Practical Contexts 9783110320862, 9783110320602

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Matjaž Potrč / Vojko Strahovnik Practical Contexts

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY Herausgegeben von / Edited by Heinrich Ganthaler • Neil Roughley Peter Schaber • Herlinde Pauer-Studer Band 8 / Volume 8

Matjaž Potrč / Vojko Strahovnik

Practical Contexts

ontos verlag Frankfurt

.

Lancaster

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

North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ire Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected]

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2004 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-61-7 2004

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Contents Foreword...............................................................................................9 I. POSITIVE AND WIDE IMPACT OF PARTICULARISM .....11 Delineating Moral Particularism .................................................................12 The Lessons and Morals of Moral Particularism ........................................17 Wider Positive Project.................................................................................19 Particularism and Metaphysics....................................................................22

II. PRACTICAL CONTEXTS .........................................................25 Particularism and Context ...........................................................................26 Why Contexts would Figure as Reasons for Action? .................................29 Humeans ......................................................................................................34 Dancy’s Pure Cognitivism Thesis. ..............................................................35 Practical Reality...........................................................................................37 Practical Contexts........................................................................................40 Objection Considered and Some Further Matters.......................................42

III. PARTICULARISM AND PRODUCTIVITY ARGUMENT .47 Patterns ........................................................................................................48 Systematizing of Lists: by General Principles?...........................................52 Arbitrariness and the Weirdly Blinking Machine .......................................55 Productivity Argument ................................................................................57 Dynamical Cognition Based Judgments .....................................................61 Some Further Remarks and Objections.......................................................61

IV. THE HEART OF KNOWLEDGE ............................................63 Reasons and Knowledge..............................................................................64 Knowledge as Justified True Belief ............................................................69 Contextualism and the Elusiveness of Knowledge .....................................77 No Justification and Rules of Relevance.....................................................83 Particularist Justification in Context ...........................................................88

V. NARRATION ................................................................................93 What is Narration?.......................................................................................93 The Role of Explanation..............................................................................94 Narrative Explanation..................................................................................98

8 Narration and Relevance ...........................................................................101

VI. PARTICULARIST COMPOSITIONALITY ....................... 103 Presuppositions of the Classicist View of Compositionality ....................103 Where Classicism Goes Wrong.................................................................104 The Possibility of the Particularist Non-Arbitrariness of Composition....107 More on FPCD ..........................................................................................115 A Particularist Methodological Remark....................................................121

VII. DYNAMICAL COGNITION ................................................ 125 Classical Cognitive Science ......................................................................126 Connectionism...........................................................................................127 Dynamical Cognition and Morphological Content ...................................130 The Case of Epistemic Normativity ..........................................................133 Conclusion.................................................................................................135

VIII. PHENOMENOLOGY OF OBJECT CONSTITUTION .. 139 The Constitution of Ordinary Objects.......................................................140 How do Metaphysicians Usually Present the Constitution of Objects?....142 Generalist Problems with Ordinary Objects..............................................144 Particularistic Object Constitution ............................................................149

XI. THE HEART OF EXISTENCE ............................................. 153 Pascal’s Distinction, Ontology and Normativity.......................................153 Monistic Metaphysics................................................................................159 Problems of Normative Conditions in Metaphysics .................................162 Ultimate and Regional Ontology...............................................................165 Holistic and Rich Regional Ontology .......................................................172 Conclusion.................................................................................................173

References ........................................................................................ 175

9

Foreword This book came into being through our encounter of moral particularism and its ideas. It presents a trial to extend contextualism and its applications into various areas of philosophy. Our interest in practical contexts started with the Ljubljana philosophy seminar in analytic philosophy that we dedicated mostly to Moral Particularism and to the work of Jonathan Dancy in the years 1999-2003. We were joined in reading and discussion of several chosen topics by Uroš Rošker, Maja Lovrenov and Danilo Šuster, besides to some other colleagues and students. In the year 2003 our discussion centered at Dancy’s book Practical Reality, and at the draft of his Ethics Without Principles book. Matjaž Potrč attended a symposium on Dancy’s work in May 2003 in Valencia, Spain, with a paper entitled Practical Contexts. The main idea of this book however is dedicated to the extension of particularist thought to contextualism. We were introduced into this topic by Terry Horgan and by his collaborators, John Tienson, Mark Timmons and David Henderson, among others. Terry Horgan repeatedly visited Slovenia in recent years and delivered lectures. A symposium on his work was organized in Celje and another one on Horgan and Tienson book on Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology took place in Ljubljana. Close collaboration between Matjaž and Terry goes on through all these years. In the previously mentioned seminar we discussed several writings by Terry Horgan and his collaborators, including the work of David Lewis the importance of which Terry stressed (Scorekeeping in the Language Game paper). During years, much of material has accumulated, having to do with contextualism, truth as indirect correspondence, epistemological and metaphysical questions. We wish to present a review of our contextualist thought that was inspired by our study of moral particularism. We wish to thank several participants at the yearly performed symposia at Bled, Slovenia, who delivered feedback to our presented material there (Mark Brown, Dale Jacquette, Gene Mills, Mylan Engel), as well as to the audiences of our presentations in Ljubljana, Memphis, Duesseldorf, Pecs, Budapest, Kirchberg and Milano (Armando Verdiglione). Important feedback came from our students at the University of Ljubljana.

10 Our main thanks go to the work and friendship of Terry Horgan with his entourage. We are also grateful for his work and for the encounter with Jonathan Dancy. We look forward to meet Professor Dancy again at the particularism dedicated conference in Bled, Slovenia, in June of 2005. The aim of this conference that we co-organize is the extension of the approach of particularism to the area of epistemology, metaphysics, and this reaches well beyond just the area of moral thought. Matjaž Potrč, Vojko Strahovnik Ljubljana August 2004

I. POSITIVE AND WIDE IMPACT OF PARTICULARISM Moral particularism claims that reasons for moral actions are not governed by general principles, but by a mixture of situation bound deliberation and values.1 Main results of particularism, which was established in the area of moral philosophy, are in delimitation with various forms of moral generalism. Many insights were accumulated along the way. This makes it possible to ask questions about the positive and not just negative story and about the wider impact of particularism. The positive story may be attempted by moving phenomenology into considerations concerning action. A wider story may be obtained by abolishing restriction of particularism to the area of morality. Metaphysics is one of the first candidates for particularist project enlargement, and this is even more the case because metaphysical considerations lay foundation for moral particularism. Other areas of this impact are e.g. epistemology and semantics. The important work done by moral particularism up till now is primarily negative; it is especially dedicated to the delimitation of moral particularism from moral generalism. Many insights concerning particularism were gathered along the way: holism vs. atomism (in several areas, such as that of inference), non-atomistic narrative explanation, the importance of context for all normativity-laden fields or theories. The work inside this wider and positive particularism project remains to be done. It involves delivering a positive story involving particularism and presenting particularism as a more general teaching, which is not just bound to the area of morality, but reveals itself as a promising approach to other areas. A starting point for this project could be the integration of phenomenology2 into particularism. This is even more plausible if one considers that moral deliberation is covered by the theory of action, along with the approach stressing phenomenology that is inherent to the agency. The second step involves realizing that particularism is a promising approach indeed, which does not need to be limited to the theory of morality. One 1

Moral particularism was developed by Jonathan Dancy and John McDowell in the early eighties of the previous century. For its development see Dancy 1983, 1993, 2000 and 2004. 2 By phenomenology we mean qualitative states and experiences.

12 natural area for establishing the foundation of particularism is metaphysics. Here are some preliminary thoughts on this. Resultance is the metaphysical particularist basis, which profiles itself in its distinction to the generalistically minded supervenience. Levels of description angle: Generalism stresses the importance of thin properties, so that thick properties are taken as instrumental in respect to them. Particularism relieves the stress from thin properties by emboldening the role of thick properties, and by adding in a non-atomistic manner the considerations pertaining to the particular project or itinerary into the evaluation of an action. The resulting story involving four levels of description may be naturally extended from morality into the wider area of metaphysic. Rationale for extending teachings of moral particularism to the wider area of metaphysics is supported by the normative nature of both morality and of regional metaphysics. Regional metaphysics thrives on language and thought, distinguishing itself from the projects of ultimate metaphysics. Blobjectivism with its holism and indexicality is a natural choice for metaphysical particularism. Normativity in both morality and in the regional metaphysics is that of the particular. Delineating Moral Particularism The important work done by moral particularism up till now is primarily negative; it is especially dedicated to the delimitation of moral particularism from moral generalism. Moral particularism gains more and more ground in the actual considerations involving ethics and metaethics. Dancy has written a new book on the matter, there is debate between particularists and between their foes, each one of them arguing for the position that is incompatible with that of another one.3 The landscape and the big themes in the metaethics began to shift, with resurrection of the topics proposed by G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross, such as moral intuitionism and moral pluralism, which were almost forgotten a few years ago. 3

Dancy’s new book, Ethics Without Principles was still in manuscript at the time of discussion of its theses on the occasion of II. Inter-University workshop on Mind, Art and Morality in Valencia, Spain, March 27-29th, 2003. Potrč has taken part in this workshop with the presentation related to Dancy’s Practical Reality (2000) “Practical Contexts” paper, which is included in this book as a basis for the second chapter. An extensive discussion of pros and cons related to moral particularism is to be found in a collection of papers, edited by Hooker and Little (2000).

13 What does particularism actually mean? The first and recurring thesis is that in the matters of normative morality there is the guidance of the authority of the particular and that there is no normative authority of the general – despite that our tradition tends to argue just in the opposite direction. Related to this is the claim that the value of a certain moral feature cannot be treated outside from and irrespective of the context in which it happens to appear. A certain feature actually just contributes to the outcome of the situation that has to be observed and treated as a whole in order for its value to be evaluated. An important ingredient that is somehow not emphasized enough, although its importance is in some ways ubiquitously present in particularist discussions, is what we may call indexicality of the available features or of the present features. The thought is that in a similar manner as expressions “now” or “I” systematically shift their reference as they move from one context to another, each moral feature may obtain a different value or valence as it shifts from one context to another. The point to be taken into account though is that in the case of indexical expressions we are talking about their change of reference, whereas in the case of moral features, such as “lying”, these features may alter their valence or their value with their shift from one context to another. Although one may perhaps not directly talk about indexicality in the case of the features' values, such as the value of lying, at least in some contexts there certainly is the change of valence. There are some different accents tied to the presuppositions of values shifting their valence, as measured by the approach of indexicality. Indexicalities' presupposition about the existence of atomistic “times” or “persons” that serve as references to expressions “now” and “I” turn out to be too simplistic and atomistic and not dynamical to a sufficient extent in order to be straightforwardly used for the case of values. “Lying”, for example, certainly does not obtain a completely new value from one occasion to another. Notice that there is the difference between the meaning of indexical expressions, such as “now” and “I”, for they retain the same meaning in several contexts, and between the reference of such expressions that change systematically from one context to another. But again, one would be mistaken to hold this to be a general, exceptionless or even exceptions riddled but still general feature. The particularist denies not only constancy of valences of some features as they get extended over several contexts, but also the systematicity of their change. Consider that indexical expressions are meant to vary their reference in a systematic manner from one context, time or bearer to another. Particularist is set out to deny this. So in cases of values, it is not the case that they would stay

14 the same in all contexts, but also they do not vary in a systematic manner: They do not do this because in this way they would establish a predictable pattern, which a particularist will as the first one be set to deny. This would mean that one could still form some general moral principles or rules that would encompass these tractable patterns. So we may wish to talk about dynamical indexicality for the case of particularism, dynamicism meaning here that along with the features' contextual change no atomistic repeatable pattern is to be expected. The main manner of moral particularism’s presentation up till now was in delimiting it against its opposing moral generalism. This is indicated by the title of Dancy’s book Ethics Without Principles. So there are two presuppositions here, to be further discussed in what follows: (i) Particularism is operative in the area of morality. (ii) Particularism opposes generalism.4 Notice that the presuppositions (i) and (ii) are sensible, there is nothing really that would invite somebody to oppose them – of course once that they have agreed about the plausibility of moral particularism. The only remark that may be made in their respect is that they should not be necessarily interpreted in a too restricted manner. So they should not be interpreted as preventing or being opposed to what in fact are their extensions: (i') Particularism is operative in other areas besides to the area of morality. (ii') Particularism is a positive teaching whose one main characteristic is that it opposes generalism. We will begin to discuss these matters to a larger extent in what follows. It should only be noted or stressed again that (i') and (ii') do not in any way contradict or go counter to (i) and (ii). They do only extend them, all in staying completely compatible with them. From this point of view, (i') and (ii') just show a work that particularism still has to perform in order to become a real entrenched philosophical position, besides to just profiling itself as an alternative to other existing views in the area of morality, i.e. besides to opposing moral generalism.

4

See Dancy 1993, 60-108.

15 The main accomplished work and also the work that is still in progress is that of opposing particularism to generalism, as two generally competing views in the area of morality. The main claim of moral generalism is that a feature (of actions) with a given valence in a certain context will retain the same valence in different contexts that are forthcoming. This amounts to the support of the existence of generalist patterns. For a generalist, the same kinds of patterns retain the same valence (such as the one going along with the thin properties, e.g. right, wrong, good or bad) over several different contexts. This feature may be called atomism, pertaining to the detached treatment of features as their value gets projected over several contexts according to the general pattern. The dialectics of opposing generalism is rich and diversified. This is due to the fact that generalists try to defend in several ways their atomism, thereby denying the importance of particularist unique patterns and of holism. Accordingly, one may argue against generalism in several ways. First, there is the aspect of generalism in respect to how many principles it subscribes. Monistic generalism offers just one principle, such as it is to be found in consequentialist utilitarianism. According to this option of generalism, each situation of moral conflict, say, may be measured just by its relation and consequences in respect to one general principle. Moral pluralism is better off; it is more realistic in that it allows for a conflict of several principles and puts more stress on a considered moral judgment in particular situations. Monism actually could not have allowed for a genuine conflict, as each situation should be measured in respect to its relation to the only existing principle. Pluralism allows for the role of genuine judgment in solving of the conflict. A particularist will embrace the force of judgment, but he will object to each general principle still being presented in an atomistic manner. Both monism and pluralism defend generalist strategies. Pluralism treats each one of the plurality of principles as a prima facie duty (as opposed to the actual duty)5, i.e. as the duty that does not change its valence along the change of contexts and that would stay in power would it not be for the complex situation in which it just gets overridden but not really silenced. 5

“I suggest `prima facie duty´ or `conditional duty´ as a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e. g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not the same time of another kind which is morally significant. Whether an act is a duty proper or actual duty depends on all the morally significant kinds it is an instance of.” (Ross 1930, 19-20) For a particularistic critique of prima facie duties see Dancy 1993, 92-108 and McNaughton 1993, 197-201.

16 As there are many faces of generalism, and as it is entrenched according to several ways into theorizing concerning moral situations, there are also several manners to pursue the negative agenda of the particularist. A particularist will try to show that general patterns cannot really function as reasons with genuine normative power, and that they can even less do so in interesting cases of moral conflict. They will also not be able to really support the paths of our motivation. The threat of moral relativism and arbitrariness may be countered by a mixture of judgmental situation bound deliberation and values, which also should not be understood as typically retaining their valence. Wouldn’t a real morally bad individual also function appropriately according to particularist – for he is, after all, following his own judgments and agenda? The answer is that the inappropriateness of his actions may be judged by values, which however should themselves not be interpreted in an invariabilist manner. Moral particularism has offered an interesting alternative to the generalist, either to the monist or to pluralist ways of approaching moral deliberation or reasons. Generalist occurrences need not be straightforwardly denied by the particularist. He may try to reinterpret them as epistemic endeavors without any solid metaphysical foundation. The reasons why I did this act may be too complex in order to be given in a detailed manner as the justification of my act. This is why I may use a simple epistemic shortcut in a form of a general principle, without that my action would be metaphysically based upon that general principle. Particularism can thus allow only for principles of possible relevance that can function as some sort of relevance reminders. Along this and other attempts, particularists have tried to counter generalist approaches, shaping up slowly the broad approach delivering a qualitatively different picture from the one offered by various forms of generalism. There also appeared various form of particularism, of which some are still close in several respects to pluralism. Dancy has argued against these as still threading on the heritage of generalism. But he also rejects extreme forms of holism, say, allowing such things as default values – provided that these would not lead to the ultimately generalist claim about retaining their valence throughout the change of contexts. Some insights into the negative delimitation of particularism from generalism are important and they will be briefly reviewed in the following section.

17 The Lessons and Morals of Moral Particularism Along the project of defending moral particularism against moral generalism, the particularist approach slowly began to get its shape. The first idea is that particularism does not need to take into account any general principles, such as those expressed by the duty of pursuing what is utile, or by the duty requiring you to act justly, or again the guidelines such as “Lying is wrong”, in order to be able to judge and accomplish the appropriateness and correctness of an action in a certain situation. The particularist simply needs to follow his best judgment in the situation, and he needs to assess the pertinent value in the context. This is due to the holistic richness of situations where reasons for a certain course of action get weighted. Because of the involved rich and variable contexts in which the features (such as lying, being correct in one’s behavior) appear, these features cannot retain or have secured the same valence along their appearance on the occasion of various changing situations. Holism may be the name of the view according to which features do not retain their valence along with their shift from one situation to another one. I.e., lying does not always need to be wrong; at the occasion of a certain game it would be wrong not to lie because this would spoil the game in question. Atomism is the opposed view according to which features do retain their valence from one situation to another. This view would take it that lying is always wrong, without taking the possibly varying circumstances into account. A slightly different view at the matter can perhaps help to clarify these circumstances. There are three ways about how to organize a list of items. The organizing and ranging may proceed by the help of exceptionless rules: all cases of lying, say, will have the same valence according to this view. The second possibility is to organize the list of items with general rules allowing for exceptions: here the general principle that lying is wrong is still in charge, but some exceptions are allowed: so most of the items will be guided by the general principle, with some cases failing to comply.6 The last possibility is to treat each case in a different manner, without application of any general principle. This would be a particularist option. There would be no generality extending its authority over various cases of lying: because of the complexity of situations in which lying ap6

For such kind of strategy see Haney 1999.

18 pears the judgment would be needed for each particular case.7 Atomism would fit to the case of systematizing the list of items by the help of general rules without exceptions, whereas holism would go with particularism, according to which each occurrence of an item should be treated in a completely different way. Atomism tends not to care about the contextual circumstances surrounding a single item, thereby inviting the covering of a list of items by general exceptionless rules. Holism puts each item in a unique and not repeatable position by allowing the impact of the surrounding context on it: the general rule will not be applicable with it at all. General rules with exceptions present the case of adapted generalism. The list of items will be systematized under the guidance of the general principle, albeit this principle is allowing for exceptions. From this point of view, general rules, either without or with exceptions, present cases of generalism: they both are cases of the normative authority of the general, used as the systematizing principle applied to a list of items. The normative authority of the particular is coming about in the holistic approach. Generalist will try to avoid the holistic impact as far as possible. He will try to establish the missing links in systematizing of elements by providing the inferential rules that should disambiguate the richness of context. This case of lying, say, is similar to another case. And what appeared here as an ingredient supporting the exception should be integrated as an additional clause into the rule. Lying is wrong unless it appears in context of a certain game. This strategy could be labeled as fine-tuning of moral principles.8 By adding reasons for exceptions into the organizing conditions, one tends towards atomistic treatment of the appearing features, towards generalism. Making the inference more fluent gives power to the application of generalities over single holistic cases one started with. This is of course done in an even easier way for the case of generalities with exceptions figuring as an organizing principle over a list of items. The last insight that will be mentioned here between these that were gathered in the defense of particularism against generalism is about the kind of explanation that is appropriate for particularism. Generalist tends to have an explanation that works with subsumption of cases under general principles. Why is this act here bad, or again why is that act there good? The answer proposed by the generalist is that the first falls under a general principle, whereas the second one fails to do so. Particularist tends to avoid 7

Compare chapter III. and Potrč 2000. For such attempts see Sinnot-Armstrong 1999, Gert 1999 and Hooker 2000; for particularistic response Dancy 1999.

8

19 such atomistic approach to explanation. For him, the evaluation of a feature is too complex that it could be successfully ranged under a universal principle. The explanation should be more careful about the details involved. As against the approach involving laws, particularist proposes narrative structure of explanation.9 Narration delivers an appropriate nonlinear structure where the understanding is achieved through involving of the whole story, and of the direction of the story, and not through simplified generalist shortcuts. It is of course appropriate to deliver general principles as the epistemic explanatory shortcuts. I give you a general consideration why I did something: because I wanted to. The actual reasons, however, may be much more intertwined and complex than that. Delivering of these metaphysically grounded complex reasons as opposed to the epistemic generalist shortcuts needs an explanation adjusted to the intractable richness, in the shape of narration. Wider Positive Project Some results enumerated in the previous section were obtained in spelling out some bases of moral particularism. But they may be also understood in a wider sense, without necessarily involving the area of morality. One hint in this direction is provided by the insistence of Dancy that one should not separate the reasons pertaining to morality from the overall treatment of reasons.10 If we take this suggestion seriously enough, we get a more general project. It then becomes a particularist project that is independent and larger from the area of morality. Such particularism does of course not need to exclude the area of morality. To the contrary, it will include it, together with other areas. Which are these other areas pertinent to particularism, besides to morality? Practical rationality and theory of action offer themselves as an obvious choice. Another further area will be metaphysics, which is an even more interesting case because it is already elaborated in a nutshell in support of and as a basis for moral particularism. The idea is simply that it is appropriate to look at the metaphysical basis of moral particularism and to extend it further in an independent manner, as a kind of particularist metaphysical basis, which does not necessarily involve moral issues. This may then give us the starting point for particularist metaphysics. Other areas of extension are epistemology and semantics. 9

See chapter IV. This claim is made for example in Dancy 2000a.

10

20 Even before this, there is a question about delivering a positive, and not just negative story involving moral particularism. The negative story is simply shaping of particularist position through confrontation with various forms of generalism. The positive story, to the contrary, tends to look at such simple questions as why a certain act is morally good, delivering a story that is not just stemming from criticism of the opposed generalism. Such positive story should go back down to cases and ask what really makes a feature good or appropriate to be chosen in a certain case. One answer to this, to be slightly elaborated below, is that this relevancyconferring feature is phenomenology, the qualitative constitutive feel about the impact and importance of the act here and now, in a kind of dynamical indexical circumstances. Notice that phenomenology may be chosen as a positive feature guiding us towards what is constitutive about an action and for its valuing, and not just whatever stems from the project of confronting the generalist. Why are we embracing a certain action in given circumstances? What are the reasons of complying with one course of action and not with another one? The generalist will typically embrace some tractable procedure for us to go from the contribution of singular features or ingredients involved into the deliberation about action to the overall result. One way to go in this direction is by embracing the so called kitchen scale model, according to which the value of the whole may be calculated from the coming together of values of its constituent parts. The kitchen scale model may be countered by pointing out that the value of the whole may not always be obtained as the result of putting together and assessing the values of its parts. This would first involve cases of organic unity, such as the feature of devil’s happiness about his misdeeds making things morally worse, despite that the feature of happiness is usually contributing to the better in a situation in which this feature occurs. This shows that the contribution of a feature to the whole of the situation in which it appears does not need to be tractably linear. Particularist will even argue against embracing the organic unity model as still clinging on to tractable procedures. The deliberation to act in a holistic situation, and the assessment in which way to go has to depend on something else than just the coming together of the features as parts figuring in the situation, or even on something else than the reversal of values of the features as parts at the moment they enter into the situation. An important thing is the awareness of the agent about finding himself in the situation, of being involved into it as a conscious agent. There is the qualitative feeling for an agent of being in-

21 volved into the situation. The phenomenology of this qualitative feeling involves such things as the awareness of the agent being there, the specific qualitative feeling of having a certain duty. Such qualitative ingredients of the overall situation are of course grounded in the situation’s multiple features. But they cannot be reduced to these features. There is specific phenomenology of agency. Let us consider the case of a moral dilemma usually stated in support of moral pluralism, where as a representative of community that delegated me and put trust into me I drive to a meeting, facing a victim of a road accident. I should either go on pursuing my obligation to community, or I should take care of this other obligation to help the victim of the road accident. What I do is not just weighing my duties and the features given in the situation in respect to each other in a tractable manner. I first of all consider myself as being involved into the situation, with the specific qualitative feeling coming along with this. The qualitative feeling reflects my situation of being involved into the world, in a dynamically indexical manner. From my perspective, I assess the situation as an embodied agent, being involved into it in a qualitative phenomenological way. This gives me then the real reason to act in one way or another. Consider again that the phenomenological qualitative feeling that I have in the situation is based on the features, that it results from them, but does not follow from them in any tractable manner. It only thrives on what is relevant in the situation. The phenomenological feel about how to act results from the features involved into the situation, in a particularist way, and not through any generalist pattern. Stressing the importance of phenomenology involved into the situation offers the occasion to deliver the beginnings of a positive story of the moral agency. Phenomenology may well be the motivating reason to act in one way or another, transcending the importance of the partial contributory features in the assessment of the situation. Centering at phenomenology surely leads to the reason to act in the situation, in a dynamically indexical way. It was recently stressed that phenomenology of embodied agency is important for an assessment of action.11 This certainly gives a broader perspective on the issue as just restriction to the cases of moral deliberation. At this point phenomenology is pointed as the ingredient that may substan-

11

Graham, Horgan, and Tienson 2003.

22 tially alter the positive story involving agency.12 The idea is that the story of action involving particularist phenomenology may be extended from moral to the non-moral. Theory of action based on phenomenology, phenomenology of embodied agency (which is compatible with the brain in a vat scenarios) is a recent elaboration or extension of the theory of action. Particularism and Metaphysics13 Dancy himself says that moral particularism is nothing but a local appearance of a larger holistic approach, which holds for the case of a theory of reasons. In articulating moral particularism though, several ideas related to metaphysics were elaborated. One reason was that some sorts of particularism may be articulated as not allowing for a general pattern like transition from the natural basis. It would be impossible to provide principles exactly according to which a natural basis for some thick moral property, i.e. an act being cruel, would be articulated. The diversity in the manners of the natural instantiation for cruel acts would be just too rich in order that it would be possible to articulate it with the usage of general patterns. This is one manner about how to articulate particularism, which clearly has to do with the metaphysical issues. We have also mentioned thin moral properties (right, wrong, good, bad), which again form a case of particularist metaphysical consideration. Three cases of metaphysical underpinning of wide particularism will be briefly presented: resultance, levels of description and regional metaphysics, dynamic indexicality and blobjectivism. Resultance is the metaphysical particularist basis, which profiles itself in its distinction to the generalistically minded supervenience. Supervenience is introduced by counterfactuals which use large physical basis in order to obtain the repeatable occurrence of tokens of moral or other kind higher order properties. The exaggerated effort put into this shows by itself the futility and extraordinary endeavor of such an exercise. St. Francis’ goodness is achieved in counterfactual circumstances involving the duplicate of the world with the duplicate St. Francis-Twin whose moral property of goodness is the same as in the first case.

12

A similar line of thought is present regarding the question of the ontological status of ordinary objects in chapter XIII. 13 This subchapter/section just briefly sets the path for a whole-hearted particularistic metaphysical picture that will be elaborated in chapter IX.

23 Resultance opposes this generalist strategy of supervenience in particularist manner. It takes as a metaphysical basis for moral or other higher order properties only the relevant underlying features in the situation.14 Levels of description: Generalism stresses the importance of thin properties, so that thick properties are taken as instrumental in respect to them. Particularism relieves stress from thin properties by emboldening the role of thick properties, and by adding in a non-atomistic manner the considerations pertaining to the particular project or itinerary into the evaluation of an action. The resulting story involving four levels of description may be naturally extended from morality into the wider area of metaphysic. One may describe the levels leading to some moral property in the following way: There is the basis of physical properties, upon which there result thick, and again thin properties. Such a model would satisfy generalist, who observes thick moral properties as instrumental in respect to the thin ones. Being cruel is instrumental to being morally bad. Particularist has the option to relieve the stress from the thin properties, in order to put more weight on the thick properties (thick properties do not retain their valence according to the changing contexts, in the eyes of particularist) on the one hand, and on the project zero level on the other hand, the project or itinerary (context) into which the agent is engaged: 0. Project or itinerary level 1. Thin properties level 2. Thick property level 3. Physical level of description Generalist does not have (0); he stresses the importance of (1) and looks at (2) as instrumental for (1), with stable atomistic valence attached. Particularist relieves the stress off the thin property level of description (1) by introducing (0) and by putting more weight on (2) that is interpreted holistically. Doing this action cannot be measured by its goodness, its thick prop14

“I begin with resultance. This is the relationship which we are talking about when we say that one property of an object exists ‘in virtue of’ another or some others. For instance, we may say that a thing has the property of squareness in virtue of its possession of some other properties.” (Dancy 1993, 72) “There are two important ways in which supervenience differs from resultance. The first is that supervenience is not concerned with the particular case. It is a relationship between classes of properties, not between whatever members of those classes happen to be present in the case before us” (Dancy 1993, 78).

24 erty, because this would be trivial. It should be measured by generosity, fairness and other thick moral properties that allow for change of valence. Particularist also stresses that the rightness or the goodness of the act is inherently involved with the itinerary or the project level of the agent performing it. Rationale for extending teachings of moral particularism to the wider area of metaphysics is supported by the normative nature of both morality and of regional metaphysics. Regional metaphysics thrives on language and thought, distinguishing itself from the projects of ultimate metaphysics. Blobjectivism, with its holism and indexicality, is a natural choice for metaphysical particularism. Normativity in both morality and in the regional metaphysics is that of the particular.15 Here is a possible objection: Why should we see metaphysics as pertinent to the particularism at all? Particularism is normative, whereas metaphysical ontology cannot be normative, it is about the mind independent world. The answer to this is that most of the metaphysics as practiced is regional metaphysics, and not the ultimate one. This fact is not appreciated enough. Your typical Quinean metaphysics is regional. But if regional, it is language and thought related, and therefore it is normative. The importance of normativity for metaphysical endavour can be seen e.g. in the argument for or against the existence of ordinary objects.16 Such a view allows for bringing together of particularism and blobjectivism, the teaching that there is just one world, richly dynamical, without any parts. Holism is inherent to both. Dynamic (and not the systematic atomistic) indexicality shows the ways of the proper particularist categorization basis along the blobjectivist metaphysical route. It also shows that the normativity in both morality and in the regional metaphysics is that of the particular. One recent objection to particularism is that it is bound to embrace theory of tropes. Blobjectivist can see this only as an advantage, in the direction of making his overall project and several aspects of it more plausible.

15 16

For elaboration of these points see chapters VIII. and IX. See Thomasson (Forthcoming).

II. PRACTICAL CONTEXTS “When someone does something, there will (normally) be some considerations in the light of which he acted – the reasons for which he did what he did. There are not so many things that we do for no reason at all.” (Dancy 2000, 1) This chapter primarily deals with Dancy’s book Practical Reality and with its main thesis that facts and not psychological states are reasons for action. It deals with reasons for action and offers a contextualised view on them. We embrace the main direction of this thesis, its arguing in favor of the reason’s objectivity, without thereby also necessarily subscribing to it. There is also a push to promote the thesis a little bit further, claiming that there may exist even something more objective than facts, namely contexts. So instead of arguing for practical reality as this was recently done by Dancy we argue for practical context as the direction which Dancy’s search for reasons of action should take. There is no harm in psychological states contributing to the overall reasons. Discussing Dancy’s position concerning his practical reality thesis, we mention facts. As it is argued that facts should be superseded by contexts, it might be thought that Dancy’s usage of terms “situations” or “states of affairs” do already encompass contexts. But our understanding is that they do not, and that his situations, say, are just limited situations, which still need dynamical pressure of contexts to become reasons. Another point concerns the usage of terminology involving necessary and sufficient conditions. Sufficient conditions are understood as to provide the necessary relevance for triggering an action, say. Sufficient conditions will not come through without the necessary conditions, which are separated into non-normative and normative necessary conditions, in the case of actions. I will be able to help somebody when the non-normative necessary condition of my breathing is satisfied first, and when the normative necessary conditions of my believing that the person needs help and that there is a fact that the person needs help are satisfied.17 But just this will not provide the reason for action according to our understanding. Such 17

Dancy, on the contrary, does not understand beliefs (or more widely, psychological states) as necessary normative conditions, because in his view these do not carry any normative strength (in usual cases).

26 a reason will be provided by the relevant context as the sufficient condition. The earlier mentioned necessary conditions will be included into reasons. Humeans claim that beliefs and desires lead to action. But desires dominate beliefs and so they are sufficient reasons for action. Desires thus have the normative authority to be reasons, whereas beliefs do not. The relation of domination provides the reason to act, and according to Humeans beliefs only present necessary condition for something else than them to be a reason. Dancy’s pure cognitivism thesis reverses this: beliefs dominate desires as reasons for action. Beliefs are more objective than desires. Pure cognitivism actually treats desires as just enabling conditions. The tendency of objectifying reasons is further stressed in Dancy’s practical reality project. Now, facts dominate psychological states, both desires and beliefs. Psychological states become necessary but not sufficient conditions for reasons, but still the relation of dominance is in favor of facts as against beliefs. Facts cannot be reasons for action just without any consideration of context though, as this may be shown by Dancy’s examples figuring facts. This leads to the recognition of contexts having normative authority as reasons, thereby dominating facts. The contextual dominating of facts succeeds through contextual variable normative parameters operating through language and thought. The ultimately metaphysical FACTS turn out to be putative facts without context. Facts may be explained as reasons when they appear in the holistic context of narration. Recognition of practical contexts as reasons for action integrates desires and beliefs. Sufficient condition is determined by the relevance in context. Phenomenology of contextually situated action is compatible with the agency that is proper to brains in a vat. Particularism and Context Our conclusion will be in favor of contexts as reasons for action. But as Dancy is the main defender of the thesis of moral particularism, it is appropriate to take a brief look at the relation between particularism and context again. It is not hard to see that contexts are important for particularism. Take a certain feature, such as lying, or a certain fact, that someone is lying. Generalist would say that there is a general principle, “Lying is wrong”, which holds for all possible cases, without exceptions.

27 Pluralist will claim that the principle still holds in its generality, but that it might be overridden. So I do the right thing if I lie about your whereabouts to the crooks that are looking for you. Another general principle than the prohibition of lying – that of helping the unduly pursued person and protecting her – has won the stage as both principles appeared in the same pluralist hopper. The intuitive judgment in the overall situation has made this possible. But the overall situation here refers to the context. In the case where some specific general principle has appeared in the context including other general principles, its normative power may be overridden.18 Particularist is even more radical here, because in counter distinction with the pluralist he would not allow for any normative authority of general principles at all. Therefore he also cannot allow for phenomenon of overriding to hold between general principles, in the way the pluralist does. But if there are no general principles around anymore to take care of what goes on at the stage, then the context in which decision to act is to be made becomes of the utmost importance. If there are no general principles to be pursued anymore, then one also has to rely on what it feels like to act, in a context. A feature or even a fact cannot have an autonomous, i.e. general validity: a certain feature or fact will obtain its meaning through the overall contextual situation. The reasons to act as well will be given through the context. Although it is easy to see that context is of the utmost importance for a moral particularist, this was perhaps not appreciated to enough extent. According to contextualism, any feature or any fact will have to be integrated into the patchwork of the context and in the forces operative within the context. What we wish to claim is that particularism is not contextual enough in treating the reasons for action, while it may be contextual enough in its overall approach. Thereby, the lack of acknowledging fullfledged contextuality of reasons for action in Dancy becomes even more interesting. He is not pushing enough towards contextual direction in the area of reasons for actions, because he did just gradually slide from desires and then to beliefs and then to facts as sufficient conditions for reasons for action, staying prey to the atomistic heritage deeply entrenched into tradition. Because of this conservative effort Dancy refrained to make the last push towards context. The problem of recognizing the appropriate factors in a situation is the problem of relevance. Relevance is non-tractable and non-atomistic and so it is natural to handle it with the help of the context. Any trial to get 18

Silencing, in opposition to overriding, is the distinctive mark of particularism.

28 to the relevance by using tractable and atomistic means will be misguided. Our claim is that the dynamically construed context can handle this. The holistic context has a structure though. The main structure leading to reasons for action may perhaps be given by the distinction between (a) moral and (b) non-moral contributing factors, that are active as forces in the context. But we would disagree with the possible suggestion that there are two contexts, the normative context and the non-normative context. We would rather embrace Dancy’s overall strategy to make one out of two: there is just one context and not two contexts (but there is the structured layering of contributing factors in the context), in a similar way as there is just one reason and not two reasons (as Dancy repeatedly stresses, and actually this is the main thesis of Practical Reality book: that there is just one reason for action, and not two reasons, motivating reasons and reasons for action, there are just two different points of view).19 Considering all this, it seems to us that particularism may be contextual enough, whereas this is not the case for the particularist treatment of reasons for action. This can and should be improved, by helping Dancy find the healthy particularistic lead out of the tractable and atomistic entangling. Moral factors are of course important as contributory (necessary) but not as sufficient conditions for reasons for action. So they do not have the last word that is reserved to the context as the ultimate sufficient condition. It is also important to appreciate that context itself is a normative notion. There are normative forces regulating the outcome of the contextual situation. These forces are not easy to pin down because they do not follow tractable manners of procedure. Therefore it is good to account for the ways according to which context operates. The adherents of moral particularism certainly will subscribe to the importance of context as reason for action. Our own claim is as well that context is the right candidate for reasons for action. Why should this be the case? Here we borrow from Dancy’s presupposition that objectivity is a guiding principle for counting something as a reason for action, i.e. as the reason’s sufficient condition. And then it turns out that the context is the most objective between the available candidates. Certainly context seems

19

“If we do speak in this way, of motivating and normative reasons, this should not be taken to suggest that there are two sorts of reason, the sort that motivate and the sort that are good. There are not. There are just two questions that we use the single notion of a reason to answer.” (Dancy 2000, 2)

29 to sound as the most objective in the sequence: desires, beliefs, facts, contexts. Or so we argue. We reconstruct Dancy’s reasoning about facts being reasons for action. Following this reasoning, his strategy of sliding further on towards what is more objective is adopted. In the process, we can allow for facts to be objective and to be fairly good candidates for being reasons for action. But we go on to argue that contexts are even more objective, and that this is why they beat facts as reasons for action. This does not imply that facts would be without any contributory role in promoting and introducing reasons for action. Why Contexts would Figure as Reasons for Action? I decided to cook celery. Why did I do this? Because I was beginning to be hungry. But also because it turned out that the time was somewhere around lunch. And there was a prospect of company that would make the circumstances even more appropriate in order for me to enjoy the meal. Also for some time now I longed to taste the baked celery. Besides, celery was not too expensive, so I bought it. The story could go on. It would be perhaps difficult to find just one single reason that would specify why I cooked the celery for my lunch today. There are many reasons, for consider that the story as reported above is far from finished. My narration could go on. But if you will ask me about my reasons to cook celery for my lunch today, I will find one of these reasons and I will give it to you, without really thinking too much about it. I will just say that I began to feel hungry. Now if I think about it, did I give you the appropriate story? I tried to stick to one relevant reason. But did I give you the whole reason as it was actually and factually happening? I doubt it. Reason giving is supposed to center at some relevant chunk. I did not cook the celery because I wanted to become the best mathematician in the world by eating it. So my reason as given, the reason that I have provided to you while I answered to your question, was appropriate to some extent. But certainly I did not deliver to you the whole holistic story that would fully justify my action. All down the line, it seems that the whole intricate context would provide for the appropriate reason. But the story of my reason giving might become too complicated through this. If nothing else, I could not give the extended story to you in the delimited time that is usually at my disposition for such

30 an endeavor. Besides to this, it may not be appropriate at all to pester you with the whole story unless it would really become relevant, as for example in the setting of discussion in the court. Here are some examples of giving reasons or explanation of reasons for action as answering to the why-question: “What explains why some person yawned may be that someone else yawned just next to them. What explains why he responded so aggressively may be that he is having trouble at home or that he is taking a particular form of medication. What explains why he gave this student a better grade than she deserved is that he was unconsciously influenced by the fact that she always dresses so neatly (or something even less defensible). What explains why so many people buy expensive perfume at Christmas is the barrage of advertising on the television. What explains why he didn’t come to the party is that he is shy.” (Dancy 2000, 5) At the first sight, there does not seem to be any context involved in the story. So the yawning of others next to me seems to be the fact that triggers and explains my own action of yawning. But consider the situation where the context is that of extreme danger. Then it seems that I would not have yawned even if somebody next to myself would. The explanation and the reason giving of his taking medication for what triggered his action again may do its job in this context, but not in another context where the circumstances and the pressures coming along with them would be different. We may presume at first that reasons for action do indeed seem to be just the mentioned facts. But if you take a closer look at each particular case where facts should be figuring as reasons, you may discover various possibilities where along with the slight changes these same facts will not really be in power as reasons. You can persuade yourself about this by performing some counterfactual variation of the wider circumstances in which the mentioned facts appear. As we are dealing with the cases of explanation, we may recall a standard example of explanation here: a match starting the fire. Why did the fire start? The match started it. Well, but there is a lot assumed here: if there would not be any oxygen in the atmosphere, as for that matter, the match would not have started the fire, because it could not be ignited. In this way you find out that many things were presupposed in what seemed at the beginning to function as an atomistic cause for the effect of the fire being started. Presume now that all various circumstances

31 that were there in support of the striking of the match would actually not have been there, or take just some of these out. Then in many contexts generated by this procedure the match could not have been lighted. As observed from this perspective, the striking of the match is then really not any more a sufficient condition for starting of the fire. The striking of the match now becomes just a degraded necessary condition. Whereas all the rest that appeared as presupposition, the context, really becomes sufficient condition, together with the striking of the match, in order that the fire would get started. The wrong overall presupposition was to center at just one single cause, or at one sole atomistic reason, thereby forgetting the importance of the whole context that contributed to happening of the event or of starting the action. The above consideration drew on explanation and thereby on giving of reasons. But we may involve another preliminary example from Dancy in order to show how the context and not the fact itself does really and finally act as a reason. Of course, we have first to dig out and subsequently to discharge the presupposition that the atomistic fact is really reason. One objection to the contextualist approach may be that the stressed atomistic factor is relevant. But to this the contextualist may respond that determining the relevance is itself a major challenge that could not happen without measuring all the different circumstantial and contextual considerations. The ultimately relevant feature is the context. So, here is Dancy’s example where fact is cited as sufficient to be a reason: “ It is because she is in trouble that I ought to help her.” (Dancy 2000, 52) The fact that she is in trouble (and granted, not my belief or some other psychological state to the effect that she is in trouble) seems to be a good enough reason that I ought to help her. But it is at least possible to have circumstances where this fact would not be enough. She may be somebody in India, say, about whom I actually do not know anything and with whom I am not related in any way. So obviously it is presupposed that I ought to help her in the context that is appropriate to this, where the requirements of epistemic filter are satisfied.20 It is a usual move, shared both by Humeans and by Dancy, that reasons for action get determined by the dominant factors. For Humeans, de20

Epistemic filter highlights the important consideration about the relevance as an integral part of the contextual approach.

32 sire will be the relevant factor that exercises its normative authority over and against other factors which also happen to place themselves as possible candidates for reasons for action. Even if the dominated candidates do not suffice to lead to the action, they may still contribute to this passage and they mostly present indispensable tools towards reaching it. Different views all share the belief that there exists some consideration why precisely this factor is able to be the reason for action, as opposed to other candidates. The following categories may appear as alternatively dominant or as exercising normative authority in respect to other factors: desire, belief, fact. What is normative authority? It is the claim that some factor exercises normative pressure, as against other candidate factors. What allows this particular factor to exercise this normative pressure is the whole setting in which it is allowed to exercise it. Finding this particular part has enabled me to fix the bicycle. But this part would not have helped me much without all the other parts of the bicycle being already there, and several other conditions being satisfied that helped me in fixing of the bicycle. So the importance of one single screw depends on the circumstances, and the exercising of normative authority by one specific factor depends on contextual circumstances as well. If that part of the bicycle would not be missing, but another one would, then this particular part could not have contributed to fixing of the bicycle. If one feature would appear where another one is needed, it could not have exercised the normative authority. The consideration goes as follows: (i.) There are several factors that are necessary for the action to happen. (ii.) But one of the factors is sufficient for the action to happen; this element is the reason for action. (iii.) Other factors build the necessary conditions, contributing thereby to the action. (iv.) The sufficient factor dominates other elements, exercising normative authority over them. The point about the dominance or about the normative authority was expressed by the terminology of necessary and sufficient conditions. If something is to count as reason for something else, then is should be a sufficient condition for this enterprise, and not just its necessary condition. If desire is the reason for action, then all other factors, such as beliefs or

33 facts, will have to stay just as necessary conditions for this reason to appear, namely necessary conditions for desire to be the reason. But notice again that, granted the desire as given in our example turns into reason, it could not have made it without the contribution of other factors, such as beliefs and facts. To some extent, the role of necessary and sufficient conditions could have been changed. This shows that considerations involving relevance – which of the various necessary conditions is a sufficient one for action to come about – become important. Because they do not take care of the phenomenon of relevance, there must be a mistake in atomistic and static presuppositions for determining reasons by the help of definitions. In other words, a definitory approach does not appreciate to enough extent contribution of contextual factors. Granting that whatever counts as sufficient condition dominates factors contributing necessary conditions for action, the main thread of the argument follows the subsequent lines: Desires dominate beliefs (Humeanism). Dominance presupposition. Beliefs dominate desires (Pure cognitivism). Facts dominate beliefs (Practical reality). Contexts dominate facts (Practical contexts). Objectivity presupposition. The schedule mostly follows Dancy’s itinerary in as far as reasons for action are concerned. Dancy would agree that according to the Humeans, desires dominate beliefs. But he first opposed Humeanism by arguing about beliefs dominating desires. And later he extended the dominance thesis in the sense of practical reality: facts dominate beliefs. Notice that the presupposition of dominance was not challenged at any of these steps. The presupposition of dominance (that there is one factor dominating others as candidates for reason for action) is shared by Dancy and by the Humeans. There is another presupposition, that of objectivity – that objective candidates have priority to the subjective, psychologically minded or other similar candidates for the reason of action. This is the presupposition that is not shared between Humeans and Dancy. Actually, Dancy reverses the

34 lines for the profit of objectivity, conflicting thereby with the Humean departure along the same lines. We decided to go along with both presuppositions endorsed by Dancy, the dominance presupposition and the objectivity presupposition. We just appropriate these presuppositions in a pragmatic manner, without trying to decide whether they are right or wrong. So both of these presuppositions may ultimately turn out to be wrong. But to prove or to refute this is not our concern in this chapter. Here we just embrace both presuppositions and take a look where they may take us if we make a further push to follow them. It is argued that where they guide us is to the Practical context thesis: Contexts dominate facts. Thus, by embracing dominance and objectivity presuppositions, one is led in a natural way to recognize facts, basic to the practical reality thesis, as only necessary conditions for reasons, whereas contexts turn out to be sufficient conditions for reasons. The claim is that the position of Dancy contextualizes itself if we simply follow its own presuppositions. But let us start in a slightly more systematic manner now. Humeans: Beliefs and desires lead to action, desires dominating beliefs. The most common view about reasons for action is proposed by Humeans.21 It sees beliefs and desires as leading to action. But beliefs, in Humean perspective, turn out to be just necessary condition for something to be a reason for action. Whereas desires give the appropriate active punch that finally can lead to action. This is why in the Humean perspective desires dominate beliefs as reasons for action. So, desire is relevant as the reason for action, whereas the belief is not. The choice is between normative candidates for reasons, whereas others, such as breathing, are of the lower scale among the candidates belonging to the necessary conditions. We will take it that desires are reasons for action for Humeans, despite that it may be argued that they are just motivating factors. Anyway, as far as the dominance relation goes, desires seem to be sufficient conditions for action, in the eyes of the Humeans. Here is their story. 21

Humeans draw on the Aristotelian tradition, and are also close to the Aristotelianinspired Brentanists, such as Meinong and France Veber. Brentanists typically range ethics or teaching about the action in the area of the emotive (Gemuethsbewegungen) as opposed to the area of the cognitive (presentations, thoughts).

35 My action of getting myself a beer from the fridge is made possible by my entertaining beliefs about the beer and the fridge, as well as about my overall conditions in which I find myself. Now, I have beliefs about many things, without thereby being obliged to undertake any action in respect to these things. So, something more active than belief is necessary that would lead me towards the action. And this active ingredient is the desire. Without desire I do not have the reason to act and still less I have the reason to act in a sensible manner.22 But with the desire there is sufficient push for me to pass over to action. Desire is a sufficient condition for action. According to the Humeans thus, desires are sufficient conditions that lead to action, thereby dominating beliefs. Dancy’s Pure Cognitivism Thesis: Belief dominate desires as reasons for action. Beliefs are more objective than desires. Dancy’s pure cognitivism thesis is a reversal of the above approach. Cognitivism here means that we are not dealing with the emotive, but with its opposite, with cognitive states such as beliefs, to figure as reasons. So beliefs should now be expected to figure as reasons for actions, whereas desires should not anymore be expected to get this role accorded to them.23 What could be the rationale for this? Well, we can think about the following. Volitions, including desires, are the stuff that in a far too large extent depends on subjective inklings. What I desire may be quite different to what somebody else might wish. Emotive states suffer from each person’s non-predictable psychological states of mind. The resulting arbitrary direction of fit may be completely different for each individual involved. It is then easy to agree that as compared to this, beliefs are much more objective. If nothing else, by their very nature beliefs are obliged to have reality check built into them, whereas this is a lot less requiring in the case of de22

Veber (1924) provides an example of a robot or of an authomaton that continues to walk into the house, even if the house turns out to be on fire. The robot does this insensible thing because he does not have any emotions, and so he does not feel any fear. It is just a pure cognitive being, and so it is actually incapable to act, still less to act in an appropriate manner. 23 “On my view, a desire is never a necessary part of what motivates. So we have two beliefs which together motivate. One of these is about how things are, ant the other is about how they would be if the action were successfully performed. I called this view ‘pure cognitivism’” (Dancy 2000, 13)

36 sires. Beliefs may be inaccurate, but even if they are, this may be rather easily proven. Community will have its role in the proof how your beliefs ultimately correspond to the givens of the mind independent world. There is no comparative stringency in the check prescribed for desires and other volitional states. If just whatever I wish or whatever I would like is the ultimate reason for action, this does not seem to be objective enough. So the presumption may be that one needs something objective as the reason for action. One needs something that may enter into the relation of correspondence with the world, although it is perhaps not obliged to do so. The world may then function as the measure of belief’s objectivity. So as compared to the desire, belief will then win as the candidate for a reason for action. The belief now turns out to be the sufficient condition for being reason, whereas the desire stays just necessary condition. The resulting position of pure cognitivism claims that desires are even not the necessary conditions to be reasons for action. But this does not seem to be accurate. Granted that beliefs but not desires are sufficient conditions for action, this does not seem to exclude desires of being at least contributory and so the necessary conditions for action. Pure cognitivism stayed with the dominance presupposition, just that it reversed it in respect to the Humeans: beliefs dominate now, and not the desires. Pure cognitivism also broke with Humeanism in that it introduced the objectivity presupposition: whatever is more objective is the reason for action. But it seems that there was a kind of confusion between the role of motivating states and reasons that still needs to be straightened up. Perhaps beliefs, in the end, are just motivating states, but they are not reasons. Yet this would be in opposition with the overall objectivist attitude, and accordingly with the main claim of Dancy’s Practical Reality book: that there may be just one kind of reasons, not the psychological motivating ones, and the objective ones. There is just one reason, and this is the objective fact that also motivates, if it is a good reason. We should start slowly though before we reach this next stage, which is already delineated here in a rough outline. We grant that beliefs are reasons and that they dominate desires. But now it seems that there are at least possible cases where beliefs cannot figure as reasons. The observation is that beliefs, although they are more objective than desires, are not objective enough to be reasons. My belief that she is in need is not the reason to act. A reason to act cannot be psycho-

37 logical. The reason to act may only be something independent of any psychological state. The reason also cannot be divided, so that one of both resulting reasons would be the reason why one acted, the motivation related psychological stuff that incited me to act, and so that another reason would be a good or appropriate (relevant) normative reason to act. Motivational reasons have to be the right sorts of things in order to be normative reasons.24 Practical Reality The next stage in moving reasons towards more objectivity is by introducing facts as reasons for action. The consideration in favor of this is already indicated. My belief that she is in need cannot be a good reason to act. And with the presupposition that the good and the motivating reason cannot be separated, and that there are just objective factual reasons, the motivating psychological states cannot be reasons to act at all. But what was then the reason to act? It was whatever was there existing independently of beliefs and of my other psychological states. It was the fact that she was in need. Does this then mean that we cannot allow for any psychological states, such as desires and beliefs to figure in supporting of the reasons at all? No. Psychological states are there and they will be there. They even have their job in making me start to engage into action. Although they may not be motivating as reasons. But in this manner the psychological states are not good enough for the job of reasons. For psychological states are just the necessary and not the sufficient conditions for me to act. The sufficient condition and the real motivation at the same time was the fact that she was in need. Facts may be both what moved my psychological states to be engaged into a certain direction, and what made my deeds normatively good or bad. Because they are more objective than psychological states – both desires and beliefs – facts are relevant to be reasons for action. Facts then dominate psychological states as possible reasons for action. Why do facts dominate psychological states in this way? Because they are more objective, as we have already indicated. This means that normative notions such as belief cannot be relevant to lead to the action in the sense of triggering it. Beliefs are only necessary conditions. Whereas 24

“Normative constraint […] requires that a motivating reason, that in the light of which one acts, must be the sort of thing that is capable of being among the reasons in favor of acting.” (Dancy 2000, 103).

38 facts are sufficient conditions for reasons. Facts possess normative authority, which leads them to the action, the normative authority that the psychological states lack.25 Of course, not any fact will be a reason for action. We are talking just about the relevant facts. But what exactly makes these facts relevant? One answer seems to be: the way these facts fit into the complex whole of other normative states, including psychological states such as desires and beliefs. Non-normative states seem to be excluded from the bet in the direction of the ultimate authoritative relevance. The main trouble for facts appears to be the following one: Facts do not seem to be normative, at least not at the outset. So, it may be important to determine the conditions under which facts may be normative. Facts do not seem to be normative, in opposition to the psychological states, such as desires and beliefs, which do seem to be of normative nature. A reason why desires and beliefs seem to be tied to the normativity is because they are close to language and thought. On the other hand and at the outset, facts seem to be close to other necessary (not sufficient) conditions for something to be a reason, such as breathing or blood circulation. Facts primarily look as being of the metaphysical and not of the normative nature. So what is it that makes facts normative then? The answer is to be searched along the already indicated lines that they are somehow engaged in the vicinity of language and thought. How can this be? Only in the case facts are facts and not FACTS. Take any facts that may figure as a reason. Say the fact that she was in need, as the fact figuring for the reason for me to help her. But if the mentioned fact was a reason for me to act, then it must have had some normative power in it. Yet it could not have this normative power if we consider it just as a metaphysical FACT, something simply being out there in the world. The capitalizing of FACT indicates that we are handling a 25

Cognitivist may try to save his position by claiming that only true beliefs can be reasons. The grade of objectivity with true beliefs is the same as with facts. An additional argument is needed, and it is provided by Dancy. If we choose between (1) I helped her because she was ill. and between (2) I helped her because I truly believed that she was ill. we always decide in our choice for (1), because this is basically the fundamental explanation of my action. (1) and (2) so essentially expose one and the same reason – that she was ill – just that the explanation (2) is psychologistic. Pure cognitivist will thus take reasons to be true beliefs. In this case, facts are already interpreted as beliefs.

39 matter that does not or almost does not have a burden of normativity. It is just something in the world out there, and one has difficulty to see how it could be normative as such. On the other hand, once I start thinking about the fact, or talking about the fact, the fact is able to provide its normative authority. In this case we are talking about the small lettered fact, to distinguish it from its capitalized metaphysically heavy weight cousin. Now the small lettered fact may obtain the normative importance that the FACT just did not have. It may become the candidate for a reason, but only in the contextual normative setting. We may also assess the difference between FACTS and facts semantically. FACTS display limit cases of truth, where requirements are very high for truth to figure as direct correspondence. Facts present more usual, austere and less opulent cases of normativity that lead to truth as indirect correspondence. It is not hard to see that facts as sufficient conditions for reasons have to be such that truth about them will be indirect correspondence, and not direct correspondence; they cannot be FACTS. For FACTS do not have normativity that is plentiful with more simple facts. The issue about normativity as related to facts is thus as follows. Facts cannot be normative if they are taken as metaphysical FACTS, but they may be normative if they are taken in the sense of truth as indirect correspondence, so if they appear as small lettered facts. If we get to the condition for facts to be normative, then these are conditions for facts to be small facts. If we take a look at Dancy’s examples of what is called facts and what he sometimes calls situations, then we will see that he is dealing with small facts. Just let us take the already known example: “It is because she is in trouble that I ought to help her.” (Dancy 2000, 52) “She is in trouble” is thus a fact that is reason enough for my action, according to Dancy’s views. But not according to our views, or to anybody else’s, just for that matter, once we start thinking about the various possible contextual situations where the fact that “she is in trouble” will not be sufficient for triggering my action. Anyway, granted that the mentioned fact is a reason for action, it has to be the small fact figuring truth as indirect correspondence, and not the ultimate metaphysical FACT. “She is in trouble”

40 has to have normative force for being a candidate for reason for me to act. And this force it can have only if it is taken into the context of language and thought. If the fact is the reason, this could only be because it is a small normative fact. Other examples of Dancy figuring facts as reasons always involve small normative facts. Otherwise, these facts could not have be proposed to do the job of motivating reasons at the same time they may be good reasons for action. Practical Contexts: contexts have normative authority as reasons. According to the above reasoning, contexts have normative authority as reasons. In order to reach this conclusion, just the same strategy was used, as was the one that Dancy employed for shifting from desires to beliefs and then to the facts as being the candidates for reasons concerning action. The shift in Dancy’s work from pure cognitivism towards practical reality was towards always more objective features as being candidates for reasons for action. In such a manner, beliefs were more objective than desires, and facts were more objective than beliefs. Now, we are on the brink of admitting that contexts are more objective than facts. How comes? Facts allow for several possible interpretations. A certain fact may have a certain role in this context. But if the context is just slightly altered, it may happen that the same fact produces a completely different effect, that it becomes a reason for an opposite action, or maybe even that it does not become a reason for action at all. So, a fact just by itself cannot really be a candidate for reason for action. But what is then a candidate for reason? It must be something more objective than fact, and it seems that it can be nothing else than the context in which the fact is forthcoming. The context thereby has the normative authority for being a candidate for reason, whereas the fact itself does not have this ultimate normative authority. It is true that the fact has a certain role. But this is the role that belongs to the necessary and not to the sufficient conditions. In other words, fact has just the role similar to the ones belonging to other necessary conditions, such as desire or belief. Both desires and beliefs are normative and in this respect they are close in their role to that of facts. But they are not sufficient to be reasons. What tips the score for somebody in order that she begins to act is the context. A certain hierarchy starts to emerge here that may be delineated already by the discussion proposed by Dancy. There are non-normative necessary conditions for action, such as breathing and blood circulation. I

41 could not have done this action if I would not breathe or if my blood would not circulate. But as already remarked, these are not sufficient conditions for action. They are not even normative conditions. There might be a hierarchy between different non-normative necessary conditions for action, but we will not go into this matter now. There are also normative necessary conditions. Now if we look at the range of necessary normative conditions following the step from the less to the more objective, then the ordering seems to fit Dancy’s itinerary towards the objective from rejecting Humeanism to embracing pure cognitivism and later practical reality: from desires to beliefs and then to facts. We propose that the next move towards objectivity, according to the same strategy and guidelines or presuppositions embraced by Dancy will bring us to contexts as reasons. As beliefs dominate desires in their role for candidates for reasons, so facts dominate beliefs. But we add now that contexts dominate facts. So the impression of Dancy’s that facts are important in the hierarchy of features leading to reasons seems to be well taken. For facts are just below the top in the hierarchy of all these features that contribute to reasons for action. As already mentioned, facts do not seem to be normative at all. There is a side to facts that is obvious: they are the metaphysical stuff, and metaphysical stuff cannot be normative by itself. Seen from this point of view, facts are more close to the non-normative objective conditions, such as blood circulation. So, what are conditions for facts to become normative? The answer seems to be that they must be taken in some way, that there has to be a certain illumination26 of facts. This means that something else is impinging on these facts in order for them to be able of being normative. And what is impinging on them in this manner is nothing else but contexts that give the facts normative authority to contribute to reasons, in the same manner that they give normative authority to other necessary conditions. Just consider that it would not be possible for someone to act if he would not be able to breathe. And in a similar manner, it would be hard for someone to act if there would not be some fact contributing to triggering of his action. But facts still have to be illuminated in a certain way in order for themselves to contribute to reasons. From this discussion it seems clear now that there is the role of contextually appropriate parameters determining that facts would have the 26

The illumination of facts proposed here is not reducible to the psychologistic species. It is the objective contextual illumination, in which psychologistic conditions also appear, as contributing factors.

42 ability to be conditions for reasons for action and how they would have this ability. Facts can only be effective as reasons in some appropriate context. There actually seems to exist an a priori consideration that facts cannot be reasons all by themselves. What are facts as such, all by themselves? These are facts without context. We may call them FACTS, because they are so independent and so metaphysically heavyweight that they can even dispose of the context. These FACTS are opulent entities. But without being inserted into a context, facts cannot be normative at all. And if something is not normative, it certainly will not be a sufficient condition for reason; it will stay just a necessary condition, in the best case. Facts can be reasons only if they are taken according to their austere, low weight normative appearance. This then means that facts are small facts, and that they will appear in some context. The normativity that comes through the context, transforming FACTS into facts, makes them apt to appear as reasons. Contextually variable parameters are trimmed to a lower grade so that they allow for facts to contribute to reasons. But the normative authority is with contexts. Objection Considered and Some Further Matters There is a possible objection to the above claim that facts are dominated by context as reasons for action. Contexts as reasons were presented as different from facts. But aren’t contexts actually facts themselves? The answer to this is that contexts may be taken as facts. But in this case contexts will not have the normative authority for being reasons, for the simple ground that contexts as facts will be just necessary conditions. Contexts however may be taken in another way: as the real normative pushing force in the direction of reasons. This succeeds if those contexts are themselves presented as normative, according to the variable parameters governing them, and giving them their motivating strength. If contexts are facts, then they are considered atomistically, as one additional element used in the building of reason.27 If contexts are taken dynamically, then it becomes impossible

27

Dancy’s overall projects of providing reasons center at atomistic features (beliefs, facts) and not on the context. But what are those atomistic features? They are the epistemically protruding reasons appropriate for reason giving but not necessarily identical to the metaphysical background constituency of reasons. So these atomistic projects are much closer to the epistemic project as it would be desirable by their author. They

43 to treat them as if they would contain separate elements; various necessary conditions rather act as contributing forces in the overall contextual setting. One objection to contextualism is that contexts cannot be anything else as necessary conditions for the production of facts. “X is drinking Y” does not describe a fact. Fact is produced by adding indexical elements to this overall form, producing “Jonathan is drinking tea now”. This is then the fact. Contextualist can answer that context may be used in the role of individuation of facts. But we are interested in the context as reason, as a sufficient condition for action. This now requires another kind of story, which is not targeted anymore by concerns of metaphysical individuation. It turns out that contextualism fights against two presuppositions: that of atomism and that of tractability. These presuppositions depict a context built out of atomistic elements according to tractable rules and procedures. Contextualist appropriates dynamical picture that counters both presuppositions.28 As already remarked, what are called facts are also called “situations” or “states of affairs” by Dancy. So someone would perhaps argue that situations are already contexts. But this cannot be, for situations, like “somebody being in need of help” may present reasons to act in some contexts, and again they may not be such reason, or at least no such motivating reasons in other contexts. It is thus shown by these examples themselves that they are not sufficient for being reasons, and that the context must do the job. Explanation is often mentioned in Dancy’s book, although it is not the central topics, in the way reasons for action are the basic concern. Explanation only comes after the action was performed. The effect of the reasons, whatever it may be, is instantaneous at the time of action, even in the cases where the deliberation leading to the act is extended and elaborated. The explanation of action, on the other hand, somehow mirrors the structure that leads to it. Usually, the reason given for an action will be just a shorthand, the closest available feature, whatever is most appropriate to the confall prey to the illusion under which atomistic reason giving is portrayed as the reason for action. 28 Since we appropriate presuppositions of dominance and objectivity, our main argument in favor of contextualism builds on objectivity. But there are other ways for demonstrating superiority of contexts as reasons in respect to other candidates. You can take the intersection involving characteristics of reasons and contexts. (Reasons are linked between them, they change valence in the context, reversal being the result of tiny variations forthcoming therein.) Then you can demonstrate how atomistic candidates for reasons (desires, beliefs, facts) do not satisfy these requirements.

44 text in which the explanation is made. You will probably not explain the same action in the same way to the judge, to your wife, to your children, or to the good old boys. You will highlight now the one and then some other feature. There will be no inconsistency in this, because different normative parameters will be in play with the variation in the explanatory context. Your explanation will be appropriate to or relevant for the context. Although shorthand explanations of action are available, we may sometimes embark on more extended explanatory versions. In this case we reach beyond the more salient conditions, those closer to the surface of what triggered the act. We may plunge below the surface and look for some loose ends, bringing their web together as we go on. This will put the facts, such as “being in need of help” into a wider holistic context of narration. Now this context will bring in more and more connections that would not be expected at the first sight, and they will continue to shed changing light at the act. Through this narrative story, facts may begin to be explained as contributory elements to the reasons that will be ultimately the concerned contexts themselves, i.e. the whole intertwined holistic situation of the narration. The bet is here that the narration will bring to the surface various contributory necessary conditions, mostly normative – desires, beliefs of the actor and beliefs of others whom the action may concern. Additionally, the narration may also point to the non-normative conditions, such as biological and other preconditions of action, including the community setting. Only in such a setting of an extended context an explanation of facts may really be successful. Dancy’s point of departure is objectivist. We have embraced this departure of his, and we have pushed it further on. In this way we came to the result that contexts, and not facts alone, not even facts understood as “situations” or “states of affairs” will be the sufficient condition for action to come about. But these contexts turn out to be holistic, as also reasons are holistic. And this is exactly what it means that context figures as the reason for action. Practical contexts are real reasons. Contexts as reasons certainly do not seem to be tractable, they do not appear to be lead by the procedures one could follow by the help of exceptionless rules, and this is stressed by the fact that the explanation of contexts is best served by narrative structure. But this is nothing unexpected in as far as narrative structure is normative. And normativity draws on changeable contextual parameters, in opposition to the tractable general procedures.

45 The unexpected thing from the point of view of tractable departure may be that the relevant desires and beliefs are included into the context, for one would fear in the light of the mentioned departure that their appearance may result in the reflexive circularity. But nothing similar needs really to be feared. For desires and beliefs are certainly parts of context. And besides to this, they are what we have called necessary normative conditions for reasons to act. In the same way as you cannot act if you happen to be an immaterial spirit, and thus you need your blood circulation and your breathing, you also need desires and beliefs. But these are just necessary conditions for you to act. What really gives you the reason to act is the context. But, is it really true that it is not possible for somebody to act without that she would be breathing and without that she would possess blood circulation? Consider the brain in a vat, the species of brain in a vat that is given the benefit of free agency by its creator. Here is the usual story: You became a victim of a road accident. And unbeknownst to you, you were saved by your super-neuro-surgeon friend. Just your brain was left intact in the accident, so your friend decided to save it. She connected all your afferent and efferent nerve endings to a powerful computer, producing to you a constant illusion that you are reading this book, that you will go to the gym, or that you will join the dinner. You will have to make some decisions about this last couple of considerations. Because the technology has advanced since the brains in a vat scenarios started to be discussed, your friend profited from the possibility of interactive computers, which means that she provided to you the situation in which you are able to decide. You may either decide to go to the gym, perhaps, or to join the dinner. If this is the case, then you are free to act, even if your usual non-normative conditions, such as breathing or blood circulation are not satisfied. But even in the case of this free acting brain in a vat scenario, normative conditions, such as beliefs and desires will still be there. And in the narrow sense, the context encompassing all this will still be there. Narrative explanation of your action will still be possible. The important thing in this setting includes the phenomenology of action. As a brain in a vat, you will retain all your what-it-is-like phenomenal feelings that go along with the action, and that are constituent of action. One important part of the phenomenology will be your qualitative feeling of being situated in the normatively changing and rich context. This phenomenology of the contextual situatedness will also be the predominant reason for your action.

46

III. PARTICULARISM AND PRODUCTIVITY ARGUMENT This chapter deals with an important objection to moral particularism that can in its generalized form function also against the wider particularistic or contextual approach in philosophy. The proposed answer can also function on both of these levels. Moral generalist presents the particularist as someone rejecting patterns, thereby embracing arbitrary classificatory decisions. The productivity argument29 is proposed then, according to which potential production of an infinite number of novel cases on the basis of a finite number of encountered cases is only possible with the assistance of a codifiable pattern assuring projectability. It is argued that the generalist presentation of the particularist undertaking is unjustifiably limited to codifiable tractable procedures leading to the formation of evaluative judgment. Particularist has no problem with the relevance if each occasion of a judgment formation is supported by a non-tractable rich pattern requiring intuitive judgment. A list of such holistic particular judgments cannot be unified by an underlying tractable pattern, but each of the items on the list still presents an individual rich holistic pattern belonging to the same cognitive system. Generalists believe that there exists an indispensable link between normativity and generality. General patterns enable projectability and therewith the extension to novel cases. Productivity argument claims that only codifiable kinds of patterns assure extension to a virtual infinity of novel cases on the basis of a restricted number of consulted cases. We judge in some instances that these singular acts are morally right. General pattern enables projectability of the same kind of judgment. Productivity argument is directed against particularism, which does not recognize general patterns. The argument starts with the statement of arbitrary and nonrelevant nature of particularism’s descriptive basis. It opts for codifiable patterns that enable finite creatures’ projectability to reach a potential infinity of novel cases. Contrary to this generalist view it may be argued that particularism is well compatible with the existence of general patterns, but that it cannot 29

The most articulated version of this argument is proposed in a paper by Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Michael Smith “Ethical Particularism and Patterns” (2000).

48 recognize the general patterns’ normative authority. There is no reason for general patterns to be indispensable in the formation of evaluative judgments. Reasons it is not so involve nature of the cognitive system that follows principles of dynamical cognition. A standard explanation why this is so comes from the failure of confirmation theory. Here to the contrary the richness and noncodifiability of the system functioning holistically in a quasi-synchronic manner is used as a direct support for particularism. The study of judgments belongs to the area of cognition. List of appropriate cognitive transitions is not fully systematizable. Potential cognitive transitions that follow the nature of morphological content outstrip general principles. Patterns Here is a brief survey of patterns in ethical monism, pluralism and particularism. Some usual examples of patterns are given with an eye on the question whether they involve generality. Patterns are important for an account of relations between ethical generalism and ethical particularism. Ethical generalists such as monistic utilitarians believe that An action X is right if X maximizes expected happiness/utility/etc. and this provides to them the pattern with the help of which to fall the judgment whether an act is right. Utilitarians also believe that this pattern provides a surveyable or codifiable tractable manner for determining the rightness of an act, although the application of the principle in concrete cases may involve several considerations. Ethical pluralists are a species of generalists. They believe that there exist several patterns belonging to the prima facie duties related principles. One of these is the duty of improving oneself and another is the duty of gratitude. Actual duties differ from the prima facie duties. They have to be observed in concrete situations where several prima facie duties come together and where it is impossible to fully respect them all. In this concrete situation I might decide to respect the duty of improving myself even if this happens at the cost of not being simultaneously able to fulfill the duty of gratitude. This kind of frequently and even regularly encountered situation presents a case where two general patterns come into one hopper and where they compete against each other. There may be even more than two

49 patterns coming together and molding themselves in concrete cases. The overall pattern applied to the situation and underlying the decision about which act is right will then not be so clear cut as this was the case for the monist. Because of this blurring of the pattern, more weight is put on the context bound intuition in forming of the judgment. The contextual pressure in concrete situations blurs the shape of each tractable pattern as several of them come together. Nevertheless pluralist does not abandon the clearness and therewith the authority of each of the patterns based on the prima facie duties. Pattern belonging to the duty of the gratitude, in his view, will stay perfectly sharply cut as prima facie duty, despite that it may be in some cases overridden. Pluralist will not wish to deny that pattern belonging to the duty of gratitude is worth to be respected as the prima facie duty, despite that it was overridden in the situation of the actual duty.30 Ethical particularists, so it seems, argue against the existence of any tractable patterns (like those seen above) that would apply in concrete situations, such as these that are encountered by us on the daily basis. So they embrace the pluralists’ contextual leaning towards the intuition-based judgment in concrete situations, whose ground are actual duties’ blurred patterns. Contextual pressure makes it hard to respect the tractability of the pattern. Particularists certainly disagree with general projectable patterns that are characteristic for the monists. Their main position is that, even if there are patterns, they do not need to have any normative authority. We are constantly confronted with specific particular situations in which we have to fall intuitive evaluative judgments. The disagreement is thus between generalists and particularists, and it involves the importance that each of them attributes to patterns. While generalists argue that an appropriate judgment is not possible without the presence of tractable or codifiable patterns, particularists rather embrace a list of situations where judgments are made without any underlying grid or shape. Before specifying the role of patterns in ethical reasoning and especially in particularism, it is appropriate to take a look at some cases of patterns outside that area. As the main claim of the generalist is that patterns are deeply intertwined with generality, we will try to establish whether patterns as encountered outside the realm of moral reasoning display this inkling towards generality. The result will be that at least some of patterns are not substantially bound to generality. The first example of a pattern that comes to the mind is the famous duck/rabbit illusion example. In the basis of the phenomenon is a certain 30

For a pluralistic account of prima facie duties see Ross 1930, 16-47.

50 shape, a line of specific form drawn on a piece of paper. As you encounter the shape you immediately grasp it as the pattern representing a duck. You do not need the time for reflection; you rather intuit the pattern momentarily. You are psychologically glued to the pattern, as at the moment you cannot help to grasp the shape otherwise as the duck pattern. At the time you are attuned to perceiving the shape as a pattern representing a duck, you are pattern-blind as to the possibility of perceiving pattern as a rabbit. Once your starting position is being attuned to the duck pattern, some effort and some pattern-switch is necessary in order for you to perceive the shape as the pattern representing a rabbit. The whole phenomenon centers on the pattern switch. And each of the states in the switch is related to the very forceful intuiting of one pattern at the exclusion of the other. Both patterns may be recognized though – although not simultaneously – on the basis of the same shape. Is there some generality in this pattern recognition? There is just powerful intuiting of a particular way for me to see the shape. Just to repeat it: there is pattern switch between two ways of seeing the shape, accompanied with deep intuitive grasp of one of the patterns, to the exclusion of the other. But it does not seem that there is any generality involved into the example of duck/rabbit, or any projectability. There is no projection involved from duck to rabbit, and there is nothing general involved into the transition between them. One may claim that once you grasp the pattern of a rabbit, this may help you to project the pattern to other similar cases. But this is not the point of the example. In general, the pattern is not there in order to enable you the projection to further cases. Just the singular intuition based experience is what matters. Some people working in aesthetics claim that grasping a work of art consists in grasping of the pattern involved in this work. Or maybe it consists in grasping of one among the patterns involved into work of art, for there may be many of these constituting it. This would then be a generalized case of pattern switching. It may happen that you hear a symphony for the first time and that you recognize a pattern in it. Then you have some aesthetic pleasure. But as you come back listening to the same symphony again, such as Brahms symphony number 2, you may recognize several patterns on several different occasions of listening to it. Each of these will bring you a different kind of aesthetic pleasure. Perhaps after a while this will allow you to intuit a further pattern at a higher level, which will become present to you in an intuitive flash. Patterns may be comparatively easily recognized in some works of arts such as pictures. But take an opera such as Mozart’s Don Juan that involves ballet, the orchestra, several sing-

51 ers and changing scenery. You may be able to intuit a pattern involved into this performance of opera at some level if you will be careful to follow several of various pattern threads. These patterns will come together from various directions and they will unite in an overall form supporting your aesthetic pleasure and the judgment that you form on its basis. Opera certainly shows an example of a complex pattern, whose intuiting, at the time you grasp it, will probably happen in a flash, in a moment full of experience. Now ask yourself if the pattern involved into the opera is there in order to allow you the projection of similar experiences at other occasions? This does not seem to be the case. Pattern is involved in your aesthetic enjoyment and this is why it is so tightly connected to the intuition. This brief survey of two examples involving patterns that may first come to the mind shows us first that several patterns may be intertwined and multiply involved into a single phenomenon, giving the occasion for appearance of some superimposed pattern. And it also shows that there is no projective role involved into the grasping of the pattern. The case of the opera has shown us that on the basis of the pattern, which you discover in it, you just form judgment about the goodness of this performance. There exists a very complex descriptive basis for formation of this judgment. But there is no generalization involved. The judgment is about this specific performance. It may be claimed that the forming of this judgment allows you to project similar judgments in the possible subsequent cases. But what are similar judgments? Certainly some skill of judgment develops along your opera involving experiences, but still it may be seen as concrete application of judgment to each separate particular case. So there is no clear role for projectability here, and thus no clear role assigned to the general. The result is that these patterns do not involve any tractability and that they rather depend on intuitions. One shape can be apprehended and intuited in several different ways. Now look at the following case. A person opens the door for you, greets you, and offers you a drink. At some moment the pattern you intuit is that the person behaves friendly in respect to you. Adding some relevant information, at some further moment you intuit that this behavior is designed to profit from you in some unexpected area. The first pattern has judgment of goodness attached to it; the second has judgment about incorrect behavior related to it. Patterns change and sometimes they may even appear on the basis of the same kind of descriptive behavior. And it is hard to see the role for generalization in this case as well.

52 Systematizing of Lists: by General Principles? A list of cases that may be supported by patterns is presented. Then a list of evaluative cases follows, with the question being asked whether it needs to be systematized by exceptionless principles. It may be claimed that examples of patterns above do not involve projectability, and that therefore they are not the kinds of examples the discussion of particularism needs to be involved with. Here is a kind of example pointing into this direction that does not belong to the realm of morals, but should show us the usefulness of patterns in enabling general conclusions and projectability, the ability to extend our judgment to novel cases. Presume you do not know the meaning of expression “being taller”. In order to get the meaning of the expression through to you, I offer you the following diet of examples:31 If X has 170 cm and Y has 180 cm, then Y is taller than X. If X has 190 cm and Y has 200 cm, then Y is taller than X. … If X has 150 cm and Y has 140 cm, then Y is not taller than X. … We can claim that the diet of examples is offered here in order for you to grasp the pattern, and once you grasp the pattern – once you understand the meaning of expression – this enables you to extend it to novel cases. There is thus a possible projection involved into the grasping of the pattern. But what has happened? While being confronted with the first two examples, you may not have grasped the pattern yet. Then, because of some similarity or because of some particular feature, you intuit the pattern in a recognizing flash. You can now apply the concept to novel cases. This is then a case of projectability. But now ask yourself: Do you apply the concept to novel cases because you have grasped the concept? In a sense yes: The understanding of the concept allows you to use it again. But each particular case will have to be judged by you in respect to whether the predicate can be applied. The generalist suggests that this just means subsuming of the case under a pat31

Compare Jackson, Pettit and Smith 2000.

53 tern. But each particular case on the list above may be seen just as a particular item. I made the effort to get you acquainted with the meaning of “being taller than”, and this is a kind of teaching. Not all teaching is done by the usage of generalizations though. Teaching may involve the acquisition of skills. Skills also enable us to use our knowledge in subsequent situations. But this is not because of the generalizations involved in apprehending skills. Take again the teaching of children involving visiting museums and galleries. There do not need to be generalizations involved in the activity. Teacher would just point to a feature on the picture, as a way of presenting an example about what a good work of art is. It does not seem that any real generalization is involved into the procedure. If several pictures are consulted and not just one, this list still does not give place to any tractable projectable generalization or to a tractable pattern unifying them. But something is learned nevertheless. This may incite us to ask the following: Even if we assume that generalizations are built into patterns – is the extension to the future cases secured? If the extension is of a tractable codifiable kind then it may require some parameters that are hard to be confidently applied to the situations. Because such tractable/codifiable extension would have unwanted consequences in several cases, the judgment involving patterns cannot be fallen mechanically; rather the formation of judgment requires centering of attention at the specificity of particular cases. Can we talk of patterns that are not projectable? Take the list of examples illustrating the case of “being higher as”. There is indeed a list of examples here. At some point one intuits that there is a pattern. But it would be perhaps premature to simply believe that this is a tractable pattern, or that generality has the authority here. Generality does not have exceptionless authority, which is for certain – inductive reasoning is not exceptionless and it always allows for counterexamples. But also, our judgments are fallen on the individual basis. The main question is perhaps whether the list is confidently systematized by exceptionless principles. At least this is not the only possibility there is. One may observe the list in several ways. From one perspective, one may systematize the list in a general exceptionless way involving each particular case, but there are also possible systematizings that allow for exceptions or even for singular instances to preserve and affirm their authority.

54 The above example of “being higher as” is a descriptive one. Moral theorizing on the other hand is concerned with evaluative terms. The problem may be then put in terms of transition from “is” to “ought”, the transition between the descriptive and the evaluative realms: D
E. Particularists do not deny that evaluative supervenes on the descriptive, at least in the weak sense. In order to put the story in terms of properties: If there is an evaluative property E, it may be assumed that there is a descriptive subvenient basis D upon which the property E supervenes. Taking this line of thought brings us to a number of different cases where E supervenes on D. These cases are then naturally put in the form of a list: D1
E1 D2
E2 and so on … Dn
En Particularist thus agrees with the supervenience of E upon D for each particular case. What she does not agree with is the idea of the existence of unifying underlying general pattern that would unite all these cases. At least there is no such general pattern that would look like the usual and standard moral principles of moral monism or pluralism. In any case, given that we have a list, it may be systematized by several standards of tightness. The tightest form of systematizing would involve exceptionless principles. Some more relaxed form would involve generalizations that allow for exceptions. And the most relaxed form of the list would not introduce any underlying pattern at all; it would just leave particular cases with their complete individual authority. So, it is at least possible that list is not systematized by general principles. But the thought should be surveyed now whether the list should be systematized by general principles at all. One main problem about this comes in terms of relevance. Is relevance better served if one proceeds by exceptionless systematizing, by systematizing allowing for exceptions or by individual cases using no general pattern? The first thought is that relevance would be better served and that it would be best determined by exceptionless general systematization. But a powerful consideration against this is the frame problem. The problem of

55 where to put the frame around an area to achieve its relevant functioning surfaces exactly because exceptionless general tractable rules are employed in order to systematize the area. Tractability thus does not solve relevance, but gives us an encounter with it in the form of a problem. It also seems that relevance is only achieved in a wimpy way if there are general rules with exceptions. The situations in which we make evaluations involve an irreducible complexity most of the time. But we do not fail to be relevant in those situations on the basis of particularly based decisions. On the other hand, if one follows tractable rules in one’s decisions for actions, one’s judgment often airs a mechanistic handling. This all shows that lists of evaluative terms or properties should better not be systematized by exceptionless rules. General patterns unifying single cases may be far sooner harming than bringing any benefit to the nature of evaluative terms. The reason seems to be simple. Evaluative terms are related to judgments, and judgments are rather tied to intuition than to the exceptionless rules. This is at least one reason why particularism would be better of than the practice of putting general projectable patterns under the list in order to systematize it. There are several ways of withholding the normative authority of the general. Just pointing to a feature in teaching does not involve the usage of any generality. Epistemic normativity may be important because of retroactively after the fact cashing in the generalities. But this kind of generality is epistemic, it just explains, and so it is without normative authority. From this point of view the epistemic normativity and its link to lists and to the semantic normativity may be surveyed. Arbitrariness and the Weirdly Blinking Machine In respect to the list of evaluative items the particularist claim seems to be simply that there is no pattern involved. For the example of the descriptive to the evaluative conditionals one could build a complex conditional D1 v D2 v …
E From the disjunction of all the descriptive items in the list, one is entitled to derive the evaluative judgment or property, as for the matter. This may seem to be a generalization. But notice that it will be a kind of generalization that should not respect any pattern, for we are dealing

56 with the particularist. There will be no “and so on” at the end of the story. And if no pattern is respected, the thought is here that there will be arbitrariness in the choice of items. Isn’t this exactly what characterizes the lack of pattern: the arbitrariness of choice? The trick is though that despite of arbitrary procedure, one is still able to classify things, say in the rubrics of acts that are right and in the rubric of acts that aren’t right. In order to show how this is possible, generalist introduces a device that according to his taste and understanding produces the effect of dual classification on an arbitrary basis. The machine is thus designed to classify the shapes that it encounters into the ones upon the presence of which it will blink and into the ones upon the presence of which it will not blink. The principle according to which this is effectuated is as follows: Blink if there is appearance of the shape on the even occasion, and do not blink if there is appearance of the shape on the odd turn. You get the following two conditionals that take care of the distribution: If presented object has shape … or … or …, then the light will blink. If presented object has shape … or … or …, then the light will not blink. Compare this to the following two conditionals: D1 v D3 v …
E+ D2 v D4 v …
EHere the disjunctive antecedents lead to the positive evaluative term (right) in the first case and to the negative evaluative term (not right or wrong) in the second case. The fact is that in both cases, the classification of items on the list into two oppositely valued categories was obtained on the basis of an arbitrary – without any pattern – selection of items. So, there is indeed categorization of shapes that trigger the blinking of light and of those that don’t into two large sets. And the same goes for the sets of right acts and of the acts that are not right according to the understanding of the particularist and according to his way to classify the matters. The main idea is that the members of a category are obtained, but they are obtained on a completely arbitrary basis. Just take a look at the objects whose shapes are united in the category according to which the machine’s light will blink. At the end of the day, is

57 there any other criterion around as the one that says how these are the shapes such that the light does blink in their presence? Exactly this last one is the criterion that stays, and nothing else. From this point of view, the particularist will be in the same position. Because there is no pattern involved in his categorization choice, the only criterion for the right acts to find themselves in their own category is just that they are right acts. But this seems to be arbitrary and actually it seems to involve circularity of the right acts’ understanding. Productivity Argument The situation is a good departure now for the productivity argument as proposed by the generalist in an effort to criticize the particularist for his lack of patterns. Here is a form of the productivity argument. Pr1 Classifying the right acts on an arbitrary basis just as the right acts is circular. Pr2 Something more is needed for classification: a projectability enabling codifiable pattern (from non-evaluative to evaluative). Pr3 Only codifiable pattern allows for the productivity, i.e. the grasping of a potential infinity of elements on the finite basis of presented samples. ∴C Thus, a pattern is necessary for productivity to be obtained. Pr1 The first premise was already introduced by explanation of the weirdly blinking machine. The main claim of the premise is about the classification’s arbitrary basis. And the conclusion of the premise is that the arbitrariness leads to circularity. The only uncomfortable thing is that the premise is itself a kind of circular in respect to the argument in its entirety, for it seems to presuppose the embracing of pattern in opposition to arbitrariness. Because of this, this first premise may not necessarily be seen as figuring as a constitutive block of the argument. In a way it just prepares us for what follows. A questionable point in this first premise is the presupposition that the particularist classification is arbitrary. The dilemma seems to be offered in the following way: either some tractable codifiable principle, or arbitrariness and anarchy.

58 Pr2 The second premise introduces the need for something more as some arbitrary criterion if classification is to be effectively obtained. One could agree that something more is needed if particularist classification is completely arbitrary, just according to the tastes of something like the weirdly blinking machine. But this may not be the case at all. Consider that the particularist endorses richness and holism of the situation and of the cognitive constituency that enables him falling normative judgment concerning the situation. Even the monist may go for some reversals as he deals with situations. But monist and generalist will care about tractability and codifiability of the criteria applied in situations. And it is possible that arbitrariness is introduced by the criteria proper to the taste of the generalist in this respect. Take a closer look at the weirdly blinking machine. It may begin to look as a parody of the particularist position. Arbitrariness is there indeed if the rules for choice involving members of classificatory set are tractable and arbitrary. In this respect the weird blinking machine is in fact designed according to the taste of the generalist insisting on codifiability. The presuppositions of the particularist may be differently shaped. And indeed, if particularist is holistic to the point of essentially not embracing codifiability and tractability, then the relevance may come to her even without a tractable pattern, but on the basis of the rich structure of each particular judgment forming. The relevant judgment will be fallen on the basis of each single pattern involving the whole of the structure at a time. This just involves taking a look at the cognitive system contributing to the judgment. The structure is proper to each single instance of evaluative judgment formed upon the basis of the rich non-codifiable system as a whole in its entirety, at a time. Codifiability even cannot be achieved because of the richness of the structure at a time. And in this way, we obtain a list of situations, where no single situation comes arbitrarily. Each of the situations is still obtained relevantly, although they are not connected between themselves. Is there a pattern in the system as a whole at a time? Even if there is, these patterns molding to the whole are not tractable in the entirety of the situation. We are not talking just about a single codifiable case of reversal here. If all of this is right – as I suppose it is – then the mistake of the generalist in as far as this point is concerned may be put in very simple terms. Generalist presupposes that there are just single patterns involved in the judgment formation, and that these single patterns unify them. But this is unrealistic for any real shape of a cognitive system. Each

59 item on the list would find its place somewhere on a single pattern through time, in an atomistic manner. As against this, the picture of relevance proper to particularist offers radically different holistic patterns, appearing as entirely different to each other on each occasion in time. Generalist P I1 , I 2 … I n

Particularist IP1, IP2 … IPn

Generalist has one single pattern P for a kind of judgment to which the different instances of judgments I1, I2 … In get attached through time, just in a way as so many darts gather on a single board to which they get thrown. This picture seems to be static in time and atomistic in the manner instances get stuck onto it. Particularist on the other hand proceeds with repeated usage of the whole system. The presupposition is here that the system is the same, but it changes through time in a dynamical manner so that each pattern comes together with the instance and so that it is particular in this sense. Each of IP1, IP2 … IPn do indeed happen in a single cognitive system. But the rich uncodifiable system changes to the extent that each instance of a pattern should be taken as a single organic unity. Generalist thus just does not see that arbitrariness is not the right word for characterization of particularism. The rightness and wrongness classification of several judgments is not the cause, it is maybe a retroactive explanation of what has to be presented in holistic manner. In the case of the holist we have the same old and rich cognitive system coming back, but always in a new manner. This is the ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen that the generalist fails to see because of his codifiable simplified assumptions. Particularist does not need more. He already has plenty of more, of richness, of the same – in abundance. Is the projectability needed here? If you look at the particularists’ procedure as described right now, it would not bring any more of relevance to make the pattern projectable. Indeed, what would a projectable pattern of an intractably rich system look like? It is hard to imagine. But we as cognizers are such systems. Perhaps we sometimes do need patterns then, but with no normative authority, just for retroactive explanatory reasons.

60 Pr 3 The third premise is a further twist, which defends and presupposes codifiable pattern as the only entrance to productivity. We have seen implausibility of codifiable pattern in as far as our cognition is concerned in the former premise. But what is productivity? And, is productivity possible without a codifiable pattern? The most known example of productivity is offered by the hypothesis of transformational grammar. The hypothesis presupposes a structure of grammatical competence, an inborn structure that enables us to take a limited finite linguistic input and to transform it in a virtual infinity of ways. So we have “grasping of potential infinity of elements on the finite basis of presented samples”.32 Notice now that the example discussed, the list of D
E’s, presents a far too simple structure as compared with the dealings and with the structure of our cognitive system. Tractable structure will just find no way to circumvent the richness of the cognitive system. But if this is like that, then again there are not codifiable patterns that insure generalizations. There is richness of the whole system on different occasions that involves the whole rich structure at a time. This is why intuitions about linguistic correctness (grammaticality, ungrammaticality) are the main tools of linguistic research. No single pattern is needed. Notice the immense complexity of the structure enabling knowledge of language and linguists’ partial empirical accounts of it. Presupposing that there is this innate structure, the explanation of the phenomenon known as productivity comes after the fact. But phenomenon and explanation itself deal with nontractable matters. Even more, the particularist noncodifiable way of achieving productivity in the area of the evaluative seems to be appropriate. Again, if the hypothesis of innate structure is right, then the particularist approach to it seems the most appropriate. The fact is that the innate structure promoted by the transformational hypothesis is so rich that the same system deals with situations as particular rich wholes appearing on several occasions in time. So, if there is a pattern necessary for productivity to obtain, it will be a non-codifiable pattern of the whole of the rich system structure that gives itself to us in an always-new way. Particular singularity is in power for output as well. So, productivity does not involve one simplified pattern through time, on which atomistic cases may be pinned. Productivity is rather the effect of 32

See also chapter VI. where we develop a particularistic view on compositionality.

61 the ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, i.e. of the same rich structure making its holistic appearance in rich particular instances. Always the same, and always different in its instances. Dynamical Cognition33 Based Judgments Assure Relevance upon an Intractable Basis Relevance is not a problem for particularist, because it is the product of a rich and intractable structure. It is a problem for the generalist though whose parody of particularism in the form of a weird codifiable blinking machine displays the generalists’ own codifiable inklings. Some Further Remarks and Objections Inductive generalization is presented by the generalist as the generalization that results in the (deductive) exceptionless principle. But this is not compatible with the nature of inductive reasoning. Is the machine a parody of particularism? Yes. Why? Because it is a machine construed with respect to the tractable codifiable procedures. But this is not how our cognition works. The blinking machine is weird because it is tractable. It also does not take account of the relevance. But relevance is not possible on the tractable basis. The relevance is otherwise easily achieved by nontractable dynamical cognition principles. The insight is that there is the structure based on the richness of cognition and not upon codifiable transitions. And there seems to be a problem lurking here for the particularist: Recognizing the structure, does not he therewith embrace patterns, perhaps something like Rossian ceteris paribus generalizations34, and therewith generalism? The first answer is that some generalizations, even if they are there, are just explanatory and after the fact epistemic ones, without normative authority (they are not metaphysically supported). Another and more basic reply is that the recognition of the structure cannot be harmful to particularist, provided that it is not a codifiable sim33

See chapter VII for an elaboration of dynamical cognition and its relation to particularism. 34 One can interpret Rossian style prima facie duties as ceteris paribus generalizations only in a very limited way.

62 plistic wimpy kind of structured pattern. Rich cognition and rich contextual surrounding involve the whole structure at a time (not tractable but something such as experienced time, say). In this way, because of its richness and intractability, this structure pushes into direction of presenting itself according to the particularist ways.

IV. THE HEART OF KNOWLEDGE35 Pascal distinguished between reasons of geometry and between reasons of heart or reasons of finesse. The affairs of knowledge were for too long treated and evaluated by tractable procedures or algorithms only, proper to reasons of geometry. It is about time to consider human knowledge as being closer to reasons of heart36 and to evaluate it accordingly. In Pascal terms thus, the proper evaluation of knowledge comes from the side of reasons of heart or reasons of finesse. If so, then reasons of geometry cannot really provide an appropriate account of knowledge. But reasons of geometry – definitory endeavors and tractable procedures – underlie the main available accounts of knowledge. Reasons of geometry are supported by generalist repeatable patterns, whereas reasons of heart are supported by the particularist unique beautiful patterns. Generalist patterns turn out to be constitutionally devoid of relevance, for they only cling to the repeatable. Salience and uniqueness of particularist patterns, on the other hand, brings the relevance.37 Justification giving follows those reasons that are best rendered by narration and not by tractable explanatory procedures, which are rather customary for the area of philosophy of science. Morphological content is a natural support for such an explanatory endeavor. Justification having, as well, gets naturally supported by non-classical multidimensional landscape proper to the morphological content. Being justified comes from having justification and having it for a good reason. Morphological content is one candidate for whatever sustains the non-classical and non-definitory account of knowledge. Relevance is at the heart of particularist account of knowledge. Particularism in epistemology is also closely linked with contextualism. 35

Parts of the second part of this chapter are taken from Potrč and Strahovnik 2004. Aristotle thought about the heart as about the seat of the soul, whereas brain, in his view, was a device designed for cooling blood. Churchland, to the contrary, thinks that brain is the seat of the soul, and probably for him heart is a pump with the job of pumping blood. We will rather embrace heart as a metaphor, as an indicator of the salient structure and of the relevance of this structure. If I say that I embrace a certain conclusion with all my heart, then this means that the conclusion is relevant for me indeed. 37 See chapter I. for the difference between general patterns and particular patterns. 36

64 The general drive in epistemology is to deliver necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge with the use of exceptionless general epistemic principles. David Lewis in his paper „Elusive Knowledge” (1996) provides a nice contextual epistemology. We also think that contextualism is the right way to go and that the epistemic context plays an important role in our endeavors to gain knowledge. But, we disagree with Lewis on two points of his account, namely that we can talk of knowledge without justification and that a set of exceptionless rules determines relevant alternatives. We retain the overall notion of knowledge as justified true belief and try to work out a contextualist account of knowledge within this notion, at the same time pointing to an alternative, particularistic view on relevance and relevant alternatives. We briefly sketch our proposal building upon the distinction between the local and global justification and we put forward some suggestions how this approach tackles skeptical scenarios, the lottery problem and Gettier cases. Reasons and Knowledge There is a useful distinction in philosophy between two kinds of reasons: reasons of geometry and reasons of heart. We believe that the right way to go is in acknowledging dominance of reasons of heart over and above the reasons of geometry. The main idea is that epistemology, in the ways that it proceeds, has lost its heart, that the relevance has drifted out of its sight. But relevance, or heart, is needed for there to be knowledge. This does not mean that tractable geometrical and definitory proceedings operative in establishing conditions for justification and for knowledge in epistemology up to date were all straightforwardly wrong. Quite to the contrary, richness and diversity of the debate is astonishing. The very first presupposition though – that conditions for knowledge may be set up in tractable ways – may be questioned. The definitory and tractable trials of setting up conditions for knowledge are not wrong per se; they may be just misguided about allowing for knowledge without the substantial involvement of the heart. As they stand, the laying out of conditions for knowledge may be impeccable, but their endeavor may still be questionable without the heart being involved into the enterprise. There is a view that various kinds of reasons cannot be observed as entirely different.38 This is a view that we endorse: you really cannot treat 38

Dancy 2000, 2004.

65 in substantially different ways moral and practical reasons, say, as both these kinds of reasons are holistically supported.39 Nevertheless we think that it is dialectically fruitful to adopt the view that the ways of dealing with things according to the algorithmic rules are different from the ways of treating things on the basis of intuition and insight. Notice that this does not imply how the things that are held to be functioning according to the rules do indeed also behave in the thus described manner. Our cognition just does not behave as relying on algorithms and upon tractable computational rules. The difficulties for a rule-based account appear in a conundrum such as is the frame problem. The problem about putting a frame around a to-be-delimited area arises as the follow-up of somebody adopting algorithm based computation functioning as the proposed ground upon which cognition works. The frame problem clearly shows that there are difficulties for an algorithm-based approach in the area of cognition. Specifically, these problems are related to the fact that relevance just cannot be achieved on the basis of the algorithmic computation based models of mind. This shows that some other kind of approach than the algorithmic one is appropriate in the area of models of mind. It will be nonalgorithmic, intuition or some other similar manner based approach. Saying that the nature of some area is not algorithmic does not imply that it cannot be treated in an algorithmic way. This is actually happening in most areas of philosophy, among which we wish to sort out the attempts to determine knowledge. If such an algorithmic treatment of knowledge is possible this still leaves open the option that it is wrong, or at least this is what we argue. The dialectic trick is as follows. For a while, you allow algorithmic treatment to co-exist with the non-algorithmic treatment. You do not abolish the legitimacy of algorithmic treatment, though. But you assert that actually, the non-algorithmic treatment dominates and disciplines the algorithmic one. This may go for collectivistic sequence dominating the individualistic sequence in the area of the transvaluationist approach to vagueness.40 (The individualistic sequence in the sorites argument involves modus ponens and so it involves algorithmic reasoning. Well, there is also a repeatable predictable pattern of reasoning here.) But the result is more widely adaptable: the non-algorithmic disciplines the algorithmic. This is to say that the non-algorithmic reasons are the appropriate ones to adopt, for an account of such areas as cognition or epistemology. 39 40

See Dancy's argument for that in Dancy 2000a. See Potrč 2000.

66 But some sequences belonging to these areas may still be appropriately described by the usage of algorithms. The structural distinction between two manners of approaching some area, between what we have called algorithmic and non-algorithmic ways of description, was invoked by Pascal as the distinction between the reasons of geometry and between the reasons of heart or of finesse. Obviously, the idea is not that there is no purpose at all in the algorithmic reasoning. Pascal achieved some insights in mathematics and geometry and he proposed an interesting calculation involving your odds to embrace the status of true believer, which is now widely known as Pascal’s wager. But his idea clearly was that reasons of heart or reasons of finesse dominate reasons of geometry. The direction of calculation is that you should embrace true belief. Thus Pascal argues that - there are two kinds of reasons: reasons of geometry and reasons of heart or reasons of finesse; - the reasons of heart or reasons of finesse dominate and discipline the reasons of geometry. We agree with Pascal that this is the way to go. You do not need to reject reasons of geometry, the algorithmic reasons or reasons of calculation. But you need to discipline them with the purpose and relevance that may only be given by direction indicated along your path, by reasons of heart and finesse. This dominating and disciplining relation is treated in the muchquoted Pascal’s aphorism: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” According to our interpretation, this means that the calculating or algorithmic reason should be disciplined and finally dominated by reasons of heart. Pascal also stresses the illusory pull that clings to each of the principles if followed separately. “The difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind. – In the one, the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for want or habit it is difficult to turn one’s mind in that direction: but if one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost im-

67 possible they should escape notice. But in the intuitive mind the principles are found in common use and are before the eyes of everybody: One has only to look, and no effort is necessary; it is only a question of good eyesight, but it must be good, for the principles are so subtle and so numerous that it is almost impossible but that some escape notice.” (Pascal, Pensées) It is just wrong that knowledge extends only to what is covered by conditions that are set by the help of the analysis determining something as the candidate for knowledge. So before engaging into the discussion of these conditions – the mentioned discussions are ubiquitous in epistemological literature anyway – it is perhaps profitable to look at a certain case of knowledge. I did not know that my paper was accepted for presentation.41 Now somebody has told me and so I know. One difference between then and now – between the moment before I knew and between the moment I learned it and I knew, is that of the quality of my experience. There is the qualitative phenomenological feeling related to the fact that I have learned. It is related to the fact that I do not know all the consequences of my acceptance yet, but there is a kind of intuitive feeling that I momentarily form about the things that this involves. This intuitive and qualitative feeling is based upon my previous experiences, involving everything that I gathered in my cognitive background about similar cases, what to expect in situations like that and comparable stuff. Consider also that at the moment I learned the fact and that I have come to know it I did not engage into a detailed investigation of conditions that may be satisfied or that may fail to be satisfied. It is just the background intuitive assurance, which seems to suffice for my obtaining knowledge at the very first moment. You may ask me and I may give you some justification of why I am persuaded that I know: the person I learned the information from is sufficiently reliable; the information was given in appropriate circumstances. All my knowledge comes in an intuitive flash,

41

“My paper was accepted for presentation” may be rendered by the usage of the propositional abbreviation p. Going this way though, the dimension of judgment that is involved into the claim to knowledge tends to be obliterated, and with it also the possibility of integrating qualitative constitutive characteristics into it. Brentanian tradition conceived knowledge as judgment and a fortiori as including the qualitative dimension.

68 and now that I know I have certainty. But undoubtedly I do not do any analysis of conditions for knowledge. The first thing that we notice if we consider cases of knowledge is the qualitative experience related to them, the specific qualitative experience related to knowledge. A certain subjective certainty comes as intertwined with this qualitative epistemic experience. I simply know that my paper was accepted, not that I would just entertain belief about the matter. There is a definite difference between the qualitative experience related to someone entertaining beliefs on the one hand and between someone having knowledge on the other hand. Cases of knowledge are mostly and simply like that. You just know that this is true. This just isn’t a mere entertaining of belief. You may explain this later, but at the moment as you come to know it, it will usually impress itself upon you. The knowledge is something relevant. Just any old stuff that you read in the newspaper is not knowledge yet. Knowledge touches you, it is related to the specific itinerary that it marks; it does not leave you indifferent. While the newspaper stories may leave you indifferent. Most of them have nothing to do with what is relevant to you, anyway. Think about several occasions where you have learned something in the sense that you might then have said that you now know it. You will notice that all of these occasions were important; that they were relevant to you, and that it was by this token that a qualitative feeling of epistemic experience that you had came into place. The experience of having learned something and the experience that you now know something is first of all, relevant to you. This qualitative epistemic experience is based upon particular patterns that provide relevance and that are constitutive for a claim or a thought to figure as knowledge. It is thus essential for knowledge that it is based upon qualitative experiences, on intuition and upon a nontractable but relevance providing background. This is all in opposition to the usual accounts of knowledge that are to be found in the epistemological literature. The first thing that is effectuated there is putting in place a setting that is designed for purging the situation of relevance. This is done by establishing cases of knowledge as those cases that provide tractable analyzable conditions, bringing the assurance against the very possibility of counterexamples. These analyzable and tractable conditions may indeed assure the cases of knowledge, in the circumstances of normatively very high contextually attuned requirements. It is not our aim to deny that these analytic precautions do indeed assure

69 knowledge in those normatively demanding circumstances.42 But it seems appropriate to state that for most cases where these definite conditions of analyzing knowledge are in place, they need to be taken just for what they are – the conditions that are involved where comparatively high requirements are set for something to figure as knowledge. Requiring though that all cases of knowledge be treated just by measures set by these high standards actually means abandoning relevance for most of cases. Relevance does not come to knowledge just by the help of tractable conditions, although such conditions may become important in circumstances figuring high normative requirements. In most cases, the qualitative side of knowledge naturally disciplines those tractable conditions that may be provided by analysis. According to Pascal’s way of putting things, the accent of heart needs to be put upon definitory and tractable means by which cases of knowledge are treated in the epistemological literature. If epistemological tradition treats cases for knowledge in the ways proper to procedures of geometry or of algorithms, this does not need to mean that knowledge is indeed a matter of specification in the area of algorithmic normative procedures. Knowledge as Justified True Belief For quite a long time now epistemologists are used to employ tractable and definitory analysis procedures for determining knowledge.43 It all started with the analysis of knowledge and with the proposed definition of knowledge as justified true belief: Knowledge =def justified true belief, or Kap =def p & Bap &Jap. According to this line of introducing knowledge, it is argued that a person knows a certain proposition that p just in case where all of the following is satisfied: It is true that p. The person believes that p, i.e. she is in some 42

We do not wish to claim that the first-person perspective is the sole relevant perspective for knowledge and epistemology. The last part of this chapter extends particularism also to the third-person contextualism perspective. 43 The analysis of knowledge as justified true belief started with Plato, and it has achieved unpredictable heights in the twentieth century analytic philosophy.

70 kind of psychological relation in respect to the proposition. And finally, there exists some justification for the person to believe that p, such as the reliability involved into these processes through which the belief is attained. We see that we encounter, in such a way, a definition of knowledge that provides tractable conditions for something to be knowledge. A natural follow-up is that the counterexamples to knowledge may now offer themselves, such as the famous Gettier style examples that argue against justified true belief automatically implying knowledge. The conditions of justification need then be sealed off in all imaginable ways. Despite much of energy being invested into this, the enterprise did not accomplish its job however: delivering exceptionless conditions for knowledge. It is proposed here that this failure is just a symptom of a larger issue: that the phenomenon of knowledge was not treated appropriately, as the matter of heart and of relevance, in addition and above specification of tractable conditions, according to the definitory analysis proper to tractable reasons of geometry. The main two branches in defining knowledge on the basis of an analysis of its ingredients (certainly this is an algorithmic procedure) figure coherentism and foundationalism. Coherentism tries to analyze conditions entering into justification of a certain belief by the means of this belief’s is surroundings, and notably by setting conditions for coherence of the net of beliefs by probabilistic or by some other tractable algorithmic procedure. Whereas foundationalism centers at the analysis of to be algorithmically determined conditions for an atomistic belief to count as a case of knowledge. These tractable conditions for knowledge are tried to be given by what may be called reasons of geometry by both coherentism and foundationalism. The relevance of the epistemic enterprise, however, seems to be lost thereby, and it may be only achieved by disciplining definitory analytic reasons of geometry, by giving a direction to them. And certainly it seems that there is direction in knowledge, which separates it from the cases of mere opinion. If you really know something, this sometimes gives directedness to your activity. One may wonder whether there is any sense in the promotion of reasons of heart for epistemology, in counterdistinction to reasons of geometry. It seems though that this is exactly the direction that is slowly pushing through in the area of epistemology. In order to grasp what is in the offing we may take a short look at the historical development of epistemology in

71 last decades. What do we see? The days of the industrial strength analysis of knowledge which may also be called Gettier industry that were prevalent some decades ago seem to be over. What was the purpose of the Gettier industry, what did it produce? The task was to provide characterization of knowledge according to definitory requirements. Gettier cases tried to identify and neutralize all the definitions of knowledge where justified true belief does not imply knowledge. So Gettier industry clearly is on the side of reasons of geometry, according to the Pascalian name given to algorithmic tractable reasons. Times of Gettier craze were followed by the era of naturalistic epistemology. Somehow, naturalistic epistemology tried to find the system that would allow it to step out of the definitory circle by offering empirical conditions for justification. Quine paved the way here by affirming permeability of even the most a priori looking truths by empirical impact of truths gathered at the experiential outskirts of science. Others tried to provide conditions for varieties of externalist support for justification, such as conditions for proof tight information provided by Dretske. The naturalist approach nicely showing existing tendencies is that by Alvin Goldman. Naturalistic conditions for justification and notably for reliability are given there by the means available to cognitive science. On the other hand, the definitory endeavor of determining conditions for knowledge comes into sight in a comparatively unaffected and separated part of the book Epistemology and cognition.44 Naturalist epistemologists tried to break away from just definitory epistemological enterprise. But they still wholeheartedly accepted algorithmic definitory conditions for knowledge, without questioning them. The reaction to naturalism took an interesting turn by stressing the a priori nature of knowledge.45 The important thing in this exercise is not perhaps so much the criticism of externalist empiricist groundings of knowledge, but introduction of a priori elements and of such things as intuition figuring as legitimate founding of knowledge. The need for acknowledgment of relevance in order to get to a viable account of knowledge in epistemology surfaced in an opaque manner. Shifting towards the a priori as the basis of knowledge also provided a hint in the direction of acknowledging knowledge as an enterprise having to do with normativity. Recent developments enhanced this tendency to establish an account of knowledge as a normative endeavor. Let us only notice the appearance 44 45

Goldman 1986. BonJour 1998.

72 of virtue epistemology and of various contextualist epistemologies. Virtue epistemology considers the main job of epistemology, that of providing justification for beliefs, as having to do with virtue, perhaps with something such as the balance, which has to be achieved similarly to the modes of obtaining virtuous deeds in the area of morality. As the job of achieving the virtuous state certainly has to do with balancing several considerations in given circumstances, this is not far from acknowledging the need for normatively changing parameters in the process of establishing the desired state. Close to this, therefore, come contextualist epistemologies, which relativize knowledge to the changing contextual circumstances. Similarly as the predicate flat is correctly used in everyday circumstances for characterizing the property of this road, the same predicate flat is not appropriately used anymore in circumstances figuring substantially higher requirements, when the physicist determines absolute flatness of a surface.46 The parameters determining the proper usage of the predicate have changed. In epistemology, I may well know something in the situation governed by normative conditions proper to the everyday circumstances. But the same knowledge will be shattered if the high normative requirements of daemon hypotheses or of the skeptical brain-in-a-vat hypotheses are put into work. If one wishes to acknowledge the normativity underlying claims of knowledge, one would be well off in stressing the recognition of reasons of heart (as dominating reasons of geometry) in the area of knowledge. The above was not enough. Real reasons of heart in the area of knowledge are the ones brought by the relevance of particular patterns. On the other hand, it seems reassuring to see that the historical development in the area of epistemology has struggled to recognize that there are not only the reasons of geometry - tractable and definitory algorithmic procedures - that are appropriate for securing conditions for knowledge. There are also tendencies closer to the reasons of heart and to the relevance, and these should be really embraced as dominating the former ones in a viable account of knowledge that brings the relevance of knowledge into the center of discussion. The definitory and tractable conditions for knowledge in the classical algorithmic accounts of justification are reasons of geometry, according to Pascalian lingo. But reasons of geometry cannot provide an appropriate account of knowledge. The large Gettier industry did not really provide any. This must then hang on the nature of knowledge, which started to re46

For contextual approaches see Cohen 1998 or Lewis 1996.

73 veal itself by recent tendencies to include intuitions and normativity into the enterprise. It is hard to beat definitory conditions for knowledge as justified true belief if one stays at the level of definitions – at the level proper to the reasons of geometry. But it will be somehow felt by now that an appropriate account of knowledge cannot really be obtained at this level. Definitory endeavors and tractable procedures – the reasons of geometry – continue to dominate the discussion of conditions for knowledge, even in the cases of knowledge conceived as requiring an a priori justification, justification construed as a virtue, or contextually supported justification. Both foundationalist and coherentist approaches to determining knowledge try to support definitory accounts of knowledge. Just that we lately heard how Keith Lehrer as one main coherentist embraced another activity – the painting of artistic pictures. Reasons of geometry are supported by generalist repeatable patterns, whereas reasons of heart are supported by the particularist unique beautiful patterns. Keith Lehrer may be right. Embracing beautiful unique patterns may be the way to go. Although we presume that he would be reluctant to acknowledge his painting activity to support his epistemic search. We think that nevertheless this is the way he should think about it. The definitory and algorithmic means to establish definitory conditions for knowledge – reasons of geometry – are not to be straightforwardly rejected. But they need to be seen as only the necessary and not as sufficient means for accomplishing the job. Reasons of geometry will just establish generalist, thus generally and objectively verifiable patterns, the patterns that will extend conditions for knowledge over all the cases or over most of the possible cases. But there is no relevance secured by this move for this case of knowledge, for a certain specific case. Now, in order for there to be knowledge, this relevant accent of the particular pattern should dominate the conditions for knowledge established by generalist definitory means. Only in such a case knowledge will follow. Salience and relevance is also brought into place by unique patterns proper to works of art and proper to their experience. As already hinted at, the idea here is that something similar is going on in acquisition of knowledge as the activity which succeeds in the experience of works of art. Both are underpinned by unique particular patterns. The further suggestion here is that we are not just dealing with epistemic conditions for knowledge in discussing this, such as with experiences of patterns. The experiences and qualitative phenomenological feelings of knowledge are established upon

74 the basis of the structure of a particular pattern itself, and this is not only the experiential but the ontological relevant structure. Frame problem has shown that relevance cannot come as the result of tractable procedures and of generalized algorithms. The structure of repetition, or of extension of general pattern over a multiplicity of cases does not assure the relevance that we are interested in. It only assures the relevance of the general, i.e. of repetition of the same schema over a multiplicity of cases, which are only relevant in as far as they do all fall under this schema. The relevance of the particular, to the contrary, does not have to do with the repeatable, but with the salience of unique structures. Justification giving follows those reasons that are best rendered by narration47 and not by tractable explanatory procedures, which are rather customary for the area of philosophy of science. How do you know that your paper was accepted for presentation? Well, I just know it. Typically, I do not engage into laying out definitory ingredients for knowledge. I just rely on the background cognitive unique pattern that supports my assertion. Justification giving is best given by narration, following the salience of the background structure. It is the structure that underlies my reasons for knowing something. In other words, in justification giving one does not follow any tractable and definitory procedures that are characteristic for explanations in the area of science and in the area of philosophy of science. Narration is an explanation that is rather closer to (ideographic) sciences that have to do with the particular, such as the science of historiography. It would be indeed difficult to proceed wholeheartedly by deductive-nomological means of explanation in such areas as historiography. Narration involves stories. Propp tried to lay out the background structure of story systems and story telling in his work Morphology of the tale. He refers to morphology that specifies the form of the background structure, a form that was also envisaged by Goethe. In terms of content, there seems to be some kind of such background structure – morphological content – that shows how justification is to be given, and that determines those ways in which it is appropriate to give justification.48 Morphological content is a natural support for non-algorithmic explanatory endeavor.49 We have reached morphological content as an onto47

More about the nature of narration and about its role in an overall particularistic approach in the next chapter. 48 See chapter VII. for an elaboration of morphological content. 49 See Horgan and Henderson (Forthcoming).

75 logically appropriate background structure that determines justification giving as an explanatory endeavor. Consider now that morphological content as such a background structure allows some of reasons to be the salient ones, which come to attention as I narrate the story. But there may also be other, deeper reasons, that are even more important in structuring a certain case of knowledge. Morphological content in the non-classical models of mind substitutes algorithms at the middle level of a system’s description as whatever determines the appearance of the total cognitive state such as belief at the higher level of cognitive system’s description. If morphological content as complex intractable background determines cases of knowledge, it will be natural for it that it will not allow all the tendencies that are at work in it to be presented in an explicit way. However, even the things that are presented as epistemic explanations only will have their salience. The background structure of the morphological content is non-algorithmic, and so it is not apt to provide generalist relevance. It rather comes with particularist relevance. There is epistemic relevance here and also the metaphysical relevance, just as in my usual reason giving activity. If you ask me why I helped her, I may give you a reason, such that it is an appropriate thing to always help people in need. This general reason is relevant, but it is not the ultimate relevance providing reason. The ultimate relevance may be much more complicated, it will usually depend on this particular complex intertwining of reasons, some conscious, some not conscious, and some not even accessible to consciousness, that determine the forces finally leading to my action in question. I agree that the description of this structure would be much more elaborated, and perhaps even not feasible, unless I engage into writing something like A la recherché du temps perdu about my reason of helping her. But in most cases this would be rather a waste of time. This is why the epistemic shortcut of giving reason that you should always help people in need will do in most of practically encountered circumstances. Compare now that the situation provided by particular morphological content underlying justification in epistemology may be rather similar. Still, it can be claimed that the underlying structure of morphological content does provide not just the means for justification giving, but also the support for justification. Justification having, as well, is naturally supported by non-classical multi-dimensional landscape proper to the morphological content. Justification having does not just depend on what one narrates. One has to have

76 justification independently of what one says about it. It is clear from our previous discussion that justification having will be in most cases more complex than justification giving, for morphological content determining someone having justification is more complex than most attempts of justification giving. Justification having is thus even to a larger extent and more naturally supported by non-classical multi-dimensional landscape proper to the morphological content than is the justification giving. And morphological content provides a relevant beautiful pattern, it finds itself on the side of reasons of heart. One result of our discussion is that reasons of heart are only uneasily given in their proper transparent form. The form they prefer to be given in is that of a complex narrative structure. This narration reflects to some extent whatever one has that supports this particular case of knowledge in its background. Being justified does not just depend on someone having justification. The additional requirement is that justification has to be there for a good reason. And this is an additional normative requirement. We have seen that morphological content is one candidate for whatever sustains the nonclassical and the non-definitory account of knowledge. The main lesson of this brief overview is that definitory and algorithmic accounts of knowledge are not enough. Something additional is needed. If we express ourselves in Pascalian terminology, reasons of geometry provide only necessary and they do not provide sufficient conditions for knowledge. These last conditions are provided by reasons of heart. And heart is in the background of our actions, as well as in the background of our knowledge. Morphological content delivers a structure that requires unique particularist patterns and intuition as its support, and thereby it provides relevance to knowledge. This is not possible for generalist patterns. Morphological structure is a structure. It is however not a generalist repeatable structure. Exactly the fact that this structure is unique gives it the relevance. The relevance does not come now from repeatable patterns (which is impossible anyway) but from the salience in the multidimensional landscape of this structure. Intuition will be then a more natural support of such endeavor. This unique non-repeatable structure provides relevance to cases of knowledge. Relevance is at the heart of a particularist account of knowledge. What remains to be told? The main bet is that relevance is at the heart of knowledge. If this is true, then according to our analysis, this cannot be the generalist relevance, but just the relevance of the particular. This has as the consequence then that particularism, which up till now is elaborated

77 mostly for the area of morality, becomes crucial for epistemology. One insight is that holism in the area of epistemology is asserted, and that the atomistic way to proceed in securing ingredients of knowledge, such as “justification”, “truth”, and “belief” must be taken not as something misguided, but as something that should be dominated by the reasons of the epistemic heart. If one takes beautiful patterns as one’s departure, then such features as phenomenology become an important constitutive ingredient of the subjective account of justification or knowledge. However, this should not point in the direction of limiting our approach to the first-person perspective that would perhaps lead us away from the contextualist features that we endorse.50 Contextualism in epistemology should be compatible with truth-tracking. Moreover, beautiful patterns featuring knowledge should not be arbitrary to any lesser extent than are those moral decisions which are taken on the basis of considerations in particular holistic circumstances. The phenomenology of knowing, so to say, was just sorely underestimated because of the blind subscription to knowledge as resulting only from generalist patterns.51 Contextualism and the Elusiveness of Knowledge In his paper “Elusive Knowledge” David Lewis provides a well-taken contextual epistemology. We also think that contextualism is the right way to go and that contexts play an important role in our endeavors to gain knowledge or to ascribe it to other subjects. Epistemological contextualism argues that whether one possesses knowledge is a context-sensitive question. Such features of contexts as intentions and presuppositions of members that are involved into a given conversational context shape and determine standards according to which our beliefs may count as knowledge. This allows for the possibility that different contexts set different epistemic standards, and contextualists invariably maintain that standards do in fact vary from one context to another. In some contexts (like well-known skep50

We are indebted to Timothy Williamson for this remark (at the occasion of Potrč’s presentation of some of this material at Kirchberg international Wittgenstein symposium in the year 2003). 51 We think though that the definition of knowledge should not be rejected. Only the normative authority should not be kept with it and this normative authority should be deferred to particularist beautiful patterns.

78 tical scenarios featuring evil demons and Marians equipped with nourishing nutrient baths and super-computers), the epistemic standards are extraordinarily high, and it is difficult, if not impossible, for our beliefs to be considered as knowledge in such contexts. In most contexts, however, epistemic standards are comparatively low, and our beliefs can and in fact they often do count as knowledge in these ordinary contexts. Since the most influential versions of contextualism also embrace the so-called “Relevant Alternatives” (RA) view on knowledge relevance and salience are among their basic concepts. The notions such as that of relevant alternative or salient resemblance between two or more alternatives play a key role in explaining the nature of our knowledge and they provide plausible solutions to some famous epistemological puzzles like that of the Skeptic, the Lottery and Gettier situations. David Lewis is well-known as a contextualist. In his paper “Scorekeeping in the Language Game” (1979) he provided a general and pragmatic contextual variation-based approach, whereby he accounted for multiple normative pressures determining the position and meaning of terms in a conversational sequence. What is correct or appropriate to say in a situation is determined by the implicit parameters that guide the situation in question. Those parameters may change as the conversation unfolds. Expressions such as “flat” or “tall” may have different truth-values attached to them depending on the variation in context. Lewis tries to capture those forces that determine semantic contributions of elements in a context by a series of general accommodation rules. The paper “Elusive Knowledge” is basically an extension of the scorekeeping approach to the area of epistemology. Lewis appropriates epistemic contextualism and he also formulates a set of rules that account for conditions of knowledge. As a proponent of common sense, Lewis’ first claim is that we know a lot. But, this claim of knowledge gets shattered once as we try to assess it in the framework of epistemological investigation. At this point we meet the skeptic. The tension is eventually resolved by taking into account the difference between strong norms in the context of epistemology and much weaker normative requirements in the context of ordinary circumstances. Of the two evils of skepticism and fallibilism we may somehow embrace the latter. Here is the definition of knowledge provided by Lewis: “S knows that p iff

79 (i) S’s evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P (ii) – Psst! – except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring.”52 Or if we reformulate this in the relevant alternatives talk: “S knows that p iff S’s evidence eliminates every relevant alternative to P.” The evidence in (i) refers to reasons for accepting knowledge, and ¬p refers to the situations where p does not hold. As for (ii), it sets the scope of possibilities that we can properly ignore according to the context and its normative standards. An example figures skeptic situations that may be properly ignored in the ongoing activity of the daily life. We may also properly ignore matrix possibilities because these are worlds far away from our usual situation. Part (i) of Lewis’ definition of knowledge aims at the evidence concerning the case in question and at its elimination. Part (ii) of this same definition aims at what may be relevant for proper ignoring in a situation. We use both (i) and (ii) in order to confront cases though, and the relation between (i) and (ii) has its own dynamics that determines what to count as knowledge. There remains a serious challenge for such accounts to explain how these two parts of definition of knowledge play their part in contextual shifts of knowledge ascriptions according to relevant alternatives. And as Sosa says any “relevant alternative” approach must answer two questions: “What sorts of alternatives are relevant?” and “How does one properly rule them out?”. (Sosa 2003, 36) A lot of work remains to be done here, and our proposal is to “go particular” and to abandon the search for determinate rules of and for context-shifting. It is crucial for such an account of knowledge that we, in some way, delimit what is relevant and should be eliminated and again what is irrelevant and can be properly ignored. This setting of limits is essentially context-dependent. We think that such contextualism offers an important insight into the nature of knowledge. Questions pertaining to knowledge could not be answered irrespective of the context in which they appear. Both concepts, relevance and salience, by their nature escape formalization in some general principles or rules. (Remember 52

Lewis 1996, 554. The two ingredients of definition are numbered by (i) and (ii) so that we may refer to them later.

80 the lessons of the frame problem.) Lessons of moral particularism learned in the area of morality could be of importance here. One cannot once and for all define a set of features and properties of our actions that always are or always would be morally relevant and would count as reasons. Our moral judgement must follow each particular situation that we are confronting and look out for its features and properties that are morally important in a particular case. We also subsequently have to judge which of these features and properties are more important than others. Moral particularism argues for holism of reasons – moral reasons are essentially dependent on context. The possibility of general moral principles and rules setting all moral reasons in advance is thus ruled out. Jonathan Dancy claims that the same goes for all kinds of reasons, hence also for holism of epistemic reasons and this fact could lead to important consequences for epistemology. (Terence Horgan and David Henderson already stressed one holistic aspect of justification in their paper “Morphological Content and Justified Belief”. On their view what constitutes having justification for a given belief turns on significantly holistic aspects of the overall cognitive system. The justification one has typically involves lots of relevant information that is in some sense available to the system, and the ways this information is evidentially relevant to the given belief typically involve highly holistic, Quineian, features of one’s overall body of beliefs and one’s total available information. “Being justified involves two factors: first, having justification for one’s belief that p, and second, believing that p because of the justification that one has for p. This is a causal/explanatory ‘because’: in some suitable way, the pertinent information and the pertinent evidentialsupport relations need to be causally operative in the actual generation of p—causally operative in a way that suitably “reflects” the evidentialsupport relations. Having justification for a belief one holds doesn’t by itself render the agent justified in holding that belief, because the agent might hold the belief for epistemically objectionable reasons (rather than holding it because of the justification for it that happens to be available). When a cognitive agent forms a belief for an epistemologically bad reason, rather than forming it for an epistemologically good reason that the agent happens to possess, then this fact prevents the agent from being justified in holding that belief—possession of the good reason notwithstanding.”) We also think that the contextualist insight may be pushed a little bit further by the following question: “Is there any general set of conditions that would be appropriate for an account of contextuality?” We suppose that there is the following presupposition at work in definitions of knowl-

81 edge: “Knowledge has to be provided by generalist conditions, i.e. features that determine knowledge are statable by the help of general patterns.” General patterns are those where given features retain the same valence over a number of cases. There is also the possibility of particularist patterns determining knowledge though, as we have claimed. Knowledge may be dependent upon rich holistic, but relevant circumstances, similarly as it happens with the moral particularism claims as the basis for moral value ascriptions. Before going on with specification of rules we should remark that Lewis’ definition of knowledge is revisionist in respect to the standard definition of knowledge in that it does not contain any condition for justification. Therefore, knowledge comes without justification, at least in an explicit sense. We argue though that justification is implicitly contained in seven rules of proper and improper ignorance. We think that what is wrong with these rules is that they try to capture relevance (whatever is relevant to be ignored in order that knowledge is attained), which may not even be in principle feasible by tractable generalist means. The bulk of Lewis’ knowledge proposal rests on proper ignoring. He supplies a list of rules that should be obeyed in order that one would attain knowledge. These rules that are seven in number determine what is relevant for proper ignoring in our search for knowledge (Lewis 1996, 554560): The rule of actuality says that whatever is actual cannot be properly ignored in our search for knowledge. The rule of belief says that we should not ignore possibilities that the subject believes to obtain, whether or not these possibilities are actual. Besides to this, we should also not ignore those p-possibilities for which the subject has good reasons in his beliefs that they obtain and hence ought to believe them to obtain. The rule of resemblance says that of two very similar possibilities that saliently resemble each other both should be either rejected or considered. Lottery ticket situations where a ticket wins or where a ticket loses resemble each other. And so it is with the Gettier case where somebody looks at the clock that unbeknownst to him stopped at 5pm, and where the resembling situation is the one in which he would take a glance at the same clock at 4:40pm. Those are the most important rules and each of them somehow stands for elements in the traditional conception of knowledge (rule of resemblance is in the place occupied by the truth condition, rule of belief in the

82 place occupied by the justification condition and rule of resemblance in the place occupied by the “Gettier cases aside” condition). The rule of reliability is a positive rule determining what to trust, in opposition to the former rules of actuality, belief and resemblance that determine what is to be ignored. Lewis thinks that such processes and institutions as perception, memory and reliable testimony are reliable in ordinary contexts. The two rules of method pertaining to non-deductive inference figure representativity of samples and reliability (of inference) to the best explanation, i.e. induction and abduction. The rule of conservatism appreciates common knowledge and common proper ignoring in the community to which we happen to belong. The rule of attention says that once we become attentive to some alternative, we cannot properly ignore it anymore. This is a controversial rule for the reason that once we really become attentive to radical skepticism, no evidence can be available to demonstrate the truth of the contrary position. In his contextualistic treatment of epistemic puzzles Steward Cohen (1998) has pointed to this Lewis's list of relevance rules. He introduced “subject-sensitive” and “speaker-sensitive” distinction (especially important for rules of Actuality, Belief and Resemblance) which shows some internal tension in Lewis's account and reveals its incapacity to solve Gettier cases. Here are the details of the proposed distinction between rules: (a) a rule is “subject–sensitive” if its functioning depends on the facts about the subject (and the epistemic situation she is in) to which we (the speakers and hearers involved into the context) ascribe or attribute knowledge; (b) a rule is “speaker–sensitive” if its functioning depends on the facts about us, the speakers and hearers of a context in which we attribute knowledge. A given rule can be both “subject-” and “speaker-sensitive”. If we look at Lewis's list of relevance rules we can see that some of them are clearly “subject-sensitive”, like the rule of actuality, while others are clearly “speaker-sensitive”, like the rule of attention. We will return to this issue later when the critique of such a list of general rules for relevance will be presented.

83 rule\type of sens. R. of Actuality

SUBJECT- SPEAKERsensitive sensitive – ⊕

R. of Belief

⊕

R. of Resemblance

⊕

R. of Reliability

⊕ –

R. of Attention

⊕ – – ⊕

No Justification and Rules of Relevance A brief look at Lewis's proposal of a contextualistic account of knowledge reveals some difficulties arising out of his insistence on the specific list of rules of relevance (although his elimination/ignorance account reveals some important characteristics of knowledge, e.g. the involvement of standards/normativity and of degrees of knowledge - more or less stable knowledge). Further we think that in the light of other problems of his account, his move of abandoning the talk about justification is unnecessary, since justification or having good epistemic reasons for our beliefs is an important aspect of knowledge. We retain the “justified true belief” view on knowledge, but its contextualized version. As we have already said we disagree with Lewis on two points of his account, namely that: (a) We can talk of knowledge without justification. (b) There is a set of exceptionless rules determining relevant alternatives. “Between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of skepticism, the former represents the less intrusive madness”, says David Lewis at the beginning of his “Elusive Knowledge”. We agree with his common sensepull away from skepticism in respect to our ordinary knowledge and with his appropriation of an overall contextualist approach to knowledge ascription. But we disagree with some features of Lewis’ contextualist solution to problems in epistemology. The first point in question relates to Lewis’

84 giving up justification as an important aspect of knowledge.53 But before taking on this first point let us briefly stress another important feature of his proposal. When Lewis finishes with his description of “rules of relevance”, he points out something that we think is very important in his account – degrees of knowledge. The more possibilities that we have eliminated by our evidence and the less that we have ignored, the better this will be for our knowledge. A better knowledge gives us more stability while we change context (Lewis 1996, 562-563). And, if our ignoring was correct (even if we have done lots of it) our knowledge will still be relatively stable knowledge in some epistemically safe contexts.54 Lewis argues that justification is not the mark of knowledge because it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition. The former is exposed by the lottery problem, where an epistemic agent has practically more justification for believing that his ticket will lose as he does for almost every other ordinary belief. But it still intuitively seems to us that he cannot claim to know that his ticket will lose. Justification as the necessary condition fails in the case of our reliance upon perception, memory or testimony, where no non-circular argument can be given for our forming of beliefs and knowledge by those means.55 We think that Lewis gives up justification much too easily and that we can still make sense of knowledge as justified true belief. The overall argument for this may only become clear once as we expose our proposed account of knowledge and justification. Still we think that Lewis needs some notion of justification, even if justification comes back into his account at the second level or at the meta-level. At least one needs some kind of justification to justify the placement of a borderline between those relevant alternatives that one has to eliminate and between the non-relevant alternatives which one can properly ignore. A 53

We think though that the question concerning justification should be carefully approached. One important distinction to be made is the distinction between having a justification and being justified that Terry Horgan and David Henderson introduce in their Horgan and Henderson 2000. 54 For the idea of safe epistemology see Horgan and Henderson 2001, where the improved reliabilistic account of justification is presented. 55 Lewis further illustrates the point that sometimes we even do not know how we know some things (e.g. in the case where we forgot our primary reasons for believing or in the case of the ability to recognize some visual patterns), but that we could still claim that we possess knowledge (see Lewis 1996, 551). This is a very wide conception of knowledge so that some may have reservations to accept such a view.

85 precise point in Lewis's account where justification steps back into play is the rule of belief: “A possibility that the subject believes to obtain is not properly ignored, whether or not he is right to so believe. Neither is one that he ought to believe to obtain – one that evidence and arguments justify him in believing - whether or not he does so believe.” (Lewis 1996, 555) And since the rule of belief is one of central rules in his account, he gets justification back in either way. Furthermore, retaining the talk of justification, we can make sense of the notion of a good epistemic reason as one of the central notions in the analysis of knowledge. On our view, justification (which appears in the standard definition of knowledge as justified true belief) amounts to having good reasons for belief together with the additional condition that we form a belief because of these good normative reasons.56 If both of these conditions are met, we can say that we are being justified in holding some belief that p. And as far as the second point of disagreement is concerned, we repeat that notions of relevance and salience cannot be suitably included into the contextualist approach to epistemology in the form of general rules. Both notions are essentially context-dependent and their normativity is particularistic.57 We do not put them into the general rules-guided patterns, but make use of particular beautiful patterns as the only candidates for capturing the normative force of the context. Lewis tries to give some general account about which alternatives are relevant and consequently about which possibilities must be eliminated or properly ignored. These rules do not come in a strict order of priority and conflicts between them are well possible. Furthermore, as Cohen has shown, it is far from clear exactly how to understand those rules, especially in the light of the speakersensitive/subject-sensitive distinction (Cohen 1998, 294). Cohen also demonstrates that the list of rules provided by Lewis does not lead to a straight solution for the skeptic, lottery, and Gettier cases. The rule of resemblance 56

For the role of this proper causal etiology and the holistic aspects of belief forming processes, see Horgan and Henderson, forthcoming. 57 We took this from moral particularism, according to which reasons are contextdependent and function holistically. The same could be said about reasons for having belief and for good normative reasons related to justification. See Dancy 2000a.

86 is especially troublesome. Ordinary resemblance is not sufficient; the resemblance between two alternatives or possibilities must be salient. But it is not clear whether Lewis refers here to resemblance that is salient to the subject of the ascription or to the salience for the speaker/ascriber of knowledge. In the case of the Lottery problem and Skeptical scenarios this distinction is not so important, because it requires just plain “subjectsensitive” resemblance combined with the rule of actuality that is also “subject-sensitive”. But we tumble into troubles with Gettier cases. In Gettier cases subject S fails to know that P because there is an uneliminated not-P possibility that resembles actuality, and this resemblance is not salient for S, but for ascribers (speakers and hearers). Because of this salient resemblance S fails in his knowledge attribution. Example: Smith is looking at a sheep-shaped rock that has a real sheep behind it. Smith fails to know although having justified true belief that there is a sheep in front of him because he is in a Gettier situation. Now imagine an attributor Jones who is unaware that Smith formed his belief about a sheep in an inappropriate way. Rules of actuality and resemblance explain our Gettier intuitions about the failure of Smith's knowledge, because Smith improperly ignored the possibility of looking at a sheep-shaped rock that resembles actuality. But this resemblance is not salient for the attributor Jones and thus he can properly ignore this possibility. So Jones can truly ascribe knowledge to Smith. Our intuitions about the “subject-sensitivity” or “speaker-sensitivity” of the rule of resemblance differ whether we consider Gettier cases on one side or the Lottery problem and the Skeptic on the other hand. It seems that Cohen has a very strong point here. We agree with this criticism. We think that here we meet the consequences of treating relevance by means of exceptionless general rules that delimit the scope of relevant alternatives in Lewis’ conception of knowledge. We observe relevance and salience as altogether contextual, and therefore as basic for contextualism. A really contextualist epistemology should show full respect to the normative power of the context in determining which epistemic possibilities are relevant or how wide our justification should be for claiming that we possess knowledge. Cohen proposes his account that is in many way more simplified as Lewis's. He builds upon two basic normative components in knowledge ascriptions: strength of one's epistemic reasons and strictness of the standards of the context of ascription. Let us look at this proposal:

87 “[T]he truth-value of a knowledge ascription will depend on whether the subject of the ascription has strong enough reasons relative to the standard of the context. This means that the truthvalue of a knowledge ascription can vary with either the strength of the subject's reasons or the strictness of the standard. On the contextualist view, we explain our confidence in the truth of our everyday knowledge ascriptions […] by supposing that our reasons are sufficient for us to know, relative to the standards of everyday contexts. When confronted with skeptical argument however, the chance of error becomes salient and the standards can shift. Skeptical arguments are forceful precisely because they can have this effect on us. In this new context, the standards are stricter and knowledge ascriptions true in everyday contexts are false.” (Cohen 1999, 61) (Note also that the “subject-sensitivity” parameters (rule of actuality, rule of belief) are more closely linked with the first component, that is the strength of one's reasons, and the “speaker-sensitivity” parameters (rule of attention, rule of resemblance) to the second, that is to strictness of standards of knowledge ascriptions. This could be an interesting point of departure for further development of the structure of reasons and standards involved in knowledge ascriptions.) As we can see this type of contextualism is much more rudimentary than Lewis. Which alternatives are relevant is not defined in a set of rules, but it is left to our particular judgment pertaining to ordinary everyday context and skeptical context. Is there any general theory of how contextshifting works for knowledge ascriptions? Cohen seems to reply that there is no such general theory. “Now I certainly have no general theory of how precisely the context determines the standard. But this is no special problem for my claim that ascriptions of knowledge are context-sensitive. Even for (relatively) uncontroversial cases of predicates whose application depend on context-sensitive standard, e.g. “flat”, it is very difficult to say exactly how the context determines the standards.” (Cohen 1999, 59)

88 Particularist Justification in Context We propose to retain the overall notion of knowledge as justified true belief and try to work out a contextualist account of knowledge within this notion, at the same time pointing to an alternative, particularistic view on relevance and relevant alternatives. Cohen revealed two basic components of knowledge ascriptions that is the strength of one's justification or reasons and standards that govern the context of ascription. Both of these are essentially contextual. If we make some parallels between moral contextualism and moral particularism, we could say that what is epistemically basic or justified in one context may not be such in another, and that our epistemic judgment involved in knowledge ascriptions means the ability to evaluate a situation, asses the evidence and come to a reasonable conclusion without following general rules. We could make a distinction between local and global justification. Lewis helped us to reveal an important aspect with his eliminating/ignoring partition of epistemic possibilities. In this light, we could propose the following distinction: Local justification: S is locally justified in believing p in context C iff S has good epistemic reasons for believing p in this context58 (and in all relevantly similar contexts). Global justification: S is globally justified in believing that p iff S has good epistemic reasons for believing p in all possible contexts. The additional condition for the case of local justification is learning to practice safe epistemology and trying to expand justification to similar contexts – for one does not know the ultimate nature of the epistemic context in which one finds oneself.59 Global justification is appropriate only 58

The additional condition to this is that of being justified because of those good reasons that one has and not just as based upon some arbitrary beliefs. We will presume this further condition from now on and will not mention it every time as we talk about justification. 59 We took this lesson from Horgan and Henderson 2001. In this paper, they deal with reliabilism and they try to improve it in the direction that besides reliability we should acknowledge the robustness of our cognitive processes for gaining beliefs as an additional epistemic value. Reliability is always reliability in the agent’s world, but robustness (of reliability) may be characterized as truth-conductivity in a very wide set of epistemically relevant possible worlds. According to their view, such an account of

89 for the strictest context – the context of epistemology. All knowledge that could not be globally justified is, in Lewis’ terms, elusive because it slips out of our hands when we shift to the strictest context of epistemology. Only beliefs that are globally justified can survive in radical skepticism scenarios. Local justification is obviously a matter of degree that should be regulated according to the epistemic pressure and threats residing in our epistemic situations. According to the first distinction we could also differentiate between two kinds of standards, as the second component vital for knowledge ascriptions. First operate in ordinary, everyday contexts with relatively low standards, where a sufficiently extended local justification suffices for true knowledge ascriptions. On the other end is an epistemological context with its wild skeptical possibilities, counter-examples, etc., here only few beliefs survive as genuine knowledge if any at all. As we can see, the radical or global skepticism is construed in a way that is immune to rejection on the basis of any evidence. So we have no evidence against radical skepticism scenario even on the level of everyday knowledge standards. Cohen here responds with a combined, twofold solution. The first fork is Cohen's original solution by “non-evidential rationality” which says that in ordinary context we can know that we are not a bodyless brain in a vat. The problem is that via this solution Cohen seems to commit himself to contingent a priori knowledge. So Cohen upgrades this original solution to contextualised modus ponens fallibilism and joins both arguments. So the solution of our ordinary knowledge under the global skepticism threat is now as follows: it is rational for me to deny that I am not plus I have some empirical evidence that I have hands, therefore I can know that I have hands and that I am not a . Cohen says that this is a more viable solution since it is neither wholly a priori nor rests solely on modus ponens fallibilism general structure of reasons. Hard problems. Now that we have presented a brief outline of our proposal of contextualist epistemology we will give some further clues about how this proposal handles a choice of hard problems in epistemology. Our solutions will not be far removed from Lewis’ proposals; the difreliability and robustness makes it possible to talk about two kinds of safety: local and general safety. We accept the lesson of this account, but try to formulate it on a more general level that is not strictly connected to reliabilistic epistemological theories and such that it is compatible with other possible epistemological starting points, while still remaining contextual by its very nature. Our rendering of local and global justification presents one possible approach of how to formalize our version of contextualism. Some modified characterizations would thus be possible that would still encompass the power of context.

90 ference is just that we use our local/global justification distinction as the basic tool, and not rules of relevance as Lewis does. Let us tackle in turn the skeptic, the lottery problem, and Gettier cases. The skeptic and the closure of knowledge. The traditional argument could be put in the following way: (1) S knows that she has hands. (2) Having hands├─ ¬.60 ∴ (3) S knows that ¬. If we presume that the right response should be that obviously S does not know that she is not a brain in a vat, then something has to give. But, by contextualization we can retain the closure of knowledge and therefore we are also able to retain our intuitive judgments that we do have ordinary knowledge and also our philosophical intuitions that we cannot know that we are not in a skeptical scenario. We propose the following depiction of this argument in the light of our proposal: (1) S knows that she has hands by local justification standards. (2) Having hands ├─ ¬. ∴(3a) S knows that ¬ by local justification standards. ∴(3b) S does not know that ¬ by global justification standards. By the means of contextualizing the original argument we solve the closure of knowledge. We also retain ordinary knowledge all in taking the skeptical case seriously enough to grant it a strong position in the global epistemological context. The lottery problem. The problem is how to preserve our ordinary knowledge that the gambling-addicted Bill is condemned to stay poor without also simultaneously willing to assert our knowledge that Bill's lottery ticket will not win. One is locally justified to make the first knowledge assertion according to the context of ordinary life where Bill will always stay poor because of the way he leads his life. But, at the time as we consider the matter with the lottery ticket-case, there is no local justification available for the assertion of knowledge that the ticket in Bill's pocket will not win because the whole problem is now appearing at the global justification level that characterizes epistemology. In this context, the 60

stands for “being in a brain-in-a-vat scenario”.

91 cation level that characterizes epistemology. In this context, the possibility for Bill's ticket to win is relevant and we are not globally justified to make the knowledge assertion of Bill’s ticket not winning. Gettier cases. In this section, we briefly consider Cohen’s criticism of Lewis. Cohen points to a case where Lewis could not succeed in solving the Gettier problem by his rules of actuality and resemblance (Cohen 1998, 296-299). Consider the person A who claims on the basis of his visual perceptual data that there is a sheep upon the hill. While A makes his assertion he is looking at a sheep-shaped white rock upon the hill. A is in the Gettier situation because behind the rock there really is a sheep. Lewis solves this case by applying the rules of actuality and resemblance since the person A should not ignore the saliently similar possibility of a sheep-shaped rock. Now, we bring in another person B who ascribes knowledge to A so that the salience of resemblance between A’s seeing a rock and A’s seeing a sheep is not available anymore from B’s point of view. B is not aware that A is actually in a Gettier case. What should we say about B’s ascription of knowledge to A? Cohen shows that Lewis does not have a convincing solution for cases of this kind. Let us now look at how our local/global justification distinction could be of use here. If we take both persons as operating under local justification standards, then we can claim that A does not have good reasons for believing that there is a sheep on the hill (since he did not practice safe epistemology). But on the other hand, B has lots of good reasons and is justified in ascribing knowledge to A (though unfortunately he is in a bad epistemic situation, since A does not have knowledge). If both are observed from the global justification perspective, neither of them has any knowledge in the discussed case since neither of them is globally justified in his claims.

92

V. NARRATION A good story has the ring of uniqueness to it. Narration is linked to particularism. Where is narration needed and where is it not needed? Some areas, such as that of mathematics, are covered by general exceptionless rules and they are extraneous to narration. Other areas, such as history or psychology, are covered by rules that allow for exceptions, and therefore they naturally shift into vicinity of narration. Third kind of areas involve moral judgments and literary works of art which both need narration in their structure. An illustration of the diversity involved into modes of structuring is implied in question whether general exceptionless rules, generalities with exceptions or the appeal to particular narrative strategies may explain the mentioned areas. Whatever fits best into the explanation of a chosen area also exercises normative authority over it. What is Narration? There is not much need to engage yourself into narration if you do exercises in your math class. Indeed, if you narrate during the math class instead of proving exercises by the help of the required rules, you may risk getting a low grade. On the other hand, narration is well seen in those areas that do not require strict or exceptionless rules, such as literary works of art. This does not mean though that there will be no constraints at all in the domain of literature. Some writers are simply excellent, and others are just not offering enough thrills. You can feel this by reading their works. Although you can feel this in a quite pronounced way, you do not necessarily always need to be able to explain why this poem was good or fun to read and why again that novel was boring. It is certain that literature cannot be measured by some kind of exceptionless rules that are applied to its evaluation. Rather, the evaluation of a work of art is a case of literary judgment. While you read this, you kind of see the whole picture and on this basis you fall your judgment. Your opinion is that this poem is just excellent. But now you have to wait a minute and think about the following. Is it really true that mathematicians deal just with exceptionless rules? It does seem to us that you proceed doing your math exercises by application of

94 exceptionless rules in the elementary school; at the time you learn how to master the area. The creative mathematician has other kinds of approaches, which mostly involve judgment and intuition. Of course, he will not have to abandon exceptionless rules that put the borders on his territory. But he will use them as the basis upon which to exercise the further creative judgmental work. The distinction between exceptionless rules and between the area that does not fall under them may then be articulated as the distinction between the time of apprenticing, referring to the period when the exceptionless rules are learned, and between the time of skillful mastering of these rules once they are all settled into your cognitive capabilities. Skillful activity cannot be mastered by exceptionless rules. So there is distinction between a domain that is based on exceptionless rules, such as mathematics, and between those areas that are based upon some other kind of rules, and that are rather tied to judgment, such as the domain of the literature. Literature is not just determined by relieving the stress of exceptionless rules. It is also determined by narration. You can perhaps say that in creative mathematics, as opposed to the apprentice math classes, narration is involved. But narration is more. It involves a direction, a story; it involves a certain style and a certain rhythm. You most explicitly encounter narration in tales, in fables and in novels, all of which involve stories. Some of these stories are complex and some are simpler. If there is narration in them, one of the questions that will naturally pose itself to you, will be: “And then, what happened?” The Role of Explanation Broadly construed, there are three ways to systematize a list of items in order to provide structure to them. The first possibility of systematizing the mentioned items involves general exceptionless rules. The second possibility of systematizing a list of items involves generalities with exceptions, and the third possibility considers each item on the list to be just a particular case. The interesting structure in this last example should then be involved into this case, and it should not extend over a range of cases; so the complexity of this singular case will naturally display itself. In what follows, we will provide as illustrations some domains that involve each of these possibilities. So we have: (a) general exceptionless rules

95 (b) general rules allowing for exceptions (c) particular cases. As promised, we will first briefly illustrate each of these three possibilities by joining to them various areas that somehow smoothly and naturally fit into place. The domains in question will present the cases through which common sense is able to understand items (a), (b) and (c). We could have proceeded in the following way. We could have taken just one list and ask what are different possible ways of systematizing it (Potrč 2000), the ways of systematizing that involve more or less pressure. But here, we are rather talking about domains that somehow naturally fit the three mentioned possibilities. The case of (a), that of general exceptionless rules, is perhaps best illustrated by the domain of mathematics. We all know that mathematics deals with general exceptionless rules. We first determine domains, so called universe of discourse, and then in this domain we start with the available elements, and also with the rules that are appropriate for combining them. It is understandable enough to say that mathematics is governed by rules, and these rules determine possible transformations of the involved elements. Systematizing of elements in mathematics can always succeed in an exceptionless manner, by following the general rules. The domains of history and psychology feature general rules with exceptions. The domain that we introduce now provides a case of (b). We are looking for these domains that incorporate general rules, but which are also domains that allow for exceptions to these rules. Two such domains may come to mind: history and psychology. Both of these domains are empirical, so that they are bound to deal with concrete, particular material. But both of the mentioned areas also strive to provide some general truths. If we look at the domain of the history61, we see that some interpretations understand it as belonging to the model (a), in as far as general historical truths are in the center of its interest. But on the other hand, historians also quickly incorporated the unique and non-repeatable historiographic materials and details into their study. As opposition to Hempel's model of general nomological historiography that would resemble closely 61

The debate about the importance and the role of narrative in history and historiography started to develop more intensely and positively about four decades ago when philosophers of history, theoreticians of historiography and other social scientists started opening a wide range of questions related to the so called “problem of the narrative”.

96 that of natural sciences62 Louis Mink defended narration as a key notion in historical understanding. “Nevertheless, the description of explanation as “colligative” does point to something else: it expresses what historians seem to mean by “perspective”, and the insistence on historical perspective seems to me more than a mere recommendation of the attitude of objectivity or an excuse to avoid making predictions. It is at least in part a claim that for the historical understanding of an event one must look before and after (and not pine for what is not); that in some sense we may understand a particular event by locating it correctly in a narrative sequence as well by classifying it as an instance of al law.” (Mink 1965, 33) “Analogously, the historian tries to understand a complex process as a function of its component events plus their interrelationships (including causal relationships) plus their importance, all interpreted in a larger context of change. It is primarily the syntax of events, of course, in which he is interested. One might even say that the aim of historical knowledge is to discover the grammar of events, whereas in the proto-science view it is, so to speak, the logic of events alone that could deserve the name of knowledge.” (Mink 1965, 40) Psychology distinguishes itself from mathematics in that its generalities come with exceptions. This must again be due to the pull of psychology as a science to articulate general truths relating to its domain, and to 62

“The explanation of the occurrence of an event of some specific kind E at a certain place and time consist, as it is usually expressed, in indicating the causes or determining factors of E. Now the assertion that a set of events – say, of the kinds C1, C2, ..., Cn – have caused the event to be explained, amounts to the statement that, according to certain general laws, a set of events of the kinds mentioned is regularly accompanied by an event of kind E. Thus, the scientific explanation of the event in question consist of (1) a set of statements asserting the occurrence of certain events C1, C2, ..., Cn at certain times and places (2) a set of universal hypotheses, such that (a) the statements of both groups are reasonably well confirmed by empirical evidence (b) from the two groups of statements the sentence asserting the occurrence of event E can be logically deduced” (Hempel 1965, 232)

97 the fact that this is a science that has to do with empirical material. But empirical features are absent from mathematics. Systematizing of the domains of history and of psychology will be certainly feasible by some rules. But besides to these general rules there will also be material forming exceptions to the generalities in question. This will succeed because of the empirical nature of history and psychology, because of the vicinity to concrete cases and to the concrete material under investigation. Domains of moral judgment and of works of art feature particular cases. The domains that are appropriate for illustrating (c) include moral judgments and works of art. One may for example classify moral judgments into successful and unsuccessful ones, into good and bad ones. One may also classify works of art into good and bad ones. But one may also use several classificatory schemas, such as assigning a certain work of art into slots of realism or romanticism. However, this is not the main point at which we will be attentive now. Both moral judgments and works of art also resist subsumption under the general exceptionless rules and even under rules with exceptions. They resist this classificatory effort by their very nature, if they are interesting cases of moral judgments and of works of art. If you took your decision in this difficult complex situation in such a manner that it was appropriate, you can tell me some generalities about why you acted in the way that you did. “To justify one's choice is to give the reasons one sees for making it, and to give those reasons is just to lay out how one sees the situation, starting in the right place and going on to display the various salient features in the right way; to do this is to fill in the moral horizon. In giving those reasons one is not arguing for one's way of seeing the situation. One is rather appealing to others to see it […] the way one sees it oneself, and the appeal consists in laying out that way as persuasively as one can. The persuasiveness here is the persuasiveness of narrative: an internal coherence in the account which compels assent. We succeed in our aim when our story sounds right. Moral justification is therefore not subsumptive in nature, but narrative. (Dancy 1993, 113) Thus even if you utilize generalities in your explanation you will not cover the specific unique nature of your particular decision by this means, you will not cover the qualitative side of your decision by subsuming it

98 under generalities, be it generalities without or even generalities with possible exceptions. In a similar way, if this is indeed a good work of art, it has to be unique, particular, and it will stay beautiful in its pattern that will not recede under any trial to classify it into some general scheme. Narrative Explanation Now that we have provided as illustration cases of domains falling under various systematizing strengths of classification (a), (b) and (c), we are able to ask whether narration is appropriate method to deal with any of these domains. Narration as we approach it here comes in the area of explanation. So we will ask ourselves whether in each of the given domains narration is needed and in what way it is needed if it is. We have available the following ways to explain the domains that we have mentioned: (i) By general exceptionless rules (ii) By general rules with exceptions (iii) By narration. We will look at each of the cases involving the already mentioned domains of mathematics for the systematization (a), of history and psychology (b), and of moral judgment and of works of art (c). We will also ask ourselves whether they may be explained by (i), by (ii) or by (iii). The cases of verifying whether (a), (b) (c) match to (i), (ii), (iii) are not trivial, for (i), (ii), (iii) may each be possible candidates for application to domains determined by (a), (b), (c). Explanations of domains involving general exceptionless rules come as first, and the case of mathematics, which was used in order to illustrate the item (a) or the domain involving exceptionless general rules. (iii) Narration does not seem to be needed in order to explain a problem in mathematics. Perhaps you have to narrate some things as you start doing mathematics. But in order to explain why 2 X 2 = 4, you really need to grasp the (i) general exceptionless rules, such as “In order to multiply an item you need to get its square value”. This point about the importance of (i) in the case of mathematics may be further illustrated by a slightly more complicated example, whose solution is not immediately transparent. In such a kind of case, you will have to explain the procedure of calculating

99 to someone by explaining all the general exceptionless rules that she does not grasp yet in such a way that she would understand the case. These general rules are taught to children in the elementary school. It is also clear that the rules which the child has to learn in order to understand calculations in the math class cannot be the rules that allow for exceptions, (ii). They must all be exceptionless rules, i.e. (i). In order to summarize the discussion: the cases of (a) are explained by delivering the grasp of exceptionless rules to the person that did not understand them yet. Somebody does not understand this example of mathematical calculation. What do you do? You explain to him the exceptionless rules which are active in the structuring and in the solving of the mathematical case. Once the person has understood these general rules, she will be able to understand how to solve the example of mathematical calculation in question. The narration, however, would be inappropriate as an explanatory principle in the case of (a). Explanation of domains involving general rules with exceptions follows now. We are talking about the case (b) which we have illustrated by providing the examples of history and of psychology as fitting into its domain. Suppose that somebody does not understand an event or a certain period in history. What do we do? We will not bring the person to the understanding of historical facts just by the usage of general exceptionless rules (i). We will at least need some kind of insertion of these historical facts into historical context, and this will require narration (ii) as the method that we use. But this will not be all. Many times we will try to subsume historical facts under some general laws, such as “Oppression is followed by revolution”, which is a case of (i). But it is actually better to construe it as a case of (ii), i.e. “Oppression tends to be followed by revolution”. This is then a case of ceteris paribus generalization, i.e. it is a generality involving exceptions (ii). Actually, intuitions tend to pull into a couple of opposed directions here. If you buy the nomological-deductive model of historical explanation, such as it is used by Hempel, then you will tend to push your chart into direction (i). If you tend to include ceteris paribus generalities into the explanation, you will lean towards direction (ii). In this last case narration (iii) will offer itself as an explanatory tool. This kind of narration will somehow try to fit under the rubrics (ii), i.e. generalities with exceptions seem to be a natural way to go in order to explain to somebody historical truths that she happens not to understand. In other words, you have a double pull here: both towards generalities and towards particularism.

100 But we would say that generalities with exception (ii) really win if you try to explain to somebody the case of history that she did not happen to grasp yet. Psychology is another illustration of the domain proper to the explanatory strategy (b), thus to the strategy involving general rules with exceptions. Well, well. If human reasoning would be perfect, it would be mastered by subsumption under general exceptionless rules (i). But unfortunately our psychological reasoning is influenced by our attention, by our cognitive abilities, and by other similar kinds of empirical stuff. So it is sometimes called heuristic or dirty reasoning. Why dirty? It does not always stick with the rules, although it still has rules (i) firmly in its basis. There are shortcuts. Altogether, psychological reasoning clearly seems to be a case of (ii), as opposed to the ideal reasoning, which seems to be the case of (i). Now we are able to summarize the discussion in this section. Suppose that you do not understand history and historical events. You have two possibilities available: either you resort to general rules, but you also explain how details fit into these rules. You do not really understand empirical ways of psychological reasoning. Examples from the heuristic inductive reasoning and their explanation allow that rules are not unanimously followed, and so that there are shortcuts. So what do you do in order to explain such cases of the domain (b) to someone who does not understand what is going on in it? First, you have to spell out general rules appropriate for that domain. Then you have to explain how these general rules were not appropriately followed because there were some shortcuts used in respect to these rules. The reason that the shortcuts were used here is the empirical and inductive nature of the area or of the domain under investigation. You have to be attentive that there is still the normative authority of the general in the domain (b), which is explained by the method (ii). This normative authority of the general appears to be breached because of exceptions that surface in it. But in fact it is not. What explains to somebody the ways in which we psychologically reason is the appeal to general rules with exceptions (ii), and not an appeal to the narration (iii). Narration is still used in psychological explanation, but it is dominated by generalities with exceptions, which therefore obtain their normative authority.

101 Narration and Relevance Now we must ask ourselves what is the best way to go in explaining some case from the domain (c) to somebody that failed to grasp it. How is the case (c) explained thus? It has to be explained by the usage of narration. Cases belonging to the domain (c) will then not involve any generalities but will be cases of particularism. Particularism is a position that does not allow for normative authority of general laws. What cases are appropriate to illustrate the point (c)? We used moral judgment and works of art as domains where the particular cases of (c) apply. Imagine that there is somebody who simply does not understand the weight and working of moral judgment and who also does not grasp why a work of art should matter. This person does not present a case of moral and aesthetic idiot but a case of a moral and aesthetic ignorant. So she is able to learn. How would you explain moral judgments and works of art to his person? In the case of domain (c) it seems most natural to proceed via narration (iii). You tell to person the story in order for her to understand why moral action had the shape it did, and why it was a good action because of having shape like that. You tell the person the story, and after a while she may grasp the story. You can also appeal to general rules (i) such as “Lying is wrong”, but these will not really explain things in interesting cases. And these are exactly the cases that the person does not really understand. Neither can the appeal to general rules with exceptions (ii) do the trick. You can of course partially shed some light at the situation by appealing to some general rule and by explaining why this rule had to come equipped with exceptions (ii) – perhaps there were several generalities involved into the situation at hand, and some intuitive judgment had to be made. But the overall situation would be better explained by using (iii), thus by the usage of narration. Actually, moral judgments provide a good illustration as they appear in works of art, as the topics these works are dealing with. Many times the center of the work of art is a moral dilemma such as it is depicted in a drama, for example in Aeschylus’ Antigone, or in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Suppose that you do not understand why someone (Hamlet, or Antigone) did what he or she did. You can of course use general rule, or appeal to general rule ((i) or (ii)) in order to explain this. But it is better for you if you use narration (iii), especially if the case is interesting and if you wish to explain why the action was relevant, why it mattered in the situation,

102 and also why it mattered in the situation that the action should be taken in such a way as it was. Narration (iii) provides the appropriate shape that explains the situation then, with its background structuring and with the salient points that come into focus through this structuring. Now you ask yourself: Where is the narration actually and usually used? Where is narration at its best, where is the place that narration feels to be its home? The answer is: in the literature. This is where interesting situations and where hard moral dilemmas abound. Take the case of Hamlet or of Oedipus. Both are covering names for situations, for stories or actions or even for the absence of actions that cannot be explained by general exceptionless rules (i) at all. Antigone: exceptionless rules of the city (i) are applied in the story, but this does not account for the tragic twist in the dramatic situation. Whatever accounts for the tragic twist can be just something that is provided for by narration, i.e. by the procedure that does not include exceptionless general rules (i) as explanatory tools. And neither does it include general but exception riddled rules (ii) as explanatory tools. Imagine that you explain Antigone by pointing out that there was exception here in the following of general rule. She buried her dead brother and that was exception to the rule that should be respected by anyone in the city once that it was issued as an order. This stress put on exception would not help to explain the situation in the least. What is needed for explanation is the illumination of the interesting difficult conflict, and this conflict can be appropriately rendered just by narration, by exposing the narrative structure, by pointing out salient features and by showing the landscape that gave rise to it. It will not be possible to accomplish this demonstration by the explanation appropriate for (a), i.e. by the means of exceptionless general rules, nor by the explanation appropriate to (b), i.e. by general rules with exceptions. As already stressed, it does not help you to understand the plot in Antigone if you just point out that she broke the rules of the city, that there were exceptions to these accepted general rules. Well, there were also rules of another sort involved, let us call them rules of the heart. These are the rules that oblige you to pay respect to the dead, to a dead relative. It would be even wrong to explain this by resorting to the clash of rules, or to the pluralist principles that ignite the clash. The conflict is much subtler, and it may only be accounted for by the engaging description of the landscape that reveals itself through the narrative procedure.

VI. PARTICULARIST COMPOSITIONALITY Particularist compositionality is offered as a realistic possibility, especially if we take a look at problems encountered in the case of ubiquitously present generalist proposals designed to explain compositionality. It is argued that generalism is not even able to support compositionality in the form of ceteris paribus generalities endowed with exceptions. Thus, no form of normative authority of the general is able to explain compositionality, and a good bet is that particularist patterns do in fact accomplish this job. Particularism is the view developed in the theory of morals. Its main claim is that moral action is not guided by general principles, but by an appropriate adjustment to the rich and holistic non-repeatable circumstances. According to generalism valence of moral features stays the same over a range of cases, which results in a general pattern. Particularism buys just unique relevant patterns proper to single cases. Particularism can be extended to other areas that bear some substantial relation to normativity, of which language furnishes an example. We propose to look at the question whether particularism-inspired compositionality would be a viable option. Presuppositions of the Classicist View of Compositionality Presuppositions of the classicist view of compositionality, such as proposed by (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988) include: (i)

Generalist and atomist view of rationality, with the following basic constituents: a. atomistic view of parts b. simple rule-based and tractable compositional structure (ii) In order to retain rationality one must pay full respect to productivity (because one plausibly anticipates to find it in rational beings, and actually one does find it there), and productivity can only be achieved by systematicity and compositionality constraints. (iii) From (ii) it follows that (i) and from – (i) it follows that – (ii); so one must buy (i) and (ii).

104 There is another alternative though that (with some necessary modifications) buys (ii) but rejects (i) and (iii). This possibility may be labeled particularist compositionality or weak compositionality. The inspiration for the alternative option (ii) is already present in the particularist view on the role of general principles and rules in ethics. It may be discerned in Dancy’s work on rationality, practical judgment and meaning (Dancy 1993, 2000, 2004). Classicists try to retain requirement of meaning constancy by arguing for appropriateness of general patterns and by diminishing the importance of contextual variation. They try hard to keep in charge atomist normative authority of the unique lexical meaning. This presents one way of following intuitions as one is confronted with cases of metaphorical meaning. Another way to go is to embrace the fact that metaphorical and other meanings are well understood and used by natural language speakers. The intuition will tell you then that atomistic meaning presuppositions have to be rejected. Classicists see structure to be possible just on the basis of atomistic meaning ingredients undergrid by tractable computational rules leading to general patterns. If you abandon this route, they argue, you stay with just a list of disconnected compositional facts involving meaning, which has to happen in the case of connectionist approach. But just how should we preserve rationality and productivity without the presuppositions of classicist compositionality? An alternative non-classicist structure There is the possibility of an alternative non-classicist structure and of nonclassicist language of thought, as based upon the proposal of dynamical cognition. “It is entirely possible that normative standards are like competent human cognition, in this respect – i.e., that normative standards are too complex, too subtle, and too sophisticated to be formulated as exceptionless general principles.” (Horgan and Tienson 1996, 143 /HT/) The logical space of possibilities needs to be extended if we should account for the actual rationality, productivity and compositionality as displayed by cognizers. Where Classicism Goes Wrong There are two main directions where classicists go wrong: 1. the supposition of atomistic meaning and not being able to explain cases of metaphors

105 and of double meaning 2. the supposition that if you do not buy atomistic meaning and rigid rules, neither compositionality nor systematicity are possible. As against this, we claim that compositionality does not necessarily need to be tied to generalism. Particularist non-arbitrariness of composition is possible. Atomistic meaning presupposition and the context The classicist compositionality argument for productivity has problems with its requirement about keeping the same meaning of the constituent compositional parts over a range of cases.63 In the sentence “The man kicked the bucket” expressions “kicked” and “bucket” do not appear with their standard lexical meaning, but with what may be dubbed their metaphorical meaning. The particularist view is that even if we try to save atomism by attributing several meanings to the same expression – so meaning of “good” would differ according to its appearance in “good killing”, “good person” – this would not tell us anything about the meaning of “good” in a certain particular case. Our understanding always succeeds in context, which atomists are unable to explain by just breaking things down into their supposed constituents. Once we grasp this, it can serve as rejection of the classicist argument that context is overestimated. Each breaking down of context into parts makes your position only worse, because you cannot explain why in this or another particular case this meaning is used. Classicist compositionality and systematicity are not viable. Presupposition of atomistic and tractable compositionality and systematicity conditions “The man kicked the bucket” case is interpreted by classicists in the way that understanding of this sentence would depend upon the understanding of other sentences, such as “The bucket kicked the man”, “The woman kicked the bucket”, “The man kicked the stone”. But none of these sentences will help us in understanding the original sentence in its metaphorical meaning, because the meaning of this sentence is formed entirely under the normative pressures of a specific context. 63

In the theory by Fodor and Pylyshyn this requirement or presupposition is present in their Compositionality Principle: “insofar as language is systematic, a lexical item must make approximately the same semantic contribution to each expression in which it occurs. […] Similarity of constituent structure accounts for the semantic relatedness between systematically related sentences only to the extent that the semantical properties of the shared constituents are context-independent.” (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988, 42)

106 Whether we understand an expression literally or metaphorically depends upon the context where the sentence is used. If it is used in the context of things going on in your yard, the meaning will be literal. If the context is that of a violent death, the context will be metaphorical. Then sentences like “The man died of a violent death.” will become important for the understanding/production of the first sentence. If we look at these two sentences, they are close indeed. But according to the classicist view, there is nothing meaning-relevant that would tie them together. Despite that there is no link here according to the classicist, we can still introduce systematicity. The understanding of the first sentence depends upon the understanding of the second. This is one way how to grasp contextual systematicity. There is a question though how you should understand atomistic and literal lexical meaning. We can help ourselves with Dancy’s thought that we do not need to have an unchangeable kernel of meaning coming with each expression, even if one allows for some kind of default meaning. Default meaning is not clearly fixed. It is half-standard meaning, not the most usual meaning. Even if we understand the default meaning, we do not necessarily need to understand all the other meanings proper to the same expression. A generalist introduces the basic meaning and allows for soft aberrations from it, for whatever needs further contextual explaining. Default meaning is the enabling condition for meaning. In the case of classicist organic unity, such as defended by Moore, all expressions retain their meaning. But once as they appear in a whole, their composed meaning may become different. So we get the dominance of organic unity upon standard meanings. According to the particularist this cannot be a sensible approach. For we can ask how a certain standard meaning can contribute a meaning that it lacks as a part to the meaning of the expression as a whole. Particularist talks about the meaning-in-thiscase and not about the standard meaning. There is then the dominance of the context over all expressions in the sentence: Meaning-in-this-case-1, Meaning-in-this-case-2, …, Meaning-in-this-case-n. Because context dominates now, we can explain how the metaphorical meaning comes about: because we uttered it in this context. Moore and the classicists cannot explain this. Contrary to classicists, we do not propose to treat aberrations from lexical meanings as to be adjusted empirical departures from general pattern of meaning for the item in question. We rather propose to generalize irregularity in meanings for a certain lexical item so that one finishes up

107 with a list of items. Each of the items however will not come without the structure. The holistic structure determining contextual meaning of the item at the occasion of each of its appearances upon the list is the structure of the relevant beautiful pattern specific for the case in question. Lexical meaning is not rejected, for it plays an important role as the enabling condition in the background structure determining the particular meaning. The competent users’ knowledge of meanings is thus not the knowledge of general rules involving classicist systematicity and compositionality. It is closer to disposition concerning the proper use – a skill that allows us to change easily form one context to another. An outline of particularist compositionality now starts to unleash itself, which is much closer to our capabilities for rationality and productivity than either classicists or connectionists would suggest. Accordingly, the prospective particularist compositionality dynamical cognition inspired proposal is better off at explaining all of these than this is the case either for classicist or for connectionist approaches. The role of generalities becomes that of the background enabling conditions without the normative authority of general patterns. General patterns give way to the morphological content as the holistic background positioning and relevance providing structure. Productivity depends upon particularistically conceived systematicity and compositionality conditions that do not require parts to make the same contribution or the contribution in the range of the same polarity every time they occur. Particularist normative authority of meaning is intrinsically involved into a certain context, which makes the varying contribution much more natural and plausible. Particularist view about meaning is not condemned to arbitrariness though. There is an underlying non-classicist holistic structure of beautiful patterns. Such a structure brings relevance with it without the prevalent engagement of generalities. Holism should not be viewed as promoting an arbitrarily composed intermingling of parts. The meaning of concepts or sentences depends upon the meaning of other relevant concepts or sentences. We can retain compositionality and show respect to the productivity presupposition (ii) on the basis of particularist non-arbitrariness. The Possibility of the Particularist Non-Arbitrariness of Composition Potrč (2002c) has argued in the following direction: even if there exist some principles, these do not necessarily need to be generalist principles.

108 The principle such as metaphysics related Non Arbitrariness Of Composition or NAOC principle may well be compatible with particularism, as long as the relevant structure is preserved. NAOC principle makes it clear how it is possible for particularism to dismiss the objection that it needs to bring arbitrariness along with it. One way to look at this matter is to distribute the job of generalist principles to the area of ultimate ontology, whereas particularist principles and structure would be recognized in the area of the regional ontology. A similar possibility to recognize nonarbitrariness of composition should be recognized in the area of compositionality and meaning, we believe. Although in the following exercise in the area of compositionality and meaning we will not dig into the distinctions comparable to these of ultimate and regional ontology. We will rather look at an approach that recognizes some flexibility in handling compositionality, and also recognizes a particularistically based non-arbitrariness of composition structure there, although it is obstructed in its explicit effort to do this because of its uneasy ways of trying to uphold generalist bonds to which it continues to be committed in the sense of the overall project. The approach of Dynamical Cognition in the area of models of mind has brought to attention the possibility of a relevant structure that is not a classicist structure. According to Dynamical Cognition approach there is a non-classical Language Of Thought that goes a long way towards embracing particularist or weak compositionality for which we argue to be the actual compositionality. The Dynamical Cognition approach however is unable to articulate compositionality under that very name. The reasons for this are in that compositionality and the semantics related to it are of particularist nature, that they follow the path of particular patterns, and not that of generalist patterns. Dynamical Cognition approach however, at least in its HT64 rendering, still follows general patterns, and thereby it follows the normative authority of the general, even if this means embracing generalities with exceptions or ceteris paribus clauses. So ceteris paribus approach loses compositionality from it sight because this approach is generalist, whereas compositionality as the main structural feature founding the 64

HT is used as an abbreviation for the position in the Horgan T. and Tienson, J. 1996 book Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology. The position of this book is that of Dynamical Cognition as a model of mind, based upon ceteris paribus clauses or upon generalities with exceptions. HT is used here as if it would designate a certain unique person holding such a view, despite that the actual authorship comes from a joint effort of two persons. HT also captures the individual that it designates in a certain moment of time. It is possible that none of the actual persons entering into the 1996 time slice of HT now still shares exactly the same view.

109 meaning is particularist. Such a position of HT is understandable if we consider that his main task is to argue against exceptionless generalities ruling over cognition, opposing to these the kind of generalities that allow for exceptions or ceteris paribus clauses. But once as we recognize the possibility of the existence of particularist beautiful and relevant patterns for which we push here, it becomes quite natural for us to offer help to HT so that he would recognize his own position in semantics and compositionality as being that of particularist compositionality. We will first take a look at where compositionality gets articulated in HT. The answer is that compositionality is articulated in the Fundamental Principle of Cognitive Design (FPCD). FPCD is indeed a rendering of compositionality, and specifically it is a rendering of particularist compositionality. Then we ask why, if this is the case, FPCD is not explicitly recognized as principle instituting compositionality. The answer is that the issue for HT is to argue for ceteris paribus (CP) generalities as against exceptionless generalities. But CP generalities are still generalities, and so we have to recognize that the normative authority of the general leads the HT project. As FPCD offers a particularist pattern covering compositionality and meaning it becomes understandable that it may not be possible to adequately account for it by the help of the generalist CP patterns. Once we see this, it becomes a natural charitable gesture to offer help to HT so that he would recognize his own compositionality proposal for what it is. HT does indeed articulate well productivity and systematicity. These are compatible with generalist interpretation, and systematicity presents a syntactic requirement for productivity. Compositionality that involves semantic contribution to productivity is a much harder issue. It turns out however that it is a much harder issue for an approach based upon general patterns. As semantics does actually follow particularist patterns, and as FPCD presents such a pattern, this will help HT to recognize FPCD as dealing with compositionality and meaning. Where does compositionality get articulated in HT? Let us first recapitulate some basic moves here. Productivity is one main issue for HT, for productivity is related to the question of the structure enabling intelligent systems and an effective cognition. Productivity in linguistic matters is the capacity to produce an infinite number of wellformed sentences upon the basis of a finite number of input data. The child gets a limited number of input blocks, such as “mama”, “dad”, “car”, “cat” and “mat”. Then at one moment in time he becomes able to produce a po-

110 tential infinity of well-formed strings or sentences, such as “The cat is on the mat”. Productivity is a cognitive ability that needs an explanation though. The explanation comes through a structure that enables production. This structure may be assured through syntactic and semantic preconditions. Syntactic precondition figures systematicity, which may be explained in the following manner: It is impossible for an intelligent cognizer to be able to form the sentence “John loves a girl”, but at the same time being unable to form this other sentence, “A girl loves John”. So the ability to master syntactic frames into which to put the items is one precondition for productivity. Another precondition for productivity is compositionality, which basically requires the items in question to retain the same semantic meaning. So the word “cat” should retain the meaning cat through several occasions of its appearance. It does not seem that productivity would be really possible if the word “cat” would mean cat on one occasion, dog on another occasion, and car on the third occasion, in an arbitrary manner. So a certain semantic constancy of basic features that assures structure seems to be needed for productivity and thus for intelligent behavior of cognizer to stay in place. The above description of enabling conditions for productivity fits well into the generalist approach. Notice that syntactic structure will be typically guided by propositional logic-like setting of a tractable kind. And constancy of meaning of a feature along several contexts is assured by an atomistic generalist account. The presupposition of the independence of units of meaning from the context is important for the ability of systematicity and compositionality to jointly explain productivity in the classicist view. Fodor and Pylyshyn stress this in a repeated manner, and they even argue that contextuality attributed to language is widely overestimated. HT does not embrace the straight and unlimited generalist account of cognition. At least he argues for some exceptions customary coming along with generalist principles. And he wishes to articulate a picture of cognition that is quite different from the generalist account. So there seems to be a tension in HT’s approach. On the one hand he still embraces a generalistbased story of cognition, even if this is a generalist story allowing for exceptions. On the other hand he wishes to promote a real wide range of approaches to cognition, some of which, such as Dynamical Cognition itself, do really transcend generalism. But the immense novelty of this direction towards recognizing particularist patterns as being in the basis of structure allowing for productivity cannot perhaps be straightforwardly recognized

111 by an approach that still clings to generalism, even to general patterns allowing for exceptions. HT in his book does well discuss productivity and systematicity. But although he perhaps entertains the feeling that he did discuss compositionality in there, he certainly did not do it in an explicit manner.65 Despite this we think that HT does discuss compositionality in his book, although in an implicit manner, without mentioning the expression, in a fundamental principle of cognitive design that he proposes. At least this is what we argue. Compositionality is articulated by the help of the Fundamental Principle of Cognitive Design (FPCD). FPCD is indeed a rendering of compositionality. There is a real issue where compositionality – in opposition to productivity and systematicity – is articulated in the HT book. Productivity and systematicity are found in the register of the HT book. But not compositionality. Given that compositionality targets the structure that enables the meaning, proper for enabling productivity, we will look where in the HT book meaning is discussed.66 This happens to be the case with the Fundamental Principle of Cognitive Design (FPCD): “The Fundamental Principle of Cognitive Design: The highdimensional topography of the activation landscape and the positioning of TCS-realizing points on that landscape are jointly just right to subserve content-appropriate cognitive transitions for the whole vast range of potential TCSs the cognitive system has the capacity to instantiate.” (HT, 154) The search of HT book is for a structure that is non-classicist, but that nevertheless enables intelligent cognition. HT calls his proposal that of Dynamical Cognition (DC). DC distinguishes itself from classicist cognition model of mind proposal, among other things, by the difference at the middle level of cognitive system’s description, according to Marr’s proposal. 65

In a private correspondence HT said that he tends to summarize his approach towards compositionality such as proposed in his book. But there is no explicit discussion of compositionality to be found in the register of HT book at all, despite of his several counts of mentioning productivity and systematicity. 66 At the very beginning of his book, HT delimits his inquiry in such a manner that it would not include the discussion of contentfull intentional states and of origins of intentionality.

112 Whereas we find an algorithm at the middle level of cognitive system’s description in the case of the classicist proposal, there are mathematicalstate transitions to be found at this level according to the generic proposal. (HT, 45) The generic proposal subsumes the algorithmic one as its subcase, a sub-case with the unwanted consequence that it is not rich enough if measured with the actual performance to be found in cognizers, and therefore also that it is not realistic. FPCD describes the generic picture of what happens at the middle level of cognitive system’s description. HT borrows from connectionism inspired picture of cognition.67 There are not tractable algorithms that would dominate this picture, but a dynamical high-dimensional landscape. Connectionists usually talk about a big number of dimensions, perhaps one dimension for each neuron, this dimension offering a mathematical projection of this neuron’s attached potential activity space. As brain has many neurons and as the resulting potential rich structure attached to it has many more dimensions than we would be able to cognitively capture, we help ourselves by a useful metaphor of a mathematically described multidimensional landscape. Inclines and caption points appear upon this landscape, indicating directions where a representation coming to the cognitive system will have a tendency to settle. Notice that the mentioned representation comes with the content, and that it thus brings the meaning. Notice also that according to this picture, each representation gets positioned upon a rich background multidimensional space, where the tendency that it may bring along is shaped by the forces of the background landscape upon which it gets positioned. The resulting meaning is a real context-related and context-infested outcome. Both the tendency of a certain representation and the underlying landscape upon which the representation gets positioned determine the resulting meaning. This meaning is each time at least slightly different and variable because of the impact of the background landscape upon which the representation gets positioned. But the outcome of meaning is not arbitrary, because it is related to the structure that is offered by the constantly molded rich background landscape. Actually, FPCD claims that cognitive design is such that the background landscape and the positioning of representations upon this land67

Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988, p. 45, say) in advance condemn the very possibility of the connectionist approach explaining productivity, systematicity and compositionality. HT to the contrary uses connectionism as an inspiration upon which to build an approach of Dynamical Cognition.

113 scape jointly determine the outcome, the Total Cognitive States (TCSs) that the cognitive system displays. Upon the landscape, these TCSs are realized as the TCS-realizing points. Whatever will be displayed at the higher level of cognitive system, the occurrent cognitive states of this system, is thus potentially determined here at the middle level, offering a structure and non-arbitrariness, without the need of any algorithms to intervene in the process and to determine its outcome. The topography of the activation landscape guides potential cognitive transitions. Notice now that there is a hand-in-glove or joint interaction of “content-appropriate cognitive transitions” here that determine the meaning. So what is described by FPCD is actually a semantic precondition for productivity. It is a description of how representations follow a structure in such a way that they result in the production of the relevant meaning. In this way compositionality is articulated by the help of the Fundamental Principle of Cognitive Design (FPCD). FPCD is indeed a rendering of compositionality. Compositionality is a requirement to explain how the meaning can contribute to productivity. In the above picture meaning does contribute to productivity in a much more plausible manner as this would be possible for atomist generalist requirements involving compositionality. In fact, the FPCD picture also brings systematicity or syntactic requirements in a much more plausible interdependency relation than this is accounted for by the classicist generalist picture concerning compositionality. It gives the sense to how the background structure of the cognitive system is related to the issues of meaning. This is not possible in a real plausible manner by the generalist requirement to substantially limit the issue of compositionality to atomism. FPCD is a rendering of particularist compositionality – a story telling how meaning is possible on the basis of particularist dynamical patterns. FPCD actually presents a case of particularist dynamical pattern supporting the production of meaning. It is not difficult to see not only that FPCD offers a story featuring compositionality. FPCD picture offers a particularist compositionality. What are characteristics of particularism? They feature embracing of holism as against atomism. Particularism also offers normative authority of particular patterns and their relevance, as against the normative authority of generalist patterns. Now the picture of compositionality offered by FPCD certainly does not offer any atomistic proposals about how the meaning enters into cognitive processing. Rather it offers the background multi-dimensional dy-

114 namical molding landscape picture, which seems to be the very mark of holistic approach. The meaning and its role in cognition is certainly also not rendered by FPCD according to generalist patterns, which opt for the projection of the same atomistic not changeable and context independent meaning of a certain feature over a whole range of cases. Rather, the joint molding of “the high-dimensional topography of the activation landscape and the positioning of TCS-realizing points on that landscape” leads us to expect the contribution of meaning of a single feature as a joint result of the tendency that it brings along with the positioning upon the non-classically rendered background. This however means that each single appearing of the TCS as meaning determining feature will be slightly different and thus substantially context dependent. But there will be the contribution of the structure, and nothing will really happen in an arbitrary manner. Just that this structure will not be the one assured by generalist projection, but that proper to each single case. This all happens in an automatic adjusting manner in the cognitive system. What is compositionality? A plea for meaning as production, as creativity, along the poetic lines. There is the sheer wrongfulness of atomistic and generalist conceiving of compositionality as a function of tractable coming together of atomistic parts. One problem for such a view is delimiting the units of meaning: are these words, phrases, sentences, narration? The narrative contextual meaning seems to dominate atomistic parts such as words, so that these atomistic parts are even not necessary for the production of a certain narrative meaning. If meaning and compositionality are described as based upon particularist patterns by FPCD, this seems to be quite a long shot away from the usual generalist and atomistic presenting of compositionality. So at this point it seems to be sensible to ask in a fresh manner what exactly compositionality should be. If FPCD is right, then the real compositionality is not assured by an atomistic fixing of meaning and by its tractable extending over a range of generalist pattern governed cases. Rather, a new way to look at compositionality offers itself. Compositionality determines the effectiveness of meaning in a cognitive system. But this effectiveness just cannot come through a shallow repetition according to generalist pattern. The meaning is rather a production, a creativity, something that happens according to poetic lines. The meaning of the word “fly” in John Donne

115 verse68 certainly does not seem to be reducible to the most standard dictionary meaning. Such examples clearly show the sheer wrongfulness of atomistic and generalist conceiving of compositionality as a function of tractable coming together of atomistic parts. And it is clear that poetry is an effective and relevant production of meaning. One problem for the generalist view of compositionality is that it atomistically delimits the units of meaning. But are meanings really limited to single words, to phrases? Perhaps they are determined by sentences and words that just bring in some meaning forces as the offered tendencies that may be and in most cases are overridden by the context in which they appear. But a sentence does not offer a context enough. Narration seems to be a much better candidate. The narrative contextual meaning seems to dominate atomistic parts such as words, so that these atomistic parts are even not necessary for the production of a certain narrative meaning. Consider that the same story, the same fable, with the same meaning, may be narrated by a different choice of words, but still having then same meaning. Consider that historical narration actually enriches itself by joining of contradictory narrative explanations. This all shows the profoundly wrong proposal of compositionality as meaning of a composite entity such as a sentence being composed of meaning of its constituent parts and of the manner of coming together of these parts. According to this simplistic atomistic generalist approach the meaning of the sentence “The cat is on the mat” would depend upon the contribution of meanings of semantic atoms such as “cat”, “mat”, “being on”, and upon the manner of these coming together. But this is just a parody of meaning which is really a production and thrives upon unexpected but relevantly structured particularist patterns. Unhappily, such parody of compositionality was basically accepted as an adequate rendering of compositionality by most analytic philosophers, from Dummett and Davidson to Blackburn. More on FPCD FPCD is a principle. As a principle, FPCD is not a generalist kind of principle; it is rather a particularist kind of principle, or at least particularism compatible kind of principle. So it is a kind of principle comparable to the 68

This verse is also reproduced in the next section: “Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly”.

116 Non Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC) principle that does not allow for arbitrariness, all in providing the needed structure. One lesson is that there exist particularist principles – the principles that follow particularist and not generalist patterns. The existence of such particularist principles is hard to acknowledge, as we are so much used for the principles to be attached to generalist patterns. But this is false. One has to acknowledge particularist principles, one species of which is NAOC. In this last mentioned principle, there is composition, and so there is structure. This is a particularist structure. FPCD has the dynamics and richness intrinsically built into it. The hand in glove syntax and semantics cooperating feature is the guiding principle. These kind of features point in the direction of a particularist structure. Dynamics is not something for which generalist patterns would easily allow. Neither is richness something that generalist patterns would easily account for. The bottom line is that HT is still under the spell of generalist patterns that govern the Fodor–Pylyshyn account of compositionality. This is the reason that he cannot even range the FPCD principle into the discussion of productivity. FPCD introduces particularist pattern, related to meaning. So HT elaborates this as it should be, in a particularist way, but is unable to treat it in the area of productivity-systematicity discussion according to the mode of Fodor-Pylyshyn to which he sticks in an explicit manner. Fodor-Pylyshyn offers a generalist approach, and generalist pattern as a way to tackle things. But FPCD actually brings in and works out particularist approach. FPCD presents a particularist pattern. The bottom line is that there are these two kinds of patterns: general patterns and particularist patterns. FPCD presents a case of particularist pattern. But the whole debate about productivity is made according to generalist patterns. So HT does expose particularist pattern of FPCD. Well in opposition to the generalist presupposition that the meaning should be atomistic and thus generalist, the meaning is rather holistic and particularist. Why? Because the whole of the context determines the meaning. You cannot say that the meaning is that of a word. This would already take you down the atomist and generalist line. The meaning is not (as Dummett presupposes) the meaning of a whole, of a sentence, which is composed out of atomistic elements, say of words. The meaning rather belongs to the whole of the sequence. You cannot identify the meaning atomistic blocks (Word? Phrase? Sentence? Paragraph? Chapter? Do these have vague borders?).

117 Rather, the meaning seems to be much more dynamic. Consider narration.69 The meaning in narration is not that of a word, of a sentence, of a paragraph, of the whole chapter. Consider that narration may proceed in several ways and that it still may remain the same narration. There are different narrative forms of the same story or of the same fable such as narrated by different storytellers. But it is still the same old story, the same narrative block. This shows that the meaning is really holistic and not atomistic at all. The same narration stays there over several quite distinctive variations along several different narrators, say narrators of folk fables, or narrators of historical events, or narrators of historical stories. Consider that in this later case the same event will be even enriched by variations in narrative approaches. If different political approaches of narration are applied to the same historical event, we can say that these approaches are in a sense not incompatible at all. They rather give a broader and sharper meaning or richer overall meaning to the same event. So this is a proof that inconsistencies enrich the meaning, and in this sense they do create meaning. But if this is the case then all the generalist presuppositions about atomism and tractability of meaning are simply false. There is no real atomist meaning, because there are wide variations possible in narration that contribute to the meaning, that enrich it. Atomism really cannot survive. An important feature that goes well along with dynamicism and narration, but not with atomism and generalism: meaning is created; it is an effect of sense. This cannot at all be captured by presuppositions of atomism and tractability. Each time there is a meaning, a real sense, a novelty should be created. This is not even sufficiently appreciated by Freud who still has these atomistic explanations of puns, related to words, or to parts of words. The meaning goes well over these, it dominates the elements that are involved into it. The dominance and the novelty of meaning are closely related. But neither of these may be adequately rendered by atomistic and generalist tractable patterns. We have effect of meaning, meaning as something creative. This only shows that meaning is really particular and that it is not reducible to atomistic elements and to tractable procedures, in the manner as Dummett supposes, when he determines the meaning to be a function of tractable bringing together of atomistic words meanings into the meaning of a sentence. This generalist picture is completely wrong picture of the meaning, not just slightly misguided. The lesson to be learned here is that meaning is really an effect of surprise, of particular patterns. So the meaning is intrinsically related to the particularist and holistic effects. This is 69

See also previous chapter.

118 how our language functions and evolves. This is also why the meaning poses such a difficult question. But it is a difficult question for generalist patterns, not for the particularist patterns view. The perspective should be completely changed towards particularist patterns in order to understand meaning and compositionality principles related to it. Holism and dynamics then become important for meaning, because these follow particularist patterns. Is this holistic approach captured by FPCD? The answer is: yes. Notice that FPCD proposes dynamics; it proposes holistic and constantly changing landscape that is rich and does not proceed along the atomist and generalist ways. The meaning is not a matter of atomistic elements, according to FPCD. It is matter of hand-in-glove collaboration of syntactic and semantic forces. What does this mean? It means that there is this landscape, not tractable or atomistically capturable, and that the meaning comes forward as an effect upon this landscape, with the change of this multidimensional landscape. HT talks about the “high-dimensional topography of the activation landscape”, thus about rich and dynamical background upon which semantics has its hold. What can one understand on the basis of this? That the meaning or semantic is really something holistic. There are thus holistic preconditions of the semantic meaning, the background that enables the meaning and that dominates it. We can take an example of poetry, of words used in a poem. It is clear that the whole of holistic background contributes to the meaning there, and certainly meaning is not a function of addition of atomistic meaning elements according to tractable procedures, in a kind of mereological manner. The meaning is rooted in the background, it is based upon the not tractable background. The dictionary meaning of words is nothing but a contributory factor in the holistic background of this multi-dimensional landscape. In a poem, the words do not have their meaning as a function of atomistic meaning coming together in a tractable manner. The background is of the utmost importance for the production of the meaning in a poem. Now we can read a poem. It is just not sensible to presuppose that the meaning given by the poem in question is a function of contribution of atomistic meaning ingredients. A poem makes it very explicit that a meaning of a certain word is given by the background landscape upon which the whole of poetic narration succeeds. Here is a verse from John Donne: 19 Call us what you will, we are made such by love;

119 20 Call her one, me another fly, It would be strange to claim that the word “fly” means an animal here that we usually designate by this name. You can see that the meaning of the word fly gives just an indication of direction towards the overall meaning of this verse inside the whole of the poem, and this succeeds upon a background landscape 70 Now background has the most important role in the overall production of meaning. The idea is that poetry is not an aberration of language, but that it shows the very truth about how language works. There is this background that structures the meaning, and also the meaning of so called elements that appear in the whole. There is no sense to insist upon an atomistic meaning of a word, such as of a word fly. The meaning is much wider, and it comes from the background. The generalistically accountable dictionary meaning of the word fly may at most figure as contributory indicator of some part of direction for the overall produced meaning. There is this activation landscape. This means that the background is much richer as that whatever gets activated upon it. Whatever is activated to determine the meaning of a whole is just one possibility upon this rich background. Because the background is holistic (multi-dimensional landscape is in the back of it) it just gives an indeterminate indication how the meaning should get its capture71. But once the pattern gets formed, also through whatever comes upon the background landscape, there is determinacy of the meaning, the determinacy that comes from the background particularist pattern. This pattern is not repeatable, it is unique, but it is not arbitrary at all. It gives the right and determinate direction to meaning through its unique particular determinateness. The activation landscape is the background for possible realizations of meaning. These realizations are unique. Whatever appears as a meaning here cannot be captured by atomistic means because of its rootedness upon the background of multi-dimensional landscape. The captions of meaning are determined by the background. They are just slogans or headers upon which the background comes to the fore. TCS’s are Total Cognitive States. The main mistake is to look at TCS’s in an atomistic manner. What is TCS of a poem, of your remark? Where exactly to delimit it? Such a delimitation is not possible because the 70

The landscape that was indicated by Searle as the background while he discussed intentionality. 71 Lacan mentioned the capturing point of meaning.

120 meaning that they show is determined in a holistic multi-dimensional background. There is rich topography of the background landscape. And there is positioning of the so called TCSs at this landscape. There is the talk about “cognitive transitions” that are “content appropriate”, i.e. the content determines the meaning. But content may best be seen perhaps as being rooted in the background landscape, so it is not some kind of atomistic matter. The meaning is thus as well holistic and not atomistic. Now let us come to the hand in glove picture. There is dynamics of the background landscape. By positioning of the captions of meaning upon the landscape, the background landscape gets molded itself. But molding of the rich dynamical landscape, all the time transformed by the positioning of TCS’s (vague indicator meaning forces) produces the effect of meaning, which is itself a dynamical matter, having to do with such things as surprise. The meaning is relevant, it becomes constantly the meaning through novelty, through the surprise. Notice also mentioning of a whole range of possible directions in which the meaning might go. The actual meaning is determined through a range of these possibilities. What is the teaching of the above? It is a view of production of meaning, and actually a view of meaning as production – as production upon a multi-dimensional landscape. This requires richness and holism. So meaning is produced in a hand and glove constantly appearing match of the background and positioning of TCS’s upon this background, which is itself a dynamical process. FPCD is a principle, but not a generalist and rather a particularist principle, better the manner of putting things together, a structure. It is a non-arbitrary structure built upon a particularist pattern, relevant pattern, i.e. beautiful pattern. The main claim was that FPCD introduces particularist pattern. Now this particularist pattern is actually what the production of meaning is based upon. But because of this an account of meaning is incompatible with the generalist Fodor-Pylyshyn account. HT also says the following about semantics and thus about the basis of meaning: “Key semantic properties and relations of total cognitive states are encoded within the structure of the mathematical system that is the locus of cognitive design. Semantic properties and relations are

121 encoded by mathematical properties and relations of mathematical states that realize those TCSs.” (HT, 155) This is actually rendering of the encoding of semantic properties. It is description of the cognitive background as the basis of meaning and of semantic properties, as possible activation states, that also exercise their force upon the actual meaning of TCS’s. There is this rich dynamical background that may only be described mathematically, because mathematical description fits to the dynamics of a system. The encoding however does not succeed arbitrarily but rather has a structure as its basis. This can only be a particularist shaped structure, based on holistic dynamical pressures bringing non-arbitrariness along with them. A Particularist Methodological Remark on HT Approach In FPCD a full-blooded holistic and particularistic approach seems to be present already. The question therefore looms large why in HT we cannot find compositionality in an explicit manner. One of the reasons besides to others that we elaborate is that the whole vocabulary or the conceptual scheme in HT book is attuned to soft generalities or to the ceteris paribus clauses. At the same time there is no direct vocabulary of beautiful patterns present in the HT book. In the sense of elaboration of FPCD picture and proposal, HT entirely appropriates particularism. But he is unable to make this last step of explicitly acknowledging it because the vocabulary that he accepts goes against it. If, on the other hand, you approach the problem of compositionality from the point of view of beautiful patterns, then it becomes somehow smoothly natural that you deny any kind of normative authority to general principles – both to the general principles in the rigid form without exceptions and also in the form of the soft ceteris paribus clauses. All that is needed in order to accomplish this is just the particularist interpretation of the FPCD principle. We will now argue for this point and for related issues. Why is FPCD not explicitly recognized as principle instituting compositionality, why does the discussion of FPCD not come under the heading of compositionality? The FPCD does not come under the heading of compositionality in HT, although the meaning is discussed in it, and the structural contribution of meaning to the cognitive capability of productiv-

122 ity. The answer to the question why FPCD is not explicitly recognized as a principle in the register of compositionality comes from the overall project into which HT is engaged. The overall HT project is to argue in favor of generalities with exception or for ceteris paribus generalities, as against the generalities without exception, in the area of philosophy of psychology and cognition. This is certainly a right track to follow and a valuable exercise. But CP generalities are still generalities. CP generalities are effective under the normative authority of the general that they bring along with them. But, can CP generalities contribute to the meaning or to the explanation of meaning at all? Consider Donne’s usage of the word “fly”. Now try to apply the following CP procedure to the meaning explanation of this case, something such as “Fly means fly, unless something in the context comes in and overrides the original lexical meaning”. We can see that there will be no explanation coming at all from such a principle. The reason is that it is a general normativity based principle. On the other hand, it seems that invoking of particularist patterns and of their contextually bound structure may show a direction of non-arbitrary explanation here. FPCD offers a particularist pattern covering compositionality and meaning. Try now to apply CP generalities account on FPCD. It turns out that it will not be able to work. The reason is that CP approach just offers general patterns as a measure. But it is not possible to account with the help of generalist patterns the specificity of particular pattern determining meaning, such as this is proposed by FPCD. It seems to be a good bet that particularist patterns will not be adequately represented by generalist patterns, such as by CP generalities. A natural gesture here is to offer a helping hand to HT and make him realize what he was up to as he endorsed FPCD. He was up to expose particularist patterns as founding meaning and compositionality. We may offer such help and give HT a little push in direction of particularism, for we do explicitly embrace particularist patterns as founding meaning and compositionality. It is interesting that in his book, HT articulates well productivity in the general sense and systematicity. But these are not semantic features. Systematicity, say, is a syntactic feature, and as such it is much sooner to be ranged under generalist patterns and under explanation according to these. Systematicity represents syntactic requirement for productivity. Compositionality and its adjoined semantic presents a much harder issue. It

123 does seem indeed that the issue of meaning is hard. Most people do opt for holistic view of meaning, but find it difficult to combine such a view with the rest of their overall atomistic and generalist tractable presuppositions in this area. Devitt opts for meaning molecularism, but again encounters similar generalism induced difficulties. Fodor offers atomistic account of meaning that appears as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of generalist atomism. However, compositionality is a hard issue for general pattern approaches only. Once as one embraces the possibility of particular patterns that bring relevance with them a kind for free, compositionality is not such a hard issue at all. Why? As semantics does actually follow particularist patterns, and as FPCD presents such a pattern, this will help HT to recognize FPCD dealing with compositionality and meaning. Semantic actually follows particular patterns. HT has seen this well enough. He has proposed FPCD as a particularist pattern. Once that we have explicitly embraced particularist patterns, we can help HT to recognize his move towards particularist compositionality that he was not able to recognize himself though, because of his commitment to generalist patterns, although these come in the form of generalities with exception CP patterns.

124

VII. DYNAMICAL COGNITION This chapter deals with certain topics from the field of philosophy of psychology that get the same inappropriate treatment due to the fallacies of general patterns and exceptionless rules. We propose some contextualist and particularist views of the encountered problems. In the first part we present a classical picture of the model of mind and show that it is fundamentally dominated by atomistic presuppositions. We present some problems that this rendition faces. As conclusion we offer the model of dynamical cognition as a holistic strategy that could encompass what turn out to be particularistic posits in this field. The classicist Language Of Thought model of mind (Fodor, 1975) came under criticism from the part of connectionist inspired models of mind (Rumelhart, McClelland, 1986). The presuppositions of the classicist model are: (1) Structurally complex mental representations, (2) Cognitive processing sensitive to the structure of these representations, (3) Exceptionless rules governed processing, (4) Syntactic structure of representations, (5) Tractably computable cognitive-transition function. Terence Horgan and John Tienson72 deny the ability of presuppositions (3) and (5) for serving a viable model of cognition. It turns out that classical Language of thought and connectionist models present just family squabbles. Contrary to connectionism, the new dynamical cognition approach proposes a Language Of Thought itself, although a non-classical one. The structure in the dynamical model is not assured by algorithms but by mathematical-state transitions at the middle level of system’s description, and not by tractable cognitive function but by cognitive-state transitions at the top level of the cognitive system’s description. At the middle level of dynamical system description the background of the morphological content (Potrč 1999) serves for positioning of total cognitive states at the top level of the system, according to a moving-target strategy. Dynamical cognition approach thus builds upon unique and holistic beautiful patterns, and not upon generalist patterns.

72

See their book Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology (MIT, 1996 [HT]).

126 Classical Cognitive Science and Marr’s Three Levels of Cognitive System’s Description In 1975 Fodor published his Language of thought book where he took the classical von Neumann architecture computer as the basis for a model of mind. At the time he could refer to this proposal as to the only game in town. The boost of representational approaches to mind was designed, among other things, as a move against behaviorism. What does the computer, the human or any cognitive intelligent system look like (notice that by moving computer into discussion we appropriate non-chauvinistic functionalist presupposition, as against type-identity theory)? Here is a description: “At one extreme, the top level, is the abstract computational theory of the device, in which the performance of the device is characterized as a mapping of one kind of information to another, the abstract properties of this mapping are defined precisely, and its appropriateness and adequacy for the task are demonstrated. In the center is the choice of representation for the input and output and algorithm to transform one into the other. At the other extreme are the details of how the algorithm and representation are realized physically – the detailed computer architecture, so to speak.” (Marr 1982, 24-25) We can thus distinguish between three levels of description of an intelligent system. Here are characterizations of these levels: Level 1: Cognitive-Transition Function - What is the goal of the computation? Why is this function appropriate and what is the logic of the strategy by which it can be computed? Level 2: Representation and Algorithm - How can this computational theory be implemented? In particular, what is the representation for the input and output, and what is the algorithm for the transformation? Level 3: Implementation - How can the representations and algorithm be physically realized? (HT, 21)

127 It turns out that human cognition is much richer and much more dynamic than it is possible to account for by tractable computational procedures. Descartes claimed that no automaton is in principle able to engage into a sensible conversation, and that no automaton is able to compute because computing is the mark of human intelligence. There is open-endedness of tasks on display in human cognition and agency. The frame problem additionally indicates the potential relevance of everything to everything else as distinguishable for human cognition and as incompatible with general exceptionless rules approach to cognition. The task is that of updating and that of adjusting to information in the changing world. The frame problem is “the problem of putting a ‘frame’ around the set of beliefs that may need to be revised in light of specified newly available information” (Fodor 1983, 112-113). Frame problem is a problem about how to obtain relevance. This is not possible on the basis of exceptionless PRL (Programmable Representation Level) rules (Dennett’s robot with a bomb attached upon its shoulder acts on the basis of such rules, and it has just a scarce possibility to survive). But we humans automatically get relevance in rich and intractable circumstances: We manage to move in crowded malls without bumping into each other, and sometimes we even manage to buy something useful there. Basketball players are another case of beautiful and dynamically active cognitive systems, as they use several layers and parameters of cognition and intelligence in a simultaneous way. Classicism is not able to account for these cases, not even in principle. Connectionism Connectionism appeared in the 1980s and it immediately drew attention of philosophers as the basis for a more realistic model of mind. Learning came in the foreground as well as the perceptual tasks, such as recognizing items on the basis of the incomplete input data. A connectionist net designed to differentiate between rocks and bombs inputs for the use of submarines is a known example. Connectionist models are naturally describable as dynamical systems. They are not based on algorithms, but on the mathematical description, which is appropriate for dynamical systems. Connections between neurons and dendrites are expressible in weights. Learning is important here as well, with its procedure of molding the multi-dimensional background cognitive landscape, where information eventually settles in basins of attraction.

128 Cognitive forces are a natural substitute for classical tractable algorithms. Multi-dimensional landscape figures forces that compete or that again cooperate between themselves. The strategy of the information settling follows multiple simultaneous soft constraint satisfaction. One natural question for connectionism is whether with it we do still have structure? Is syntax still there? We reject classical presupposition (3). An answer going even behind connectionist practice although using it as inspiration is to substitute algorithms at the middle level of cognitive system with the mathematical dynamical description. Algorithm is a subset of mathematical description anyway. We also reject classical presupposition (5). It is important that Total Cognitive States (TCS’s) do not comply to tractable cognitive transition function. Assumption (3) implies assumption (2), but assumption (2) does not imply assumption (3). Thus there is possible cognitive processing that is sensitive to the structure of representations, but which does not necessarily conform to exceptionless rules (programmable representation-level rules). (1)-(4) pertain to Marr’s middle level of description, whereas (5) fits to the top level of description. Assumption (3) is the most basic one for classicism, since it implies (1), (2) and (5). Assumption (4) adds the contention that the relevant structure in the representations is largely if not perhaps entirely syntactic. (HT, 29) An alternative approach to mentality must reject one or more of these assumptions. Connectionist approaches tend to reject (4). But one obtains relevance however by preserving syntactic structure (4). So (1), (2) and (4) are retained. This offers the basis for an account of relevant, i.e. beautiful patterns. Then we have to reject (3) and (5) because they are causes of classicist difficulties (for they promote general patterns). But what should or could substitute (3) and (5)? Recursive function theory and computational complexity theory are branches of discrete mathematics. Thus, Marr’s middle level is essentially a level of mathematical characterization of a cognitive system. Characterization of connectionist networks does not come from discrete mathematics, but from the theory of dynamical systems. As a mathematical framework, Dynamical Systems Theory is far richer than the theory of algorithms. From the point of view of Dynamical Systems Theory, algorithms are vanishing small special case. Thus, limiting oneself to algorithms in the determination of cognitive transitions is a very severe limitation, if sense can be made of the idea that a dynamical system can

129 somehow serve as the determiner of cognitive transitions. (HT, 29) Here is the summary comparison between Marr’s classical and generic levels: Level Top Middle Bottom

Marr Cognitive function Algorithm Implementation

Generic Cognitive-state transitions Mathematical state transitions Implementation (HT, 45)

The important point for nonclassicist retaining of the structure is the realization that syntax is possible without PRL (Programmable Representational Level) rules. Syntax includes productivity, systematicity and compositionality. Structure without part-whole mereology emerges upon the rich background and it automatically results from the dynamical pressures in this background. Classicist presuppositions (1), (2) and (4) suffice for syntax to be there, though. Thus, structure is possible on the nonclassicist basis – which is proper to dynamical systems. Embracing the possibility of non-classicist syntax, HT argue that soft laws are natural for the area of psychology.73 In psychology, generalizations come with exceptions (ceteris paribus clauses), in counter distinction with (quasi-)exceptionless general laws in such areas as physics. Soft generalities also appear in folk generalizations (“Slovenes are brave”; “Cheetahs are fast runners”, as against “All cheetahs are fast runners” or “Some cheetahs are fast runners”). The main claim of the soft laws approach to cognition is that the real features of cognition are richness, intractability, dynamics, automatically adjusting relevance, multi-dimensional dynamical space. HT conclude on the basis of this that cognition cannot conform to the PRL rules and therefore that it should be considered as being soft, amenable under ceteris paribus laws. They allow for deductive or quasi-exceptionless rules to take place (in cognition), but as a very special case of the overall normative authority proper to the general laws featuring exceptions or to the soft ceteris paribus rules.

73

See also the last section of chapter VI.

130 Dynamical Cognition and Morphological Content We say that the features characterizing cognition such as presented by HT seem to be realist enough. But contrary to what HT claim, there is no need to recognize these features of cognition as leading to any kind of general patterns, not even to general patterns with exceptions (ceteris paribus or soft laws). Much more close to the facts, the mentioned features characterizing cognition seem to describe particularist structure. If we look at an analogy with moral particularism, generalist normative views in ethics such as utilitarianism cling to such exceptionless view. Kant for example believed into something as the following: “You should always tell the truth, even if criminals are coming and asking you if there is this innocent victim here that they are looking for.” This seems to be a little bit strange position to take though. Consider also the case with this lady who has invited you to taste what she has cooked. Unfortunately her meal is just disgusting, in an objective manner. Despite that this is the case it seems to us that it would be actually morally wrong to tell her: “Your meal is disgusting”. To the contrary, it seems to us that it would be morally right and appropriate to tell her the following lie: “Your meal is excellent.” It also seems to us that it is morally appropriate not to respect Kant’s suggestions and that you should rather lie to those gangsters. One way to describe such cases is that they figure conflict between several principles, such as “Do not lie” and “Do not hurt a person’s feelings” in the poor cook’s case. As there are several principles, one should use intuition in the specific circumstances in order to estimate which way to go. Because there is more than one principle in the discussed case, this view is called pluralism. Now consider that pluralism still has the normative authority of the general as its guiding principle. There are several perfectly general principles to which it subscribes; just that intuition should resolve the conflict between them. Particularism, to the contrary, does not buy any normative authority of the general, but subscribes just to the normative authority of the particular case. Particularism claims that moral action and appropriateness is perfectly possible on the basis of particular cases, and not on the basis of any generalities. Because of the richness of the cognitive background that lead you automatically to your action, you acted on the basis of holistic and not on the basis of any tractable computable and atomistic considerations. The relevance (the direction of the action to be taken) came somehow for free on

131 the basis of this particular pattern that we are inclined to call Beautiful Pattern. We say that there is no need to allow for any generalities to exercise their normative authority across the area of cognition. Look at the features about which HT argued for as being characteristic for cognition: richness, holism, intractability, dynamics, multiple dimensionality, relevance. All of these characteristics which pertain to the real way how cognition works are compatible with particularism. There is no need for any generalities to be involved into them; these characteristics actually do describe particularism. Cognition is not tractable; rather it is dynamical. We have encountered the beginnings of this thought as we tried to give a sketch of belief fixation that would possibly result in justified belief. Now it is time to deliver a more systematic story about cognition that does not follow tractable procedures. It is the positive story about dynamical cognition. Here we draw on the work of Horgan and Tienson (1996). Again, there are five presuppositions of classical cognitive science: (1) Intelligent cognition employs structurally complex mental representation. (2) Cognitive processing is sensitive to the structure of these representations (and thereby it is sensitive to their content). (3) Cognitive processing conforms to precise, exceptionless rules, statable over the representations themselves and articulable in the format of a computer program. (4) Many mental representations have syntactic structure. (5) Human cognitive transitions conform to tractably computable cognitive-transition function. (HT, 24-5) Adversaries of classicism usually criticize (2) and (4) of these presuppositions. Their point is that non-classicist systems, such as connectionism, will have to abandon any structure, such as promoted by the model of language of thought, and substitute it with such things as skills which build rather on behavioral adaptation than on any ordered structure. As against this, it is possible to stick with the structure, thus to retain points (1), (2) and (4). Contrary to the now mentioned proposal it is then

132 better to reject points (3) and (5), which require tractability of cognitive processing. We obtain a language of thought, indeed a nonclassical language of thought. The belief here is that it is possible to retain structure, although this structure will be nonclassical. The structure will then be available even if there will be no conforming of the system to precise, exceptionless rules, and even if human cognitive transitions will fail to be tractably computable. Borrowing Marr’s model we can describe a cognitive system (such as human, hyena or perhaps computer) on the top level, where there are beliefs or information displayed. Besides to this, another description is possible at the middle level, where there is the program determining what will be displayed at the upper level. Yet another description concentrates simply on the fact that cognitive systems are also physical systems, and thus that they may be described as such. Whereas Marr proposed cognitive function on the top level, algorithm at the middle level, and implementation at the lowest level of description, the proposal is now to genericize the setting. Cognitive-state transitions will substitute cognitive functions, and mathematical-state transitions will substitute algorithms. This exactly means abandoning tractable rules of algorithm in classicism in favor of mathematical-state transitions at the middle level of description in the alternative genericized framework (compare abandoning point (3) above). It also means abandoning tractable cognitive function of classicism for cognitive-state transitions in the alternative approach (compare abandoning presupposition (5)). What is the resulting picture here? At the middle level of cognitive system's description we have rejected tractable algorithmic rules, or to express ourselves more adequately, we have incorporated them as just insignificant subset into the broader mathematical-state transitions framework, which is apt to describe the situation in a more broad way. This goes for the middle level of description. At the top level of description, the tractability of cognitive function − the order of appearance of actual beliefs or of other explicit states displayed by the system − is substituted by nontractable order of appearing. Although intractability is important here, the main point is retaining of the structure. Just that this structure is now obtained by nonclassical nontractable and dynamical means that are available to the system.

133 The resulting dynamical cognition approach observes total cognitive states (the displayed beliefs, say) realized as points at the middle mathematical level of the cognitive system's description. Mathematics here substitutes logic of classicism in providing the needed structure. Just that the structure will not be obtained now on the basis of exceptionless rules, but on the background of forces being active in the dynamical system. The middle level of description is best described as multi dimensional structure of potential transitions. In this way the approach characteristic for various connectionist models of computation is enlarged into a comprehensive overall dynamical picture. Total cognitive states are indeed points at the middle level of the system's description. But they are realized as total cognitive states of the system at the upper, intentional level of description. The mathematics at the middle level is needed in order to describe transitions and potential transitions in the multi dimensional landscape. We can picture ourselves transitions at this landscape as forces directing rolling down of points or small balls in order that they would join the local minima. Just that it is practically impossible to realistically picture ourselves the multi dimensionality of this landscape, given that we are accustomed to imagine mostly four dimensions. Dynamical cognition resulting from such an approach will not conform to the exceptionless principles. Classical computational model was substituted by much broader minded possibility, which seems to be closer to the actual richness of human cognition. Just think about all the richness of our memories and of the immense possibilities latently residing in our imagination. But think also about the richness of each concrete environment, in which we have to fulfill the tasks of perceiving, navigating and acting.

The Case of Epistemic Normativity From here it may be further concluded that (first-person) epistemic normativity does not conform to exceptionless general principles. Namely, if cognition is such that it is rich in such a way that it may not be accounted for by any general principles, one can suppose that standards of epistemic

134 normativity will be similar as well, because they will have to be established on the background of this kind of rich cognition. Exceptionless general principles of belief formation would mean just that, namely those normative rules will have no exceptions. Thus they would hold for every possible case. Epistemic normativity has its role in justification. If it would be based on exceptionless general rules though, it seems that it would hold for very few psychologically or cognitively plausible cases, roughly for the cases of deductive reasoning as the support of justification. But it may be doubted that deductive reasoning is the only adequate support for epistemic normativity. To the contrary, it may be presumed that most of the support for the justification background will not be deductive. The background of the rational belief formation comes from those forces existing in a belief system and determining it that are mostly not tractable. This also means that they are not exclusively occurrent, i.e. they are not limited only to what appears as explicit and as accessible to the cognizer. If we come back to levels of the cognitive system's description, we may say that the intentional total cognitive states are good candidates for explicit and occurrent cognition. But these states appear in nontractable order because their appearance is determined at the middle level of cognitive system's description. In dynamical cognition, the middle level turned out to be a kind of multi dimensional landscape where the inclines in this multi dimensional space determine directions that will be followed by possible transitions (of total cognitive states, appearing here in form of points). Forces determining transition are a kind of cognitive background that is not directly accessible to the cognizer and that cannot be represented by any tractable means. This background of the cognitive system determining transitions is called morphological content. Except for cases of deductive belief formation which must be fairly rare, rational belief formation in humans will be essentially morphological. This means that it will not be formed by occurrent procedures. One example of morphological content's role is finding a joke to be funny. It is thus not the explicit content of the joke as far as its text is narrated. It is rather everything that the cognizer knows but does not explicitly master, that pushes towards his recognizing of the joke as funny, which

135 pushes him towards laughing at the joke. This illustration of the causally effective but perhaps in principle inaccessible background is here to indicate in which direction conforming to the epistemic normativity and thus to justification will have to go.74 Conclusion Now the following picture of cognition emerges: (a) cognition is guided by particular patterns, by the automatically relevance providing BPs; (b) these overall functioning particularist background of BPs does not deny the presence of soft laws, they are recognized, but as a special tiny subset of particularist patterns; (c) soft laws may then allow for exceptionless (say, deductive) proceedings as for a very special and even more tiny subset of them, and accordingly as an even tinier subset of particular patterns. Here again is particular patterns guided description of cognition: (1) Particular patterns are effectively guiding cognition in the widest sense, but they allow for (2) Soft generalities and their patterns in some special cases, and these again allow for (3) Exceptionless generalities as their even more curious case. One asks oneself then why HT themselves could not come to the conclusion that particularist patterns guide cognition. The answer is that in 1996 it was a bold enough move to recognize soft laws as against exceptionless rule guided laws to figure in the area of cognition. But nowadays, HT need some help for the push in the direction of particular patterns, because they actually risk to fall into a benign form of inconsistency by still opting for the normative authority of the general via their soft laws, while actually embracing the normative authority of the particular by the description of 74

See also chapter IV.

136 the real features characterizing cognition (holism, richness, dynamics, automatic production of relevance). You may depict normative authority as something following the effective “because”. You do not help this person because of general principles (these generalities are just forthcoming in your explanation); you help her because of the rich and appropriate coming together of multiple cognitive forces in these circumstances. If there would be a slight change in the overall holistic pattern upon which you act, you may perhaps not have helped her. Dynamical cognition approach says something about the cognitive intentional background subserving intentionality. Morphological content (MC) is not identical either to the occurrent or also not to the dispositional content. Morphological content is the content that is in the weights (if we may use connectionist talk). One example of MC: I recognize this animal (perhaps a kind of bug, but I am not sure at all) being similar to another bug. But I do not form any generalization in order to reach this conclusion (I do not even use the concept “bug”; I just see that those two things are similar). Thus the relevant conclusion is entirely reached upon the normative authority of the particular. Other examples of MC: recognizing someone’s specific accent while she talks English, or Polish. MC is whatever enables you to get the joke. This is all due to the dynamical multi-dimensional cognitive background. Generalities do simply not figure in this as being able of causing something. One main feature of this dynamical background is molding of the multidimensional background landscape and its pressures which produce a structure in an automatic way. The positioning of TCS’s as realized points at this landscape in their semantic dimension get hand in glove with the continuous molding of the cognitive background, all the time as the new input information needs to be accommodated, and this means all the time when the cognitive system functions. Cognitive system also functions during the night. Beautiful pattern is dynamic and its continuous molding is essential to it. How can syntactic structure be realized in a dynamical system? (HT, 30) One may think that exceptionless rules and their regularities provide causal connections. HT opt against exceptionless rules and for ceteris paribus generalizations, for soft laws with defeasible causal tendencies. We accept HT’s adoption of ceteris paribus generalizations with exceptions, but assign to them the background support role in cognitive system’s dynamical structure. The real relevance and causal impact comes from unique arrangement of holistic particular patterns, i.e. from beautiful patterns. In

137 several cases the meaning of “and”, say, is not conjunction. You may even put in doubt normative authority of defeasible generalities; in as far as those are generalities. The meaning may succeed on the basis of particular holistic patterns, and the support still comes from the structure, namely from a particular structure. You throw out presuppositions tied to general patterns (3), (5), and you retain those presuppositions of classicism that may be compatible with particularist patterns.

138

VIII. PHENOMENOLOGY OF OBJECT CONSTITUTION The last two chapters of this book deal with metaphysics and ontology. First we apply some ideas and lessons of the previous chapters to the area of (common sense or ordinary) objects. Then we present an overall particularistic metaphysical picture that respects the role of normativity in metaphysics. It consists of a monistic picture of the world and of a variety of complex regional ontological posits. Our first thesis is that ordinary objects or Middle Sized Dry Goods (MSDGs) have phenomenology intrinsically built into their constitution. The first positive objects constitution argument replies to the question how objects or MSDGs are built. Objects belong to the regional ontology and thus to the area of the ontic. Constitution of objects in the regional ontology depends upon the world and upon the power of language and thought that both sort them out. Language and though are normative practices that belong to the area of cognition. As cognition has phenomenology intrinsically built into it, so do the objects. The second critical argument looks at the question how the constitution of objects or MSDGs is usually presented by metaphysicians. Metaphysicians start with objects as with brute existent facts. Accordingly they add ultimate reality appropriate normative standards to the constitution of objects. In this manner objects such as cat get the status of language and thought independent reality. There is no language and thought in object constitution in this manner, and so there is no phenomenology either. But if there is no phenomenology, which is constitutive of objects, there actually cannot be any objects in this metaphysicians’ practice. These metaphysicians are metaphysical zombies. They stay without objects because they apply high generalist normative standards appropriate for ontology to the ontic area of objects. Moreover, they are phenomenological zombies. They do not have any phenomenology, for qualitative experiences only come through particular patterns. Because metaphysicians apply generalist patterns to objects, patterns that are proper just to the world, they cannot recognize objects with their intrinsically constitutive phenomenology. Phenomenological constituency of objects is enhanced by the thesis that narrow phenomenology is sufficient for object constitution.

140 We will look into the question of the object constitution. By objects we mean spatiotemporal objects or Middle Sized Dry Goods (MSDGs). We thus allow for the possibility of existence of other kinds of objects, such as Platonic or Meinongian objects that are not spatiotemporally located; but these kinds of objects simply are not the matter of our concern here. We center at MSDGs or at ordinary objects, and we pose two questions on their account. First, how are objects constituted? The answer is that objects have phenomenology intrinsically built into them. This is the conclusion of a positive argument on behalf of object constitution. The second question that we pose is how the constitution of objects is usually presented by metaphysicians. The answer to this one is that the object constitution presentation from the part of metaphysicians has no phenomenology constitutively embedded into it. This is how metaphysicians stay without objects: as they apply generalist normative standards appropriate for ontology to the features in the area of the ontic. So they are metaphysical zombies. They are also phenomenological zombies because of their neglect of particular patterns proper to object constitution. The Constitution of Ordinary Objects First we ask the question how objects are constituted, and we provide a positive answer to it, affirming that phenomenology is intrinsically built into objects. In this positive argument for the object constitution we expose our view. We believe that a distinction between the ultimate ontology and between the regional ontology should be made, and that objects belong to the regional ontology or to the area of the ontic. The ultimate ontology includes the world. Ontological difference or the difference between ontology and between the ontic should be respected. Constitution of objects is both the function of how the world is and of the sorting out power of language and thought. Now, language and thought are cognitive, and so they have phenomenology intrinsically built into them. So, objects have phenomenology intrinsically built into them. The question about object constitution is one of the oldest topics of philosophy. One would therefore expect that it would already receive an unambiguous answer, which unhappily is not the case. Quine provided one of the best answers to this that however still seems unsatisfactory to us: objects are whatever fills a certain region of space and time. (Quine 1970) Amie Thomasson is recently engaged into a defense of ordinary objects or

141 what we call Middle Sized Dry Goods (MSDGs).(Thomasson Forthcoming) None of these seems to us to provide a viable direction about how to assess the MSDGs constitution. We think that this is the consequence of the fact that these proposals do not sufficiently respect some basic distinctions in metaphysics. The first basic distinction in metaphysics is that between the ultimate and between the regional ontology. Ultimate ontology encompasses the world. Whereas regional ontology includes several features that are found in the world, on a daily basis, such as cats, cups and stones. It is actually misleading to range such stuff into ontology; it rather belongs to the ontic area. Ordinary objects or MSDGs belong to the area of the ontic. There is just one world, i.e. one spatiotemporal object, without any parts, but dynamical and rich. The distinctions between ontology and between the ontic are thus not these between several existing levels, between real ontological and ontic strata. Rather, the distinctions between ontology and the ontic are matters of normatively conditioned zooming in and out of the one and only world. It is to be expected that the regional assessment of the world will include a bigger part of discriminatory power than this will be the case for its ultimate ontological assessment. (Horgan and Potrč 2000) What is the constitution of objects (MSDGs) in the regional ontology? A common mistake is either to tend towards an entirely world or ultimate ontology dependent constitution of objects, or again to assess objects as being predominantly just cognition dependent constructions. The first of these views will be analyzed in the second section of this paper. The second of these views is anti-realist: for it, MSDGs are predominantly or entirely constituted by language and thought, the view that may be presented by the work of Hilary Putnam. (Putnam 1983) We think that none of these views is right, and that objects (MSDGs) are constituted both in function of how the world is and in the function of discriminatory powers of language and thought. A cat is a congealing in the world, approached on a regional scale. A cat is no part, because there aren’t any parts, there is just the world. As we refer to the cat, we do refer to the world, although in an indirect manner. Language and thought discriminative capabilities are intrinsically involved into sorting out of objects. So against predominant metaphysical views we claim that objects (MSDGs) are constituted both as a function how the world is and as a function of the intrinsic language and though contribution to the object constitution.

142 Now consider that language and thought are normative practices. They are only possible as an effect of normativity, the normativity that is directed towards regional discrimination, such as the assessment of particularist discriminatory compositional structure in semantics that enables productivity in both language and thought. Both language and thought belong to the area of cognition. Cognition has phenomenology intrinsically built into it. It would be impossible to master the rich and dynamical structure conditioned linguistic skills without phenomenology intrinsic to particularist patterns that provide the mentioned structure. And similarly it goes for the structure of thought which also has phenomenology intrinsically built into it. Now because objects (MSDGs) are constituted both as a function of the world and of language and thought, they also have phenomenology intrinsically built into them. This is what we proposed to demonstrate in the first, positive support for our thesis. How do Metaphysicians Usually Present the Constitution of Objects? The second and rather negative support for our thesis comes from taking a look at the question how metaphysicians usually present the constitution of objects. Many times metaphysicians simply start their investigation with objects as with brute existent facts. So they presuppose that objects (MSDGs) exist and that they are parts. Proceeding like that, metaphysicians actually appropriate normative standards that are appropriate for the ultimate reality and they apply them to the area of objects. So objects acquire the status of language and thought independent reality. Because of this, there is no cognition, and accordingly no phenomenology recognized as being intrinsically constitutive of objects. Some consequences follow. If there is no phenomenology that is intrinsically constitutive for objects, metaphysicians cannot really deal with any objects. And, they are metaphysical zombies because they apply generalist normative standards, appropriate for ontology, to the area of the ontic. Besides, metaphysicians are phenomenological zombies, for they do not account for any phenomenological experiences that only come through particularist patterns. Applying generalist patterns, appropriate for the ultimate ontology, to the area of the ontic, metaphysicians cannot recognize objects with their intrinsically constitutive phenomenology. The impor-

143 tance of phenomenology may be enhanced by the thesis that narrow phenomenology suffices for object constitution. Previous section briefly sketched our view on object constitution. But metaphysicians use to have a different approach to the constitution of objects or MSDGs. We identified two separatist takes on the object constitution with which we disagree: pushing for the importance of the exclusive contribution of the world, or again for the exclusive contribution of language and thought. We believe that the appropriate constitution of objects succeeds through combination of these factors. In what follows, we will sketch the first separatist approach to the object constitution, the one that overemphasizes the importance of the world. Often, metaphysicians start with objects as with brute existent facts. Being brute means here that objects are simply taken as metaphysical givens. As objects are taken to be parts, parts are thereby also taken to be metaphysical givens. Being existent means for objects that they belong to the ultimate ontology. This is different to our understanding of the nature of objects, for which we claim that they ex-sist, i.e. they appear as ontic stuff. By ex-sistence, we mean that there is regional ontic presence of objects in the world, but not as separate entities. Metaphysicians often conclude towards the existence of objects, contrary to what we think is an appropriate way to proceed. Existence refers to the ultimate ontological reality. But ultimate ontological reality comes with the highest normative standards. Now the first decision to start with objects as brute facts gets supported by appropriating ultimate normative standards on their behalf. Take an object (MSDG) such as a cat. If you treat the cat as brute metaphysical fact, and if you apply general patterns supported ultimate ontology norms to it, one consequence will be that you will not be able to recognize any constitutive role of language and thought for the cat (MSDG). Then the cat will have the status of language and thought independent reality attached to it, and this is the result that you have aimed towards as the metaphysician all the time. But if language and thought are not recognized as constitutive for the object (MSDG) cat, then no phenomenology will be recognized as intrinsic to the constitution of the cat either. For only particularist patterns proper to language and thought may get the phenomenology involved into the picture, but adopting the highest ontological normativity disallows the presence of such patterns in the object constitution.

144

Generalist Problems with Ordinary Objects If we look at the work of Amie Thomasson, she persistently aims at specific normative conditions, appropriate for the area of the regional ontology. But she uses these as if they would be generalist. This is wrong. It is wrong to apply bunch of different generalist normative conditions of metaphysics to several areas of ontic domain of ordinary objects. Ordinary objects would need particularist normative treatment, which means that some structure is still necessary for them, although this should not really be generalist structure. Amie Thomasson does not even really thematize that we have to do with the normative conditioning of metaphysics. Ordinary objects are things that surround us and that we deal with on a daily basis, such as chairs, cats, sticks and stones. There are several metaphysical arguments against the existence of ordinary objects however. In more positivistic minded times the existence of ordinary objects was denied because of their incompatibility with the scientific outlook. More recently, we witness diverse sources of their denial: either that MSDGs as posits of common sense are of an inherently contradictory nature, or again that they are taken to be in disaccord with some general metaphysical principles. The statement that MSDGs are inherently contradictory may come from their acknowledged vague nature75, which is itself an issue having to do with normativity, for vagueness is a phenomenon stemming from normativity.76 But let us call this a non-explicit normative denial of MSDGs. There is also an explicit normative denial of MSDGs, resting upon principles. For principles are normative matters. Amie Thomasson77 considers five explicitly normatively motivated arguments against the existence of ordinary objects with the agenda of rejecting them. It is significant that she does not count arguments against the existence of ordinary objects as based on vagueness to be normatively grounded (or principle grounded). This lack of spotting normative issues in the phenomenon of vagueness shows that she is not sufficiently attentive at the normative dimension, which will unfortunately turn out to be the case in her treatment of the argument reviewed and considered here. 75

Some people, such as Meinongians and other Platonists tend to affirm vagueness of ordinary objects. 76 Potrč 2002a. 77 Thomasson (Forthcoming).

145 The first normative argument against ordinary objects that Thomasson mentions is the argument from composition, to be dealt somewhat more extensively in what follows. In short, the argument denies the existence of ordinary objects because they do not comply with the general principle such as Non Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC), as underlying the reply to the Special Composition Question (SCQ).78 The second is the causal redundancy argument, which treats MSDGs as epiphenomenal upon their basic physics constituent and causally efficacious stuff. In the case of the ball breaking the window, causal efficacy is the attribute of atoms, but it just cannot come with anything else. Co-location argument denies existence of ordinary objects because of their multiplying at a single location. A generalization of the second argument is the affirmation that there is nothing over and above the basic stuff. The final principled consideration involves parsimony, with the proposal to reduce the ontologically not really needed entities, of which MSDGs form a patent example. The argument from composition proposes a general normative criterion as an answer to the question of composition. Because MSDG’s do not satisfy this criterion, they are affirmed not to exist. (SCQ) When is it true to say that there is a y such that x’s compose this y? Peter van Inwagen considers several answers to SCQ, starting with contact, and then continuing with external (say, teleological) or internal criteria of composition. He rejects them all and affirms that the only appropriate answer to SCQ may be provided by the principle of Life. His answer to SCQ is thus that the only time it is true that x’s compose a y is in the case where the composition succeeds according to the principle of Life. (Van Inwagen 1990) This has the consequence that many posits or MSDGs that we postulate according to the everyday attitude – chairs, cars, stones, houses – do not exist, because nothing is really composed in their case. What is then there where I think that there is my chair? According to the criterion of Life as an answer to SCQ it may only be a bunch of elementary particles acknowledged by physics – let us call them atoms – bunch of atoms com-

78

See Horgan 1993 for the relation between Non Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC) and Special Composition Question (SCQ) as two metaphysical principles.

146 ing together in a chair-wise manner.79 But there is no chair. However there are alligators and people, and other living beings, if the principle of Life is able to propose an answer to the SCQ. Peter van Inwagen actually uses a general normative criterion in order to determine what exists beside to the atoms. This criterion has the consequence that many posits of common sense and of science finish up to be denied ontological right to existence. There is thus a normative criterion that is more important than our pre-theoretical intuitions about what should be there. Such a criterion may be called Non Arbitrariness Of Composition: (NAOC) It is implausible to build one’s ontology upon a bunch of unexplained facts or ontological surds. Some general normative principle should answer to such questions as SCQ. This means that for someone accepting the principle of Life, NAOC will reply to SCQ by allowing living beings into ontology, as the only ones where something metaphysically respectable gets composed. Once as one accepts NAOC thus as the criterion determining an answer to SCQ and finally as an answer to the question “What exists?” one may plausibly ask whether it is not the case that the Life itself also provides an arbitrary answer to the SCQ80. Does this then mean that nothing exists, except atoms? Several principled questions are possible here, such as: Nihilism or the view that simples never compose anything. Then the view that each possible combination of simples composes something. None of these seem to have metaphysically desirable consequences. One may also put into question a presupposition underlying SCQ, namely that there are parts. At least according to some interpretations of physics, it is questionable what exactly should be counted as simples and perhaps also whether there are any simples out there. There may be just forces constituting our world, and no simples. All these possible answers obviously presuppose a general meta79

Van Inwagen claims that despite that there are no chairs, one may still talk about chairs, and say something sensible, as this would be in the case “This 17th century chair I saw yesterday is beautiful and expensive.” According to Van Inwagen, such kind of talk is misguided, and practically used nonetheless, in a similar manner as the affirmation “The sunset will be at 4:52p today” may be practical although strictly seen it is false. It is not the case that the Sun circles around the Earth; it is just another way round. 80 See Horgan 1993 for a more detailed argument.

147 physical normative principle of a sort. NAOC is such a proposed principle that answers to the SCQ. Thomasson in her attempt to save the existence of MSDGs has the following proposal on offer as an answer to SCQ: SCQ is just too general and therefore it cannot be a sensible question.81 It is not a sensible question to ask when in a general sense it is true that some x’s compose a y. There cannot be any appropriate answer to such a broadly construed question. It is however sensible to ask such questions as “When do planks compose a ship?” In fact, the trimmed down SCQ question, according to Thomasson proposal, will finish up with a plethora of sortal-attuned questions. This sounds nice, but here are some problems. These sortals somehow already presuppose the acceptance of ordinary objects. Sortals determine parts in the world. And parts may either be chunked in a more general or in a more individual manner. If in the individual manner, we are left with a bunch of our MSDGs, so the circulus is apparent. If the criterion of chunking proceeds according to several general questions, we are left with the same stuff as this was the case with the first generalist appearance of SCQ. SCQ presupposed a general normative principle. Now if SCQ gets trimmed down to several sortal attuned SCQ’s these are still general principles. So Thomasson in this case buys some sort of normativity, still general normativity. But this is not all. Thomasson seems to deny generalism and normativity altogether when it comes to the matters of metaphysics. Why? Because she falls under the illusion of ultimate reality. The illusion under which Thomasson succumbs is to pretend that metaphysics does not ultimately have to do with normativity, despite that she acknowledges normative principles as an important challenge to the existence of MSDGs. Here is what she thinks. The business of metaphysics is in description and not in explanation. So a metaphysician should accordingly just describe things, and answer to such questions as “Does the cat there exist?”, “Did Moses exist?”, “Does this chair exist?”. The metaphysician’s lot is not that of explanation however. In this sense Thomasson denies the plausibility of Horgan and Potrč (2000) requirement put on the explanation in the area of metaphysics. Explanation would come to the fore if there would be questions related to normativity pertinent in metaphysics, such as the NAOC supported questions. But as description is the real job of metaphysician, she cannot go 81

Thomasson relies about this on Sanford 1996 and Hilpinen 1996, who defend a similar line.

148 along with the matters of explanation that are appropriate for such an area as that of a physical science. But this seems kind of shaky. If for example I wish to classify dolphins as distinct from sharks in my metaphysics, a lot of explanation will be needed in order to make an appropriate description. Even more, it seems impossible to have description without that it would also include explanation.82 Thomasson, according to her own schedule, has to defend ordinary objects. And so the explanatory principles must be involved into her choice of ordinary objects. It just does not seem honest to say that ordinary questions are not asking for explanation of anything. Sortal terms have determining conditions. We sort out whales from the fish as being of a different nature. But why? It is not obvious that there is no explanatory principle that Thomasson would use herself.83 Ordinary ontology, whatever it may be, is thus not just a matter of description, but also of explanation. You must have explanation for the principles you use, and you have some of these in the area of ordinary ontology. Thomasson does seems to follow this procedure. First, she is set up to defend the existence of ordinary objects. So she is set up to claim that these objects are ultimately real. But if they are ultimately real, there is no place for normativity in an approach to them. They just exist out there, without really following any general principles. According to the framework we propose, MSDGs do exist (in fact they ex-sist upon the Blob and this is why the assertions about them are still capable to be true), but only in a regional manner. In this case lower normative standards are responsible fort them. MSDGs do not exist however in the manner of the ultimate ontology. Thomasson now confuses the natural order of things. She presupposes MSDGs to build the realm of the ultimate ontology, and of course in this case they should come so to say without any normativity. Even this is wrong by the way because this no normativity claim should be spelled out as the normativity according to the highest metaphysical normative requirements. But appropriating the ultimate standards in the area of the regional – leaning towards the more language and thought and thus towards what is more normativity adjusted – is stubborn and will leave an uncomfortable feeling. A blobjectivist is sensible to the SCQ question, and she supposes that such a question together with the normativity that it implies is in accor82 83

Thanks to Danilo Šuster for discussion concerning this. And that she promises to elaborate in Chapter 10, which was not available to us.

149 dance with the generalist kind of principle appropriate to the ultimate ontology. SCQ and the normative principle NAOC are thus appropriate for the ultimate ontological stuff, where the only object, the Blobject is to be found. If MSDGs are the ultimate metaphysical stuff, then just the ultimate ontological norms are appropriate to them. But they aren’t; they are actually particularistically accountable beautiful patterns that ex-sist upon the Blob.84 Because of the lack of thematizing normativity, the illusion is produced that MSDGs belong to the ultimate ontology. (Horgan and Potrč 2000) What are MSDG’s then? As already stated they are the beautiful – relevant – patterns that ex-sist upon the Blob. They are supported by the most holistic stuff of them all, by the world or by the Blob. Because of this holistic background, MSDG’s as regional metaphysical stuff comply with particularist metaphysical norms. According to our understanding MSDG’s not only do exist. MSDG’s actually ex-sist upon the Blob in a regional manner. Van Inwagen and Thomasson somehow recognize the role of normative principles in metaphysics. But normativity is not really thematized by them. They do use generalities, but to these who use them these do not seem to be normative principles at all. So much still needs to be clarified in metaphysics. Particularistic Object Constitution We claimed that phenomenology is intrinsically constitutive for objects. But if there is no phenomenology recognized in the constitution of objects, then actually there cannot be any objects recognized at all in this separatist metaphysical practice (separatist, because just the world is separated from the whole of the world and language-thought object constitution). So these metaphysicians that we talk about actually cannot have any objects. At least, they cannot have any objects in the appropriate metaphysical sense. Objects, as we claim have phenomenology intrinsically built into their constitution. But as metaphysicians some of which we have mentioned do not leave any space for phenomenology, they are metaphysical zombies. 84

If MSDGs are particularistically accountable this is by itself a sign of their regional – metaphysically beautiful and holistic background supported – nature.

150 A metaphysical zombie is somebody who does not allow for any phenomenology to enter into objects’ constitution. How does this happen? Simply. As metaphysicians appropriate generalist normative standards fitting to the ultimate ontology, they rid themselves of phenomenology, because these standards do not really have an important or constitutive part of phenomenology built into them. This is contrary to the regional ontology appropriate particularist standards that exactly do have phenomenology intrinsically built into them. But if no phenomenology can be recognized, so no objects can be really recognized, and so metaphysicians do not have any objects. Metaphysical zombies are the product of applying ultimate normative ontology standards to the area of the ontic or of ex-sistent. A related issue sorts out these metaphysicians as phenomenological zombies as well. Phenomenological zombies do not have any qualitative experiences, they do not have any what-it’s-like attitudes. There is a certain feeling attached to objects (MSDG’s): it feels different to recognize the cat, or a spider, or again a cup, as for that matter. If phenomenology is intrinsic to the constitution of objects, then these qualitative experiences are really constitutive for these objects, not just accompanying their recognition. But if there is no what-it’s-like part in the object constitution, we finish up with phenomenological zombies. One important angle to look at things is provided by the difference between generalist and particularist patterns. We believe that objects (MSDG’s) are regional, ontic, and that they constitutively involve particularist patterns. But metaphysicians almost exclusively use general patterns in their accounts that range over objects and beyond. So because of this very fact of sticking with generalist patterns and not even being disposed to thematize particularist patterns metaphysicians cannot have phenomenology. Patterns that metaphysicians apply to objects are appropriate just for the world and thus to the ultimate ontology. If objects (MSDG’s, being ontic or regional) are constituted by particularist patterns, they do intrinsically involve phenomenology. Now applying generalist patterns will make you blind to the particularist patterns and to the phenomenology intrinsic to these. Notice that consciousness is widely known as the hard problem. We propose to take a look at easy problems as those problems that are related to the approaches using generalist patterns. Whereas hard problems are the

151 ones related to particularist patterns, and consciousness or qualitative phenomenology, we take, is certainly one of these. Our official position is that both the world and language-thought constitute objects. One may remain with our position, all in putting the world into methodological parentheses, thus exercising phenomenological epoche. This proposal, being methodological, would not get rid of the world. But it would even more stress the importance of phenomenology in constitution of objects (MSDG’s). We think that recognizing objects as congealings in the world (Blob) would be made simpler by such proposal. And especially, particularist patterns would then much more naturally be accounted for in their role involving constitution of objects.

152

IX. THE HEART OF EXISTENCE As it was already laid out in chapter IV Pascal distinguished between reasons of geometry or reasons of arithmetic and between reasons of finesse or reasons of heart. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with whatever exists. Contrary to common beliefs ontology is also normativity-laden. There is an account of existence that appeals to reasons of arithmetic, but another account appeals to the reasons of heart. Reasons of arithmetic build upon general patterns, such as categories and predicates. Reasons of heart appeal to unique patterns as grounding the existence. These unique patterns cannot be attained in an arithmetical way; they have to be deciphered in their singularity. Then we touch the heart, particularity and non-repeatable nature of whatever exists. The usual and wrong proceeding in ontology is to take whatever is regionally there as falling under normative measure of ultimate existence and under general patterns. It is suggested that the heart of regional existence has to be tackled by particular beautiful patterns. They behold the relevance proper to the particular and not the relevance of the general, which is suitable for general patterns. Special Composition Question allows either for a generalist or again for a particularist answer, the first one being supported by reasons of arithmetic and the second one by reasons of heart. Pascal’s Distinction, Ontology and Normativity Pascal distinguished between reasons of geometry or reasons of arithmetic on the one hand and between reasons of finesse or reasons of heart on the other hand. If you ask me why the volume of the equilateral pyramid will be smaller in respect to the volume of the cube with the same length of basic sides, I can explain this to you and give you some reasons. These will be then the reasons of geometry. Similarly in the case of arithmetic, I can give you reasons why “7+5=12”. These will then be the reasons of arithmetic. What do these two have in common? The answer is that the com-

154 mon link between those reasons or proofs85 in the area of arithmetic and geometry is their general value and universality. This is not the case with the reasons of heart. A couple of centuries ago Balthasar Gracien wrote a book about how to behave in the royal entourage. There are no exceptionless proofs that may be calculated in advance, but only directions, or indications in which way to go. Much is left to the intuition, which needs to be used in the indicated complex social circumstances. As there is no tractable procedure to indicate in advance how exactly to behave in some areas, a lot is left to what you may feel is a proper way to act in a situation, a lot is left to the finesse of your considerations and to your calculations. The reasons underlying decisions in your practical life will normally not be reasons of a general and calculable nature. It would be simply wrong to calculate in the matters of heart, it would not feel to be an appropriate approach to the area.86 This is exactly why reasons of heart may also be called reasons of finesse – in order to underline that they are not of a calculable nature. Pascal himself excelled in calculations. He contributed to the development of arithmetical calculus. On the other hand, he also wrote a bunch of essayistic remarks, such as these that come to the fore in the book that is now known under the title of Thoughts. Although he was very systematic in his work in the area of what may be extensively called arithmetic, this was not the case in the area of his writing that was closer to the impulses of his heart. He did not even care about putting his scribbled notes together in a book form. The editors of these texts only later attempted systematization. In the now mentioned notes he developed and proposed the distinction between the reasons of geometry and between the reasons of heart. In a certain sense, we may feel that there is not any democratic equality in the relation between these two kinds of reasons, for reasons of heart dominate the reasons of geometry.87 But it is also the case that reasons of heart often 85

Lakatosz retraced the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry by proofs and refutations. This shows that the reasons or proofs which are at disposal in geometry are far from simplistic and that they do allow for dynamicism. Their main attitude of performing an abstraction over and above examples and being in value for all the cases falling under given parameters is not shaken thereby. 86 Perhaps there is indeed some sort of calculation going on in the matters of heart, but it is quite a different sort than calculation of your everyday scheduler appointments. If nothing else, there is a whole range of emotional issues going on here that are not necessarily present in the case of your routine based tasks. 87 In many practical situations, it often feels weird if reasons of geometry dominate the reasons of heart.

155 need the reasons of geometry. The development in a certain area is needed, in a systematic way, in order that there emerges an interesting dominance from the part of reasons of heart. This is shown by Pascal’s wager, where in a curious twist, a calculation is proposed as to whether one should believe in God. The decision to believe in a deity certainly is a matter that should not be calculated, if one’s decision should stay appropriate, similarly as a decision to love somebody will not be appropriate if attained on the basis of precise and extended calculations. This shows us how Pascal, in order to upheld the very distinction between reasons of geometry and between reasons of heart is committed to the dominance of reasons of heart over reasons of arithmetic.88 The distinction between reasons of arithmetic and between reasons of heart will be applied to the existence, as the title of this chapter promises. Now, the philosophical branch that has to do with whatever exists is called ontology or again metaphysics. Sometimes metaphysics is said to be the teaching about what there is. Peter van Inwagen tells us that the best definition of metaphysics that he ever heard is the simple assertion “Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate reality.”89 Aristotle determined metaphysics as having to do with the most general categories, the categories that over-determine the specific categories of any other discipline, such as biology or physics. Biology has to do with whatever exists in the sense of the living, and physics has a larger range, for it has to do with whatever exists in the sense of the physical. But as far as we know everything that is alive is also physically realized, and of course much more than just the living is physically realized. Usually we would take it that only physical things exist. But some people believe that angels exist, and that they are not physical. And that a God exists, and that She is not necessarily physical either. Philosophers distinguished between several kinds of existence. Some things, such as our world, exist in a physical manner. Other things, such as concepts, exist in a non-physical manner. They have Platonic kind of existence, say. From this point of view, conceptual entities are even more persistent and worthy of our attention as the physical kinds. For each physically existing cat, or ta88

This touches the question of the philosophical point of departure. All the arguments should possibly proceed in a flawless argumentation order. But the basic instinct also has to be there, independent of the arguments’ order, and relying on intuitions. An argument against the importance of basic intuitions underlying philosophical investigation was lately attempted by Timothy Williamson. 89 See the introduction to Van Inwagen 1993.

156 ble, may eventually perish. But concepts of a cat or of a table will not perish that easily. Additionally, there are some entities that exist in such a way that they cannot possibly exist.90 Then they certainly exist in a Platonic sense, but they could not have existed in a physical or in some similar sense. So the concept of existence certainly requires some clarification. It is not clear in ontology, either, in which sense the existence has to be taken in the case where we talk about the ultimate ontological constitution of the world, or again about the regional constitution of the world. Sometimes this difference tries to be captured as the difference between the ontological and between the ontic questions. Ontological questions, according to this reading, apply to the world as it ultimately is. Whereas ontic questions apply to whatever we find or encounter in the world, on a daily basis, say. You can then see that ontological questions are metaphysical in a genuine sense, whereas in the case of the ontic questions there is a hybrid intermingling between metaphysical and epistemic ways of assessing that what exists.91 The confusion of taking ontic questions as ontological questions is widespread in the ontological literature. Even more, this confusion or this misguided cipher92 is laying the foundations of the ontological literature. This question was not even well tackled in the immense amount of 90

Meinong expressed this thought in the following way, as we remember: “Es gibt die Gegenstaende, so dass es solche Genegnstaende nicht gibt.” For Meinong, each content of a thought has an object correlated to it. If this is the case, also the impossible objects – such as round square, which is conceptually impossible – has an object correlated to it. Of course, this is not a physical object, but a rather Platonic kind of Meinongian object. These objects were introduced by Meinong in order to defend the basic intentional idea of the necessary directedness of contents at something – at objects in our case. 91 Heideggerians understand ontological questions to target the Being all in itself (the existence in the largest sense), whereas ontic questions for them are directed at whatever-of-the-existing-is-found-in-the-world. We would say: “das innerweltlich Bestehende”. We are certain you like the sound of this expression – even more so in the case where you may not completely understand German language. So we do not translate it for you. 92 There are puzzles that really are not guiding us in the right directions. This is why we call the now mentioned stuff a misguided cipher or puzzle. There are other kinds of puzzles or ciphers that lead us to relevant issues. These relevant ciphers are well worthy to lend them our ears and activity. By the way, consider that there is no ultimate unique answer to some puzzles, such as Delphi puzzle: “What is walking at four legs in the morning, at two legs at noon and at three legs in the evening?” You can say that the answer is “A human.” But this answer is so thin that it is really left to each one individually to find an answer to this puzzle or cipher, to de-cipher it.

157 the writings having to do with metaphysics. The prolegomena will be sketched down here. Most of the literature having to do with ontology or metaphysics is dealing with general categories. So the existence, which the literature proposes, comes in the form of general claims. But there is also a possible intuition that whatever exists really exists in a unique and not repeatable way. The situation is such that this intuition needs to be spelled out first. Perhaps the existence has to do with uniqueness, with whatever exists in a unique manner. But if this is the case, then such a way to the ontological existence has to be paved first by the criticism of the exclusive generalist approach to ontology, in terms of categories, and of general lawful statements concerning existence.93 Whatever started to be tackled here, we may preliminary conclude as follows. Metaphysics or ontology has to do with whatever exists. But there are several ways, regions or levels at which one may conceive existence. And there are some other foundational decisions to be cleared before one starts to engage himself in respect to what exists. Would one be interested, first of all, in the ultimate ontology or in the regional ontology? And there are eventual confusions to be cleared, such as that of the impact of metaphysical and epistemic questions upon the ontological investigation itself. We will dedicate ourselves to the job of starting tackling this later question. We have laid out two things up till now: the distinction about reasons of arithmetic and between reasons of heart, and then ontology as the investigation of the area of what exists or of what there is. The idea is to bring these two together and to claim that there are two accounts of what exists: one closer to the reasons of arithmetic, and another close to the reasons of heart. But here is a preliminary question to be addressed. Reasons are something that is of normative nature, they have to do with the normative standards that are applied to a certain case. If I approach my lover in the manner by mostly calculating or applying arithmetic reasons, you can feel that there is another kind of normativity applied here as there is in the case of 93

As already mentioned, Aristotle considered ontology or metaphysics in generalist terms, in terms of categories and of general lawful statements considering the existent. This heritage was not just taken over by Aristotelian adepts such as Brentano (Kategorienlehre; Ueber die mannigfaltige Bedeutung des Seienden beim Aristoteles), but also by others. Platonists are perhaps even more attracted by generalities as this is the case for Aristotelians, because Platonists naturally aim for the existence of pure concepts.

158 reasons pertaining to the heart. Thus, different kinds of normative pressures, or reasons, may be applied to the same case. The assessment of the case will then be quite different for various normative pressures, and the difference will also be underscored by the variability in qualitative feelings going along with it.94 It is a basic idea here, which was not appreciated to a sufficient extent yet, that the questions of existence or of ontology should be indeed approached by reasons and thus by the variable normative pressures applied to them. The failure to do so leads to the often-used wrong presupposition that matters of ontology do not have to deal with normative issues. It is forgotten thereby that the issues of ontology do not usually have directly to do with what exists, but with the discourse about the existent, and with various normative pressures exercised upon this discourse. If this is the case, then reasons and other normative considerations are indeed an integral part of ontology or of philosophical discipline concerned with that what exists. If somehow one may accommodate oneself to the thought that reasons and the normative stuff have something to do with ontology, then an additional unusual thought opens itself, namely that reasons of heart have something to do with ontology. The idea here is that one may somehow be prepared to buy classifying of the kinds of being, by using categories as applied to what there is. But why would just the intuition or your feeling, which is natural for reasons of heart, give you an access to the area of what exists? There are approaches to what exists or to ontology that belong to the hearty kind however. It is natural for somebody like Boethius to come within the reach of what exists from the part of reasons of heart. One may be simply amazed that there is the world, without the attempt to classify the kinds existing in the world. Ontologies that have to do with the world as it is, recognized in its complexity, but also in its simplicity, without classification, are of this sort. One such ontology would be simply the teaching of what there is, of the world, as opposed to what we find on our everyday basis in the world.95

94

The main idea is that quality is constitutive for the application of the normative relation, and that it is not just accompanying it. What is claimed here for cases of normative variability also applies to a sub-case of the variability in the intentional constitutive normativity. 95 This is the distinction between the ontological and the ontic, pointed at in the footnote above.

159 There are thus two basically different accounts of existence. The first of these accounts appeals to the reasons of arithmetic, which means to several techniques how to classify the categories of whatever exists in the world. There is the accounting and classifying of several kinds of the existent involved here. This approach usually comes along with some general criteria about how to order classification of the kinds of existent. Another approach, already hinted at above, addresses whatever exists with reasons of heart. Here is the place then for wondering that the world exists, and that it exists in several given ways. We have to clarify to some more extent the two approaches to what exists. Monistic Metaphysics As a prelude to the following discussion, we first set out our basic metaphysical beliefs. We think that the appropriate kind of metaphysics is monistic. This is the claim that there is just one spatio-temporal world or the Blob, as we call it.96 One reason to claim that there is just one world without any parts lies in persisting difficulties to set appropriate standards for what these parts, such as ordinary objects, or Middle Sized Dry Goods (MSDG’s) would actually be.97 We think that it is on time to bite the bullet and to embrace the truth about the monistic nature of the world. Despite that the world comes without any parts, we think98 that it is dynamical and richly diversified.99 This allows us to account for ordinary objects not as the ultimate constituents, but as features that we recognize as ex-sisting in 96

See Horgan and Potrč 2000, Horgan and Potrč 2002, Tienson 2002, and Potrč 2003. Perhaps the best rendition of what should be ordinary objects is given by Quine as he characterizes them as the approximately compact coming together of matter that fills a certain space throughout some amount of time. But this definition of ordinary objects is questionable on several counts, such as Quine’s positing of spatio-temporal regions that are in disaccord with the rest of his ontology. (Horgan 1991). 98 In opposition to Parmenidean monism which bought the difference between appearance and reality. Parmenides considered appearance to include parts. Whereas the real world is for him without any parts, immobile (not dynamical) and probably of the same dispersive quality along all of its texture. 99 Horgan and Potrč 2000, use the metaphor of undulating jell-o in order to illustrate the very possibility and conceivability of diversified and rich dynamical entity without any parts. Considerations in favor of exactly this being the case with our world come additionally from the possibility that the basic worldly constituent matter may be rather force and wave like than particles based. This is then the support from the part of science for our position. 97

160 the world and that in fact are regionally rooted in the world. But we still deny to them the recognition to be genuine parts or entities. We thereby deny the rendition of ordinary objects as appearances, and thereby the distinction between truth and appearance. We substitute this division by differences in normatively based approaches to the same one world. If I refer to a cat, I do not aim at appearance, and I still refer to the world – just that now I refer to the world in a rather indirect manner, by zooming in at some salient regional area of the world. This normatively underpinned assessment of the relation between the world and between whatever ex-sists in the world in a regional manner seems to be much more realistic account than is, as we believe, the now defunct distinction between reality and appearance. So there is just one world, but there are several possible manners to zoom at the world, to talk or think about it. This brings along with it diversity in normative standards that are employed in different cases. Normativity is thus inherent to our assessment of the world and to the kinds of metaphysics that we may recognize. We thus believe that metaphysical monism is true, and that it is a plausible view if supported by the appropriate account of the possible different areas of metaphysics and of their relatedness to the normative issues. Normative issues only recently began to shift100 into the focus of metaphysicians at all. But the normative issues continue not to be appropriately recognized because the important possibility of the particularist normativity, such as it is forthcoming in what we call particularist Beautiful Patterns, is not even considered. And this continues to happen despite that, as we believe, particularist Beautiful Patterns have the potentiality to properly account for what the metaphysicians are mostly concerned with, namely for the regional ontology. We will explain this in what follows. We will actually argue for the distinction between the ultimate and regional ontology as the framework that may allow us, through the normative singularity of Beautiful Patterns, to untie an important veil that hides the truth about metaphysics. Let us summarize the monistic metaphysical credo in a preliminary manner. It is the belief that there exists just one spatio-temporal world, without any parts, but dynamical and richly intertwined. Despite this, many everyday statements concerning ordinary objects are true, although the 100

Thomasson (Forthcoming), considers some principle and thus normativity based approaches to metaphysics that she characterizes as comparably recent items entering into discussion. She shows how a certain specific group of the arguments for or against MSDGs is basically normativity related.

161 truth in their case is not a direct kind of correspondence with the world, but rather an indirect kind of correspondence. The following two main principles are also important for an appropriate recognition of metaphysical monism that we advocate: The first is the principle of Non Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC) that argues for impossibility of existence of a multitude of arbitrary composed objects.101 This is the most general normative principle, which metaphysicians refuse to completely acknowledge because they many times continue to hold to the area of everyday objects as their basis. Just for this reason, they only partially acknowledge NAOC. Once the metaphysicians would recognize NAOC principle in all its consequences, as extending throughout the entire area that they are concerned with, they would have to recognize the existence of just one ultimate object, namely of the world. By the entire area we mean what is captured by the ultimate and regional ontology. Although NAOC is in value for both ultimate and regional ontology, its role and power is not equal in these. For the ultimate ontology, the only candidate satisfying NAOC is the Blob. In the case of the regional ontology, beautiful relevant patterns are satisfying NAOC. The second principle that we find plausible is that of impossibility of metaphysical vagueness. We think that the world just cannot be vague. Vague objects thus cannot exist.102 Just one, non-vague object exists. But we may still recognize vague objects in the world. In this manner we use language and thought that, as our cognitive endowments, allow for vagueness, and we use them for the task of cognitively and thus regionally sorting out things from the non-vague world. This rootedness of what we recognize allows us to stay in touch with the world, and to affirm the truth about what otherwise comes as ultimately metaphysically inexistent. The appeal to normativity and to the normatively changing standards turns out to be of importance in order that this principle would be properly under101

“The principle of Non-Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC): There cannot be a body of specific compositional facts that are collectively disconnected and unsystematic, and are individually unexplainable. Such ontological arbitrariness is not possible in the mind and language independent world.” (Potrč 2002c, 202; See also Horgan 1993) See also discussion of NAOC in the previous chapter. 102 The proof that vague objects cannot exist starts with the presupposition of their existence and by the usage of RAA reasoning that then derives their impossibility. See Horgan 1991, and Horgan and Potrč 2000. Barry Loewer proposed the name slobjects for the putative vague objects, and snobjects for non-vague objects that may come in multitude.

162 stood. It presupposes the division of metaphysics along two kinds of ontologies, the division that we appropriate as our framework. The third issue that we mention here is to some extent basic for our project, and especially for the concern here with metaphysics. It is the assessment of truth as indirect correspondence that we introduce along with the more usual construal of truth as direct correspondence and in opposition to it. Truth as direct correspondence refers directly to objects, to states of affairs or whatever you suppose to be there in your preferred ontology. As we buy just one object, the world or Blob, truth as direct correspondence will be appropriate, as we will refer to this object, to the world, in a direct matter. As basically there is no other object as the world around, according to us, we still refer to it, and we still manage to assert something truthfully if we assert something about the cat, say, both as the function of how the world is, and as the function of how our cognitive means of assessment of it work and contribute to the evaluation of the assertion. Truth as indirect correspondence is an important device because it allows us to keep our monistic view compatible with many things relating to common sense. And respect to and compatibility with common sense seems to us to be one desirable feature of a metaphysical theory. Problems of Normative Conditions in Metaphysics Metaphysics is the teaching about what there is. Peter van Inwagen tells us that the best definition of metaphysics that he ever heard is the simple assertion “Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate reality.”103 It seems a reasonable front up claim that what there is cannot depend upon conventions104 or upon various forms of normativity. This is certainly true in the following sense: the existence of the world cannot depend upon conventions and normative principles. But consider that our recognition of how the world is can depend on normative principles.105 The world certainly is intertwined in its constitution and it is rich. It is also rich to the extent that 103

See the introduction to Van Inwagen 1993. See Van Inwagen 1990. 105 This means that Middle Sized Dry Goods (MSDGs), as for that matter, are the province of how the world is. They are in the world, although they even do not exist as separate entities and they are vague. The vagueness and lack of the ultimate existence of MSDGs is also the mark of their language and though dependent constituency, for language and thought are vague, in counterdistinction to the world. 104

163 it is probably simply impossible for us to recognize the world as it is, in all the miniature of its detail. This is one way to start explaining how whatever exists – the world – does not depend upon matters of convention or normativity, but that the things in the world, and in a certain sense their existence that we recognize do in the indicated manner depend upon convention and normativity. For convention and normativity are related to language and thought and to our cognitive abilities. And cognitive abilities are normativity dependent, contrary to the world. The zooming-in onto the world is normativity dependent, although the world itself is not normativity dependent. But there is a powerful pull into the direction of not recognizing normativity as an important issue in metaphysics at all. It is believed that metaphysics is simply the teaching about what there is. And rightly it is thought that whatever there is cannot be normativity, i.e. language and thought dependent. This certainly is a plausible view about the world. But consider that the world, although recognized as solidly existent, is quite an abstract determination from this point of view, a determination that finds itself as far away from richness of our cognitive or normative capabilities as possible. If there is just a very thin and almost disposable normative cover posed upon the ultimate metaphysical assessment of the world, this cannot be the case with all the details – roses, cats and cars – that we encounter on the everyday basis in the world. These objects are of course rooted in the world106, but also they heavily depend upon our cognitive capacities of recognizing them. This simple fact tends to be obscured. Metaphysicians take just the first presumption – that whatever exists cannot be straightly normativity dependent. They then go on to slice away from this assertion any imprint of normativity, and they extend it to the matters that we recognize as existent on the everyday basis in our dealings with the world. Then they wrongly recognize the cat, say, as something ultimately existent. The main point is that this problem is not even thematized, and so it does not appear to be a problem at all for the metaphysics as it is mostly practiced. The importance of normativity related issues in metaphysics might be seen in the case of some arguments for or against the existence of ordinary objects. We deal with these matters in detail in the second part of this section. But if we go along with this insight, it may have the potential to reveal some preconditions of metaphysics, and perhaps to put metaphysical investigation upon an interesting and as we believe correct track. 106

At least those objects that were mentioned are all spatio-temporal.

164 The insight in the very possibility of particularist patterns in metaphysics, and also the insight why they were neglected may then become important. In the actual metaphysical discussion however it is not even thematized that there is this problem with normativity and that normativity is important for metaphysics because one has not laid importance onto particularist patterns. So particularist patterns seem to have a normative and possibly even an ethical dimension to them, as far as the direction of the basic research in metaphysics is concerned. Which are actually the main problems with metaphysics, the problems that we began to mention? These problems should first be illustrated by some instances, and then they should be related to their normative backgrounds. The beginning problem is that of identifying the area of metaphysics, and therewith the entities with which it is preoccupied. Does the area of interest for metaphysicians include only the world, or does it include other entities besides to the world, such as cats and cars? The problem is to set criteria for recognizing these, and these criteria by their nature are normative. For determining what belongs into certain metaphysics proceeds from setting the norms in respect to this matter. Some proposals about what exists are based upon principles. Peter van Inwagen in his Material Beings book, for example, accepts the proposal that just elementary particles and living beings exist. Thus there are no cars and mountains, but there are cats and people. This is an example where principles and normative criteria are set to determine whatever exists, even if consequences may not necessarily coincide with the criteria and normativity proper to common sense, or proper to that of other metaphysicians. Other beginning metaphysician’s problems involve vagueness: just when does a cat come into being? It seems that cats are vague. But vagueness is a normative consideration. So we end up with normativity again as determining one of basic metaphysician’s issues. The next metaphysical problem that one may discuss is that of the existence of Platonic or abstract entities. Do the numbers exist, and if they do, in what sense? Again, the answer seems to depend upon the nature of normativity involved. For Platonic entities such as numbers heavily depend upon normative issues, according to several possible interpretations. We mentioned just a choice of problems for metaphysics, and we discovered that they all seem to be normativity related. So normative issues seem to form the basic background for the discussion in metaphysics. The very basic metaphysical issues, such as whether someone prefers to be a realist or a nominalist, seem to bear normative imprints. Problems of metaphysics have to do with normativity. But the very begin-

165 ning stumbling block consists in recognizing the effectiveness of normative conditions in the discussion pertaining to metaphysics. Lately the shift is towards awareness of the importance of principles in metaphysics, as Amie Thomasson has pointed out. (Thomasson Forthcoming) But it is not the case that all or even the most general principles would be considered in the metaphysical praxis. And principles of course are normative. Anyway, there are problems in metaphysics, and these seem to be related at least in a big part to the normative issues. Ultimate and Regional Ontology In order to approach a problem, and first of all a philosophical problem, a useful procedure recommends to introduce some distinctions. We have seen that there is a difference in metaphysics that we have touched repeatedly in our tiny introductory discussion, that between the world, and between the features that we distinguish or encounter in the world. This is a distinction in ontology between several things that exist, the distinction imposing itself at least in the beginning as we try to approach the problem. Most of the problems in metaphysics are related to the separate entities that we encounter in the world, and to their existence, their individuation and their vagueness, besides to several other issues. But digging a little bit further into this, just in the way that we started, shows the dependency of two main forms of ontology on normative issues. We have introduced normative dimension by the device of zooming onto the world along several varying magnitudes approach. The plausible intuition about what exists that we embrace is that of one spatio-temporal world, which stays one irrespectively of how complex it may happen to be. And it seems how things that we encounter in the world, such as cats and cars, are important enough to deserve a separate category and treatment. So we say that (A) Metaphysics consists of two brands of ontology: (a) Ultimate ontology, and (b) Regional ontology. The ultimate ontology consists of the world itself. Whereas the regional ontology consists of the features that we find and recognize in the world. This is a distinction that is not appreciated at all or at least it is not sufficiently appreciated. It has to provide a framework for any possible metaphysics, as we understand it. This distinction may go under the name of ontological difference. Difference itself means that there is a distinction. And ontology means the teaching concerning whatever exists. So there is

166 some kind of difference in respect to that whatever exists. What should be this difference? Ontological difference simply tells you that ontology is different in respect to the ontic. Ontology in this sense refers to the world, whereas the ontic refers to what may be encountered in the world. A useful approach to this question is to proceed along the following lines. Ontology has high standards involved into it. At the time as we think about the world or as we mention it, our standards certainly get a lot higher than this is the case with the items that we find on the everyday basis in the world. One contemplates high and abstract ontological issues, principles and arguments about externalism, individuality and vagueness. It is not difficult to understand that our ontological standards will rise if we talk about the world, in respect to the standards concerning the existent that we use at the time as we talk about the cat or about the vegetarian hamburger. In the first case, in the case as we talk about the world, our standards perform the zooming out of the ordinary and everyday concerns of existence. We get ourselves into the distant mood, the mood that is distant at least in respect to our everyday concerns.107 At the time we think about the vegetarian hamburger, our standards get lowered in respect to the standards such as they were discussed previously. We zoom out of the world inspecting distant way to handle things, and we zoom into whatever is of our everyday concern in the world. Actually, usually we do not need to perform this zooming-in operation in this last case, for in the conditions of the everyday we just stay with whatever we encounter in the world.108 Whatever is there on everyday basis, the vegetarian hamburger say, is the matter that we already find in the world. We may just adopt an everyday ontological attitude in its respect. This everyday attitude tends to confuse the two areas of ontology: it tends to confuse the ontic and the ontological. In order to understand this confusion, we have to tackle the matters of normativity though. The reason that we need to do this is the simple truth that the difference between the ontological and between the ontic is a normative one, or it is the difference of various manners of zooming-in and of zooming-out in respect to the world. In the case our interest is dedicated to ontology, we 107

If we have a toothache, we will most probably center at our condition, and not on the world. 108 Notice that we do not need to zoom-in in the case of the ontic everyday concern at all. This is an interesting feature, perhaps not appreciated enough in discussions of metaphysics. We do need some zooming-out effort however in the case we deal with the matters of ultimate ontology. But nothing similar is required in the case of the ontic attitude. This is why we may call the ontic attitude the everyday metaphysics. We simply stick to the norms that we already find.

167 zoom-out of the matters of everyday existence and we zoom-in onto the world. This certainly requires some effort. At the time we are concerned with the ontic, we do not need to do anything, actually, in most of cases. We just need to stick with whatever we find around us in the world, on the everyday basis. We just stick to the everyday attitude. In the quite unusual case where we are already concerned with the matters of the ultimate world, we must zoom-out of our ontological attitude however. But this simple maneuver that just invites you to adopt simpler attitude as compared to the one that you now adopted turns out to be interestingly enough a challenging and insurmountable task for most of philosophers. We can call ignoring the importance of this maneuver stubborn. It is namely stubborn not being able to change your view and attitude in respect to adopt what is obvious and simpler than the attitude which you are engaged in. It is stubborn to persist in believing that things are more complicated than they actually are.109 Now, most philosophers, such as van Inwagen and Thomasson, actually adopt a mixture of everyday and stubborn maneuvers when performing metaphysics. They adopt as the area of their interest the regional ontic stuff, in an everyday manner. And they adopt in a stubborn manner the highest standards that they somehow feel they have to retain and continue to stick to as philosophers. But being everyday and stubborn amounts to disrespect for the ontological difference. Van Inwagen and Thomasson do not respect the ontological difference. But respect for the ontological difference is a must if you take metaphysics seriously, and if you wish to encounter difficulties that appear in it. In simple terms, you should not confuse the world for a vegetarian hamburger. The distinction between ultimate ontology and between regional ontology, between the ontological and between the ontic, is not appreciated to a sufficient extent, and many times it is not appreciated at all.110 But there are ways to at least recognize the difference between the ontological and the ontic, although in an implicit manner. So van Inwagen asks the basic metaphysical question about what is there that actually exists. When is 109

It would be stubborn to use the highest table bon-ton related standards appropriate for the court or for the company of the president at the time you find yourself in the local McDonalds. 110 Perhaps Heideggerians may seem to be able to appreciate ontological difference. But this is not the case. The difference in question is of normative nature, and they are mostly unable to recognize this. Although Dreyfus, H. in his 1991 may be read as arguing for the normative approach to the ontic in respect to the ontological. Skills, for example, have the precondition to happen in a setting where they are recognized, which of course is a normative approach to things.

168 it true that there is some y such that x’s compose y? In what circumstances do several material things add up or compose a single material thing? He considers as possible candidates several objects of the commonly accessible everyday world. He appreciates the normative dimension in trying to deliver an answer to this question, as he claims that there has to be some criterion to determine conditions for existence. His answer is that several material beings compose something iff the collective activity of these several beings constitutes Life. So, many entities that we suppose to exist in our everyday attitude, such as chairs and stones, do not exist according to him, for they do not match the criterion for existence that for van Inwagen is delivered as the principle of Life. So cats exist, but tables don’t. But consider now that this maneuver is at least partially stubborn, for it fails to recognize the difference between the ontological and the ontic for all the items of the everyday ontic metaphysical attitude. This is then just another manner of claiming that van Inwagen does not actually respect a wider metaphysical principle, such as Non Arbitrariness Of Composition (NAOC).111 Van Inwagen wrongly thinks that some items of the ontic everyday existent things are the ultimate ontological stuff. This is what we call being partially everyday in the matters of metaphysics. Van Inwagen namely stubbornly holds to the highest normative standards of the ultimate ontology and applies them to the area of the everyday metaphysical stuff or to the ontic. He rightly sees that this cannot get through in most of the cases. But he stubbornly persists in his claim that ultimate ontology applies to at least some ontic cases, namely to those that satisfy the requirement of the principle of Life. But this is arbitrary and it is partially stubborn. It is arbitrary because it is not clear why exactly the principle of Life should single out an exceptional lot of existent entities, in counterdistinction to the entities that do not really exist, although folks may suppose that this would be the case. It is partially stubborn because this arbitrary maneuver is propelled by the disrespect for the ontological difference. Van Inwagen obviously accepts the view that there are differences in metaphysical recognition of existence. If he would be consistent, he would have to go with the ultimate existence for the area of the world, and for the regional existence in the area of what we encounter on the everyday basis as existent, for the ontic. Now, he makes some effort to adopt this special philosophical attitude. He feels that there is something else as just the everyday mode of existence. So he would deny the special philosophical existence status to most items in the world, such as chairs and stones. But he would then arbi111

See Horgan 1993, Potrč 2002, and Potrč and Strahovnik 2004b.

169 trarily and thus in a partially stubborn manner adopt some special area of the ontic, namely whatever complies with the principle of Life, as ultimately existent. But this is stubborn, for a cat or even a human being just cannot be ontological: they are the ontic everyday matters that we encounter in the world. The partial stubbornness of van Inwagen maneuver is due to the commendable move to recognize most of the ontic features (chairs, stones) as not being ontological. But van Inwagen is confused even in this basic respect. He somehow feels that this chair is not ontological, that it is just ontic. But he does not say this in so many words. He does not say that the chair does not exist as an ontological entity (just the world does); he claims that it does not exist, in a simple manner.112 Is van Inwagen everyday? Yes, he is, in the sense that he lazily sticks with a part of the ontic being-in-the-world as with something ontological. Following the crowd, he refuses to step out of the ontic area when dealing with ontology, i.e. with whatever there ultimately exists, with the world. Van Inwagen is thus partially stubborn and everyday in his disrespect for the ontological difference. Van Inwagen is partially everyday because he does not consider normativity; he does not continue to embrace NAOC all the way down once he has appropriated it for non-living objects. Van Inwagen is partially stubborn because there is no real reason for limiting entrance rights into the existence club that he proposes, i.e. there are no real reasons that just chairs do not exist in the ultimate ontology. You take at least some MSDGs as actually existing if you go van Inwagen way, the living MSDGs. Notice that if van Inwagen would consider NAOC as ranging all the way through the areas of metaphysics, then the answer to his Special Composition Question (SCQ): “When does exist an y such that x’s compose this y?” would be different. Van Inwagen’s answer is: “The y exists when the x’s that compose it are guided by the principle of Life”. But if NAOC would be considered thoroughly, then the answer to SCQ would be: “As the world does not have any parts, no parts, i.e. no x’s are able to compose a y. So parts do not compose living beings either.” Additional underpinning of our standpoint is that from the point of view of ultimate ontology the principle Life is arbitrary. 112

Horgan and Potrč 2000, will have to improve their approach as well from this point of view. As they say that chairs and people do not exist, they do not go arbitrary, because they do recognize the difference between the ontic and the ontological in a nonarbitrary manner. They extend the treatment of the ontic over all the area. But it should be added that chairs and people do not exist as ontological entities, yet they may exsist as the ontic stuff, in the world, without that they would be parts of this world.

170 Here is a more general remark about the everyday. An everyday metaphysician leans towards the following reasoning about the world. Let us start with the ontic, with what is around here. If general principles may be found, or at least if we attempt to effectuate the search for them with a sufficient hope, we may justifiedly talk about the ultimate reality, about the world in general, as we tackle this ontic stuff. Thus, if generalist principles are expressible, this will be reason enough to talk about the ultimate reality. Both Thomasson and van Inwagen have this kind of approach when tackling the SCQ issues. But van Inwagen is closer to NAOC as Thomasson is in respect to this issue. This all happens because they do not consider our presupposition according to which general principles dominate one and rich world. Van Inwagen and Thomasson both share with us the belief that general principles belong to the ultimate reality. But they search for generalities in the area of the ontic. Another example of such proceeding is Quine’s definition of objects as the matter filling some space and time region. This is then supposed to be a general principle that determines what exists and what does not exist. And ultimate reality is supposed to exist. But this is again the application of general principles to the area of the ontic. Thomasson does not appreciate ontological difference as she persists in applying general principles, although somehow adapted general principles, to the area of folk ontology. She does not appreciate that folk ontology is guided locally by what we call beautiful particularist patterns. As van Inwagen asks about what exists, he goes on to explain it in terms of SCQ, which is for him the basic metaphysical question. However this is generality based approach to what really exists and to what does not really exist in the ontic world. He does not divide between high standards appropriate for monism and between the area of entities ex-sisting in the world. Van Inwagen just claims that it is impossible for something to exist in the ontic world unless it satisfies some criteria, and most folk ontology supposed things do not satisfy those criteria. From this point of view, van Inwagen’s SCQ divides into the question about what actually exists (cats for him) and into the question about what does not actually exist (chairs). Thereby he just confirms the usage of general question. We have taken the case of van Inwagen, a philosopher and metaphysician whom we appreciate very much as a leading authority in the area. We agree with the opinion somehow known in philosophical community that a positive response to someone’s view from the side of van Inwagen is practically the ultimate endorsement of this view. Yet exactly this respect

171 that we show for van Inwagen demonstrates how the framework that we wish to point towards, that of distinction between the ultimate and regional ontology, the framework that we adopt, together with the ensuing appreciation of the ontological difference, still stays a not recognized although basic item in metaphysics. Most metaphysicians are everyday and stubborn. They are everyday in that they do not sort themselves out of the area of the everyday ontic stuff as they treat the questions of the ultimate ontology. And they are stubborn when, once as they adopt the special philosophical attitude, they continue to stick to it no matter what, even if they clearly see that this special philosophical attitude, close to the generalist standards, will probably not be in power for the everyday area in metaphysics. They just stubbornly persist in the high standards adopted philosophical arrogance that makes them blind for the obvious. They persist with the highest normative standards, in our case with the ontological standards, and they apply them to the area of the ontic. Thereby they show their disrespect for the ontological difference. They stay in regional ontology, applying ontological ultimate standards to it. The distinction between the ultimate and regional ontology is our framework. It is a very basic and simple distinction. But it is not appreciated enough113. It is simply the distinction between the world, under the high criteria or standards of extreme zooming-out at what exists114, and between whatever exists in the world, where we may lazily stay with the things that we already find to exist around us, on the everyday basis. The techniques of zooming in and out of things introduced something such as varying standards. Now these varying standards or normative conditions may be divided into generalist and particularist ones. This distinction will be our framework in as far as normativity or normative conditions get concerned. So here is our second distinction in respect to (B) Normative conditions: (a) Generalist normative conditions, (b) Particularist normative conditions. Generalist normative conditions are set up in such a manner that they should be used for all the cases in question concerning a certain domain. Consider that this task is easily and trivially satisfied by the monistic ultimate ontology. As there is just one world out there, according to the ultimate ontology, this world and a certain normative condition that is in power for this world will of course range over all the cases in the respec113

Or as we claim, many times it is not appreciated at all. Zooming-out of the everyday existent and zooming onto the world as a general category. 114

172 tive domain. Of course, for there is just one world out there and so there is nothing else in this domain. Ultimate ontology thus satisfies the requirement of generalist normative conditions easily, for there is no special procedure needed here given that the domain involves just one object, namely the world. And the generalist normative condition requirement is satisfied trivially, for one world cannot fail to satisfy it. Particularist normative conditions, as this is indicated by their very name, are such that they will not range over a multitude of cases, but preferably over a unique case. The following confusion is often committed. One presumes that there exist a number of cases to which particularist normative conditions apply. From the point of view of all of these cases, particularist normative conditions would apply to this particular case only. Say, indexical determinants would determine uniqueness of such a case, and sort it out from many different similar cases. But notice that contribution of a feature will vary and it will have a possibly quite different role from one case to another one, depending on very hard to be tracked shape of the context that will each time determine the contribution of this feature. Indexicals are important. But that a feature shares the same time and space makes it context dependent how we see the indexically determined regions. Another possibility about how to understand this comes from the way holism is present in metaphysics. Context itself determines what is the ontology that we are talking about: whether it is regional or ultimate. Is there just the MSDGs ontology, or are there inside the area of the regional ontology also other contexts present? Holistic and Rich Regional Ontology Regional ontology is holistic and rich. The world that we encounter on the everyday basis is extremely intertwined. There are no clear borders for the things that ex-sist in the world. Cats are vague entities for all that we know and these vague entities do not even exist – they certainly do not exist as the ultimate ontological stuff. A fact is that there is holism appropriate for the common sense everyday world. There is the richness of the ex-sistent world that we encounter. Besides to this, regional ontology is composed out of things that are relevant for us in each respective situation. If there is a situation of everyday life, then there are MSDGs at which we focus. If there are other kinds of situations, other kinds of entities will enter as ex-sistent into the area of

173 the regional ontology. We argue that relevance is only brought along with the help of particularist patterns. But if this is the case, then particularist patterns dominate the regional ontology. Generalist patterns do not bring the relevance along with them at all, except for shallow repetitive relevance. So, relevance has to be brought in by particularist patterns. The area of regional ontology is relevant. So this area of regional ontology has to be dominated by particularist patterns. An already mentioned counterexample is provided by Amie Thomasson when she explains the regional ontology with the help of generalist patterns SCQ’s*, i.e. the sortally specified SCQs are applied to the specific kinds. Do chairs exist? Do nations exist? Do organisms exist? We transform these starting questions into SCQs*. These are: When do parts of a chair compose the chair? When do citizens form a nation? When do cells form an organism? This move of Amie Thomasson is generalist, for it completely preserves the normative authority of the general, through the promotion of dominance from the part of generalist patterns. A sortal claim would be that a chair is such that it is composed from the parts of the chair. Amie Thomasson has the best brand of examples in this direction. If these examples are intuitively false, this seems to be an explanation that this generalist take on things is not and cannot be an appropriate strategy. Conclusion Regional ontology is just one way to zoom onto the world. It is rooted in the one world, although in an indirect manner. So language and thought are of importance to the regional ontology, in a pronounced way, besides that MSDGs, say, are entities cum fundamentum in the world or in the Blob.115 Is regional ontology just a folk attuned matter? We may suppose that theory of literature has its own Beautiful Patterns determining the ways to speak about the world in an indirect but true manner. Two possibilities open themselves here. You may either extend the world of MSDGs to capture other, not only folk ontological metaphysical entities. Or you may admit that there are several regional ontologies. The difference with the reification inclined metaphysicians would then be that regional ontologies exsist in the world. Thus, how should we understand the regional ontology? Should there be just a folk ontology attuned understanding? Or should we include aesthetics, ethics: do goodness and what is morally right ex-sist 115

Horgan and Potrč 2000.

174 only regionally, as beautiful particularist patterns? If they exist in the regional way, the consequence will be that this moral judgment will be correct or incorrect in function of its indirect truth in respect to the world. It is difficult to claim that goodness is a part of the world anyway. The question should not necessarily be decided here, and we may just continue to refer to MSDGs. But on a certain occasion we may tackle this question what exactly enters the regional ontology. Is regional ontology just folk psychological ontology consisting of roughly MSDGs? Or do there exist several aspects of regional ontology, such as aesthetic, ethic aspect, scientific aspect, MSDG world aspect? Then there would be a range of ex-sisting things, indirect correspondence allowing for truth or falsity of assertions concerned therewith, depending on their rootedness in the world or on the lack of such a rootedness. We skillfully master regional ontology. As van Inwagen discusses the question whether the room without the furniture is empty, he claims that for the questions of metaphysics it is just not relevant whether atoms are in the room. If physicist would address the same question, this may then become relevant. Relevance in respect to us is thus determinant for the regional ontology. In this manner, van Inwagen recognizes the weight that is proper to folk ontology. One must acknowledge that the regional existence is really what is accessible to us. And if it is accessible, it comprises an important epistemic ingredient. So ontology is actually an epistemic enterprise, it is the matter of discourse being applied to what exists. But then the general patterns, such as properties, cannot be really taken as ultimate ontological stuff. They really should be recognized as linguistic and conceptual, thus as epistemic stuff. The regional existence is then in question, and this regional existence should be approached not by any generalist categories (such as properties and kinds) but by particular beautiful patterns.

175

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