Pragmatism and Objectivity Essays Sparked by the Work of Nicholas Rescher 2016048944, 9781138655232, 9781315622620

Citation preview

Pragmatism and Objectivity

Rescher’s masterly corpus is legendary in its scope and volume. This collection focuses on issues prompted by his avowed pragmatism. Philosophers who have long studied and commented on Rescher’s work have been asked to share this focus, which results in a welcome avenue to understanding pragmatism, as well as Rescher’s system and its unifying themes. —Ernest Sosa, Rutgers University, USA Pragmatism and Objectivity illuminates the nature of contemporary pragmatism against the background of Rescher’s work, resulting in a stronger grasp of the prospects and promises of this philosophical movement. The central insight of pragmatism is that we must start from where we find ourselves and deflate metaphysical theories of truth in favor of an account that reflects our actual practices of the concept. Pragmatism links truth and rationality to experience, success, and action. While crude versions of pragmatism state that truth is whatever works for a person or a community, Nicholas Rescher has been at the forefront of arguing for a more sophisticated pragmatist position. According to his position, we can illuminate a robust concept of truth by considering its links with inquiry, assertion, belief, and action. His brand of pragmatism is objective and organized around truth and inquiry, rather than other forms of pragmatism that are more subjective and lenient. The contingency and fallibility of knowledge and belief formation do not mean that our beliefs are simply what our community decides, or that truth and objectivity are spurious notions. Rescher offers the best chance of understanding how it is that beliefs can be the products of human inquiry yet aim at the truth nonetheless. The essays in this volume, written by established and up-and-coming scholars of pragmatism, touch on themes related to epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics. Sami Pihlström is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the President of the Philosophical Society of Finland.

Routledge Studies in American Philosophy Edited by Willem deVries, University of New Hampshire, USA and Henry Jackman, York University, Canada

1 Intentionality and the Myths of the Given Between Pragmatism and Phenomenology Carl B. Sachs 2 Richard Rorty, Liberalism and Cosmopolitanism David E. McClean 3 Pragmatic Encounters Richard J. Bernstein 4 Toward a Metaphysics of Culture Joseph Margolis 5 Gewirthian Perspectives on Human Rights Edited by Per Bauhn 6 Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics Diana B. Heney 7 Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy Edited by David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum 8 Pragmatism and Objectivity Essays Sparked by the Work of Nicholas Rescher Edited by Sami Pihlström

Pragmatism and Objectivity Essays Sparked by the Work of Nicholas Rescher Edited by Sami Pihlström

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pihlström, Sami, editor. Title: Pragmatism and objectivity : essays sparked by the work of Nicholas Rescher / edited by Sami Pihlström. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in American philosophy ; 8 | 1 [edition]. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016048944 | ISBN 9781138655232 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Pragmatism. | Rescher, Nicholas—Influence. Classification: LCC B832 .P7564 2017 | DDC 144/.3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048944 ISBN: 978-1-138-65523-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62262-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgments Foreword

vii ix

CHERYL MISAK

Introduction

1

SAMI PIHLSTRÖM

PART I

Truth and Reality

5

  1 Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism: A Rescherian Balance?

7

SAMI PIHLSTRÖM

  2 Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy

31

SCOTT F. AIKIN AND ROBERT B. TALISSE

  3 Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism: Frank Ramsey on Truth, Meaning, and Justification

46

GRIFFIN KLEMICK

  4 Pragmatism and Science

72

ROBERT ALMEDER

  5 Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?

98

TOM ROCKMORE

  6 Toward a More Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism VINCENT COLAPIETRO

113

vi Contents PART II

Reasoning131   7 Ramsey’s Theory of Belief and the Problem of Attitude Divergence

133

JESSICA J. R. WRIGHT

  8 Concrete Reasonableness and Pragmatist Ideals: Peirce and Rescher on Normative Theory

150

ROSA MAYORGA

  9 Obliquely about Realism: The State of Play of a Minor Affair

169

JOSEPH MARGOLIS

PART III

Value195 10 Rescherean Pragmatism

197

JOSEPH C. PITT

11 Pragmatism and the Inseparability of Objectivity and Solidarity: Rescher on Rhetorical Rationality, Method, and Cooperative Interaction

205

HELMUT PAPE

12 Psychology of Desire and the Pragmatics of Betterment

223

TIMO AIRAKSINEN

13 From Method to Medicine: A Pragmatist Approach to Bioethics

239

DIANA B. HENEY

14 Moral Responsibility and the Cognitive Status of Ethical Ideals

254

JOHN R. SHOOK

List of Contributors Index

277 279

Acknowledgments

I should like to most warmly thank, first of all, Professor Nicholas Rescher for providing us all with a model of rigorous philosophical work and attitude over the years and decades. I am very pleased to be able to present him and his numerous readers all around the world with this collection and honor his contributions to pragmatism by offering him an opportunity to continue critical discussion with the authors. Professor Cheryl Misak, in fact, initiated this entire book project a long time before it was decided that I would eventually replace her as the volume editor. I am deeply grateful to her and to the Routledge editors Andrew Weckenmann and Nicole Eno for this opportunity. Cheryl had fortunately already recruited all the contributors before I took over, and I simply continued her work from that point. I saw no reason to make any changes in the group of people involved, nor even in the order in which their essays are placed in the volume. Thus, the final result follows the outline already proposed by Cheryl, and she also kindly agreed to write a brief foreword to our volume. The series editors Henry Jackman and Willem deVries have also been strongly supportive of the project since its initiation. Needless to say, I should like to warmly thank all the chapter contributors not only for their excellent articles but also for their patience; this volume has been in the making for a relatively long time. Let me add a final note on Rescher’s considerable influence in my home country, Finland. In fact, I first learned about Rescher’s work and its significance from my dissertation supervisor, Professor Ilkka Niiniluoto, already as an undergraduate. Ilkka later encouraged me to send my dissertation on pragmatism and realism (1996) to Rescher, which I did, receiving an immediate friendly and supportive response. While I have never worked with Rescher, I have enjoyed the (all too few) opportunities to occasionally meet him at conferences, and I have done my best to digest even a small fragment of his enormous philosophical oeuvre. I know some of my Finnish colleagues—in addition to Ilkka Niiniluoto, at least Timo Airaksinen and Arto Siitonen—have been more directly influenced by him, and his significance for the Finnish academic community is also demonstrated by the fact that he holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki.

viii Acknowledgments I am confident that I can speak on behalf of all the contributors to this volume when saying that I very much look forward to further exchanges of philosophical ideas with Professor Rescher. It is in this spirit of continuing critical dialogue that I am pleased to present him and all his readers with this book. Sami Pihlström Helsinki, Finland, December 6, 2016

Foreword

I owe a major debt to Nicholas Rescher, and I would venture that anyone who works within the tradition of pragmatism does so as well. So it is my pleasure to preface this volume of essays on his thought with a few words about why I think Rescher is so important. While some versions of pragmatism have it that truth is whatever works for a person or a community, Rescher has steadily, over many decades, given pragmatists what I think is a better alternative. He has argued for a pragmatist position on which we can illuminate a robust concept of truth by considering its linkages with inquiry, assertion, belief, and action. His kind of pragmatism is an objective truth-and-inquiry oriented pragmatism, rather than a subjective “anything-goes” pragmatism. According to Rescher, the contingency and fallibility of knowledge and belief formation do not entail that our beliefs are simply what our community decides or that truth and objectivity are spurious notions. That is, he offers us a real chance of understanding how it is that beliefs can both be the products of human inquiry and nonetheless aim at the truth. My own engagement with his work started when I was an undergraduate and stumbled across his book Peirce’s Philosophy of Science: Critical Studies in His Theory of Induction and Scientific Method. It was an open door into a kind of Peirce scholarship directed at utilizing Peirce’s ideas to help us answer the big questions in philosophy of science. I was very happy to walk through that door and never turn back. Then, as a graduate student, I snapped up a book of his in Blackwell’s on the growth of knowledge and spent a term writing essays based on its ideas. Now, always on my desk is a copy of his (and Ulrich Majer’s) edition of Frank Ramsey’s great, unfinished, book manuscript On Truth. The careful editing of this important pragmatist work is a gift to the history of analytic philosophy. The travels that others have taken through the astonishing number of books that Nicholas Rescher has written or edited will have been other paths. But, however they wind, they all lead, via the signposts set out by Rescher, to promising versions of pragmatism, which are indebted to his reliable directions. Cheryl Misak

Introduction Sami Pihlström

This volume explores a number of interrelated themes that have been central in pragmatism scholarship since the earliest stages of the development of the pragmatist tradition: truth, objectivity, rationality, value, and the controversy between realism and idealism (among other things). The contributions have been inspired by Nicholas Rescher’s pragmatism, but most of them are not primarily—and some of them not at all—commentaries on Rescher’s own work. They are, precisely, independent examinations of the above-mentioned and many other pragmatist topics inspired—or, as the subtitle of the book puts it, sparked—by Rescher’s philosophy. As Nicholas Rescher’s work on pragmatism, realism, idealism, and numerous other topics (covering, indeed, almost all topics of philosophy) is both well known among philosophers and too vast to be briefly introduced, I will let the individual contributors substantially introduce the aspects of Rescher’s pragmatism their chapters analyze and critically examine. Nor can Rescher’s publishing profile be easily summarized in an introduction; with more than one hundred books and several hundreds of articles, he has written on virtually any philosophical issue worth considering. Moreover, Cheryl Misak has contributed a “Foreword” to this volume, explaining at a general level why it is important to collect together a volume of essays on pragmatism and objectivity and how she sees the relevance of Rescher’s thought in this regard, while my own chapter in the book is still to some extent introductory, as it explores the relations between Rescher’s realism and idealism, in particular. Therefore, I have decided to keep this “Introduction” brief and basically offer only short summaries of the individual chapters here. *** The book is organized into three main parts: Part I, titled “Truth and Reality,” contains chapters 1–6; Part II, “Reasoning,” chapters 7–9; and Part III, “Value,” chapters 10–14. Chapter 1, authored by myself, continues the introduction by examining how Rescherian realism, idealism, pragmatism, and pluralism hang together

2  Sami Pihlström as a complex set of philosophical commitments. In particular, I try to illuminate the relations these Rescherian ideas have not only to the pragmatist tradition but also to the Kantian project of transcendental philosophy. Special attention is devoted to Rescher’s peculiar transcendental argument for realism. In Chapter 2, Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse discuss Rescher’s pragmatism in relation to William James’s pragmatist metaphilosophy, as laid out in James’s Pragmatism (1907). The authors find Rescher’s position superior to James’s, while also analyzing its relation to what they call metaphilosophical skepticism. Chapter 3, by Griffin Klemick, returns to one of the favorite historical figures of many “objective” pragmatists, namely, Frank Ramsey. His theories of truth, meaning, and justification are analyzed in relation to the pursuit of objective pragmatism and thus as precursors of the kind of pragmatism Rescher has advanced in contrast to less objectively oriented pragmatists like James and Rorty. Robert Almeder’s Chapter 4 takes up fundamental issues in pragmatist philosophy of science, including scientific inference (especially induction), scientific explanation, and scientific realism, identifying Charles S. Peirce as the pioneer figure to whose views Rescherian objective pragmatism is to a considerable extent indebted. In Chapter 5, Tom Rockmore comments on Peirce’s quip according to which Kant was just a “somewhat confused pragmatist,” thus contributing to an enhanced historical understanding of the development of the pragmatist tradition, especially regarding the issue of realism vs. idealism, in Peirce through his appropriation of classical German idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel. Vincent Colapietro continues the discussion of pragmatic realism as a philosophy of inquiry as well as the Peircean dimensions of objective pragmatism in Chapter 6. He introduces the notion of homo quarens (a term also used by Rescher) and seeks to account for the specifically pragmatist conception of inquiry, emphasizing its Peircean but also Deweyan background. In Chapter 7, Jessica J. R. Wright argues, drawing on the behavior-based account of belief defended by Ramsey, that such a behavior-based account can deal with cases of attitude divergence and that there are theoretical reasons not to accept the competing view about belief. The chapter draws on Ramsey’s book manuscript On Truth—a manuscript edited and made available to us through the work of Rescher and Ulrich Majer. Rosa Mayorga analyzes Rescher’s and Peirce’s pragmatisms in Chapter 8, drawing attention to the relevance of pragmatism in normative theory and to Peirce’s ideal of concrete reasonableness in particular. While Rescher’s pragmatism is in many ways a continuation of Peirce’s, it turns out that Rescher cannot be considered a scholastic realist in exactly the Peircean sense; the reality of ideals is a crucial issue upon which these two pragmatists’ divergences focus.

Introduction  3 Joseph Margolis continues the realism discussion and thus partly returns to the topics of Part I in Chapter 9. Taking issue with a number of recent philosophers, including John McDowell in particular, he develops a form of pragmatic naturalism that firmly gives up any Kantian a priori without sacrificing the distinctive, albeit naturally evolved, cognitive and linguistic capabilities of human beings, nor the empirical realism that pragmatic naturalism needs to be committed to. In Chapter 10, Joseph C. Pitt opens Part III of the volume by examining the relation between pragmatism and cognitive values in the context of Rescher’s as well as Peirce’s work. Starting from Peirce’s original pragmatic maxim, he critically yet sympathetically examines the status of Rescher’s objective pragmatism in contemporary debates over value. Helmut Pape is yet another contributor who sees Peirce as the most important historical background thinker in the tradition of objective pragmatism that Rescher has developed. His Chapter 11 focuses on the inseparability of objectivity and solidarity (in contrast to Rorty’s neopragmatist dichotomy between them), seeking to illuminate Rescher’s views on rationality and cooperation starting from a Peircean account of assertion and communication. In Chapter 12, Timo Airaksinen examines pragmatist views on desire. Anxiety, happiness, gratification, and related topics are analyzed in relation to the pragmatist view of “betterment” (or what some pragmatists might prefer to call meliorism), defeating unnecessary pessimism. Chapter 13, by Diana B. Heney, explores pragmatist bioethics, commenting on one of Rescher’s early contributions to this discussion. The pragmatic method advanced by Rescher turns out to be relevant not only in general methodological issues in ethics and the philosophy of value but in more concrete problems of medical ethics as well. John R. Shook concludes the volume with his Chapter 14, which returns to the topic of idealism (already discussed by many of the contributors to Part I, in particular), now in the context of ethics, specifically inquiring into the doctrine of ethical idealism in relation to moral responsibility.

Part I

Truth and Reality

1 Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism A Rescherian Balance? Sami Pihlström

1 Introduction One of the most remarkable features of the kind of pragmatism committed to advancing scientific rationality and objectivity—and thus to criticizing subjectivist and relativist misconstruals of pragmatism—that Nicholas Rescher has defended for several decades is its attempt to maintain a balance of a number of philosophical ideas that are often thought to be in tension with each other. Rescherian pragmatism is realistic (even “metaphysically realistic”), but it is also idealistic (in the sense of what he calls “conceptual idealism” or “pragmatic idealism”); moreover, its realism and objectivism do not seem to preclude a pluralistic conception of a variety of different perspectives (or “systems,” “conceptual schemes”) that we may employ for conceptually categorizing reality. These views are highly relevant to the general realism discussion as well as its special applications in the philosophy of science, to which Rescher has been a key contributor for decades. Starting from some of Rescher’s own formulations of these and related ideas—spanning dozens of years and volumes of systematic philosophical work, from Conceptual Pragmatism (1973) via A System of Pragmatic Idealism (1992–1994) to Realistic Pragmatism (2000) and beyond—this essay will critically examine the Rescherian attempt to overcome the potential conflicts between realism, idealism, and pluralism. Thus, this chapter will, to some extent, still serve an introductory function, aiming at a relatively general outline of the specifically Rescherian position in the contemporary debates over realism. The core of Rescher’s distinctive realistic project, in my view, is his pragmatism. Although Rescher has hardly presented any truly novel interpretations of the classical thinkers of the pragmatist tradition, his discussions are highly valuable, as they distinguish between significantly different currents within the movement from the standpoint of his own preferred form of pragmatism. In particular, he powerfully argues, against Richard Rorty and some other neopragmatists inclined toward relativism, that pragmatism should not be construed (or, rather, deconstructed) as a form of “antiphilosophical nihilism” abandoning systematic argumentative work in philosophy conceived as a rational project.1 Pragmatism, he urges,

8  Sami Pihlström is compatible not only with scientific realism and objectivity but also with a conception of philosophy itself as a systematic cognitive enterprise (and, thus, as broadly speaking “scientific”). Rescher, indeed, is a profoundly systematic philosopher; yet he wishes to recognize a certain plurality in the possible ways in which one can be systematic and argumentative.2 I will, inevitably moving significantly beyond Rescher’s own position and its historical development,3 yet in a continuous critical dialogue with Rescher, seek to articulate a pragmatist approach whose key aim is a critical balance of Rescher’s allegedly mutually incompatible philosophical commitments. Such a balance will be sought by utilizing Rescher’s own systematic rational methods. I will, in particular, suggest that the kind of holistic pragmatism defended by Morton White (who, like Rescher, is a somewhat neglected pragmatist thinker fighting against various subjectivist and relativist tendencies within pragmatism), since his Toward Reunion in Philosophy (1956), is a helpful, albeit not unproblematic, resource for integrating pragmatic realism, idealism, and pluralism. I will argue that the Rescherian type of pragmatic realism-cum-idealism, even when enriched by White’s holism, needs to take seriously the Kantian (and, therefore, transcendentally idealistic) background of pragmatism, pluralistically reinterpreted. Furthermore, in order to illustrate these issues, I will briefly apply the problem of pragmatic realism and objectivity to the science vs. religion debates.

2 Rescher as a Pragmatist As anyone acquainted with his writings knows, Rescher is an exception in contemporary philosophy in the sense that he is not only a pragmatist but also an idealist. He has for decades insisted that reality, as experienced by us humans, is inescapably “our reality,” that is, constructed, conceptually grasped, or schematized by us. While some pragmatists—most famously, or notoriously, William James, and more recently Hilary Putnam—have also often been regarded as idealists in a roughly similar sense,4 it is possible to interpret Rescher’s commitment to pragmatism itself as “a counterweight to idealism”: far from subscribing to any antirealist form of idealism, pragmatism reminds us that our mental activities cannot be detached from our natural needs, corporeality, and interests; accordingly, a pragmatic “reality principle,” while still compatible with idealism, prevents idealism from going too far in its legitimate emphasis on human world-construction.5 According to Rescher, such a reality principle is “an objective monitor whose operations lie above and beyond the reach of our own arbitrary contrivings”; it is with reference to “the nature of things” that the question of the pragmatic, purposive efficacy of particular means for particular ends is to be settled (RP, xiii). In this sense, pragmatism is, for Rescher, a realistic doctrine: pragmatic efficacy is sought and found in the operations of our conceptual machinery in a largely mind-independent reality. As Rescher explains, the pragmatist method of evaluating

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  9 methods of inquiry in terms of their efficiency can also be applied to itself; far from leading to any vicious circularity, this makes pragmatism “selfsubstantiating” (RP, 240–242). Indeed, Rescher maintains that his realistic pragmatism “fares well by its own standards of utility” (RP, 248). Curiously, Rescher’s idealism, strongly emphasized, for example in his three-volume System of Pragmatic Idealism, one of his main works in the 1990s, is virtually absent as we arrive at his key statement of pragmatism, Realistic Pragmatism.6 Possibly he there wishes to emphasize the realistic element in pragmatism so strongly that there is no room for his former idealism in the book any longer—or perhaps he had by the year 2000 come to the conclusion that what he earlier called “idealism” (or “conceptual idealism”)7 is actually quite far from any recognizably idealistic doctrine. In any event, his failure to connect idealism with pragmatism in his work around the turn of the millennium is obviously related to another striking feature of Realistic Pragmatism, namely, his failure to acknowledge Immanuel Kant as one of the central background figures of the pragmatist tradition. I am afraid we cannot get rid of idealism so easily—either Kant’s, the pragmatists’, or Rescher’s own. Or so I will try to argue, returning to Kantian matters more explicitly in section 4 below. It can also be argued that Rescher’s understanding of pragmatism is based on an unnecessarily sharp distinction between what he regards as objectivist and subjectivist (or realist and relativist) forms of pragmatism. His own version, the objectivist and realist one seeking an impersonal reality principle in real-world considerations of purposive efficacy, follows Charles S. Peirce’s and C. I. Lewis’s pragmatism, whereas subjectivist pragmatism originates, in Rescher’s view, with James and F.C.S. Schiller, culminating in Rorty’s more straightforwardly relativistic thought. As a picture of pragmatism, this is rather crude, however, and can serve as only a rough summary of the history of the tradition.8 There is, admittedly, a great difference between Peirce and Rorty, and Schiller’s “humanistic” pragmatism in particular was a radically subjectivist doctrine hard to reconcile with the spirit of objective scientific thinking, but there are also interesting intermediary positions that may be more plausible than either Peirce’s or Rorty’s (or Schiller’s). I believe (although I am unable to argue for this view here) that James’s and Dewey’s pragmatisms were among such intermediary positions and that in our days, too, a Jamesian or Deweyan pragmatist may be able to avoid both strongly realist metaphysical speculations and the relativist and antiphilosophical swamps of mere Rortyan “conversation.”9 The Rescherian objective pragmatist’s “reality principle” can be considered self-subsistent and person-indifferent, but Jamesian or Deweyan pragmatists need not be irresponsible subjectivists or relativists, either. Rescher is, arguably, right in being critical of Schiller’s personalist subjectivism and Rorty’s postmodernist ironism, but he is somewhat unfair to James: while it may be correct to note that James “opened the way to fragmenting truth into a plurality of contextualizations” (RP, 17), it is far from clear that

10  Sami Pihlström James himself walked that road of fragmentation and started a “deconstructive transformation of pragmatism” (RP, 61).10 Such an overhasty attack on James illustrates how Rescher himself falls back to a number of rather unpragmatic conceptual dichotomies, reflecting the most fundamental distinction he makes, i.e., the one between realistic “pragmatism of the right” and relativistic “pragmatism of the left” (RP, Chapter 2; cf. 246–247). He subscribes to the dualisms between, say, epistemic and non-epistemic (affective), cognitive and normative/evaluative, objective and subjective, impersonal and personalistic, as well as legitimation and de-legitimation (RP, 49, 245).11 Instead of showing that pragmatism simply ought to take an objective (“Peircean”) route, Rescher thus succeeds in demonstrating how surprisingly unpragmatic some allegedly Peircean realistic and objectivist commitments are, at least on a certain strongly realistic interpretation. Rescher’s classifications of different forms of pragmatism—semantic, epistemic, metaphysical, moral, and political—are clarifying, but, by suggesting that we should return to what he takes to be the Peircean roots of the tradition, he loses much of what is philosophically valuable in post-Peircean pragmatism. Rescher’s most problematic, and presumably the most important, division lies between “thesis pragmatism” and “method pragmatism” (or methodological pragmatism). The latter, which he subscribes to, urges that pragmatic considerations ought to be applied to methods and procedures employed in the validation of theses, not to theses themselves (RP, 77, and Chapter 3). Apart from historical inaccuracies,12 the obvious problem with this view is that it hardly acknowledges the idea of the theory-dependence of methods. It is a simplification to state that “a thesis can be justified by application of a method,” which, in turn, is justified by practical criteria (RP, 96). The very possibility of using some particular method, let alone the availability of the practical criteria with reference to which the method is assessed, may crucially depend on assumptions concerning the truth of certain “theses,” i.e., on researchers being committed to a theoretical framework that takes the world to be in some way rather than another. Methods can scarcely be developed and evaluated in total abstraction from the theoretical theses they are used to validate; it sounds suspicious to suggest that there even could be a completely “theory-external quality control upon cognition” (RP, 97). The threatening circularity built into the view that methods depend on theories and vice versa has been widely debated in the philosophy of science at least since Thomas Kuhn, but, especially in Realistic Pragmatism, Rescher simply fails to pay sufficient attention to this issue. Paradoxically, then, his “scientific” pragmatism is harmed by his not being sufficiently responsive to developments in the philosophy of science in, and since, the 1960s. On the other hand, Rescher is certainly right—and obviously up-to-date— in conceiving of “the scientific method” as “not a single and uniform mode of procedure but a vast manifold of thought-tools,” as a fallible “procedural organon that is itself evolving under the pressure of considerations of

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  11 pragmatic efficacy” (RP, 114). Here, I think, all pragmatist philosophers of science should follow him; however, the notion of pragmatic efficacy, inviting the pragmatic realist’s “reality principle,” brings us back to the question of realism, the main issue of this paper.

3 Rescher (and His Critics) on Realism and Idealism—an Uneasy Balance? Rescher labels his basic view of reality—which he considers not only compatible with pragmatism but supported by it—metaphysical realism, defined as the doctrine that “there indeed is a real world—a realm of mind-independent, objective physical reality” (RP, 126; see also 147), i.e., that “the world exists in a way that is substantially independent of the thinking beings that inquire into it, and that its nature—its having whatever characteristics it does actually have—is also comparably thought independent” (SPI, I, 255).13 A critic of realism might question the notion of (mind-)independence here, problematizing statements such as the one about objective things existing and functioning “in themselves,” “without specific dependence on us” (RP, 131). In the terms of Rescher’s (earlier) idealism, the objective world might still be regarded as “conceptually” dependent on us—and not everybody, and certainly not every pragmatist, maintains that conceptual and (say) existential or ontological (in)dependence can be sharply distinguished from one another. In any event, realism is, in Rescherian pragmatism, a deeply human commitment, not a description of the world in itself or of things in themselves from a God’s-Eye-View. It is “a commitment that we presuppose for our inquiries rather than discover as a result of them” (RP, 126). We cannot discover, on the basis of evidence, that such a general thesis as realism is true; we can only presuppose realism as something that makes sense of and regulates our inquiries and other practices. Realism can, then, be supported by means of something like a transcendental argument: it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of inquiry and communication (RP, 134–135). It is not a view to be defended on the basis of evidence but to be postulated in order for us to be able to collect any evidence for any view whatsoever (or better, in order for us to be able to make sense of our “given,” unproblematized practice of gathering evidence for any other view). In this sense, Rescher’s realism is a transcendentally grounded commitment arising from what seems to be a transcendentally idealistic (Kantian) conception of the necessary constitutive conditions for the possibility of certain given actualities of human life (i.e., inquiry, discovery, conceptualization, and communication). Again, one may wonder, therefore, why Rescher has not devoted more space to Kantian issues in his discussions of pragmatism, though he does refer to Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism” (RP, 127, n1). It is not clear without further investigation that the transcendental mode of argumentation

12  Sami Pihlström (in favor of realism or anything else) could be employed entirely independently of transcendental idealism.14 A key issue here is the relation between pragmatism and Kantian-styled transcendental argumentation, since realism, transcendentally defended, is also for Rescher “ultimately a principle of practice,” justified because “we need it to operate our conceptual scheme” (RP, 134),15 that is, a principle of inquiry pragmatically “retrojustified” (see RP, 145–146). The very same principle is treated simultaneously as a transcendentally necessary condition for the possibility of certain purposive human activities and as a pragmatically useful postulate enabling us to engage in those activities efficaciously—that is, as a postulate itself pragmatically validated. A pragmatist conception of human activity is both a presupposition of realism (understood as a practical commitment) and something that itself requires a realistic conception of the world in which human beings act. In this sense, we may say that the transcendental cuts both ways: something can be a transcendental precondition of something else while also being itself “conditioned.” These different Rescherian commitments could also be seen as constituting a set of mutually supportive philosophical principles that are themselves constitutive elements of inquiry (see also section 5 below). However, one may wonder why Rescher calls his realism “metaphysical.” He might have chosen a more neutral term, but presumably he wants to draw, again, a (rather unpragmatic) distinction: he wishes to be able to say that, although one might, epistemologically, embrace conceptual idealism, one can and should be a realist in metaphysical matters. The meaning of the term is here different from what Hilary Putnam, another influential neopragmatist, meant by “metaphysical realism” in his famous attack on that doctrine.16 In any case, it is clear that the problem of realism vs. idealism lies at the heart of pragmatist philosophizing; it is much less clear that Rescher has adequately settled this vexing question. Realistic Pragmatism—as just one selected example of his enormous oeuvre—makes it very clear that several tensions remain in his position. Turning to a diagnosis of what might be going wrong in Rescher’s project, it might be suggested that one of the reasons why he has difficulties with the issue of realism is his failure to pay due attention to what he takes to be merely the subjectivist trend in pragmatist thought, especially to James’s pragmatism, which views any realistic commitment to an objective reality as a commitment based on concrete, individual human purposes and thus arrives (arguably) at a genuinely pragmatic form of realism, in which realism is subordinated to pragmatism (rather than vice versa). The key problem in Rescher’s (and many others’) accounts of realism and idealism is the (transcendental) role played by human conceptualizations, idealizations, and schematizations in the structuring of reality. The issue of realism cannot, therefore, be discussed independently of our philosophical views on what it is to be a human being intelligently examining the world. The most important lesson that Rescher’s reflections on pragmatism may teach

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  13 us is the unavoidability of something like philosophical anthropology in the realism discussion. We have to acknowledge the relevance of philosophical inquiries into “human nature” regarding our disputes over realism and idealism (and several other philosophical disputes as well). Realists, after all, claim that the world is independent of us humans (or, more precisely, of our ways of conceptualizing it and inquiring into it), whereas idealists regard it as being somehow (but exactly how?) dependent on us. Rescher interestingly argues that pragmatism, rightly developed, leads to an ethically (and metaethically) responsible realistic position (RP, chapters 7 and 8; see also SPI, II). Here, I believe, his case for realistic pragmatism is at its strongest, at least if his pragmatic defense of moral realism can be distinguished from the more problematic assumptions of metaphysical realism. The view that there are not only descriptive but also evaluative or “morally laden” facts (RP, 198, 220)—or that facts and values are inseparably entangled— has been central in the pragmatist tradition since James and Dewey. A key idea in Rescher’s axiology and metaethics is that the pragmatic principle of rational evaluation through purposive efficacy should be extended to the normative area. Values, no less than methods employed in factual belief-acquisition, ought to be pragmatically assessed; they are not just “matters of taste.” What is decisive in such assessment is the capacity of our values to contribute to the realization of human interests. Hence, philosophical anthropology is needed in the pragmatic legitimation and rational criticism of values (RP, 168–169). Morality is ultimately grounded, Rescher maintains, in our inherently rational “ontological duty of self-realization,” “the fundamental obligation of endeavoring to make the most of one’s opportunities for realizing oneself as fully as possible as the sort of being one is” (RP, 213). The kind of value objectivism Rescher advances is certainly worthy of being taken more seriously than is customary in contemporary moral philosophy, but Rescher’s strong emphasis on rationality in axiology and ethics may also be misleading, as not all pragmatists would join him in defining morality as something essentially “geared to the benefit of rational agents” (RP, 199)—or as anything grounded in any metaphysical principles whatsoever.17 Not only is Rescher himself caught in the problematic web of realistic, idealistic, and pragmatist commitments; the same is true of some of his sympathetic critics who are trying to resolve the tensions we find in his work. I will conclude this section by taking a look at how some of his commentators contributing to the essay collection, Pragmatic Idealism (1998), have tried to deal with these matters. As one of the editors of the collection, Axel Wüstehube, clearly explains, Rescher endorses a conceptual idealism that states that “everything real is knowable, and all knowledge includes [human] conceptualizations” (PI, 15). On the other hand, we have to be realists and to acknowledge the independent existence of the natural world—even though this realism is, again, our conception, only pragmatically justified (PI, 15). We presuppose in our

14  Sami Pihlström inquiries and practical actions the reality of an objective, mind-independent world; as noted above, we do not discover it on the basis of evidence (cf. also SPI, I, especially Chapter 15). This defense of realism is thoroughly anthropocentric and pragmatic, as it appeals to our practical need to be realists. Wüstehube concludes that, while we must accept realism, “we cannot but be conscious of the fact that realism does not describe the world as it really is” (PI, 15). This is a puzzling statement, however. If Rescher’s realism is distinguished from what Putnam and others have called metaphysical realism, as Wüstehube claims (PI, 15–16), then it of course cannot describe the world “as it really is” (as seen from a “God’s-Eye View”), for the concept of such a world does not make sense. If, however, Rescher’s realism amounts to something weaker, e.g., to a mere “internal realism” in Putnam’s sense, or perhaps “empirical realism” in Kant’s sense, it can be seen as describing the world as it really is (empirically speaking), from within a human, practice-embedded perspective, or rather, as describing the relation between our descriptions and the world we take them to be about.18 While Rescher does call his view “metaphysical realism,” he qualifies his notion of mind- or thought-independence by admitting that his pragmatic argument for this kind of realism does not establish the mind-independent reality of physical entities (e.g., stones), but only establishes the fact that our conception of them is a conception of something mind-independently real (SPP, I, 274). Realism is, then, as emphasized above, our human pragmatic commitment, not a description of the world in itself or of things in themselves. At this point, a critic might claim that Rescher’s combination of idealism and realism is quite trivial. The world as we know or experience it is unavoidably a world reflecting our cognitive peculiarities. What we know or experience is, as Kant already emphasized, a “world for us.” Even a rather strong (metaphysical) realist could easily accept Rescher’s allegedly idealistic statement that our knowledge of the world is “a knowledge of it in our own, characteristically human terms of reference” (SPP, I, 323). Not even the strongest of realists would claim that realism is anything else than a human picture of the world, or of the relation between human inquiries and the world (even though such a realist might claim—albeit somewhat circularly, I would argue—that it is a true picture independently of whether we humans regard it as true or not, that is, that the truth of any humanly maintained view, realism itself included, is ultimately determined by the mind-independent world). If, on the other hand, conceptual idealism is construed in a stronger way, unacceptable to the realist who refuses to admit that human beings construct the world in any sense, it may threaten to take us into the kind of subjectivist pragmatism Rescher abandons. Hence, the critic would argue, Rescher’s “idealism” is either vacuous (because it is, in the end, realistic) or, if genuinely idealistic, too implausible or even crazy (too strongly constructivistic) to be acceptable by a rational, realistically minded thinker.

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  15 Helmut Pape, in his contribution to Pragmatic Idealism, illuminates Rescher’s realistic requirement of the “stubbornness of things” and the “bruteness of facts” with reference to Peirce’s pragmatic idealism.19 He succeeds in formulating a crucial question (PI, 122): “What is the ontological status and what is the epistemological connection between mind-independent reality and mental processes? In what sense is Rescher’s conceptual idealism still a form of idealism if it treats mind, consistent with the causal autonomy of nature and its physical processes, as a non-causal factor in the general scheme of things that has an explanatory role to play?” That is, in what sense is Rescher still an idealist, if he insists (as we saw above) on metaphysical realism?20 In his response to Pape, Rescher reformulates his combination of realism and idealism in explicitly Peircean terms (PI, 245): “With Peirce, I want to be a scholastic realist who sees mental phenomena as the causal product of an extra-mental reality.21 [. . .] [T]he ‘extra-mental reality’ that is at issue here is itself a creature of theory—a mind-postulated thought-product. What we thus have is a commitment to realism of sorts that is itself embedded in an idealistic position.” Now, idealism again seems to be the basic commitment, somehow more fundamental than realism, as realism needs to be embedded in idealism. Hence, the reality external to the mind postulated by the realist is, according to Rescher, “ultimately ideal,” a “mental projection,” but yet, astonishingly, mental only in its “status” and extra-mental in its “nature” (PI, 245–246). Neither this distinction between status and nature nor Pape’s Peircean considerations can, I am afraid, fully settle the dialectics of realism and idealism we have arrived at. Both realism and idealism seem to be mutually presupposed; neither is self-standing without the other; and yet it remains unclear how exactly they are integrated. Indeed, Peirce’s own form of realistic idealism or idealistic realism is entangled with the same bunch of problems. In the spirit of Peirce, Rescher, and Pape, we may agree that realism and idealism should somehow “come into alignment” (PI, 245), but none of these philosophers has shown in detail how this can be achieved. Essential tensions seem to remain at the heart of pragmatist realism-cum-idealism. At this point, I propose revisiting the Kantian background of these issues—with Rescher’s help.

4 Kantian Matters: Things in Themselves and Conceptual Schemes I already hinted at the Kantian features of Rescher’s thought by characterizing his argument for realism as “transcendental.” More generally, his interpretation of realism and idealism reminds us of Kant’s critical combination of empirical realism and transcendental idealism; famously, Kant maintained that empirical realism is possibly only insofar as we embrace transcendental idealism. Furthermore, while Rescher neglects, at least in

16  Sami Pihlström Realistic Pragmatism, the Kantian background of pragmatism, he has elsewhere interpreted Kant’s philosophy in a (broadly) pragmatist manner, elaborating on the idea that philosophizing, according to Kant, is “ultimately a matter of practical rather than theoretical reason,” as practical reason addresses both moral and cognitive interests and thus in a sense guides our entire project of reason-use.22 It is now time to examine further the (pragmatistically updated) Kantian idea—integrating idealism and realism—that humanly developed conceptual schemes organize or categorize a mind- and scheme-independent world of “things in themselves.” This is realism, given that the reality of things in themselves (or a world in itself) is not denied, but it is also idealism, given that the independent world is always inevitably categorized by means of human conceptual schemes. The postulation of Kantian-like things in themselves starts from the above-discussed idea that realism is something that we must presuppose instead of maintaining on the basis of any conceivable evidence. We do not, Rescher reminds us, discover that there is an objective, mind-independent reality; rather, the assumption of the existence of reality is justified on the basis of its utility and functionality, as we observed above (see SPI, I, Chapter 15). “As Kant clearly saw,” he writes, “objective experience is possible only if the existence of such a real, objective world is presupposed from the outset rather than being seen as a matter of ex post facto discovery about the nature of things” (SPI, I, 257). This presupposition is necessary for various reasons: we need to maintain distinctions between truth and falsity and between reality and appearance; we need a basis for intersubjective communication and for a “shared project of communal inquiry”; and we need to endorse fallibilism and conceive of inquiry in terms of a causal model based on the interaction between the inquirer and the world (SPI, I, 260–264). Thus, realism is both a presupposition of inquiry and retrospectively justified by the cognitive and practical success of inquiry (SPI, I, 266–270).23 As we already saw above, Rescher’s validation of realism is pragmatist in the sense that we need to be realists: an “intellectual accommodation to the world” is, we are told, “one of our deepest practical needs” (SPI, I, 265–266). This is directly related to what Rescher has to say about the Kantian postulation of things in themselves. He argues that the notion of a thing in itself does not commit Kant to any ontological category of “wholly mindindependent reality.”24 Things in themselves are not “things” in the sense of “real things,” but rather some kind of mental products, creations of the human understanding, or “thought-things” (TT, 296–299). Their role, for Rescher, or Rescher’s Kant, is epistemological rather than metaphysical. They serve as “an instrumentality of our thought about the real world” (TT, 298). Our conception of them is “a self-imposed demand of the human understanding needed to implement its commitment to the externality of things with which it has to deal on the basis of the deliverances of sensibility and understanding” (TT, 295), that is, “a mental contrivance to which

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  17 our reason finds itself unavoidably committed” (TT, 297). Hence, we can never know the existence of things in themselves, but we have to postulate them (TT, 295), just as we have to postulate realism while admitting that our knowledge is confined to things “carved out” (idealistically) within our cognitive practices. Even if there were, per impossibile, a “realm of mindindependent realia that exist altogether ‘in themselves,’ ” such things would, “literally, be nothing to us” (TT, 297). Rescher writes: The conception of a thing in itself . . . is a creature of the understanding to which we stand irrevocably committed in viewing our experience as an experience of something that is itself experience-external. . . . The existence of things in themselves thus emerges as a postulate of the human understanding. To be fully objective and authentic, an appearance must be an appearance of something; there must be an underlying something that does the appearance—that grounds it in a nonphenomenal order. . . . Our understanding is committed to the postulate or supposition that such experience-external nonsensuous entities exist, however little we may know about them. (TT, 292) This is somewhat puzzling, as Rescher says that we do postulate things in themselves as existing, yet in effect he is saying that they are dependent on our postulating them (as mind and postulation-independent, though). There is a kind of dialectic of ontological dependence and independence at work here. The ontologically independent world paradoxically depends on our actively granting it such a status, although it is postulated precisely as being independent of any such activities of ours. In essence, Rescher’s argument for the reality of things in themselves is the same as his argument for realism: these postulations are needed for us to be able to make sense of our experience. This is at the same time a pragmatic and a transcendental argument. It also implies that the Kantian notion of a thing in itself needs to be thoroughly humanized and “pragmaticized.” Our postulation of Dinge an sich selbst is not a metaphysical postulation of an unknown and unknowable transcendent realm, but a transcendentally necessary pragmatic postulation playing a functional role in our dealings with the world we inquire into. This turns our realism itself thoroughly pragmatic.25 Again, this also means that realism is justified by a “fundamentally idealistic basis” (SPI, I, 271; cf. NU, 115). The worry here may be that this realism—or the pragmatic postulation of practice- and experience-external things in themselves—verges on triviality. Of course we cannot conceptually make sense, or categorize, any other reality than the reality we do, or at least can, conceptually categorize. Of course we can know only a world reflecting our conceptual capacities, because any other world would be completely beyond our cognitive and conceptual reach. Of course philosophical

18  Sami Pihlström concepts such as the concept of things in themselves are only our conceptual ways of making sense of the externality of reality. Even a rather strong metaphysical realist not subscribing to anything like “conceptual idealism” or even pragmatism could agree with Rescher that our knowledge of the world is “knowledge of it in our own, characteristically human terms of reference” (SPI, I, 323), without agreeing that this commits us to any sort of idealism.26 In a way, his explicit treatment of things in themselves as merely human “thought-things”—indicating simply our commitment to there being something external to our experience—makes this even clearer. But we cannot get rid of the paradox, as that externality itself depends on us. In my view, only an explicitly transcendental (albeit not for that reason non-pragmatist) approach (reinvoking Kantian idealism) yields a plausible account of realism and idealism qua pragmatically interpreted. Let us complete our picture of Rescher’s various tensions by turning from things in themselves to the other “pole” of the relation, namely, our concepts. I will again phrase this discussion by citing a relatively early paper by Rescher, in this case an essay in which he examines Donald Davidson’s celebrated argument against “the very idea of a conceptual scheme.”27 Rescher argues against Davidson’s conception of the necessary intertranslatability of languages (or schemes) by pointing out that, if the descriptive, taxonomic, and/or explanatory mechanisms of two languages are “substantially” different from each other, no genuine translation can take place between them; yet they may still be mutually interpretable without being mutually translatable. The functional role of languages in communication and human action in general is what makes them languages (CS, 327–329). The idea of alternative conceptual schemes is, therefore, intelligible, as our concepts are theoryladen and make factual commitments: “A conceptual scheme comes to be correlative with and embedded in a substantive position as to how things work in the world” (CS, 330). If conceptual schemes differ from each other, this does not mean that different truth-values are given to the same statements about the world or that the same questions are answered in different ways. Instead, different schemes approach the world from entirely different perspectives. They do not make different statements about the same things but speak about different things (CS, 331–333). Rescher’s view would undoubtedly be classified by Davidson and his sympathizers as just another version of the conceptual relativism the argument against different schemes seeks to silence. However, here again Rescher is a pragmatist—and a pragmatic pluralist (cf. SPI, III, Chapter 4)—instead of being simply a relativist. As a pragmatist, he suggests that conceptual schemes describing experience, or the world, in different yet equally valid and equally objective ways can be compared to each other only on the basis of criteria of pragmatic efficacy. Successful human practice is the “semantically neutral” judge in the comparison between rival schemes (CS, 342–343). Moreover, there is no need to presuppose any “preexisting ‘thought-independent’ and scheme-invariant reality that is seen differently from different perceptual

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  19 perspectives” (CS, 337); that is, the idea (presupposed by Davidson), that the “content” of the rival conceptual schemes would have to be something like “the given” or “the world in itself” is itself (like the notorious “myth of the given”) a myth. The Davidsonian argument is based on the false assumption that the content must be invariant, neutral, or ready-made. Insofar as such assumptions are rejected, the argument against the so-called scheme vs. content dualism becomes either trivial or unsound. I am not going to settle the issue regarding conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism here. It is, however, important to consider the possible links between Rescher’s views on things in themselves and his views on conceptual schemes. While the “content” of the schemes need not be any world in itself, we might say that we pragmatically need the concept of a thing in itself in order to make sense of the very idea that we may through our conceptual scheming categorize the world in a plurality of different ways, while also retaining the “reality principle” according to which our categorizations do not just make up the world but pragmatically contribute to shaping the world “for us” into a cognizable and experienceable structure. We may also say that the notion of a thing in itself is one of the presuppositions of our conceptual schemes, the very schemes we need to employ in our inquiries. This, again, yields a transcendental argument for realism—as Rescher puts it in a slightly different context, a “transcendental argument . . . from the character of our conceptual scheme to the acceptability of its inherent presuppositions” (NU, 112). This all goes back, ultimately, to Rescher’s pragmatic views on the compatibility and (so to speak) interpenetration of realism and idealism. This is a most pragmatic position to take, even though it also rests on a kind of transcendental argument. Yet, the tension between realism and idealism still seems to remain unresolved, like (arguably) in Kant himself and the classical pragmatists. Let us therefore examine one more attempt to integrate these views into a coherent whole.

5 Holistic Pragmatism How could we try to find a way of living with the Kantian tensions of realism and idealism? It might, indeed, be argued that the pragmatist should attempt to critically reconcile, instead of resolving, such tensions as the one between realistic and idealistic commitments. There is no way, and no need, to establish either realism or idealism as the most fundamental commitment; even attempting to do something like that would be against the even more fundamental pragmatist principle of anti-foundationalism. We may learn from Rescher’s reflections on these matters that realism and idealism, far from being the kind of philosophical rivals or opposites they are often claimed to be, presuppose each other and are mutually entangled and self-supporting. Moreover, their interdependence can be analyzed, again in quasi-Kantian terms (departing from Rescher’s actual views), as a

20  Sami Pihlström “transcendental” interdependence: the relations of presupposition that run both ways are transcendental in the sense that the very possibility of realism requires idealism, and the very possibility of (the relevant kind of) idealism requires realism. This is because both are ultimately pragmatic doctrines. So what we have here is an illustrative case of mutually supporting pragmatic transcendentalia. In addition to going back to the Kantian tradition of transcendental philosophy (including transcendental idealism) in order to make sense of the Rescherian entanglements (and tensions) of realism and idealism, we may also find useful resources within the pragmatist tradition itself. What I would like to suggest here is that Morton White’s holistic pragmatism can be used to systematize the holistic commitments to realism and idealism, as well as, at the meta-level, to pluralism and pragmatism, that Rescher makes but leaves into a state of tension. Helping ourselves to White’s views at this point is a way of endorsing Rescher’s own systematic rational methods of philosophical and metaphilosophical inquiry. In particular, the Rescherian idea that valuational issues, no less than factual ones, are open to rational consideration and argumentation is fundamentally important here. Indeed, a crucial part of White’s holism is the entanglement of the rational evaluation of factual and valuational beliefs. White’s pragmatism is indebted to W. V. Quine’s better known but considerably narrower position. It can also be seen as a development of the Quinean idea of a “web of belief.” In a Quinean manner, White maintains a “holistic” form of pragmatism; like Quine, he follows the strongly antiCartesian line of pragmatism, abandoning any “first philosophy.”28 The specific nature of White’s position emerges against this background of Quine’s more extreme views. While both Quine and White begin from the rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction and from the holistic idea that our beliefs (or sentences) are not tested individually but “face the tribunal of experience” in corporate bodies, they draw quite different morals from this picture. White believes that the kind of holistic, empirical approach Quine favors in the philosophy of science can be extended to the philosophy of culture, covering not only science but also religion, history, art, law, and morality.29 Philosophy of science is, of course, one of its subfields—but White insists that other cultural institutions require empirically informed philosophical scrutiny no less than science does. Holistic pragmatism says that “philosophy of art, of religion, of morality, or of other elements of culture is in great measure a discipline that is epistemically coordinate with philosophy of natural science.”30 The idea that ethics, in particular, “may be viewed as empirical if one includes feelings of moral obligation as well as sensory experiences in the pool or flux into which the ethical believer worked a manageable structure” has been strongly present in White’s writings from an early stage to the present.31 Quine took his famous holistic step by arguing that even logical truths are not immune to revision, because they are tested along with factual claims

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  21 as components of a large conjunction of statements. No general analytic/ synthetic division can be drawn, as statements about, say, the synonymity of terms are ultimately empirical statements describing the contingencies of language-use.32 Despite this fundamental agreement with Quine, White argues that “observation sentences” (e.g., “That’s a rabbit”) and ethical sentences such as “That’s outrageous” cannot be sharply separated from each other any more than analytic and synthetic statements can; their difference is a matter of degree rather than a difference in kind.33 That is, descriptive statements and normative ethical principles form conjunctions that are tested holistically, just as Quine argued that scientific and logico-mathematical beliefs in science are.34 Logic, science, and ethics form a unified whole, a holistic web without epistemic dichotomies.35 Moreover, as logical principles may, by Quinean lights, be given up in the face of sufficiently recalcitrant experience, descriptive statements may be denied in order to preserve a normative principle we do not want to give up,36 although such situations are rare. White’s point is that ethics is not inferior to science, or immune to empirical evaluation, because feelings of obligation together with sensory observation link ethical sentences to the natural world. Pace Quine, ethics is, then, “anchored in experience.”37 Ethics is a “soft science” rather than a “hard” one, but it is a science nonetheless, hardly any softer than Quine’s own naturalized “epistemological science,” the branch of psychology studying human cognition.38 Furthermore, “feeling sentences” are also fallible and can be surrendered when a conjunction is tested.39 Both ethics and science are, then, corrigible but cognitive enterprises—just like classical pragmatists like John Dewey also maintained already a century ago. Both are elements of culture forming a holistic totality instead of being distinct areas with definite boundaries. Knowledge and morals, as White himself formulated his point many years ago, form a “seamless web.”40 Given this introduction to holistic pragmatism, how might White’s approach save us from the tensions inherent in Rescher’s pragmatism? How can Rescher’s pragmatism, philosophical or metaphilosophical, be rendered truly holistic? I would like to suggest that realism and idealism (as well as related meta-level views such as pluralism and pragmatism) form a critically and holistically testable web of (philosophical or metaphilosophical) beliefs in Rescher’s system, none of which can be assessed individually but all of which need to be assessed as a corporate body. In this sense, Rescher’s “systematic” tendencies need to be taken very seriously: to be systematic in his sense, we may argue, is to be a holistic pragmatist in White’s sense. The relevant kind of systematization in our philosophical web of beliefs can be achieved when we subordinate our entire philosophical framework to a meta-level pragmatic testing. In this sense, Rescher’s entire system should primarily be approached from the perspective of pragmatism—albeit without turning even pragmatism into a fundamentalist dogma. Let us, by way of an analogy, pursue this further by examining a reflexive problem concerning the internal coherence of White’s holistic pragmatism.

22  Sami Pihlström White tells us that holistic pragmatism enables us to evaluate both factual (descriptive) and valuational (normative, e.g., ethical) beliefs or statements. However, isn’t holistic pragmatism itself a normative view within morality, in the sense that it is a position that contains a significant ethical element, having to do with what we can or should (legitimately) think or say about human cultural institutions? Aren’t we, if we follow White’s own principles, testing the whole conjunction of our beliefs, holistic pragmatism included (if it, indeed, is among our beliefs), whenever we test any belief, scientific or ethical? Now, someone might, pace White, come up with the belief (or, perhaps, the feeling?) that, say, mere feeling is not an appropriate experiential back-up for ethics, i.e., that moral obligation transcends feelings of obligation. How can this feeling (stimulated, possibly, by our experience of reading Kant) be accommodated within holistic pragmatism? Is the principle that feelings are central in ethics unsurrenderable in White’s pragmatism? It shouldn’t be, given his all-encompassing fallibilism and reflexively critical attitude. An analogous case in Rescher would be, e.g., the apparent unsurrenderability of realism itself. Could our holistic meta-level inquiry into the tensions between realism and idealism lead us to revise, or even abandon, the principle of realism (or the pragmatic “reality principle”) adopted as a way of making sense of our commitments in inquiry? White does step on the meta-level when he suggests that holistic pragmatism itself ought to be conceived as a rule rather than a descriptive statement.41 The holistic pragmatist behaves like a legislator transforming a custom into a law when s/he formulates the rule that no experience may disconfirm holistic pragmatism itself, because this is the method we should employ in testing our beliefs.42 White thus saves the normativity of epistemology, but he hastens to add that even such rules are not immutable, any more than legal statutes are.43 “Resolving to accept holistic pragmatism does not mean that it can never be altered or surrendered, but it does mean that a very powerful argument would be required to effect either of those changes.”44 White intends his holism to be a normative view of how philosophers should philosophize, and about which topics45—hence, it can be seen as a broad cultural thesis about the way in which a certain area of human culture, philosophy, ought to be organized—but he does not put it forward as a non-revisable norm. It is neither analytic, a priori, necessary, nor selfevident;46 it is just our best guess so far, and as things are we ought to follow this rule, in a fallibilist spirit. Yet, it is very important to observe here that to admit this possibility of critically evaluating and “testing” holistic pragmatism is to already work within holistic pragmatism. In this qualified sense, I grant that White has made a very powerful case for his position, even though some of its details perhaps cannot be fully accepted. Arguments against his conception of ethics should be evaluated within the overall normative scheme he develops.

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  23 The analogy to Rescher becomes obvious as soon as we compare holistic pragmatism to the Rescherian kind of pragmatism that includes both realism as a pragmatic “reality principle” and idealism as the “conceptually idealist” view maintaining that human principles such as realism are our ways of making sense of the world rather than pictures or descriptions of the world in itself. This combination of realism and idealism can itself be reflexively and pragmatically examined within the overall pragmatistrealist-idealist picture it affirms. Furthermore, this integration—this holistic totality—of Rescherian philosophical theses bound together by the systematic use of pragmatist methodology is itself neither a priori, analytic, necessary, nor self-evident. It is, Rescher might agree with White, our best guess so far, and it is on the basis of such a guess that we need to develop our total picture of pragmatic commitments of inquiry.

6 Science and Religion An interesting test case for Rescher’s pragmatism is the heated debate on science and religion. Is there a role for holistic, pluralistic pragmatism integrating realism and idealism to play here? Let us once more recapitulate the essential tension of pragmatism, as applied to realism and idealism. Pragmatism can, as I have suggested, be seen as a philosophical approach seeking to mediate between realism and idealism in a manner comparable to Kant’s attempt to argue that empirical realism is compatible with (and even requires) transcendental idealism. While the realism vs. idealism tension is inevitably present in pragmatism, both classical and “neo,” pragmatists have typically attempted to move beyond this tension in interesting ways. The Rescherian pragmatist can maintain that the world is (empirically) independent of us (realism), but its independence is itself a human construct within our purposive practices (idealism) possibly receiving different forms within different practices (pluralism). Moreover, the world and whatever exists or is real within it can exhibit a number of different practice-laden forms of mind-independence. For example, the mind-independence of electrons, of historical facts, and of God (if, indeed, all of these entities or structures are mind-independently real) are all quite different kinds of mind-independence, and it makes sense to speak about these different kinds only within different purposive practices in which they play some functional roles. The practice of physical science within which the independent existence of electrons is at issue does not, presumably, have any function for God to perform, but, on the other hand, the religious person’s prayer addressed to a God believed to be real independently of that activity of praying hardly presupposes that electrons, or any other pieces of material world, are real. There is no need to reduce all these to an essence of what it means to be mind-independent. This is a key observation in the philosophy of religion

24  Sami Pihlström and the science vs. religion debate. Pragmatic realism—whether Rescher’s or, say, Putnam’s—is itself “practice-involving,” not just a view held for “practical” (e.g., non-theoretical or instrumental) reasons.47 Rearticulating realism (especially, in this special case, realism about religious and/or theological views) in terms of human practices is the key program of pragmatic realism in the philosophy of religion, analogously to the philosophy of science. This program is very different from the more radical neopragmatist (Rortyan) program of giving up realism, or even the issue of realism, altogether. Some contemporary pragmatists, including Eberhard Herrmann and Niek Brunsveld, have suggested that the realism issue in religion and theology can be fruitfully articulated in terms of Putnam’s distinction between internal and metaphysical realism; according to Herrmann, in particular, Putnam’s internal realism can plausibly be used as a model for realism in theology and religion.48 This may or may not be a pragmatically workable approach (I must say I have some modest reservations regarding the contemporary “Putnamian” internal realism theologians’ views); what is worth pointing out here is that, similarly, one could rely on Rescher’s combination of realism and idealism in developing a pragmatist perspective on the realism issue in the philosophy of religion. There is no reason why we could not start developing a plausible pragmatic realism in the science vs. religion debate from the Rescherian entanglement of realism and idealism. We could start doing this by admitting that both realism and idealism are human ways of making sense of reality, religious and/or theological reality included. No human view, religious or theological views included, can be regarded as a picture of reality as it is in itself, let alone of divine reality, which, if real, must almost per definitionem be beyond human cognitive and conceptual capacities. In such a pragmatist philosophy of religion, one would rely on realism insofar as one claimed that religious and/or theological statements are about reality (and not merely, e.g., about subjective religious experiences or religious language). On the other hand, one would rely on idealism insofar as one claimed that such statements, just like the realistic (and idealistic) statements themselves at a meta-level, are necessarily human attempts to make sense of the world we live in, whether or not that world is taken to contain religious and/or theological aspects. Doing all this, one would then also rely on pragmatism, and more precisely holistic pragmatism, as one would subordinate one’s entire system of beliefs, realism and idealism (and even pragmatism and holistic pragmatism) included, to a pragmatic evaluation in terms of its success in enabling us to make sense of the world we live in and our practices of living in it, including both cognitive and valuational practices (with no dichotomy between the two). Seeking to develop a holistic pragmatism inspired by White would be a subtly Rescherian undertaking in the sense that, even without any explicit connections to Rescher in this context, we would be operating on the basis of a rational, systematic pragmatism with a carefully construed realistic yet

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  25 not non-idealistic “reality principle.” Even this brief example shows that Rescher’s approach has very interesting applications also outside the philosophy of science.

7 Conclusion The relevance of Rescher’s position to the philosophy of religion cannot be further discussed here. What is important to observe, both historically and systematically, is that Rescher can be in interesting ways compared not only to the classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) but also to contemporary neopragmatists like Putnam, for whom the realism-idealism tension seems to be very similar. Already in the 1970s and 1980s, it became clear that Rescher’s conceptual idealism shares several insights with Putnam’s internal realism—which is something that Putnam later gave up, in a way going through a similar development as Rescher.49 In addition, there are less well known approaches in recent philosophy that would offer at least as interesting points of comparison, such as Rein Vihalemm’s “practical realism.”50 It seems to me that these and many other pragmatists and neopragmatists seeking to maintain realism within some form of constructivism or idealism (or vice versa) would be saved from the trouble of moving back and forth between different philosophical commitments apparently in tension with each other by explicitly interpreting their realism-cum-idealism as a nonreductive, pragmatically naturalized form of (quasi-Kantian) transcendental idealism.51 This could, I believe, be most fruitfully done by construing this combination of realism and idealism as a holistic pragmatically testable set of commitments, to be analyzed in terms of White’s holistic pragmatism. Finally, it is worth pointing out that Rescher, while developing a valuable version of pragmatic idealism-cum-realism, entirely lacks the meta-level worry regarding the coherence or meaningfulness of the realism debate that has been part of Putnam’s pragmatist and partly Wittgensteinian approach to these issues for decades. Rescher is a systematic theory-builder, primarily or even exclusively concerned with the truth and/or rational acceptability of philosophical theses such as metaphysical realism (albeit as pragmatic postulates). He is certainly no Wittgensteinian and does not find the coherence of the realism issue itself a problem worth serious consideration. This, depending on his reader’s philosophical temperament, may be a vice or a virtue in his system.52

Notes 1 Rescher (2000b, xi). (Hereafter cited as RP.) 2 For Rescher’s views on philosophical systems and their diversity, see Rescher (1985). 3 Rescher has authored so many books that it would be impossible to discuss the minute differences between the various different formulations of his views in any detail here. As textual evidence, I will simply use some selected works by Rescher

26  Sami Pihlström that I have over the years found useful for the purpose of my own research. Nor will I be able to take into account secondary literature in any comprehensive manner, but I will cite some helpful contributions illustrating the basic tension I will identify in Rescher’s project. Therefore, while I will take a detailed look at some representative writings by Rescher, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s up to the early 2000s, this inquiry focuses on what we may call “Rescherian” pragmatism, realism, and idealism (instead of primarily focusing on Rescher’s own views in their historical development). 4 See, e.g., James’s well-known discussion of how human categorizations “carve out” reality in James (1975 [1907]), Lecture VII. Putnam’s association with idealism became a topic of hot debate when he announced his turn from metaphysical to internal realism in the late 1970s; see especially Putnam (1981). More recently, he has moved back to something like metaphysical realism. 5 See Wüstehube’s essay in Wüstehube and Quante (1998, 9). (Hereafter this volume will be cited as PI.) 6 Cf. Rescher (1992–94). (This work will be cited as SPI, followed by volume and page numbers.) In the 2000 book, Rescher speaks about “idealistic pragmatism” only when he defends the compatibility of pragmatism and a concern for “higher values” (RP, 189, 229). 7 See Rescher (1973b). In this earlier book, Rescher characterizes conceptual idealism as the view that “nature, as we standardly conceive it, is conceived by us in terms of reference whose adequate analysis or explication requires some reference to the characteristically mental processes like imagining, supposing, and the like,” and that the mind “makes” “the mode-and-manner-determining categories” we employ to conceive nature (3). The argument then unfolds by seeking to show that such ontological categories as possibility, particularity, and lawfulness are “mind-involving” in this sense. 8 Another contemporary philosopher committed to a strongly realist (Peircean) understanding of pragmatism in a manner closely resembling Rescher’s is, as Rescher himself notes (RP, 60–61n1), Susan Haack (e.g., 1998). In addition, H. O. Mounce (1997) has defended the view that there are essentially two forms of pragmatism, the Peircean realistic one and the antirealistic one emerging from James. As Rescher (RP, 79–80) points out, however, Mounce’s way of dividing the pragmatist territory is somewhat different from his. Both defend a basically realistic interpretation of pragmatism, though. 9 For my attempts to interpret and develop the pragmatist tradition in these ways, implicitly critical of Rescher’s, see, e.g., Pihlström (2003, 2009), and the editorial chapters in Pihlström (2015). 10 Moreover, it is misleading to claim that James emphasized non-epistemic, affective, factors in belief validation (RP, 17, 20) and that he developed pragmatism into “a personalistic and psychologistic orientation towards matters of affective and subjective satisfaction” (RP, 18). It would be much more accurate to point out that James sought to offer a thoroughly pragmatic interpretation of epistemic concepts, deliberately blurring the kind of traditional dichotomies that have set the epistemic or cognitive on one side and the affective or “merely practical” on the other. James, as pragmatism scholars have for a long time recognized, did not give up objective correspondence truth, either, but required true beliefs to be in “agreement” with reality and sought to reinterpret this concept of agreement in terms of pragmatic efficacy. 11 Other dualisms that make his approach superficial from the perspective of Jamesian or Deweyan pragmatism are the ones between the definition of truth and the criterion of truth (RP, 52) and between “user-oriented” conditions of warrant and “reality-oriented” conditions of truth (RP, 150). It is one of the key

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  27 insights of James’s (admittedly often unclear and confusing) discussions of truth that no such foundationalist dichotomies can be drawn: while there is no denying of the fact that truth in some highly general sense means “agreement with reality,” no abstract definition of truth independently of epistemic warrant can provide us with a “meaning” of the notion of truth as we use that notion in ways inextricably tied to our human epistemic affairs. 12 While it may be correct to say that methodological pragmatism is inspired by Peirce and the pragmatic evaluation of specific theses by James (see, e.g., RP, 89), this dichotomy is once again too straightforward: we should not forget that James also wanted to apply pragmatism to the evaluation of our methods or strategies of belief-acquisition (not only in science but in non-scientific, such as ethical and religious, matters as well). 13 A realistic conception of truth is also a key part of Rescher’s position. See his discussion of the distinction between “use conditions” and “truth conditions” in RP, Chapter 6. One may wonder, however, what has happened to his earlier defense of a coherence theory of truth (Cf. Rescher 1973a). 14 For a famous Kantian argument seeking to establish a necessary connection between transcendental idealism and transcendental philosophy generally, see Allison (2004). 15 The notions of “practice” and “need” should, as always in Rescher’s texts, be interpreted in a wide sense: we are reminded that “intellectual accommodation” in the world is “one of our deepest practical needs” (RP, 141). 16 In addition to Putnam’s (1981) book cited above, see, e.g., Putnam (1990). For some comparisons between Putnam and Rescher, see, e.g., Niiniluoto (1999). 17 Jamesian pragmatists may feel that Rescher over-intellectualizes morality by assuming that all ethical issues are in principle rationally answerable. For those (pragmatists and non-pragmatists) who have come to think—with James, or perhaps with Wittgenstein—that ethical problems are ultimately personal and cannot be settled theoretically at all, Rescher’s rationalistic moral pragmatism may seem to be a violation of the seriousness of moral thought. His repeated insistence on the idea that rationality is “inherently impersonal” and objective (RP, 222) may appear as irrelevant in the ethical sphere. 18 Discussing Rescher’s conception of the objectivity of values in Wüstehube’s and Quante’s (1998) collection (PI), Timo Airaksinen suggests that Rescher’s moral realism might be called “internal moral realism” (PI, 35). Lorenz Puntel, in turn, speaks about internal realism in connection with Rescher’s coherentist conception of truth (PI, 165). Finally, Michele Marsonet (in the same volume) explicates the Rescherian view that science is a matter of truth estimation, not truth presentation, and that no particular scientific theory can give us the final and fundamental true picture of reality (see also Rescher’s response, in PI, 240–242; cf. Marsonet 1994). 19 Pape’s essay, “Brute Facts, Real Minds and the Postulation of Reality,” is one of the most interesting contributions of the PI volume from the point of view of our current interest in realism and idealism. See also Pape’s chapter in this volume. 20 Pape here defends Rescher by arguing that a notion of a mind-independent reality is, idealistically, constitutive for perceptual experience (PI, 124). For both Peirce and Rescher, reality is both real (i.e., it clashes with our interpretations and expectations) and ideal (i.e., general statements about it refer to future possibilities that are necessarily “mind-invoking”) (PI, 133). 21 This, of course, does not by itself make anyone a scholastic realist in Peirce’s sense. What scholastic realism requires is a realistic attitude to the reality of “generals,” such as habits, laws, and dispositions. 22 Rescher (2000b).

28  Sami Pihlström 23 Rescher maintains that metaphysical validation is more generally “retrospective revalidation,” as metaphysics elucidates the “presuppositional backyard” of scientific knowledge by means of “second-order reflection” on the answerability of questions about reality. See Rescher (2000a), 4–5 (hereafter cited as NU). Our realism, again, also becomes validated in such a manner, along with various forms of “systematicity” that Rescher regards as conditions for the possibility of inquiry (NU, 18–19). 24 Rescher (1981, 289, 298). (I will cite this paper as TT in the text.) It can be suggested that in this essay Rescher defends a version of the “one world” interpretation of Kant’s distinction between things in themselves and appearances, familiar from Henry Allison’s work, in particular (see Allison 2004). 25 Another term Rescher uses in describing his realism is “contextualistic”: metaphysical realism, he tells us, “maintains investigation-antecedently that there is a physical state of natural reality,” but “ ‘what reality is like’ is nothing definitive and categorical but something contextual and limited to a particular state-ofthe-art level of sophistication in point of scientific technology” (NU, 71). 26 See here also Rescher’s exchange with several critics in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), containing a book symposium on SPI, as well as Marsonet (1994). Perhaps a slightly stronger attempt to formulate an interesting form of idealism is Rescher’s suggestion that idealism incorporates a “valueinformed view of the world and one’s place within it” (SPI, II, 252–253), but even this need not be any threat to realism. 27 Rescher (1980) (hereafter cited as CS in the text). Davidson’s famous essay, originally published in 1973–1974, is reprinted in Davidson (1984). 28 White (2002, 3–5). 29 Ibid., x–xi. In this regard, White’s philosophical temperament (employing a Jamesian phrase) is much closer to Rescher’s, who also strives for a comprehensive philosophical system. 30 Ibid., 66. 31 Ibid., xi; see also 3, 6, 76, 124–125, and especially Chapter X. 32 Ibid., 71, 73. 33 Ibid., 154–155, 160–163. 34 In an earlier work, White (1981) labeled his view “epistemological corporatism,” meaning by it roughly the doctrine he later started to call “holistic pragmatism.” Note that this is a methodological or epistemic thesis about the testing or justification of the different types of statements forming the holistic totality, not a—much more radical—semantic or metaphysical claim about there being no difference between those types of statements, or their objects, at all. As such, it resembles Rescher’s methodological pragmatism. 35 Cf. White (1956, 257). 36 White (2002, 159). 37 Ibid., 160. 38 Ibid., 161–162. 39 Ibid., 166. 40 White (1956, 287). 41 White (2002, Chapter XI). 42 Ibid., 179. 43 Ibid., 180, 186. 44 Ibid., 181. 45 Ibid., 184–185. 46 Ibid., 186. 47 At this point, a critic could point out that occasionally Rescher’s pragmatic realism does go too far in this direction, i.e., it is in the danger of collapsing into a merely instrumentally held position enabling us to make sense of our practices of inquiry rather than being constitutively tied to those practices. I leave this

Pragmatic Realism, Idealism, and Pluralism  29 question open here. Rescher’s own pronouncements could be interpreted in both ways in some contexts. 48 See especially Brunsveld (2012); Herrmann (2003) I discuss the relevance of Putnam’s and Rorty’s versions of pragmatism to issues in pragmatist philosophy of religion in Pihlström (2013, Chapter 3). 49 For Putnam’s most recent discussions of why he moved back to realism, even metaphysical realism, and gave up the verificationism associated with internal realism, see Putnam (2012, 2015). 50 See Vihalemm (2012); for other recent contributions (including my own reflection on “Pragmatic Realism”) to the on-going discussion of the relation between realism and pragmatism, see Westphal (2014). 51 This is what I suggest in several previous writings, including Pihlström (2009). 52 I would like to thank Cheryl Misak for first inviting me to contribute this chapter to this volume that was initially supposed to be edited by her but ended up being edited by me. I presented a fragment of this essay at the International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science 2015 in Helsinki. Along with honoring Professor Rescher’s achievements as a realist and pragmatist, I would like to dedicate this piece to the memory of my practical realist friend Professor Rein Vihalemm (1938–2015), whose views on realism and pragmatism were in many ways strikingly similar to Rescher’s.

References Allison, Henry E. 2004 [1983]. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, rev. ed. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Brunsveld, Niek. 2012. The Many Faces of Religious Truth. Diss., Utrecht: Utrecht University. Davidson, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Haack, Susan. 1998. Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Herrmann, Eberhard. 2003. “A Pragmatic Realist Philosophy of Religion.” Ars Disputandi 3, 65–75. James, William. 1975 [1907]. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Marsonet, Michele. 1994. “On Rescher’s Conceptual Idealism.” Idealistic Studies 24, 147–161. Mounce, H. O. 1997. The Two Pragmatisms. London and New York: Routledge. Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 1999. Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pihlström, Sami. 2003. Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Kantian View. Amherst, NY: Prometheus/Humanity Books. ———. 2009. Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology. London and New York: Continuum. ———. 2013. Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. (ed.). 2015 [2011]. The Bloomsbury Companion to Pragmatism, 2nd ed. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Putnam, Hilary. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

30  Sami Pihlström ———. 1990. Realism with a Human Face. Ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2012. Philosophy in an Age of Science. Eds. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2015. “Naturalism, Truth, and Normativity.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1, 312–328. Rescher, Nicholas. 1973a. The Coherence Theory of Truth. Dordrecht: Reidel. ———. 1973b. Conceptual Idealism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ———. 1980. “Conceptual Schemes.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5, 323–345. (Cited as CS.) ———. 1981. “On the Status of ‘Things in Themselves’ in Kant.” Synthese 47, 289–299. (Cited as TT.) ———. 1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 1992–1994. A System of Pragmatic Idealism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. In 3 volumes: I, Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective (1992); II, The Validity of Values (1993); III, Metaphilosophical Inquiries (1994). (Cited as SPI.) ———. 2000a. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Cited as NU.) ———. 2000b. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Cited as RP.) ———. 2000c. “Kant on the Limits and Prospects of Philosophy—Kant, Pragmatism, and the Metaphysics of Virtual Reality.” Kant-Studien 91, 283–328. Vihalemm, Rein. 2012. “Practical Realism: Against Standard Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism.” Studia Philosophica Estonica 5, 7–22. Westphal, Kenneth R. (ed.). 2014. Realism, Science, and Pragmatism. London and New York: Routledge. White, Morton. 1956. Toward Reunion in Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1981. What Is and What Ought to Be Done. La Salle, IL: Open Court. ———. 2002. A Philosophy of Culture: The Scope of Holistic Pragmatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wüstehube, Axel and Quante, Michael. (eds.). 1998. Pragmatic Idealism: Critical Essays on Nicholas Rescher’s System of Pragmatic Idealism. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 64. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi.

2 Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

1 Pragmatism’s appeal lies arguably in its brass-tacks approach to philosophy. The pragmatist holds that philosophical questions are elliptical for problems in experience; they are practical challenges made theoretical. The pragmatist program reorients philosophical speculation toward our lives and away from idle abstraction, integrating theory with practice. And so, at its core, pragmatism is a metaphilosophical program; it is ultimately a philosophical view about philosophy, particularly about how philosophy is properly done. This feature of pragmatism is not distinctive. Many of the major historical philosophical movements—from Aristotelian naturalism and Cartesian rationalism, to Hegelian idealism, logical positivism, and phenomenology— are largely metaphilosophical programs, systems that begin with an (often explicit) account of how philosophy should be done, and then proceed to address problems according to that metaphilosophical prescription. Still, all such views confront difficulties. For one thing, philosophical programs that are driven by a metaphilosophical prescription too often appear to cook the books from the start; the seeds of their substantive first-order philosophical views are latent in the metaphilosophy. Further, in beginning with a conception of how philosophy ought to be done, one invites intellectual insularity; critical stances towards one’s program will naturally originate from outside of one’s professed metaphilosophy, and thus they will appear to be rooted in an erroneous conception of philosophy. And so objections to one’s views will strike one as irredeemably defective. In fact, they will not even seem to rise to the level of being objections, but remain merely noise. The result of such self-sealing metaphilosophies is retrenchment and resentment, especially if one’s favored tradition does not hold sway in the broader philosophical community. Such is the case with much contemporary pragmatist philosophy. What are presented as first-order substantive philosophical views are often merely restatements of the metaphilosophical prescription to attend to “lived experience” and the “problems of men” (rather than the problems of philosophers). Moreover, a good deal of work in contemporary pragmatism drips

32  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse with an uncomprehending resentment towards non-pragmatist views. Consider the hiss implicit in the ubiquitous (thus hackneyed) Deweyan epithet “the epistemology industry.” Clearly, something’s gone wrong. Much of contemporary pragmatist philosophy seems devoted to the thought that one should take care of the metaphilosophy and let the philosophy take care of itself. Nicholas Rescher’s work offers a refreshing and fruitful alternative. His program presented in The Strife of Systems (1985) and more recently in Philosophical Dialectics (2006) presents an identifiably pragmatist metaphilosophy, yet it avoids the insularity and resentment that plagues much of the pragmatist idiom. To demonstrate this contrast, we will examine the problems evident in William James’s metaphilosophy, as articulated in “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy.” Then we will show that Rescher’s program not only does not suffer from these problems, but provides a model for philosophical progress that is not itself beholden to exclusively pragmatist dogma. However, Rescher’s metaphilosophy is not free from difficulty, as it seems clear he must be able to distinguish his view from a form of metaphilosophical skepticism. We hold that he cannot, but this is not bad news. This is because metaphilosophical skepticism is a more comfortable position, especially for pragmatists, than is generally appreciated.

2 William James begins his “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy” with the observation that the history of philosophy “is to a great extent that of a certain clash of temperaments” (1991 [1907], 6). On the surface, he contends, the contestations are theoretical disagreements, questions about what commitments argument supports best. But James asserts that, at a deeper level, our philosophical commitments are manifestations of our psychological comportments. He concludes that there is a “certain insincerity in our philosophical discussions: the most potent of our premises is never mentioned” (1991, 7). On James’s view, then, philosophical disputes are proxies for conflicts among different individuals’ temperaments, and, at bottom, all philosophers are “temperamental thinkers.” The principal contrasting temperaments James sees are those of toughmindedness and tender-mindedness. The tough-minded have inclinations toward empiricism, facts, materialism, pluralism, and skepticism. The tenderminded prefer rationalism, idealism, monism, and dogmatism. Although the history of philosophy is organized around the battle between these two tribes, most people have “a hankering for the good things on both sides of the line” (1991, 10). That is, James holds that most people have mixed temperaments; they’re a jumble of tender and tough elements. Accordingly, longstanding philosophical debates strike most people as distant, alien, and irrelevant. Hence, James resolves that there should be a philosophical program that reflects that mixed psychology. James “offer[s] the oddly

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  33 named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demands” (1991, 18). The apparent dilemma of philosophy, between the two grand traditions of rationalism and empiricism, thus is broken by a third option—a pragmatist rapprochement that synthesizes the spirit behind the two supposed antitheses. James terms the exclusivity of the two traditions a “barbaric disjunction,” and he calls for pragmatist reconstruction of philosophy. At first blush, the Jamesian metaphilosophy seems ecumenical enough, and it certainly seems plausible as a causal theory about why individuals espouse the views they do. The personal appeal of one view over another often seems to be less a matter of how truth-like they are, and more a function of how well they resonate with our tastes and inclinations. How often does the discussion of philosophical ideas turn to autobiography? Often enough for James’s genealogical claim to sound about right. Further, if, as James alleges, philosophical exchange is entirely a matter of the various temperaments of humankind to find expression, then surely the most widely held temperaments should be heard in the philosophical canon. If James is right, then pragmatism has a place at the table as the mixed—or middle—temperament. It is only fair, and it certainly is appealing to those who have minds neither tough nor tender. We may say, then, that James proposes a metaphilosophy that offers a causal account of the psychological origin of our philosophical commitments, and then proposes a first-order philosophy designed to accommodate a psychological type that he claims has been neglected in the history of philosophy. However, as his pragmatism develops, James’s deployment of his metaphilosophy changes. His first step is to extend his explanation into a complaint; he claims that, as the broad majority of humanity is of pragmatiststyle mixed temperament, philosophy has been held hostage by radicals of the pure temperaments. That is what makes the philosophical dilemmas “barbaric disjunction[s]”; and further, the work that must be put into these pure programs gives them the “whiff of pure artificiality.” They are products of a “sick man’s dream,” and they are “out of plumb and out of key and out of ‘whack’ ” in a way that makes it so that they cannot be the kind of philosophical views that cannot be lived out (1991, 20). Hence James’s descriptive causal explanation of philosophical commitment has become a normative theory aimed largely at disparaging non-pragmatism. James’s extension of what he calls pragmatism’s “mediating way of thinking” in “What Pragmatism Means” is a full endorsement of the normative turn on the tempermentalist metaphilosophy. The pragmatic method of settling disputes by tracing “practical consequences” is posed as a means not only of clarifying the views at issue, but of identifying their resolution (1991, 23). Pragmatism emerges, then, as not simply a temperament given voice, but as an all-purpose philosophical method. James poses this point with an analogy. He asks us to imagine all philosophical views as inhabitants of a grand hotel.

34  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse In one (room) you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone on his knees praying . . .; in a third a chemist . . . In a fourth a system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. (1991, 27) Given this analogy, all of the various philosophical views have an actual position; each is in its own room in the hotel, and the hotel itself stands as a map of philosophical space. But where is pragmatism located? Given James’s description of how philosophical commitments emerge, one would expect the pragmatist to inhabit her own room, neighboring the representatives of the other grand philosophical idioms. But no. James identifies pragmatism with the hotel’s corridor, what connects each and every one of the rooms. On James’s account, pragmatism is what makes the atheist and the theist relevant to one another; it is what allows the metaphysician and antimetaphysician to have anything to say to each other. Pragmatism is the intellectual space where all of the other philosophies meet. Hence, James says: But they all own the corridor, and they all pass through it if they want a practicable way of getting into or out of their respective rooms. (1991, 27) And so, with his corridor metaphor, James expands his pragmatist metaphilosophy considerably. James starts with the sensible point that fairness requires that those of the mixed temperament be allowed at the philosophical table; but he quickly inflates this view into the idea that pragmatism is the superior, non-artificial philosophy, and that which enables all the competitors to interact and be relevant. Such is what we call James’s bait-and-switch pragmatist metaphilosophy. It begins with a descriptive thesis about the genesis and sustaining causes of philosophical views and ends with the triumphalist assessment of itself as the only appropriate option. Of course, the other traditions will object to the idea that they must adopt pragmatism as their means of interaction, but, after all, that is exactly what one would expect of those who grew up confined only to a hotel room. Notice the self-sealing that Jamesian metaphilosophy invites. In appointing itself the conduit for all intellectual exchange, pragmatism thereby insulates itself from critique. Consider the non-pragmatist response that, although philosophy may begin with temperamental expression, it ultimately is about the truth of the theories at issue; the criticism continues that the pragmatist mixing of temperaments is a thinly disguised form of embracing contradictions. And James indeed provides critics with sufficient ammunition. He advocates “free-will determinism” as the “true philosophy,” and, further, “pluralistic monism,” and contends that thus “practical pessimism may be combined with metaphysical optimism” (1991, 10). But,

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  35 to the non-pragmatist critical ear, this is no philosophy but only a hash of views. The Jamesian then rejoins by embracing the hash, asserting in her metaphilosophical register that philosophical theses don’t matter as views, but only as expressions of temperament. The non-pragmatist critic then responds that the pragmatist is simply ignoring the fact that the views can’t both be true—we may be of a temperament to want them both to be true, but wanting isn’t a good criterion for assent. The Jamesian naturally replies with an appeal to her distinctive ideas about truth, which are in turn motivated by the same metaphilosophical prescription that drives the entirety of the Jamesian program. We are all familiar with how these dialectical exchanges run. The point to emphasize here is that once the Jamesian pragmatist metaphilosophy has diagnosed its non-pragmatist opposition, the pragmatist can no longer regard her opponent as pressing a critique—to the pragmatist ear, the non-pragmatist simply gives voice to an alien (and perhaps artificial) temperament. The pragmatist asserts that the “intellectualist” and “rationalist” scrambles about with a notion of truth that is an “unutterable triviality,” and even if well structured, “rationalism’s sublimity does not save it from inanity” (1991, 100). These, as it were, are expressions of their temperaments, but these temperaments are ultimately objectionable and so cannot give rise to a philosophical criticism worth responding to. Hence, James’s bait-and-switch is complete. A descriptive metaphilosophy about how philosophical views arise and why they are sustained has now become a normative view about which philosophical views are sustainable and which worth ignoring. Moreover, once the switch is complete, criticism from outside is reconstructed according to the metaphilosophy as mere temperamental expression, and so muted and rendered inert. If the inhabitants of the philosophical hotel have any complaints, the only way to the front desk is through the corridor. But the corridor imposes its own commitments and criteria concerning what is to count as a reasonable complaint and what qualifies as a successful resolution. All criticism thereby is rendered moot. The walk to the front desk is pointless.

3 We can summarize the foregoing like this: Jamesian pragmatist metaphilosophy embodies two objectionable features. The first is the deceptive move of introducing a causal thesis then turning it into a normative program. The second is the self-sealing the program performs once in place. The first is a form of genetic fallacy; the second is sheer triumphalist dogmatism. We take it that it is not controversial that a successful metaphilosophy be neither established fallaciously nor (excessively) dogmatic in its normative role. We see a metaphilosophy of both similar and dissimilar form in Nicholas Rescher’s work. Rescher, too, tells genetic-causal stories about how philosophical views arise and why they appeal, but his causal story does not then

36  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse become the overriding normative program for assessing philosophical alternatives to pragmatism. And so Rescher’s metaphilosophy both avoids the genetic fallacy we see plaguing James’s and is a form of undogmatic pragmatism that is neither self-sealing in its deployment nor self-congratulatory in assessments of the pragmatist program in action. In The Strife of Systems, Rescher is careful to distinguish descriptive from prescriptive metaphilosophy. The descriptive program is “one of factual inquiry handled in terms of the history of the field.” The core finding of the descriptive program is what Rescher calls Orientational Pluralism, that “conflicting positions are . . . maintained and their justificatory backing trace to different probative value orientations” (1985, 261–262). People value different things, are comported in diverse ways, have natural compulsions to care for some things and not others. We share a good deal of rational norms, but not basic orientations, and so we can understand why some arguments cannot achieve consensus. “Philosophical positions hinge on diverse views regarding matters of cognitive value, so that philosophical disagreement becomes inevitable” (1985, 125). In many ways, Rescher’s orientational account is like James’s temperamental story. However, the difference is that, on Rescher’s view, those in the minority on some matter are not dismissed as a fringe element, or those with mixes are the more cosmopolitan and less dogmatic. Rescher’s view is, as he calls it, a “Pluralism,” that there is diversity but without any valence on what amongst those diverse views is better. James, given his view, is in fact a kind of anti-pluralist, then, as he holds that the more widely held mixed orientation is best. Notice, further, that given Rescher’s descriptive metaphilosophy, there is no obvious way for any one temperament or orientation to ground a specific normative metaphilosophy without being overtly dogmatic. If some orientational set were to be used to justify a normative program for philosophy, one that overtly favored itself as an orientation and the conclusions that orientation favors, such a program would rightly be called self-congratulatory and question-begging. And so Rescher’s normative metaphilosophy must have independent grounds from the orientational pluralism, but it must bear on the psychological truths of such orientational diversity. The prescriptive program begins with an important difference from James’s. Recall that James’s program was that philosophical commitment had less to do with propositional content of the views at issue, but more with the temperaments expressed by them. And, so, James’s view seems not only to not to be worried by contradiction, but to positively court it. So, James thinks that pluralist-monism, determinist free will, and empiricist-rationalism are all appealing commitments. The trouble, again, is that this makes a hash out of all that was supposed to be synthesized. Rescher, in contrast, holds that the normative program in philosophy begins with maintaining the meanings of those commitments in conflict and working to manage in light of those conflicts. He holds that

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  37 at its core, “philosophy is a cognitive endeavor” (1985, 171), and so the truth of our commitments and the justification we have to hold them as true is important, even central. Consequently, resolving conflict in philosophy requires that we sometimes reject one side of a contradiction as false and other times refigure what a commitment really means. At other times, it comes down to making the right distinctions, so that we may carve up our commitments, keeping some parts, rejecting others. This program of spotting inconsistencies in our theoretical, practical, and valuational commitments Rescher calls Aporetics. An apory is a “group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent” (2006, 17). Now, what provides plausibility at first are our natural plural orientations—so some may have apories that others don’t, since some views are more appealing to some than others. But many apories are easy to see ourselves into, regardless of particular orientation. Consider: 1 2 3 4

Knowledge is grounded in observation. We can observe only matters of empirical fact. From empirical facts, we cannot infer values. We have knowledge of values.

Individually, these commitments are all plausible, but, together, they create a real problem, we might call it the problem of moral knowledge. Or consider another apory: 1 2 3 4

Some facts are satisfactorily explained. No explanation is satisfactory if it uses unexplained facts. No circular explanations are satisfactory. All explanations require some further fact as part of the explanation.

Here, we see another reasonable problem, the regress of explanation. With any of these problems, Rescher holds, the options for solution are numerous, at least as numerous as the number of commitments comprising the apory. Consequently, apories allow us a means of discussing solutions to problems in terms of what components are revised or rejected. “Aporetics is thus less a method of innovation than of regimentation” (2008, 3). We may reject one or more of the commitments in the apory and resolve the paradox, and logic tells us that we must do so. But logic does not tell us which one to reject. That’s where we are, again, returned to our base orientational pluralism. Because some commitments are more plausible than others for different people, the solutions will be more or less plausible for different people. And so, with the problem of moral knowledge above, denying (4), moral skepticism, may be an acceptable solution, but for others, it will strike them as horrendous. One must deny (1) and posit a different moral epistemology, or deny (2) and explain how a naturalism about value can work.

38  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse The norm of elimination is what Rescher calls “the quest for consistency.” It is an indispensable part of treating the commitments comprising an apory as worthy of assent. But, as Rescher notes, “the cruel fact is that theorizing itself yields contradictory results” (2006, 75). The reason why the drive for consistency yields more contradiction is, again, a fact of orientational pluralism. Individually, one may pursue a more consistent set of commitments, but the variety of ways to do that are as wide as there are options for elimination. And one does not just solve one apory by itself, but we find that apories come in groups and how we solve one may influence how we solve others. And that’s just on the individual level. Given orientational pluralism, a wider and wider variety of internally (minimally) consistent solutions to sets of apories can be proposed, but these solutions are all inconsistent with each other. The emerging picture of Rescher’s normative program is not one that tells of a philosophical method that ties all together and provides criteria for solutions, amounting to a method that establishes an intellectual convergence. Instead, Rescher predicts wider and wider realms of disagreement, more systematic argument between camps, and fewer and fewer stable solutions. Philosophical progress, then, isn’t to be found in establishing agreement, but in having dialectically deeper understanding of issues. Rescher calls philosophy’s normativity at this secondary level more “consciousness raising” than solution finding (1985, 163). And, consequently, no philosophical work is ever complete, as there are always both internal and external inconsistencies to address. There are always more apories that arise, even as we may resolve the ones immediately in front of us. “The development of a philosophical position is accordingly a potentially never-ending task that takes on the form of a dialectical cycle” (2006, 83). The norms at the core of the dialectic are, again, those of reasoned establishment and maintenance of consistency. We move from apory to reasoned resolution by modifying some of the aporetic commitments. What matters is the reasoned part of that maintenance, and Rescher outlines the three desiderata of that process as: #1: We want domain definitive answers to philosophical problems. #2: We want cogent answers, backed by evidence, argument, and demonstration. #3: We want economical answers, ones that do minimal damage to the rest of our commitments. These, Rescher calls the “three prime goals of philosophizing” (2006, 13), and they are regulative of how apory-resolution should run internally and externally. The trouble, however, is that, given the story Rescher tells about the consequences of orientational pluralism, these three objectives will never be fully met.

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  39 Our solutions to philosophical problems engender further problems . . . [I]n consistency-averting elaboration at one point only engenders further difficulties at another. No articulation of a philosophical system is free from problems. (2006, 84) The consequences, it seems, are tragic. And a form of metaphilosophical skepticism looms. The norms that animate our primary goal in philosophy, that of pursuing truth about our deeply held views, guarantee that we can never fully have knowledge of those truths. Moreover, in following those norms, we make it impossible to ever completely satisfy their demands. All philosophy is destined for shipwreck. Out of the failure of both our primary (collectively possessing the truth) and secondary objectives (definitive cogent and economical solutions), Rescher finds a tertiary objective we can achieve to varying degrees: complexity and nuance. We begin with very rough ideas, brute affordances of our orientations, but over time these views are refined in the apory-solutionapory dialectic. We arrive at a model of philosophical development that is essentially exfoliative. Every philosophical positon is linked to and developmentally derived from a prior doctrine that contains its root idea. (2006, 87) The history of philosophy progresses, then, in the sense that it is “an ongoing confrontation between competing positions perpetually in conflict, though changing in detail through increasing sophistication and complexification” (2006, 87). Rescher calls it “a dialectical process of Hegelian proportions” (2006, 84). But the grand synthesis does not await us at the end; rather, greater and deeper disagreement and more refined views in the mix. We can already discuss how [philosophy] will end, not because we can detect some great ultimate convergence, but, more mundanely, because we are already there. It will end where it began—in disagreement and controversy. (1985, 274)

4 We believe it should be clear that Rescher’s metaphilosophical program, both in its descriptive and normative modes, does not suffer from the self-sealing and triumphalist tendencies latent within Jamesian pragmatism. Philosophical disagreement arises out of our contingencies, our histories, our physiognomies, and those conditions for their arising are constraints on how we

40  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse ought to proceed. These genealogies are useful and appealing, and seem to be great hallmarks of the broader pragmatist program of philosophy— tracing philosophical issues to their lived and personal antecedents. It is clear in James’s theory of sentiments, and in what Dewey calls his ‘the denotive method’ in Experience and Nature (LW 1.18). Hook notes that philosophical views are “interpretations of existence from the standpoint of value” (1991, 18), and Rorty calls his a program of redescription and solidarity (1996, 21). Rescher’s own pragmatism is announced in both the genealogical and methodological features of the metaphilosophy. The genealogical pragmatist line is that philosophy’s significance depends on the lived complications it makes explicit: If the deliberations of philosophy were not connectable to those of human experience through a process of developmental emergence, they would become pointless. (1985, 59; emphasis in original) And, even in method, Rescher invokes the pragmatist notion of working to explain how philosophical programs can best run: Philosophical problem-solving is, in the final analysis, an evaluative matter—though, to be sure, it is not aesthetic or ethical values but specifically cognitive values that relate to matters of importance, centrality, significance and the like. In philosophy, our problem resolutions always involve us in issues of precedence and priority. (2006, 25) This view of philosophical method is pragmatic at its core, but it is not a form of pragmatist triumphalism. The triumphalist pragmatist holds that this method is the tool for both the clarification and singularly pragmatist resolution of philosophical dispute, as seen with James’s corridor metaphor. Rather, Rescher’s normative metaphilosophy emerges from the shared norms of contradiction-management that favor pragmatism no more than any of its competitors.

5 Is such a program as sketched here ultimately a form of metaphilosophical skepticism? Rescher holds that he is no skeptic, but we are not convinced. Instead, we think not only that the skeptical outcome is clear, but that it should be welcome, especially for pragmatists. Rescher distinguishes skepticism from theories of cognitive finitude. The skeptics “call into question the very possibility of knowledge,” which Rescher says flatly “doesn’t make much sense.” On the other hand, a theory of cognitive finitude shows that “the reality of the situation of finite knowers

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  41 is that there are limits to knowledge,” which he claims “makes very good sense indeed” (2006, 100). This is a helpful line to take, as we save a good deal of knowledge but admit of our limitations. But then comes the time to identify the limits. For all cases of insolubilia (things we cannot know) and accounts as to why they are so, we see equally controversial philosophical theories. Theoretically adequate answers elude us as to what is unknowable and what it knowable, and Rescher concedes that “we cannot make a reliable assessment of the extent of our ignorance” (2006, 107). First, we should ask just how different this view is from skepticism. Both commitments hold that there is much we do not know—the skeptic holds that there is vanishingly little we do know; Rescher’s view is that there is some (and perhaps much) that we do know. But now, once we see that the methods of demarcation between what is and what is not known are themselves not known to be reliable (and are perhaps themselves insolubilia), we see the problem clearly. There is nothing that the philosophically critical view lights upon that does not yield to its challenges. If any commitment may in principle be saved by modification to our broader commitments, so too may any be rejected. This is both the benefit and cost of aporetic method. And, again, given valuational pluralism, not only may any substantive commitments in principle be subjected to this dialectical scrutiny, they are. Too many forms of skepticism, as Rescher holds, make little sense because they call for what seems prima facie impossible: that we refrain from all belief. It seems plausible to say that we cannot do that, and, importantly, many skeptical programs have been designed to proceed in light of the fact that, though all is dubitable, we must still have some beliefs. The crucial thing is that these beliefs are held in such a fashion that we are aware of their tentative status. The Pyrrhonians allowed the skeptic to live in light of commitments provided by the fourfold of our natures, individual inclinations, culture, and training (PH 1.17). The Academic skeptics allowed a second-class form of commitment, one based on what Carneades termed to pithanon, ‘the believable,’ and Cicero termed probabile and veri simile (Ac 2.99). Montaigne, Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein all recognized this constraint on the skeptical project as either intermediate features, as Descartes did with his theory of ‘Provisional Morality’ in his Discourse on Method (CSM 1.122), or as endpoints, as when Wittgenstein says that his “spade is turned” (PI 217). Pragmatists, we think, wrongly resist the skeptical tradition, holding the radical skeptic in contempt as a form of the spirit of total impracticality. But this is a mistake. The skeptical tradition is a reminder of how contestable all our claims to knowledge are, how our confidence arises more from ignoring many challenges than from answering them all. To be sure, we must act; but we also must be intellectually honest. And so too in metaphilosophy. It seems we are drawn to philosophy, and so we do it. But given the problems, the breadth of disagreement, and the interminability of the debates,

42  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse philosophical solutions are indexes—to particular orientations, under specific dialectical circumstances, in light of scientific and historical developments at the time. We may, given these restrictions, still sort the better from worse solutions, the failed versus the successful defenses, but these are not yet conditions for knowledge. They are conditions for blameless belief, or, as Carneades called it, the believable (to pithanon). It should be no surprise that pragmatism is methodologically consistent with a form of mitigated skepticism. Pragmatism’s first rule is that one should never block the road of inquiry. Skepticism, properly deployed, is no block to the road of inquiry (as we see with Peirce, as he introduces the First Rule of Reason (CP 1.135), he pauses to positively reference the Academic skeptics as those who were exemplary in following the rule). We discover our ignorance, we have fallible means of inquiry, and we desire to have the truth as best we can. A skeptical metaphilosophy, or, as Rescher terms his, one of the severe limits of knowledge, does not prevent inquiry, but is a spur to the development of more robust programs of research, far-seeking questions and ambitious systems. Sextus Empiricus pauses at the opening of The Outlines of Pyrrhonism to note that it is those who think they know who stop inquiring, but it is the skeptics, the ones who recognize that they do not know, who are genuinely zetetic, that is, inquirers. We will close with a brief sketch of our own skeptical pragmatic metaphilosophy. It is greatly influenced by Rescher’s program, as we think that what we’d termed the “tertiary” goals of philosophy are the achievable ones— nuance and dialectical robustness. The primary goal of knowledge, and even the secondary goals of definitiveness, cogency, and economy of solutions are achievable only to varying degrees and regularly at costs in other areas. It is regrettable, but a reality nonetheless, that all philosophical views are mixed bags. This, we think, is clear if one goes to any textbook on any problem area in the discipline or looks at any interpretive debate about the history of the discipline. There is reasonable disagreement all over. And one of the most reliable signs of the failure of training of a young philosopher, we think, is the inability to name a philosopher that has a good argument for a view one thinks is wrong or a figure that has a challenging objection to one of one’s most closely held views. It is all too often that engagement with opposition has an author referring to the reasons given by opponents as “arguments,” but always in scare quotes. For sure, there are many sets of claims arranged to mimic argument, and so the use of scare quotes for them is appropriate. But this cannot be our default, and, when it is, the real arguments are rendered undetectable. Without argument, philosophy is mostly bullshit. Or worse. It becomes hectoring, self-indulgent, play-acting, poseurdom. And all the primary, secondary, and even tertiary objectives in philosophy are lost—no knowledge, no completeness, no cogency or economy. And no complexity or nuance, either. Why? Because for any of these things to emerge, the reasons need to hang together. There needs to be salience; there needs to be

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  43 some rational management of information. It’s argument at the core, or else, it’s all noise. Nuance, for example, without being motivated by dialectical considerations, to answer an objection or avoid a confusion, is just fussy gewgaw. Further, argument makes sense only if one can see one’s opposition as minimally reasonable. They may have different priorities and beliefs, but we share a love of reason, understanding, and solutions. And so we exchange our reasons, and they come on a variety of levels, and the justification we assess ourselves and our opponents as having depends on how well we account for and are accounted on these levels. On the first level, every view can be evaluated by itself—what reasons can be mustered in its favor, what intuitions are preserved by it, what aspirations it captures. And so arguments for views are places where we must start, and the capacity to judge them as they are is necessary. Understanding why someone would even want to hold a view that you see as false (and perhaps contemptable, too) is an important step in understanding what any debate or issue context is about. And it is with this first step that we cross the threshold of seeing our dialectical opponents less as those with whom we clash and more those with whom we can disagree. On the second level, once we have appreciated the range of views and their individually supporting reasons, there arises a dialectical interplay between them. Take three views on an issue: A, B, and C. A has reasons in its favor, and B does, too. And once this is clear, A’s reasons may seem to force those who hold A to pay a price of not maintaining the intuitions captured by holding B. And C, too, itself may not initially seem to be so appealing, but it may not be so easily objected to. And so, though A and B have very strong reasons for them, they have costs. C, too, may have costs, but smaller ones, even if the reasons for it are not especially compelling. And the exchanges can go on from there—making judgments in the sort of dialectical context of appealing views and their costs requires a good deal of judgment and experience. It is not an accident that Aristotle said that philosophy is not appropriate intellectual work for children. Finally, there is the third level of assessment, which is how well those who hold these views can honestly articulate their initial driving reason for holding the views they do, the costs of the view and its benefits, and why the contrastive judgment should favor their view over competitors. This is a demand for a kind of cognitive command of the dialectical terrain and a kind of deliberative honesty of the pros and cons that comprise the running debates. Those who hold views at the end of such exchanges, of the dialectical back-and-forth, and of the clarification of the best arguments against one’s view, cannot be said to know that their view is best or even correct. That seems absurd, as few who honestly have performed such tasks ever honestly take themselves to know at the end. Rather, they take themselves to reasonably believe or are fallibly justified or have seen the verisimilitude of an option. Again, the model of the ancient skeptics is useful. Cicero reports:

44  Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Nor do our arguments have any purpose other than to draw out or to formulate the truth or its closest possible approximation by means of arguing on either side. (Ac 2.7) We do not know in philosophy, but we may yet reasonably hold views. This is a function of a three-levels assessment of the command we have of (a) arguments for our views and our competitors, (b) objections to competing views and rebuttals to objections to our own views, and (c) acknowledgment of the costs for our own views and the contrastive case that they are still worth the mixed bag. No view in philosophy comes without a cost, and being dishonest with others and oneself about them is either sheer dogmatism or blinkered rationalization. This skepticism is not a metaphilosophical view that is as absurd as Rescher calls it, but, rather, it is a way of inhabiting a domain wherein knowledge is severely restricted. We believe that our metaphilosophy here, like that of Rescher’s we’ve sketched, is a pragmatic program. This is primarily because, albeit a form of skepticism, it yet returns us to life, puts philosophy to work in medias res. Yes, we acknowledge the costs of our views, but we realize that we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good . . . or even the good enough. We have lives to lead, other debates to hear, and dinners to make. There is no obvious order to how we might ask and answer questions, and there is no obvious degree to which we must have justification for fixing one answer and turning to others. And this may be the cost of our skeptical metaphilosophy— there very well may be a proper order to questions, and knowledge may await those who follow it. The problem, however, is that for every systematic program, there is yet another that not only is different, but stands in a dialectical position of deep critique of the former. Better, we think, to be unsystematic, omnivorous, and zetetic.

References Cicero, M. Tullius. 2006. On Academic Skepticism. Trans. Charles Brittain. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. (Cited as Ac.) Descartes, René. 1999 [1637]. “Discourse on Method.” In John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (eds.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume I. New York: Cambridge University Press, 111–151. (Cited as CSM.) Dewey, John. 1988 [1925]. Experience and Nature. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Empiricus, Sextus. 1990. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Trans. R. G. Bury. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. (Cited as PH.) Hook, Sidney. 1991. “Philosophy and Human Conduct.” In S. Hook (ed.), The Quest for Being. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 3–24. James, William. 1991 [1907]. Pragmatism. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1958–1966. Collected Papers. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Cited as CP.)

Pragmatism and Metaphilosophy  45 Rescher, Nicholas. 1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press. ———. 2006. Philosophical Dialectics: An Essay in Metaphilosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ———. 2008. Aporetics: Deliberation in the Face of Inconsistency. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Rorty, Richard. 1996. “Solidarity or Objectivity?” In R. Rorty (ed.), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21–45. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. (Cited as PI.)

3 Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism Frank Ramsey on Truth, Meaning, and Justification Griffin Klemick I It is by now a familiar view that, at bottom, there are two rival factions within the pragmatist camp. “One kind,” Cheryl Misak maintains, “tries to retain a place for objectivity and for our aspiration to get things right”; “the other,” she adds delicately, if suggestively, “is not nearly so committed to that” (2013, 246; cf. 3). Misak gives her allegiance to the former faction, interspersing defenses of it and attacks on its rival throughout her telling of the history of pragmatism (see Misak 2013). Indeed, from pragmatism’s inception, those who committed themselves to an objective pragmatism, as I shall call it, have been much more invested in distinguishing the two factions than those accused of a subjective pragmatism.1 For instance, while William James dedicated his 1897 collection The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy “to my old friend Charles Sanders Peirce” (1979 [1897], 3) and presented the pragmatism of his 1906 Lowell lectures as founded on “the principle of Peirce” (1978 [1907], 29), Peirce was concerned to distinguish the “logical gospel” he had called “pragmatism” from the “doctrine of philosophy” into which James transformed it. For, he reports, “prominent parts” of this Jamesian doctrine “I regarded, and still regard, as opposed to sound logic,” and even as “characterized by an angry hatred of strict logic, and . . . some disposition to rate any exact thought which interferes with [its adherents’] doctrines as all humbug” (1931–1958, 5.482, 5.485 [1908]). One philosopher who has recently expounded the distinction between the two factions in some detail is Nicholas Rescher, who, like Misak, vigorously defends objective pragmatism, which he calls “pragmatism of the right,” against the subjectivist view he calls “pragmatism of the left.”2 While we saw Misak describe the former as committed to objectivity and the goal of accurately describing reality, we have not yet arrived at a positive characterization of the latter position. But Rescher leaves us in little doubt about its central feature: in his description of pragmatism of the left, he uses ‘relativism’ or cognate words six times in five pages (2000, 64–69). He tells us that this sort of pragmatism “countenances a live-and-let-live multiplicity

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  47 of views that is as broad and flexible as the range of human idiosyncrasy and cultural variation,” abandoning all “impersonal or [at] any rate personindifferent” epistemic standards (2000, 65). It holds, rather, that one is warranted in believing something just in case it works for one, which does not entail its working for those with different goals, values, or preferences. The most prominent representatives of pragmatism of the left identified by Rescher are William James and Richard Rorty.3 And it’s not difficult to see why these two are singled out. Replying to Russell’s objections to his pragmatist view of truth, James states outright that “in any concrete account of what is denoted by ‘truth’ in human life, the word can only be used relatively” to some particular subject’s point of view. He goes on to suggest that, if he engages in a disagreement about some matter of fact, his interlocutor ought “in his capacity of pragmatist [to] see plainly that the workings of my opinion, I being what I am, make it perfectly true for me” even as the interlocutor maintains his contrary opinion (1978 [1909], 147). Rorty, for his part, builds upon James’s idea that truth is “what is good for us to believe,”4 suggesting that we should attempt to “reduce objectivity to solidarity”: to identify the distinction between knowledge and opinion with that “between topics on which agreement [within one’s community] is relatively easy to get and topics on which agreement is relatively hard to get” (1991 [1989], 22–23). Rescher’s pragmatist of the right recoils at this idea: surely the community with which I am in “solidarity” might agree in finding a belief congenial for reasons with no bearing on its truth! James’s stance is equally unacceptable: that “I, being what I am,” should find a belief agreeable or even plausible might not be a reliable indicator of its truth. For the belief might be false but useful to me or to my community, in light of other false beliefs we hold; likewise, it might be true but fail to be useful, in light of our ignorance of other pertinent truths. Pragmatists must go deeper, normatively speaking: they must hold that a statement’s truth conditions, as well as the conditions under which someone is justified in believing it, are not relativized to the contingent features of particular subjects, but are objective, applying indifferently to any person. Of course, whether a particular person is justified in believing a statement will depend on features of her particular epistemic situation: most obviously, on what else she knows and believes. But that her total evidence does or does not justify her in believing the statement in question—this, Rescher insists, does not depend on her or on the particularities of her culture, but rather is a norm that applies to all persons alike. To forestall the worry that this makes truth and justification excessively transcendent, placing them entirely beyond the sphere in which we live our lives and so leaving us without hope of attaining them, Rescher notes that he is not advocating a version of this view that would devolve into “academic skepticism revivified” (2000, 67). If he refuses to follow James and Rorty in replacing objective notions of truth and evidence with a relativistic notion of practical success, still he maintains that practical success, understood in an

48  Griffin Klemick objective way, constitutes our best evidence for truth. But he thinks we can affirm this claim while retaining a place for objectivity and “an impersonally normative rationality.” Indeed, he thinks that, rightly understood, acceptance of this claim leads us to “an adherence to metaphysical realism,” since practical success, at least in the sense relevant to epistemology, is something “that lies in the objective nature of things,” especially in our dealings with the natural world (2000, 68). Both Rescher (2000, 64, 68) and Misak (2013, 3–4) identify Peirce as the foremost proponent of objective pragmatism. I think Peirce’s relation to objective pragmatism merits detailed scrutiny, and I hope to explore this question elsewhere. Presently, however, I turn to a figure who is less frequently associated with pragmatism, but who was in fact a serious reader of Peirce and played an important role in the transmission of pragmatism in England: Frank Ramsey.5 Misak has recently suggested that Ramsey argues for a persuasive version of objective pragmatism (2016, Chapter 6). And Rescher has worked extensively on Ramsey, acquiring and administering the Ramsey Collection at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as editing (with Ulrich Majer) Ramsey’s unfinished manuscript On Truth for publication. He, too, recognizes the important pragmatist strand in Ramsey’s thinking (see Rescher and Majer 1991, xv), and he finds Ramsey’s views important and, seemingly, congenial. So, I propose to explore Ramsey’s views of meaning and justification, exploring how he manifests the deep normative concerns and realist sympathies characteristic of objective pragmatism. I suggest that we will indeed find both of these features present in Ramsey, but that they fit together less easily than we might have supposed— indeed, that they are ultimately in significant tension. In §II, I present Ramsey’s deflationism about truth and show how it leads him to search for a pragmatist theory of meaning. I explain that theory of meaning (and the functionalism about belief on which it is based) in §III. I draw some epistemological consequences from this theory of meaning in §IV, suggesting that objective pragmatists should find them congenial. But I argue in §§V–VI that Ramsey’s endorsement of metaphysical realism leads him to bifurcate his theory of meaning, restricting his pragmatist account to apply only to statements in the non-representational secondary system. This prevents him from preserving the attractive epistemic consequences just mentioned; indeed, it lands him in skepticism and psychologism. I conclude in §VII, suggesting that work remains for objective pragmatists in their attempt to articulate both the fit between their realism and their emphasis on objectivity as well as their precise differences from subjective pragmatism.

II One not intimately acquainted with the life and work of Frank Plumpton Ramsey might be surprised to find him proclaimed (on the back cover of a collection of his philosophical writings) “the greatest of the remarkable

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  49 generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and [John] Meynard Keynes” (Ramsey 1990). Yet, as engagement with Ramsey’s work has deepened, this view has steadily gained support. Leaving aside his founding of decision theory and important branches of mathematics and economics, additional attestation to his superlative genius derives from the seeming inescapability, for late twentieth-century analytic philosophers, of what Donald Davidson called the Ramsey effect: “for any theory that X believes to have discovered, it is likely that it was anticipated in some form by Ramsey.” Those who have fallen prey to the Ramsey effect include proponents of reliabilism about knowledge and justification, subjectivism about probability, functionalist approaches to meaning and the mind, the “Ramsey-Lewis” analysis of theoretical statements, the neo-Humean “best systems” approach to scientific laws, expressivism about causal statements, and an indexical analysis of tensed beliefs and statements—as well as Davidson himself.6 These achievements of Ramsey’s, already staggering, seem completely astonishing when one realizes that he completed them all before his twenty-seventh birthday, which, owing to acute liver problems, he did not live to see. It seems best to approach Ramsey’s views of meaning and justification by considering the contribution for which he is, perhaps, most often actually read today: his deflationary account of truth. Ramsey spent much of his time during the years 1927–1929 painstakingly drafting a manuscript titled On Truth, which he did not complete before his death. He was keenly interested in problems about meaning, addressing their complexities in great detail. But concerning the basic question what ‘true’ means, Ramsey thought that “the answer is really perfectly obvious” (1991 [1927–1929], 9). Indeed, he had arrived at his central insight on this point as early as 1921, stating it in a paper read before the Moral Sciences Club called “The Nature of Propositions”: “The most certain thing about truth is that ‘p is true’ and ‘p’, if not identical, are equivalent” (1991, 118). For, he later wrote in On Truth, the correct “definition” of truth is the following simple biconditional: “a belief is true if [and only if7] it is a belief that p, and p” (1991, 9). And therefore, as he remarks in his 1927 article “Facts and Propositions,” “it is evident that ‘It is true that Cæsar was murdered’ means no more than that Cæsar was murdered, and ‘It is false that Cæsar was murdered’ means that Cæsar was not murdered” (1990, 38 [1927]). For Ramsey, then, ‘true’ and ‘false’ do not make contributions of their own to the meanings of statements in which they appear. And therefore “there is really no separate problem of truth but merely a linguistic muddle” (1990, 38). But what is the function of the phrase ‘ . . . is true,’ if not to ascribe a substantive, irreducible semantic property? For Ramsey, its basic function is to resolve a quirk of ordinary language: namely, that we cannot affirm a proposition simply by referring to it via a nominal, but must supply a verb as well. And the verb phrase dedicated for this function is ‘ . . . is true.’ Now, it doesn’t serve this function in statements like ‘It is true that Caesar was murdered,’ statements in which we are told explicitly what proposition it

50  Griffin Klemick is that is being taken as true. In such statements, the phrase makes only a pragmatic (as opposed to a semantic) contribution to the statement: we use it “for emphasis or for stylistic reasons, or to indicate the position occupied by the statement in our argument” (1990, 38 [1927]). Its basic function emerges only in statements like ‘What he believed was true’ or ‘She always speaks truly,’ in which the propositions taken as true are not explicitly given. In uttering these sentences, we refer to the propositions we wish to affirm by means of the terms ‘what’ and ‘that’ (glossing the second sentence as ‘For any proposition, if she asserts it, then that proposition is true’). Now these terms, Ramsey tells us, “should really be called pro-sentences” (1991 [1927–1929], 10) and viewed as standing in for whole sentences. Accordingly, there is no reason convention should not permit us to affirm those sentences simply by saying ‘What he believed’ or ‘For any proposition, if she asserts it, then that’: since the propositions denoted by the prosentences contain verbs of their own, in principle, there should be no need to supply an additional verb.8 But ordinary language treats these terms instead as mere pronouns and so requires their supplementation by a verb phrase. And when they are used to refer to propositions for the purpose of assertion, the supplementary verb phrase we use is ‘ . . . is true.’ In short, then, ‘ . . . is true’ functions primarily as a device for asserting propositions denoted by opaque nominalizations, which device is necessary because natural language construes the most basic of these nominals as pronouns rather than prosentences. Here, again, Ramsey was prescient, anticipating the central idea of the influential prosentential analysis of ‘it is true’ given by Grover, Camp, and Belnap (1975).9 In this way, Ramsey commits himself to a pragmatist direction of explanation in his theory of meaning. He does not propose to account for meaning in terms of truth conditions and, in turn, for truth conditions in terms of correspondence to facts. Instead, he analyzes ‘the fact that p’ as a loose, ontologically noncommittal way of talking, licensed whenever p is true (see 1991 [1927–1929], 114–118), and, in turn, accounts for the truth of p in terms of a pragmatist account of the meaning (or, to use Ramsey’s own term, the “propositional reference”) of p, as we shall see in the next section.10 And so, while in an early draft of On Truth, Ramsey says that his view of truth “belongs undoubtedly to the class of correspondence theories” (1991, 18), he quickly notes problems with analyzing the truth of just any belief (and especially beliefs in disjunctions) in terms of a corresponding fact, and suggests that talk of correspondence to fact is “not an analysis of truth but a cumbrous periphrasis” (1991, 19). In the draft on which he was working when he died, he says not that his view is a correspondence view, but only that it can capture some of the advantages of correspondence theories without presupposing a precise notion of correspondence (1991, 11–12). Ramsey thus follows Peirce in accepting as a platitude the thesis that truth is correspondence to fact while maintaining that truth must ultimately be accounted for in terms of a pragmatist account of meaning.11

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  51 Indeed, Ramsey’s account seems elegantly to execute this Peircean program while eschewing some of Peirce’s explications of truth that proved more distracting than illuminating—especially his descriptions of it as our “predestined” or “fated” opinion.12

III Ramsey grants, then, that “an account of truth which accepts the notion of propositional reference without analysis cannot possibly be regarded as complete,” since “all the many difficulties connected with that notion are really involved in truth which depends on it” (1991 [1927–1929], 14; cf. 1990, 39–40 [1927]). Deflationism about truth calls urgently for a satisfactory account of meaning, and so, having defended the former in the first chapter of On Truth, Ramsey tells us that his next task is to deliver the latter (see 1991 [1927–1929], 43, 103). Let us consider, then, his account of meaning, as presented in the third chapter of On Truth and in several earlier papers. Given the role meaning plays in Ramsey’s theory of language, accounting for truth and facts rather than accounted for in terms of them, one might expect Ramsey to take meaning as primitive by embracing what he calls the propositional theory of judgment: the view that the contentfulness of our mental states can be explained only by positing irreducible semantic entities called propositions. But here, again, Ramsey opts instead for a pragmatist stance. He considers the positing of such entities an unwarranted instance of ontological profligacy; as he remarks in one manuscript, “it is only the hardiest verbalists who can persuade themselves that ‘that the earth is flat’ is the name of something real” (1991 [1927–1929], 85). The only motivation such “verbalists” can provide for this posit is “that no one has seen any alternative” (1991, 110): we can explain the intentionality of our mental states—their directedness toward objects—only by appeal to their contents, which, seemingly, we can explain only by positing entities that can serve as their contents. But Ramsey offers a clever argument against this view. The verbalist’s sole reason for positing propositions is, as we’ve just seen, to explain how beliefs can be related to the objects that figure in their contents. But in that case, why not simply identify a belief’s propositional reference— its meaning or content—with this multiple relation it bears to these objects? After all, this would equally preserve the belief’s directedness toward objects while being more parsimonious than the propositional theory of judgment. Seeing no plausible objection to this line of argument, Ramsey concludes: “The correct analysis is that [propositional] references are multiple relational properties” (1991, 113). Ramsey gave this clever argument against the existence of propositions (construed as irreducible semantic entities) in “The Nature of Propositions.” But the force of the argument depends on finding particular relations between beliefs and objects that can plausibly be identified with the

52  Griffin Klemick beliefs’ meanings: if no such relations can be found, it would seem we have no recourse but to posit new entities to do the job. In that early paper, Ramsey doesn’t specify the relations he has in mind. It isn’t till five years later, with the presentation of “Truth and Probability” (1926) and the publication of “Facts and Propositions” (1927), that Ramsey gives the details of his proposal. In the former paper, Ramsey attempts to give a theory of probability, which he takes to be “a branch of logic, the logic of partial belief and inconclusive argument” (1990, 53 [1926]). His aim, then, is normative: to show us how “to apportion correctly our belief to the probability” (1990, 62). But since we can do this only if we already know what we believe, he attempts “to develop a purely psychological method of measuring belief” (1990, 62): that is, to give an account, using only descriptive language, that tells us just when a subject has a belief with particular content, as well as to what specific degree she believes it. After considering and rejecting the view that beliefs are constituted by subjective, introspectively accessible feelings, Ramsey settles on an alternate approach: one he finds in the claim, raised (though not fully endorsed) by Russell in The Analysis of Mind, “that the degree of a belief is a causal property of it, which we can express vaguely as the extent to which we are prepared to act on it” (1990, 65 [1926]). On this view, beliefs are “dispositional”: their existence is grounded in the fact that they “would be manifested if occasion arose,” though they “may still be there without being manifested” (1991 [1927–1929], 43). He continues: To say a man has such and such . . . beliefs . . . means then generally something hypothetical, something about what he would think, say, or do in suitable circumstances. It is, in my view, important to realise that it is not only a question of what he would think or say but also of what he would do, for many of our dispositional beliefs are manifested far more in our actions that in our thoughts. For instance, I have a dispositional belief . . . that the Cambridge Union is in Bridge Street; but this belief is very rarely manifested in an [occurrent] act of thought. . . . On the other hand, this belief of mine is frequently manifested by my turning my steps that way when I want a book from the Union Library. . . . I go there habitually without having to think. (1991, 44–45) In fact, Ramsey suggests, he has just understated the relationship between belief and action in giving this example: not only does the action manifest the belief, but the disposition to act in that way in those circumstances partly constitutes the belief. For “it [is] impossible to give any satisfactory account of belief or even of thought without making any reference to possible resulting action” (1991, 45).

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  53 Now, one reason Russell objected to the dispositional view of belief is that it individuates beliefs solely by reference to their effects. And this we cannot do, he argues, because, absent any difference between two beliefs independent of their effects, there is no reason they should produce different effects. So, we must find some corresponding antecedent difference between them. Ramsey grants the objection to a purely dispositional account of belief, but suggests that we can find a corresponding difference between the respective causes of the beliefs (1990, 66 [1926]). The reason for focusing on the effects rather than the causes is simply that the latter are of interest to us when we are attempting to predict others’ behavior, as well as that we sometimes know the causes of our beliefs only vaguely. But beliefs are nevertheless partly constituted by each: to believe that p is to be in a mental state that is caused by one of a number of input states and tends in given circumstances to produce various output states, where these states are selected by their relation to the belief’s propositional reference. Ramsey gives us, then, a functionalist theory of belief.13 Peirce tells us that, once Nicholas St. John Green had impressed Bain’s dispositional view of belief as “that upon which a man is prepared to act” upon him and the other members of the Metaphysical Club, their new theory of meaning followed quickly: “From this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary” (1931–1958, 5.12 [c. 1906]). So it was for Ramsey as well: quick upon his functionalist account of belief followed a functionalist account of meaning. Not only is a belief that p a state constituted by its causal relations to various input and output states, but the belief’s being a belief that p is to be analyzed in terms of the belief’s being caused by, and causing, the particular states to which it bears those relations. He writes: It seems to me that the equivalence between believing ‘not-p’ and disbelieving ‘p’ is to be defined in terms of causation, the two occurrences having in common many of their causes and many of their effects. . . . To be equivalent, we may say, is to have in common certain causal properties, which I wish I could define more precisely. It is evident that the importance of beliefs and disbeliefs lies not in their intrinsic nature, but in their causal properties, i.e. their causes and more especially their effects. For why should I want to have a feeling of belief towards names ‘a’, ‘R’, and ‘b’, except because the effects of these feelings are more often satisfactory than those of the alternative ones. (1990, 44 [1927])14 Here we finally find the answer to our question: with which relational properties does Ramsey seek to identify meanings? The answer is that he identifies them with causal relations between mental states and worldly objects—whether their causal impact on us in perception, or ours on them in action—as well as relations between distinct mental states exhibited in

54  Griffin Klemick inference. In identifying meanings with these properties rather than positing irreducible propositions, Ramsey adopts a pragmatist rather than a metaphysical approach to meaning, as he recognizes: “The essence of pragmatism I take to be this, that the meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead, or, more vaguely still, by its possible causes and effects” (1990, 51 [1927]). Thus construed, he is right to make a remark that some have found quite perplexing: “My pragmatism is derived from Mr Russell” (1990, 51). For it was in reading The Analysis of Mind that Ramsey first saw the appeal of functionalism.15

IV Now we can begin to situate Ramsey with respect to objective pragmatism. For, I suggest, Ramsey’s functionalism about meaning has epistemological consequences that those seeking an objective pragmatism should find congenial. Notice first that, on Ramsey’s view, meaning must be holistic: any particular statement means what it does only in virtue of its role in a network of other meaningful statements.16 For the meaning of a particular statement consists in its propensities to be caused by particular perceptual states of a subject and to cause him to perform particular actions. Let’s focus on the latter propensities at present: what sort of assertion about a subject’s hypothetical behavior do we make when we say that he believes that p? Ramsey remarks that this assertion must be “a very complicated one, for no particular action can be supposed to be determined by this belief alone; his actions result from his desires and the whole system of his beliefs, roughly according to the rule that he performs those actions which, if his beliefs were true, would have the most satisfactory consequences” (1991 [1927–1929], 45). Since no belief makes a contribution to a subject’s behavior except in tandem with many other beliefs, meaning is a property, first and foremost, of the whole network of the subject’s beliefs, and only derivatively of any particular belief in the network.17 This holism about meaning leads naturally to an epistemic holism: like meaning, justification is not primarily a property of a subject’s particular beliefs, but first and foremost of the whole “system with which [she] meets the future” (1990, 149 [1929]). For Ramsey—and here, as he notes (1990, 90n2 [1926]), he is simply following Peirce—a belief is justified just in case it is produced by a reliable belief-forming habit or process: one which leads, and perhaps would lead in similar circumstances,18 to truth a sufficiently high proportion of the time. But the other beliefs of the subject will figure at least implicitly in any sufficiently detailed description of her belief-forming habits. My perceptual processes lead me to form the beliefs I do—presently, for instance, that there is a stuffed penguin wearing an eyepatch on my desk—only operating in tandem with many other beliefs of mine: beliefs about what penguins look like, what items I have accumulated as would-be cutesy gifts for my wife, the likelihood that my perceptual

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  55 faculties are reliable at close range, and so on.19 To be sure, when describing how we come to form beliefs, we frequently leave the background conditions involving such beliefs out of the story. But this is only because we take them for granted, not because they are not necessary parts of the beliefformation process. A person who did not know what a penguin was would not form the belief I presently have. And if I were explaining how I came to believe as I do to someone I knew who lacked this knowledge, I would not say simply that I formed the belief on the basis of perception but would also adduce the role played by my beliefs about penguins. Inquiry, then, is a matter of confirming, or discovering the need for revisions within, our whole system of beliefs. And it succeeds when it leads us to beliefs that are true—beliefs that are useful in an objective sense (see Ramsey 1991 [1927–1929], 91–92).20 This seems an excellent statement of the epistemology objective pragmatists are attempting to articulate: a view on which epistemic norms are founded in practical success without being relativized to particular subjects. Ramsey’s epistemological holism initially appears to yield a further appealing consequence. For it seems to enable him to conjoin two views that initially may seem incompatible when applied to the same domain of statements: expressivism, or the thesis that a given domain of (putative) statements that behave syntactically like assertions should nevertheless be analyzed as expressions of non-cognitive attitudes, and warrant-aptness, the thesis that commitments to statements within a given domain are properly assessed according to whether they mislead a subject about the world or instead enable her to get it right. In his influential 1929 paper “General Propositions and Causality,” Ramsey attempts to maintain both these views concerning statements of causal laws. Such statements are not strictly true or false, Ramsey tells us. For they admit of, and entail consequences for, an infinite number of cases, whether actual or merely hypothetical ones. The only way to analyze them truth-functionally, then, would be as infinite conjunctions, stating that the law is satisfied in every one of these infinitely many cases. Ramsey had previously adopted this analysis of law-statements (in “Facts and Propositions”), but he now abandons it, on the grounds that infinite conjunctions are inexpressible and, at any rate, do not capture the central practical function of law-statements (1990, 145–146 [1929]). Instead, he holds that law-statements are not propositional or strictly true or false. Nevertheless, he argues, we can view commitment to such statements as more or less reasonable (and different subjects’ different degrees of commitment to them as genuinely disagreeing with, and not merely differing from, one another) precisely because such commitments play a role in shaping our systems of expectations for the future, and particular possible states of the future will be consistent with some such systems but inconsistent with others. In this way, by relying on his epistemological holism, Ramsey seems able to maintain that causal commitments are sometimes warranted (in light of their contributions to warranted systems of belief) even while treating

56  Griffin Klemick them as expressions of commitments to rules for judging rather than of beliefs in propositions, capable of truth or falsity.

V If this result appears to yield a satisfying epistemology, however, still one might wonder whether it is compatible with Ramsey’s theory of meaning. On Ramsey’s functionalism, all it takes for a mental state to be a belief is for it to stand in particular causal relations—especially for it to make a particular contribution, as a part of a system of beliefs and in tandem with a system of desires, to the behavior of a subject. And the content of such a belief—the “proposition” to which it refers, we might say loosely—simply is the sum of the causal relations in which the belief stands. But we have just seen him grant that commitments to statements of causal laws play such a functional role, and so it is not clear how he can deny that they are beliefs in “propositions” (on his understanding of propositions).21 Nor does Ramsey seem able to pull apart a commitment’s warrant-aptness from its truth-aptness in the way his view of law-statements requires. For Ramsey is committed to analyzing statements of the form ‘p is true’ in terms of the instances of p, which he must analyze, in turn, without appealing to truth. So, once he has given deflationist-friendly accounts of content and of the norms governing assertion of content, he can have nothing more to say about truth: truth can’t be some further property or status that transcends the outputs of these accounts. Of course, this isn’t to say that Ramsey is committed to identifying truth with justification or with proper assertibility for a particular speaker at a particular time. But it is to say that any understanding of warranted belief or assertibility that Ramsey is entitled to deploy in accounting for the ‘and p’ on the right side of his biconditional—a belief is true just in case it is a belief that p, and p—can differ only in degree or in scope from simple speaker-warrant, not in kind. He could appeal, for instance, to such Peircean ideas as indefinitely persisting justification or an indefinitely expansive community of inquiry, but to nothing more transcendent than that. But since Ramsey grants that a commitment to a causal statement can be warranted for particular subjects at particular times, and since he gives us no reason to think that this warrant could not in principle persist across indefinitely many subjects and times, he is not entitled to deny that such commitments are truth-apt any more than that they amount to beliefs in propositions. What accounts for Ramsey’s failure to follow through on his ostensible commitment to holism in these ways? I think that this failure evinces his reliance on a logical atomist conception of meaning or the proposition, which leads to a bifurcation within his theory of meaning (to borrow a term from Kraut 1990): only a subset of the statements he admits as in a loose sense meaningful correspond to propositions, or are meaningful, in this deeper sense. It is

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  57 easiest to see how this bifurcation arises by considering the development of Ramsey’s views about meaning against the backdrop of logical atomism. In the mid-1920s, and specifically in his 1925 paper “Universals,” Ramsey’s account of propositions follows closely the one Wittgenstein presents in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (which, incidentally, Ramsey was largely responsible for translating).22 On this view, there exist simple objects that bear relations to one another; the obtaining of such a relation is an atomic fact, which we logically “picture” in an atomic proposition by means of simple signs. These simple objects in relation compose complex objects bearing relations to one another; the obtaining of a relation of this latter sort is a molecular fact. And, similarly, we picture these molecular facts by means of complex signs. And we can analyze these complex signs into simple signs, just as the complexes for which the former stand are composed of the simples for which the latter stand. Importantly, Ramsey follows Wittgenstein in adopting what might be called a transcendental attitude toward atomic facts and propositions: as he says in “Universals,” “we are not acquainted with any genuine objects or atomic propositions, but merely infer them as presupposed by other propositions” (1990, 19 [1925]). The Wittgensteinian inference Ramsey alludes to here is this: Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite. If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. In that case we could not sketch any picture of the world (true or false). (Wittgenstein 1974 [1921], §§2.021–2.0212) We posit simple objects not because perception puts us in relations of acquaintance with them, but because only if they exist will there be a world outside us with a determinate character—a base-level, objective “way things are.” And only in this way can our statements be about anything at all, and so be capable of describing anything rightly or wrongly (i.e., being true or false). We see, then, that Ramsey’s theory of language in “Universals” ties the concepts of the proposition and of truth to worldly objects as conceived by the metaphysics of logical atomism. If other statements (e.g., probability statements) have “meanings” and correctness-conditions of some sort—deriving from their causal influence on our behavior, say—still these statements “express cognitive attitudes without being propositions” and without being truth-apt (see Ramsey 1990, 147 [1929]). The concession that we lack acquaintance to objects might not seem particularly damaging; indeed, it might seem a healthy corrective to Russell’s perhaps naïvely empiricist epistemology of acquaintance. But, as David Pears notes, the early Wittgenstein was equally “opposed to any . . . dilution

58  Griffin Klemick of pure atomicity” by appeal to “the way in which we learn meanings in daily life” or the role terms play in our current philosophical regimentation of our thought (1985, 31, 34). So, having already contested the Russellian argument that, in molecular statements, terms denoting universals and terms denoting particulars can be differentiated based on pure syntax, Ramsey is happy to reply to the rejoinder that this can at least be done for atomic propositions with a straightforward expression of his Tractarian stance: The truth is that we know and can know nothing whatever about the forms of atomic propositions; we do not know whether some or all objects can occur in more than one form of atomic proposition; and there is obviously no way of deciding any such question. (1990, 29 [1925]) Whatever the merits of the concession regarding acquaintance to objects, the consequences of this more expansive concession appear devastating— most obviously for epistemology, but even for the theory of meaning. First and foremost, it leaves us vulnerable to skepticism. On the atomist model, the molecular statements we make in the course of everyday life are true just in case they are analyzable in terms of atomic propositions—statements about simple objects and the relations between them—that picture these worldly entities accurately. But the Tractarian account denies that we can know whether our molecular statements are thus analyzable, by denying that we can recognize atomic propositions as such.23 So, it seems we have no way of knowing whether our molecular statements are true. And, in fact, the situation is even worse, since analyzability into atomic propositions is a necessary condition not only for molecular statements’ truth, but even for their meaningfulness (at least in the strict sense: their constituting propositions). In this way, the Tractarian theory of meaning Ramsey espoused in 1925 undercuts itself by leading to skepticism about meaning.24 The accounts of meaning and of metaphysics he borrows from logical atomism is not only difficult to square with his holist functionalism, and so a threat to the idea that statements that are not propositional in the atomist sense (e.g., law-statements) are genuinely meaningful in any sense. The particular version to which Ramsey subscribed in 1925, at least, is also straightforwardly self-defeating.

VI It did not take long for Ramsey to grow dissatisfied with the semantic approach of the Tractatus. In a 1926 note on “Universals,” written just a year after the paper, Ramsey noted that he was “now very doubtful” that it is impossible to reach atomic propositions through analysis (1990, 31 [1926]). In “Facts and Propositions,” one year later still, he retained the Tractarian analysis of molecular propositions as truth-functions of atomic

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  59 ones, but rejected its transcendental approach to the meaning of atomic propositions in favor of the functionalist account described above in §III. As Ramsey described it: “Everything that I have said is due to [Wittgenstein], except the parts which have a pragmatist tendency, which seem to me to be needed in order to fill up a gap in his system” (1990, 51 [1927]). The latter, again, he learned from Russell. But ultimately, in the 1929 note “Philosophy,” he would embrace a metaphilosophical program that departed starkly from the atomism of both Russell and Wittgenstein. Against Wittgenstein’s clinging to semantically self-undermining philosophical propositions, Ramsey writes that, once we have established that philosophy is nonsense, “we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!” (1990, 1 [1929]). And his insistence that “our analyses of our statements, whether about meaning or about anything else, must be such as we can understand” (1990, 7) equally opposes the attempt to analyze all our ordinary statements in terms of an unknowable, transcendental, foundational body of atomic propositions. But the implications he draws from this point apply not merely to Wittgenstein but to the heart of the atomists’ analytic program. Articulating the central insight of his functionalism about meaning, he argues that some bits of our language—he singles out variable hypotheticals and theoretical terms—are such that we can’t capture their meanings naturally in definitions, but must instead “explain the way in which they are used” (1990, 5) by displaying their effects on our other cognitions and, ultimately, on our behavior. But this means that, contra the atomists, we cannot simply look through our thoughts and our language to the facts themselves, assuming a structural isomorphism between the realm of the semantic and that of the real; rather, we must develop accounts of mental states and their meanings that can incorporate these accounts of our language-use. Nor, however, should we attempt to do this in Cartesian fashion, accounting for meaning and mind without reference to the external world, which latter we work our way out to only subsequently. Rather, we “have to take our problems as a whole and jump to a simultaneous solution; which will have something of the nature of a hypothesis. . . . [W]e are in the ordinary position of scientists having to be content with piecemeal improvements” (1990, 6). Here Ramsey puts forward a holistic view of inquiry quite reminiscent of Peirce25 and seems to do so on the basis of his mature pragmatist account of meaning. Should we conclude, then, that Ramsey’s flirtations with a bifurcation between attitudes that express propositions and other cognitive attitudes that do not were mere by-products of his early allegiance to a Tractarian theory of meaning and that they formed no part of his final philosophical views? I confess that I’d rather like to take this view of the matter, but, unfortunately, I don’t think it is correct. A defender of this view would be hardpressed to explain why Ramsey’s denial that variable hypothetical statements are genuine propositions is found, as we’ve seen, not in his early work, but

60  Griffin Klemick in the 1929 paper “General Propositions and Causality.” She would also be hard-pressed to explain why, in “Philosophy” itself (which, recall, was also written in 1929), Ramsey appears to contrast variable hypotheticals and theoretical statements, which should be explained in terms of use and which (as he says elsewhere) do not express propositions, with other statements that apparently require other sorts of semantic explanation. Which statements fall into this latter class? Ramsey tells us that such “a belief of the primary sort is a map of neighbouring space by which we steer” (1990, 146 [1929]): seemingly, a description of a finite number of spatiotemporal objects. These are genuine propositions, corresponding to facts (1990, 112 [1929]). In attempting to evaluate or explain these primary propositions, we commit to statements of other sorts: besides variable hypotheticals and theoretical statements, these include statements about chances26 and counterfactual statements not entailed by known facts.27 As we’ve seen, these secondary statements do form part of “the system with which we meet the future,” for Ramsey. But they are not propositions, nor is the system taken as a whole (cf. 1990, 106 [1928]); indeed, Ramsey is clear that theoretical statements are ultimately (if not always informatively) definable in terms of primary statements or propositions (1990, 119–129 [1929]), and that counterfactuals are nonsensical unless they or their negations “can be deduced from our system” (1990, 161 [1929]). These conclusions are hard to explain, given a holistic functionalist theory of meaning: after all, Ramsey himself tells us how vital such non-propositional statements are for guiding our inferences and actions,28 as well as for epistemic appraisal (see 1990, 153–157 [1929]). It seems, then, that even after his ostensible shift away from atomism in 1926–1927, Ramsey ultimately retained the representationalist view he acquired from atomism as his core notion of meaning (or the proposition): a statement that is meaningful in this sense is one that stands for or represents non-semantic, worldly objects.29 He allowed that statements he treated as non-representational could be meaningful only in a secondary sense, one grounded in our use of them—in their functional characteristics. In my view, this later bifurcated theory of meaning has epistemological consequences that are just as unpalatable as those of Ramsey’s earlier Tractarian account. These emerge on both sides of the bifurcation: the representationalist center and the pragmatist edges. Statements of the former sort are to be treated as meaningful in virtue of their depicting—and true in virtue of their correctly depicting—“the facts”: mind-independent spatiotemporal objects bearing relations to one another. But because he adopts this representationalism, Ramsey lands us in skepticism about the primary propositions. The central difficulty is this: for any belief about worldly facts that a subject reaches on the basis of some perceptual or cognitive state she is in, the state might be such as to make the belief “seem correct to [the subject] and yet . . . be utterly mistaken” (1991 [1927–1929], 58). But we cannot analyze any of our perceptual or cognitive mental states as relations

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  61 to (or “apprehensions of”) facts unless we can introspectively distinguish between cases in which that state discloses reality to us as it really is from cases in which it misleads us (1991, 59). So, the skeptic concludes, no mental state constitutes an apprehension of a fact. Indeed, she suggests, “this is not merely a limitation of the human mind, [i.e.] it is not merely beyond our capacity to apprehend facts, but [rather] such a thing is in the nature of the case impossible” (1991, 62). It is perhaps not surprising that Ramsey anticipates this argument. What is surprising, however, is that he does not object to it, but rather grants its conclusion quite cheerfully. I think this is because he runs together two concessions, one innocuous and the other deeply damaging.30 The former is the thesis that we have “no infallible mode of knowledge” (1991 [1927–1929], 62): that is, there is no type of mental state such that, simply by our occupying such a state, we are, or are justified in being, immune in principle from doubting the beliefs we embrace on its basis. I think Ramsey’s reply to worries about this concession is completely on point: “This fact, with the risk of error which it involves, must simply be faced. . . . We sometimes make mistakes and it’s no use pretending we don’t” (1991, 62). Admitting this, we are still right to embrace the beliefs that presently appear to us quite well-founded with something approaching certainty (“practical certainty,” Ramsey calls it: 1991, 63), while remaining just open-minded enough to listen to those who reject them. But the manifest correctness of this approach cannot be explained, I argue, once we make the further concession that none of our mental states puts us in relation to facts. For if this is true, it becomes mystifying how any such state could imbue our beliefs about the facts with so much as fallible or probabilistic justification. It can only constitute one more appearance that p, and, absent any contact with some of the facts that shows us that our appearances are even probably veridical, how can the weight of such appearances ever license us in taking p to be really true? Moreover, as I argued above (while discussing “Universals”), such epistemological skepticism leads equally to skepticism about meaning: if our beliefs are meaningful, at least in the primary sense, only by depicting (accurately or inaccurately) the facts, and if we find reason to reject the idea that any of our beliefs is a relation to a fact, it seems we should reject the idea that our beliefs are meaningful. And this conclusion, of course, serves as a reductio ad absurdum. If Ramsey’s representationalist treatment of the one side of his bifurcated account of meaning leads to skepticism, his pragmatist treatment of the other side leads, first, to formalism.31 This is especially apparent in his 1929 paper “Theories,” where Ramsey suggests that all that “our theory asserts to be true” is the “totality of laws and consequences” stated in the vocabulary of the primary system that the theory leads us to predict (1990, 115 [1929]). The theoretical statements themselves, while practically indispensable for generating new empirical predictions, nevertheless have no genuine content of their own; they are simply the most efficient and internally consistent system

62  Griffin Klemick we can adopt to transform statements of the primary system (1990, 119). Retaining a representationalist conception of meaning generates pressure to oppose statements’ genuine meaningfulness to their practical function— at least when the statements in question aren’t easily assimilated to the model of ordinary empirical claims. It pushes for a deflationary account of them as merely useful shorthand for generating “real beliefs.” And so it is unable to account, as Ramsey himself had previously noted (in his 1926 paper “Mathematical Logic”), for the fact that all our natural associations to the words judgment and knowledge fit [e.g.] general and existential propositions as well as they do individual ones; for in either case we can feel greater or lesser degrees of conviction about the matter, and in either case we can be in some sense right or wrong. (1990, 235–236 [1926]) It is unable, that is, to do justice to our application of epistemic statuses and norms to the statements of “the secondary system” as well as to those of “the primary system.” How, then, should we account for our epistemic appraisals of strictly contentless secondary statements? Since such a statement serves as a rule for generating beliefs in primary statements, we can obviously assess it according to whether the beliefs it generates are true or false (waiving for the present the skeptical worries raised above). But since these rules will always apply to more cases than those we observe and in which we form the corresponding primary-statement belief—as Ramsey says, they “always [go] beyond what we know or want . . . express[ing] an inference we are at any time prepared to make” (1990, 146 [1929])—they cannot be justified fully on the basis of the truth of those beliefs. How, then, should we account for this epistemic residue? In a 1928 note concerning statements about chances, Ramsey takes a natural line, perhaps the only one that remains open to him: these are objective, and so our beliefs about them admit of justification, “in that everyone agrees about them” (1990, 106 [1928]). He adopts, that is, a psychologistic epistemology of secondary statements. This is the second position to which Ramsey’s pragmatist treatment of the secondary side of the bifurcation leads. Ramsey states this psychologistic view most generally in drafts of an Introduction to the planned Logic treatise that would follow On Truth. Speaking of ethics and aesthetics, which, together with logic, form the three “normative sciences,” he writes: it will be one of my chief objects to show that the view, which I take of them, that they are definable in . . . natural terms, is also true of rationality and truth: so that just as ethics and aesthetics are really branches of psychology, so also logic is part, not exactly of psychology, but of

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  63 natural science in its widest sense, in which it includes psychology and all the problems of the relations between man and his environment. (1991 [1927–9], 4) Here Ramsey states plainly that all normative statements, including epistemic ones, are to be accounted for purely descriptively, in terms of psychological properties of subjects and, perhaps, natural properties of worldly objects (cf. 1991, 5n4). Insofar as secondary statements go beyond particular objects and their properties in their application, then, our justification for committing to them can be grounded only in our psychology—in that “everyone agrees about them.” The clearest application of Ramsey’s psychologism can be found in his approach to induction. In a 1922 paper, after rejecting Keynes’s logical account of probability relations, Ramsey considers what non-logical approach we might take to justifying induction. The first suggestion he makes—seemingly, the one in which he has more confidence at the time—is Hume’s: “good inferences are those proceeding from those principles of the imagination which are permanent, irresistible and universal, as opposed to those which are changeable, weak and irregular” (1991 [1927–1929], 123). This approach is psychologistic, reducing the reasonability of an inference to the force of our disposition to employ it. And it would seem that, until shortly before Ramsey gave this paper, this approach had been his considered view. But now he also suggests an alternative, which, he says, “has only just occurred to me, and as I am tired I cannot see clearly if it is sensible or absurd.” This second approach is reliabilist, holding that “a type of inference is reasonable or unreasonable according to the relative frequencies with which it leads to truth and falsehood” (1991, 123). And Ramsey evidently decided that it was quite sensible after all, as he carried it into the works of his middle period, most notably “Truth and Probability.” There he suggests that this approach is “a kind of pragmatism,” judging habits of inference “by whether they work, i.e. whether the opinions they lead to are for the most part true, or more often true than those to which alternative habits would lead” (1990, 93–94 [1926]). And he argues that, by this criterion, induction is clearly vindicated, since “the world is so constituted that inductive arguments lead on the whole to true opinions. We are not, therefore, able to help trusting induction, nor if we could help it do we see any reason why we should, because we believe it to be a reliable process” (1990, 93). Now, one might raise worries about this approach like those typically raised against externalist theories of justification.32 In the 1922 paper, Ramsey cheerfully admits that, on his reliabilist proposal, we “establish by induction that induction [is] reasonable, and induction being reasonable this [is] a reasonable argument” (1991 [1927–1929], 123). An internalist might reply that whether induction is reasonable is, however, precisely what was in question. And absent any non-circular reply to this prior question, it would

64  Griffin Klemick seem that the only support Ramsey can fall back upon is our inability to help trusting induction, or our basic, ungrounded feeling of assent on considering inductive inferences. In short, one might wonder whether, absent some deeper support for induction, reliabilism really advances beyond psychologism in any significant way. This objection is hardly unfamiliar and rarely unanticipated by externalists. I put it forward, not to suggest that it is decisive, but rather to note that, in fact, Ramsey abandoned this reliabilist justification of induction for entirely different reasons—reasons much more closely linked to his bifurcated theory of meaning. In 1926, the same year Ramsey wrote “Truth and Probability,” Ramsey was still following Wittgenstein in arguing (in “Mathematical Logic,” as well as in “Facts and Propositions” the following year) that general propositions are to be analyzed as infinite conjunctions. Indeed, that year, Ramsey baldly rejected Hilbert’s objection that statements in which a variable ranges over an infinite number of objects are “initially meaningless and can only be given a meaning in an indirect way”; he simply denies that whether a conjunction is finite or infinite makes any semantic difference (1990, 237 [1926]). Of course, by 1929, precisely this argument had convinced Ramsey to abandon this Tractarian analysis of general propositions for Hilbert’s formalist approach. And this is an admission that his reliabilism cannot provide a deep account of the epistemic standing of our inductive “rules for judging,” since reliabilism accounts for their justification in terms of the truth of the judgments to which they lead, but Ramsey must now grant that they are not simply truth-functions of the latter but go beyond them. Two subjects might agree in all their particular judgments about how things are while still adopting conflicting inductive rules. He faces again, then, the question of how to justify our commitment to general propositions as rules for inductive judgment. And he is adamant that, in cases of the sort just mentioned—in which the parties agree in all their particular judgments but differ in their commitments to inductive rules—there is no fact of the matter that can decide their dispute. We cannot appeal to merely possible experience to settle things: our respective rules may have consequences about counterfactual circumstances, but there is no “fact” or “reality” that these consequential commitments seek to describe and that is capable of confirming or disconfirming them. Since both systems of inductive rules lead to the same primary beliefs, and so “both fit the facts,” Ramsey asks, “is not the choice capricious?” Here is his answer: We do, however, believe that the system is uniquely determined and that long enough investigation will lead us all to it. This is Peirce’s notion of truth as what everyone will believe in the end; it does not apply to the truthful statement of matters of fact, but to the ‘true scientific system’. (1990, 161 [1929])

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  65 In fact, though this is a fairly accurate description of Peirce’s account of truth in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” it is not his considered view of truth. Peirce quickly moved from this indicative framing to a subjunctive one, on which the truth about a question is the view on which the totality of possible evidence could not (rather than simply will not) improve. Given the paltry circulation of Peirce’s later works and manuscripts, Ramsey is hardly to be blamed for attributing the less nuanced view to Peirce. It’s important to realize, however, that Ramsey must himself be endorsing this less nuanced view rather than its counterpart. This is not merely because the language he actually uses is decidedly indicative, or because he is drawing upon the writings where Peirce puts forward that view. It is because Peirce’s considered view of truth is irreducibly normative and modal, and at this stage of the development of his views, Ramsey has committed himself to rejecting non-reductive realism about both normativity and modality.33 He can account for the “truth” of the secondary system, then, only in terms of our actual psychological properties (and the actual natural properties of objects), then, and not in terms of our hypothetical normative statuses (e.g., the persistence of our warrant to assert a claim across indefinitely many possible increases in our information). He does not give this psychologistic account of “the truthful statement of matters of fact”: statements on that side of the bifurcation are accounted for in representationalist terms. But the other elements of “the true scientific system” are indeed true just in case “everyone will believe [them] in the end”: Ramsey gives only a psychologistic account of their truth.34

VII For all their Peircean trappings, then, Ramsey’s ultimate views about meaning and justification begin to look more significantly Humean than Peircean. Indeed, Peirce was a fierce critic of psychologism, especially in the case of logic: he famously argues in “The Fixation of Belief,” for instance, that “the question of validity is purely one of fact and not of thinking. . . . It is not in the least the question whether, when the premisses are accepted by the mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also” (1931–1958, 5.365 [1877]). And yet, viewed from another direction, one can see Ramsey and, at least in his later writings, Peirce as struggling with similar difficulties.35 Both are attracted by a unified pragmatist account of meaning, with anti-skeptical epistemological implications. This account captures nicely the objective pragmatist concern for normative depth and opposition to relativism, but it cannot obviously found the robust understanding of facts or of “the objective nature of things” that at least some objective pragmatists are concerned to provide. Both also feel this pull toward metaphysical realism and, in some measure, toward a representationalist theory of meaning: to interpret the ‘and p’ in Ramsey’s biconditional—a belief is true just in case it is a belief that p, and p—by appeal to the facts, or constraint by the real, and not wholly in pragmatist terms. But this introduces a bifurcation into

66  Griffin Klemick their theories of meaning. As a result, the statements they treat representationally are threatened with skeptical worries that every pragmatist is committed to opposing. And psychologism looms for those statements they treat “merely pragmatically”: the objective pragmatist concern for normativity notwithstanding, it seems they must ultimately treat our commitment to some statements central to our practical inquiry as merely a stance to which “we, being what we are” are forced, and not one supported by reasons that would hold good for any rational subject. My central contention in this paper is that, for all that Ramsey was able to achieve before his tragically premature death, he was not able to provide a satisfactory resolution to this difficulty. But that leaves us with the question of whether and how contemporary objective pragmatists can do better. I want to conclude by making two brief remarks about that question. First, the problem of skepticism regarding the primary propositions seems to arise for objective pragmatists because of their metaphysical realism. As we have seen, Ramsey’s realist construal of facts entails that any appearance of them to a subject or community of subjects might prove misleading. For this reason, he concludes, none of our mental states can be analyzed simply as an apprehension of a fact: appearances screen off the facts from us. And then it becomes hard to see how the appearances could provide us with any reason to judge that the facts are as they appear. Now, one way to avoid this conclusion would be to reject the metaphysical realist’s construal of facts, holding instead with the early Peirce that “the real, as it really is” consists simply of the contents that a hypothetical community of inquiry “without definite limits” would, eventually, “always continue to reaffirm” (1931–1958, 5.311 [1868]). This would not be simply to surrender objective pragmatism. For this view retains a distinction between what limited communities presently agree about or take to “work for them” and what is true. But objective pragmatists who will not relinquish realism face the task of answering this skeptical worry. And, if answering it proves impossible, and if skepticism seems untenable (as it should), then the only remaining option is to hold that such beliefs can be justified in some more minimal way—not as demonstrating that the subjectivity-transcendent facts are thusand-so, but as constituting the best grasp of them that “we, being what we are” can attain. That is, in this case, objective pragmatists would be forced into adopting psychologism about our justification for our beliefs in primary propositions as well as secondary ones. Accordingly, my second remark concerns psychologism. If objective pragmatists do embrace psychologism about justification, then, I suggest, the onus is on them to explain how their view of epistemic norms is less unattractive than the subjective pragmatist view they decry. For it is not clear that relativism is in fact the source of the faults they find with subjective pragmatists. Take Rorty, for instance. In some places, at least, Rorty emphatically rejects the relativistic thesis that other cultures might have conceptual schemes incommensurable with ours, or that our disagreements with them

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  67 might be simply incapable of adjudication. On the contrary, he holds, such disagreements can be—and indeed ought to be—adjudicated, though the opposing beliefs can only “be tested by trying to weave them together with beliefs we already have” (1991 [1989], 25–26). This last thought, far from relativistic, is simply the Peircean idea that we can begin to inquire only from where we actually are. The objectionable thought Rorty retains is not relativism, but is instead his persistent distinction between our views’ being better or worse and their succeeding or failing at “correspond[ing] to the nature of things” (1991, 23)—that is, his persistent psychologism. In any case, whether or not this is an entirely adequate reading of Rorty, it raises an important substantive question: what is the benefit of rejecting relativism if we retain psychologism? The objective pragmatist’s worry about relativism seemed to be that it threatens our right to view the beliefs embraced by our community as not merely what we happen to think, but as aimed at getting things right. But even if we reject relativism, this right is just as seriously threatened by psychologism: granted, not with respect to our local communities in the here and now, but with respect to the human community, spanning across indefinitely many subjects and an indefinite period of time. If psychologism is true, this community’s beliefs can only ever amount to what it happens to think; it cannot view itself as subject to the standard of getting reality right. In my view, the central task at hand for objective pragmatists who are metaphysical realists is explaining why, given this fact, the objectivity with which their view is concerned is something that should matter to us—something that makes it important to opt for objective rather than subjective pragmatism.36

Notes 1 Rorty is an exception. He sharply separates Peirce’s embrace of Kantianism from James’s and Dewey’s rejection of it, insisting that Peirce’s “contribution to pragmatism was merely to have given it a name, and to have stimulated James” (1982, 161). 2 Rescher gives the former its name “because of its essentially conservative nature” (2000, 69). (Misak’s preference for ‘objective pragmatism’ is perhaps motivated by the desire to avoid this connotation.) 3 Rescher also names F.C.S. Schiller (2000, 64). I won’t discuss Schiller’s views here. 4 The wording and emphasis are Rorty’s own; for James’s original statement, see his (1978 [1907], 42). 5 One might wonder how Ramsey gained access to the then-unknown Peirce’s thought and writings. He did so through C. K. Ogden, who published in England the first collection of Peirce’s writings and also gave papers of Peirce’s to Ramsey personally. See Misak (2016, §3.3). 6 Davidson (1999, 32) uses the phrase “the Ramsey effect” and describes its befalling him. (He thought he had discovered a way to isolate a 50% subjective probability of one of a subject’s beliefs without knowing anything about the subject’s scale of utilities—the fundamental insight of Ramsey’s 1926 paper “Truth and Probability.”) The actual description of the Ramsey effect, however, is Dokic and Engel’s; see their (2002, 2).

68  Griffin Klemick 7 In his initial statement of the “definition,” Ramsey forgets to claim that the condition is necessary as well as sufficient. But he adds the ‘only if’ in his second statement of it (1991 [1927–1929], 13). And his criticism of James for violating the definition makes sense only if the definition includes this claim to necessity as well, since James does not deny that any belief that p is true if p, but instead seemingly maintains that a belief that p can be true even if ~p. 8 The formal analogue to this natural linguistic phenomenon is the variable sentence. Ramsey’s “definition” of truth—a belief is true if it is a belief that p, and p—“sounds odd because we do not at first realize that ‘p’ is a variable sentence and so should be regarded as containing a verb” (1991 [1927–1929], 9). 9 And for a modified prosententialist theory that seems to end up quite close to Ramsey’s mature view, since it analyzes the function of ‘ . . . is true’ in terms of prosentences while allowing its coupling to pronouns, see Brandom (1994, §§5. III.3–4). 10 Of course, this direction of explanation requires establishing a close relationship between the meaning of p and the norms governing assertion of p, since Ramsey’s biconditional—a belief is true just if it is a belief that p, and p—presupposes not only a theory of content that tells us when a belief is a belief that p, but also a criterion that tells us when p—when the assertion that p meets some standard of correctness (which, moreover, we must analyze without presupposing the notion of truth). We shall return to this below. 11 For Peirce’s attempt to bring together these two thoughts, see his 1931–1958, 5.100 [1910]. 12 But Peirce himself deflates this language of “fate” and was not, perhaps, seriously committed to these formulations. (See Misak 2013, 36–37.) There is some question about whether Ramsey himself recognized this and so viewed himself as in line with Peirce concerning truth (if perhaps as expressing the view more clearly than Peirce himself did), or instead took himself to be correcting Peirce’s inadequate, inflationary view of truth. There is some textual support for the latter view (1991 [1927–1929], 24n2), but Ramsey makes some approving remarks about Peirce’s view of truth that lend some support to the former (1991 [1927– 1929], 91; 1990, 161 [1929]). 13 At times, Ramsey seems to allow, against functionalism, that beliefs are partly constituted by intrinsic phenomenal properties. In “Facts and Propositions,” for instance, he suggests that judgments, or beliefs that are consciously asserted, are “accompanied by a feeling or feelings of belief or disbelief, related to [the symbols that express the judgment’s content] in a way I do not propose to discuss” (1990, 40 [1927]). (Misak cites a similar passage as evidence that “Feeling . . . remains part of Ramsey’s account of belief”; see her 2016: 200, cf. 183.) But in a footnote, he suggests that, if the reader prefers, she is free to substitute other terms for ‘feeling’—among them, “act of assertion” and “act of denial” (1990, 40n2). And these seem less phenomenally weighty and more amenable to functionalist analyses. Moreover, in “Truth and Probability,” Ramsey seems explicitly to deny that a mental state can constitute a belief only if it is accompanied by a feeling, since “the beliefs which we hold most strongly are often accompanied by practically no feeling at all” (1990, 65 [1926]). For the suggestion that Peirce, too, was torn between an attraction to dispositional accounts of belief and the burden of doing justice to belief’s intrinsic character, see Misak (2016, Chapter 1). 14 This emphasis on “feeling” might seem to conflict with Ramsey’s functionalism. But see the preceding footnote. 15 The Analysis of Mind came out in 1921, while the first collection of Peirce’s writings was not published until 1923. Ramsey had already cited Peirce approvingly on epistemological matters in §5 of “Truth and Probability,” as we shall

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  69 see below. But he does not seem to have engaged (in writing, at least) with the American pragmatists on the topic of meaning until 1927–1929, in the drafts of On Truth as well as briefly in “General Propositions and Causality.” 16 In the second chapter of On Truth, Ramsey objects to one particular construal of holism about meaning. But his objection applies only to views on which meaning “is not applicable to isolated judgments but only to systems of judgments” (1991 [1927–1929], 26). This claim is not essential to holism about meaning, and the view I sketch briefly in the text makes no use of it. 17 A similar holistic point, can, I think—and, if the functionalist program is to work, must—be made with reference to input states. Indeed, Wilfrid Sellars, perhaps the next great pragmatist or functionalist following Ramsey, makes an argument of this sort concerning input states (1997 [1956], §VIII). 18 For the need to take hypothetical and not merely actual cases into account in deciding whether a belief-forming habit leads to truth, see Ramsey (1990, 97, ¶2 [1928]; 1990, 153–157 [1929]). (For analogous subjunctive statements about meaning, see 1990, 51 [1927]; 1990, 133–134 [1929].) But Ramsey’s stance on this question is ambivalent, as we’ll see in §VI. 19 Compare Sellars (1997 [1956], §VIII.36). 20 If we were attempting to analyze truth and meaning in terms of practical success, this would be far too quick: we would need to explicate and defend this idea in painstaking detail. However, I’ll be arguing (in §§V-VI) that Ramsey actually turns his back on this program. So, while it remains an essential program for objective pragmatists (in my view), we need not pursue it in any detail to meet our present goal of understanding Ramsey’s views of meaning and justification. 21 This worry has been raised by Holton and Price (2003). Indeed, a number of the worries I’ll raise below for Ramsey’s theory of meaning are anticipated by Holton and Price. 22 I am not entirely sure how to square Ramsey’s commitment to this Wittgensteinian view of propositions with his earlier deflationary theory of propositions (in his 1921 “The Nature of Propositions”) and his later functionalist development of it (in 1926–1927). But since one of my central theses in this paper is that there is a deep inconsistency in Ramsey’s views on this topic, perhaps this is not altogether surprising. 23 A defender of the Tractarian account might reply that, though we cannot know whether our ordinary propositions about everyday objects can be analyzed into atomic propositions, we have discovered that they are analyzable into the more basic propositions of physics and so have inductive support for concluding that we will be able to analyze them still further—ultimately, into atomic propositions. But the Tractarian account denies that the theoretical virtues that attach to our best theories of fundamental physics provide any motivation for viewing the statements of any such theory as atomic propositions. (This is Pears’s point that, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein opposed any “dilution of pure atomicity” by pragmatic considerations.) 24 Of course, considering Wittgenstein’s famous admission at the end of the Tractatus that the work’s propositions are nonsensical (1974 [1921], §6.54), this self-undercutting character is perhaps not surprising. For a contemporary presentation of the idea that skepticism about knowledge leads to skepticism about meaning, see Button (2013, Chapter 7). 25 For Peirce’s assimilation of practical inquiry to piecemeal scientific investigation (though he distinguishes them in some respects), see the third lecture in his series “Detached Ideas on Vitally Important Topics” (1931–1958, 5.589 [1898]). 26 See Ramsey (1990, 162 [1929]; 1990, 104 [1928]). 27 See Ramsey (1990, 135, 138, 161 [all from 1929]). 28 See Ramsey (1990, 129–130 [1929]; 1990, 97–101 [1928]).

70  Griffin Klemick 29 See Price et al. (2013, 8–9). 30 He is addressing Cook Wilson’s particular statement of the position he’s contesting, so perhaps it is this statement and not Ramsey’s treatment to which this looseness should be traced. In any event, on the importance of distinguishing these two ideas when discussing skepticism, see Harman (1973, 3). 31 On Ramsey’s formalism, see Holton and Price (2003, §4). 32 On externalist theories of justification, a subject can acquire a justified belief by employing a particular belief-formation process, provided that this process satisfies certain conditions, where its satisfying those conditions need not be accessible to the subject. (e.g., it is not required for the subject’s belief to be justified that she have a justified belief that the belief-formation process in question satisfies those conditions.) On internalist theories of justification, by contrast, the conditions that suffice for justification must be accessible to the subject. 33 As we’ve seen, he rejects non-reductive realism about normativity in the Introduction to the Logic treatise. He rejects this stance toward modality here in “General Propositions and Causality,” as well as in “Theories” and a companion note of 1929 called “Causal Qualities.” 34 I take, then, a rather minimal view of Ramsey’s earlier claim that “Variable hypotheticals or causal laws . . . are not . . . subjective in the sense that if you and I enunciate different ones we are each saying something about ourselves which pass by one another like ‘I went to Grantchester’, ‘I didn’t’ ” (1990, 149 [1929]). Of course Ramsey is right that, “so long as we don’t believe the same things” (1990, 149), there is an important difference between us; the question, though, is about the significance of a disagreement purely at the secondary level, and so the point that there is an epistemically significant difference in a case where we believe different primary statements is not pertinent. Once this is recognized, it seems to me that the only difference Ramsey can allow is that, while the two parties in the example will never reach an agreement on the truth of the sentence ‘I went to Grantchester’ unless an index for ‘I’ is fixed, we all assume that we will reach an agreement on the “truth” of statements of causal laws. But unless this psychological difference is grounded in a further normative difference, I don’t see that the former difference is deep or significant. 35 On the difficulties for Peirce, see Hookway (2004). 36 I am grateful to Cheryl Misak for two rounds of helpful comments, as well as to the Balzan Foundation−University of Toronto Styles of Reasoning project, inaugurated by Ian Hacking, for its support.

References Brandom, R. B. 1994. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Button, T. 2013. The Limits of Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. 1999. “Intellectual Autobiography of Donald Davidson.” In L. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago and LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 3−70. Dokic, J. and Engel, P. 2002. Frank Ramsey: Truth and Success. London: Routledge. Grover, D., Camp, J., and Belnap, N. 1975. “A Prosentential Theory of Truth.” Philosophical Studies 27, 73−125. Harman, G. 1973. Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Holton, R. and Price, H. 2003. “Ramsey on Saying and Whistling: A Discordant Note.” Noûs 37, 325−341. Hookway, C. 2004. “Truth, Reality, and Convergence.” In C. Misak (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Peirce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 127−149.

Prospects for an Objective Pragmatism  71 James, W. 1978 [1907]. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1978 [1909]. The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1979 [1897]. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kraut, R. 1990. “Varieties of Pragmatism.” Mind 99, 157−183. Misak, C. 2013. The American Pragmatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pears, D. 1985. “Introduction.” In B. Russell (ed.), The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1−34. Peirce, C. S. 1931–1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols. Eds. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (vols. 1–6), A. W. Burks (vols. 7–8). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Citations given with the year from which the manuscript dates.) Price, H., with Blackburn, S., Brandom, R., Horwich, P. and Williams, M. 2013. Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramsey, F. P. 1990. Philosophical Papers. Ed. D. H. Mellor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Citations given with the year from which the manuscript dates.) ———. 1991 [1927–1929]. On Truth. Eds. N. Rescher and U. Majer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Rescher, N. 2000. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Rescher, N. and Majer, U. 1991. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Ramsey 1991 [1927– 1929], ix−xxi. Rorty, R. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: 1972–1980). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1991 [1989]. “Solidarity or Objectivity?” Reprinted in R. Rorty (ed.), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21−34. Sellars, W. 1997 [1956]. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (monograph reprint). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1974 [1921]. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, rev. ed. Trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge.

4 Pragmatism and Science Robert Almeder

1 Introduction “Pragmatism” often means different things to different people; and even when it does not, there are still different kinds of pragmatists. Indeed, depending on what one thinks pragmatism is, or should be, one might end up refusing to accept, for example, that Charles Peirce was a pragmatist, or even that William James was a pragmatist, when in fact they were both pragmatists, although, as we shall see, one had a more liberal concept of evidence than the other even when they both arguably advanced an epistemic concept of truth in term of warranted assertibility.1 The best way to confront this problem of explicating the nature of pragmatism is to examine carefully the works of the luminaries in the pragmatic tradition in order to see just what they all shared by way of their distinctive epistemology on what are the goals, methods, and limits of rational belief. Unfortunately, that story cannot be told here in any detail.2 Even so, if we are to make any progress in weighing the contribution of pragmatic thought on the problem of induction, the status of theoretical entities, and the problem of scientific explanation, we should point to some reasonably non-controversial features that separate pragmatists from non-pragmatists, and then note the major variations among different kinds of pragmatists. This I will do briefly before trying to determine the relative merits of certain proposed pragmatic solutions to the aforementioned problems in the philosophy of science.

2  What Is Pragmatism? Typically, pragmatists believe that the rational acceptability of a belief, either as an item of knowledge or as an item of justified belief, is ultimately a function of whether the belief in question is likely to be the best available instrument for our successfully adapting to the world in some fundamental and enduring way under the principle of homeostasis. Either that or they believe that the rational acceptability of a belief is ultimately a matter of its being produced by a method or process generally reliable in producing beliefs permitting that sort of successful adaption.

Pragmatism and Science  73 Under this characterization, of course, sophisticated natural scientists can be, and have been, pragmatists simply for believing that the fruits of standard scientific methodology generally tend to produce beliefs better by way of providing precise predictions for biological success than any other available method. That sort of success, they say, justifies the methodology of natural science and serves simultaneously to indicate the goal or fundamental purpose of science.3 After all, why do science at all if it is not that the doing of it is fundamentally useful by way of providing beliefs for living a fuller and happier life? But some pragmatists, such as William James and his followers, go further than simply adopting the methods of natural science in order to determine the reliability of beliefs about the physical world.4 They will add that there are some such beliefs that cannot be systematically established or refuted under the methods of testing and confirmation in the natural sciences but are, nevertheless, reliable instruments which when adopted as true produce predictable consequences that provide for suitable adaptation under homeostasis, or natural selection, just as efficiently as beliefs forged under the anvil of inductive methodology. Like the beliefs established in good science, those beliefs too have a right to exist under the same general rubric that justifies the beliefs emerging from good scientific practice.5 Either way, to paraphrase William James, the rational acceptability of a belief is rooted in the strong likelihood of its producing effects or consequences instrumentally effective in allowing us to conquer or regulate successfully the enduring or transitory exigencies of our world. Accordingly, traditional pragmatists think that beliefs are presumptively and fundamentally rational instruments that we construct in order to achieve biological equilibrium under the principle of homeostasis; and our beliefs are to be judged more or less epistemologically adequate pending their success, relative to all available alternatives, as predictive mechanisms operative under homeostasis, and therefore the objects of natural selection.6 Those who deny that thesis for whatever reason will deserve the label “non-pragmatist.” Invariably, pragmatists have also been fallibilists and verificationists with regard to beliefs about physical objects and the laws governing them in the external world, although there are fallibilists and verificationists who would not claim the label “pragmatist,” probably because they think pragmatists generally believe that beliefs are true simply if it pleases somebody to think they are true, no matter what the facts may be. Fallibilism, incidentally, is not simply the view that we could always make mistakes about what we believe, even in science. More fundamentally, it is the view that, no matter how much evidence one has for one’s beliefs, there is always some real probability greater than zero that one is in error and, however well-confirmed one’s beliefs about the world may be, and however confident one may be in the truth of one’s beliefs about the world, even if one’s beliefs are about logic and mathematics, they are always subject to truth-value revision pending their adequacy as predictive and adaptive

74  Robert Almeder instruments in the face of new and changing bodies of evidence, or rules for interpreting the evidence. And where the beliefs may not be directly verifiable or consciously derivable from other known propositions under the canons of confirmation in natural science, pragmatists often tend, as did Peirce, James, and Dewey, to permit those beliefs as revisable postulates, or inference tickets, when there is a common and ineluctable inclination to accept them, and no good reason at the moment to reject them. Although fallible, such basic beliefs are acceptable for producing consistent consequences promoting adaptive or applicative success by way of providing for cognitive utilities, or forms of happiness, based on the predictable results of accepting such beliefs as true even if they were not systematically testable and confirmable under the standard methods of science.7 With regard to verificationism, although there are stronger and weaker versions of verificationism, beginning with Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, pragmatists can be seen to adopt the general verificationist view that one does not know the meaning of a proposition if one has no conception of what one should take as sufficient evidence for confirming the proposition.8 Finally, most classical pragmatists, along with many other contemporary or recent pragmatists, agree that when it comes to knowledge about the external world, the truth or justification of a belief is less a function of how the belief is caused, or originates from experience, than it is of whether the belief, however it is caused, leads to what the belief predicts at the sensory level under the assumption of its truth. This particular feature of pragmatism is what James christened “radical empiricism,” in contradistinction to Humean empiricism, when he asserted that it is in the fruits of our beliefs, and not the roots, that the truth resides.9 These then are the major common traits of pragmatism that together distinguish pragmatists from non-pragmatists. Not surprisingly, incidentally, pragmatists continue to spend much time responding to the pervasive anti-pragmatist objection that knowledge requires truth, just as highly justified belief requires strong truth-conduciveness, and neither is plausibly defined or construed solely in terms of the appropriate instrumental or cognitive utilities accruing to the acceptance of a belief if the confirmation of a belief can be achieved independently of its having test conditions of the sort usually required in natural science.10 There is, the anti-pragmatists say, a world of difference between believing what it is best for us to believe by way of the predictive implications of our beliefs, and believing the truth, or what is likely to be true; and the goal of inquiry is to find the truth, or what is likely to be true platitudinally, rather than what it is best for us to believe in the way of survival in this cruel and unforgiving world.11 The way pragmatists respond to this objection permits us to distinguish briefly between two further types of pragmatist. The first type of response, advanced by Richard Rorty and others, consists in affirming that the objection in question assumes that truth, as we ordinarily understand it, is certifiably attainable, that we can, at least from

Pragmatism and Science  75 time to time, decisively show which of our beliefs are true in the platitudinous or common sense of “true.” But this, said Rorty, we cannot do, and so truth, as we ordinarily understand it, is a myth, no less than any concept of knowledge that would require either truth, or the strong likelihood of truth as a necessary condition.12 In short, for Rorty, the objection would make sense only if we can effectively determine which of our beliefs are true rather than merely justified by appeal to the standards of rational justification present in contemporary discourse, standards by no means certain to prevail for future audiences in different places. Given this response, all we have is justification relative to changing standards of acceptance. That, said Rorty, is all we could ever mean by “knowledge,” and it requires abandoning truth (as we ordinarily understand it) as a necessary condition for knowledge. Either that or we abandon the concept of knowledge altogether, and settle for strongly justified belief as our highest epistemological calling. If we must label it, call this radical pragmatism.13 It is sometimes identified with cultural relativism in epistemology. The second type of response we often hear to the above objection consists in affirming that pragmatism is at liberty to emphasize the utility of one’s beliefs as the criterion for their acceptance as true without abandoning the idea that some of them are in fact true platitudinally. That one’s system of beliefs may well allow us to adapt successfully to the world is perfectly consistent with thinking that the reason they have such consequences is plausibly a function of at least some of those beliefs, or beliefs implied by them, succeeding in correctly describing the world, even if incompletely. In other words, pragmatists have the option of responding, contra Rorty, that even if we cannot determine at any given time which of our beliefs are true in the ordinary sense of “true,” we can avoid making a mystery or a miracle of scientific progress by urging that the success we so earnestly seek and find in our theories and predictive hypotheses is there simply because some of the assertions in them, or assumed or implied by them, do in fact succeed in correctly describing the world even if we cannot say, or reliably determine, which assertions are doing the work and thereby allowing for the correct predictions.14 Again, if we must label it, call this non-radical pragmatism. More on this anon. With this admittedly brief and qualified description of what all pragmatists have in common, and how they may respond to the most common objections to pragmatism, we turn now to the questions we promised to discuss at the outset: proposed pragmatic solutions to the problem of induction, the problem of theoretical entities in science, and the problem of scientific explanation.

3 Pragmatism and Induction Induction is the method of inference by which we infer that all Xs are Ys because all past observed Xs were also observed to be Ys. Hume pointed out

76  Robert Almeder that such an inference assumes that the future will be like the past, or that the unexamined members of a class will be like the past examined members of the class when the number of observations is very large. But how do we know that the unexamined members of the class will have the same properties as the examined members, or how do we know that the future will be like the past? If we do not know as much, we do not know that any generalization about the world is true or known. Hume claimed that we have neither an inductive nor a deductive justification for believing that the future will be like the past.15 Certainly, an inductive justification of induction based on the observation that past futures were like the past pasts is minimally circular for appealing to the inductive justification offered while overlooking the question of how we know that future futures will be like past futures. Also, sometimes past futures were not like past pasts, as Russell and many others have clearly noted.16 Moreover, there can be no deductive proof that the future will be like the past; it will always be logically possible that the future will not be like the past. Arguing a priori that there is a principle of uniformity in the world guaranteeing and explaining past successes in predicting that the future would be like the past in specific ways will not help either.17 At best, that evidence shows only that there was a principle of uniformity in the past, when the question is whether such a principle of uniformity will continue to exist in the future. That question cannot be answered affirmatively deductively without assuming that the future will be like the past. Most pragmatists have generally agreed with Hume that any standard inductive justification of induction is viciously circular because it assumes what needs to be proven, namely that the future will be like the past; and they have also agreed that no deductive justification of induction is possible because whatever argument one provides in that vein, it will always be possible to imagine the conclusion false, or that the future will not be like the past. Hume, to be sure, did not suggest that we should not be inductive reasoners. Such reasoning has worked wonders for us by way of often providing us with very successful beliefs. But it does not follow from that that the success we have garnered in the past under such reasoning amounts to knowing anything generally true about the world. For Hume, the success of our inductive reasoning is not evidence of our having any knowledge about the world rather than simply useful beliefs any of which could at any time be false. In recent philosophy of science, there are at least three distinct pragmatic responses to the problem of induction. The first is Peirce’s, the second is methodological pragmatism, and the third is simply a non-methodological form of pragmatism. A Charles Peirce offered the first pragmatic defense or vindication of induction. He argued that, while inductive reasoning at its best could mislead us from time to time into accepting as true what is in fact false,

Pragmatism and Science  77 nevertheless, in the long run and on the whole, induction will sooner or later lead to the truth on any answerable question. More specifically, and in response to Hume’s challenge to justify the method of induction when any inductive justification would be circular and any deductive justification impossible, Peirce granted that in any particular case inductive inference can lead us to false conclusions; but the method of induction finds its vindication as the only reliable method for fixing belief about the world in the fact that in the long run induction will lead the scientific community inexorably to the one destined and irreversibly true answer for any answerable question about the world.18 But what was his reasoning for this confident assertion, and what kind of reasoning was it anyway? Peirce’s basic argument for asserting that induction will lead to truth was that all reasoning and inquiry proceeds on the general assumption that there is a correct objective answer to any answerable question, one that does not depend on what anybody wishes, wants, or opines, and that inquiry pursued indefinitely long under inductive reasoning will reach this one True irreversible answer.19 He thought that, if we did not assume as much, no inquiry would go forth at all. Believing in the general reliability of induction to lead sooner or later to the Truth was, for Peirce, something we had to do if we were to fix or establish reliable belief in the presence of recalcitrant experience under existing beliefs or no beliefs at all. So, his proposed justification for the method of induction was inspired by what he called his doubt-belief theory of inquiry. This theory of inquiry, incidentally, he found in the works of the Scotch psychologist Alexander Bain (1875),20 who argued that the whole purpose of inquiry is to overcome the dissatisfaction and irritation of not knowing what to believe when existing beliefs failed to provide us with the means of adapting successfully. For Peirce, the only reliable method that will fix belief is the scientific or inductive method because only it will give us beliefs devoid of wishful thinking and thus objectively reliable instruments for predicting future sensory experience.21 Without the capacity and method to predict precisely our sensory experiences, our beliefs would not satisfy the end for which we inquire, which is not, according to Peirce, to find the truth but, rather, to find those beliefs we sincerely think to be true as a result of applying a method that guarantees objectivity.22 Peirce’s doubtbelief theory of inquiry, then, construes the activity of fixing or establishing belief as a biological activity under the principle of homeostasis. Evolutionary forces drive us to the method that best enables us to establish beliefs we will not find wanting as adaptive instruments relieving the stress of not knowing what to believe, and only inductive reasoning can do the trick. Is Peirce’s defense of induction persuasive? It depends on how we read it. What are we to make of the claim that all inquiry proceeds on the assumption that there is one objective answer to any answerable question and that an indefinitely long inquiry conducted

78  Robert Almeder by the scientific community using only the inductive methods will sooner or later come to the one irreversibly true answer? The problem seems to be that somebody such as Hume could readily accept the assertion that all inquiry proceeds on that assumption and then promptly note that the assertion itself is an inductive conclusion based on an examination of all past cases of inquiry. That lands us back in the vicious circle of seeking to justify induction by inductive inference. Either that or Peirce was seeking to avoid the necessity of an infinite regress of justification by implicitly asserting that all reasoning begins with certain assumptions that cannot be justified except by the practical consequences they have for ultimately providing beliefs we generally find suitable for the ends for which we conduct inquiry. But even then, the ghost of Hume will pleasantly note that assumptions are still unjustified assertions and, however intuitively acceptable they may seem, any conclusion based on them will not be sound. B To this last Humean objection, however, those contemporary pragmatists following Peirce’s lead may tend to press the Peircean point that, unless we start with assumptions that we do not know how to justify, except to say that there seems no good reason to doubt them either by way of their inductive or deductive implications, we will end up with nothing at all by way of justified belief or knowledge. Moreover, we are laying down demands for certainty and implicitly faulting inductive inference for not being deductive inference. Take, for example, the defense of induction offered by Nicholas Rescher.23 Rescher affirms, along with Aristotle, Carnap, Sellars, Quine, and many others, that the first principles and the methodology of natural science cannot be justified in any non-circular way by explicit and direct appeal to those very principles in question. So much is clear. Even so, Rescher asserts that there must be a solution to the problem of induction because, “contrary to what the skeptic suggests, we do have knowledge of the physical world, thanks to the use of inductive methods. We know, for example, that atoms exist, and this latter bit of knowledge depends on a good deal of inductive inference” (1982, 25ff; see also 1984, 12ff). Nor can we establish the validity of inductive methods a priori, as some (e.g., Bonjour 1985, 1988) have argued. Rather the validity of induction can, and should be, established pragmatically, that is, by directly seeing whether, when simply adopted, the fruits of induction lead to the observable satisfaction of the primary goals of science in accurate predictions and applicative success of beliefs so formed. If they do, then, although this pragmatic form of justification may indeed be empirical, it is not scientific in the sense of proceeding directly from standard testing and confirming whether the primary cognitive goal has been satisfied (1984, 12ff). If the skeptic demands more than this for justification or vindication of inductive reasoning and first principles, Rescher, like Peirce before him, locates the demand,

Pragmatism and Science  79 for various reasons, in a sterile Cartesianism feeding on a faulty argument whose conclusion is that all beliefs about the world are truly doubtful, and therefore in need of justification (1977, 175–184).24 This would be to say that induction fails simply because it is not deduction. What can one say about Rescher’s proposal? Well, those impressed with Hume’s argument will find themselves predictably reluctant to shoulder the charge that they are advancing a sterile Cartesianism. They will want to know why they should accept that particular criticism. After all, they may say, if there is no non-circular inductive justification for induction, and no deductive justification for it either, what other conclusion can we draw except that the belief that the future will be like the past is more like an act of faith or a grand assumption that, however useful it has been in the past, does not provide us with any real justification for accepting induction as a source of knowledge, or even justified belief (which makes no sense without reference to certifiably true beliefs about the world)? But then again, as we saw, Rescher especially, and other pragmatists, will want to insist that there is something disturbingly inaccurate about the claim that the pragmatic story is going to be simply another inductive, and hence circular, justification for induction. They may even complain that there is not much difference here between the pragmatic story and what Aristotle in fact came to believe about how one would be justified in believing first principles. Doubtless, Hume would respond in kind to Aristotle’s proposals and urge that such a defense of first principles amounts to nothing more than a grand assumption offered arbitrarily to end the infinite regress. C There is a third distinctive pragmatic solution to the problem of induction. It was initially offered by Hans Reichenbach, and more recently defended by Brian Skyrms in “The Pragmatic Justification of Induction.” Wesley Salmon also defended it.25 In explicating this pragmatic solution, Skyrms asks us to imagine that you were forcefully taken into a locked room and told that whether or not you will be allowed to live depends on whether you win or lose a wager. The object of the wager is a box with red, blue, yellow, and orange lights on it. You know nothing about the construction of the box but are told that either all of the lights, or some of them, or none of them will come on. If the colored light you chose comes on, you live; if not you die. But before you make your choice, you are also told that neither the blue, nor the yellow, nor the orange can come on without the red light also coming on. If this is the only information you have, then you will surely bet on red. (1975, 43) In other words, if any light will come on, the red one will; but of course it is possible that no light will come on. So, if any bet is successful, red will be

80  Robert Almeder successful. Skyrms urges then that something like this is true of induction. That is to say, if any method will work for forming reliable (that is, more often than not true) accurate general beliefs about the world, the inductive method will work. As others have noted, the self-correcting nature of induction is the reason why we should accept the view that, if anything will work to form reliably accurate beliefs about unobservable things, induction will. If any method other than induction is found to be successful by way of producing generally reliable beliefs about unobservables, then induction will sanction it. So, if any method will work, induction will work.26 What can we say about this self-styled pragmatic proposal? The first reply is that Hume might well agree that if any method succeeds in providing us with reliable generalizations about the world, the inductive method will succeed, and then wonder why anybody would think that such a claim justifies the belief that some method will so succeed. But to show that any method will provide us with reliable beliefs about the world will presuppose and not show that the future will be like the past. Hume’s argument is an argument to the effect that we have no way of knowing whether any method will in fact provide us with reliable beliefs because such a proof would require that we know that the future will be like the past; and that cannot be shown deductively or inductively. Hume’s tour de force was to note that we in fact infer that all Xs are Ys simply because in the past we have never seen an X that was not a Y, and that the generalization “All Xs are Ys” extends to the unobserved members of the class on the assumption that the future will be like the past. And how exactly do Reichenbach and Skyrms show that the future will be like the past? If inductively, then it will be circular; and it cannot be done deductively. In short, we could all accept the claim that, if any method will work, induction will work, and then affirm that no method will work because that would suppose that the future will be like the past, when in fact we do not know that the future will be like the past, even if it were true that in the past all futures were like the past. Secondly, asserting that “if any method works, induction will work” seems persuasive, but it also begs the question against Hume’s argument in another way. Suppose, for example, that we had a successful psychic gambler, Paul, who was never wrong in ten million bets at Churchill Downs. Induction would need to regard Paul as a reliable indicator of the way the world is. After all, if we asked Paul how he knows that the next horse he picks will be a winner, he can say “because I am always right,” meaning he has never made a mistake in ten million past predictions. The generalization in question would be “For all X, if X is a horse scheduled to run today at Churchill Downs and predicted by Paul to win, then X wins.” The Reichenbach/ Skyrms thesis implies that induction sanctions consulting Paul about future winning horses at Churchill Downs as the method that works. But induction needs to suppose that Paul will perform as he has in the past and not suddenly lose his edge, so to speak, in order to know that the next prediction

Pragmatism and Science  81 to be made by Paul will in fact be like the past successful ones. Here Hume again raises his grinning head and affirms that the generalization is an item of knowledge only if you can assume that Paul will perform in the future as he has in the past . . . and if it is a good bet that he will, it is only because we believe the future will be like the past, when in fact we do not know it. At this point, of course, the predictable and common reply on the part of the pragmatist will be that, as Rescher has objected above, all such criticisms in the end amount to nothing more than the blaming of induction for not being deduction, and that is to advance by implication and without justification a sterile Cartesianism.27

4 Pragmatism and Scientific Realism Scientific realists believe that (a) there is a world of physical objects whose existence, and some of whose properties, depend neither causally nor logically on the existence of any number of human minds, (b) some of our beliefs about that world are, even if somewhat incomplete at any time, correct descriptions of that world, and (c) we can reliably or justifiably determine and say which of those beliefs, including our theoretical beliefs, about this world are in fact the correct descriptions. Scientific realism shares with classical realism (a) through (c). What distinguishes scientific realism from classical realism is simply that scientific realists extend classical realism to include the existence of theoretical entities postulated to exist by empirically adequate or successful scientific theories, even though such theoretical entities may not be directly observable. On the question of whether science provides us with correct descriptions of an external world, and in contradistinction to classical realists and scientific realists, there will be positions that fall into the categories of scientific nonrealist or scientific anti-realist. Scientific non-realists typically assert that while the world may, or may not, be as the scientific realist claims in asserting above conditions (a) through (c), we have no generally non-controversial way of showing that all those conditions are satisfied and, moreover, for the purpose of satisfying the goal of natural science, we need only generate theories or hypotheses that allow us, through the prevalent canons of testing and confirmation, to predict reasonably precisely our sensory experiences, thereby allowing for maximal prediction and control. In other words, for the scientific non-realist, there is nothing about the success of scientific theories that requires us to accept all the conditions (a) through (c). As a result, the scientific non-realist pleads agnosticism on questions such as “Do successful scientific theories succeed in correctly describing an external world even when such theories

82  Robert Almeder assert the existence of theoretical entities?” or “Does science provide us with knowledge of an external world, including knowledge of the existence and nature of theoretical entities?” The only interesting question, at least for the scientist, is whether the theory works by way of providing explanations that allow us to correctly and reliably predict our sensory experience. The rest may be grist for the philosopher’s mill, however it turns out.28 Scientific anti-realists assert that it makes no sense to adopt (a) through (c). Better yet, they assert, for example, that there is every reason to believe that all properties are linguistic in nature, and so the first tenet of realism, that is (a), is philosophically indefensible; and if (a) were defensible for some reason, neither (b) nor (c) would be. Whereas scientific non-realists are willing to think that scientific theories may, at their best provide us with knowledge of an external world, even though they also may not, there is no way of knowing; scientific anti-realists assert the stronger position that in fact there are no defensible arguments showing that scientific theories may, at their best, successfully describe an external world. Where, if at all, do pragmatists fit into this picture? From a purely historical perspective, it seems doubtful that there is a distinctively pragmatic position on the question of scientific realism, or on the ontological status of theoretical entities. Well-known pragmatists have defended different versions of classical scientific realism,29 while others (Van Fraassen, for example) have defended different species of scientific non-realism, and others (as did Goodman and Davidson) have defended scientific antirealism. And all either claim to be pragmatists, or are widely regarded as pragmatists. Charles Peirce, for example, argued strenuously that there is an external world, and that the scientific community will come sooner or later to answer correctly every answerable question about that world. This destined irreversible opinion of the scientific community will be the Truth (with a capital T) about the world. He defined truth (with a capital T) in terms of correspondence and reckoned such truth as the property of the destined final opinion of the scientific community. Indeed, he believed that when we arrive at this destined point in the indefinite future (whether we know we have arrived there or not) the opinion of the scientific community will be the final demonstrable truth assertible about the world. Bypassing problems in Peirce scholarship on this issue, (because some Peirce scholars think that Peirce did not really assert that, in fact, the final opinion on any answerable question about the world will emerge in the course of time, rather than that it would emerge if only we could continue successful inquiry into the indefinite future), it seems clear that this position offered by Peirce certainly satisfies the above conditions (a) through (c), thereby qualifying him as a classical scientific realist.30 In addition to Peirce, we can find other classical scientific realists in the pragmatic tradition who have argued for (a) through (c). Unlike Peirce, however, some of them think we should postulate or posit, rather than profess to

Pragmatism and Science  83 prove, the existence of the external world because the implications of such a postulate or posit at the level of applicative success more than vindicates (a) because there is no good reason against believing that there is an external world, and a very strong common-sense impulse in favor of it; whereas its denial leads to serious troubles, not the least of which is that everything we take our world to be is some basic mental or human construct. That conclusion is a fundamental counter-intuitive assault. More importantly, however, we have no reason against believing in physical objects and the belief that there are such objects has been and remains maximally productive. Ditto for (b) and (c). Denying that we have any beliefs about an external world that are correct descriptions of an external world flies in the face of common sense, just as does the claim that we cannot ever justifiably say which of our beliefs (including the theoretical) are in fact correct descriptions. This latter view is advanced by Nicholas Rescher, among others. But Rescher does not accept Peirce’s proof for the existence of the external world, rather than justify belief in the existence of an external world as a posit or postulate that we have no plausible reason to reject and that the belief has never disappointed us in its applicative consequences.31 Nor does Rescher accept the view that the truth (with the capital T) of things will be seen only in some final irreversible theory of the world. On the contrary, Rescher thinks we now have many irrefutable general truths about the world, and that there will never be any final irreversible theory about the world.32 But not all pragmatists are, for one reason or the other, scientific realists. Indeed, if we take fallibilism seriously, and then combine it with certain lessons from the history of science, one might well end up a pragmatist endorsing a scientific anti-realism of the sort adopted famously by Richard Rorty who, among other pragmatists, urged at one time that truth, at least as we ordinarily understand it, does not exist because nobody has ever been more than justified in any belief adopted, and, even then, justification would have been relative to changing social standards of acceptance. Insofar as classical realism, and classical scientific realism requires belief in the platitudinous or ordinary concept of truth (reflected trivially in Tarski’s bi-conditionals) and in our ability to determine reliably which sentences are true in that sense, Richard Rorty, again among others, made a strong case early for being an anti-realist, while claiming to be a pragmatist for adopting what he took to be the soul of pragmatism, namely, a verificationist or warranted assertibility theory of justification sans verite. He also rejected strenuously the claim that some of our beliefs are correct descriptions of an external world. His reason for that rejection was simply that we have no reliable method for deciding which propositions would be correct descriptions rather than simply justified beliefs that they are correct descriptions. Rorty thought that the true pragmatist should have been a cultural relativist rather than a classical realist or a scientific realist. Even Quine was often tempted to move into the scientific anti-realist position when arguing for hyper-pythagoreanism, or ontological relativism, while arguing (along with

84  Robert Almeder Carnap and Sellars) that the choice of a physical object language was always and only a matter of the empirical adequacy of the theory to systematize our surface irritation. Of course, we must not forget that Goodman also, while hastening to declare himself an irrealist, in fact adopted an anti-realist position for affirming unhesitatingly that all properties of the world were in fact linguistic in nature.33 Finally, there is a strong tendency for most philosophers simply to assume that the standard pragmatic solution to the problem of realism is simply instrumentalism and that, for that reason, most pragmatists are basically scientific non-realists, rather than anti-realists or realists. This is because, as we saw a few pages back, the first core epistemological principle of pragmatism is that beliefs and belief systems are created by us in response to perceived needs to have beliefs that will ultimately allow us to deal with sensory experience. Such beliefs are more or less adequate pending their efficacy as instruments for successfully predicting our sensory experience, and thereby allowing us to adapt to it under the principle of homeostasis. In other words, for some pragmatists it is not the goal of scientific inquiry to find the truth of things, or to determine whether our current scientific beliefs are providing us with knowledge of the external world. Whether our beliefs in fact do that is not a scientific question, and certainly if it is a philosophical question, scientists, qua scientists, will not be helpful in answering it. We cannot be sure, moreover, that simply because a scientific theory provides us with remarkable instruments for predicting precisely our sensory experiences, therefore it is true, in the sense that all sentences asserted to be true in an empirically adequate theory are true. Ordinary appeals to the truth of a theory do not explain the predictive adequacy of theories because we can find past theories that were empirically adequate but were not true because they came subsequently to be replaced. Instrumentalists will want to note that history has taught us that yesterday’s absolute truth is today’s outmoded theory but yesterday’s empirically adequate theory. How else could we determine that empirically adequate theories are, for all that, a set of true sentences providing us with knowledge of the external world? Better by far, they say, that we rest content with the view that the purpose of science is to create empirically adequate systems of beliefs that will allow us to predict precisely our sensory experience and then thereby to adapt. Again, this is not to deny that successful scientific theories may, from time to time, be true pictures (even if incomplete) of an external world. It’s just that we have no way of demonstrating as much from the mere empirical adequacy of the theory. Nor does there seem to be any other way to do it. We are much better off, so the story goes, if we take our successful theories merely as instruments for accurate predictive adaption, affirm that as the primary goal of all scientific reasoning, and leave aside whether science ever gets to the demonstrable truth of an external world for the simple reason that there is no non-arbitrary way to answer it.

Pragmatism and Science  85 This general story has been demonstrably adopted by various pragmatists such as Bas Van Fraassen, John Dewey, Rudolf Carnap, and Wilfrid Sellars. Other pragmatists such as Rescher, Rorty, and Davidson would agree but still affirm that, while we have no reliable method for determining which of our theoretical beliefs are true, the predictive power of a theory requires that there be at least some classically true propositions (consequences or assumptions) in the theory under Tarski’s definition of truth. What might we now say about these various pragmatic responses to the question of whether scientific theories at their best tell us anything about an external world, or whether they are merely successful instruments for prediction and control, carrying no ontological implication about the existence of a real external world? Given these considerations, it is something of a stretch to determine the value of a distinctively pragmatic contribution to the discussion on scientific realism and its mutually exclusive options in anti-realism and non-realism. Indeed, there is historically no distinctively discernible pragmatic position and, although some of these positions seem considerably more defensible than others, all of them seem to satisfy the core features of pragmatism as noted above. Take, for example, the first three tenets of scientific realism, namely, (a) through (c) above. Separate arguments are required for each of these three assertions. Peirce actually offers three distinct arguments for (a). The first one we mentioned above when referring to Peirce’s argument to the effect that all inquiry proceeds on the assumption that there is an external world and that something or other is so about it, something that does not depend on our thinking or wishing it to be so, and that if we continue to conduct inquiry under the scientific method about the correct answer to any answerable question we shall find the correct answer sooner or later and that will be the truth, understood in terms of a capital T. His second argument was simply an assertion that we are all aware of something not of our creation in the experienced duality and brute compulsiveness of our experience, a compulsiveness that speaks to the existence of something not caused by our minds. The third argument, which he classified as an experimental proof of the existence of the external world, and which has become known as “Peirce’s Harvard Experiment” (because he conducted the experiment during a lecture he gave at Harvard), began with his distinguishing between mental and physical properties, the latter of which would be, unlike mental properties, what they are quite independently of what we think. Mental properties change or can change with changes in the way we think. So, he thought that if we could experience something that could not be altered, changed, or destroyed simply by a change in our collective thinking, we would have proof of physical properties not dependent upon the existence of any number of minds. This he claimed to find in simply dropping a stone and noting that no matter how much we would want it otherwise, the stone will

86  Robert Almeder drop every time when released. Not only did he find that as sufficient evidence for the existence of an external world, the observed regularity with which it occurs is also evidence that the stone is governed by law-like forces equally non-mental for not being alterable by our wishing, willing, or wanting otherwise. Whatever else we might think about Peirce’s arguments for the existence of an external world, there does not seem to be anything particularly pragmatic about this last argument or about the one before it. The first one, however, the one to the effect that all inquiry goes on the assumption of an external world and, without such an assumption, we would not have any knowledge or even desire to conduct inquiries, seems particularly vulnerable. As we saw above, the skeptic will urge so much the worse for that assumption because the skeptic has argued in various places that indeed there is no knowledge, and that in effect the assumption in question is false. Besides, is it really true that all inquiry proceeds on the assumption that, if we continue indefinitely progressively in searching for the truth, then sooner or later we will find it? Is that claim meant to be obvious? This is not the place to launch into Peirce’s other arguments. Suffice it to say that, while they may be acceptable, there is nothing particularly pragmatic about them, although to be sure Peirce was a fallibilist and a verificationist of sorts and a radical empiricist. Does construing the existence of an external world, or the use of a physicalist language as a useful posit or postulate fare any better? Recall that pragmatists such as Quine, Rescher, and others, have offered just such a reason for believing the first tenet of scientific realism.34 Well, of course, if we have a strong inclination to believe in an external world, and if, after careful reflection, we have no reason to disbelieve it, certainly one would be very justified in accepting it. But, as Goodman once noted, science does not decide between realism and phenomenalism (Goodman 1978). We can do science equally well whether we construe our sensory experience phenomenally or realistically. We can always convert physical object statements into phenomenal statements, about how the world will appear under certain conditions and do science equally well. If that is so, there is no reason to think that the language of physicalism and its commitments is more privileged than the language of phenomenalism with no realistic commitments. The scientific realist who argues that we should accept the belief in an external world because, as posits or postulates go, it is not refuted in the implications of accepting it, will need to deal with the counter reply that if we construed physical objects in purely phenomenal terms we would get the same results, thereby showing that the posit argument is no better than the argument positing only phenomenal objects. Turning to the above arguments for scientific non-realism and scientific anti-realism, it seems worth noting that the scientific anti-realist position Rorty has defended is one that he has also recently abandoned when coming to agree with Davidson that, if we are to explain our success in

Pragmatism and Science  87 communicating with each other, we must assume that the large majority of our beliefs must be true.35 Whether he should have agreed with Davidson on that score is certainly something discussable; even so, Rorty does not see his recantation as much of a step backwards. But others will. It makes him not an anti-realist, but more of a blind realist because he will still argue that, even if most of our beliefs must be true, we still cannot justifiable distinguish between true beliefs and those that we are justified in accepting relative to current and revisable societal standards of evidence. After all, it was Rorty’s earlier view that there is no truth because nobody would know if they had found it. In the end, scientific non-realism, at least as it is developed and defended by Van Fraassen, seems the purest and possibly the most defensible of pragmatic positions on the question of scientific realism. Van Fraassen, along with Niels Bohr and others, argues that, while we may seek the truth in science, our basic goal is empirical adequacy in belief systems that allow us to predict in detail our sensory data. The latter occurs under robust but fallible confirmation. Whether the empirically adequate theory is telling us the truth about the external world rather than merely how to predict precisely our sensory experience, is not a scientific question; and so the main goal of science will need to be construed solely in terms of the ability to predict precisely our sensory experiences. Van Fraassen calls all this constructive empiricism. Given that, rational acceptability is simply a matter of the capacity of the theory to provide that predictive power so necessary to adapt under homeostasis. When we have such power we can, if we like, call it true; but we do so at our peril especially since we have seen enough empirical adequacy in the presence of what we subsequently called a false theory. It may well be that the instrumentalism of a Bas van Fraassen, or a Dewey, or a Carnap, Rescher, or Sellars, turns out to be the ultimately pragmatic story on this issue, and that story is by no means a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.36 The last item where pragmatic thought has entered into the discussion of the philosophy of science is in the area of scientific explanation.

5 Pragmatism and Explanation The extensive literature on the concept of explanation in the natural sciences generally affirms that if we want to explain why a particular event occurs at some time or other we must appeal to some lawlike generalization(s) in such a way as to make the event to be explained (the explanandum) predictable prior to its occurrence, and such lawlike generalizations, whether nomic or statistical, must be true. In short, whatever other differences there are among those who adopt this general rubric, they generally agree that when we ask the question “why?” about the occurrence of some event in the observable world, we do so in order to understand what causes things to occur in one way rather than another and, because their being one way

88  Robert Almeder rather than another seems obviously independent of our wishes and wants, the causes we adduce in giving an explanation should be understood to capture objective forces in the world accounting for the state of affairs we wish to understand. Alternatively expressed, the point of natural science is generally to understand why things happen in the way they do, and that requires an understanding of why things are the way they are, or why events occur in the way they do. In all of this, there is an implicit assumption that there is a way the world really is, and its being what it is, is causally and logically independent of the existence and cognitive activities of any number of human minds; and that if the knowledge we acquire via our proffered explanations is to provide any real understanding of this independent world, it is the truth of why things are the way they are that is the primary goal of our explanations. On this view, explanations are truth-seeking instruments, or attempts to provide an understanding how things really are, and why they are what they are. Hence, explanations, or the statements that constitute the explanations, must themselves be true if they are to provide an understanding or knowledge of what it is they seek to explain. In advancing the classical Deductive-Nomological Model (D-N Model) or the Covering Law Model of Explanation, Carl Hempel and Robert Oppenheim, for example, clearly argued that, in order to explain why something occurs in the way it does, we must appeal to some true law-like-generalization, followed by a true statement of the current initial conditions under which the law designated by the statement of law applies. The event to be explained is then explained as the deductive conclusion of the statement of law and the current conditions under which it applies. For example, in order to answer the question, “Why does this gas pressure gauge read 40 lbs psi after the amount of the gas within the container was increased by 100%?” we must provide an argument consisting of some true lawlike statement(s), followed by a true statement of the current conditions under which the aforementioned law(s) designated by the statement of law applies, and the event to be explained should follow deductively from the statement of law and the particular conditions under which the law applies. That is to say, we must provide a deductive argument basically of the following sort: P1. All else being equal, assuming constancy of temperature, the pressure and volume of any gas varies inversely. P2. This is a closed container with a pressure gauge reading 20 lbs psi five minutes ago, and we just now finished pumping into the same container an amount of gas equal to the original amount. Therefore: This gas pressure gauge reads 40 lbs psi after the amount of gas was increased by 100%. Accordingly, the explanandum follows from the explanans in the same way a conclusion follows from the premises in any sound deductive argument.

Pragmatism and Science  89 This model, according to Hempel and Oppenheim, provides a confirmable answer to the original why-question because the state of affairs to be explained follows deductively from the true statement of law combined with the true statement of specific relevant conditions under which the law applies. When the event to be explained follows from a statement of law and specific conditions under which the law applies, one has explained why the event occurred and the why-question is answered. Hempel maintained that this model is in fact a generalization of what practicing scientists actually employ in their search for sound explanations, and so it is simply a description of the logic of good scientific practice rather than a philosophical prescription. Notice too, of course, how it is a feature of this generalized D-N model that a good explanation offered under it also furnishes reliable grounds to have predicted the event before the event actually occurred. A good explanation is one we would have been able to use to reliably predict the event to be explained prior to its occurrence. If a proposed explanation does not do as much, then it will fail for not offering an explanatorily relevant explanation. In fact, under the D-N model, the only difference between an explanation and a prediction is pragmatic; if the event has not yet occurred, the D-N model predicts it, and if the event has already occurred, the D-N model explains the event by furnishing grounds to have expected it before it occurred.37 There are well-known criticisms by way of seeking emendations to the D-N model for reasons of scope or relevance.38 Invariably, however, those suggested revisions do not question that the goal of an explanation is to find the truth, and that explanations are only adequate if they provide us with a true understanding of the causes of the phenomena to be explained. But there are pragmatists who, as instrumentalists, have challenged the received view that the goal of an explanation is the attainment of truth in understanding the causes of observed phenomena or events. For example, and as we saw above, Bas Van Fraassen, in advancing what he has called constructive empiricism, has argued along with others that the goal of science, and hence of scientific explanation, is not truth, but rather empirical adequacy, meaning thereby that theoretical science, in constructing systems and models, is not necessarily concerned with seeking and finding the truth in general, or in one’s theories, as much as in corroborating or confirming proposed hypotheses that are adequate by way of predicting our sensory experience in relevant ways. As soon as we attain to the latter, we may if we like, accept the proposed hypothesis as true, but, of course, it may not be (Van Fraassen 1980a, 151–152). While for pragmatists such as van Fraassen, theoretical scientific explanation is arguably less a matter of seeking truth than it is of satisfying certain cognitive needs for adaptation by being able to predict precisely our sensory experience, explanation is also described as a sufficiently context-sensitive activity39 as to warrant the view that, depending on what one’s purposes or goals may be, different explanations of the same event may be adequate, and that the adequacy or completeness of an explanation should be judged

90  Robert Almeder relative to different goals and purposes. For some purposes or goals, certain explanations will be perfectly adequate, but the same explanations would not be adequate for others. As an example of how contextual factors can determine different but adequate explanations of the same event, van Fraassen refers to a well-known passage written by N. R. Hanson: There are as many causes of x as there are explanations of x. Consider how the cause of death might have been set out by a physician as “multiple hemorrhage,” by a barrister as “negligence on the part of the driver,” by a carriage builder as “a defect in the brake block construction,” by a civic planner as “the presence of tall shrubbery at that turning.” (Hanson 1958, 54, and as cited by Van Fraassen 1980a, 125)40 While philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and Van Fraassen will differ in relevant respects in their understanding of the requirements of a good explanation, a striking similarity they share is that they both believe that depending on one’s purposes, explanations can be more or less adequate, more or less complete. Van Fraassen’s view is that science does not in fact seek truth, that science is perfectly happy to accept an explanation as soon as it satisfies our collective need to predict precisely our sensory experiences, and this we can do without having to provide theories that are true in their theoretical claims rather that empirically adequate for predicting relevant sensory experience (1980a, 120ff). As described, Russell’s position would appear to agree with Van Fraassen’s instrumentalism, affirming that the goal of a good explanation is simply its confirmed power to predict reliably our sensory phenomena. But, of course, Russell would not have thereby abandoned truth as the primary goal of scientific explanation rather than see it realized in propositions full confirmed under induction. Van Fraassen, as we also saw, pleads agnosticism on whether any empirically adequate theory is in fact true in the theoretical claims it makes. For him, empirically adequate theories may, or may not, be true. In fact it may even be the case that they are either true or false. But truth, as we ordinarily understand it, is not the goal of theoretical science, hence cannot be a requirement for any explanation seeking to satisfy the goal of theoretical science. The difference between what Wesley Salmon and Van Fraassen regard as the goal of an explanation is, as Salmon himself acknowledged, rooted in what each regards as the purpose of an explanation in science. It is Van Fraassen’s view that, if we ask practicing scientists what they seek, the answer will be “empirical adequacy” first and foremost. Whatever else that implies is grist for the philosopher’s mill (Van Fraassen 1980a).41 Other radical pragmatists, such as Brian Ellis or even Richard Rorty, will take issue with Van Fraassen’s pragmatic instrumentalism for its countenancing the possibility that one’s theories and explanations are true in the usual

Pragmatism and Science  91 sense of “true,” or for Van Fraassen’s claim that one’s constructed theories or explanations will of necessity require that we have knowledge or true beliefs about the world of observed phenomena, if we are to provide anything by way of confirmation of proposed theories or explanations (Ellis 1985). In the hands of somebody like Van Fraassen, a pragmatic construal of scientific explanation does not require truth as we ordinarily understand it; but in the hands of more radical pragmatists, those who abandon truth completely as an unattainable goal in any way imaginable will object to the idea of pleading agnosticism on the question of truth rather than their veritistic atheism, which offers the rest of us nothing by way of an explanation for the longterm success of some scientific theories. As a matter of fact, Van Fraassen’s agnosticism, as we noted earlier, does not provide us anything better by way of accounting for the long-term predictive success of some scientific theories.

6 Conclusion If there is a defensible and distinctive proposal made by pragmatists on the problem of induction, it would seem to be the one advancing the view that accepting induction because it leads to beliefs that allow us to adapt successfully even though there is strictly no inductive or deductive proof of the validity of induction as a source of human knowledge. But that requires defending the view that the primary purpose of inquiry is to establish beliefs that allow us to adapt successfully under homeostasis. For reasons indicated earlier, that goal seems pre-eminently more defensible than having the realizable goal of attaining the truth as the end of belief formation. Rescher and others claim that denying that induction leads to knowledge is to condemn induction for failing to be deduction, and that is to say that at the root of every rejection of induction as a source of knowledge is a sterile and indefensible Cartesianism that poor Hume never saw motivating his position. Peirce’s defense of induction as well as the proposal made by Skyrms and Reichenbach seem clearly to beg the question against Hume’s argument. When one turns to the question of realism, non-realism and anti-realism in science, it appears that, for all the reasons indicated, there is no distinctively pragmatic proposal on the table, although, to be sure, many pragmatists have delivered themselves of differing views on the matter. In spite of that, there is good reason to suppose that the purest and most defensible pragmatic proposal is the non-realist sort of instrumentalism adopted by Van Fraasen and a few others on the question of the external world and the existence of theoretical entities. However, this is a long story, better developed at another time. Finally, when we turn to the question or the problem of scientific explanation, there does seem to be a distinctive pragmatic proposal countering all variations on the DN Model. Insofar as all pragmatists advance a warranted assertibility theory of truth, combined with a deep fallibilism, we can view them as abandoning truth as a necessary condition for adequate statements

92  Robert Almeder of law. The premises of an adequate explanation need not be true but only warrantedly assertible as true. Truth as we ordinarily understand it would not be a necessary condition for any valid explanation; it need only provide for precise predictions of sensory experience. This last may turn out to be an enduring contribution on the part of pragmatism along with a Van Fraasenlike instrumentalism with regard to the existence and nature of an external world and theoretical entities.

Notes 1 When Richard Rorty, for example, talks about “we pragmatists,” he intends primarily to characterize pragmatism in terms of warranted assertibility theories of truth or knowledge (Rorty 1982, 1991; and Rorty in Brandom 2000, 129ff). Sometimes Peirce agreed on this item, and on other occasions he thought truth understood alethically was indeed the object and attainable destined goal of the final opinion of the scientific community (Peirce 1931–1958, 8.43ff). James was happy to affirm the correspondence theory of truth, but when he characterized correspondence, it ended up more a matter of warranted assertibility than anything like an alethic characterization because his criterion for such warranted assertibility was whether the belief in question would serve as the best available instrument for facilitating our dealings with our sensory experiences. Dewey, of course, made truth warranted assertibility under the scientific method (Dewey 1938). But defining truth in terms of warranted assertibility merely raises without settling the question of what kind of evidence and how much of it will be required to instantiate the concept. Where they differed on this last item they could be expected to differ substantially on various philosophical issues. More on this later. 2 See, for example, Almeder (1986). 3 See Feyerabend (1973). 4 It is an enduring and unfortunate tradition among many philosophers to characterize the epistemology of William James as endorsing the view that the truth of a belief is fundamentally a matter of whether one attains psychological satisfaction in willfully accepting any proposed belief as true, as if the requirements of scientific methodology could be generally ignored in determining whether propositions about the world are more of less worthy of rational acceptance in virtue their predictive power. This tendency continues, for example, in Simon Blackburn’s defense of Willaim Craig’s assault on irrational conviction, taking as a paradigm example of such irrational behavior the position adopted by William James (Blackburn 2005, 3–20). For the better interpretation of James, see Tiercelin (2005) and Almeder (1986). Doubtless, James is partly responsible for this traditional misinterpretation. But, as we shall soon see, his position was less a matter of endorsing willful belief carte blanche than it was a matter of granting provisional permission to accept certain beliefs for which science could not provide any systemically compelling evidence, either for or against, under induction, when and only when the effects of so believing tend to produce consequences that provide more good or even happiness than would otherwise occur if one had believed the denial of the proposition in question or if one had chosen to believe nothing at all. Why he adopted that position is partly explained, and defended, in the next footnote. 5 More specifically, pragmatists such as William James pushed the envelope a bit further when contemplating the rational justification of proposed hypotheses which had no explicitly statable test conditions under inductive methodology, but

Pragmatism and Science  93 which seemed crucially important and forced, hypotheses such as the tenability of belief in freedom of choice, or the tenability of belief in the God of the omnipredicates. James simply applied the same justificatory principle to these beliefs that works for justifying the institution of natural science itself. Just as scientific methodology is justified because the consequences of adopting beliefs sanctioned by the methodology allow us to survive better under natural selection than if we had believed otherwise, belief in the existence of God, or freedom of choice, should be equally well justified, even if they could not be established under the methods of induction, if the consequences of adopting such beliefs should allow us to survive better than if we had believed otherwise. Suitably characterized, belief in the existence of the God of the omni-predicates, like belief in freedom of choice, has predictable consequences that, as a matter of fact, will or will not allow us to survive better under natural selection. James’s strategy, then, was simply to redeploy the same principle justifying induction to justify beliefs that did not emerge from the inductive method. If the former is justified because the consequences of adopting the affirmations of inductive methodology allow us to adapt better under homeostasis than if we had used some other method, then the latter should be equally justified if the consequences of adopting such beliefs would allow us to generally adapt better under homeostasis. James went on to argue that even though belief in the existence of God, or belief in freedom of choice, have no explicit test implications under induction, they turn out to be no more or less rationally justified than induction itself simply because the consequences of accepting them can be shown to allow us to adapt better than would their denials. Pragmatism, as James and his followers would describe it, turns out to be a liberal form of empiricism that requires the use of inductive methodology not only for the acceptability of those propositions or hypotheses whose test conditions can be stated in terms of their sensory implications at the phenomenal level, but also for justifying beliefs that have no imaginable specific test conditions under induction, but at the same time have implications at the sensory level that allow for justification for the same reasons that the methods of induction in general are justified. (See James 1907, 131–150, and 1909.) 6 Almeder (1986). 7 Almeder (1986). 8 When it comes to the epistemic justification of one’s beliefs, the evidence for determining whether the beliefs are successful because the beliefs in question in some way either assert, assume, or imply assertions that are more or less correct descriptions of what they purport to describe, is problematic. Some pragmatists will find good reasons to assert that the best available explanation for the long-term success of any hypothesis or theory is that such hypotheses or theories have within them sentences or affirmations that succeed in correctly describing the external world, even if we have no way to determine which assertions in current theory are in fact the correct descriptions. Such pragmatists may characterize themselves as either structural realists or blind realists (see Worrall 1989;Almeder 1992). Other pragmatists, as we will see, leave it an open question of whether successful theories are empirically adequate theories because they, in some important measure, successfully describe an independently given world.   There are several pragmatists who will, for example, simply urge that empirical adequacy or applicative success of our theories or beliefs will be enough to satisfy the fundamental goal of inquiry. For them, while a goal of science may be to search for the truth, and to accept only what we take to be true in the ordinary sense of “true,” we are perfectly content to declare our theories confirmed and acceptable when they satisfy the primary goal of allowing for precise prediction and control, and there is no fundamental need to assert that the utility of the

94  Robert Almeder theory is a function of its truth rather than say that the long-term success of hypotheses and theories is simply a matter of natural selection. For them the goal of science is not so much a matter of providing true sentences about an external world as it is to provide systems of belief that shall not disappoint us by way of providing successful instruments for prediction and control, hence for biological adaptation. (See, for example, the works of Niels Bohr, Rudolf Carnap, Bas Van Fraassen, Nancy Cartwright, and Nicholas Rescher, to name just a few.) 9 See James “What Pragmatism Means” in James (1907, 43–81), and “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth” in James (1909). See also Tiercelin’s discussion of James’s theory of truth in Tiercelin (2005). 10 The second most frequent objection, one also raised against verificationism, is that pragmatists, in defining truth in terms of confirmation conditions, confuse truth with confirmation, or the concept of truth with the criterion for truth. Anti-pragmatists and anti-verificationists have not understood, however, that pragmatists are not trying to define truth as we ordinarily employ the concept. They are rather best viewed as offering a substitute notion on the grounds that truth as we ordinarily understand it is an empty concept because we have no reliable decision procedures for determining which sentences in our language satisfy that alethic concept owing to the fact that we can never attain to anything more that a high probability of truth which is logically distinct from attaining the truth itself. It would have been nice, of course, if they had all made this quite explicit. 11 For a restatement of this objection, see, for example, Blackburn (2005, 7–13). 12 Brandom (2000, 2–4). 13 Brandom (2000, 4–14). 14 For a similar view, see Worrall (1989; Almeder 1992, Chapter 4). 15 David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, iv, ii, 32. 16 Russell (2009 [1960], 1948). 17 For this sort of mistake see, for example, Bonjour (1998, Chapter 5). 18 Peirce (1931–58, 5.345ff, 8.12, 2.769, 2.729,2.693, 8.43); and Almeder (1980, 61ff). 19 Peirce (1931–58, 4.547, 7.335, 8.12). 20 Bain (1875, 505–507, 573, 595). 21 Peirce (1931–58, 4.41–48). 22 Peirce is often conflicted on whether we seek the truth, with capital T, or just what we deem or sincerely think to be true even if it is not true. See Almeder (1980, Chapter 1). 23 Rescher (1977, 2000, 2001). 24 For a wonderful treatment on Cartesian Scepticism as it applies to this discussions, see Tiercelin (2005). 25 Reichenbach (1938; Salmon 1967; Skyrms 1975, 43). 26 See Richard Feldman’s discussion of this argument in Feldman (2002, 136–137). 27 Rescher (2000; 2001; 2003). 28 See the works of Bohr, Carnap, Van Fraassen, Dewey, and Hempel. 29 See especially Rescher (2000, 2001, 2003). 30 Elsewhere, I have argued that he did in fact believe that the final irreversible opinion on any answerable question will come, that he argued as much but that the arguments arguably are not terribly persuasive, and finally that we can offer him compelling arguments for that same thesis. See Almeder (1992, 201). 31 Rescher (2000). 32 Rescher (2000, 2001, 2003). 33 Goodman (1978). 34 Rescher (2000). This is an excellent book by way of a clear and probing introduction to pragmatism. See especially 246–251.

Pragmatism and Science  95 35 See essays by Rorty and Davidson in Brandom (2000). 36 This author has defended a weaker form of instrumentalism affirming the view that some of our beliefs about an external world, including the theoretical beliefs, must in fact be correct descriptions (even if incomplete) of an external world, although we have no reliable method for determining which of our beliefs are correct descriptions rather than very probably correct descriptions (Almeder 1992 and 1998). 37 See Hempel (1967, Chapter 5). 38 For a critical discussion, evaluation, and emendation of the D-N Covering Model of explanation see, for example, Salmon (1984). 39 Van Fraassen (1980, 125). See also Van Fraassen (1996 [1976]). See also Wesley Salmon’s discussion of the differences between his and Van Fraassen’s concept of explanation and why he thinks that in the end the pragmatic emphasis on context-sensitivity of explanation is indefensible owing to the fact that complete theoretical explanations will always be required in science and that requires an understanding of all the causes and causal mechanisms involved in producing a certain event (Salmon 1984, 127ff). 40 A historical example, incidentally, of what Van Fraassen here advances relative to the context-sensitivity of an explanation, and how its adequacy is to be determined by the goals or purposes of the inquirer, is one offered earlier by Bertrand Russell in his famous BBC debate with Frederick Copleston on the existence of God. In fact, we may view Russell’s position as an earlier instance of what some contemporary pragmatists advance as an adequate explanation. Copleston had argued that we do not have a causal explanation for anything unless we admit to the existence of God. Russell replied that if he wanted to know why the tides, for example, were higher or lower at different times, or why the one succeeded the other in a regular way, he only needed to know something about the law of gravity, and varying gravitational effects on different locations on the earth under various phases of the moon, in order to predict precisely the times of the high and low tides. Russell insisted that the demands of the question required for an explanation nothing like a belief in the existence of a God. For the question at hand, an explanation is perfectly adequate as long as the events to be explained could have been predicted rather precisely by appeal to certain laws and conditions under which they apply. Copleston replied that, for some purposes, some explanations will be more or less adequate or complete depending on one’s purposes, but one cannot presume to have explained completely why the tides rise in the way they do in different locations, without having an answer as to why the law of gravity exists or works the way it works, or why there is anything at all. The same position Copleston advanced is also offered by Richard Swinburne in Swinburne (1979, 2004). 41 Van Fraassen, incidentally, accepts as true some observational beliefs when there is no good reason to think anything else, because otherwise we could not confirm any proposed theory in terms of its deductive implications at the sensory level. (Van Fraassen 1980.) He sees nothing particularly problematic in affirming the truth of some of our common sense beliefs while denying determinable truth associated with theoretical beliefs. More radical pragmatists, such as Wilfrid Sellars, who saw natural science as a matter of common sense gone systematic, would tend to see the claims of common sense and natural science as no different in kind, the alleged distinction between the theoretical and the observational a distinction without a real difference, and hence regard all claims about the external world, whether theoretical or observational, as revisable in the light of future changes in evidence or rules for interpreting the evidence.

96  Robert Almeder

References Almeder, Robert. 1980. The Philosophy of Charles Peirce: A Critical Introduction. London: Blackwell. _______. 1986. “A Definition of Pragmatism.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 3, 79–87. _______. 1992. Blind Realism: An Essay on Human Knowledge and Natural Science. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. ———. 1998. Harmless Naturalism. Peru, IL: Carus Publishing Company. ———. 2000. “The Limits of Natural Science: Rescher’s View.” In R. Almeder (ed.), Science at Century’s End: Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Natural Science. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 40–61. ———. 2007a. “Pragmatism and Science.” In P. Stathis and M. Curd (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science. London and New York: Routledge, 91–99. ———. 2007b. “Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical Survey.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21, 171–195. ———. 2011. Truth and Skepticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bain, Alexander. 1875. The Emotions and the Will, 3rd ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Blackburn, Simon. 2005. Truth: A Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bonjour, Lawrence. 1998. In Defense of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brandom, Robert (ed.). 2000. Rorty and His Critics. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Carnap, Rudolf. 1956. Meaning and Necessity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cartwright, Nancy. 1983. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dewey, John. 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Ellis, Bryan. 1985. “What Science Aims to Do.” In P. M. Churchland and C. A. Hooker (eds.), Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 48–74. Feldman, Richard. 2002. Epistemology. New York City: Pearson. Feyerabend, Paul. 1973. “The Goal of Science.” Philosophical Forum 6. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Hempel, Carl. 1967. Introduction to the Philosophy of Natural Science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hume, David. 1955. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. James, William. 1907. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York: Longmans, Green. _______. 1909. The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism. New York: Longmans, Green. Peirce, Charles. 1931–1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vols. 1–6. (1931–1935), Vols. 7–8 (1958). Putnam, Hilary. 1978. Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan, Paul. Quine, W. V. 1953. “On What There Is.” In W. V. Quine (ed.), From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper Row, 1–19.

Pragmatism and Science  97 Reichenbach, Hans. 1938. Experience and Prediction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1977. Methodological Pragmatism. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1982. Empirical Inquiry. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. ______. 1984. The Limits of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. ______. 2000. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ______. 2001. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Rorty, Richard. 1982. The Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. _______. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. “Is Truth the Goal of Inquiry? Davidson vs. Wright.” In Brandom 2000, 242–262. Russell, Bertrand. 1948. Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon and Schuster. ———. 2009 [1960]. An Outline of Philosophy. London: Routledge Press. Salmon, Wesley. 1967. The Foundations of Scientific Inference. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 1984. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception, and Reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Skyrms, Brian. 1975. Choice and Chance, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Press. Swinburne, Richard. 1979. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press. _______. 2004. “The Justification of Theism.” Reprinted in John R. Burr and Milton Goldinger (eds.), Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, 9th ed. Prentice Hall. Tiercelin, Claudine. 2005. Le Doute en Question: Parades Pragmatistes au Defi Sceptique. Paris-Tel-Aviv: Editions de L’Éclat. Van Fraassen, Bas. 1977. “The Pragmatics of Explanation.” The American Philosophical Quarterly 14, 143–150. ________. 1980a. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press. _______. 1980b. “To Save the Phenomena.” Journal of Philosophy 73/18. Reprinted in David Papineau (ed.), Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 82–92. Worrall, John. 1989. “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Possible Worlds.” Dialectica 43, 99–124.

5 Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist? Tom Rockmore

Kant’s Copernican turn is a central modern example of constructivism. Constructivism is any form of the general view that cognition is limited to what we in some sense construct. Peirce, who studied the critical philosophy very intensively, later went beyond it in working out his own distinctive approach to pragmatism on a revised but still recognizably Kantian, constructivist basis. Peirce sums up his reaction to the critical philosophy in remarking that “Kant (whom I more than admire), is nothing but a somewhat confused pragmatist.”1 This paper examines Peirce’s remark. Peirce and Kant are both cognitive constructivists. From his constructivist perspective Kant favors an a priori conception of cognition, whereas Peirce embraces an a posteriori approach. I will be arguing that Peirce’s a posteriori approach leading to his rejection of Kantian a priorism amounts to the claim that Kant’s approach is indeed confused.

Outlines of Peirce’s Pragmatist Critique of Kant Peirce’s remark occurs in an article on “Critical Common-sensism,” a position he formulated before turning to pragmatism. In the paper, he distinguishes Critical Common-sensism, a view he held before arriving at his mature version of pragmatism, from the views of Reid and Dugald Stewart and also from Kant’s critical philosophy. He then points to the difference between actually doubting a proposition and, like Descartes, doubting it on principle, before suggesting that Kant is a confused pragmatist. In this context, Peirce relates his suggestion to Kant’s thing in itself, which the latter understands as an external object unaffected by cognition. Like almost all Kant’s readers, Peirce rejects this concept. According to Peirce, who is perhaps following Hegel, the logical concept of the subject, though indescribable, can be identified ostensively. But one can neither indicate nor find, nor even refer, to the thing in itself. Peirce further suggests that “The kind of Common-sensism which thus criticizes the Critical Philosophy and recognizes its own affiliation to Kant has surely a certain claim to call itself Critical Common-sensism.”2 Since Peirce’s pragmatism turns on observable

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  99 consequences, I take him to be indicating that the Kantian thing in itself has no observable consequences, and hence is an unacceptable concept.

Peirce on “Pragmatism” Peirce criticizes but also seeks to build on Kant. His pragmatism is a different form of the pragmatism he attributes to the critical philosophy. The critical link to Kant is a permanent thread in Peirce’s position, including the latter’s term “pragmatism.” Peirce employs this term in sometimes surprising ways that do not always relate to Kant. He thinks, for instance, that Berkeley is a founder of pragmatism. Yet the core of the term clearly derives from the critical philosophy. A main difference between the form of pragmatism Peirce attributes to Kant and his own view lies in the relative strength of the cognitive claims. As concerns cognition, Kant in many ways distantly follows, but Peirce rejects, Descartes. Everyone knows that the latter introduced a method intended to go beyond mere disagreement to justify the claim to apodictic cognition. Kant follows Descartes in relying on a different method, which is also intended to yield apodictic cognitive claims. Peirce, on the contrary, rejects any form of the Cartesian claim for apodicticity. We can grasp the distinction between the Peircean and the Kantian normative conceptions of cognition in respect to the latter’s moral theory. Kant bases his deontological theory of morality on his understanding of an “imperative” or, roughly, a requirement of reason. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (section 2), Kant calls attention to the distinction between a categorical and a pragmatic imperative. The categorical imperative is a principle of moral action that is not a means to an end but rather an end in itself. That means that it is good in itself but not good with respect to something else. Pure practical laws, which command absolutely, differ in kind from pragmatic laws of free conduct, which form a subsection of the class of hypothetical imperatives, or actions that one can undertake in respect to an end to be realized.3 According to Kant, the latter is “only a means to something else,”4 or “good for some purpose, possible or actual.”5 Kant, who thinks that opinion with respect to knowledge is absurd, further refers to contingent beliefs, which depend on such factors as desire, inclination, conviction, and so on as mere pragmatic beliefs.6 Kant explicitly rejects experimentation of all kinds. Peirce, on the contrary, understands philosophy as intrinsically experimental. Though Kant introduces the so-called Copernican turn as an experiment, he claims that, since it can be formulated, it has been proven, and hence has transcended its initial experimental status. Kant aims at ahistorical, apodictic cognition, whereas Peirce endorses revisable belief, since he thinks we cannot make a stronger cognitive claim. Peirce understands “pragmatism” to mean that “if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have

100  Tom Rockmore therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it.”7 The antecedents of the term “pragmatism” go all the way back in the Greek tradition. Peirce bases his use of the term “pragmatism” on his reading of Kant. “Some of his friends,” he writes, “wished him to call it practicism or practicalism.  . . . But for one who had learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy, had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily, praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as two poles, the former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.”8 Peirce’s teleological view of pragmatism is linked to the Kantian rejection of a hypothetical moral imperative. Cognition is not aimless, but rather goal-directed, or teleological. He draws this lesson in writing: “Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory,” namely his view of pragmatism, “was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined the preference for the name pragmatism.”9 Kant’s view of theoretical knowledge is carried further in his theory of practical knowledge or morality. Peirce’s choice of the term “pragmatism” suggests that, in formulating his own cognitive position, Peirce inverts Kant’s approach to morality. Kant rejects the hypothetical imperative of any kind in favor of a categorical imperative. Peirce in turn rejects the categorical imperative in favor of the hypothetical imperative as his cognitive model.10

Kant, Peirce, and Cognitive Constructivism The importance of the relationship between German idealism and American pragmatism has long been recognized. Writing early in the twentieth century, Royce, an interested observer, points to the link in writing: “Idealism has appeared in recent thought partly as pragmatism, insisting that all truth is practical, that is, is true by virtue of its practical relation to some finite need.”11 Royce’s suggestion points to a way in which American pragmatism builds on idealism, especially German idealism. Peirce’s and Kant’s shared interest in a generally constructivist approach to cognition was noted above. Constructivism is a leading alternative to what in recent times is often called metaphysical realism, or the cognitive grasp of the mind-independent world as it is beyond mere appearance. Metaphysical realism arises very early in Greek tradition, for instance in Parmenides’ influential, but obscurely formulated, thesis that knowing and being are identical (“to gar auto noein estin kai einai”).12 The Parmenidean thesis suggests two main interpretations, including metaphysical realism and constructivism. The former is an ontological thesis, which since early Greek philosophy has functioned as the main

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  101 approach to cognition. The latter is an epistemological approach to cognition. Constructivism, which is a second-best approach to knowledge, is the most promising alternative if metaphysical realism fails and in order to avoid epistemological skepticism. A constructivist approach to cognition is both old and new. It is old because it is central to Euclidean geometry, which is based on the construction of plane figures with ruler and compass. It is also relatively new, since it comes into modern philosophy only as a cognitive thesis through Hobbes, Vico, and Kant. The many different kinds of cognitive constructivism share a turn away from numerous efforts over the centuries to know the mindindependent world as it is in favor of a series of related forms of the view that we can claim to know only what we in some sense construct. The Parmenidean assumption that cognition must conform to mindindependent objects is a central feature of the debate at least since Plato. Kant, who notes that no progress has ever been made on this assumption, suggests, as an experiment, that we make cognitive objects depend on the subject. Kantian constructivism is a priori, hence neither historical nor social, nor dependent in any way on experience. His approach, which is helpful in suggesting an alternative to metaphysical realism, is, however, confused, since Kant thinks that cognitive constructivism is a priori. Kant points out that, in effect, no one has ever been able to show how to cognize a mind-independent object in drawing the lesson of centuries of effort. This is as true now as it was in Kant’s day. Yet the a posteriori lesson of experience conflicts with Kant’s concern with only a priori knowledge. Kant prefers an a priori approach to cognition, which alone provides apodictic cognition, and, hence, as he says, remains on the secure path of science. It is not possible to draw the lesson of experience on the a priori plane, but only on the a posteriori plane. Further, the proposed experiment, which depends on experience, cannot therefore be a priori; hence, it necessarily conflicts with the Kantian criterion of cognition. Modern natural science necessarily assumes a mind-independent world as its cognitive object. Kant and Peirce propose very different accounts of what that means. The former concentrates on the theory of the natural sciences, which he mainly understands as physics. The latter is centrally concerned with the practice of natural science. Kant’s focus lies in ascertaining the general outlines of the science of nature. He defends a revised form of the ancient Greek view that all forms of knowledge, hence natural scientific knowledge, depend on philosophy, which possesses an epistemic priority that justifies its role as the science of the sciences. Though Kant was a Newtonian, he objects to Newton’s anti-metaphysical view of natural science, for which he substitutes a metaphysical view. Peirce defends a form of the modern view of natural science as self-contained and, hence, independent of philosophy. Kant denies Newton’s claim to derive the laws of nature from experience in insisting, on the contrary, that the understanding prescribes laws

102  Tom Rockmore to nature. He argues in favor of a causal approach to explanation through grounding a posteriori knowledge in a priori laws of nature. His commitment to a priori cognition points to a conception of natural science as ahistorical and anti-fallibilistic. Peirce rather concentrates on the relation between what we know and the supposed mind-independent real, or what can be said to exist independently of us. Through his often-misunderstood view of the long run, he suggests that what we mean by the real is what we arrive at within the scientific community over time. Peirce’s account of the long run is one of his earliest concepts. It appears from time to time in his writings13 but, to the best of my knowledge, is never directly focused. The long run provides Peirce’s solution to the theme of what we know when we know. All claims to know aim at knowledge of the real, which they, however, understand in different ways. Through the term “long run,” Peirce suggests that, in practice, we converge on a view that we take as the real, though we do not and cannot know how what we take as the real relates to the mind-independent world. A belief is at most probable but never certain. Peirce’s view of the long run is consistent with his limitation of cognition to belief as the experimental but never final result of experience, but inconsistent with the Kantian view that we must and indeed can surpass mere probability for certainty.

On Kant’s Ahistorical View of Science Kant’s search for the theoretical conditions of apodictic cognition is undermined in different ways by an ineliminable a posteriori dimension. In invoking the Copernican revolution, Kant turns to logic, mathematics, and natural science. He regards them as completed sciences in virtue of their continued status on the “secure course of a science.”14 This term, which he never defines, seems to indicate that the cognitive credentials of the specific science in question were in each case permanently established by a revolutionary transformation that was never later called into doubt. Kant’s ahistorical approach to the examples he considers is in each case undermined by later developments. Since he does not anticipate the transformation of logic late in the nineteenth century, he thinks that it has been a finished science since Aristotle. He has a similar view of mathematics, especially geometry, which he understands as an a priori science, whose results necessarily describe the real world. His failure to consider non-Euclidean geometry, which, when Kant was active, was studied among others by his friend Lambert, kept him from grasping that more than a single geometry is possible. These examples illustrate the historical change in the cognitive domains Kant considers. A change in cognitive practice casts doubt on the project of determining the general conditions of a particular cognitive domain. This problem, which is exemplified in Kant’s view of the relation of philosophy and the natural sciences, can be illustrated by his understanding of the relationship of the critical philosophy to Newtonian mechanics.

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  103 Newton, who famously claims not to make hypotheses in drawing the principles of natural science out of experience, relies on Kepler’s results in formulating a mathematical model of the law of gravitation as the inverse square law. Kant thinks that, in formulating “the central laws of the motion of the heavenly bodies,” the English physicist has “proved the invisible force (of Newtonian attraction) that binds the universe.”15 Newton relies on experience to formulate the laws of nature, which cannot be confirmed but, according to modern philosophy of science, can rather be disconfirmed in experience. In this sense, his fallibilistic understanding of science as based on experience is in some ways similar to current views. Kant, who, like Descartes but unlike Newton, relies on a view of cognition as apodictic, claims to found natural science in a priori laws, which the understanding does not discover in but rather imposes on nature. He claims that in this way “natural science was first brought to the secure course of a science after groping about for so many centuries.”16 Though he contributed to contemporary natural science, especially in astrophysics, Kant’s view, which supposes that natural science must be justified by philosophy, depends on the ancient Platonic view.

Peirce, Descartes, and Cognitive Method Kant and Peirce both understand the relation of method to cognition in reacting to Descartes. Aristotle and Descartes hold dissimilar views of cognition. According to the former, the correct approach to cognition, which varies, depends on the cognitive object of the specific science. Aristotle, who acknowledges different types of cognitive objects, also acknowledges different sciences. Descartes, who holds that disagreement derives from an absence of method, proposes no more than a single method intended to yield apodictic cognition in a universal science that is in principle applicable to any and all forms of knowledge. His effort is focused on what is sometimes called epistemological foundationalism, or the grounding of claims to know in a so-called Archimedean point. Like Descartes, Kant thinks there is one and only one method for apodictic knowledge, hence only a single science, which he describes as the transcendental approach to philosophy. Since this science is theoretical, Kant is not concerned with science as it actually unfolds but rather with what he regards as the necessary conditions of science in general. He applies this approach in his investigations of theoretical knowledge, which answers the question: what can we know, and practical knowledge, which answers the question: what should we do? Peirce, who renounces any form of epistemological foundationalism, and who gives up any claim to apodicticity, is an anti-Cartesian. He is not concerned in theory with the general conditions of knowledge. He is rather concerned with the logic of scientific inquiry as it actually occurs—hence scientific practice, or the practice of scientific inquiry. Like Descartes (and

104  Tom Rockmore Kant), he has a method; but unlike Descartes (and Kant), his method is not conceived as a theory yielding incorrigible cognition, but rather as moving from doubt to belief in yielding only the best results we can arrive at based on our assumptions by employing his particular form of the logic of scientific investigation.17 Peirce distinguishes, as Descartes does not, between real doubt and theoretical doubt, which afflicts only philosophers concerned with overcoming difficulties raised by other philosophers as opposed to those raised in real life; he parts company with both Descartes as well as Kant. Peirce, who adopts a version of what we now call “holism,” thinks we cannot doubt everything, since we are always already in the world, hence embedded in a web of belief. Belief is the state arrived at when doubt has provisionally (but not definitively, since nothing about knowledge is definitive) been left behind as the result of overcoming practical doubt as it arises within the process of inquiry. Stable beliefs, which are sought in the process of inquiry, either are or are comparable to the laws of science. There is a distinction between knowing that something is true, for instance, in contemporary language, because one has grasped the mind-independent real world and merely believing that it is true. Peirce, who settles for mere belief as very best he can have, gives up the Cartesian idea, later restated by Kant, of certainty. According to Peirce, ideas are not true because they tell us the way the world is; rather, beliefs are accepted because there is in practice no practical, as opposed to theoretical, reason (such as the hyperbolic doubts Descartes raises against himself in the Second Meditation) to doubt them. The relation of Peirce and Kant to Descartes points to another aspect of Kant’s confusion. Peirce, who considers the latter to be a pragmatist, denies that cognitive practice leads or ever could lead to certainty. If there were certainty, belief would be impossible, since we could claim to know absolutely. Yet for Peirce, apodicticity, which is only a theoretical but never a practical goal, is regulative but never constitutive. In other words, for an enlightened pragmatism, cognitive claims are never certain or indefeasible because, in practice, the real possibility of doubt can never be banished. Hence, truth is merely regulative and never constitutive; in practice, cognitive claims are always potentially subject to refutation.

On Kant’s A Priori View of Natural Science Kant applies his a priori approach to cognition to modern natural science. He was very familiar with and made a number of important contributions to modern natural science, especially astrophysics. Today, we think the natural sciences are not apodictic but at most probable, not infallible and unrevisable but rather fallilibilistic and revisable, not dependent on but rather independent, or independent of philosophy and all other forms of cognition. Kant still featured a pre-modern, Platonic approach to the relation of philosophy and science. Plato argues that, like mathematics, science depends

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  105 on philosophy. In the famous account of the divided line in the Republic, he suggests that mathematics and the natural sciences depend on presuppositions, which are directly grasped as true through philosophy. According to this view, knowledge of all kinds finally derives from philosophy. Kant applies a form of this approach to Newtonian mechanics. Newton, who claims not to make hypotheses but rather to derive his views from ordinary experience, in fact provides a mathematical formulation of the inverse square law or law of gravitation. Kant, who maintains a form of the ancient Platonic conception that science depends on philosophy, hence rejects the modern view that natural science depends on itself. He formulates a metaphysical theory of modern science in order to ground the laws of nature, for instance Newton’s inverse square law, in the understanding. Newton, like Peirce, like most modern scientists and philosophers of science, adopts what Peirce calls belief as the standard of knowledge. Belief is justified by the relationship between the explanation and the explanandum, in which the explanation changes as a function of the explanandum. Kant, who adopts apodicticity as his explanatory standard, and who rejects mere belief as insufficient, further rejects mere probability in favor of an a priori law of nature. In theory, that means that, since the understanding prescribes laws to nature, Newton’s inverse square law, which holds empirically, hence contingently, must also be shown to hold a priori, hence necessarily. Necessity, Kant’s only criterion, requires a justification. The difficulty lies in making an argument that works both in theory and in practice. The Cartesian conception of foundationalism suggests an initial principle known to be true and from which, through rigorous deduction or at least rigorous argument, the remainder of the theory can be deduced. Kant’s abstract conception of the cognitive subject as a transcendental unity of apperception, which he deduces as the highest point of the transcendental deduction, arguably functions as an epistemological foundation. Yet Kant, unlike Descartes, does not pretend, say, to deduce the Newtonian law of gravitation. Newton, who does not claim to derive the inverse square law a priori, advances the law of gravitation as a mathematical model of the available astronomical data. The law is contingent, not necessary. Since he thinks that, like all forms of knowledge, the laws of nature are necessarily a priori, Kant’s problem consists in showing that the law of gravitation is an a priori law of nature. Kant works out his philosophical approach18 to natural scientific theory in various places, including the pre-critical Physical Monadology (1756), Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the Prolegomena (1783), and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). In the Physical Monadology, before the critical period, he suggests that attractive force or gravitation varies as the inverse square of the distance. Since we are not concerned here to provide an account of the evolution of Kant’s position, it will suffice here to concentrate on his effort in the Prolegomena to ground Newtonian mechanics in a metaphysical conception of natural science.

106  Tom Rockmore

Kant’s Effort to Provide an A Priori Foundation to Newtonian Mechanics The Prolegomena considers, among other things, the possibility of pure natural science, whose principles are a priori laws of nature. According to Kant, this statement, which solves the problem of the possibility of pure natural science, still remains to be illustrated through an example.19 Kant, who distinguishes between the form and the content of knowledge, claims that an answer to the question of how nature itself is possible must lie, as concerns the constitution of our understanding in its form, and as concerns its content, or the material sense, in the constitution of our sensibility. These two points, when taken together, yield the view that, as Kant says, “The possibility of experience in general is thus at the same time the universal law of nature.”20 We can generalize this claim. According to Kant, nature depends on the understanding and not the understanding on nature. Hence natural science discovers only the laws of nature that we put there. In §38, Kant refers to the inverse square law as true a priori since the understanding prescribes its laws to nature. Kant, who notes “the unity of the manifold properties of geometrical figures under common laws,”21 extends this claim to physical astronomy in providing a statement of Newton’s form of the inverse square law accompanied by a series of remarks. Kant, who suggests that this law is customarily presented as if it were cognizable a priori, further claims, in simply ignoring the effort by Kepler and others over more than a century, that this law can be formulated in one way only. Newton did not discover the inverse square law, or the law of gravitation, which Kepler formulated in the Astronomia pars optica (1604). Newton rather linked the inverse-square law to Kepler’s planetary laws (1684) and derived it mathematically for gravity (1687). After stating the inverse square law in spherical geometrical terms, Kant explicitly claims that, as he says, all possible orbits are conic sections and that no other law is possible. He ends this analysis in asking rhetorically if this determination is a posteriori or rather, as he thinks, a priori. Kant, who thinks that natural science is actual, now asks: how is this possible? He answers that such laws do not lie in space to be discovered through the understanding but rather lie in the understanding in that “the understanding is the origin of the universal order of nature, in that it comprehends all appearances under its own laws, and thereby first brings about experience a priori.”22 Kant’s precise claim is unclear. He seems to be taking Newton’s inverse square law as an example of the constructivist view that the understanding prescribes a priori laws to nature. This view is problematic. Friedman, who bases his interpretation on texts other than the Prolegomena, suggests that the law of gravitation is neither a priori nor a posteriori but rather empirical.23

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  107 The justification of the Kantian claim for an a priori approach to nature lies in the analysis of the distinction between perception and experience. Kant’s famous claim that Hume woke him from a dogmatic slumber suggests the need to reestablish causality not on a posteriori but rather on an a priori basis. In the Prolegomena, Kant draws attention to a distinction between sensation, or sheer content; perception, or an individual report; and experience, or a universal law of nature. In a crucial passage, Kant writes: “If the sun shines on the stone, it becomes warm. This judgment is a mere judgment of perception and contains no necessity . . . . But if I say: the sun warms the stone, then beyond the perception is added the understanding’s concept of cause, which connects necessarily the concept of sunshine with that of heat, and changes from perception to experience.”24 Here, as elsewhere, Kant believes causality, hence a causal relation, is indispensable for explanation. Kant’s central claim is that, through explanation, a mere perception, or a simple empirical judgment, is transformed into a universal judgment, or law of nature. Kant seeks to ground Newton’s inverse square law in a metaphysics of nature. What for Newton is an empirical derivation is for Kant also a universal law of nature. The problem lies in transforming individual perceptual instances into experience, or universal laws. At stake in the example of the inverse square law is whether there is any instance to support the Kantian claim that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. According to the order of discovery, we first observe a conjunction and only later argue that the observation identifies a law of nature. Whether we understand laws of nature as tendencies, or as universal, as Kant does, depends on the conception of nature we have in mind. In both cases, the insuperable difficulty lies in transforming what is at least initially a mere perception, which may or may not hold for another observer, into a universal law of nature, which, according to Kant, must hold without exception. Kant, following Hume, correctly observes that repetition or frequency does not allow an inference to a universal law of nature. Kant attempts to reply to this difficulty in suggesting an analogy between mathematics and modern natural science. As he points out, there is a continuity between observations that hold for a plane figure, for instance a circle, and those that hold for a section of a sphere, or for solid geometry. He extends the analogy in writing that in “physical astronomy” there is an inverse square law, or “something that seems to reside as necessary in the nature of the things themselves and which therefore is customarily presented as cognizable a priori.”25 Yet the argument is fallacious. It does not hold that, because the inverse square law seems to belong to things themselves, then it in fact does, and it also does not hold that, if it is customarily presented as an a priori truth, then this inference is justified. Hence, Kant cannot does not and cannot show that the inverse square law, which Newton takes to describe the phenomena, is in fact an a priori universal law of nature.

108  Tom Rockmore

Kant, Peirce, Hegel, and Knowledge of the Real It was already noted that Hegel and Peirce both react to Kant in formulating their views. Peirce reacts to both Kant and Hegel. On theoretical grounds, Platonism, or the idea of knowledge as the grasp of the mind-independent real world, suggests that, when we know, we also know that we know in a way that is simply beyond doubt, and hence not in need of verification of any kind. For a Platonist, it would make no sense to wonder whether one was really seeing the forms or whether one was possibly deceived, say, since human beings are subject to perceptual errors of various kinds, and so on. Like Descartes, Kant insists on a theoretical justification of unrevisable claims to know. Like Hegel, Peirce favors a practical justification of revisable claims to know. For Hegel, as for Peirce, cognition derives from an ongoing process that has neither an absolute beginning nor an absolute end, that is always subject to rational criticism, whose results are hence always provisional, and that is self-justifying or self-legitimizing through rules devised by the participants. There is some confusion about the views of Hegel and Peirce on the crucial point of what we know when we know. Kant, who denies that we know or can know the world as it really is, claims that we can and in fact do have apodictic knowledge of the world in which we live, which, depending on the interpretation, is either the visible side of invisible reality, a representation of the real, or again an appearance. The interpretation of Peirce’s ambiguous view of reality, or the mindindependent real, is delicate. Depending on how one interprets Peirce, his view of what we know is the same, or nearly the same, as Hegel’s, or, on the contrary, very different. Hegel’s view combines both an ontological difference between subject and object and an epistemological identity. Knowledge concerns, not what is as it is, but only what is revealed within consciousness. We can be said to know when there is no longer any difference between our conception of the cognitive object, say the proverbial cat on the mat, and what appears in conscious experience. To put the point in Kantian language, to know is to overcome the difference between our view of the object and our experience of the object, though we do not know how what we know through conscious experience relates to anything that may or may not lie outside it. Hegel does not claim that we know reality as it is in independence of us. Though he is opposed to empiricism, since he denies that we directly grasp what is as it is through experience, he apparently makes a version of the standard empiricist claim that knowledge is limited to no more than the contents of experience. Hegel understands knowledge, not as immediate, or as all or none, but rather as a process through which we gain an increasing knowledge of the contents of experience. The process of knowing consists in forming successively better, more strongly explanatory theories of the contents of experience, which are then tested in practice or further experience.

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  109 Peirce’s version of the real is arguably similar to Hegel’s but expressed in very different language. In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” he offers a standard view of the real as that whose properties are independent of what anyone thinks and what acts on us to cause belief. For Peirce, the real as distinguished from theoretical belief is arrived at by application of the current methods of science. The presupposition of the scientific method is that investigation leads to a single shared view, or the so-called destined center. According to Peirce, truth is what everyone will agree on in the long run and the object represented at the end of that process is what is meant by the real. There is an ambiguity in Peirce’s view about what he thinks we know when we know that no amount of interpretive scrutiny can overcome. Even on a charitable interpretation, Peirce seems never to have finally decided on his concept of reality. His writings suggest two incompatible views, which cannot clearly or simply be separated merely through textual exegesis. On the one hand, he claims knowledge of the mind-independent real as it is, to which we approximate. This view is a modern successor to Platonism, understood as a grasp of the mind-independent world. On the other hand, he understands reality as that of which increasing, finally satisfactory knowledge is given in experience, which is a successor version of Hegel’s view, or at least very close to Hegel’s view. The conception advanced in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” contains elements of both views. Consider merely the following three passages, which follow closely on one another. The first passage suggests, in traditional fashion, that reality is indeed mind-independent, which is an obvious prerequisite for any claim to know it: (1) “Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”26 The second passage suggests that, in the long run, we correctly represent mindindependent reality, whose existence is suggested in the first passage: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.”27 In sum, the first passage describes reality as mind-independent, and the second passage indicates that we know it as it is in the long run. How can we justify the conviction that our representation of reality in fact accords with it? Peirce’s answer, which is contained in a third passage, seems to be that, in the long run, scientific investigation achieves a consensus around a view that we take as true opinion about what we take to be reality without knowing that or how it relates to the way the world is: “But the reality of that which is real does depend on the real fact that investigation is destined to lead at last, if continued long enough, to a belief in it.”28 Instead of claiming that the real determines a correct belief about it, on the supposition that the independent world acts on us, in this passage he claims that the real is that which at the end of the road we believe in. That is not to say that we correctly represent the way reality is; it is, rather, to affirm that our consensus, or agreement among the members of the community of scientific investigators, defines what we mean by reality.

110  Tom Rockmore Perhaps Peirce did not make up his mind about his final claim; perhaps he was led by his interest in Scotist realism to believe that our theories increasingly approximate the mind-independent real. If that is his view, then it is widely represented in the current debate but indefensible. There is a difference between claiming that later theories improve on their predecessors, on the one hand, and claiming that we are getting ever closer to knowing the way the world is, on the other. The former is defensible. We know that, say, relativity theory resolves certain difficulties in Newtonian mechanics. In that sense, Einstein improves on Newton. Yet there is no way to infer that Einstein is closer to grasping the mind-independent real than Newton, since there is no way to know that we know the real, and hence no way to compare the state of our knowledge to it. Surely Thomas Kuhn is right that there is no way to infer that later scientific paradigms are closer to truth construed as grasping the way the world is.

Conclusion This paper has examined Peirce’s suggestion that Kant is a confused pragmatist. A moral of this paper is that, to an often unsuspected degree, the tensions separating different theories of knowledge derive from different normative views of what it means to know. The confusion lies in Kant’s rejection of the experimental character of knowledge central to modern science, which is now routinely regarded as fallibilistic, in favor of his version of the Cartesian normative conception of knowledge as apodictic. In his view of philosophy, Peirce preserves the experimental character of natural science that Kant rejects in virtue of his normative conception of knowledge. Kant’s confusion derives from his quasi-Cartesian insistence on apodicticity in what, despite his Copernican revolution, is finally only an experimental approach. His confusion is visible in the concern to transcend mere belief, that is, momentary but revisable certainty, to seek unrevisable truth is visible in his confused account of the relation of knowledge to reality. This confusion takes different forms, including an experimental approach to the so-called Copernican turn while insisting on apodicticity, a representational view of mind-independent reality that, according to Kant, cannot appear and hence cannot be known, or represented, and a fruitless effort to ground natural science in philosophy. I conclude that Peirce is right to call Kant a confused pragmatist.

Notes 1 See “Critical Common-sensism” (1905), in Peirce (1955, 299). 2 Peirce (1955, 300). 3 See Kant (1998 [1781/1787], B828). 4 Kant (1997 [1785], 25). 5 Kant (1997 [1785], 64). 6 Kant (1997 [1785], 65).

Is Kant a Confused Pragmatist?  111 7 “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (“How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Peirce (1992–98 [1878], 1:132). 8 “The Essentials of Pragmatism,” in Peirce (1992–98, 1:252). 9 “What Pragmatism Is,” in Peirce (1992–98 [1905], 2:332–333). 10 The difference between these two forms of imperative is important. A categorical imperative is necessary in itself without regard to a further end. A hypothetical imperative, which is goal directed, points to an action as good either with respect to a possible purpose, hence problematically, or with regard to an actual purpose, hence assertorically. On the contrary, the categorical imperative concerns form only, since it is unrelated to an end. An imperative of skill is analytically linked to the means to realize it. An important instance is happiness. Since happiness is an unclear concept, which rests on empirical but not a priori grounds, it is unclear how to realize it, because there are no a priori principles or imperatives on which to act. At stake is the problem of whether an action is disinterested, motivated by a categorical imperative, or interested and hence motivated in a different subjective way, which pays attention to desires, impulses, inclinations, and so on. An example might be acting in respect to the desire to obtain happiness, which Kant likens to the so-called pragmatic laws of free conduct, which are by definition goal-directed. See Kant (1998 [1781/1787], B 800). 11 Royce (1919, 257). 12 DK 28 B 3, Clem. Alex. strom. 440, 12; Plot. Enn. 5, 1, 8. 13 See, e.g., Peirce (1992–98, 1:111, 1:127, 2:98, 2:100–101, 2:138). 14 Kant (1998 [1781/1787], Bvii). 15 Kant (1998 [1781/1787], B xxii). 16 Kant (1998 [1781/1787], B xiv). 17 For early statements of Peirce’s view of the logic of scientific inquiry as moving from doubt to belief, see especially “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” and “The Fixation of Belief,” in Peirce (1992–98, vol. 1). 18 Kant (2012 [1783], 70 (§36)). 19 See Kant (2012 [1783], 57–58 (§23)). 20 See Kant (2012 [1783], 70 (§36)). 21 Kant (2012 [1783], 72 (§37)). 22 See Kant (2012 [1783], 73 (§38)). 23 See Friedman (2013). 24 Kant (2012 [1783], 53n (§20)). 25 Kant (2012 [1783], 73 (§38)). 26 “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Peirce (1992–98 [1878], 1:137). 27 Peirce (1992–98, 1:139). 28 Peirce (1992–98, 1:139).

References Friedman, Michael. 2013. Kant’s Construction of Nature: A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gallop, D. 1984. Parmenides of Elea Fragments a Text and Translation with an introduction. Ed. David Gallop. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1997 [1785]. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998 [1781/1787]. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press.

112  Tom Rockmore ———. 2012 [1783]. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Trans. Gary Hatfield. New York: Cambridge University Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1955. Peirce: Critical Writings. Ed. Justus Buchler. New York: Dover. ———. 1992–1998. The Essential Peirce. Ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2 vols. Royce, Josiah. 1919. Lectures on Modern Idealism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

6 Toward a More Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism Vincent Colapietro

Introduction The resurgence of pragmatism has taken various forms (Bernstein 1992), from neo to paleo, from a development within analytic philosophy to a broadside against the dominant tradition in Anglophone philosophy. Today, we still are disposed to debate the extent to which contemporary pragmatism is a prolongation of, rather than a rupture with, the classical phase of this philosophical movement (Edel 1985; Margolis, 2002, 2010, 2011; Sleeper 1985; and, again, Bernstein 1992). This is especially true when such pragmatism flies under the banner of neopragmatism. Have Richard Rorty, Robert Brandom, Joseph Margolis, and others carried forward impulses emanating from Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, or rather have they simply changed the conversation? Of course, the name of Rorty serves as the flash point for these hermeneutic disputes. But these interpretive disagreements are perforce also philosophical ones, substantive no less than methodological. In this polemical context, Rorty is denounced by some as a vulgar pragmatist (see especially Haack 1995) and defended against such denunciations as the cutting edge of contemporary pragmatism. Still others try to offer a more nuanced and qualified assessment of Rorty’s singular contribution to contemporary thought (see Bernstein 2010; Smith, Introduction). In any event, the forms of pragmatism range today from Rorty’s anti-philosophical debunkings and deflations to his student Brandom’s efforts to make our linguistic and epistemic practices Philosophically explicit and indeed systematic, from Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism to the strict observance of countless Dewey-eyed pragmatists to the letter of their hero’s texts (cf. Diggins 1994), and from Richard J. Bernstein’s engaged, pragmatic pluralism to John J. Stuhr’s critical, genealogical pragmatism and, more recently, his expressivist, absurdist version (2016). Within neopragmatism especially, C. S. Peirce is very often the bête noir (see, e.g., Rorty 1982). At times, one gets the impression that pragmatism would have been much better off had Peirce not existed. To invert a famous remark by Voltaire, neopragmatists seem bent on dealing with

114  Vincent Colapietro the unfortunate fact of Peirce’s existence by uninventing him!1 For many Peirceans, however, this classical figure is the best weapon to use against the barbarian horde of vulgar pragmatists (again, Haack 1995). Rather quietly, Nicholas Rescher has avoided the all too heated polemic surrounding the resurgence of pragmatism and devoted himself to the constructive task of fashioning a pragmatist approach to epistemological, metaphysical, and other kinds of philosophical questions. For this task, he has drawn principally upon Charles S. Peirce, though John Dewey is far from irrelevant to aspects of this undertaking. He has done so with analytic rigor and speculative imagination, argumentative finesse, and a keen sense of the human stakes at issue in the philosophical debates regarding pragmatic themes. At the center of Rescher’s constructive engagement with the pragmatist tradition, there is a defense of realism. It is, however, hybrid in character, just as Peirce’s own apologia was. In particular, a form of idealism is no less integral to Rescher’s defense of realism than his commitment to objectivity. Indeed, this commitment itself owes much to a critical appropriation of certain “idealistic” tenets, not least of all purposive agency and, inseparably tied to such agency, rational autonomy. “It is,” he contends, “a position to which we are constrained not by the push of evidence but by the pull of purpose— not a factual discovery but a practical postulate justified by its utility or serviceability in the context of our aims and purposes” (2000, 215). Accordingly, it seems appropriate to honor Nicholas Rescher by taking up the topic of actuality and intelligibility (here, as is so often the case with pragmatism, the sign of conjunction is, at least, as important as the terms being conjoined). As Peirce suggests, there is no intelligibility without actuality, no thirdness without secondness, but actuality inevitably falls far short of exhausting reality. In brief, being is more than actuality. Peirce’s judgment regarding John Duns Scotus (his claim that his medieval predecessor, even this subtle defender of scholastic realism, failed to disentangle himself from the snares of nominalism) is based on his contention that, in making the concrete existent the highest reality, Scotus elevated individual actuality at the expense of yet to be realized intelligibility (cf. Boler 1963). For Peirce, the insistent actuality of haecceity is not the acme of being; rather open-ended processes of growth, above all, the growth of a self-evolving intelligibility, occupy this position. In other words, Scotus in the end subordinated thirdness to secondness. Peirce’s efforts were aimed at countering just this tendency. Somewhat ironically, so are Professor Rescher’s. I say this because he succumbs to some extent to doing what Scotus did rather than what Peirce advised. Moreover, it seems especially appropriate to honor Professor Rescher by sketching my own pragmatist portrait of homo quaerens (see, e.g., Rescher 2001, 1), a portrait at once akin and supplemental to his own efforts to provide what is of course a self-portrayal (for in drafting a portrait of homo quaerens we are effectively portraying ourselves). If we are at home in the

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  115 world, it is as much as anything because we are at home on the road, because we have become accustomed to finding or forging our way in unfamiliar settings (cf. Dewey, MW 14, 195; cf. Ingold). Such a portrait of ourselves, however, stops short if it does not drive toward explicating concepts of the most comprehensive scope, the ones on which we ultimately rely in our efforts to make sense of our world no less than our selves (and hence our place in the world). To some extent, our inquiry is always a process of more or less blind groping. But, at this point in the development of our efforts to make sense of things and events, it is not utterly blind. In response to the claim that we do not know enough to articulate a comprehensive system or categoreal framework, the most telling rejoinder is that we know too little to turn aside from the task of identifying and integrating the categories that in practice have proven so effective in goading and guiding our investigations. In brief, we know too little not to construct a system of some kind! So, third and finally, it is appropriate to honor Professor Rescher by discussing not only categories in general but also the implications of Peirce’s categories for our understanding of reality or being. Before turning to a sketch of Peirce’s “system” (cf. Weiss 1940), that is, the framework of his categories, however, let us begin much closer to home, with the paradoxical being whose very being is so deeply problematic and precarious. That is, let us begin with Homo sapiens, though redescribed as Homo quaerens. If we take the origin of both sapiens and quaerens into account, we might identify ourselves as those animals with a remarkable taste for seeking, at least ones capable of cultivating such a taste for heuristic adventure. We not only can but also must become acclimated to uncertainty, even radical uncertainty (cf. Dewey, LW 4). The problematic character of human existence is nowhere more evident than in the fact that we are part of, and at odds with, nature. We are natural beings whose historical developments have rendered increasingly problematic and precarious both our being and the Earth whence we emerged and where we must secure our existence. Just at the historical moment when we are in a position to offer a naturalistic account of human life, such life has threatened itself by threatening the Earth itself.

A Pragmatist Portrait of Homo Quaerens We might contrast the classical Christian conception of homo viator (a being on the way) with the pragmatist notion of homo quaerens. For Josef Pieper, a contemporary defender of this classical vision, viator means “the inherent ‘not-yet’ of the finite being,” especially in the case of the human animal, one for whom a sense, however vague and tacit, of the “not yet” and indeed the “no longer” is woven into the very significance of the here and now. The not-yet of such a being indicates that the way of humanity is “temporality.” Humans do not exist all at once; their lives are stretched across time and the

116  Vincent Colapietro vision of the possibility of transcending temporality takes hold of the human imagination in the ongoing flux of their manifestly temporal lives (cf. Royce 1913 [2011]; Neville 1993). Insofar as the dream of a realm of existence beyond the one in which their lives temporally take place, they conceive of a now incorporating within itself the totality of time (Thomas; Royce 1913 [2011]; also Neville 1993). This conception of eternity as such a now traces its roots to our experience of moments in which the present includes within itself the no longer and the not yet. “When dominating religious ideas were built up about the idea that the self is a stranger and pilgrim in this world . . . [then] the notion that the bearer [or subject] of experience is antithetical to the world instead of being in and of it was,” Dewey notes, “congenial” (“The Need for a Recovery” in MW 10, 25). But when “the doctrine of biological continuity or organic evolution has destroyed the scientific basis of the conception” of such a self or subject, the most plausible hypothesis is that the experiential subject is nothing other than the human animal in its remarkable plasticity and inherent instability, also its irrepressible vitality and multifarious ingenuity. As Dewey notes in Experience and Nature, “unless there is a breach of historic and natural continuity, cognitive experience must originate within that of a non-cognitive sort. And unless we start from knowing as a factor in action and undergoing [i.e., as a function emerging and evolving in experience] we are inevitably committed to the intrusion of an extra-natural, if not a supernatural, agency and principle” (LW 1, 29–30). Especially after Darwin, the most plausible account of human knowing falls completely within the confines of nature. There is indeed no need to invoke a “spiritual” agent or principle to explain the fact of knowing. The instinctual cunning of the human animal suffices. The human self is, accordingly, not a fallen angel or imprisoned spirit but a unique representative of a biological species. As already suggested, a better name for this species than homo sapiens is arguably homo quaerens. As beneficial as this defining feature of the human animal is, it is fraught with risk. Homo quaerens is no exception to what is observable in other species: “Every race of animals is,” Peirce notes, “provided with instincts well adopted to its needs, and especially to strengthening the stock” (CP 6.498). This of course includes humans. The human animal, however, “is so continually getting into himself into novel situations that he needs, and is well supplied with, a subsidiary faculty [or capacity] of reasoning” (Neville 1993). Stated differently, this animal is, by the irrepressible drive of its innate curiosity, continually getting into trouble, putting itself into situations for which the sum total of its innate dispositions provides no reliable resource for effective action. The reason (or intelligence) upon which a human actor in a novel situation is thrown back is, moreover, a highly fallible resource, but the reliance of humans on their instinctual cunning or ingenuity opens innumerable paths by which the transformative power of experimental endeavor, in however a spontaneous or unreflective form,

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  117 increasingly consolidates and augments itself. The emergence and growth of scientific knowledge is, on this picture, traceable to the operation and transformation of innate dispositions (see Peirce, EP 2, 467–468). After offering an anecdote about his dog Zola, one in which the instinctual drive for nourishment is supplanted by the acquired habit of waiting to be told “Zola est servi” before eating (recall Peirce’s second wife was French), Peirce argues: Now, if the vital instincts of beasts are so much modified by human Companionship, it is surely to be anticipated that the instincts of mankind, owing to the vastly greater range of our ideas, as well as to the gift of more articulate speech and the power of reasoning, and that multiply, whatever flits through consciousness, should prove more mutable by far; and this anticipation is not merely confirmed but more deeply and sharply engraved into our convictions by facts [i.e., the brute compulsions of observable situations]. For although there is as much reason to believe in the unity of the origin of humankind as there is in that of the dogs, the parrots, or the finches,—which I instance as being among the families whose mental constitutions strike us as most like our own,— yet the extraordinary variety of languages, customs, institutions, as well as the many revolutions [these] have undergone in the brief half-dozen millennia to which our acquaintance with them is as yet limited, as compared with the almost insignificant anatomical variations,—these facts . . . make the old-fashioned notion that there can be no immediate appeal from instinctive ratiocinative conviction there can be no improvement or growth in fundamental ratiocinative procedure, appear to a modern a good deal in the attitude of the schoolboy perched on a stool with a fool’s cap on his head. (EP 2, 468) Peirce spells out in some detail here what James wrote of his and thus Peirce’s generation (we had no choice but to take evolution with the utmost seriousness).2 We find, at the center of Peirce’s understanding of evolution, the conviction that the growth of scientific knowledge is at once transformative of the human animal and the natural world. “Modern science, with is microscopes and telescopes, with is chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of life, has put us into quite another world” (Peirce, CP 5.513). The world into which humans are transported by the evolution of science is, in fact, not a single or fixed world but an ongoing series of increasingly complex and inherently precarious worlds. They are worlds for which we are not instinctually equipped. Accordingly, the innate dispositions or “indubitable beliefs” with which the human animal is equipped “refer to a somewhat primitive mode of life” (CP 5.511). These dispositions or beliefs “never become dubitable in so far as our mode of life remains that of a somewhat primitive man.” But homo quaerens exiles itself from such a primitive sphere. So, “as we develop degrees of self-control unknown to that

118  Vincent Colapietro [primitive] man, occasions of action arise in relation to which the original beliefs, if stretched to cover them, have no sufficient authority.” The result is as inevitable as it is manifest: “we outgrow the applicability of instinct—not altogether, by any manner of means, but in our highest activities.” In our engagement in these activities, we are thrown back on our inchoate experimental intelligence. In the course of this engagement, this intelligence itself evolves into a developed and reflexive power. At its heart, however, we find simply the capacity to guess more or less aright. “If man had not had the gift, which every other animal has, of a mind adapted to his requirements [above all, those of securing nourishment and reproducing itself], he not only could not have acquired any knowledge, but he could not have maintained his existence for a single generation” (CP 5.603). Peirce goes so far as to insist that “man’s mind has a natural adaptation to imagining correct theories of some kind, and in particular to correct theories about forces,” (to repeat) without which the species would never have survived (CP 5.591). This adaptation is, simultaneously, a truly natural one and the principal factor by which we get ourselves into bewildering situations for which we are woefully ill adapted. In other words, it is the basis for the understandable but deeply mistaken impression that the human animal is more than a natural being. Human intelligence is the outgrowth of animal cunning, but such cunning has been radically transfigured by the evolution of simple forms of sign-use into increasingly complex forms of symbol-creation (cf. Langer 1957). If the evolution of the eye from the sense of touch, from living matter possessing initially nothing more than tactile sensitivity, falls within the scope of our credulity, then so too does that of increasingly complex forms of symbolmaking from quite rudimentary forms of sign-use. That is, it is not less credible to argue for the seemingly miraculous emergence of a symbolific mind such as homo quaerens displays in various contexts from simpler processes than to argue for the evolution of the eye from living tissue originally limited to contact receptors (sensory apparatus limited to effective stimulation by what it is in direct physical contact). Sensory receptors such as those involved in seeing or hearing distant objects indeed prefigure the symbolic capacity to conjure the presence of what is absent, to undermine the tyranny of the here and now by brining into play the no longer and the not yet. “The conception of the rational Mind as an Unmatured Instinctive Mind which takes [or requires] another development precisely because of its childlike character is,” Peirce contends, “confirmed, not only by the prolonged childhood of men, but also by the fact that all systems of rational performance have had instinct [or innate disposition] for their first germ” (CP 7.381). The origin of rationality is, for a pragmatist at least, less significant than the outcome or, more accurately, the dramatic achievements in an ongoing history. “Thought requires,” Peirce claims, “achievement for its own development, and without this development it is nothing” (CP 5.594). This development is, however, never complete (CP 1.615; cf. Rescher). For thought “must live and grow in incessant new and higher translations, or

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  119 it proves itself not to be genuine thought” (Langer 1957). As Peirce puts it elsewhere, “the essence of Reason is such that its being can never have been completed perfected. It must always be in a state of incipiency, of growth” (CP 1.615). This growth “consists, you will observe, in embodiment, that is, in manifestation” (CP 1.615). The totality of such embodiments or manifestations, however, hardly hints at the inexhaustible fecundity of what is, without exaggeration, an infinite power. If this does seem to be a hyperbole, consider a very simple example—the virtue of being considerate. The forms of this virtue cannot be laid out in advance. What being considerate in a novel situation might look like is in fact beyond anything we can predict. Moreover, what this virtue is in itself is what an agent would do in circumstances of a more or less definite kind (social circumstances in which the needs, interests, and desires of other people are likely to be overlooked or trammeled). For Peirce no less than Aristotle, a virtue is a habit. In turn, “the word ‘habit’ in the original sense” means “only that the person or thing that has the habit, would behave (or usually [or generally] behave) in a certain way whenever a certain occasion should arise” (CP 8. 380). But consider the modalities discernible here—possibility (what might be), actuality (what is in fact the case), and, for lack of a better word, dispositionality (what an agent would do). For Peirce, what we have here amounts to nothing less than three modes of being. As he, in a letter to William James, dated December 17, 1909, identifies these modes, “every Object is either a Can-be [more usually designated by as a Might-be], an Actual, or a Would-be” (CP 8.305). No point is more important, as he makes clear elsewhere, than Peirce’s opposition to defining being or reality simply or even primarily in terms of actuality: “the will be’s, the actually is’s, and the have beens are not the sum of the reals. They only cover actuality. There are besides would-be’s and can-be’s [or might-be’s] that are real” (CP 8.216). The development of thought drives toward making explicit the categories or most general concepts on which we rely in our ceaseless efforts to make wider and deeper sense out of whatever we encounter in experience, especially in those novel situations into which we are thrown by the irrepressible operation of human inquisitiveness. For Peirce, the explication of these categories is, however, distinct from an account of their origination. They pervade not only our thinking but also reality itself, and the categories pervade it so intimately that their “discovery” is as much as anything else the work of acknowledgment. There is, no doubt, a constructive side to the systematic elaboration of any categoreal framework, but the categories are not simply or even primarily constructs. They are rather ubiquitous features of whatever is observable. In response to drafts of two of Peirce’s lectures on pragmatism, James, who was arranging for his friend to address this topic, wrote that these lectures are wonderful things—I have read the second one twice—but are so original, and your categories are so unusual to other minds, that

120  Vincent Colapietro although I recognize the region of thought and the profundity and reality of the level on which you move, I do not yet assimilate the various theses in the sense of being able to make a use of them for my own purposes. (Perry 1935, II, 427) Peirce rather testily responded to his patron by asserting: “It rather annoys me to be told that there is anything novel in my categories; for if they have not, however confusedly, been recognized by men since men began to think, that condemns them at once” (Perry 1935, II, 428; also in CP 8.264). A Peircean version of pragmatic realism must be one in which his three categories play a prominent role, not least of all for what they suggest about being. These categories are not primarily ontological or cosmological, although their deployment in the fields of both ontology and cosmology goes some distance toward revealing their power and fecundity. The more or less blind groping of homo quaerens is eventually displaced by formally systematic modes of experimental inquiry. For the purpose of conducting inquiry in a systematic and critical manner, however, Peirce contends that the formal articulation of a categoreal framework is an indispensable tool. So, too, does Nicholas Rescher. It is, accordingly, opportune to pivot from our pragmatic portrait of homo quaerens to a sketch in broad, bold strokes of this framework. From a Peircean perspective at least, an adequate formulation of pragmatic realism requires the deliberate mobilization of a categoreal scheme.

In Quest of a More Adequate Categoreal Scheme In Chapter Three of Cognitive Pragmatism, Rescher sketches a pragmatic approach to categoreal schemes. There is no inherent limit to the ceaseless efforts of homo quaerens to render more adequate its epistemic practices, including the formally reflexive elaboration of conceptual schemes or categoreal frameworks. We can question the formulation or intelligibility of our questions, just as we can criticize the forms and efficacy of our modes of criticism. For most practical purposes, however, what Rescher calls our proto-categories define the highest limit of generality our concepts can reach. These categories cannot be defined in terms of anything more general, but they can be exemplified. Of course, every exemplification is likely to convey a one-sided or unduly narrow sense of what the category is. Even so, our grasp of any category in its inherent and boundless generality depends upon exemplification. If we return briefly to what James says about Peirce’s categories, what is most troublesome is not what he claims about their unusualness or originality, but what he confesses about not “being able to make a use of them for my own purpose” (Perry 1935, II, 427). For this is the raison d’être of Peirce’s categories. These categories were crafted by an experimental inquirer for the purpose of being used to inaugurate and

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  121 facilitate the efforts of others, precisely in the context of such investigation. In brief, their use is heuristic (Colapietro 2001, also 2015). They are worthless if they do not prove effective in goading and guiding inquiry. The formal derivation of abstract categories is justified, to the extent that it is, only because it assists in enlarging the all too narrow scope of the theoretical imagination. This practically means that the formal justification is far less important than the pragmatic warrant for Peirce’s categoreal scheme. Richard J. Bernstein brings just this crucial point into sharp focus when he writes: Like Kant, Peirce “believed that the clue [at least, a clue] for arriving at the categories was to be found in logic” (1971, 178). The proof of the pudding is, however, in the eating, not the recipe; it is in what one can actually cook up with the categories, not the purely formal elaboration of abstract instructions. “There is,” Bernstein thus adds, “a descriptive, empirical, pragmatic temper manifested in Peirce’s use of the categories. The ‘proof’ or, more accurately, the adequacy of the categories is to be found in the ways in which Peirce uses them to illuminate fundamental similarities and differences in everything we encounter” (1971, 178; emphasis added). There is a mathematico-phenomenological derivation of the categories (cf. Potter 1997, 8–9; Rosenthal 1994, Ch. 4; Short 2007, Ch. 3). The logic of relations, a branch of mathematics, provides us with a set of clues regarding how to identify concepts of the utmost generality. But, then, phaneroscopy, “first philosophy” in Peirce’s mature vision of philosophical inquiry, turns to the task of exploring how these concepts might be observed in whatever can be brought before the mind. While the word phenomenology places the emphasis on logos, making this discipline primarily descriptive, the term phaneroscopy puts the stress on observation, the seemingly simple yet actually difficult task of seeing what stares us in the face (see, e.g., Peirce, EP 2, 147). But this is already not only an inquiry into a more or less determinate subject matter (albeit only highly indeterminate in comparison with the subject matter of, say, physics, chemistry, geology, or biology), but also one undertaken for the purpose of identifying a set of concepts that holds the promise of providing a lamp by which any inquirer, in any field of inquiry, might illuminate paths to be explored. Heuristically, then, the Peircean categories pretend to be nothing more, but also nothing less, than a lanterna pedibus for experimental inquirers (Colapietro 2001).3 These heuristic categories are in their origin phenomenological or phaneroscopic, but also formal or mathematical (in a somewhat misleading sense, “logical”). But, in designating them as heuristic, their function is made explicit. And their justification is to be traced to their fulfillment of this function (that of goading and guiding investigation). “This is,” Peirce claims, “all the categories pretend to do. They suggest a way of thinking” (CP 1.352). For him, however, thinking is first and foremost seeking. But this very modest claim is tied to a rather bold one: “the possibility of science depends on the fact that human thought necessarily partakes of whatever character is diffused through the whole universe” (CP 1.352).

122  Vincent Colapietro The “natural modes” of human thought “have some tendency to be the modes of action of the universe.” Qualitative immediacy (firstness), brute otherness (secondness), and evolving and inexhaustible intelligibility are accordingly not only facets of our mental lives but also features of the natural world. Moreover, they are “modes of action,” that is, processes by which qualities come to be felt, objects and events are experienced, and some sense or understanding of things is made (thirdness). But there is no divide between feeling, experience, and intelligence, on the one side, and qualitative immediacy, brute otherness, and fathomless intelligibility, on the other. Our affective susceptibilities, actual experience, and successful explanations partake of whatever pervades the world. This implies, at least for Peirce, that quality, alterity, and cognizability are features of reality as much as they are distinct facets of our mental life. The bearing of this on the issue of realism is that, in our effort to understand reality, we need to make use of Peirce’s categories, at least if we are to begin to do justice to reality. “The modern philosophers—one and all, unless Schelling be an exception—recognize,” he alleges, “but one mode of being, the being of an individual thing or fact. The being which consists in the objects crowding out a place for itself in the universe . . . and reacting by brute force of fact, against all other things” (CP 1.21). In contrast, Peirce’s “view is that there are three modes of being” (CP 1.23). In this context, he identifies them as “the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will [or, more accurately, would] govern facts in the future” (CP 1.23). The names are not all that important. Indeed, Peirce’s writings abound with alternative designations, suggesting his invincible dissatisfaction with virtually all of his proposed labels. Any name for each of these modes of being is likely to be misleading or deficient in some respects. What is important is, first, that he insists there are three irreducible modes of being, second, that in the modern epoch of Western philosophy only one mode of being (that of existence or actuality) tends to be acknowledged, and, third, that the reality of science, religion, art, and much else that existence does not exhaust reality. Focusing on but one of these (the one with which both Peirce and Rescher are principally preoccupied), the reality of science is itself a disclosure of reality. The success of our efforts to explain phenomena is itself a phenomenon calling for explanation. What must we assume about reality if we are to have the means by which we can begin to explain the reality of a striving such as science? A world in which possibility, actuality, and generality or dispositionality are more than simply features of our experience. They are part and parcel of the world in which the possibility of human experience took root and the development of that seemingly insignificant phenomenon unfolds in ever more intricate ramifications. This is, at least, Peirce’s answer to the riddle of the universe (see, e.g., CP 1.401; also CP 6.32). It is, at one level, a cosmological guess; at a deeper level, however, it is an ontological guess.

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  123 Nicholas Rescher gets dangerously close to identifying being or reality with actuality (see, e.g., Chapter 1 of Rescher 2006). “To be is,” he asserts, “to be an item that has a footing in a well-defined realm of some kind” (2006, 17). “To ‘exist’ as a character in a fiction is,” he however goes on to insist, “not to exist at all, although this is a matter of metaphysical conscientiousness, not of logical principle” (2006, 20). What he then goes on to maintain is especially noteworthy: “Mere possibilia—merely fictional possible objects and world—lack the credentials needed for being considered as authentic beings” (2006, 20). To be means, in one sense, Peirce argues, to be actual. But there is more to being or reality than actuality. Rescher’s position is, without question, more nuanced than I have space to show. But, in the end, he comes dangerously close to advocating the nominalism against which Peirce pitted himself might and main. A more Peircean version of pragmatic realism, at least such as I am disposed to defend, would be more careful about distinguishing the irreducibly different modes of being than Nicholas Rescher appears to be. Even so, his complex position unquestionably deserves to be accorded the name of pragmatic realism. In its spirit and letter, it moreover shows itself to be akin to Peirce’s defense of realism. There are, alas, certain crucial respects in which his realism and Peirce’s diverge. Above all, I have tried to indicate what is arguably the most important of these respects. In doing so, I have not in the least shown Rescher to be mistaken (though I would be less than candid if I disclose that I do think this is the case). All I have done is to mark a point of divergence, against a large background of substantive agreement.

Connections and Divergences Kant tried to conjoin empirical realism and transcendental idealism, Hegel what might be called experiential realism with absolute idealism (cf. Westphal 1989), and Peirce the abstract definition of reality as that which is independent of finite thought with the pragmatic clarification of reality as that which infinite thought would disclose in the indefinite long run of experimental inquiry. Analogously, Nicholas Rescher is endeavoring to conjoin conceptual idealism and ontological realism. Much like his predecessors, he is trying to do justice to both the constraints of objective reality and the irreducibility of human purposiveness. In the course of attempting to do so, he has fashioned a truly distinctive and finely articulated position, moreover, one clearly in the pragmatist tradition. Without question, he is working in the “grand tradition” of Western philosophy, unapologetic about taking up big questions in a forthright manner. It is equally unquestionable that he is engaged in the creative appropriation and philosophical refinement of certain tendencies and themes deeply rooted in Peircean pragmatism. This is nowhere more evident than in his endeavor to trace the roots of our living sense of objectivity to our experience of the inexhaustible character of

124  Vincent Colapietro reality. This endeavor is at once Peircean in spirit and goes beyond not so much anything Peirce wrote as anything he argued. (But it also falls short of Peirce in one or more important respects.) In particular, Rescher links the inexhaustible character of reality with his pragmatist defense of realism in a manner not present in Peirce’s own pragmatist apologia for this position. At least, this linkage is not so clearly, forcefully, or centrally present in Peirce’s argument as it is in Rescher’s. It is precisely the conjunction of humility and boldness that marks the realism of both and, thus, that marks Rescher’s realism as Peircean. Our knowledge is infinitesimally small. The growth of knowledge is inherently unlimited. It will, alas, never be complete or with any certainty penetrate to the very heart of things. In a sense, our knowledge will always be as superficial as it is incomplete. But our invincibly vague yet practically effective sense of the unimaginably vast and complex world in which we are enveloped intimates an intimacy with reality deeper than that of simply floating on the surface of things. We are indeed very much like very small children, only beginning to have acquired the rudiments of a language. We are playing in the sand at the edge of the ocean, fascinated by several stones immediately in our grasp. Meanwhile, the “whole ocean lies before us unexplored” (CP 1.117). Those who presume science to be a secure possession nearing conceptual completion betray in this presumption their ignorance of the enterprise: they reveal that they “have no acquaintance at all with it as a living inquiry” (CP 1.116). Scientific inquiry is itself a living reality and the failure to appreciate this is simultaneously an intellectual error and a spiritual failing. For those such as Peirce and Rescher who are attuned to science as such a reality, however, the most assured conclusions of experimental investigation are precarious and provisional, the most comprehensive accounts anything but complete or exhaustive of what they aim to explain. “An infinitesimal ratio may be,” Peirce stresses, “multiplied indefinitely and remain infinitesimal still” (CP 1.117). He makes this point in reference to the ratio between what humans know at any particular point in the ongoing history of experimental investigation and what is knowable. Reality is experimentally accessible but inherently inexhaustible. There is no limit set to what we can discover. There is, however, no possibility of ever knowing a single object or event exhaustibly, let alone knowing the totality of things. For Peirce no less than Dewey, “experience is of as well as in nature. It is not experience which is experienced, but nature” (LW 1, 12). “Experience thus reaches down into nature; it has depth. It has breadth and to an indefinitely elastic extent” (LW 1, 13). Vis-à-vis reality, then, the scope of our knowledge is infinitesimally small. In turn, the character of our knowledge is insurmountably fallible. But “there is a world of difference between fallible knowledge and no knowledge” (CP 1.37). The frustrations of our efforts tempt us to be skeptics, while the successes of these endeavors, however partial, provisional, and precarious, encourages us to be fallibilist. A contrite sense of our own fallibility is, however, compatible with “a high faith in the reality of knowledge” (CP 1.14).

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  125 The reality of our knowledge itself intimates something significant about the character of reality. The limits of human understanding and knowledge are, more than anything else, those of the human imagination and will. Epistemic humility and “speculative audacity” (Dewey, LW 3, 10) need to be conjoined. So, too, do painstaking attention to the actual disclosures of our experimental probings and conceptual innovation, often of a highly inventive cast. Indeed, such attention makes such innovation necessary. In their pragmatic guise, our proto-categories are so many prompts to pose the most basic questions. They are in effect standing invitations to return to the ubiquitous features of both our most commonplace and our most recondite experiences. The qualitatively unique individuality of things and events must be at least felt and, in turn, our feel for them must direct and guide our inquiries. The brutally forceful and experientially insistent features must be accorded their due. Our sense of actuality is rooted in how things act on us and how in our actions on them our undertakings are both facilitated and frustrated, often carried propitiously forward but no less frequently brought up expectantly short. Our sense of reality is intertwined with, but not reducible to, our sense of the actuality of things and events. Both prompt us to acknowledge our finitude, but not in exactly the same way. The brute compulsions and constraints virtually constitutive of so much of our experience make it evident that the realization of our purposes and simply the satisfaction of needs are hardly guaranteed. We must make our way in a world not of our own making (more accurately, a world only very slightly of our own making). But the world facilitates as well as frustrates our efforts and endeavors. In some manner and measure, it avails itself, as much as it seems to hide. Not least of all, the world avails itself to us as knowable or intelligible (Colapietro 2016). As a result, our experience is not only a process in which our finitude is brought home to us. It is also a process in which not only the inherent but also the truly inexhaustible intelligibility of the world is glimpsed, however fleetingly. It is a matrix out of which emerges our growing sense of expansive purposes no less than objective limits. There is, in sum, more to being than existence. To be in one of its most dramatic and critical forms is, without question, to exist. But one of the reasons to insist upon being more than existence is that intelligibility outruns actuality. In a sense, actuality is, for us at least, more than actuality. In the sense of pure secondness, actuality is a facet or feature of experience, not the whole of experience. Qualitative immediacy and indeliminable intelligibility are, however, no less integral features of human experience than brute facticity. Things and events in their qualitative singularity and, hence, in their ineffable uniqueness need to be acknowledged. But no less so do things in their brute compulsions and, most relevantly here, their inexhaustible cognizability. Just as Rescher, by tracing the roots of objectivity to our sense of the inexhaustibility and complexity of things and events, assists Peirce in making the case for a form of realism, so Peirce, by following the

126  Vincent Colapietro promptings of his categories (not least of all, by following their promptings regarding the modes of being and the facets of experience), assists Rescher in making the case for that to which any realism is designed to honor—reality or, more precisely, being in its most basic senses and its most humanly salient inflections. Peirce’s proto-categories prompt us to trace the roots of Being more deeply than the roots of objectivity, though the contrast ought not to be drawn too sharply.

Conclusion Our experience continually carries intimations of intelligibility and, as countless episodes and the sum of such episodes suggest (above all, those occasions when we actually make sense of some thing or event), our experience of this intelligibility itself intimates that the limits of the world infinitely transcend the limits of our understanding. Somewhat ironically, Jamesian expressions enable us to make this Peircean point most effectively: “ever not yet,” “ever not quite.” In the meantime, however, significant discoveries are truly made, important insights attained, and mutual understanding deepened. There is no arrogance in being animated by “a high faith in the reality of knowledge,” at least when such faith is conjoined to a contrite sense of our fallibility. Indeed, there is far more arrogance in pronouncing that all of our knowledge is illusory and, by implication, that all we ever go on are illusions. Our beliefs are indeed, more than anything else, what we go on and, on countless occasions, they prove themselves to be reliable. While the pragmatic justification of their objective reliability is only part of the story, it is nonetheless an important part. It is a part that Nicholas Rescher has articulated and refined in a number of important books. While he has detailed and dramatized other important parts of this complex story (e.g., the reflexively critical character of deliberative rationality), I cannot even touch upon them in the limits of this essay. Even so, as responsible and imaginative an inquirer as he has proven himself to be, his defense of realism fails in several respects to do justice to reality. A more Peircean approach would itself prove to be a more adequate one. Such, at least, is what I disposed to suggest on this occasion, precisely as a way of honoring a thinker whom I deeply admire. Nicholas Rescher’s leanings toward nominalism, toward taking being to mean for the most part actuality, need to be countered by C. S. Peirce’s suggestions regarding the modes of being and, more narrowly, the dimensions of experience. Peirce’s proto-categories open paths of inquiry that lead to unexpected clearings in which vast vistas dramatically open before us, also to intricate entwinements in which the intimate details of seemingly isolated phenomena suggest an apt metaphor for countless other phenomena. The seemingly most abstract of categories prove themselves invaluable in aiding us in “subtilizing” our experience (Stevens 1957)4 and, by extension, our understanding of reality: that is, in helping us to work toward as subtle and nuanced an

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  127 understanding of our experience and the reality to which our experience attests as our experience and this reality seem inherently to be. The realist is by definition one who is committed to giving reality its due. Especially as conceived by Rescher and indeed Peirce, this imposes a virtually impossible task upon the philosophical realist. Given the nature of reality, as conceived by such realists, they are bound to fail! But their failure is hardly complete. A partial success is, after all, the best we can ever hope for. For the purpose of orienting us to the world and, moreover, doing so in the hope that the orientation being advocated will lead to an increasingly wider and deeper familiarity with the world in which we are enveloped, Nicholas Rescher’s indefatigable defense of pragmatic realism makes a singular contribution to contemporary thought. As a Peircean realist of an even more extreme stripe than Professor Rescher, however, I am reluctant to identify reality with existence. Indeed, Peirce’s categories (or proto-categories) suggest that being can be said in several (if not many) ways (cf. Aristotle). The mode of being of the concrete existent is distinct from that of living generality in its inexhaustible fecundity. While there is no thirdness without secondness, no living generality without concrete instantiations, the sum of such embodiments gives, in most instances, only the barest hint of the boundless richness of even seemingly simple beings or occurrences. Intelligibility infinitely outstrips actuality. But actuality is in our experience more than simply a brutal compulsion or insistent surd. Any this for all its qualitative singularity and brute facticity is connected to that—and that and that. . . . A growing tapestry of the most intricate weave results from the woof of differentiation and the warp of connections Any this is a relatum countless times over (cf. James 1912)5 in countless relationships and, moreover, many of these relationships enable us to make sense out of the existent. “ ‘This,’ whatever this may be, always implies,” Dewey suggests, “a system of meanings focused at a point of stress, uncertainty, and need of regulation [or readjustment]. It sums up a history, and at the same time opens a new page; it is record and promise in one; a fulfillment and an opportunity” (LW 1, 264). If this is true of as tentative a pragmatic realist as Dewey, how much more so is it for as emphatic or unhesitant a realist as Peirce! Any this implies a system of meanings, indeed, nexûs (not simply a nexus) of relationships. In addition, these systems or nexûs hold the promise of relating this to countless other things and events such that the qualitative uniqueness and brute individuality of this do not exhaust the being of this (“whatever this may be”!). For the thirdness of indeliminable intelligibility needs to be added the firstness of qualitative immediacy and the secondness of individuating haecceity—at least it must be so added if we are to do justice to reality as it is disclosed in our experience. And those philosophers who are most worthy of the name realist are precisely those who do the fullest justice to reality. From a Peircean perspective, this means reality, at the least, in its qualitative immediacy, insistent individuality, and unfathomable significance. Peirce’s

128  Vincent Colapietro categories suggest nothing less. Of far greater weight, the disclosures of our experience indicate that these suggestions accord with reality. The reality of our meanings, purposes, and ideals points to categories as worthy of acknowledgment as the hardness of facts and the inexhaustibility of reality. This reality is, as Peirce clearly discerned, distinct from actuality. A Peircean version of pragmatic realism accords uncompromising acknowledgment of the irreducible reality of inexhaustible generals.

Notes 1 Peirce’s “contribution to pragmatism was merely,” Rorty suggests, “to have given it a name, and to have stimulated James. Peirce remained the most Kantian of thinkers—the most convinced that philosophy gave an all-embracing ahistoric context in which every other species of discourse could be assigned its proper place and rank” (1982, 161). 2 In his Lecture Notes for a course on Metaphysics, James wrote: “Take evolution au grand serieux” (1988, 367). 3 Near the end of his life, Peirce indicated in a letter to a friend: “I began working intelligently, or as I generally phrase it, ‘reasonably,’ that is to say, under the dominance of a well-matured purpose, so that my thought has been, ever since, what I mean by ‘self-controlled,’. . . early in the year 1867, when I already had in mind the substance of my central achievement, the paper of May of that year, ‘On a New List of Categories’ ” (Letter to Francis C. Russell, 1908; quoted in Fisch 1986, 229). 4 In “Adagia,” to be found in Opus Postumous, Wallace Stevens defines this expression in this fashion: “ ‘to subtilize experience’ = to apprehend the complexity of the world, to perceive the intricacy of appearance” (1957, 201). 5 In his Essays in Radical Empiricism (1976 [1912]), James argues that the selfsame experience can be taken twice over and hence be identified as “mental” or “material.” I am suggesting here that any this can be taken countless times over, without suggesting that there are at bottom two categories in which it might be thrown.

References Bernstein, Richard J. 1971. Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. _______. 1992. “The Resurgence of Pragmatism.” Social Research, 59, 4, 813–840. _______. 2010. The Pragmatic Turn. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Boler, John. 1963. Charles S. Peirce and Scholastic Realism. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Brandom, Robert. 2011. Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Colapietro, Vincent. 2001. “A Lantern for the Feet of Inquirers: The Heuristic Function of the Peircean Categories.” Semiotica 136, 1/4, 201–216. _______. 2015. “C. S. Peirce’s Phenomenological Categories: Their Basic Form, Recursive Elaboration, and Heuristic Purpose.” Journal Phänomenologie 44, 10–20. ———. 2016. “Being, Existence, and Reality: Taking Seriously Hints by Peirce and Latour on the Modes of Being.” In Andrey Tashev, Elka Traykova, Miryana Yanakieva, Paul Cobley, and Raya Kuncheva (eds.), The Statutes of Thought. Sofia, Bulgaria: Boyan Penev Publishing Centre, 50–67.

A Peircean Version of Pragmatic Realism  129 Dewey, John. 1980 [1917]. “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy.” In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The Middle Works of John Dewey, vol. 10. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 3–48. Cited as MW 10. ———. 1981 [1925]. Experience and Nature. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Cited as LW 1.) ———. 1983 [1922]. Human Nature and Conduct: The Middle Works of John Dewey, vol. 14. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Cited as MW 14). ———. 1988. The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 3. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Cited as LW 3.) ———. 1988 [1929]. The Quest for Certainty: Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 4. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Cited as LW 4.) Diggins, John Patrick. 1994. The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edel, Abraham. 1985. “A Missing Dimension in Rorty’s Use of Pragmatism.” The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, 21–37. Fisch, Max H. 1986. Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism. Eds. Kenneth Laine Ketner and Christian J. W. Kloesel. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Greco, John. 2010. Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haack, Susan. 1995. “Vulgar Pragmatism: An Unedifying Project.” In Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. (ed.), Rorty and Pragmatism. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 126–147. Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. New York: Routledge. James, William. 1976 [1912]. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1988. Manuscript Lectures. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Langer, Susanne K. 1957. Philosophy in a New Key, 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Margolis, Joseph. 2002. Reinventing Pragmatism: American Philosophy as the End of the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 2010. Pragmatism’s Advantage: American and European Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2011. Pragmatism without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Neville, Robert C. 1993. Eternity and Time’s Flow. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Peirce, C. S. 1931–1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 vols. Eds. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Cited as CP.) ———. 1992–1998. The Essential Peirce. 2 vols. The Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. (Cited as EP.) Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James, vol. II. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

130  Vincent Colapietro Pieper, Josef. 1997. Faith Hope Love. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Potter, Vincent G. 1997. Charles S. Peirce on Norms and Ideals. New York: Fordham University Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1986. “The Roots of Objectivity.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 59, 19–34. ———. 2000. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 2005. Reason and Reality: Realism and Idealism in Pragmatic Perspective. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield Publishers. ———. 2006. Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realist Perspective. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. ———. 2012. Reality and Its Appearance. London and New York: Continuum. ———. 2014. The Pragmatic Vision: Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1985. “Comments on Sleeper and Edel.” The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, 39–48. ———. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenthal, Sandra B. 1994. Charles Peirce’s Pragmatic Pluralism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Royce, Josiah. 2001 [1913]. The Problem of Christianity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Short, T. L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sleeper, Ralph W. 1985. “Rorty’s Pragmatism: Afloat in Neurath’s Boat, But Why Adrift?” The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, 9–20. Smith, John E. 1992. American’s Philosophical Vision. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Stevens, Wallace. 1957. Opus Postumous. New York: Vintage. Stuhr, John J. 1997. Genealogical Pragmatism: Philosophy, Experience, and Community. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ______. 2016. Pragmatic Fashions: Pluralism, Democracy, Relativism, and the Absurd. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Weiss, Paul. 1940. “The Essence of Peirce’s System.” The Journal of Philosophy 37, 253–264. Westphal, Kenneth R. 1989. Hegel’s Epistemogical Realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Part II

Reasoning

7 Ramsey’s Theory of Belief and the Problem of Attitude Divergence Jessica J. R. Wright

I Theory of Belief and Attitude Divergence In 1991, along with his collaborator Ulrich Majer, Nicholas Rescher edited F. P. Ramsey’s previously unpublished book manuscript On Truth. Had Ramsey ever been able to complete and publish the manuscript (he died in 1930 at age 26), On Truth would have been his philosophical masterpiece. Despite its incomplete nature, On Truth remains one of the most complex and interesting texts in the history of philosophy, and it is thanks to the pioneering work of Rescher and Majer that we have access to it today. In it, Ramsey articulates his dispositional theory of belief, a theory that draws and expands upon the work of C. S. Peirce.1 In this chapter, I will articulate Ramsey’s dispositional theory of belief, and defend it against the charge that it cannot account for the contemporary problem of attitude divergence. Dispositionalism is committed to the intuition that behavior reveals belief. But belief plays a dual role in our folk psychology: beliefs inform our behavior, and we can say what we believe. Recently, philosophers and psychologists have pointed to cases—often formalized in empirical studies— that show that these two aspects can diverge. If a person standing next to a cliff edge sincerely, competently, and upon reflection claims a belief that he is safe, yet simultaneously sweats and trembles uncontrollably—what does he believe, and how do we determine it? Cases like these lead to an epistemic question about what the agent believes, and a corresponding metaphysical question about what belief is. Pointing to this empirical work, some philosophers have argued that cases of attitude divergence spell the end for behavior-based accounts. When assertion and behavior diverge, these philosophers privilege the connection between belief and assertion, arguing that cases of attitude divergence show that behavior doesn’t always reveal belief. This theory has been called “Intellectualism” (Marley-Payne 2015, 1), due to its emphasis on the connection between belief and rational, conscious assertion. Drawing on Ramsey’s dispositional theory, I will discuss what’s at stake between these competing theories of belief. I will show how Ramsey’s theory of belief easily extends to account for attitude divergence. I will then argue that the debate between intellectualism and dispositionalism lies not

134  Jessica J. R. Wright in either theory’s (in)ability to account for attitude divergence, but rather in conflicting theoretical assumptions about belief, which drive competing empirical interpretations. In the spirit of much of Nicholas Rescher’s own work, an account like this one addresses contemporary problems by drawing on historical sources.

II Ramsey’s Behavior-Based Account The central commitment of Ramsey’s dispositional theory is the claim that behavior reveals belief. To believe that p is to manifest a disposition to think, speak, or act in a particular way: [T]he meaning of saying that a man has a belief that such and such is the case, for instance, that the earth is flat. This we have seen to be partly an assertion about what he would think or say and partly (if I am right) one about how he would behave. (Ramsey 1991, 45) To believe that the earth is flat is to behave as though the earth is flat. This means (along with an appropriate accompanying desire) exhibiting a certain amount of fear if one sails far enough into the skyline, and verbally denying that one could get to Japan by sailing West from Spain instead of East. The dispositionalist is committed to the claim that behavior reveals belief, but “behavior” can refer to many kinds of behaviors. One’s thoughts, assertions, and other actions all reveal one’s beliefs. Of course, a case where a person asserts ‘The Earth is flat!’ and acts in ways consistent with this assertion is a simple one: when determining what this man believes, all the evidence points in one direction. But there are more subtle cases. For instance, Ramsey argues that one need not be actively thinking of or asserting one’s beliefs in order to have them. Belief refers not to “definite acts of thinking,” but rather to “the persistent background of the mind” (1991, 43). For this reason, one can have a belief that one does not assert and is not conscious of. Ramsey’s example is of walking to the Cambridge Union: For instance, I have a dispositional belief (or perhaps I should rather say knowledge) that the Cambridge Union is on Bridge Street; but this belief is very rarely manifested in an act of thought: I do not often have occasion to judge that this is where the Union is: I only do this when I have to inform a stranger, or just now when I thought of it for an example. On the other hand, this belief of mine is frequently manifested by my turning my steps that way when I want a book from the Union Library, which I do without any process of thought which could properly be called thinking that the Union is in Bridge Street . . . I go there habitually without having to think. (Ramsey 1991, 44–45)

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  135 Despite the fact that Ramsey never thinks to himself “The Cambridge Union is on Bridge Street,” his behavior is consistent with that belief, and the fact that he believes this is “frequently manifested” in his actions. That being so, not all of our beliefs manifest in our actions. In his 1926 paper “Truth and Probability,” Ramsey attributes an objection like this to Bertrand Russell (from Russell’s 1921 book The Analysis of Mind): [Russell] argues that in the course of trains of thought we believe many things which do not lead to action. This objection is however beside the mark, because it is not asserted that a belief is an idea which does actually lead to action, but one which would lead to action in suitable circumstances; just as a lump of arsenic is called poisonous not because it actually has killed or will kill anyone, but because it would kill anyone if he ate it. (Ramsey 1990b [1926], 65–66) Russell’s objection is that the behavior-based account fails because it does not attribute belief in cases where an agent has a belief that will not or has not manifested in behavior. Ramsey’s response to Russell is a clarification of what he means by a disposition. To have a dispositional belief that p is to be disposed to behave as though p is the case, but only in the appropriate circumstances. Take, for example, my belief that there is no oxygen in the atmosphere of the moon. I may never act on this belief, except should I find myself in some circumstance where I need that information (and I will assert it only if it becomes relevant in some way, as it just did). Even on a dispositional account, the fact that this belief of mine is never actually manifested does not mean that I don’t believe it: To say a man has such and such knowledge, belief and opinions means then generally something hypothetical, something about what he would think, say, or do in suitable circumstances. It is, in my view, important to realize that it is not only a question of what he would think or say but also of what he would do, for many of our dispositional beliefs are manifested far more in our actions than in our thoughts. (Ramsey 1991, 44) Dispositional beliefs are hypotheticals, not actuals; they are based on ways that the agent would act, given appropriate circumstances, rather than on how the agent has acted or will act. In sum, Ramsey’s theory has two basic tenets. First, behavior reveals belief, and ‘behavior’ refers to all kinds of behaviors, not only linguistic behavior. This means that one’s beliefs can manifest in one’s actions in other ways, bypassing assertion entirely. Second, a belief is a disposition to behave. This means that belief refers to one’s hypothetical, rather than actual, behaviors.

136  Jessica J. R. Wright Indeed, most of our beliefs about the world around us are like this: latent, habitual, unconscious, and—for the most part—unexamined. In what follows I will slightly refine these basic tenets: but first, let us look at the objection from intellectualism.

III The Intellectualist’s Challenge A behavior-based theory like Ramsey’s is consistent with our practices of belief attribution, where we attribute beliefs to individuals on the basis of what they say and do. However, intellectualists have argued that any behaviorbased theory runs into trouble when faced with the phenomena of attitude divergence. In this section, I will articulate the intellectualist’s analysis of attitude divergence, and explain how this analysis provides ammunition for the challenge to behavior-based accounts. Cases of attitude divergence are varied and commonplace. They include everything from a person’s tendency to treat people of different races as though they are dangerous, despite explicit egalitarian beliefs, to a person’s tendency to feel fear when she stands near the edge of a precipice, despite her judgment that she is not in any danger. Despite this broad variation, cases of attitude divergence all have the following structure: S asserts p (assuming her/his sincerity, reflectiveness, and competency), but S’s other behavior betrays a different version of how s/he takes the world to be— her/his actions scream not p. For example: Dan the Sexist Ally: Dan says that he believes in the intellectual equality of the sexes, and often touts his feminist values. Yet Dan systematically neglects to call on women when he chairs discussion sessions, and tends to engage more thoroughly with the points that his male colleagues make in conversation.2 Intellectualists argue that cases like Dan are best explained as Dan exhibiting two distinct kinds of attitudes. One is an implicit attitude that causes him to engage in sexist behavior, and the other is his explicit attitude that causes him to assert his belief that women are equally intelligent. The intellectualist holds that Dan has two kinds of attitudes because of the way that these attitudes behave: one (the belief revealed by Dan’s assertions) is rational— it updates in response to evidence (for example, Dan’s evidence that women are intelligent). The other (the implicit attitude revealed by Dan’s other behavior) is arational—it doesn’t update in response to evidence or in response to concerns for consistency. Implicit attitudes are thought to be arational because they are inculcated in arational ways—by things like habit (instinctual or learned), repeated exposure to a set of stimuli together such that they become associated (called “conditioning”), and/or the identification of similar features (like “redness” or “dangerousness”) in stimuli (called “pattern activation”). Because implicit

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  137 attitudes are the result of nonrational processes, they don’t update in response to evidence—they’re simply not the kind of thing that can. The fact that these implicit attitudes behave differently from (explicit, articulated) beliefs provides the intellectualist with reason to hold that what we have here are two different kinds of attitude, rather than two conflicting beliefs.3 Moreover, these attitudes are thought to manifest in different kinds of behavior. Intellectualists connect belief with linguistic behavior, and implicit attitudes are thought to manifest in other behaviors. Doxastic Intellectualism, then, is the view that only certain kinds of behavior—what we might refer to as intellectual behavior—reveal belief. In cases in which one’s assertions and other behaviors diverge, the intellectualist argues that one’s assertions reveal one’s beliefs, while one’s other behavior reveals one’s implicit attitudes: Doxastic Intellectualism (DI)4: A person’s assertions reveal her beliefs (where the conditions of reflectiveness, sincerity, and competence hold5), while her other, divergent behavior reveals her implicit attitudes. It is important to this formulation of DI that one’s beliefs are revealed by those attitudes that one could verbalize or turn into assertions, rather than simply those things that one does verbalize or assert. This avoids excluding those beliefs that one has that are simply not yet verbalized, or that one has not sufficiently reflected on.6 Despite this, many advocates of DI rely on empirical studies that determine an agent’s beliefs by directly asking the agent. This means that, in practice, many defenders of DI attribute beliefs on the basis of what the agent does assert, rather than on what the agent could assert. Tamar Gendler is probably the best-known defender of  DI. In her papers on the topic (2008a; 2008b), Gendler forcefully argues in favor of intellectualism— when assertion and behavior diverge, the agent’s non-assertive behavior reveals her implicit attitudes (Gendler calls these “aliefs”), rather than her beliefs. One of Gendler’s central cases is of a person walking on the Grand Canyon skywalk who asserts that the skywalk is safe, but who exhibits belief-divergent behavior when approaching the edge of the cliff (sweating, trembling, etc.). Gendler’s analysis of this case is the following: Although the venturesome souls wholeheartedly believe that the walkway is completely safe, they also alieve something different. The alief has roughly the following content: ‘Really high up, long long way down. Not a safe place to be! Get off!’ (Gendler 2008a, 635) After considering a number of cases like this one, Gendler articulates a clear challenge to a behavior-based theory. That challenge is the following: if much of our (non-verbal) behavior is caused by arational attitudes or

138  Jessica J. R. Wright processes, then much of our (non-verbal) behavior is not caused by beliefs. For this reason, a theory that holds that behavior reveals belief will be wrong in many (if not most) cases: [O]ur natural inclination to treat something as indicative of belief regularly misfires, so that the presence of this natural inclination cannot be taken as decisive evidence for the correctness of the attribution. (Gendler 2008b, 564) The problem is the one noted at the outset—we think that both behavior and assertion reveal belief. If Gendler and other intellectualists are right, one of our basic intuitions about belief—that behavior reveals belief—is completely misleading. If our inclination to attribute belief on the basis of observed behavior often leads us astray, then we will find ourselves attributing beliefs to ourselves and others in cases where we ought not to. The objection says that behavior doesn’t always (or often) reveal belief. This is enough, by Gendler’s lights, for the behavior-based account to fail: [T]he behavioral account rests on an overextension of a heuristic: it depends on treating something that is a general indicator of belief as if it were a necessary and sufficient correlate of belief. (Gendler 2008b, 566) Thus, the intellectualist’s challenge to a behavior-based theory is twofold. The intellectualist claims that a behavior-based theory cannot account for the phenomenon of attitude divergence, and that this inability to account for cases of attitude divergence forces us to accept DI. It is my task for the rest of this chapter to show that Ramsey’s dispositional theory can address these challenges.

IV Believing without Judging In this section, I will argue that Ramsey’s theory can easily account for cases of attitude divergence and the phenomenon of “implicit” attitudes. In the following section, I will explain the theoretical underpinnings driving these theories’ disagreement, and offer some reasons to think that intellectualism is the less attractive of the two. Recall that Ramsey’s dispositional theory (as described in Section II) has two main aspects. First, Ramsey tells us that many kinds of behavior—not just linguistic behavior—reveal belief. This means that a person can express a belief in her actions, like walking to the philosophy department, without necessarily being aware of it and without verbalizing it. Second, Ramsey says that a belief is the expression of a disposition—an attitude that does not require actual manifestation in overt behavior in order to exist.

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  139 So far, we’ve seen that Ramsey holds that a belief need not necessarily be verbalized in order to count as a belief. But the intellectualist has no quarrel here—they also don’t hold that a belief needs to be verbalized in order to count as a belief. Rather, the intellectualist holds the more sophisticated position that a belief is the kind of thing that the agent is able to verbalize (where the conditions of reflectiveness, sincerity, and competence hold). This allows the intellectualist to target the content of the attitude in question, rather than merely its expression. Ramsey also holds a more sophisticated position than what I’ve so far attributed to him, which is revealed in his analysis of belief and judgment. Ramsey thinks that the difference between belief and judgment is that, while a judgment is a linguistic act, a belief need not be. A linguistic act has linguistic content—content expressible (though not necessarily expressed) in language: The range of phenomena which I intend the term judgment to cover, a range which we can also describe as that of all those mental acts, as opposed to dispositions, which could be expressed by statements. (Ramsey 1991, 51) Ramsey articulates the difference between attitudes expressible in language and those that are not in the cases I will refer to as “Jones’s Back” and “The Apple.” In Jones’s Back, Ramsey asks us to envision a scenario where “we see at a little distance a person whom we ‘mistake for an acquaintance’ ” (Ramsey 1991, 47 [from Cook-Wilson 1926, 109]), and we slap him on the back. Ramsey then asks: did I judge that this back was Jones’s back? I treated him as if he were my friend, not only in the practical sense of acting as if he were, but also in my mental attitude . . . Let us think what probably occurred. On seeing, say, the man’s back resembling his friend’s, the man may have said to himself, ‘Hullo, it’s Jones’, or, if not, perhaps he may have had an image of Jones’s face suggested by this back he saw. (Ramsey 1991, 47) In both of these cases (that of the agent saying to himself ‘Hey, there’s Jones!’ or having an image in his mind as of Jones’s back), there is a judgment made. In both of these cases, the agent first represents to himself some state of affairs—either by expressing a thought to himself or by representing to himself that person being Jones—and then acts on that judgment (by slapping the back). In either case, the cause of his action is his (mistaken) judgment that the back was Jones’s back. But what about a case where there is no explicit judgment made? Ramsey considers a scenario where his agent has no “mental image” or “sentence

140  Jessica J. R. Wright said to himself,” but where the perceptual experience of seeing this back leads to an immediate reflexive response: But suppose he neither said anything to himself nor had an image, what then? . . . If he very often came upon his friend from behind, the action of slapping him on the back might have become an immediate response to seeing that kind of back, a “conditioned reflex” working without any thought or act of consciousness beyond his initial visual sensations. (Ramsey 1991, 48) When the agent acts immediately in response to his perceptual input, “without any thought or act of consciousness,” he is not acting on a judgment. There is no judgment because the perceptual experience as of Jones’s back leads directly to action without any intervening mental representation. In contemporary parlance, we might say that Ramsey’s agent associates all such backs as look like Jones’s back with the action of slapping, and so, when he sees any such back, he slaps it. And yet, even though there is no determinate judgment made, Ramsey argues that slapping this person on the back—even without any explicit mental representation—is still the expression of a belief: In such a case, the man should still say e.g. ‘I thought it was Jones’ but this would not be literally true. The only possible sense in which he had such a thought would be that there was in his mind or brain a conformation analogous to that which would give rise to a dispositional belief that that back must be Jone’s [sic] back. [That is not an actual event but a hypothetical property postulated to explain my conduct.] Such a ‘thought’ would be nothing observable, but something postulated to account for the man’s conduct and for the fact that if asked ‘who’s that?’ he would undoubtedly have replied ‘Jones’ (unless something made him pause to reflect). Indeed, we might even say that this ‘thought’ was a dispositional belief, and that by saying he thought it was Jones’ back, he meant that he would have behaved (in this case actually did behave) as if it was, and if asked have said it was. (Ramsey 1991, 48–49) So, for Ramsey, a belief is not and does not entail a judgment—one can believe that p is the case without judging that p is the case. This insight will be important for my argument further down the line. Ramsey considers another case—The Apple—where the agent’s sensory experience leads directly to action, without an intervening mental representation: Suppose I see an apple; then my visual sensation (or if you will the intuitive apprehension of the visual sensum) has two kinds of mnemic

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  141 effects. In the first place it may call up images of the taste of apples etc. and perhaps the word ‘apple’; these can I think be or express parts of a judgment, just as the man’s image of Jones’ face was or expressed part of a judgment that what he saw was Jones’ back. But secondly the sensation may cause grosser bodily changes or bodily actions; it may for instance make my mouth water, and my limbs adjust themselves to grasp the apple. In this case the stimulus is exciting me directly to act, and my response is an action not a thought; neither my mouth watering itself nor the feeling produced by my mouth watering can be part of a judgment. My mouth watering and the adjustment of my limbs are my getting ready to eat the apple, they are not part of thinking the apple is good to eat, but of actually eating it, which we normally take to be a consequence of the thought; only in this case habit or instinct has made the intermediate stage of judgment disappear; thought has been ‘telescoped’ away and the stimulus leads straight to action. . . . [W]e act as it would be reasonable to act if we believed, manifesting what we have called above a dispositional belief function. (Ramsey 1991, 51) In this case, just as there was no representation of the back “as” Jones’s back which led to the action of slapping; there is no representation of the apple “as” good to eat, which leads to the mouth’s watering. In both of these cases, Ramsey considers behavior that happens without a preceding or concurrent judgment. Despite this, Ramsey tells us that these agents manifest beliefs, since our beliefs need not be able to be expressed in language, and many of them “are manifested far more in our actions than in our thoughts.” Further, as we’ve seen, that behavior need not be caused by any corresponding mental component. Ramsey tells us that while a judgment is a linguistic act, requiring a representation of some kind (he considers both pictured representations and linguistic judgments), a belief need not have that representational quality.7 Rather, even behavior caused by so questionable a process as “habit,” “instinct” or “conditioned reflex” reveals a belief. The next step in the argument should, at this point, be fairly clear. If—as Ramsey argues—a belief is the kind of thing that we need not be aware of having and that typically manifests in behavior; and if many of those beliefs do not have content that we can assert, then the basic phenomena captured by the term “implicit attitudes” clearly fit the bill. Just like Dan the Sexist Ally, the agent in Jones’s Back behaves in ways that are seemingly outside of his conscious control, and are not the result of any determinate judgment. Just as Gendler’s agent trembles uncontrollably without judging that the skywalk is dangerous, Ramsey’s agent salivates without judging that the apple is good to eat. More significantly, Ramsey points to the cause of the agent’s behavior in The Apple as “habit or instinct,” and to “conditioning” in the case of Jones’s

142  Jessica J. R. Wright Back. Recall the intellectualist’s claim that behavior caused by non-intellectual processes expresses implicit attitudes, not beliefs—and “non-intellectual” behavior includes behavior caused by things like conditioning and habit.8 Ramsey also points to non-intellectual behavior as the causes of these attitudes. Nevertheless—according to Ramsey—these actions reveal beliefs. Therefore, rather than not being able to account for the implicit attitudes phenomenon, Ramsey’s theory is tailor-made to do so—in fact, so much so that Ramsey included two cases of agents displaying so-called implicit attitudes in On Truth. Indeed, it is possible to construe the debate between dispositionalism and intellectualism as in part a debate about how to understand Ramsey’s cases. An intellectualist would argue that Jones’s Back and The Apple are paradigm examples of implicit attitudes in action. When the agent’s actions are being caused by non-intellectual processes—like conditioning, habit, or instinct—the behavior in question is not belief-driven. Ramsey, on the other hand, agrees about the causal origin of the behavior— it’s even possible to construe Ramsey’s differentiation of “linguistic” behavior as roughly mapping onto the intellectualist’s “intellectual” behavior—but disagrees that this isn’t a case of belief. In short, we’ve traced the origin of the disagreement to the level of concepts, not causes.

V Judging without Believing? Despite similarities to cases of “implicit” attitudes, Ramsey’s cases differ in one important way from that of cases like Dan the Sexist Ally: they do not feature the hallmark problem of attitude divergence. While some theorists have argued that attitude divergence is not necessary to “diagnose” a case of implicit attitudes (e.g., Greenwald and Banaji 1995, 8–9), others have argued that this is the only way for intellectualists to make the case that we are dealing with two different kinds of attitudes (Levy 2015, 11–12). Thus, attitude divergence itself creates questions for any account: the challenge for Ramsey in particular is to explain how an agent might simultaneously believe both p and not p. Take the case of Dan the Sexist Ally. Dan would not self-attribute the belief that women are less intelligent than men, despite behaving in this way. On a behavior-based reading, we have evidence both that Dan believes that women are intelligent (from his assertions), and also that Dan believes that women are not intelligent (from his other behavior). How do we attribute a belief to Dan without privileging either Dan’s behavior over his assertions (as would naïve behaviorism), or his assertions over his behavior (as would intellectualism)? A number of explanations are open to Ramsey. In Ramseyan terms, what we have is a case where Dan judges that p, but is disposed to behave as though not p. The question is whether his being “disposed to behave” is enough evidence that Dan believes that not p, given his contrary judgment.

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  143 Part of Ramsey’s discussion of Jones’s Back complicates the matter. Here Ramsey argues that although the agent does not make a judgment, post hoc this agent would self-attribute the belief consistent with his behavior: In such a case, the man should still say e.g. ‘I thought it was Jones” but this would not be literally true . . . Such a ‘thought’ would be nothing observable, but something postulated to account for the man’s conduct and for the fact that if asked ‘who’s that?’ he would undoubtedly have replied ‘Jones’. (Ramsey 1991, 48–49) This post hoc attribution is intended to “account for the man’s conduct.” Of course, in cases of attitude divergence, the agent would not self-attribute the belief in question, which leads to a problem: how important, for Ramsey, is this post hoc self-attribution to this action being the expression of a belief? To put it another way, Ramsey has told us that one can believe without judging, but now we’re wondering whether the reverse holds true: can one judge without believing? The answer to this question will in part depend on how strongly Ramsey thinks that introspective access to one’s beliefs matters for them to be a belief. If Dan either believes that p or that not p, and we have some evidence (linguistic) in favor of him believing p, and other evidence (behavioral) in favor of him believing not p, then how we weigh this evidence is going to matter. If verbal behavior counts for more than other kinds of behavior does (and intuitively, for many people it does), then we may be inclined to think that Dan believes what he asserts. In order to settle the matter, perhaps we would need to observe Dan’s behavior over a period of time and see whether he tends to act more consistently in one way than another, so as to gain more evidence about his credences. If we’re exposed to Dan over a long period of time and we observe that Dan systematically engages in sexist behavior, we might wonder whether Dan really believes what he says he believes. Assuming, as always, his sincerity, we might wonder whether Dan is deluding himself. But Ramsey has a neat solution to this problem. In “Truth and Probability,” Ramsey argues that an agent is not always (or often) in a state of complete belief or complete doubt. In fact, it’s reasonable to assume (where complete credence is 1 and complete lack is 0) that we do not always have a credence of 1 for many of our beliefs. If one’s behavior is a function of how strongly one believes something combined with one’s desires (or other motivating factors), and if one exhibits contradictory behaviors, then it seems that we have a case of partial belief, where a person has some degree of belief in p but also some degree of belief in not p (i.e., his credence is somewhere between 0 and 1) (Ramsey 1990b [1926]). According to this answer, then, Dan isn’t manifesting contradictory beliefs; rather, Dan’s beliefs are in

144  Jessica J. R. Wright flux and not fully determinate—they manifest differently depending on the circumstances and Dan’s desires.9

VI Belief, Behavior, Assertion: Against Intellectualism Even if the intellectualist admits that a behavior-based theory can account for attitude divergence, I suspect that the disagreements run deeper than that. In fact, the critical disagreement is one that has come up throughout this chapter. Dispositionalists and intellectualists are disagreeing about whether—for the purposes of belief attribution—unconscious, habitual or unendorsed behavior and conscious, linguistic, or endorsed behavior reveal different kinds of attitudes. For this reason, the question the intellectualist must answer is the following: why is linguistic behavior so specially different from other types of behavior, such as to correspond with a wholly different kind of underlying attitude? There are at least two reasons why the intellectualist might think something like this. The first is a view about the power of introspection—one’s own access to one’s attitudes and mental states. The central intuition here is that I alone have privileged access to my own beliefs. For this reason, if I act in ways outside of my conscious control, then this behavior must in turn be caused by attitudes that are outside the realm of conscious control. In short, the things that I believe are available to me in a way that they are not to you—thus, unlike you, I cannot be mistaken about them. Dispositionalists must reject this view about the power of introspection. While a behavior-based account need not deny that introspection gives an agent a particular kind of access to her own attitudes that other agents don’t have, central to a behavior-based account of belief is the idea that it is possible for me to be mistaken about what I myself believe.10 This means that it is possible for my own introspective access to be limited, and for someone else to more accurately attribute a belief to me.11 The second reason that one might cleave to intellectualism is because one thinks that believing something is necessarily an intellectual state—one that differs from things like habits or “conditioned reflexes” insofar as our intellectual states are rational, pictured, representational, or otherwise cognitive in a way that our lower-level behaviors—our habits, automatic responses, and impulses—are not.12 As we’ve seen, this is precisely the intuition that Ramsey argues against. There are two ways here that the intellectualist’s argument potentially runs into trouble. The first is a view about the relationship between rational, evidence- and inference-sensitive attitudes and linguistic behavior. The problem for the intellectualist lies in holding that there is a strong connection between reasons, evidence, and articulation, such that it is only those attitudes which are rational (evidence- and inference-sensitive) that can manifest in (appropriately reflective) assertions. This view also entails that those attitudes that one cannot assert but that manifest in other behaviors

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  145 are arational and evidence-insensitive. In order to argue for such a view, the intellectualist must prove the connection first between implicit attitudes and lack of evidence and inference sensitivity, and then between assertion and evidence- and inference-sensitivity. Indeed, much of the work in the psychological literature on implicit attitudes has been focused on this very question, though the empirical results are, so far, mixed.13 The dispositionalist must argue that, for the purposes of belief attribution, there is no crucial difference between articulated behavior and other kinds of behavior.14 That is, they are both kinds of behavior that manifest beliefs. One benefit to this theory is that it is consistent with our practices: we do attribute beliefs to individuals on the basis of what they say, just as we also attribute beliefs to individuals on the basis of what they do. In both cases, we are attributing belief on the basis of behavior, and there is no reason to think that one of these kinds of behavior is a better doxastic indicator, because there is no constitutive connection between linguistic behavior and intellectual thought. Of course, the difficulties of belief attribution are not to be dismissed. As Gendler presses, just because a person exhibits behavior that indicates a belief in p, this doesn’t necessarily mean that she fully believes that p. There are many things that may cause a person’s behavior, and it is difficult—if not impossible—to correctly attribute an epistemic attitude to an individual on the basis of it.15 The question is, of course, whether this difficulty scuttles a behaviorbased account. The process of belief attribution (to ourselves or to others) is extremely fallible. Just because a number of aspects surely contribute to a person’s actions and overall behavior does not mean we must reject attribution on the basis of non-linguistic behavior. Indeed, one might think (as I have argued) that assertion suffers from the same problem. Once we deny that introspection is infallible, this opens up the possibility that an agent might assert p without believing p. In addition, although in most of our toy cases we assume sincerity, reflectiveness and competence, it is far from clear that we can do the same in many real-life situations. For these reasons, Gendler’s point that belief attribution “regularly misfires” simply misses the mark; the fallibility of behavior-based belief attribution is not a fatal flaw, or if it is, it’s one that her own theory suffers from just as badly. Of course, Gendler’s assertion is buttressed by her claim that the best way to account for divergent behavior is to posit the existence of a new kind of attitude. But as we have already seen, on a dispositionalist account, there is no reason to suppose that this new attitude must be something other than a belief. The second theoretical problem for the intellectualist comes as a challenge to the idea that belief must be an intellectual state. That is, the intellectualist must argue that, in order to be a belief, an attitude must pass a threshold of epistemic adequacy. A belief, to be a belief, must be evidence and inference-sensitive enough such that it is the kind of thing that counts

146  Jessica J. R. Wright as a belief. This problem differs from the one above because, hypothetically, there could be cases where an articulated attitude—where the conditions of sincerity, reflectiveness, and competence apply—doesn’t pass the threshold of adequacy to count as a belief on this theory. This opens up many tricky questions, like how rational things like “conditioning” really are. Despite this, we’ve already seen that Ramsey has a certain kind of response. Ramsey tells us that beliefs need not be linguistic. This means that they are not necessarily articulated, represented, or pictured in any way. Beliefs can immediately translate to action, without any intermediate, cognitive judgment. This throws into question how intellectual or rational a belief need be at all. If beliefs can be caused by things like habits and instincts, and assuming that habits and instinct aren’t rational (a large assumption, but one that many intellectualists make), then beliefs, in turn, can be caused by processes that are not rational.

VII Conclusion There is a growing movement among philosophers and psychologists who argue that belief should be tied more closely to assertion than to other kinds of behavior. This movement I have—following others—called “intellectualism,” for its dependence on belief’s assertable, intellectual states rather than belief’s action-guiding role. Intellectualism holds that belief is a rational (‘intellectual’) state that is evidence- and inference-sensitive. Because of this, intellectualists hold that, when an agent’s attitudes diverge, that agent believes what they can explicitly self-attribute, rather than what is revealed “implicitly” by their nonlinguistic behavior. I have argued that intellectualism fails to explain why behavior caused by irrational or unconscious processes should not be understood as the expression of doxastic attitudes—of our taking the world to be a certain way. The basic problem is one of how we should understand our doxastic attitudes. Should we be privileging a combination of introspectability and assertability, or should we be privileging attribution on the basis of behavior? To focus on belief’s introspectable and assertable nature is to deny that one could have a belief that one is unable to articulate or become aware of. According to a Ramsey-style dispositionalism, a belief is a disposition to behave. I hope to have shown both how Ramsey’s theory would deal with the problem of attitude divergence and how this provides us with arguments against the dominant theory of belief (‘intellectualism’). These arguments amount to a certain, pragmatic approach to understanding belief. I want to leave the reader with a final thought about this debate. This discussion articulated in this chapter is concealing a larger debate about how we should understand a concept—in particular, the folk-psychological concept of belief. Intellectualists rely on psychological research that purports to show that our attitudes have different etiologies—that they are the

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  147 result of different processes, or that they exhibit different structures in the mind (“associative” and “propositional,” for example). It is worth noting that Ramsey questions this very move. To attribute belief on the basis of a causal process or a suspiciously detectable “structure” (or lack thereof) is to define belief too narrowly. It is too narrow because it leaves out attitudes that we regularly manifest but that are not asserted or assertable. There may well be different processes in the mind, but it is an open question whether this means that we should be calling the result of these processes something other than a “belief,” if it results in the same effect on behavior.16 Beliefs are formed in many different (good and bad) ways, for many different (good and bad) reasons.17

Notes 1 See Misak (2016). 2 There are, of course, possible worlds where Dan is simply pretending to be an ally out of fear of reprisal, but many studies on implicit attitudes attempt to control for factors like this one (where the subject is motivated to conceal an unpopular opinion, for example) by using indirect testing methods. In addition, Dan may or may not be aware of the fact that he engages in this kind of behavior, and be unable to control it. Cf. Gawronski, Bertram, and Peters (2007). 3 Cf. Gendler: “In each of the cases we have been considering, only one of the competing tendencies is evidence-sensitive. . . . This gives reason to treat the two as not being on par. . . . Beliefs change in responses to changes in evidence; aliefs change in response to changes in habit. If new evidence won’t cause you to change your behavior in response to an apparent stimulus, then your reaction is due to alief rather than belief” (Gendler 2008b: 566). 4 Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006), Rydell and McConnell (2006), Strack and Deutsch (2004), Gendler (2008a, 2008b), Greenwald et al. (2002), Levy (2015), and Madva (2016) all further variants of DI. 5 This is a caveat that I have adopted from Barcan-Marcus (1990, 144). It helps to weed out those cases where the agent is lying, has not sufficiently reflected, or (for whatever reason) cannot assert her attitudes. 6 Thanks to Cheryl Misak for helping me clarify this. 7 Cf. Barcan-Marcus (1990, 139): “We often, very likely more often than not, do not consciously entertain propositions or sentences held true when acting, although they are actions explicable as consequences of beliefs and desires. Language users may assert such ‘propositions’ if asked why they are acting as they are. Indeed being asked why we are acting as we are may lead us to discover or describe a belief which had never been verbalized. I usually walk a route to my office which is not the shortest and am asked why. It requires some thought. It isn’t out of habit, I decide. I finally realize that I believe it to be the most scenic route. Verbalization as a necessary condition of believing precludes our discovering and then reporting what we believe.” 8 Many intellectualists hold that implicit attitudes are automatic conditioned responses inculcated by repeated exposure to stimuli—“conditioned reflexes.” In fact, it is precisely this conditioning that differentiates implicit attitudes from bona fide beliefs, since the very fact that these attitudes need behavioral conditioning (in particular, repetition) to form or to change shows that these attitudes will not respond to one instance of contradictory evidence—so they’re not rational, and not beliefs.

148  Jessica J. R. Wright 9 For those readers unhappy with this Ramseyan solution, it’s worth noting that contemporary philosophers like Ruth Barcan-Marcus (1990), Eric Mandelbaum (2016) and Eric Schwitzgebel (2010) have furthered behavior-based theories about what to say about cases like Dan. 10 Ruth Barcan-Marcus put this nicely: “Indeed, despite the widespread assumption of privileged access to one’s own beliefs, it could and does happen that someone other than the agent may better be able to report an agent’s belief than the believer” (Barcan-Marcus 1990, 141–142). 11 Part and parcel of belief attribution is attribution on the basis of behavior—we even often attribute beliefs to ourselves on the basis of our own behavior. Gendler acknowledges this (2008b, 564) but argues that it is misleading. 12 Much of the literature on implicit attitudes and attitude divergence can be understood as centralized around one notion: the concern to empirically measure how cognitive implicit attitudes are. Theorists use a variety of empirical tests to determine whether subjects’ habits and automatic responses are rational: evidencesensitive, truth-sensitive, and/or inference sensitive. 13 See (for both sides of the debate): De Houwer (2014), Levy (2015), Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006), Madva (2016), and Mandelbaum (2016). 14 Thanks to Cheryl Misak for pointing this out to me. 15 Says Ramsey of his agent in Jones’s Back (1991, 45): “The assertion we make about his behavior is a very complicated one, for no particular action can be supposed to be determined by this belief alone; his actions result from his desires and the whole system of his beliefs, roughly according to the rule that he performs those actions which, if his beliefs were true, would have the most satisfactory consequences.” 16 Cf. Ramsey’s discussion of Russell’s second argument against a behavior-based account: “[Russell] points out that it is not possible to suppose that beliefs differ from other ideas only in their effects, for if they were otherwise identical their effects would be identical also. This is perfectly true, but it still may remain the case that the nature of the difference between the causes is entirely unknown or very vaguely known, and that what we want to talk about is the difference between the effects, which is readily observable and important” (Ramsey 1990 [1926], 66). 17 Many thanks to Willie Costello and Cheryl Misak for their excellent comments on this chapter, and to Jennifer Nagel and Andrew Sepielli for their extensive comments on early versions of this chapter. Thanks also to Sami Pihlström for editing this volume.

References Barcan-Marcus, Ruth. 1990. “Some Revisionary Proposals about Belief and Believing.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, 133–153. Cook-Wilson, John. 1926. Statement and Inference, vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Houwer, Jan. 2014. “A Propositional Model of Implicit Evaluation.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 8, 342–353. Gawronski, B. and Bodenhausen, G. V. 2006. “Associative and Propositional Processes in Evaluation: An Integrative Review of Implicit and Explicit Attitude Change.” Psychological Bulletin 132, 692–731. Gawronski, B., Lebel, Etienne P. and Peters, Kurt R. 2007. “What Do Implicit Measures Tell Us? Scrutinizing the Validity of Three Common Assumptions.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 2, 181–193.

Ramsey’s Theory of Belief  149 Gendler, Tamar Szabó. 2008a. “Alief and Belief.” Journal of Philosophy 105, 634–663. ———. 2008b. “Alief in Action (and Reaction).” Mind & Language 23, 552–585. ———. 2011. “On the Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias.” Philosophical Studies 156, 33–63. Greenwald, A. G. and Banaji, Mahzarin R. 1995. “Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes.” Psychological Review 102, 4–27. Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A. and Mellott, D. S. 2002. “A Unified Theory of Implicit Attitudes, Stereotypes, SelfEsteem, and Self-Concept.” Psychological Review 109, 3–25. Levy, Neil. 2015. “Neither Fish nor Fowl: Implicit Attitudes as Patchy Endorsements.” Noûs 49, 4, 800–823. Madva, Alex. 2016. “Why Implicit Attitudes Are (Probably) Not Beliefs.” Synthese 193, 8, 2659–2684. Mandelbaum, Eric. 2016. “Attitude, Inference, Association: On the Propositional Structure of Implicit Bias.” Noûs 50, 3, 629–658. Marley-Payne, Jack. 2015. “Against Intellectualist Theories of Belief.” Minds Online Symposium. Available at: http://mindsonline.philosophyofbrains.com/ author/marley_pmit-edu/. Misak, Cheryl. 2016. Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1958–1966. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; vols. 7–8. Ed. A. W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton. 1990a. Philosophical Papers. Ed. D. H. Mellor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1990b [1926]. “Truth and Probability.” In D. H. Mellor (ed.), Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 52–94. ———. 1990c [1927]. “Facts and Propositions.” In D. H. Mellor (ed.), Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 34–51. ———. 1991. On Truth: Original Manuscript Materials (1927–1929) from the Ramsey Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. Eds. Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. Russell, Bertrand. 1921. The Analysis of Mind. New York: MacMillan. Rydell, Robert J. and McConnell, Allen R. 2006. “Understanding Implicit and Explicit Attitude Change: A Systems of Reasoning Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 995–1008. Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2010. “Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs, or the Gulf between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91, 531–553. Strack, Fritz and Deutsch, Roland. 2004. “Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 8, 220–247.

8 Concrete Reasonableness and Pragmatist Ideals Peirce and Rescher on Normative Theory Rosa Mayorga It seems to me that the only admissible view is that the reasonableness, or idea of law, in a man’s mind . . . must be in the mind as a consequence of its being in the real world. . . . I do not see how one can have a more satisfying ideal of the admirable than the development of Reason so understood. (CP 7.687; CP 5.160)1 An ideal is a model or pattern of things too perfect for actual realization in this world . . . Ideals are irrealites. (Rescher 1987, 2–3; Rescher 1993, 119)

The notion of ideals plays an integral part in the normative thought of both Charles Peirce and Nicholas Rescher. It was Pierce’s discovery late in life of the interrelatedness of esthetics,2 ethics, logic, and the eventual identification of “the growth of concrete reasonableness” as the ultimate ideal, that, as Peirce puts it, sets us “upon the trail of the secret to pragmatism” (CP 5.130). Rescher, acknowledged advocate of Peircean pragmatism, recognizes the importance of ideals in ethics, but surprisingly does not make any reference to Peirce’s own normative theory in his writings.3 Indeed, as the above quotations seem to indicate, Peirce and Rescher appear to take disparate views regarding the nature and reality of ideals, but not of their importance. Peirce has reasonableness, the highest ideal, permeating the real world, while Rescher, at first glance, seems to make the rather un-Peircean claim that “ideals are irrealities” (Rescher 1993, 130) and “cannot be encountered actualized in physical embodiment on the world’s stage” (Rescher 1987, 119). In what follows, I will explore the similarities and differences between the theories of these two pragmatists, focusing on their respective notions of ideals. To do this, I will need to say something about pragmatism, realism and idealism, values, and ideals.4

Pragmatism According to Rescher For more than forty years, as is well-known among pragmatist scholars, Rescher has championed pragmatism as the basis for his views on a breadth

Concrete Reasonableness  151 of topics ranging from epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science, political philosophy, and ethics. He distinguishes between a subjectivistic “pragmatism of the soft” or a “pragmatism of the left” first propagated by William James, culminating with Richard Rorty’s deconstructivism, and a “pragmatism of the right” advocated by Peirce. Rescher sides with Peirce, finding in his work the inspiration for a “harder, objectivistic” pragmatism (Rescher 2014, 5).5 Rescher shares with Peirce the insistence that “functional efficacy is pragmatism’s core concern;” that is, efficacy in meeting “human needs and serving our objectives and best interests, beginning with the demand for knowledge” (Rescher 2014, 2). The initial basis of pragmatism, which Peirce famously developed into a philosophical position, can be traced back, Rescher tells us, to the ancient academic skeptics who denied the possibility of achieving authentic knowledge regarding the real truth, and instead argued for focusing on the kind of information which we find useful and effective (Hobbs 2005, 2–3). Rescher interprets Peirce as saying that we seek information about the world because we have evolved as beings that function in the world on the basis of our beliefs about it. The more successful we are in acquiring beliefs that reflect how things are, the more likely we are to make predictions based on these beliefs, reach our goals, and, ultimately, satisfy our needs and wants, whatever they are. As humans, we are dependent on reliable information, i.e., knowledge. Our needs and our intelligence are inextricably linked—we must use our intelligence in order to satisfy our needs. It is our intelligence and the capacity to reflect and reconsider (evaluative reason—the use to which we put our brains) that help determine the course of action to undertake. Our intelligence is a well-adapted response to the exigencies of our environmental situation. It behooves us, then, to find a method that guides us in this process, and Rescher claims that pragmatism is that standard for validation, constituting a “quality control monitor of human cognition” pivoting on the issue of predictive success (Rescher 2014, 2–3). The prime function of our beliefs is to furnish guidance for our behavior, whether in scientific contexts or everyday life; hence the pragmatic maxim—that to ascertain the meaning of a conception one should consider “the practical consequences that might conceivably result if that conception were true, and this will constitute the entire meaning of the conception” (CP 5.9). And the best route to true factual beliefs producing trustworthy results is the scientific method, which is superior to the other three methods that Peirce identified for acquiring beliefs, such as tenaciously holding on to them despite evidence to the contrary; blind adherence to authority; and a priori speculation. The meaning of a conception and truth are related; although successful applicability, or utility, is an indication of truth, it is not all that truth is. For Peirce, Rescher tells us, truth is revealed, acquired progressively through the work of an objective self-monitoring and self-correcting community of inquirers, and is not an invention based on what works, or is useful, subject and relative to the individual. The latter Rescher identifies as

152  Rosa Mayorga the softer, subjectivist kind of pragmatism that Peirce’s friend and colleague William James subsequently theorized.6 Rescher considers that therein lies the core of the realistic and objectivistic Peircean version—there is an extramental world that provides a “quality control” or “reality check” for our beliefs and the truth is our best approximate expression to date of this presupposed fact (Rescher 1998, 245).

Rescher’s Scholastic Realism and Conceptual Idealism Rescher claims to want to be, like Peirce, “a scholastic realist who sees mental phenomena to be the causal product of an extra-mental reality” (Rescher 1998, 245).7 At the same time, Rescher considers himself a “conceptual idealist,” since he thinks that the only access we have to the world’s realities is “via the intellectual resources we create to handling these things” (Hobbs 2005, 22).8 The way that we grasp the existent proceeds “via cognitive, mental, ideational, and conceptual resources that we create” for handling this information. It’s not that thought is about things that are “mentalistic” in nature, he says, but rather that the way in which thought proceeds is through the “utilization of mind-provided materials.” It isn’t that mind creates reality as such, but rather that the mind-devised resources that we put to work are “the instrumentalities through which our view of reality and its nature” get processed, and that endows reality with a kind of “mentalistic cast” (Hobbs 2005, 23). We cannot characterize things as we do without some indirect reference to minds, because the terms of reference in which we carry out that characterization are terms of reference that can be explained only in terms of minds. At the same time, Rescher claims, while I am emphatically an idealist I also want to join Peirce in being a realist. For however true it may be that thought shapes reality, it is certainly false that thought shapes reality wholly on its (thought’s) own terms . . . However, the key question is this: Are these constraints imposed BY the mind—by the way our mental modus operandi is itself constituted—or are they something imposed ON the mind by a power entirely independent of its operations. Either way we have a reality that is “forced upon us” but the question of “What does the forcing?” remains—is it something external to the mind (a transcendental realism) or something intrinsic to its own operation (an immanentist realism of some sort)”? (Rescher 1998, 245) Rescher replies: “I want to have it both ways.” He proposes to go about this by insisting that the “extra-mental reality” that is at issue here is itself a creature of theory—a mind-postulated thought-product. What this is, then, “is a commitment to realism of sorts that is itself embedded within an idealist position” (Rescher 1998, 245). The “mind-external reality” at issue for Rescher

Concrete Reasonableness  153 is accordingly something “whose nature is purported to be extra-mental but whose status is that of a mental projection,” an explanatory hypothesis of sorts. Such claims to reality as it has are not experientially encountered but thought-projected, which is to say that it is an “ultimately ideal” reality. Our experiential contact with reality presumably occurs at the point of intractability where we have little choice but to conform our thought to the necessitation of circumstances—to shape our belief not by what seems optimal to us but by what is inevitable, not by decision but by submission. This is never wholly the case with matters of theory. And insofar as the extra-mental reality that is supposed to be the causal source of experience is itself a creature of theory, it becomes true that reality is itself is an idealization—however paradoxical this may sound. Here idealism and realism come into alignment. (Rescher 1998, 245) As far as we are concerned, Rescher wishes to argue, extra-mental reality is a creature-of-theory; irrespective of its nature, its status is that of a mind-projected artifact. Those realities of ours are items in our model of the world that “only a process of presumption” can project into the world itself so as to “leap over the gap between putative reality and reality itself.” Here, then, we have a realism that, though as such it envisions a transcendental, mind-independent reality, itself rests on an immanentist, mind-involving basis—not only as regards the considerations that justify it, but in its very conceptualization (Rescher 1998, 246). But can we say that Rescher’s scholastic realism and idealism are truly the same as Peirce’s? This will be addressed in a later section, but now let us take a brief look at Rescher’s normative theory.9

Rescher’s Real Values and Unreal Ideals Success or failure at being rational (with rationality defined as “the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends”) usually occurs in three (overlapping) contexts: beliefs, action, and evaluation (Rescher 1993, 19).10 Correspondingly, Rescher identifies three modes of reasoning—theoretical or cognitive (reasoning about matters of information), practical (reasoning about actions), and evaluative (reasoning about values, ends) (Rescher 1993, 12). A rational (practical) choice in alternative actions will depend on factual (cognitive) information (i.e., true beliefs) and the right (evaluative) decision. This is where values come in. Since undertaking evaluations is as important a part of our life as obtaining information or performing sensible actions, Rescher places great emphasis on the importance of values as the means by which we are able to decide and act at all. Values cannot be reduced to mere wishes and desires; Rescher argues they must satisfy objective and impersonal standards. Consistent with his

154  Rosa Mayorga support of an objectivistic over a subjectivistic pragmatism, Rescher claims that we can argue for an objective and realist (as opposed to the more popular relativistic) value system based on certain common needs (food, water, air, shelter, etc.) and certain common goals (happiness, self-realization, companionship, etc.). Just as when we have no idea what the facts are in a situation, it is unlikely that we act intelligently in the effective pursuit of a goal, a similar account holds on the side of values—if our decisions are directed at “unsuitable” (evaluatively inappropriate) ends, then it is doubtful that our best interests will be met (Rescher 1993, 14). He draws a parallel between “the generation of (presumably) true assertions in accordance with truthcriteria” and “the generation of appropriate evaluations in conformity with value-criteria.” So, there are not only factually derived data (informational facts) but also value-related data (evaluative facts) such as “it is morally wrong to inflict pain on others.”11 Furthermore, he claims that rationality imposes an “ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own mode of life” to make the best of one’s possibilities— The binding obligation to be rational inheres in the “metaphysical” consideration that we “owe it to reality at large” to realize ourselves as the sort of being we are, to take our proper place in the world’s scheme of things. (Rescher 1993, 20) Ideals, Rescher says, “are values of a special sort,” guiding our actions (Rescher 1993, 129). It comes as a bit of a shock, then, when he speaks of an ideal’s “inherent unrealism” and refers to their “inherent irrationality” (Rescher 1987, 84). To be sure, an ideal is not a goal we can expect to attain. . . Ideals are irrealities, but they are irrealities that condition the nature of the real through their influence on human thought and action. (Rescher 1987, 133) Rescher considers that ideals take us beyond experience into the realm of imagination, wishful thinking, and “utopian aspiration.” Human aspiration is not restricted by the realities—neither by the realities of the present moment (from which our sense of future possibilities can free us), nor even by our view of realistic future prospects (from which our sense of the ideal possibilities can free us). Our judgment is not bounded by what is, nor by what will be, nor even by what can be. (Rescher 1993, 130) On this account, “we are agents who can change and transform the world, striving to produce something that does not exist except in the mind’s eye,

Concrete Reasonableness  155 and indeed cannot actually exist at all because its realization calls for a greater perfection and completeness than the recalcitrant conditions of this world allow” (Rescher 1987, 135). The validation of an ideal is thus ultimately derivative. It does not lie in the (inherently unrealizable) state of affairs that it contemplates—in the unachievable perfection that it envisions (Rescher 1987, 136). Ideals cannot be brought to actualization as such; their very “idealized” nature prevents the arrangements they envision from constituting part of the actual furnishings of the world (Rescher 1987, 118). The validation and legitimation of ideals accordingly lie not in their (infeasible) applicability but in their utility for directing efforts—their productive power in providing direction and structure for evaluative thought and pragmatic action. In this view, ideals, despite their superior and splendid appearance, are actually of a “subordinate” status. They are not ultimate ends but instrumental means, subservient to the ulterior values whose realization they facilitate (Rescher 1987, 139). Rescher gives us a couple of clues as to why he considers ideals to be unreal. First, he adopts what he identifies as a Kantian conception—“what I call the ideal seems further removed from objective reality than the idea”— being paradigmatic, being perfect and flawless, being unreal, imaginary, accessible in idea alone (Rescher 1987, 115). Secondly, he seems to think that considering ideals as real implies that they are existent things— Some theoreticians have viewed ideals as actually existing things. Plato, for example, thought they existed in a realm of their own. He conceded that ideals are not part of the world’s furniture, and that they are accessible through thought alone. But he nevertheless viewed them as being found rather than made by minds—as self-subsisting objects existing in a separate, world-detached domain rather than as mere thought artifacts. In this way, various theorists maintain the self-sufficient existence of ideals, independent of the sphere of the mind. But such a “realistic” view of ideals has its difficulties. Once we abandon Plato’s view that ideals are causally operative in the world directly and immediately, independently of their role in human thought, we lose the basis for assigning them a thought-independent existence. (Rescher 1987, 118) Rescher concludes that the “reality” (in square quotes) of an ideal lies not in “its substantive realization” but in “its formative impetus upon human thought and action in this imperfect world.” I want to argue that Rescher’s view is un-Peircean for several reasons—for one, the claim that ideals are “inherently unrealizable,” “incapable of genuine fulfillment,” “beyond the reach of practical attainability,” etc., is analogous to the claim in epistemology that “things-in-themselves” are inherently unknowable—this “blocks the way of inquiry.”12 Furthermore, Peirce would say, the view is nominalistic.13 As we will see below, it overlooks the

156  Rosa Mayorga fundamental claim of the scholastic realists, that existence is not the only mode of reality. It also goes counter to synechism.

Peirce’s Extreme Scholastic Realism and Objective Idealism Peirce famously declared himself to be a Scotistic scholastic realist “of a somewhat extreme stripe” (CP 5.470). Now it would take us too far beyond the confines of this paper to go into too many details of Peirce’s adaptation of John Duns Scotus’s theory, but a brief word or two may not be out of place.14 The question of whether there could be knowledge of the natural world and knowledge of God was of central importance during the Middle Ages and went hand-in-hand with the metaphysical problem of the existence of universals, or concepts. Philosophers were acutely concerned with the problem of epistemological skepticism and spent much time and effort on the metaphysical problem, with realists claiming that universals or concepts had to be real if we were to claim that we have true knowledge of the world, and nominalists claiming that universals are just mental constructs and hence not real. Nominalists then had to provide a metaphysical explanation as to why we can use the same term or concept, e.g., “man” to refer to two different substances such as Socrates and Plato; on the other hand, realists needed to provide an explanation as to how one real nature “man” could exist as many individuals (Socrates, Plato, and the rest of humanity). By Scotus’s time there were two competing theories about the process of acquiring knowledge, one derived from Plato, or Neo-Platonism, and the other from Aristotle. Neo-Platonism claimed that all truth derives from the Form of the Good, conceived as a transcendent and separate entity. The Augustinian school, derived from Neo-Platonism, identified God with the Form of the Good and arrived at the claim that Divine Illumination, that is, an act of God’s grace illuminating the mind, is necessary for true knowledge, including knowledge of natural objects in the world. The Aristotelian view, on the other hand, contended that knowledge of the natural world can be had indirectly by acquaintance of the form in individual particulars through sensory perception. Scotus subscribed to the Aristotelian account of how we acquire knowledge, known as the process of abstraction, modified to incorporate Christian tradition. According to this tradition, humans are creatures midway between animals and angels. Animals are made up of material substances only, angels of immaterial substance, and human beings are composites of both material (body) and immaterial substance (soul). The respective cognitive powers reflect this: animals rely on their bodily senses and hence perceive only sensible things due to animals’ nature as material substances, while angels who have no bodily senses have direct access, or knowledge, to the natures or essences of things due to their spiritual or immaterial makeup. Human beings, alone among creatures, have two different sorts of

Concrete Reasonableness  157 cognitive powers: senses and intellect. The senses depend on sense organs such as the eyes, ears, etc.; the intellect is immaterial. Humans, although relying on bodily senses, can have access to the natures or essences of things indirectly, or “derivatively” through the process of abstraction; the term is derived from the Latin abstrahere, which means “to drag out.” Peirce recognizes this cognitive process—“Sensation and the power of abstraction or attention may be regarded as, in one sense, the sole constituents of all thought” (CP 5.295). In order for the intellect to make use of sensory information in humans, it must somehow take the raw material provided by the senses in the form of material images and transform them into suitable objects for understanding. The senses, in conjunction with the intellect, “drag out” the nature, or essence, or form, from the material singular in which it is embedded, and transform these into material images, or “phantasmata” or “phantasms,” the Greek word for images, in the intellect, where they are converted into intelligible species, which in turn become the universals, or concepts, used in reasoning. These entia rationis, or mental things, although immaterial, and therefore without material, or real existence, can still have real being, Scotus argued. This claim that there can be real being without existence is what differentiated the scholastic realists from the nominalists. Peirce, too, refers to “That wonderful operation of hypostatic abstraction by which we seem to create entia rationis that are, nevertheless, sometimes real” (CP 4.549). The process of acquiring knowledge in this life, according to Scotus, then, goes something like this: a sensory object excites our senses which detect its accidental features (size, color, shape, etc.). The phantasm, or image is then created in the “phantasy” located in the “passive” intellect, which then abstracts the form or nature of the thing, creating an “intelligible species” that has the common features of the sensible object. The “active” or “agent” part of the intellect then interacts with the intelligible species in conjunction with the other phantasms in the memory to create the universal in the mind. It is the agent intellect in conjunction with the passive intellect that produces the universal, that concept which can then be predicated of others with the same features. Since the only way we can acquire knowledge is through this abstractive process that results in the universal, our knowledge of the world is a product both of our mind and of the world at large. Peirce agrees: It is the external world that we directly observe. . . . Of course, in being real and external, it does not in the least cease to be a purely psychical product, a generalized percept. (CP 8.261) The proper intellectual (immediate) object is the essence, or nature, or form, or quiddity (quidditas) or “whatness” of what is sensible or material, and the path to this knowledge for humans, again, begins with the senses. It should be remembered, however, that, though the path is indirect, the

158  Rosa Mayorga knowledge of the nature or essence attained is truly of the nature; it is not just a representation only, since the phantasm captures the nature’s true essence. When a cognition takes place, Scotus holds that what is perceived is the nature. But the nature is not universal in itself (nor is it singular in itself); it is converted into a universal by the process of abstraction, which is a spontaneous activity of the intellect. The universal, although a product of the mind, is nevertheless real since it is the mental transformation of the actual nature that is abstracted and made an image in the intellect. This is the same nature or quiddity that exists in the singular object as well (though only “formally,” but not actually, distinct), but its existence in the object is “contracted” by its unique singularity, which Scotus calls its “haecceity” (haecceitas) or “thisness.” Only the quidditas is abstracted, and not the haecceitas, which is the same as to say that all knowledge is of the general, as per Aristotle’s dictum. Peirce expresses the same sentiment in his own terminology— To make a distinction between the true conception of a thing and the thing itself is, he will say, only to regard one and the same thing from two different points of view; for the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is the reality. The realist will, therefore, believe in the objectivity of all necessary conceptions, space, time, relation, cause, and the like. (CP 8.16) Our reliance, due to the human condition, on sense-dependent processes such as abstraction in order to gain knowledge of the world is the reason why we cannot know the “haecceity,” or the “thisness,” or the singularity, of “things in themselves” as such. Peirce himself used the notion of haecceity, putting it in his own words— By a hecceity, I mean, some element of existence which, not merely by the likeness between its different apparitions, but by an inward force of identity, manifesting itself in the continuity of its apparition throughout time and in space, is distinct from everything else, and is thus fit (as it can in no other way be) to receive a proper name or to be indicated as this or that. (CP 3.460) Instead of “universals,” Peirce prefers to speak of the reality of “generals,” a term he uses to include not only concepts, natures, as the scholastics did, but the more modern notion of laws. Signs (or words, or meanings) are also generals, and like laws, they regulate individual concrete instances, and cannot be exhausted by them. Generals, like Scotus’s universals, do not exist as such, but it does not follow that they are not real. Peirce says “that is real which has such and such characters, whether anybody thinks it to

Concrete Reasonableness  159 have those characters or not” (CP 5.430). The opposite of the real, then, is a mental fiction. But not all that is mental is fiction— The question is, “Whether corresponding to our thoughts and sensations, and represented in some sense by them, there are realities, which are not only independent of the thought of you, and me, and any number of men, but which are absolutely independent of thought altogether.” The objective final opinion is independent of thoughts of any particular men, but is not independent of thought in general. (CP 7.336) In this one passage, Peirce declares for realism, and at the same time, for idealism. Peirce, as Rescher says of himself, is also trying “to have it both ways.” But there is a very important difference between the scholastic realism and the idealism of one and the other— The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. (CP 6.25)15 Peirce’s realism feeds into his notion of synechism, the doctrine of continuity, which, as we will see below, undergirds the reality of Peirce’s esthetic ideal, that of concrete reasonableness.16 So I turn now to Peirce’s normative theory.

Peirce’s Normative Science Save for an 1857 college paper written on Friedrich Schiller after reading his Aesthetische Briefe, Peirce does not broach the subject of esthetics, considering it a “silly science” until his change of heart very late in his career. While struggling with the subject, Peirce repeatedly admits of his lack of knowledge—“Of Esthetics I must confess myself utterly ignorant;” “I am still a perfect ignoramus in esthetics;” “I do not feel entitled to have any confident opinions about [Esthetics].” He confesses that “like most logicians” he had pondered esthetics “far too little” and had mistakenly thought that logic and esthetics belonged to “different universes.” For many years, Peirce says, he doubted whether ethics was anything more than a practical or applied science or mere art, concerned with “morality, virtuous conduct, and rightliving,” a “traditional standard, accepted, very wisely, without radical criticism, but with a silly pretence of critical examination” (CP 1.573). But when, in the 1880s he came to read “the works of the great moralists,” whose “great fertility of thought” he found in wonderful contrast to “the sterility of the logicians,” he comes to agree that the triad of ideals classified as “normative sciences” and recognized since ancient times as the doctrines of the true, the beautiful, and the right (and/or good) correspond to logic,

160  Rosa Mayorga esthetics, and ethics. It is then that he begins to develop his own version of normative science within the context of his established theory. Although the development of his normative theory came late in Peirce’s career, his discovery of the dependence of logic on ethics and of ethics on esthetics was a great breakthrough. It provided him with the way to differentiate his “pragmaticism” from other pragmatisms. In a letter to James written in 1902, he writes: But I seem to myself to be the sole depositary at present of the completely developed system, which all hangs together . . . My own view in 1877 was crude. Even when I gave my Cambridge lectures I had not really gotten to the bottom of it or seen the unity of the whole thing. It was not until after that that I obtained the proof that logic must be founded on ethics, of which it is a higher development. Even then, I was for some time so stupid as not to see that ethics rests in the same manner on a foundation of esthetics. (CP 8.255) Peirce’s scientific nature colored all his projects, and his approach to the development of his normative theory was no exception. Like a true scientist, he performed a variety of tests on his hypotheses, which, in this case, meant seeing how his claims about logic, ethics, and esthetics fared with the rest of his philosophy. A case in point is how he begins by finding the place for normative science in his classification of sciences. In order to begin the process of analysis, Peirce incorporates the Normative Sciences within his scheme of the Classification of Sciences, formulated on August Comte’s system whereby the areas of study are arranged in a series with reference to the abstractness of their objects, each science drawing regulating principles from those superior to it in abstractness, while drawing data from the sciences below. Peirce also orders the new classification to reflect his three categories, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, as we will see below. Mathematics is the first science and hence the most abstract, so it depends on no other science, while all the other sciences that fall below it depend on mathematical reasoning. Idioscopy is the third and last major classification, encompassing the Physical and Human Sciences, which are the least abstract. Between Mathematics and Idioscopy is Philosophy, which studies the elements of familiar experience. It has three divisions; the first of these is Phenomenology, which studies phenomena in their Firstness, that is, as they present themselves to us in experience, in other words, whatever is present to the mind in any way at any time. Peirce defines Firstness “as the study of what seems . . . It describes the essentially different elements which seem to present themselves in what seems” (CP 2.197). The Normative Sciences form the second division within Philosophy, and as such they examine familiar phenomena (our everyday world of

Concrete Reasonableness  161 experience) in their Secondness, that is, in so far as we can act upon the phenomenon and it can act upon us. Normative science as a whole distinguishes what ought to be from what ought not to be; Secondness is the category of effort and resistance, so it exemplifies self-controlled actions. The third division is Metaphysics, which seeks to give an account of the universe of mind and matter; it is therefore concerned with the study of reality, of laws, of Thirdness as Thirdness, that is, in its mediation between Secondness and Firstness. A simple sketch of the classification appears below: Classification of Sciences I. Mathematics II. Philosophy A Phenomenology B Normative Sciences 1 Esthetics 2 Ethics 3 Logic C Metaphysics III. Idioscopy A Physical Sciences B Human Sciences Peirce can now analyze the specific normative sciences in turn within the rubric of his Phenomenology (his categories), since Phenomenology precedes Philosophy. Supposing . . . that normative science divides into esthetics, ethics, and logic, then it is easily perceived, from my standpoint, that this division is governed by the three categories. For Normative Science in general being the science of the laws of conformity of things to ends, esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling, ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose end is to represent something. (CP 5.129) By using his categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness as a schema, Peirce now has a nice tripartite structure for his trio of esthetics, ethics, and logic, which relates to feeling, action, and thought. This was no small achievement for Peirce, since the normative sciences as reformulated by him still retained at least part of their traditional meaning, while at the same time they fit in and enriched the rest of his system. Thus esthetics concerns qualities of feeling (Firstnesses); ethics concerns norms for judging conduct (Secondnesses); logic concerns norms for reasoning, that is, norms

162  Rosa Mayorga for judging which arguments we accept, and which thoughts we should hold on to (Thirdnesses). Peirce had studied logic as a child, and understood and preached the importance of right reasoning throughout his life, so it was not difficult for him to see logic as a normative science. Right reasoning is thinking with an end, where the end is to achieve truth, or knowledge of the world. Peirce struggled more when accommodating ethics into this scheme since, not having clearly distinguished it from “morality;” by his own account, he had considered it, like Aristotle, a practical and not a theoretical science worthy of philosophical investigation. Indeed, his frank avowals of ignorance and accounts of frustrated efforts, mixed with sarcasm in some of his public remarks on “vitally important topics,” have led some commentators to dismiss the importance of his observations on ethics.17 After much thought and effort, however, Peirce is able finally to make the connection between logic and ethics. We are too apt to define ethics to ourselves as the science of right and wrong. That cannot be correct, for the reason that right and wrong are ethical conceptions which it is the business of that science to develope and to justify. . . . Now logic is a study of the means of attaining the end of thought. It cannot solve that problem until it clearly knows what that end is. . . . It is Ethics which defines that end. It is, therefore, impossible to be thoroughly and rationally logical except upon an ethical basis. (CP 2.198) Instead of judging which actions are right and which are wrong, as the practical science of ethics does, the theoretical science of ethics is concerned with what makes right right and wrong wrong (Potter 1967, 32). Hence, it has more to do with the establishment of ideals, or ends of conduct, or deliberate self-controlled actions. Now we can see the relation between logic and ethics—logic deals with reasoning, and reasoning is a type of conduct, or deliberate self-controlled action as well. It was even more difficult to incorporate esthetics into this framework. Peirce resisted the traditional notion of Beauty as the highest of all ideals, the admirable per se, the summum bonum, and we see ample of evidence of his struggle—18 But in order to state the question of esthetics in its purity, we should eliminate from it . . . all consideration of action and reaction . . . We have not in our language a word of the requisite generality. The Greek [kalos], the French beau, only come near to it, without hitting it squarely on the head. “Fine” would be a wretched substitute. Beautiful is bad; because one mode of being {kalos} essentially depends upon the

Concrete Reasonableness  163 quality being unbeautiful. Perhaps, however, the phrase “the beauty of the unbeautiful” would not be shocking. (CP 2.199) It is not until Peirce realizes that, as in ethics, the goal of esthetics is to determine what makes the beautiful beautiful, and not to judge specific instances as beautiful, that he can find its proper place in his normative theory. This means, of course, that esthetics needs to be in relation to ethics (which “asks to what end all effort shall be directed”) and to logic, which deals with reasoning. Esthetics, then, is the attempt to analyze the ideal of ideals, the admirable in itself, the end in itself, that ideal state of things that is desirable in and of itself regardless of any other considerations. Peirce concludes that “Reasonableness” is this ideal—“The one thing whose admirableness is not due to an ulterior reason is Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness, so far as we can comprehend it” (CP 1.615). Furthermore, since esthetics corresponds to the category of Firstness, it must have “a positive, simple, immediate quality” pervading a “multitude of parts,” as we can see in Peirce’s attempt at a phenomenological description: in esthetic enjoyment we attend to the totality of Feeling—and especially to the total resultant Quality of Feeling presented in the work of art we are contemplating—yet it is a sort of intellectual sympathy, a sense that here is a Feeling that one can comprehend, a reasonable Feeling. (CP 5.113) I think what Peirce means by “intellectual sympathy” and “reasonable Feeling” (certainly an odd mix of categories) is something like this—since we are part of the reasonable universe, we would find satisfaction, or enjoyment, when we acquire novel insights, make innovative connections, detect new patterns, whether consciously (or as may happen sometimes in the case of enjoyment of art), subconsciously, because we are engaging in our true nature of reasonable creatures.19 This ties in nicely with Peirce’s synechism, the notion that all creation is continuous— Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process of the growth of reasonableness. (CP 5.4)  . . . the world is reasonable—reasonably susceptible to becoming reasonable, for that is what it is, and all that it is, to be reasonable. (CP 2.122)

164  Rosa Mayorga

Peirce’s Real Ideal and Conservative Values Peirce identifies the ideal of all conduct, the admirable in itself, the summum bonum, as the growth of reasonableness. For Peirce, “the highest of all possible aims is to further concrete reasonableness” (CP 2.34). Reasonableness, as a law, or habit of nature, has reality. Unlike Rescher’s ideals, Peirce’s ideal is real. But the saving truth is that there is a Thirdness in experience, an element of reasonableness to which we can train our own reason to conform more and more. (CP 5.160) The fact that reasonableness actually permeates the universe is the “saving truth” for pragmaticism. If the reasonableness of the mind is essentially the same, or continuous with, the reasonableness in nature (the synechistic principle), then it is not surprising that we can attain true beliefs about the world and can successfully model our actions based on them. The underlying goal, or ideal, for all human endeavor, then, is to promote the growth of reasonableness— Under this conception, the ideal of conduct will be to execute our little function in the operation of the creation by giving a hand toward rendering the world more reasonable whenever, as the slang is, it is “up to us” to do so. (CP 1.615, 1903) Peirce recognized “two general branches of science: [the] Theoretical, whose purpose is simply and solely knowledge of God’s truth; and [the] Practical, for the uses of life” (CP 1.239), where the first is concerned with having knowledge of theory as its ultimate end, while the second has to do with results that relate to “the conduct of life.” He considers his normative theory as a theoretical science, so he refrains from an analysis of specific human values, as Rescher does, or of other “vitally important topics” of our everyday life. Instead, Peirce is extremely cautious— And it is precisely because of this utterly unsettled and uncertain condition of philosophy at present, that I regard any practical applications of it to religion and conduct as exceedingly dangerous. I have not one word to say against the philosophy of religion or of ethics in general or in particular. I only say that for the present it is all far too dubious to warrant risking any human life upon it. I do not say that philosophical science should not ultimately influence religion and morality; I only say that it should be allowed to do so only with secular slowness and the most conservative caution. (CP 1.620)

Concrete Reasonableness  165 Taking this into account, as well as individual fallibility in reasoning, Peirce suggests that we adopt a “conservative morality”—that “system of morals [which] is the traditional wisdom of ages of experience” (CP 1.50).20 Established morality is likelier to be closer to a kind of “final opinion” than an individual attempt at establishing moral conduct starting from ground zero.21

Peirce’s Pragmaticism and Rescher’s Objective Pragmatism: Conclusion Both Peirce and Rescher considered it important to differentiate their brand of pragmatism from those of others. Throughout his work across many philosophical topics, Rescher has famously opted for the Peircean kind as the basis for many of his views. In his writings on normative theory or ethics, however, I did not find explicit references to Peirce’s own normative theory, and Peirce does allege that his “Normative Science” is what gets us “upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism” (CP 5.130). Furthermore, I have argued that some of Rescher’s claims regarding the “unrealism” of ideals seem to go counter to some of Peirce’s fundamental metaphysical doctrines of scholastic realism (that something can be real yet not have material existence)22 and synechism (that there is a reasonableness that pervades nature). I will mention a few things in Rescher’s defense against these claims (these are the result of pure speculation, and I will not argue for them here, though): First, it could be argued that Rescher does implicitly reference, and account for, Peirce’s ideal of the growth of reasonableness when he says, Every voluntary action of ours is in some manner a remaking of the world—or at any rate, of a very small corner of it—by projecting into reality a situation that otherwise would not be. (Rescher 1993, 129) This sounds very much like: it is by the indefinite replication of self-control upon self-control that the vir is begotten, and by action, through thought, he grows an esthetic ideal, not for the behoof of his own poor noddle merely, but as the share which God permits him to have in the work of creation. (CP 5.402) Secondly, it could also be argued that, when Rescher speaks of his ideals as being “inherently unrealizable” or “unattainable,” he means that they have no endpoint, or limit, just like there is no end to the growth of reasonableness. Thirdly, perhaps Rescher finds, as others have, that Peirce’s normative theory is in too much of a disarray and is best referenced obliquely.

166  Rosa Mayorga It has been my purpose in this paper to point to some similarities and dissimilarities in the work of these two great pragmatists, in the hope that my reflections will shed some light. I have not pretended to argue for the merits or faults of their theories here; that I leave for another time.

Notes 1 I use the standard abbreviation of The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, followed by volume and paragraph number. 2 I use Peirce’s spelling of the more common “aesthetics.” 3 In all honesty, I cannot say that I have checked all of Rescher’s 100-plus books; however, I have perused an important portion of them. I found it helpful that, unlike Peirce, Rescher does not change his opinion often about issues and is constant in his recurring themes throughout his writings. 4 Granted, due to the nature of this paper, this will be only a sketch. 5 No doubt Rescher’s work throughout these years has been instrumental in a revival of interest in pragmatism, especially the objectivistic kind. 6 This may be an oversimplification of James’s view of truth, which he attempted to revise, but I have no room to go into that here. 7 Of course, there is more to Peirce’s scholastic realism than just this claim; e.g., reality of generals, of possibility, etc. For more on Peirce’s scholastic realism, see Mayorga (2007). 8 Rescher does not subscribe to a “regular” idealism—the view that the world, at least as experienced by us humans, can exist only as our reality, i.e., that we design, construct, conceptually grasp, and schematize it. Pragmatism is intended to serve as a counterweight to idealism. For even though our model of reality is an intellectual construction, it is not figment or pure fancy. 9 Rescher has written much on values and philosophical anthropology; I do not pretend to cover even a small part of it in this short paper. For more on the background of the topic, see Pihlström (2003). 10 Peirce defines “a reasoning” as “something upon which we place a stamp of rational approval” (CP 2.183); rationality as “logical force” (CP 1.220), or as “being governed by final causes” (CP 2.66). 11 Obviously aware of the fact/value distinction, Rescher argues that the “chasm between acts and values is not as deep as we think.” See his “Concluding Observations” in Wüstehube and Quante (1998). 12 Rescher is aware that the claim is problematic; basically, he argues that it is not irrational to adopt unachievable ideals because of collateral gains. See Chapter 7 in Rescher (1993). 13 Nominalists, of course, claim that only existent things are real. Peirce calls the view that there are existing exemplars a nominalistic Platonism (CP 5.470). Many others were also characterized as such—“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state in one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness” (CP 5.121). 14 See Mayorga (2007) for a more extensive explanation. 15 Carl Hausman and Doug Anderson argue for two realisms in Peirce—external realism, where “inquiry is directed towards a structured system of laws that is real in the sense that they exist apart from mental processes” vs. a cosmological or cosmic realism, “the notion of an infinitely encounterable excess to thought” (Anderson and Hausman 2012, 45). 16 Peirce considered synechism to be the proof of pragmatism—“a proof that the doctrine is true—a proof which seems to the writer to leave no reasonable doubt on the subject, and to be the one contribution of value that he has to make to

Concrete Reasonableness  167 philosophy. For it would essentially involve the establishment of the truth of synechism” (CP 5.415). 17 See Mayorga (2012). 18 See Mayorga (2015). 19 Peirce describes the process of acquiring specific ideals—“an ideal belongs only to conduct that is deliberate. To say that it is deliberate implies that the agent has reviewed the action and has passed judgment on it, as to whether he wishes to act that way in the future. His ideal is the kind of conduct that attracts him. His self-criticism, followed by a resolution, excites a determination of a habit, which will modify a future action (CP1.574). 20 Of course, Peirce is not saying that we should not reflect on our moral conduct; he provides a detailed account of the process of self-criticism and “heterocriticisms” involved in this personal choice. His point, though, is to make a distinction between morality and what he is concerned with—theoretical, or philosophical, ethics. “Finally, in addition to this personal meditation on the fitness of one’s own ideals, which is of a practical nature, there are the purely theoretical studies of the student of ethics who seeks to ascertain, as a matter of curiosity, what the fitness of an ideal of conduct consists in, and to deduce from such definition of fitness what conduct ought to be. Opinions differ as to the wholesomeness of this study. It only concerns our present purpose to remark that it is in itself a purely theoretical inquiry, entirely distinct from the business of shaping one’s own conduct. Provided that feature of it be not lost sight of, I myself have no doubt that the study is more or less favorable to right living” (CP 1.600). 21 “The perversity or ignorance of mankind may make this thing or that to be held for true, for any number of generations, but it can not affect what would be the result of sufficient experience and reasoning. And this it is which is meant by the final settled opinion” (CP 7.336). 22 Rescher, of course, does share the realist belief that there is a mind-independent reality, but he identifies the basis for this realism as “the recognition of the mind’s limitations,” (Rescher 1998, 246) that is, that there are outside constraints to our thinking, which is only one side of the story.

References Anderson, Douglas and Hausman, Carl. 2012. Conversations on Peirce: Reals and Ideals. New York: Fordham University Press. Hobbs, Charles. 2005. “Interview with Nicholas Rescher.” Kinesis 31, 18–42. Mayorga, Rosa. 2007. From Realism to Realicism: The Metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2007. (Second printing 2008.) ———. 2012. “Peirce’s Moral ‘Realicism.’ ” In Cornelis De Waal and Chris Skowronski (eds.), The Normative Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. New York: Fordham University Press, 101–124. ———. 2014. “On the Beauty of the Unbeautiful in Peirce’s Esthetics.” Cognitio 14:1, 85–100. ———. 2015. “The Fairy and the Aleph: On Peirce’s Normative Theory.” Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana (CSP) 6. Nubiola, Jaime. 2009. “What Reasonableness Really Is.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 45, 125–134. Peirce, Charles. 1931–1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirc, vols. I–VI. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Peter Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

168  Rosa Mayorga Press, 1931–1935; vols. VII–VIII. Ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. Pihlström, Sami. 2003. “On the Concept of Philosophical Anthropology.” Journal of Philosophical Research 28, 259–285. Potter, Vincent S. J. 1967. Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals. Worcester: The University of Massachusetts Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1987. Ethical Idealism: A Study of the Import of Ideals. Berkeley: University of California Press. _______. 1993. A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Volume II: The Validity of Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. _______. 1998. “Response to Helmut Pape.” In Wüstehube and Quante (1998). _______. 2014. The Pragmatic Vision: Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Wüstehube, Axel and Quante, Michael. (eds.). 1998. Pragmatic Idealism: Critical Essays on Nicholas Rescher’s System of Pragmatic Idealism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

9 Obliquely about Realism The State of Play of a Minor Affair Joseph Margolis

I I’m immensely impressed with the human infant’s—the human primate’s— ability to begin to grasp (and master in its quick way) the language of its home society, and to do so from the vantage of never having had a language of its own. I discount completely Noam Chomsky’s original (innatist) treatment of “universal grammar” (UG), which, Chomsky has acknowledged, illicitly relied on the contingent, cognitionally freighted uniformities of selected human languages. If I understand him rightly, he continues to believe that there must be some relatively simple innatist basis (neuronal perhaps, but still unknown) that accounts for the infant’s extraordinary feat. I don’t find that impossible, though the linkages to actual usage in the human context tend to be noticeably spare and abstract. Chomsky seems to be more interested in accounting for the evolutionary emergence of language as a bodily organ than in the actual mastery and use of a home language or in the analysis of its actual structure. I deem that to be a strategic mistake. In any case, the validity of Chomsky’s analysis of the meaning and grammar of his specimen sentences seems to me to rest on the prior findings of a lebensformlich analysis of known natural languages, which Chomsky does not characterize in any detail. But, now, UG has been reconceived and replaced by conjectured genetic and computational processes (possibly the result, Chomsky ventures, of an evolutionarily fortunate “small change” in the neural wiring of the brain), so that language itself does not (need not) have evolved at all, and an actual unlearned modular grammar enabling the production and mastery of all natural languages is no longer required.1 Of course, an innatist claim of such power and flexibility—effectively, the unique capacity of Homo sapiens to have generated the immense run of human languages that we are aware of—is quite beyond any possible testing at the present time. The idea, however, remains problematic, outflanking so completely (as it does) the seeming importance of the bare process of actually learning one or another local language and the contextual complexities of spontaneous speech in societal settings.

170  Joseph Margolis Yet, obliquely, even there, if Chomsky’s project conceded the infant’s native intelligence (as I think it would have to), then we should find ourselves obliged to admit nondiscursive concepts (say, perceptual and experiential concepts), more or less in accord with the continuum of animal and human life acknowledged by Darwinian and post-Darwinian accounts of evolution. But then, further, if what remained to be thus posited were not narrowly linked to mastering the learnable part of a natural (human) language, then, on evolutionary grounds alone, I would find no reason that the intelligence of languageless animals might not be analogously characterized (however differently); and, then, we should find ourselves confronted by a basket of neglected questions regarding a possible, graded continuum between discursive and nondiscursive concepts and capacities. If we denied the continuum—Chomsky suggests a genetic discontinuity—then, if strict innatism failed, the infant’s obvious achievement might well appear (from such a vantage) to be an insoluble mystery. I myself prefer Bildung to the abstractions of computationality, though without discounting genetic chance. Nevertheless, I cannot see how the infant could possibly learn a human language (a fortiori, learn its concepts), as it obviously does, unless its native perceptual and experiential powers (by which it thus succeeds) were already suitably qualified—in conceptual but nonlinguistic ways— to progress from nondiscursive to discursive concepts. That might in fact begin to explain just how, with whatever caveats, chimpanzees and bonobos have been able to make some tantalizing progress in “learning” known languages, though not, of course, with anything like the special fluency the human infant displays. In any event, the achievement, thus conceived, would have to have explored the possibility of animals learning actual languages by means of some sort of improved Bildung, as opposed to speculating at a distance about the would-be resources of an innatist biology more or less indifferent to the vagaries of actual language use and societal life. There are two very different conceptions of language in play here: two very different models of mind. Nevertheless, remote as these may appear to be, I’m persuaded that each harbors profound consequences for a general theory of mind and cognition—and, hence, for a theory of realism and objective truth as well. I have in mind, particularly, consequences affecting the prospect of a resurgent contest between Kantian and pragmatist approaches to perceptual realism. I find an instructive analogy in the revival of rationalist treatments of the mastery of language and the conditions of perceptual knowledge, in the inquiries of a Cartesian Chomsky and a Kantian John McDowell, confronted with opposed intuitions centered in post-Darwinian and pragmatist inquiries regarding language and cognition, within the play of actual human life. I’ve broached the question somewhat improbably, in order to convey a sense of a larger shift of interest in the recent treatment of foundational philosophical issues that are bound to alter very seriously the reception of otherwise standard accounts.

Obliquely about Realism  171 All this accords with what is most instructive in Darwinian and postDarwinian evolutionary studies. I press the issue beyond the corrective speculations of the so-called philosophical anthropologists and their allies—figures like Helmuth Plessner, Adolf Portmann, Arnold Gehlen, and Marjorie Grene—because I believe that, even there, canonical evolutionary theory fails to grasp the decisive fact that no merely biological model can do justice to the extraordinary hybrid (that’s to say, biologically and culturally intertwined) processes by which the human primate (Homo sapiens sapiens) transforms itself, artifactually, into a functionally competent person, precisely by its spontaneous mastery of language.2 More specifically, I mean to bring these not uncontested considerations to bear on certain recent options of a jointly epistemological and metaphysical nature, which, in various guises, threaten to alter the import and reception of the most commanding inquiries of the day and which, at the same time (unwittingly perhaps), expose the fact. I have in mind the remarkably persistent confidence—in my opinion, increasingly contentious—in the continuing authority and commanding power of Kant’s first Critique brought to bear on the realism issue and the gathering contest between pragmatism and any apriorist or suitably naturalized version of a Kantian-like critical realism. We’re in the middle of a sea change here, and the puzzles I favor afford a cameo glimpse of the larger upheaval. In fact, I intend no more than a brief sketch of an argument that deserves a fuller treatment. For present purposes, I single out John McDowell’s muchadmired, so-called naturalized transcendental analysis of discursive knowledge and discursive concepts, deliberately cast (by McDowell) in Kant’s terms—as they appear in the first Critique—so as to confirm the near-validity (and approximative advantage) of the conclusions of McDowell’s own inquiry. I draw McDowell’s account chiefly from the Woodbridge Lectures, occupied largely with appraising Wilfrid Sellars’s “deeply Kantian account of perceptual experience” (McDowell’s phrasing), qualified by symptomatic second thoughts (on McDowell’s part) in papers like “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” and “Sensory Consciousness in Kant and Sellars.”3 So, there is already an unresolved (unacknowledged) tension in McDowell’s Woodbridge Lectures. McDowell seems to support the verdict that Kant’s treatment of the essential issues, on which a proper answer to the question of perceptual experience and perceptual knowledge depends, is indeed generally correct—that is, proceeds in the best way possible—if we but allow McDowell a few liberties regarding transcendental “necessity.” I take this sort of latitude to be indefensible and entirely undefended—to be, in fact, a troubling sort of philosophical argument, possibly entailed by McDowell’s own “quietist” reliance on Kant’s claims—if McDowell cannot explain, satisfactorily, just how to understand the pertinent difference between transcendental (even if naturalized) and empirical conjectures. (On Kant’s view, such options must be entirely disjoint, though easily confused: epistemological “necessities” are at stake.)

172  Joseph Margolis May I say that a similar question applies to Sami Pihlström’s more straightforward notion of a “transcendental pragmatism”? I won’t attempt to answer Pihlström’s ingenious retreat to his “weak” form of transcendental necessity: I’m not sure that it can be “answered,” since Pihlström is prepared to treat his own departure from Kant’s original view as a definite virtue of his “pragmatist” or “Wittgensteinian” revision.4 For what it’s worth, therefore, I suggest that to attribute transcendental status to contingent, passing, historied, local, sittlich, practice- or praxis-centered “rules” or regularities may indeed be conceded as a philosophical courtesy, so long as we agree, first, that Kant’s would-be a priori claims identify an unavoidable set of conceptual concerns regarding epistemology and metaphysics— that are likely to be deeply modified (or simply lost) wherever deprived of their accustomed necessity; and, second, that Kant never demonstrates (could never demonstrate, on the strength of his own premises) that pertinent answers (“transcendental,” not “empirical”) could be shown to be, when shown to be true or valid in suitable circumstances, necessarily (transcendentally) true as well, true in all possible circumstances. Read this way, Kant’s “Critical” rationalism could never escape being a “weak” version of the epistemologically privileged rationalisms Kant himself was combating. I take Pihlström’s pragmatism to acknowledge Kant’s unearned advantage as well as his own scruple. But, if that’s conceded, then there remains an argumentative lacuna the “Kantians” (including McDowell and Pihlström in different ways) fail to address; there is, also, little point (in our time) for any merely textual objection to Sellars’s thought-experiment (which occupies McDowell in the Woodbridge Lectures), and we ourselves are quite unable to complete any “Kantian”-like recovery of empirical realism. My surmise, therefore, simply concedes that our realist claims could never be more than conjectural—instrumentally reasonable perhaps, contingently grounded in our prevailing interests, forever open to partisan dispute generated from different vantages and different histories. The pragmatist tends, opportunistically, to favor whatever plurality of approaches illuminate our provisional conjectures; the Kantian requires an exclusively valid resolution approximating seemingly necessary truths (or at least strongly convergent accounts) that behave as if they were “necessarily true” for some present interval.5 I’m prepared to say that, once we abandon extensionally unrestricted, foundational, synthetic a priori truths, we will have effectively adopted a mode of analysis confined within the terms of what Wittgensteinian calls a Lebensform (or something akin). In fact, I view as decisive, in appraising Pihlström’s pragmatist proposal, invoking the ultimate lesson of Wittgenstein’s well-known lines on the matter of “following a rule”: that is, that When I obey a rule, [Wittgenstein says,] I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly.6

Obliquely about Realism  173 That’s to say: I (LW) still believe I’m following a rule—the rule “we” all invoke; but I no longer see a way to demonstrate the fact for all to see! Nevertheless, to abandon transcendental necessity is to jeopardize the clarity of the line between the transcendental and the empirical or commonsense.7 I apply this “argument” also, in appraising McDowell’s line of reasoning. It needs another step, however: Wittgenstein’s “form of life” and Kant’s “unity of apperception” have entirely different—potentially opposed—roles to play. What Wittgenstein says here clearly belongs to a “form of life”—open to contingent and conjectural (and historied) remarks—but not to transcendental inquiry (in Kant’s original sense or in any sense that might be drawn from Frege’s rationalism). Pihlström is entitled to any and all of the interesting comparisons he favors. But all of his would-be examples have the odd feature that they succeed in being “transcendental” (in Pihlström’s sense) just where they fail to be transcendental in Kant’s. The explanation has to do, I believe, with the need, on Pihlström’s part (as a “re-Kantianized” pragmatist) to separate the conditions of being, a “transcendental” inquiry (concerned, say, with the “conditions of possibility” of truth or knowledge or something of the kind) and the conditions of possibility of specifically synthetic a priori truths. Of course, Pihlström is more than willing to abandon synthetic a priori truths and to draw attention to the resultant informal, approximative continuity between the second-order questions favored by Kantians and by pragmatists. I see no harm in the reclassification, unless it ignores the bearing of such a policy on what to count as required of a Kantian account of perception and perceptual judgment. After all, it’s Kant himself who makes the conceptual structure of perception (and perceptual judgment) exclusively discursive—transcendentally supplied! McDowell is closer to Kant than is Pihlström; but, as far as I know, he does not explain his own “transcendental naturalism” in a way that could be straightforwardly compared with Kant’s or with Pihlström’s view. Pihlström’s suggestion makes it all but impossible to say that Kant was grievously mistaken in characterizing his own transcendental questions in the way he does—as, indeed, he was! Against Kant, Pihlström agrees that there is no synthetic a priori. But, of course, if that’s conceded, then there is no Kantian transcendental necessity to conjure with. The status of the rest of Kant’s “system” would need to be reexamined: especially the objective standing of perceptual judgments. Furthermore, I take it that Pihlström would not agree with Peirce’s verdict: Kant (whom I more than admire) [Peirce says] is nothing but a somewhat confused pragmatist. A real is anything that is not affected by men’s cognitions about it; which is a verbal definition, not a doctrine. An external object is anything that is not affected by any cognitions, whether about it or not, of the man to whom it is external.8

174  Joseph Margolis According to Peirce, then, epistemologically inflated “transcendental” claims cannot determine what to count as real. (How would McDowell or Pihlström answer? Here, Kant’s theory teeters on irrelevance.) Indeed. Does Kant violate his own injunction against transcendental realism here? Regarding the Ding-an-sich (which Peirce has specifically in mind), it’s hard to improve on Nicholas Rescher’s summary judgment: Toward transcendental reality itself [he says] it is appropriate to take much the same stance that Kant took toward his “thing in itself.”9 But if you concede these worries, it becomes more than difficult to say what “realist space” McDowell means to occupy—what guarantee of empirical realism could the discursivity issue possibly provide. Realism is both more difficult and easier to defend than one supposes. To return to my initial remarks: what I’ve proposed, on broadly Darwinian grounds, as empirical facts about the human infant’s mastery of language makes it not unlikely, though difficult to confirm (or disconfirm), that linguistically apt speakers may yet retain (in some sense) the residual advantage of a spontaneous exercise of native nondiscursive concepts (inhering, say, in learnable perception and experience), whether or not (when triggered) involving conscious awareness or discursive attention. That’s to say: linguistically apt persons may be able to acquire cognizably pertinent perceptual data nondiscursively, which they may then be able to process discursively at some later time (for instance, inferentially, by scanning memory and the significance of what may be retrieved from memory), perhaps (at times) without one’s having been initially aware of a particular sensory or experiential acquisition. Think, here, of a long-distance truck driver making his standard trips largely by habit and assured experience, without being pointedly aware, from moment to moment, of his actual perceptual intake along considerable stretches of road. Might he not correctly infer (as it turns out), scanning his memory of his last trip (much of which he paid no attention to), that he probably did see something unusual along what he knew to be a relatively untraveled road. Now that he thinks of it: it might have been a body; yes, of course, there was an unusual patch of color that he hadn’t remembered he “must have seen.” Suppose, then, that, driving the same road a day later, he “remembers” (that is, he infers that he’s remembering) just where the sighting (probably) occurred—and he’s right! Could a nondiscursive perceptual event of which one is completely unaware be “remembered” and spontaneously processed in discursive memory, so that it could then be thus retrieved? What would Kant or McDowell say about that? How would it affect the theory of apperceptive unity—and McDowell’s Woodbridge argument? We very rarely raise such questions, and philosophers have no particular expertise in the matter. But you begin to see the relevance of “perceptual concepts” and the deep vulnerability of both Kant’s and McDowell’s accounts of apperceptive unity.

Obliquely about Realism  175 It’s certainly not clear how the nondiscursive and the discursive are linked here; but the example raises possibilities of an empirical nature that, for one thing, Kant would suppose were transcendentally qualified rather than being merely empirical; and, for a second, such possibilities might easily invalidate whatever Kant (or McDowell) supposed was transcendentally necessary or impossible.10 At the very least, the contemporary reception of Kant’s original argument cannot fail to come to terms with the kind of possibility I’ve just mentioned. How could McDowell’s treatment of perceptual judgment possibly make sense solely or primarily in transcendental terms? Even now, the theory of mind is an extraordinarily primitive affair. That alone suggests the improbability of posing the question of empirical realism in terms of the kind of detail that Kant and McDowell favor. Their entire strategy may well be the wrong way to go. Neither one addresses the worry.

II Here, now, is an instructive passage from one of McDowell’s papers (not among the Woodbridge Lectures), that leads us directly to the questions I’ve been approaching: This paper [McDowell advises, opening “One Strand in the Private Language Argument” piece] belongs in a general investigation of dualism of conceptual scheme and pre-conceptual given: that is, of the philosophical temptation to suppose that the conceptual structures that figure in experience (to put it neutrally) are the result of our imposing conceptual form on something received in pre-conceptual shape—intuitions, in a roughly Kantian sense. It is becoming a familiar suggestion in modern philosophy that this dualism is a mistake. Wilfrid Sellars has long opposed “The Myth of the Given”; and the dualism has more recently been attacked by Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty.11 McDowell stretches this seemingly irenic picture to accommodate the suggestion that Wittgenstein, in his attack on the “private language argument” (in Philosophical Investigations) may be read as adding a further important instance of the “un-Kantian” theme (just broached) by construing the wouldbe champions of the “private language argument” as having invoked the same “scheme-content” disjunction Davidson is thought to have defeated in our own time. “What is pre-conceptually given [McDowell adds] has to be outside the space of reasons, since it is not in conceptual shape and therefore not capable of standing in rational relations with anything.”12 Mark this an essential premise of McDowell’s “Kantian” argument directed against Sellars— and, I suggest—against any admission of “animal” intelligence that cannot claim the use of discursive concepts. How does McDowell know that the problem of the “pre-discursively” given of Kant’s account is at all like the “scheme-content” dualism Davidson attacks? I don’t think they’re similar at

176  Joseph Margolis all; and I don’t think either puzzle is perspicuously formulated. The “space of reasons” is itself a quarrelsome matter. Here, it needs to be said, McDowell may have been too hasty in conflating the treatment of perception and perceptual judgment. There are “perceptual” processes featured in animal studies—in J. J. Gibson’s account of the rabbit, for instance13—which apparently proceed in two notably distinct ways: in one, the usual sensory stimulus is tracked through the sense organs and yields (at a relatively slow pace) perceptual cognition in the standard way; in the other, the would-be stimulus innervates an alternative fast channel (bypassing the sensory route) through which the seemingly equivalent information is processed without sensory awareness. The rabbit, let us say, races for cover when it “sees”—the term is equivocal of course—the silhouette of an approaching hawk (by either channel). Where it responds because it actually sees the hawk, we tend to speak of “perceptual cognition” (though nondiscursive); in the second scenario, we might better speak of “sensory information,” where the relevant events occur too quickly to speak of perceptual or sensory awareness. In either case, we must posit (however loosely we characterize what’s happened) suitably pertinent “structures” that, not unreasonably, we treat (when “discerned”) as “concepts”: “perceptual concepts,” in the first instance (where we regard the event as one of perceptual cognition); “informational concepts” at best (in the second case) as a plausible verbal courtesy), in order to accommodate the “objective” status of the perception and information in question. As far as I know, McDowell says nothing about such possibilities; neither does Kant: the one in post-Darwinian time; the other, perhaps too early a figure to grasp its full significance.14 In accord with Darwinian and postDarwinian reflections, however, a small number of concessions begin to appear well-nigh irresistible—though they are not compatible with Kant’s or McDowell’s claims. For one thing, many animal species are obviously intelligent and able to make effective use of what they learn from their speciesspecific forms of perceptual cognition and experiential understanding, as in inference, judgment, planning, memory, cooperation, and the instruction of offspring, in spite of the fact that neonates (perceptually gifted animals, let us say) lack a mastery of language. Secondly, the human infant is obviously capable of mastering language, any natural language, from a languageless vantage; and efforts to train bonobos and chimpanzees in the use of language show some incipient gains (admittedly disputed) but sufficient to confirm some form of experience- and perception-based intelligence. Thirdly, the infant’s feat confirms as well that its incipient mastery of language undoubtedly depends on its use of perceptual concepts and its prelinguistic mental powers. Fourthly, in accord with the Darwinian continuum, the artifactuality of language and the cultural complexity of acquiring a first language, it’s well-nigh impossible to deny that the “structures” of discursive concepts (usually expressed or identified verbally) must be quite similar to salient

Obliquely about Realism  177 perceptual concepts at the level of linguistic incipience; so that perceptually descriptive words (or concepts) probably make use of, absorb, even cannibalize perceptual concepts. Hence, to adopt any argument of this general sort is, effectively, to commit to the “existence” of perceptual concepts as an adequate ground for intelligent life (including the life of the various languageless species of early Homo). But then, when (in both the Woodbridge and Locke Lectures) he champions the ubiquitous presence (so-called spontaneity, in Kant’s idiom) of discursive concepts among all instances of sensory cognition, McDowell neglects to mention that sensory perception itself is, normally, already conceptually freighted. (It seems accurate to say that McDowell believes that there are no nondiscursive concepts.) Consider the following possibility: if an event of sensory perception might obtain without our being aware of the episode, and if such data might be stored in memory nondiscursively, and yet, on occasion, discursively retrieved (say, subliminally), there might well be no need to insist on the ubiquity of the “spontaneous” activation of discursive concepts accompanying the “receptive” onset of sensory impressions (in Kant’s and McDowell’s sense)—in order to escape the supposed threat of “scheme-content” (or “scheme-given”) dualism. There may be many ways in which the “spontaneity” of discursive concepts and the “receptivity” of sensibility may be satisfactorily reconciled—even if we agree to speak in Kant’s terms—so that the full play of enlanguaged thought need not be compromised even when we oppose Kant’s variant of the general apperceptive formula. Kant’s entire transcendental conjecture may be off the mark. How would Kant or McDowell know? Kant’s doctrine is simply a deus ex machina.15 Kant’s conjectures about mind and cognition are much too contrived to support any seriously apriorist necessities. The question remains unanswered: What is it that McDowell could possibly salvage from Kant that contributes transcendentally to the defense of realism (whether Kantian or not)? We have only to read McDowell’s (equivocal) phrasing—the “pre-conceptual given”—signifying either what (say), in sensory episodes below the level of cognizable experience, is meant to be truly non-conceptual (whatever we may make of that), or, more pertinently (in light of Darwin’s discoveries, though still misleadingly), as with languageless animals and the human infant, signifying what “merely” collects what belongs to the work of “perceptual” and “experiential concepts” prejudicially labeled “pre-conceptual”: meaning by that, perhaps, no more than to challenge the existence of “nondiscursive” concepts. Here, McDowell has (somehow) managed to determine the fate of a sizable number of empirical questions transcendentally. I don’t deny that the private-language argument (which Wittgenstein memorably reviews) is a deep mistake; but I do deny that it must take the form of one or another version of the “dualism of conceptual scheme and pre-conceptual given.” I also don’t deny that if Davidson were correct in charging Thomas Kuhn’s perfectly straightforward conjecture about

178  Joseph Margolis “paradigm shifts” as itself a version of “scheme-content” dualism, then McDowell would indeed have enlarged our sense of the scope of his own complaint. But Davidson’s charge is due to a profoundly mistaken reading of Kuhn (and the general pattern of linguistic meaning) and does no service to our understanding of the alleged dualism. (There are, I concede, verbal infelicities on both sides of the question, but paradigm shifts are here to stay.) Furthermore, I don’t deny that familiar versions of the “sense-datum” theory may be reasonably construed as instances of the offending dualism (where sense-data are thought to have no conceptual structure at all); but since the theory (in its best-known form) treats sense-data as cognizable (and even foundational), it may be too confused a doctrine to be of any serious use—for instance in clarifying the “Myth of the Given.”16 The fact remains that, when Kant and McDowell speak of “non-conceptual content,” they risk venturing a version of the same (incoherent) “schemecontent” dualism they oppose, just where they broach (or need to broach) the puzzle of empirical realism. That may already entail some form of “transcendental realism,” which of course the first Critique was designed to disallow. It must be clear by now that any posit of the “receptivity” (the “passivity”) of “non-conceptual content” is, first of all, a perfectly idle conjecture: because any effort to confirm the argument that non-conceptual “sensibility” must be passively received if realism is to be explained in terms of the mind’s own powers (in effect, the burden of Hegel’s objection to the entire Kantian undertaking) is already a violation of Kant’s ban on treating the Ding-an-sich epistemologically. It’s the passivity thesis (in effect, the relevance of the causal question) that the severe reading of transcendental apperception is meant to secure—in both Kant’s transcendental idealism and McDowell’s naturalized transcendentalism.17 On the one hand, it’s the passivity thesis that, relative to the structure of our minds, affirms the non-distortion or reliability of our sensory powers and thus provides a sort of neutrality for our initial sensory data, however they may be specialized by the generic features of our species’ mode of sensibility; and, on the other hand, it’s the supposedly invariant structure of our transcendentally discursive categories that apperceptively collects our sensory intakes propositionally, so that they are best suited for a search for the universal laws of nature. It looks very much as if Davidson believes (mistakenly) that Kuhn subscribes to a version of “scheme-content” disjunction in pursuing valid descriptions and explanations in empirical physics; it also looks as if McDowell endorses (perhaps inconsistently) Kant’s transcendental use of a version of the “scheme-content” disjunction, in accounting, philosophically, for the apperceptive realism of Kant’s theory of judgment. (But then, McDowell’s “quietism” is no more than arbitrary.) McDowell’s entire effort to recuperate Kant’s apperceptive thesis begins to look hopeless once we realize that the intended role of “non-conceptual content” already entails Kant’s would-be solution to the realist question— ineluctably addressed to the Ding-an-sich, regardless of anyone’s verdict as

Obliquely about Realism  179 to whether it succeeds or not. McDowell has simply allowed himself to be enlisted in the defense of a lost cause. Kant was unable to vouchsafe our cognitive access to the world—or to make the “use” of the Ding-an-sich convincing. There’s the clue to the advantage of addressing the realism issue through the conjectured (but uncontrived) “perceptual concepts” of languageless animals, the significance of the infant’s feat, and the import of the Darwinian continuum that leads us, more promisingly, in the direction of the pragmatist alternative. Consider, only that Kant’s “receptivity” (or “passivity”) thesis appears to be transcendentally innocent, precisely because it does not (as a separate “source” of perceptual cognition) play any (“official”) conceptual role in the formation of our perceptions; and yet, on an alternative theory (Aristotle’s or Gibson’s, say) an intelligent animal’s ability to discern and make practical use of the perceived structures of things in the world already counts as implicating the use of perceptual concepts! If, then, you consider the defense of Kant’s view of “empirical realism,” how can one escape admitting that the contribution of “passivity” is already tantamount to the admission of perceptual concepts! The “scheme-content” disjunction is an irrelevant distraction as far as empirical realism is concerned. Notice that with the bare acknowledgment of non-linguistic perceptual concepts (which appear in a variety of cognitive contexts we almost never think about, involving the continuum of languageless animals, human infants, and linguistically apt persons), the abstract worry regarding “scheme-content” dualism simply vanishes in Kant and McDowell for purely verbal reasons that are barely in touch with the actualities of perceptual knowledge. On my reading, both Kant and McDowell, drawing on the logic of the “space of reasons,” invent reasons of a factitious threat and then resolve the threat in a compensatingly ingenious (ad hoc) way. Of course, it won’t do: more complex worries are bound to take its place. Imagine that one may not always be able to tell the difference between a remembered perception and a merely imputed memory of a perception, or between either of these and an interpretation of a would-be perception seemingly retrieved from memory—though never actually remembered because never consciously perceived—hence perceptually stored as a memory in a discursively retrievable way and then retrieved by a strenuous (but mistaken) effort at apparently remembering the event. Such complications cannot be reliably parsed by either Kant or McDowell. Probably, the collection of perceptual knowledge does not proceed by any rule of the Kantian kind. The “body of knowledge” is itself a societal gamble or construction answering to our shifting interests and experience, without benefit of determinate rules but with endlessly many conjectures of what such rules might be like. I’m inclined to think that (in something like a Rousseau-esque sense of la volonté générale) a viable society discounts the seeming validity of the ephemera of individuated sensory impressions and relies instead, provisionally, on the continually revised (very probably diverse) interpretations of the general drift of experience itself. Determinate perceptual judgment tends,

180  Joseph Margolis therefore, to occur among already partially systematized and interpreted perceptual events (more or less along lines common, say, to the somewhat different phenomenologies proposed by Hegel and Peirce)—hence, contrary to the seemingly static determinacies Kant and McDowell insist on. You cannot fail to see that if we abandon the Kantian a priori, there will no longer be a reason to hew closely to Kant’s account of perception or apperception or perceptual judgment: this is indeed an essential, well-nigh unavoidable consequence of the lesson of the history of physics surpassing Newton’s achievement.18 McDowell’s rationalism cannot but appear regressive. I cannot see the reason for McDowell’s confidence, for instance, regarding the following pair of transcendental claims, once we admit perceptual concepts as distinct from discursive concepts, once we admit that the human infant’s learning discursive concepts probably relies on native perceptual concepts that may themselves be incorporated (in some way) in discursive concepts that the infant learns, once we become aware that an intelligent animal’s use of perceptual concepts may reasonably be assigned some realist import, and once we acknowledge that we ourselves are, obviously, profoundly ignorant of the actual ways the mind works, cognitionally whether in thought, in memory, in perception, or in the division of cognitive labor. Here, now, are McDowell’s firmest claims about the transcendental conditions of perception: The [passively received, non-conceptual] impressions on our senses. . . are [always] already equipped with [discursive] conceptual content. and We can effect [the] deletion of the outer [conceptual] boundary [that “encloses” our cognizable world] without falling into idealism without slighting the independence of reality.19 As far as I can see, these cautionary convictions are purely verbal, completely internal to the Kantian apparatus McDowell adopts. The insistence on a discursive boundary enclosing all that we may cognize has very little to do with any detailed knowledge of how Kantian “spontaneity” and “receptivity” cofunction and approach the actual workings of cognitively successful minds. On my reckoning, that the realism argument relies (let us, say, provisionally but not epistemologically) on the survival of animal species is far more plausible—pragmatically—than Kant’s or McDowell’s contrivance. It’s the inherent circularity of specifically epistemological questions that must be persuasively confronted. (There, too, however, the solution does not seem too difficult, if we’re prepared to abandon Kant’s exemplary account.) It’s entirely possible (in fact, it’s more than plausible) to reject “scheme-content” (or “scheme-given”) dualism and, at the same time, conjecture that the human infant that learns its home language without difficulty must have

Obliquely about Realism  181 had the use of “perceptual concepts” in acquiring “discursive concepts”— or (perhaps) must conjecture that there is indeed a functional resemblance between the two sorts of concept (in effect, Aristotle’s guess in the De Anima). I don’t deny that we cannot avoid modeling nondiscursive concepts discursively; but I don’t see why that fact should defeat the conjecture that languageless animals and prelinguistic infants are capable of something distinctly akin to perceptual judgment, inference, propositional memory, planning and the like. Here, I think of watching the chance encounter of two dogs circling one another at a distance and “thinking” that each is “looking for” a clue as to the other dog’s likely hostility or friendliness. We habitually treat such situations as proto-inferential, though we have no doubt that the communicative and logical abilities of intelligent dogs cannot be characterized as enlanguaged. What exactly is it that validates Kant’s notion of apperceptive unity that has persuaded McDowell so compellingly? Might it have been Davidson’s attack on the “scheme-content” disjunction? But if that’s all there’s to it, the admission (as in the dog example) that it’s entirely reasonable to concede perceptual concepts obviates the threat of dualism and postpones the need for Kant’s theory of apperceptive unity in a single stroke. I shall come in a moment to two very simple premises—already partly revealed, though still obscure—that I’ve been drawing courage from, that might vouchsafe a form of realism “adequate for all our needs”— adequate, that is, for pragmatists (possibly not for Kantians)—who foreswear all heroic, all disputatious and paradoxical assumptions and every form of transcendental necessity and cognitive privilege. I’m content to adopt, at least for purposes of discussion, McDowell’s own notion of realism— formulated in the Introduction to Mind and World, although the term “realism” does not appear in it, or for that matter anywhere else in the body of the argument: To make sense of the idea of a mental state’s or episode’s being directed towards the world, [McDowell affirms] in the way in which, say, a belief or judgment is, we need to put the state or episode in a normative context. A belief or judgment whose content (as we say) is that things are thus and so—must be a posture or stance that is correctly or incorrectly adopted according to whether or not things are indeed thus and so. . . . This relation between mind and world is normative, then, in this sense: thinking that aims at judgment, or at the fixation of belief, is answerable to the world—to how things are—for whether or not it is correctly executed.20 But what, non-vacuously, does it mean to answer “correctly”? McDowell does not say. I draw your attention to the fact that McDowell makes an unmarked allusion to both Kant’s and Peirce’s treatment of the realism question. I shall,

182  Joseph Margolis soon, cite some further lines of McDowell’s that explicitly employ the term “reality” in the realist sense. But the passage I’ve just cited is entirely, surely no more than, verbal—in the sense that it yields no more than an abstract hint of the standard account but does not say whether it’s operative in any distinctly validative sense. I think McDowell’s sort of assurance will strike any reader, now, as utterly inadequate and unconvincing; his appeal to normativity (though normative distinctions can always be invoked) is simply unresponsive. McDowell’s wording insinuates that Kant was on the right track regarding the capture of empirical realism; but he nowhere shows us how to recover the argument or how “naturalizing” Kant’s transcendental maneuver might do the trick. Think, only, that the validation of what to regard as the “correct. . . posture or stance” as to whether “things are indeed thus and so” calls for a constructive proposal, not a factual discovery. Note, here, that McDowell, very like Kant, nowhere legitimates the sense in which, in “answer[ing] to the world,” we could ever show that we were answering “correctly”! Such worries arise only dependently, once we put indubitability and privilege and apodicticity aside. If you grant the point, you cannot fail to see that Kant has completely mischaracterized what may be salvaged from the apriorist strategies of the first Critique. A fortiori, McDowell’s Kantian maneuver (in both the Locke and Woodbridge Lectures), naturalized or not, simply begs the same question. The conclusion I draw is a double one: first, that there can be no disjunctive difference between “answering to the world” and “answering to one another”;21 and, for a second, the paradoxes of First Philosophy oblige us to treat the provision of a legitimate epistemology as no more than a conditionally dependent conjecture, which, if reasonable at all, must be one of many licit resolutions (very likely at odds with one another).

III My own proposal has it that it’s a mistake to think that realism is, finally, a specifically epistemological question. Once we turn from Kant to Darwin, it becomes clear that the general posit of realism is more a matter of spontaneous existential energy and expression than of confirmable belief: it’s the expression of animal vitality itself, conatus, tacitly unquestioned but neither affirmed nor confirmed. I deem that constraint—the import of life itself—to be naively misjudged by Descartes in the Cogito—as well as in Kant’s Ich denke; hence, also, in McDowell’s borrowed idiom. It can’t be initially epistemological, if, inherently, epistemological reflection must be question begging if it can’t be apodictic. But then it’s the existential “thrust” of animal life—hardly cognitive certainty—that makes the epistemological question manageable or possible at all, exclusively, among human persons. Because, at least from pragmatism’s vantage, whatever answers (under that condition) to the “rule” or “logic” of the “pragmatic maxim” is the constructed or consensual sense of what is actual or real or exists.22 As persons,

Obliquely about Realism  183 we find ourselves “always already” in the middle of life, existentially committed to the evidentiary practices of our home society, adherence to which we may suppose accounts for our actual survival. To borrow Wittgenstein’s immensely instructive observation: we draw our first conceptions of the evidentiary support for realism from our living in accord with the ordinary practices of our Lebensform. Derivatively, then, realism becomes a subordinate (“second-best”) epistemological concern—benignly so—without the encumbrance of an infinite regress. We bypass the aporia merely by mastering language in the same interval in which we learn to recognize the epistemological question. The improvement of our conception of truth and evidence is, then, entirely internal to our assessment of practices already in place. Hence, also, the realist standing of our own existence, of the cognitive accessibility of the world, of the content of our minds and thought, of the logic of confirmation is, at best, a dependent, philosophically minor benefit of the public division of labor that presents no insuperable paradox. Skepticism in the large never arises, and doubts about particular conjectures are never foundational. My first premise (the first of two promised—answering McDowell) affirms that, if McDowell’s formulation is a fair definition of realism, there can be no argument by which any would-be realist practice can be proved or demonstrated to have “correctly” met whatever are its proper conditions. Every such demonstration will prove to be circular or regressive or vacuous or similarly unsatisfactory. No conception of realism can, or need, provide criteria of application by which realist claims admitted to be “answerable to the world” (in McDowell’s phrasing) can be shown to have answered the world “correctly” (as McDowell also insists). The good news is that a reasonable defense of realism need not (indeed could not) depend on the satisfaction of conditions impossible to meet or meet discernibly. For example, it’s reasonable, post-Darwin, to treat animal perception as, functionally, broadly realist, within a particular species’ Umwelt, judged by the “evidence” of “normal” behavioral responses to perceptual stimuli—precisely because animals lack the misleading and conflicting tendencies of discursive thought. But then, “perceptual concepts” functioning among the perceptual cognitions of discursively apt humans (in ways evolutionarily akin to animal practices) may be reasonably said to qualify our sense of realism within societies of persons. My second premise is more complex—hardly obvious, often puzzling, much more potent and more far-reaching than my first. It affirms that the reliably realist treatment of particular “judgments and beliefs” (to speak once again with McDowell) presupposes and depends on an existential rather than a straightforwardly epistemological defense of realism—on the strength of which a conditional epistemological provision of would-be realist criteria may be applied to particular judgments and beliefs—a practice that may be debated, decided, and even reasonably improved along realist lines.

184  Joseph Margolis It is my contention that, although realism is a doctrine concerned with the way the world is, there is no straightforwardly reliable way to state the way “the world is.” Ultimately, we consult our “animal intuitions” about ourselves, our interests, our energies, and the saliencies of human life itself, in fashioning an “argument” to the effect that we deem ourselves to be justified in our realist commitment! The executive argument is never epistemologically decided: whatever is conditionally affirmed in its name (among our judgments and beliefs) displays the animal convictions that prevail. In that sense, philosophically, realism dwindles to no more than a minor issue. I return to the question at the close of this account. But you may already see that the remarkable detail of Kant’s transcendentalism is likely to be very largely beside the point. There can be no privileged vantage in examining the “conditions of possibility” of our cognition of the world, once we concede the artifactuality of enlanguaged (or discursive) concepts. You have only to think that, in both Kant’s and McDowell’s recuperative efforts, the would-be ultimate “conceptual scheme” of cognition is “given or pre-given” (in some sense) as the necessity of discursive order at the very core of what is given cognitionally— as, in very different ways, is more or less affirmed by both Davidson and Rorty, who, for the moment, McDowell allows himself to be guided by. Faute de mieux, epistemology is a circular affair, though not for that reason impossible to engage profitably. It’s only that it cannot (in the evolutionary setting) be tested by way of any formulation that eschews one or another (putatively benign, unprivileged) cognizable “given.” What would McDowell say about that? The “given,” I take it, is always a “theoretical” posit (wherever cognitionally freighted), as indeed it is in Kant and Sellars. The only question that remains requires that we outflank the intolerable regress without recourse to cognitive privilege of any kind. The answer that I provide I cast in terms of Wittgenstein’s Lebensform or pragmatist analogies. McDowell’s Woodbridge Lectures—most pointedly, the second lecture— are meant, in good part, to bring Sellars “back” to a sort of Kantian orthodoxy, which McDowell (seemingly by a maneuver somewhat to the right of Kant) believes himself to have effectively crafted, in a gloss on the first Critique, that he pits against an exploratory conjecture of Sellars’s and that characterizes “spontaneity” (the spontaneity of thinking; the use of discursive reason, in Kant’s sense) as always and already operative in the least incipience of sensuous “receptivity”: meant to demonstrate that Kant, if read in Sellars’s way, may himself appear to be an advocate of the very “scheme-content” disjunction Davidson attacks—or would have attacked, if Sellars’s innovation were allowed to define Kant’s view. (All of this is of doubtful importance.) The concept of “concept” is, largely, redundantly invoked in speaking of knowledge, intelligence, learning, understanding and the like, whether we speak of linguistically apt persons or of languageless animals. There is no malign dualism here. Concepts are never—directly—“cognitively

Obliquely about Realism  185 encountered,” apart from their being implicated in attributions of intelligence. Spontaneity and passivity are, of course, “transcendental” distinctions in Kant’s account. But are they “given” in any evidentiary way? I don’t believe McDowell answers here. I find it entirely fair to say that Sellars’s conjecture nowhere pretends that his reading of Kant (the one McDowell opposes) is textually valid, hands down. Sellars treats it as independently plausible; McDowell’s reliance on textual considerations is itself problematic—ultimately inhospitable to the options suggested by Sellars’s thought-experiment. In fact, McDowell’s resolution requires that ubiquitous or spontaneous “discursivity” must obtain (for philosophical rather than merely textual reasons) in all bona fide instances of perceptual cognition. But that cannot be shown to be true! (McDowell ultimately gives ground here—not negligibly—as in his “Avoiding the Myth of the Given,” but only far enough to ensure the seeming tenability of his textual fidelity to Kant’s rationalism.) “Discursivity,” I believe, is Henry Allison’s term, the key to Allison’s second go at a defense of Kant’s transcendental idealism (by which to save empirical realism), which supports (so Allison argues) the “inseparability of Kant’s transcendental idealism from virtually every facet of the [first] Critique.”23 But that, precisely, is what defeats the Critical proposal in the first place. To this extent, McDowell may count on Allison’s support in opposing the dualism he takes Davidson to have rightly challenged—perhaps even defeated. Accordingly, he reads Kant’s account of the ubiquity of discursive concepts as effectively blocking the “scheme-content” disjunction Sellars’s and Kuhn’s maneuvers threaten to revive. But is McDowell’s or Kant’s argument already hostage to a form of “transcendental realism”? My own surmise has it that Sellars could not rightly ignore the postDarwinian question: namely, how does the intelligence of languageless animals bear on our understanding of the intelligence of enlanguaged persons? Answer: there must be a continuum linking perceptual and discursive concepts that facilitates the human infant’s mastery of language. If so, then, for one thing, the dualism that worries McDowell will already have been blocked in languageless perception (though not perspiciously, for Kant’s account); for another, it will, nevertheless, be blocked in a way that bears directly on the resolution of the realism question; and, for a third, it will be blocked in a way that does not require any a priori lien on our speculations regarding how discursive thought affects our epistemology. The entire Kantian structure will simply risk collapse when read in post-Darwinian terms; and McDowell’s transcendentalism will be seen to be both futile and regressive. The Darwinian and post-Darwinian discoveries will be deemed to provide the shortest geodesic between Kantian and pragmatist intuitions about mind and knowledge. They will advance instrumental proposals—not matters of fact of any kind. The answer to Davidson’s charge may be given in a sentence or two: Davidson reads Kuhn’s notion of a “paradigm shift” as if Kuhn conjectured

186  Joseph Margolis that, wherever a paradigm shift occurs, the scientist engaged will find himself obliged to posit a suitably “new” language (an entirely new language), so that different “conceptual schemes” (reflecting the “shift”) may conform, however incoherently, to the rule, “Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts as real in one system may not in another.”24 This is effectively to charge Kuhn with advancing a linguistic thesis better said to have been fatally championed by the field linguist Benjamin Whorf. Kuhn clearly means to affirm—he has Galileo specifically in mind, Galileo: who knew both Aristotle’s natural philosophy and the new physics of the late Middle Ages—that a knowledgeable scientist would be able to compare statements within different conceptual schemes. Davidson is seriously mistaken here. There’s nothing puzzling about the widely acknowledged fact that what is deemed real or actual in one conceptual scheme may be denied in another. (Think of Priestley and Lavoisier.) To dismiss Kuhn’s important challenge (in Davidson’s terms) is to misunderstand completely the complexity of the realism issue. (A version of the same problem is already lightly visited in Ernst Cassirer’s attempt to reconcile Kant’s vision with the history of postNewtonian science.)25 McDowell advances his argument under cover of naturalizing the a priori argument laid down in Kant’s first Critique—possibly to replace P. F. Strawson’s blunter philosophical surgery. You cannot fail to see that Kant’s “two sources of cognition”—“intuition” and “thought”—have been construed as supporting a “disjunction” (apparently by Sellars) that Kant could never have intended, since, precisely, it’s the indissoluble “unity” of the two sources (“given” in some undisputed way) that Kant views as yielding empirical knowledge. Nevertheless, the would-be disjunction is not entirely useless, since it draws attention to Kant’s own questionable maneuvers in the service of a would-be realism, as well as to the fact that the union of discursive thought and sensory intuition may be “experientially” conjectured to be possible in many different (as yet unknown) ways. That is: always apart from the fact that neither Kant nor McDowell is tempted to consider that, as with the mastery of language, perceptual concepts may play an important role in explaining human intelligence, the resolution of the realism puzzle, and the appraisal of Kant’s theory of apperceptive unity. Here I must add: McDowell compliments Rorty for plausibly completing Wittgenstein’s incipiently Kantian-like account of “ ‘inner’ experience” (pains, tickles) to match what McDowell himself offers regarding “ ‘outer’ experience”—in effect, the strenuous claims of the second Woodbridge lecture.26 But he also chides Rorty: Rorty [he says] seems to me. . . to spoil the point somewhat by putting it in unnecessarily provocative surroundings. No useful purpose is served by crediting the pre-linguistic infant with knowing that it has a pain, rather than simply with feeling a pain.27

Obliquely about Realism  187 I’ve been arguing, of course, that McDowell fails to make his case. The entire question of challenging Sellars’s conjecture—-hence, also, the “useful purpose” of continuing to rely on Kant’s account of perceptual knowledge, or indeed the revision of Kant’s account (if that is what it is) in Sellars’s or McDowell’s emendations—remains inadequately addressed. (What is at stake are the supposed proprieties of philosophical argument itself: Rorty’s would-be lesson for our age.) All this seems to go seriously awry in a number of neglected ways. For one thing, McDowell cannot possibly know that the prelinguistic infant, just as it is beginning to acquire the language of its home society, just where it is obviously capable of learning and mastering a natural language—beginning with no more than unlanguaged perceptual and related powers—could never come to know (at some point before functioning as a distinctly apt enlanguaged person) that it is indeed experiencing pain (or, learning a routine of a communicative game-like sort). I freely concede—in accord with Wittgenstein’s careful sketch at the start of Investigations—that children begin to learn a language without yet understanding the language they acquire. But that is the issue! I cannot see how one can deny that, in such a process, a child (a clever animal) may come to know (in a fair sense admittedly difficult to formulate, except anthropocentrically) many things prelinguistically, essential to mastering language itself. That is where the continuum of the animal and the human comes into play. The infant gradually comes to know—initially, much in the same way (we may conjecture) a trained dog comes to know that it is expected to perform the tricks it learns—to speak (to perform its tricks) within some extended interval that spans perceptual (but unlanguaged) and enlanguaged (or linguistic) knowledge. The point is, there is no assured privilege in any of these beginnings—but our discursive powers must begin somewhere. McDowell’s thesis in the second Woodbridge lecture is clearly bent on demonstrating that Sellars’s reading of Kant’s account of the “sheer receptivity” of the sensory manifold “is not Kantian at all.” Sellars, he says, “is wrong about that” and wrong about the concession’s being “required for a satisfactory execution of Kant’s [own] project [in the first Critique].”28 It is perhaps a pardonable quibble on my part to suggest that Sellars is entirely aware that the speculation he offers Kant might not agree with Kant’s own conviction: Sellars believes it deserves an inning in any case, and has its own advantages to offer—a matter McDowell is unwilling to concede (for more than textual reasons). The odd fact is that McDowell himself sidles up to the question in the earlier Locke Lectures collected in Mind and World.29 Lecture II anticipates the main lines of the second Woodbridge lecture; the vocabulary ultimately derives from Kant’s first Critique, but McDowell brings it to bear primarily on conjectures offered by Davidson, Wittgenstein, and Sellars: This talk of impingements on our senses [he affirms] is not an invitation to suppose that the whole dynamic system [of the perceived world], the

188  Joseph Margolis medium within which we think, is held in place by extra-conceptual links to something outside. . . . We find ourselves always already engaging with the world in conceptual activity within such a dynamic system. Any understanding of this condition that it makes sense to hope for must be within the system. It cannot be a matter of picturing the system’s adjustments to the world from sideways on, that is, with the system circumscribed within a boundary, and the world outside it. That is exactly the shape our picture must not take.30 But is McDowell arguing that the boundary rule is needed in every Kantian effort, or is he arguing that the same rule is transcendentally necessary in any coherent account of human cognition? If it’s the second, (as it seems to be), then the only argument McDowell develops relies on the treatment of “scheme-content” dualism, the relevance of which seems to depend on failing to address the viability of perceptual concepts. Nevertheless, that “the impressions of our senses . . . are already equipped with conceptual content” (read here: discursive content) is not enough to recuperate Kant: he needs (it may be argued) the passivity thesis in order to infer the causally “external” function of the Ding-an-sich, in ensuring the possibility of a full-bodied empirical realism.31 The discursivity of our (apperceptively unified) impressions is not enough for Kant’s empirical realism, even though it defines the space “within which we [are said to] think.” McDowell must render his own realism robust enough for his own purpose. The inference from “outer” sense to the realism of the “external” world (say, in Peirce’s sense—already cited) cannot be “internal” to Kant’s “system,” at least as regards its causal role. Where do the conceptual categories come from that enable us to infer that our perceptual claims are pertinent in the realist way? I am myself prepared to abandon Kant’s solution. But what does McDowell intend in speaking of “impingements on our senses”? I’m persuaded that the human infant’s extraordinary feat (in acquiring and mastering a first language) pretty well confirms, empirically: (i) that if we admit linguistic concepts, we cannot fail to admit perceptual (or experiential) nondiscursive concepts; (ii) that the prelinguistic or nonlinguistic is likely to involve the “use” of perceptual concepts, without requiring, transcendentally (whether a priori or naturalistically), the use of discursive judgments—hence, the use of discursive concepts; (iii) that, given the human infant’s facility in learning a language, there is bound to be a considerable congruity (despite decisive differences) between perceptual and (even) ratiocinative concepts among humans and apes; and thus (iv) that, on Darwinian and post-Darwinian grounds, what holds true for the human infant is likely to apply as well (in a suitably graded, diversified, possibly diminished way) to the perceptual powers of animals closest to humans evolutionarily or in intelligence—which is, effectively, the import of Aristotle’s claim in De Anima. Since this account is meant to be no more than a sketch of some unanswered questions regarding McDowell’s “Kantian” treatment of the realism

Obliquely about Realism  189 issue, centered in the Woodbridge Lectures, let me close this harangue with a small coda. I’ve already drawn attention to McDowell’s essential premise: namely, that, in adopting Sellars’s well-known treatment of the “space of reasons,” McDowell is bound to hold that “What is pre-conceptually given has to be outside the space of reasons.” Because, on McDowell’s reading of Kant—to be pre-conceptually given is to have “no rational relations with anything”—a fortiori, to have no cognitive relations with anything. “The space of reasons” is, of course, Sellars’s most commanding phrase (from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” §36)—the common posit, I daresay of McDowell’s Mind and World and the Woodbridge Lectures. But, unaccountably, McDowell nowhere reviews the affirmative case in favor of the “rationality” of prelinguistic animal life. McDowell chides Sellars for having violated his own (Kantian) constraint. Now, I regard my “Darwinian” reading of animal intelligence and cognition as suggesting a more than plausible approach to the deeper import of McDowell’s own premise, that is, with an eye to challenging—possibly, to defeating—McDowell’s “Kantian” reading of the discursivity condition. Humans alone are able to pose the realism puzzle. I concede the point. But I don’t see how that shows that the discursivity thesis (the point of mentioning the “space of reasons”) bears directly on the validity of our theory of perceptual realism! There’s a very large premise that’s missing in Kant’s and McDowell’s arguments. Nevertheless, for the sake of getting clearer about the realism issue, we must bring the “space of reasons” closer to the function of the “scheme-content” consideration than either McDowell or Kant manages to do. It’s my contention that the line I’ve cited from Wittgenstein’s discussion of “following a rule” may indeed provide the elusive key to the final resolution needed. Because, as I read Wittgenstein—although, to be sure, rules are ineluctably discursive, even though (as with Sellars and Wittgenstein) they may be extracted from nonverbal practices—when Wittgenstein says, “I obey the rule blindly,” two important (Darwinian) lessons present themselves to me at once: one, that intelligence and cognition cannot convincingly be restricted to discursively apt beings alone (human persons); the other, that Wittgenstein’s inference (reading the “following-a-rule” passage in the context of the entire Investigations) effectively concedes that the realism question can be answered only within the amplitude of our “form of life.” If he had been familiar with Sellars’s use of the “space of reasons” idiom, Wittgenstein would not have regarded mere “placement” within the space of reasons (a verbal matter) as conferring realist standing on (say) perceptual judgments thus subtended. No, Wittgenstein would have meant something closer to the sense of what he offers in that other (linked) remark, that yields a deeper meaning to the term “blindly”: namely, If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments.32

190  Joseph Margolis Not in any particular judgment, mind you, but in judgments—in some stable and reassuring core of judgment—that yields an effective (collective or consensual) sense of the realist standing of what we confidently affirm, as persons. In short, the space of reasons itself originally acquires realist and normative import when it functions adequately, within our enabling Lebensform, so as to accommodate (for example) Wittgenstein’s confession, “I obey blindly,” in its dual existential and dependently epistemological sense, that is, as expressing our form of life. As a result, the realism puzzle dwindles into a small maneuver. We must do two things: first, escape the endless petitio of the regress problem, which blocks the transcendentalist’s privilege and defeats all theories of reason as a self-validating cognitive faculty (Cartesian, Kantian, Husserlian, Fregean, or whatnot); and then, address all epistemological questions that standardly arise regarding particular “judgments and beliefs” about the world and about ourselves in the world. This seems easy enough. Except that the tasks must be completed in the right order logically. As I’ve explained, I call the first task “existential” rather than “epistemological” and the second, “epistemological” but dependently informed by the existential. I mean, by that, that there is no epistemological procedure by which to demonstrate that what we claim to be the “correct” operative definition of realism, objective truth, knowledge or the like is indeed “correctly” (McDowell’s term) so defined. That is the regress trap. We complete the first task by rejecting the possibility of failure! But then, the epistemological question becomes answerable, conditionally, on the strength of any “existential” commitment. Epistemic revisions remain artifactual, of course. This is, in fact, the Darwinian variant of the “pragmatic maxim.” The simplest, most natural way to meet the existential question is to acknowledge the pertinent sittlich practices and norms that prevail in our Lebensform and that define, according to our lights, “the way the world is.” Precision is not the issue here. On the contrary, we cannot fail to answer “correctly,” if we answer under the pledge of an unrestricted openness to fallibilist corrections. You see at once, therefore, how this part of the answer places “the space of reasons” itself within the larger fluxive space of our form of life—at one stroke—thereby completing McDowell’s definition of realism, defeating its regressive transcendental rationalism, and demonstrating both how and why pragmatism succeeds where Kantianism fails. We begin, therefore, with sittlich regularities, always already in place in our lebensformlich world and we continually adjust our criteria of cognitive success by whatever measures prove productive by our lights. You will have noticed that the instruction is, effectively, a preferred response to the verbal constraints of McDowell’s definition of realism. We cannot make sense of failure wherever we have addressed the dual tasks.33 I have one last remark to make. I say that the legitimation of realism is “existential” rather than “epistemological.” But, of course, I don’t mean by

Obliquely about Realism  191 that that realism is not an epistemological concern. It’s only that if it were, at once and essentially, an epistemological issue, it would be impossible to resolve. I’ve been suggesting that it is, in the first instance, a question that arises with the human being’s reflecting on its being both an animal and a person! The question arises because it is a person; the answer strikes me as satisfactory because it remains an animal even as it becomes a person. For instance, it grasps the significance of admitting that even languageless animals must, instinctively and intelligently, conform with “the way the world is.”

Notes 1 See Chomsky (2000); Berwick and Chomsky (2016). 2 For a fuller account of the themes mentioned, see Margolis (2016, chapters 1–2). The decisive issue, as I see it, is that the evolution of the human primate makes no sense if separated from its transformation into the human person. 3 In its final form, the Woodbridge Lectures comprises Part I of McDowell (2009, 3–65). I emphasize the import of McDowell’s phrasing, in the expression I coopt just above, from the first paragraph of the first Lecture (3), because that paragraph confirms that neither McDowell nor Sellars expects to be strictly committed to Kant’s theory (in the first Critique). Sellars was perfectly aware that, although, in his own conjectures, in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (in Sellars 1963, 127–196) and Science and Metaphysics (Sellars 1967, read as a sequel to the “Empiricism” paper), he respects Kant’s argument, he also departs from Kant’s position here and there, in order to test whether he’s found a better option than Kant’s (that might yet be regarded as a possible “Kantian variation”). McDowell chides Sellars on “textual” grounds, which suggests (to my mind—inaccurately, as it turns out) that McDowell’s own argument is primarily textual; but the drift of the Woodbridge Lectures (including McDowell’s second thoughts) also yields the contrary impression, namely, that McDowell takes Kant to be basically correct in his account of “perceptual experience.” (That is to say, the textual evidence shows that McDowell endorses Kant’s essential premise.) The two corrective papers also appear in McDowell (2009, 256–272 and 98–126, respectively). 4 See Pihlström (2003, chapters 1–2). 5 See Putnam (2004, 60–67), for a clear discussion of this option. See, also, the pragmatist tolerance of Feynman (1965). 6 Wittgenstein (1953, I, § 219). 7 Compare Kant (1998, A141, A133/B172), on “mother wit.” 8 Peirce (1934, 5.525). 9 See Kant (1998, A366–370); and Rescher (1992, 264). 10 See Kant (1998, B131–132), which does not rule in or out possibilities like the one I’ve sketched. Kant’s treatment is remarkably vacant here, but, of course, suggests the poverty (and presumption) of a transcendental theory of mind. 11 John McDowell, “One Strand in the Private Language Argument,” in McDowell (1998, 279–286, at 279–280). 12 Ibid., 280. 13 Gibson offers the compelling account of a rabbit’s flight response to a hawk’s aerial approach, too early to have been triggered by the rabbit’s actually perceiving the hawk’s approach! Gibson ascribes two “perceptual” systems to the rabbit: the “sensory” channel is too slow to meet the threat; the “informational” channel is much faster. But even the informational process suggests the pick-up

192  Joseph Margolis of “structures” functionally analogous to what arises in the process of explicit sensory perception. (Gibson, of course, favors an extremely spare account of the functioning of the senses and perception.) If we concede the usual picture of sensory consciousness—which is not Gibson’s—it becomes all but impossible to deny “perceptual concepts.” Gibson himself acknowledges the Aristotelian version of the argument, and the Gibsonian option shows the reasonableness of outflanking Kant’s treatment of the apperceptive issue, which puts McDowell’s account in serious jeopardy. See Gibson (1979). 14 I cannot forbear mentioning—though I have no space to pursue the matter here—that when McDowell speaks of humans as “animals,” he characteristically identifies them as “rational animals”: he means, by “rational,” linguistically apt or something akin, being capable (say) of applying “concepts” (I would say, applying “linguistic concepts” to signify that there must be “perceptual concepts” as well) to whatever may be regarded as “merely” sensorily “given” in experience or to whatever may be simply “experienced” (since, in recent years, McDowell has tended to use the term “experience” in a cognitively freighted way addressed exclusively to so-called rational animals). Thus, McDowell contrasts rational and languageless animals, the latter being incapable of “experience” (hence, not “rational” and not capable of using “concepts” at all). The trouble is, McDowell makes no effort to come to terms with the extraordinary fact that human infants—non-rational animals (on his own usage)—learn to acquire (with impressive rapidity and precision) any natural language from an initial vantage of lacking language altogether. All this may be kept separate from the independent issue of the intelligence, the capacity for learning from “experience,” and what can only be described as the species-relative “rationality” of dogs, cats, elephants, apes, dolphins, and the like. It’s not merely a question of (two) different kinds of knowledge; it’s a question of the significance of the evolutionary continuum of “animal” and “human” intelligence and the maturational continuity of infant and adult (human) intelligence that McDowell scants. On broadly Darwinian grounds, McDowell cannot get to his sort of “rational” life, except by way of the putatively “non-rational.” What does he make of that?   In the context of his well-known quarrel with Hubert Dreyfus (whose own views I have no wish to defend), McDowell says, revealingly: “The point is not that the word ‘know’ applies only to the kind of knowledge that is a standing in the ‘space of reasons.’ There need be no implication that languageless animals can be said to know things only by a kind of courtesy. But their knowledge is not of the kind that is characteristic of rational animals and that is the kind that our experience makes available to us” (McDowell 2013, 56n2). It’s hard to see, for instance, how McDowell could suppose that his own argument, in the Woodbridge lectures (supported chiefly in the second lecture), could possibly be construed transcendentally, if he restricts the use of “rational” in a way that makes the argument well-nigh tautological. I leave aside the question of the apparent ability of gifted bonobos to have learned more than a little of human language: of what it means to be capable of knowledge, inference, the use of concepts, to be rational—in short, despite being languageless. I insist, moreover, that these difficulties affect our treatment of the realism question. For how can the question of perceptual realism be settled without an adequate account of perception itself? Here, frankly, I agree with Aristotle in thinking that our discursively qualified perceptual ability depends on the infant’s ability to use “perceptual concepts.” 15 The critical passage in Kant’s first Critique appears at A68/B93. 16 See Sellars (1963); and Davidson (2001). See, also, the painstakingly decisive labors of Lepore and Ludwig (2005). 17 See McDowell (1996, Lecture I). 18 It’s also the decisive clue regarding the point of Cassirer’s very carefully crafted departure from the conceptual architecture of Kant’s first Critique, regarding the

Obliquely about Realism  193 methodology of the physical sciences: see Cassirer (1957, especially 464–479). I’m prepared to say that, here, Cassirer shows the way to “pragmatizing” Kant. 19 McDowell (1996, 34). (The bracketed words are intended to clarify McDowell’s meaning.) 20 Ibid., xi-xii. The “Introduction,” an important addition, was added to the 1996 edition. 21 This is the notorious disjunction Rorty advances—in favoring Robert Brandom’s version of realism over McDowell’s, in the paired essays, “Robert Brandom on Social Practices and Representaions” and “The Very Idea of Human Answerability to the World: John McDowell’s Version of Empiricism,” in Rorty (1998, 122–137 and 138–152), respectively. 22 See “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Peirce (1934, 5.388–410). 23 See Allison (2004, xiv). 24 Davidson (2001, 183). See, also, Hoyningen-Huene (1993). 25 See Cassirer (1957, 470–479). 26 See McDowell, “The Logical Form of an Intuition” (the second Woodbridge Lecture), in McDowell (2009, 23–43). 27 McDowell (1998, 282). 28 McDowell (2009, 24). 29 See McDowell (1996); and Sellars, “Sensibility and Understanding,” in Sellars (1967, 9–32), particularly §1 (9–14), which is essentially Sellars’s argument. 30 McDowell (1996, 34). 31 Ibid.; see also, Lecture I. 32 Wittgenstein (1953, I, §242). 33 Compare McDowell, “Sellars on Perceptual Experience” (the First Woodbridge Lecture), in McDowell (2009, §2 (4–5)).

References Allison, Henry E. 2004. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, rev. and enl. ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (1st ed. 1983). Berwick, Robert C. and Chomsky, Noam. 2016. Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cassirer, Ernst. 1957. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 3. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, Donald. 2001. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In D. Davidson (ed.), Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 183–198 (originally published in 1973–1974). Feynman, Richard. 1965. The Character of Physical Law. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gibson, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hoyningen-Huene, Paul. 1993. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science. Trans. Alexander T. Levine. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and Ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (originally published in 1781/1787). Lepore, Ernest and Ludwig, Kirk. 2005. Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.

194  Joseph Margolis Margolis, Joseph. 2016. Toward a Metaphysics of Culture. London: Routledge. McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (1st ed. 1994). ———. 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2013. “The Myth of the Mind as Detached.” In Joseph K. Schear (ed.), Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate. London: Routledge, 4–58. Peirce, Charles S. 1934. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pihlström, Sami. 2003. Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Pragmatic View. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Putnam, Hilary. 2004. Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1992. Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective (vol. 1 of A System of Pragmatic Idealism). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1998. Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1967. Science and Metaphysics. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1992. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan.

Part III

Value

10 Rescherean Pragmatism Joseph C. Pitt

In the end, my objective is to take a serious look at one aspect of Nicholas Rescher’s brand of pragmatism, his justification of cognitive values. Rescher may be the most prolific of contemporary American philosophers with over 130 books and countless articles in print. But, more to the point, he stands out in the terrain of twentieth-century philosophy dominated in North America by the analytic tradition as one who deeply adheres to the importance of language in the generation of knowledge, but not one who subverts all of human experience to the linguistic domain. Further, he is a system builder. This is not a popular philosophical undertaking in the era dominated by the systematic deconstruction of linguistic formulations of philosophical claims. Rescher seeks to understand the relation of humanity to the world and how, in that complex relation, one can isolate the specific activity of producing knowledge, best seen in the context of science. I start with a question: what makes someone a pragmatist? The essentials of pragmatism are difficult to pin down, just like the essentials of any other “ism.” For example, painting with the broadest of brushes, empiricism needs experience and rationalism needs first principles—but why is Berkeley so often classified as an empiricist when his sense of “experience” is so truly weird? So, when in doubt, reboot—or, in this case, return to the founder, Peirce. Peirce articulates first his most fundamental maxim: “the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action” (1955, 30). This is shortly followed by what James calls the pragmatic maxim: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearing, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (1955, 31) There is also a presentation of the maxim in “What Pragmatism Is” (1905) that elaborates this claim and turns it more directly into a potential theory of meaning: the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously

198  Joseph C. Pitt nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept would imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept. And there is absolutely nothing more in it. (Peirce 1955, 252) And shortly thereafter he notes on his selection of the name for his account, Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined the preference for the name pragmatism. (1955, 252–253) So, for Peirce, the crucial issue in generating knowledge is to consider the practical effects of an action. Note that in neither of Peirce’s two claims is the term “consequences” to be found; it is, rather, “effects.” But since “consequences” has come to be so closely associated with pragmatism, probably because of James, who, I will assert, but not argue here, is not a pragmatist, and since his formulation of the pragmatic maxim became fixed in the public’s mind due to his popular set of lectures, published as Pragmatism in 1907, I will move slightly away from Peirce’s original formulation and speak of consequences. Thus, considering the consequences of an action provides a procedure for activating a habit of action leading to knowledge. A crucial feature of Peirce’s epistemology is that you need experimentally based knowledge to create more knowledge. The habit of action so important to Peirce is created through experience, in a manner very similar to Hume’s habit creation (see Pitt 2005). The primary features of pragmatism that are most attractive to me are its emphasis on action and the role of the consequences of our actions for our understanding of why we do what we do and what we come to know. Rescher shares these concerns. For Rescher, pragmatism is action oriented; it is teleological. The here-envisioned functionalistic version of pragmatism regards effective praxis as the proper arbiter of appropriate theorizing. It takes considerations of purposive effectiveness to provide a test-standard for the adequacy—alike in theoretical and in practical matters. (Rescher 2008, 4) Here he is doing several things: (1) articulating a version of pragmatism he calls “functionalist,” (2) laying down the rule that effective action is the proof of correct theorizing, and (3) more explicitly attacking the theoretical/ practical distinction. He continues:

Rescherean Pragmatism  199 Traditionally philosophy has been divided into a practical and a theoretical sphere, distinguishing issues of cognition from issues of action as reflected in the belief-desire approach to explaining human action. But a very different perspective is also available that sees cognition— the quest for and consideration of information—as itself a mode of practice. Rational inquiry is now viewed as a practical endeavor, a purposive enterprise, and even theorizing can be seen as a purposive endeavor whose aim has in mind the answering of questions with a view to information gap-filling and applicative guidance. (Rescher 2008, 5) By attacking the theoretical/practical distinction, Rescher is taking a major step in his effort to put the human being back in the world. There are two concerns at play here—one has to do with a negative consequence of the way the Western philosophical enterprise has developed since René Descartes. The second has to do with devising a solution to that problem that does not devolve into the extreme relativism of a Richard Rorty. In one respect, Rorty might have been right. Descartes might have put philosophy on the wrong road. What follows is me, not Rorty. By emphasizing the production of knowledge as the intellectual activity of individuals attempting to do something with the buzz of sensory input, Descartes pointed us inevitably toward solipsism. The primary problem such a view of knowledge generation creates is getting from whatever an individual does in his or her head back out to the world. Some, like Hume, give up on the effort and on “abstruse” thinking altogether, remaining content to simply live in the world as a common man, refraining from engaging in the philosophical enterprise so construed. Others, like Descartes and Berkeley, invoke god, not a particularly satisfying move. But if you give up on philosophy as a theoretical activity concerned with, among other things, the manner in which knowledge is created, what’s left? Must we resort to the having of conversations without normative constraints or even the possibility of determining which ones are better than others at producing insight into the world? That is the Scylla and Charybdis that Rescher is trying to steer between—solipsism, on the one hand, and extreme relativism, on the other. He proceeds by having effective action be the test of our theorizing. Think whatever you like, but the test of whether or not what you concluded in your head has any validity is put to the test in terms of successfully acting on those conclusions. For Rescher, thinking and acting are inextricably tied together. Thus he claims in A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It calls for the appropriate use of reason to resolve choices in the best possible way. To behave rationally is to make use of one’s intelligence to figure out the best thing to do in the circumstances. It is a matter of the recognizably effective pursuit of appreciated benefits. Rationality has a crucially economic dimension, seeing that the impetus to economy is

200  Joseph C. Pitt an inherent part of intellectual comportment. Rationality is a matter of deliberately doing the best one can with the means at one’s disposal— of striving for the best results that one can expect to achieve within the range of one’s resources, specifically including one’s intellectual resources. Optimization in what one thinks, does and values is the crux of rationality. (Rescher 1994, 11–2) So the picture looks something like this: one starts with a tabula rasa, then through living in the world acquires values, goals, and knowledge. Acting on those values and that knowledge, one then strives in the most economical manner possible to achieve one’s goals. The appropriateness of one’s values is determined by whether they contribute to successfully achieving one’s goals. One revises all of knowledge, values, and goals in the light of a failure of successful action. Thus, Rescher places a significant emphasis on the manner in which the consequences of our actions play a justificatory role in our selection of our values and our goals. It is the interplay of values and goals in the light of successful or failed action that allows us to both justify and revise our values. That in itself is an important step forward, since values often are treated with privileged status—on this account values become our values, human values, the values of a cognitively limited and cognitively evolving group of enquirers. I would also like to put this in a slightly different way—let’s think of it as an update on Rescher. Yes, after some period of time we end up with some knowledge—or what we settle for as knowledge—some values and some goals. All three are always up for evaluation in terms of whether or not they contribute to successful action. But they are not up for evaluation all at once. Further, we tend to make changes to what we claim to know, what we value and in our goals in a kind of rational order. Based on what we know, value, and want to achieve, we act. If the action is successful, we make a note somewhere in our epistemic Facebook account. But if we fail, we first re-examine what we thought we knew—for action based on flawed knowledge can fail. We then try again. If that fails to fix the problem we re-examine our values—specifically our epistemic values. Consider the value Truth. If we require that our knowledge claims be true, we may be asking for too much. We might adjust our expectations downward and settle for high probability—but in so doing realize that we just can’t replace one true claim with one highly probable claim. Doing that leads to mere belief and a very tentative reaching out to the world. We need to be bold. We most probably need to invoke a group of mutually supporting highly probable claims. With that expanded cognitive base, let’s see how far we get. The last thing we will make changes to are our goals. But here I need to draw a distinction that I do not find in Rescher. There are at least two different kinds of goals when we are talking about knowledge and action. There

Rescherean Pragmatism  201 are epistemic goals and then there are action-oriented goals. Our epistemic goals might include something like acquiring a coherent set of knowledge claims. Our action-oriented goals might include not just successful action, rather successful action but not at the expense of the welfare of others. How we adjust our epistemic goals depends on how our epistemic base, resting on the previous use of those goals, holds up under fire. How we adjust our action-oriented goals depends on such factors as long-range versus shortrange success. We may have the goal of becoming rich as quickly as possible but, in the process, break some laws, do some insider trading, and end up with a criminal record and/or jail time. If our goal is to retire rich, then we may be willing to put up with some lean years as our investments build and investment strategies are refined. What is going on here is that there is a continuous feedback loop at work involving a complex interplay among our values, goals and knowledge and what we learn from our actions. The entire conglomeration is in constant flux—always being rearranged as we stumble through life learning more and sometimes ruining past decisions. All of this is consistent with Rescher’s view of enquiry, which, like Peirce’s, finds it most effective undertaking in science. This view comes the closest to making sense of science as a selfcorrecting activity—for it spells out how the self-correction can take place. And once we discard talk of “science” and start talking about the individual sciences and their component parts, talk about values and goals can become more specific to the needs of the investigators of special sciences. When it comes to the fruits of science, Rescher has a very down-to-earth approach to what we can know. He views human cognitive capacity as limited. He also views the philosopher’s injunction to seek certainty with suspicion. Thus, A realistic pragmatism insists upon pressing the question: “If A were indeed the correct answer to a question Q of ours, what sort of evidence could we possibly obtain for this?” And when we actually obtain such evidence—or at least as much of it as we reasonably be expected to achieve—then pragmatism enjoins us to see this as sufficient. (“Be prepared to regard the best that can be done as good enough.” is one of pragmatism’s fundamental axioms.) If it looks like duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and so on, then, so pragmatism insists, we are perfectly entitled to stake the claim that it is a duck—at any rate until such time as clear indications to the contrary come to light. (Rescher 2008, 7) I am not sure where Rescher got that fundamental axiom from, but I can live with it from a common sense point of view. So, then we also ought to give up the search for absolute certainty and remain content with the best we can do. And that is Rescher’s conclusion as well, at least with respect to knowledge.

202  Joseph C. Pitt In discussing philosophical methodology, Rescher articulates a model he calls the network approach to organizing knowledge in which he articulates a vision much like the one above. He notes, when discussing textual interpretation and exegesis, Here there is no rigid, linear pattern to the sequence of consideration. The whole process is iterative and cyclical; one is constantly looking back to old points from new perspectives, using a process of feedback to bring new elucidations to bear retrospectively on preceding analyses. What determines correctness here is the matter of overall fit, through which every element of the whole interlocks with some others. Nothing need be more fundamental or basic than anything else; there are no absolutely fixed pivot points about which all else revolves. One has achieved adequacy when—through a process that is continually both forward and backward looking—one has reached a juncture where everything stands in due mutual coordination with everything else. (Rescher 1994, 44) Note that this stasis is not stable—everything has to be recalibrated when something new enters the picture. Note also that this is just how scientists work. Note also that this sounds a lot like Sellars when he discusses the aim of philosophy as “to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” (Sellars 1963, 1). This is a continuing process. As new stuff enters our world, we have to readjust our conceptual framework to accommodate it. The appeal here is the sense of contact with how the world actually works. Philosophers too often spin lovely webs that rarely touch the earth— pragmatism insists that we not just touch the earth, but that we be embedded in it so that we can act on a rational basis. At this point I am tempted to ask how we, as philosophers, became not even spectators, for that would force us to see what is going on around us, but rather speculators. Living in the world of “what-if” seems to me to be the activity of those who have given up hope about what-now. Socrates was a doer—likewise Plato and Aristotle emphasized acting in the world. Where did we go wrong—was it really Descartes’ fault? It is tempting to agree with Rorty on this, but one almost agreement is all I have in me. To understand the origins of this not-in-the world approach to philosophy you need to go back further. Descartes, poor fellow, was merely the inheritor of an older tradition—one that stressed disputation for the sake of disputation, one that saw theology and philosophy as sisters—and, this is my speculation, it is from the theological side of things that this habit of turning away from the world came. Returning to Rescher, the dissolution of the theoretical/practical distinction has multiple ramifications. In so doing, we reject the hierarchy in which intellectual achievement has some ideal priority. This hierarchy is

Rescherean Pragmatism  203 one favored by so-called intellectuals. These are the folks who praise the life of the mind—always quick to remind us that the unexamined life is not worth living. To them, pragmatists like Peirce, Rescher, and myself reply that the unlived life is not worth examining. This insistence on the necessary feedback loop among, action, goals, values, and knowledge puts the human being back in the world doing things—rather than sitting in a chair thinking about balls of wax. It also recognizes the fluidity of knowledge, values, and goals. What we value must change in the light of how our values affect our actions—if we find ourselves doing things that cause suffering just because we refuse to examine and perhaps reject a formerly prized value, then we are looking at the heart of moral corruption. Likewise, our goals need to be constantly re-evaluated in the light of what we come to know. If, in fact, it is physically impossible to fly by flapping your arms alone, then you should stop trying to do so after the first time you stepped off your garage roof and woke up in the hospital. Likewise, when we realize not just that we do in fact readjust in the light of experience but that we ought to do so. While I agree with much of what Rescher has to say about pragmatism, I do have some concerns. One of my frustrations with Rescher is his minimal reference to the classical pragmatists. He tends to present these ideas as if he created them de novo. Why is this a problem? It makes it hard to assess his contribution. Consider his presentation of the pragmatic theory of meaning. Urging a different conception of language to what he calls the traditional semantics, he proposes a view which insists upon uniting what the traditional position separates (meaning and truth) and sees the waters of the theoretical distinction as unavoidably muddied by the realities of operational interrelatedness here. The idea that underlies this alternative approach is a less simple and tidy view of the nature of language whose guiding thought is that there just is no neat meaning/fact separation. Language is now seen as so complex and convoluted, that what we mean linguistically and what we assert factually are inextricably intertwined. Only a part—say, for discussion, half—of what we mean to be saying only emerges subsequently from the entire context of discussion. (Rescher 2008, 13) In short, once into the discussion—when we see what the person is driving at—can we get the meaning. In other words, the meaning is the full set of inferences we can draw from what was said; thank you Peirce. One final worry. The main reason that I find pragmatism so attractive is that it offers a way out of the solipsism/relativism dichotomy. It accomplishes this by giving up the privileged status of the individual as the source of knowledge. Instead of individuals producing knowledge, individuals offer candidate claims for inclusion in the body of knowledge based on the processes discussed above. But it is the community of investigators that

204  Joseph C. Pitt determines what is to count as knowledge based on the standards they have evolved through the same feedback system Rescher describes for individuals. The book of knowledge is a social product and its content keeps changing as we revise what we thought we knew in the lights of changing knowledge, values, and goals. I mentioned at the start of this essay that Rescher has written an impressive amount. It is possible that I overlooked his appeal to the community. But in what we have been discussing it does not appear. And that leads me to wonder whether he is not ultimately left in the solipsist camp.

References Peirce, C. S. 1955. Philosophical Writings of Charles S. Peirce. Ed. J. Buchler. New York: Dover. Pitt, J. C. 2005. “Hume and Peirce on Belief, or, Why Belief Should Not Be an Epistemic Category.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41, 343–354. Rescher, N. 1994. A System of Pragmatic Idealism, vol. III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2008. Epistemic Pragmatism. Rutgers, NJ: Transaction Books. Sellars, W. 1963. “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” In W. Sellars (ed.), Science, Perception, and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1–40.

11 Pragmatism and the Inseparability of Objectivity and Solidarity Rescher on Rhetorical Rationality, Method, and Cooperative Interaction1 Helmut Pape Among Nicholas Rescher’s books and papers on pragmatism two books stand out because they define his position most clearly and forcefully.2 His Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy (2000), cited as “RP,” and his much earlier Methodological Pragmatism (1977), cited as “MP.” The 1977 book provides the more technical background for Rescher’s understanding of pragmatism, and he refers in RP to these arguments and results quite frequently. Here, I will concentrate on RP. Indeed, Rescher understands pragmatism as a uniquely methodologically oriented type of philosophy. He argues that method pragmatism shifts the focus from individual contentions to methodological quality of theories by concentrating on their functional efficacy, purposive success and orientation towards mind-independent reality. Method pragmatism evaluates the acceptability of methods in general and justifies theories or specific contentions via their relation to methods. Only in this way, Rescher argues, in scientific inquiry and in everyday experience, does a rationally controlled, truth-orientied connection with reality become feasible. Arguing with this understanding of what pragmatism is really about, Rescher sees not only a distinction but rather a cultural divide between “pragmatism of the right” and of “the left”: whereas pragmatism of the right, invented by Peirce, stands for rational stability and objectivity, the relativistic, socially oriented pragmatism has its roots in the subjective, personalist pragmatism that James and Schiller proposed. However, leftist pragmatism received its skeptical, anti-philosophical thrust only recently in Rorty’s version of pragmatism. Rescher forcefully rejects Rorty’s thesis that, in place of truth and objectivity, philosophy should rather care about “conversational constraints,” feelings, and solidarity. Rescher’s pragmatism of the right, by invoking successful implementation and application in terms of method, stresses the link to external reality involved in practice. This is the reason why objective pragmatism is able to give rational priority to truth because it is open to the critical, methodological evaluation of the objective, external factors in the justification and validation of knowledge. But, according to Rescher, leftist pragmatism, in stressing social relations and solidarity, ignores truth completely. That is to say, the leftist version of

206  Helmut Pape pragmatism is mistaken because it claims that conversational constraints and human needs lead to all the knowledge that humans really need. But are there really good reasons that force us to contrast these two versions of pragmatism as sharply as Rescher suggests? It seems to me that such a sharp divide would require an argument that there is a categorical difference in the Aristotelian sense: that nothing of importance is shared by these two versions of pragmatism and there is no common ground. And why does Rescher’s pragmatism need such a harsh contrast? Let us start with one simple observation: In its dualistic form, Rescher’s distinction corresponds to one of Rorty’s, who not only distinguishes but confronts two mutually exclusive types of philosophy and pragmatism.3 According to Rorty’s distinction, we have to choose between objectivity and solidarity. This confrontation assumes a thesis that Rorty never took the trouble of arguing for, namely, that we cannot have both solidarity and objectivity. I think there is no sound argument or methodological reason that justifies this rather drastic and simple confrontation. I will argue in this paper that both Rescher’s and Rorty’s confrontational strategies are misleading and unhelpful. Rescher’s confrontation of two mutually exclusive types of pragmatism leads him to ignore contentions and premisses which both versions of pragmatism share. I will show that there is much that connects both versions of pragmatism4 and that the confrontation between conversational, social, and truth-oriented methodological pragmatism can be avoided by adopting a mediating strategy: pragmatism is part of a rhetorical approach to the justification of knowledge that explains how objective and social factors go together. To vary a famous Kantian saying: solidarity without objectivity is blind; objectivity without solidarity is inhuman. A sort of mediating argument will show that truth-preserving interpretations may be achieved from within a community of interpretation and experience. That is to say, sharing experiences and cooperation in the use of signs can be captured by rules describing a practice of interactions and communication. For these are rules specifying interactive experiences shared between people in truth-relevant situations. This view of pragmatism and the practice of communication is implicit in Peirce and is actually to some extent assumed in Rescher’s methodological pragmatism.5 In this way, it will become obvious that his confrontational stance is misleading. I will show that Rescher’s methodological pragmatism does not exclude but rather implicitly builds on “conversational contraints,” that is to say, on success conditions of dialogical interaction and methods. Rescher identifies his pragmatism with Peirce’s pragmatism when he claims: “The guiding idea of pragmatism—in relation to knowledge, at any rate—is that pro­ positional knowledge not only enjoys no priority over operational how-to knowledge but even stands subordinate to it” (RP, 59). But what constitutes the relation between practice and propositional knowledge? In this paper, I show that in Peirce’s pragmatism the priority of practice for propositional

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  207 knowledge is irresolvably bound to the conditions of cooperative, dialogical interaction for assertions and that Rescher does not take this into account. Both Rescher and Rorty, by confronting solidarity and objectivity, use a severely restricted notion of human practice. It is true that Rescher, in contrast to Rorty, asserts that science is by far the best and most effective of all the human practices that produce knowledge by resorting to experiments. And Rescher, again in contrast to Rorty, has a place for non-linguistic cognitive activities that are critical for the role of practice in validating and producing knowledge. In excluding the interactional, non-symbolic aspects in the practice of human solidarity, Rorty’s neopragmatism proliferates a dogma of analytic philosophy and ignores other aspects of practice. For example, all sorts of non-verbal face-to-face interactions have no role to play. But if Rorty’s pragmatism does not allow for non-verbal action and interactions, it cannot take everyday experience of cooperation and exchanges between human beings as a practice with practical consequences into account. But practice and practical consequences require the activity of humans, and this leads to all sorts of problems concerning the status of interactions and relations of different types of cooperative human activity. Peirce’s semiotics takes a relation to a community of sign-interpretation for granted—even if the convergence towards truth presented by a final opinion is brought about only in the limiting case of an ultimate opinion of an infinite community of inquiry. Rather, right from the start, every case of signuse, implies the existence of a common ground from which the community of dialogical, interactional practice may start its interpretative interactions. For this reason, Peirce analyzes all logical operators, connectives, and quantifiers in terms of moves in a dialogical interaction of truth-determination between author and interpreter. Therefore, Peirce’s pragmatism is part of the third subdiscipline of semiotics, which he calls methodeutic, speculative rhetoric (or universal rhetoric). In fact, that pragmatism is a rhetorical theory is obvious from the title of the famous 1878 paper. For this is what “How to make our ideas clear” obviously means. Therefore, when Peirce states that philosophy should not start from abstract ideas but rather “begin with men and their conversation” (8.1126 [1901]) this underlines the importance of rhetoric for the whole of his philosophy. Rhetoric is the third and highest branch of logic or semiotics. It deals with truth enhancing methods of research and discovery by developing a comprehensive, general account of conditions of interpretation and dialogical interaction. This is the reason why Peirce understands rhetoric as “the highest and most living branch of logic” (2.333 [1893]). Although their concepts of methods differ in scope, Rescher’s concept of pragmatism as methoddriven is, with respect to the emphasis on method, close to Peirce’s rhetorical semiotic. But they differ dramatically because, for Peirce, pragmatism is a rhetorical theory addressing the practical conditions of human communication in semiotically structured interactions. For Peirce, the pragmatic maxim in stressing practical consequences as the arbiter of clarification

208  Helmut Pape becomes functional only if there is a community of shared ground, shared interpretations, and conversations. Only on this basis of common practices and methods of interpretations are the scientific methods of discovery and checking of truth-claims a possible achievement. Peirce argues that only on the condition that an interpretation is based on “common experience, will it connect itself with a new experience after a fashion analogous to other connections of experiences, which have made this mode of connection familiar to both parties” (8.112 [1901]). The guiding idea of Peirce’s pragmatism, the relation of concepts to practical consequences, assumes a community of interpreters for which pragmatic rules and recommendations concern interactive practices in two ways: First, communal practices, not only of language use, are implicitly taken for granted, that is, already have to be in existence and presently effective. Second, communal practices are tacitly addressed and treated as interactively interpretable and applicable, open to further development by their use. That is to say, a sign-user has to be a semiotical-logical competent and self-critical agent. For these relations to communal practices activated by every sign-user who wants to clarify his thoughts can be effective only if they actually connect to signprocesses that are accepted (or could be accepted) in some communities of interpretation. Pragmatism’s assumption is that our explicit practical recommendations and evaluations hold for and operate on common, shared experiences depending on practices in a community of interpretation to which every person reflecting pragmatic consequences belongs. Therefore, speculative rhetoric is indispensable to understanding this situation. It studies methods, strategies, rules for signs, their connection to inferential structures, and truth-claims that hold for community members, focusing on conditions of dialogical interaction7 between any two members of a community. These rhetorical conditions will establish how to ascertain propositional truthclaims and to perform valid arguments. In this way, in explaining how we make experience shareable by rules of sign-use and interpretation, rhetoric will also be able to show how we are able to combine objectivity and solidarity in a community of interpretation.8 This is what I want to spell out in this paper: both Reschers’s and Peirce’s pragmatism involve as a crucial element conversational and interactional rules, combining objectivity and solidarity, and they can be accounted for by a Peircean rhetoric approach, exemplified by Peirce’s account of assertion. Peirce’s account of assertion will help us to see how socially accessible relations, first, in the form of common accessibility and, second, in the form of person-to-person relations, constitute the force of experience that produce understanding and knowledge. Experiential evidence is rhetorical only if it can be used by other sign-users in a community to check whether we have understood the assertion conditions correctly. This might be called Peirce’s Critical Common Sense account of rhetorical evidence: only in the practice of common, actively, and cooperatively shareable experience is the evidential support of assertions by which we access truth conditions conclusive.9

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  209 Next, we will look for the place of communication and rhetorical rules in Rescher’s methodological pragmatism. In a last step, we will turn to Peirce’s rhetorical account of assertion to see whether it is possible to explicate truth-orientation in terms of conversational contraints and non-epistemic cognitive abilities.10

1 Rescher’s Pragmatism: Communication and the Conditions of Access to Reality The most characteristic feature of Rescher’s pragmatism in MP, RP, and later studies is the claim that only methods can be pragmatically justified by their success in implementation and application of their results without running into problems. Rescher’s notion of method is quite specific and restricted to science: only methods for “the validation or substantiation of thesis-acceptance” (RP 86) and in particular “the probative methods of empirical inquiry” (RP 87) are his topic. His methodological pragmatism reverses the direction of justification for propositional knowledge that has been assumed by thesis-pragmatists like James. In contradistinction to Jamesian pragmatism, methodological pragmatism treats the claim for the truth of a certain proposition as justified only because it results from the use of a certain, well-established method. Rescher insists that even large numbers of instances experientially confirming a thesis, if not entrenched by some method, do not count. That is to say, he opts for methodologically pragmatic validation of knowledge claims (RP, 85ff) by a different justificatory connection that holds only between pragmatic success and method: the linkage between pragmatic utility and the truth of theses is broken apart, and methods are inserted into the gap that opens up. Pragmatic considerations are not brought to bear on theses directly. This mediation of methods between pragmatic considerations and thesis-acceptance is central to, and indeed definitive of, the specifically methodological pragmatism at issue here. (RP, 89) Rescher identifies Peirce as a forerunner and as the only classical pragmatist who developed a method oriented version of pragmatism.11 Rescher argues that methodological pragmatism, among other good things, provides a way to counter the objection that pragmatism equates truth with utility. For it allows us to insert method and its validational function in the place of sheer utility of individual beliefs. Therefore, we may argue that “the pivot of rational belief lies in the guidance of action (communicative action—that is, thought-coordination among individuals)—included)” (RP, 91). Whereas thesis-pragmatism cannot allow a contradiction between success and truthfulness, method pragmatism can: “Theses perish in unfavorable circumstances, but methods can live on to fight another day” (RP, 95).

210  Helmut Pape There are at least three places where conversational constraints play an important, justificatory role in the overall layout of Rescher’s argument for the reality access of method oriented pragmatism: (1) In the metaphysical argument for realism, the presupposition of an independent reality is justified because it allows for ways of “cognitive coordination” (RP, 131) connecting us to an independent reality figuring as common focus of concern needed both for inquiry, communication and cooperative action. That is to say, Rescher claims that “all our ventures at communication and communal inquiry are predicated on the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of things” (RP, 131). But how are we able to share a common world, if we act rationally only if we maximize personal gains? It seems that rationally structured conversation will have to bridge the gap between the rational strategies of individuals. (For more on Rescher’s economic interpretation of rationality, see below.) Another argument assumes that, for communication and conversation, we have to assume that the real world functions as an entity we are able to access commonly. The real-world-entity is to be assumed because “only through reference to the real world as a common object and shared focus of our diverse and imperfect epistemic strivings are we able to effect communicative contact with one another” (RP, 132). (2) In his account of language and assertion, Rescher distinguishes strictly between truth and use conditions in such a way that truth requires reality conditions to be met which are unfathomably ontological and existential. However, use conditions require only “user-oriented circumstances in which a statement is appropriately and warrantedly assertable” (RP, 150). Nevertheless, Rescher clearly states that this strict divide has no practical reality and continuously undergoes drastic changes. That is to say, use conditions take over all the work that, according to his account, truth conditions are responsible for. Although Rescher goes on to stress that “the fact is that language simply could not develop as an effective instrument of communication (information transmission) if the coordination of warrant to truth did not generally obtain” (RP, 156) and insists that “truth conditions are . . . always experience-transcendent where matters of objective fact are at issue” (RP, 159), he admits that, in the end, use conditions will carry the burden of reality-access of our assertions. For this is simply what they do in conversational practice. It is the force of practical convenience to treat use conditions as if they were warranting the truth conditions: “In actual practice we effectively allow the use conditions to do duty for truth conditions, seeing the negativity of a risk of error is here offset by the communicative advantages of being able to make communicatively efficient claims” (RP, 157).

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  211 (3) In Chapter 8, “Morality, Pragmatism, and the Obligations of Personhood,” cooperation and communication stand in need of a pragmatic justification of objectively valid moral principles. Rescher’s arguments for trust and cooperation in scientific communication are functional, utilitaristic, and economic. He uses cost-benefit calculations, treating interactive rules as “economic principles of balance; they all run on finding a point after which the benefit of further gain in information falls below the cost demanded for its process of acquisition” (RP, 211). The economic stance as a paradigm for scientific rationality, as it is deployed here, is open to several objections. First of all, whether it adequately describes the success of scientific communication or not, this type of explanation is much too general and external to be pragmatic. Such an economic explanation does not take into account that communication might have morally important, independent features of its own—whether functionally and economically successful or not. For we respect human rights and dignity even in scientific communication, thereby limiting, from the very beginning, the scope in which economic rationality might become effective. On the other hand, why communicative interaction is able to be at the same time morally preferable and perform successfully cannot be explained only by giving cost-benefit calculations and game-theoretical analysis. For these externalistic analytic accounts say nothing about what actually goes on in communicative interaction and why it works at all. Secondly, it may be objected to the economic and game-theoretical account that it conveys a morally relevant, normative stance of cognitive and real-life behavior that needs to be justified with ethical and even sociological arguments. For an unconditioned praise of economic rationality connects moral properties with an anthropological view of the agent of communications. The implicit normative stance is: to be a good communicator and scientist, be economic in all your cognitive and real-life behavior! In this way, Rescher identifies “good” human rationality and behavior with what accords to economic calculations and functional-instrumentalistic uses of arguments. Surely, this is not what he explicitly claims, and such an approach is open to many objections. For Rescher knows that it is not possible to restrict rationality of human agents to the ability to handle cost-benefit calculations and functionalistic arguments. And, indeed, his book gives evidence that he favors other forms of rational cognition (cf. n7, above). But the crucial question is: what is the fate of these other, more comprehensive forms of rationality, such as, e.g., sharing experience by telling a story, acting and thinking without or in contradiction to economic calculations? It seems to me that Rescher does not see that, in most modern societies, the economic and game-theoretical view of human behavior already has a strong normative effect on human agents. In fact, the use of these explanations in the economic sciences already has had such an effect on almost all parts of our culture and societies. Not only in economic science but also in ethics and philosophy, even in religion, people are told that the only

212  Helmut Pape rational way of conceiving of their actions—including communication—is to use cost-benefit calculations and game theory. Today, many people are convinced that benefit-maximizing thought and game-strategic behavior is the only way of being a rational human agent. Many consider it to be completely wrong and old-fashioned to suggest that, although these economic and game-theoretical accounts are useful in some functional contexts, their explanatory power is limited and they are unable to account for many altruistic and communicative actions and interactions between people. Whether or not the economic account of rationality and behavior is, for pragmatism, the only correct one might be an open question. But at least Rescher should have addressed the problem of the normative influence and the contradiction between economic and non-economic rationality. It seems that the identification of rationality with some such economic/game-theoretical stance does not even follow from Rescher’s own account of personhood and moral obligation. For he defends the thesis that moral obligations depend on the way we see ourselves as rational agents in a much more inclusive sense (cf. RP, 212–218). If some practice of conversation is effective, relevant, and reliable, a pragmatic and rational strategy will be to focus on why and how reality becomes accessible because of the communicative, conversational interaction between people. Shouldn’t we try to give an account, in pragmatic-rhetorical terms, of how strategic behavior in conversational practice effectively establishes such a connection with truth conditions? Rescher, in RP and in some of his other writings on pragmatism, does not give any explicit account or argument for why the practice of communication is able to establish reliable, truth-bound connections with reality, but rather assumes that his economic account is taking care of this. Had he tried a rhetorical explanation, this would already have undermined his strict dichotomic divide between conversational “leftist” and reality-oriented “right-wing” pragmatism. Taking conversational interaction seriously suggests that the connection between the use and truth conditions of language is to be spelled out in terms of practical rules of interaction. In what follows, I will describe in outline a pragmatic rhetoric of assertion that does exactly that. That is, it shows how conversational interaction might connect use and truth. Indeed, this is the approach that C. S. Peirce, Rescher’s arch-pragmatist, defended. As I will show, Peirce’s rhetoric reconstructs a conversational method that fills the gap between use and truth that Rescher’s methodological pragmatism leaves open.

2 Sharing Compulsions: Peirce’s Dialogical Account of Assertion The subject matter of rhetoric is all the conditions, methods, rules, and strategies of thought or interaction that support a valid, truth-producing relation of a sign to its interpretant in some community of interpretation or

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  213 inquiry.12 However, it is pragmatism that tells us what actually constitutes a “clarifying” relation of concepts or assertions to those interpretants that instantiate these concepts by some practical consequences. In fact, Peirce’s first version of the pragmatic maxim was explicitly phrased as a rhetorical rule describing the conditions of the use of words in terms of their practical function: “A . . . rule for avoiding the deceits of language is this: Do things fulfil the same function practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished” (8.33 [1871]). Just because Peirce understands pragmatism as a rhetorical theory of methods of interpretation, he argues in a pragmatic vein when he insists on invoking rhetorical evidence into even formal arguments. A case in point is his criticism of Ernst Schröder’s Algebra der Relative (cf. 3.513f [1897]), volume 3 of his “Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (Exakte Logik).” Peirce criticized the sort of unrestricted generality of the “solutions” Schröder had offered. He does so by resorting to what he calls “rhetorical evidence” in order to show that Schröder’s notion of “general solution” of algebraic forms is deficient. The argument from rhetorical evidence shows that Schröder’s general solutions do not allow for any specific logical forms that can be asserted and applied to special cases. That is to say, by ignoring that even the most general solution must allow for a relation to specific consequences, Schröder ignores “rhetorical evidence.” Peirce’s rhetorical requirement for general, fruitful general assertions is therefore that “a general solution points the way to the particular solutions” (3.514). For pragmatically acceptable in mathematics are those general solutions that can be shown to lead to particular solutions. For only particular solutions allow us to infer, assert, and communicate about the specific experiential conditions under which a solution becomes applicable to individual “particular” cases. Understanding some such connection between the general and the particular is what Peirce calls a “picture.” In what follows, I will describe this grasp of a general-particular relation as a strategic model because it requires the grasp of the inferential and application conditions of an assertion that leads to a solution in individual cases. That is to say, the concept of a picture concerns the pragmatic feature, the applicability of an asserted complex sign—dicent or dicisign—by its rhetorical force and function to contribute to the practice of arriving at a definite solution. So, in Peirce’s criticism of Schröder’s mathematical methodology, the rhetorical is identical with the pragmatic. For his objection to Schröder is that “it is only the particular solutions which picture to the mind the solution of a problem; and a form of words which fails to produce a definite picture in the mind is meaningless” (3.514). In stressing “strategic” relations, we will concentrate on cognitive relations that are tightly connected with interactional, organizing features of two- and one-person activities integrating rhetorical evidence into the successful interpretation of assertions. Viewed in this frame, the rhetoric of assertion is instantiated in actions, reactions, and correlated experiences of

214  Helmut Pape speaker and interpreter that are connected because of some assertion. For only interrelated experiences and activities can be practically effective in establishing the right “picture” or strategic model validating an assertion. Let us start with some general properties of this approach: Peirce assumes that all logical processes have a dialogical structure. That is to say, there are always at least two positions that have a logically distinct function. These positions are variously designated as —author and interpreter, —speaker and listener —writer and reader; etc.13 The ontology implicit here is that every semiotical process to be executable at all requires at least two positions or phases that the logical process passes through. The process of construing a strategical model or picture takes place between speaker and listener and depends on the interactions initiated, stimulated, and guided by the uttered sign, that is, the token. Therefore, the first effect of an uttered token is to establish some sensory relation between the two, not necessarily a conscious one. This might seem to be a trivial observation; however, it already implies that some interaction takes place. But the utterance of an assertion is not just a mere physical effect on the interpreter, for that something is apprehended or perceived as a sign implies a semiotic element, even if the uttered token captures only a subliminal attention of the interpreter.14 The way in which the token is understood by the two participants depends on the way each one of them has acquired a command of the sign-type that the token instantiates.

3 The Rhetoric of Attention, Semiotic Experience, and Rhetorical Evidence On the level of subliminal, automatic attention aroused by the utterance of assertion, it may be that, at first, there is not much of a difference between the utterance of an assertion or another type of sign, at least on the level of interactive reactions.15 Peirce argues that, e.g., assertion and question share the same rhetorical property of attention arousal: An assertion has its modality, or measure of assurance, and a question generally involves as part of it an assertion of emphatically low modality. In addition to that, it is intended to stimulate the hearer to make an answer. This is a rhetorical function which needs no special grammatical form. If in wandering about the country, I wish to inquire the way to town, I can perfectly do so by assertion, without drawing upon the interrogative form of syntax. Thus I may say, “This road leads, perhaps, to the city. I wish to know what you think about it.” The most suitable

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  215 way of expressing a question would, from a logical point of view, seem to be by an interjection: “This road leads, perhaps, to the city, eh?” (4.57 [1893]) Peirce’s argument is explicitly rhetorical: Under some circumstances, a question might do the job of information gathering better than an assertion. The main task is the capturing and focusing of attention of the hearer/interpreter. One assumption of Peirce’s strategic account of assertion is that, in order to understand how an assertion functions semiotically, the rhetorical evidence is decisive for triggering the suitable interpretative response of the listener. Rhetorical evidence in the “This road leads to the city” example covers more than the basic arousal of a person’s perceptual attention because he/ she perceives some, e.g., acoustical or visual event is a sign and is much more demanding. In the case of assertions, rhetorical evidence requires the activation of experiential familiarity with what is observable in the situation of utterance and with the sign itself—as some sort of token of a type. For an assertion, this means to perceive an utterance in some situation as a single uttered sign and to relate some asserted content, e.g., to a present experience of the situation of the utterance. In the very situation of the utterance, several cognitive processes, semantic, perceptual, and orientating, are involved when Peirce insists that “we can directly observe what is familiar to our experience of assertions and seems to be inseparable from them” (2.333, MS 787 [1896]).

4 Cooperation and Sharing Compulsive Experience How are we to fill the “gap” between use and truth conditions that Rescher’s pragmatism leaves us with? So far, we have not shown that the semiotic and strategic moves and actions between speaker and interpreter are what allows us to treat use-conditons or conversational constraints as strategies that enable us to access truth conditions and reality. A semiotic account of the rhetoric of assertion should be able to explain how semiotically mediated relations connect people because of the use of an assertoric sign: as members of a semiotic community and as persons whose perceptual presence is focused and guided by the token of a sign uttered or perceived here and now. So far our characterization of the rhetoric of assertion was that every assertion is interpreted by a strategic model of how the assertion is connected, via rhetorical evidence of sorts, with the experiential processes in the situation of its use by an author and an interpreter.16 But will the speaker, by suggesting such a translation into shared experience, be able even to force or compel the interpreter to accept an assertion? Accepting an assertion because one is forced to or because one is convinced by a valid, convincing inferential chain are two mutually exclusive cases.17 If I am convinced by the premisses and accept the inferential

216  Helmut Pape rule of an argument offered to me, it is the rational validity of the argument that forces me to accept the conclusion and not some external pressure or force. But can I be certain that it was the rationality of the argument that convinced me?18 The power of an irrational, forceful influence by another person seems to be a strong case of assertions for which no argument is provided. Sometimes, assertions are quite willingly understood as commands to accept a certain proposition because somebody—an authority, the boss, a celebrity— says so. The question is: how can one ever be rationally convinced, if a speaker just utters an assertion and does not give any good reasons for the asserted proposition? Peirce’s account of the rhetorical force of assertions does not resort to force to explain the rhetorical evidence that will convince the interpreter. Instead he construes the use- and interpretation-conditions as affording a sort of quasi-argument. To do this, he includes into rhetorical evidence (or strategic model) the condition —that the interpreter will be able to evaluate and interpret the assertion correctly, if the rhetorical evidence provided by the utterance allows him to access that information (collateral observations, knowledge available in the situation) which caused the author of the assertion to formulate such a claim. The interpreter, by sharing rhetorical evidence of the assertion with the author of the assertion, develops a semantic picture that allows her/him to validate the truth of the assertion claims. That is to say, interpretations of assertions are rhetorically adequate and, therefore, rational only if the interpreter’s picture of the truth conditions agrees or disagrees relative to the same perceptual and cognitive situational compulsions that the author and interpreter share. What is involved in the force of an assertion is that it actually stimulates the interpreter to enter into a sort of cooperation of truth-value determination. In MS 787 (1896), Peirce describes this thesis as that the rhetorical force of assertions acts on three levels: The assertion consists in the furnishing of evidence by the speaker to the listener that the speaker believes something, that is, finds a certain idea to be definitively compulsory on a certain occasion. There ought, therefore, to be three parts in every assertion, a sign of the occasion of the compulsion, a sign of the enforced idea, and a sign evidential of the compulsion affecting the speaker in so far as he identifies himself with the scientific intelligence. Let us look separately into what constitutes the evidential effect, the semantic picture, of each of the three features of the assertion’s force. What people will understand when they grasp and interpret an assertion is that

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  217 (1) they are able to connect it to a compulsory situation, the occasion; (2) they understand that there is a predicative content, an idea applicable to the situation; and (3) they acknowledge that a claim of evidential relevance is raised. Now, (1) and (2) describe how the asserted predicative content is tied to compulsory relations that the interpreter is able to access as features of some relevant perceptual situation. These compulsory relations are two-place relations and they subsist only if the relata are actually present. They are what Peirce calls “existential relations.” Requiring their presence or accessibility for a correct interpretation of an assertion is a crucial condition for the picture acting as a strategic model of assertions. For in this way the use of assertions captures and generalizes the fleeting, ephemeral features in terms of how a strategy of the interpreter is to access and rehearse relevant existential relations. This is how Peirce describes the conditions of interpreting assertions successfully: Because compulsion is essentially hic et nunc, the occasion of the compulsion can only be represented to the listener by compelling him to have experience of that same occasion. Hence it is requisite that there should be a kind of sign which shall act dynamically upon the hearer’s attention and direct it to a special object or occasion. Such a sign I call an Index. It is true that there may, instead of a simple sign of this kind, be a precept describing how the listener is to act in order to gain the occasion of experience to which the assertion relates. But since this precept tells him how he is to act, and since acting and being acted on are one and the same, and thus action is also hic et nunc, the precept must itself employ an Index or Indices. That to which the index directs attention may be called the subject of the assertion. (2.336) Nothing depends on the subjective sameness of experience, but everything on how experience may be accessed and rehearsed by another person. This gives assertions the status of an offer or challenge: an assertion offers and stimulates the interpreter to enter into experiential contact with the compulsory occasion which according to rhetorical evidence conveyed by the assertion’s strategic model. In short, on the one hand, an assertion functions as a suggestion from the author to the possible interpreter to participate. That is to say, the speaker invites the (listener) interpreter to produce an interpretation, cooperating by his own bodily, cognitive activities. We might paraphrase the offer to the interpreter presented by the assertion in the following way: If you want to become an interpreter and know why the proposition I am asserting is true, you have to undergo the same experience which

218  Helmut Pape compelled me. That is to say, you will have to follow the indexical structure of the assertion that provides you with the clues for the appropriate perceptual, cognitive and bodily activities that will lead you to the experience supporting the asserted proposition. Of course, assertions acting as suggestions to cooperate by experiencing some asserted experiential compulsion in person can be refused; they are fragile and do not force anybody. But if an assertion is at all interpreted adequately, the interpreter has to accept this rhetorical requirement. For it describes, pictures, the access to the truth claim of the assertion: the interpreter has to experience the same compulsion that led the author to formulate the assertion. The requirement of an “identification with a scientific intelligence” may seem rather strong, even transcendental. However, this third requirement is a sort of calibration condition for the interpretability of an assertion. Peirce argues that there are some experiences that are so pervasive and accessible that we can even assume that they can be accessed by every scientific intelligence. This is not a fancy claim about intelligent extraterrestial beings but relies on general notion of scientific intelligence defined as an intelligence which is able to learn from experience. And this learning, in the case of science, requires cooperation within a community that has reasonably broad shared access to some experiences but not to others. For this reason, Peirce in 1902 claims: “But science being essentially a mode of life that seeks cooperation, the unit science must, apparently, be fit to be pursued by a number of inquirers” (MS 1343, 0009, “Classification of the Sciences”). Therefore, it is not enough for an experience just to be compulsory for some lone individual or other. It will count as rhetorical evidence for an assertion only if it is intelligible for a community of inquirers. In this way, nobody asserting a proposition may claim that it was after his/her private, idiosyncratic experience, which cannot be reproduced. In terms of the strategic interplay in a dialogue: in uttering an assertion, the speaker/author implicitly underwrites the commitment that the general circumstances of the evidence validating the assertion are publicly accessible— i.e., at least for everybody who qualifies as being able to learn from experience in this or that community of inquirers. Assuming that every scientific intelligence would be able to observe something raises a claim concerning the accessibility of rhetorical evidence of an assertion. Therefore, this third element, the identification with every scientific intelligence, explains on what, in general, the trust in the reliability of assertions depends. If we combine this third point with the requirement of transitive sharing of situational forces or compulsions, we get that for every assertion, —first of all, it captures the interpreter’s attention who will have to follow an offer or suggestion presented to him in this way; —secondly, it acts as a move in interpersonal interaction. It proposes to focus the attention and stimulates an interpreter to act appropriately.

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  219 When we understand an assertion as a suggestion, invitation or offer, that is to say, a move in an interactional interchange, our analysis is transferred to the level of rules, strategies, or at least stratagems taking place between people engaged with each other, sharing a common interest, goal, or purpose.19 Some interpretation rule like the following one captures this condition: If you want to interpret this proposition, you have to place yourself into that sort of a compelling perceptual situation which forced me, the speaker, to assert this proposition. This way of explicating Peirce’s rhetorical account of assertion makes explicit that an assertion depends on the cooperation of the people concerned and that they access reality via the sameness and common accessibility of experience. But, to trigger this process of sharing realities, the assertion has to be accepted as a suggestion for entering into a process of interpretative determination. Sometimes it may therefore be perceived as an unacceptable challenge, and may at other times be understood as a quasispeech act by which the speaker shares an experiential incident in his/her life with the person who trusts the assertion. This is the gap-filler that connects use and truth conditions that I promised above. For we can see now that all those strategies, habits, or convenient interactional procedures successfully established to share experience between people are simply ways of sharing truth and accessing reality.

Notes 1 The work on this paper was supported by the Cluster of Excellence EXC264 TOPOI “The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilisations” during my stay at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 2 In Rescher (2012) and (2014), he developed his view of pragmatism in much more detail and defends pragmatism against many popular misunderstandings. 3 E.g., Chapter 1 of Rorty (1991) is titled “Solidarity or Objectivity?” 4 The important differences between the various strands of pragmatism led many people to ignore the common ground that, e.g., Peirce and James share. See my argument in Pape (2000). The argument of this paper adds the internal relation between solidarity and objectivity to the features of common ground discussed there. 5 In fact, Peirce was well aware that in the middle ages experimentum referred to a solitary, private experience whereas from the seventeenth century onward it was used to describe an experience publicly accessible e.g. by an experimental setup. 6 The decimal notation, e.g. 8.112, refers to the eighth volume and the 112th section of Peirce (1931–58). 7 Ahti Pietarinen (2006, 77ff) lists no less than 24 pairs of concepts describing the dialogical positions, ranging from “the utterer—the interpreter,” “the assertor— the critic” to “the Artifex of Nature—the interpreter of nature,” “the ego—the non-ego” and including even “the interlocutor—the receiver.” 8 In several places, e.g., in R 478, Peirce argues that experience based on everyday, human face-to-face interaction is both more comprehensive and irreplaceable by science and philosophy. In R 478, he points out that the knowledge acquired

220  Helmut Pape before we start with science and philosophy is much more important: “Philosophical inquiry consists, by the definition given above, of reflexion upon the knowledge that all men, so to say, already possess; and in point of fact the beginner in the study of philosophy is already possessed of knowledge far greater in weight than all that science can ever teach him” (MS 478, alternative draft, 3). 9 Surely, Rescher is right that scientific knowledge has a special value, because of its many action-enhancing technological applications and implementations. But if we grant that the practice of knowledge production is placed and evaluated from within the space of human activities, actions, interactions, and relations, this special value is relative to other values, interests, and goals. Even Peirce’s classical pragmatism, although relying on practice and practical consequences, has not given sufficient attention to what actually constitutes the relation between different types of human activity and interaction. Rather, both Peirce’s classical pragmatism and Rescher’s methodological variety assume that scientific knowledge and method have a sort of the winner-takes-all priority. They presuppose that science provides a self-sufficient guide and orientation for streamlining and evaluating all scientific activities so that they lead to the suitable sort of practical consequences. Rescher assumes that this presupposition takes care of and manages the way in which all other relevant human activities are ordered and arranged so that they contribute to bringing about scientific knowledge generation and evaluation. 10 Another strategy to argue against the categorical divide between objectivity and solidarity and Rescher’s instrumentalistic justification of metaphysical realism would make explicit those forms of reality access that Rescher’s primacyof-practice thesis does not cover. For the primacy of practice for scientific knowledge evaluation does not rule out that there are other practical relations between human activities and interactions that access reality. These non-truthoriented cognitive activities and non-epistemic interactions between people provide an access to reality by means of an experience of others and oneself as being close. This sharing each other’s life is a way of entering into twoplace existential relations by our semiotic activities and is a feature of practice Heidegger called “Mitsein.” For the majority of human beings, interactional “Mitsein” is their primary reality. In many ways, literature, painting, dancing, sexual and other kinds of hedonistic sensory experience represent and embody modes of a Mitsein-access to reality. This reality for most people—with the exception of some scientists and philosophers—results from important, basic, and worthwhile activities. It cannot be brought about or replaced by theoretical knowledge or technolology. In fact, Peirce’s pragmatism relies on a comprehensive concept of reality that explicitly includes many Mitsein-forms of access to reality. 11 This interpretation of Peirce’s pragmatism as method-based is too narrow. We will see in the next section that Peirce’s pragmatism implies not only a much more general notion of method comprising procedures and strategies of human communication, but a different justification of methods: the ultimate justification of the cognitive methods of science has to appeal to communal experience— and not the other way around. In this respect, Peirce’s comprehensive, communal notion of methods excludes Rescher’s sharp contrast, phrased in political terms, between pragmatism of the left and right. 12 This sums up some of Peirce’s definitions of rhetoric. For example, in 1902 he defines rhetoric as the discipline that studies “the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other Signs to the Interpretants which they aim to determine” (2.93 [1902]). 13 See also the reference to Pietarinen (2006) above.

Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Solidarity  221 14 In fact, the question of whether he/she is willing to become an interpreter at all raises quite a different sort of issue. 15 Of course, the neurophysical processing is not our topic here. For example, reading an assertion is a highly complex process combining fine-grained differences of reactions on many levels, as Stanislas Dehaene (2009) has pointed out. 16 This is confirmed by Peirce requiring for every general propositional form of an assertion of a translation that establishes a situational relation to some object that can be shared by person-to-person relations: “Thus every kind of proposition is either meaningless or has a real Secondness as its object. This is a fact that every reader of philosophy should constantly bear in mind, translating every abstractly expressed proposition into its precise meaning in reference to an individual experience” (2.315 [1903]). 17 It may even be the case that you are forced to accept a valid argument. However, in this case, you did so for the wrong reason. 18 Peirce’s account of self-control may be seen to supply at least a sort of fallible, provisional, and open-ended way of addressing the question of whether the belief in an argument is well founded. For, I have to start a self-critical reasoning that looks into all the reasons that induced me to accept an argument. And although “reasoning is essentially thought under self-control” (1.606) and all development of thought is dialogical (4.551), self-control can “never be perfectly thorough. For the last act of criticism is always itself open to further inquiry” (MS 831, 12). 19 Please keep in mind that, in describing semiotic cooperation in this way, we do not have to accept any of the assumption of game theory. There is no need to assume that there always will be a winning strategy. All we need is a possible conditional success.

References Dehaene, S. 2009. Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. New York: Viking Adult. Pape, H. 2000. “The Unity of Classical Pragmatism: Its Scope and Its Limits.” In Daniel O. Dahlstrom (ed.), The Proceedings of the 20th World Congress of Philosophy. Paideia: Philosophy Educating Humanity, Philadelphia, PA: Philosophical Documentation Center, 233–244. Peirce, C. S. 1931–1958. Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, vols I–VI. Eds. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss; vols. VII–VIII. Ed. A. W. Burks. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ———. Various years. MS: Manuscripts of Charles S. Peirce in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, followed by manuscript number and page number, as identified in: Robin, R. (1967). Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, and in Robin, R. (1971). “The Peirce Papers: A Supplementary Catalogue.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 7, 37–57. Pietarinen, A. 2006. Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication. Dordrecht: Springer. Rescher, N. 1977. Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. (Cited as MP.) ———. 2000. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Cited as RP.)

222  Helmut Pape ———. 2012. Pragmatism: The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers. ———. 2014. The Pragmatic Vision: Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Rorty, R. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 Psychology of Desire and the Pragmatics of Betterment Timo Airaksinen

Cleombrotus the Ambraciote leapt from a high wall to his death for no other reason than that Plato’s reasoning had convinced him of another and better world. (F.C.S. Schiller, Our Human Truths, 1939, 141)

1 Narratives of Desire Many pessimistic philosophers and religious thinkers argue that desires are practically problematic and often unsatisfiable.1 Heraclitus says: “It is hard to fight impulsive desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul” and “It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish” (Wheelwright 1989, 73). Objects of desire are often vague, complicated, and rich in tacit content. Let us say a desire entails its subjective and idealized narrative concerning a desirable possible world; hence, desire may not find its satisfaction in our real world (see Airaksinen 2012; on desire, Arpaly and Schroeder 2014, and Schroeder 2004). The narrated intentional object or the desideratum de dicto contains a limited set of features compared to the real intentional object de re, or the two are incongruent in some relevant manner. Hence, I want something of the object and not the object simpliciter. This is why the agent will necessarily discover that some bad or undesirable features in the real world accompany the good or desirable features of her/his de dicto intentional object as it happens to be realized. “My new car should be red” but “Red color fades” are mutually unhappy descriptions in a relevant sense: red color fades, which I do not like, and hence in the de re sense, I want a car that also fades. I can do nothing about it. The real world is a recalcitrant place. Nevertheless, the world should be as I want it to be— as my desire dictates. This is the direction of fit argument: the world should obey my desires. Obviously, this is unlikely to happen, except partially and even then incidentally. My desires are immodest in this sense. I want something that I have named. I can then expand on this as much as I like so that a full narrative emerges telling at least what the desired object is, what it is like, who wants it, how to get it, and why it is so desirable. Such

224  Timo Airaksinen a narrative is useful when my desires grow more and more complicated so that they no longer pick an obviously referential object: for instance, I have this irascible emotion: say, I hate wine. Hence, I do not want wine. What do I want? I want a world without wine. What would it be like? What I want de dicto must now be given in a narrative form before I know what it is de re. I say I want to be an exemplary father. What is my real object now? Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a truly exemplary father, which is an idealization. The best way to describe such an object is to narrate a relevant possible world. Then we can say that I want de dicto such a possible world where I am something like an exemplary father. I desire a possible world that is just like this real world except that there I am something like an exemplary father, along with the causal consequences of this fact. In this way, I project the idea of my desideratum on this possible word. Notice that there are plausible narrative approximations of an exemplary fatherhood even if there are no such fathers. Also, it is possible to become like an exemplary father in this modest sense. I need to conceive a realistic path to that part of the real world that fits the narrated possible world.2 The object of my desire is then accessible. In other words, I say I can successfully access a de re realization of the de dicto intentional object of my desire that satisfies my desire and gratifies me as an agent (cf. McGinn 2004, 496). This is not an empty wish, or a desire whose real object I believe is out of reach. I believe I cannot go there—it is an empty wish—even if the relevant possible world exists. For instance, I want to talk to the dead (Gray 2011). Here we require that our de re object representations be such that they may fit the narrated de dicto possible world, but now the desirable part of the world is too distant, demanding, or somehow “outlandish” and bad. What I understand to be a bad part depends of course on my belief system and conceptual framework. Science may say one and common sense another thing but religious faith disagrees. It may somehow be rational to want to be immortal even though I suspect that no path takes us to that (desirable) part of the real world where people are, like angels, immortal. In this sense, some wishes are plausible, namely, if the idea of the object is possible and the path somehow realistic, or the path is incidentally unavailable. Nevertheless, wish-like desires are often fanciful and totally implausible, especially in a practical perspective. Be this as it may, I sketch a path from where I am now to the part of the world where I am, in some sense, an exemplary father. I can try to get there; it is possible. My point is simple: desires may be empty wishes or true desires but they all presuppose a narrative concerning a realistic path to that part of the world where they are satisfied.

2 Sources of Anxiety Various sources of failed desire exist, as the pessimists have duly emphasized. I do not get what I want, regardless of what I get. I say such disappointments make me anxious. This can happen in different ways. First, the emerging

Psychology of Desire  225 real object does not fit the narrative. Our new house is not what I thought it would be. Second, my path to the desired world becomes unavailable. I want to be loved, but this depends on you as well as on me. I am unable to do much about it. All I can do is to sit and wait for the world to turn in a favorable way. Sometimes the source of failure is that the intentional object is so opaque, vague, or ambiguous that I do not know whether I am gratified of not. In this and many other similar cases, I am unable to clarify the narrative by retelling or explaining it. Perhaps I do not feel that the desire is really mine. Certain types of failure are internal to desire, such as mutually inconsistent desires. I desire two things that I cannot hope to realize together—we often do. If we assume that desire depends on imagination, this is easy to understand. I want to be young and agile, and I want to be old and wise. Some desires are self-defeating: I eagerly want to show people how wise and mature I am, but this in itself is stupid and immature. Your urgent desire to be loved defeats your chances. Here is a Kantian example: I want to get rich and so I steal money; consequently, I am loaded with money but I am not rich. There are many ways of getting anxious about desires. Certain individual desires are socially, or in foro externo, incomprehensible. I should not imitate Saint Simeon the Stylites, my personal hero. At one time his feat was truly desirable but today it is incomprehensible. Some sexual desires are so costly and demanding, or forbidden, that they are a constant source of anxiety. All desires based on in foro externo unacceptable narratives are more or less anxious, which is to say that they are asocial failures. We should avoid them but this is easier said than done because individual desires can be peculiarly resistant to interference, especially if they are strange. They are difficult to extinguish (for an illustration, see Shepard 2005, 310). Many irrational gratifications are made inadvisable and unacceptable in foro externo by a social calculus of desire. They are troublesome, and some troubles are real troubles. As Michael Shapiro puts it, “Desire is the value whose exchange must be the most closely regulated, for instability in the economy of desire can render precarious and perhaps topple the moral order resting on it” (Shapiro 1993, xii).

3 Happiness Desire tracks satisfaction and, consequently, personal gratification, which implicates happiness related considerations (see Airaksinen 2012). To get what I want according to my desire narrative somehow contributes to my happiness. Some examples of this are trivial, like “I always wanted a fur coat, I am so happy you bought me one.” However, some desire-based happiness ascriptions should be taken seriously. They indicate happiness in the proper sense of the word, whatever that is. As Thomas Hobbes famously says, Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call

226  Timo Airaksinen felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. (Hobbes 1651, Ch. 6/51) Therefore, it sounds alarming if desires are only a source of anxiety and unhappiness, like the pessimists say. All or most of my desires would then be failures. The pragmatic philosophical task is to explain how desires may make us happy, and why anxiety and unhappiness are anomalies. Otherwise, our system of rational (conative) interests in the appropriation of desirable possible worlds does not make sense. Happiness is practically necessary for us. Moreover, we know that sometimes we are gratified and sometimes not. If we are gratified too seldom, we are unhappy, and no one wants to be unhappy. This is against our most fundamental hopes, as it makes life less worthy, more anxious, and ultimately miserable. We must fight against such a fate. Besides, we believe that some people are happier than others. We also believe that luck and external circumstances do not explain all these differences. Some people seem to adjust better to the vagaries of life and to be more able to handle the challenges of the recalcitrant word. How do they do it? How could it happen that always when I entertain and aim at a desirable possibility I must at the same time anticipate anxiety and disappointment? This cannot create any sustainable basis for anything like a good life. Some solutions of this problem are self-deceptive. We tend to be irrationally happy (Joffe 1999, 56). An agent sees opportunities to happiness where no happiness may exist, but she should know that. She only pretends to be gratified and happy. She is posing without recognizing it herself. It is hardly conceivable that the best aspects of human life depend on straight irrationality. From a pragmatic point of view, we need to indicate a rational and honest way to a happy life, which, hopefully, is free of disappointment and anxiety. Only then can one live a good life. I do not think this conclusion requires any further justification. Empirical happiness studies often seem to assume that happiness is an emotion or a feeling. People are asked if they are happy or not at the time of asking. What they report shows how they feel about themselves and their life. This is how people understand the question. Most people say they are happy regardless of who they are and where they are; in Finland 83% are happy. I do not want to go deeper into the problems of the interpretation of such strange empirical results (see Brooks 2008). Here is one relevant problem: people who obviously live a problematic and anxious life still report high degrees of happiness. Cancer patients tell they are happy and so do old people, regardless of their life prospects. This is unconvincing. Too many people report subjective happiness, even if we expect them to suffer.3 The problem disappears if we reject the idea that happiness is an emotion or a

Psychology of Desire  227 feeling in foro interno. Here is an argument to support such a thesis. We can call it a relative happiness argument, which indicates that, in relation to desire, happiness results from a special type of personal gratification based on the pattern of constantly and systematically satisfied desire, which again is based on the realization of the objects of desire; or, to put it simply, systematically attaining what you desire. This means you cannot naturalize happiness by simply asserting that it is what empirical psychology observes when people say they feel happy. Happiness is not an empirically observable and verifiable feeling that tracks personal gratification. You cannot desire happiness as if it were an object; in fact, you cannot directly aim at happiness at all. Happiness is a kind of by-product of certain types of practical successes. Let us now review the relative happiness argument. A cancer patient is asked whether she is happy and her answer is in the affirmative. We suppose she answers honestly and without any effort to please the interviewer or guess the correct answer. She is happy but happy in a peculiarly relative sense. She is not a happy cancer patient, which suggests an oxymoron. We say she is happy for a cancer patient. In other words, she is in a fearful position, she suffers, and she is afraid of the future; yet, she is happy. She is happy in such way that cancer patients can be happy. I hesitate to say she is happy in a way only a cancer patient can be happy. This makes her happiness a special psychological attribute, which it is not. Her happiness is quite ordinary happiness, which you enjoy during the better moments of your life, too. How is this possible? It is possible because happiness is not a feeling like, say, delight or elation. The person suffers; there is no pleasure and little joy in her present life. Moreover, all her future hopes are more or less unfounded. Nevertheless, she is happy. Now, a Q-agent can be happy, depending on the circumstances, in the sense that she is happy for a Q-type (see Thomson 2008, 30). We can further clarify this position by means of a simple switch-test: You report unhappiness; would you join the happy patient on the grounds that then you will be happy, too? If happiness is a feeling, the switch sounds plausible. Ceteris paribus, I have a good reason to join a happy company. Nevertheless, the only reasonable answer is in the negative. She may be happy but not in the way you desire. You do not want to have the desires whose satisfaction makes her happy. Your and her desires are mutually incompatible. Notice that we seem to have an idea of paradigmatic type of happiness that is based on universally acceptable desires in good circumstances. Not all happiness ascriptions follow the “happy-for-Q” pattern. My conclusion is that to feel happy is not yet to be happy in the primary sense of the term. The relevant feelings are a kind of extra component of the happiness ascriptions based on some real-life pragmatic considerations. The patient has her own special reasons for her happiness; say, the fact that she is still alive and the care is good enough. In this way, satisfied desires provide

228  Timo Airaksinen reasons for happiness ascriptions, but the cancer patient’s relevant reasons are quite special. They do not apply to you as a healthy person. Moreover, you do not want to be in a situation where those reasons apply. I conclude that happiness is not an emotion or feeling and hence cannot be naturalized as one. There are two types of relevant cases here, actionist and non-actionist.4 The former refers to desires that entail action and the latter to the cases that do not. Examples: I want ice-cream and so I am inclined to go and buy some, or I want you to remember me after my death. In the first case, my own action resolves my problem; in the second case, it does not. Now, in an actionist case, my gratification requires my own action and the lack of gratification indicates a missing, interrupted, or rejected action plan and its replacement with an omission or other actions. In a non-actionist case, success entails a favorable turn of external events; otherwise one’s attention is directed away from the original object in a more or less permanent manner. The object de dicto then vanishes. However, in both cases the blocked action and the lack of attention are normally accompanied by feelings of loss, anxiety, and disappointment, which we can detect empirically. All emotions have their typical physiological symptoms. It is also true that gratification is normally accompanied by some typical positive reactions like feelings and emotions, which make its objective detection possible. In both cases also non-emotional bodily symptoms tend to be present, such as bodily motions, including unintentional sounds and verbalizations. Gratification is normally delightful but this is never what we should mean by happiness. This is to say that, at most, personal gratification and delight are indicators of happiness, which can then be objectively detected and measured. This shows, in a methodological sense, how happiness gets naturalized. I want to say that happiness is a positive evaluative attitude concerning my relative success of systematic long-term desire satisfaction and the resulting personal gratification. In this sense, happiness is an emergent property that supervenes on a series and pattern of relevant gratifications. Happiness emerges from a sufficiently long patterned sequence of mutually related gratifications. We can say that happiness refers to the right pattern of continuous gratification. This gives happiness an objective flavor as something that can be observed and measured in foro externo. We may continue this argument by saying that the fundamental sources of happiness are relatively uniform among people, because of our similar physiology and biological constitution; or, at least the variation of these sources can be understood scientifically. Of course we also have idiosyncratic desires, but their meaning should not be exaggerated.

4 Pragmatic Methods of Betterment We now ask: When exactly is a desire satisfied? As I said, there is no such thing as a simple success. What one wants and what one gets are two different things; when are they close enough? Accordingly, the fundamental

Psychology of Desire  229 psychological question is, when exactly did one get what one wanted? To answer this question, my suggestion is that we first translate the theory of desire, as presented above, to the language of dialectical and naturalized pragmatism. Our recalcitrant world tends to make us anxious and unhappy. How to avoid it? I do not entertain any desires nor do I hope for good things to happen; this is what a pessimist recommends. I systematically avoid all desires (Agamben 2013). Or, I desire and act, but I also rewrite my desire narrative so that it minimizes the grounds for disappointment. In other words, I dialectically adjust my narrative to verified facts in order to reach the practically best possible results in the long run; Nicholas Rescher (2007) has developed a suitable method. The most extreme case is that I first observe what I got and then reformulate my de dicto intentional object so that there is now a perfect fit. In other words, I desire what I already have. This is a perverse strategy because—paradoxically—it makes disappointment impossible. Such a relaxed guarantee shows that the strategy is indeed irrational. The normal case is that I first acknowledge my intentional de dicto object and subsequently check it against the received real object; as I argued above, the result is bound to be disappointing. I also argued that it is too difficult to live a life like this even when it appears unavoidable to a pessimist. In real life, an agent finds her way between the horns of this dilemma of mad optimism and unfounded pessimism. How does it happen? We need a method of betterment that fixes the discrepancy between the two objects of desire.5 The method of betterment requires a dialectical rule of adjustment, as well as a pair of standards of evaluation focusing on the practicality and rationality, or short- and long-term viability, of desire. The results of this method should show the improvement of one’s life, living conditions, and happiness levels. Such results are real-life positive effects concerning the foundations of good life; Rescher maintains, as I see it, that we should aim at, in pragmatic terms, “satisfying life in terms of personal happiness and contentment” (2012, 4; 2014, 11). Let us now look into the details.

5 Clarification When I focus on my current set of intentional de dicto objects of desire, I notice that they range from relatively simple to fully opaque always depending on the narrative. Sometimes I consider an object about which I tell a narrative; sometimes the narrative constitutes the object. I want a new car and I want to be an exemplary father are two relevant examples. In the first case, my expensive desire may require a justification, hence the narrative. In the second case, I desperately want to know what it is to be an exemplary father. Hence, the best available narrative constitutes my intentional object—which needs no further justification. Desire narratives can be complex and conceptually tricky. Many real-life objects of desire are suggestive, fuzzy, metaphoric, metonymic, ironic, etc.

230  Timo Airaksinen They may be open ended in so many ways. And they may surprise the agent, too. Some narratives are metonymic: I want X but mention Y, when X, say, is a part of Y. I am a poor person and the only car I can afford is a rusty second-hand one, but I say I want the best of wheels. This is a combination of a hyperbole and ironically applied metonym. What I actually say is that I want a car and any car is fine with me. I say I love you, which is a double metonym. Love is a particular type of desire and “you” refers, say, to some of your body parts. Only by telling the whole story and making the narrative as complete as possible can we clarify such opaque contexts. However, I may not understand my own desire, however rich and complete the narrative. The psychoanalysts, following Sigmund Freud, talk about unconscious levels of desire, which sounds, however, like an unnecessary ontological mystification (cf. Davidson 1982, 204). It is better to talk about the incompleteness and opaqueness of desire narratives in the first person perspective, or in foro interno. Think of the following simple case: The king wants to kill a brazen usurper, but before he has time to do anything a valiant knight runs the man through with a sword. Is the king gratified now? He wanted to do it himself, but now he cannot. Is he angry and disappointed? The king may still be gratified because his enemy is dead. Suppose he is; we must then conclude that the king’s original narrative was either incomplete or first-person opaque; he only wanted the usurper dead. The question is, is it always possible to make a desire narrative transparent? The answer may be in the negative. I often ask, did I really want that? My narratives, even in foro interno, may remain opaque. Intentional objects de dicto specified by their opaque narratives can be satisfied in so many ways that it may shock me. The first task is to dialectically fix and clarify these narratives and, thus, specify the object. How should we do it? I suggest that we have three plausible alternatives. Perhaps we could focus on intentions, but this is obviously a bad solution. Intentions are private states of affairs, or they only figure in foro interno, which is a problem for a pragmatist. It is very difficult to verify an intention either ex ante or post hoc. Sometimes it is possible, sometimes not but the general rule is that intention ascriptions tend to be backward looking. In a pragmatist perspective we would like to find a solution that works both in foro externo and ex ante. There are alternatives that should work: we can focus on reasons for action, desires as scripts, and needs as conditional desires. Reasons for action are shared in foro externo; so, this helps. However, not all desires imply actions. A much more promising strategy is to say that desires are scripted (see Airaksinen 2014, 449ff). Our desires tend to be uniform and predictable. They follow their normative scripts in foro externo, which is to say that the desire narrative has its known standard interpretation. When I want some dough, you know what it means. You want to be an exemplary father, and I know what that is. When a woman wants to be a bride of Christ, we know she wants to be a nun. The narratives may look opaque,

Psychology of Desire  231 but we know how to read them on the basis of the scripts they are based on. The method is not fool-proof, of course, but it works in standard and normal cases. Idiosyncratic cases exist, but if they do not communicate at some social level they are mad. In this way, desires in foro interno come with their preferred readings in foro externo. In other words, I can translate oratio recta into an oratio obliqua: “I want X” becomes “You believe he wants X*” This means that my private narrative concerning X has its social interpretation X* according to the relevant script of X. Another method is based on the difference between instrumental needs and intrinsic desires. This distinction works as follows. First, a subjective interpretation: needs are conditional or instrumental desires. I want to go home, hence I need a taxi. Second, an objective interpretation: a motor needs oil to function. The body needs vitamins. A person needs education. In these cases, it is clear that the need does not depend on any subjective desire. I feed oil into the motor and it needs it regardless of my desires. The body does not flourish without vitamins. The point is that status quo, equilibrium, normal functioning, and good progress require something that we can then call a need. In this way, these two interpretations of need are independent of each other. Now, concerning the disambiguation problem, we may utilize this idea as follows. Desires are sometimes idiosyncratic, sometimes socially scripted. If they are idiosyncratic, their disambiguation remains a problem; one never really understands them. If they are scripted social constructions, we can then disambiguate them by referring to needs, as follows. Suppose there is a party. Late at night the host knows, ex ante, that taxis are needed because people will want to go home. When we know what people need, we also know what they desire. The king needs a sword, given that he wants to kill the usurper. In other words, because desires are social constructs they also are in a sense standardized and, therefore, we know what needs they entail or presuppose in a given social setting. And this truth applies both to the subjective and objective needs. The latter case requires an extra condition; namely, the condition that the need is based on a rationally desirable but not necessarily desired fact. The doctors say that they need to operate, and this presupposes that what follows is an intrinsically desirable state of affairs; however, the patient may not desire it. He has his reasons that can be rational or irrational. Perhaps he, irrationally, does not want to live. Alternatively, he may say with a perfect rational justification that what the doctors predict and promise is not in his long-term interest. To live is desirable as such but to live as a permanent patient is not always desired. What the doctors can promise is good but not good enough. The person says, in this social setting, that he does not need an operation and from that we can infer to his desires in foro externo. If you say you want to be an exemplary father, I like to know what your respective needs are. I ask what you think you need in order to achieve

232  Timo Airaksinen your goal. Many socially scripted desires hang on their typical patterns of needs, without which they are just empty wishes, day dreams, or fancies. Need descriptions tell what path you think you may take to that part of the real world that realizes the story of your desirable intentional de dicto object or desideratum. Perhaps you cannot infer much on this basis but it is all you may get. In some cases the need structure is rich, detailed, and informative but not always. However, the main thing is that we can say something socially useful about subjective desires. As Heraclitus says, “You could never discover the limits of the soul, . . . such is the depth of its meaning” (Wheelwright 1989, 72). Rescher (2014, 9) is willing to conflate needs and desires, and he says they are both “clearly a factual issue” as observable facts. I agree, as I said above, that needs are in a sense observable although they are also thick normative concepts. In this way, if we focus on a person’s needs in the case of scripted desires we can also tell what these needs are. They are anchored, as I said, on the one hand, to (subjective) desires and desirability and, on the other hand, to (objective) status quo and normal functioning. However, I do not quite see how desires could be observable facts in the same sense as needs are. That would be too good as it voids our problem. One can of course talk about such folk-psychological terms in various ways.

6 Gratification The next step of the argument is transcendental: I know that gratification occurs so I ask what makes it possible. We obviously use and apply a method of betterment that enables systematic gratification without which happiness is impossible. The method is simple: we form a dialectical loop from the real world back to the de dicto intentional object so that it adjusts to the world to a degree that allows them to fit together. Now, the traditional direction of fit argument fails: it is not possible for the recalcitrant world directly to fit our immodest desires; on the contrary, our desires must fit the world, too. Desires cannot be like fixed demands on the world; that is far too immodest. Instead, they must remain flexible and adjustable. This is to say we need more modest desires. Therefore, the direction of fit in the case of satisfied desires is a two way path. If it is not, the desire is unreasonable. Many of our desires are unreasonable in the sense that they are so immodest they do not respect the recalcitrance of the world—thus they fail. We need to learn about the world and our desires as if together (see Airaksinen 1998). In this way we can adjust the two objects of desire to each other—we better do so because it may not happen spontaneously. The dialectical loop, as I will argue, makes the fit more or less perfunctory. Of course, the dangers of such a method of betterment are obvious. Too easy a fit is deceptive and in the long run harmful or even self-destructive. If you want O but you are happy with O* that is too far from O, you should learn how to amend the situation. The same can be said of the case where

Psychology of Desire  233 you insist that what you want and what you can get match exactly. Instead, I need to correct my initial de dicto intentional object according to what I can get de re and then I will gradually learn what I can expect de dicto. This allows a person to satisfy her desires and be happy about it without damaging her long-term interests. Such a dialectical betterment certainly is ad hoc, but it is, nevertheless, a pragmatically justifiable method. It works. An example: I want a fine car and all I can afford is a new Ford. I am gratified only if I successfully adjust my idea of a fine car so that a Ford is a fine car. This is what I learn to do over time. Suppose I want something but believe I cannot get it. Can the belief extinguish the desire? I feel disappointed but in the long run I will learn that I cannot get it, which is to say I no longer desire it. Of course, I may still dream of it, but that is all. We must react post hoc, or we gradually and systematically adjust that what we want (the narrative) to the real object (what we got) after getting it and learning from it. I no longer say, “I know I did not get what I wanted.” Instead, I say, “I got enough and came close enough,” which now means I got what I wanted. So, in this restricted sense I can get what I want. This requires an iterated feedback loop from the real object back to my de dicto intentional object and its narrative. This is to say that my first impressions of the real object do not dominate my gratification ascriptions; on the contrary, I must learn to suppress the effects of the first impressions so that I can evaluate the relationship between the two objects once again; I must wait and learn to be modest. Actually, there is no limit to how many times one applies the dialectical procedure of object evaluation while one is learning about the case. An agent learns to do this more or less methodically. Then one can start anticipating how one will feel, but not before. We say one is well-adjusted to the real world and its constraints. This is a thoroughly normative business because it is governed by rationality considerations in the pragmatic perspective.

7 Rational Desirability You do not want to be too easily gratified as you want—according to the logic of desire—all you can get; neither do you want to be permanently disappointed, anxious, and unhappy due to your immodest requirements. Your strategy should be practically maximizing—this is rational. You do want it all, but you must be happy with getting as much as possible. This is our first principle of rationality, or a principle of modesty. What we require is a realistic criterion and procedurally justified rational method of evaluation that provides the best results for you in the long run. Here a pragmatic approach is the only plausible one.6 How do you justify your prima facie gratification ascriptions? I said above that both satisfaction and gratification signify a semantic match between the two intentional objects of desire, given that you now know what it is you want. But this does not imply that the match is so close that it, as such,

234  Timo Airaksinen justifies an unconditionally positive attitude. Suppose I want to be an exemplary father and, hence, according to its script, I take loving care of my children. Again, this shows what I mean by exemplary father, but it does not prove that I reached my goal. The solution is this: my properly interpreted desire narrative allows me to individuate the object of my desire but it also provides a set of additional features. Some of these features are there to show why the object is desirable. No object is desirable as such; it all depends on the set of the additional features of the case. The object is desirable “as something.” So, even if I can specify what the object is, I may have no clear idea of why I wanted it. I get some fine wine, and I now know what I wanted and what satisfies my present desire, but why this object gratifies me is another question. Therefore, given that a desire is satisfied, we can still ask why I should be gratified. It may look like a peculiar problem, but it is all too real. “Why do you love/want that man? He looks not too attractive to me.” You may have a hard time answering. Desires that have objects whose desirable feature are unknowable are irrational. If I desire I must be able to say why. If the desire narrative is complete, I can do it; however, the narrative can be limited, rudimentary, or misleading. It follows from this epistemic uncertainty that I can ask whether some good features are there. The answer may well be in the negative. Perhaps the special features of the de dicto intentional object that can make it desirable are missing. I notice that the object that I now have is devoid of many of the properties that can make it desirable.7 So, the first thing is to check out, when I aim at the rational explanation and justification of my gratifications, what the desirable features are. Next, I ask whether the features are there. I have my ice cream; does it taste good? I wanted ice cream but I suppose it to be tasty, which it may not be. Should I still say I got what I wanted— because I got ice cream? Perhaps not, because I wanted something that is ice cream and tastes good. Suppose the ice cream should be firm, cold, sweet, tasty, and fruity. I find out that my ice cream is sweet, but not that cold or firm and less than fruity. Now I hesitate to admit that my would-be gratification is justified. The problem is that I am not maximizing the number of the good features of the de re object. I want all I can get. No firm rules govern such cases. It all depends on my modesty and epistemic depth. I need a rational method to solve the problems. In other words, my present approach is again procedural. All one can say is, if a sufficient number of such known good features figure in the case, my gratification is both explained and rationally justified. And by sufficient we mean reasonable maximization. I want as much as I can get. What happens is that my gratification supervenes on the known desirable, good properties of the object, if I know them. This idea connects to the requirements of procedural rationality. We compare what we got with the multiple, known good features that figure in the desire narrative. If the list of hits is sufficiently complete—as much as we can get—we declare satisfaction and gratification. In this case, gratification supervenes on these hits:

Psychology of Desire  235 the two intentional objects match in the correct maximizing way and hence we can rationally justify the alleged gratification ascription. Now, it is fine to say in foro interno that a given less than perfect de re object is what I wanted, or to deny it, as long as my deliberative criteria and the idea of maximization remain consistently the same. They express my character, temperament, and personality and therefore they are agent relative and in this sense subjective. However, we ought to be consistently what we are, or otherwise the notion of gratification does not make much sense. Some people are easily gratified; some are not. Here rationality demands consistence but that is all. Otherwise my reactions to practical demands would turn unpredictable and enigmatic even to myself. What if you are easily satisfied in the case of ice cream; so, you also should be relaxed with the demands of your budding fatherhood? This may not be easy to accept. Some issues are more serious and important than others. For instance, some desires, like fatherhood, organize my life and thus provide relevant reasons for action. They connect to my special projects (see Scheffler 2004). In this sense they are important desires. Sometimes I am happy with my fatherhood; sometimes I am not. This does not help my project of being an exemplary father at all. My psychology becomes opaque both in foro interno and externo. My occasional craving for ice-cream certainly does not matter much. Hence, a meta-rule may allow the criteria of gratification be relaxed in trivial cases (ice cream) and strict in important cases (fatherhood). I require more when I consider my fatherhood. This sounds acceptable, if this meta-rule is applied consistently. A rational agent, as he deliberates on his possible gratifications, will learn to take into account the negative features of the de re intentional object. First, he may not consider any bad features, then he forms beliefs about them, and finally he includes them in the desire narrative itself. After a learning process, the relevant desire narrative is already stained by them. A full account tells a story so rich that its negative features emerge and become evident: I want something that I also hate, loath, or am afraid of.8 Alternatively, I am tempted by something that must be seen as bad although has some major good features. Desires are often in foro interno confusing and even anxious. When this happens, the positive, desirable features must dominate so that the blemished object still looks desirable in its own possible world. Suppose a de re object exemplifies only one positive feature but a bundle of negatives ones. The positive feature may even look like a minor one. However, it must somehow dominate if the object is still to be rationally desired. Otherwise, it is necessary to extinguish the desire. It is not easy to see what makes a given positive feature dominant in such a desire narrative; moreover, it is an open question what the degree of imbalance between the good and bad features should be before it wrecks the case. Somehow, the good must shine through and capture the agent’s attention. Whatever happens, the agent, to be rational, must react to the dominant feature. He must then admit that he is gratified in this situation regardless

236  Timo Airaksinen of the bad features. He will, in the long run, also learn more about all these features. This process modifies her desire narrative and may change the place and status of the dominant features in it. After learning my lessons, my next full narrative may also explicitly list beliefs concerning the bad features and so I can anticipate what will happen with my supposed gratification. But nothing much at the level of narratives can prepare me for the actual experiences with regard to real world objects. I do my homework and that is that. Upon the first try with a new desire its bad features may feel either awful or negligible—who knows? I must try before I know and then I will learn. Perhaps I have originally overestimated or underestimated the negative effects of the bad features. The time perspective is crucial here: Whisky brings about hang-overs. If I neglect the time perspective, I need not care of it. I anticipate happy drinking. Gradually, I learn that this is neither pleasant nor advisable. Some undesirable effects are delayed in time, perhaps a very long time. All of them should be considered ex ante.

8 Pessimism Defeated Perhaps partial satisfaction of desire is possible. I have argued that, on the contrary, only full satisfaction matters. Everything else indicates a failure. I tried to show how what looks like partial satisfaction can be understood, pragmatically, as full satisfaction and gratification. This is necessary because there is no such thing as “full and perfect” satisfaction of desire. The problem is this: if all gratification is only partial, can I ever be happy? Do I tend to be gratified and disappointed at the same time? Such a conflict is not a good thing. I must therefore learn how to handle it. For this we need the dialectical pragmatic method I sketched above, applying some ideas of Nicholas Rescher. We can learn the art of reasonable maximization. In sum: (i) I need to disambiguate my de dicto intentional object, (ii) I must learn to anticipate a reasonable fit between it and the real world, and (iii) I must rationally justify my claim that I am gratified. In the last case, I must pay close attention to the negative features of the case. The key lesson is that one can find gratification and happiness through desire. Regular gratification patterns mean happiness—at least to some degree. The pessimists are wrong. They do not take into account the pragmatic nature of the quest for happiness and the available dialectical methods betterment. Yet it is true that we never, strictly speaking, get what we want. We may get it, but we originally wanted so much more. We catch some desirable features of it, but we also acquire some bad features. The point is that we first need to know what we want and then decide to what degree we reached the goal. The fact that we cannot get it all does not mean that we got nothing. And if we got something, perhaps we got enough? If we got it often enough we can then with some rational justification be happy about it. It may not make much sense to talk about an unconditionally satisfied desire, and certainly

Psychology of Desire  237 we should not insist on it; but as long as it makes sense to talk about a rationally justified idea of less-than-perfect satisfaction as satisfaction it also makes sense to talk about human happiness.

Notes 1 For instance, Heraclitus, Plato, Epicurus, the Buddhists, many/most Christian thinkers, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Simon Weil, and many others. For them, desires mean a source of anxiety and a threat to happiness. 2 Wollheim (1984, 53) argues that desires do not constitute a possible world. Of course they do not, but a desire fits a given possible world. Desires also presuppose a possible world. 3 The relevant problems have been known for a long time. The Finnish sociologist Erik Allardt reports them in 1976. See also Michalos (1980, 386) and Rescher (1972, Chapter 3). 4 In empirical psychology, Grammond et al. (2010, 9) define desire as follows: Desire “concerns the various things one would like to have or to do even if it is impossible.” This is a semi-actionist definition. In Hofmann and Nordgren (2015, 5, 62) desire gets a strictly actionist and motivational definition. Philosophers normally do not believe that desires are motives for action. 5 See Rescher (2014, Chapter 12, “The Pragmatics of Betterment”). He asks how to make the world better: I ask how to make the “us vs. the world” relationship better through an adequate personal adjustment to the recalcitrant world. 6 Rescher’s main idea is to ground the rationality of desire on basic needs, or on “[a] pragmatism of effective need cultivation” (2014, 9; also 2000, 178–185). He also writes, “[M]eeting the prevailing needs in so far as possible is a rational mandate” (2014, 11). Next, “[t]he pivot point is how matters ought to be—a region where needs come to dominate over wants” (2000, 181). The problem is obvious. Needs are too often just conditional desires. The line between such conditional desires and unconditional basic needs tend to get blurred. Need ascriptions also tend to be subjective. Moreover, our “larger universal needs” (Rescher 2000, 183) are just the bare bones of the good life of a unique individual. We must allow for personal desires as well. 7 It is a moot point to ask what these features are. Schroeder says they are related to rewards (2004, 35). Historically, they are mostly related to pleasures. Plato grounds them on values and I will follow him. 8 Girard quotes Marcel Proust: “the hero finds he is in the presence of a ‘dream which is hostile yet passionately desired’ ” (1965, 93). His mimetic theory says all desires are social copies. It is then easy to see why I am anxious about my desires: I cannot fully recognize them. They remain partly alien to me.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2013. The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life. Trans. Adam Kotsko. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Airaksinen, Timo. 1998. “Action and Learning.” In W. W. Gasparski and D. Botham (eds.), Action Learning. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 65–75. ———. 2012. “Desire and Happiness.” Homo Oeconomicus 29, 393–412. ———. 2014. “An Introduction to Desire.” Homo Oeconomicus 31, 447–461. Arpaly, Nomy and Schroeder, Timothy. 2014. In Praise of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

238  Timo Airaksinen Brooks, Arthur C. 2008. Gross National Happiness. New York: Basic Books. Davidson, Donald. 1982. “Paradoxes of Irrationality.” In R. Wollheim and J. Hopkins (eds.), Philosophical Essays on Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 289–305. Girard, René. 1965. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Trans. Y. Freccero. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Grammont, Franck, Legrand, Dorothée, and Livet, Pierre (eds.). 2010. Naturalizing Intention in Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gray, John. 2011. The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. London: Allen Lane. Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan. London: Penguin, 2003. Hofmann, W. and Nordgren, L. F. (eds.). 2015. The Psychology of Desire. New York: Guilford Press. Joffe, Helene. 1999. Risk and “The Other.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGinn, Colin. 2004. “Objects of Intentionality.” In R. Shantz (ed.), Current Issues of Theoretical Philosophy, Vol. 2: The Externalist Challenge. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 495–512. Michalos, Alex C. 1980. “Satisfaction and Happiness.” Social Indicators Research 8, 385–422. Rescher, Nicholas. 1972. Welfare. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 2000. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 2007. Dialectics. Hausenstamm: Ontos Verlag. ———. 2012. Pragmatism: The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. ———. 2014. The Pragmatic Vision, Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield. Scheffler, Samuel. 2004. “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons.” In R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith (eds.), Reason and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 247–269. Schroeder, Tim. 2004. Three Faces of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shapiro, Michael J. 1993. Reading “Adam Smith”: Desire, History and Value. London: Sage. Shepard, Sam. 2005. Seven Plays: “The Tongues.” New York: Trial Press. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 2008. Normativity. Chicago, IL: Open Court. Wheelwright, Philip (ed.). 1989. The Presocratics. New York: Macmillan. Wollheim, Richard. 1984. The Thread of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

13 From Method to Medicine A Pragmatist Approach to Bioethics Diana B. Heney

1 Remarks on Rescherian Pragmatism Nicholas Rescher’s incredibly wide-ranging work exhibits throughout a deeply pragmatist spirit. That work demonstrates—more truly than any abstract argument could—that pragmatism is, as Charles Sanders Peirce argued, not a narrow doctrine but “a principle and method of right thinking” (Peirce 1997 [1903]). The methodological commitments of pragmatism are fully on display in Rescher’s approach to questions ranging from logic and philosophy of science to history of philosophy and applied ethics. In taking pragmatism on the road, Rescher has exemplified Peirce’s ideal of the laboratory philosopher, one who is animated by the “impulse to penetrate into the reason of things” (CP 1.44). In “On Not Being a Pragmatist: Eight Reasons and a Cause,” Ian Hacking has offered a succinct expression of that same spirit with a different intellectual backstory: a contemporary philosopher, he says, is best served by committing to “taking a look” (Hacking 2007, 36). While Hacking is no doubt right that this way of doing philosophical business is not the private province of the pragmatist, it is nonetheless a characteristic feature of pragmatism as an empiricism that it takes a look, and takes seriously the lessons and pressures of experience as well as the social settings and structures that frame such experience. Hacking’s way of taking a look has other roots—he declares his allegiance to Karl Popper, declaring himself the “last living Popperian,” while acerbically noting “I would never, ever, call myself Peircean, living or dead” (Hacking 2007, 35). Whereas Hacking explains how he has taken himself to “be led to express pragmatist-sounding ideas without feeling any sense of commonality with self-identified pragmatists” (Hacking 2007, 33), Rescher explicitly aligns his work with the classical pragmatist tradition, and espouses a form of pragmatism thoroughly permeated with Peircean ideas. Rescher served as the President of the Charles S. Peirce Society for 1983, and in his work on a theory of knowledge and logic especially, the influence of Peirce is clear. Like Peirce, Rescher is extremely widely read in the history of philosophy. In much the same way that Peirce drew on the newest science alongside Kant,

240  Diana B. Heney Duns Scotus, and Aristotle, Rescher has drawn on the newest logic alongside Peirce, Leibniz, and many more besides. From this orientation, Rescher’s work ranges over epistemology; logic; metaphysics; philosophy of religion; philosophy of science; social and political philosophy; history of philosophy (with notable bodies of work on Kant, Leibniz, and Peirce); ethics; and recently most extensively, metaphilosophy. It is metaphilosophy and applied ethics that occupy me here, but one might start just about anywhere, with any one of the hundreds of articles that struck one’s fancy (unless, perhaps, one of the dozens of books seemed more appealing).1 For the project undertaken in this paper, I bring together Rescher’s metaphilosophy and his treatment of the problem of how to allocate a specific category of medical care. In his prescient 1969 Ethics article “The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy,” Rescher both anticipates the severity of health resource shortages at the level of microallocation now being experienced world-wide, and suggests a method for answering the question of who should receive certain types of treatment when scarcity is a factor, a method that aspires to objectivity while simultaneously acknowledging our fallibility and our epistemic limits. Before considering Rescher’s treatment of exotic medical lifesaving therapy (hereafter, ELT), it will be useful to consider more explicitly just what Rescherian pragmatism consists in. With an eye to characterizing what unifies much of this massive output, some of Rescher’s most recent work is illuminating. I focus here primarily on two sources, his 2014 Metaphilosophy: Philosophy in Philosophical Perspective and 2015 Cognitive Complications: Epistemology in Pragmatic Perspective. Parts of these two books are helpful in thinking about Rescher’s work as a whole, and setting us up to see the method that permeates the work as a whole and the 1969 Ethics article in particular. It also puts us in a position to consider the prospects for Rescherian pragmatism in contemporary bioethics more generally. Hilary Putnam, another past President of the Charles S. Peirce Society (1989) and the most recent recipient of Pittsburgh University’s Rescher Medal,2 has characterized pragmatism as simultaneously “fallibilist and anti-skeptical” (Putnam 2005, 99). Putnam also maintains that pragmatism’s most basic unifying commitment is to the “primacy of practice,” which is “perhaps the central” emphasis of pragmatism (Putnam 1995, 52). Rescher’s recent metaphilosophical work demonstrates that he affirms both of these features of pragmatism. Through Rescher’s work, we can also see that these commitments can be serious and substantive, not mere platitudes that fail to constrain and direct philosophical investigation. What Putnam refers to as the fallibilist and anti-skeptical stance of pragmatism describes the attitude of the inquirer. She who would set out after the truth by means of inquiry must be prepared to meet with new evidence that could undermine previously held beliefs—none of which are immune to revision. But the inquirer does not set out from some mythical starting

From Method to Medicine  241 line down some pre-established path—instead, she is nudged, nagged, or positively pushed into inquiry by the presence of some real doubt about some specific proposition or commitment. What makes inquiry the proper response to doubt is both our animal needs and our critically endorsed epistemic standards. Those standards are not solitary, but shared, which is why Peirce notes that the “social impulse” is against methods other than inquiry (CP 5.378). With the commitment to inquiry understood in these naturalistic but socially situated terms, we can begin to see why Rescher has remained staunchly committed to that which gives this volume its title: to a notion of objectivity. Inquiry as a response to real doubt makes sense only if the inquiry has some chance of carrying us to a more secure belief. That kind of security is what we crave, but as Peirce argued in “Fixation of Belief,” we find that we cannot take security by any means whatever. When we think about dodgy methods of belief fixation like tenaciously clinging to the beliefs that we like best by refusing to see any evidence that we fear might produce doubt, we find that the beliefs we attain by such methods carry their taint. Badly acquired beliefs cannot be maintained in the face of doubt concerning the methods of their acquisition. Inquiry is the last method standing because it is the only one that involves an idea of objectivity—this is the idea and commitment of (some) pragmatists that gives this volume its name. As Rescher clearly advertises in his 2005 “Pragmatism at the Crossroads,” he regards a commitment to a notion of objectivity as a hinge in pragmatism not just historically, but also as a point for great care with an eye to pragmatism’s prospects in the twenty-first century. In Rescher’s 2014 Metaphilosophy, the most salient portions are Chapter 10, “Can Philosophy Be Objective?” and Chapter 12, “Does Philosophy Make Progress?” In brief, the answers are “yes” and “yes.” In “Can Philosophy Be Objective?” Rescher begins with a quote from William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, here excerpted: No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in unique manner. (James 1916 [1902], 487) This leads to the framing question of this chapter: must we accept that pragmatism’s emphasis on agents as situated, and on the real features of our shared lives, rules out maintaining any meaningful conception of objectivity? Rescher tips his hand early here, when he suggests that without a philosophically defensible conception of objectivity, “[t]he whole enterprise becomes disjointedly relativized to the specific and situations of various individuals” (Rescher 2014, 141). And hyper-individualized theorizing quickly devolves, as David Bakhurst has put the point, into “narcissistic

242  Diana B. Heney anthropocentrism” (Bakhurst 2007, 139). In comparing pragmatisms, Bakhurst singles Rescher’s out on the basis of its commitment to objectivity (Bakhurst 2007, 129). But is there a defensible conception of objectivity that coheres with a pragmatist program? To begin to offer an answer, we need some working definition of objectivity. Here is Rescher’s: A thesis, doctrine, or argument is objective if it can stand tall before the tribunal of impartial reason as something upon whose cogency all people should—and reasonable people in general will—agree. For something to be objective is for it to be a matter of impersonal fact—to be the sort of thing that any careful inquirer can come to see, irrespective of personal inclinations or predilections. (Rescher 2014, 141–142) This closely echoes Peirce, whose account holds that the advantage of inquiry is that through its use “our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency” (CP 5.384). It is on the basis of such “impersonal facts”, such “external permanency”, that we can make objective judgments. Such judgments have the kind of stability that we expect of the products of inquiry as a method. When we consider them, we see—as David Wiggins has put it—that there is simply “nothing else to think,” nothing else that properly respects the world outside of our individual ruminations (Wiggins 1990–91, 67). A main reason that we need such a notion of objectivity to guide the business of philosophy is that philosophy itself has an end in view, which is “to create an edifice of thought to provide us with an intellectual home . . . in a complicated and challenging world” (Rescher 2014, 143). Whether one is dealing with metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics, “nothing within the framework of . . . a philosophical discussion relates to people’s idiosyncratic attitudes” (Rescher 2014, 143). This is because “By its very nature as the sort of inquiry it is, philosophy stands committed to objectivity” (Rescher 2014, 148). Here, Rescher is again echoing Peirce, who argues that all inquiry is regulated by certain guiding principles. If we are to understand philosophy as attempting any knowledge other than self-knowledge, we must have a conception of objectivity that makes sense of our fallibilism in the following terms: one could always be wrong with respect to a belief and be forced, in the face of recalcitrant experience, to revise it. But one is wrong in such a case because there is something to be wrong about, not because one has had an unpopular opinion. If part of what philosophy aims to do is grapple with “external permanency” in a way that makes our “intellectual home[s]” comfortable and defensible, it will be clear that we can do better and worse with respect to this goal. Rescher takes this up in “Does Philosophy Make Progress?” Much of his answer can be anticipated by considering this idea of

From Method to Medicine  243 philosophy as “home-making,” where there are both shared general commitments and individual preferences at play. You might have in mind a mansion while I am happy with a flat, but we all want to keep the weather off and the rats out. In more theoretical terms: given the complexity of philosophy as a field and its history of engagement with questions ranging from highly abstract to fiercely urgent, we must regard it as pursuing “no single goal but a variety of interconnected objectives” (Rescher 2014, 155). Given individual differences regarding which goals have priority, it should be unsurprising that philosophy is not a field that marches lockstep toward some predestined resting place where the questions are all answered and the debates replaced by mutual admiration societies. Because the pragmatist holds that inquiries arise from the real doubts of agents in context—that is, that specific goals gain priority because they matter in some way to us here and now—we should expect the pursuit of inquiry to be unfolding at any time across a diverse range of problems. As Rescher points out, the interplay of philosophy and metaphilosophical issues suggests the possibility of progress not merely in parallel tracks within a domain, but also within and about programs. Philosophical progress can be “technical” or “doctrinal” (Rescher 2014, 157). On the side of technical merits, Rescher lists “breadth of concern, refinement of distinctions, suitability of question posing, rigor of argumentation”—matters that he maintains are fit for objective assessment. This suggests that the standard of objectivity Rescher defends is both an aim of philosophical inquiries and a standard against which to assess the practices of philosophy itself. And on the technical side, Rescher argues that there can be no doubt that philosophy has made progress. But the technical question is unlikely to be the question that most people— even most philosophers—have in mind when they ask whether the discipline makes progress. What is being asked is more plausibly understood as whether philosophy makes the world better, or makes us better off in it. And here, Rescher thinks that “[t]he issue of philosophical progress will . . . depend crucially on exactly how we construe the mission of the enterprise” (Rescher 2014, 159). With respect to this question, the pragmatist balance of fallibilism and anti-skepticism suggests a way forward. Insofar as philosophy is something that we do, it happens where we are. As George Santayana put the point, the philosopher does not begin “at the heart of the universe nor at its origin”—instead, we “lay siege to the truth,” “first from one quarter and then from another” (Santayana 1955 [1923], vi). Peirce makes a similar point, likening the position of the embarked inquirer to that of a person bog-walking: one “can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay till it begins to give way” (CP 5.589). Rescher is squarely in this tradition, too: “In ‘solving’ the problems of philosophy, as in solving the problems of life, the victories we gain are never permanent—and never complete” (Rescher 2014, 162). Nonetheless,

244  Diana B. Heney victories are possible, and moreover, the cognitive aspirations of philosophy— expressed by the field and by individuals engaged in the process of inquiry— give us something that looks like a finish line. When we have reached a conclusion that bears the marks of truth, when there is “nothing else to think,” we do not just call that progress, we sincerely regard it as such. If we discover later that we have good reason to doubt what once seemed objectively true, the dynamic of inquiry begins again. It could be tempting to regard this as a kind of futility, and to conclude from the expectation that inquiry will always recur that consensus is impossible and philosophy thus without any hope of “real” progress. But as Rescher rightly points out, “[i]nability to achieve consensus is very different from an inability to achieve answers” (Rescher 2014, 166). It may seem that a Peircean pragmatist must focus on consensus—after all, the social impulse pushes us to try to achieve it. Nor is this a narrowly Peircean point: as neopragmatist Huw Price frames this commitment, “assertoric dialogue requires an intolerance of disagreement” as a “pragmatic presupposition of judgment itself” (Price 2003, 186). Hence, it seems odd that Rescher is willing to let go of “communal consensus as a pivotal desideratum” (Rescher 2014, 166). Rescher’s reason, however, looks like a resoundingly pragmatist reason: he endorses a form of pluralism. This form, which he refers to as “orientational pluralism,” sees rational credence in philosophy as relative to a normative basis of cognitive values. And since it acknowledges that this basis is (at least in part) appropriately person-differential, it does not accept consensus as a legitimate requirement of rationality in the philosophical domain. (Rescher 2014, 67) The question of pluralism is no less vexed among pragmatists than the question concerning objectivity, but it is clear that Rescher wants both. His view is that our technical standards, as a discipline, are of the sort that there are objective facts regarding whether or not they are being met—whether someone is making progress locally, with respect to breadth of concern, refinement of distinctions, suitability of question posing, and rigor of argumentation. Regarding the question of what philosophy is, or should be, about, Rescher actually seems closer to Santayana than to Peirce. Santayana expresses something akin to operational pluralism in Scepticism and Animal Faith: I do not ask anyone to think in my terms if he prefers others. Let him clean better, if he can, the windows of his soul, that the variety and beauty of the prospect may spread more brightly before him. (Santayana 1955 [1923], vi–vii)

From Method to Medicine  245 Ultimately, Rescher holds that one can maintain both that philosophy is structured in part by its cognitive aspirations and the production of work that meets certain objective standards, and also that philosophy produces and must permit disagreement as a matter of course, such that philosophical progress does not mean agreement in philosophical treatments of the “big questions.” This may seem reminiscent of Boris Johnson’s policy on cake: “pro having it and pro eating it.” But if we keep in view a distinction between the philosophical and the metaphilosophical, the tension here is minimized.3 Within a philosophical program, there are moves to make and moves to avoid, and objective standards to help us determine which are which. When choosing between philosophical programs, we must expect that people will work on what moves them. Just as pragmatism balances fallibilism and anti-skepticism, Rescher balances a commitment to objectivity and a commitment to pluralism. Rescher’s metaphilosophcial work demonstrates that he also shares Putnam’s view about focus on practice as a core commitment of pragmatism: The guiding idea of . . . pragmatism—in relation to knowledge, at any rate—is that propositional knowledge-that not only enjoys no priority over operational how-to knowledge but even stands subordinate to it. The crux of our knowledge of things does not lie in their descriptive characterization; rather it is a matter of knowing what to do with them—how they can function in the setting of our own doings and dealings. (Rescher 2005, 356) Getting savvy about our own doings and dealings requires excursions into all kinds of important domains of human enterprise, as well as attention to specific features of our shared practices that seem to require the balance of fallibilism and anti-skepticism united with a notion of objectivity. In Rescher’s 2015 Cognitive Construals, two chapters are particularly illuminating. The first of these is Chapter 13, “Inescapable Error.” In practice, as we know all too well, errors are of a piece with the progress that we have already seen Rescher championing. Here, he notes that “The prospect of error is ubiquitous and pervasive, for while questions usually have only one correct answer, there is generally the prospect of endlessly many incorrect ones” (Rescher 2015, 19). In a practice-first view, what are we to make of this fact? “In practice,” Rescher replies, “precision always has its limits”—and “this holds . . . of human factors across the whole range from health to wealth” (Rescher 2015, 19). What this means in practical terms is that there are “tensions” “between objective realities and human arrangements” (Rescher 2015, 20). In this particular usage, ‘tensions’ seems euphemistic: say instead, perhaps, that we screw up regularly. The general form of reasoning that permits such errors is that as actors, we can choose between “go/no-go,” which is useful because we can sort

246  Diana B. Heney cases swiftly and see the implications for action as fixed by the general type of case. However, a range of cases is often just that—a range, continuous rather than binary. So our decision procedures artificially obscure the real complexity. One of the arenas where this happens, Rescher notes, is in medicine (Rescher 2015, 21)—the domain to which we will turn shortly. When we arrange a sorting mechanism for, say, a medical procedure, we can err in two ways: by including cases that out to be omitted, or by omitting cases that ought to be included. Though error really is inescapable, Rescher proposes that we should be “concerned with minimizing error, or—rather more accurately—the unfortunate consequences thereof” (Rescher 2015, 22). It is not just the number of errors which we must aim to keep as low as possible, but the impact of the errors. So if it is harmless to err by inclusion, but potentially very damaging to err by omission, we should set our decisionprocedure accordingly. While we can make progress, and should be prepared to bring our best capacities to bear on our problems, Rescher believes that human practices are so likely to be flawed that we should regard them as guaranteed to be so by a law of nature, the “Law of Imperfectability”: “With any practicable human arrangement in this world there is a limit to the extent that errors can be eliminated on a systematic basis” (Rescher 2015, 24). Despite ratcheting up our tendency to make mistakes to the status of a law, Rescher tempers this with concrete harm-reduction strategies. Helpful in this regard is Chapter 14 of Cognitive Complications, “Group Knowledge.” Here, Rescher again demonstrates the resolutely Peircean character of his pragmatism: just as Peirce extolls the community as a corrective force in epistemic matters, Rescher sees communities as satisfying critical functions for error-reduction. “From the epistemic standpoint,” he argues, “a team of individuals . . . has to be treated as a new, different entity in its own right. Such a collectivity will know things that no individual does—and this not only in the sense of performatory ‘know how’ but in factual matters as well” (Rescher 2015, 184). What is crucial here, from my point of view, is not that there are many different ways of understanding such group interactions or that there are puzzles about how to set the size and composition of such groups; instead, what is critical is that groups can sometimes accomplish more effective harm-reduction that individuals, who are of necessity confined to their own experiences and imaginative capacities as means of determining the probabilities of certain inclusions or exclusions going well or poorly. Let us now unite these very recent writings with a vintage paper that clearly exhibits Rescher’s particular blend of pragmatism: fallibilist, antiskeptical, informed by the idea of objectivity, optimistic at its core, and committed to turning that optimism to concrete topics. By way of laud, we should also note what the very possibility of unifying these works here suggests: Rescher has been cohesively developing complementary ideas for well over fifty years.

From Method to Medicine  247

2 Rescher’s Approach to Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy Rescher’s “The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy” has been widely anthologized.4 The enduring popularity of the paper is easy to understand: it treats a class of problem in health care settings that has become only more prevalent since the article first appeared, and it offers a concrete set of criteria for navigating a cut-off for medical benefit for cases within this class. Along the way, Rescher also makes arguments about “expert” vs. “group” knowledge that have come to seem prescient with regard to the evolving forms of modern medical decision making. Most interestingly, this article also demonstrates the adaptability of the Peircean strand of pragmatism for bioethics—insofar as Rescher’s proposed solution to scarcity issues in ELT is compelling, it is compelling on generalizable pragmatist grounds. To see that this is so, let us explore the pragmatist elements of Rescher’s solution. First, the problem itself: Technological progress has in recent years transformed the limits of the possible in medical therapy. However, the elevated state of sophistication of modern medical technology has brought the economists’ classic problem of scarcity in its wake. . . . The enormously sophisticated and complex equipment and the highly trained teams of experts requisite for its utilization are scarce resources in relation to potential demand. The administrators of the great medical institutions that preside over these scare resources thus come to be faced increasingly with the awesome choice: Whose life to save? (Rescher 1969, 173) ELT, then, is exotic because it requires “some very complex course of treatment” (Rescher 1969, 173). And it poses a moral problem because of the scarcity of the resources—human resources, in the form of highly trained specialists; and medical resources, in the form of highly specialized facilities and potentially rare components—requisite to carry out such courses of treatment. Examples Rescher discusses are heart transplantation and chronic haemodialysis, both of which are procedures that are still exotic today by the standard articulated. In the initial set-up of the problem of allocating ELT, Rescher emphasizes that it “is not fundamentally a medical problem” at all (Rescher 1969, 174). In practice, problems are rarely “pure,” and what seems superficially like a medical matter is also a moral problem. Crucially, in addressing such problems, we hold ourselves to standards beyond those of subjective satisfaction. It is not enough for the decision-makers in an ELT scenario to be comfortable with their choice. What makes a decision morally defensible, as Rescher argues ELT allocation decisions in bioethics must be, is that it is rationally defensible: it shows responsiveness to the pressures of evidence

248  Diana B. Heney and experience. It strives for the objectively best outcome, in the sense of pragmatist objectivity discussed above. The aspiration to objectivity in the case of ELT allocation decisions suggests one very clear theoretical need, which is a stable set of selection criteria to be applied to like cases alike. Rescher is highly critical of the idea that doctors could just “know best” on the basis of their medical knowledge whose life is the one that they are most justified in saving. This makes sense: there just isn’t enough phronesis available to create an outcome where no one who deserves to live just as much as anyone else ever dies. Wisdom and medical expertise cannot create more transplantable organs; some who should be saved by any reasonable selection criteria will die. However, the difficulty of accepting unavoidable harm—possibly especially difficult for those who have sworn the Hippocratic Oath—should not stop ELT decision makers from developing the most defensible selection criteria possible. Such criteria should meet the standard of objectivity, “stand[ing] tall before the tribunal of impartial reason as something upon whose cogency all people should—and reasonable people in general will—agree” (Rescher 2014, 141–142). Whether Rescher’s proposed criteria actually meet this standard is an open question. But what he calls the “regulative” requirements for constructing such criteria certainly seem like standards that reasonable people in general will agree about: “an ELT selection . . . must be simple enough to be readily intelligible, and it must be plausible, that is, patently reasonable in a ways that can be apprehended easily” (Rescher 1969, 175). Under these regulative requirements and what Rescher calls the constitutive requirement that a selection system must be rationally defensible, he offers criteria for basic screening for inclusion and exclusion. This basic screening produces the pool of candidates for ELT, all of whom are fitting on initial grounds, but not all of whom will be allocated lifesaving resources due to scarcity. Once a candidate passes the standards of basic screening, Rescher emphasizes that all decisions are “conditioned by the ever-present element of limited availability” (Rescher 1969, 177). It is at this stage that decision-makers must also move beyond the merely medical. They must consider certain medical criteria, such as “the relativelikelihood-of-success factor” and “the life-expectancy factor,” but Rescher argues that they should also consider “the family role factor, the potentialcontributions factor, and the services-rendered factor” (Rescher 1969, 177). He is well aware of the looming objection about the inclusion of non-biomedical features in the decision-making process for a medical procedure, and prepared for it: The justification for taking account of the medical factors is pretty obvious. But why should the social aspect of services rendered and to be rendered be taken into account at all? The answer is that they must be taken into account not from the medical but from the ethical point

From Method to Medicine  249 of view. Despite disagreement on many fundamental issues, moral philosophers of the present day are pretty well in consensus that the justification of human actions is to be sought largely and primarily—if not exclusively—in the principles of utility and of justice. (Rescher 1969, 180) This is to say that there really is no tension here between pluralism and objectivity. Philosophers, who disagree about much, agree about the importance of justice and utility in justifying judgments in moral matters. The inclusion of criteria aimed at tracking justice and utility, then, is rationally defensible, not merely subjectively preferred. Just as the decision-makers in ELT cases must strive for objectivity, Rescher’s analysis suggests that they must also strike the balance of being fallibilist and anti-skeptical. They should be anti-skeptical to the extent that we do, in practice, recognize differentiating non-medical features among candidates for ELT. This means that decision-makers should not give up on the idea of there being better and worse answers to the question, “whose life shall we save?” But they should also take doubt seriously when they come to doubt whether there really is any best choice once initial selection criteria have been applied, and they should further be fallibilist about their capacity to execute perfectly with respect to those criteria. In sum: decisionmakers in an ELT allocation scenario should take their position as inquirers seriously. That ELT allocation decisions are a moral matter and capable of being modeled as inquiry suggests that we should remind ourselves of Rescher’s claims about error and group knowledge. Recall Rescher’s “Law of Imperfectability”: “With any practicable human arrangement in this world there is a limit to the extent that errors can be eliminated on a systematic basis.” Still, we should strive to eliminate those errors that we can. One possible way to do this, given that ELT presents a moral problem and not merely a medical one, is to enlarge the body of decision makers. This raises the question of “whether non-physician laymen should be given a role in ELT selection” (Rescher 1969, 180). In response to physicians who maintain that ELT allocation should not “pass out of strictly medical hands,” Rescher emphasizes the non-medical aspects of ELT decisions: “many residual issues remain to be dealt with once all of the medical questions have been faced” (Rescher 1969, 180–181). In the 1969 paper, Rescher stresses that there is no reason to believe that physicians will be better at reasoning about non-medical features of cases under consideration for ELT than anyone else would. He recommends the inclusion of laypeople in decision-making panels, so that the aspects of cases tangled up with social justice and utility can be deliberated on by a more diverse group than members of the medical profession. When we reconsider this in light of “Group Knowledge,” Rescher’s case for ELT panels including non-physicians is even stronger. Rather than having a physician with

250  Diana B. Heney unilateral power to decide who will receive treatment from among her own roster of patients, or a medical second-opinion system, the very idea of ELT panels moves us toward the epistemically distinct entity of a group—a positive movement for its likelihood of reducing arbitrariness and the effects of personal bias. As a final pragmatist feature of the 1969 article, we should consider whether it exhibits what Putnam called ‘perhaps the central’ emphasis of pragmatism, the commitment to the primacy of practice. Because the 1969 article deals with an actual practice, we should expect the emphasis on objectivity, fallibilism, and anti-skepticism to be united with concern for the practice itself. ELT allocation decisions must be made. The practice of allocating scarce medical resources instead of refusing to treat anyone, or throwing the entire business into a lottery system, is one that we wish to preserve. This means that the theoretical work here really is for the sake of the practice, and for the sake of the improvement of the practice. While we must acknowledge “the inherent imperfection of any selection system,” we also must have a system in order to offer rationally defensible decisions that do not smack of confabulation or ad hoc arbitration. Here, the emphasis on practice is one again tempered by Rescher’s pluralism, as he admits that he “want[s] to maintain that there is no such thing here as a single rationally superior selection system” (Rescher 1969, 182). Practice drives the need for a system, and for the need for a constitutive component of that system to be rational defensibility from something like an objective standpoint—but awareness of our epistemic limits dictates that we treat the system not as sacred, but as a work in progress.

3 From Method to Medicine: A Pragmatist Approach to Bioethics If we step back from the particular case of ELT discussed by Rescher and focus on how he deals with that case, it becomes clear that general features of his pragmatist methodology are very much on display in his approach. This suggests that we should consider the prospects of a generalized pragmatist model adaptable to the needs of contemporary bioethics. I think that the prospects are promising indeed.5 I close here by sketching the relation between a pragmatist approach to bioethics and conventionally popular accounts. A turn to pragmatism in bioethics can help us to say “yes” to Rescher’s question of whether philosophy makes progress. The single most prominent decision-framework in contemporary bioethical theory is that of Beauchamp and Childress, which recommends a fourprinciple frame for any potentially problematic medical decision. Those principles are beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and respect for patient autonomy (Beauchamp and Childress 2012). There is no rigid ordering of the principles. Rather, context plays a part in determining which principle will “carry the day,” though all four principles remain important even in

From Method to Medicine  251 cases where their individual recommendations fail to be decisive. Here, Rescher’s pragmatist focus on “know-how” as the knowledge of primary importance supports flexibility with regard to the application of principles, which is certainly compatible with the basic approach popularized by Beauchamp and Childress. In addition to the principlist approach, a second increasingly widespread approach in contemporary bioethics focuses on medicine construed as a narratively structured practice. Narrative medicine focuses on “medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness” (Charon 2006, vii). In thinking beyond the strictly biomedical, as Rescher does in considering the non-medical factors potentially relevant to ELT allocation, we see how pragmatism is well-positioned to make space for consideration of narratives. Here, too, a pragmatist bioethicist could be at home and offer new connections and directions. It might seem that if pragmatism as a metaphilosophy fits equally well with two different approaches within a domain of applied ethics, its commitments must be vacuously minimal. But as the consideration of Rescher’s views of objectivity and pluralism shows, this is not so. What the compatibility of pragmatism with both principlist and narrative-driven approaches really shows is that those views are not rigidly opposed.6 Bioethics, like morality itself, “is a functional enterprise whose aim is to channel people’s actions toward realizing the best interests of everyone” (Rescher 2008, 393). Insofar as they contribute to its functionality, perspectives emphasizing different aspects of dilemmas and decision-making are part and parcel of moving toward that realization. A turn to Rescherian pragmatism—which we might as well now recognize as a return to the insights of classical pragmatism—should be regarded as promising for contemporary bioethics because it calls us to consider the lived problems of a shared moral life, recognize the epistemic advantage of groups, and make the most of a form of pluralism bounded by the basic commitment to objectivity.

Notes 1 One would like to be more precise about these numbers, but they will no doubt be obsolete by the time this volume goes to press. For Rescher’s full list of publications, see http://www.pitt.edu/~rescher/. 2 The Rescher Prize is awarded for “contributions to systematic philosophy.” For details of Putnam’s win, see http://www.philosophy.pitt.edu/news-story/ hilary-putnam-wins-rescher-prize-2015. 3 For another angle on Rescher’s metaphilosophy in general and operational pluralism in particular, see Aikin & Talisse (this volume). 4 Though this is likely an incomplete sample, the paper has been reprinted in at least all of the following places: (1) Question (January, 1970), 13–31. Reprinted in: (2) T. L. Beauchamp (ed.), Ethics and Public Policy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1975), 424–441; (3) J. M. Humber and R. F. Almeder (eds.), Biomedical Ethics and the Law (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), 447–463; (4) S. J. Reiser

252  Diana B. Heney et al. (eds.), Ethics in Medicine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977); (5) Robert Hunt and John Arras, Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1977); (6) T. L. Beauchamp and L. Walters (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Bioethics (Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1978), 378–388; (7) R. Munson (ed.), Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Biomedical Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1979), 409–418; (8) Steven E. Rhoads (ed.), Valuing Life: Public Policy Dilemmas (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980); (9) Natalie Abrams and Michael D. Buckner, Medical Ethics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); (10) Hisatake Kato and Nobuyulki Ieda (eds.), The Bases of Bioethics (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1988); (11) Johnna Fisher (ed.), Biomedical Ethics: A Canadian Focus, 2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013). 5 Pragmatism and bioethics have seemed a natural fit to others, too. See, for instance, Misak (2008), as well as her articles on ICU care and patient autonomy, including her 2004 and 2005. Also very instructive is Glenn McGee’s Pragmatic Bioethics, 2nd ed, which offers essays from leading pragmatists on a wide range of topics in bioethics, many of which develop Jamesian and Deweyan approaches. It will be clear that there is a strong Peircean influence in Rescher’s version; as my focus here is on Rescher, I do not attempt a fuller accounting of the state of the intersection between pragmatism and bioethics. It is, however, a busy intersection! 6 For a different argument that pragmatism as a method can help us to smooth out what looks like stark disagreement between proponents of evidence-based medicine and proponents of narrative medicine, see Heney (2016).

References Beauchamp, Tom L. and Childress, James F. 2012. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charon, Rita. 2006. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hacking, Ian. 2007. “On Not Being a Pragmatist: Eight Reasons and a Cause.” In Misak (2007), 32–49. Heney, Diana B. (2016). “Practitioner Narrative Competence in Mental Health Care.” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 23(2): 115–127. James, William. 1916 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religions Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902, New York: Longman Green & Co. McGee, Glenn. (ed.). 2003 [1999]. Pragmatic Bioethics, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Misak, Cheryl. 2004. “The Critical Care Experience: A Patient’s View.” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 170/4, 357–359. ———. 2005. “ICU Psychosis and Patient Autonomy: Some Thoughts from the Inside.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30/4, 411–430. ———. (ed.) 2007. New Pragmatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. “Experience, Narrative, and Ethical Deliberation.” Ethics 118/4, 614–632. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931–1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. i–vi. Eds. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss; vol. vii and viii. Ed. A. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. (Cited as CP plus volume and paragraph number). ———. 1997 [1903]. Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking, Ed. Patricia Ann Turrisi. Albany: State University of New York Press.

From Method to Medicine  253 Price, Huw. 2003. “Truth as Convenient Friction.” The Journal of Philosophy 100/4, 167–190. Putnam, Hilary. 1995. Pragmatism: An Open Question. Cambridge: Blackwell. ———. 2005. Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1969. “The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy.” Ethics 79, 173–186. ———. 2005. “Pragmatism at the Crossroads.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41, 355–365. ———. 2008. “Moral Objectivity.” Social Philosophy and Public Policy 25 (2008). Reprinted in Ellen F. Paul, Fred J. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Objectivism, Subjectivism, and Relativism in Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 393–410. ———. 2014. Metaphilosophy: Philosophy in Philosophical Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2015. Cognitive Complications: Epistemology in Pragmatic Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Santayana, George. 1955 [1923]. Scepticism and Animal Faith. New York: Dover. Wiggins, David. 1990–1991. “Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91, 61–85.

14 Moral Responsibility and the Cognitive Status of Ethical Ideals John R. Shook

1 Appreciating Ethical Ideals Nicholas Rescher’s Ethical Idealism stands with the finest work on ethics produced by the pragmatism movement in philosophy. Indeed, his examination of ethical ideals and the moral life places his book among the small number of twentieth century works on ethics that will remain worthy of close study. Consistent with his overall philosophy of idealistic pragmatism, Rescher finds that ethical ideals are essential for the proper functioning of morality. Ideals in general are indispensable for intelligent practices, and morality is no exception. Innumerable practices involve projecting what we can be beyond what we are. Human aspiration is not restricted by the realities—neither by the realities of the present moment (from which our sense of future possibilities can free us), nor even by our view of realistic future prospects (from which our sense of the ideal possibilities can free us). Our judgment is not bounded by what is, nor by what will be, nor even by what can be. For there is always also our view of what should be—what might ideally to be. The vision of our mind’s eye extends to circumstances beyond the limits of the possible. (132)1 Rescher speaks of the “limits of the possible”—this is by no means a gesture towards the imagination’s overreach where pure fancy lies. In the realm of human action, it really is possible to go beyond the limits of what ideally seems possible. His philosophical anthropology emphasizes that “nature has managed to evolve a creature who aspires to more than nature can offer” (132). Humans are able to intelligently predict much about nature’s ways, but our intelligence also evolved to project plans for our ways. Ideals are “a tool for intelligent planning of the conduct of life” (119). Rescher’s ethical idealism has a pragmatically realistic basis. Beyond calculations of what will be, and beyond estimations of what may be, the actual

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  255 consequences of acts can be barely imaginable and perhaps even unimaginable to the actor. It is the realist, more than the idealist, who stresses the way that actualities always far outrun foreseeable implications to one’s deeds. The ongoing world is not constrained by our own ideas about what is probable. The idealist therefore just as rightly insists that agents pursuing ideals, despite what can be judged possible, do make new realities actual. The idealizing agent is not constrained by the world’s indications about what is possible. And that difference makes all the difference in the world. Ordinary life revolves around what gets deemed practically doable and morally acceptable. Energies should wisely be spent on life’s little “musts” from day to day. Yet life has larger prospects. Major endeavors calling for extraordinary effort and sacrifice do not wait upon consultations with mundane musts. Eyes unable to lift their gaze above immediate necessities can’t appreciate lofty visions. A petty and small-minded pragmatism is not what Rescher has in mind. To realize the practical need for ideals, one begins by rising above the level of mere practicalities. Organizing and mobilizing resources for a cause requires a guiding idealization to coordinate efforts towards concrete achievements. But realizable achievements are one thing, while that inspiring idealization is another. Rescher tells us in Ethical Idealism that To adopt an ideal is emphatically not to think its realization to be possible. We do (or should!) recognize from the start that ideals lie beyond the reach of practical attainability. Ideals accordingly do not constitute the concrete objectives of our practical endeavors but rather provide them with some generalized direction. (120) Since ideals, in Rescher’s sense, serve in the capacity to guide thoughtful action by agents, they have a cognitive role, as well as any emotive/affective role, in human conduct. Furthermore, their cognitive role has less to do with what we think shall be, and more to do what we think should be. Yet Rescher does not rely on dichotomizing and reifying this distinction. Pragmatically, there need not be a wide “Shall-Should” gap, especially in the sphere of morality.2 No fallacious leap from ‘shall’ to ‘should’ is required. Ideals bridges them, but not to convey one from “shalls” to “shoulds.” Ethical ideals (hereafter, simply “ideals”) state what should guide how a person’s conduct shall be. The environing conditions calling for action will naturally have their considerable say about the degree of success awaiting that conduct, but those conditions are not grounds for justifying ideals. The basis for ideals lies elsewhere, in the moral sphere. Exercising moral responsibility at least involves accepting the moral oughts inherent to one’s duties. But that commitment is rarely sufficient, due to the complexities of ordinary life. Duties frequently conflict, or at least get in the way of each other, when fulfilling one diminishing the opportunity

256  John R. Shook to fulfill another. At this level of ordinary moral responsibility, the “oughtness” of one obligation does not evaporate when another obligation is fulfilled instead. Moral regret is unavoidable, and it should be unavoidable even when it quite understandable. Rescher accordingly holds (rightly, in my view) that moral responsibility is not exercised if one outright dismisses an “ought” merely due to limited “cans.” Some ethical theories say otherwise, claiming that conflicts among duties are only apparent, typically adopting some version of the principle that “ought implies can.”3 Those theories suggest that on reflection, oughts should be merely “prima facie” or provisional until proven satisfiable, especially if their fulfillment seems less than guaranteed. Rescher argues that “ought imply can” mustn’t prevail in the moral realm of ordinary life. The plausibility of “ought implies can” arises from retrospective judgment upon transpired events. We don’t assign moral blame for failing to accomplish A if circumstances had turned out to make A impossible anyways. However, prospective judgment on future conduct is quite another matter. The widespread adoption of “can’t implies no ought” would unravel morality entirely. If people say “I accept a duty to do A” while only meaning “I will do A only if future matters permit A,” no one would find obligations or promises believable or dependable, and society would largely cease to use morality. (Morality would devolve into the etiquette of polite promises, like vowing to write every day while traveling away from home.) If moral theory attends to actual moral life, “ought implies can” would only have limited applicability (33–37). Moral theory should also notice how ordinary morality already handles moral problems (circumstances forbid moral action) and moral dilemmas (another obligation took precedence). We are able to excuse people for unforeseen circumstances or unavoidable duty conflicts, so long as matters were truly unforeseeable or unavoidable. Trying to take due diligence even as we regretfully fail to fulfill many of our obligations is an inevitable aspect of exercising moral responsibility. Rescher adroitly exposes how moral theories affirming the truth of “ought implies can” always refer to concrete cases where thoughtful diligence has already done its work. For example, a duty is supposedly “prima facie” because circumstances are revealed as too unfavorable, or other duties prove to be more important. Evidently, additional moral criteria (rules, principles, and so on) are tacitly applied in these cases to produce just the right judgment about which duty is excusable or not. These are far from intuitive or naïve matters. Moral theory ascends to ethical theorizing here, at the level where criteria about excusing circumstances or ranking obligations are doing their work. Ethical theories can take the liberty of affirming “ought implies can” only because they are taking the sensible precaution of pre-judging which oughts are excusable and which are not. Ethical theories are not unreasonable for appealing to those additional criteria, but those criteria are useful precisely because moral problems and moral dilemmas are very real in the moral sphere.

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  257 Moral obligations prevail even if we cannot be sure that we can fulfill them. But there are more and less intelligent ways to anticipate and manage moral problems and conflicts. A morally responsible person must take care to prioritize moral duties in any actual situation, and may have to re-prioritize them in a different situation. How can that kind of moral responsibility, which now can be labeled as ethical responsibility, be properly exercised? Rescher takes the philosophical position that this ethical responsibility is exercised through the apt cognizance and intelligent application of ideals. For this position, ideals inherently possess a cognitive status, and they can be expressed in propositional form as needed, for playing roles within inferences at the ethical level of reflection upon moral obligation. Moral obligation itself usually doesn’t require much self-reflection, but one’s day-to-day life encounters situations where moral obligations are somewhat uncertain and confusing. Deliberations involving ideals can clarify genuine moral obligations and draw conclusions about the important responsibilities appropriate to a situation. Ideals will never erode or erase moral “oughts” from view—but ideals can transform unavoidable moral doubts, dilemmas, and disappointments into matters amenable to intelligence. The tragic needn’t get us lost in nihilism or mindless despair. Robust moral responsibility and sound ethical judgment, in short, includes the infusion of ideals. There simply is no realistic alternative, if morality is to flourish. As Rescher says, “The moral enterprise is fundamentally committed to the never fully achievable task of making a place for the ideal in the hostile environment of the world’s realities” (54).

2 The Proper Function of Ethical Ideals Both moral philosophy and moral psychology must start from the plain facts of ordinary moral experience. Moral obligation, in so far as an obligation is moral, presents itself as non-contingent and non-conventional to the person feeling under its obligation. If a person is able to regard an obligation as entirely contingent on one’s own present state of mind, or current wishes, or one’s passing interests and attitudes, then that obligation is not taken to be a moral obligation. If a reader insists that some moral obligations can be appreciated by a person as both moral and as optional and dependent on whether one feels like taking them to be moral obligations, then that reader must set those cases aside for the purposes of this essay. What readers are more likely thinking about are genuine moral obligations which fail to be acted upon by a person, due to other non-moral matters. But those cases are not about a person able to regard an obligation as moral or not depending on one’s wishes, but rather about a person able to regard a moral obligation as something to act upon or not depending on one’s motives. The warranted view is that moral obligation per se, as an individual experiences it, is never taken to be completely contingent and conventional.4 Other readers will dispute this on the grounds that

258  John R. Shook different groups of people evidently adhere to different moral obligations, so morality does depend on contingent matters (what group one belongs to, for example) and has a conventional status (what each group agrees is moral, for example). This phenomenon points to moral relativism across human cultures, which is an anthropological thesis, but it does not dictate moral contingency, which is a psychological thesis. Each person, no matter what group membership and group history, experiences moral obligation as primarily non-contingent and non-conventional, in so far as one experiences moral obligation at all. This capacity to internalize moral obligation is acquired in young childhood and lasts throughout the lifespan.5 Anyone who permits that anthropological thesis to dictate how to regard and react to moral obligation has simply degraded their capacity to appreciate moral obligation. Philosophically, there is no need whatsoever to substitute anthropology for psychology. Philosophy can acknowledge both moral relativism and moral obligation simultaneously, comprehending each in its proper sphere of life. Each moral duty (encompassing moral obligations whether from virtues, rights, and so on), as a duty, makes its demand regardless of any other duties. No duty inherently informs a person how to compare it to rival dutiful demands, or how to ignore or compromise it, or even precisely how to fulfill it in any actual situation. Yet duty doesn’t completely confuse or paralyze us. Apparently, more than just duty guides our actual moral conduct from situation to situation. If we are told, “But duties do have features making them more or less relevant, compelling, or overriding,” this observation is surely accurate—but what allows us to discriminate and utilize those features? And if we are told, “Compare duties as they present themselves, without bias or sentimentality, to see which deserves priority,” this advice is surely wise—but what guides us for forming apt comparisons? Understanding my duty to help a child in need is not the same thing as understanding why dutifully helping that particular child must make me so late for work this morning that I’d get fired. As soon as matters are clarified—Whose child is this? Who else depends on my income? and so on—it is obvious how additional moral criteria are getting applied which were not inherent to the duties themselves. Duties do carry features leaving them amenable to criterial and comparative evaluation, but that additional intellectual work is not done by duties alone. This conclusion cannot be evaded by supposing that our genuine duties are highly specific, such as “Protect one’s own child!” Life’s strange situations have a way of leaving us all the more uncertain about whether and how to fulfill specific duties. Which of my children do I protect first? . . . and so on. Knowing how to formulate duties so they relevantly guide conduct in actual situations is precisely that extra cognitive information not contained with duties themselves, no matter how specific. Ethical ideals, from a functionally cognitive viewpoint like Rescher’s, should be regarded as regulative norms through which a person can clarify, prioritize, and creatively fulfill moral duties.

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  259 To act intelligently is to act with due reference to the direction in which our own actions shift the course of things. And it is exactly here that ideals come into play. Our ideals guide and consolidate our commitment to virtues and moral excellences. (131) Ethical ideals are both “true” to the effort to fulfill morality, and “truly” demanded of any exemplary person able to promote morality. Ordinary morality can perform its social functions for endless generations without much detectible change or appeal to ethical ideals. However, once humanity developed the linguistic and conceptual capacity to formulate and emulate ethical ideals (through the modes of narrative, play acting, art, and so on), their power was undeniable, and no human society has entirely avoided their use. If morality itself will continue to benefit humanity into the indefinite future, ethical ideals will be integrated with the moral life. In that sense, moral philosophy and moral psychology has to recognize ethical idealism as a realistic theory about morality. Even if this ethical idealism is taken seriously, ethical theory has to consider carefully how intelligence is supposed to both appreciate and apply ethical ideals. While ethical ideals are cognitive, for Rescher, ideals do not automatically possess an a priori status, even if some do aspire to that dubious status. Aspects of morality can have the role of something akin to moral absolutes.6 Ideals are well designed to play that role, although this “absolute” status must be severely qualified. For moral actors fulfilling morality in their lives, they can and should appeal to specific moral absolutes from time to time when appropriate. There are boundaries to moral permissiveness, for any moral agent, and those boundaries should not be overridable or negotiable in relevant situations encountered by that agent. However, crediting anything, including ideals, with any stronger meaning of ‘absolute’ should be carefully deliberated. One sense of “absolute” can be ruled out: [W]hile ideals can—nay should—be cultivated, they never deserve total dedication and absolute priority, because this would mean an unacceptable sacrifice of other ideals. Their pursuit must be conditioned by recognizing the existence of a point of no advantage, where going further would produce unacceptable sacrifices elsewhere, and thus prove counterproductive in the larger scheme of things. (127) In another sense of absolute, however, Rescher (2012, Chapter 9) thinks that genuinely moral norms are absolute, because treating a moral norm as valid is to credit it with an objective validity regardless of which people or what authority may do so as well. However, it remains logically correct that a situation in which several people each uphold a moral norm as absolute is not necessarily a situation where they all uphold the same moral

260  John R. Shook norms. Going further, to say that each moral agent should prioritize some set of high ideals is not the same thing as claiming that there is a unique set of moral absolutes prevailing over all conduct by all moral agents, anywhere and anytime. Some ethical theories presume that speaking of one automatically refers to the other. Rescher is reticent about depicting ideals as absolutely dictatorial over the will or objectively necessary for one’s reason, although he expects ideals to be attractively compelling for moral agents who commit to them. Assigning cognitive status to ideals is a controversial stance, to begin with. Even among philosophical positions permitting ideals to play a cognitive role, denying that ideals need to be static, a priori, or universal is not a popular position. However, serious philosophical work is required to establish that even one single ethical ideal could or should have the cognitive status of a necessary truth for every rational agent. And even more philosophical work would be required to demonstrate that some particular ethical ideal must take exclusive priority over the moral deliberations of every rational agent. In the absence of conclusive philosophical justifications for both of these views, it needn’t be unreasonable to think that persons across diverse cultures or eras can be devoted to somewhat different ethical ideals, or that one culture should promulgate many divergent ethical ideals simultaneously. Rescher does not identify, nor does he expect, any specific conception of an ethical ideal to hold normative priority for all humanity for all time. However, he does assert that all rational agents capable of morality must acknowledge and pursue some ethical ideal(s) having top priority over moral conduct. He is not an absolutist about ethical ideals in every sense; he usually speaks about ideals as a pluralist. His position also accommodates a historicist view of ethical ideals: which specific ideals are the wisest to pursue, and which concrete means shall be used to pursue them, can be discerned only in the course of historical change. People exercising ethical responsibility try to discern the ethical ideals most appropriate for their era, and do their best to judge how to realize those ideals better. Ethical ideals, for Rescher, arise from the moral life itself, and they serve to elevate the moral life to finer levels. Ethical ideals are not needed most by people lacking moral character and motivation. The common moral life of any society deals directly with laxity and vice through shaming and punishment. Rather, ethical ideals lend guidance to those striving for moral responsibility, improvement and perhaps excellence—in themselves, others, and wider society. Moral obligations crowd us and confuse us, and one’s devotion to be true to them all in due measure is the key reason why appreciating ethical ideals makes good sense.

3 Seeking Ethical Ideals What all ethical ideals have in common is that they are, in a basic sense, “idealizations.” They are more abstract than concrete, and they point towards

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  261 optimization rather than adequacy. Rescher says, “An ideal is a model or pattern of things too perfect for actual realization in this world” (115). An idealization, generally speaking, begins with a chosen exemplar, whose key features are abstracted for imagining them as perfected. Among ethical ideals, the simplest kind is the “moral idealization.” An important moral obligation is isolated so that its essence can be identified and magnified to an extreme. Suppose we start from the moral obligation to be honest. “Honesty” can be imaginatively taken in its purity and refined to its ultimate extent. The moral idealization of Honesty is now ready for application to the moral sphere of life, when a person adopts Honesty as the right policy, and tries to be completely and openly honest about all matters regardless of circumstance or consequence. That person would be annoying at best, and eventually blunder into incivilities and even immoralities at worst. That is why moral prudence cautions against living strictly by one or a few moral idealizations, no matter how noble they are. Still, living by a set of sensible and coherent moral idealizations, pursued civilly, is a fine way to live the moral life. Their cognitive role is prescriptive, as all moral obligations basically are, but they are “prescriptive moral ideals” that set themselves as priorities as moral confusions or conflicts arise. Prescriptive moral ideals, while sensible enough, cannot suffice for living the ethically responsible life. Which moral obligations are worthy of idealization? Which prescriptive moral ideals should people commit their lives to? How can excessive devotion to prescriptive ethical ideals be prevented? How do the inevitable conflicts between prescriptive moral ideals be managed? These problems arising in the real world of morality are generated anew in the ideal world of ethics. Rescher is well aware that intelligence does not craft envisioned ideals only to let them heedlessly run rampant to disrupt our lives. The stress on ideals must accordingly be tempered by this recognition of the need to harmonize and balance values against one another. In the realm of values too, there must be a Leibnizian harmonia rerum where things are adjusted in an order of mutual compossibility. (128) Not all ethical ideals are worth the same. Worthier ethical ideals yield some sort of harmonization to values and duties, as the moral realm deserves. Rescher has the resources to guide ethical theory towards more sophisticated kinds of ethical ideals to answer these questions. Rather than delineating them immediately, I suggest that we first ponder what a moral world would truly look like. Is philosophical ethics burdened with the task of envisioning the morally perfect world in order to measure our immense distance from that vision? Rescher would not place that burden on ethical theorizing— his ethics is idealistic, not unrealistic or pessimistic. Yet the contrast between Rescher’s ethical theory and his theory’s rivals can be drawn more starkly by allowing philosophers chasing morally perfect worlds to have their say.

262  John R. Shook Let us suppose that in a “morally perfect” world all moral duties would be knowable, actionable, and fulfilled. A morally perfect world would not look much our actual world we inhabit. In the real world, one can be ignorant or unthinking about one’s moral duties, one can know one’s moral duties but lack the capacity to fulfill some, and one can perform all of one’s actionable moral duties and yet fail to fulfill some other moral duties. But perhaps our world isn’t so imperfect. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that this definition of “moral duty” is adopted: D is not a true moral duty for P unless P understands that X is P’s moral duty, P knows how to take effective action to fulfill D, and P’s fulfillment of D doesn’t imply that any other of P’s duties are not fulfilled. In other words, D is P’s true moral duty only if P fails to fulfill D because of a lack of will by P. Or, put another way, P cannot be accused of a failure to do moral duty D unless P knowingly and willfully chose to not to fulfill an actionable D. There is no possible world in which a true moral duty goes unfilled except through the lack of will of a person to fulfill that duty. Every possible world is not a world in which all moral duties are fulfilled (a “morally perfect” world). However, all possible worlds are worlds where moral duties could be fulfilled yet go unfulfilled only due to willfully noncompliant persons, who are the subjects of moral blame and correction. These worlds are “ethically perfect” worlds. A venerable theological ethics from Christianity offers a vision of an ethically perfect world.7 (1) Each person can know one’s moral duties because God’s Divine Law is knowable to all (and any ignorance is always due to willful neglect). (2) Each person has the capacities to fulfill a moral duty set by DL because each duty is always actionable (and any ignorance of actionability is due to willful neglect). (3) Each person can know how to simultaneously fulfill all relevant moral duties of DL (and any ignorance about moral performance is always due to willful neglect). In this vision, God takes responsibility for the DL and its determination of moral duties so that 1–3 are always true for each person, while each person takes responsibility for willful compliance. In general, in an ethically perfect world, the cause of immorality is always ascertainable: a willfully noncompliant person who intentionally prefers immorality. Because the cause of immorality is always ascertainable, the subject of moral correction/retribution is always ascertainable: the willfully immoral person. Are there any nonreligious visions of an ethically perfect world? Kant and Mill supply versions. Consider this schematic version of Kantian deontology. (1) Each person can know one’s moral duties because the categorical imperative (CI) is knowable to all (and any ignorance is always due to willful neglect). (2) Each person has the capacities to fulfill a moral duty because each duty confirmable through the CI is always actionable (and any ignorance of actionability is due to willful neglect). (3) Each person can know

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  263 how to simultaneously fulfill all relevant moral duties confirmable through the CI (and any ignorance about moral performance is always due to willful neglect). In this vision, each person’s capacity to apply the CI for setting moral duties ensures that 1–3 are always true for each person, while each person takes responsibility for willful compliance. Next, consider this schematic version of Utilitarianism. (1) Each person can know one’s moral duties because the utilitarian method (UM) is knowable to all (and any ignorance is always due to willful neglect). (2) Each person has the capacities to fulfill a moral duty because each duty confirmable through the UM is always actionable (and any ignorance of actionability is due to willful neglect). (3) Each person can know how to simultaneously fulfill all relevant moral duties confirmable through the UM (and any ignorance about moral performance is always due to willful neglect). In this vision, each person’s capacity to apply the UM for setting moral duties ensures that 1–3 are always true for each person, while each person takes responsibility for willful compliance. In this vision, each person’s capacity to apply the UM for setting moral duties ensures that 1–3 are always true for each person, while each person takes responsibility for willful compliance. For these three idealized ethical theories, the DL, the CI, and the UM must be evident for ordinary human capacities, no non-actionable duty is confirmable through the DL/CI/UM (‘ought’ implies ‘can’), and any apparent conflict among simultaneous moral duties is always resolvable by better applying, or reapplying, the DL/CI/UM to break seeming ties. In an ethically perfect world envisioned by these schematic versions of ethical theories, each person can have a single ethical ideal, an ideal fusing ethical motivation with an ethical end. Simplified versions could be expressed as follows: Christianity: an ideal of eager compliance with divine law. A person may express this ideal through various emotive tones—love, submission, trust, fidelity, and so on. Kantian deontology: an ideal of unwavering respect for duty. A person should cultivate various emotive drives—altruism or piety, for example—to promote compliance with this ideal. Utilitarianism: an ideal of more happiness for everyone. A person can exemplify devotion to this ideal by approving benevolent actions and civic structures for social welfare. Multiple ideals, and unmotivating ideals, must all be ruled out. Multiple ethical ideals promulgated by an idealized ethical theory raise severe problems. They might contravene each other by prioritizing different duties simultaneously—hence rendering an ethical theory inconclusive, unable to guarantee that moral conflicts are always resolvable. An idealized ethical theory could harbor several ideals, but one must be supreme while the rest

264  John R. Shook are derivative or supportive, unable to ever overrule that principal ethical ideal. There can be no “motivational gap” on these idealized ethical theories, either. If a person doesn’t feel powerfully motivated by an ethical ideal, this person either fails to grasp the ideal (a cognitive defect) or willfully spurns the ideal (a character flaw). So long a person understands an ethical ideal as valid, sufficient internal motivation has already been included with that acceptance. Supplemental motivations can be cultivated, but they do not carry the burden of motivating the ideal. There is no deep psychological or philosophical puzzle to ponder about how a person could affirm an ethical ideal yet need additional prudential reasons to ever heed it. Not heeding an ethical ideal, according to these versions, is easily explained by either mental incapacity or moral depravity. These three versions are highly idealized and arguably unrealistic even in their most idealized forms, because no amount of philosophizing may permit formulating the Dl, CI or UM to guarantee satisfaction of their respective criteria (1–3). Kantians and utilitarians endlessly dispute the merits of their respective approaches, and each school internally divides over specific formulations, none of which may be entirely satisfactory.8 Theological ethics finds no easy way to satisfy its criteria (1–3) either. Nevertheless, idealized versions of ethical theories from Christianity, Kantian deontology, and Utilitarianism all seek to restrict actionable moral duties to those that could be reasonably understandable and motivational for typical people. That is why the staple of moral philosophizing involves the design of hypothetical situations in which moral decisions are called for under conditions where actors can know much about the outcomes of available alternatives. “Will you choose the act that will surely be sinful to God, or the act that will help your relatives maintain family honor?” “Will you choose the act that will surely kill one person, or the act that will let five people die?” And so on. In an ethically perfect world, such dilemmas are only psychological, not rational or real. They should stimulate moral deliberation without halting it in frustration, since they have definitive singular answers in ethically perfect worlds. Different people reach different verdicts only if they willfully turn away from proper ethical deliberation. That’s the true tragedy for such theories—human noncompliance. In an ethically perfect world envisioned by an idealized ethical theory, moral dilemmas aren’t real tragedies, since the dilemmas aren’t real (there is always a true moral duty, and a false moral duty). For definitive ethical theories, consequences of choices have to be foreseeable, moral duties can become obvious, and moral tragedy has to somehow be avoidable. A situation in which a person is troubled by what seems to be a moral dilemma is not a counter-example proving that no definitive ethical theory is valid, for each definitive ethical theorist need only say, “If that person heeded my definitive moral theory, that person’s moral dilemma would dissolve.” However, no definitive ethical theory can point to that situation as positive support, since none of those theories have actually dissolved all possible dilemmas, and that kind of situation could support all definitive

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  265 ethical theories equally. The most that can be said is that some definitive moral theories can illuminate some types of moral dilemmas to help resolve them, and various theories have thereby merited respect. There is surely a role for principled ideals of definitive ethical theories in the moral life even if none of them ever demonstrate their exhaustive reach or exclusive validity.9 Moral dilemmas, and their tragic aspect, are fit for imperfect ethical worlds, where people must choose their course of conduct despite dilemmas. Just because definitive ethical theories are not dissolving most dilemmas does not mean that there is nothing intelligent left to do about them. Moral dilemmas give instruction in what it is like to try to live a moral life, and an opportunity to intelligently reflect on ways to prevent some future dilemmas. Rescher writes, “a moral dilemma is nothing paradoxical; it is merely an especially difficult case of moral conflict, of the general phenomenon of divergent ethical pushes and pulls” (39). Ethical theorizing needn’t halt, stunned and muted, before the presence of tough moral dilemmas. In imperfect ethical worlds there can be multiple ethical theories supply numerous moral methods, each capable of practical guidance, but none yielding definitive verdicts. While constructive, ethical theories in imperfect moral worlds would not involve the sorts of ethical ideals found in definitive ethical theories.

4 Conclusive and Projective Ethical Ideals What features do ethical ideals of constructive ethical theories display? They would be unlike the features of ethical ideals from definitive ethical theories. Definitive ethical theory: Its ethical ideal is singular, supreme, and intrinsically motivational. It possesses undeniable authority, because it carries intrinsic validity and/or a higher authority backs it. This kind of ethical ideal is “conclusive.” A typical person who understands it can always methodically determine and fulfill one’s true moral duty (unless one rebels against its authority). Constructive ethical theory: Its ethical ideals are multiple, competing, and highly motivational. An ethical ideal has considerable authority, because it enjoys high plausibility and/or a higher authority supports it. This type of ethical ideal is “projective.” A typical person who affirms one (or more) of them can practically postulate how to best prioritize among moral duties (and may fulfill many of them). The crucial signs differentiating the application of a conclusive ethical ideal from a projective ethical ideal are these: A conclusive ethical ideal applies when a person has considerable reliable knowledge about potential outcomes of a decision to act one way or another, including the knowledge that one is in a position to decisively take an action having moral import. Given that knowledge and

266  John R. Shook an understanding of the conclusive ethical ideal, the person figures out how to act in accord with the ethical ideal by judging which action fulfills one’s true moral duty in that situation. This informed person so acts (unless moral depravity intervenes) and commendably performs the morally correct action. A projective ethical ideal applies when a person has modest information about some possible outcomes of a decision to act one way or another, and may not fully realize how one is even in a position to do something moral (or immoral). Given one’s limited information, an affirmation of some projective ethical ideals, and many other extraneous goals and temptations, the person postulates how to act in accord with relevant ethical ideal(s) by judging which course of action most fulfills the moral duties that seem prioritized by those ideals. This informed person so acts (unless ignorance, moral depravity, or prudential interests intervene) and performs a morally commendable action. Failing to distinguish whether an ethical ideal is designed to be conclusive or projective can make it difficult to analyze a moral situation. For example, consider this account of a hypothetical situation: A person feels a moral duty to achieve a goal that is unachievable. Consulting an ethical ideal, this person confirms this duty to pursue that goal, and resolves to act in accord with that ideal while fully expecting that the goal cannot be satisfied. What sort of ethical ideal is involved in this situation? We can first notice how this situation may not make much sense. Can this person sincerely regard a goal as unattainable while intentionally pursuing it? If not, we’d appeal to a principle of “intending implies possibly achieving.” Can a genuine ethical ideal approve a moral duty to pursue an impossible end? If not, we’d appeal to a principle of “responsibility implies sufficient ability.” These two principles—basically, “trying implies envisioning” and “ought implies can”— presuppose a person’s knowledge of foreseeable outcomes and actionable means. Hence we can next see how those principles cohere with conclusive ethical ideals, not with constructive ethical ideals. As described, this odd situation is indeed paradoxical. We anticipate a determinate judgment about what one should accomplish, yet nothing seems morally accomplishable or commendable, and this ideal doesn’t appear to be an ethical ideal. To avoid the paradox, either the situation’s conditions or the nature of the ethical ideal (or both) must be altered. Consider this version: A person feels a moral duty to pursue an end that probably isn’t achievable. Consulting an ethical ideal, this person affirms this duty to pursue that end, and resolves to allow that ideal to guide life while ignoring how that end probably won’t be achieved.

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  267 In this scenario, the ideal is a constructive ethical ideal, able to guide life by commending the fulfilment of a moral duty in the name of a worthy end. Satisfying a constructive ethical ideal does not require actually fulfilling a moral duty that it approves. Satisfaction requires only that one shapes one’s life, despite distractions and prudential factors, in a serious attempt at moral fulfillment—a morally commendable effort. Constructive ethical theories advance projective ethical ideals, ideals shaping long-term and even lifetime projects. The proper function of a projective ethical ideal is to select out and arrange some set of moral duties into a prioritization schema to guide the conduct of living. This kind of ideal, expressed in general form, proposes that “these moral duties should be prioritized in this manner” by the people affirming that ideal. Projective ethical ideals are distinguished from each other by the differing sets of moral duties they deal with, and the prioritization schemes that they recommend. The ideal of justice, in its form as a projective ethical ideal, could be expressed (among many variants) like this: “The moral duties to respect basic rights should be fulfilled towards all persons equally.” The corresponding constructive ethical theory endorsing this ideal would specify and justify the basic rights worthy of unbiased and unwavering protection and offer guidance about effective means of providing such protection. A person committed to this ideal of justice would shape their life by not merely respecting basic rights (that satisfies a simpler ethical ideal to be personally just), but by promoting social processes and civic structures fostering as much justice as possible. A person can live a morally commendable life by faithfully pursuing such broad-scale efforts regardless of whether much advancement of justice is witnessed during one’s lifetime. Conclusive ethical ideals are better fitted to short-term situations of narrow scope. That kind of ideal, expressed in general form, proposes that “this moral duty takes priority in this manner.” Delimited scenarios permit much more knowledge about prevailing contexts and expected outcomes, making it far easier to figure out how to effectively fulfill one’s given moral duty, one situation at a time. Only projective ethical ideals are useful for contemplating how one should shape and live one’s life, and only constructive ethical theories are complex enough to handle long-term issues for larger populations.

5 Classifying Ethical Ideals Before we conclude with some broader observations about Rescher’s position on the importance of ethical ideals, we may summarize the key features to three kinds of ethical ideals discussed in this chapter. Prescriptive ethical ideals are synthetic a posteriori in their cognitive import. They are understood through reasoning and validated through learning.

268  John R. Shook Full appreciation carries a commitment to exemplify it in each applicable situation. Conclusive ethical ideals are synthetic a priori in their cognitive import. They are understood through reasoning and validated without learning. Full appreciation carries a commitment to apply it to every situation. Projective ethical ideals are analytic a posteriori in their cognitive import. They are understood by definition and validated through learning. Full appreciation carries a commitment to infuse it throughout all of one’s life. This chapter has presented an interpretative reconstruction of Rescher’s views on ethical ideals, suggesting that they are most compatible with “projective” ethical ideals. Hereafter, mention of ethical ideals refers only to this projective kind, and only I am hereafter responsible for defending their role in ethics. Rescher nowhere describes ethical ideals as “analytic a posteriori,” so the burden of justifying that classification falls on my shoulders alone, a burden that must be taken up elsewhere. Here, I can only point to key observations he makes about ideals, concerning how they can be understood and validated. First, ethical ideals for Rescher make a poor fit with the expectations placed on a priori matters. Ideals are forged in the imagination, but their materials come from ordinary life. Similarly, due to their functions in ordinary life, their validation cannot be independent from experience. Isolated from the living context of everyday life, their significance fades. Ideals are crucially important, but without an adequate realization of the realities and complexities of life, they are of little avail. By themselves, ideals are very incomplete guides to action. (127) The validation of an ideal is derivative. It does not lie in the (unrealizable) state of affairs that it contemplates—in that inherently unachievable perfection it envisions. Rather, it lies in the influence that it exerts on the lives of its human exponents through the mediation of thought. The justification and power of an ideal inhere in its capacity to energize and motivate human effort toward productive results—in short, in its practical efficacy. (137) When infused into the moral life, ethical ideals come alive to do their proper work, and they should be evaluated by their work. To appraise ideals in a way that avoids begging the question we must leave the domain of idealization altogether and enter into that of the

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  269 realistically practical. The superiority of one ideal over another must be tested by its practical consequences for human well-being. (137) As for the analytic status of ethical ideals, their role in a person’s moral life rules out a synthetic status. When one is deeply committed to an ethical ideal, it is fairly well defined in one’s mind. An ideal only vaguely conceived is not playing a large role in that person’s moral judgments and decisions. (It’s not a coincidence that people eager to praise justice without any clear conception of it are probably not directly participating in its concrete realization.) When a person is committed to a clearly defined ethical ideal, that definition is cognitively appreciated as analytic, even if its implementation depends on real-world matters. (The ideal of honesty at least means “do not deceive,” but one must find out whether honesty is always the best policy.) Someone who has woven an ethical ideal into their moral life will not agree that it is a contingent matter whether it has the meaning that it does. Returning to the example of a conception of justice as “respect for basic rights should be fulfilled towards all persons equally,” a person committed to that ideal would find unintelligible the notion that justice may alternatively be an unequal respect for basic rights. That person would hardly be impressed by the evident way that other people commit to different meanings to what they call “justice.” That people can deeply disagree over what “justice” must mean is further evidence for the analyticity to their conceptions. If “justice” were agreed by all parties to be a synthetic matter, they’d all be amenable to discovering how many rights inequalities truly count as justice. But such amenability among all seekers of justice is difficult to imagine. The analyticity to the meaning of an ethical ideal, for those applying them, is compatible with their a posteriori validity. In a way, the two support each other. No longer should philosophy feel bound by Kantian dictums concerning analyticity. Pragmatists liberated themselves long ago, and contemporary philosophy after W. V. Quine can also appreciate how “analytic” does not carry every sense of necessity, long-term immutability, or irreplaceability.10 For pragmatism, an analytic judgment enjoys its validity only so long as those people applying it in their inquiries remain confident in its contributions to achieving hoped-for results. That confidence must be earned, and earned anew into the future.

6 Ethical Ideals and the Moral Life Life in general, and the moral life in particular, is surely enriched beyond measure by ideals. Even the so-called hopeless ends forever beyond our reach have their place. Rescher ably argues that an attempt to reach an impossible goal may make other goals attainable, and an attempt falling short of an impossible goal can still be an achievement (9–16). All three kinds of ethical

270  John R. Shook ideals—prescriptive, conclusive, and projective—can enjoy these two sorts of justifications. The life of reason meshes well with the life of morals. Intelligence appreciates how courageous trials in the face of obstacles can frequently produce more good than not. This pragmatic appreciation for strenuous ideals lends itself to an overall attitude towards life that Rescher finds optimistic. His ethical idealism endorses “attitudinal optimism”: “a policy of proceeding (when possible) in the confident hope that a futureoriented optimism of tendency or prospect is indeed warranted” (98). This pragmatic optimism should not be conflated with what might be imagined as an idealistic or even utopian optimism. Rescher lends no support to those urging that life is best when we think our highest ideals are arriving soon. All the same, we often find that great leaps must be taken in faith or not at all, as William James urged in “The Will to Believe” in 1897. In a later essay on “Pragmatism and Religion,” James labeled his life stance as “meliorism” to take a position between optimism and pessimism. Our actions taken in accord with ideals can help create a better world, even if the best is beyond our reckoning.11 Reason must not lapse into a false optimism that takes advantage of our fond wish to see ideals safely preserved and insulated away from the harsh realities of worldly existence. The purity and stability of ideals is not due to their fixity in some transcendent reality. Ideals are set up high, but we placed them there. Nor should we imagine that our destiny is to join them. They illuminate our lives because we can look up to see them. Rescher says that “ideals serve to orient and structure our actions and give meaning and significance to our endeavors. They are guiding beacons across the landscape of life—distant, even unreachable points of reference that help us find our way” (119–120). Fellow pragmatist John Dewey regarded ideals in a similar manner. His first important work on ethics, The Study of Ethics (1894) took a pragmatist position on ideals: “true ideals are the working hypotheses of action . . . Ideals are like the stars; we steer by them, not towards them.”12 In his 1908 book Ethics with co-author James Tufts, Dewey reaffirmed how the loftiness of ethical ideals endow our deeds with deep significance, rather than deprive them of worth by comparison. An ideal is not some remote all-exhaustive goal, a fixed summum bonum with respect to which other things are only means. It is not something to be placed in contrast to the direct, local, and tangible quality of our actual situations, so that by contrast these latter are lightly esteemed as insignificant. On the contrary, an ideal is the conviction that each of these special situations carries with it a final value, a meaning which in itself is unique and inexhaustible.13 As James and Dewey agreed, intelligence can make sense of pursuing excellences and perfections for the sake of practical consequences. Many kinds of ideals can pass that reasonable test, especially projective ethical ideals.

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  271 Projective ethical ideals can also help us to understand one puzzling aspect of Rescher’s ethical theory, his position on “lost causes.” Ethical ideals sometimes call for great sacrifice from individuals in the face of great hazards and even assured defeat, but they also call for re-evaluation and reconstruction by successive generations in light of their own experiences. Are ethical ideals recalcitrant to hard experience, or answerable to hard experience? Only projective ethical ideals, and their analytic a posteriori status, allow us to make sense of these seemingly contrary features to ethical ideals. Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce now step forward as Rescher’s pragmatist allies. Peirce defined ethics as “the theory of the control of conduct, and of action in general, so as to conform to an ideal.”14 All reasonable conduct conforms to some ideal or another; ethics seeks the most reasonable ideals. Ideals are no exception from Peirce’s pragmatic maxim that “the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life.”15 For Peirce, worthy norms for conduct are never really just the invention or possession of any individual alone. Similarly, the testing of a norm of conduct is never left to any single person, or a single group of people. This is true of science, and Peirce expected it to be true of ethics.16 Peirce’s 1903 Lowell Lectures included a paper on “Ideals of Conduct” in which he says, We saw that three kinds of considerations go to support ideals of conduct. They were, first, that certain conduct seems fine in itself. . . . Secondly, we wish our conduct to be consistent. . . . Third, we consider what the general effect would be of thoroughly carrying out our ideals.17 Peirce next drew explicit parallels between these three considerations and the reasonable pursuit of inquiry in general, including scientific inquiry. Inquiry is never best undertaken by anyone acting alone. Filtering out error and converging on valid ideas is a communal enterprise. Throughout his writings, he expected the “indefinite community” of inquirers18 to bear the responsibility for experimentally showing that a hypothesis is “capable of being pursued in an indefinitely prolonged course of action.”19 A moral way of life guided by a certain set of projective ethical ideals is essentially a hypothesis, a communal hypothesis, and any community following those ideals must judge them by their fruits.20 However, just as a group of scientists may fail to confirm a hypothesis due to a lack of resources and time, a moral community may fail to sustain their way of life due to unfortunate circumstances. If conditions were favorable but ideals proved inadequate, a suffering community may negatively judge those ideals. But what if conditions were unfavorable? Peirce would deny that a scientific hypothesis is forever falsified just because the first scientists to test it managed only to produce inconclusive results. Another scientific community, employing advanced technologies and more resources, may be able to validate that

272  John R. Shook hypothesis, and equally advantaged scientists anywhere could do the same. Likewise, valid ideals await the thorough testing by any number of communities under favorable conditions. On this reading of Peirce, an individual’s commitment to a projective ethical ideal, or a community’s devotion to a set of projective ethical ideals, cannot be finally declared to be unreasonable until full and fair evaluations have been made. When we render a verdict of “unethical” upon a past society, we have the advantage of wider experience: we can either (a) see how that society didn’t flourish well under good conditions, or (b) if a society was terminated before its time, we observe how similar societies couldn’t flourish when they had good conditions. We can also pass judgment on contemporary societies. For example, we judge tyrannical societies as unethical today because every tyranny in the past eroded or limited human well-being, and recent tyrannies are similarly unsuccessful despite favorable conditions. On the other hand, we should refrain from condemning a society as unethical if its ideals have not yet been fully and fairly tested. There may be something lastingly redeemable about an otherwise failed society, and only future communities would be able to learn whether that is so. Intelligence has every right to search out intriguing ethical hypotheses, especially if there already are examples of people devoted to successful ways of life and people devoted to hopeless ways of life. Their exemplary devotion, in both cases, shows that someone placed their confidence and their very lives in the hands of certain ideals. These reflections allow us to pragmatically appreciate lost causes. A person who sacrifices everything for a failed society has put their faith in a lost cause, but not necessarily in an unreasonable ideal. In fact, marching bravely to the bitter end allows one’s life to shine all the brighter from the light of one’s ideals, for others in the future to see. Even as I commit my last breath to my ideal, I cannot know that no one will ever learn from my enterprise, even if no one ever thinks about me. That perspective is the ideal of hope, which was Peirce’s highest ethical norm for reason.21 The bare possibility that I may share my beloved ideal with another unknown community, and perhaps an indefinite number of future communities, allows me to participate in that ideal whole community. My living and dying for an ideal is to potentially commune with an extended community most of whom I will never meet, but they could know me as I was, and my spirited hope will live in them. Josiah Royce’s ethical philosophy centers on communal loyalty to high ideals. His theory of the nature of community and the role of individuality incorporates much from Peirce.22 Royce agreed that devotion to ideals need not be unreasonable just because one witnesses failure and tragedy. Quite the opposite is the case for Royce, who exalts loyalty to lost causes as the finest exemplar of loyalty to ideals. That loyalty is all the more practical because ideals may survive while societies and entire civilizations go extinct. In his book The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), he writes,

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  273 [L]oyalty to a lost cause may long survive, not merely in the more or less unreal form of memories and sentiments, but in a genuinely practical way. And such loyalty to a lost cause may be something that far transcends the power of any mere habit. New plans, endless conspiracies, fruitful social enterprises, great political organizations,—yes, in the extreme case,—new religions, may grow up upon the basis of such a loyalty to a cause whose worldly fortunes seem lost, but whose vitality may outlast centuries, and may involve much novel growth of opinion, of custom, and of ideals.23 It is the potential survival of an ideal in future new communities that bestows the greatest practicality to its significance. [W]hen a cause is lost in the visible world, and when, nevertheless, it survives in the hearts of its faithful followers, one sees more clearly than ever that its appeal is no longer to be fully met by any possible present deed. Whatever one can just now do for the cause is thus indeed seen to be inadequate. All the more, in consequence, does this cause demand that its followers should plan and work for the far-off future, for whole ages and aeons of time.24 This loyalty to ideals, which is capable of transcending the fate of any particular society, lends ethical nobility to one’s devotion to lost causes. All the same, as Royce readily admits, many lost causes should stay lost, and many ideals deserve to be forgotten. But only the indefinite future of all communities can be the best judge upon the prospects for ideals.25 Their collective judgment will be made with a sense of reverence and gratitude to those who nobly lived in ages past. That reverence is entirely appropriate, for the moral values and ideals of one age grew from those of past ages. Ethical ideals can mutate and develop like any organic thing, for they live in intelligent beings who prospectively apply them in their lives. In summary, Rescher’s view of the cognitive role of ethical ideals, and his philosophy of ethical idealism, is evidently in good company with his fellow pragmatists. They would whole-heartedly agree with the conclusion of Ethical Idealism, so let its final words be our final words here: A life without ideals need not be a life without purpose, but it will be a life without purposes of the sort in which one can appropriately take reflective satisfaction. The person for whom values matter so little that he has no ideals is condemned to wander through life disoriented, without guiding beacons that give meaning and point to the whole enterprise. Someone who lacks ideals suffers an impoverishment of spirit for which no other resource can adequately compensate. (144)

274  John R. Shook

Notes 1 All Rescher quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise specified, are from Ethical Idealism (Rescher 1987). Any italics in quotations are in the original. Many of his views on values, morality, and ethics are also discussed in Rescher (2012). 2 On the supposed gap between facts and values, see Rescher (2006, Chapter 3). 3 Consult Chrisman (2015). 4 On the matter of answering the question “Why be moral?” see Rescher (1993, Chapter 12). 5 Schmidt, Rakoczy, and Tomasello (2012). 6 See Rescher (1898). 7 Updated for modern times, this theological ethics is explored in Hare (2015). 8 Rescher (2000, Chapter 8) provides his interpretation of the categorical imperative. His core critique of utilitarianism can be read in Rescher (1975, Chapter 5). 9 Rescher’s ethical theory does not align well with moral particularism. Moral principles, and other kinds of ethical ideals, have reasonable justifications and undeniable worth on pragmatic grounds, even if they are not necessarily required for conducting ordinary morality in a naïve manner, or sufficient for explaining why every moral duty is truly a moral duty. On moral particularism and its limitations, see McKeever and Ridge (2006). 10 See Rescher (2004, Chapter 9). 11 James (2011, 173–174, 370–373). 12 Dewey (1971, 262). 13 Dewey (1908, 422). 14 Peirce (1931, para 573). 15 Peirce (1934, para 412). 16 Consult Shook (2011). 17 Peirce (1931, para 608). 18 Peirce (1934, para 311). 19 Peirce (1934, para 135). 20 See Liszka (2012). 21 See Shook (2014). 22 See Oppenheim (1993). 23 Royce (1908, 277–278). 24 Royce (1908, 281). 25 Neither Peirce nor James required, as Royce did, the affirmation that an actual all-inclusive community will be fully realized; see Colapietro (2015).

References Chrisman, Matthew. 2015. The Meaning of Ought: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Colapietro, Vincent. 2015. “The Pragmatic Significance of ‘Lost Causes’: Reflections on Josiah Royce in Light of William James and Edward Said.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 51, 277–299. Dewey, John. 1971. The Early Works of John Dewey, vol. 4. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, John and Tufts, James. 1908. Ethics. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Hare, John E. 2015. God’s Command. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, William. 2011. The Essential William James. Ed. John R. Shook. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Liszka, James. 2012. “Charles Peirce on Ethics.” In Cornelis de Waal and Krysztof Piotr Skowronski (eds.), The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce. New York: Fordham University Press, 44–82.

Moral Responsibility and Ethical Ideals  275 McKeever, Sean and Ridge, Michael. 2006. Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oppenheim, Frank M. 1993. Royce’s Mature Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1931. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1. Ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1934. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5. Ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1898. Moral Absolutes: An Essay on the Nature and Rationale of Morality. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 1975. Unselfishness. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 1987. Ethical Idealism. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1993. A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Volume 2, The Validity of Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2000. Kant and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. Value Matters: Studies in Axiology. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. ———. 2006. Studies in Value Theory. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. ———. 2012. Pragmatism: The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. ———. 2014. Vagaries of Value: Basic Issues in Value Theory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Royce, Josiah. 1908. The Philosophy of Loyalty. New York: Macmillan. Schmidt, Marco, Rakoczy, Hannes and Tomasello, Michael. 2012. “Young Children Enforce Social Norms Selectively Depending on the Violator’s Group Affiliation.” Cognition 124, 325–333. Shook, John R. 2011. “Peirce’s Pragmatic Theology and Stoic Religious Ethics.” Journal of Religious Ethics 39, 344–363. ———. 2014. “Reasoning is Communal in Method and Spirit.” In Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sørensen (eds.), Charles S. Peirce in His Own Words. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 70–83.

Contributors

Scott F. Aikin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Timo Airaksinen is Professor Emeritus of Moral and Social Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Robert Almeder is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University. Vincent Colapietro is Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. Diana B. Heney is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York. Griffin Klemick is Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Toronto. Joseph Margolis is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. Rosa Mayorga is Chair of the Department of Arts and Philosophy at Miami Dade College. Cheryl Misak is Professor of Philosophy and former Provost at the University of Toronto. Helmut Pape is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Sami Pihlström is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Joseph C. Pitt is Professor of Philosophy and Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech. Tom Rockmore is Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. John R. Shook is Research Associate in Philosophy and Instructor of Science Education at the University at Buffalo. Robert Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Jessica Wright is Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Index

actuality 114, 124 – 6 aesthetics (esthetics) 62, 159 Aikin, Scott 2 Airaksinen, Timo 3 Allison, Henry E. 185 Almeder, Robert 2 analyticity 269 anti-realism 83 anxiety 224 – 6 aporetics 37 – 8 Aristotle 78 – 9, 102 – 3, 156, 162, 179, 188, 240 assertion 54 – 6, 77 – 8, 133 – 4, 210 – 14 assertion, rhetoric of 212 – 14 attitude divergence 136, 142, 144 Bain, Alexander 77 bait-and-switch 34 – 5 Bakhurst, David 242 behavior 211 – 12 being 125 belief(s) 51 – 3, 56, 62, 133 – 48, 190 belief attribution 133 – 48 Belnap, Nuel 50 Berkeley, George 197 Bernstein, Richard 113, 121 Bildung 170 bioethics 239 – 52 Bohr, Niels 87 Brandom, Robert B. 113 Brunsveld, Niek 24 Camp, John 50 Carnap, Rudolf 78, 84 – 5, 87 Cartesianism 79, 81, 91 categorical imperative 100 categories 115, 120, 122, 127 – 8 causality 107

Chomsky, Noam 169 – 70 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 41, 43 – 4 cognitive command 43 Colapietro, Vincent 2 common sense, critical 208 compulsion, shared 212 – 15 concept(s) 176 conceptual idealism 7, 14, 18, 123, 152 conceptual relativism 18 conceptual schemes 18 – 19, 184 concrete reasonableness 150 – 67 consensus 109, 244 constructive empiricism 87, 89 constructivism 100 – 1 Cook Wilson, John 139 Copleston, Frederick corridor metaphor 34 – 5, 40 critical common-sensism 98 culture 20 – 2, 258, 260 Davidson, Donald 14, 19, 82, 85, 87, 175, 177 – 8, 181, 184 – 5,  187 deductive-nomological (D-N) model (covering law model) 88 – 9 deflationism (deflationary view of truth) 51 deliberative honesty 43 Descartes, René 41, 103 – 4, 108, 182, 199, 202 desire, theory of 223 – 37 Dewey, John 13, 21, 25, 32, 40, 74, 85, 87, 113 – 16, 124, 127, 270 dispositional account of belief 133 – 4 dispositionalism 133, 146 Einstein, Albert 110 Ellis, Brian 90 – 1 emotions 228

280 Index empirical realism 14, 123, 178 – 9, 182, 185 empiricism 197 error 245 – 6 ethical idealism 254 – 73 ethics 62, 254 – 73 evidence 74 – 6, 78, 134 – 8, 144 – 5, 213 – 16 evolution 116 – 18,  170 existential 182 – 3,  190 exotic lifesaving medical therapy (ELT) 247 – 51 experience 197 explanation 87 – 91 expressivism 55 fallibilism 73, 124, 240, 245 formalism 61 foundationalism 103, 105 Fraassen, Bas van 82, 85, 87, 89 – 90, 95 Freud, Sigmund 230 Friedman, Michael 106 functionalism 54, 56, 58 – 9 Galileo 186 Gehlen, Arnold 171 Gendler, Tamar 137 – 8, 145 generals 158 Gibson, J.J. 176, 179 given, the 184 God 23, 262 Goodman, Nelson 82, 84, 86 Green, Nicholas St. John 53 Grene, Marjorie 171 Grover, Dorothy 50 habit(s) 119 Hacking, Ian 239 haecceity (haecceitas) 158 Hanson, N.R. 90 happiness 225 – 8,  237 Hegel, G.W.F. 2, 108 – 9, 180 Hempel, Carl 88 – 9 Heney, Diana 3 Heraclitus 223 Hermann, Eberhard 24 Hilbert, David 64 Hobbes, Thomas 101, 225 – 6 holism 54 – 5,  104 holistic pragmatism 19 – 25 homeostasis 72 – 3, 77, 84, 87 homo quaerens 114 – 20 honesty 261, 269

Hook, Sidney 40 human infant 170, 185 Hume, David 76 – 81, 91, 107 idealism 1 – 30, 100, 153, 156 ideals 153 – 5, 164 – 5, 254 – 73 implicit attitude(s) 136 – 8, 141 – 2 induction 63, 75 – 81 inference 62 – 4, 74 – 8, 144 – 6 inquiry 77, 241 – 4, 271 instrumentalism 84, 87, 90 – 2 intellectualism 136 – 7, 142, 144 – 6 internal realism 14, 24 – 5 interpreters, community of 208 James, William 2, 8 – 9, 12 – 13, 25 – 7, 32 – 6, 39 – 40, 46 – 7, 72 – 4, 92 – 3, 113, 119 – 20, 151, 160, 205, 209, 241, 270 judgment(s) 51, 139 – 41, 179, 181, 189 – 90 justice 267 Kant, Immanuel 2, 9, 11, 15 – 16, 23, 28, 98 – 112, 121, 171 – 91, 239, 262 Kepler, Johannes 106 Keynes, John Maynard 49, 63 Klemick, Griffin 2 knowledge 75, 108, 203 Kuhn, Thomas 10, 110, 185 – 6 language 169 – 91 law of imperfectability 246, 249 learning 169 – 70, 184, 187 – 8 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 240 Lewis, C.I. 9 linguistic behavior 137 – 8, 144 – 5 logic 62, 207 logical atomism 57 – 8 McDowell, John 2, 170, 172 – 91 Majer, Ulrich 2, 48, 133 Margolis, Joseph 2, 113 Mayorga, Rosa 2 Mead, George Herbert 113 medicine 239, 247 – 52 meliorism 270 metaphilosophy 31 – 6, 39 – 42,  44 metaphysical realism 11 – 14, 24, 66, 100 methodological pragmatism 205 – 6, 209 Mill, John Stuart 262 mind 118

Index  281 Misak, Cheryl 1, 46, 48 Moore, G.E. 48 – 9 moral dilemmas 264 – 5 moral norms 259 moral obligation 257 – 8 moral responsibility 254 – 73 narrative (of desire) 223 – 4, 229 necessity 171, 173 Newton, Isaac 103, 106 – 7, 110 nominalism 156 non-conceptual content 178 normative (normativity) 62, 65 normative science(s) 159 – 63 objective pragmatism 46 – 71, 165 (and passim) objectivity 205 – 6, 208, 240 – 2, 248 – 9,  251 Ogden, C.K. 67n5 Oppenheim, Robert 88 – 9 optimism 229, 270 Pape, Helmut 3, 15 Pears, David 57 Peirce, Charles Sanders 2 – 3, 9, 15, 25, 42, 48, 50, 54, 59, 65 – 6, 68, 72, 74, 76 – 8, 82 – 3, 85, 91, 98 – 128, 133, 150 – 67, 173, 180 – 1, 188, 197 – 8, 201, 203, 205 – 21, 239 – 44, 271 – 2 perceptual 178 – 81, 183, 189 person(s) 183 – 4, 231 – 3, 258 – 63 pessimism 229, 236, 270 phaneroscopy 121 phenomenology 121 philosophical anthropology 13 philosophy of culture 20 philosophy of religion 23 – 5 Pihlström, Sami 172 – 4 Pitt, Joseph 3 Plato 155 – 6 Plessner, Helmuth 171 pluralism 7 – 8, 244 – 5,  250 Popper, Karl 239 Portmann, Adolf 171 possible worlds 226 practical realism 25 practice 250 – 1 pragmatic idealism 7, 25 pragmaticism 165 pragmatic maxim 151, 182, 197, 213 pragmatic realism 24, 120, 128 pragmatism passim

pragmatism, method 9, 205 pragmatism, thesis 9, 209 praktisch vs. pragmatisch 100 Price, Huw 244 primate(s) 169, 171 private language argument 175, 177 progress 38 – 9, 231, 243 – 7,  250 propositions 51 – 2, 56 – 60 psychologism 63, 66 – 7 Putnam, Hilary 8, 12, 14, 24 – 5, 240, 250 qualities 161 quidditas 157 – 8 Quine, W.V.O. 20 – 1, 78, 83, 86, 269 radical empiricism 74 radical pragmatism 75 Ramsey, Frank P. 46 – 71, 133 – 49 rational desirability 233 – 5 rationalism 172, 197 rationality 13, 199 – 200, 205, 210, 234 rationality, economic 210 – 11 realism 1 – 30, 58, 110, 114, 122 – 3, 125 – 6, 152, 169 – 91,  210 reality 186, 205, 209 – 215 (and Part I passim) reality principle 9, 11, 22 – 23 reasonableness 150 – 66 Reichenbach, Hans 79 – 80, 91 relative happiness argument 227 relativism 65, 67, 203 reliabilism 49, 64 religion 23 – 5 representationalism 60 Rescher, Nicholas passim rhetoric 207, 214 – 16 Rockmore, Tom 2 Rorty, Richard 2 – 3, 7, 9, 40, 47, 66 – 7, 74 – 5, 83, 87, 90, 113, 151, 184, 186 – 7, 199, 205 – 7 Royce, Josiah 100, 116, 271 – 3 Russell, Bertrand 49, 52, 57, 59, 90, 135 Salmon, Wesley 79, 90 Santayana, George 243 – 4 scarcity 240, 247 – 8 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 122 Schiller, F.C.S. 9, 205 Schiller, Friedrich 159 scholastic realism 152, 156 – 8 Schröder, Ernst 213 scientific non-realism 81 – 7

282 Index scientific realism 81 – 7 Scotus, Johannes Duns 114, 156 – 8, 240 script (of desire) 230 – 4 Sellars, Wilfrid 78, 84 – 5, 87, 171 – 2, 175, 184, 187, 189, 202 semiotics 207 – 8 Sextus Empiricus 42 Shapiro, Michael 225 Shook, John R. 3 skepticism 32, 40 – 4, 60 – 1, 66, 101, 156 Skyrms, Brian 79 – 80, 91 solidarity 205 – 6 solipsism 203 space of reasons 179, 189 strategic model 213 – 17 Strawson, P.F. 186 Stuhr, John J. 113 summum bonum 162 switch test (of happiness) 227 synechism 159, 163 Talisse, Robert 2 Tarski, Alfred 83, 85 things in themselves (Dinge an sich) 15 – 18, 155, 178, 188 transcendental(ity, -ism) 171, 173, 182, 185, 218 transcendental argument(ation) 11 – 12, 19, 232

transcendental idealism 15, 23, 123, 185 transcendental naturalism 173 triumphalism 40 truth 47 – 51, 83, 85, 210 Tufts, James 270 universal grammar 169 universals 157 – 8 utilitarianism 263 – 4 value objectivism 13 values 153 – 5, 164 – 5, 200 – 3 verificationism 73 – 4 verisimilitude 41, 43 Vico, Gianbattista 101 Vihalemm, Rein 25 vindication 76 – 7 Voltaire 113 warranted assertibility 72 West, Cornel 113 White, Morton 8, 20 – 5, 28 Whorf, Benjamin 186 Wiggins, David 242 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 41, 49, 57, 59, 64, 172 – 3, 175, 177, 183, 187, 189 – 90 Wright, Jessica 2 Wüstehube, Axel 13 – 14