reacting in a particular way if subjected to a temperature of 10,000°C and of reacting in a certain way if emplaced for one hundred hours in a large, turbulent body of water. But if either of these conditions is ever realized, it will destroy the lump of sugar as a lump of sugar, and thus block the prospect of its ever bringing the other property to manifestation. Because of such inherent conflicts, the severally possible realization of various dispositions can fail to be conjointly compossible, and so the dispositional properties of a thing cannot ever be manifest in toto—not just in practice but in principle. On the other hand, to say of the apple that its only features are those it actually manifests is to run afoul of our conception of an apple. For to deny—or even merely to refuse to be committed to the claim—that it would manifest particular features if certain conditions came about (e.g., that it would have such-and-such a taste if eaten) is to be driven to withdrawing the claim that it is an apple. A real thing is always conceptualized as having features that transcend our actual experience of it. All discourse about objective things involves an element of experience-transcending imputation—of commitment to claims that go beyond the experientially acquirable information, but yet claims whose rejection would mean our having to withdraw the thing-characterization at issue. To say of something that it is an apple or a stone or a tree is to become inexorably committed to claims about it that go beyond the data we have—and even

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beyond those that we can, in the nature of things, ever actually acquire. Real things always do and must have features that transcend our determinable knowledge of them. In the light of such considerations, it emerges that a finite decidability semantics—though seemingly a merely linguistic doctrine about meaningful assertion—is in fact not just theory of language or logic. For, it now has major repercussions in very different domains. In particular, it has the far-reaching metaphysical consequence of precluding any prospect of the common-sense realism at issue in our standard conception of the world’s things. On its basis, any statement of objective fact—however modest and common-sensical—is immediately rendered meaningless by the infinitude of its evidential ramifications. Thus, a “merely semantical” doctrine seemingly devised to serve the interests of a philosophy of language has implications that pre-empt a major substantive position in metaphysics. Its conflict with the common-sense realism of ordinary discourse does not, of course, demonstrate that finite decidability semantics is ultimately incorrect. But it once again illustrates vividly the ramified interconnectedness of philosophical doctrines—the fact that a seemingly attractive problem-­solution in one area may be available as such only at the cost of creating massive problems elsewhere. The theory is certainly one that we cannot reasonably accept on its local, semantical recommendations alone, irrespective of wider implications. Externalities are once again at work. Further illustrations of the matter are readily available. A metaphysical determinism that negates free will runs afoul of a traditionalistic ethical theory that presupposes it. A philosophical anthropology that takes human life to originate at conception clashes with a social philosophy that sees abortion as morally unproblematic. A theory of rights that locates all responsibility in the contractual reciprocity of freely consenting parties creates problems for a morality of concern for animals. And the list goes on and on.

The Methodological Rationale of Systematicity in Philosophy To this point, it has been stressed that the explanatory work of philosophy needs to be accomplished systematically—that in the interests of adequacy, philosophizing must aim at a system that is at once comprehensive in its purview and systematic in its articulation. But does this requirement not

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prejudice the substantive issues—does it not precommit us to the view that the world is a system? Any such presupposition would clearly be inappropriate in philosophy. This is an issue that needs to be addressed. The basic reason why philosophical issues are interrelated across different subject-matter domains lies in their aporetic nature—their invariable linkage to the situation where we confront groups of propositions that may seem individually plausible but are collectively inconsistent. For as was indicated above, the data of philosophy—the manifold of nontrivially evidentiated considerations with which it must come to terms—is always such that internal tensions and inconsistencies arise within it. The range of contentions which there is some reason to accept here outrun the range of what can be maintained in the light of plausibility considerations. The examples considered above thus convey a clear lesson. We all too easily risk losing sight of this interconnectedness when we ride our hobby horses in pursuit of the technicalities of a limited subdomain. In actuality, the stance we take on questions in one domain will generally have substantial implications for very different issues in other seemingly distant domains. And exactly this is why systematization is so important in philosophy—because the way we do answer some questions will have limiting repercussions for the way we can answer others. We cannot emplace our philosophical convictions into conveniently separated compartments in the comfortable expectation that what we maintain in one area of the field will have no unwelcome implications for what we are inclined to maintain in others. Systematicity thus emerges as a salient aspect of the rational methodology of inquiry in general and philosophical inquiry in particular. But such a methodology seeks to reveal orderliness if it is there. When fishing, a net whose mesh has a certain area will catch fish of a certain size if any are present. Use of the net indicates a hope perhaps even an expectation that the fish will be there, but is certainly not based on a pre-assured foreknowledge of their presence. Nothing in the abstract logic of the situation guarantees a priori that we shall find order when we go looking for it. Our cognitive search for order and system may issue in a finding of disorder and chaos. The question of whether the world is such that systematic knowledge of it is possible is, for us, an ultimate contingent question—one the answer to which must itself emerge from our actual endeavors at systematization.

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Systematic Interconnectedness as a Consequence of Aporetic Complexity The basic reason why philosophical issues are interrelated across different subject-matter domains lies in their aporetic nature—their invariable linkage to the situation where we confront groups of propositions that may seem individually plausible but are collectively inconsistent. For as was indicated above, the data of philosophy—the manifold of nontrivially evidentiated considerations with which it must come to terms—is always such that internal tensions and inconsistencies arise within it. The range of contentions which there is some reason to accept here outrun the range of what can be maintained in the light of plausibility considerations. The aporetic perspective on philosophical issues puts the phenomenon of philosophical externalities into sharp relief. It stresses that philosophical doctrines are inextricably interconnected, spreading their implications across the frontiers of very different, subject-matter disjoint and seemingly disparate areas. The ramifications and implications of philosophical contentions do not respect the discipline’s taxonomic boundaries. The long and short of it is that the realm of truth is unified and its components are interlinked. Change your mind regarding one fact about the real and you cannot leave all the rest unaffected. To qualify as adequate, one’s account of things must be a systemic whole whose components are interrelated by relation of systemic interaction or feedback. In the final analysis, philosophy is a system because it is concerned to indicate, or at least to estimate, the truth about things, and “the truth about reality” is a system.5 Its various sectors and components are bound to dovetail smoothly with one another. For even if one is reluctant to claim that reality as such must be systematic, the fact remains that an adequate account of it must surely be so. Even as we must take a sober view of inebriation, so we must aim at a coherent account of even an incoherent world. Philosophy’s commitment to the project of rational inquiry, to the task of making coherent and comprehensive sense of things, means that an adequate philosophy must be holistic, accommodating and coordinating all aspects of its concerns in a single unified and coherent whole, with the result that any viable philosophical doctrine will and can be no more than a particular component piece fitting smoothly into the wider picture. Insofar as such a perspective is apt, it emerges that the range of relevant consequences cannot be confined to the local area of the immediate thematic environs of the contention, but will have to involve its more remote

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reverberations as well. If an otherwise appealing contention in semantics wreaks havoc in metaphysics or in the philosophy of mathematics, that too will have to be weighed when the question of its tenability arises. The absolute idealist for whom “time is unreal” cannot appropriately just write off the ethicist’s interest in future eventuations (as regards, for example, the situation that will obtain when the time to make good a promise arrives)—or the political philosopher’s concern for the well-being future generations. The materialist cannot simply dismiss the boundary-line issues involved in the moral question of why pointlessly damaging a computer is simply foolish while pointlessly injuring a developed animal is actually wicked. The long and short of it is that philosophical issues are organically interconnected. Positions that maximize local advantages may fail to be optimal from a global point of view. In the final analysis, only positions that are holistically adequate can be deemed to be really satisfactory. From Greek antiquity to the nineteenth century, a conviction prevailed that the branches of philosophy could be arranged in a neat hierarchy of sequential dependence and fundamentality, somewhat along the lines of: logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics (axiology), and politico-social philosophy. In fact, however, the various sub-domains of philosophy are interlinked by a complex crisscross network of reciprocal interrelationships. (For example, one needs epistemology to validate principles of logic, and yet one must use logic for reasoning in epistemology.) Justificatory argumentation in philosophy admits of no neat Aristotelian order of prior/ posterior in its involvement with the subject’s components. The inherent interrelationships of the issues is such that we have no alternative but to see the sectors of philosophy as interconnected in interlocking cycles that bind the subject’s various branches into one systematic whole. Because its issues are interrelated, philosophical argumentation must look not just to antecedents but to consequences as well. Virtually nothing of philosophical relevancy is beyond question and altogether immune to criticism and possible rejection. Pretty much everything is potentially at risk. All of the data of philosophy are defeasible—anything might, in the final analysis, have to be abandoned, whatever its source: science, common sense, or common knowledge. One recent theorist writes, “No philosophical, or any other, theory can provide a view which violates common sense and remain logically consistent. For the truth of common sense is assumed by all theories…. This necessity to conform to common sense establishes a constraint upon the interpretations philosophical theories can

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offer.”6 But this overstates the case. The philosophical landscape is littered with theories that tread common sense underfoot. As philosophy goes about its work of rendering our beliefs coherent, something to which we are deeply attached often has to give somewhere along the line, and we can never say at the outset where the blow will or will not fall. Systemic considerations may well in the end lead our most solid-seeming suppositions into insuperable difficulty—even as can happen in the context of natural science. And the only cure for shortcoming in philosophical systematization lies in the construction of better systems.

Addressing Problems In philosophy there are always different alternative ways of resolving issues and answering questions. And enroute to endorsing one particular philosophical position as against its rival possibilities, the individual comes up against a series of crucial questions: • [Urgency] What are the questions and problems that are the most significant? Which of them are of greatest importance (to me)? • [Issue Resolution] To what extent does taking the position resolve our puzzlements and lay our doubts to rest. • [Data Resources] What considerations are at my disposal and serve as relevant data for resolving the issue? What information at one’s disposal can serve to substantiate a particular resolution? The more the better. • [Presumptive Avoidance] To what extent does the position require guesswork for informational gap-filling? • [Credibility] To what extent does a given position place reliance on implausible or otherwise highly probative assumptions? Does it fly in the face of what is otherwise credible? The less of the credible considerations (e.g., go against science, common sense, and established experience). • [Issue Resolution] To what extent does the position answer questions and resolve problems? • [Problematicity] To what extent does the position open up new issues and raise new problems? • [Harmonization] To what extent does the position harmonize smoothly with the general course of experience and square with the

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preexisting understanding of the relevant issues? To what extent does accepting the position require a suspension of disbelief? • [Practical Utility] To what extent does taking the position constitute to the more effective and efficient management of our practical affairs? No doubt other considerations will come into play as well. But these constitute an array of personal prospects. Plausibility-assessment is a matter of determining how well an issue resolving position or contention fits into the overall fabric of what we take ourselves to know—how acceptable we find it to be in harmonizing with what we otherwise endorse. This is a matter of assessing the extent to which the position is able to accommodate our “data for philosophizing” as represented by Common-sense beliefs: common knowledge and traditionary convictions scientific knowledge: the beliefs of “experts” and “authorities” received opinions: the teachings of everyday experience and “the lessons of history” traditionary wisdom: as encompassed in ancestral lore To be sure, none of these cognitive resources deserve outright acceptance and provide for categorical assurance. But all deserve respect. All of them enjoy the pro-presumption authorizing acceptance in the absence of good reason to the contrary. Each is open to dismissal—but only for good reason. Each provides for cognitive gapfilling on a basis of “innocent until proven guilty.” Most of these factors are not subject to the individual’s free choice and fortuitous preference but are significant matters of objective fact. This is so, for example, with an individual’s life-context, course of experience, psychic make-up, and so on. Even a person’s likings, preferences, and tastes are not themselves choice self-generated by their likings, preference, and tastes but may well go against them. Most of us are in these regards not just exactly the sort of persons we would want to be if our choices were detrimental. Our dispositions themselves are for the most part not given but choices, and are matters of objective fact rather that subjective inclination. For objectives are givens (rather than chosen) and all their factors are clearly of this nature.

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The problem of course is that of potential dissonance. One positon may be superior to another in one respect, and inferior in another. To resolve the matter there will then have to be a balancing act to decide the matter of everything-considered superiority. Since different thinkers may—and likely will—have different views on this critical issue.

Legitimation Issues The preceding account presents what purports to be the proper way, to philosophizing. What authenticates this? What validates its claims to accept? The answer is that its validity lies on the very nature of the subject itself. And the reasoning here runs as follows: 1. It is the aim and mission of philosophy to provide cogent answers to “the big questions” concerning man, his place in the world, and his knowledge about these matters. 2. Given the cognitive resources at our disposal—both in point of relevant data and in point of available ways and means for their processing—the method at issue affords the best and the most we can effectively do to accomplish these goals. It is this line of quintessentially practical reasoning that validates the claims of that characteristic mode of proceeding to qualify as the rationally appropriate mode of philosophical procedure.

Philosophical Disagreement It is effectively inevitable that different individuals are going to arrive at different resolutions of philosophical issues. This is an inducible consequence of the logically basic tact that different premisses authorize different conclusions. For it is inevitable that different individuals, existing at indifferent places and times, having different courses of experience, and equipped with different material environments, functional concerns, and cognitive prospectus and preoccupy interests are going to appraise matters differently in point of their interests, significance, priority, morality, and so on. And these are not matters of haphazard or able choice—all of them hinge on objective matters ruled by the structure of experience. The key fact is that philosophy is a rational discipline that renders philosophical disagreement inevitable. For different premisses yield different conclusion, and the difference in people’s experiential situations—both

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personal and social—make it inevitable that different premisses became available to different individuals. The line of thought followed here runs as follows: Q: Whence came the premises on which philosophical reasoning are to be based? A: Their source lies in harmonizing one’s course of experience Q: But different people have different and discordant experiences. Does this not render philosophical disagreement inevitable? A: Yes, of course it does. Q: But does this fact not unto the value and validity of philosophizing and make philosophy a futile undertaking? A: By no means! The fact that differently situated people do (and should) resolve their dietary, medical, occupational, and religious issues differently does not destroy the value and validity of these enterprises. Why would philosophy be any different? What is appropriate in my life-situation is not undone by the fact that something else may be appropriate for a differently situated other. Q: But does this not make philosophy an irrational, subjective, and indifferent enterprise. A: By no means. What is suitable for X given his-or-her circumstances is a perfectly objective fact, nowise j validated by the fact that something else is suitable for Y in his/her very different context of life. In most sectors of life, we do not require—or even much care, if issue resolutions satisfactory to ourselves would suit everybody else as well. And there is no good reason why the matter should stand differently in relation to philosophy. That those issue-resolutions should properly harmonize with our own conditions and circumstances is paramount—and is itself something altogether objective. That they should be agreeable with the conditions of others is pretty much beside the point. To be realistic about philosophy we must be contextualistic about it as well.

Notes 1. Wolfram Sieman, Metternich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), p. 172. 2. William James, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), p. 109.

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3. Michael Dummett, “Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1956–1959): 159–170 (see, p. 160); reptd. in Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). C. S. Peirce sometimes asserted a similar view. 4. This aspect of objectivity was justly stressed in the “Second Analogy” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, though his discussion rests on ideas already contemplated by Leibniz. See the Philosophische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, Vol. VII (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1890), pp. 319–20. 5. Further aspects of the systemic nature of truth is explored in the author’s The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 6. John Kekes, The Nature of Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980), p. 196.

CHAPTER 12

The Transcendental Impetus

Introduction Our cognitive concern for reality’s actualities is inseparably matched with a no less pressing concern for an ideality that transcends the limits of observational determinability. The situation is readily illustrated.

Epistemic Boundaries Matters of fact or supposed fact admit of three levels of acceptance or endorsement: • absolute certainty: factuality, total assurance: “It is certain that p” “It is the case that,” “I know it for a fact that p” • personal assurance: I feel certain that p” “I view it as certain that p” “I am certain that p” • acceptance: “I believe that p” “I am of the opinion that p” Only the first of these—absolute certainties—purports to be objective and unqualifiedly factual. The others all have an indelibly autobiographic qualification. Their immediate bearing is not on the facts than on the person who considers them. Between the total assurance of unqualified certainty and the idiosyncratic acceptance of opinions and belief comes the personal endorsement © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_12

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of individual assurance—of a personal boundary or guarantee of veracity. When I tell you what my opinion or belief is, I do not put my good faith and credibility entirely on the line. If there indeed is a significant borderland between the absolute certainty of fact and its mere belief or acceptance. And it is the ethical borderland of personal guarantee—the claimant’s assurance that the fact at issue is as it is claimed to be. In sum, between fact and opinion there is a borderland of a promised transit from opinion to certainty that may well be flawed.

Ethical Boundaries There is an analogous philosophical boundary between morals and mores, between the established customs of the community and matters of right and wrong—of ethical propriety. Mores relate to matters of social practice in line with the customs of the community. For the most part, the issues they govern are ethically indifferent matters of how to greet people, how to leave or enter domiciles, how to eat food, and so on. In violating them one marks oneself as socially inept and boorish, but not as bad, wicked or contemptable. Mores are factual, simply a matter of established ways. As such, they can be ethically good or bad—suttee among the Hindus, hospitality to strangers among the Bedouin. For morals and ethics are something very different—a normative matter of what people should do—what the best and true interests of their fellows requires. And on this basis, the ethics is not tribal but universal. If murder, theft, dishonesty, and random vandalism are morally wrong anywhere they are so everywhere. Mores are simply a matter of fact—of what people do actually do. And so here too is an important philosophical border between matters of fact and observable behavior on the one side and matters of right, or normatively appropriate behavior in the other. And there is again a philosophically crucial borderland between what people do and actually think about the issues and what it is normatively and objectively appropriate to think about them.

Legal Boundaries A strictly analogous distinction functions in relation to what is legal and what is just. Legality is purely factual in its reach: a matter of what the institutional processes of the communal decision and decree. Justice, by contrast, calls for the implementation of certain universal principles:

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• Treat like cases alike • Align judgment to the available evidence • Give everyone their appropriate due Such rules are universal and not merely communal—a matter of what is proper in the treatment of homo sapiens at large. They call for the implementation of norms that act beyond the boundaries of nations, societies, and cultures. To violate them is to open oneself to the just condemnation of humanity at large. So, here too we confront the philosophically crucial distinction between what is and what should be. Once more, we are concerned with what it is—objectively and impersonally—not just the idiosyncratic views of particular individuals but for the objectively best and optimal concern of the best interests of humanity at large.

Evaluative Boundaries: Preference/Preferability and Mill’s Fallacy In the classic 1863 tract in Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill (1806–1873) wrote as follows in substantiation of his utilitarian ethics: The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so on with the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself [viz. happiness] were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. (J.  S. Mill, Utilitarianism (1863), Chapter IV (London: Longmans Green))

However, this reasoning is involved in a serious misunderstanding. The English word-pattern xxxible/xxxable bears two very different constructions. It can be used possibilistically to indicate that what can be xxx’d and is able to be so, as per: • visible, tenable, countable, refutable, measurable

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Or it can be used normatively to indicate what is deserving to be xxx’d and should be so esteemed and valued, as per: • notable, contemptible, despicable, valuable, estimable, preferable And it is clear that desirable lies squarely in the second, normative category. The two perspectives of being and desired are quite different, and it is obvious that not everything that is capable of being xd (be it made or admired) is deserving of it. And so, Mill’s argumentation goes badly awry here. His evidentiating premisses about deserving all relates to the possibilistic manner of what is or can be done about deserve. But the conclusion he wants and needs hinges on the second matter of what deserves to be so. By neglecting this crucial difference between the factual and normative realms, Mill conveniently but inappropriately eases the pathway to his conclusion.

Proof vs. Demonstration A demonstration is an argument that establishes a conclusion relative to and on the basis of acceptable premisses. A proof is an argument that demonstrates a conclusion on the basis of correctly and appropriate accepted premisses. Demonstrations are factual and can lead to incorrect conclusions when their premises go wrong. Proofs are normative and must lead to correct conclusions. Demonstrations consolidate acceptance; Proofs augment authentic knowledge. Reasonings that do not yield established facts cannot be characterized as proofs; they remain mere demonstrations. Mere would-be but failed proofs. Demonstrating something achieves a matter of fact; proving something involves a step beyond this in making a normative commitment that transcends merely factual commitments of an inherently evaluative nature. Once more, the philosophically crucial gap between the factual and the normative is not given its just due.

Egalitarian versus Fair Egalitarian distributions provide for equal shares; they are a matter of treating everyone alike. This is a strictly factual matter, pivoting on the question: does everyone come out with the same identical or at least equivalent share.

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Fair distribution by contrast is a normative matter. Here the pivotal question is, “Does everyone alike come out with their just and fair chance: the share that is appropriate for the circumstances of their particular situation. This is obviously a normative rather than simply factual matter that raises a whole host of plausible issues.

The Realism of the Ideal The pervasiveness of the ideal makes itself felt at every juncture of philosophical deliberation. Normativity is itself an inherent part of the fundamental realities of our cognitive operations. Just as with such dialectics as Belief/Knowledge, Mores/Morals, Law/Justice, and the other pairings we have, is a perspectival duality of factual actuality and normative ideality. The former address the actual factual arrangements that human operations have instituted in actual proceedings; the latter address the idealizations that stand hopefully in the utopian backdrop to those actual proceedings and provide the telos, which provides the propriety of their aspirational motivation. William James was given to dwelling on the contrast between the hard-­ minded realists and the tender minded idealists who aspired to a nobler Display A Idealizations Factual realization

Normative idealization

Belief/Opinion/Informative Mores/Custom Law Preference Obligations Cost/Price

Knowledge Ethics/Morals Justice Preferability Duties Value/Worth

variant than what an unconsciously realistic realism is able to afford when ignoring the idealistic purview. Display A indicates, such an aspirational normativity is not just the possession of tender-hearted idealists but runs like an all-pervasive leitmotiv throughout our everyday life perspective in things. Even a realistic philosophy cannot overlook the fact that the directive impetus of identity is itself an eliminable aspect of the constitution of the Real. Normativity is as much a feature of the real as its observable constitution.

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To be sure, before the emergence of evaluative intelligence in the cosmos there was no scope for a normativity that cannot but be the artifact of intelligent judgment. And so a philosophically critical distinction is at work. While before there was measurement there was measurability, before there was evaluative judgment there was no evaluative normativity. A realism of sorts is also at work here, but one that deals not simply in impersonally objective facts, but rather in conceptions that regard creations of reason (entia rationis). But reason’s conceptions are every bit as real as Nature’s.

CHAPTER 13

Ultimate Explanation: The Principle of Sufficient Reason and Its Ramifications

Introduction This is a long and complex chapter, and it may be helpful to readers to preface an outline to serve as road-map for its somewhat circuitous route of deliberation. • THE ULTIMATE WHY QUESTION 136 • THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON (PSR) 138 • EXISTENCE ISSUES 139 • THE HUME-EDWARDS THESIS AND THE PROBLEM OF TOTALITY EXPLANATION 141 • THE OMNIFACT PROBLEM 143 • A TWOFOLD TURNING: (1) THE TURN TO POSSIBILITY ELIMINATION 144 • THE SHERLOCK HOLMES PRINCIPLE OF STATUS CHANGE146 • A TWOFOLD TURNING: (2) THE TURN TO AXIOLOGY AND THE OPTIMALISTIC TRANSIT TO EXISTENCE VIA VALUE 149

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• THE STANDARD OF METAPHYSICAL VALUE: NOOPHELIA AND THE PIVOTAL ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE154 • OPTIMALISM158 • OPTIMALITY AND SUFFICIENT REASON 160 • CIRCULARITY PROBLEMS: SELF-RELIANCE AS PIVOTAL IN EXPLAINING ULTIMACIES AND TOTALITIES161 • PECULIARITY PROBLEMS: DEFEATING THE ODDITY OBJECTION 165 • FURTHER ASSETS OF OPTIMALISM 167 • SUMMARY169 • APPENDIX: HISTORICAL ROOTINGS IN THE NEOPLATONIC PERSPECTIVE 170

The Ultimate Why Question Among the most fundamental issues of philosophy is the ultimate metaphysical question put on the agenda of the field by G.  W. Leibniz (1646–1716): “Why is there anything at all?” And alongside this stands the equally significant and puzzling question: “Why is it that that which exists is as it is?” However, before the issues can be addressed meaningfully, some essential clarification must be provided. To begin with, what sort of “thing” is to be at issue in this question? Are numbers to count as “things”? Then reasons of necessity will do the job. Or again, if facts (states of affairs) are to count as “things” then the answer is once more straightforward: there are such things because their necessity has it so. Some things—number and facts—necessarily exist. And there is also—according to many thinkers—yet another necessary existent, viz. God. And so as long as “things” like facts numbers and relationships (let alone deities) are allowed into the range of relevancy, the answer to the Leibnizian question would simply seem to be, “Because it has to be so and cannot possibly be otherwise.” However, this resolution goes amiss. For the pivot of Leibnizian concern is actually: Why is there something contingent—something that exists ­notwithstanding the fact that this is not necessary whose existence is

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Display I POSSIBLE RESPONSES TO THE ULTIMATE WHY? QUESTION I.

The question is illegitimate and improper. [Rejectionism]

II.

The question is legitimate 1) but unanswerable: a) Only available by the via negativa of an insistence that there really is no “answer” in the ordinary sense—no sort of explanatory rationale at all. The existence of things in the world is simply a brute fact. [Rationalism.] b) it represents a mystery [Mystificationism]. 2) and answerable a) via a substantial route of roughly the following sort: “There is a substance [viz. God] whose position in the scheme of things is one that lies outside the world, and whose activity explains the existence of things in the world.” [The theological approach.] b) via a nonsubstantival route of roughly the following sort: “There is a principle of creativity that obtains in abstracto (i.e., without being embedded in the characteristics of any substance and thus without a basis in any preexisting thing), and the operation of this principle accounts for the existence of things.” [The nomological approach.] c) via the quasi-logical route of considerations of absolute necessity. [The necessitarian approach.] d) via the axiological rank of value considerations [The optimalstic approach]

not necessary?” Thus in the context of present concern, the necessary being of abstractions is beside the point and what is really at issue there is the matter of specifically contingent existence. At bottom, that initial question is intended to ask, “Why is there a realm of contingent existence—a real world with concrete objects in it? Why are there actually spatio-temporal reals when there might possibly not be?” And of course, once this issue is resolved satisfactorily there arises the further and no less problematic question: “Why is it that this contingent order of things exists rather than some possible alternative?” And so, the ultimate question can be simply formulated: Why is it that reality—what actually exists—is as it is? In theory, reality could be otherwise, so how is it being as is to be explained? The questions is difficult both in its substance and in it status. As Display 1 indicates, there is a plethora of possible answers, each of which carries its own problems and difficulties, so that various problems of explanation come to the forefront here. As rational beings we are, nevertheless insistent on having rational accounting.

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The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) The Principle of Sufficient Reason, as already envisioned by Leibniz, maintains that every fact about reality can be accounted for by some explanatory reason, so that for every fact (f ) there is reason (r) constituting the grounding rationale (R) for its being so rather than otherwise:

 PSR 

 f   r  rRf

But so formulated the principle is equivocal. For there are two very different sorts of factual reasons, namely epistemically evidentiating reasons, and ontologically existential reasons—creating a dual aspect of being and knowing that renders the PSR itself equivocal as between reasons for being and reasons for knowing. The former, evidentiating reasons, explain why is it that one should accept and believe something to be so—what grounds there are for its acceptance. These reasons are epistemic and address matters of belief-­ justification; evidential in nature, the schoolman called them cognitive reasons (rationes cognoscendi). They answer the question: What entitles one to think that it is so—what are the evidential grounds for its acceptance? By contrast, the latter, existential reasons, address the question: What is it that makes it to be so—how has state of affairs at issue come about—what are the operative grounds for its realization. These reasons are productive or operational in nature and so relate to what the schoolman called them existential reasons (rationes essendi). Grounding accordingly admits of different construals: the one ontological to account for how and why some state of affairs obtains, the other epistemological to account for how it is that we are entitled claim it. And on this basis, the PSR itself has two distinct versions, the ontological (PSR/O) and the epistemological (PSR/E): (PSR-E) The epistemic version: Every true fact-claim can (in principle) cognitively validated via considerations that justify its acceptance. (PSR-O) The ontological version. Every fact is processually explainable via a productive account for its being so.

The cognitive and epistemic versions of the PSR are distinct principles and could in theory obtain separately. If there are facts about Reality that are inaccessible to (finite) knowers—that is, aspect of Reality’s modus operandi that are hidden from our view—then it is possible in theory that

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PSE-O obtains but PSE-E does not. (Of course, with omniscience in prospect the two versions of the principle will coincide.) Contingence is a pivotal consideration for the PSR-O, seeing that its application to non-contingent—that is, necessary proportions looks to be a trivial matter. For a contentive p to constitute a necessary claim is requisite and sufficient to have it that not-p involves a logico-conceptual impossibility, a self-contradiction of sorts. And this very fact itself provides a suitable optic accounting. Hence, the informative case poses the real heart of the matter. The crux of the matter of PSR validation thus becomes the claim that Nature’s facts are one and all ultimately explicable (both cognitively and productively). There is no way of establishing on the basis of general principles at the very start of the cognitive enterprises that inquiry is destined for success, that reality constitutes a rationally intelligible order of things so that the real is rational and everything can be explained. This is not something we know from the outset, but only a presuppositional commitment: a guiding hypothesis that rationalizes our search for understanding. It is, in effect, what Immanuel Kant called “regulative principle”—a practice-facilitating and guiding presumption holding that the real is rational. In its essence, this issue is one of philosophy, not of science and the very idea of explanation constitutes its focus.

Existence Issues Some descriptions convey the same meaning in every range of application: liquid for example applies in the same way to water and to mercury. Other descriptions have different meanings in different ranges: green grass is one sort of thing, a green employee is another. The existential “is” is of the latter sort. Different sorts of things “exist” in very different modes: rocks, numbers, shapes, laws, aches-and-pains, all have very different modes of existence and have their being in sufficient sorts of ways. Things exist in a manner that is sui generi. The questions: “Do numbers exist?” calls for the answer “Yes, but in their own characteristic way.” Different sorts of things have different domain-correlative modes of being. And they manifest their existence in different domain correlative ways. Rain manifests its existence by makings things wet, pains by being felt, and ideas by being thought. Some sorts of things exist only in relation to thinking and modes of thought. Take suppositions, recollections, and imaginings. The object of such mental operations may well not exist, but the procedures understood

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as mental operations—the supposings, rememberings, and imaginings— certainly do so. Do possibilities exist? Yes-and-no. It may possibly rain tomorrow, but that possible rainstorm may never come to existential realization. But possibilities can exist as such, that is, as possibilities. It’s raining tomorrow is a real (existing) possibility, its desert-style drying out is not; for, if it were, it would have had to be under way by now, which it is not. Here again, possibility have being in their own way—different from that of the existing realities that furnish the actual world about us. There is no question that about their existence—it is a given. But how does this get to be so? The central problem of metaphysics is to account for existence—to provide an explanation for what it is for the things that actually exist to have this status. Science sets out to describe and explain the what and when of existence, by contrast the task of metaphysics is to account for its why. And while science looks distinctly to its types and kinds and proceeds locally— as per chemistry, biology or geology—metaphysics also looks globally at the whole of existence-at-large. The key problem that confronts an adequate metaphysical account of existence is that of contingency—of explaining why it should be that one particular manifold of possibility among various others alternatives should be the one that is actually existent, and thus explaining why the things might be different or not. Scientific explanation accordingly must use existential information in its explanations: it can and must invoke some respects of existence to account for others. Metaphysics, by contrast, cannot presuppose existential facts for its explanatory purposes without becoming enmeshed in the fallacy of begging the question. In theory it is of course possible to maintain—with Spinoza—that everything is as is of necessity—that there just are no possible alternatives to the existing order of things. But such a position is not easily established—nor even remotely plausible given the ease with which, to all appearances, alternative dispositions can be concerned. And what we are now dealing with is not a matter of conditional possibilities IN THE WORLD (relative to its lawful constitution) but rather of real possibilities FOR A WORLD. And once the prospect of such alternative possibilities is conceded, it becomes clear that any adequate metaphysical accounting for what actually exists will have to operate with respect to the realm of possibility (rather than proceeding, as science does, with regard to the realm of

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actuality). It must become evident that some sort of creative process is at work within the possibilistic domain that so functions as to single out a unique existential realm. It would, in sum, have to provide for the collapse of an immense and diversified manifold of theoretical possibility into a single coherent sub-manifold of actual existence. But how might this be achieved?

The Hume-Edwards Thesis and the Problem of Totality Explanation Where is one to go for an explanatory account for existing reality as a whole? Some theorists endorse what has come to be called the “Hume-Edwards Thesis” to the effect that, If the existence of every member of a set is explained, then the existence of the set is thereby explained.1 And they then propose to resolve the existential why-question seriatim, by explaining the existence of every existent in this contingent world of ours through a causal explanation of its origin. However, the fallacy at work here is not too difficult to see. Consider the following two claims: • If the existence of every sentence of a paragraph as a sentence of that particular paragraph is explained, then the existence of that paragraph is thereby explained. • If the existence of every note of a symphony as a part of that particular composition is explained, then the existence of that symphony is thereby explained. Both these theses are indeed true—but only subject to that added qualification. After all, to explain the existence of each spouse is not automatically to achieve an explanation of the marital couple, seeing that this would call not just for explaining these participants distributively but their collectively coordinated co-presence in the structure at issue. And the case is just the same with the Hume-Edwards Thesis. Explanatory invocation of the Hume-Edwards Thesis is unavailingly in this context. For this thesis fails to heed certain critical conceptual distinctions that are readily brought to light by means of a bit of symbolic machinery. So let us adopt the following abbreviations:

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• p @ q for “p [is true and] provides an adequate explanatory account for q”, where the variables p and q range over factual claims. • E!x for “x exists”, where the variable x ranges over possible existents. Since the variable x ranges over possible existents, we have it that (∀x)⋄E!x. On this basis, it is readily brought to view that the form of the statement “Everything has an explanation” or “There is an explanation for everything” admits of two very different constructions: Distributive explanation: “For every and any individual existent there is some (case-specific) explanation to account for it.



 x   E ! x   p  p & pE ! x  

13.1

Collective explanation: “There is one single comprehensive explanation that accounts for all existents—the entire totality of them.”2



 p   p &  x  E ! x  pE  E ! x  

13.2 

It is clear that very different questions are at issue and very different matters at stake with distributive and collective explanations. For distributive explanations explain the fact that every member of a certain set has the feature F; collective explanations account for why it is that this is so. And explaining how it is that all members of the club are male—which could be so by fortuitous circumstances—does not accomplish the job of explaining why this is so (e.g., because the bylaws require it). In posing different questions, we must be prepared for the possibility of different answers. Distributive questions address the issue locally and can be resolved by proximate answers; ultimate questions ask for more and have to be addressed globally. And this distinction means that the Hume-Edwards Thesis will be of no real avail in our explanatory quest. One has to look elsewhere. The standard approach to explanation validates fact on the basis of their following from other pre-established facts. But at this point—a big problem for the PSR arise. For with the standard process of the fact-by-fact explanation of facts we encounter a

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decisive obstacle in the case of the omnifact Ω, the grand all-encompassing fact in which all facts whatsoever is compounded—the comprehensive fact that characterizes the whole of Reality, so that (∀p)(p → [Ω → p]).

The Omnifact Problem The omnifact is the totality of fact—the conjuncture or compilation of all facts: the combination of factual reality in toto. And it is clear that there can be no factual explanation of this fact, and explanation of it on the basis of some body of fact. For any factual premiss put to work here will create a circularity by itself being a component of the body of fact that is to be explained. Entailment by the omnifact cannot achieve explanatory work, seeing that here we cannot have recourse to what we have called “the standard, fact-by-fact mode of fact explanation.” For, if we propose to contemplate fEΩ, we come into difficulty since the omnifact already includes f. And to cast f in this role and invoke it in its own explanation is to commit the fallacy of circular reasoning. There can be no satisfactory explanation that proceeds by taking as already explained and as already available, the very item that is at issue in the required explanation. And so in the end a very clear lesson emerges here. If as per the PSR all facts are to be explainable, including the all-inclusive omnifact explanation cannot be at issue here. The rational validation at issue will have to be something other than the usual. A different, very different, non-standard mode of explanation must be invoked. Accordingly, for the being of contingent-existence at large one has to put the burden explanation on something that is itself entirely outside the realm of contingent existence. With such an “ultimate” question, the explanatory appeal has to move outside the entire realm of existential fact. Ordinary questions of existence-explanation proceed in causally putative terms. The reason that X exists is that there exist other items Y1, Y2, … Ya which interact causally so as to engender X. In standard existence explanations, what exists emerges through the causally productive machinations of other existents. But this sort of thing clearly will not do in the present context. Its formulation at this level of synoptic generality marks the “why-thisworld?” as decidedly nonstandard. For the question of existence-­in-general cannot be dealt with as one of the standard generative sort at issue with a productive explanation that asks for the existence of one thing to be explained

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causally in terms of the existence and functioning of another. We cannot say, “Well there’s X in the world, and X explains the existence of things” because this simply shifts the issue to X, which after all is itself an existent. When someone explains the existence of something (e.g., the outcome) in terms of processes involving other things (the development of a seed) it puts existential facts to effective explanatory use. By contrast, metaphysics, which asks about the totality of things, does not have this convenient proposal at its disposal. In dealing with the whole, it cannot presuppose the availability of the parts. In this setting, a key point was made by Leibniz long ago: The reasons for the entire world [must] therefore lie in something extramundane, different from the chain of states or series of things whose aggregate constitutes the world. … So [to account for the world’s being] there must exists something which is distinct from the plurality of beings, or from the world.3

If we want global explanations of existence of things in the world, we are going to have difficulty in getting them from existential premisses pertaining to what the world is like. Does this mean we cannot get them at all? Since one cannot adequately explain contingent existence-at-large by an appeal to the nature of existence itself. It is clear that one must here proceed via principles that function with respect to the manifold of possibility.

A Twofold Turning: (1) The Turn to Possibility Elimination The classic dictum Ex nihlo nihil fit admits of two interpretations. Its claim that nothing can arise [come into being] from nothing whatsoever can claim either: • The origination of anything whatever requires a prior existent to serve as its producer. • The origination of anything whatever requires some prior condition or state from which to emerge. These are very different propositions. The first of these demands a preceding existent—a productive agent, and thereby something substantial. But the second merely requires a condition, a state or situation, a field of

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potency or potential, but noting substantial and nothing in the way of preexisting objects is required here, only a duly structural manifold of possibility. On this basis an existing state of affairs can and will arise in an existential vacuum through emerging from an ontological field of mere possibility whose constitution encorporates a suitable manifold of modes of potential. It is as though an internal pressure in the realm of the merely possible impels it to burst its boundaries into the realm of actuality. Such an account is of course figurative, but in the nature of the case, this is unavoidable. Insisting on the non-figurative realism would confine us to the realm of actuality, thus automatically defeating the purposes at issue. The possibility-elimination approach to existence-explanation has it that existence emerges from the lawful machinations of the manifold (of field) of possibility there indeed is a “pre” existent possibility-field with structure and laws of its own—and so there is a Reality of sorts that in being without (and thus “prior to”) the existence of substantial thing of any sort. And it is from this “preexisting Reality”—comprised of possibilities alone—that existents emerge. The laws of operation of this proto-Reality hylarchic principles—principles setting the possibility-restrictive conditions which ultimately narrow the range of existence-eligible real possibilities down to one single outcome. These hylarchic principles set the preconditions to which possibilities must confirm if they are to be eligible for actual realization. For as laws of nature diminish the range of possible realities, so hylarchic principles delimit the range of real possibilities. And even as the manifold of logic-­ conceptual principles define once-and-for the overall range of theoretical possibility so that these principles determine stepwise an ever-narrowing range of metaphysical possibilities which successively delineate ever-­ shrinking ranges of real possibility enroute to the ultimate determination of the uniquely qualified (“last man standing”) manifold of possibility that is in actuality real. The principle ex nihilo nihilo must thus be qualified with respect to what sorts of “things” are involved. On this perspective the realm of substantial things as a whole does not—cannot—arise from prior, pre-existing (substantial) things, but only from a “pre-existential” realm of being constituted by possibilities alone. Such an explanation does not account for existence in terms of prior existents: possibles can do the job via suitable principles of elimination.

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Granted, in matters of explanation, as elsewhere, conclusions require premisses: you do not get something for nothing. But the operation of possibility-elimination means that existential conclusions averts the need for existential premises through a process that has some theoretically available possibilities disqualified as authentic possibilities and thereby eliminated from the prospect of realization. And so a radical step becomes inevitable to secure an explanatory basis for contingent existence at large. For, here, one has to redirect one’s line of thought in two directions, from actuality to possibility and from fact to value. Let us consider how these reorientations are to work. To begin with there is the turn to metaphysical possibility. The transition from non-existence via possible existence in actual existence is not—and cannot be—a causality productive re-shifting of things in the world akin to the cue’s strike setting the billiard ball into motion. It is a change in the condition or status of things comparable to a directional change in a thermal or electrostatic field, not a physical transformation but a metaphysical change of status. The standard form of scientific explanation deploys certain facts to explain others. This inferential proceeding of securing factual conclusions via factual premisses will not work here. For these factual premising would themselves form an integral part of the explanation problem. So if there is to be any resolution of the issue it cannot take the usual form of explaining fact via fact. For one cannot provide factual explanation without vitiating circularity when the being or nature of existence and realty-as-a-whole in terms of any aspects of itself. To achieve a viable explanation here we must proceed in terms of possibility alone because this is all there is available to work with at this stage. We must in consequence be willing and able to affect in explanatory transit from possibility to actuality.

The Sherlock Holmes Principle of Status Change A comprehensive account for contingent existence at large, has to put the burden of explanation on something that is itself entirely outside the realm of contingent existence. With such a totalistic question, the explanatory appeal has to move outside the entire realm of existential fact. In explaining the being and the nature of actual concrete existence-as-­ a-whole, we cannot have explanatory recourse to any aspect of the being and nature of reality itself. To do so would be to “beg the question”—to make use in giving an explanation of some part, feature, or aspect of the

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very thing that is to be explained. And of course, this mode of explanation cannot function effectively in the present context. For, any causal explanation carries us back to the starting point: the presupposition of this or that existent. But the questions at issue puts this very circumstance into question. One cannot coherently invoke the existence of something in trying to explain the existence of anything whatsoever. In explaining the internality of the whole of real existence, one must go outside this realm. It would accordingly be absurd to ask for some sort of causal account for reality-as-a-whole. Causality, after all, is a world-internal process and requires world-internal inputs to do its work. It is not the sort of resources that would possibly be called to account for the world itself and to explain the origination of the totality of existents. The usual way of explaining how something comes into existence is transformative: it sets out from the existence of something else and gives an account of how transformation processes function so as to give rise to the object at issue. But this, of course, cannot work when the entirety of existence is itself at issue. A comprehensively originative rather than merely transformative explanation will have to be of a different and distinctive sort. For, here, we will need to effect—not an explanatory transformation from one sort of actuality to another, but—a trans-categorical transmutation from possibility to actuality. We will, in sum, have to proceed in a manner that is something decidedly different and proceeds not by transformation but by elimination. This non-transformative route to actualization can only be provided by one route—one that is not positively productive by nature but negatively eliminative. And this route from possibility to actuality is opened up by what might be called the Sherlock Holmes Principle. But how can mere possibility operate productively to propel itself into existential actuality? How can possibility function so as to propel itself across the existential divide into Reality? The answer is that it cannot. It simply cannot achieve this transit by some sort of productive means or method. It cannot proceed productively because as yet there is nothing on hand to do the producing. It can achieve this only reductively. Its role in this regard is entirely dependent in the Sherlock Holmes to the effect that “Once all other possible alternatives have been eliminated, whatever remains—however implausible—will have to be the case.” Seeing that it cannot possibly proceed productively—creators must now be considered reductively, by a process of elimination via a

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principle of ontological merit. We thus shift from the sphere of production to that of elimination. And must effect a revolutionary shift in the mode of processuality at work from production to reduction. To effect a transit from possibility to existence one can have recourse to what might be called the Sherlock Holmes Principle: “When you have eliminated all untenable possibilities, whatever remains, whatever its features or other aspects, will be real and actual.”4 This principle provides a basis of the metaphysics of creation. At this point one must look more closely at the requisite principle of possibility-elimination. In this ontological realm of the merely possible, nothing actually exists as such: there are only possibilities connected by hypothetical relations of if-then. And to secure any explanatory traction here, we must invoke the conception of value—of what there ought to be. Thus to resolve the problem on the metaphysics of existence we must ultimately turn to an axiology of value. A cogent explanatory account for the entire domain as a whole cannot be cogently explained by invoking some feature of its existential content. If there is to be an acceptable explanation, its probative basis must lie wholly outside this domain. It cannot be done within the realm of things or substances at all, but must step outside to proceed on the basis of some sort of principle. When we are to explain some actual condition of things without involving any other actual conditions of things, we are obviously facing a very tall order. And our room for maneuver is extremely limited. For if we cannot explain actualities at large in terms of actualities, we have little alternative but to explain them in terms of possibilities. What is thus called for here is a principle of explanation that can effect a transit from possibility to actuality, and thereby violates the medieval precept de posse ad esse non valet consequentia. Then too there is the further turn to eliminative valuation. It arises from the problem: If an adequate explanation of contingent existence is achievable only in terms of reference lying outside the realm of necessity and also outside the realm of concrete existence and contingent fact, then where can it possibly go? And the only conceivable answer here is this: it must go entirely outside the realm of fact to that of value. To achieve a synoptically ultimate explanation of the domain of contingent (existence/reality) we thus have to shift to another domain of deliberation altogether—and move outside of the existential realm of what is to the normative realm of ought to be, and so from actuality to value.

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A Twofold Turning: (2) The Turn to Axiology and the Optimalistic Transit to Existence Via Value To resolve our explanatory problem one must adopt a radically different line of approach. Blocking the existence of a possibility requires a blocker: Existence rather that non-existence becomes the metaphysical default condition. Possibilities obtain as real unless prevented from so being by preexisting others. And so one arises at the principle: If something does not exist then there must be some condition of affairs whose existence blocks its realization, or symbolically:

~ E ! x   y  E ! y & yBx 



where yBx comes to E!y → ~E!x. A non-existent, that is to say, always has an existent existence-blocker it fails to be real because some superior combination of possibility stands in the way. The overall manifold of possibility envisions a pyramid-like structure of possibility as per Display 1. It begins at the base/level of rigidly construed logico-conceptual possibility and ascending tier by tier to ever smaller groups ongoingly resolved by further quantifying conditions of existential realizability: And as we ascend the pyramid we encounter ever existing requisites of lawful order, regularity, uniformity, harmony, and intelligent design. Finally, at the pinnacle, we have the uniquely qualified “last man standing” arrival through the principle that “The better alternatives”—the more metaphysically involving and ontologically qualified—expel the less. And that final transparent proposal prevails on the basis of a metaphysical version of the “Sherlock Holmes Principle.” • That when one has eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever remains, however implausible, is real and true. It is tempting and even plausible to argue that in reasoning about possibilities one can never emerge from this relation—that reflection or possibilities cannot produced a transit to actuality. But this is very mistaken. For the actual itself must, of course, figure somewhere among the possibilities. And it is, of course, just this fact that the Sherlock Holmes Principles exploits. And so possibility reduction is the pivot of existenceexplanation. It affords the crucial mechanism of explanation here. A critic

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might be tempted to object: “Since possibilities are infinite, how could reasoning from hylarchic principles possibly reduce possibilities from infinity to singularity.” But two considerations serve to sideline this: (1) There is no reason why a single principle cannot eliminate infinitely many cases. THE PYRAMID OF POSSIBILITY actuality metaphysical possibility

physical possibility

theoretical possibility

reality intelligent design quasi-aesthetic harmony physical lawfulness nomic possibility logico-conceptual possibility

[When you establish that the solution of an equation must be an odd integer, you eliminate an infinite multitude of alternative possibilities.] And (2) is there no conclusive reason why the ontological side of things could not encompass an infinite multitude of hylarchic principles. The structure of the overall pyramidal domain of possibility has a range from the bottom level of sheer logico-conceptual possibility and the pinnacle of actual existence at its top and increasingly narrowing spectrum of levels of states of real possibility stratified by increasingly demanding requirements of an ontological merit, throughout this hierarchy membership at these levels of possibility makes increasingly demands regarding such matters as order, regularity, symmetry, balance, variation, harmony, and the like. And in the ongoing dimension in which some possibilities give way to others in this sequence of constraints this is an ultimate reduction to that topmost apex where all other alternatives have been eliminated. Sheer logic requires that some one alternative possibility must be realized, and that only one of them possibly can be. And contentions of merit, quality, and value determine which of them it is to be. There need be no creative agent or agency in operation. Acknowledging is not a matter of goal-oriented production but one of evaluatively principled reduction.

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One optimal alternative prevails not by telic selection but by the normative elimination of alternatives. This axiological approach envisions the pyramid of possibility. It means that among alternative possibilities, that which is—on the whole and everything considered—will be actualized, simply because there will (by hypothesis) be no synoptically superior alternative to block it. On such an approach, an ultimate account of reality-as-a-whole will proceed not in terms of causal production, but in terms of possibility-elimination based on evaluative considerations. But in this matter of synoptic existence explanation, just how are we to travel on the via negativa of possibility-limitation? What could it be that renders authentic possibilities unfit for actualization? But what is to do the blocking? What can possibly stand in the way of a possibility’s actualization? The answer is simply its lack of sufficient value, its comparative unworthiness to exist, and failure to contribute adequately to the harmony of things. Realization is like solving a jigsaw puzzle with extra pieces to achieve a maximally harmonious overall optimum. Harmonization is the motive force at work in the realization of possibilities. On such an approach, value becomes the determinant of existence. The omnifact is the totality of fact—the conjuncture or compilation of all facts: the combination of factual reality in toto. And it is clear that there can be no factual explanation of this fact, and explanation of it on the basis of some body of fact. For any factual premiss put to work here will create a circularity by itself being a component of the body of fact that is to be explained. And where facts cannot serve, we have nowhere else to turn but values. Where factuality fails us, we must turn to axiology. [[Continuity]] But just what is “elimination” in this context? The answer is that among alternative possibilities one will eliminate another two conditions are fulfilled. (1) the alternatives are generalities that they are logically incompatible so that one excludes the others, and (2) the prevailing alternative is predominant: its claim is actualized and realizations are superior. Thus, the overall process is that possibility-field is governed by Principle of Optimality: in the process of bringing coherence and consistency into a real possibility, the superior (stronger, more rational, reasonable) is going to prevail over the inferior. There are two possible pathways from value (merit, goodness), to existence.

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• The positive via positiva which is productively self-propelling in the way of merit fostering takes the line that in an existential competition among possibilities the more meritorious is bound to prevail. This envisions a positively productive impetus to greater value. Its processuality is an ancestral neo-Platonic emanation from to ôn (the Good) which spreads out it productive and creative agency across the field of possibility to ensure the realization of the fittest (i.e., best) alternative, so to speak. Speaking ontologically (existentially) the optimal possibility is destined to prevail over the inferior: in any competition between the superior is bound to win out. • The negative via negativa which is reductively self-propelling in the way of demerit diminution takes the line that in an existential competition any possibilities the less meritorious is bound to give way. This envisions a negatively reductive impetus to lesser values. Its ancestor is a Manichaean eliminationism of disvalue spreading out its reductive eliminative impetus across the landscape of possibility to ensure the non-realizing to the less fit, so to speak. Its operative principle is that the inferior possibilities are bound to give way. Speaking ontologically (existentially) the inferior possibilities are destined to give way to the better. In any competition between them, the inferior is bound to lose it. It is clear that these two distinct pathways are bound to lead to exactly the same optimific destination. The crux of the reasoning at work here lies in the Sherlock Holmes Principle of possibility elimination. Here we reason from elimination to actualization, from disqualification from the realm of possibility to entry into the domain of the real. And this possibility-elimination cannot proceed causally; it has to proceed normatively. Those eliminated possibilities are out of the running not because some creative agent an agency chooses to dismiss them, but because they are inherently unworthy—outranked and outflanked by superior alternatives. And so, here, we undertake a transit from the domain of value to that of actual fact. Such an axiological turning, and it alone, can furnish the requisite instrumentality of possibility elimination. We have to draw and implement an unavoidably evaluative distinction between ontologically positive and negative possibilities. Naturalistic explanation functions with the world’s realities—to existence-­in. But metaphysical explanation at the level of things-in-general

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have to function at the level of possibility. And here we come to the fundamental law of metaphysics: Inferior alternatives are ipso facto unavailable for realization. Inferior merit is existentially disqualifying. And this principles carries a crucial corollary: Reality is optimific. And so the answer to the question of what explains the elimination of the inferior alternatives lies in a metaphysical Optimality Principle: Given an exhaustive range of possible alternatives, it is the best of them that is actualized. And on this basis the answer to our initial question “Why is there something contingent— something whose existence is not necessary” is simply: “Because everything considered it is for the best that this should be so.” So what we have here is the Leibnizian Turn of shifting the explanatory strategy at work from the order of descriptive fact to that of normative evaluation. For, if we are not to explain facts via fact, then we have no alternative but to move on to a non-standard value-based mode of fact explanation. We must acknowledge that if fact cannot be grounded in fact, then we have little alternative but to ground it in value. And so our explanatory reasoning must now take the line of the explanatory format: . That which is (existentially) optimal will obtain 1 2. It is (existentially) optimal that f should

be

realized

Therefore: f obtains In sum, we must now have to take recourse to axiological (value-geared) explanation of possibility elimination and take the neo-Platonic line proposed by Leibniz and adopt an optimalism that looks to optimality as an explanatory basis for the grounding of existence. Given that an adequate explanation of contingent existence is achievable only in terms of reference lying outside the realm of fact, where could it possibly go? The only viable answer here is this: It must go to the realm of value, and will have to shift to another domain of deliberation altogether—and move outside of the factual realm of what really is to the normative realm of what ideally ought to be, from extent actuality to possible value. In the end, the ex nihil organization of existence meets the following problems:

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• The availability of a manifold of exclusions and exhaustive possibilities. (This is apparently furnished by the resources of logic.) • The availability of an evaluative standard to assess the comparative existence-worthiness of alternative possibilities. (This is apparently formulated by the resources of a metaphysical axiology.) Given these theoretical instrumentalities the problem of existence is resolved not by a creative processuality of some sort, but rather by a process of elimination that leaves “the last man standing” among the uneliminated possibilities. With productive creation put aside, the project of existence explanation can be accomplished via the elimination of a metaphysical version of the Sherlock Homes Principle.

The Standard of Metaphysical Value: Noophelia and the Pivotal Role of Intelligence But what sort of existence-oriented value can be at work in these deeply metaphysical deliberations? Just what considerations can render one family (manifold) of possibility more realization-qualified that another? How are we to enable alternative “possible worlds” from the angle of their realization-­qualifying merits? What sort of self-determinative considerations could function as an existentially qualifying role in this context of deliberations? What factor could possibly provide a rationally intelligible response to this problem? And here the standard of value when we take the axiological turn to existence explanation will have to be intelligence and its ramifications. Intelligence calls for intelligibility and this in turn requiring harmony order, harmonious organization, and thus encompass the various parameters rational design. The characteristics that intelligence values will themselves serve as the pivots axiological explanation. After all, it is clear that one cannot just optimize, any more than one can just maximize or minimize. For optimalism, one has to optimize something, some feature or aspect of things. But if this merit-indicating factor is to be something that is self-validating and self-sustaining then the clearly most promising candidate would seem to be intelligence itself—that is to say the overall status and standing of intelligent beings at large. Any rational being is bound to see the loss of reason as a supreme tragedy. For an intelligent being—a rational creature—intelligence itself must have a prime place high on the scale of values. It, accordingly, is intelligence and

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rationality as such that best qualifies as the self-sufficient standard of value that will have to be at issue “for the best” will have to be construed in terms of what is best for the enhancement and diffusion of intelligence in the cosmos. The answer stands all too plainly before us. The requisite rationally intelligible standard is intelligent realizability itself. But it is only natural and fitting that the arrangements of a reasonable universe should look to reason itself as the paramount positivity. And on this basis the merit/value at issue would pivot on the external to which an existential manifold supposition the interests of reason—that is, facilitates the development of rational beings and principles them with the occasions and means for deploying that reality on developing an understanding of its nature. User-friendliness in relation to the best intent of intelligence and reason affords the most suitable value standard in relation to existence. The mode of the merit at work in the axiological explanation of existence is intelligence. Merit here consists in serviceability to the overall best interest of intelligence in the world’s scheme of things. Ratiophilia—fostering the interest of intelligence—is the grounding of existence. Any rational agent—God certainly included—would want to resolve any issue via the best-available resolution. But what if we leave God out of the account—not necessarily via atheistic disbelief but simply as an explanatory exercise. Nature too is a problem solver: its ever-present problem being that if temporal continuity, of projecting itself from its present state into the unfolding future. This is a problem which, insofar as there are alternatives (which indeed there always are) she would want to resolve in terms of ever-operative principles which enable this development to unfold in the most uniform, simple, and efficient ways, that is, in the rationality-­ analogous manner. In the end, we must expect that any ultimate principle must explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. The impetus to realization inherent in authentic value lies in the very nature of value itself. A rational person would not favor the inferior alternative; and a rational reality cannot do so either. At work here is a proto-ontological law to the effect that under such-­ and-­such conditions various theoretically available possibilities become eliminated (i.e., realization-ineligible) as real possibilities by virtue of evaluative inferiority. And such a process will have to continue to operate in the possibilistic domain until at last only one privileged alternative remains.

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What we have here is literally a struggle for the survival of the fittest, but now with matters being fought out not among competing actuals but among competing possibilities—that is between theoretically available possibilities and metaphysically acceptable ones. The crucial point of these deliberations is that the principles of order that characterize the real not only describe its constitution but also serves to explain its existence. The crux is that in the final analysis Reality exists because this is necessitated—not in the logical order of deliberations (as contemplated by Spinoza), but in that axiological order as adumbrate by Neo-Platonism and renovated by Leibniz. For ultimately, the ontology of existence must be grounded in the axiology of value, predicated on the principle that any inferior alternative is unqualified to be actual. And the explanation of this principle lies reflexively in the principle self. As with any ultimate principle, it cannot look elsewhere for explanation but has to provide for itself in that it is for the best that this should be so. This is a matter of faute de mieux. It is in principle impossible to get an ultimate explanation in the productive order of factual explanation because the need for transformative preliminaries here stands in the way of ultimacy. When ultimacy is at issue, value is the only game in town. To elucidate how axiological explanation proceeds consider the series: 121212121212

How is one to explain the presence of a 2 in that twelfth and final place? The answer is that it must be there in order to maintain the orderly structure of a pattern of alteration. Only the presence of a two can maintain the systemic harmony of the situation that the series is unfolding. Or again consider the following situation of X

X

X O

X

X

What are we expect for those three blank positions? On grounds of symmetry, it would seem that the answer here must have the format:

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X

X

X

O

?

O

X

X

X

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This clearly is the most rationally harmonious resolution (with that central? alone as yet undetermined, though not for long, since X would now serve to maximize symmetry. As such examples show, considerations of structural harmony—of uniformity, symmetry and balance—can serve as determining factors in the optimalistic explanation of facts via eliminative unsuitability. For the sort of values at work in the axiological explanation of facts are, in the end, the parameters of rationally systemic order such as, regularity, uniformity, comprehensivity, symmetry, reciprocity, harmony, and the like. All such factors are versions of an aesthetic standard of rational fitness, serving to bring harmonious order into a setting of variety, diversity, and harmony. The overall standard considering these features (variety and order as per Leibniz) is the aesthetic standard of harmonious complexity of the sort exhibited in nature in the structure of nature’s laws. If value is to serve as a factor in the explanation of fact, it will have to be a matter of the nature’s accommodation of rational intelligibility via functional systematicity. Specifically this involves nomic order via natural laws that exhibit uniformity, order, regularity, harmony, symmetry, and the like. The value-factors at issue here are quasi-aesthetic: aesthetic, that is to say, in relation to intellectual rather than sensuous beauties. One is put in mind of Rosalind Franklin’s reaction when first confronted with James Watson’s double helix model of DNA transmission: “it’s just too beautiful to be wrong.” The value at issue will thus have it pivot on the interests of intelligence, and intelligibility. All this still leaves one big issue hanging—one massive loose end. Namely, why should value be the standard of being? Why should Reality favor what is for the best? Why should the Real be axiotropic? What is it that qualifies value as an explanatory factor? Why should that which is for the best be real/actual, existent? The answer is straightforward: because this too is for the best. This axiological mode of explanation of fact is self-sustaining—as any ultimate explanation must be. For while self-explanation is vitiatingly circular in the factual case, it is self-sustaining

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in the axiological case. Different issues call for different accounts. This looks paradoxical and problematic—but only because we are so extensively habituated to regard factual explanation as the norm. The process of axiological explanation roots in the Optimality Principle. Every contingent fact has an ontological basis in its contribution to the overall merit and value of the Real. If any fact comprised in Reality were different the World overall would pay a price so that, taken as a whole, it would become less meritorious in rendering the Real less intelligible.

Optimalism The only validation of rational intelligibly that can reasonably be asked for—and the only one worth having—must lie in considerations of the systemic self-sufficiency of reason—its endorsement on the basis of rational considerations. And such self-endorsement is not problematic but altogether appropriate. The only satisfactory explanation for anything—even for the existence of intelligence and its requirements—will have to be an intelligent explanation. In taking intelligence to provide its own ultimate explanatory basis, we proceed in a way that is cyclical and indeed even “circular.” But this simply reflects the structural coherence of rational systematization. And there is nothing viciously self-defeating about such self-reliance. For while vicious circularity stultifies by “begging the question,” virtuous circularity merely coordinates related elements in their mutual interlinkage. The former pre-assumes what is to be proved, the latter simply shows how things are connected in a well-coordinated and mutually supportive interrelationship. After all, even to ask the question “Why should it be that reality is intelligible?” is already to manifest one’s commitment to the rationality principle at issue, since asking this question is to expect an answer—and a cogently intelligent one at that. There is simply no rationally satisfactory alternative to using intelligence in its own explanation. For when a self-validating principle of explanation is needed, then intelligence and reason appear on the scene as ready volunteers. Noophelia—intelligence favoring—accordingly provides a natural pivot for the presently envisioned optimalism in existential explanation. Accordingly, the optimalism envisioned here is based on the conditions of order rendering nature’s modus operandi acceptable to intelligent

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beings at large. And at the cosmological level such an optimalism militates toward a universe which • provides for the chance and randomness through which alone intelligent beings can emerge in the world through evolutionary processes based on chance-conditioned variation and selection. • provides for the chance-conditional novelty and innovation needed to provide an environment of sufficient complexity to be of interest for intelligent beings. • provides for the order of regularity and lawfulness needed for a universe sufficiently orderly and to allow complex creatures to develop and thrive. • provides for a lawful order in the modus operandi of nature sufficiently simple to be understood by imperfectly intelligent beings as a basis for grounding their decisions and actions in a complex world. The arrangements of an intelligently contrived universe must, in sum, manage things in a way that rational creatures would see as optimal from the vantage point of their own cognitive interests as rational beings. And so an optimal world, in the cosmological sense presently at issue, is one that provides for a manifold of natural law favorable to the best interests of inquiry in point of its existence, its resources, and its operations. And so optimalism is a theory of rational systematization that grounds the explanation of the world’s facts through a process of optimization subject to constraints—the constraints being the projection of a lawful order of things in which intelligent beings can emerge through evolutionary processes of a sort that affords them the opportunity to thrive physically and to progress cognitively. In effect, we have, optimalism + noophelia = axiogenesis. The theory accordingly explains the world’s existence and nature in terms of their providing for a natural domain that is conducive to the success of its intelligent beings. And this is crucial for the present range of deliberations. For to be able to afford an adequate resolution of our ultimate question the principle at work cannot rest on further extraneous considerations. For the question of why the truth of things is what it actually is will arise with respect to the principle itself, and if it is to resolve such matters it must do so with respect to itself as well. It must, in short, be self-sustaining and self-grounding. Otherwise, the requisite ultimacy cannot be achieved.

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Optimality and Sufficient Reason It is evident that the Principle of Optimization (PO) can render great service in matters of ultimate explanation seeing that it can serve to explain not only the mega-fact but also the PSR and indeed even the PO itself. Four pivotal considerations are at play at this point. • The PO must admit of an adequate explanation (if the PSR is to be sustained). • To realize adequacy, this explanation cannot be infinitely regressive. It must terminate in something self-explanatory and ultimate. • Such an explanation must proceed in the evaluative order—because explanation in the factual order (being fact dependent) cannot be ultimate and (being non-circular) cannot achieve self-sufficiency. • Only the PO can achieve self-sufficient ultimacy. Its seeming circularity is nowise a flaw (as it would be in the factual order), but is a situational requisite. Any ultimate prospect must be self-explanatory—being ultimate, it cannot possibly depend on explanation in terms of something else. And this is why only axiological explanation obtains not of fact but of value can possibly qualify as ultimate. Value-explanation alone can provide for the situationally requisite of self-validation in a manner that fact-explanation could not possibly manage to achieve. On its own telling, the PSR must—as a contingently true contention— have a rationale for obtaining: its being in operation must have an explanatory account of some sort. Here there are three possibilities: • The theological account in terms of divine agency. The principle is instituted by a divine Creator. • The axiological account in terms of value. The principle obtains as a consequences of a yet more functional value maximizing principle: the Principle of Optimality that grounds the existence of what is for the best. • The rationalist account that sees Reality as governed by a Principle of Ratiotropism that sees reality as the actualizations of that in whose favor (from the standpoint of intelligence) there is the best case. With duly adjusted construals of divine preference, alternative evaluation, and existential rationalization, these three approaches can be seen as

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different perspectives in one and the same outcome. And the upshot of the present deliberations is that all three approached issue in the same destination, the observation of a Principle of Sufficient Reason throughout the realm of the Real. The approach envisioned here is predicated on an inherent impetus to the metaphysical optimality governing the being and nature of Reality. This basic principle accordingly provides a uniform resolution to a cascade of basic issues: Q: What explains the principle of optimality itself? Why does it govern Reality? A: It is self-explanatory. Its obtaining is for the (metaphysically) best. Q: How did Reality arise and acquire its actual nature? A: Because its doing and being so are for the metaphysical best. Throughout the level of ultimate issues, the Principle of Metaphysical Optimality does the requisite work.

Circularity Problems: Self-Reliance as Pivotal in Explaining Ultimacies and Totalities In factual reasoning—and in particular in deduction—a premiss must not presuppose its conclusion. The employment of a contention in the course of its own validation is generally rejected as a matter of “begging the question.” But axiological reasoning is something else again. And this is actually unavoidable where ultimacies are at issue. An ultimate explanation of Reality at large cannot presuppose facts: it must somehow implement the idea that contingent reality is what it is because that is for the best. It must, that is to say, explain existence in terms of (some mode or) value, and take what might be called the axiological turn. But what substantiates the Principle of Optimality with its justification legitimates its claim that what is for the best will be actual? The answer is both strange and inevitable: The principle is self-validating—it obtains because that too is for the best. To be sure, in the standard order of explanatory reason this self-reliance would not be possible, and would have to be rejected as viciously circular. But in the order of evaluation, even such self-reliance is not only viable but also essential. Here any validation that did not prevail by its own telling would for this very reason fail to qualify as ultimate. What makes self-substantiating sound so strange is

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simply that we conduct all of our explanatory business by other means—in the standard, factual, mode of legitimation. But the axiological principle of value-tropism itself provides for its own actualization. Reality is axio-­ phelic and realizes the best because that too is for the best. The answer here lies in the principle itself. The principle is literally self-explaining. Realization of the Optimality Principle is itself the best alternative in accounting for the prevailing order of things. But is this reasoning not invalidated through circularity? The circumstance that an ultimate principle must be self-sustaining lies in the necessary shift from descriptive facts to normative values. Grated, matters of descriptive fact cannot function self-sustainingly without vitiating circularly. For at this stage circularity is not vicious but virtuous: it is not a flaw but an essential asset. The fact is that any ultimate explanation must be self-sustaining: it must rest on a principle that is self-validating. For if the validity of the principle rested on something else—some deeper and different rational of validation—then by hypothesis it would not be ultimate but would through this very circumstance be flawed. And of course, the optimality principle indeed has just this feature of self-support. For the obviously suitable answer to the question “But why is it that such a principle of optimality obtains” is simply “The principle obtains because that is for the best.” The principle is self-sustaining and self-explanatory. And in this present cast this is not vitiating circularity but an essential aspect of the problem—an indispensable and decidedly virtuous circularity. After all, there is no decisive reason why the prospect of self-explanation has to be excluded at this fundamental level. After all, we cannot go on putting the explanatory elephant on the back of the tortoise on the back of the alligator ad  infinitum: as Aristotle already saw, the explanatory regress has to stop somewhere at the “final” theory—one that is literally “self-explanatory.” And what better candidate could there be than the Optimality Principle itself with the result that the divisions between real and merely theoretical possibilities is as it is (i.e., value based) because that itself is for the best? Granted, a Law of Optimality to the effect that “whatever possibility is for the best is ipso facto the one that is actualized” is certainly not a logico-­ conceptually necessary truth. From the angle of theoretical logic it has to be seen as a contingent fact—albeit one not about activity as such, but rather one about the manifold of real possibility that underlies it. Insofar as necessary at all, it obtains as a matter of ontological rather than

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logico-­conceptual necessity, while the realm of possibility as a whole is presumably constituted by considerations of logico-metaphysical necessity alone. To avoid vitiating circularity, a comprehensive explanation of fact requires external recourse, so that here epistemology requires an axiological grounding. The very rationality that impels us to require an ultimate explanation has to function so as to principle from its own explanatory grounding. And so, at this stage, self-reliance is not an impediment; and is not a condition of adequacy. And so reason’s self-reliance is not vicious but virtuous. The fact is that any ultimate explanation must be self-­ sustaining: it must rest on a principle that is self-validating. For, if the validity of the principle rested on something else—some deeper and different rationale of validation—then it would not be ultimate but would through this very circumstance be flawed. The only satisfactory explanation for anything—even for the existence of intelligence and its requirements—will have to be an intelligent explanation. In taking intelligence to provide its own ultimate explanatory basis, we proceed in a way that is cyclical and indeed even “circular.” But this simply reflects the structural coherence of rational systematization. And there is nothing viciously self-defeating about such self-reliance. For while vicious circularity stultifies by “begging the question,” virtuous circularity merely coordinates related elements in their mutual interlinkage. The former pre-assumes what is to be proved, the latter simply shows how things are connected together in a well-coordinated and mutually supportive interrelationship. The contention that “It is for the best that what is for the best should be real” is self-certifying—but it is not trivial. For it accomplishes a great deal of explanatory work. In the end, then, we must expect that any ultimate principle must explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. After all, we cannot go on putting the explanatory elephant on the back of the tortoise on the back of the alligator ad infinitum: as Aristotle already saw, the explanatory regress has to stop somewhere at the “final” theory—one that is literally “self-explanatory.” And there is no decisive reason why that explanation has to be “deeper and different,” why the prospect of self-explanation has to be excluded at this fundamental level.5 What better candidate could there be than the Optimality Principle itself, with the result that the

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division between real and merely theoretical possibilities is as it is (i.e., value based) because that itself is for the best? Cyclic reciprocity is the lifeblood of epistemology. We assess the meaning of words in the light of the truths they are used to convey and endorse truth on the basis of what their words mean. Circularity of this sort is not—or should not be seen—as automatically inappropriate. In many cognitive contexts, validation is not in-directional from for secure premisses to inferred conclusions but is determined on the light of feedback processes of cyclic and reciprocal harmonization and systematization. We assess the reliability of reports on the basis of the trustworthiness of their species and assess this trustworthiness in the light of the circumstances of these reports. Consider the thesis: (T) In validating a thesis it can sometimes be appropriate to make use of that very thesis itself as a premiss of the reasoning. The question before us is whether this thesis is true. And in exploring this issue, we shall proceed not by considerations of general principles, but rather by way of illustrations and examples. It is not all that difficult to provide instances of self-certifying theses— claims that are cogently self-substantiating. Thus, consider • There are truths. • This is an English sentence. • Some English sentence begin with “some.” • Some true statements are about statements. • Meaningful statements can mention science. • Negative claims are not invariably false. • Some truths can be stated briefly. All of these claims are true and are, in fact, self-certifying. And the circularity of such self-support need not be inappropriate and so invalidate a claim, but can be the raison d’être of a proposition’s truth. For these claims about themselves can constitute conclusive evidence for their own truth and so dispense with external support. There is circularity alright, but it serves to validate rather than disrupt. And analogously, reason’s self-­ reliance is something which, owing to its inevitability not vicious but virtuous.

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Peculiarity Problems: Defeating the Oddity Objection Granted, this axiological approach to fact explanation sounds extra-­ ordinary. But the reality of it is that in asking for an explanation of contingent-­existence-as-a-whole one is posing a decidedly extra-ordinary question, and when one insists upon doing this, one must be prepared for a decidedly extra-ordinary answer. In this context, the bizarre nature of the answer is not an objection to it, but the acknowledgment of a necessary condition for its adequacy. For the fact of it is that with ultimate questions, eccentricity is unavoidable. Those ultimate, totalistic, and holistic questions are altogether extraordinary. And extraordinary questions require extraordinary answers. Usually, when we ask about things and their conditions we want a developmental account—how they got to be so given a process of transformation from some earlier condition. This standard sort of issue resolution is clearly impossible in the present case. For, if an altogether basic condition of things is to be explained, this cannot be done on the basis of the machinations within the realm of existing things. And so, an ultimate account of reality as a whole has to proceed not in terms of causal production but in terms of possibility elimination based on evaluative considerations. If an altogether basic condition of things is to be explained this cannot be achieved appropriately on the basis of the machinations within the realm of existing things. For while causality presupposes a foothold in the realm of the actual existence—real effects require real causes—normative elimination can perfectly well proceed in the sphere of the possible. And as axiological eliminationalism sees it, one possibility can block another and it takes one to block one. Accordingly, this entire eliminative proceeding is played out at the level of possibilities. For is clear that ultimate explanation cannot be one that relates to actualities. This would simply carry us back to the starting point. Rather, it must relate to possibilities. It cannot deal in actually extant facts but must deal merely in what is potentially possible. And possibilities as such cannot have existence, but they can have value. And this is their only available basis for a state-transformation. For, if an altogether basic condition of things is to be explained this cannot be done on the basis of the machinations of some sort of thing. Rather, it must be done on the basis of some sort of principle.

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In the end, the only viable alternative to the usual fact-by-fact explanation is the radical and nonstandard procedure of a fact-by-value explanation, taking the form that X obtains because its lack would be evaluatively unsustainable—in sum, that its being so is for the best. Once we step outside the realm of factual explanation, the recourse to evaluation becomes our only alternative. An ultimate principle must be self-sustaining and matters of descriptive factuating cannot function self-­ sustainingly without vitiating circularly. The recourse to value is unavoidable. And the values at issue in the axiological value-explanation of facts will have to be fact-oriental values such as truth accuracy, harmony, uniformity, systematization, and so on. This means that the values at issue will be subject to their congeniality to reason and rational comprehensibility. With ultimate questions about existence-at-large eccentricity becomes unavoidable. Those ultimate, totalistic, and holistic questions are altogether extraordinary. Usually when we ask about things and their conditions we are after a developmental account—how they got to be so given a process of transformation from some earlier condition. This standard sort of issue-resolution is clearly impossible in the present case. The fact of it is that when we ask an extraordinary question we must be prepared for an extraordinary and indeed seemingly bizarre answer. For, if an altogether basic condition of things is to be explained, this cannot be achieved appropriately on the basis of the machinations within the realm of existing things. On this basis an existing state of affairs can arise in an existential vacuum, originating from an ontological field of mere possibility whose constitution embraces a suitable manifold of potential. An internal potency functioning in the realm of the merely possible somehow spills out beyond its boundaries into the realm of actuality. The account is of course figurative, but in the nature of the case, this is unavoidable. Since limiting ourselves to non-figurative actualities would confine us to the realm of the real, automatically aborting a course of reasoning that must proceed independently of the actualities. What must here abandon is the decidedly problematic principle of hypostatization to the effect that the explanatory reason for anything that exists must ultimately always inhere in the operations of existing things. And at this point we come to a prejudice as deep-rooted as any in Western philosophy—the idea that things can only originate from things, that nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) in the sense that no thing can emerge from a thingless condition of affairs, Agreed, this somewhat ambiguous principle is perfectly unproblematic when construed as saying that if the existence of something real has a correct explanation at

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all, then this explanation must pivot on something that is really and truly so. Clearly, we cannot explain one fact without involving other facts to do the explaining. But the principle becomes highly problematic when construed in the manner of the precept that “things must come from things,” that substances must inevitably be invoked to explain the existence of substances. But this is an untenable position. Yet how can it be that value can determine fact short of theological commitment to a benign creative intelligence—and so through a problematic anthropomorphism. How can value affect nature of Reality short of a mediating agent to act as valuer-creator? Perhaps the easiest response here is that there is no need to see value as other than self-sustaining. If value is to serve as an interest factor in the explanation of Reality, then it must account for itself as well. Why the creative upturn of nature? Because that too is for the best. But why is Reality optimalistic? Because that too is for the best. The cogency of this radical step from factual to value based explanation is that it itself is a value-validated proceeding as a matter of “this or nothing better.” It lies in the nature of the situation that we cannot but accept the best available prospect as good enough. In sum, value based explanation emerges from the considerations that it best affords the realization of the epistemically requisite desiderata. The arrangement explanation optimize the realization of epistemic positivities. Ultimately, axiogenesis is matter of “this or nothing”—or at any rate nothing better. No other available way to explain the existence and nature of Reality better accomplishes the tasks at issue.

Further Assets of Optimalism The optimalistic approach has many theoretical advantages. Here is just one of them. If even the empty world—one devoid of any existential content—still counts as a world, it becomes possible, and perhaps even inevitable, to pose two different questions: Why does a non-empty world rather than an empty one exist? and Why is it that this particular non-empty world exists? However, an axiogenetic approach enjoys the advantage of rational economy in that it proceeds uniformly here. It provides a single uniform rationale for both answers—namely: “Because this is for the best.” It accordingly also enjoys the significant merit of providing self-supportively

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for the rational economy of explanatory principles at the level of metaphysical fundamentals. On this basis the world’s existence is thus necessitated—not in the logical order of deliberations (as contemplated by Spinoza) but in that axiological order as adumbrated by Neo-Platonism and renovated by Leibniz. Such an explanation of Reality is nowise “unscientific” but rather trans-­ scientific. It has no quarrel whatsoever with the scientific description and explanation of things. For science explains what the natural order of the world’s law doctrine is. And the axiological approach to reality-­explanation address a very different question: namely, why it should be that to us. Reality has a constitution which science increasingly reveals. Science elaborates how things work in the world. Metaphysics sees to provide an account of why for only it should be that this elaboration is what it is. We are—or at any rate see ourselves—as rational beings. As such, we stand committed to the idea that facts always have a rational explanation for being as is. (This is the co-called “Principle of Sufficient Reason.) Why the facts are as is—taken as a whole—is something that cannot be explained in the order of functionality. For when we explain some facts in terms of others as premisses, we presume further facts, and this would lead to circularity when the manifolds of facts-as-a-whole is at issue. But if facts are indeed explainable, but so yet not so in the order of factuality, then the order of normativity—that of worth and volume—is the only other place to turn. And we must according deploy some version of the idea the facts are as is because this is somehow for the best (somehow optimal with regard to some order of physical value). To be sure, it is conceivable that in the end, there is just no explanation for the actual nature of things—that reality is as is without rhyme or reason so the human search for explanation is a Quixotic quest that is foredoomed to failure from the outset. But this is not something we either can or should bring ourselves to believe. For if the existence and nature of Reality has any rational explanation at all—which as rational beings we cannot but suppose that it does—then this explanation cannot be on the order of existence, since that would be circular and this no explanation at all. Rather it must be via an account developed on the order of value. And it must accordingly take the form of working out the details of some version or other of the principle that Reality exists and has the features is does because this state of things is somehow for the best.

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Summary The present deliberations have sought to establish is that there is a coordinative interdependence among various key metaphysical factors: Reality, Intelligence, and Order. The basic ideas at work are (1) that an ontological impetus to value gives rise to Reality, (2) that order is a key manifestation of value, (3) that reality’s lawful validness is the key to its intelligibility, (4) the mind and intelligent emerge within Reality under the aegis of its laws, (5) that mind seeks order for the sake of understanding and that this quest is bound to be satisfied in an orderly worlds. On this basis, reality is seen as an existential manifold whose being and nature is based on the inherent value of a rational order to which intelligence secures a secure access. The overall line of reasoning at work runs as per the following question/answer exchange-sequence: Question: Why is Reality as is: why is there any existence at all, and why is its nature what it is? Answer: Because all other possibilities—nonexistence included—have been eliminated. Question: How have they been eliminated? Answer: Through a process of elimination by metaphysical selection. Question: What enables this process to work? Answer: It works by a stepwise narrowing of the field of possibility. Initially the field is as broad as logico-conceptual possibility. But working across the range of this field is an ever-narrowing process of elimination by metaphysical selection through a process of evaluation that ongoingly narrows the scope of survival. Question: What drives this process? Answer: This eliminative process is the value-driven result of a metaphysical Law of Optimality that proceeds evaluatively by having inferior alternatives give way to the superior. Question: Why is this process in operation? Answer: It is self-engendering and self-subsistent. It obtains because this too is optimally for the best. Question: How is it that this account is able to explain the being and nature of existence?

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Answer:

The Law of Optimality requires no external account. It is self-­ engendering and self-explaining. It too obtains because this is for the best: it too is part of the optimality that is its operative rationale. Question: Why do people incline to be discontent with this explanatory scenario and why can they not keep from viewing it with a skepticism that wants and to reject it as simply too bizarre strange? Answer: Because our intentions are shaped by what is normal and ordinary, and this sort of normative explanation we encounter is simply too unusual and extra-ordinary for ready acceptance. All of the more routine explanations address some features of reality and existence in terms of others, so that this explanatory mode falls (as by nature it must) outside of the familiar box. We resist such an account because we are reluctant to accept that unusual and extra-ordinary questions require unusual and extra-ordinary answers. Granted, optimalism is less a theory than a program. For it is a complex thought-device of many moving parts: value, possibility, selective elimination, and so on. And each of these facts of logic, metaphysics, axiology, and so on requires further clarification, analysis, explanation, and substantiation before the conceptual definitiveness for a viable theory can be claimed for it. The profundity of the Leibniz question of existence explanation renders all this complexity unavoidable.

Appendix Historical Rootings in the Neoplatonic Perspective The objection that value explanation is something exotic and unheard-of is very questionable. For this mode of reasoning is as old as Neo-­ Platonism—or even as Plato himself, depending on how one proposes to read his dialogue Timaeus. The Western tradition of philosophy emerging from the Neo-Platonism of classical antiquity envisions three prime factors as essential to the metaphysical understanding of the world, a trichotomizing of the metaphysical domain culminating in the philosophy of Plotinus (A. D. 204–270) whose way of conceptualizing the issues was based on his three “hypostases”:

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• The One (hên): reality—the entirety of the existing things (to ôn) in the world as being actually constituted. This encompasses the whole manifold of existence. • Soul (psychê): rational order/organization—the form and systemic structure of things-at-large that enables their understanding on general principles. This systemic order shapes Reality as an harmonious and intelligible whole, providing it with modes of order that enable it to be understood on the basis of general principles. It provides the One with a structure that enables it in terms of how to be conceived of and rendered mind accessible. • Reason (nous): rationale/explanation—the explanation of reality as grasped by the mind’s conceptualized understanding of the One in comprehending its structure of order and lawfulness. In Neoplatonic deliberations, three aspects of Reality (“hypostases”) thus stand at the forefront: (H)

• UNITY: the systemic unity of integrity of existence or being (to ôn) • HARMONY: the lawful order of existence (nous) • INTELLIGIBILITY: the cognitive accessibility of existence (psychê)

On this three-fold perspective, existence has an order that renders it intelligible: reality/existence (to ôn) is a unified system (hên) possessed of a lawful order of rational organization (nous) that renders it intelligible to mind (psyche). This trio of what is, how it is, and why it is unites Reality into a unified and intelligible whole, a harmoniously coordinated complex where organized structure provides for its cognitive receptivity. Plotinus accordingly envisions a hierarchy of explanatory proceedings arranged in increasing fundamentality with the modus operandi of each level accountable for at the next higher level, whose inherently greater rationality emanates (as it were) its deeper intelligibility toward that which precedes. Each successively level of understanding renders what goes before more intelligible and rational. And accordingly, the highest level of Reason (nous)—called for a proper systemic account (logos) for the constitution of things. The result is a characteristic metaphysical position. Committed to viewing reality as a coherent and unified system exhibiting the well-integrated (harmonious) structure essential to the rational comprehensibility by the mind.

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On neo-Platonic principles, there is a fundamental unification between existence and rational order: it is not just that there is a realm of real existence AND that it has an intelligible rationale order, but that the realm of real existence exists as it does BECAUSE it is a rational order. Reality is rational because Reason dedicates it formation. The demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus is still at work here. Reason not only characterizes Reality but creates it: Reality is what it is because its realization of harmonious systematicity is what Reason requires. As the Neoplatonic tradition has it, Existence has two sectors the physical (sensible) and the cognitive (intelligible). The former consists of the material things of our sensory experience, the latter of the abstract patterns of structure exhibited in their modus operandi. And they function in an overall-coordinated harmony. This overall harmonization provides the ultimate rationale for both the reality and the cognition of the Real and provides the existential basis for its intelligibility Reason. If Reality were not so harmonized, it would not be sufficiently user-friendly for rational agent to function effectively within its orbit. It is the key lesson for rational metaphysics that absent its provision of a user-friendly setting for intelligence, Reality could not exist as is in its capacity to provide a home for intelligent beings. And the PSR embodies the mechanism of cosmic understanding. It is this rational intelligibility that (so to speak) “makes the world go round” and accounts for the constitution and modus operandi of the real. Neither Aristotle’s affective “love” nor Spinoza’s “intellectual love” (amor intellectualis) but rather intellect (intelligence, rational understandability is the drawing force of explanation) that lies at the core of neo-Platonism. The world exists as is so that the intelligence operative within it can come to realize an adequate grasp on its nature and processuality. Reality so functions as to institute a Principle of Sufficient Reason. Reality is mind-­ accessibility intelligible because it exhibits a rational lawful structure of a systemic unity that realizes what is for the best interest of intelligence. In confronting the problem of explaining why it is that the universe exhibits noophelic in that its modus operandi and exhibits a PSR in its operations the neo-Platonist had three options: • theism: a benign creator arranges matters in an optimalistic manner. • optimalism: self-sufficiency based on a metaphysical principle that is self-engendering

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• epistemic naturalism: Optimality is not a constitute feature of reality but no more than an explanatory hypothesis that accommodates the desirables. There are thus three distinguishable routes optimalism, viz. the theological, the metaphysical, and the methodological. Nothing in the abstract nature of the issue constrains one of these resolutions over against the others. Opting for one or the other of them is open to the ideological posture of the optimalist at issue. When the Church Fathers Christianized Neo-Platonism, they opened the way to the theological route by which St Thomas and other scholastics effectively sidelined the alternative approach that was entrenched in the Neoplatonic tradition. This approach allowed for contemplating yet another principle coordinated with the PSR, namely a Principle of the Good. In contemplating the relationship between optimalism and theology, one must acknowledge that there are three theoretical possibilities: • Optimalism has a theological grounding in theism • Theism itself has a metaphysical grounding in optimalism • Theism and Optimalism are reciprocally intertwined and coordinated. The first of these would reflect the stance of Christian scholasticism. Its basis is the benign Creator-deity who in his creation choices institutes a benign concern for the best. The second of these reflects a prioritization of value and presupposes to answer the theological questions of the existence and nature of God via the metaphysics of optimalism: maintaining that God’s existence is itself part and parcel of Reality’s optimality and is as is because this too is for the best and reality is optimalistic. This is effectively the stance of pre-­Christian Neo-Platonism. The third reflects a version of the “God of hope” that sees affinity, affectivity, and valuation as constitutive aspects of the divine and accordingly envisions the relationship of God and Value in terms of coordination rather than subordination.

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Notes 1. William L.  Rowe, “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument,” The Monist, vol. 54 (1970); reprinted in W. L. Rowe and W. Wainwright (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: Selective Readings, 2nd edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanavich, 1989), pp. 142–156. (See p. 153.) On this principle in its relation to the cosmological aspect for the existence of God, see William L.  Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). See also Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Alexander R. Pruss, “The Hume-Edwards Principle and the Cosmological Argument,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 434 (1988), pp. 149–165. 2. Note that neither of these is the same as (∃p)(p @ (∀x)E!x) which obtains trivially given the symbolic conventions adopted here. 3. G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, tr. and ed. by L. E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969), p. 487. 4. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of the Beryl Coronet (1892). 5. After all, there is no reason of logico-theoretical principle why propositions cannot be self-certifying. Nothing vicious need be involved in self-­ substantiation. Think of “Some statements are true” or “This statement stakes a particular rather than universal claim.”

CHAPTER 14

Contextual Metaphilosophy

Introductory In his notorious 1946 Cambridge non-debate with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper argued that there are genuine philosophical problems and not—as Wittgenstein maintained—mere puzzles arising from confusion and linguistic misunderstandings.1 As Popper himself was to stress, this very question of the nature of philosophical issues is itself a prime example of a philosophical problem.2 And here we reach the core thesis of the present deliberations, viz. that metaphilosophy—the clarification and analysis of philosophy and philosophizing—is an integral part of philosophy itself. Metaphilosophy is the field of inquiry that addresses the aims, problems, and methods of philosophizing. But just what is the classificatory position of this venture itself? Is its proper status also to be part of philosophy? Or is it a philosophy-external enterprise, albeit one whose focus of concern is to be philosophy itself—functioning at arm’s length in much the way that the philosophy of chemistry lies outside chemistry? In addressing this question, the present deliberations will seek to substantiate the former answer, so that it will be argued here that metaphilosophy should be seen as forming an integral part of philosophizing itself.

Two Modes of Metaphilosophy There are, however, two modes of metaphilosophy: the descriptively reporting and the substantively normative: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_14

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• The descriptive, which description is based wholly on what philosophers say in a purely observational and reportorial manner. Its affirmations are entirely grounded in claims on the order of “X has it that - - -” (and of course, whatever follows from this sort of claim.) By contrast, the substantive endeavors to formulate the appropriate or proper way of doing philosophy. This is normative and legislative regarding the right ways to philosophize. Its affirmations are based on claims on the order of “Sensible reflection will have it that - - -,” or “reasonable people must agree that - - -” (and once against whatever follows from these.) Some illustrations from the descriptively reportorial sector of metaphilosophy include: • No philosophical doctrine or position enjoys universal acceptance: Every philosophical doctrine or position has been contested by rival alternatives. • Philosophers generally take a metaphilosophical stance of some sort toward the enterprise, sometimes explicitly, but usually in a way that can be inferred from their discussions. By contrast, substantive metaphilosophy arises out of attempts to answer such questions as: • What is a properly philosophical question? • What sorts of considerations can appropriately be invoked to substantiate a philosophical thesis? The difference between these two modes of metaphilosophy is crucial in the present context because it is substantive metaphilosophizing is an integral part of philosophy itself, while the merely descriptive claims of reportional philosophy are not. They are matters of pure histography while substantive metaphilosophy is bound to engage in philosophizing as such.

Substantive Metaphilosophy as an Indispensable Entryway It is clear that philosophizing cannot get off to a successful start without explicitly or tacitly addressing unavoidable preliminary deliberations regarding the aims and methods of inquiry. For, the following

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project-­defining issues must be explicitly or tacitly confronted at the very outset of a philosophical inquiry: 1. What is the mission and goal of philosophical deliberation? What is the aim of the enterprise: What is it trying to achieve? 2. What are the issues that philosophy seeks to clarify and the questions it seeks to answer? What is the problem-agenda of philosophy? 3. What marks a philosophical issue as such? What is it that distinguishes an issue as philosophical (rather than, say, as mathematical or geographic)? What entitles it to serve on the problem-agenda of philosophizing? 4. What methods and procedures are available for philosophical deliberations? What processes are available to us for the cogent substantiation of philosophical contentions? 5. What is the standard acceptability in philosophy? What sorts of reasonings establish (or at least plausibility) philosophical contentions? What are the methods by what the acceptability of philosophical conventions can be established? 6. What are the data that can substantive philosophical contentions? What range of premisses can serve to sustain and substantiate philosophical claims? With what considerations must philosophy come to terms? 7. What are the presuppositions that underlie the conduct of philosophical inquiry. As this inventory of basic issues indicates, it is evident that, be it directly or indirectly, substantive philosophical deliberation must from the very outset come to terms with such metaphilosophical matters. And on nearer inspection it emerges that all of these questions lead to an entanglement in philosophical issues. But—and this is now the crucial consideration—all of these issues are in themselves philosophical. Without resolving them—if only tacitly and presumptively—cogent philosophizing cannot even make a cogent start seeing that they constitute an indispensable inaugurating phase to cogent philosophical deliberation and thereby make substantive metaphilosophy—with its preeminent concern for the aims and goal of philosophizing—a crucially constituted part of philosophy itself. Any system of philosophy that does not have a position on these matters is by nature incomplete.

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To deliberate about philosophy is thus to enter the fray of philosophical disputation. To take a metaphilosophical position is already to engage in philosophy. In other fields—chemistry or meteorology, for example— comparable questions about the nature of the discipline can be left aside for ex post facto considerations. But in philosophy they cannot do this because these questions about philosophy themselves pose indelibly philosophical. The reality of it is that there is no higher or greater philosophy-­ external standpoint from which the nature of philosophy can be examined “from without.” Even as there can be no extra-spatial viewpoint for material objects, so there can be no extra-philosophical standpoint for reflective issues. And this condition of affairs serves to make metaphilosophy into an integral and essential part of philosophizing, and accordingly an indispensable comportment of the enterprise as such.

Variation and Evaluation Substantive metaphilosophy reveals—and reportional philosophy amply illustrates—that philosophical issues are always contestable. The reality of it is that thesis of substantive metaphilosophy can be expected to universal acceptance: all are themselves contested in the battleground of philosophical disputation. Accordingly, the methodological situation of substantive metaphilosophy has to be the same as that of philosophy itself, so that its teachings will be inevitably controversial. For, there are always alternatives resolutions of its problems; no reasoning on the basis of abstract principles alone can enforce the unique appropriateness and cogency of one uniquely privileged alternative. Everything here is ultimately in principle contestable, and every alternative resolution has its pros and cons—its plusses and minuses. The decisive process of issue-resolution becomes one of cost-­ benefit analysis—of weighing the comparative assets and liabilities of the alternatives at our disposal for resolving the issue. For each solution has its assets and liabilities—its plusses and minuses—it answering questions and raising them. And in assessing philosophical alternatives, these pros and cons must be weighted off against each other. The mainstream view of substantive metaphilosophy that views philosophy as a venture in rational inquiry that seeks to answer “the big questions” of the nature of Reality and our human place within it, then it becomes clear that the optimal method at our disposal is one of dialectical pro/con assessment. That is, we begin with a canvas of the alternatives

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that are available as possible answers to our questions, and then embark on a comparative assessment not the pro-and-con considerations speaking for or against these to determine where it is that the optimal balance of probative determination lies. Such balancing is fundamentally evaluative and will ultimately come down to a harmonization with the experience of the evaluator. It will be a matter of how smoothly and neatly the contention at issue accords with the evaluator’s general course of the evaluator’s experience. In matters of factual detail thought, however competent, cannot far outrun its time and setting. Ptolemy cannot think with Newton, nor yet Newton with Einstein. Machiavelli can plan for the Florence of his day, but not for Metternich’s Austro-Hungarian Empire. Philosophers included, all of us must play the game of life with the hands that fate has dealt us. Context delimits capability: we are—all of us—children of our time and place. The premisses of our philosophical deliberations do and can have only one source: the experience of the individual. In philosophizing as elsewhere you can only begin a journey from where you are. The experiential situation of the individual is an unavoidable starting point. But this is something that is given and not chosen. An indifferent relativism of preferential choice is just not in the picture. In thought as in life, we have to begin our journey from where we are.

Plurality Does Not Entail Relativism: The Contextualist Alternative From its very start, philosophy has been is an exercise in reasoning. But its characteristic claims are generally problematic because philosophers do not establish them with incontestable assurance: they are not certified truths but reasonable hypothesis that serve to render our experience of the world realities intelligible. The resultant weighing of the various alternatives will ultimately become a matter of assessment by person-­correlative value standards. However, the matter is not one of arbitrary personal preferences—of matters of idiosyncratic taste or affective inclination: what we have here is not a matter of indifferentist relativism. Rather, it is one of situational contextualism, of standards that emerge not from arbitrary and idiosyncratic affinities and likings, but from the experiential situations of the individual. There is no question of arbitrary and indifferent choice here, but rather one of the individual’s experientially grounded conditions

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and circumstances. The individual’s value scheme is not a matter of a thinker’s self-determined preferential choice but one of his experiential formation. And so, what we have here is not an indifferentist relativism of individual affinities, but a circumstantially enjoined functionalism as a matter of what best harmonizes with an individual’s life-situation. The answer may be person-variable but not via preference but via experiential circumstance. As with medicaments, there is no one-prescription-for-all resolution—no one dosage that is appropriate for everyone. But this contextuality of “proper amount for you” does not issue in an indifferentists relativism of “any amount you please.” The issue is certainly not one of arbitrary preferability but rather of circumstantial cogency. Every individual has their own individual requirements and there is accordingly a perfectly objective and rationally cogent answer to their situation. And what holds in medicine with regards to amounts holds in philosophy with respect to accounts. Given your existential setting—your mode of experiential emplacement in the setting in the world’ processuality, there is only one philosophy that is appropriate for you. There is no indifferentist relativism here—no room of arbitrary choice. However, while in the abstract and the natural services we find a large degree of consensus, in philosophy the limited scope of our data in relation to the scale of the problems means that we can resolve these big issues of the field with no more than plausible assurance with a corresponding diversity of opinion. The distinction between relativism and contextualism is crucial here. Relativism pivots on differences in taste, inclination, and affectivity. Nothing rational is at work here—as the dictum has it: “There is no disputing about tastes.” Contextualism is rational through and through. It is predicated in the fact that different premises are bound to enjoin different conclusions. Different bodies of experience provide different philosophers with different premisses and thereby yield different outcomes in a perfectly objective and rational way. A philosopher’s premisses do and should harmonize with their body of experience, and the premisses that emerge from this harmonization provide rational substantiation for their teachings. There is no “one size fits all” but there is very definitely and objectively is one of “one size fits you.” There is no place for the subjectivity of personal taste in such a process. A plausible version of substantive metaphilosophy will thus have to view the discipline emphatically not as a venture in personal-preference relativism, but rather as an experientially grounded contextualism. The venture is

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not one of subjective choice but rather of objective contextuality. The appropriateness of a philosopher’s persistence lies not in his principle tastes but in his objective situation.

More on Contextualism The theoretical ideal in matters of cognition is a firm assurance that our own knowledge-claims qualify as authentic facts, determinate realities that hold in general for everyone alike. Ideally, our contentions are to be categorically correct and adequate for everyone alike as impersonally and objectively valid truths. The teachings of science and the commonplaces of everyday life are—or are generally supposed to be—of this sort. In contrast are the affirmations of individual opinion, beliefs that reflect personal opinions claims geared to people’s individual inclinations and—chacun à son goût—bereft of objective correctness and proper authentication. This situation is particularly paramount in philosophy. Seeing that philosophers proverbially disagree and even after centuries of effort have failed to reach consensus it is often maintained that philosophy falls into this subjective realm of mere opinion, lacking any cogent claims to rational adequacy and objective truth. However, this reaction is based on a grave oversimplification of the issue. For one must draw and heed a careful distinction between two different stances opposed to the aforementioned idealized absolutism, namely the indifferentist relativism described above, and something very distinct from it—situational contextualism. As relativism does, contextualism acknowledges personal variation. However, it does not view cognitive positions—and philosophical doctrines in particular—as matters of impersonal generality and universal appropriateness. But it does not take this personal variation to betoken rational indifference based on idiosyncratic taste, inclination, or attitude, but rather as reflecting differences in prevailing conditions and thereby subject to appraisals of objective facticity, correctness, and rational adequacy. Consider the analogy of people’s variable and circumstantially differentiated life-condition. Here there is no impersonal universality, no uniformity of standing, but rather every individual occupies their own characteristic setting. Yet nevertheless, the issue is one of the realities imposed by prevailing conditions and circumstances. One’s situation in these regards is a matter of objective fact, and emphatically not a matter of

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relativistic indifferentism and arbitrary choice. What is appropriate for given individuals is a matter of their condition and situation, and is accordingly something objective and factual, entirely unlike the indifferentist relativism of personal inclination and preference. And just this sort of situation obtains with respect to philosophical disagreement. Its basis is not the random taste, idiosyncratic affinity, or personal inclination, but rather is a product of situational, conditional, and circumstantial placement. Granted, this means that with respect to philosophical issues and doctrines there is no fixed resolution that is universally and unconditionally appropriate correct. But it definitively does not preclude there being one which—given your contextual acculturation and your personal experience—is clearly right and proper for you as a so-circumstanced individual. And so the basis of variability here is not one of unreasoned subjective inclination and individual preference, but one of harmonization with the circumstances of situational emplacement through cultural emplacement and personal experience. And it does (or should) become determinable as objectively right and proper to adopt this or that position on the issues— one that is fitting for and duly harmonious with the bearer’s circumstantial context. This contextualism pivots on the principle that what it is reasonable for a person to believe depends crucially on the evidence at their disposal and that this in turn is a matter of accessibility, availability, and acceptability, and so that person’s individual stance in relation to the body of relevant information and validation. And here, as elsewhere, different premisses will rationally engender different conclusions. On this basis, a rational evaluation and criticism of positions becomes available, unlike the situation of mere preference, affectivity, and taste. Unlike relativism, contextualism does not impede its rational appropriateness but provides for what can be called orientational philosophizing. The enterprise becomes a rational discipline open to deliberate assessment and critique. On this basis, the world’s ways fit every philosopher out with a cognitive orientation of sorts: a family of circumstantially developed convictions on whose basis a pro- or con-stance toward key doctrines of the field become rationally determined. And it is on this variable basis that this rational construction of a doctrinal posture has to proceed, And this opens up a manifold of considerations on whose basis philosophical issue-resolutions become open to corrections and criticism,

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seeing that the conformity proceedings considered must meet the general conditions of rational substantiation. Such a situational contextualism makes ample room for an objective criticism of philosophical positions. For on its basis: 1. A given orientation can itself be inadequate and unrealistic in failing to do justice to the context of extra-philosophical fact provided by everyday common-sense and/or scientific inquiry. 2. The orientation can prove itself to be deficient in that its own implications and ramifications are misunderstood and distorted. Granted, one philosopher cannot appropriately criticize another for not sharing his own fundamental predispositions and presuppositions. But one can validly criticize a rival for the neglect of common sense and empirical (scientific) fact as well as failing to acknowledge and accept consequences of his own contentions. In the end, philosophical reflection must (1) give due respect to the extra-philosophical factualities of ordinary life and scientific inquiry, and (2) Give due attention to logical coherence and consistency. For overall teachings of a doctrinal position must properly relate to the fundamentals of its basic commitments. And so, while rejecting a one-size-fits-all universalism, it qualifies philosophy as a rational endeavor makes it possible to see how rationality accommodates differentiation, and in this way affords a compromise intermediation between traditional extremes. It would accordingly be very wrong to say that orientational pluralism renders philosophizing impervious to rational criticism. For it does not put matters on the basis per the dictum that “there is no disputing about matters of taste.” Instead, what it maintains is that the state of information and the thought-environment of the day and the manifold of his own education and reading we cannot and should not expect the manifold of Cicero’s philosophical convictions to accord with those of John Locke in the seventeenth century—it is radially significant and proper that their views should differ radically—not because of any feckless eccentricities on their part but because of the radical contextual difference at the formative basis on their thinking. On this basis, philosophical variation and discord is not—as it is so often held to be—a token that philosophy is an extra-­ rational venture in mongering feckless opinions guided by nothing save personal preference and taste.

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Against “Quietism” Since the day of the Pyrrhonian empiricist skeptics of classical antiquity various philosophers have seen fit to argue as follows: If one cannot expect to arrive at a conclusive resolution to philosophical questions that is universally convincing to everyone then: Why bother? Why trouble to reflect on these matters if no consensual resolution can be achieved? Why not abandon the whole project, suspending judgment in philosophical matters, abandoning their pursuit, manifesting indifferent to the whole enterprise, and consigning the total complex of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, etc., to the dust heap of fruitless and abandoned ventures along with alchemy, astrology, and other such “failed enterprises”?

This line of thought is nowadays generally designated as “quietism” to indicate its total recommendation of silence regarding the substantial issues of traditional philosophizing has recently been abandoned by such otherwise diverse thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the whole school of logical positivism, and that sector of pragmatists whose guiding spirit is Richard Rorty. The fatal flaw of this line of thinking is its commitment to the idea that an issue is meaningless and pointless if universal agreement about it is unavailable. The crucial point is that different individuals are differently circumstanced in point of: • available evidence • experience-reflexive trust in different sources of information • urgency of information needs • capacity to process information • interest in and concern for relevant issues Given these situational differences, there is no basis for believing—and no reason for hoping—that different individuals will arrive at uniformly consensual opinions on problematic issues. And this in turn dissolves any justification for representing the lack of consensual unanimity on the issues as grounds for them as pointless and meaningless. The pivot of the matter is not mere taste but rational cogency:

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How adequately does the thinker resolve what is—or should be—his problem agenda by his resources and thus in his terms of inference? There is nothing arbitrary or indifferent here.

Conclusion And so, to conclude, the line of deliberation of the present discussion makes a transit across the following points: 1. Metaphilosophy has two sectors: a reportorial and a substantive. 2. Substantive philosophizing is always contestable, all substantive parameters leave room for alternatives (and this is also true of metaphilosophy itself). 3. The mainstream view in substantive metaphilosophy sees philosophy as a venture in rational inquiry—a project of finding optimal answers to the big questions regarding man and his place in reality’s scheme of things. And the method here is one of cost-benefit analysis, of balancing assets of the alternatives off against their liabilities. 4. Problem-resolution will now pivot on the evaluative matter of how costs and benefits are to be weighted. 5. In these matters of assessment and validation, different people are bound and to deploy different standards in line with their own body of experience. 6. In consequence, in addressing “the big question” of philosophy we cannot have—and should not expect to secure—a definitive consensus where “one size fits all.” 7. However, the resultant metaphilosophical position is not an indifferentist and subjective relativism, but rather constitutes a ­contextualism that is—or should be—objectively grounded in a thinker’s experience. 8. Such a contexualist perspective in philosophizing renders it only natural and to be expected that there will be no consensus on the substantive issues of the field. 9. Nevertheless there is no cogent justification for the contention that the absence of consensus philosophical issues shows the meaningless and futility of philosophical deliberation.

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10. On the contrary, developing a philosophical positon which—even in the absence of consensual approbation—satisfactorily meets the conditions and requirements of one’s own contextual situation is a challenging and objectively meaningful venture that demands as much ability and deserves as much respect as any other branch of rational inquiry.

Notes 1. For details see David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Wittgenstein’s Poker (London: Faber & Faber, 2002). 2. Op. cit. p. 255.

CHAPTER 15

Apories and the Rational Unavoidability of Philosophizing

These brief deliberations propose to establish—and indeed to prove, insofar as matters outside the formal science of logic and mathematics permit of proof—that philosophizing is rationally inescapable: that within the boundaries of reason there is no avoiding an engagement with philosophical issues and no averting acceptance of philosophical contentions. The argumentation pivots on the conception of apories—aporia as the Greeks called them.1 By definition, philosophical apory is a thematically connected group of seemingly plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions. Aporetic clusters of this sort permeate the entire landscape of philosophical deliberation. An instructive illustration of philosophical apories is provided by an historical example drawn from the Greek theory of virtue: 1. If virtuous action does not produce happiness (pleasure) then it is motivationally impotent and generally pointless. 2. Virtuous action is eminently pointful and should always provide a powerfully motivating incentive. 3. Virtuous action does not always—and perhaps not even generally— produce happiness (pleasure). It is clearly impossible—on grounds of mere logic alone—to maintain the whole of this inconsistent triad of collectively incompatible contentions.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 N. Rescher, Essays in Philosophical Synthesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34287-5_15

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At least one member of any such an inconsistent group must be abandoned—or at least radically modified. Philosophy pervaded by such aporetic clusters where: • Each contention of the group has some philosophical relevancy. • Taken as a whole the group is inconsistent—some of them are logically incompatible with the others. And so, plausible as those theses may seem, one or another of them has to be jettisoned in the interests of consistency. And the problem is that there are always alternative ways of doing this and the situation of any one of the needs a rational justification that can only be achieved thru philosophical argumentation. But providing a rationale of justification for any particular resolution unavoidably requires philosophical deliberation. Philosophizing becomes inescapable here. For further illustration, consider the following philosophical apory regarding freedom of action: 1. People are free agents: they can and sometimes do act by free decisions. 2. If an action issues from a free decision, then it is causally unconstrained. 3. All occurrences—human actions included—are causally engendered by antecedent occurrences. Here again rationality requires that a choice of omission be made for the sake of consistency. But rationality also requires that this choice be justified—and to do this is to philosophize. A further illustration comes closer to home here. Consider: • Philosophizing is a legitimate venture in rational inquiry. • A legitimate venture in rational inquiry must be able to settle its issues definitively. • Philosophy is unable to settle its issues definitively. Sheer rationality requires eliminating the patent inconsistency here by rejecting at least one of these collectively incompatible contentions. And, rationality also requires that we provide some sort of rationale to justify

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this step. And just this unavoidably requires involvement in philosophical reasoning since reasoning about philosophy is itself inextricably philosophical in its bearing. In the end, there is no help for it. There is no help for it: confronted with any such philosophical apory, sheer rationality unavoidably impels us into an engagement with philosophical issues. Aporetic clusters bearing on philosophical matters admit of no rationally viable alternative to embarking on philosophical deliberations. And so, given the pervasive presence of philosophical apories, there is no appropriate and rationally defensible way for cogent thinkers to escape involvement in philosophical deliberation.

Note 1. See the author’s Aporetics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

References

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologica. Bradley, F. H., Appearance and Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893). Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Adventures of the Beryl Coronet (1892). Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie, La théorie physique: son objet, et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier and Rivière, 1906); tr. by Philip P. Wiener as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954). Dummett, Michael, “Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1956–59): 159–170 (see, p.  160); reptd. in his Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). Eddington, A.  S., The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929). Edmonds, David and John Eidinow, Wittgenstein’s Poker (London: Faber & Faber, 2002). Gale, Richard M., On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. James, William, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), p. 109. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason. Kekes, John, The Nature of Philosophy (Totowa N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980). Leibniz, G.  W., Philosophical Papers and Letters, tr. and ed. L.  E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969).

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REFERENCES

———. Philosophische Schriften, edited by C.  I. Gerhardt, Vol. VII (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1890). Makinson, D.  C., “The Paradox of the Preface,” Analysis, vol. 25 (1965), pp. 205–07. Prichard, H.  A., “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind, vol. 21 (1912), pp. 21–37. Pruss, Alexander R., “The Hume-Edwards Principle and the Cosmological Argument,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 434 (1988), pp. 149–165. Rescher, Nicholas, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). ———, Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory (Pittsburgh, 1975). ———, “Rationality and Moral Obligation,” Synthese, vol. 72 (1987), pp. 29–43. ———, The Validity of Value (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). ———, Aporetics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). Rowe, William L., “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument,” The Monist, vol. 54 (1970); reprinted in W. L. Rowe and W. Wainwright (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: Selective Readings, 2nd edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanavich, 1989), pp. 142–156. ———, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Sieman, Wolfram, Metternich (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2019), p. 172. Weinberg, Stephen, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992).

Index1

A Anaximander of Miletus, 27, 28 Aquinas, Thomas (Saint), 27 Aristotle, v, 87, 105, 162, 172 Augustine of Hippo (Saint), 23

D Descartes, René, 26, 112, 115, 116 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 174n4 Duhem, Pierre Maurice, 102–107 Dummett, Michael, 128n3

B Baier, Kurt, 70 Berkeley, George (Bishop), 113 Bohr, Niels, 107n1 Bradley, F. H., 36n3

E Eddington, Arthur S., 36n1 Edmonds, David, 186n1 Edwards, Paul, 141–143 Eidinow, John, 186n1 Einstein, Albert, 179

C Caesar, Julius, 27, 36, 95 Cicero, 183 Clifford, William Kingdon, 31, 117

F Franklin, Benjamin, 31 Franklin, Rosalind, 157

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

G Gale, Richard M., 173n1 Gerhardt, C. I., 128n4 H Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 69 Heidegger, Martin, 184 Hume, David, 71, 87, 141–143 J James, William, 31, 112, 117, 133 K Kant, Immanuel, 19n1, 62, 63, 113, 128n4, 139 Kekes, John, 128n6 L Leibniz, G. W., 113, 128n4, 136, 138, 144, 153, 156, 157, 168, 170 Locke, John, 183 M Machiavelli, Niccolò, 179 Makinson, D. C., 36n4 Mill, J. S., 131–132 N Newton, Isaac, 78, 179

P Peirce, C. S., 128n3 Plato, 35, 62, 72, 112, 170, 172 Plotinus, 170, 171 Popper, Karl, 175 Prichard, H. A., 60 Pruss, Alexander R., 173n1 Ptolemy, 179 R Rorty, Richard, 184 Rowe, William L., 174n1 S Saxe, John Godfrey, 28 Sieman, Wolfram, 127n1 Socrates, 34, 72 Spinoza, Baruch, 112, 140, 156, 168, 172 T Thrasymachus, 35 W Watson, James, 157 Weinberg, Stephen, 107n1 Wiener, Philip P., 107n1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 57, 175, 184