Reason, Method, and Value: A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher 9783110329056, 9783110328660

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Dale Jacquette (Ed.) Reason, Method, and Value A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher

READING RESCHER Volume 4

Dale Jacquette (Ed.)

Reason, Method, and Value A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher

Edited and with a Critical Introduction by Dale Jacquette

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A Rescher Reader Preface General Introduction: Dale Jacquette

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Part I: Theory of Inquiry Introduction: John Greco

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1: Plausibility and Presumption

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2: The Pursuit of Truth: Coherentist Criteriology

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3: The Culture Evolution of Communal Practices in Inquiry

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4: On Cognitive Economics

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5: Against Cognitive Relativsim

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Part II: Logic and Paradox Introduction: John Woods

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1: Vagrant Predicates and Unanswerable Questions

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2: Truth, Fact, and the Limits of Knowledge

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3: Aporetics

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4: Paradox Resolution

183

5: Reification Fallacies and Inappropriate Totalities

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6: Plurality Quantification

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Part III: Science and its Limits Introduction: Robert Almeder 1: The Systematicity of Nature

225 247

2: The Complexity and Cognitive Inexhaustibility of Nature 263

3: The Unpredictability of Future Science

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4: Technological Escalation and the Exploration Model of Natural Science

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5: The Law of Logarithmic Returns

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6: The Unrealizability of Perfected Science

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Part IV: Metaphysics Introduction: William Jaworski

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1: Pragmatic Realism: A Practical Perspective on Philosophical Realism

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2: Idealism

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3: Pragmatism

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4: Optimalism and Axiological Metaphysics

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Part V: Ethical and Social Philosophy Introduction: Lenn Goodman

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1: Moral Relativism: Are there Moral Universals?

471

2: Rationality and Moral Obligation

509

3: Is Consensus Required for a Rational Social Order?

521

4: The Power of Ideals

535

Part VI: Comments on Rescher’s Essays on Philosophical Systematization Introduction: Lorenz Puntel

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1: On Philosophical Systematization: Plausibility and the Hegelian Vision

555

2: Why Philosophizing must be Systematic (The Holistic Nature of Philosophy)

585

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3: Philosophy and Paradox

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4: Holistic Explanation and the Idea of a Grand Unified Theory

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Books by Nicholas Rescher

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Preface

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icholas Rescher enjoys a long and distinguished career in philosophy, writing on many different areas from logic to philosophy of language, epistemology, pragmatism, ethics and political philosophy, and metaphilosophy. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, it is therefore an enormous pleasure to celebrate Rescher’s unparalleled accomplishments in philosophy in the only way that Rescher himself has ever seemed to desire— that his work be read and his ideas understood, considered, debated and made part of the ongoing dialogue about the most important philosophical questions of the day. Reason, Method, and Value: A Retrospective Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher offers a sampling of Rescher’s writings over several decades brought together in a single volume to provide a useful overview of his contributions to six key areas of contemporary thought in logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, metaphysics, ethics and socialpolitical philosophy, and metaphilosophy. The point of the edition is not merely to extract Rescher’s most salient ideas from their voluminous original sources, but rather through these selections to present his ideas as moments in a unified system of philosophical reflection that Rescher has been at work for many years to sketch in bold outline and complete with extraordinary detail in specific subdisciplines within the general field of philosophy. Taken together, the six areas covered by the volume encapsulate the heart of Rescher’s impressive lifelong contributions to philosophy between two covers, in a single collection that provides a solid overview of his thought while serving to direct readers to the body of Rescher’s writings for a more complete picture. The system that emerges from this retrospective encounter with Rescher’s thought is meant to serve several different purposes. Since Rescher has seldom commented metaphilosophically on the overall contours of his work in multiple philosophical domains, culling from his writings with a deliberate plan of illustrating the underlying structure of his philosophical program may help to cast the main lines of his contributions to ontology, epistemology, value theory and philosophical methodology in bold relief.

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There is an undeniable difficulty of not being able to see the forest for the trees in Rescher’s vast œuvre, and a reader interested in what Rescher has to say about this or that particular topic is easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of pages one might need to digest in order to fully understand his ideas about any particular topic. Without suggesting that there might be any sort of shortcut to grasping the subtleties of Rescher’s philosophical system, the plan of this new collection is to assemble significant samples of his work in the six areas in which he has been most active. The contents of each selection have been chosen by Rescher from his most characteristic books as offering insight into his philosophy, and each section of the book is introduced by an expert on Rescher’s thought and on the particular philosophical field the section represents. The introductory remarks are expository and critical, and help to place Rescher’s ideas in a broader context of recent conceptual and technical developments. My interpretive Introduction knits together the separate strands of the six sections into a unifying picture of the theses and methods by which Rescher’s work in philosophy has progressed over the years. A critical discussion of many aspects of Nicholas Rescher’s work is given in Robert Almeder (ed.) Rescher Studies: A Collection of Essays on the Philosophical Work of Nicholas Rescher. This includes a comprehensive bibliography. I am grateful to Nick for his help and guidance in preparing this work for publication, and to the authors for their lucid, constructive and penetrating introductions. Finally, I thank Rafael Hüntelmann, my editor at Ontos Verlag, for encouraging and nurturing this project from inception to production. Dale Jacquette Orthi Ammos, Crete—23 May 2008

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NICHOLAS RESCHER’S SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY Introduction Dale Jacquette

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icholas Rescher’s philosophy is deeply systematic. This is in part to say that his writings do not always wear system on their sleeves, but have flowered into a system more organically as a reflection of Rescher’s evolving cohesive view of the major problems of philosophy, an outgrowth of his tireless pursuit of common threads linking together a variety of seemingly disparate philosophical themes. To understand Rescher’s systematic philosophy is accordingly to come to terms with the exact sense in which he considers himself to be an idealist, with the exact sense in which he considers himself to be a pragmatist, and with how it is that these two apparently rather disparate philosophical ideologies are brought together synergistically in Rescher’s inquiries. Here it is possible not only to draw hints from Rescher’s floruit of writings, but to consult especially his Autobiography, as a clue to the historical progression of his thought. In the latter, personal-professional account, Rescher describes his philosophical system as a synthesis of German and British idealism with American pragmatism: A philosopher has little choice but to be many-sided because the impetus to philosophizing is ultimately a search for systematic principles underlying the jumbled profusion of phenomena. Fortunately, then, I have gradually acquired the vision of a system of philosophy geared to the idealistic tradition from Leibniz and Berkeley through Kant to Hegel and Peirce, with the German idealists on the left side, the English Hegelians on the right, and the American pragmatists to the forefront…It has become my life’s task—my “mission,” if you will—to proceed with the exposition and elaboration of

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this philosophical perspective of a pragmatical idealism [or] idealistic pragmatism. The aim is to become clear about the import and credentials of various sorts of human knowledge—above all in the sciences, in everyday life, and in philosophical reflection itself. The adequate comprehension of the character of these various realms of inquiry—especially of the mutual interrelationships—is the formative purpose of the enterprise. The system I have long had in view is a substantial structure combining historical elements from the idealistic and pragmatic traditions with various original moves—a structure embodying traditional materials, but built up with contemporary tools of logical and conceptual analysis. Whether what I have done has managed to realize this ambition is not for me to say. All I can say is that I have given it “my best shot.” (Nicholas Rescher, Autobiography (Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag, 2007), 286)

Following a series of contributions to the study of medieval Arabic logic in the mid- to late-1960s, at the outset of his career, Rescher turned to larger problems of metaphysics and epistemology. As the breadth of topics he investigated expanded during this still early period, in the course of this research, several distinctive theses began to emerge, involving what were eventually to become the dominant strands of Rescher’s characteristic unifying of limited forms of idealism and pragmatism. Again, in his Autobiography, Rescher explains the steady progression of his ideas moving in a general direction toward what he was eventually to identify as methodological pragmatism, partly as a result of his experience working closely with a variety of non-classical logics. The central studies marking this phase of Rescher’s development are his much-discussed monographs, The Coherence Theory of Truth (1973) and Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (1977). Logic is also the source of at least certain aspects of Rescher’s idealism, coming to the fore as a result of his conclusion that the imputational theory of lawfulness and the nature of logical possibility are conceptual and, as such, mind-dependent. Thus, he writes: “After 1968 the pattern of my philosophical work changed. I now became increasingly preoccupied with mainstream philosophical issues of epistemology and

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metaphysics, and my philosophical work gradually came to assume a more continuous direction and more systematic aspect” (Autobiography, 165). Rescher emphasizes the connection between logic and idealism in the development of his thought during this period, when he continues: “The series of books that emerged from my pen in the years after 1969—beginning with The Coherence Theory of Truth—were a systematic development of my ideas of the just-preceding period and represented the culmination of lines of thought at that stage. The fundamentals of methodological pragmatism were implicit in the last chapter of Many-Valued Logic (written in 1967; published in 1969)” (Autobiography, 165-166). Neo-pragmatism of a uniquely Rescheresque stamp is already discernible in these writings, but its grounding in a thorough study of Peirce is still several years in the making. Idealism more immediately appears in Rescher’s writings at this early date, explicitly attributed to his research in philosophy of logic. “The imputational theory of lawfulness and the thesis of the mind-dependence of possibility,” he writes in his Autobiography, “go back to my essay in the Festschrift for C.G. Hempel (written in 1968; published in 1969), and this idealistic approach to natural philosophy was further developed in Scientific Explanation (written in 1968-9; published in 1970). These writings marked a turning point in my development as a philosopher” (Autobiography, 166). By the 1970s, Rescher had made important contributions to the history and philosophy of logic, epistemology, cognitive philosophy, and philosophical methodology, as well as rational decision-making. During this time also he intensified his studies in American pragmatism, remarkably, occasioned by the United States Bicentennial in 1976, achieving some of his most important insights as he assimilated and modified especially the pragmaticism of C.S. Peirce. These two elements, idealism and pragmatism, have provided the cornerstones of Rescher’s systematic philosophy. They are present at least in nascent form already in his first explorations of knowledge theory and metaphilosophical methodology. Rescher chronicles this crucial formative period in his writing career: “My own philosophical research and writing continued to evolve in a constructive direction”, he explains, “with each successive year bringing along its quota of

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one or two books. These fell into several areas: the study of cognition in science (Cognitive Systematization, Induction, Empirical Inquiry) and in ordinary life (Plausible Reasoning, Dialectics, Scepticism); and some theoretical issues about rational decision (Risk)” (Autobiography, 195). A concentrated examination of Peirce’s philosophy of science was soon to follow. “With the onset of the U.S. bicentennial”, he writes, “I now interested myself more deeply in pragmatism, this quintessential American approach in philosophy, an interest that came to expression in Peirce’s Philosophy of Science and in Methodological Pragmatism. The ideas of the latter had a particularly deep and lasting impact on my philosophical thought” (Autobiography, 195-196). The building blocks and major influences of Rescher’s systematic philosophy were consequently well in place during the 1970s. “Along with The Coherence Theory of Truth of 1973”, Rescher recounts, “this 1977 book [Methodological Pragmatism] was to constitute one of the principal formative landmarks of my philosophizing” (Autobiography, 196). We are nevertheless not to imagine that Rescher’s philosophy is somehow an uncooked fusion of Berkeley, Hegel, and Peirce. Rescher’s philosophy is more than the sum of its parts, and the parts themselves, though indebted in indirect ways to these historical predecents, are not mere recapitulations in modern concepts and language of prior idealisms and pragmatisms to which Rescher acknowledges his indebtedness. Rather, Rescher, in the process of working through epistemic and methodological problems by his own lights, first in philosophical logic and then in cognitive theory and metaphysics, seems to have arrived at similar conclusions in which he recognizes a distant fellow-traveling echo of the great idealist and pragmatist thinkers of the past. Moreover, Rescher’s philosophy has been holistically informed as well by his interests in and affinities with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibnizianism informs Rescher’s vision of his philosophical project as a whole in putting diversified and scattered elements into interactive coordination for the benefit of the whole. Rescher takes the Leibnizian dictum, Sympnoia Panta (“everything conspires”, originally attributed to Hippocrates) as a motto also for the way in which the individual parts of his philosophy collaborate to the benefit of the

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whole, as reflecting the spirit of his work. Rescher’s detailed investigations of Leibniz’s philosophy begin with his 1954 Journal of Symbolic Logic (19; 1-13) article, “Leibniz’s Interpretation of his Logical Calculi”, and are represented by his booklength studies, Leibniz: An Introduction to his Philosophy (1979), his student edition with commentary of Leibniz’s Monadology (1991), and On Leibniz (2003). Leibniz’s philosophical influence on and commonality with Rescher’s philosophy, reinforced by Rescher’s noted historical studies of Leibniz, is the glue that holds together Rescher’s idealism and pragmatism. That Rescher’s special brand of idealism in “natural philosophy” is firmly rooted in his grasp of modern science is clear from the fact that Rescher’s object is to explain its principles, along with those of logic and mathematics, from a human standpoint, as something that people do, ultimately, with their brains. Anticipating W.V.O. Quine’s call for a naturalized epistemology by several decades, Rescher’s idealism in all its ramifications is in some ways a continuation of the observer-relative orientation of Einstein’s special relativity physics. Nor is there anything strange, on the contrary, the move is almost inevitable once this perspective is established, in bridging a limited epistemic idealism of Rescher’s sort to methodological pragmatism. If it is human beings who make science, whatever the status of logical, mathematical, and scientific principles themselves might be, then it is only reasonable to consider the tasks and purposes for which their knowledge-acquiring actions are undertaken. For it is only in this way that we can hope to provide a standard for judging their success in terms of truth, justification, and related terms of cognitive and epistemic appraisal. The problem for idealism, whether of the British radical empiricist or Hegelian sort, is always the preservation of objectivity. If the heart of idealism is to take seriously the proposal that certain aspects of the world or the subject matter of the sciences by which the world is studied and understood are owing to human cognition and conceptualization, then it becomes an important task, at least for those philosophers who take logic, mathematics, and science equally seriously, also to make provision within an idealist framework for the possibility of objective knowledge. The world

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is not subject to the will and whims of scientists to say anything they like and thereby establish what is true. Truth resists wishful thinking in the formal and natural sciences, as in everyday life, and the idealist needs to satisfy the requirements for correct and incorrect judgments in these disciplines as in everyday experience. Pragmatism can help articulate such a criterion in the success or failure of beliefs applied in practical activities, but it is the idealist’s burden first to establish that there is no logical incompatibility between the mind’s responsibility for thought-dependent aspects of what we take to be reality and the possibility of getting things right or wrong when we venture to speak the truth about the formal and other descriptive and causal features of the world. Rescher addresses this obligation in a number of places. His thoughts on this vital topic over several decades can be traced in a series of publications from early in his career to the present day. The relevant texts include, in addition to those already mentioned, The Primacy of Practice (1973), Rationality (1988), Cognitive Economy: Perspectives in the Theory of Knowledge (1989), Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (1993), Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason (1997), Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy (1999), Cognitive Pragmatism (2001), and Rationality in Pragmatic Perspective (2003). It will be worthwhile to consider arguments from several of these sources in detail. To adopt Rescher’s own phrase, Pluralism is a book about how to be open-minded without being empty-headed. Rescher defends the epistemic and political advantages of pluralism against the demand for consensus in scientific thought and social interaction. Rescher’s criticisms are aimed principally at Peirce, Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and John Rawls. His attack on consensus as an ideal is nevertheless conducted on a wider front, with implications for a variety of fashionable contemporary nonrationalist attitudes that have emerged with the postmodern disparagement of the quest for absolute certainty. These standpoints range from extreme skepticism and syncretism to indifferent relativism. Rescher asks whether consensus is required by rationality, by the limitations of reason, or as a moral imperative. He evaluates representative ar-

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guments for and against the need for and usefulness of consensus in epistemic inquiry, and concludes that consensus is not needed for science or the theory of truth, and that there is no obligation to work toward agreement for its own sake. He further examines the experiential basis for cognitive diversity, from which he deduces the unavoidability of pluralism among differently perspectivally situated and valuationally motivated believers. Rescher argues that pluralism need not lead to skepticism, syncretism, or indifferent relativism, all of which he rejects. The fourth pluralist possibility Rescher endorses is what he calls perspectival rationalism or contextualism. Rescher believes that as perspectival rationalists or contextualists we can acknowledge the inevitable and valuable diversity of opinion in knowledge-seeking, without denying or accepting any and every proposition, and without thereby lapsing into complete indifference about the truth. We can tolerate and even encourage dissent, recognizing that others will not necessarily agree with the positions we find compelling, without giving up our own convictions, and without making the truth or worthiness of our own opinions arrived at from our own equally pluralistically respectable points of view unrealistically dependent on the agreement of others. With a cognitive epistemic framework in place, Rescher then broaches the problems of consensus and the implications of pluralism for value inquiry, communication, and social policy. Rescher regards it as pragmatically absurd to expect consensus ever to be reached even among conscientious inquirers following the same methods. The philosophical argument for the unattainability of consensus is reinforced by psychological and sociological evidence, and an interpretation of decision theory paradoxes like the prisoner’s dilemma and Newcomb’s box. Even if agreement could be obtained at the asymptotic apotheosis of a Peircean community of inquirers or within a Habermasian rational consensus, Rescher believes that it is unnecessary and even detrimental as a goal for productivity in science. He reasons that it is implausible to regard consensus as contributing to the discovery of new truths, except under idealized conditions. In such counterfactual circumstances, however, Rescher argues, consensus itself is irrelevant to successful inquiry, since under idealized conditions truth is just as readily available to individuals as to

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groups. It is the idealization of conditions rather than agreement per se that is responsible for the advance of knowledge in epistemically utopian scenarios. Nor is consensus needed for a benign social order. Rescher identifies acquiescence in rather than consensus or approval or acceptance of the rule of law as the operative principle in a beneficent society. Litigants need not agree with judicial decisions in order to promote and participate in the effective administrative of justice; nor need they accept, as long as they obey and act appropriately within, though they may also try to change, a legal procedural structure. As Samuel Butler in the cantos of his (1663) Hudibras remarks: “He that complies against his will / Is of his own opinion still.” Finally, Rescher claims, consensus is undesirable even as an ideal in science or politics, which he carefully distinguishes from merely positively evaluated idealizations. The difference is illustrated by Rescher’s example that, other things being equal, perpetual springtime would be a good thing. This is a positively evaluated idealization or abstraction from real world contingencies. In contrast, it is obviously not a suitable ideal in the sense of constituting a state of affairs it would be reasonable to work toward or try to do something about. Consensus in epistemic matters is similarly a positively evaluated idealization, an outcome that would be good, other things being equal, if, despite the greatest unlikelihood, it were to obtain. Consensus is nevertheless not an acceptable ideal for us to take as a reasonable goal to work toward in the actual world, because truth is more likely to be discovered and more rigorously tested and confirmed where competition flourishes among dissenting intellectual rivals. In the socialpolitical realm, consensus as an idealization is equally unpalatable as an ideal, where it has promoted social injustices against the holders of minority opinions and practices in the history of religious and racial intolerance. Society is enriched rather than limited or impoverished by pluralism; it develops in more directions and offers opportunities that would not otherwise exist by tolerating cultural differences and disagreements of many kinds. Here, in examining the implications of an overly simplified solution to the problem of subjectivity that seems to be entailed by idealism in the social

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sciences and moral and political practices, Rescher’s plausible defense of the pragmatic middle ground between the epistemic and political extremes he finds unacceptable encourages social participants in the honest pursuit of their heartfelt convictions as objectively true or objectively normatively right without disrespect or intolerance for the contrary opinions of others. As in Pluralism, Rescher’s Objectivity carries forward his systematic program of rehabilitating a truth-oriented pragmatism in a rigorous methodological framework that is pluralistic in its tolerance of alternative perspectives without sacrificing its own conclusions or lapsing into cognitive or moral relativism, skepticism, nihilism, or indiscriminate syncretism. Objectivity is the guiding spirit of this pragmatic, scientific, and rational moral enterprise. Rescher approaches the problem of objectivity by offering a definition of the concept that searches for middle ground between two opposing principles. On the one hand, Rescher wants the responsibility for objective judgment to reside with the individual epistemic or evaluative agent. On the other hand, Rescher equally wants to mitigate the potential subjectivity and egocentric relativism that seems to be threatened when every individual is an epistemic and moral law unto him or herself. We cannot consign objectivity entirely to others, nor can we escape our personal obligations to decide what is true and good. Neither, however, can we retreat into self-satisfied complacency about the truth of our subjective opinions, without check or correction from an external, independent, and, as we sometimes like to say, objective outlook. In trying to navigate between these shoals, Rescher comes to terms with one of the most crucial problems that divides many thinkers about the nature of objectivity. Rescher’s Objectivity considers the implications of philosophical commitment to objectivity in science, metaphysics, ontology, cognition, discourse and communication, ethics and value theory, hermeneutics and the critique of deconstructionism. The book accordingly concludes with a discussion of the limits of objective inquiry, in which Rescher staunchly upholds the virtues of objectivity, while recognizing that there is more to life than purely rational pursuits, and that both objectivity and subjectivity in their respective spheres each make important complementary contributions to the complex fabric of human existence.

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Rescher’s solution is to require of objectivity that judgment rest with each individual according to the individual’s accepted standards and methods, while it takes into account the individual’s assessment of what other persons would imaginatively be likely to judge in similar circumstances. There is, as Rescher rightly observes, adapting Thomas Nagel’s suggestive phrase, no “view from nowhere”. Every judgment is made from and to that extent dependent for its content on the peculiarities of a particular perspective. This fact still does not preclude objectivity, according to Rescher, if we strive for impartiality by trying from within our distinct standpoints to arrive at conclusions that reflect what any rational being from any perspective would be likely to judge. A sense of objectivity is thereby achieved by discounting the personal perspectival factors that would otherwise lead different epistemic or moral decision agents to reach different results. It is not a view from nowhere that Rescher recommends, but the view from somewhere in particular insofar as it agrees with the view that could be had from anywhere. Rescher describes objectivity as involving what he calls the complexity of the first-person plural. This paradoxical expression is meant to emphasize the combination of particular first-person perspective with a sensitivity to judgments reached from other viewpoints. Thus, Rescher explains: If I care for objectivity, then only those things should be convincing to me that would be convincing to others—those things of which I can reasonably say that they would and should be convincing to anybody who would be “in my shoes.” We enter (even if merely hypothetically) into a public forum of discussion (of dialectics if you will) where we must see it as incumbent on ourselves to put what we maintain in a way that others (insofar as reasonable) would be hard to deny. We try, in short, to free what we maintain from our personal idiosyncracies: from biases, idiosyncracies, predilections, personal allegiances, and the like. (Rescher, Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), 16)

We cannot decide objective truth or moral right by taking a vote or conducting a poll, but we must rely on our own standards vicariously applied

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as though from other persons’ standpoints. Rescher distinguishes between objectivity as he has defined it and consentuality or simple agreement with the community. In contrast, Rescher endorses what he refers to as an “appropriate” judgment as the outcome of objective reasoning. “We do,” he says, “—and should—do the best we can to achieve an appropriate answer, and consensuality is not determinative here because the community is not always right. (Vox populi is certainly not vox dei)” (Objectivity, 54). This clarification comes as a relief insofar as it forestalls objections to Rescher’s characterization of objectivity wrongly interpreted as universal or majoritarian agreement. Otherwise, it might be supposed that objective judgment is blatantly false or morally reprehensible when it represents consensus with a sufficiently deluded or morally depraved population. Whatever Rescher means by taking other subjective viewpoints into account in arriving at an objective judgment, of walking in their shoes, he evidently does not intend merely agreeing with the actual content of other persons’ judgments. Nor can we at will simply trade in our values for those of other persons with different perspectives who see things differently from us. We can only modify our own standards by applying the standards we have, and can only see and understand things as we see and understand them, from a particular perspective. One might wonder why Rescher’s acknowledgment does not immediately revivify subjectivity. How do we who aspire to objectivity latch onto an “appropriate” judgment when we are perspectivally situated with methods and standards of judgment that are ineluctably our personal subjective cognitive apparatus? How in particular can we do so in light of the fact that perspective not only involves differences in spatiotemporal location, but differences in method, criteria of truth and the good, prior political, philosophical and religious ideology, however confused or corrupt, and a diversity of purposes and attitudes about the reasons for inquiry and evaluation? It is not as though the many perspectives I am supposed to respect in arriving at objective judgments merely involve imagining me just as I am with all of my particular cognitive and normative baggage intact moving about to compare the conclusions I would reach from different locations. I must also try to do so by putting myself in the place of ancient,

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contemporary and future peoples of all cultures and with very different belief systems. Inevitably, then, we encounter the problem of whether we can meaningfully satisfy Rescher’s requirements for objective judgment. If I cannot undertake astral projection into another person’s subjectivity, then there may be reason to worry whether Rescher’s concept of objectivity can rescue his epistemic idealism from an objectionable psychologism. The danger is that if I cannot actually enter into the subjectivity of another mind in trying to implement Rescher’s notion of objectivity, then the only thing I can do instead is to persuade myself that differently situated thinkers would agree with me when for whatever reasons I am personally convinced of the truth or moral probity of my judgments. The proof is to try meaningfully and substantively to imagine the reactions of a tribesman from the Brazilian rainforest being transported for decision-making into a board members meeting of the New York Stock Exchange and Trade Securities Commission, or the reverse. The problem is especially perilous because Rescher admits that we each have no choice but to prefer and make use of our own individual standards and methods of judgment no matter what we do and even as we try to improve our thinking by following wellregarded paradigms. Rescher concedes the possible diversity of conclusions reached by means of objective reasoning in applied epistemology and applied ethics, while preserving the universality of higher-order moral and epistemic principles. To manage this accommodation, he distinguishes throughout between the exceptionless generality of objective moral and epistemic principles and their variable application in particular concrete circumstances. This part of Rescher’s exposition recalls Kant’s distinction between the categories and pure principles of the understanding and their temporal schematizations mediated by the imagination, or between the categorical imperative and its typics and the moral maxims they support. The difficulty in this account, though not one to be underestimated, remains that of distinguishing in practice between personal idiosyncracies and what any reasonable person would or should judge concerning any putative absolute epistemic and moral principles.

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By distinguishing between objectivity as an ideal versus practical aim, Rescher refutes a broad spectrum of assaults on knowledge and moral value. His targets include anthropologism, historicism, as well as certain factions of the sociology of knowledge, personalism, feminism, Marxism and class-interest theory, post-modernism, social activism, scientific consentualism, and cognitive relativism. Rescher overall makes a convincing argument for the distinction between objectivity and quantifiability, demonstrating that not all systematically produced numberings necessarily represent objective factors. He establishes ontological objectivity as the ground of cognitive objectivity, explicates the role of objectivity as an essential presupposition of communication, and investigates the pragmatic rationale of cognitive objectivity. When he turns to moral judgment in the second half of Objectivity, Rescher interestingly relies on a positive analogy between cognitive and moral objectivity by which he attacks moral relativism and upholds the rationality of absolute ethical principles. In Rationality in Pragmatic Perspective, Rescher champions objectivity from yet another angle by denying the standard sharp divisions of philosophical methodologies into such supposedly watertight categories as rationalism, empiricism, and pragmatism. He argues here instead that the values and standards especially of rationalism, but also the virtues and advantages of empiricism, can be understood in terms of a more powerful conception of functionalist pragmatism. Rescher’s methodology explains pragmatic success as the most effective and efficient attainment of a specific type of human purpose or objective. He grapples throughout with a difficulty that has long troubled received forms of philosophy. Rationalism takes its concepts from and seeks justification in a realm of abstract entities that cannot be experienced in sensation but are known only to reason. Empiricism and pragmatism react to the experiential inaccessibility of rationalist ideals by trying in different ways to humanize philosophy’s goals. In the process of humanizing or naturalizing truth, knowledge and moral and aesthetic good as the idealist also urges, empiricism, in some regards the companion of idealism, and conventional pragmatism, threaten once again to make knowledge subjective, personal, and, to that extent, unscientific. Functionalist methodological pragmatism in Rescher’s theory promises

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humanly accessible philosophical principles that are nevertheless objective and interpersonal. He defines the effective and efficient achievement of human purposes relative to the satisfaction not merely of perceived needs but of real objective and normatively predetermined needs. That is to say that Rescher introduces what we as historically and culturally contexted living beings should or ought to need, as opposed to what we may sometimes rightly or wrongly subjectively merely think we need. The identification of real objective human needs and analysis of pragmatic success in terms of their effective and efficient satisfaction enable Rescher to find a negotiated middle-ground between rationalism’s abstract ideals and the subjectivism of ordinary empiricism and nonfunctionalist pragmatism. They are the key to Rescher’s efforts to subordinate the aims of reason and the philosophical criteria and desiderata of rationality to his vision of a humanized but still objective functionalist pragmatism. Within this metaphilosophical framework of reducing rationalist concepts to a functionalist pragmatism, Rescher fits valuable discussions of major topics in practical reasoning, epistemology, the mind’s entertainment of possibilities in everyday life and scientific reasoning and the sometimes blurred distinction between reality and fiction, the requirements of truth and cognitive realism, the subtle linkages between epistemic and moral evaluation and justification, the relativism of circumstantially conditioned normative judgment and conduct, the existence of necessarily unknowable but equally unspecifiable truths as a limit of inquiry, and the underlying pragmatic foundations of basic principles of reasoning and philosophical methodology. For each of these topics, Rescher offers independently attractive explanations of ideas that are otherwise assumed to belong to the domain of absolute truths in the exclusive province of rationalism in a coherent picture of objective scientific knowledge, existence, and value. Rescher in this connection seizes the opportunity to denounce what he sees as a deplorable postmodern trend of blurring the once widely respected distinction between objective reality and its subjective appearance in perception, attitude, judgment and belief. He does not merely vent reactionary dismissal of what is rapidly being exposed as obsolete antiobjectivism based on mistaken implications of the necessity for perspecti-

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vally interpreting the facts of the world in theory construction and application. Rather, he stands opposed on functionalist pragmatic grounds to any obscuring of the boundary between appearance and reality. Calling its bluff, Rescher finds that postmodern insouciance about truth and the mindindependent objective facts of the world put into practice simply does not work. From a practical standpoint in trying to solve our problems and address our needs we are not helped in reaching our goals by believing whatever we like about the nature of reality. If we try to interact with the world according to freewheeling subjective conceits that are indifferent to truth we inevitably fail to meet our needs. In this way our will is frustrated or even defeated, signaling something objective outside ourselves that does not yield to our subjective desires and beliefs, and establishing under the aegis of a functional methodological pragmatism precisely the kind of limit and boundary stone that Rescher’s naturalization of human knowledge requires. The range of topics and interrelated problems to which Rescher’s revisionary epistemic idealism and neo-Peircean methodological pragmatism has been applied can seem eclectic from a distance, but on closer inspection it represents a perfectly intelligible network of philosophical topics. Rescher himself describes a three-stage course of development in his philosophical thinking. The progression has proceeded from logic and mathematics to natural science, and finally expanded to include ethics, politics, and more creative humanistic and aesthetic endeavors. With characteristic detachment, surveying the progress of his own intellectual maturity, Rescher remarks: “I have observed in myself a distinct sort of evolution. In my earlier years I was primarily interested in abstractions—in the “pure,” strictly theoretical questions of logic and mathematics. Then, in my middle years, my interests graduated to the sciences of nature (particularly cosmology and biology) and society (particularly economics). As I grew older, however, my interest became increasingly humanistic, and oriented themselves more heavily towards the creative activity of homo sapiens in the realms of literature, politics, and intellectual culture” (Autobiography, 222). Whether self-consciously undertaken in sequence or not, Rescher’s itinerary in three stages, from technical investigations in logic

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and mathematics, to philosophy of the natural sciences, and finally to the humanities and philosophy of social sciences, or philosophical anthropology, describes a natural if not inevitable succession of applications for his synthesis of idealism and pragmatism. With foundational matters more securely in place, it is sensible for Rescher to have proceeded from a core of technical philosophical problems to the natural sciences and then to the social sciences at the periphery of knowledge, seen in something like the unity of sciences model as dependent on each successively more interior cluster of philosophical principles. “Issues of “philosophical anthropology”, Rescher remarks, “concerned with various aspects of the human condition have thus recently acquired an increasing prominence in my work. The books on Ethical Idealism (1987) and Human Interests (1990) reflect this phenomenon” (Autobiography, p. 222). It is within the two-part structure of Rescher’s systematic philosophy, a synthesis of very specifically circumscribed epistemic idealism and revisionary Peircean methodological pragmatism, together with his three stages of inquiry from logic and mathematics, to philosophy of the natural sciences, and finally to philosophy of the social sciences or philosophical anthropology, examined from the standpoint of his evolving methodology, that the present selections from Rescher’s voluminous writings in six areas need to be considered. A philosopher as self-reflective and conscientious as Rescher should surely be taken at his word, when he explains that his prodigious contributions to philosophy can be explained in large part by his desire to learn, coupled with the belief that the best way to learn is to think and write about an ever-broadening horizon of interconnected philosophical problems. What knits this network of investigations together in the three main stages of inquiry Rescher describes is not mere idle curiosity about this or that glittering philosophical problem, but rather the effort scientifically to test his systematic synthesis of idealism and pragmatism against the challenges of an unlimited array of philosophical topics. In the Autobiography, Rescher offers the following retrospective: For what has been characteristic of my philosophical labors—and is rather unusual in the present scheme of things—is their comprising a system, a

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NICHOLAS RESCHER’S SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY

complex yet nevertheless (as I see it) unified and cohesively interconnected body of thought that tries to weave a great many key issues together into one coherent fabric. Systematizing was popular in the 19th century, but fell almost wholly out of favor in the 20th. But I myself am somewhat of a throwback to the past in this regard, since, as I see it, any really adequate philosophical position must be systematic and to forego this larger aspiration is to abandon one of the salient missions of the entire enterprise. (Autobiography, p. 228)

A throw-back? Not at all, Rescher’s many admirers should be quick to reply. Rather, a forerunner for and defender of the type of generalism on which philosophy throughout its history has repeatedly thrived. Rescher’s lifework offers a model for one way of doing philosophy that, pragmatically speaking, has manifestly proven its viability in Rescher’s own case. The selections in this book, representing Rescher’s impressive productivity in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, pragmatism, ethics and political philosophy, and metaphilosophy, offer a panoramic perspective on the idealist-pragmatist methodology and its application to the three successive domains of logic and mathematics, philosophy of the natural sciences, and philosophy of the social sciences or philosophical anthropology by which Rescher marks his own philosophical journey from its beginning to the present day. The reader is now invited to share in that expedition and gain a better appreciation for Rescher’s accomplishments in the pursuit of his systematic philosophical aspirations.

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Part I

THEORY OF INQUIRY

Introduction John Greco

T

o understand Rescher’s theory of inquiry, it is helpful to make a distinction between a) the process of inquiry, which involves the methods by which one goes about investigating the world, and b) the product of inquiry, which involves the results of that investigation by way of acceptance, belief, theory, etc. Normative questions arise about each. Regarding the process of inquiry, we can ask such questions as: How ought inquiry to proceed? What sort of method is reasonable? Regarding the product of inquiry, we can ask such questions as: What is rational to believe? What is the intellectual status of my conclusions? Before looking at Rescher’s own answers to these questions, it will be useful to contrast his views with the “rationalist” model of inquiry that he is rejecting. This rationalist model or picture is broadly Cartesian, in the sense that it broadly resembles the views of Descartes and other philosophers who were influenced by him. Regarding the process inquiry, the rationalist counsels us to begin with doubt. The rationalist ideal here, exemplified in the first of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, is to suspend all pre-judgment whatsoever, and to begin only with what is so certain that it cannot be doubted. With a certain foundation of evidence once in place, the rationalist moves carefully to construct further conclusions, insuring that nothing less than certain creeps into the process. Regarding the product of inquiry, the rationalist aims for certain knowledge. That is, the product of inquiry is to be indubitable and irrevisable. The reward of perfect method is perfect knowledge. Rescher thinks that the rationalist model of inquiry is radically inadequate. First, the model is descriptively inadequate, failing to describe the way that human inquiry actually proceeds. Second, the model is prescriptively inadequate, failing to prescribe norms and standards that are relevant to human inquiry. One result of these inadequacies is that the model entails widespread skeptical consequences. For consider, when the skeptic rejects any and all presuppositions or starting points, he thereby eliminates any prospect of reasoning or inquiry. If rational inquiry must always be based

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upon pre-justified starting points, then skepticism becomes unavoidable because rational inquiry can never get started. The rationalist model fails to explain the nature of rational inquiry: it fails to explain how such inquiry actually proceeds, and it fails to capture the difference between rational and irrational inquiry. Rescher’s theory of inquiry is intended to do better. In the remainder of this introduction I will briefly discuss three important aspects of Rescher’s views about inquiry. First, Rescher thinks that the justification of method is pragmatic. This is a view about the process of inquiry. Second, Rescher thinks that the criterion for truth is coherence. This is a view about the product of inquiry. Finally, Rescher argues against both skepticism and cognitive relativism. On Rescher’s view, the process of inquiry is historically constructed, context-bound and contingent. None of this implies, however, that the product of inquiry must fall short of rational belief and knowledge, as the skeptic would have it. Neither does it entail that the norms of inquiry are not objective and universal, as the cognitive relativist would have it. 1. PRAGMATIC JUSTIFICATION Consider the notion of a “method,” broadly enough understood to include strategies for hunting prey, practices for preparing food, techniques for building shelter, etc. According to Rescher, such methods and practices arise through a process of “cultural evolution,” by means of which the less effective are replaced by the more effective. Quite generally, Rescher argues, domains of human activity have a teleological character; that is, such domains are characterized by their purposes, and by methods for achieving those purposes. And quite generally, he argues, human methods have an evolutionary character; those methods that survive are the one’s that are most effective for achieving their purposes. Rescher thinks that cognitive activity and cognitive methods are no exception. Cognitive activity is characterized by the ends of knowledge and action, and the methods we use for achieving these ends grow up and are honed in the context of a cultural evolution of the survival of the fittest. According to Rescher, a method of inquiry is an instrument for organizing our thinking into a systematic view of reality. And as with any method or instrument, it should be judged by how well it does its job. We must ask: Does it work? Does it produce the desired result? Is it successful in practice?

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One important aspect of Rescher’s pragmatic approach is his views on the role of “presumption” in rational inquiry. As Rescher explains them, presumptions are cognitive commitments of a distinctive and important sort. Presumption falls somewhat short of actual belief, but rather functions as “a provisional gapfiller” for an “informational void.” As such, Rescher tells us, a presumption is “innocent until proven guilty,” appropriately endorsed until we have some reason to give it up. Moreover, presumptions are merely our “fair weather friends,” enjoying our commitment only until something better comes along. Importantly, the justification of presumptions, and of their role in rational inquiry, is largely pragmatic. First, without the use of presumption, rational inquiry could never get started. Presumptions thus function as the “raw materials of cognition,” indispensable for the purposes of further inquiry. But more generally, the justification of presumptions is “preevidential” and practical. That is, what justifies presumptions is not so much their evidential grounding as their practical role in inquiry. For consider, presumptions arise in contexts where we have questions that need answers, but where conclusive evidence is unavailable. In such circumstances, we must settle for the best we can do. That is, we settle for what best furthers the ends of inquiry. Presumptions are thus practically rational, but can they be theoretically rational as well? Rescher wants to answer yes. First, on Rescher’s view we should reject any sharp distinction between theoretical rationality and practical rationality. Theoretical inquiry, like any domain of human activity, is characterized by its distinctive ends or purposes, and so what is theoretically rational is at least partly determined by what serves the ends of theory. Specifically, presumptions are justified insofar as they help us achieve an accurate and informative view of our world. Second, Rescher’s views about the role of presumption do not entail that “anything goes.” On the contrary, appropriate presumption is guided by considerations of plausibility. “Presumption favors the most plausible of rival alternatives— when indeed there is one. This alternative will always stand until set aside (by entry of another, yet more plausible, presumption).” The sort of plausibility at issue here comes in degrees and has a variety of sources, including reliability of the presumption’s ground (e.g., in perception, testimony, expert testimony), inductive criteria such as simplicity and uniformity, and strength and number of competitors. Finally, tentative commitments that begin as presumptions can get post hoc justification via the usual channels

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of evidence. That is, what begins as presumption can graduate into rational belief and knowledge. To understand how this comes about, it is necessary to turn to Rescher’s coherentist criteriology. 2. COHERENTIST CRITERIOLOGY The process of inquiry begins with presumption, but ends with acceptance. One task of Rescher’s coherentist criteriology is to explain how this transition takes place. In very general terms, coherence is to be understood in terms of systematic relations among propositions. The sort of systematic relations that Rescher has in mind are those invoked by orthodox scientific method, such as generality, uniformity, simplicity or elegance, etc. The central idea is that systematic coherence acts as a test (or criterion) of truth. Rescher explains several aspects of the coherentist method. First, the process requires “data” in the form of initial presumptions, together with initial “plausibility ratings” that classify the data in terms of relative acceptability. In addition, the coherentist must devise alternative ways for resolving inconsistencies, guided by the rule that the less plausible should be discarded in favor of the more plausible. Finally, alternative reconciliations are evaluated in terms of systematicity or coherence. Here Rescher invokes the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle with extra pieces. Working with such a puzzle, sound method requires us to make initial judgments about which pieces are likely to fit where. But these initial judgments must eventually be modified by judgments about over-all fit, i.e., judgments regarding the wholes that result by using the various pieces in different ways. An adequate solution to the puzzle, Rescher argues, requires both kinds of judgment. Is it possible to validate coherentist methodology? In other words, is it possible to show that the coherentist test for truth is a good test? Rescher thinks that it is. The first step is to recall that the coherentist criteria for acceptance are manifested in good scientific method. The second step is to note the dramatic success of the sciences by way of explanation, prediction and control. Invoking an idea we saw earlier, Rescher argues that scientific method has won the Darwinian contest of survival of the fittest. In so far as this method is validated by its pragmatic success, so are the coherentist criteria that it embodies. Accordingly, the validation of coherentist criteria is a posteriori rather than a priori. That is, coherentist norms of rationality are vindicated by the pragmatic efficacy of their real world application, as opposed to some a priori insight into the nature of reason or such.

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In a related fashion, the legitimacy of such norms is contingent rather than necessary: their adequacy as a test of truth is relative to the actual world rather than absolute. Put another way, the world might have been such that coherentist criteria did not track truth. For example, the world might have been less uniform and more inelegant. If that were the case, then the coherentist norms embodied by successful science would not have their a posteriori vindication. 3. AGAINST SKEPTICISM AND COGNITIVE RELATIVISM Skepticism is the thesis that our cognitive commitments fall short of rational belief. Relativism is the thesis that the standards of rationality are not objective—that what is rational for me to believe can be different from what is rational for you to believe. Rescher’s theory of inquiry is intended to avoid both skepticism and cognitive relativism. Skepticism is rooted in various sorts of skeptical worry, and Rescher’s theory of inquiry is designed to answer these. We have already seen one prominent skeptical worry—that knowledge requires a never-ending regress of rational reasons, and is therefore impossible to achieve through finite human inquiry. Putting the worry differently, if every commitment of inquiry is in need of pre-justifying reasons, then the process of inquiry can never get started. Rescher’s response here is largely in terms of his notion of presumption, i.e. his notion of tentative commitments that are innocent until proven guilty. Such presumptions serve as “the raw materials of cognition,” allowing inquiry to get started without the benefit of pre-justified materials. In this context, it is important to note that Rescher’s “presumptively justified beliefs” are not the self-certain beliefs of rationalism. They are not uncontestable, or absolutely certain, or irrefutable. On the contrary, Rescher’s presumptions are always tentative and provisional, awaiting further justification by way of practical efficacy and systematic coherence. Importantly, his claim here is both descriptive and prescriptive: this is the way that human inquiry in fact proceeds, and it is the way that rational inquiry ought to proceed. It is less clear that Rescher’s theory of inquiry can respond to cognitive relativism. In fact, there is some reason to think that his theory entails it. Cognitive relativism, recall, is the thesis that the norms of rationality are not universal. In contrast to this, objectivity requires that “What is evidence for one will have to count as evidence for another if evidence it in-

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deed is . . . If something makes good rational sense, it must be possible in principle for anyone and everyone to see that this is so.” But earlier we saw that, on Rescher’s view, the norms of cognition have a practical and therefore a posteriori validation: the regulative principles of cognitive systematization . . . come to stand on an ultimately factual footing—one that is a posteriori and contingent. The ‘first principles’ by whose means we constitute our factual knowledge . . . are themselves ultimately of an a posteriori and factual standing.

This is an implication of Rescher’s view that the norms of inquiry are products of cultural evolution and rational selection. They encode those methods of inquiry that as a matter of fact have worked best, among competitors, to achieve the theoretical and practical ends of human cognition. But it is precisely this a posteriori and contingent standing that seems incompatible with the sort of objectivity and universality that Rescher wants to claim for them. For example, we can imagine two cultures in which, through different experiences of rational selection, different norms of evidence and rationality evolve. The problem, then, is this: How can such norms be both contingent and a posteriori on the one hand, and universal and objective on the other? One line of reply open to Rescher is to make claims about universality contingent. As matter of fact, Rescher might argue, the practical problems that humans face are similar in relevant ways. And this guarantees that the same norms of inquiry will win the competition of rational selection across all groups of human inquirers. The norms of rationality are universal, but this is a contingent fact about the world, owing to a sufficiently homogeneous practical environment of human inquirers. But this sort of antirelativism is weaker than what one might expect, amounting to a claim about the facts of human cognition and circumstance rather than the nature of rationality. I end by exploring a different line of reply. Rescher argues that the sort of objectivity and universality at issue must be relativized to circumstances. Here is a passage where Rescher makes exactly this point. The resolution of an issue is objective if it is arrived at without the introduction of any resources (be they substantive or methodological) that would not be deemed acceptable in the circumstances by any rational and reasonable individual . . . To reemphasize: rationality is

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universal alright, but it is circumstantially universal. (Rescher’s emphases.)

Suppose we understand “circumstances” very broadly, to include the cultural circumstances in which the relevant norms of rationality evolved. Accordingly, the existence of different rational norms in different cultures would not violate strictures of universality, since the people adopting those different norms would not be “in the same circumstances.” The problem with this sort of reply, one might worry, is that it threatens to make claims about objectivity and universality empty. Put differently, it threatens to collapse the distinction between objectivism and cultural relativism. On the contrary, Rescher might argue, the present position achieves a needed middle way between sheer contingency and absolute necessity, acknowledging both the general nature of rational principles and the historical contingencies of the human condition.1 NOTES 1

I would like to thank Nicholas Rescher for helpful conversation and correspondence.

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Chapter I/1 PLAUSIBILITY AND PRESUMPTION 1. THE NEED FOR PRESUMPTIONS

A

presumption is something distinctive that is characteristically its own within the cognitive domain. What is at issue here is not knowledge, nor probability, nor postulation, nor assumption, but something quite different and destructive, namely a provisional gap filler for an informational void. The key idea of presumption thus roots in an analogy with the legal principle: innocent until proven guilty. A presumption is a thesis that is provisionally appropriateon which can be maintained pro tem, viewed as acceptable until or unless sufficiently weighty counter-considerations arise to displace it. On this basis, a presumption is a contention that remains in place until something better comes along. For example, we generally presume that what our senses tell us is correct. We know full well that our senses sometimes deceive us: the stick held at an angle under water looks bent even though touch tells us it is straight. Nevertheless we are entitled to trust sight and maintain what we see to be so until something else (like touch) comes along to disagree. Again, we generally presume that what uniformity tells us deserves the benefit of doubt. We know full well that generally reliable informants can provide misinformation, but nevertheless deem ourselves entitled to treat what otherwise reliable people tell us as correct unless and until some counterindication comes to view. We know full well that what our expert advisors in medical, or economic, or legal matters tell us is often incorrect but nevertheless are well advised to treat it as true until good reason to do otherwise comes to view. All of these instancessensory indications, informal reports, expert judgmentsillustrate matters of presumption. Much of what we take ourselves to know is actually presumptive knowledge: claims to knowledge that may in the end have to be withdrawn. It must be stressed from the very start that the acceptance or assertion of claims and contentions is not something that is uniform and monolithic, but rather something that can take markedly different types or forms. For we can “accept” a thesis as necessary and certain on logico-conceptual grounds (“Forks have tynes”), or as unquestionably true, although only

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

contingently so (“The Louvre Museum is in Paris”), or in a much more tentative and hesitant frame of mind as merely plausible or presumably true (“Dinosaurs became extinct owing to the earth’s cooling when the sun was blocked by the debris of a comet’s impact”). When a proposition is so guardedly endorsed we do not have it that, à la Tarski, asserting p is tantamount to claiming that “p is true.” What is at issue with the guided endorsement of a claim p as plausible is simply the contention that “p is presumably true.” And what this means is that we will endorse and employ p insofar as we can do so without encountering problems but are prepared to abandon it should problems arise. In effect we are not dedicated partisans of such a claim but merely its fair-weather friends. The sort of tentative plausibility at issue with presumptions is preevidential in its bearing. As far as evidentiation goes, plausibility awaits further developments. Plausibilities are accordingly something of a practical epistemic device. We use them where this can render effective service for purposes of inquiry. But we are careful to refrain from committing ourselves to them unqualifiedly and come-what-may. And we would, in particular, refrain from using them where this leads to contradiction. In sum, our commitment to them is not absolute but situational: whether or not we endorse them will depend on the context. To reemphasize, the “acceptance” that is at issue here represents no more than a merely tentative or provisional endorsement. Plausibilities are thus one thing and established truths another. We “accept” plausible statements only tentatively and provisionally, subject to their proving unproblematic in our deliberations. Of course, problems do often arise. X says 25 people were present, Y says 15. Sight tells us that the stick held at an angle under water is bent, touch tells us that it is straight. The hand held in cold water indicates that the tepid liquid is warm but held in hot water indicates that it is cold. In such cases we cannot have it both ways. Where our sources of information conflict—where they point to aporetic and paradoxical conclusions—we can no longer accept their deliverances at face value, but must somehow intervene to straighten things out. And here plausibility has to be our guide, subject to the idea that the most plausible prospect has a favorable presumption on its side. Plausibility is in principle a comparative matter of more or less. Here it is not a question of yes or no, of definitive acceptability, but one of a cooperative assessment of differentially eligible alternatives of comparative advantages and disadvantages. We are attached to the claims that we regard as plausible, but this attachment will vary in strength with the epistemic

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circumstances. And this fact has significant ramifications. For the idea of plausibility functions in such a way that presumption always favors the most plausible of rival alternatives. Presumption represents a way of filling in—at least pro tem—the gaps that may otherwise confront us at any stage of information. The French Code civil defines “presumptions” as: “des conséquences qui la loi ou le magistrat tire d’un fait connu à un fait inconnu.”1 A presumption indicates that in the absence of specific counterindications we are to accept how things “as a rule” are taken as standing. For example, there is, in most probative contexts, a standing presumption in favor of the usual, normal, customary course of things. The conception of burden of proof is correlative with that of a presumption. The “presumption of innocence” can serve as a paradigm example here. In its legal setting, the conception of presumption has been explicated in the following terms: A presumption in the ordinary sense is an inference. ... The subject of presumptions so far as they are mere inferences or arguments, belongs not to the law of evidence, or to law at all, but to rules of reasoning. But a legal presumption, or, as it is sometimes called, a presumption of law, as distinguished from presumptions of fact, is something more. It may be described, in (Sir James) Stephen’s language, as “a rule of law that courts and judges shall draw a particular inference from a particular fact, or from particular evidence, unless and until the truth” (perhaps it would be better to say “soundness”) “of the inference is disproved.”2

Such a presumptio juris is a supposition relative to the known facts which, by legal prescription, is to stand until refuted. Accordingly, presumptions, though possessed of significant probative weight, will in general be defeasible, subject to defeat in being overthrown by sufficiently weighty countervailing considerations. In its legal aspect, the matter has been expounded as follows: [A] presumption of validity . . . retains its force in general even if subject to exceptions in particular cases. It may not by itself state all the relevant considerations, but it says enough that the party charged should be made to explain the allegation or avoid responsibility; the plaintiff has given a reason why the defendant should be held liable, and thereby invites the defendant to provide a reason why, in this case, the presumption should not be made absolute. The presumption lends structure to the argument, but it does not foreclose its further development.3

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Presumptions are, as it were, in tentative and provisional possession of the cognitive terrain, holding their place until displaced by something more evidentially substantial.4 In the law, such presumptions are governed by strict and specific rules: the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty; the individual missing for seven years is presumed dead. In this way, the standing of a presumption is usually tentative and provisional, not absolute and final. A presumption only stands until the crucial issues that “remain to be seen” have been clarified, so that it is actually seen whether the presumptive truth will in fact stand up “once everything is said and done.”5 In the absence of counterevidence that supports some alter nature, it stays in place, on analogy with the politician’s maxim: “You can’t beat somebody with nobody.” A presumptive answer is one that enables us to make do until that point (if ever) when something better comes along. This is a resource we constantly employ in communication, allowing matters to go unsaid that—in the circumstances—are sufficiently probable. (If I tell you that I met a man in town, it can go unsaid that he wore clothes.) Specifically defeasible presumptions are closely interconnected with the conception of burden of proof: The effect of a presumption is to impute to certain facts or groups of facts prima facie significance or operation, and thus, in legal proceedings, to throw upon the party against whom it works the duty of bringing forward evidence to meet it. Accordingly, the subject of presumption is intimately connected with the subject of burden of proof, and the same legal rule may be expressed in different forms, either as throwing the advantage of a presumption on one side, or as throwing the burden of proof on the other.6

In effect, then, a defeasible presumption is just the reverse of a burden of proof (of the “burden of further reply” variety). Whenever there is a “burden of proof” for establishing that P is so, the correlative defeasible presumption that not-P stands until the burden has been discharged definitively. Archbishop Whately has formulated the relationship at issue in the following terms: According to the most current use of the term, a “presumption” in favour of any supposition means, not (as has been sometimes erroneously imagined) a preponderance of probability in its favour, but such a preoccupation of the ground as implies that it must stand good till some sufficient reason is ad-

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duced against it; in short, that burden of proof lies on the side of him who would dispute it.7

It is in just this sense, for example, that the “presumption of innocence” in favor of the accused is correlative with the burden of proof carried by the state in establishing his guilt. Our stance towards presumptions is unashamedly chat of fair weather friends: we adhere to them when this involves no problems whatsoever, but abandon them at the onset of difficulties. But it is quite clear that such loose attachment to a presumption is by no means tantamount to no attachment at all.8 However, a presumption stands secure only “until further notice,” and it is perfectly possible that such notice might be forthcoming. 2. THE ROLE OF PRESUMPTION The traditional theories of perception all face the roadblock of the problem: How do we get from here to there, from subjective experience to warranted claims of objective fact? However, what all these theories ignore is the fact that in actual practice we operate within the setting of a concept-scheme that reverses the burden of proof here: that our perceptions (and conceptions) are standardly treated as innocent until proven guilty. The whole course of relevant experience is such that the standing presumption is on their side. The indications of experience are taken as true provisionally— allowed to stand until such time (if ever) when concrete evidential counterindications come to view. Barring indications to the contrary, we can and do move immediately and unproblematically from “I take myself to be seeing a cat on the mat” to “There really is a cat on the mat, and I actually see it there.” But what is at issue here is not an inference (or a deriving) from determinable facts but a mere presumption (or a taking). The transition from subjectivity to objectivity is automatic, though, to be sure, it is always provisional, that is, subject to the proviso that all goes as it ought. For unless and until something goes amiss—i.e., unless there is a mishap of some sort—those “subjective percepts” are standardly allowed to count as “objective facts.” To be sure, there is no prospect of making an inventory of the necessary conditions here. Life is too complex; neither in making assertions nor in driving an automobile can one provide a comprehensive advance survey of possible accidents and list all the things that can possibly go wrong. But the key point is that the linkage between appearance and reality is neither

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conceptual nor causal; it is the product of a pragmatic policy in the management of information, a groundrule of presumption that governs our epistemic practice. The rational legitimation of a presumptively justified belief lies in the consideration that some generic mode of “suitably favorable indication” speaks on its behalf while no as-yet available counterindication speaks against it. When, after a careful look, I am under the impression that there is a cat on the mat, I can (quite appropriately) base my acceptance of the contention “There is a cat on the mat” not on certain pre-established premisses, but simply on my experience—on my visual impression. The salient consideration is that there just is no good reason why (in this case) I should not indulge my inclination to endorse a visual indications of this kind as veridical. (If there were such evidence—if, for example, I was aware of being in a wax museum—then the situation would, of course, be altered.) With presumption we take to be so what we could not otherwise derive. This idea of such presumptive “taking” is a crucial aspect of our languagedeploying discursive practice. For presumptively justified beliefs are the raw materials of cognition. They represent contentions that—in the absence of pre-established counterindications—are acceptable to us “until further notice,” thus permitting us to make a start in the venture of cognitive justification without the benefit of pre-justified materials. They are defeasible alright, vulnerable to being overturned, but only by something else yet more secure some other preestablished conflicting consideration. They are entitled to remain in place until displaced by something better. Accordingly, their impetus averts the dire consequences that would ensue of any and every cogent process of rational deliberation required inputs which themselves had to be authenticated by a prior process of rational deliberation—in which case the whole process could never get under way.9 3. PLAUSIBILITY AND PRESUMPTION Perhaps the single most important device for putting the idea of presumption to work is the natural inclination to credence inherent in the conception of plausibility.10 For such plausibility can serve as the crucial determinant of where presumption resides. The basic principle here is that of the rule:

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Presumption favors the most plausible of rival alternatives—when indeed there is one. This alternative will always stand until set aside (by the entry of another, yet more plausible, presumption).

The operation of this rule creates a key role for plausibility in the theory of reasoning and argumentation.11 In the face of discordant considerations, one “plays safe” in one’s cognitive involvements by endeavoring to maximize the plausibility levels achievable in the circumstances. Such an epistemic policy is closely analogous to the prudential principle of action— that of opting for the available alternative from which the least possible harm can result. Plausibility-tropism is an instrument of epistemic prudence. There are many bases for plausibility. For one thing, the standing of our informative sources in point of their authoritativeness affords one major entry point to plausibility. In this approach, a thesis is more or less plausible depending on the reliability of the sources that vouch for it—their entitlement to qualify as well-informed or otherwise in a position to make good claims to credibility. It is on this basis that “expert testimony” and “general agreement” (the consensus of men) come to count as conditions for plausibility.12 Again, the probative strength of confirming evidence could serve as yet another basis of plausibility. In this approach, that one among rival theories whose supporting case of substantiating evidence is the strongest is thereby the most plausible. Our evidential sources will clearly play the determinative role here. The plausibility of contentions may, however, be based not on a thesiswarranting source but a thesis-warranting principle. Here inductive considerations may come prominently into play—in particular such warranting principles are the standard inductive desiderata: simplicity, uniformity, specificity, definiteness, determinativeness, “naturalness,” etc. In such an approach one would say that the more simple, the more uniform, the more specific a thesis—either internally, of itself, or externally, in relation to some stipulated basis—the more emphatically this thesis is to count as plausible. For example, the concept of simplicity affords a crucial entry point for plausibility considerations. The injunction “Other things being anything like equal, give precedence to simpler hypotheses vis-a-vis more complex ones” can reasonably be espoused as a procedural, regulative principle of presumption, rather a metaphysical claim as to “the simplicity of nature.” On such an approach, we espouse not the Scholastic adage “Simplicity is

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the sign of truth” (simplex sigilium veri), but its cousin, the precept “Simplicity is the sign of plausibility” (simplex sigilium plausibili). In adopting this policy, we shift the discussion from the plane of the constitutive/descriptive/ontological to that of the regulative/methodological/prescriptive. Again, uniformity can also serve as a plausibilistic guide to reasoning. Thus consider the Uniformity Principle: In the absence of explicit counterindications, a thesis about unscrutinized cases which conforms to a patterned uniformity obtaining among the data at our disposal with respect to scrutinized cases—a uniformity that is in fact present throughout these data—is more plausible than any of its regularitydiscordant contraries. Moreover, the more extensive this pattern-conformity, the more highly plausible the thesis.

This principle is tantamount to the thesis that when the initially given evidence exhibits a marked logical pattern, then pattern-concordant claims relative to this evidence are—ceteris paribus—to be evaluated as more plausible than pattern-discordant ones (and the more comprehensively pattern-accordant, the more highly plausible). This rule implements the guiding idea of the familiar practice of judging the plausibility of theories and theses on the basis of a “sufficiently close analogy” with other cases.13 (The uniformity principle thus forges a special rule for normality— reference to “the usual course of things”—in plausibility assessment.)14 The situation may thus be summarized as follows. The natural bases of plausibility—the criteria operative in determining its presence in greater or lesser degree—fall primarily into three groups: (1) The standing of sources in point of authoritativeness. On this principle, the plausibility of a thesis is a function of the reliability of the sources that vouch for it—their entitlement to qualify as wellinformed pr otherwise in a position to make good claims to credibility. It is on this basis that expert testimony and general agreement (the consensus of men) come to count as conditions for plausibility. (2) The probative strength of confirming evidence. Of rival theses, that whose supporting case of substantiating evidence is the strongest is thereby the most plausible.

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(3) The impetus of principles of inductive systematization. Other things being sufficiently equal, that one of rival theses is the most plausible which scores best in point of simplicity, in point of regularity in point of uniformity (with other cases), in point of normalcy, and the like. The principles of presumption of this range correlate with the parameters of cognitive systematization.15 These three factors (source reliability, supportive evidence, and systematicity) are the prime criteria governing the assessment of plausibility in deliberations regarding the domain of empirical fact. In general, the more plausible a thesis, the more smoothly it is consistent and consonant with the rest of our knowledge of the matters at issue. Ordinarily, the removal of a highly plausible thesis from the framework of cognitive commitments would cause a virtual earthquake while removal of a highly implausible one would cause scarcely a tremor. In between, we have to do with varying degrees of readjustment and realignment when plausible contentions have to be abandoned. In general, then, the closer its fit and the smoother its consonance with our cognitive commitments, the more highly plausible the thesis.16 Here the practical aspect becomes crucial. For the validation of postulates is ultimately pragmatic, rooting in the fact that without them we could not achieve our endsor at any rate not achieve them as effectively. The validation of a postulate lies in the fact that it renders the achievement of a mandatory objective possibleor at least far easier than it otherwise would be. The rational justification of postulates, in sum, lies in their pragmatic efficacy on the basis of considerations/effectiveness and efficiency in goal attainment within the domain of deliberation to which the presumption belongs. 4. COMMUNICATION AND PRESUMPTION Once a practice of presumption is in place within a community, a communicator in its orbit will be presumed not only to be aware of it but to honor it as well. In particular, he will be presumed to authorize its application with respect to his own discourse. His statements will thus in effect carry with them an “inference license” that authorizes their recipients to accept all of those consequences, presuppositions, and connectivities that fall within the established presumption range of his statements.

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It must be stressed, however, that talk of “inference” here is metaphysical. Strictly speaking what is at issue here is by no means an “inference”— it is less a matter of dedication than one of interpretation. Consider an example. I tell you that I have just come from a meeting downtown with your uncle and that he sends you his regards. You conclude on this basis that he has not turned green and sprouted a second head. This “conclusion” does not in any sense follow from what I said; it simply roots in the circumstance that I did not say something else. It is a standard aspect of communicative practice not to skip over important issues, and in particular not to let big deviations from the usual course of things to pass by unremarked in a relevant observation. That “conclusion” is not something that is given by what I said; it is taken by you from the contextual consideration of what I did not say. And this taking is not arbitrary and unwarranted; it is authorized by the groundrules of communicative practice to which we subscribe throughout our linguistic interactions. In saying what I do I effectively warrant you in arriving of that “conclusion,” and to do so not by a valid deduction but by an authorized presumption. In matters of securing information, we simply cannot start at square one and do everything needful by ourselves. We must—and do—proceed in the setting of a larger community that extends across the reaches of time (via its cultural traditions) and space (via its social organization). This requires communication, coordination, and collaboration. And so even as the pursuit of objectivity is aided by an agent’s recourse to the resources of the environing community, so inversely, is objectivity an indispensable instrumentality for the creation and maintenance of an intercommunicative community as such. There can be no community where people do not understand one another, and it is the endeavor to proceed as my rational person would in my place that renders my proceedings efficiently intelligible to others. (Here too the uniformizing principle of the Impartiality of Reason is at work.) In extracting information from the declarations of others we do—and must—rely on a whole host of working assumptions and presumptions. The pivotal factor here lies in the circumstance that verbal communication in informative contexts is governed by such conventions as: • Speakers and writers standardly purport their contentions to present the truth as they believe them to be. (This is why saying “The cat is on the mat and I don’t believe it” is paradoxical.)

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• Speakers and writers purport their contention to be formulated in a way that is accurate and not misleading. Such conventions are not hypotheses regarding the actual modus operandi of speakers. They are something quite different, namely imputations that we ourselves make in the interests of communicative efficacy. For it is through imputing to our interlocutors an intention to convey relevant information (and the like) that we are best able to draw informative benefit from our communicative interactions. Accordingly, such conventions have a well-based rationale in considerations of communicative efficiency and effectiveness, since in their absence communication would become at most impossible and at best vastly more cumbersome, Byzantine and problematic. The coordination of common sense inherent in the standard communicative presumptions is an integral and indispensable component of this enterprise. It is a significant feature of normal communication that it is subject to a policy of not saying what does not really need to be said. That presumption of normalcy—that the relevant circumstances and conditions stand in their prosaically normal and natural condition unless otherwise indicated—is a crucial factor in communicative economy—an important communicative groundrule that authorizes all sorts of inferences ex silentio. This enables us to convey without explicit mention the fact of “business as usual” in the vast majority of circumstances where this is the case. In the absence of such a presumption it would become next-to-impossible to communicate efficiently. If I merely say “She gave birth to a child” you are on safe ground in concluding that it was a normal child and not, say, a pair of Siamese twins. To be sure, this conclusion “follows” not so much from what I said as from what I did not say. For either of these possible eventuations would have been so newsworthy, so contextually significant that there is every expectation that the speaker would have mentioned it had it been the case. It is part of the common sense that we impute to ourselves and credit to others that in offering and extracting information in communicative contexts people will make those presumptions that allow our communicative business to be transected smoothly and efficiently. Some of the key presumptions of communication reviewed in Display 17 1. The presumption of relevance has special interest. Let it be that in a context where we are discussing the depressed state of the construction industry in town you mention the Brown’s Lumber Yard closed for business

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 SOME KEY COMMUNICATIVE PRESUMPTIONS • to recognize what is explicitly said as the most relevantly significant aspect of the matter. • to accept one’s interlocutor’s semantical competence (e.g., that they know the meaning of the words they use). And so— • to construe what one’s interlocutor says in its normal signification; to take what people say at face value • to accept one’s interlocutor’s good faith (e.g., that they intend to affirm what their words mean). And so— • to accept one’s interlocutor’s veracity; to accept as true what one’s interlocutor maintains to be so. • to accept one’s interlocutor’s logical competence; to credit him with accepting the logical consequences of what they say. • to credit one’s interlocutors with rational cogency by construing what is said in whatever sense makes it maximally relevant to the issue under discussion.

____________________________________________________________ last month. One would then feel entitled to conclude that this occurred because business was poor. If on the next day it transpired that the place burned down, people would rightly consider themselves misled because that added bit of information destabilizes the otherwise perfectly plausible presumption of context-relevancy.18 There is also the closely related presumption that what is left unsaid does not abrogate or otherwise crucially alter that which it is only natural to infer from what is actually said. And this means that in many declarative settings silence implies normalcy. Suppose, for example, that Smith enters in and tells us that he saw a monkey at the construction site down the street. We would of course be surprised, realizing how unusual it is for this sort of primate to be at large in the town. But if on further discussion it turned out that Smith meant a pile driver with its falling hammer (also called a “monkey”) we would feel misled and deceived. We would think “If that’s the sort of monkey he meant, he should have said so.” Smith’s silence about the sort of non-standard “monkey” at issue in his statement is

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meaningful because it authorizes the belief that it is an ordinary and familiar sort of monkey that is at issue. Accordingly, we have to have silence do important communicative work. In verbal communication we never have enough time and space at our disposal to do justice to it all: to explain every detail, and then to explain the further details relating to those explanations. Since there is never time (or space) to say everything—to make explicit in practice everything that is relevant in principle, we have to operate on the natural presumption that what we do actually say is the most important part of the matter. And presumptions regarding silence hold not just with matters of fact but with matters of fiction as well. The story tells us that the villain ate a grape but tells us nothing further about that grape. Was it unripe or fully matured, pitted or pittless, Concord or Catawba? The story does not say. But this certainly does not mean that what the villain ate was a strangely anomalous grape—ontologically indeterminate in nature as between all of these possibilities and thus of a type we never encounter in the real world. The presumption of normalcy means that we are entitled to suppose that it was a perfectly ordinary grape—and not some biologically strange sort of grape about which our information in complete. Stories may be indeterminate about things, but they are not about indeterminate things. In grounding the truth about fictional things in what it is that the stories at issue say about them, one must be careful not to go too far. In his article on fictional objects, Terence Parsons has it that fictional objects are that of which all and only the sentences of the stories are true.19 But this is deeply problematic. The Sherlock Holmes stories certainly do not tell us that Sherlock Holmes’s paternal grandfather was not a chimpanzee. And so if only the Holmes characterizing statements that are explicit in the stories are true, then this sentence would loose its claim to truth, expelling Holmes from the realm of ordinary humanity in a way that is clearly absurd. However, this situation is at once remedied by adopting the standard policy of communicative presumption that silence implies normalcy. Given that the Holmes stories are otherwise silent on the subject of grandfather Holmes, we are entitled to maintain that he, too, was an ordinary human being. For the context of telling us about things—be the setting one of real life or of fiction—the standing presumption is operative that if anything is out of the ordinary, the narrator would tell us about it. Communication thus proceeds on groundrules of communicative efficiency.20 And those presumptions governing silence and normalcy play a pivotal role here through underwriting such principles as: “what is left out

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is unimportant for the issue at hand,” “what is left out will not significantly alter the indications plausibly drawn from what is put in,” and “what is left out would not call for a substantial revision of what has been said.” Effective communication would become impracticable without presumptions that enable us to fill in the gaps between what is explicitly said. The standard presumptions that underlie our communicative practices are emphatically not validateable as established facts. (For example, it is certainly not true—save at the level of statistical generality—that people say what they mean.) But their justification becomes straightforward on economic grounds, as practices that represent the most efficient and economical way to accomplish our communicative work. The commitment to an objective reality that lies behind the data that people secure is indispensably demanded by any step into that domain of the publicly accessible objects that is essential to communal inquiry and interpersonal communication about a shared world. We do—and must— adopt the standard policy that prevails with respect to all communicative discourse of letting the language we use, rather than whatever specific informative aims we may actually have in mind on particular occasions, be the decisive factor with regard to the things at issue in our discourse. For if we were to set up our own conception of things as somehow definitive and decisive, we would at once erect a barrier not only to further inquiry but also—no less important—to the prospect of successful communication with one another. However, any pretensions to the predominance, let alone the correctness, of our own potentially idiosyncratic conceptions about things must be put aside in the context of communication. The fundamental intention to deal with the objective order of this “real world” is crucial. If our assertoric commitments did not transcend the information we ourselves have on hand, we would never be able to “get in touch” with others about a shared objective world. No claim is made for the primacy of our conceptions, or for the correctness of our conceptions, or even for the mere agreement of our conceptions with those of others. The fundamental intention to discuss “the thing itself” predominates and overrides any mere dealing with the thing as we ourselves conceive of it. Someone might, of course, possibly object as follows: But surely we can get by on the basis of personal conceptions alone, without invoking the notion of “a thing itself.” My conception of a thing is something I can convey to you, given enough time. Cannot communication pro-

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ceed by correlating and matching personal conceptions, without appeal to the intermediation of “the thing itself”?

But think here of the concrete practicalities. What is “enough time”? Just when is the match “sufficient” to underwrite outright identification? But such imponderables do not and need not trouble us; our commitment to the thing itself enables us to make this identification straight away by imputation, by fiat on the basis of modest indicators, rather than on the basis of an appeal to the inductive weight of a body of evidence that is always bound to be problematic. Communication—the conveying of information—is something that we set out to do, and not merely something that we ultimately realize only retrospectively, with the wisdom of eventual hindsight. Our very concept of a real thing is such that it provides a fixed point, a stable center around which communication revolves, an invariant focus of potentially diverse conceptions. What is to be determinative, decisive, definitive, etc., of the things at issue in my discourse is not my conception, or yours, or indeed anyone’s conception at all. The conventionalized intention discussed means that a coordination of conceptions is not decisive for the possibility of communication. Your statements about a thing can and should convey something to me even if my conception of it is altogether different from yours. For to communicate we need not take ourselves to share views of the world, but only take the stance that we share the world being discussed. This commitment to an objective reality that underlies the data at hand is indispensably demanded by any step into the domain of the publicly accessible objects essential to communal inquiry and interpersonal communication about a shared world. And, indeed, we could not establish communicative contact about a common objective item of discussion if our discourse were geared to the substance of our own idiosyncratic ideas and conceptions. The objectifying imputation at issue here lies at the heart of our cognitive stance that we live and operate in a world of real and objective things. This commitment to the idea of a shared real world is crucial for communication. Its status is a priori—its existence is not something we learn of through experience. As Kant clearly saw, objective experience is possible only if the existence of a real, objective world is presupposed at the onset rather than seen as a matter of ex post facto discovery about the nature of things. And so, what is at issue here is not a matter of discovery, but one of imputation. The element of commonality, of identity of focus is not a matter

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of ex post facto learning from experience, but of an a priori predetermination inherent in our approach to language-use. We do not infer things as being real and objective from our phenomenal data, but establish our perception as authentic perception of genuine objects through the fact that these objects are given—or rather, taken—as real and objectively existing things from the first. Presumption is the key here because impersonal objectivity is not deduced but imputed. We do, no doubt, purport our conceptions to be objectively correct, but whether this is indeed so is something we cannot tell with unqualified assurance until “all the returns are in”— that is, never. 5. PRESUMPTION AND SCEPTICISM The following objections might be offered against the idea of defeasible presumptions: “How can you speak of asserting a proposition merely as a presumption but not as a truth! If one is to assert (accept, maintain) the proposition in any way at all, does one not thereby assert (accept, maintain) it to be true.” The answer here is simply a head-on denial, for there are different modes of acceptance. To maintain P as a presumption, as potentially or presumptively factual, is akin to maintaining P as possible or as probable. In no case are these contentions tantamount to maintaining the proposition as true. Putting a proposition forward as “possible” or “probable” commits one to claiming no more than that it is “possibly true” or “probably true.” Similarly, to assert P as a presumption is to say no more than that P is potentially or presumptively true that it is a promising truthcandidate—but does not say that P is actually true, that it is a truth. Acceptance does not lie along a one-dimensional spectrum which ranges from “uncertainty” to “certainty.” There are not only degrees of acceptance but also kinds of acceptance. And presumption represents such a kind; it is sui generis, and not just an attenuated version of “acceptance as certain.” In fact, however, the conception of a presumption does not “open the floodgates” in an indiscriminate way. Not everything will qualify as a presumption of the concept is to have some probative bite. A presumption is not merely something that is “possibly true” or that is “true for all I know about the matter,” To class a proposition as a presumption is to take a definite and committal position with respect to it, so as to say “I propose to accept it as true insofar as no difficulties arise from doing so.” There is thus a crucial difference between an alleged truth and a presumptive truth. For allegation is a merely rhetorical category: every con-

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tention that is advanced in discussion is “allegedly true”that is, allegedto-be-true. But presumptionthat is, warranted presumptionis an epistemic category: only in certain special circumstances are contentions of a sort that they merit to be accepted as true provisionally, “until further notice.”20 The idea that the burden of proof always rests with the party asserting a thesis means that there is automatically a presumption against anything ever maintained thesis. But, of course, if the adducing of evidence in the dialectic of rational argumentation is to be possible at all, this doctrine must have its limits. Clearly, if the burden of proof inclined against every contention—if there were an automatic presumption of falsity against any contention whatsoever—it would become in principle impossible ever to provide a persuasive case. The rule that each contention needs evidential support through the adducing of further substantiating contentions cannot reasonably be made operative ad indefinitum. In “accepting” a thesis as presumptively true one concedes it a probative status that is strictly provisional and pro tem; there is no need here to invoke the idea of unquestionable theses, theses that are inherently uncontestable, certain, and irrefutable.21 To take this view would involve a misreading of the probative situation. It is to succumb to the tempting epistemological doctrine of foundationalism, that insists on the need for and ultimate primacy of absolutely certain, indefeasible, crystalline truths, totally beyond any possibility of invalidation. The search for such selfevident or protocol theses-inherently inviolate and yet informatively committal about the nature of the world-represents one of the great quixotic quests of modern philosophy.22 It deserves stress that an epistemic quest for categories of data that are prima facie acceptable (innocent until proven guilty, as it were) is altogether different from this quest for absolutely certain or totally self-evidencing theses which has characterized the mainstream of epistemological tradition from Descartes via Brentano to presentday writers such as Roderick Chisholm. The idea of presumptive truth must thus play a pivotal role in all such various contexts where the notion of a “burden of proof” applies. The mechanism of presumption accomplishes a crucial epistemological task in the structure of rational argumentation. For there must clearly be some class of claims chat are allowed at least pro tem to enter acceptably into the framework of argumentation, because if everything were contested then the process of inquiry could not progress at all.

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In any essentially dialectical situation in which the idea of burden of proof figures, the very “rules of the game” remain inadequately defined until the issue of the nature, extent, and weight of the range of operative presumptions has been resolved in some suitable way. Burden of proof and presumption represent correlative conceptions inevitably coordinate with one another throughout the context of rational dialectic, because the recourse to presumptions affords the indispensable means by which a burden of proof can—at least provisionally—be discharged. The reality of it is that we cannot pursue the cognitive project—the quest for information about the world—without granting certain initial presumptions. They are reminiscent of Kantian “conditions under which alone” the business of securing answers to questions about the world is even possible. And prominent among these conditions is the consideration that we can take our “data” about the world as evidence, that a presumption of experiential veridicality is in order. In matters of sense perception, for example, we presume that mere appearances (“the data”) provide an indication of how things actually stand (however imperfect this indication may ultimately pose to be). That we can use the products of our experience of the world to form at least somewhat reliable views of it is an indispensable presupposition of our cognitive endeavors in the realm of fictional inquiry. If we systematically refuse, always and everywhere, to accept seeming evidence as real evidence—at least provisionally, until the time comes when it is discredited as such—then we can get nowhere in the domain of practical cognition. When the skeptic rejects any and all presumptions, he automatically blocks any prospect of reasoning with him within the standard framework of discussion about the empirical facts of the world. The machinery of presumptions is part and parcel of the mechanisms of cognitive rationality; abandoning it aborts the entire project at the very outset. If it is indeed the case that rationally justified belief must always be based upon rationally pre-justified inputs, then scepticism becomes unavoidable. For, then the process of rationally validating our accepted beliefs can never get started. To all appearances, we here enter upon a regress that is either vitiatingly infinite or viciously circular. The rational justification of belief becomes in principle impossible—as skeptics have always insisted. But this particular skeptical foray rests on a false supposition. For the rational justification of a belief does not necessarily require prejustified inputs. The idea that even as human life can come only from prior human life so rational justification can come only from prior rational justification is

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deeply erroneous. The important distinction between discursive and presumptive justification becomes crucial here in a way that skeptics conveniently overlook. A belief is justified discursively when there is some other preestablished belief on whose basis this belief is evidentially grounded, that is, when the belief is substantiated by some particular item of supporting evidence. The discursive justification of a belief lies in there being an already available, pre-justified belief that evidentiates it. In informationprocessing terms, this discursive sort of justification is not innovative but merely transformatory as a production process; there must be justified beliefs as inputs to arrive at justified beliefs as outputs. However, discursive justification is not the only sort there is. For there is also presumptive justification. Presumptive justification—unlike discursive justification—does not proceed through the evidential meditation of previously justified grounds, but directly and immediately through the force of a “presumption.” A belief is justified in this way when there is a standing presumption in its favor and no pre-established (rationally justified) reason that stands in the way of its acceptance. Beliefs of this sort are appropriate—and rationally justified—as long as nothing speaks against them. Presumption is the epistemic analogue of “innocent until proven guilty.” The rational legitimation of a presumptively justified belief lies in the fact that some generic mode of “suitably favorable indication” speaks on it behalf while no already justified counterindication speaks against it. When, after a careful look, I am under the impression that there is a cat on the mat, I can (quite appropriately) base my acceptance of the contention “There is a cat on the mat” not on certain pre-established premisses, but simply on my experience—on my visual impression. The salient consideration is that there just is no good reason why (in this case) I should not indulge my inclinations to endorse a visually grounded belief of this kind as veridical. (If there were such evidence—if, for example, I was aware of being in a wax museum—then the situation would, of course, be altered. Presumptively justified beliefs are the raw materials of cognition. They represent contentions that—in the absence of pre-established counterindications—are acceptable to us “until further notice”, thus permitting us to make a start in the venture of cognitive justification without the benefit of pre-justified materials. They are defeasible alright, vulnerable to being overturned, but only by something else yet more secure some other preestablished conflicting consideration. They are entitled to remain in place un-

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til displaced by something superior. Accordingly, their impetus averts the dire consequences that would ensue of any and every cogent process of rational deliberation required inputs which themselves had to be authenticated by a prior process of rational deliberation—in which case the whole process could never get under way. But indispensability apart, what is it that justifies making presumptions, seeing that they are not established truths? The answer is that this is not so much a matter of evidentially probative considerations as of procedurally practical ones. Presumptions arise in contexts where we have questions and need answers. And when sufficient evidence for a conclusive answer is lacking, we must, in the circumstances, settle for a more or less plausible one. It is a matter of faute de mieux, of this or nothing (or at any rate nothing better). Presumption is a thought instrumentality that so functions as to make it possible for us to do the best we can in circumstances where something must be done. And so presumption affords yet another instance where practical principles play a leading role on the stage of our cognitive and communicative practice. For presumption is, in the end, a practical device whose rationale of validation lies on the order of pragmatic considerations. We proceed in cognitive contexts in much the same manner in which banks proceed in financial contexts. We extend credit to others, doing so at first to a relatively modest extent. When and as they comport themselves in a way that indicates that this credit was warranted, then we extend more. By responding to trust in a “responsible” way—proceeding to amortize the credit one already has—one can increase one’s credit rating in cognitive much as in financial contexts. In trusting the senses, in relying on other people, and even in being rational, we always run a risk. Whenever in life we place our faith in something, we run a risk of being let down and disappointed. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly reasonable to bet on the general trustworthiness of the senses, the general reliability of our fellow men, and the general utility of reason. In such matters, no absolute guarantees can be had. But here one may as well venture, for if venturing fails, the cause is lost anyhow—we have no more promising alternative to turn to. There is little choice about the matter: it is a case of “this or nothing”. If we want answers to factual questions, we have no real alternative but to trust in the cognitively cooperative disposition of the natural order of things. We cannot preestablish the appropriateness of this trust by somehow demonstrating, in advance of events, that it is actually warranted. Rather, its rationale is that

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without it we remove the basis on which alone creatures such as ourselves can confidently live a life of effective thought and action. In such cases, pragmatic rationality urges us to gamble on trust in reason, not because it cannot fail us, but because in so doing little is to be lost and much to be gained. A general policy of judicious trust is eminently cost-effective in yielding good results in matters of cognition. Of course, a problem remains: Utility is all very good but what of validity? What sorts of considerations validate our particular presumptions as such: how is it that they become entitled to this epistemic status? The crux of the answer has already been foreshadowed. A two-fold process is involved. Initially it is a matter of the generic need for answers to our questions—of our being so circumstanced that if we are willing to presume we are able to get . . . anything. But ultimately we go beyond such this-ornothing consideration, and the validity of a presumption emerges ex post facto through the utility (both cognitive and practical) of the results it yields. We advance from “this or nothing” to “this or nothing that is determinably better.” Legitimation is thus available, albeit only through experiential retrovalidation, retrospective validation in the light of eventual experience.23 It is a matter of learning that a certain issue is more effective in meeting the needs of the situation than its available alternatives. Initially we look to promise and potential but, in the end, it is applicative efficacy that counts. The fact is that our cognitive practices have a fundamentally economic rationale. They are all cost-effective within the setting of the project of inquiry to which we stand committed (by our place in the world’s scheme of things). Presumptions are the instrument through which we achieve a favorable balance of trade in the complex trade-offs between ignorance of fact and mistake of belief—between unknowing and error. 6. HOW PRESUMPTION WORKS: WHAT JUSTIFIES PRESUMPTIONS But, just what sorts of claims are presumptively justified? The ordinary and standard probative practice of empirical inquiry stipulates a presumption in favor of such cognitive “sources” of information as the senses and memoryor, for that matter, trustworthy personal or documentary resources such as experts and encyclopedias. And the literature further contemplates such cognitively useful alternatives as:

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1. Natural inclination: a “natural disposition” to accept (e.g., in the case of sense observation). 2. Epistemic utility in terms of the sorts of things that would, if accepted, explain things that need explanation. 3. Analogy with what has proved acceptable in other contexts. 4. Fit: coherence with other accepted theses. Even a weak reed like analogy—the assimilation of a present, problematic case to similar past ones—is rendered a useful and appropriate instrumentality of presumption through providing our readiest source of answers to questions.24 However, the salient feature of a viable basis of prescription is that it must have a good track record for providing useful information. Our cognitive proceedings accordingly incorporate a host of fundamental presumptions of reliability, such as: • Believe the evidence of your own senses. • Accept at face value the declarations of other people (in the absence of any counterindications and in the absence of any specific evidence undermining the generic trustworthiness of those others). • Trust in the reliability of the standardly employed cognitive aids and instruments (telescopes, calculating machines, reference works, logarithmic tables, etc.) in the absence of any specific indications to the contrary. • Accept the declarations of recognized experts and authorities within the area of their expertise (again, in the absence of counterindications). All in all, presumption favors the usual and the natural—its tendency is one of convenience and ease of operation in cognitive affairs. For presumption is a matter of cognitive economy—of following “the path of least resistance” to an acceptable conclusion. Its leading principle is: introduce complications only when you need to, always making do with the least complex resolution of an issue. There is, of course, nothing sacrosanct

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about the result of such a procedure. The choice of the easiest way out may fail us, that which serves adequately in the first analysis may well not longer do so in the end. But it is clearly the sensible way to begin. At this elemental level of presumption we proceed by “doing what comes naturally.” The salient point for validating a presumption is that there is reason to thinkor experience to showthat in proceeding in this way we fare better than we would do otherwise. The justification of these presumptions is not the factual one of the substantive generalization. “In proceeding in this way, you will come at correct information and will not fall into error.” Rather, it is methodological justification. In proceeding in this way, you will efficiently foster the interests of the cognitive enterprise; the gains and benefits will, on the whole, outweigh the losses and costs. Principles of this sort are integral parts of the operational code of agents who transact their cognitive business rationally. Presumption is a matter of cognitive economy—of following “the path of least resistance” to an acceptable conclusion. Its leading principle is: introduce complications only when you need to, always making do with the least complex resolution of an issue. There is, of course, nothing sacrosanct about the result of such a procedure. The choice of the easiest way out may fail us, that which serves adequately in the first analysis may well not longer do so in the end. But it is clearly the sensible way to begin. At this elemental level of presumption we proceed by “doing what comes naturally.” What is fundamental here is the principle of letting appearance be our guide to reality—of accepting the evidence as evidence of actual fact, by taking its indications as decisive until such time as suitably weighty counter-indications come to countervail against them. The justifactory rationale for a policy of presumption lies in the human need for information. It is undoubtedly true that information is a good thing: that other things equal it is better to have informationto have answers to our questionsthan not to do so. But the reality of it is much more powerful than that. For us humans, information is not just a mere desideratum but an actual need. This role of presumptions is absolutely crucial for cognitive rationality. For this mode rationality has two compartments: the discursive (or conditionalized) and the substantive (or categorical). The former is a matter of hypothetical reasoning—of adhering to the conditionalized principle that if you accept certain theses, then you should also accept their duly evidentiated consequences. But, of course this conditionalized principle cannot

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yield anything until one has already secured some acceptable these from somewhere or other. And this is where substantive rationality comes in, by enabling us to make categorical moves. Presumptions determine our “starter-set” of initial commitments, enabling us to make a start on whose basis further “inferential” reasoning may proceed. While the mechanism of a presumption affords a most useful cognitive and communicative resource, it is only recently that it has begun to interest logicians, semanticists, and epistemologists. Their discussions have, in the main, focused on the relation of presumption to the issues of benefit of doubt and burden of proof. But what is it that justifies making presumptions since they are neither established truths nor probabilities in the most standard sense? The answer is that this is not so much a matter of evidentially probative considerations as of procedurally practical ones. Presumptions arise in contexts where we have questions and need answers. And when sufficient evidence for a conclusive answer is lacking, we must, in the circumstances, settle for a more or less plausible one. It is a matter of faute de mieux, of this or nothing (or at any rate nothing better). Presumption is a thought instrumentality that so functions as to make it possible for us to do the best we can in circumstances where something must be done. And so presumption affords yet another instance where practical considerations play a leading role on the stage of our cognitive and communicative practice. The obvious and evident advantage of presumption as an epistemic device is that it enables us vastly to extend the range of questions we are able to answer. It affords an instrument that enables us to extract a maximum of information from communicative situations. Presumption, in sum, is an ultimately pragmatic resource. To be sure, its evident disadvantage is that the answers that we obtain by its means are given not in the clarion tones of knowledge and assertion but in the more hesitant and uncertain tones of presumption and probability. We thus do not get the advantages of presumption without an accompanying negativity. Here, as elsewhere, we cannot have our cake and eat it, too. What justifies a presumption initially is a need: that is, the fact that we require an information gap to be filled and that the presumption accomplishes this for us. But this is only a start. For the question remains: What sorts of considerations validate our particular presumptions as such: how is it that they become entitled to this epistemic status? The basis of the answer has already been indicated. A two-fold process is involved. Initially it is a matter of the generic need for true presumptions continued with the

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mere convenience of these presumptions. But ultimately a this-or-nothing recognition of the validity of a presumption emerges ex post facto through the utility (both cognitive and practical) of the results it yields. Legitimation is thus available but only through experiential retrovalidation, retrospective validation in the light of eventual experience.25 For what validates presumptions is something quite different, namely experience. All the same, the concession of presumptive status to our pre-systematic indications of credibility is the most fundamental principle of cognitive rationality. The details of presumption management are clearly negotiable in the light of eventual experience—and improvable over the course of time. But without a programmatic policy for presumption cognitive rationality cannot get under way at all. For present purposes, then, the salient point is that presumption provides the basis for letting appearance be our guide to reality—of accepting the evidence as evidence of actual fact, by taking its indications as decisive until such time as suitably weighty counter-indications come to countervail against them. What is at issue here is part of the operational code of agents who transact their cognitive business rationally. It is thus clear that all such cognition practices have a fundamentally economic rationale. They are all cost-effective within the setting of the project of inquiry to which we stand committed (by our place in the world’s scheme of things). To be sure, such a validation of our presumptions is not really theoretical but practical. It does not show that it cannot sometimes or often go awry when we endorse the presumptions at issue. Instead it argues only that when we indeed need or want here-and-now to resolve issues and fill informative gaps then those presumptions represent the most promising ways of doing so, affording us those means to accomplish our goals whichas best we can telloffer the best prospect of success. Such a process of validation is not a matter of theoretical adequacy as of practical efficacy. It is a practical or pragmatic validation in terms of a rational recourse to the best available alternative.26 Accordingly, presumption, like our cognitive practices in general, has a fundamentally economic rationale. Like the rest, it, too, is cost effective within the setting of the project of inquiry to which we stand committed by our place in the world’s scheme of things. They are characteristics of the cheapest (most convenient) way for us to secure the data needed to resolve our cognitive problems—to secure answers to our questions about the world we live in. On this basis, we can make ready sense of many of the

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established rules of information development and management on economic grounds. By and large, they prevail because this is maximally cost effective in comparison with the available alternatives. And just here the idea of presumption impinges on the idea of trust. NOTES 1

“Consequences drawn by the law or the magistrate from a known to an unknown fact.” Code Civil, Bk. III, pt. iii, sect, art. 1349.

2

Sir Courtenay Ilbert, “Evidence,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Vol. 10, pp. 11-21 (see p. 15).

3

Richard A. Epstein, “Pleadings and Presumptions,” The University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 40 (1973/4), pp 556-82 (see p. 558-59). As Lalande’s philosophical dictionary puts it: “La présomption est proprement et d’une manière plus précise une anticipation sur ce qui n’est pas prouvé.” (A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la philosophie, 9th ed. [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962], s.v. “présomption.”)

4

The modern philosophical literature on presumption is not extensive. Some years ago, when I wrote Dialectics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977) there was little apart from Roland Hall’s “Presuming,” Philosophical Quarterly, col. 11 (1961), pp. 10-22. A most useful overview of more recent development is Douglas N. Wallon, Argumentation: Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning (Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Assoc., 1996). I am also grateful to Sigmund Bonk for sending me his unpublished study “Vom Vorurteil zum Vorausurteil.”

5

C. S. Peirce put the case for presumptions in a somewhat different way—as crucial to maintaining the line between sense and foolishness: There are minds to whom every prejudice, every presumption, seems unfair. It is easy to say what minds these are. They are those who never have known what it is to draw a well-grounded induction, and who imagine that other people’s knowledge is as nebulous as their own. That all science rolls upon presumption (not of a formal hut of a real kind) is no argument with them, because they cannot imagine that there is anything solid in human knowledge. These are the people who waste their time and money upon perpetual motions and other such rubbish. (Collected Papers, Vol. VI, ed. by C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 193x), sect. 6.423; compare Vol. II, sect. 2.776-7.) Peirce is very emphatic regarding the role of presumptions in scientific argumentation and adduces various examples, e.g., that the laws of nature operate in the unknown parts of space and time as in the known or that the universe is inherently indifferent to human values and does not on its own workings manifest any inclination towards being benevolent, just, wise, etc. As the above quotation shows, Peirce saw one key aspect of presumption to revolve about considerations regarding the economics of inquiry—i.e., as instruments of efficiency in saving time and money. On this sector of his thought, see the author’s paper “Peirce and the Economy of Research,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. (43 (1976), pp; 71-98.

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NOTES 6

R. A. Epstein, “Pleading & Presumptions,” pp. 558-59.

7

Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1828), pt. I, Ch. III, sect. 2.

8

As I. Scheffler puts a similar point in the temporal context of a change of mind in the light of new information: “That a sentence may be given up at a later time does not mean that its present claim upon us may be blithely disregarded. The idea that once a statement is acknowledged as theoretically revisable, it can carry no cognitive weight at all, is no more plausible then the suggestion that a man losses his vote as soon as it is seen that the rules make it possible for him to be outvoted” (Science and Subjectivity [Indianapolis, Ind. : Bobbs-Merrill, 1967], p. 118).

9

The next chapter will examine the idea of presumption in greater detail.

10

Historically this goes back to the conception of “the reasonable” (to eulongon), as discussed in Greek antiquity by the Academic Sceptics. Carneades (c. 213-c. 128 B.C.) for one worked out a rather well-developed (nonprobabilistic) theory of plausibility as it relates to the deliverances of the senses, the testimony of witnesses, etc. For a helpful discussion of the relevant issues, see Charlotte L. Stough, Greek Skepticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969).

11

For an interesting analysis of presumptive and plausibilistic reasoning in mathematics and (to a lesser extent) the natural sciences, see George Polya’s books Introduction and Analogy in Mathematics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954) and Patterns of Plausible Inference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954). Polya regards the patterns of plausible argumentation as defining the “rules of admissibility in scientific discussion” on strict analogy with the legal case, regarding such rules as needed because it is plain that not anything can qualify for introduction as probatively relevant.

12

This view of plausibility in terms of general acceptance either by the consensus genium or by the experts (“the wise”) was prominent in Aristotle’s construction of the plausible (endoxa) in Book I of the Topics.

13

All this, of course, does not deal with question of the status of this rule itself and of the nature of its own justification. It is important in the present context to stress the regulative role of plausibilistic considerations. This now becomes a matter of epistemic policy (“Given priority to contentions which treat like cases alike”) and not a metaphyscially laden contention regarding the ontology of nature (as with theblatantly falsedescriptive claim “Nature is uniform”). The plausibilistic theory of inductive reasoning sees uniformity as a regulative principle of epistemic policy in grounding our choices, not as a constitutive principle of ontology. As a “regulative principle of epistemic policy” its status is methodologicaland thus its justification is in the final analysis pragmatic. See the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976).

14

See Gerdinand Gonseth, “La Notion du normal,” Dialectics, vol. 3 (1947), pp. 24352. More generally, on the principles of plausible reasoning in the natural sciences

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NOTES

see Norwood R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge, 1958), and his influential 1961 paper “Is There a Logic of Discovery,” in H. Feigl and G Maxwell (eds.), Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961). The work of Herbert A. Somon is an important development in this area: “Thinking by Computers” and “Scientific Discovery and the Psychology of Problem Solving” in R. G., Colodny (ed.), Mind and Cosmos (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966). 15

All three of these principles of plausibility were operative in the protoconception of plausibility represented by Aristotle’s theory of endoxa as developed in Book I of the Topics. For this embraced: (1) general acceptance by men at large or by the experts (“the wise”), (2) theses similar to these (or opposed to what is contrary to them, and (3) theses that have become established in cognitive disciplines (kata technas).

16

For a closer study of the notion of plausibility and its function in rational argumentation see the author’s Plausible Reasoning (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976).

17

On communicative presumptions see H. P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). And beyond this pioneering work see also John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1969); Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), The Logic of Grammar (Encino, California, Dickenson, 1975);

18

On the presumption of relevance see David Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986: 2nd ed. 1995).

19

See Terence Parsons, “A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 71 (1974), pp. 551-60, and also “A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional Objects,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, vol. 1 (1974), pp. 73-86.

20

On this issue see the author’s Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).

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Chapter I/2 THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH: COHERENTIST CRITERIOLOGY 1. THE COHERENTIST APPROACH TO INQUIRY

C

oherentism, as we have seen, views the systemic-interrelatedness of factual theses as the criterial standard of their acceptability. But just how does such a coherence criteriology work? The overall stance of the theory is to be articulated in terms somewhat as follows: Acceptance-as-true is in general not the starting-point of inquiry but its terminus. To begin with, all that we generally have is a body of prima facie truths, that is, presumption-geared and thereby merely plausible propositions that qualify as potential—perhaps even as promising—candidates for acceptance. The epistemic realities being as they are, these candidate-truths will, in general, form a mutually inconsistent set, and so exclude one another so as to destroy the prospects of their being accorded in toto recognition as truths pure and simple. The best that can be done in such circumstances is to endorse those as truths that best “cohere” with the others so as to “make the most” of the data as a whole in the epistemic circumstances at issue. Systemic coherence thus affords the criterial validation of the qualifications of truth-candidates for being classed as genuine truths. Systematicity thus becomes not just the organizer but the test of truth.

A coherentist epistemology thus views the extraction of knowledge from the plausible data by means of an analysis of best-fit considerations. Its approach is fundamentally holistic in judging the acceptability of every purported item of information by its capacity to contribute towards a wellordered, systemic whole. In general terms, the coherence criterion of truth operates as follows. One begins with a datum-set S={P1,P2, P3, . . .} of suitably “given” propositions. These data are not necessarily true nor even consistent. They are not given as secure truths in a foundationalist’s manner of theses established once and for all, but merely as presumptive or potential truths— plausible truth-candidates—and in general as competing ones that are mu-

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tually inconsistent. The task to which a coherentist epistemology addresses itself is to bring order into S by separating the sheep from the goats, distinguishing what merits acceptance as true from what does not. Such a coherence analysis calls for the following epistemic resources: (1) “Data”: theses that can serve as acceptance-candidates in the context of the inquiry, plausible contentions which, at best, are merely presumptively true (like the “data of sense”). These are not certified truths (or even probable truths), but theses that are in a position to make some claims upon us for acceptance—are prima facie truths in the sense that we would incline to grant them acceptance-as-true status if (and this is a very big IF) there were no countervailing considerations upon the scene. (The classical example of “data” in this sense are those of perception and memory.) (2) Plausibility ratings: comparative evaluations of our initial assessment (in the context of issue) of the relative acceptability of the “data.” This is a matter of their relative acceptability “at first glance” (so to speak) and in the first analysis, prior to their systematic evaluation. The plausibility-standing of truth-candidates is thus to be accorded without any prejudgments as to how these theses will fare in the final analysis. The process of coherence analysis consists in first classifying those relevantly plausible data into plausibility categories that reflect the nature of their source or basis and then using this as a rating index of plausibility. (On the side of substance, the various parameters of systematicitygenerality, uniformity, etc.can themselves serve to provide indices of plausibility.) In cases of a conflict of inconsistency the next step is then a process of “pruning” that abandons sufficiently many of the data so that that consistency is restored, being guided in this process by plausibility considerations in such a way as to preserve as much plausibility as possible by sacrificing what is less plausible to what is more soexactly along the lines envisioned in the earlier chapters. The governing injunction of plausibilistic coherentism is: Maintain as best you can the overall fit of mutual attunement by proceeding—when necessary—to make the least plausible competitors give way to the more plausible. On this approach, a truth candidate comes to make good its claims to recognition as a truth through its consistency with as much as

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possible from among the rest of the data. The situation arising here resembles the solving of a jigsaw puzzle with superfluous pieces that cannot possibly be fitted into any maximally orderly, systemically integrated picture representing the “correct solution.” Accordingly, the general strategy of the coherence theory lies in threestep procedure: • To gather in all of the relevant “data” (in the present technical sense of this term). • To inventory the available conflict-resolving options that represents the alternative possibilities for achieving overall consistency. • To choose among these alternatives by using the guidance of plausibility considerations, subject to the principle of minimizing implausibility. In this way, the coherence theory implements F. H. Bradley’s dictum that system (i.e., systematicity) provides a test-criterion most appropriately fitted to serve as arbiter of truth. With plausible data as a starting point, the coherence analysis sets out to sift through these truth-candidates with a view to minimizing the conflicts that may arise. Its basic mechanism is that of best-fit considerations, which brings us to the second main component of coherentism, the machinery of “best fit” analysis: That family embracing the truth candidates which are maximally attuned to one another is to count—on this criterion of over-all mutual accommodation—as best qualified for acceptance as presumably true, implementing the idea of compatibility screening on the basis of “best-fit” considerations. Mutual coherence becomes the arbiter of acceptability which make the less plausible alternatives give way to those of greater plausibility. The acceptabilitydetermining mechanism at issue proceeds on the principle of optimizing our admission of the claims implicit in the data, striving to maximize our retention of the data subject to the plausibilities of the situation.

The process of deriving useful information from imperfect data is a key feature of the coherence theory of truth, which faces (rather than, per standard logic, evades) the question of the inferences appropriately to be drawn from an inconsistent set of premisses. On this approach, the coherence the-

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ory of truth views the problem of truth-determination as a matter of bringing order into a chaos comprised of initial “data” that mingle the secure and the dubious. It sees the problem in transformational terms: incoherence into coherence, disorder into system, candidate-truths into qualified truths. The interaction of observation and theory provides an illustration. Take grammar. Here one moves inferentially from the phenomena of actual usage to the framework of laws by the way of a best-fit principle (an “inference to the best systematization” as it were), and one checks that the cycle closes by moving back again to the phenomena by way of their subsumption under the inferred rules. Something may well get lost en route in this process of mutual attunement—e.g., some of the observed phenomena of actual language use may simply be dismissed (say as “slips of the tongue”). Again, the fitting of curves to observation points in science also illustrates this sort of feedback process of discriminating the true and the false on best-fit considerations. The crucial point for present purposes is simply that a systematization can effectively control and correct data—even (to a substantial extent) the very data on which it itself is based. The coherentist criterion accordingly assumes an entirely inward orientation. It does not seek to compare the truth candidates directly with “the facts” obtaining outside the epistemic context, but rather, having gathered in as much information (and this will include also misinformation) about the facts as possible, it seeks to sift the true from the false within this body. On this approach, the validation of an item of knowledge—the rationalization if its inclusion alongside others within “the body of our knowledge”— proceeds by way of exhibiting its interrelationships with the rest. What we accepts must all be linked together in a connected, mutually supportive way (rather than having the form of an inferential structure built up upon a footing of rock-bottom axioms). On the coherentist’s theory, justification is not a matter of derivation but one of systematization. We operate, in effect, with the question: “justified” = “systematized.” The coherence approach can be thought of as representing, in effect, the systems-analysis approach to the criteriology of truth.

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2. THE CENTRAL ROLE OF DATA FOR A COHERENTIST TRUTHCRITERIOLOGY As coherentist methodologists see the process of inquiry, all that we generally have to begin with is a body of data, that qualify as potential—perhaps even as promising—candidates for truth. The epistemic realities being as they are, these candidate-truths will, in general, form a mutually inconsistent set so as to destroy their prospects of their being accorded in toto recognition as truths pure and simple. We are accordingly well advised to make the most of the data as a whole. Coherence thus becomes the critical test of the qualifications of truth candidates for gaining endorsement as genuine truths. The concept of a datum, whose role is pivotal in coherentist methodology, is something of a technical resource. To be sure, the idea is one not entirely unrelated to the ordinary use of that term, nor to its (somewhat different) use among philosophers. Yet it is significantly different from both. A datum is a plausible truth-candidate, a proposition to be taken not as true, but as potentially or presumptively true. It is a prima facie truth in exactly the sense in which one speaks of prima facie duties in ethics—a thesis that we would, in the circumstances, be prepared to class as true provided that no countervailing considerations are operative. A datum is thus a proposition that one is to class as true if one can—that is, if doing so does not generate any difficulties or inconsistencies. A datum is not established as true; it is backed only by a presumption that it may turn out true “if all goes well.” It lays a claim to truth, but it may not be able to make good this claim in the final analysis. (A datum is thus something altogether different from the basic, protocol truths that serve as foundation for an Aufbau of truth in the manner of the logical positivists.) In taking a proposition to be a datum, we propose to class it as true whenever possible, recognizing that this may not be possible because some data may contradict one another, so that we must consider some of them as non-truths. Our stance towards data is unashamedly that of fair-weather friends: we adhere to them when this involves no problems whatsoever, but are prepared to abandon them in the face of difficulties—that is, whenever consistency maintenance so requires. But it is quite clear that such loose attachment to a datum is by no means tantamount to no attachment at all.

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The conception of a datum certainly does not “open the floodgates” in an indiscriminate way. Not everything is a datum: the concept is to have some logico-epistemic bite. To be a datum is not just to be a proposition that could conceivably be claimed to be true but to be a proposition that (under the circumstances) can be claimed to be true with at least some plausibility: its claim must be well-founded and proposition will not qualify as a datum without some appropriate grounding. Virtually all writers on the subject take the position that, as one recent authority puts it, “acceptance as true is a necessary condition for acceptance as evidence.” On this view, if something can only count as genuine and actual evidence when it is established as true, the weaker conception of potential evidence—as contradistinguished from evidence as such (the actual evidence)—comes closer to our conception of the data. But although some basis is required for counting as a datum, this basis need not be very strong by the usual epistemic standards. To be a datum is to be a truthcandidate. And to count as such, a proposition need be neither an actual truth nor a probable truth: it need only be “in the running” as a genuine candidate or a live possibility for truth. Such propositions are not truths, but make good a claim to truth that is at best tentative and provisional; by themselves they do not formulate truth but at most indicate it. Historically, the tentatively of the experientially and mnemonically “given” has always been recognized, and the deliverances of our senses and our memory are the traditional examples of this circumstance of merely purported truth. A more ambitious claim to truthfulness affects such a family of data than any one member of it. No imputation of truth (as opposed to presumptive or candidate truth) attaches to any individual datum, but there is a definite implicit claim that the “logical space” spanned by the data as a whole somewhere embraces the truth of the matter. The winner of a race must be sought among those “in the running.” Taken individually, the data are merely truth-presumptive, but taken collectively as a family they are to be viewed as truth-embracing. One may well ask: “How can coherence with the data yield truth if the data themselves are not individually true? How can something so tentative prove sufficiently determinative?” Consider again the earlier example of a jigsaw puzzle with superfluous pieces. It is clear here that the factor of “suitably fitting in” will be determinative of a piece’s place (or lack of place) in the correct solution. Data—construed along the plausible lines as that of the preceding discussion—play a pivotal role in the articulation of a coherence-based crite-

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rion of truth. The entire drama of a coherence analysis is played out within the sphere of propositions, in terms of the sorts of relationships they have to one another. For the crux of the matter is not mere coherence, but coherence with the data. It is not with bare coherence as such (whatever that would be) but with data-directed coherence that a truth-making capacity enters upon the scene. But, of course, datahood only provides the building blocks for truth-determination and not the structure itself. Coherence plays the essential role because it is to be through the mediation of coherence considerations that we move from truth-candidacy and presumptions of factuality to truth as such. And the procedure is fundamentally noncircular: we need make no imputations of truth at the level of data to arrive at truths through application of the criterial machinery in view. The concept of the datahood is the crux of the coherence theory of truth. It serves to provide an answer to the question “Coherent with what?” without postulating a prior category of fundamental truth. It provides the coherence theory with grist to its mill that need not itself be the product of some preliminary determinations of truth. A reliance upon data makes it possible to contemplate a coherence theory that produces truth not ex nihilo (which would be impossible) but yet from a basis that does not itself demand any prior determinations of truthfulness as such. A coherence criterion can, on this basis, furnish a mechanism that is originative of truth—that is, it yields truths as outputs without requiring that truths must also be present among the supplied inputs. A novel or science fiction tale or indeed any other sort of made-up story can be perfectly coherent. To say simply that a proposition coheres with certain others is to say too little. All propositions will satisfy this condition, and so it is quite unable to tell us anything that bears upon the question of truth. It would be quite senseless to suggest that a proposition’s truth resides in “its coherence” alone. Its coherence is of conceptual necessity a relative rather than an absolute characteristic. Coherence must always be coherence with something: the verb “to cohere with” requires an object just as much as “to be larger than” does. We do not really have a coherence theory in hand at all until the target domain of coherence is specified. And now it must be said in their defense that the traditional coherence per se, but have insisted that it is specifically “coherence with our experience” that is to be the standard of truth. (In taking this line, the coherence theory of the British idealists has never abandoned altogether the empiricist tendency of the native tradition of philosophy.)

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What is clearly needed is a half-way house between coherence with somethat is, anypropositions (which would be trivial) and coherence with true propositions (which would be circular with a criterion for truth). Essentially, what is needed is coherence with somehow “the right” propositions. The coherence at issue in a coherence theory of truth must be construed as involving all in some way appropriately qualified propositions. This line of thought poses a task central to the construction of a workable coherence theory: that of specifying just what propositions are at stake when one speaks of determining the truth of a given proposition in terms of its “coherence with others.” Which others are at issue? It was, of course, for the sake of a satisfactory answer to this question that our approach made its crucial resort to the key concept of an experientially grounded datum that concerned us so elaborately in the preceding section. It is sometimes objected that coherence cannot be the standard of truth because there we may well arrive at a multiplicity of diverse but equally coherent structures, whereas truth is of its very nature conceived of as unique and monolithic. Bertrand Russell, for example, argues in this way: . . . there is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that, with sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the world that would perfectly fit on to what we know, and yet be quite different from the real past. In more scientific matters, it is certain that there are often two or more hypotheses which account for all the known facts on some subject, and although, in such cases, men of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the hypotheses except one, there is no reason why they should always succeed.

One must certainly grant Russell’s central point: however the idea of coherence is articulated in the abstract, there is something fundamentally undiscriminating about coherence taken by itself. Coherence may well be— nay certainly is—a descriptive feature of the domain of truths: they cohere. But there is nothing in this to prevent propositions other than truths from cohering with one another: Fiction can be made as coherent as fact: truths surely have no monopoly of coherence. Indeed “it is logically possible to have two different but equally comprehensive sets of coherent statements between which there would be, in the coherence theory, no way to decide which was the set of true statements.” In consequence, coherence cannot of and by itself discriminate between truths and falsehoods. Coherence is thus seemingly disqualified as a means for identifying truths. Any viable coherence theory of truth must make good the claim that despite

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these patent facts considerations of coherence can—somehow—be deployed to serve as an indicator of truth. But the presently envisioned theory averts these difficulties. It looks not to coherence in and of itself a criterion of truth, but to coherence with the date of experience. It thus renders Russell’s objection effectively irrelevant. 3. ON VALIDATING THE COHERENCE APPROACH But how can it be shown that the specifically coherentist approach to cognitive systematization meets the demands for an effective standard of quality control? The argument here has two stages: (1) recalling our earlier thesis that the coherentist approach to cognitive systematization can assimilate the standard mechanisms of scientific method, and then (2) noting the dramatic efficacy of science vis-à-vis any even remotely available alternative candidate as a mechanism of prediction and control over nature. One can thus invoke on coherentism’s behalf the pragmatic efficacy of science, holding that coherentist accommodation of scientific method gains to the credit of a coherentist approach the dramatic success of science in realizing its conjoint purposes of explanation, prediction, and control over nature. On this perspective, the pragmatic warrant of coherentism is seen to reside in its capacity to serve as organon of scientific reasoning. But how can this capacity be made manifest? It is sometimes suggested that coherentism’s picture of interlocked circles of the theoretical and applicative validation of cognitive systems portrays the process of system-validation in the essentially timeless terms customary in epistemological discussions. However, this static view of system-validation needs to be supplemented—indeed corrected—by considering the issue in its temporal and developmental aspect. The atemporal relationships of probative justification must be augmented by examining the justificatory bearing of the historical dynamics of the matter—the evolutionary process of system development. After all, the articulation of cognitive systems is a matter of historical dynamics of the matter—the evolutionary process of system development involving our repeated efforts at improvements in systematizing in the light of trial and error. We are faced with a fundamentally repetitive process of the successive revision and sophistication of our ventures at cognitive systematization, a process which produces by way of iterative elaboration an increasingly satisfactory system, one that is more and more adequate in its internal articulation or effec-

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tive in its external applicability. There are iterative cycles of tentative systematizations followed by resystematizations in the light of the feedback provided by its utilization for theoretical application and practical implementation. This dynamic process is depicted in the diagram given in Display 1, which presents the cycle at issue in an historical perspective, regarding it as a developmentally iterative feedback process. What is at stake is not just retrospective reappraisal in the theoretical order of justification, but an actual revision or improvement in the temporal order of development. Display 1 THE FEEDBACK CYCLE OF LEGITIMATION Presumptive “trial assumption” of certain cognitive machinery

Appraisal of success

Revision of cognitive machinery in the light of this appraisal

This sequential and developmental process of historical mutation and optimal selection assures a growing conformation between our systematizing endeavors and “the real world.” In the final analysis, our systematized cognition fits the world for the same reasons that our eating habits do: both are the product of an evolutionary course of selective development. It is this evolutionary process that assures the adaequatio ad rem of our systembased claims to knowledge. The legitimating process at issue here is not only a matter of a static pattern of relationships in the probative order of rational legitimation, it also reflects a temporal and developmental process of successive cyclic iterations where all the component elements become more and more attuned to one another and pressed into smoother mutual conformation. And the pivotal feature of the process is its concern not with the substantiation of theses or propositions themselves, but rather with the validation of the methods that we use for substantiating them. This evolutionary development of intellectual methodologies proceeds by rational selection. As changes come to be entertained (within the society) it transpires that one “works out for the better” relative to another in terms of its fitness to survive because it answers better to the socially determined purposes of the group. Just what does “better” mean here? This carries us back to the Darwinian perspective. Such a legitimation needs a

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standard of survivalistic “fitness.” And this normative standard is provided by considerations of theoretical adequacy and applicative practice, and is inherent in the use to which conceptual instrumentalities are put in the rational conduct of our cognitive and practical affairs. Our legitimation of the standard probative mechanisms of inquiry regarding factual matters began with the factor of pragmatic success and subsequently transmuted this into an issue of Darwinian survival. And as the discussion has already foreshadowed, it is clearly the method of scientific inquiry that has carried the day here. The mechanisms of scientific reasoning clearly represent the most developed and sophisticated of our probative methods. No elaborate argumentation is necessary to establish the all-too-evident fact that science has come out on top in the competition of rational selection with respect to alternative processes for substantiating and explaining our factual claims. The prominent role of the standard parameters of systematization in the framework of scientific thought thus reflects a crucial aspect of their legitimation. The methodological directives that revolve about the ideal of systematicity in its regulative role (“Of otherwise co-eligible alternatives, choose the simplest!”, “Whenever possible invoke a uniform principle of explanation or prediction!”, etc.) form an essential part of the methodological framework of a science. Experience has shown these methodological principles to be rooted in the functional objectives of the enterprise, by conducing efficiently to its realization of its purposes. Legitimation is thus evidenced by the fact of survival through historical vicissitudes. We have every reason to think that an abandonment of these regulative principles, while not necessarily spelling an abandonment of science as such, would make hopelessly more difficult and problematic the realization of its traditional goals of affording intellectual and physical control over nature. Considerations of functional efficiency—of economy of thought and praxis— militate decisively on behalf of the traditional principles of scientific systematization. It is not difficult to give examples of the operation of Darwinian processes in the domain of the instrumentalities of cognitive systematization. The intellectual landscape of human history is littered with the skeletal remains of the extinct dinosaurs of this sphere. Examples of such defunct methods for the acquisition and explanatory utilization of information include: astrology, numerology, oracles, dream-interpretation, the reading of tea leaves or the entrails of birds, animism, the teleological physics of the Presocratics, and so on. There is nothing intrinsically absurd or contempti-

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ble about such unorthodox cognitive programs; even the most occult of them have a long and not wholly unsuccessful history. (Think, for example, of the long history of numerological explanation from Pythagoreanism, through Platonism, to the medieval Arabs, down to Kepler in the Renaissance.) But there can be no question at this historical juncture that science has won the evolutionary struggle among various modes of methods of cognitive procedure, and this more than anything else makes it manifest that the inherent coherentism of the orthodox scientific approach to cognitive systematization satisfies the requirement of pragmatic efficacy. It makes perfectly good sense to ask: “Why should our scientific deliberations proceed in the usual way—with reference to the pursuit of systematicity, etc.?” And it is possible to answer this question along two seemingly divergent routes: (i) the pragmatic route: it is efficient, effective, successful, “it works,” etc. (ii) the theoretical route: it is rationally cogent, cognitively satisfying, aesthetically pleasing, conceptually “economical,” etc. But the divergence here is only seeming, for Darwinian considerations assure that in the course of time the two maintain a condition of convergent conformity. The merit of entrenched cognitive tools lies in their (presumably) having established themselves in open competition with their rivals. It has come to be shown before the tribunal of bitter experience—through the historical vagaries of a Darwinian process of selection—that the accepted methods work out most effectively in actual (albeit rational rather than natural selection) practice vis-à-vis other tried alternatives. The overall line of validation for a probative methodology of coherence involves a double circle, combining a theory-internal cycle of theoretical self-substantiation with a theory-external cycle of pragmatic validation—as is illustrated in Display 2. Here, Cycle I represents the theoretical/cognitive cycle of theoretical consistency between regulative first principles and their substantive counterparts, and Cycle II, the practical/applicative cycle of pragmatic efficacy in implementing the substantive results of the first principles.

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Display 2 THE TWOFOLD CYCLE OF THE LEGITIMATION OF SYSTEMATIZING METHODOLOGY Theoretical legitimation (retrojustification) Systematizing methodology

Theoretical controls of self-substantiation Theoretical Cycle

I System of validated knowledge

Utilization

Pragmatic Applicative legitimation Cycle (successful implementation)

II Pragmatic controls of applicative efficacy

Accordingly, the overall legitimation of a methodology for the substantiation of our factual beliefs must unite two distinctive elements: (1) an apparatus of systematic coherence at the theoretical level (a coherence in which factual presumptions and metaphysical presuppositions both will play a crucial part), and (2) a controlling monitor of considerations of pragmatic efficacy at the practical level. Neither can appropriately be dispensed with for the sake of an exclusive reliance on the other. The proof of the theoretical pudding must, in the final analysis, lie in the applicative eating. We monitor the adequacy of our procedures of cognitive systematization through an assessment of their applicative success in prediction and control over nature. The legitimative process at issue thus relies on an appropriate fusion of considerations of theory and praxis. It is a complex of two distinct but interlocked cycles—the theoretical cycle of cognitive coherence and the pragmatic cycle of applicative effectiveness. Only if both of these cycles dovetail properly—in both the theoretical and the applicative sectors—can the overall process be construed as providing a suitable rational legitimation for the cognitive principles at issue. The symbiotic and mutually supportive nature of the enterprise is fundamental: its structure must afford a systematic union in which both methods and theses are appropriately inter-

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linked. Legitimation once more inheres in an appropriate sort of systematization in which both cognitive and ontological factors play a role. On this approach, the strictly theoretical aspect of explanation and understanding is coordinate in important in the teleology of science with its pragmatic aspect of “control over nature.” This ranges from prediction as minimal control (the adequate alignment of our own expectations) to the more elaborately modificatory change in the course of nature through effective interaction—comes to be seen in the pivotal role of the final arbiter of adequacy. We thus arrive at an interventionist theory of knowledge, one which sees the issue of monitoring the adequacy of our theorizing to reside ultimately on the side of efficacy in application. The conformity between the regulative presumptions and other methodological instrumentalities of inquiry and its results is not guaranteed by a preestablished harmony. Nor is it just a matter of contingent good luck. It is the product of an evolutionary pressure that assures the conformation of our systematizing efforts and the real world under trial and error subject to controlling constraint of applicative success (pragmatic efficacy). The evolutionary process assures the due coordination of our cognitive systematizing with the “objective” workings of a nature that is inherently indifferent to our purposes and beliefs. It is clear that if the legitimation of the regulative principles of cognitive systematization is construed as proceeding along such pragmatic/evolutionary lines, then these principles come to stand on an ultimately factual footing—one that is a posteriori and contingent. The “first principles” by whose means we constitute our factual knowledge of nature (uniformity, simplicity, and the other parameters of systematization that make up our guide-lines to plausibility) are themselves ultimately of an a posteriori and factual standing in point of their controlling force. Seemingly serving merely in the role of inputs to inquiry, they emerge in the final analysis as its products as well, and accordingly have a contingent rather than necessary status. The legitimation of our methodological guidelines to cognitive systematization in the factual domain is thus ultimately not a matter of abstract theoretical principle, but one of experience. Accordingly, our “first principles” of cognitive systematization have no claims to inherent “necessity.” Conceivably, things might have eventuated differently—even as concerns the seemingly a priori “first principles of our knowledge.” (Why didn’t they so eventuate? The question “Why these principles rather than something else?” is not illegitimate—it is indeed answerable in terms of the over-all double-circle of methodological legitimation.)

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Are such first principles a priori and analytic (a part of the “conceptual schema” of our science) or are they a posteriori and synthetic (a product of scientific inquiry)? This question now looks naïve—for they are both. The idea of a feedback cycle of evolutionary legitimation indicates that we are ill advised to put the question in terms of a logically tidy yes-or-no. Such first principles are thus “first” only in the first analysis. Their theoryinternal absoluteness is deceptive—it represents but a single phase within the historical dialectic of evolutionary legitimation. They do not mark the dead-end of a ne plus ultra. To be sure, all this is to say no more than that circumstances could arise in which even those very fundamental first principles that define for us the very idea of the intelligibility of nature might have to be given up. In a world sufficiently different from ours reliance on simplicity, uniformity, etc. could conceivably prove misleading and cognitively counterproductive. But to concede the possibility is not, of course, to grant the likelihood—let alone the reality—of the matter as regards our actual world. The first principles at issue are so integral a component of our rationality that we cannot even conceive of any rationality that dispenses with them: we can conceive that they might have to be abandoned, but not how. The very circumstance that these principles are in theory vulnerable is a source of their strength in fact. They have been tried in the history of science—tried long, hard, and often—and yet not found wanting. They are founded on a solid basis of trial in the harsh court of historical reality. Forming, as they do, an integral component of the cognitive methods that have evolved over the course of time it can be said that for them—as for all our other strictly methodological resources—“die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.” A quasi-Lamarckian process of rational selection is the key to quality control in the cognitive domain. 4. IDEAL COHERENCE In general terms, a coherence epistemology of truth has it that a proposition p is true iff it forms part of a suitably formed set of optimally coherent propositions. On such an approach, truth-recognition is accorded to generality-encompassing propositions regarding matters of fact propositions to reflect simply local characteristics of their own, but an ultimately global feature of their place in a larger context so that truth-qualification is not an isolated but a contextual characteristic.

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A common objection to the coherence theory of factual truth is that the linkage of coherence to truth is simply too loose for coherence to provide the definitive standard of truth. As one writer put it some years ago: It is quite conceivable that the coherence theory is a description of how the truth or falsehood of statements comes to be known rather than an analysis of the meaning of “true”. . . . One might agree that a given statement is accepted as true in virtue of standing in certain logical relations to other statements; still it would not follow that in calling it true one means to ascribe to it those relations.

Here we have the oft-repeated standard reservation regarding a coherence theory of truth: “Coherence may perhaps be suitable as a criterion for the true, but certainly not as a definitional standard of truth.” It can, however, be shown that if one is prepared to consider coherence in an idealized perspective—as optimal coherence with a perfected data base, rather than as a matter of manifest coherence with the actual data at our disposal—then an essential link between truth and coherence emerges. Supporters of a coherentist standard of truth must be able to establish that this criterion is duly consonant with the definitional nature of truth. For there ought rightfully to be a continuity of operation between our evidential criterion, of acceptability-as-true and the “truth”, as definitionally specified. Any really satisfactory criterion must be such as to yield the real thing—at any rate in sufficiently favorable circumstances. Fortunately for coherentism, it is possible to demonstrate rigorously that truth is tantamount to ideal coherence—that a proposition’s being true is in fact equivalent to its being optimally coherent with an ideal data base. This circumstance has far-reaching implications. Given that “the real truth” is guaranteed only by ideal coherence, we have no categorical assurance of the actual correctness of our coherence-guided inquiries, which are, after all, always incomplete and imperfect. This is amply substantiated by the history of science, which already shows that the “discoveries” about how things work in the world secured through scientific coherentism constantly require adjustment, correction, replacement. It is only too obvious that we cannot say that our coherence-grounded scientific theorizing furnishes us with the real (definitive) truth, but just that it furnishes us with the best estimate of the truth that we can achieve in the circumstances at hand. In characterizing a claim as true, we indicate that what it states corresponds to the facts, so that its assertion is in order. But while this factually

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(“stating which is the case,” “corresponding to the facts”) is what truth is all about, we cannot apply or implement it as such. It just does not provide an adequate basis on which the truth of claims can be determined. Thus while we have the equation to be true = to be (assertible as) factually correct we also will have to be determinable as true = capacity to meet certain conditions that can be taken as indicators of factual correctness. But these conditions of truth-determination are in their very nature conditions whose full realization is a matter of idealizationthat is, the conditions are such as to obtain only in ideal circumstances. As noted above, it is of the traditional objections to coherentism in that the coherence theory is unable to deal with the “problem of error”to be able to explain how it is that what is thought to be true might yet actually prove false. But, of course, the consideration that truth is a matter of ideal (rather than actually realized) coherence at once sweeps this difficulty aside. 5. TRUTH AS AN IDEALIZATION Definitive knowledge—as opposed to “merely putative” knowledge—is the fruit of perfected inquiry. Only here, at the idealized level of perfected science, could we count on securing the real truth about the world that “corresponds to reality” as the traditional phrase has it. Factual knowledge at the level of generality and precision at issue in scientific theorizing is akin to a perfect circle. Try as we will, we cannot quite succeed in producing it. We do our best and call the result knowledge—even as we call that carefully drawn “circle” on the blackboard a circle. But we realize full well that what we currently call scientific knowledge is no more authentic (perfected) knowledge than what we call a circle in a geometry diagram is an authentic (perfected) circle. Our “knowledge” is in such cases no more than our best estimate of the truth of things. Lacking the advantage of a God’seye view, we have no access to the world’s facts save through the mediation of (inevitably incomplete and thus always potentially flawed) inquiry. All we can do—and what must suffice us because indeed it is all that we

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can do—is to do the best we can with the cognitive state of the art to estimate “the correct” answers to our scientific questions. Definitive truth is realizable only by way of idealization: actual inquiry presents us with estimates of truth, in matters of scientific theorizing, the real truth as such is realizable only under ideal conditions. For the idea of a state-of-the-art in science that attains definitive finality in empirical inquiry is pie in the sky. It represents an idealization and not a matter of the practical politics of the epistemic domain. But it affords the focus imaginarius whose pursuit canalizes and structures our actions. It represents the ultimate objective (goal) of inquiry—the destination of an incompletable journey. The conception of the definitive capital-T Truth thus serves a negative and fundamentally regulative role to mark the fact that the place we have attained falls short of our capacity actually to realize our cognitive aspirations. It marks a fundamental contrast that regulates how we do and must view our claims to have got at the truth of things. It plays a role somewhat reminiscent of the functionary who reminded the Roman emperor of his mortality in reminding us that our pretensions to truth are always vulnerable. Contemplation of this ideal enables us to maintain the ever-renewed recognition of the essential ambiguity of the human condition as suspended between the reality of imperfect achievement and the ideal of an unattainable perfection. We must suppose that science does not and cannot ever actually attain an omega-condition of final perfection. The prospect of fundamental changes lying just around the corner can never be eliminated finally and decisively. A basic analogy obtains as per the following proportion: putative knowledge: actual inquiry :: genuine knowledge: ideal inquiry

Rational inquiry is the pursuit of an unattainable ideal—the ideal of “the real truth” about laws of nature as yielded by perfected science. Actual inquiry is no more than our best effort in this direction, and the information (the putative knowledge) that it yields is no more than our best available estimate of the real truth of things. Yet to abandon this conception of the truth as such—rejecting the idea of an “ideal science” which alone can properly be claimed to afford a grasp of reality—would be to abandon an idea which crucially regulates our view as to the nature and the status of the knowledge we claim to have about it.

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We would then no longer be constrained to characterize our truth as merely ostensible and purported but would be led to view it as real, authentic and final in a manner which as we cannot but realize it does not deserve. The lesson of these deliberations is clear: “the real truth” in scientific matters is not the actual product of current inquiry, but the hypothesized product of idealized inquiry. The conditions of objectivity and definitiveness we have in view in relation to “the real truth” are not satisfiable in the circumstances in which we do and unavoidably must labor. In this regard, we have no realistic alternative but to regard the truth in these matters as having an idealization. Conceptions such as definitive knowledge and truth in matters of scientific theorizing are idealizations geared to the idea of completed and perfected science. And this—all too obviously—is not something we have in hand. It is no more than a regulative ideal that guides and directs our efforts in question-resolving inquiry. Such an ideal is not (or should not be) something that is unhealthily unrealistic. It should produce not defeatism and negativity towards our efforts and their fruits, but rather a positive determination to do yet better and fill a half-full barrel yet fuller. It should give not our expectations of realized achievement but our aspirations, and should give not our demands but our hopes. Endowing us with a healthy skepticism towards what we actually have in hand, it should encourage our determination to further improvements and should act not as an obstacle but a goad. And here, as elsewhere, we must reckon appropriately with the standard gap between aspiration and attainment. In the practical sphere—in craftmanship, for example, or the cultivation of our health—we may strive for perfection, but cannot ever claim to attain it. And the situation in inquiry is exactly parallel with what we encounter in such other domains—ethics specifically included. The value of an ideal, even of one that is not realizable, lies not in the benefit of its attainment (obviously and ex hypothesi!) but in the benefits that accrue from its pursuit. The view that it is rational to pursue an aim only if we are in a position to achieve its attainment or approximation is mistaken; it can be perfectly valid (and entirely rational) if the indirect benefits of its pursuit and adoption are sufficient—if in striving after it, we realize relevant advantages to a substantial degree. An unattainable ideal can be enormously productive. And so, the legitimation of the ideas of “perfected science” lies in its facilitation of the ongoing evolution of inquiry. In this domain, we arrive at the perhaps odd-seeming posture of an invocation of practical utility for the validation of an ideal.

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And so the defense of coherentism against traditional objections comes clearly to view: • The objection that coherence does not determine truththat “truth” is not to be defined in terms of coherenceis met by accepting coherence as a criterion for (rather than definition of) truth. • The objection that all sorts of fictions can be just as coherent as the truth is to be met with the acknowledgement that what is at issue is not merely coherence as such but coherence with something, viz. with the plausible datawith information that has initial credibility on the basis of its inherent plausibility or the reliability of its sources. • The objection that alternative ways of forming what complexes is not with an instance or construing coherence in terms of a systematization that prioritizes factors like economy, simplicity, uniformity, elegance, etc. • The objection that the parameters of systematization that determine coherence must themselves be validated is met by taking a pragmatic turn towards those methodologies and procedures that produce results which exhibit applicative adequacyones that can be utilized effectively in matters not just of explanation but above all in matters of prediction and operational (i.e., technological) application. • The objection that there is no binding linkage between coherence and the truth as such is met by insisting that ideal coherencecoherence perfected under ideal conditions—is a definitive hallmark of the truth. For the connection at issue is not one of hermeneutics (of meaning-explication) but of criteriology.

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Chapter I/3 THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF COMMUNAL PRACTICES IN INQUIRY 1. CULTURAL EVOLUTION AS TELEOLOGICAL: RATIONAL SELECTION

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cientifically minded epistemologists nowadays incline to consider how the workings of the “mind” can be explained in terms of the operations of the “brain.”1 But this approach has its limits. Biological evolution is doubtless what accounts for the cognitive machinery whose functioning provides for our possession of intelligence, but explaining the ways in which we use it largely calls for a rather different sort of evolutionary approach, one that addresses the development of thought-procedures rather than that of thought-mechanisms—of “software” rather than “hardware”. What is at issue here is a matter of cultural-teleological evolution through a process of rational rather than Darwinian natural selection. Very different processes are accordingly at work, the one blind, as it were, the other purposive. (In particular, biological evolution reacts only to actually realized changes in environing conditions: cultural evolution in its advanced stages can react also to merely potential changes in condition through people’s capacity to think hypothetically and thereby to envision “what could happen if” certain changes occurred.) Once intelligence appears on the scene to any extent, no matter how small, it sets up pressures towards the enlargement of its scope, powerfully conditioning any and all future cultural evolution through the rational selection of processes and procedures on the basis of purposive efficacy. Rationality thus emerges as a key element in the evolutionary development of methods as distinguished from faculties. The “selective” survival of effective methods is not a blind and mechanical process produced by some inexorable agency of nature; rational agents place their bets in theory and practice in line with methods that prove themselves successful, tending to follow the guidance of those that succeed and to abandon—or readjust— those that fail. Once we posit a method-using community that functions under the guidance of intelligence—itself a factor of biologically evolutionary advantage—only a short step separates the pragmatic issue of the

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applicative success of its methods (of any sort) from the evolutionary issue of their historical survival. As long as these intelligent rational agents have a prudent concern for their own interests, the survival of relatively successful methods as against relatively unsuccessful ones is a foregone conclusion. Rational selection is a complex process that transpires not in a “population” but in a culture. It pivots on the tendency of a community of rational agents to adopt and perpetuate, through example and teaching, practices and modes of operation that are relatively more effective for the attainment of given ends than their available alternatives. Accordingly, the historical development of methods and modes of operation within a society of rational agents is likely to reflect a course of actual improvement. Rational agents involved in a course of trial and error experimentation with different processes and procedures are unlikely to prefer (for adoption by themselves and transmission to their successors) practices and procedures which are ineffective or inefficient. This line of consideration does not envision a direct causal linkage between the historical survival of method users and the functional effectiveness of their methods. The relationship is one of common causation. The intelligence that proves itself survival conducive also grounds functional efficacy. In consequence, survival in actual use of a method within a community of (realistic, normal) rational agents through this very fact affords evidence for its being successful in realizing its correlative purposes.2 These deliberations regarding rational selection have to this point been altogether general in their abstract bearing upon methodologies of any shape or description. They apply to methods across the board, and hold for methods for peeling apples as much as of methods for substantiating knowledge-claims. But let us now focus more restrictedly on specifically cognitive methods, and consider the development of the cognitive and material technology of intellectual production. There is certainly no need to exempt cognitive methodology from the range of rational selection in the evolution of methodologies. Quite to the contrary, there is every reason to think that the cognitive methods and information-engendering procedures that we deploy in forming our view of reality evolve selectively by an historic, evolutionary process of trial and error—analogous in role though different in character from the biological mutations affecting the bodily mechanisms by which we comport ourselves in the physical world. Accordingly, cognitive methods develop subject to revision in response to the element of “success and failure” in terms

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of the teleology of the practice of rational inquiry. An inquiry procedure is an instrument for organizing our experience into a systematized view of reality. And as with any tool or method or instrument, the paramount question takes the instrumentalistic form: Does it work? Does it produce the desired result? Is it successful in practice? Legitimation along these lines is found in substantial part on the fact of survival through historical vicissitudes in the context of this pivotal issue of “working out best.” This sort of legitimation has at the basis of the cultural development of our cognitive resources via the varieties and selective retention of our epistemically oriented intellectual products.3 It is clear that there are various alternative approaches to the problem of determining “how things work in the world.” The examples of such occult cognitive frameworks as those of numerology (with its benign ratios), astrology (with its astral influences), and black magic (with its mystic forces) indicate that alternative explanatory frameworks exist, and that these can have very diverse degrees of merit. But in the Western tradition the governing standards of human rationality are implicit in the goals of explanation, prediction, and preeminently control. (And thus the crucial factor is not, for example, sentimental “at-oneness with nature”—think of the magician vs. the mystic vs. the sage as cultural ideals.) And given the reasonable agent’s well-advised predilection for success in one’s ventures, the fact that the cognitive methods we employ have a good record of demonstrated effectiveness in regard to explanation, prediction, and control is not surprising but only to be expected; the community of rational inquirers would have given them up long ago were they not comparatively successful. The effectiveness of our cognitive methodology is thus readily accounted for on an evolutionary perspective based on rational selection and the requirements for survival through adoption and transmission. And the emergence of the principles of scientific understanding (simplicity, uniformity, and the like) is thus a matter of cultural rather than biological evolution subject to rational rather than natural selection; it proceeds through rationally guided trial and error in circumstances of a pragmatic preference for retaining those processes and procedures that prove theorists efficient and effective. Rational people are bound to have a strong bias for what works.4 And progress is swift because once rationality gains an inch, it wants a mile.

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2. THE RATIONALE OF TRUST AND THE EMERGENCE OF COLLABORATION The historical development of the social processes and practices that characterize the conduct of inquiry in its institutionalized setting in the domain of science afford a clear illustration of this phenomenon of rational selection. In any community of interacting rational agents, the pragmatic impetus conduces powerfully to the selection and retention of those practices that prove themselves to be teleologically successful and functionally costeffective in realizing the shared aims of the enterprise at hand. The modus operandi of the scientific community affords a clear illustration of this state of affairs. Consider, for example, customary practices of scientists, such as information sharing and open publication, a credit system based on the principle that being first is everything, and a rigoristic intolerance of plagiarism cheating,5 data forgery, and other modes of dishonesty. Rational selection militates towards their emergence and consolidation among scientists because all such practices are cost-effective relative to the goal structure of the scientific enterprise. In particular, the development of the institutional groundrules of science can best be understood on this basis. Its motive force is self-interest since to be helpful to others when in so doing we are, to all intents and purposes, helping them to be helpful to us. Contrast two hypothetical communities: The Trusters and the Distrusters. The Trusters operate on the principle “Be candid yourself! And accept what other people say as truthful—at any rate in the absence of counterindications.” The Distrusters operate on the principle: “Be deceitful yourself. And look on the assertions of others in the same light—as ventures in deception and deceit. (Even when ostensibly being truthful, they are only trying to lure you into a false sense of security.)” It is clear once again that the policy of the Distrusters is totally destructive of communication. If the accession of information for the enhancement of our knowledge through communication and exchange is the aim of the enterprise, the process of distrust is totally counterproductive. In intellectual as in financial commerce, trust is essential to the maintenance of universally beneficial institutions. Not only is the maintenance of credibility an asset to communication, but some degree of it is in fact an outright necessity. The precept “Protect your credibility; do not play fast and loose with the social groundrules, but

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safeguard your place in the community of communicators” is basic to the entire project of communication. And so, practices which discernibly lead in this direction are for that very reason the more likely to be tried and, once tried, retained. A society of communicators is accordingly destined to evolve under the pressure of rational self-interest into a kind of mutual-aid association whose members are engaged in a collaboration to create and maintain a fabric of trust. For, clearly, everyone benefits from a system (modus operandi) which maintains the best balance of costs and benefits for each of us in this matter of creating a communally usable pool of information. It is easily seen that a contrary practice—one which takes a skeptical or agnostic stance towards the declarations of others—would be disastrous. For if, instead of treating those with whom one communicates on the basis of “innocent until proven guilty,” one were to treat them on the lines of “not trustworthy until proven otherwise,” this procedure would clearly prove vastly less economic. We would now have to go to great lengths in independent verification before we could achieve any informative benefits from the communicative contributions of others. We know that various highly “convenient” principles of knowledgeproduction are simply false: —What seems to be, is. —What people say is true. —The simplest patterns that fit the data are actually correct. We realize full well that such generalizations do not hold—however nice it would be if they did. Nevertheless, throughout the conduct of inquiry we accept them as principles of presumption. We follow the higher-level meta-rule “In the absence of concrete indications to the contrary, proceed as though such principles were true—that is, accept what seems to be (what people say, etc.) as true.” The justification of this step as a measure of practical procedure is not the factual consideration that, “In proceeding in this way, you will come at correct information—you will not fall into error.” Rather it is the methodological justification: “In proceeding in this way you will efficiently foster the interests of the cognitive enterprise and the benefits will—on the whole—outweigh the costs.” Any group of mutually communicating rational inquirers is fated in the

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end to become a community of sorts, bound together by a shared practice or trust and cooperation, simply through self-interest operating under the pressure of economic advantage. For when nature (“the operating environment”) can be seen to function in such a way to reward a center course of action, rational people will obviously favor this course in what they do, and thereby in their teaching by example (if not also by precept). This sort of process works on other fronts as well. Consider such operational rules as: Be clear: Formulate your findings intelligently, avoid imprecision, equiorition, obscurity, etc. Be honest: Do not manipulate data, distort findings, misrepresent work, etc. Be careful: Do not be sloppy, indifferent to precision and exactness, heedless of pitfalls, etc. Be openminded: Do not ignore difficulties, neglect alternative possibilities, etc. Be ambitious: Strive for generality, elegance, etc. All such groundrules of scientific practice have been developed and consolidated because they are cost-effective within the setting of the project of inquiry. They are procedures that have as their economically cogent rationale the characteristic feature of being the cheapest (most convenient) way for us to secure the data needed for answers to our questions about the world we live in. The considerations of efficacy that lie at the root of rational selection speak loud and clear on their behalf. As one recent theorist insightfully observes: In science . . . the ultimate goal is not the transmission of genes but of ideas. Scientists behave as selflessly as they do because it is in their own selfinterest to do so. The best thing that a scientist can do for his own career is to get his ideas accepted as his ideas by his fellow scientists. Scientists acknowledge the contribution made by other scientists because it is in their own best self-interest to do so.6

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Rational agents are constantly impelled by the impetus of evident advantage towards a system of cooperative social practices—an operational code that serves the aims and objectives inherent in the scientific enterprise. The relevant modes of mutually helpful behavior—sharing, candor, and trustworthiness—are all strongly in everyone’s interest, enabling each member to draw benefit and advantage from his own purposes. In the circumstances, cooperation emerges not necessarily from morality but even from mere self-interest. Cognitive and biological evaluation alike are replete with situations in which self-interest simulates altruism—in which the inherents “doing the right thing” acknowledges the species and this agent with it. 3. THE PRACTICES OF A “SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY” The free exchange of “the scientific literature” further illustrates this state of affairs. Such an open literature initially impels the community of inquirers towards becoming a mutual assistance society and thereafter sustains it as such. Even if (contrary to fact) individual credit for one’s own contributions were not forthcoming through “professional recognition,” it would still be well worthwhile for individuals to enter into such an arrangement. For this obviously redounds to their interests in furthering their own work—at any rate as long as intellectual curiosity is a motivating factor for them. The commodity of information illustrates rather than contravenes the division of labor that results for Adam Smith’s putative innate human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.” The market in knowledge has pretty much the same nature and the same motivation as any other sort of market—it is a general-interest arrangement. To be sure, it is by no means the case that the evolutionarily relevant cost-benefit advantage lies wholly on the side of cooperation. Competition also has its role to play. Cooperation is useful and indeed necessary in bringing budding scientists up to the frontier of current inquiry. But in moving that frontier forward—in innovation—competition has a crucial role to play. It is illuminating in this regard to consider the reward system of science. When evaluating people’s contributions why do scientists accord such great value to priority? Why make scientific discovery a “winner takes all” process, as in political election? (After all, as long as the work was done independently and accomplished within the same “state of the art,”

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the achievement is surely just as great?) The answer lies largely in the circumstance that this provides a maximum incentive to creative effort. Moreover, the interests of the community require avoidance of duplication of effort. The originality-promoting principle that “once done it’s a dead issue” gives powerful assurance that people will not work in “dried-up” areas. The reward system of science is by and large designed to promote aims and objectives of the enterprise in the most efficient way. This is clearly illustrated by the emergency of a reward system that apportions credit for scientific discoveries in line with their inherent importance. Good quality work is lauded to the skies and highly rewarded in “professional recognition” and other rewards while poor quality work is ignored. Such a system obviously fosters the interest of the enterprise-ingeneral, in which its participants all have a substantial stake. The scientific community is self-policing (to an extent that, for example, police departments or the medical community are not) because of mutual dependency— people are in a position where they chance to make use of each others work in the course of doing their own. Note that even apart from the aforementioned considerations of rewards and incentives, powerful considerations of economic cost-effectiveness militate against anonymity in scientific and scholarly publication. Identification is advantageous through enabling readers to make some initial discrimination between the presumably competent work of people who, having gained good reputations through competent work, have something at risk. And their identification is clearly also a guarantor of care and conscientiousness for those who still “have to make their name” in the field. Blind publication would have the substantial disadvantage of entailing the loss of useful information. (Contemplate a scientific journal of anonymous results.) The upshot of such deliberations is straightforward. The codes of practice by which we humans pursue the project of serious inquiry in science is the product of rational selection. The systematic practices that constitute the modus operandi of “the scientific community” in its various characteristic aspects are in the main products of a cultural evolution proceeding under the governing directive of functional effectiveness. They have emerged under the teleological pressure of purposive efficacy as the product of a fundamentally rational process of perpetuating—through acculturation, preaching, teaching, role-modelling, and the like—just those practices that are cost-effective in facilitating the efficient realization of the objectives that characterize the scientific enterprise. The factors of

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effectiveness and efficiency have operated to assure that the real is rational in this regard. NOTES 1

See, for example, P. M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) and P. S. Churchland, Neurophysiology: Towards a Unified Science for the Mind-Brain (Cambridge, MA, 1986).

2

No recent writer has stressed more emphatically than F. A. Hayek the deep inherent rationality of historical processes in contrast to the shallower calculations of a calculating intelligence that restricts its view to the agenda of the recent day. See especially his book, The Political Order of a Free People [Chicago, 1979], Volume 3 of “Law, Liberty, and Civilization.”

3

The French school of sociology of knowledge envisioned a competition among and natural/rational selection of culturally diverse modes of procedure in accounting for the evolution of logical and scientific thought. Compare Louis Rougier, Trait de la Connaisance (Paris, 1955), esp. pp. 426-428.

4

These present deliberations have a close kinship with the “epigentic rules” that figure prominently in Michael Ruse’s fine book on Taking Darwin Seriously (Oxford, 1986). The only significant divergence is that Ruse sees the rules at issue as having a predominantly biological basis where the present discussion sees their basis as predominantly cultural.

5

Compare J. R. Cole and S. Cole, “The Ortega Hypothesis,” Science, vol. 178 (1972), pp. 368-375, and also their Social Stratifications in Science (Chicago, 1973).

6

David L. Hull, “Altruism in Science: A Sociobiological Model of Co-Operative Behavior Among Scientists,” Animal Behavior, vol. 26 (1978), pp. 685-697. Hull’s writings carry much grist to the mill at work in this section.

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Chapter I/4 ON COGNITIVE ECONOMICS 1. THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION OF KNOWLEDGE: COSTS AND BENEFITS

F

rom the very start, students of cognition have approached the issues of epistemology from a purely theoretical angle, viewing this field not as the study of knowledge-acquisition, but quite literally as the theory of knowledge-possession. However, in taking this approach one looses sight of something critically important, namely that there is a seriously practical and pragmatic aspect to knowledge in whose absence important features of the idea are destined to be neglected or, even worse, misunderstood. And in particular, what we are going to loose sight of is the profoundly economic dimension of knowledge development. Knowledge indeed has a significant economic dimension because of its substantial involvement with costs and benefits. Many aspects of the way we acquire, maintain, and use our knowledge can be understood and explained properly only from an economic point of view. Attention to economic considerations regarding the costs and benefits of the acquisition and management of information can help us both to account for how people proceed in cognitive matters and to provide normative guidance toward better serving the aims of the enterprise. Any theory of knowledge that ignores this economic aspect does so at the risk of its own adequacy. With us humans, the imperative to understanding is something altogether basic: things being as they are, we cannot function, let alone thrive, without knowledge of what goes on about us. The need for information, for knowledge to nourish the mind, is every bit as critical as the need for food to nourish the body. Cognitive vacuity or dissonance is as distressing to us as physical pain. Bafflement and ignorance—to give suspensions of judgment the somewhat harsher name that is their due—exact a substantial price from us. The quest for cognitive orientation in a difficult world represents a deeply practical requisite for us. That basic demand for information and understanding presses in upon us and we must do (and are pragmatically justified in doing) what is needed for its satisfaction. For us, cogni-

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tion is the most practical of matters because knowledge fulfils an acute practical need. Homo sapiens has evolved within nature to fill the ecological niche of an intelligent being. The demand for understanding, for a cognitive accommodation to one’s environment, for “knowing one’s way about,” is among the most fundamental requirements of the human condition. Humans are Homo quaerens. We have questions for which we want and indeed need answers. The demand for information, for cognitive orientation in our environment, is as pressing a human need as that for food itself. We are rational animals and must feed our minds even as we must feed our bodies. In pursuing information, as in pursuing food, we have to settle for the best we can get at the time, regardless of its imperfections. Throughout modern times philosophers have divided their field into two main domains, the theoretical and the practical, the one oriented to the articulation of knowledge, the other to matters of decision and action.1 The school of thought that most decidedly rejected this approach is that of Pragmatism. From Peirce to Dewey and beyond, pragmatists have argued that no Chinese Wall can be erected between theoretical and practical philosophy. They have sensibly maintained that both the development of knowledge itself and theorizing about it must be seen as a praxis, at the same time insisting that we must cultivate this praxis under the guidance of theory. Put in Kantian terms, their position is that praxis is blind without theory and theory empty without praxis. Just this holistic view of the matter mandates an economic perspective. For any human activity—rational inquiry and theorizing included— demands the deployment of resources (time, energy, effort, ingenuity). And no view of reality is acceptable to us—no model of the world’s operation accessible—without the expenditure of effort and the risk of error. Any adequate philosophically grounded understanding of the nature and ramification of knowledge cannot but see information as a product that must be produced, systematized, disseminated and utilized in ways that are inherent to economic processes in general. What interests philosophers and economists in their shared concern for cognition will doubtless differ. But one fundamental fact links their deliberations in symbiotic unity. A philosophy of knowledge that does not acknowledge and exploit the subject’s interest in the economic realities is in significant measure destined to be an exercise in futility. As these deliberations indicate, the economic perspective of cost and benefits has a direct

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and significant bearing on matters of information acquisition and management. The introduction of such an economic perspective does not of course detract from the value of the quest for knowledge as an intrinsically worthy venture with a perfectly valid l’art pour l’art aspect. But as Charles S. Peirce emphasized, one must recognize the inevitably economic aspect of any rational human enterprise—inquiry included. It has come to be increasingly apparent in recent years that knowledge is cognitive capital, and that its development involves the creation of intellectual assets, in which both producers and users have a very real interest. Knowledge, in short, is a good of sorts—a commodity on which one can put a price tag and which can be bought and sold. Like many another commodity, its acquisition involves not just money alone but other resources, such as time, effort, and ingenuity. Why pursue cognitive economy? Why strive for the most economical resolution of the issues before us? After all, we have no categorical assurance that the most economical—the simplest, most uniform, and symmetrical, etc.—is actually correct. Rather, we do so because economy is a decider, a means to definiteness. Resources can be expended in this way or that. Economy eliminates alternatives. In cognition as in life, there will be many possible paths leading towards a distinction and alternatives proliferate here. But there is generally only one that is the usual economics of effort. Economy thus serves as a decision principle. It guides investigation. It need not lead immediately to the correct situation. But in tracking economy along the pathway of the best-option alternatives, we are bound to arrive at the best available resolution in the most efficient and cost-minimizing way. 2. VIRTUE COMPLEMENTARITY IN EPISTEMOLOGY So much for economy. Turning now to other philosophical concerns, let us begin with Niels Bohr’s epistemic illustration of complementarity. It is a basic principle of this field that increased confidence in the correctness of our estimates can always be secured at the price of decreased accuracy. For in general an inverse relationship obtains between the definiteness or precision of our information and its substantiation: detail and security stand in a competing relationship. We estimate the height of the tree at around 25 feet. We are quite sure that the tree is 25r5 feet high. We are virtually certain that its height is 25r10 feet. But we can be completely and absolutely sure that its height is between 1 inch and 100 yards. Of this we are

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 COGNITIVE BENEFITS I. Theoretical —Answering our questions about how things stand in the world and how its processes function. —Guiding our expectations by way of anticipation. II. Practical —Guiding our actions in ways that enable us to control (parts of) the course of events.

____________________________________________________________ “completely sure” in the sense that we are “absolutely certain,” “certain beyond the shadow of a doubt,” “as certain as we can be of anything in the world,” “so sure that we would be willing to stake your life on it,” and the like. For any sort of estimate whatsoever there is always a characteristic trade-off relationship between the evidential security of the estimate, on the one hand (as determinable on the basis of its probability or degree of acceptability), and on the other hand its contentual detail (definiteness, exactness, precision, etc.). And so these two factors—security and detail—stand in a relation of inverse proportionality, as per the picture of Display 2. This situation was adumbrated by the French physicist Pierre Maurice Duhem (1981–1916) and may accordingly be called “Duhem’s Law.”2 In his classic work on the aim and structure of physical theory, Duhem wrote as follows: A law of physics possesses a certainty much less immediate and much more difficult to estimate than a law of common sense, but it surpasses the latter by the minute and detailed precision of its predictions ... The laws of physics can acquire this minuteness of detail only by sacrificing something of the fixed and absolute certainty of common-sense laws. There is a sort of teetertotter of balance between precision and certainty: one cannot be increased except to the detriment of the other.3

In effect, these two factors—security and detail—stand in a teeter-totter relation of inverse proportionality, much as with physical complementarity. While in many cases the virtue complementarity at issue rests on a contingent basis. However, in the present case of security vs. detail it is—or

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____________________________________________________________ Display 2 THE COMPLEMENTARITY TRADE-OFF BETWEEN SECURITY AND DEFINITENESS IN ESTIMATION increasing security (s)

s x d = c (constant)

increasing detail (d) NOTE: The shaded region inside the curve represents the parametric range of achievable information, with the curve indicating the limit of what is realizable. The concurrent achievement of great detail and security is impracticable.

____________________________________________________________ should be—clear that the complementarity at issue rests on conceptual rather than contingent considerations. Or consider another epistemological example of such complementarity. There are only so many hours in a day and thus only so many in a workday and a work-life. And so, if the extent/range of someone’s knowledge is measured by the number of items of information this individual ever processes and the depth/profundity of this knowledge is measured by the amount of attention these items receive, we will have it that extent and depth trade off against one another in much the same see-saw manner as with the security/detail balance of Display 2. Accordingly, a further epistemic situation of virtue complementarity clearly obtains as between the extent and the depth of an individual’s knowledge. And in this instance the relationship at issue is not something contingent but lies in the inevitable nature of things. In the era of the knowledge evolution, exponential growth in the extent of information overall means exponential decay in the information of individuals—an era of exploding superficiality. Continuing along such lines, let it be noted that there are two significantly different sorts of errors, namely errors of commission and errors of omission. For it is only too clear that errors of commission are not the only sort of misfortune there are. Ignorance, lack of information, cognitive disconnection from the world’s course of things—in short, errors of omission—are also negativities of substantial proportions, and this too is something we must work into our reckoning. Both are negativities and obvi-

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ously need to be avoided insofar as possible in any sensible inquiry process. With error-avoidance in matters of cognition the trade-off between errors of type 1 and errors of type 2—between improper negatives and false positives—is critical in this connection. For instance, an inquiry process of any realistically operable sort is going to deem some falsehoods acceptable and some truths not. And the more we fiddle with the arrangement to decrease the one sort of error, the more we manage to increase the other. The by now familiar teeter-totter relationship obtains here once more. For unfortunately the reality of it is that any given epistemic program—any sort of process or policy of belief formation—will answer to the situation of Display 3. In discerning between the sheep and the goats, any general decision process will either allow too many goats into the sheepfold or exclude too many sheep from its purview. The cognitive realities being what they are, perfection is simply unattainable here. To be sure, agnosticism is a sure-fire safeguard against errors of commission in cognitive matters. If you accept nothing then you accept no falsehoods. But error avoidance as such does not bring one much closer to knowing how pancakes are actually made. The aims of inquiry are not necessarily enhanced by the elimination of cognitive errors of commission. For if in eliminating such an error we simply leave behind a blank and for a wrong answer substitute no answer at all we have simply managed to exchange an error of commission for one of omission. Accordingly, a situation of desideratum complementarity obtains here requiring a trade-off between the values at issue: How much gain in one is needed to compensate for how much loss in the other? And such situations crop up in many epistemic contacts as Display 3 illustrates. Overall then we face the reality that there is an effectively inevitable trade-off among the cognitive virtues. The benefits gained by an increase in one gets counterbalanced by the cost of decrease in another. This state of things comes to the fore when we consider the problem of skepticism. 3. SKEPTICISM AND RISK The scientific researcher, the inquiring philosopher, and the plain man, all desire and seek for information about the “real” world. The skeptic rejects their efforts as vain and their hopes as foredoomed to disappointment from the very outset. As he sees it, any and all sufficiently trustworthy informa-

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____________________________________________________________ Display 3 THE PREDICAMENT OF COGNITIVE PROCEEDINGS errors of commission

errors of omission

____________________________________________________________ tion about factual matters is simply unavailable as a matter of general principle. To put such a radical skepticism into a sensible perspective, it is useful to consider the issue of cognitive rationality in the light of the situation of risk taking in general. For cognitive efficacy calls for a judicious balance between vacuity and potential error. There are three very different sorts of personal approaches to risk and three very different sorts of personalities corresponding to these approaches, as follows: Type 1: Risk avoiders Type 2: Risk calculators 2.1: cautious 2.2: daring Type 3: Risk seekers The type 1, risk-avoidance, approach calls for risk aversion and evasion. Its adherents have little or no tolerance for risk and gambling. Their approach to risk is altogether negative. Their mottos are: “Take no chances,” “Always expect the worst,” and “Play it safe.” The type 2, risk-calculating, approach to risk is more realistic. It is a guarded middle-of-the-road position, based on due care and calculation. It comes in two varieties. The type 2.1, cautiously calculating, approach sees risk taking as subject to a negative presumption, which can however, be defeated by suitably large benefits. Its line is: “Avoid risks unless it is relatively clear that a suitably large gain beckons at sufficiently suspicious odds.” It reflects the path of prudence and guarded caution. The type 2.2,

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daringly calculating, approach sees risk taking as subject to a positive presumption, which can, however, be defeated by suitably large negativities. Its line is: “Be prepared to take risks unless it is relatively clear that an unacceptably large loss threatens at sufficiently inauspicious odds.” It reflects the path of optimistic hopefulness. The type 3, risk-seeking, approach sees risk as something to be welcomed and courted. Its adherents close their eyes to danger and take a rosy view of risk situations. The mind of the risk seeker is intent on the delightful situation of a favorable issue of events: the sweet savor of success is already in his nostrils. Risk seekers are chance takers and go-for-broke gamblers. They react to risk the way an old warhorse responds to the sound of the musketry: with eager anticipation and positive relish. Their motto is: “Things will work out.” In matters of cognition, the skeptic accepts nothing, the evidentialist only the chosen few, the syncretist virtually anything. In effect, the positions at issue in skepticism, syncretism, and evidentialism simply replicate, in the specifically cognitive domain, the various approaches to risks at large. It must, however, be recognized that in general two fundamentally different kinds of misfortunes are possible in situations where risks are run and chances taken: 1. We reject something that, as it turns out, we should have accepted. We decline to take the chance, we avoid running the risk at issue, but things turn out favorably after all, so that we lose out on the gamble. 2. We accept something that, as it turns out, we should have rejected. We do take the chance and run the risk at issue, but things go wrong, so that we lose the gamble. If we are risk seekers, we will incur few misfortunes of the first kind, but, things being what they are, many of the second kind will befall us. On the other hand, if we are risk avoiders, we shall suffer few misfortunes of the second kind, but shall inevitably incur many of the first. The overall situation has the general structure depicted in Display 4. Clearly, the reasonable thing to do is to adopt a policy that minimizes misfortunes overall. It is thus evident that both type 1 and type 3 approaches will, in general, fail to be rationally optimal. Both approaches engender too many misfortunes for comfort. The sensible and prudent thing

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is to adopt the middle-of-the-road policy of risk calculation, striving as best we can to balance the positive risks of outright loss against the negative ones of lost opportunity. Rationality thus counterindicates approaches of type 1 and type 2. Instead, it takes line of the counsel, “Neither avoid nor court risks, but manage them prudently in the search for an overall minimization of misfortunes.” The rule of reason calls for sensible management and a prudent calculation of risks; it standardly enjoins upon us the Aristotelian golden mean between the extremes of risk avoidance and risk seeking. Turning now to the specifically cognitive case, it will be clear that the skeptic succeeds splendidly in averting misfortunes of the second kind. He makes no errors of commission; by accepting nothing, he accepts nothing false. But, of course, he loses out on the opportunity to obtain any sort of information. The skeptic thus errs on the side of safety, even as the syncretist errs on that of gullibility. The sensible course is clearly that of a prudent calculation of risks. Ultimately, then, we face a question of value trade-offs. Are we prepared to run a greater risk of mistakes to secure the potential benefit of an enlarged understanding? In the end, the matter is one of priorities—of safety as against information, of ontological economy as against cognitive advantage, of an epistemological risk aversion as against the impetus to understanding. The ultimate issue is one of values and priorities, weighing the negativity of ignorance and incomprehension against the risk of mistakes and misinformation. And here the skeptics’ insistence on safety at any price is simply unrealistic, and it is so on the essentially economic basis of a sensible balance of costs and benefits. Risk of error is worth running because it is unavoidable in the context of the cognitive project of rational inquiry. Here as elsewhere, the situation is simply one of nothing ventured, nothing gained. Since Greek antiquity, various philosophers have answered our present question, “Why accept anything at all?,” by taking the line that man is a rational animal. Qua animal, he must act, since his very survival depends upon action. But qua rational being, he cannot act availingly, save insofar as his actions are guided by his beliefs, by what he accepts. This argument has been revived in modern times by a succession of pragmatically minded thinkers, from David Hume to William James. On the present perspective, then, it is the negativism of automatically frustrating our basic cognitive aims (no matter how much the skeptic himself may be willing to turn his back upon them) that constitutes the salient

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____________________________________________________________ Display 4 RISK ACCEPTANCE AND MISFORTUNES Misfortune of kind 1 Misfortune of kind 2 Number of (significant) misfortunes

0

50

100

Increasing risk acceptance (in % of situations) Type 1 (Risk avoiders)

Type 2.1 (Cautious calculators)

Type 2.2 (Daring calculators)

Type 3 (Risk seekers)

____________________________________________________________ theoretical impediment to skepticism in the eyes of most sensible people. The crucial defect of skepticism is that it is simply uneconomic. 5. WHEN IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE ENOUGH? The cognitive enterprise of information acquisition through rational inquiry is a vast venture in decision making—of deciding which questions to pursue, which possible question-resolutions to take seriously, which answers to accept as correct and (at least putatively) true. The last of these issues is particularly crucial. Almost immediately further information on a given issue can always be secured. So why not always simply suspend judgment until all possibly relevant information is at hand—which may well of course never happen. When is the evidence enough to give us rational warrant for endorsing/directing an answer? Consider the following situation. I face a decision, which I can either resolve now or later on, after a further inquiry which will cost me a certain amount C. Let us suppose that making the decision correctly brings a return of gain G and making it incorrectly exacts the penalty of a loss in rela-

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tion to G, and so will yield G – L. Moreover, I cannot at present determine the correct answer; as I see it, my decision can go either way, 50:50. Then at present my expectation is: ½ G + ½ (G - L) = G – ½ L But after making the further inquiry needed to settle the matter—thus expending C—my expectation will be: G–C Accordingly undertaking that further inquiry will be worth while as long as G–C>G–½L That is, as long as ½L>C The crux of the matter is—obviously enough—the comparison of the negativity of error with the cost of removing its prospect by further inquiry. To be sure, with respect to many issues the gathering of further evidence can prove to be not impracticable but pointless. To arrive at a diagnosis, here the physician can observe his patient one more day and he can insist that some further tests be done. If the chances of error are very small and the penalty of error very small as well, there is little point in pushing for greater evidential assurance. The crux here is the fundamentally economic question of whether the advantages of a secure decision are costeffectively worthwhile in relation to the disadvantages of delay and the added costs of further inquiry. To be sure, some questions just cannot be resolved by any finite amount of effort. What is known as the “halting problem” in pure mathematics is relevant here. It envisions the prospect of calculations where there is never any way of deciding that we have done enough, where the prospect of a change of situations can never be ruled out at any particular stage whatsoever. Consider, for example, the decimal expansions of S and of 2 , respectively:

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3.14159 ... 2.14142 ... And now pose the question of the existence of a value of n when the nth place of the S expansion duplicates that of the 2 expansion, for 100 successive times. No matter how far we carry out our calculations with negative results, we can never rule out that there will be no value of n that would do the job. Such issues are matters of speculative conjecture that intrigue and challenge theorists. Even where they cannot be settled the attempt at their resolution often brings interesting and far-reaching facts to life. But were it not for those collateral benefits of potential value in other contexts, a stage could well be reached where the expenditure of further effort on the matter would simply not be worthwhile. 6. DIMINISHING RETURNS Quality and quantity are factors that play every bit as significant a role in matters of knowledge as elsewhere. They are usually seen as terms of contrast. So regarded, the idea quantifying quality would be seen as a contradiction in terms. But this does not do justice to the actual situation—and in particular not as regards knowledge. Knowledge in effect is high—grand information—information that is cognitively significant. And the significance of incrementally new information can be measured in terms of how much it adds, and thus by the ratio of the increment of new information to the volume of information already in hand: •I/I. Thus knowledge-constituting significant information is determined through the proportional extent of the change effected by a new item in the preexisting situation (independently of what that preexisting situation is). In milking additional information for cognitively significant insights it is generally the proportion of the increase that matters: its percentage rather than its brute amount. And so, with high-quality information or knowledge it is a control matter of how much a piece of information 'I added to the total of what was available heretofore I. Looking from this perspective at the development of knowledge as a sum-total of such augmentations we have it that the total of high-grade information comes to:

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dI K = ³ I | log I On this basis, viewing knowledge as significant information we have it that the body of knowledge stands not as the mean amount of information-todate but rather merely as its logarithm. We have here an epistemic principle that might be called The Law of Logarithmic Returns. The Law of Logarithmic Returns has substantial implications for the rate of scientific progress.4 For while one cannot hope to predict the content of future science, the knowledge/information-relationship does actually put us into a position to make plausible estimates about its volume. To be sure, there is, on this basis, no inherent limit to the possibility of future progress in scientific knowledge. But the exploitation of this theoretical prospect gets ever more difficult, expensive, and demanding in terms of effort and ingenuity. New findings of equal significance require ever greater aggregate efforts. Accordingly, the historical situation has been one of a constant progress of science as a cognitive discipline notwithstanding its exponential growth as a productive enterprise (as measured in terms of resources, money, manpower, publications, etc).5 If we look at the cognitive situation of science in its quantitative aspect, the Law of Logarithmic Returns pretty much says it all. On its perspective, the struggle to achieve cognitive mastery over nature presents a succession of ever-escalating demands, with the exponential growth in the enterprise associated with a merely linear growth in the discipline. 7. PLANCK’S PRINCIPLE It is not too difficult to come by a plausible explanation for the sort of information/knowledge relationship that is represented by our K | log I measure. The principal reason for such a K/I imbalance may lie in the efficiency of intelligence in securing a view of the modus operandi of a world whose law-structure is comparatively simple. For here one can learn a disproportionate amount of general fact from a modest amount of information. (Note that whenever an infinite series of 0’s and 1’s, as per 01010101 ..., is generated—as this series indeed is—by a relatively simple law, then this circumstance can be gleaned from a comparatively short initial segment of this series.) In rational inquiry we try the simple solutions first, and only if and when they cease to work—when they are ruled out by further findings (by some further influx of coordinating information)—do we move on to the

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more complex. Things go along smoothly until an oversimple solution becomes destabilized by enlarged experience. We get by with the comparatively simpler options until the expanding information about the world’s modus operandi made possible by enhanced new means of observation and experimentation demands otherwise. But with the expansion of knowledge new accessions set ever increasing demands. The implications for cognitive progress of this disparity between mere information and authentic knowledge are not difficult to discern. Nature imposes increasing resistance barriers to intellectual as to physical penetration. Consider the analogy of extracting air for creating a vacuum. The first 90 % comes out rather easily. The next 9 % is effectively as difficult to extract than all that went before. The next .9 is proportionally just as difficult. And so on. Each successive order-of-magnitude step involves a massive cost for lesser progress; each successive fixed-size investment of effort yields a substantially diminished return. The circumstance that the increase of information carries with it a merely logarithmic return in point of increased knowledge suggests that nature imposes a resistance barrier to intellectual as much as to physical penetration. Intellectual progress is exactly the same: when we extract actual knowledge (i.e., high-grade, nature-descriptively significant information) from mere information of the routine, common “garden variety,” the same sort of quantity/quality relationship is obtained. Initially a sizable proportion of the available is high grade—but as we press further this proportion of what is cognitively significant gets ever smaller. To double knowledge we must quadruple information. As science progresses, the important discoveries that represent real increases in knowledge are surrounded by an ever vaster penumbra of mere items of information. (The mathematical literature of the day yields an annual crop of over 200,000 new theorems.6) In the ongoing course of scientific progress, the earlier investigations in the various departments of inquiry are able to skim the cream, so to speak: they take the “easy pickings,” and later achievements of comparable significance require ever deeper forays into complexity and call for an everincreasing bodies of information. (And it is important to realize that this cost-increase is not because latter-day workers are doing better science, but simply because it is harder to achieve the same level of science: one must dig deeper or search wider to achieve results of the same significance as before.) This situation is reflected in Max Planck’s appraisal of the problems of scientific progress. He wrote that “with every advance [in science]

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the difficulty of the task is increased; ever larger demands are made on the achievements of researchers, and the need for a suitable division of labor becomes more pressing.”7 The Law of Logarithmic Returns would at once both characterize and explain this circumstance of what can be termed Planck’s Principle of Increasing Effort to the effect that substantial findings are easier to come by in the earlier phase of a new discipline and become ever more difficult in the natural course of progress. A great deal of impressionistic and anecdotal evidence certainly points towards the increasing costs of high-level science. Scientists frequently complain that “all the easy researches have been done.”8 The need for increasing specialization and division of labor is but one indication of this. A devotee of scientific biography cannot help noting the disparity between the immense output and diversified fertility in the productive careers of the scientific colossi of earlier days and the more modest scope of the achievements of their latter-day successors. As science progresses within any of its established branches, there is a marked increase in the over-all resource-cost of realizing scientific findings of a given level intrinsic significance (by essentially absolutistic standards of importance).9 And this at once explains a change in the structure of scientific work that has frequently been noted: first-rate results in science nowadays come less and less from the efforts of isolated workers but rather from cooperative efforts in the great laboratories and research institutes.10 The idea that science is not only subject to a principle of escalating costs, but also to a law of diminishing returns as well is due to the 19th century American philosopher of science Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). In his pioneering 1878 essay on “Economy of Research” Peirce put the issue in the following terms: We thus see that when an investigation is commenced, after the initial expenses are once paid, at little cost we improve our knowledge, and improvement then is especially valuable; but as the investigation goes on, additions to our knowledge cost more and more, and, at the same time, are of less and less worth. All the sciences exhibit the same phenomenon, and so does the course of life. At first we learn very easily, and the interest of experience is very great; but it becomes harder and harder, and less and less worthwhile ... (Collected Papers, Vol. VII [Cambridge, Mass., 1958], sect. 7.144.)

The growth of knowledge over time involves ever-escalating demands. Progress is always possible—there are no absolute limits. More information will always yield proportionality greater knowledge. For the increase

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of knowledge over time stands to the increase of information in a proportion fixed by the inverse of the volume of already available information: d d 1 dI K | dt log I = dt dt I The more knowledge we already have in hand, the slower (by very rapid decline) will be the rate at which knowledge grows with newly acquired information. As noted above, with the progress of inquiry, the larger the body of available information, the smaller will be the proportion of this information that represents real knowledge. Consider an example. In regard to the literature of science, it is readily documented that the number of books, of journals, of journal-papers has been increasing exponentially over the recent period.11 Indeed, the volume of familiar fact that scientific information has been growing at an average of some 5 percent annually throughout the last two centuries, manifesting exponential growth with a doubling time of ca. 15 years—an order-ofmagnitude increase roughly every half century. By 1960, some 300,000 different book titles were being published in the world, and the two decades from 1955 and 1975 saw the doubling of titles published in Europe from around 130,000 to over 270,000,12 and science has had its full share of this literature explosion. The result is a veritable flood of scientific literature. As Display 5 indicates, it can be documented that the number of scientific books, of journals, and of journal-papers, has been increasing at an exponential rate over the recent period. It is reliably estimated that, from the start, about 10 million scientific papers have been published and that currently some 30,000 journals publish some 600,000 new papers each year. However, let us now turn attention from scientific production to scientific progress. The picture that confronts us here is not quite so expansive. For there is in fact good reason for the view that the substantive level of scientific innovation has remained roughly constant over the last few generations. This contention—that while scientific efforts have grown exponentially, nevertheless the production of really high-level scientific findings has remained constant—admits of various substantiating considerations. One indicator of this constancy in high-quality science is the relative stability of honors (medals, prizes, honorary degrees, memberships in scientific academics, etc.). To be sure, in some instances these reflect a fixed number situation (e.g., Nobel prizes in natural science). But if the volume

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____________________________________________________________ Display 5 THE NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ABSTRACT JOURNALS FOUNDED, AS A FUNCTION OF DATE

1,000,000 100,000 10,000 Scientific Journals Number of journals

1,000 (200)

(200)

100 10 Abstract Journals (1665) 1700

1800

1900

2000

date Source: Derek J. Solla Price, Science Since Babylon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).

____________________________________________________________ of clearly first-rate scientific work were expanding drastically, there would be mounting pressure for the enlargement of such honorific awards and mounting discontent with the inequity of the present reward-system. There are no signs of this. A host of relevant considerations thus conspire to indicate that when science grows exponentially as a productive enterprise, its growth as an intellectual discipline proceeds at a merely constant and linear pace.13

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NOTES 1

The ancients favored a triparitative division discourse: Logic and Language, Theoretical Philosophy, and Natural Philosophy. With the last setting up shop on its own as Natural Science, the former two morphed into the dichotomy of the theoretical and the practical, engendering a duality in the arrangement of university chairs that so continues in Scandinavia to the present day.

2

Here at any rate eponyms are sometimes used to make the point that the work of the person at issue has suggested rather than originated the idea or principle at issue.

3

La théorie physique: son objet, et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier and Rivière, 1906); tr. by Philip P. Wiener, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954), op. cit., pp. 178–79. Italics supplied.

4

It might be asked: “Why should a mere accretion in scientific ‘information’—in mere belief—be taken to constitute progress, seeing that those later beliefs are not necessarily true (even as the earlier one’s were not)?” The answer is that they are in any case better substantiated—that they are “improvements” on the earlier one’s by way of the elimination of shortcomings. For a more detailed consideration of the relevant issues, see the author’s Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987).

5

To be sure, we are caught up here in the usual cyclic pattern of all hypotheticodeductive reasoning. In addition to explaining the various phenomena we have been canvassing that projected K/I relationship is in turn substantiated by them. This is not a vicious circularity but simply a matter of the systemic coherence that lies at the basis of inductive reasonings. Of course the crux is that there should also be some predictive power, which is exactly what our discussion of deceleration is designed to exhibit.

6

See Stanislaw M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (New York: Scribner, 1976).

7

Max Planck, Vorträge und Erinnerungen, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1949), p. 376; italics added. Shrewd insights seldom go unanticipated, so it is not surprising that other theorists should be able to contest claims to Planck’s priority here. C. S. Peirce is particularly noteworthy in this connection.

8

See William George, The Scientist in Action (New York: Arno Press, 1936), p. 307. The sentiment is not new. George Gore vainly lambasted it 100 years ago: “Nothing can be more puerile than the complaints sometimes made by certain cultivators of a science, that it is very difficult to make discoveries now that the soil has been exhausted, whereas they were so easily made when the ground was first broken ...” The Art of Scientific Discovery (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878), p. 21.

9

The following passage offers a clear token of the operation of this principle specifically with respect to chemistry: Over the past ten years the expenditures for basic chemical research in universities have increased at a rate of about 15 per cent per annum; much of the increase has gone for superior instrumentation, [and] for the staff needed to service such instruments ... Because of the expansion in research opportunities, the increased cost of the instrumentation required to capitalize on

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NOTES

these opportunities, and the more highly skilled supporting personnel needed for the solution of more difficult problems, the cost of each individual research problem in chemistry is rising rapidly. (F. H. Wertheimer et al., Chemistry: Opportunities and Needs [Washington, D.C., 1965; National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council], p. 17.) 10

The talented amateur has virtually been driven out of science. In 1881 the Royal Society included many fellows in this category (with Darwin, Joule, and Spottiswoode among the more distinguished of them). Today there are no amateurs. See D. S. C. Cardwell, “The Professional Society” in Norman Kaplan (ed.), Science and Society (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 86–91 (see p. 87).

11

Cf. Derek J. Price, Science Since Babylon, 2nd ed. (New Haven CN: Yale University Press, 1975), and also Characteristics of Doctrinal Scientists and Engineers in the University System, 1991 (Arlington, VA.: National Science Foundation, 1994); Document No. 94–307.

12

Data from An International Survey of Book Production During the Last Decades (Paris: UNESCO, 1985).

13

Further material relevant to the material of this chapter can be found in the author’s Scientific Progress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), and Epistemetrics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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Chapter I/5 AGAINST COGNITIVE RELATIVISM 1. WHAT’S WRONG WITH RELATIVISM

I

nquiry is an inevitably cooperative enterprise. We may stand on our own feet, but they never manage to find bedrock here, seeing that we always stand on the shoulders of others. Unfortunately, however, we live in an era of relativism. “To each his own” and “I did it my way” figure among the mottos of the day. In the prevailing circumstances, all too few of us manage to come to the realization that this is a profoundly mistaken approach in cognitive matters. I think X, you think Y. I hold A to be correct, you opt for B. And this, as the cognitive relativist sees it, is simply the end of the matter. To refute such a position, it must be shown that there is a sound basis for claiming that it is not the end of the matter. It has to be established that it is, or can be, the case that you should think as I do, and conversely, because certain beliefs represent the objectively right and appropriate thing to think. It must be emphasized from the very outset that to ask for it to be shown that my view is the correct one is not to ask whether—and, if so, how—I can succeed in convincing you that my view is correct. It is not necessarily you that I need to convince here. Rather, it is the uninvolved, unprejudiced, reasonable bystander. It is in relation to such suitable third parties that the issue of cognitive appropriateness must be pursued. The real question is not what you or I do think but rather what, in the circumstances, anybody ought to think. Ought you to think as I do? At this point we will have to take a closer look at me. The pivotal question becomes one of how I proceed in matters of thinking. Clearly, if I am a frivolous, careless, sloppy thinker, then there is no reason why you should think as I do. Now of course I can only manage to persuade those reasonable bystanders if I myself am reasonable about it. I cannot persuade them to go along with the idea of: “I think X, therefore you should think X as well” unless I can convince them to think it is reasonable for you to think X. And they will certainly not agree that others should think as I do if they do not accept that I am being reasonable about it.

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I cannot, without further ado, plausibly take the line, “What I accept, everyone ought to accept.” But of course I can, if I so choose, reverse matters here. That is, I can choose to heed the demands of objective reason by proceeding on the principle and policy of myself accepting just exactly that which anyone and everyone ought to accept in the circumstances. I can, in sum, be reasonable about this matter of acceptance. What is now at issue is not the cognitive egomania of the idea “Everyone ought to think as I do” but the cognitive modesty of the idea “I ought to think as any reasonable person would in the circumstance.” The line is not: “I think X and so you should do so too because you ought to be guided by me.” Rather, it is: “I think X because it’s the right thing to do in the circumstances and that’s the reason why you should think X too.” It is precisely this policy that best accommodates the demands of impersonal reason. And of course if I proceed on this basis, then the approval of those who are—by hypothesis—reasonable bystanders is (ipso facto) assured. The most promising prospect for refuting relativism accordingly lies in the recourse to reason. For rational acceptance carries with it an inherent claim to universality. The rational person accepts exactly what he is convinced that everyone ought to accept exactly because accepting it is, in the circumstances, the rationally appropriate thing to do. And so the idea “I think X, therefore you should think so too” is (or can be) sensible and acceptable—but only if I myself am rational by proceeding on the basis of seeking to accept only that which people-in-general ought to accept. To be sure, when I think X and am thereby convinced that you should think so too, I do not thereby revoke your right to think non-X. You are a free agent and are at liberty to do as you please. But this only means that I concede you the right to fall into error. And of course in granting you this right (in the sense of entitlement) I do not and need not think that it is right (in the sense of appropriate) that you should fall into error. Now it must, of course, be acknowledged that we have no automatic process—no mechanical algorithm—for achieving cognitive adequacy. But the difficulty of attaining generality here does not mean that this desideratum is beyond our grasp in the various particular cases that confront us. It is certainly possible to produce examples of things every reasonable person could reasonably be expected to accept. Examples abound, witness Descartes’ “I exist”; G. E. Moore’s “This is a human hand”; Dr. Samuel Johnson’s “This is a stone”; C. S. Peirce’s “This stone will fall to the ground when I let go of it.” Reasonable people are prepared to give credit

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to the “normal” sources of cognition. They can be expected to concede the ordinary presumptions of truth, and we will certainly expect them to take the line “innocent until proven guilty” toward sources like the testimony of the senses and the reflections of common sense thinking. There are certainly no guarantees that matters will always turn out for the good—or, rather, for the true—when we do the reasonable thing in matters of belief. But experience indicates that we will then be right more often than not in doing so. After all, if matters stood otherwise, reason would itself reflect this. 2. WHAT’S RIGHT WITH OBJECTIVISM The preceding reflections provide a clear indication of what is wrong with relativism. For the relativist systematically takes the line that “There’s no good reason to expect that you should think as I do.” And this is just not sensible. For when my thinking proceeds as it ought—when it is grounded in what are standardly taken to be evidentially sound reasons—then this very fact constitutes a good reason why you should think as I do. It is the factor of objective cogency that constitutes the crucial coordinating principle which links together the conclusions and acceptances of reasonable people. But this line of thought still leaves some important open questions on the agenda—in particular: What’s right with objectivism? Why be objective? To ask this is to ask for cogent reasons for cognitive objectivity. But of course there is no point in plunging into a discussion in the setting of why-do-something questions if one is not going to cast rationality to the winds here. So we have to construe “Why be objective?” as: Give me a good reason—an impersonally and objectively good reason—for being objective. This circumstance alone suffices to show that objectivity has to be respected even by those who are, for reasons of their own, concerned to call it into question. It itself attests the appropriateness of objectivity. The next question is that of just what objectivity is all about. How is one to understand what is involved here? To achieve a reasonable approximation we shall suppose that, more or less by definition: To be objective is to proceed as any reasonable person would do in the circumstances at issue. But just how do reasonable persons comport themselves? What does their reasonableness ask of them? The answer here is that reasonable persons are optimizers—individuals who do the best they can with the means available in the prevailing circumstances, endeavoring to do that which is the best

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thing possible to do (in the circumstances). And at this point, the answer to our initial question lies before us clear and plain. For the very fact that something is the best that can be done in this circumstance is ipso facto a good reason for doing it—for anyone. And so the challenge “Why be objective?” is resolved in a manifestly cogent way by the simple and straightforward answer: Because it is the reasonable thing to do. Rational belief, action, and evaluation are possibly only in situations where there are cogent grounds (and not just compelling personal motives) for what one does. And the cogency of grounds is a matter of objective standards. The idea of rationality is in principle inapplicable where one is at liberty to make up one’s rules as one goes along—effectively to have no predetermined rules at all. For a belief, action, or evaluation to qualify as rational, the agent must (in theory at least) be in a position to “give an account” of it on whose basis others can see that “it is only right and proper” for him to resolve the issue in that way. Objectivity thus pivots on rationality. But the rationality at issue involves more than mere logical coherence. It is a matter of the intelligent pursuit of circumstantially appropriate objectives.1 Accordingly its demands are few in type but elaborate in extent: • aligning one’s beliefs with the available evidence; • maintaining consistency within one’s beliefs; • making reasonable efforts to ensure the adequacy of the available evidence to the problems at hand. There is nothing idiosyncratic about such principles. What is evidence for one will have to count as evidence for another if evidence it indeed is. What is an authentically cogent inference with you is cogent inference with me. And so on. The generality of access at issue with objectivity becomes crucial here. If something makes good rational sense, it must be possible in principle for anyone and everyone to see that this is so. This matter of good reasons is not something subjective or idiosyncratic; it is objective and lies in the public domain. There is no exclusively personalized rational cogency: what is cogent for me would be equally cogent for anyone in the circumstances. Robinson Crusoe may well proceed in a perfectly rational way in the context of his peculiar setting. But, he can only do so by doing what would

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make sense for others in similar circumstances. He must, in principle, be in a position to persuade others to adopt his course of action by an appeal to general principles to show them that his actions were appropriate in the circumstances. Rationality is thus inherently general and objective in its operations, endeavoring to deal with issues in an objective manner—in such a way that anyone can see the sense of it. We thus have the core of an answer to our initial question of what is wrong with an objectivity dismissive relativism. The answer is that—in cognitive matters—relativism violates objectivity and objectivity violations are at odds with being reasonable. Let us consider some of the ramifications of this position, and in particular consider what it is that reasonableness and rationality demand of us. 3. OBJECTIVITY AND THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL UNIVERSALITY OF REASON Consider the following contention: “There are no objective facts—or at least none that we can formulate by the use of language. For the man-made character of all our human contrivances means that everything that we can manage to produce is a cultural artifact within the course of human history in the setting of a particular place and time. And this is also emphatically the case with respect to our language and whatever we produce by its means, all of our statements, claims, and assertions included. How, then, can anything that people say possibly be wholly independent of all they— people that they are—think and believe? And even if some fact were to be something altogether objective and thought-independent, how can we ever get there from here?” It is readily seen that what we have here is simply a mass of confusions. Thus take a shovel. It, too, is a cultural artifact made in the course of human history. But it can touch and move materials that are nowise manmade (earth and sand, say). Even so, statement are artifacts that address facts which themselves are nowise man-made (cats emplaced on mats, for example). “No truths or purported truths are ever actually objective in the sense of being wholly independent of what people think or believe. Consider the (presumptive) fact that ‘copper conducts electricity.’ Clearly if people thought differently about the meaning of words—and specifically about the meaning of ‘copper’, say by letting it stand for what we call wood—then this would no longer be true.”

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This argument trades on a vitiating ambiguity. Two very different items are in play here, namely: • copper-now = “copper” as now conceived • copper-then = “copper” in its modified understanding However true it might be to say that copper-then fails to conduct electricity, it would be patently false to say that copper-now fails to do so. Indeed the status of copper-now is entirely untouched by bringing copper-then upon the state of consideration. (It is, after all, the meaning of our present terminology as we actually have it and use it that is at issue in the communication we presently construe by its means.) “But if facts are something independent of human thought and belief— if they obtain irrespective of anything that we do in this mind-connected realm—then how can human thought and belief ever succeed in managing to consider, present, or convey them? How can thought come into (cognitive) contact with something entirely outside itself?” To ask this is to be obtuse and foolishly closed-minded. It is like asking “Since numbers are nonphysical abstractions how can they ever be used to count sheep?” Numbers by their very nature are thought-accessible counting instruments that can be used throughout to enumerate collections of objects. Similarly, statements are thought-accessible description instruments that can be used by thought to describe objective arguments in the world. That’s simply how things work. If numbers couldn’t be used to count real things they would not be what they are. And similarly if words, ideas, and concepts could not be used to characterize objectively real things, communication would be blocked at the starting gate. “But surely when I say or think ‘The cat is on the mat’ I am managing to achieve no more than to avow ‘I think/believe that the cat is on the mat.’” Wrong! These two remarks are very different. The one is something about the world (viz., that the cat is on the mat). The other is something about you and your thoughts (viz., that you think or believe that the cat is on the mat). And these are very different issues. And no sort of statement specifically about you and your beliefs can ever be equivalent with a claim regarding the you-independent arrangement of the world. Objectivity is a matter of what one ought to think—that which is right and proper to think in the circumstances. And that little expression “in the circumstances” is critical to objectivity. For that which one ought to want

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in the circumstances is exactly that which any sensible person should—and a sensible person would—think if they were “in one’s shoes,” that is, if the circumstances were the same. Of course, different people are differently situated and this is something that rationality requires us to take into account. It is only the deeply underlying “fundamental principles” that are uniform. In this sense, reason plays no favorites, for while people’s circumstances differ—vastly and endlessly—nevertheless that which is reasonable for X in his (X’s) circumstances is ipso facto also reasonable for anyone who is (or would be) situated in the relevantly identical circumstances. To be sure, it must be granted to relativists that, as William James insisted, “There is no point of view absolutely public and universal.”2 The “God’s eye view” on things is unavailable—at any rate to us. Whatever we can judge we must judge from the vantage point of a position in space, time, and cultural context. But, of course, it is not the absoluteness of an unrealizable point of view from nowhere or from everywhere-at-once or from God’s vantage point that is at issue with objectivity. Objectivity is a matter of how we should proceed—and how otherwise reasonable people would proceed if they were in our shoes in the relevant regards. It is a matter of doing not what is impossible but what is appropriate. Reason is (circumstantially) universal, and it is objectivity’s coordination with rationality that links it to universality. That which (as best one can tell) is the sensible thing for us to do in the circumstances is thereby the reasonable thing for anybody—any rational individual—to do in those circumstances. The objectivity at issue accordingly comes down to rationality. If it is reasonable for you to A in circumstance X, then it is so for anybody else—and conversely. Reason is agent-indifferent. The principles operative in the rational economy of things are all objective and universal—though of course their application will bear differently on differently situated individuals. What it was rational for Galen to believe—given the cognitive “state of the art” of his day regarding medical matters—is in general no longer rational for us to believe today. Obviously, what it is rational for someone to do or to think hinges on the particular details of how this individual is circumstanced—and the prevailing circumstances of course differ from person to person and group to group. To be objective in one’s proceedings is to do what any sensible person would do in one’s place and we don’t all stand on the same spot. The resolution of an issue is objective if it is arrived at without the introduction of any resources (be they substantive or methodological) that would not be

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deemed as acceptable in the circumstances by any rational and reasonable individual. Accordingly, the rulings of rationality are universal, alright, but conditionally universal, indeed subject to a person-relativity geared to the prevailing conditions. This sort of contextualism does not engender corrosive do as you please “relativism,” but represents a deep central fact about our procedural situation. To reemphasize: rationality is universal alright, but it is circumstantially universal. To be sure, we cannot shed our individuality like a snake its skin. Be it in cognitive, practical, or evaluative matters, rationality has two distinguishable but inseparable aspects, the one personal, private, and particular, the other impersonal, public, and universal. The private (particularized) aspect turns on what is advisable for the agent, duly considering his own personal situation in point of his circumstances—his opportunities, capabilities, talents, objective, aspirations, values, needs, and wants. (Note that we here construe “circumstances” very broadly, including not only the outer and situational, but also the inner conditions that relate to a person’s physical and psychological make-up.) The universalized aspect of rationality turns on its being advisable by person-indifferent and objectively cogent standards for anyone in those circumstances to do the “rationally appropriate” things at issue. The standards of rational cogency are general in the sense that what is rational for one person is also rational for others—but here we have to add: for those others who are in his shoes. Both aspects, the situational and the universal, are inseparable facets of rationality as we standardly conceive it. But what about this “in my place” business? What can they bring along in getting there? What those others can bring along and what of mine are they allowed to displace? Clearly what they are bringing along is their rationality, and reasonableness, their common sense and good judgment. But my circumstances and conditions, my commitments and interests are things they have to leave in place. Clearly they are not to substitute their predilections and preferences, their values and affinities for mine, their beliefs and desires for mine. Everything must remain as was except for those characteristics that go against the dictates of reason: phobias, groundless anxieties, delusions, senseless antipathies, and irrationalities of all sorts. These must be erased, so to speak—and left blank. In making that suppositional transfer, one has to factor out all those psychic aberrations that stand in the way of a person’s being sensible or reasonable. The circumstances of human life are such that, like it or not, we need knowledge to guide our actions and to satisfy our curiosity. Without

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knowledge-productive inquiry we cannot resolve the cognitive and practical problems that confront a rational creature in making its way in this world. But in matters of knowledge production life is too short for us to proceed on our own. We simply cannot start at square one and do everything needful by ourselves. We must—and do—proceed in the setting of a larger community that extends across the reaches of time (via its cultural traditions) and space (via its social organization). This requires communication, coordination, collaboration. And so even as the pursuit of objectivity is aided by an agent’s recourse to the resources of the environing community, so conversely, is objectivity an indispensably useful instrumentality for the creation and maintenance of intercommunicative community. For there can be no community where people do not understand one another, and it is the fact that I endeavor to proceed as any rational person would in my place that renders my proceedings efficiently intelligible to others. The commonality of rational procedure provides the crucial coordination mechanism that renders people understandable to one another. It is, accordingly, a key instrumentality that positions each of us to benefit by a mutually advantageous commerce that is indispensable for the cooperation and collaboration without which our cognitive enterprise—and other social enterprises in general—would be infeasible. 4. OBJECTIVITY AND THE COMPLEXITY OF THE FIRST PERSON PLURAL Proceeding with a view to objectivity in its impersonal mode is thus generally in our best interests. But is it not just advantageous but somehow obligatory? Objectivity’s bonding to rationality shows that this is indeed the case. For insofar as we reason-capable agents have an obligation to exercise this capacity—as we indeed do—we are involved in a venture that carries the obligation to objectivity in its wake.3 Let us see how this is so. The subjectivity/objectivity contrast turns on the distinction between what is accepted by me as things stand—and quite possibly by me alone— over against that which is acceptable for us in general in suitably similar conditions. And this issue of a range of cogency pivots on the I/we contrast. The crucial contrast is that between what simply holds for oneself versus what is to be seen as holding for all of us. Objectivity is coordinate with generality: what is objectively so holds independently of the vagaries, contingencies, and idiosyncrasies of particular individuals. Consider, in particular, the objectivity of claims and contentions. An ob-

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jective truth does not hold of everyone; it holds for everyone. “Bald men have little or no hair” wears on its very sleeve the fact that it holds only of some—viz. of bald men. But it holds for everyone, is just as true for you as for me. The questions “who realizes it?” or “who has reason to believe it” certainly arise—and may well be answered by saying that only some people do so and many others don’t. But the question “Whom is it true for?” simply does not arise in that form. If that contention is true at all, it is true for everyone. Truths do not need to be thematically universal and they do not need to be evidentially universal, but they do need to be universal in point of validity. And this precisely is the basis of their objectivity. As truths they will necessarily have that for-everyone aspect. Objectivity keeps us on the straight and narrow path of commitments that are binding on all rational beings alike. But cultivating objectivity is certainly no exercise in power-projection. It is not a matter of trying to speak for others, preempting their judgment by a high-handedness that constrains them into alignment with oneself. Quite to the contrary, it works exactly the other way around. The proper pursuit of cognitive objectivity calls for trying to put one’s own judgment into alignment with what—as best one can determine it—the judgment of those others ought to be. It is not a matter of coordination by an imposition upon others but the very reverse, one of a coordination by self-subordinated submission to the modus operandi of the group upon granting it the benefit of the doubt in point of rationality. Such conformity is a requisite for objectivity but the matter of how it comes about is pivotal. It is—and must be—a matter of my conforming to them (the generality of sensible people) as opposed to any megalomaniacal insistence that they conform to me. Objectivity is a policy not of the dictatorial but of the cognitively gregarious who seek to be in cognitive harmony with the rest—at least insofar as they subscribe to the standards of rationality. The impetus to rationality accordingly has important and immediate implications for our concern with objectivity. For rationality carries objectivity in its wake: the universality and impersonality of reason validates the pursuit of objectivity in direct consequence. Objectivity’s insistence on resolutions that are sensible and reasonable—that prevent the course of reason from being deflected by wish and willfulness, biases and idiosyncrasies—automatically foster and implement a commitment to the primacy of reason. To proceed objectively is, in sum, to render oneself perspicuous to others by doing what any reasonable and normally constituted person would

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do in one’s place, thereby rendering one’s proceedings intelligible to anyone. When the members of a group are objective, they secure great advantages thereby: they lay the groundwork for community by paving the way for mutual understanding, communication, collaboration. And in cognitive matters they also sideline sources of error. For the essence of objectivity lies in its factoring out of those of one’s idiosyncratic predilections and prejudices that would stand in the way of other intelligent people’s reaching the same result. Objectivity follows in rationality’s wake because of its effectiveness as a means to averting both isolation and error. 5. OTHER CULTURES But can objectivity manage to achieve a universalized impersonality? Can we expect other cultures to conform to our standards? Do not those other cultures have their own way of doing things—and thus also their own rationality? Anthropologists, and even, alas, philosophers, often say things like “The Wazonga tribe has a concept of rationality different from ours, seeing that they deem it rationally appropriate (or even mandatory) to attribute human illness to the intervention of the rock-spirits.”4 But there are big problems here; this way of talking betokens lamentably loose thinking. For, compare: (1) The Wazonga habitually (customarily) attribute . . . (2) The Wazonga think it acceptable (or perhaps even necessary) to attribute . . . (3) The Wazonga think it rationally mandatory to attribute . . . Now, however true and incontestable the first two contentions may be, the third is untenable. For compare (3) with (4) The Wazonga think is mathematically true that dogs have tails. No matter how firmly convinced the Wazonga may be that dogs have tails, thesis 4, taken as a whole, remains a thesis of ours, and not of theirs! Accordingly, it is in deep difficulty unless the (highly implausible) condition is realized that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what

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is, and, moreover, are convinced that the claim that dogs have tails belongs among the appropriate contentions of this particular realm. Analogously, one cannot appropriately maintain (3) unless one is prepared to claim both that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what rationality is (correct, that is, by our lights), and furthermore that they are convinced that the practice in question is acceptable within the framework of this rationality project. And this concatenation is highly implausible in the circumstances. The fact is that different cultures do indeed implement a rational principle like “Be in a position to substantiate your claims” very differently. (For one thing, there are different standards as to what constitutes proper “substantiation”.) But, they cannot simply abandon such a characterizing principle of rationality. For if they were to convert to “It’s all right to maintain anything that suits your fancy” they would not have a different mode of cognitive rationality but rather, in this respect at any rate, are simply deficient in cognitive rationality. The anthropological route to a relativism of rationality, is, to say the least, highly problematic. There is no difficulty whatever about the idea of different belief systems, but the idea of different rationalities faces insuperable difficulties. The case is much like that of saying that the tribe whose counting practices are based on the sequence: “one, two, many” has a different arithmetic from ourselves. To do anything like justice to the facts one would have to say that they do not have arithmetic at all—but just a peculiar and very rudimentary way of counting. And similarly with the Wazonga. On the given evidence, they do not have a different concept of rationality, but rather, their culture has not developed to the point where they have any conception of rationality whatsoever. Rationality is, after all, a definite sort of enterprise with a characteristic goal structure of its own— the pursuit of appropriate ends by appropriate means. Its defining principles make for an inevitable uniformity. To be sure, the question “What is the rational thing to believe or to do?” must receive the indecisive answer: “That depends.” It depends on context and situation—on conditions and circumstances. At the level of the question “What is rational; what is it that should be believed or done?” a manysided and pluralistic response is called for. The way in which people proceed to give a rational justification of something—be it a belief, action, or evaluation—is unquestionably variable and culture relative. We mortal men cannot speak with the tongues of angels. The means by which we pursue our ends in the setting of any major project—be it rationality, morality,

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communication, or nourishment—are “culture dependent” and “context variable.” But the fact remains that certain crucial uniformities are inherent in the very nature of the projects in which we are engaged. With rationality as with swimming, different cultures and different people may go at it differently but the object of the enterprise is uniformly the same, fixed by the definitive conception of what is at issue. 6. ABANDONING OBJECTIVITY IS PRAGMATICALLY SELFDEFEATING “I believe (accept, am convinced) that p” simply does not convey the same information as p. And neither does “Everybody is convinced and accepting of p.” Language, as we use it, is simply at odds with relativistic subjectivism. In making a statement we implicitly assert that it is a matter of objective fact. Sometimes we are told: “People never actually know anything really and objectively: there is only what people think they know.” But this contention is deeply problematic. Asserting “There are no objective facts” is self-contradictory. Whoever makes (asserts) this statement is presumably stating a matter of objective fact, they are not saying that they merely think it to be so. What is at issue in an overt denial of facts is not a logical inconsistency but a practical inconsistency. For now the practice in which you are engaging becomes infeasible through the very nature of the way in which you are engaging in it. That is, you are engaging in a process of communication but doing it in with a machine that produces a monkey wrench which it inserts into its own works. Thoroughly practical (functional/operations) reasons thus speak on behalf of endorsing the conception of objective truth. Specifically we require it: 1. As a presupposition to make communication possible by way of agreement and disagreement. To principle a commonality of focus. 2. As a contrast conception that enables us to acknowledge our own potential fallibility. 3. As a regulative ideal whose pursuit stops us from resting content with too little.

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4. As an entryway into a communicative community in which we acknowledge that our own views are nowise decisive. The commitment to objectivity thus affords us an effective practical instrumentality that facilitates communication and cognitive collaboration. It is certainly not something that we have to endorse only “on faith.” Practical experience amply endows it with a track record of utility that constitutes a retrospective justification of a commitment to objectivity. Its substantiation lies largely in the fact that we simply could not get on without it. 7. THE CHARGE OF CIRCULARITY There is, of course, bound to be a skeptic who comes along to press the following objection: “Your proposed universalistic legitimation of objectivity pivots on the appropriateness of rationality. But your legitimation of reason conforms to the pattern: ‘You should be rational just because that is the rational thing to do!’ And this is clearly circular.” It might seem questionable to establish the jurisdiction of reason by appeal to the judgment of reason itself. But, in act, of course, this circularity is not really vicious at all. Vicious circularity stultifies by “begging the question”; virtuous circularity merely coordinates related elements in their mutual interlinkage. The former presupposes what is to be proved, the latter simply shows how things are connected in a well-coordinated and mutually supportive interrelationship. The self-reliance of rationality merely exemplifies this latter circumstance of an inherent co-ordination among its universe components. It is not a matter of sequential validation, but rather of a legitimation process that is coordinative and coherentistic. Admittedly, the reasoning at issue has an appearance or vitiating circularity because the force of the argument itself rests on an appeal to rationality: “If you are going to be rational in your beliefs, then you must also act rationally, because it is rational to believe that rational action is optimal in point of goal attainment.” But this sort of question begging is simply unavoidable in the circumstances. It is exactly what we want and need. Where else should we look for a rational validation of rationality but to reason itself? The only reasons for being rational that it makes sense to ask for are rational reasons. In this epistemic dispensation, we have no way of getting at the facts directly, without the epistemic detour of securing

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grounds and reasons for them. And it is, of course, rationally cogent grounds and reason that we want and need. The overall justification of rationality must be reflexive and self-referential. To provide a rationale of rationality is to show that rationality stands in appropriate alignment with the principles of rationality. From the angle of justification, rationality is a cyclic process that closes in on itself, not a linear process that ultimately rests on something outside itself. One would accordingly expect, nay demand, that rationality be self-substantiating in this way—that it must emerge as the best policy on its own telling. From the justifactory point of view, rationality is and must be autonomous. It can be subject to no external authority. Rationality in general is a matter of systematization, and the justification of rationality is, correspondingly, a matter of systemic self-sufficiency. Rather than indicating the defect of vicious circularity, the self-referential character of a justification of rationality is a precondition of its adequacy! It is only a rational legitimation of rationality that we would want; any other sort would avail us nothing. And if such a rational validation were not forthcoming this would indicate a grave defect. To be sure, some theorists would see rationality as heteronomous—as subject to some external sort of authority such as “feeling” or “the will.” Thus, one contemporary philosopher offers the idea that [U]nderlying each . . . judgment there is a choice that the agent has made—a type of choice in which the individual is at the most fundamental level unconstrained by good reasons, precisely because his or her choice expresses a decision as to what is to count as a good reason for him or her.5

Such a view sees rational justification as linear and regressive—and thus as ultimately having to rest on an unrationalized rock-bottom that itself lies quite outside the domain of reason as a matter of ultimately unreasoned selection. But any such view is profoundly mistaken. For rational validation need not be linear and regressive; it can—quite appropriately—be rather cyclical and systemically self-contained. We need not—must not— subscribe to the Rock-Bottom Fallacy. There is no way of grounding good reasons in arbitrary or otherwise unrationalizable decisions. (“Deciding as to what is to count as a good reason” forsooth! Not even God is in a position to do that!)6. It makes no sense to ask “who gets to decide what it is rational for an agent to do?” In these factual matters, there simply is no one who “gets to decide”—any more than someone “gets to decide” that 2 + 2 yields 4 or sunlight is brighter than moonlight. No one decides what sorts

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of things are to count as good reasons. This is something we cannot make up but only discover or learn. And in general, we only learn in the school of bitter experience what qualifies as such. A desperate objection yet remains: “So rationality speaks on its own behalf. Well and good. But why should I care for rationality? Why should I set myself to do the intelligent and appropriate thing?” At this point there is little more to be said. The preceding considerations already do the job insofar as it is doable. For if I want a reason at all, then I must—if I am being reasonable about it—want a rational reason. If I care about reasons at all, I am already within the project of rationality. But once I am within the project, there is nothing further external to reason that can or need be said to validate it. At that stage rationality is already at hand to provide its own support—it wears its justification on its sleeve. (The project of trying to reason with someone who stands outside the range of rationality to convince them to come into its fold is clearly an exercise in pointlessness and futility.) A pervasive irrationalism is astir in the world that rejects the quest for rationally validated reasons and advocates a free-wheeling “anything goes”—even in the cognitive sphere of empirical inquiry.7 But, of course, any sensible person who is not already committed to such a position would want to know if there is any good reason for taking it. And then we are at once back in the sphere of rationality and good reasons. One may of course quite appropriately ask questions like: “Why should I cultivate the truth; why should I cultivate my best (or true) interests?” But in the very act of posing such questions I am asking for reasons—that is, I am evincing my commitment to the project of rationality. Caring for the truth and for one’s best interests are simply part and parcel of this commitment. And if I do not care for these things, then there is really no point in raising these questions. Here we confront a lost cause. For if I take this line then I have already taken my place outside the precincts of rationality, beyond the reach of reason. And then, of course, there is no reason why any sensible person would want to follow me there. And so it is, in the end, the fact that objectivity rides on the back of reason itself that provides it with a safe and secure transit to the domain of what is rationally justified.8 NOTES 1

For an elaborate development of this position see the author’s Rationality: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

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NOTES 2

William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1899), p. 4.

3

On our duty towards the cultivation of rationality see also pp. 204-09 of the author’s Rationality.

4

On “alternative standards of rationality” see Peter Winch, “Understanding a Primitive Society,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1 (1964), 307-24.

5

Alasdair MacIntyre, in MacIntyre and Stanley Haverwas (eds.), Revisions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. 9.

6

On this point, see G. W. Leibniz’s correspondence with Antoine Arnauld regarding the Discourse on Metaphysics.

7

See e.g., Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method (New York: New Left Books, 1975).

8

This chapter is an expanded version of a keynote address delivered at the annual meeting of the West Virginia Philosophical Society in Charleston, West Virginia in October of 1997. Some relevant issues were also treated in the author’s Objectivity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).

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Part II

LOGIC AND PARADOX

Introduction John Woods

I

t is by now a well-worn legend that Isaiah Berlin dined out often and to advantage on the strength of the observation by the poet Archilocus (680-645 BC) that the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one mighty thing. Given his breathtaking versatility, no one could deny to Nicholas Rescher the appellation “fox.” But it would be quite wrong to overlook Rescher’s appreciation of big ideas, and their potential for unification and systematicity. One of Rescher’s big ideas is that of limitations, whether on actions and understanding, on reference and ascription, on the acquisition of knowledge, on access to information, on the capacity to process it. These for the most part are not discoveries of Rescher’s making, but they stand out in his writing, and they do so in noticeably Rescherian ways. Important examples of these limitations are those that involve wayward quantification and from anomalous conjunctions, themselves a kind of “illegitimate totality.” The limitations that occupy Rescher fall into two broad categories. Some of them generate undetermination problems; the others give rise to overdetermination. In the undetermination cases, the limitation in question leaves salient aspects of the case in question concealed. In the overdetermination cases, it is the limitation itself that is transgressed, giving rise to inconsistency. Inconsistency is a hot problem in logic and cognitive science, and Rescher’s contributions to its analysis are pioneering. The logical and semantic paradoxes are a natural home for inconsistency (for example, the paradox of the set that is and is not a member of itself.) So too are the conflicted intuitions that drive philosophical theses of great intuitive absurdity. (Think, for example, of the notorious proof from intuitive premisses of the impossibility of free action.).

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In this essay, I propose to reflect upon Rescher’s contributions to all these issues, in a steady flow of publications since the 1950s. I begin with undetermination, with quantifications that place themselves beyond the range of identifying specification.1 For example, there are ideas that have never occurred to anyone, but precisely because the quantified sentence is true, no one will ever come upon a sentence knowing it to be an instantiation of it. In Epistemic Logic, Rescher says that these quantifications embed “vagrant predicates.” A vagrant predicate “P” has this property: The dots in the sentence “There are things that have P, e.g., . . .” are by the meaning of “P” impossible to fill in. Since vagrant predicates must have non-specifiable application, we have it that individuation doesn’t require identification. And since we can know the unknowability of something without knowing what it is, Rescher takes this as compromising the prospects of substitutional quantification and intuitionistic logic. In like manner, there are facts that can never be expressed; no one will ever come upon a fact knowing it to be an instantiation of that limitation. Each kind of case lands us in an instantial blackout. Instantial blackouts make for underdetermination.2 Chapter 6 of What If? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy3 deals with aporetic clusters, so-named after the Latinized Greek aporos for “impassable.” Aporetic clusters are the stock and trade of philosophy. They are families of claims of which Rescher writes: (1) as far as the known facts go there is good reason for accepting them all; the available evidence speaks well for each and everyone of them, (2) taken together, they are mutually incompatible; the entire family is inconsistent. While predicate-vagrancy lands us in the bind of underdetermination, aporetic clusters pull in the opposite direction. They are overdetermining. They are structurally linked to arguments of the following type:

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1. Every natural event except possibly those in the micro-order is caused. 2. Every human action is a natural event of this very sort. 3. No caused action can be free. 4. So, human action can’t be free. The argument proceeds from premisses not antecedently in doubt, yet they jointly ground a truth-preserving conclusion which everyone would find, to say the least, unwelcome. Assuming its deductive validity, the argument is open to two conflicting interpretations. On one of them, the argument is a reductio of one or more of its premisses by virtue of the absurdity of its conclusion. It bears on this that a principal virtue of the very enterprise of proof is that it not merely rubber-stamp what is already known; it sometimes overturns wholly confident convictions to the contrary. This being so, we have a second interpretation: our present argument might be one of those, that is, a sound demonstration of something surprising (or gobsmacking). This gives rise to what with some justice might be called Philosophy’s Most Difficult Problem4. Save for a particular class of exceptions, there seems to be no suitably general and grounded policy for determining when a valid argument is a reductio of something heretofore taken as true, and when it is a sound demonstration of something previously thought to be absurd. The exceptions, as is widely supposed, are those valid arguments whose conclusions are contradictions. Here, it is said, there is no question of there being a sound demonstration of such a conclusion, for we would have it otherwise that some contradictions are actually true. Still, this is precisely what some philosophers do in fact think, although Rescher is decidedly not in their number. These are the dialetheists, subscribers to the proposition that some (very few) contradictions are indeed true.5 This occasions difficulties, one for the non-dialetheist and the other for the dialetheist. For the non-dialetheist, there is the problem of showing in a non-question-begging

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way that the proof of, say, Russell’s paradox is not a sound demonstration of a surprising—indeed, a shocking—truth. For the dialetheist, the problem is that of producing a policy for determining when a valid argument whose conclusion is a contradiction is a reductio of something in the premiss-set is a sound demonstration of one of those few true contradictions. Consider, for example, the Curry Paradox, whose conclusion is the trivialist claim that every sentence is true. Dialetheists abhor trivialism as much as the rest of us abhor dialetheism. The rest of us, Rescher included, have a reason to reject the Curry proof of it. The reason is that the proof’s conclusion entails contradictions. But for dialetheists this is not a generally available manoeuvre. In each case, then—for us and for them—Philosophy’s Most Difficult Problem recurs. Aporetic clusters face us with the task of “epistemic damage control.” In What If? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy, Rescher relativizes weakest-link identification to the nature of the enquiry in which the aporetic cluster arises and the kind of the aporetic trigger that produces the problem. There are five cases to consider. (1) In the area of scientific inquiry aporized by new discoveries, the weakest link is “the most weakly evidenced proposition.” (2) If in the same field, aporia arises from scientific conjecture, the weakest link is “the systematically least well entrenched proposition.” (3) In philosophy, under press of a speculative supposition, the weakest link is the thesis least consonant with the fundamental commitments of one’s overall position.” (4) In mathematics under a consistency-distributing hypothetical assumption, the weakest link is by reductio the assumption itself. (5) In the area of pure speculation under a wholly speculative supposition, the weakest link is the systematically least fundamental proposition.” A particular kind of aporetic cluster is the paradox. In Paradoxes (2001), Rescher observes that the set of all sets includes itself as a member, but no one will ever come upon something knowing it to be that set. Like aporetic clusters—and contrary to the suggestion of two paragraphs ago— paradoxes offer promise of resolution at their weakest link. Rescher here conceives of the weakest link as the least plausible of the propositions involved in the paradox. If it is not obvious where the greatest implausibility

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lies, Rescher offers an algorithm that identifies that proposition whose abandonment entails least cost. The algorithm operates on the priority ranking of propositions, where rankings are reflections of the reliability of a proposition’s source or ground. The theme of inconsistent totalities is picked up again in chapter 9 of Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective (2001), and so too the idea of experiential inaccessibility.6 Consider illegitimate totalities such as, again, the set of all sets or the truth that conjoins all truths. A good many philosophers side with Russell in determining that no such totalities exist. Russell judged that they offend against the Vicious Circle Principle. Cognitive Pragmatism is important for the wedge that it drives between two kinds of illegitimacy, the ontic and the epistemic. Rescher thinks that Russell’s Vicious Circle Principle goes too far precisely because it is an existence-negating rationale for rejecting these totalities. By Rescher’s lights, the trouble caused by these totalities is epistemic (“experiential”), not ontological. The Vicious Circle Principle is over-kill. What’s wrong with the set of all sets is: a problem of identification [of knowing that this is it] rather than one of being or existence—an epistemic rather than ontological failing.

This is a distinction that also bears on instantially non-specifiable generalizations such as “There are ideas that have never occurred to anyone” in which “ideas that have never occurred to anyone” is a vagrant predicate. Here, too, it is easily seen that the problem is not that there aren’t such ideas but rather that they can’t be knowingly specified. Accordingly, Rescher replaces the Vicious Circle Principle with the Successful Introduction Principle (SIP): The identifying condition for an item must not involve a reference—explicit or tacit—to that item itself.

If we grant that SIP is correct, then it offers promise of repair for the entire class of self-referential paradoxes. But it is not a wholly general paradox-

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snuffer. It leaves non-referential variants—for example, Steven Yablo’s non-referential form of the Liar—beyond its reach.7 The Logic of Inconsistency (1980), co-authored with Robert Brandom, is a ground-breaking essay on paraconsistency.8 A logic is paraconsistent precisely when it blocks the derivation of ex falso quodlibet, the theorem that provides for the equivalence of negation inconsistency and absolute inconsistency. A system is negation-inconsistent if and only if for some wff A, both A and aA are theorems. A system is absolutely inconsistent if and only if it is trivial, that is to say, its every sentence is a theorem. Paraconsistent logics divide rather neatly into two camps. In the one, ex falso is blocked by imposition of a relevance constraint on deducibility and entailment.9 In the other, ex falso is blocked in some other way, for example, by suppressing the rule of adjunction, without the need to impose a relevance condition. At the time of the book’s publication, most of the paraconsistent work done by American logicians was of this first type. Indeed some of the leading relevant logicians were Rescher’s colleagues at the University of Pittsburg. Rescher himself, and Brandom, too, are in the second camp, in the slipstream of paraconsistent developments in Brazil and Poland. (The paraconsistent terrain in Australia tended to subdivide into dialetheic logic on the one hand and relevant logic on the other. The paraconsistent turn in Canada is substantially influenced by adaptations of Rescher and Brandom, got by weakening some of the latter’s inferential constraints)10 The Rescher and Brandom essay is a response to two different impulses. One is the impulse to free set theory from the Russell contradiction, and to do so with least possible disturbance to the theory’s original intuitions. The other is to have a logic that is duly sensitive to the particularities of what for present purposes I will call “assertion”. Although these are clearly inequivalent objectives, they embed a common strategy, which in the manner of JaĞkowski, entails suppression of the adjunction rule, the rule that permits unrestricted premiss-aggregation.11 It is a fateful rejection. It enables Rescher and Brandom to undo the classical equivalence between 1. The implication of X by ^A, B, C, } `

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2. The implication of X by A š B š C š } Concerning the first issue—that of attaining a consistent version of intuitive set theory—Rescher and Brandom involve a quite general procedure for paradox resolution. As they see it, paradox resolution is a matter of converting an inconsistent set of sentences into a consistent set. Conversion is achieved by deletion, and is governed by deletion, a principle of conservation: And the object is to achieve this at minimal cost—with the least possible sacrifice among the theses towards which we were, in the first instance, favorably inclined.

In the matter of Russell’s Paradox, Rescher is one of those philosophers who think that getting rid of the old axioms and finding some new (and presumably consistent) axioms for sets is more trouble that it’s worth. It is doubtless true that that replacement systems such as ZF or ZFC have by now attained a sure footing in modern mathematics, but Rescher thinks that this success has come at a price. The new set theories are complicated, counterintuitive and ad hoc. It is doubtful that, when writing in 1980, Rescher and Brandom were seriously proposing that ZF and the like be given up on. But they did want to make the point—if only as a matter of principle—that there was a better way in which to have proceeded with the rehabilitation of set theory. Toward the end of The Logic of Inconsistency we find the idea of a “minimally consistent complete” or “intelligible” formal system. Something is an intelligible system if and only if it meets the following three conditions. (1) Its theorems include all classical logical truths. (2) No selfcontradiction is a theorem. (3) Any classical consequence of a theorem is a theorem. Condition (3) does not apply to sets of theorems, however. An intelligible formal system not only need not be closed under conjunction, it may contain pairs of incompatible propositions (but not their conjunctions). We see, then, that an intelligible system is a set of propositions generated by non-empty (though not necessarily finite) intersections and un-

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ions of complete consistent theories. Rescher and Brandom’s logic is an intelligible logic in this sense. It is a non-classical system built up from classical components. Could we apply to Russell’s proof the method recommended in What If? for aporetic clusters in mathematics? If so, we would have to find a hypothetical assumption in the Russell proof for which the proof itself would serve the purpose of reductio ad absurdum. Everyone agrees that the comprehension axiom is the source of the contradiction, and Rescher appears to believe that the paradox downgrades a would-be axiom to a “hypothetical assumption,” which in turn is brought down by Russell’s contradictionproving argument. We might agree that Rescher’s test succeeds in finding the proof’s weakest link. But it leaves undealt with the question of “what now?” This, in large part, is the business of the Logic of Inconsistency. How, then, do these authors deal with the paradox? In the spirit of Rescher’s ontological openness to vicious circularity, they would allow the intuitive comprehension axiom to stand, as well as the contradictions it generates, but without having also to allow for the explosiveness of those contradictions. The set theoretic contradictions are tolerable precisely because they can be isolated in ways that not only avert trivializing explosion but also avoid the considerable ad-hocness that attaches to the replacement of the intuitive axioms with new ones. Here the basic idea is to consider the naïve axioms as describing an impossible world. But since Rescherian impossible worlds are superpositions of possible worlds, it ought to be possible to split the comprehension axiom into two consistent axioms, each of which operating distributively rather than aggreggatively would deliver the theory of sets without further ado. Clearly an interesting idea, it turns out that splitting is met with technical difficulties. Rescher and Brandom want axiom-splitting to do two things for set theory. One is to keep the contradiction out. The other is to let the rest of set theory in. It is a fairly straightforward matter to achieve the first goal, but uncommonly difficult to achieve the second.12 The result is that Rescherian set theory is threatened with a complexity and ad hocness that rivals ZF. This is a telling lesson. It helps us see that in theoretical contexts small changes have a way of turning out to be big ones.

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Given its paraconsistent credentials, Rescher and Brandom’s logic has a stake in averting ex falso. There is a well-known and much-approved way of doing this. It turns on a distinction between the consequences a sentence has and the consequences of a sentence it would be appropriate to draw. On this view, it is one thing to assert that B is a consequence of A. It is another thing to assert B on grounds that it is a consequence of A. Having, we might say, is up to A. Drawing, we might also say, is up to us. With the distinction at hand, it is left open that there are consequences that a sentence has that would not be appropriate to draw. And with this possibility in mind, one might be inclined to suppose that although everything whatever is a consequence of a contradiction, nothing even close to everything is appropriately drawn from a contradiction. We might even go so far as to say (with some of the ancients) that nothing whatever is appropriately drawn from a contradiction. The distinction between having and drawing is as old as logic itself, and is implicit in the difference between Aristotle’s logic of immediate inference and his logic of syllogisms. In more recent times, the contrast is present in Gilbert Harman’s contention that conditions on entailment are one thing and rules of inference are another, and, this being so, that A š aA might well entail every sentence without licensing the inference of every sentence therefrom.13 Rescher’s and Brandom’s approach ex falso is in the spirit of the distinction between having and drawing, between entailing and inferring. But the details are significantly different. Harman says that the rules of logic aren’t the rules of correct inference. The rules of inference—of consequence-drawing—are non-classical. Rescher and Brandom say something similar. They say that there is nothing wrong with the rules of classical logic. Rather, it is the semantics of his system that can’t be classical. It is well to note that Rescher is drawn to a distinction between logic in the strict sense, in which the classical approach does just fine, and logic in a more generic sentence that includes Rescher’s own particular handling of semantics. The distinction will become clearer as we proceed. Harman’s view is that it never was the business of logic to give expression to the rules of right reasoning. Rescher says something weaker. In consistent

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worlds, the laws of logic and the laws of inference are equivalent. This equivalence is lost in impossible worlds. There, and only there, does inference lift away from logic and become non-standard. Rescher is a non-classical minimalist. In their approach to the paradoxes, he and Brandom want to be as classical as is consistent with their resolution of them. In The Logic of Inconsistency, they take pains to make this clear. The rule of adjunction, they say, is valid both as a principle of deduction and as a metatheoretical principle that preserves theoremhood (that is, it is a valid principle of logic in the strict sense). It fails only as what they call a semantic rule (logic in a more generic sense), that is, a rule of the form tw(P), tw(Q) Ÿ tw(P š Q) in which ‘t’ is a truth predicate and ‘w’ indexes to worlds. Below I will say something further about Rescher’s notion of semantic rule and of the role played by ‘t’. But for now I want to say something about the classical latitude offered by both the Harmanian and Rescherian handling of ex falso. To do this, we might ask ourselves what is the job of a mathematical theory, say a theory of sets? The answer, certainly, is that its job is to attain a knowledge of sets. This is done by constructing a theory. Theories are semantic objects. A theory is a partition of a class of sentences about sets into those to which hold (rather than not hold) and those which don’t hold (rather than hold). The two sets are strictly disjoint, although sometimes the partition that begat them may not be complete. Suppose now that we had a theory in which every sentence held; in which, that is, there is no sentence that holds whose negation doesn’t also hold. This is the so-called Catastrophe Thesis. If ex falso were true, then inconsistent theories would simply blow up, explode, detonate, or what have you. It is easy to see that no such theory could afford us a knowledge of sets—none, not a jot. If ex falso were true, then there is nothing whatever to be learned about sets from intuitive set theory. Frege published the bad news of the paradox in an appendix of volume 2 of the Grundgesetze. If ex falso is true, the preceding pages of the Grundgesetze teach us not one blessed thing about sets.

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The same is true of the calculus before the discovery of limits and, later, of the hyperreals. The calculus harboured a known inconsistency for a very long time. Old quantum theory was also known to be inconsistent. If ex falso is true, the calculus told us nothing at all about differentiation and integration, and old quantum theory told us nothing at all about the interior of the atom. As the history of mathematics and science attest, no one has had the slightest inclination to accept these implications. If those histories are anything to go on, inconsistent theories of X routinely give us lots of principled information about X. The Catastrophe Thesis has no legs. In the circumstances of the case before us, if the classical laws of entailment did hold true (and entailment were also theoremhood-preserving), then for no sentence of a negation-inconsistent theory would we have an adequate reason to pick it over its negation. The theory would speak equally well for the negation of any sentence it spoke well of. But, again, as the history of actual mathematical practice tells us, this is nonsense. Ex falso can’t be true of entailment. For ease of reference, let us call this the Contra-Catastrophe Thesis (CCT). CCT bears weightily against a certain picture of inconsistencymanagement. The picture is roughly as follows. Suppose that T is an inconsistent theory. If the inconsistency is known to the theorist and if he is unable to block its emergence in a principled way, he is nevertheless able to work out the findings of his theory by taking pains to keep the inconsistency out of harm’s way. If the theorist is unaware of the inconsistency, he proceeds in the same way, applying tacit check to the inconsistency. So while it may be true that every sentence is derivable in T, the competent theorist restricts his T-findings to a consistent subset of T’s sentences. If CCT is true, there is something fatally wrong with this picture. It presupposes that one can discern which particular sentences hold in T in a way that gives you a knowledge of T’s subject-matter, notwithstanding that they all hold in T. It imputes to the theorist capacities for discernment which exceed those exercised by the working mathematician. For in no case would picking a particular winner make a loser of its negation, picked or not. Picking is not in the theorist’s gift. Picking is the prerogative of the

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theory. One picks what one’s theory separates out as a winner. But in an inconsistent theory everything is a winner and nothing is. I want to turn now to the particular focus of Rescher’s nonadjunctivism. Besides being of interest in its own right, this will help us to assess CCT. Rescher and Brandom are careful to say that adjunction is all right for logic in the strict sense, and that its suppression is intended only as a “semantic” rule. On the face of it, this is an oddly unconvincing claim. If “semantic” is taken in the standard way, the claim is almost certainly false. But the standard way is not the way of Rescher and Brandom. Theirs is an “unorthodox” understanding of what a semantic rule is. What is the nature of this semantic heterodoxy? In chapter 9, of Cognitive Pragmatism Rescher characterizes his semantic rules as principles of communication. He writes that “the salient lesson of these deliberations is that the effective ground-rules of effective communicative practice suffice to side-line a significant range of epistemic puzzles and paradoxes.” We have it then that whatever else they may be, Rescher’s semantic rules are pragmatic rules of communication. They are rules of utterance. Of assertion. Rescher began the pragmaticization of logic as early as 1959.14 A further development was Hintikka in Knowledge and Belief (1962).15 One of the job descriptions of a formal semantics is to define the system’s logical truths. Hintikka includes in this category sentences whose negations would be self-defeating for someone to utter, some of which fail the Tarskian test of having a model in every interpretation. Rescher’s treatment of the truthpredicate, as with expressions in the form t(P) occurring in his semantical rules, is seriously nonstandard. Truth is not a model theoretic property. Tarski’s semantic maps truth values to sentences via the relations borne by them and their parts to a family of set theoretic structures, which Tarski clearly thinks of as a simulation of the world. The truth and falsity of sentences is a matter of how they stand to the word; it is also a matter of how the world is. In its occurrences in Rescher and Brandom’s semantical rules, the sentence operator ‘t’ is not functioning as Tarski’s truth predicate. It functions instead as an assertion operator, and assertion is allowed to be world-relative. In world w1 A might be asserted with good authority, and in world w2 aA might be asserted with good authority. But it cannot be as-

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serted on good authority that A and aA. Assertion is Moorean; it is intrinsically truth-committed. I cannot assert “A, but A is not true.” If we now interpret the operator ‘t’ as an assertability operator, this is tantamount to making it a truth predicate of kinds. For an assertible claim is a claim whose assertion honors all its commitments. Assertion is truth from the inside, so to speak. Assertion and assertibility have not stirred much interest in the mainstream of logic, but Rescher has been thinking about it for a long time. His “Assertion logic” appeared in 1968 in Topics in Philosophical Logic.16 Rescherian truth is such that both the inaccessible and misbehaving bits of the world can’t be thought. And what can’t be thought can’t be reasoned from. As Rescher and Brandom write “[a]ssertion is, of course, only a meaningful prospect in contexts where not everything can be asserted—where there is some exclusion. For assertion must be determinative, and omniis determinatio est negatio }, as Spinoza’s precept has it.” It bears on our reading of Rescher that Jáskowski’s founding investigations were directed to the logic of discussion. Jáskowski called his systems “discussive” logics (and, in a variation, “discursive”). They are a branch of dialogue logic. Discursive systems are non-classical in certain predictable respects. In a conversation, one party might forward the claim that A, and another might assert a proposition incompatible with it. It might even be the case that there is a positive degree of reasoned support for each of A and aA. But there are two things Jáskowski won’t allow. He won’t allow that the combination of the reasons for A and the reasons for aA constitutes any reason for A š aA. Neither will he allow that A š aA has even occurred in this discussion (so the question of what are the reasons for it doesn’t actually arise). N-party discussions are non-adjunctive. The rule of adjunction is not a universally valid rule there. Imagine a conversation between two speakers S and Sc over some disputed matter. It is natural to suppose that there will be a number of propositions on which S and Sc disagree and that, for the most part, they will not shrink from giving them voice. If each is performing self-consistently, we could speak of the worlds constituted by their respective assertions in this dispute. World w1 would be made up of S’s assertions and w2 would be

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made up of Sc‘s assertions. Could we now make a further world—not a world “thrust upon” us “by an ineluctable force” of its own, but a world “of our devising” whose “descriptive make up” would be “as we please”? Rescher’s answer is Yes. In Imagining Irreality (2003), Rescher writes: “These [= possible worlds], of course, are not possible worlds as such but conceptual constructs.”17 We “construct” the superposition of w1 and w2 to make the impossible world w3. But since the proposed construction would be along discussive lines, it can only be expected that adjunction would not be valid in w3. And whatever the details (the devil is in the details), Rescher and Brandom are entirely right in thinking that in the old calculus, old quantum theory and old set theory, what those theories taught us was produced paraconsistently. Perhaps we now have the basis on which to mount a rejoinder to CCT. Recall that if CCT is true, so is ex falso; and any readiness, whether Harman’s or Rescher and Brandom’s or anyone else’s, to preserve its truth for strict logic is doomed. CCT presumes that a mathematical theory is a class of true sentences closed under logical or logico-mathematical consequence. If T is an axiomatic theory, then what T tells us about its subject-matter is conveyed by those axioms and their closure under consequence (whatever the details). As CTT points out, if T’s closure-mechanisms fail to partition T’s sentences in the requisite way, then whatever we might already know about T’s subject-matter or whatever we might come to know about it, this could not be a knowledge afforded by T. Rescher’s insistence, in The Logic of Inconsistency and elsewhere, that his semantic rules are, in effect, assertibility rules suggests a different conception of what a theory is. Contrary to what is assumed by CCT, a theory is not, in the standard meaning of the term, a semantic object, not a set of truth-valuable sentences closed under sentential relations. Rather a theory is a pragmatic object, that is, a set of assertions closed under its “semantic” rules, which are rules of an assertibility logic. An assertibility logic can guard against catastrophe in two ways. It can forbid the assertoric aggregation of any assertion and its negation. It can also suppress ex falso for assertion. Even if someone did assert something in the form A š aA, the assertion of everything would be flatly disallowed (recall the Spinozistic constraint). What do we now make of the

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theories which provoked CCT—old calculus, old set theory and old quantum theory? How, we asked, could these inconsistent theories give us any instruction if deduction were closed under classical consequence? The answer is that this is all beside the point. Perhaps the old comprehension axiom does indeed entail everything whatever. But Rescherian theories aren’t closed under strict logic. They are closed by the rules of assertion. Could such theories give us instruction about integration and differentiation about sets and about the interior of the atom? Yes, they could. I am not aware of any place in Rescher’s writings in which he either identifies the CCT or marshals the present rebuttal of it. But, if I am not mistaken, all the elements required for the rebuttal are prefigured in Rescher’s nonstandard notion of a semantical rule. I mentioned earlier Rescher’s approach to aporetic resolution. This is done by spotting the weakest link in an aporetic cluster. The procedures of chapter 5 have their origin in Rescher’s theory of plausibility screening, developed in his pioneering Plausible Reasoning (1976).18 Consider a simplified example. X, Y and Z are expert witnesses in a criminal trial. Although they agree on some matters, they disagree on others. Thus the totality of their evidence—call it 6—is inconsistent. We might note in passing that although every sentence of 6 has been attested to by an expert, no one has attested to 6. The relation of being attested to is not closed under aggregation. Suppose now that there were some reasonable basis on which to rank the reliability of these experts. If we used the numerical scale 1-10, with 10 highest and 1 lowest, we could also rank the reliability of the claims given in evidence; a proposition’s reliability is the same as the reliability-ranking of its source. When confronted with 6, it is a juror’s job to pick a maximal consistent subset of it. One might think that the best way to do this is to form that set whose propositions have the highest reliability ranking; that is, to accept everything the most highly ranked expert says and reject any contrary claim of the lesser-ranked experts. It is to Rescher’s considerable credit to have taken note of an important empirical fact about resolution of testimonial conflict. It is that often a resolver’s subset will contain the negation of a more highly ranked proposition. Such a proposition might be picked because, for example, it is backed by two or more ex-

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perts of less than top ranking. It is true that in figuring out what evidence to believe, Rescher’s method gives overall preference to propositions of high rank. Not in the direct way just noted, but rather by application of the following rule: Pick that maximal consistent subset of 6 that excludes 6-propositions of least reliability. In the case of a tie, pick the common components of the tied sets.

In Plausible Reasoning, Rescher generalizes the judicial example in an interesting way. Any proposition that one might assert or consider asserting has a source. The source might be sense-perception or memory or mathematical proof or the say so of a pundit or interlocutor, and so on. Sources in turn are more or less reliable. Sources can also be construed as witnesses to the propositions they ground. Some sources speak their truths literally, others in a more metaphorical way, suggestive of the Book of Nature. Sources, then, are sources of information. When the information that comes one’s way is inconsistent, one has the task of conflict resolution. One way of proceeding is to handle all these cases in the way in which testimonial conflicts in court are handled, that is, by applying the method of plausibility screening. Considered as a general method of conflict resolution, plausibility screening embodies some fairly unrealistic idealizations. Leading the list is the assumption that our epistemic sources are subject to credible and predictable reliability-indexing, even on so gross a scale as 1 to 10. Another possible difficulty is Rescher’s equation of plausibility with a degree of source-reliability. In fact, one might say that the greater the reliability of its source, the greater latitude a proposition has on the score of implausibility. Perhaps a more interesting question is whether plausibility screening (or anything like it) actually works for aporetic clusters. We should ask the same question for the closely related issue of paradoxes. I lack the time to give these questions the attention they deserve. But before moving on, a few brief observations might be in order. First, in What If? Rescher also entertains what can only be consider a rival of plausibility screening as a

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method of conflict-resolution. It is the econometric method of costs and benefits crudely formulable as follows: Pick that maximal consistent subset of 6 that excludes an 6-proposition at least over-all cost to one’s epistemic priorities.

The dominant conception is now of a proposition’s priority-ranking, which while a generalization of plausibility-ranking, is one in which some of the trouble with plausibility evaporates. This, I think, is a considerable improvement over the provisions of 1976. There may well be classes of cases in which the two methods trigger the same exclusions, but they are far from equivalent. A second point is that a defining characteristic of aporetic clusters is not only that the propositions they contain are highly plausible, but it is not always possible to discern reliability-variations in the sources of these conflicting plausibilities. But, even assuming tenability of the equation of the most plausible and the most reliably-sourced, consider again the deterministic cluster. If we opted for plausibility screening, we would order the conflicting propositions according to source-reliability. But what are the sources of these propositions? Perhaps they are rooted in “our” intuitions or in “common knowledge.” If so, the prospect of ordering would seem to evaporate. But if we opted for the econometric method in which priorities were ordered by costs and benefits, there would be some clear advantages. One is that we would not need to worry about plausibilistic/reliability indiscernibilities. Another is that weakest-link identification need not be an affair of the moment. The econometric method leaves plenty of time to sort out what the costs of the various exclusions actually turn out to be. A case in point is the handling of ex falso by the early proponents of relevant logic. By a large majority, relevant logicians elected to crimp the reach of the law of disjunctive syllogism. It was not realized at the time that the cost of this rejection is the thorough-going intensionalization of the resulting logic.19 As Quine observed, when we meddle with a given connective, we meddle with them all. (Recall difficulties of the same sort attending the Rescher-Brandom repair of intuitive set theory.)

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The determinism cluster is important in an obvious way. It can serve as a test case for Rescherian weakest-link identification. If we follow the procedures of What If?, we are supposed to do two things. We must first identify something as “a speculative supposition” in virtue of which the cluster is engendered. We must then reject whatever proposition that is “least consonant with the fundamental commitments of [our] overall position.” This may strike the reader as problematic on both fronts. Which is the speculative supposition that does all the damage here? Perhaps Rescher would say that they all are. Which, then, least comports with the fundamentals of our overall position? Consider the options: 1. Human beings are in part outside the natural order. 2. The law of causality breaks down in the mezzo-world. 3. Human beings aren’t free after all. Hobson’s Choice, some would say, and historically none of these is the preferred solution anyway. The preferred solution is to plead ambiguity, and then to disambiguate in ways that all the propositions in the cluster turn out to be both true and welcome. This is precisely what compatibilism seeks to deliver. True, it is in its own right a contested solution, but it is one whose heart is in the right place. It seeks for something for these conflicting intuitions to be true of. For one sense of “cause,” everything in the natural order is caused. For another sense of “cause,” anything caused is incompatible with freedom, yet lots and lots of human actions aren’t caused. Solutions of this sort deserve a name. Let us say that they are a kind of reconciliation. A third observation also concerns costs and benefits. There is a wellestablished mathematical theory of costs and benefits. In speaking of the econometric method of conflict resolution, one might suppose that the conflict-resolver applies the theorems—tacitly perhaps—of this mathematical model. There is not much in the way of empirical evidence to suggest that this is actually the case. We need only reflect on the history of the deter-

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minism-free will conflict to see that precisely what is missing here are the calculations mandated by the mathematical model. This suggests not only that as used here the cost-benefit idiom is a metaphor. It also suggests that its cash value is dialectical rather than mathematical. Seen this way, the value one attaches to a claim is reflected in what one is prepared to give up to hold it. Embedded in this conception is a further notion of conflict resolution. One finds it championed in Henry Johnstone’s thesis20 that philosophical argument and counter-argument has the ad hominem character of arguments discussed (without disapproval) by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)21. It is a form of argument in which one party presses the other with consequences of the latter’s “own principles and concessions,” and in that way seeks his surrender. The dialectical conception of cost-benefit conflict resolution is an easy generalization of this notion. One of the virtues of Johnstone’s approach is that since different people often value things differently, philosophical pluralism is an entirely intelligible state of affairs. And, of course, pluralism is an issue about which Rescher himself has written valuably and with insight.22 In bringing this essay to a close, I want to say something about Rescher’s early paper on plural quantification, dating from 1962.23 Part of what makes the Rescher-quantifier interesting and important is the kind of philosophical issue to which it is a response. Also of interest is its timeliness. What is striking about Rescher’s writings, among their other very obvious virtues, is how ahead of the curve they tend to be. Rescher is not the originator of all that he writes about, but he has an admirable ability to spot trend-lines very early. Plural quantification is a case in point. Not much was going on with plural quantifiers in 1964, but today they are all the rage.24 Especially important is what motivated Rescher’s interest in them. One way in which to be drawn to the subject is by noticing the plain linguistic fact that natural languages possess quantifiers other than those of mainstream logic. They are right “there” in the language, so wouldn’t it be interesting to expose their logical structure? This was not Rescher’s motivation. Rescher was struck by the frequency with which the lawlike generalizations of successful science failed the standard of strict universality. The universal quantifier overstates the insights of much of science. We

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might say that the totalities invoked by such generalizations are themselves classically nonstandard; they don’t honor the strict universality of classical quantifications. Rescher was not alone in noticing nonstandard totalities. In 1959 Michael Scriven published an important paper on “normic” claims in science, statements that hold for the most part.25 (And before Scriven, Harold Langford was writing about generic claims in a paper he published in 1949).26 The papers by Scriven and Rescher appear to mark two different approaches to non-universal generalization, Scriven anticipating developments in the logic of generic statements and Rescher taking the different route of plural quantification. For certain classes of cases, there are significant differences between the two, as may be seen by considering the fourleggedness of ocelots or the malaria-carriage of the Aropheles mosquito. We might note not only that “Ocelots are four-legged” is not a Rescherquantification, but that in any event not every generic statement even implies a corresponding Rescher-quantification. “The Aropheles mosquito carries malaria” is a true generic claim, but fewer than 5 % of these creatures are carriers.27 The semantically distinctive feature of generic truths is that they can remain true in the case of true negative instances. The same is also true of “Most ocelots are four-legged”, but with a large difference: a three-legged ocelot is an exception to the generic claim but not to the Rescher-quantification claim. Non-universal generalizations exhibit even more heterogeneity than one finds in the contrast between Rescher-quantification and the genericity of the four-leggedness of ocelots. Aside from the obvious variations on Rescher’s “most” (“many,” “several,” etc.), we also have it that genericity comes in varying kinds, covering among other things claims about what is typical, usual, characteristic and normal. Even “Ocelots are four-legged” can claim membership in this set, but with a peculiarity: “Ocelots are fourlegged” is always true except where something has gone wrong, such as congenital defect or injury. Accordingly, notwithstanding the intuitions noted just above, “Ocelots are four-legged” is true just when “All nondefective ocelots are four-legged” is also true. It might be supposed that we

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get a similar paraphrase with typicality-generics (“Zs typically W”) and characteristicness-generics (“Xs characteristically Y”), as follows: i. It is characteristic of Xs that all of them Y. ii. It is typical of Zs that all of them W. But this is wrong. It is characteristic of Xs that most of them Y, and it is typical of Zs that most of them W. So some generics—quite a range of them in fact—do indeed incorporate the Rescher-quantifier. Here again, as early as 1962, Nicholas Rescher was on to something of major importance. NOTES 1

Nicholas Rescher, Epistemic Logic, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

2

Nicholas Rescher, Epistemetrics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

3

Nicholas Rescher What If? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2005.

4

John Woods, Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 14-16 and 76-78.

5

For a compact and up-to-date apologiae for true contradictions, see Bradley Armour-Garb, “Wrestling with (and without) dialetheism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83, pp. 87-102, 2005, and Graham Priest, “Paraconsistency and dialetheism.” In Dov M. Gabbay and John Woods, editors, The Many Valued and Nonmonotonic Turn in Logic, volume 8 of the Handbook of the History of Logic, pp. 129-204. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2007. For reservations, see for example John Woods, “The economics of paradox,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83, pp. 103-113, 2004 and “Dialectical considerations on the logic of contradiction I,” Logic Journal of the IGPL, 13, pp. 231-260, 2005.

6

Nicholas Rescher, Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.

7

Steven Yablo, “Paradox without self-reference,” Analysis, 53, 251-252, 1993.

8

Nicholas Rescher and Robert Brandom, The Logic of Inconsistency. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.

9

The locus classicus is Nuel D. Belnap’s “Entailment and relevance,” Journal of Symbolic Logic, 25, pp. 144-146, (1960). See also A. R. Anderson and Nuel D. Belanp, Jr., Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, volume 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

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NOTES 10

For the tie between preservationist logics and Rescher and Brandom’s brand of non-adjunctive logic, see Bryson Brown, “Rational inconsistency and reasoning,” Informal Logic, 14 (1992), 5-10.

11

S. JaĞkowski, “On the rules of suppositions in formal logic.” In Storrs McCall, editor, Polish Logic: 1920-1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. First published in Studia Logica, 1 (1934).

12

See, for example, David Makinson’s review in the Journal of Symbolic Logic, 47 (1982) 233-236 and A.J. Dale’s “The illogic of inconsistency,” Philosophical Studies, 46 (1984), 417-425.

13

Gilbert Harman “Induction.” In Marshall Swain, editor, Induction, Acceptance and Rational Belief. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1970.

14

“The logic of existence and denotation,” Philosophical Review, 1959. See also “Belief contravening suppositions,” Philosophical Review, 1961 and “Plausible Implication,” 1961.

15

Jaakko Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1962. Reprinted under the same title by College Publications: London, in 2005.

16

Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel.

17

Chicago and LaSalle: Open Court; p. 144, n. 9.

18

Assen and Amsterdam: van Gorcum.

19

See here J. Michael Dunn, “Relevant logic and entailment.” In Dov M. Gabbay and F. Guenthner, editors, Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume 3, pages 117-224. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984, and Arnon Avron, “Whither relevant logic,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, 21 (1992), 243-281.

20

Henry W. Johnstone, Jr., “Philosophy and the Argumentum ad Hominem”, Journal of Philosophy, 49 (1952), 489-498.

21

And with qualified approval, by Aristotle. See, for example, On Sophistical Refutations 167b 8-9ff, Prior Analytics A9 76a 13-15 and Metaphysics K5.

22

Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995.

23

Nicholas Rescher, “Plurality quantification and quasi-categorical propositions,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 27, 1962, pp. 373-374.

24

See, for example, Gila Sher, The Bounds of Logic, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1991.

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NOTES 25

Michael Scriven, “Truisms as the grounds for historical explanations,” in PatrickGardiner, editor Theories of History, pp. 443-75. Glencoe, IL: Free Press 1959.

26

C.H. Langford, “The institutional use of ‘the’,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 10, (1949), 115-120.

27

See here, Manfred Krifka, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Gregory N. Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Gennaro Chierchia and Godehard Link, “Genericity: An introduction.” In Gregory N. Carlson and Francis Jeffry Pelletier, editors, The Generic Book, page 1124. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995, p. 44.

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Chapter II/1 VAGRANT PREDICATES AND UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS 1. NONINSTANTIABLE PROPERTIES

O

ne can refer to an item in two distinctly different ways: either specifically and individually by means of naming or identifying characterization (“George Washington, the Father of our Country”), or obliquely and sortally as an item of a certain type or kind (“an American male born in the 18th century”). Now a peculiar and interesting mode of reference occurs when an item is referred to obliquely in such a way that its specific identification is flat-out precluded as a matter of principle. This phenomenon is illustrated by claims to the existence of: a thing whose identity will never be known, an idea that has never occurred to anybody, an occurrence that no-one has ever mentioned, —an integer that is never individually specified. Here those particular items that render (u)Fu true are referentially inaccessible: to indicate them individually and specifically as instances of the predicate at issue is ipso facto to unravel them as so-characterized items.1 The concept of an applicable but nevertheless noninstantiable predicate comes to view at this point. This is a predicate F whose realization is noninstantiable because while it is true in abstracto that this property is exemplified nevertheless no specific instance can possibly be adduced. Here (u)Fu will be true while nevertheless the very manner of its specification makes it impossible to identify any particular individual u0 such that Fu0 obtains. Accordingly:

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

F is a vagrant predicate iff (u)Fu is true while nevertheless Fu0 is false for each and every specifically identified u0. Such predicates are “vagrant” in the sense of having no known address or fixed abode: though they indeed have applications these cannot be specifically instanced—they cannot be pinned down and located in a particular spot. Predicates of this sort will be such that: one can show on the basis of general principles that there must be items to which they apply, while nevertheless one can also establish that no such items can ever be concretely instanced.2 2. EXAMPLES OF VAGRANT PREDICATES The following predicates present properties that are clearly noninstantiable in this way: being an ever-unstated (proposition, theory, etc.), being a never-mentioned topic (idea, object, etc.), being someone whom everyone has forgotten, being an issue no-one has thought about since the 16th century. Noninstantiability itself is certainly not something that is noninstantiable: many instances can be given. Specifically, in our epistemic context, one realizes perfectly well there are bound to be truths one does not know: (p)(p & ~Kip) But of course I can identify no such specific p0 for which I know p0 & ~Kip0 Thus while (x)Kx(p)(p &~Kxp)

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can be maintained unproblematically, (x)(p)Kx(p & ~Kxp) cannot because it straightaway engenders a contradiction. The generic p at issue in that former thesis is thus in principle noninstantiable. There are bound to be truths nobody knows. But no one can provide a certifiable instance of this phenomenon, so that “being a truth nobody knows” is a model instance of a vagrant predicate. 3. THE ROLE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN VALIDATING CLAIMS OF INAPPLICABILITY A predicate F is generically applicable when we have (u)Fu On the other hand, a predicate is specifically instantiated if we manage to indicate its concretely identified application in some particular instance: for some canonically identified u0, Fu0 After all, it is usefulindeed necessaryto distinguish between a property F that is known to have an application (x)Kx(u)Fu and there being a known instance of F: (u)(Fu & (x)KxFu) or simply (u)(x)KxFu In the former case we only know that there is a fact, in the latter there is a known fact. And of course there are doubtless facts of this nature that are not and indeed cannot be identifiably known. When this occurs we have to do with vagrant predicates: they exist in the gap established by the distinction at issue. The existence of vagrant predicates shows that applicability and instantiability do not come to the same thing. By definition, vagrant predicates will be applicable: there indeed are items to which they apply. However,

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this circumstance will always have to be something that must be claimed on the basis of general principles, doing so by means of concretely identified instances is, by hypothesis, infeasible. Consider an example of this sort of general-principle demonstration. There are infinitely many positive integers. But the earth has a beginning and end in time. Its overall history has room for only a finite number of intelligent earthlings, each of whom can only make specific mention of a finite number of integers. (They can, of course, refer to the set of integers at large, but they can only specifically take note of a finite number of them.) There will accordingly be some ever-unmentioned, ever unconsidered integersindeed an infinite number of them. But clearly no one can give a specific example of this. Or again consider being an unverified truth. Since in the history of the species there can only be a finite number of specifically verified propositions, while actual truths must be infinite in number, we know that there will be some such unverified truths. But to claim specifically of a particular proposition that it is an unverified truth is impracticable, seeing that it involves claiming it as a truth and thereby classing it as a proposition whose truth has been determined. We can allude to such items but cannot actually identify them. Such examples show how considerations of general principle can substantiate claims to the existence of vagrant predicates. 4. GENERAL VS. SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND THE IMPACT OF VAGRANCY The difference between predicate vagrancy and its contrary mirrors that between: • generic knowledge: I know that something has F: Ki(u)Fu and • specific knowledge: I know something that F’s, that is, I know of something that it has F: (u)KiFu

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This recurs at the general level in the distinction between the generic “Somebody knows that something has F.” (x)Kx(u)Fu in contrast to the specific “There is something of which someone knows that it in particular has F”: (x)(u)KxFu In the former case y simply knows that F is applicable, in the latter case x is in a position to adduce specific example F-applicationto adduce a known instance of F. From the logical standpoint, then, the issue comes down to the relative placement of the existential quantifier and the cognitive operator. It is in just this context that vagrancy manifests itself. Vagrant predicates are by nature noninstantiable, but we can nevertheless use them to individuate items that we can never identify. Thus if “the oldest unknown (i.e., never-to-be identified) victim of the eruption of Krakatoa is at issue, then we can make various true claims about the soindividuated person—for example that he-or-she was alive at the time of Krakatoa’s eruption. We can allude to that individual but by hypothesis cannot manage to identify him. Predicative vagrancy thus reinforces the distinction between mere individuation and actual identification. 5. VAGRANT PREDICATES AS EPISTEMIC To establish vagrancy for a predicate F one needs to show that while there indeed are F-instantiating items, nevertheless they cannot be specifically identified. The vagrancy status of the item is never known. This comes to maintaining: (u)(Fu & ~(x)KxFu) No problem here. Such a claim makes perfectly good sense. It would not, however, make sense for us (or anyone) to claim to know the identity of this unknown. That is, we could not sensibly claim that for some specified individual u0: Fu0 & ~(x)KxFu0

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Maintaining this would commit us to the claim that we ourselves know Fu0 to be the case so, that KiFu0 (i = myself). But then in going on to say ~(x)KxFu0 we stand committed to denying this claim and thereby enmesh ourselves in contradiction. In other words: Ki(Fu & ~(x)KxFu0) is incoherent. The fact of it is that whenever F is a vagrant predicate the claim that (x)(Fu)KxFu is (by hypothesis) in principle self-contradictory and thereby false. With formalistic discussions in matters of logic or mathematics—where predicates cast in the language of cognitive operators have no place—one never encounters vagrant predicates. For in such contexts we affirm what we know but never claim that we know. However, with epistemic matters the situation can be very different. Consider such predicates as being a book no one has ever read, being a sunset never witnessed by any member of homo sapiens. Such items may be difficult to instantiatebut certainly not impossible. The former could be instantiated by author and title; the latter by place and date. In neither case will an instantiation unravel that item as described. Being read is not indispensably essential to books, nor being seen to sunsets: being an unread book or being an unwittnessed sunset involves no contradiction in terms. But in those epistemic cases that concern us now, epistemic inaccessibility is built into the specification at issue. Here being instantiated stands in direct logical conflict with the characterization at issue, as with: being a person who has passed into total oblivion, —being a never-formulated question, being an idea no one any longer mentions.

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To identify such an item (in the way now at issue) is thereby to unravel its specifying characterization.3 The knowledge operator K is of the essence here. What is pivotal in all of these cases of vagrant predicates is that they involve a specification whichlike identification, comprehension, formulation, mention, etc.is fundamentally epistemicsomething that can only be performed by a creature capable of cognitive and communicative performances. This is readily established. Let F be a vagrant predicate. Since we then by hypothesis have it that (u)Fu is true, there is clearly nothing impossible about being F-possessing as such. Ontologically speaking there are, by hypothesis, items to which F applies; what is infeasible is only providing an instance—a specific example or illustration. The impossibility lies not in “being an F” as such but in “being an concretely/instantiated F.” The problem is not with the indefinite “something is an F” but with the specific “this is an F.” Difficulty lies not with F-hood as such, but with its specific applicationnot with the ontology of there being an F but with the epistemology of its apprehension in individual cases. 6. THE CENTRALITY OF EPISTEMIC INVOLVEMENT The salient point is that specification, exemplification, etc., are epistemic processes which, as such, are incompatible with those epistemically voided characterizations provided by vagrant predicates. Total oblivion and utter nonentertainment are automatically at odds with identificatory instantiation. After all, honoring a request to identify the possessor of an noninstantiable property is simply impossible. For any such response would be selfdefeating. It is this uniting, common feature of all vagrant predicates that they are so specified that in the very act of identifying a would-be instantiation of them we will automatically violatethat is, falsifyone of the definitive features of the specification at issue. In other words, with such noninstantiable features their noninstantiability is something inherent in the defining specification of the features at issue. Specifically, in claiming F to be instanced but not instantiable we subscribe to (u)(Fu &~¸(x)KxFu)

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Accordingly, let us define this idea of “being an unknown instance of F” by the specification: F#u iff

Fu & ~¸(x)KxFu

On this basis, the aforementioned contention that F has an unknown instance comes to (u)F#u. And to say that this itself is known is perfectly practicable. For (x)Kx(u)F#u or equivalently (x)Kx(u)(Fu & ~¸(y)KyFu) is a perfectly viable contention.4 The very concept of instantiability/noninstantiability is thus epistemic in its bearing because all of the relevant proceduresexemplifying, illustrating, identifying, naming, and the likeare inherently referential by way of purporting a knowledge of identity. And since all such referential processes are, and must be mind-projected, they are epistemic in nature. On this basis, the idea of knowledge is unavoidably present throughout the phenomenon of predicative vagrancy. 7. UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS In inquiring into this problem area, we are not interested in questions whose unanswerability resides merely in the contingent fact that certain information is not in practice accessible. “Did Julius Caesar hear a dog bark on his thirtieth birthday?” There is no possible way in which we can secure the needed information here-and-now. (Time travel is still impracticable.) But of course such questions are not inherently unanswerable and it is unanswerability as a matter of principle that will concern us here.5 There are two principal sorts of meaningfully unanswerable questions, those that are locally irresolvable, and those that are so globally. Locally unanswerable questions are those which a particular individual or group is unable to answer. An instance of such a question is: “What is an example of a fact of which you are altogether ignorant?” Clearly you cannot possibly manage to answer this, because whatever you adduce as such a fact must be something you know or believe to be such (that is, a fact), so that you cannot possibly be altogether ignorant of it. On the other hand, it is clear that somebody else could readily be in the position to answer the question. Again, consider such questions as:

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• What is an example of a problem that will never be considered by any human being? • What is an example of an idea that will never occur to any human being? There are sound reasons of general principle (the potential infinitude of problems and ideas; the inherent finitude of human intelligence) to hold that the items at issue in these questions (problems that will never be considered; ideas that will never occur) do actually exist. And it seems altogether plausible to think that other (non-human) hypothetically envisionable intelligences could well answer these questions correctly. But though it is equally clear that we humans could never provide the requisite answers. And looking beyond this we can also contemplate the prospect of globally intractable questions such that nobody (among finite intelligences at least) can possibly be in a position to answer them (in the strict sense described at the outset). These questions have an appropriate answer but for reasons of general principle no one—no finite intelligence at least—can possibly be in a position to provide it. On this basis, Q is a globally intractable question iff: (p)(p @ Q & ~(p)(x)¸Kx[p @ Q]) An example of such globally unanswerable questions can be provided by nontrivial but yet inherently uninstantiable predicates along the lines of • “What idea is there that has never occurred to anybody?” • “What occurrence is there that no one ever mentions?” There undoubtedly are such items, but of course they cannot be instantiated, so that questions which ask for examples here are inherently unanswerable.6 The questions that will concern us here are those that are both answerpossessing and unanswerable, that is, they have answers but these answers cannot be specified. Now answer-possession comes to (p)(p @ Q). But if this answer were to be specified, we would then have it that for some spe-

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cific p0 it can be established that p0 @ Q. And if we ourselves (= i) could determine this, then we would have it that Ki(p0 @ Q) And on this basis it would follow that (x)(p)Kx(p @ Q) But given the hypothesis of unanswerability it is just exactly this that cannot be. With answer-possessing but unanswerable questions it accordingly must transpire that the answer which, abstractly speaking, has to be there is one that cannot possibly be specified by way of particularized identification. If such questions can indeed be adduced, then, while one cannot identify an unknown truth, one would be able to identify cases of unspecifiable truth, propositions such that either p0 or not-p0 must be true and yet nevertheless there is no prospect of determining which it is. Here we can localize truth by emplacing it within a limited range (one here consisting of p0 and ~p0) but cannot pinpoint it within this range of alternatives. One member of the assertion/denial pair will unquestionably prove to be true. And so, one way or the other, a case of truth stands before us. It is just that we cannot possibly say which member of the pair it is: the specifics of the matters are simply unknowable.7 NOTES 1

We can, of course, refer to such individuals and even to some extent describe them. But what we cannot do is to identify them.

2

A uniquely characterizing description on the order of “the tallest person in the room” will single out a particular individual without specifically identifying him.

3

To be sure one could (truthfully) say something like “The individual who prepared Caesar’s breakfast on the fatal Ides of March is now totally unknown.” But the person at issue here goes altogether unknown, that is, he or she is alluded to but not specified—individuated but not concretely identified. So I cannot appropriately claim to know who the individual at issue is but only at best that a certain individual is at issue.

4

It is, of course, crucially different from (u)(x)Kx(Fu & ~¸(y)KyFu)

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NOTES

Here, as elsewhere, the position of the K operator relative to the environing quantifiers is crucial. 5

Nor will we be concerned here with the issue of indemonstrable truths and unanswerable questions in mathematics. Our concern is only with factual truths and the issue of truth in such formal descriptions as mathematics or logic will be left aside.

6

This issue here is one of so-called “vagrant predicates” that have no known address.

7

For further information on these issues see the author’s Epistemic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).

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Chapter II/2 TRUTH, FACT, AND THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 1. TRUTH VS. FACTS

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t serves the interests of clarity to distinguish between truths and facts. Truths are linguistically stated facts, correct statements, in sum, which, as such, must be formulated in language (broadly understood to include symbols systems of various sorts). A “truth” is something that has to be framed in linguistic/symbolic terms—the representation of a fact through its statement in some language, so that any correct statement represents a truth. A “fact,” on the other hand, is not a linguistic item at all, but an actual aspect of the world’s state of affairs which is thereby a feature of reality.1 Facts correspond to potential truths whose actualization as such waits upon their appropriate linguistic embodiment. Truths are statements and thus language-bound, but facts outrun linguistic limits. Once stated, a fact yields a truth, but with facts at large there need in principle be no linguistic route to get from here to there. 2. THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF FACT Accordingly, facts need not be exhausted by truths. It is a key facet of our epistemic stance towards the real world that its furnishings possess a complexity and diversity of detail so elaborate there is always more to be said than we have so far managed. Every part and parcel of reality has features beyond the range of our current cognitive reach—at any juncture whatsoever. Moreover, any adequate account of inquiry must recognize that the process of information acquisition at issue in science is a process of conceptual innovation. In consequence, the ongoing progress of scientific inquiry always leaves various facts about the things of this world wholly outside the conceptual realm of the inquirers of any particular period. Caesar did not know—and in the then extant state of the cognitive art could not have known—that his sword contained tungsten and carbon. There will

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always be facts about a thing that we do not know because we cannot even express them in the prevailing conceptual order of things. To grasp such a fact means taking a perspective of consideration that as yet we simply do not have, because the state of knowledge (or purported knowledge) has not reached a point at which such a consideration is feasible. And so, the facts about any actual physical object are in theory inexhaustible. Its susceptibility to further elaborate detail—and to changes of mind regarding this further detail—is built into our very conception of a “real thing.” The range of fact about anything real is thus effectively inexhaustible. There is, as best we can tell, no limit to the world’s ever-increasing complexity that comes to view with our ever-increasing grasp of its detail. The realm of fact and reality is endlessly variegated and complex. And so we also arrive at: The Inexhaustibility of Fact. Facts are infinite in number. The domain of fact is inexhaustible: there is no limit to facts about the real. In this regard, however, real things differ in an interesting and important way from fictive ones. For a key about fictional particulars is that they are of finite cognitive depth. In characterizing them we shall ultimately run out of steam as regards their non-generic features. A point will always be reached when one cannot say anything further that is characteristically new about them—presenting non-generic information that is not inferentially implicit in what has already been said.2 New generic information can, of course, always be forthcoming through the progress of science: when we learn more about coal-in-general then we know more about the coal in Sherlock Holmes’ grate. But the finiteness of their cognitive depth means that the prospect of ampliatively novel non-generic information must by the very nature of the case come to a stop when fictive things are at issue. With real things, on the other hand, there is no reason of principle why the elaboration of non-generically idiosyncratic information need ever end. On the contrary, we have every reason to presume real things to be cognitively inexhaustible. The prospect of discovery is open-ended here. A precommitment to description-transcending features—no matter how far description is pushed—is essential to our conception of a real thing. The detail of the real world is inexhaustible: obtaining fuller information about its constituents is always possible in principle—through not of course in practice, since only a finite number of things have actually been said up to now—or indeed up to any actually realized moment of world

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history. Something whose character was exhaustible by linguistic characterization would thereby be marked as fictional rather than real.3 And so we have it that facts regarding reality are infinite in number. But just how infinite? 3. FACTS ARE TRANSDENUMERABLE While statements in general—and therefore true statements in particular— can be enumerated, and truths are consequently denumerable in number, there is good reason to suppose that this will not hold for facts. On the contrary, there is every reason to think that, reality being what it is, there will be an uncountably large manifold of facts. The reality of it is that facts, unlike truths, cannot be enumerated: no listing of fact-presenting truths—not even one of infinite length—can possibly manage to constitute a complete register of facts. Any attempt to register-fact-as-a-whole will founder: the list is bound to be incomplete because there are facts about the list-as-a-whole which no single entry can encompass. We thus arrive at the next principal thesis of these deliberations: The Transdenumerability of Facts. The manifold of fact is transdenumerably infinite. The idea of a complete listing of all the facts is manifestly impracticable. For consider the following statement. “The list F of stated facts fails to have this statement on it.” But now suppose this statement to be on the list. Then it clearly does not state a fact, so that the list is after all not a list of the facts (contrary to hypothesis). And so it must be left off the list. But then in consequence that list will not be complete since the statement is true. Facts, that is to say, can never be listed in toto because there will always be further facts—facts about the entire list itself—that a supposedly complete list could not manage to register. This conclusion can be rendered more graphic by the following considerations. Suppose that the list F F: f1, f2, f3, … were to constitute a complete enumeration of all facts. And now consider the statement

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(Z) the list F takes the form f1, f2, f3, … By hypothesis, this statement will present a fact. So if F is indeed a complete listing of all facts, then there will be an integer k such that Z = fk Accordingly, Z itself will occupy the k-the place on the F listing, so that: fk = the list L takes the form f1, f2, f3, . . . fk, . . . But this would require fk to be an expanded version of itself, which is absurd. With the k-th position of the F listing already occupied by fk we cannot also squeeze that complex fk-involving thesis into it. The crux here is simply that any supposedly complete listing of facts f1, f2, f3 . . . will itself exhibit, as a whole, certain features that none of its individual members can encompass. Once those individual entries are fixed and the series is defined, there will be further facts about that series-as-a-whole that its members themselves cannot articulate. 4. MORE FACTS THAN TRUTHS In such circumstances, no purportedly comprehensive listing of truths can actually manage to encompass all facts. The long and short of it is that the domain of reality-characterizing fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvas completely. The realm of fact is endlessly complex, detailed, and diversified in its make-up. And the limitedness of our recursively constituted linguistic resources thus means that our characterizations of the real will always fall short.4 We arrive at: There are quantitatively more facts than truths seeing that the facts are too numerous for enumerabilty.

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The basic reason why the domain of fact is ampler than that of truth is that language cannot capture the entirety of fact. It is not only possible but (apparently) likely that we live in a world that is not digital but analogue and whose manifold of states of affairs is simply too rich to be fully comprehended by our linguistically digital means. To all visible appearances the domain of fact transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvass it. In confronting any landscape in nature, our representation of it in propositional discourse or thought—our description-scape, so to speak—is invariably far less complex and inevitably suppresses a vast amount of detail. (Even the physics of discrete quanta requires continuous—and thus nondiscrete—parameters for its characterization.) Truth is to fact what film is to reality—a merely discretized approximation. Cognition, being bound to language, is digital and sequentially linear. Reality, by contrast, is analogue and replete with feed-back loops and nonsequentially systemic interrelations. It should thus not be seen as all that surprising that the two cannot be brought into smooth alignment. The comparative limitedness of language-encapsulable truth points to an inevitable limitedness of knowledge. 5. MUSICAL CHAIRS ONCE MORE It is instructive at this point to consider the analogy of Musical Chairs. Of course any individual play can/might be seated. And the same goes for any team or group of them with one exception; namely the whole lot. But since the manifold of knowable truth is denumerable and the manifold of fact in toto is not, then (as in our Musical Chairs example) the range of the practicable will not, cannot encompass the whole. (And note then while a team of individuals is not an individual, a complex of facts will nevertheless constitute a fact.) With regard to language, too, we once again confront a Musical Chairs situation. Conceivably, language-at-large might, in the abstract, manage to encompass nondenumerably many instances—particularly so if we indulge the prospect of idealization and resort to Bolzano’s Saetze an sich, Frege’s denkerlose Gedanken, and the like. But given the granular structure of a universe pervaded by atoms and molecules, only a denumerable number of language-using creatures can ever be squeezed into the fabric of the cosmos. And so the realistically practicable possibilities of available languages are at best denumberable.

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When reality and language play their game of Musical Chairs, some facts are bound to be left in the lurch when the music of language stops. The discrepancy manifests itself in the difference between any and every. Any candidate can possibly be accommodated. (We have (x)¸(y)Syx.) But it is not possible to accommodate every candidate. (We do not have ¸(x)(y)Syx.) The limits of knowledge are thus in the final analysis quantitative. The crux of the problem is a discrepancy of numbers. They root in the Musical Chairs Perplex—in the fact that the realm of fact is too vast for the restrictive confines of propositionalized language. And this situation has important cognitive ramifications that are brought to view by the following line of thought: (1) Everything there is—(and indeed even presumably everything there possibly can be)—has an idiosyncratic property, some feature, no doubt complex and perhaps composite, that holds for it and it alone. (Metaphysical principle) (2) The possession of such a unique characteristic property cannot obtain in virtue of the fact that the item at issue is of a certain natural kind or generic type. It can only obtain in virtue of something appertaining to this item individually and specifically. (3) Accordingly, for anything whatsoever, there will be facts about it that one can know only if one can individuate and specify that particular thing. (4) The inherent limitations of language mean that there are more things that it is possible to individuate and specify. The inevitability of unknown facts emerges at once from these considerations of general principle. The reality of it is that the domain of fact is ampler than that of truth so that language cannot capture the entirety of fact. We live in a world whose features will often be continuous rather than discrete so the manifold of its states of affairs is simply too rich to be fully comprehended by our linguistically discrete means.5 The domain of fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvass it in overt detail. Truth is to fact what moving pictures are to reality—a merely discretized approximation.

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To be sure, the numerical discrepancy at issue with the Musical Chairs Perplex does no more than establish the existence of unknown facts. It does not got so far as to establish the existence of facts that are unknowable, facts which cannot, as a matter of principle, possibly be known. To see what can be done in this line we shall have to look at matters in a different light. There clearly is, however, one fact that is unstatable to language and thereby unknowable by creatures whose knowledge is confined to the linguistically formulatable. This is the grand mega-fact consisting of the amalgamation of all facts whatever. For language-dependent knowers can at most and at best have cognitive access to a denumerable number of facts, whereas factuality itself in principle encompasses a nondenumerable quantity. And a very important point is at issue here. With Musical Chairs we know that there will be someone unseated, but cannot (given the ordinary contingencies) manage to say who this will be. And with facts, which from a cognitive point of view reduplicate the Musical Chairs situation, we also cannot manage to say which facts will be unknown. For here too there is a lot of room for contingency. But there is one very big difference. With Musical Chairs the totality of individuals, while of course not reliable, does not combine to form a single unseatable mega-individual. But the totality of facts—which cannot possibly be known—does indeed combine to form one grand unknowable megafact. So here indeed we have managed to individuate a particular unknowable fact, namely the all-encompassing megafact. But of course while we know that it is unknowable, we do not know what it is. We have individuated but not identified it. So here, as elsewhere, the details of out ignorance are hidden from our sight. Just what does this mean in the larger scheme of things? 6. CODA: AGAINST COGNITIVE NOMINALISM If we are going to be realistic about it—in both the ordinary and the philosophical sense of this term—then we still have to resist the temptation of a nominalistic textualism the identifies the nature of reality with what we can manage to about it. However, we are also well advised to avoid succumbing to the siren call of mysticism as well. Certainly the present deliberations regarding unknowable fact do not lead to this destination. Granted, given the limitations of language, there will of course be things that have to

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go unsaid—facts with respect to what words literally fail us. But there is no reason to join with Wittgenstein in characterizing this as “the mystical” (Tractatus, 6.522). These considerations afford no automatic reason for thinking that what is unsaid is going to be significantly different in kind from the things one can say, no constraining reason to see them as somehow strange and different—any more than those individuals who go unseated in Musical Chairs need be strange and different. What makes for the unsayability of these things is not their inherent ineffability but merely that there just are too many of them. No doubt reality is stranger than we think. But the ground of this circumstance will ultimately lie in the complexity convoluted nature of reality and not merely in the limitations of our languages. Doing full descriptive justice to reality is more than the limited resources of language ever permits.6 NOTES 1

Our position thus takes no issue with P. F. Strawson’s precept that “facts are what statements (when true) state.” (“Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 24, 1950, pp. 129-156; see p. 136.) Difficulty would ensue with Strawson’s thesis only if an “only” were added.

2

To deny inferentially implicit information the title of authentic novelty, is not of course, to say that it cannot surprise us in view of the limitations of our own deductive powers.

3

This also explains why the dispute over mathematical realism (Platonism) has little bearing on the issue of physical realism. Mathematical entities are akin to fictional entities in this—that we can only say about them what we can extract by deductive means from what we have explicitly put into their defining characterization. These abstract entities do not have non-generic properties since each is a “lowest species” unto itself.

4

Even in matters of actual linguistic practice we find an embarrassing shortcoming of words. The difficulty in adapting a compact vocabulary to the complexities of a diversified world are betokened by the pervasive phenomenon of polysemy—the contexulaized pluralism of varied senses and differentiated uses of the same words in different semantical and grammatical categories. On this phenomenon see Hubert Cuyckens and Britta Zawada (eds.), Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003).

5

Wittgenstein writes “logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world” (Tractatus, 6.13). This surely gets it wrong: logic is one instrumentality (among others) for organizing our thought about the world, and this thought is (as best and at most) a venture in describing or conceiving the world and its modus operandi in a way that—life being what it is—will inevitably be imperfect, and incomplete. And so any talk of mirroring is a totally unrealistic exaggeration here.

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NOTES 6

Some of the issues of this chapter are discussed in the author’s Epistemic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh press, 2005).

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Chapter II/3 APORETICS 1. APORETICS CLUSTERS IN PHILOSOPHY

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he doctrinal positions of philosophy standardly root in apories—in groups of individually plausible but collectively incompatible contentions. Just here, for example, lay the basic methodological insight of Plato’s Socrates. His almost invariable procedure was a process of “Socratic Questioning” to elicit a pre systemic apory that sets the stage for philosophical reflection. Thus in the Republic, Thrasymachus was drawn into acknowledging the aporetic triad: (1) What men call justice is simply what is decreed by the authorities as being in their own interest. (2) It is right and proper (obligatory, in fact) that men should do what is just. (3) Men have no obligation to do what is in the interest of the authorities particularly since those authorities may well themselves be mistaken about what these interests really are. The task of philosophy, as Socrates clearly saw, is to work our way out of the thicket of inconsistency in which we are entangled by our presystemic beliefs. For the sake of sheer consistency, something one might otherwise like to keep must be abandoned—or at least qualified. And when this happens, philosophizing becomes a matter of cost-benefit optimization relative to one’s overall systemic commitments. An aporetic cluster is a family of interrelated contentions of such a sort that: (1) as far as the known facts go, there is good reason for accepting them all; the available evidence speaks well for each and everyone of them, but

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(2) taken together, they are mutually incompatible; the entire family is inconsistent. Such a cluster is a set of otherwise congenial propositions which, while otherwise plausible and to some extent appealing, unfortunately, happen to be mutually inconsistent. They are of such a sort that if we are to have some, then others must be adjusted. They cannot all be maintained as correct—their mutual inconsistency precludes this prospect. In such cases we cannot simply appeal to “the evidence” to settle matters. For the evidence has already spoken and has done pretty well all it can do at the time the difficulty arises. And so, while we know (thanks to the inconsistency) that something is wrong, we cannot say with confident assurance just what has gone amiss. And this situation is typical: the problem context of philosophical issues standardly arises from a clash among individually tempting but collectively incompatible overcommitments. Philosophical issues standardly center about an aporetic cluster of this sort—a family of plausible theses that is assertorically overdeterminative in claiming so much as to lead into inconsistency. The long and short of it is that thought experimentation in philosophy is simply so much grist for the mill of a coherence analysis geared to consistency resolution of the sort at issue in counterfactual reasoning. It, too, is predicated on foregoing the weakest links in argumentation. Consider an example. Ordinarily we would say that a person might have acted differently from the way he did, and, had he done so, would still be the very same individual. But Spinoza flatly denies that this is true for God, and substantiates this claim by a thought experiment: [It is wrong to say] that God can change his decrees. For it God’s decrees had been different from what in fact he has decreed concerning nature—that is if he had willed and thought differently concerning Nature—then he would necessarily have had a different intellect and a different will from that which he actually has [and so would not be the being he is].1

With God, as Spinoza sees it, a change of mind would mean having a different mind and thereby being a different being. And of course since God (as Spinoza sees it) could not possibly be a being different from the one he is, this argumentation is to be seen as a reductio ad absurdum of God’s decrees—and thereby the actual world—being different in any respect. In addressing philosophical apories the standard policy proceeds by breaking the chain of inconsistency at its weakest link. And in the setting

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of philosophical concerns this will be a matter of weakness in point of assessed plausibility. And this issue of philosophical plausibility will here be a matter of consonance with one’s fundamental commitments which is— and is bound to be—a matter of experience. The sort of data that a philosopher’s course of experience has brought his way is going to be pivotal in this regard. In these cases of collective inconsistency, something obviously has to go. Whatever favorable disposition there may be toward these plausible theses, they cannot be maintained in the aggregate. We are confronted by a (many-sided) cognitive dilemma and must find one way out or another. It is clear in these aporetic cases that something has gone amiss, though it may well be quite unclear just where the source of difficulty lies. The resolution of such an aporetic situation obviously calls for abandoning one (or more) of the theses that generate the contradiction. Unexceptionable as these theses may seem, one or another of them has to be jettisoned in the interests of consistency. And the problem is that there are always alternative ways of doing this. After all, the root cause of such a situation lies in cognitive overcommitment. Too many jostling contentions strive for our approbation and acceptance. And this state of affairs is standard in philosophy and represents the most common and pervasive impetus to philosophical reflection. We could, in theory, simply suspend judgment in such aporetic situations and abandon the entire cluster, rather than trying to localize the difficulty in order “to save what we can.” But this is too high a price to pay. By taking this course of wholesale abandonment we lose too much through forgoing answers to too many questions. We would curtail our information not only beyond necessity but beyond comfort as well, seeing that we have some degree of commitment to all members of the cluster and do not want to abandon more of them than we have to. Again, consider the following trio, which constitutes yet another aporetic cluster: (1) Taking a human life is morally wrong. (2) The fetal organism living in its mother’s womb embodies a human life. (3) Abortion (i.e., taking the life of a fetal organism living in the mother’s womb) is not morally wrong.

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Here, too, the demands of consistency call for sacrificing something. And three alternatives present themselves: Deny (1): Regard human life as expendable in certain circumstances; abandon the idea that it is sacred. Deny (2): Gerrymander the idea of human life so as to exclude fetuses (perhaps only those that have not yet attained a certain state of development). Deny (3): Condemn abortion as morally wrong. In such situations, the issue is always one of a choice among alternatives where no matter how we turn, we find ourselves having to abandon something that seems to be plausible—some contention that, circumstances permitting, we would want to maintain and whose abandonment makes a great deal of difference. Confronted by an aporetic antinomy, we recognize that something must give way. We ought, perhaps, prefer to take the easy way out and ignore the difficulties, concealing them in a comfortable ambiguity rendered harmless by benign fact. But the urge to understanding does not allow us to rest satisfied in convenient ignorance. In all such cases, we are driven to make choices. We cannot maintain everything as it stands. The chain of inconsistency must be broken, and the best place to break it is at is weakest link. And the strength and weakness at issue here, is determined through the effort at optimal systematization—of preserving as much as one possibly can of the overall informative substance of one’s cognitive commitments. Realizing that something has to give and that certain otherwise plausible conclusions must be jettisoned, we seek to adopt those resolutions that cause the least seismic disturbance across the landscape of our commitments. And this calls for a deliberative process that invokes weighing the comparative costs and benefits of a series of mutually exclusive alternatives in the endeavor to identify that (or this) which offers the best balance of benefits over costs. Accordingly, the overall process that is called for here is a matter of cost-benefit optimization on the basis of thinking through the overall consequences of competing alternatives. This sort of thing is clearly a matter of thought experimentation. That is, we contemplate ac-

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cepting—one by one—each of the available prospects in the overall speculation of possibilities and weigh out the resulting assets and liabilities on a comparative basis to determine the optimal resolution. 2. COUNTERFACTUALS Let us enter into the region of cognitive pretence and make-believeof what-if. After all, things might have been very different. Caesar might not have crossed the Rubicon. Napoleon might never have left Elba. Surely we can reason sensibly from such straightforward contrary-to-fact assumptions so as to obtain instructive information about the consequences and the ramifications of these unrealized possibilities. There can be little question that we can generally say something about “what would happen if” in such matters. We know perfectly well that (for example): “If Hitlerite Germany had developed an atomic bomb by 1943, World War II would have taken a very different course.” What we have here is a counterfactual conditional: an answer to a question that asks what would transpire, if some putatively false antecedent were actually the case.2 Just as explanations answer “why?” questions, these conditionals offer responses to “what if?” questions. And there are, clearly both falsifying and truthifying counterfactuals, respectively coordinated with the questions: • If p (which is true) were false, then what? • If p (which is false) were true, then what? Answering such falsifying and truthifying questions is the very reason for being of counterfactual conditionals. Such contentions have been a mainstay of speculative thinking for a long time and arise over a wide range of subject-matters. These include: 1. Thought-experimentation in tracing through the consequences of a disbelieved proposition (this occurs both in common life and in technical contexts). 2. Explanation of how things work in generaleven under conditionals not actually realized. 3. Evaluating theories through (hypothetical) applications.

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4. Contingency planning. 5. The didactic use of hypotheses in learning situations. 6. Games and make-believe of all kinds. 7. Reductio ad absurdum reasoning and especially per impossible proof (in logic and in mathematics). Counterfactual inference accordingly arises over a wide and diversified spectrum of uses, ranging from the most serious to the most frivolous of contexts. It plays an important role alike in everyday life, in science, and especially in philosophy. Counterfactual conditionals pivot on suppositions seen as false—along the lines of “If Napoleon had stayed on Elba, the battle of Waterloo would never have been fought.” Such counterfactuals purport to elicit a consequence from an antecedent that is a belief-contradicting supposition.3 Such conditionals have antecedents that involve conflicts with our beliefs and not just mere supplementations to them. The result is a self-contradictory chaos, and distinctive new instrumentalities need to be provided to restore order. 3. VALIDATING COUNTERFACTUALS If overall coherence is to be achieved in the wake of a belief-conflicting supposition this requires various deletions from the body of preexisting belief.4 For in the wider context of all the prevailing beliefs counterfactual hypotheses are always paradoxical because every belief-contradicting hypothesis engenders conflicts with other available beliefs—conflicts that will require further adjudication. The reality of it is that the logicoconceptual interlinkage of our beliefs is such that belief-contradictory suppositions always function within a wider setting of accepted beliefs p1, p2, . . ., pn where one of them, say p1, must be abandoned owing to a hypothetical endorsement of its negation, nevertheless the resulting group ~p1, p2, . . . , pn still remains collectively inconsistent. The difficulty is that when a belief-contradicting hypothesis is projected at least some of the environing beliefs must always be abandoned in the wake of the hypothetical assumption. And this elimination can invariably

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be accomplished in various different ways. For instance, contrast that “natural” counterfactual: • If wood conducted electricity, then this stick would conduct electricity (since it is made of wood). with the “unnatural” counterfactual: • If wood conducted electricity, then this stick would not be made of wood (since it does not conduct electricity). As this example indicates, once we introduce that belief-contravening hypothesis different possibilities for readjustment arise. And since alternative outcomes are always possible in such cases, a logical analysis of the situation will not of itself be sufficient to eliminate the basic indeterminacy inherent in counterfactual situations. In order to avert such difficulties there must be some further guidance as to which antecedent belief should be retained and which should be abandoned. Accordingly, R. M. Chisholm added the proviso that only some suitable beliefs are to be retained. However, he never managed to indicate any satisfactory means for implementing this condition of suitability.5 And so, if a workable derivability theory of counterfactuals is to be obtained, then it becomes necessary to remedy this deficiency by making it possible to determine just which beliefs are to be available for the deductive work at issue. Unfortunately, no purely formal/logical resources will resolve the issue of such discrepant counterfactuals. Recourse to some logical-external, “material” or substantive mechanism is unavoidable here. The question of which way to go among the theoretically available alternatives is something that cannot be settled by considerations of logic and abstract theory alone, at this point we shall need to turn from theoretical logic to look elsewhere. It emerges that counterfactual reasoning, like inductive reasoning, is ultimately a primarily functional project whose management requires pragmatic resources inherent in the particular context of aims and purposes of the reasoning at issue.6 Consider, for example, the conditional: If John (who is in Detroit) were in Los Angeles, then he would be in California.

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This thesis is projected in a context where we believe: (1) John is in Detroit. (2) John is not in Los Angeles. (3) Anyone who is in Los Angeles is in California. Now the antecedent of the conditional instructs us is to suppose not-(2), namely that John is in Los Angeles. We must then, of course, abandon not only (2) but also (1). But we can unproblematically retain (3) which, in combination with our assumption of “John is in Los Angeles” yields the consequent of our counterfactual. The process at issue here can also be illustrated vividly by another example from the literature, namely: —If this rubber band were made of copper, it would conduct electricity. The counterfactual question that here confronts us is: • If this rubber band were made of copper, what then? And this question arises in an epistemic context where the following beliefs are salient: Beliefs: (1) This band is made of rubber. (2) This band is not made of copper. (3) This band does not conduct electricity. (4) Things made of rubber do not conduct electricity. (5) Things made of copper do conduct electricity. We are instructed to accept the hypothesis

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Not-(2): This band is made of copper. The following two propositional sets are the hypothesis-compatible maximal consistent subsets of our specified belief-set B: {(3), (4)}

corresponding to the acceptance/rejection alternative (3), (4)/ (1), (2), (5)

{(4), (5)}

corresponding to the acceptance/rejection alternative (4), (5)/ (1), (2), (3)

The first alternative corresponds to the counterfactual —If this band were made of copper, then copper would not conduct electricity [since this band does not conduct electricity]. And the second alternative corresponds to the counterfactual —If this band were made of copper, then it would conduct electricity [since copper conducts electricity]. There is clearly a problem of co-tenability here: to all appearances these conditionals lead us from one selfsame hypothesis to logically incompatible conclusions. We cannot have it both ways. So, in effect, we are driven to a choice between (3) and (5), that is, between a particular feature of this band and a general fact about copper things. Its greater generality qualifies (5) as being systemically more informative, and its prioritization is therefore appropriate. Accordingly, we will retain (4) and (5) along with not-(2), and therefore accept that second counterfactual as correct and abandon the first. Again, systematicity tropism is the crux. So much then for the general theory of counterfactuals. Let us now turn to a consideration of their role in philosophy.7 4. THE WEAKEST LINK IN PHILOSOPHICAL APORETICS Confronted with an inconsistent set of otherwise plausible propositions in any domain of inquiry, it is only rational to seek to restore consistency. Something has to give way in the interests of coherence. And the standard approach here is to break the chain of inconsistency at its weakest link(s).

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However, this business of weakest-link determination functions rather differently in different areas of inquiry in alignment with the variation of the purposive nature of the context of thought that is at issue. For of course different cognitive enterprises will have aims and objectives in view. The overall situation occurs over a wide range of issues, a circumstance surveyed in Display 1. In relation to philosophy, the focus of our present concerns, it is clear that the aim of the enterprise is understanding. Philosophy, after all, concerns itself with “the big questions” regarding man’s place in reality’s scheme of things. And in addressing the issues that rise here, we do not just want answers, we want cogent answers that have the backing of good reasons. Reasoned argument alone is the proper instrument of this domain. But to secure good reasons for a position one must be able to evaluate the merit of arguments, which means that we must be in possession of norms and standards of acceptability. And in philosophy our norms and standards are appropriately articulated in terms of cognitive harmonization—of conformity to the fundamental commitments at which one arrives on the basis of the course of one’s experience.8 Here as elsewhere conclusions rest on a basis of data and their acceptability is a matter of optimal overall consonance and conformity with the “facts” at one’s disposal. Let us examine more closely how this works itself out. 5. THE DETERMINATIVE ROLE OF SYSTEMATICITY CONSIDERATIONS Consider the following passage in which Nietzsche contends (in effect) that conscience and the sense of moral wrong is, unlike prudence and the sense of self-advantage a johnny-come-lately in human history. For this reason, he argues, it is not deeply inherent in the human condition; and actually of little value for us: [1] For thousands of years, all evil-doers overtaken by punishment would think, “Something has unexpectedly gone wrong here,” and not, “I should never have done that.” [2] They would undergo punishment as one undergoes sickness or misfortune or death, with that stout, unrebellious fatalism which still gives the Russians an advantage over us Westerners in the management of their lives. [3] If actions were “judged” at all in those days, it was solely from the prudential point of view. [4] There can be no doubt that we must look for the real effect of punishment in a sharpening of man’s wits, an extension of his memory, a determination to proceed henceforth more prud-

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 VERSIONS OF THE WEAKEST LINK PRINCIPLE When an inconsistency among beliefs arises in the setting of _________________

Then the weakest And this happens links are determined/ in the wake of will be _______________ _________________

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

new discoveries

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

thought experimental the systemically least assumptions well entrenched contentions

PHILOSOPHY

a speculative supposition

the thesis least consonant with the fundamental commitments of one’s overall position

MATHEMATICS

a hypothetical assumption

the assumption itself (reductio ad absurdum)

the most weakly evidentiated proposition

PURE SPECULATION a wholly speculative the systemically least supposition fundamental proposition

____________________________________________________________ ently, suspiciously, secretly, a realization that the individual is simply too weak to accomplish certain things; in brief, an increase of self-knowledge. [5] What punishment is able to achieve, both for man and beast, is increase of fear, circumspection, control of the instincts. [6] Thus man is tamed by punishment, but by no means improved; rather the opposite.9

What is to be said about the probative status of these several assertions? Clearly something like this: [1] is (presumably) an historical report—a summary of the records of the past, [2] and [3] are of the same general sort as [1]: they are (presumably) historical reports once again,

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[4] is by all appearances a plausible inference that we are invited to draw from the data provided by [1]-[3], [5] is a verbal reformulation of the point at issue in [4], [6] is a plausible inference in the light of [4] and [5]. The probative structure of this passage is accordingly a matter of drawing plausible conclusions from one’s general reading of the historical situation. The tenability of this whole bit of philosophizing accordingly hinges on the adequacy of those historical summaries and on the cogency of those supposedly plausible inferences drawn for them. And considerations of consistency apart what this principally requires is a matter of consonance with a philosopher’s fundamental commitments. Accordingly, the claims and contentions offered in the course of articulating, explaining, and substantiating a philosophical position must be harmonious in part of their probative status with the substantive content of the contentions at issue. A systemic unification of commitments is the crux. Yet what sort of foothold can and do these have for their probative support? Just what is it in the way of cognitive commitments that is being harmonized? There is a wide range of possibilities here. In philosophical texts one encounters statements that represent: • self-certifying biographical avowals (“I dislike solving quadratic equations”), • parts of the mechanism of communication (“Let p stand for ‘Today is Tuesday’ and q for ‘Tomorrow is Wednesday’”), • claims that are self-evident—or supposedly so (“It is easier to discern triangles then chiliagons”), • matters of determinable empirical fact (“People find it hard to accept that a day will come when they no longer exist”), • common knowledge: things that any reasonably well-informed person can be expected to know (“People and animals require nourishment to live”),

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• technical knowledge: things that technical experts come to realize and that we ought to accept on their authority (“Different people respond differently to one selfsame medicaments,”) • common-sense beliefs, common knowledge, and what have been “the ordinary convictions of ordinary people since time immemorial”, • the facts (or purported facts) afforded by the science of the day; the views of well-informed “experts” and “authorities”, • the lessons we derive from our dealings with the world in everyday life, • received opinions that constitute the worldview of the day; views that accord with the “spirit of the times” and the ambient convictions of one’s cultural context, • tradition, inherited lore, and ancestral wisdom (including religious tradition), • the “teachings of history” as best we can discern them. These various commonplaces all constitute data for philosophizing. They are the fundamental commitments that constitute the foundation upon which sensible philosophizing must erect its theoretical structure. The possibilities here are in theory virtually endless though in practice there are a modest number of predominant types along the lines of the just-indicated enumeration. And it is these types that both delineate the background against which philosophical thought experimentation proceeds and which set the stage for the reasonable-conformity deliberations required for the resolution of philosophy’s aporetic problems. These considerations indicate why and how it is that thought experimentation is so prominent an instrument to philosophical reasoning. For when confronted with a group of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions it is only natural and sensible to explore experimentally each of the various ways of restoring consistency. We must consider the alternatives for thesis-abandonment, and determine in each case the balance of advantage vs. disadvantage—of cost versions benefit, so to speak—of adopting that particular resolution. After all, no exit from

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aporetic inconsistency is cost-free—each requires us to give up something which—ideally—we would like to have. Philosophical problems root in conflict, dissonance, incoherence, incongruity. A prime mission of the enterprise is to smooth matters out. Philosophy tries to do for our cognitive landscape what the Roman road builders did for the physical landscape of their world: to develop smooth, straight ways that make it possible to get about more easily, with fewer checks and frustrations. And it is thought experimentation that affords our principal instrumentality here. It above all enables us to discover the best balance of systemic cost and benefit that we are able to obtain within the limited opportunities afforded us by the aporetic situation that is at issue.10 NOTES 1

B. de Spinoza, Ethics, Book I, prop. 33, scholium 2.

2

The pioneer studies are: Chisholm 1946 and Goodman 1947. See also Schnider 1953.

3

Sometimes what looks like a counterfactual conditional is only so in appearance. Thus consider “If Napoleon and Alexander the Great were fused into a single individual, what a great general that would be!” What is at issue here is not really a counterfactual based on the weird hypothesis of a fusion of two people into one. Rather, what we have is merely a rhetorically striking reformulation of the truism that “Anyone who combines the military talents of Napoleon and of Alexander is certainly a great general.”

4

The treatment of suppositions presented in this chapter was initially set out in the author’s 1961 and subsequently developed in his 1964.

5

See Hansson 1995, pp. 15-17.

6

On this issue see Rescher 1964, Hansson 1995, and Levy 1996. The sort of logical or quasi-logical approach envisioned by various 1940’s theorists such as Chisholm 1946 and Goodman 1947 is foredoomed to failure as the subsequent unfolding of discussion during the second half of the twentieth century has made only too clear.

7

Overall, the theory of aporetics that is at work here is set out in a series of the author’s prior publications: Hypothetical Reasoning (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1964), Paradoxes (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), Imagining Irreality (Chicago: Open Court, 2003), and Conditionals (publication pending).

8

On this theme see the author’s Cognitive Harmony (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).

9

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals, Pt. II, sect. xv.

10

On philosophical aporetics see the author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

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Chapter II/4 PARADOX RESOLUTION 1. ADDRESSING PARADOX RESOLUTION VIA PRIORITY RATINGS

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ince a paradox is generated by an inconsistent set of propositions, it is useful to begin with a brief review of some relevant logical ideas regarding such inconsistent sets. Every set of individually consistent but collectively incompatible propositions engenders a family of maximal consistent subsets (m.c.s.). These are those consistent subsets that are rendered inconsistent by the addition of any of the omitted propositions. Further, every set of individually consistent but collectively inconsistent propositions also engenders a family of minimal inconsistent subsets (m.i.s.). There are those inconsistent subsets that are rendered consistent by the deletion of any one of their members. These minimal inconsistent subsets constitute the “cycles of inconsistency” that afflict an inconsistent set of propositions.1 A set will be more (or less) extensively inconsistent when it has more (or fewer) cycles of inconsistency. Thus an inconsistent set is maximally inconsistent if every single pair of its members is inconsistent. It will then have as many m.c.s as it has members, because all—and only— its individual members constitute m.c.s.2 An inconsistent n-et (quartet, quintet, etc.) is a set of n collectively inconsistent propositions that is minimally inconsistent in that the deletion of any one of which will restore overall consistency, so that every n-1 sized subset of such a set is a maximal consistent subset (m.c.s.). Thus consider the situation where both {(1), (2), (3)} and {(2), (3), (4)} are inconsistent triads, and we now take into view the set {(1), (2), (3), (4)}. Owing to the overlaps involved this is not an inconsistent quartet, since instead of having the requisite four m.c.s. (one for each available proposition) it has only three: {(1), (2), (4)}, {(1), (3), (4)}, and {(2), (3)}. It is a readily demonstrable fact of logic that any inconsistent set of propositions can be decomposed into (potentially overlapping) subsetcomponents each of which is an inconsistent n-et. Accordingly, an incon-

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sistent set has as many “cycles of inconsistency” (as we have called them) as there are inconsistent n-ets to this decomposition. Paradox solution is in general a matter of bringing consistency to an inconsistent set of propositions. On this basis, there is a generic, across-theboard methodology for analyzing paradoxes of all kinds. For apory resolution becomes an exercise in epistemic damage control, for when we encounter an inconsistent cluster we have to restore a cognitively viable situation. And the object is to achieve this at minimal cost—with the least possible sacrifice among the theses towards which we were, in the first instance, favorably inclined. Yet given the conflict among the propositions involved in an aporetic situation, it is clear that they cannot all be true. (The truth, after all, must constitute a consistent whole.) And so when confronted with an aporetic situation there is really only one way out: some of the theses that engender the conflict must be abandoned—if only by way of restriction or qualification. We have here overextended ourselves, by accepting too much—more than a due heed for consistency can possibly support. And this means that one and the same recourse—the abandonment of some of the propositions involved on the basis of their absolute or comparative untenabilitycan resolve the problem. It also means that paradox resolution never comes cost free: there is always something that we must give up for the sake of recovering consistency. The fact remains, however, that paradox management requires an extraor supra-logical resource. For the way to restore consistency to an aporetic situation is to implement some sort of prioritization principle that specifies how, in a case of conflict, we should proceed in making some of the relevant claims give way to others. What is needed is a rule of precedence or right of way. Considerations of priority are needed for breaking the chain of inconsistency at its weakest link. The guiding ideas of this approach are accordingly two: • that paradoxes of the most diverse sorts can be viewed in a uniform way as resulting from an aporetic overcommitment to theses which, albeit individually plausible, are nevertheless collectively incompatible. And on this basis— • that paradoxes of the most diverse sorts can be resolved through a uniform process of weakest-link abandonment in view of the fact that some of the conflicting theses take precedence or priority over others.

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And with this second point, considerations of epistemic evaluationof priority determinationbecome an inevitable part of paradox management. The general process at issue is best conveyed via some particular examples, beginning with the Smashed Vase Paradox based on the contention “There’s no real harm done by breaking the vaseafter all, it’s all still there.” Now consider the theses: (1) If we smash the vase into bits, the vase no longer exists as such. (2) There is nothing to the vase over and above the mass of ceramic material that constitutes it. (3) When the vase is smashed, all the ceramic material that constitutes it still remains in existence. (4) By (2) and (3), the vase still remains in existence after it is smashed, contrary to (1). Thus {(1), (2), (3)} constitutes an inconsistent triad. And (1) and (3) are both incontestable facts while (2) is no more than a plausible-sounding principle. We thus have no alternative but to reject (2), as the weakest link in the chain of inconsistency plausibility notwithstanding. Here presumably we would say something like: “There is more to the vase than merely the ceramic material that constitutes it, namely the organization of that material into a certain sort of vase-shaped-like configuration.” On this basis we reject (2) as untenable, notwithstanding its surface plausibility. In paradox analysis it becomes crucial to list in detail all of the theses and principles that are operative in creating the apory at issue with a view to this methodology, consider the Happiness Paradox of John Stuart Mill which stands as follows:3 (1) His own happiness is the natural end of any rational agent. (2) A rational agent will adopt whatever end is natural for a being of his kind. (3) Therefore (by (2) and (3) a rational agent will adopt his own happi-

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ness as an end). (4) A rational agent will only adopt ends that he can realistically expect to achieve by striving for their realization. (5) Therefore (by (3) and (4)) a rational agent can realistically expect to achieve his own happiness by striving for its realization. (6) But it is a fact of life that rational people realize that they cannot expect to achieve their own happiness by striving for its realization. (7) (6) contradicts (5). Here {(1), (2), (4) and (6)} constitute an inconsistent cluster, (3) and (5) being merely derivative—as indicated. The maximal consistent subsets (m.c.s.) of this inconsistent quartet are: {(1), (2), (4)}, {(1), (2), (6)}, {(1), (4), (6)}, {(2), (4), (6)}. These engender four corresponding retention/abandonment alternatives: (1), (2), (4)/(6) and (1), (2), (6)/(4), and (1), (4), (6)/(2) and (2), (4), (6)/(1). The problem is to choose one of these retention-abandonment (R/A) alternatives in preference to the rest. As regards the status of the propositions involved, Mill himself saw (1) and (2) as basic principles of rationality. And he accepted (6) as a crucial insight into human nature. But (4) is not more than a highly plausible supposition. The ranking of those four theses in point of precedence and priority would accordingly be as follows: [(1), (2)] > (6) > (4). (Note that theses of equal priority are bracketed together.) Accordingly, Mill deemed it necessary to abandon any unqualified endorsement of thesis (4), however plausible and sensible it may otherwise seem to be. For the pursuit of even unrealizable ends canin certain circumstancesyield other incidental benefits. This example is typical, so that the process of paradox resolution accordingly has the following generic structure: 1. Setting out the aporetic group at issue in the paradox at hand via an inventory of the aporetic (collectively inconsistent) propositions involved, and exhibiting how the logical relations among them engender a contradiction. 2. Reducing this inconsistent set to its inferentially non-redundant

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foundation. 3. Making an inventory of the maximal consistent subsets (m. c. s.) of the resulting aporetic cluster. And on this basis— 4. Enumerating the various alternatives for retention/abandonment combinations (R/A-alternatives) through which aporetic inconsistency can be averted. 5. Assessing the comparative precedence or priority of the propositions at issue. 6. Determining which among the resultant retention/abandonment alternatives for consistency restoration is optimal in the light of these priority considerations. It is, of course, possible that some propositions of an aporetic cluster will not figure in the inconsistency that arises. Such “innocent bystanders” will stand apart from the clash of contradiction and thereby belong to every maximal consistent subset (and to no minimal inconsistent subset). For them, priority does not matter; they will emerge as immune for rejection, irrespective of any rankings of procedure and priority. Thus consider the following aporetic clusterthe Paradox of Evil from the domain of philosophical theology:4 (1) God is not responsible for the moral evils of the world as exemplified by the wicked deeds of us humans, his creatures. (2) The world is created by God. (3) The world contains evil: evil is not a mere illusion. (4) A creator is responsible for whatever defects his creation may contain, the moral failings of his creatures included. (5) By (1)-(3) God is responsible for the world as is—its evils included. (6) (5) contradicts (1).

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Let us step back and consider the systemic standing or status of these contentions. Thesis (5) can be put aside as a consequence of others that carry its burden here. Thesis (3) comes close to qualifying as a plain fact of everyday-life experience. Theses (1) and (2) are (or could reasonably be represented as being) fundamental dogmas of Judeo-Christian theology. But (4) is at best a controversial thesis of moral theology, involving a potentially problematic denial that creatures act on their own free will and responsibility in a way that disconnects God from moral responsibility for their actions. We thus have the priority ranking [(1), (2)] > (3) > (4).5 On this basis it is reasonable to take the line that since one of these aporetic theses must be abandoned in this context. And it is easily (4) that should give way seeing that only the R/A alternative (1), (2), (3)/(4) abandons a lowest-priority thesis. 2. PROCEDURAL CONSIDERATIONS The basic rule for choosing among the appropriate retention/abandonment alternatives is: A1: Minimize the extent to which you abandon propositions of the highest relevant priority level. (Or equivalently: maximize the extent to which you retain propositions of the highest priority level.) Of course, this measure alone may not suffice, since several competing R/A alternatives may tie in the regard. The next rule to apply is: A2: When (owing to a tie) rule A1 does not settle matters, reapply it at the next lowest priority level. And when this does not do the job, we simply proceed to the next level, A3: Whenever application of the preceding rules of this sequence does not settle matters, proceed to apply the same process at the next priority level. Every retention/abandonment alternative thus has a retention profile in point of prioritization determined by the proportion of statements whose retention it allows at the successive priority levels. And the optimal R/A-

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alternative is that whose profile stands first in lexicographic ordering when one compares all of the available possibilities. The resultant procedure minimizes implausibility or maximizes the miniscule plausibility of the propositions we propose to endorse. (What we have here is accordingly a maxim plausibility principle of assessment.) An example of this process is provided by the Socratic Ignorance Paradox. Let us suppose that Socrates maintains that he knows nothing. To be sure, Socrates presumably said “I know only that I know nothing [move]” (Nihil scio praeter hoc, quod nihil scio) which is nowise paradoxical. But let us amend reality somewhat for the sake of an example. Then we confront an aporetic situation which stands somewhat as follows: (1) Socrates claims to know nothing. (2) By (1), Socrates makes the claim: “I know nothing.” (3) To claim something is to hold it to be true. (4) To hold something to be true is effectively to claim to know that it is so, and so to claim to know something. (5) Sensible people do not make inconsistent claims. (6) Socrates is a sensible person. (7) By (5) and (6), Socrates does not make inconsistent claims. (8) By (1) and (4), Socrates makes inconsistent claims. (9) (8) contradicts (7). Here {(1), (3), (4), (5), (6)} constitutes an inconsistent quintet. Now (1) and (6) are putative facts that constitute part of the stagesetting of the problem: their position is secure. And (3) and (5) are plausible principles of rational process, as is (4) albeit at a lower level of plausibility. We thus arrive at the plausibility ranking [(1), (6)] > [(3), (5)] > (4), with the result that the circle of inconsistency should be broken at (4). The rationale for so proceeding is that even conscientious people can stake claims at the level

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of probable or plausible conjecture or supposition rather than at the level of outright knowledge. Here we have available the five R/A-alternatives, of abandoning exactly one of the theses (1), (3), (4), (5), (6). These R/A-alternatives have the re1

1 1

1

1

1

tention profiles , , (1, 1, 2 >, and , respectively. (As indicated above, these numbers indicate the proportion of retentions in the three categories at issue.) The optimal profile is that which stands last in a lexicographic ordering, and it is this which indicates the optimal R/A-alternative that is available in the circumstances. It is clear that the third of these offers the best option, and the sacrifice of (4) results. 3. DISJUNCTIVE RESOLUTIONS: CONFLICTING REPORT PARADOXES To be sure, the preceding rules will fail to decide matters when several retention/abandonment alternatives have the same retention profile. We then come to the end of our preferential tether without reaching a unique result. When this occurs and further preferential elimination is impracticable, we must fall back on a disjunctive resolution. For then all that we can then say is that one or another of those equally eligible alternatives must obtain. This sort of thing is rare among the familiar paradoxes but can of course happen. The journey into paradox sometimes proceeds by way of dilemma. A dilemma-engendered paradox takes the following generic form: (1) If C, then P. A given. (2) If not-C, then Q. A given. (3) Either P or Q. From (1), (2). (4) Not-P. (P is by hypothesis unacceptable). (5) Not-Q. (Q is by hypothesis unacceptable). (6) (3) contradicts (4)-(5). Here an unavoidable disjunction (Either C or not-C) leads to an unacceptable result (Either P or Q).

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Thus consider the following as an illustration of a Dilemmatic Paradox: Suppose you borrowed $10 from Tom and $10 for Bob. On your way to repaying them, you are robbed of everything but the $10 you had hidden in your shirt pocket. Through no fault of your own, you now face the following paradoxical dilemma: (1) You are obligated to repay Tom and Bob. (2) If you pay Tom you cannot repay Bob. (3) If you repay Bob you cannot repay Tom. (4) You cannot honor all your obligations: in the circumstances this is impossible for you. (By (1)-(3).) (5) You are (morally) required to honor all your obligations. (6) You are not (morally) required to do something you cannot possibly do (ultra posse nemo obligatur). Here {(1), (2), (3), (5), (6)} form an inconsistent cluster. (1), (2) and (3) are supposedly fixed facts of the case. Both (5) and (6) areor seem to bebasic general principles of morality. The resulting plausibility ranking is [(1), (2), (3)] > [(5), (6)]. The conclusion is the one of (5) and (6)or bothmust be abandoned. We here have an instance of the objective situation contemplated above. To be sure, instead of outright rejection we could endeavor to save them in some duly qualified form, perhaps somewhat as follows: (5ǯ) You are morally required to honor all your obligationsalbeit only insofar as the circumstances of the case permit (provided those circumstances are not of your own making). (6ǯ) You are not (morally) required to do something you cannot possibly do (provided the improbability at issue is not of your own making). Subject to such qualifications, the paradox can be overcome through premiss abandonment along the by now familiar lines.

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Other examples of disjunctive solutions are forthcoming in the case of Conflicting Report Paradoxes. Thus suppose that three equally reliable contemporaneous polls report the following paradoxical result regarding how people stand on a certain issue of public policy: (1)

(2)

(3)

For

30 %

55 %

30 %

Against

30 %

30 %

55 %

Unwilling to respond

40 %

15 %

15 %

Here polls (2) and (3) are incompatible: there is no way to redistribute the nonrespondents of these polls so as to bring them into accord. We must thus choose between (1), (2)/(3) and (1), (3)/(2) whose condition in point of retention/priority is identical. A disjunctive result, along the lines of (1) & [(2) v (3)] now ensues, suggesting the inconclusive conclusion: For 3070 %. As far as our polling information goes, the situation is simply a tieeven though this was perhaps not clearly apparent on first view. And this resolution is the best that we can achieve here, since we are caught up in a tie in point of retention priorities. (If we had reason to discount pole (2) or pole (3), the result would be quite different.) It should be stressed that even merely plausible claims, frail though they are, still count for something. In endeavoring to accommodate insofar as possible even those theses that we abandon—and not simply throwing them on the trash-heap of rejected falsehoods—we position ourselves to profit from the information they provide. To abandon a plausible proposition in the context of resolving a paradox is not to dismiss it as false and thereby pervasively and context-indifferently useless. Abandonment is accordingly not something absolute but rather contextual. And it does not abolish completely the utility that proposition has by virtue of its inherent plausibility. 4. COMPOUND PARADOXES The fundamental fact of paradox theory—of aporetics—is that every paradox is resolvable in principle. For if we dismiss (and thus withhold endorsement from) sufficiently many of the theses of the aporetic cluster at

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issue, there will no longer be an inconsistency among our actual commitments. However, even the best available resolution may well be an indecisive one that leaves us confronting a disjunctive plurality of alternatives no particular one of which can be preferentially justified in the circumstances. If we abandon a thesis in the context of one paradox, must we not also reject it in the context of another? Not necessarily. Consider an inconsistent cluster compound of two inconsistent triads {(1), (2), (3)} and {(3), (4), (5)} where (1) > (2) > (3) > (4) > (5), Looking to the second triad we will retain (3) and abandon (5). But when we take the first triad also into view, we realize that it is (3) that must be abandoned. When concerned for coherence overall, we must (obviously enough) take a broad, inclusive view of the relevant paradoxes. (Nevertheless, hereas elsewheretaking everything into account may prove to be somewhere between impracticable and impossible.6) The illustration of the preceding paragraph yields an example of a compound paradox constituted by an aporetic cluster that has more than one cycle of inconsistency. For when we group all of the relevant propositions together and contemplate the inconsistent cluster {(1), (2), (3), (4), (5)}, we find that this gives rise to the two aforementioned inconsistent triads. A concrete example of such a compound paradox is as follows. Suppose the following four collectively inconsistent reports: (1) There are no males in the room. (2) There is only 1 person in the room. (3) Tom Smith is in the room. (4) Jack Jones is in the room. This aporetic cluster consists of three cycles of inconsistency: {(1), (3)}, {(1), (4)}, {(2), (3), (4)}. Thus consistency-restoration overall could be effected by the following R/A-alternatives: (1), (2)/(3), (4) and (2), (3)/(1), (4) and (3), (4)/(1), (2) and (2), (4)/(1), (3). Thus if we had reason to see report (1) as more reliable than the rest, we would be led to the resolution (1), (2)/(3), (4) which alone enables us to restore consistency everywhere while still retaining the only top-priority thesis at hand. We would then arrive at the definitive result that there is just one female in the room. Suppose however that we had a compound paradox consisting of three

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cycles of inconsistency (A, B, C) constituted as follows by three interlocking inconsistent quartets: A

(1) (2) (3)

B

(5) (4) (6) (7) C Note that we could break all three chains of inconsistency at issue here by dismissing premiss (5). But whether or not this would be the appropriate solution would depend entirely on the priority-status of the propositions involved. Suppose, for example, that the priority situation were: (1) > [(2), (4), (6)] > [(1), (3), (7)] Then we would (and should) unhesitatingly abandon the trio (1), (3), (7), even notwithstanding the fact that dismissing (5) alone would restore consistency across the board. Though interesting from a theoretical point of view, compound paradox is an uncommon phenomenon. None of the standard paradoxes encountered in the extensive literature of the subject involve more than a single cycle of inconsistencythat is, they all relate to inconsistent n-ads. NOTES 1

Most of the paradoxes discussed in the extensive literature of the subject involve only a single cycle of inconsistency and accordingly have as low an index of inconsistency as is possible for an inconsistent set of the size at issue.

2

On this basis, the comparative extent to which a set is inconsistent can be measured by the ratio (k – 1) ÷ (n – 1), where k is the number of m.c.s. and n the number of set-members. This inconsistency index of a set can range from 0 in the case of a consistent set to 1 in the case of a maximally inconsistent set of individually consistent propositions.

3

John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, chap. III.

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NOTES 4

On this paradox and related issues see Richard M. Gale, The Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

5

To be sure, a committed atheist would have a very different priority rankingone in which (1) would presumably be the low man on the totem pole.

6

On this theme the words of Nicholas of Cusa still ring true: A finite intellect, therefore, cannot by means of comparison reach the absolute truth of things. Being by nature indivisible, truth excludes ‘more’ or ‘less,’ so that nothing but [the whole] truth itself can be the exact measure of truth. . . . The relationship of our intellect to the truth is like that of a polygon to a circle; the resemblance to the circle grows with the multiplication of the angles of the polygon; but apart from its being reduced to identity with the circle, no multiplication, even if it were infinite, of its angles will make the polygon equal to the circle . . . . The more profoundly we learn this lesson of ignorance, the closer we draw to truth itself. (Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance I, iii; tr. by Germain Heron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954).)

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Chapter II/5 REIFICATION FALLACIES AND INAPPROPRIATE TOTALITIES 1. IMPROPERLY TOTALIZED WHOLES AND ILLICIT REIFICATION

S

ome of the problems and difficulties in reasoning that logicians and cognitive theorists generally seek to overcome by elaborate formal devices such as the logical theory of types can be averted by using some of the straightforward informal devices of communicative practicespecifically the rejection of inappropriate anaphora, the mistake committed in communication when a back-reference treats an item yet to be specified as already identified. It helps to return to fundamentals here. The circumstance that questions can rest on inappropriate suppositions has far-reaching implications. In particular, it means that there are—or can be—items of discussion that are no more than pseudo-realities that fail to give rise to meaningful questions and do not qualify as a viable subject of further inquiry. And it is noteworthy that various sorts of putative totalities constitute a case in point. Let us consider how this comes about. To provide for ostensive identification one always needs something descriptive, namely a sortal classifier. I do not identify anything by simply “this (pointing)” without adding “table” or “table cloth” or “dark speck on the table cloth” or the like. And there is, in principle, no limit to the number of sortal elaborations that can be added to specify what is at issue with an ostensive act of “this (pointing).” Now a physical particular, as Aristotle rightly insisted, is something specifiable as a this, a tode ti, the possible target for a “this thing (pointing).” But we cannot count what we cannot identify. Hence we cannot count what is an altogether nondescript and otherwise unspecified particular, thing, object, item, similar indefinite. It makes sense to ask how many books or apples are in the room but not how many things or items are in the room. To count particulars, we must first sortalize them in order to make identification possible. To introduce something into deliberation or discussion as a meaningful

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

item of consideration we have to proceed by way of expository definitions or explanatory specifications that only employ materials which that themselves have already been introduced—apart from whatever may qualify as a primitive on the basis of being so self-evident as to require no further introduction. It does us little good to be told that something we seek is sited next to something else whose location we do not know. Thus consider the following identification-purporting specifications: • The individual in question is the first child of the mother who is this person’s female parent. • The position in question is the one to the left of that position which is to its immediate right. • The woman in question is the wife of the man who is her husband. Although there is some description going on in all such cases, there is certainly no question of any effective introductory identification. And when God responded to Moses question “Who are you?” with the statement “I am the one that I am” he was not being particularly helpful—though this very fact gave an appropriate response by indirection: “There is really nothing I can say in your language or convey by your concepts that would be adequate in answering your question.” On this basis the identifying specification: Z = the item that bears such-and-such a relationship to Z (or “is involved in such-and-such a way with Z).

is identificatorily unavailing. In all cases of this sort the formula’s anaphoric back-reference to the item in question itself is a factor that supposes an already effected identification. All of these formulations fail as identifications because they require a prior item-identification which (by hypothesis) is unavailable in view of the identification processes that are being embarked upon. In each case the purported identification manifestly presupposes a yet-unavailable answer to the identificatory question that is being addressed. In these matters, as elsewhere, what the answer is depends on just exactly what the question at issue happens to be. And if the question is one of introductory individuation—of identificatory specification—then referen-

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tial self-involvement is inappropriate because the “self” at issue is not yet in hand. On the other hand, when it is only a matter of the description or characterization of some pre-identified item, then self-involvement is harmless because the “self” at issue has already been specified. As long as the self-reference at issue is merely a matter of dealing with something that is already specified, there is no problem. But whenever we are dealing with the introduction of items by way of an initial specification or definition, then it is clear that the availability of these items cannot be appropriately assumed at this stage.1 Self-referential item-specifications and identifications are by their very nature ineffectual because there is nothing to discuss until the item supposedly at issue has been properly identified. Now what holds here of identification also holds of any meaningful totalization. For what we cannot count we cannot totalize either. There is no total for objects (items, things, particulars, and individuals) in the abstract. We can only have totals where we can count, and thus again only where we have to do with descriptive kinds of things. To effect meaningful totalization we require meaningful identification, and this in turn means that we require descriptive sortalization. Moreover, the fact that we cannot totalize what we cannot count and that we cannot count what we cannot identify means that the items at issue in a totalization must have an identity that is accessible to us independently of and prior to the process of totalization itself. Totalization as such is harmless enough. The totality of X’s is the putative item that includes all of the X’s—that is, contains or embraces them in whatever way is appropriate to the sort of thing at issue. Thus the totality of letters of the alphabet is the alphabet as such, the totality of colors is the entire color spectrum, or the totality of plants is the entire kingdom of flora. However, self-referential totalization is by nature an illicit process because identification or specification of a totality is meaningfully practicable only when the item being totalized has already been identified antecedently to the totalization process itself. Thus to define a certain something (Z) by way of a formula of the format: Z = the total of a group of items including Z itself is also unavailing. It is one thing—and harmless—to be given a total and thereupon to learn that it is duly self-inclusive—a “fractal” rectangular pattern, say, within each of whose four quadrants this very pattern is repeated

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all over again. But it is something very different—and altogether vitiating—to attempt to introduce (define, identify, specify) a totality in a way that demands or presupposes that this putative item is already available through previous introduction. Meaningful totalizations cannot involve an anaphoric back-reference that is self-referential; such reference must proceed in terms of items that have an antecedently specified identity.2 And we therefore cannot appropriately effect a totalization whenever its purported product is itself a candidate for inclusion among the items being totalized. Only when its constituents are already identified can we have a meaningfully defined totality that is to be comprised of “them.” And we are certainly not entitled to presuppose the prior specification of a (totalized) item whose specification is only now in progress. It is, clearly, inappropriate to attend the specification of a total based on the supposition that the very item at issue in this specification has already been specified. Just as the object of a meaningful item-specification must have a preestablished identity independent of that specification itself, so also with objects that are being gathered together in an item-totalization. But when the totality supposedly at issue is homogenous with the items being totalized, then of course we would have to have it that then the totalization at issue is vitiated. For appropriate identification we cannot presuppose the availability as input into the identificating process the very item itself that is supposed to be its output. The illegitimacy of self-involving specifications roots in the fact that self-reference presupposes that the item in question is already available as a meaningful unit of discussion.3 Perplexity is thus bound to arise when there is homogenous totalization, that is, when the items being totalized are of the same sortal type (thingkind) as the totality that is supposedly at issue. In consequence, there is a decisive difference between the identificatory specification of “The set of all sets that include less then five members,” which is innocuous since this set certainly cannot include itself, and the specification of “The set of all sets that include more than five members” which—were it to exist—would have to include itself. The homogeneous totalization at issue accordingly envisions a putative item that the formula at issue fails to specify in a meaningful way. Self-referential identifications are by nature inappropriate, and we must accordingly place a conceptual embargo on selfinclusively characterized totalities. This occurs in such cases as when the totality of sets is supposed to be a set that includes all sets, the totality of regions is supposed to be a region

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that includes all regions, or the totality of timespans is supposed to be a timespan that includes all timespans, and the like. All such attempts at identification are uniformly unsuccessful because no meaningful itemintroduction is effected when the totality that is being introduced is itself one of the items being totalized: when it is, so to speak, one of its own members (elements, constituents, components, or the like). For then it is implicitly supposed (via the presence of that “all”) that the total being introduced is itself already available as an item for potential inclusion in something. And the difficulty that arises with homogenous totalization is clearly the problem of self-inclusion. The membership of a meaningfully identified totality must have a pre-established identity; those envisioned members must be identified prior to and thereby independently of the totalization that is in progress. There can, of course, be comprehensive totals; and they can be comprehensive in rather different ways. A whole is T-maximal in the sense of Nicholas of Cusa4 if it itself has T-parts but is itself a T-part of nothing further (i.e., of nothing other than possibly itself). Thus a human body is biologically maximal since it has biological parts (e.g., cells) but is not itself a biological part of some larger organism. A book, on the other hand, is not literally maximal for while it has literary parts (chapters) it is itself a literary part of something larger (a series or even a library). Again the cosmosas-a-whole is—obviously—physically maximal. But comprehensive totalities of this sort totalize pre-identified itemsand indeedare themselves pre-identified. No problem here. But when totalization is a means for introducing something new into the arena of discussion things stand very differently. Let us adopt the notation to abbreviate “the totality that embraces (that is, C-relevantly ‘embraces’) all of the C-type items.” Thus, for example, if C(x) = “x is a letter of the (Roman) alphabet,” then is the totality of letters of the (Roman) alphabet, which is to say it is that alphabet itself. If C(x) = “x is a cat,” then is the totality of cats, the entire genus Felix that includes all the felines there are. Or again, if C(x) = “x is a color” then is the totality of colors, which is to say it is the whole color spectrum. On the basis of the preceding deliberations it is clear that whenever the totality that is presumably being defined is “itself” seen as something that meets condition C so that C() obtains—which is emphatically not the case with any of the preceding examples—then the totalization process in question goes awry since it is now unable to realize a welldefined result. A purported item that lacks a discussion-introducing identi-

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fication in terms of reference independent of itself has simply not been introduced meaningfully into the discussion at all. Examples of putatively totalized wholes that violate the proscription of self-presupposition include the following pseudo-totalities: The supertruth understood as the truth that conjoins all truths.5 The cosmic fact about the world understood as a fact that encompasses all facts about the world. The megaset understood as the set that includes all sets. Eternity understood as the timespan that contains all timespans. The panexplanation understood as the explanation that encompasses all explanations (that explains everything). The protocause understood as the cause that causes all causes. The mega-story understood as the story that encompasses all stories. The superadjective understood as the adjective that applies to all adjectives. The world-all (Weltall) understood as the physical region that includes all physical regions. The omni-cause understood as the cause that causes literally everything that is real. In each case we have a putative item that is identified by means of a common format: “The C-type item that ‘embraces’ all C-type items.” And this clearly presupposes not only that there indeed is (a unique) something that “embraces” all C-type items, but that this something is itself of type C. Throughout, the proscription of self-involving totalization is thus violated. The boundaries of that proported total at issue are not something that can be settled unproblematically until we have determined the viability of that total itself as an item of its purported kind. There yet remains the prospect of objecting: “But if it is defined as an X,

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if its X-hood is something that is explicitly specified in its definition, then surely it’s got to be an X!” This plausible protest does not, however, hold water. As the longstanding critique of the Ontological Argument shows, substantive questions cannot be settled by definitional fiat. (This is a cardinal principle of rational inquiry.) Calling something an X does not mean that it is actually going to be an X. Thus “the integer that is larger than any other” is a formula that purports to specify an integer but actually fails to do so, seeing that there is no integer larger than all others. And similarly to call a supertruth a truth or a megaset a set does not mean that this is actually so—that there really is a set or a truth that answers to the specification at issue. For that item may simply not exist as such. The assumption that something exists under a certain description—for example, as the set of all sets that do not include themselves—may well be false. Anything that answers to this description—whatever it might be—cannot be a set. That supposed specification simply fails to identify. To be sure, hypostatization (item-introduction) is one thing and mere description (of a pre-identified item) something else again. Once we have an item at hand (say 2 as “the smallest prime”) one can describe it in selfinclusive terms (as “the prime that is not undersized by any prime whatsoever”). But we cannot properly introduce it in this way until the issue of existence has been (independently) resolved. There is thus a crucial disanalogy between identifying something on the one hand and describing it on the other. We can only consider “the thing identified” once some “identification of the thing” has been given: any possible entertainment of the former (the thing identified) is contingent upon the latter (the identification of the thing). By contrast, nothing whatever about the describability of something rests upon the description of this thing. The hypothetical removal of its identification creates problems for discourse about something in view in a way that the hypothetical removal of its description would not. Accordingly, there is no problem about (say) characterizing a preidentified being (i.e., God) as that which is “the ultimate reason of all being” or again as that which “self-caused—causa sui—the cause of itself.” Describing an already individuated God by such formulas could in theory qualify as perfectly meaningful. But we nevertheless cannot identify God by a decision-introducing characterization as “the reason-for-being of all reasons-for-being” or as “that being which is the cause of all being itself included.” For when seen as operative in an identifying specification selfreference must be rejected as counter-productively vitiating. We can certainly say—truly and meaningfully of some pre-identified item that “it is

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the result of the cause that produced it.” But we cannot use this sort of formula when the initial introducing identification of the item is at issue (“the item that is to be at issue is the product of its cause”). For here nothing is as yet available to serve as referential for that ultimate anaphoric back-reference. Unlike inappropriately described items, inappropriately introduced items are no more than illusions. A significant lesson emerges. Not only are there pseudo-questions like “Have you stopped beating your wife?” that should not be asked (because they rest on inappropriate suppositions) but there are pseudo-identifications that should not be considered (investigated, taken seriously) because their very conception is flawed in that it rests on the erroneous presupposition of a particular answer to an inappropriate question. For successful identification requires and presupposes an affirmative answer to the question: “Have all the items being referred to already been identified effectively?” Let us be somewhat more explicit about the ramifications of this state of affairs. 2. THE ROUTE TO PARADOX All contexts of rational assertion and deliberation are governed by an at least tacit supposition that its terms of reference are meaningful. Should this presupposition prove to be unwarranted, the chasm of paradox yawns wide-open before us. This is illustrated by a conundrum that has received much attention: The Barber Paradox.6 It is based on the following riddle: A certain village has a barber whose practice it is to shave all the adult male villagers who do not shave themselves. He himself, of course, is an adult male who lives in the village. Does he or does he not shave himself?

The evident paradox here is that if he is a self-shaver, then (by hypothesis) our barber does not shave himself, while if he is not a self-shaver, then (by hypothesis) he does shave himself. Either way we are in difficulty. It is clear that consistency is beyond our reach here. The following theses constitute the aporetically inconsistent cluster that defines the paradox: (1) There is—or can be—a barber who answers to the specifications of the narrative.

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(2) This barber at issue in the narrative (like any other) either does or does not shave himself, but not both. (3) If the barber shaves himself then, by the narrative’s stipulation he is not someone who shaves himself. (4) If the barber does not shave himself then, by the narrative’s stipulation he does shave himself. (5) Thus either way a contradiction ensues. The optimal point at which to break the chain of inconsistency here is clearly at its very start with that hypothetical barber himself. For there is not and cannot be a barber who answers to the specified conditions. The barber paradox is thus vitiated from the very outset, by being predicated on the supposition of a barber who cannot possibly be. That purported introduction of a barber upon the stage of discussion misfires—it fails to introduce. And what holds for inappropriate identifications also holds for inappropriate totalizations. With such self-encompassment in view we can now project. Specifically, consider what might be characterized as the Xtotalization of self-nonencompassing X’s as per: the X of all those X’s that do not X-wise encompass themselves (the set of all those sets that do not set-include themselves, the shaver of all these shavers who do not share themselves, or the like).

It is clear that any such totalization is always paradoxical. Thus consider the container (set) of all containers (sets) that do not contain (set-include) themselves, the list of all lists that do not list themselves, the picture of all pictures that do not depict themselves, etc. In each case we have a totality Z of such a sort that: Z enc X iff ~(X enc X) But now whenever Z itself belongs to the range of the X’s at issue we shall arrive at the upshot: Z enc Z iff ~(Z enc Z)

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And now we confront the question: Does this totalitarian X-item Z encompass itself X-wise or not: does that set include itself, that list lists itself, that picture pictures itself, etc.? And paradox occurs immediately because in virtue of its very definition that totality of self-exclusive X’s is itself an X that neither can nor cannot encompass itself. The problem, of course, is that the presupposition that such a negatively totalitarian Z does or can exist is simply false. The item purported to be an instance of the kind at issue (a set, a list, etc.) just does not exist at all—to call it such does not make it such. The preceding difficulties relate to the mis-identification of items purported to be of a type to which they could not possibly belong in view of the way in which that identification is presented. Throughout this range of cases, we have paradox of inappropriate presupposition that incorrectly assumes that something is appropriately identified by a specification which actually does not and cannot succeed. By any body of reasoning or argumentation presumes, explicitly or tacitly, that its propositions are meaningful and thus that its relevant terms are well-defined, and when terms become unraveled on the basis of an inappropriate totalitarian selfinvolvement, this crucial presupposition is falsified and the paradox dissolved. When the charge of illicit totalization can be made to stick, it is a highly effective paradox-buster. 3. THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM Recall that the identification operator (Lx)Pxread “the x such that Px”so functions that (1) this object is undefined unless there is just exactly one specifiable item that has the property P, and (2) when there is just exactly one such item, then (Lx)Px is (identical with) that item. And here saying that (Lx)Px is properly defined—symbolically E!( Lx)Px—is to say that it represents a unique member of the range of our universal quantifier . Thus understood, (Lx)Px will be defined only when P plainly and unequivocally applies to a single object. And it remains undefined whenever: (i) P is uninstantiated. For it then applies to nothing at all (Px is always false). (ii) P is multiply instantiated. For it then applies to several distinct objects (Px is true for several values of x).

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(iii) P is problematic. For it then is unclear where it applies (Px is not clearly determinable for some potential values of x). Now let  represent membership in a collectivity (of some—i.e., any— sort). Then we may define totalization in terms of identification via the formula: (T) (Wx)Px = df (y)x(xy { Px), where W indicates totalization of P’s with respect to  And this of course, means that (Wx)Px will be undefined when P is an “unsuitable” predicate—say because it is equivocal or ill-defined. On this basis, a properly-defined total exists whenever—but only whenever—the individuals that have the property at issue constitute a unique, well-defined set. The infeasibility of totalization in unsuitable conditions is now not a distinctive and characteristic phenomenon, but simply a natural consequence of the definitional specification of W in terms of L. Accordingly, the principle envisioned in the present approach is a limitation on the introduction (or specification or definition) of totalities. It reads: Illicit Totalization Principle (ITP): The attempted specification of a total of items of a certain type is not meaningful unless—when itself is purported of the type at issue—the question of its self-membership can be resolved unproblematically in its favor. To be meaningfully and viably introduced into the discussion (that is, adequately specified, identified, defined) a totality (collection or whole) must not be purported in its introducing definition to include itself.

If this principle is violated, then we certainly run the risk of paradox. For note that this principle so functions as to preclude all of the following item specifications: • the set of all sets [including that set itself] (Cantor’s Paradox) • the set of all sets satisfying a certain condition whose satisfaction by the set itself is unresolved (Curry’s Paradox) Given the inappropriateness of the item-specification at issue, no separate

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mechanism need be adopted to avert those associated paradoxes. The issue of identification-legitimacy is a powerful tool that suffices our needs here. No separate more elaborate mechanism is required to avert paradox in these indicated cases. And so, given definition (T) it follows theorematically that totalization hinges on the nature of the factor at issue: unsuitable predicates demonstrably do not totalize. Accordingly, no burdensome special mechanism along the lines of a type theory of sets need be adopted to resolve the paradoxes posed by “illicit totalities”: those paradoxes simply do not arise because those problematic totalities are not defined. 4. MORE ON ILLICIT TOTALITIES There is no problem about the idea of a list of lists or a bibliography of bibliographies; such things exist in plenty and are altogether unproblematic. In principle we can even contemplate a list of all lists or a bibliography of all bibliographies: a complete list of lists or a complete bibliography of bibliographies. But what of the idea of: • a complete list of all incomplete lists • a complete bibliography of all incomplete bibliographies If such a work includes itself, then it is ipso facto ineligible for selfinclusion. But if it does not include itself, then it is eligible for selfinclusion and for that very reason fails to answer to its own specification. What this clearly means is that the very idea of such works is selfcontradictory and the work supposedly at issue cannot possibly exist. A list of incomplete lists or a bibliography of incomplete bibliographies represent practical ideas, but totalization is inherently impracticable here. For what we have here is a fallacy of erroneous presupposition analogous with the erroneous presuppositional “loading” at issue in the question as per: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” For the fact of the matter is that not every otherwise plausible itemspecification can be totalized. Consider such specifications as: • a list of self-omitting lists • a bibliography of self-omitting bibliographies

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• an inventory of self-omitting inventories • a set of self-omitting sets • a discussion of self-ignoring discussions So far, so good. However, otherwise meaningful item-specifications cannot be totalized. The very idea of a complete list of all self-omitting lists (or bibliographies, etc.) is absurd. What we have here is throughout a problem of one uniform phenomenon: the illicit totalization of the item at issue. Observe that the Illicit Totalization Principle is not one that governs the membership of totalities—let alone their existence as such—but one that merely addresses the proprieties of how totalities can meaningfully be introduced upon the stage of discussion and consideration. It deals with issues of communicative procedure, not issues of existence as such, and is accordingly a principle of logical grammar rather than one of ontology.7 The principal lesson of this discussion, however, is that recourse to elaborate formal devices for paradox evasion such as the theory of settypes can in various cases be averted by the employment of a very straightforward and far less elaborate informal device, namely the eminently plausible proscription of identificatory selfreference. 5. A RUSSELLIAN DIGRESSION What is at issue here is akin to, though yet not identical with, a principle that Bertrand Russell took over from the French mathematician Henri Poincaré and which, following him, Russell characterized as the Vicious Circle Principle (VCP): No collection (whole or totality) can contain members that are defined in terms of itself: specifically, no collection can ever be a constitutive part of itself.8

As it stands, this is clearly a limitation upon the constitution of totalities— and a very strong limitation at that. To quote Russell: “Whatever involves all of a collection must not itself be one of the collection.”9 And in saying that such a so-called collection “has no total” Russell has it that it does not exist as a collection. Thus what we have here is a restriction on the sorts of collections that can exist—that is, upon how authentic collections can possibly be constituted.

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However, Russell’s approach has serious drawbacks. For example, as he saw it, we must never stake claims about “all propositions” or about “all properties” because such locutions involve violations of his Vicious Circle Principle.10 He was so intent on barring illicit self-involvement that he insisted on barring self-involvement in general. And so in seeking to eliminate paradox, Russell also dismissed a great deal of innocuous stuff as well—including such tautologically harmless universalizations as “All meaningful propositions make an assertion of some sort,” or “All properties can be attributes to some sort of object,” or “All objects can be members of collections.” Someone prepared to subordinate logic to the requirements of common sense might well see this consequence alone as invalidating the Vicious Circle Principle on grounds of throwing out the baby with the bath water. However, while the Russellian Vicious Circle Principle is ontological in its nature, the presently contemplated Illicit Totalization Principle is merely communicative or semantical, it only deals with the expository proprieties of how items of discussion can meaningfully be placed upon the agenda of consideration. The one principle deals with matters of actual existence, the other merely with matters of appropriate specification. For our present analysis pivots upon showing that various putatively identifactory specifications will not succeed in placing a certain supposedly real item upon the stage of consideration. And the rationale for this is simply that a particular individuative presupposition is violated by the use of such an expression, thereby failing to enable the expression in question successfully to establish its intended reference. An instructive lesson thus emerges. Russell sought an existencenegating rationale for rejecting certain totalities. And he thought to find a suitable basis for dismissing existence claims in a complex theory of types. But in fact a much simpler route to problem-resolution is available. It lies in construing totalization (7) in terms of definite description (L) as per definition (7) above. For then the fact that definite descriptions fail to identify in certain conditions automatically provides a rationale for seeing totalization in the same light. What is now at issue with improper totals is a problem of identification rather than one of being or existence—an epistemic rather than ontological failing. Accordingly, that the present approach is decidedly less drastic than Russell’s. What is wrong with the “set of all sets that do not contain themselves” is—on the present account—not its excessive inclusiveness as a presumptive set but rather the anaphorically self-invoking back-

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reference—via the expression “themselves”—that is at work in its formulation. In short, what the present approach proscribes is not self-referential impredicativity in general, but only its presence in identificatory contexts. (With sensible liberality, it sees nothing wrong with a descriptive report along the lines that some pre-identified set “is a set that does (or does not) contain itself” as such.) And in taking this line in the present context we place a restriction not on existing totalities as such, but on the sorts of predications that can meaningfully be employed in the course of identifying totalities so as to introduce them into the discussion. And this approach makes it possible to take a more narrowly targeted procedure that is not committed to wholesale object dismissal in the manner of Russell’s approach. We need not proscribe all talk about “all sets” or “all propositions,” but rather must merely be careful about what we endeavor to accomplish with these locutions.11 Specifically, we need to embargo impredicative characterizations only in identificatory, definitional, and similarly item-introductory contexts. Russell’s wholesale rejection of self-inclusion—dismissing, for example, the self-inclusive contention “All propositions are either true or not” as meaningless—simply slays the innocent along with the guilty. The salient lesson of these deliberations is that the pragmatic groundrules of effective communicative practice suffice to sideline a significant range of familiar epistemic puzzles and paradoxes. A resort to cumbersome and complex logical mechanisms can generally be avoided by such rudimentary devices. 6. A KANTIAN POSTSCRIPT Immanuel Kant deserves recognition as the philosopher who, in his Critique of Pure Reason, first objected to illicit totalization. And he took this step as a means for freeing himself from what he regarded as problematic and theoretically unwelcome entities. For as Kant saw it, such ideas as that of “an ultimate component of spatial regions” or “the ultimate cause of events” represent the products of illicit totalization. He rejects totalities that are not closed as it were and thereby impossible to survey in toto, since he held that experience is our only pathway to knowledge about existence, and of course we almost never experientially survey certain totalities as such. Thus as Kant saw it, a fundamental fallacy is involved in such totalitarian conceptions:

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The concept of totality is in this case [of the-world-as-a-whole] simply the representation of the completed synthesis of its parts; for we cannot obtain the concept from the apprehension of the whole—that being in this case impossible . . . (CPuR, B456.)

For Kant, such closure-defying, unsurveyable conceptions as that of the world-as-a-whole-one whose content goes beyond the range of that which could ever be given in experience, is something ill-defined and thereby inappropriate. Only experiential interaction can assure actual existence— description alone can never do the job: [It is inappropriate to suppose] an absolute totality of a series that has no beginning or end [such as would be at issue with “the terminus of all successive divisions of a region” or “the initiation of all the causes of an event.”] In its empirical meaning, the term “whole” is always only comparative. The absolute whole of quantity (the universe), the whole division [of a line segment], or of [causal] origination or of the condition of existence in general . . . along with all questions as to whether this whole is brought about through finite synthesis or through a synthesis requiring infinite extension . . . [are something altogether inappropriate]. (CPuR, A483-84 = B511-12.)

Wherever experiential totalization is unachievable, we can never appropriately reify such a totalitarian conception into that of an object that has a well-defined identity of its own. For Kant, such improperly totalized items as “the-physical-world-as-awhole” represents an inherently fallacious conception that leads to inconsistency: [As a sum-total of existence] the world does not exist in itself, independently of the regressive series of my representations, it exists in itself neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite whole. It exists only in the empirical regress of the series of appearances, and is not to be met with as something in itself. If, then, this series is always conditioned, and therefore can never be given as complete, “the world” is not an unconditioned whole and does not exist as such a whole, either of infinite or of finite magnitude. (CPuR A503-05 = B531-33.)

Kant has it that the endorsement of such unsurveyably unbounded totalizations will result in untenable concepts that engender logical selfcontradictions. His four classic “Antinomies” of Critique of Pure Reason

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exemplify the difficulty at issue. These Kantian Antinomies run as follows: I.

The totality of physical existence (= the world or the universe as a whole) • is limited in the physical manifold of space and time, • is unlimited in the physical manifold of space and time.

II.

The ultimate components of nature, the absolutely atomic, totally indecomposable units of physical substance • are pervasive throughout all of physical reality, • are excluded from physical reality (i.e., do not exist as such).

III.

The totality of natural occurrence (= the aggregate of events in physical realm) • is of necessity determined by physical law, • is free from determination by physical law.

IV.

An absolutely necessary, self engendering being—one that itself encompasses the totality of its own cause • is physically or causally active in the natural world, • is physically and causally excluded from the natural world.

In each case there is at issue an extra-ordinary, somehow totalitarian (that is, ultimate or absolute) object of consideration regarding which some farreaching feature is both flatly affirmed and categorically denied. What is being claimed throughout is (structurally speaking) that a certain putative object (A) both does and does not have a certain physically geared feature (F). Conflicting predications arise: “A is F” and “A is not-F.” And, so Kant maintained, equally good arguments can be constructed either way, so that both the thesis and the antithesis can be rendered plausible and contradiction results.

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On this basis, Kant’s antinomies are seen by him as engendering a paradox along the following general structural lines: (1) Item A (e.g., physical-existence-as-a-whole) is a legitimate object of prediction. (2) There are cogent reasons for saying that item A (e.g., physical existence) is F (e.g., limited). (A substantiable fact grounded in argumentation that Kant presents in some detail.) (3) There are cogent reasons for saying that item A (e.g., physical existence) is not F (e.g., unlimited). (Also a substantiable fact rooted in presented argumentation.) (4) (1) and (2) are logically incompatible if (and whenever) A exists as a legitimate object of predication. (A fact of logic.) (5) Therefore, by (2)-(3) item A does not exist because it is a fact of logic that no legitimate object of predication can have incompatible predicates. (6) (5) contradicts (1). As Kant saw it, the natural place to break this chain of inconsistency is at thesis (1) which—so he maintains—is the weak spot of the antinomy. For him, the proper lesson to be drawn is that identifiable particulars can exist as proper objects of predication whereas abstract totalities are vitiatingly problematic in this regard. The four Kantian antinomies arise from a series of corresponding questions of a common format: Is the ultimate unit of [i] limited or unlimited in point of [ii]? where the four cases stand as follows: [i]

[ii]

1.

physical existence

spatio-temporal distribution

2.

physical divisibility

physical diffusion

3.

natural occurrence

lawful determination

4.

existential self-sufficiency

causal participation in nature

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And all of these questions make the common supposition that that ultimate item at issue in [i] actually exists—something that Kant emphatically denies each. Kant argues that the resolution of the antinomy consists in rectifying a mistaken presupposition that that putatively ultimate item at issue is a bona fide (physical) existent capable of being a proper bearer of such (physically oriented) predicates as spatiotemporal extent, physical existence, lawful determination, or causal efficacy. As he sees it, those ultimates do not qualify as items of natural existence of which physical features can appropriately be predicated even though they can serve as communicative devices for thought and expression. (This is why the second, negative side of the antinomies always comes closer to the mark.) Kant’s position is not so much that of Nicholas of Cusa that certain totalities are beyond human comprehension, as that they are not defined as identified individuals upon which the machinery of subject/predicate logic can get a purchase hold. Kant’s position here is certainly controversial. One could, for example, contend that those supposed “cogent reasons” at issue in the aporetic theses (2)-(3) of the basic argument constitute the vulnerable presupposition of the argument rather than thesis (1). Or again one could try to dissolve the contradictions on grounds of equivocation, arguing (for example) that the sense in which the physical world is limited in space-time is different from the sense in which it is not so limited. All the same, Kant’s idea of rejecting certain totalities as illicit is not all that implausible. No painting of a painting can represent all of its detail. And even so no thought or theory can encompass the entire reality to which it itself belongs. The hypothetical projection of such an item envisions a totality that is incapable of realization—one whose acceptance conflicts with the things we know about the nature of human knowledge. As Kant saw it, the synoptic (totalitarian) purview of the claims of classical metaphysics is simply unavailable to us humans. We are limited creatures who have to operate within the world and therefore from a particular (specifically human) perspective. We have no cognition-external Archimedean fulcrum outside the realm of our specifically human cognition from which to move the entire domain of thought as a whole. And this Kantian perspective relates to the relationship between inner and outer. We humans are emplaced within nature and by this very fact are limited as to the sort of information we can obtain about nature. All of our observations-based judgments are partial and thereby incomplete whose limitedness precludes in scope. Every observer has a body of information

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anything like an all-inclusive view of things. As far as actual knowledge goes, totalities are off limits—be it the totality of actual experience (the self) or of its objects (the world) or of its rationale (ultimate purpose or God).12 As Kant saw it, such ideas represent useful mind-contrivances for the development of actual knowledge but do not—cannot—themselves constitute actual objects of knowledge. For they are not really entities at all, but only practical resources, instrumentalities of cognitive procedure useful only for contrasting what we actually have with what we would ideally like. Those improperly totalized items simply do not exist as actual objects. (Their status is akin to that of the equator or the north pole.) However, another aspect of the matter must be noted. Kant thought that by representing such totalitarian items as “the all-encompassing world” or “the all-creating deity” as illicit totalizations he could eliminate the salient issues of traditional (“pre-critical”) metaphysics. In particular, his critique of inappropriate totalization was an integral part of his dismissal of the cosmological argument for the existence of an all-creative God to serve as producer of the world. As he saw it, if there is no such thing as “reality-atlarge” or “the world as a whole,” then the issue of its causal origination is rendered moot subject to the plausible principle that: Only an item that is already known to exist needs to have its existence explained. Nevertheless, there are problems here. The proscription of worldtotalization may blank “Why does the world-as-a-whole exist?” But it does not affect—let alone invalidate—the ontological question in the form originally envisioned by Leibniz: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” And this condition of affairs prevails more widely. Those metaphysical issues while Kant sought to eliminate by rejecting of totalized objects can generally be reconstitutedwholly or partiallyin ways that avert the illicit reification that is supposedly at issue.13 NOTES 1

To be sure, where the matter is one of picking out items from a pre-established group, there need be no difficulty.

2

On problems of self-reference in general see R. M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 2nd. ed. 1995), pp. 121-22 of the second ed.

3

What is at stake here is a flaw different from the more familiar identification-defect that arises where there is vagueness—a penumbrally “fuzzy” whole where one cannot tell exactly what is within and what is not. For in our present case, the very item at issue is not defined as a meaningful unit because it itself is presupposed by

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NOTES

its mode of identification/specification. Accordingly it is not the purported totality’s membership but its very identity that is questionable. 4

Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance tr. by G. Heron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), Bk. III, chap. 1.

5

Throughout these formulations, “all” is to be construed as “all but only.” Accordingly, a supertruth (for example) would be said to be a truth that conjoins all members of {p: p is true}, the set of all propositions p such that p is true.

6

This paradox—often called The Barber of Seville Paradox—is an informal variant of Russell’s Paradox in set theory which will be discussed below. See T. S. Champlin, Reflexive Paradoxes (London: Routledge, 1988), esp. pp. 172-74.

7

This ITP principle might well be grounded in a broader principle to the effect that for successful identification the items being referred to in the course of the process must themselves already have been identified. This approach, in effect, seems to have lain at the basis of Henri Poincaré’s treatment of the paradoxes, a strategy whose decided difference from Russell’s neither he nor Russell seem to have appreciated sufficiently. See the lucid discussion of all these matters in Charles S. Chihara’s Ontology and the Vicious Circle Principle (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), esp. pp. 138-140.

8

See Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910) [re-issued in paperback in 1967], pp. 31, 37. Elsewhere Russell puts it as follows: “If provided a certain collection has a total, it would have members only definable in terms of that total, then the said collection has no total.” American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 30 (1908), pp. 222262 (see p. 240). Russell went on to explain that “When I say that a collection has no total, I mean that statements about all its members are nonsense.” (Ibid.; see also P.M.) He appears to think, however, that the culprit here is “all” instead of “it”!

9

Bertrand Russell, “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types” (1908) rptd. in J. van Heijenoort, From Frege to Gödel (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 153-182; see p. 155. Elsewhere, Russell is more cautious “If, provided [we assume] a certain collection has a total, it would have members only definable in terms of the total, then the said collection has no total.” Bertrand Russell, “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types,” American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 30 [1908], pp. 222-262 (rptd. In van Hiejenoort 1967), see p. 227. See also Principia Mathematica, Vol. I, pp. 31,36. The phrase “only definable” helps matters but also introduces problems of its own because that “only” is somewhere between difficult and inappropriate to cash in.

10

Thus it is necessary, if we are not to sin against the above negative principle, to construct our logic without mentioning such things as ‘all propositions’ or ‘all properties’—and without ever having to say that we are excluding such things. The exclusion must result naturally and inevitably from our positive doctrines which

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NOTES

must make it plain that ‘all propositions,’ and ‘all properties are meaningless phrases (“Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types,” p. 277). 11

We thus need not follow Russell in rejecting an ontology of classes and adopting a “no class theory” on grounds that statements about “all classes” are meaningless. There lies open the option of holding, with Gödel that classes can be abstract objects that “exist independently of our definitions and constructions.” For we can merely hold that certain ways of trying to refer to classes are flawed and cannot succeed in effecting such reference. Compare Kurt Gödel, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic” in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell ed. by P. Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1969), pp. 123-53.

12

See the discussion of these ideas at CPuR A680-B708 = A689-B717.

13

This chapter is a revised version of a paper of the same title published in Informal Logic, vol. 22 (2,000), pp. 43-60. I am grateful to Alexander Pruss for constructive comments.

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Chapter II/6 PLURALITY QUANTIFICATION

T

he year 1964 saw the publication of a brief note no more than two pages long presenting an idea with which my name has become most intimately associated.1 This is the so-called “Rescher-quantifier,” which has made a name for itself in symbolic logic.2 And so, the irony transpires that, in a long lifetime of creative philosophical work, the creation perhaps most closely associated with my name—and which more than any other thing seems likely to be associated with it over the years to come—is embodied in a diminutive note formulating a rather simple idea tossed off in some idle moments as a jeu d’esprit. Classical quantification theory in symbolic logic is based on two quantifiers only, namely “existential quantifier” where something holds of SOME and the “universal quantifier” where something holds of ALL. And these are in one very important way sufficient—that is, they suffice for all the purposes of mathematics. But the contrasting “plurality quantifier” MOST not only resists definition in terms of the standard quantifiers, but also has various interesting formal features (such as the duality implication that MOST Ÿ not-MOST-not and also the failure (in contrast to SOME and ALL) to be self-commutable. Moreover, it is just this sort of qualification, standing apart from all-or-something approach of the usual quantifiers, that is interestingly applicable and useful in the domain of human affairs. This idea of plurality quantification might possibly have dropped into oblivion were it not for a follow-up discussion in which David Kaplan drew attention to the fact that it opened the doorway to a significant shift of prospective regarding the role and modus operandi of quantification.3 But this is speculation, and in actual fact during the subsequent period plurality qualification under the name of “the Rescher quantifier” made its way into the agenda of logical research and established itself as a useful instrumentality for elucidating and systematizing a significant sector of quantificated logic. Odd though it seems (to me, at any rate), it seems fair to say that no other single concept or thesis of my work has found such extensive resonance in the research literature. In substantiation of this contention it can be observed that currently (January, 2004) the search engine Google offers

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

under the rubric “Rescher quantifier” several hundred references to the work of a wide variety of logicians at work in many countries. In view of this development, it seems appropriate to give a brief account of how the idea of plurality quantification initially entered into my thinking. A word as to background. My work on plurative generalization was prefigured on views about the human sciences developed in the mid 1950s which pointed towards the idea of exception-tolerant generalizations as an important instrumentality in social and, in particular, in historical contexts came to the fore in my thought regarding the epistemology of the inexact sciences and history in particular.4 While (rather regrettably) I have no specifically concrete recollection of this, I feel pretty confident that at the back of my mind in thinking on this issue there figure Aristotle’s idea of generalizations that hold on-the-whole (or “for the most part,” epi to polu.5) In the wake of my return to philosophy in 1957, after some years spent in other pursuits, I worked rather intensely on issues relating to Aristotle’s logic.6 Additionally, during this period I was carrying out a variety of investigations regarding nonstandard uses of quantifiers in relation to such matters as many-valued qualification, many-sorted quantifiers, quantification in modal and many-valued systems, and the like.7 And so, proceeding not just by memory but by the documentary record, I feel confident that it was the confluence of these two streams of historical and logical studies that led me to conceive the idea of plurality quantification. Moreover, as that 1964 itself note indicates, immediately upon projecting the idea of plurative generalizations, the idea came to me of adding such propositions to the standard manifold of universal and existential propositions in Aristotelian syllogisms. And from this it was an easy step to extend the mechanism of so-called Venn diagrams to monitor the validity of syllogisms in this extended syllogistic. The details of this approach were worked out in collaboration with my student Neil Gallagher, and the results formulated in a little paper published in the mid-1960s.8 Ultimately, the ideas at work in these deliberations about pluralityquantification in formal logic ultimately exerted a significant influence upon my work on larger philosophical issues—and indeed upon my views regarding the nature of philosophy itself. For—as Aristotle already contemplated—the shift from “all” to “most” in science suggests the prospect of a parallel shift from “always and invariably” to “normally and standardly” in matters afforded by chance and choice. On such a perspective,

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philosophical generalizations would be construed as holding not with regard and rigorous universality, but would instead manage to characterize the usual and normal course of things. In unusual or extraordinary circumstances, such generalizations would admit of exceptions which would be seen as such exactly because the circumstances are un-usual and extraordinary. The program of “philosophical standardism” which I elaborated in a 1994 book of that same title9 was dedicated to working out the details of such a metaphilosophical approach geared to generalizations of this sort. Thus while the idea of plurality qualification was principally active in the world of logicians, its influence on me moved rather in the direction of social and humanistic concerns. It is not that there are no pluralistic facts in mathematics and logic. (After all, “Most primes are odd,” with 2 forming the sole exception.) But the pluralistic truths of these disciplines can always be restated without going beyond the resources of standard quantification. Whereas in the social and human sciences this does not seem to be the case. And so, in the end, the ideas at work here came round in a full circle— moving from the initial inspiration of Aristotle’s qualified “generally and on the whole” generalizations towards the general idea in matters of human affairs and humanistic studies of an Aristotelian (quasi-) science geared not to how matter stand always and invariably, but rather merely “on the whole” (epi to polu).10 Appendix We introduce the new mode of plurality-quantification, represented by the quantifier M, with (Ma)Ia to be construed as: “For most individuals a (in the non-empty universe of discourse D)Ia.” This is to be taken to say that the set of individuals for which I is true has a greater cardinality than the set for which it is false (so that it is clear that the applicability of the notion is not restricted to finite universes). This M quantifier qualifies as a quantifier in the sense of Mostowski (Fund. Math., vol. 44 (1957), pp. 12-36; cf. T. Hailperin in Zentralblatt für Mathematik etc., vol. 78 (1959), p. 244). The semantical theory of this mode of quantification is obvious. Some of the logical principles governing this quantifier are: (i) (x)Ix Š (Mx)Ix, (ii) (Mx)Ix Š (x)Ix,

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(iii) [(Mx)Ix & (Mx)\x] Š (x)(Ix & \x), (iv) (Mx)Ix Š ~(Mx)~Ix, (v) [(Mx)(Ix Š \x) & (x)Ix] Š (Mx)\x, (vi) [(x)(Ix Š \x) & (Mx)Ix] Š (Mx)\x. (It is clear that the converse of (iv) does not obtain—think of a domain D with an even number of members, exactly half of which have I.) Note, however, that all these theses, as well as all ensuing remarks about the Mquantifier, are unaffected if (Ma)Ia were construed—for finite universes— as “For over 80 % [instead of 50 %] of all individuals a, Ia”, etc. Since a semantical interpretation of the M-quantifier is in hand, we may raise (but will not here discuss) the question of a complete set of axioms for the “lower predicate calculus” involving this quantifier (i.e., principles which, taken as axioms, yield as theorems all logical truths of the (Menriched) quantification theory based on 1-place predicates alone). An interesting feature of the M-quantifier is that it is not selfcommutative, i.e., unlike the analogous case with universal or existential quantification, we do not have: (Mx)(My)Ixy { (My)(Mx)Ixy. This is readily shown by considering a universe of discourse of three members, xl, x2, x3, with the relation R taken such that xl bears R to nothing, x2 only to xl and x2, and x3 only to xl and x2. If the identity-relation is given, so that we can define the familiar operator for “there are exactly i distinct individuals a such that Ia”, and further if the domain of discourse D is finite and its cardinality is specified, then one can of course define M by the remaining machinery of the system. However, if the cardinality of the (finite) domain D is unspecified, or if this domain is infinite, then (Ma)Ia cannot be defined in terms of the familiar resources of standard quantificational logic. The theory of quantification based on universal and existential quantification alone cannot render: “For most x’s (of the non-empty domain D), Ix.” Observe that “(Mx)(Ax Š Bx)” does not represent “Most A’s are B’s”

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(and indeed would not do so even if “Š” were replaced by an implicationrelation stronger than material implication). It is readily shown that (if the A’s are a proper subset of the entire domain of discourse, and the cardinality of this domain is not specified as some finite number) “Most A’s are B’s” cannot be defined by means of the usual resources of quantificational logic; not even when these are supplemented by our pluralityquantification, or any other type of quantification, for that matter. Nevertheless, the logic of the propositions “Most S is P” and “Most S is not P” is an extremely simple matter. For example, syllogisms involving these quasi-categorical statements are subject to a validity test using Venn-diagrams (by a suitably elaborated employment of arrows to indicate the extension of one region of the diagram to be less than that of another). More generally, the machinery needed for the analysis of such syllogisms is much less than is required for De Morgan’s “numerically definite syllogisms” (Formal Logic, Chapter VIII). Consider the following three arguments: (1) All A’s are B’s All parts of A’s are parts of B’s

(2) Most things are A’s Most things are B’s Some A’s are B’s

(3) Most C’s are A’s Most C’s are B’s Some A’s are B’s

Textbooks often charge that traditional logic is “inadequate” because it cannot accommodate patently valid arguments like (1). But this holds equally true of modern quantificational logic itself, which cannot accommodate (2) until supplemented by something like our pluralityquantification. And even such expanded machinery cannot accommodate (3). Powerful tool though it is, quantificational logic is unequal to certain childishly simple valid arguments, which have now featured in the logical literature for over a century (i.e., since De Morgan). (To be sure, once the quantificational system is elaborated in some way to the point where arithmetic is possible so that we can count the extension of a property P and compare the results of such countings—then this impotence is overcome.) NOTES. 1

Nicholas Rescher, “Plurality Quantification,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 27 (1964), pp. 373-74. The entire text is presented here as an Appendix.

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NOTES 2

See the Handbook of Philosophical Logic, ed. By D. Gabbay and F. Guenther (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1989), p. 18; 2nd edition, Vol. I (19xx), p. 168; also Dag Westenshahl, “Quantifiers” in Lou Goble (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 441.

3

David Kaplan, “Rescher’s Plurality Quantification,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 31 (1966), pp. 53-55.

4

See N. Rescher and Olaf Helmer, “The Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences,” Management Science, vol. 6 (1959), pp. 26-52. (This paper was also published in 1959 as Rand Corporation Memorandum No. 353. It was subsequently also reprinted in N. Rescher, Scientific Explanation (New York: The Free Press, 1970), pp. 163-208) and in Olaf Helmer, Looking Forward: A Guide to Futures Research (Beverley Hills: Sage Publications, 1983), pp. 25-48.

5

On this Aristotelen conception see Gisela Striker, “Notwendigkeit mit Lücken” Neue Hefte für Philosophie 24/25 (1985), pp. 146-164. Its role in Aristotelian science is discussed in Lindsay Judson, “Chance and Always or For the Most Part,” in idem (ed.), Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 73-99.

6

It took some time for this work to bear fruit in publications. Among the earlier of these were: “New Light for Academic Sources on Galen and the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (1963), pp. 27-41 and “Aristotle’s Theory of Modal Syllogisims” in M. Bunge (ed.,) The Critical Approach of Science and Philosophy (London and New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), pp. 152-77.

7

“Many-sorted Quantification,” Proceedings of the 12th International Congress for Philosophy (Venice, 1958); vol. 4, Logic, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language (Firenze, 1960), pp. 447-453; “A Quantificational Treatment of Modality,” Logique et Analyse, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 34-42; “Predicate Logic Without Predicates,” Logique et Analyse, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 101-103; “Quantifiers in Many-valued Logic,” Logique et Analyse, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 181-184; “Venn Diagrams for Plurative Syllogisms,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 16 (1965), pp. 49-55. With Neil A. Gallagher.

8

“Venn Diagrams for Plurative Syllogisms,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 16 (1965), pp. 49-55.

9

Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

10

This chapter was originally published in Philosophical Inquiry vol. 26 (2004), pp. 1-6.

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Part III

SCIENCE AND ITS LIMITS

Introduction Robert Almeder 1. RESCHER ON THE LIMITS OF NATURAL SCIENCE

R

escher’s core position on the nature and limits of natural science includes the following basic items:

1. There are important empirically answerable questions about the observable world that we cannot answer by appeal to the methods of testing and confirmation proper to the natural sciences. Answers to the questions about the validity of the inductive method itself, or about the basic common sense beliefs upon which natural science rests at any time, for example, we cannot established directly and non-circularly by appeal to either deduction alone or the inductive methodology in natural science. 2. Our methods of induction are also limited in that even when one’s particular beliefs about the world turn out to be fully warrantedly assertible under the usual methods of testing and confirmation in natural science; such warranted assertibility is evidence neither of their certainty nor of any strong guarantee of their truth. They are truth approximations, and sometimes they are not true. In fact, for this reason, all empirical beliefs are fallible, and hence, however wellconfirmed, or confirmable, they are defeasible, and subject to revision or rejection in the light of future evidence or future collective decisions on future standards for evaluating the evidence. 3. Moreover, although the products of inductive methodology may be limited in the above ways, the methodology in general is more than justified as a methodology reliably providing knowledge of the external world because in the long run, and on the whole, it leads often enough to truth. Thus, for example, the limits of natural science do

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not imply a purely instrumentalist interpretation of empirical knowledge in general and scientific theories in particular. 4. The number of non-trivial empirically answerable questions that natural science can in principle answer at any given time is inexhaustible, or indefinitely large; and so natural science will never, even unto eternity, answer all the questions that it can in principle answer. There will always be ignorabimus questions. 5. Whatever progress natural science will make unto eternity by way of answering more and more non-trivial questions in time, the progress will be increasingly limited by economic forces and an expansion of natural resources so that, under the best of circumstances, there will be a logarithmic retardation in scientific progress as time advances. This retardation will result from the ever-increasing cost of the technology necessary for doing science in conjunction with ever increasing global demand for both finite and limited resources and the demand for social services outside science. 6. Scientific theories are limited in that while seeking to correctly and completely describe nature, they can never quite achieve as much although, to be sure, they approximate, estimate, or come close to doing as much; and finally, 7. As natural science progresses, it is inevitable that the technology required for solving social problems will become so increasingly complex, along with the complexity of social problems and the answers offered, that science will not be able to deliver the technology or answers necessary to solve the inevitable social problems that will emerge. Natural Science, then, in its applicative function, is limited in that it will not be able to provide adequately and indefinitely for important social progress and welfare because answers provided by technology become ever more complex, and the technology becomes ever more costly and difficult to control in the interest of promoting social welfare. Let me offer now a brief exposition of the reasoning Rescher offers for the first six of the above listed items. My conclusion shall be that while one might conceivably question some of the finer implications of Rescher’s

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thesis on the eternity of scientific progress, we can nonetheless applaud the impressive answers offered on the general question of the limits and scope of natural science. Thereafter we can reflect more on his realism and idealism and hopefully offer some clarification on his current position as it has emerged in the last few years. 2. SCIENTISM AND LEGITIMATELY ANSWERABLE QUESTIONS OUTSIDE SCIENCE For Rescher, it is a mistake to believe that the only legitimately answerable questions about the world of physical objects are those that can be answered by appeal solely to the methods of testing and confirmation in the natural sciences. Nor has he argued by way of a fallback position that whether anybody knows anything at all is a scientific question. In fact, he finds such positions strikingly self-defeating because, as he says, “To engage in rational argumentation designed to establish the impossibility of philosophizing is in fact to engage in a bit of it.” [(LS). 1984. 3-4, 15, 108, and 210; and on the self defeating nature of scientism see also “Philosophobia” in The American Philosophical Quarterly vol.39, #3 (July 1992. 301-2 ] Like Carnap, and most other classical pragmatists, moreover, Rescher advances the view that whether one’s methods of testing and confirmation in natural science are themselves epistemologically acceptable is simply a function of whether they ultimately guarantee us precise sensory predictions and control (or applicative success) which is the primary end of cognitive inquiry. Trying to determining inductively whether one’s methods are acceptable is viciously circular if one’s purpose is to establish the inductive justification of the inductive methods of natural science. [(LS). 1984, 12ff; I, 1981]. Along with Aristotle, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellars, and many others, Rescher has consistently asserted that the first principles and the methodology of natural science cannot be justified or established in any non-circular way by explicit and direct appeal to those very principles in question. [Sellars, 1968, 101-15, and Carnap 1980; See also Rescher’s response to Bonjour’s piece in Sosa 1979 and in Rescher 1982. 25ff. See also Bonjour 1985 222ff]. And yet, for Rescher, there must be some solu-

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tion to the problem of induction because, contrary to what the skeptic suggests, we obviously have much knowledge of the physical world, thanks to the use of inductive methods. How else can we explain successfully the remarkable predictive and applicative success of so many beliefs acquired by appeal to inductive methodology? We know, for example, that atoms exist and this latter bit of knowledge depends on a good deal of inductive inference. Nor can we establish the validity of inductive methods a priori, as some have erroneously suggested. (Bonjour 1985, 1998). Rather, in the end they can, and should be, established pragmatically, that is, by directly seeing whether, when adopted, they lead ultimately to the observed satisfaction of the primary goals of science. If they do, while this pragmatic form of justification may indeed be empirical in a general way, it is certainly not scientific in the sense of proceeding directly from standard testing and confirming to whether the primary cognitive goal has been satisfied. Like other pragmatists, Rescher is often more inclined to talk about the vindication or the validity rather than the justification of scientific induction.[(I) ch.3] The Humean skeptic, incidentally, may demand more justification for inductive reasoning and first principles. But Rescher’s consistent response is that, for various reasons, such a demand roots in a sterile Cartesianism feeding upon a faulty argument whose conclusion is that all beliefs about the world are truly doubtful and therefore in need of justification. (1981, 1984, 12ff.; 1978, 175-84.; 2000, 2001, 2003). Once this Cartesian skeptical conclusion is eliminated, we need not worry about the charge of there being no non-circular defense of induction or of basic principles because these basic beliefs will not be the product of beliefs directly justified by appeal to the methods of induction. We can simply start the system with beliefs free of all real or honest doubt, and out of that set of initial credibilities build non-circularly the edifice of natural science. We call those initial credibilities the deliverances of common sense and, as long as they are not honestly doubted, we have no choice but to regard them as certain and without any need for conscious justification in terms of other known propositions. Other philosophers have opined that pragmatic justification ‘obviously’ does not work as a non-circular way of answering legitimate questions

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about the adequacy of induction or of first principles. After all, some say, claims about the pragmatic adequacy of any system of beliefs are empirical claims themselves which can only be justified on inductive grounds. Rescher has replied, however, that there is nothing at all viciously circular about observing whether one’s methods of testing and confirmation, and the assumptions upon which they rest, lead generally to reliable predictions of sensory experience. [Apart from his general defense of induction in (MP) and (I), see Rescher’s remarks in Sosa (PNR) 174; in Almeder (PR) 25ff.; and his response to Bonjour in both (SEK) 222ff. and also in (DPR).Ch.6. For a view similar to Rescher’s see also Wilfrid Sellars, (SM) 101, and the last page of Rudolf Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. 1959”]. Along with other pragmatists, Rescher has argued more recently that all Humean criticisms of induction amount to blaming induction for not being deduction; and that is by implication to advance an indefensible Cartesian a priorism. [See (RP), (CP), and (PR)]. We will return to this discussion later. If Rescher is right on this way of justifying basic beliefs and inductive methodology, and arguably he is, there will be a way to defend the epistemological foundations of science without falling into rank subjectivism or skepticism based upon an infinite regress, while simultaneously avoiding vicious circularity and any appeal to a purely a priori common sense defense of foundational beliefs in natural science. Accordingly, while natural science has certain limits in that its foundational beliefs and methods cannot be established non-circularly by direct appeal to propositions established in natural science, nevertheless, it will not follow from all that that science is limited in that its beliefs at any level are based upon beliefs which ultimately cannot be objectively vindicated. The justification of the inductive methodology rests on the applicative fruits and precise predictions the method ultimately provides us when in fact we cannot plausible be held accountable for that success in prediction and application of our beliefs. But that scarcely implies that the inductive method cannot fail us sometimes by providing us with systemically confirmed beliefs that we come to reject for good reason at a later date. Induction is generally reliable, but that is not to say that confirmation under the inductive methodology will give us the truth every time. [(LS) 1984.78-79)] The attractiveness of Rescher’s pragmatic reply that the Humean problem is rooted in a sterile and arbitrary Cartesianism, and thus that the reply liberates pragmatists such as Rescher from the charge of begging the question against the

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Humean argument certainly seem a convincing way of furthering the vindication and validation of induction in the face of Hume’s argument. [See also (MP) 1977. 175-184]. At any rate, Rescher is certainly no naturalized epistemologist singing unreservedly the praises of natural science and announcing the death of philosophy or traditional epistemology. His saying that there are some answerable questions about the world that science cannot answer and that natural science cannot in any case provide a non-circular inductive justification of the methodology of natural science differs, of course, from saying that there will always be unanswered questions in natural science, or questions that science can answer but will not, for various reasons, succeed at doing unto eternity. Naturally, again, as is evident in his adoption of fallibilism, natural science is limited in that it cannot provide us with logically certain beliefs, rather than highly likely estimates or approximations of the truth about the physical world. But this only means that all knowledge about the physical world is defeasible; and there is a world of difference between defeasible knowledge and no knowledge at all [(MP) 1977. 201ff; (S) 1978. Ch.4]. More on this shortly. 3. THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY In Methodological Pragmatism, (1977b) and elsewhere, Rescher takes a cue from C. S. Peirce and argues against another skeptical argument about the possibility of scientific knowledge. In so doing, he points to other limits of natural science without abandoning the claim that we have knowledge in science about the external world. The skeptical thesis in question consists in avowing that the methodology of natural science can fail in any given case to provide us with knowledge of the world. Some robustly confirmed theories or beliefs established under inductive methodology have turned out to be false, and so there is inductive evidence that they will continue to do so. For this reason, the real probability of error attending any claim offered by inductive methodology more than suggests that there is no attainable knowledge of the world under the method of the natural sciences. We need only admit that often in the past some of our most cherished and robustly confirmed beliefs have turned out to be disturbingly and

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surprisingly false. This argument itself, incidentally, is an inductive argument based upon the frequency of past failures among robustly confirmed beliefs in natural science. Rescher, in response, argues that while thesis pragmatism is unacceptable for such reasons and, if followed, would support the skeptic’s claims, nevertheless methodological pragmatism is sound. The latter amounts to asserting that the general methods of the natural sciences provide knowledge. They are selected-out by nature because they tend to be generally reliable in producing true beliefs in the long run, although, to be sure, in any given case the methods may fail us. In sum, and as we noted above, Rescher claims along with Peirce, that the validity of inductive inference rests on the fact that if we follow inductive methods carefully, we are likely in the long run to hit the truth more so than if we were to follow any other method, and that is the reason why evolution and natural selection favors the use of the scientific method . [(MP) 1977b, chapters 3 and 4; See also Almeder 1982. ff]. This means that while highly confirmed beliefs in the history of science may subsequently be found false, the inductive method (or the hypothetico-deductive method) is, with suitable provisos, generally reliable most of the time. So, for the skeptic who argues that truth-value revision in natural science shows that the inductive methods fails to provide knowledge in any given case, Rescher’s reply is that there is no justification for such a strong skepticism about the failure of scientific methodology. It is still the methodology that turns up beliefs most likely to be true and, more often than not in the long run, what is most likely to be true is true.[(MP) 1977b, 66ff. 99ff. 189, 197-202]. So, even though science may be limited in that not all robustly confirmed beliefs in science are demonstrably true at any given time, nevertheless, neither can it be the case that none, or very few, are true. And if the skeptic urges that knowledge is a function of certainty (of the Cartesian sort) Rescher’s response is again that such a criterion is too strong relative to what our deepest intuitions reveal about what we all know. Because of the reflections just noted, Rescher has frequently said that owing to the fallible deliverances of the inductive method on any specific claim that we can never be sure with regard to any particular claim that it is the very truth itself rather than our best estimation [(SR),(LS) 79, 84, (MP) 12ff. and EI 236-7]. In fact in the earlier works, he often characterizes confirmed beliefs in science merely as estimates of the truth, that the truth in

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fact is never reached in science, and that therefore realism in science is a matter of intent rather than accomplishment that there is no difference between what we think to be so, and what is so (EI 223). For example, in the Limits of Science [(LS) 1984)] he says: Our science, as it stands here and now, does not present the real truth. The best it can do is to provide us with a tentative and provisional estimate of it (77-78).The standards of scientific acceptability do not and can not assure actual, or indeed, even probable or approximate truth. (79) In the same place he also goes on to claim that the history of science teaches us (like the Preface Paradox) that “we know, or must presume, that (at the synoptic level) there are errors though we certainly cannot say where and how they arise” (83). As we shall see, Rescher remains equally firm in later publications that science only provides us with estimates of truth, that we can never say with certainty that any particular proposition confirmed in science is true. How he ends up a scientific realist with this thesis in hand is by an appeal to what he ultimately calls ‘myopic’ realism. More on that soon enough. 4. SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IN GENERAL, AND ECONOMIC CONSTRAINTS Rescher has also argued that the number of nontrivial empirically answerable questions in natural science is limitless. No matter how many questions we can (and do) answer in natural science, there has always been a large number of unanswered questions and, indeed, typically, the answering of questions produces more questions. Hence, if one believes in induction, the future should be like the past in that there will always be interesting empirical questions to answer. In short, for Rescher, unto eternity scientific progress will continue by way of answering more and more questions in time. Hence, natural science is limited in not being able to answer all theoretically answerable questions. By implication, there is no substance to the claim that natural science could come to some end in answering all legitimately answerable questions. Those questions are indefinitely many. Interestingly enough, however, while this thesis implies that scientific progress will continue indefinitely long (because there will always be nontrivial scientifically answerable questions) the progress that science takes will be drastically limited as time goes on such that, for all practical pur-

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poses, science will come to an end although not literally so. Let me explain. In Scientific Progress (1977a) and elsewhere, Rescher has urged that even though natural science will progress indefinitely long, there will be a logarithmic retardation in scientific progress. Such retardation will occur because there will be an ever-increasing economic cost of scientific research combined with the need to finance other human needs competing with scientific progress in a world of finite and decreasing resources and productivity (even in the presence of advances in technology). So, for Rescher, although scientific progress will enter into a stage of progressive deceleration, still, given an indefinite future, scientific progress will never stop in some final theory of the empirical world. In defending this thesis, Rescher claims some dependence by way of inspiration on the important work done by Peirce on the economics of research and, of course, adds a few points Peirce left out. Here briefly is his basic argument that natural science is limited in crucial ways by economic forces. Given Planck’s principle that every advance in science makes the next advance more difficult and requires a corresponding increase in effort, ever-larger demands are made of the researchers in science as it progresses. If we combine this conclusion with the thesis that real qualitative progress in science is parasitic upon advances in technology, and that these advances in technology are in turn ever more costly, then we shall need to conclude that scientific progress will become progressively slower because experiments will become increasingly more difficult to conduct for being ever more expensive in a world of finite and decreasing resources. So, if we factor into our understanding of scientific progress the cold and hard economic fact of increasing cost for technology and decreasing resources and productivity, then a logarithmic retardation in scientific progress is inevitable. Thus, as Rescher sees it, while major scientific discoveries will never come to a complete stop (because new questions will always emerge with each discovery), the time between significant discoveries grows larger with the passage of time. In providing an analogy for this, Rescher asks us to consider such progress similar to a person’s entering a Borgesian library but with a card that entitles the bearer to take out one book the first week, one for the second two weeks, one for the following three weeks, and so on, with increasingly long periods of delay unto eternity. The library has an unlimited, or inexhaustible, number of books in it; every time somebody takes out a book somebody adds, we may suppose, other books to it. In this model, our ever-expanding knowledge grows at an ever-decreasing rate.

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Scientific revolutions will go on forever, but the time gap between them moves toward infinity and carries with it a substantial slowdown in science as an activity.[(SP) 1977a, 230]. In discussing the economics of deceleration in scientific progress, Rescher considers the possibility that, as technology develops, the cost of progress will become less expensive rather than more expensive. He argues that while this prospect is certainly feasible, it is not realized in practice; and hence a non-linear cost increase is required to maintain a constant pace of progress in science, at least into the indefinite future. Further, that there could not be a finite number of empirically answerable questions follows, Rescher argues in the same place, from what he terms the “Kantproliferation effect” (1977a, 245). This is to say, along with Kant, that unending progressiveness follows from the very real phenomenon that in the course of answering old questions we constantly come to pose new ones. Thus, no matter how much science progresses, there will still be questions that need answers. By implication, there will be questions that we will never, in fact rather than in principle, be able to answer, no matter how sophisticated we become in the practice of natural science. Moreover, even in the infinite long run, these questions will remain unanswered because answering them depends upon a greater concurrent commitment of natural resources than will ever be marshaled at any time in a zero growth world: They involve interaction with nature on a scale so vast that the resources needed for their realization remain outside our economic reach in a world of finite resource- availability. [(SP) 1977a, 250)]. Let us turn now to Rescher’s views on Realism and Idealism. 5. SCIENTIFIC REALISM, IDEALISM, AND INSTRUMENTALISM Realism, like idealism and instrumentalism, means different things to different philosophers. So, in the interest of avoiding as much unnecessary confusion as possible, let me briefly characterize these items as they function classically, and then locate Rescher’s position relative to them Classical realists believe that (a) there is an external world, that is to say, a world of objects whose existence and some of whose properties are neither logically nor

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causally dependent for their existence on any mental activities of human beings; (b) some of our beliefs about that world are, even if somewhat incomplete at any given time, correct descriptions; and (c) we can justifiably determine and say which of those beliefs, including our theoretical beliefs in natural science, are in fact correct descriptions. Classical scientific realism shares with classical realism acceptance of (a) through (c). But what distinguishes scientific realism from classical realism is that scientific realism simply extends classical realism to include explicitly beliefs asserting the existence of unobservable theoretical entities postulated to exist by empirically adequate theories. The main alternatives to classical realism are non-realism and antirealism. Non-realists are agnostic about the existence of an external world or about our ability to know anything about such a world, were it to exist. They allow that the world of our experience may or may not satisfy conditions (a) through (c), but they invariably insist that we cannot know that all three of these conditions hold. Moreover, scientific non-realists argue that the success of scientific theories does not require acceptance of (a) through (c) as true particularly of theoretical entities. The only interesting question for scientific non-realists, is whether scientific theories work as effective instruments by allowing us to make reliable predictions and application to phenomenal experience, and for that, they say, we only need standard confirmation theory. Requiring anything more of a scientific theory is philosophically contentious. These agnostics usually see themselves as instrumentalists epistemologically liberated from the need to claim that successful theories are successful for the reason that they accurately describe the external world, its entities, and its properties. They will claim that successful theories in the past were quite successful in offering precise predictions and applicative success in various contexts, but were later rejected as false. Anti realists, whether classical or scientific, are atheists about our ability the show that (a) through (c) holds. Some have urged, along with both the early Richard Rorty and the later Nelson Goodman, that (a) is unacceptable because all properties of the world are linguistic in nature, and they then go on to dismiss (b) and (c) as obviously indefensible [Rorty, 2000. 1-31, and Goodman, (WOW) 1978.] Whereas scientific non-realists

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willingly concede that our best scientific theories may, for all we know, correctly describe the external world and its theoretical entities, scientific anti-realists reject that concession. Classical anti-realists are typically phenomenalists, restricting reality to the systematized content of our conscious experience. Some scientific anti-realists may allow that observable physical objects exist in addition to our experience of them, but emphatically deny that theoretical entities exist. Some non-realists are professedly agnostic and instrumentalists with regard to the existence of theoretical entities but are common sense realists relative to the existence of observable middle sized physical objects and their observable properties. [Van Fraassen, (SI) 1980]. We may, if we like, regard anti-realists, both classical and scientific, as rejecting any or all of the conditions (a) through (c). They tend to see themselves as pure instrumentalists regarding rational belief, simply for having empirically well-confirmed beliefs no one of which happens to be that some of the conditions (a) through (c) are true in the ordinary sense of ‘true.’ As typical instrumentalists would have it, then, scientific theories provide us with no demonstrable knowledge of a real external world, or of the existence of theoretical entities in it, unless of course we simply define knowledge in terms of well-confirmed beliefs (however acquired) about what we take to be the external world. Given usual instrumentalist arguments, natural science is therefore crucially limited, or fails completely, in its claims to be describing correctly properties and entities in an external world. So where does Rescher’s metaphysics and epistemology fit into all this? As early as 1981 in Empirical Inquiry and in Induction, and in all his later discussions on realism, Rescher consistently defends (a) and (b) and will accept (a) and (b) for theoretical claims in natural science. In the end, for matters falling outside of science but under the rubric of common sense belief, he adopts (a) through (c), sounding very much like a common sense realist. But he hesitates as to accept (c) for propositions asserting the existence of theoretical entities, entities such as atoms, neutrons, pions and mesons, even though he admits that some theoretical claims certainly can be, and are, true in any empirically adequate theory.[(SR)71-73] In matters of common sense we are certain as we can be about some things because we collectively cannot imagine being wrong about those basic common sense beliefs [(CS) ch.1]. But, as the history of science will attest, we can easily imagine being wrong in our claims about theoretical entities posited to exist in theoretical science. In theoretical science we have only approximative estimations of truth, and in that activity there will always be

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some real likelihood of error no matter how small or contextually irrelevant to our predictive and applicative success. This makes Rescher a classical realist at the level of common sense and empirical knowledge outside of natural science, but not a classical scientific realist because of the problem of not being able to determine which theoretical claims in natural science are in fact true rather than fully justified estimations or approximations of truth. So, when Rescher characterizes his realism as ‘myopic,’ we see him as adopting (a) and (b) but not (c) in natural science. If this construal of Rescher’s realism(s) is basically correct, and if one could argue that common sense beliefs are no different in kind than any other empirical claim about the world in that they too are defeasible even though at any given time we may not be able to imagine being wrong about what they assert, the ‘myopic’ realism he adopts would also turn out to apply to the realm of common sense. “I know that I had a biological mother” may be as certain as certain can be certain; but that still won’t give us the very truth rather than the fully warranted estimation that it is true. One can plausibly argue for the extension of ‘myopic’ realism to the domain of all empirical beliefs outside of, as well as within, natural science, if one can, as I do, regard even common sense beliefs, no matter how true they seem, as empirical assertions that are fundamentally fallible and defeasible. In such a world, one would be more of a classical realist than a classical idealist for adopting (a) and (b) and not (c) although that is still attractive by way of undermining the cultural relativism deriving from a full blown fallibilism that goes too far in seeing that all properties of the world are linguistic in nature. The only downside of ‘myopic’ realism, both in and out of natural science, would be our needing to admit generally that even in the best of our theories, at any given time, we must take seriously that the world may be quite different than we assert it to be in our most robustly confirmed theories. However, that is just to affirm, along with Rescher, that when it comes to saying how the world really is, rather than how we sincerely think it to be, we cannot aspire to anything more than the sort truth estimations or approximations that have allowed us to adapt as well as we have. There is no harm in that as long as our robustly confirmed theories produce those predictive and applicative successes we need for basic adaptation and human happiness. Sure, the world will remain a little more mysterious than if we had been able to adopt (c). But what’s wrong with leaving a little philosophical space for poets, playrights, mystics and an occasional epistemologist? Finally, what has any of this to do with Rescher’s idealism?

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It depends on how we define ‘idealism.’ In Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective (1992) Rescher delineates the sort of idealism, conceptual idealism, he endorses while reaping all the benefits of being a realist of the sort he defends as ‘myopic,’ and as described above in terms of accepting (a), (b) and not (c). In this venture he avoids adopting any form of idealism affirming that all properties in the world are linguistic in nature and that everything therefore in the world is mental. Rather, he is intent on advancing a form of idealism advancing the idea that the world cannot be understood except through the constructive conceptualizations of the human mind without which we would not even have an idea of the world, and how we conceptualize the world determines crucially what we take it to be. Given this rough and ready characterization of his idealism, Rescher does not see realism and idealism as mutually contradictory stories, and that the ideal strategy in his overall system is to combine the two in terms of what has proven attractive in each.[(HKIP) 125]. Well and good. But a possible problem with the idealism Rescher seeks to advance along side of his ‘myopic’ realism is that it seems not at all controversial because it seems in the end to assert fundamentally the non-controversial point that in order to know anything at all about the external world human minds are necessary. That affirmation seems distinctly removed from the core classical idealisms that deny any real distinction between the mental and the non-mental, and thereby deny that there is an external world as distinct from the world of thought. So, we can characterize Rescher’s realism as it relates to “idealism” in the following manner. If ‘idealism’ refers simply to the belief that human beings are cognitive creatures that have magical mental capacities to create categorial structures with which they can ultimately formulate and classify hypotheses answering certain why questions about their phenomenal experience, and then test those hypotheses in terms of what we should expect of those hypotheses if they are true of our phenomenal experience, then anybody who is a ‘myopic’ realist or even a classical realist in and out of scientific discourse, can also be an idealist. But if ‘idealism’ refers to the belief that we do not know that there is an external world, that all properties of our world are purely linguistic or mental, or that we cannot know that some of our beliefs about an external world are correct descriptions of that world, then one cannot be a ‘myopic’ realist, or a classical realist in any sense and at the same time be an idealist. The only problem is that ‘myopic’ realism seemingly seeks to cure the myopia (and thereby block the possible charge of being a classical idealism

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at root) by appealing to common sense as a default mechanism for determining which beliefs are true alethically about the world when in fact common sense may be no more privileged than any other source of empirical knowledge. It’s just that common sense beliefs seem more certain and free of any real doubt. That is certainly strong enough grounds for appealing to any common sense belief as a line in any argument we will call sound, but about them we can be as fallible as we are about the existence of theoretical entities. All things swim in the continuum. Still, we know that there is an external world that some of our beliefs correctly describe even if we cannot on any given occasion distinguish those beliefs from any other robustly confirmed belief about the external world. 6. APPRAISAL By way of brief assessment of Rescher’s above-stated views on the limits of natural science, it is difficult to disagree with his firm rejection of scientism. Nor does this rejection of what has come to be known as ‘the replacement thesis’ imply an abandonment of a rich naturalism, unless one happens to define stipulatively a rich naturalism in terms of the replacement thesis. Science can still be the most privileged of methods for understanding the nature of physical objects and the regularities governing their activities in this world even if there are some legitimate questions about this world that are not scientific questions. Anything else, as Rescher has argued, would be a self-defeating and incoherent form of naturalism. Secondly, with regard to Rescher’s distinctive views on the economic limits on scientific progress owing to the ever increasing cost of technology, it is, again, equally difficult to disagree with the impressive contours of the thesis. Admittedly, in a world of finite and decreasing resources where global population tends to increase exponentially, there will inevitably be a time when the technological cost of scientific progress will become a real impediment to robust scientific progress, and that in all likelihood there will be a logarithmic retardation of scientific progress for that reason. On this score, however, there may well be a question about whether global population will continue to increase exponentially into the indefinite future. Some demographers, for example, now predict that the world population will peak soon and then enter into a period of indefinite decline [See Nicholas Eberstadt “World Population Implosion ? The Public Interest. No.129, (Fall, 1997) 3-22.]. That the world’s population has in the past tended to increase exponentially may well be the result of certain fac-

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tors no longer present to the world population. This is an empirical question, of course, and best left to demographers. Even so, it is worth raising the issue because if contemporary demographers are correct in their estimations, then the cost of new technology necessary for robust and continuing progress may not become so high as to induce the logarithmic retardation Rescher predicts. The only question then is whether the cost of technology for doing science would continue to escalate for the simple reason that, owing to increasing scarcity of natural resources, global productivity would drop dramatically enough in the presence of escalating costs for other human needs, even in a world of decreasing population. Seems plausible enough. But it is nonetheless within the realm of possibility that a cost-effective technology could occur for the safe use of atomic or solar energy. If so, then, even though such energy would not be an unlimited resource, it might take a very long time for the logarithmic retardation in scientific progress to emerge. But, presumably, Rescher’s point is that the logic of logarithmic retardation in scientific progress ties tightly to the fact that in this world, natural resources for economic productivity are finite and decreasing and the demand on them is at least constant if not escalating. In such a world the only way to stop the progressive deceleration in scientific progress would be to guarantee that demand for natural resources extend only to those resources that are basically renewable in a way that establishes an equilibrium between the demand and the supply without threatening the capacity for renewal itself to meet existing demand. Thirdly, on the question of scientific realism, Rescher’s earlier views seem a bit different from his later views. In the earlier works (including LS) his position seems to be one of claiming that scientific theories aspire or intend to succeed in correctly describing the external world but that, as Laudan and others have argued, the history of science justifies the view that science never succeeds, and never will, succeed in correctly describing the external world. That is why, for example, in LS Rescher’s position seems to end up more classically idealistic in endorsing the view that natural science does not in fact ever succeed in correctly describing an external world. But later in Scientific Realism (and in Methodological Pragmatism) we hear him saying, as we noted above, that the success of natural science under the methods of the natural sciences indicates that at some level or other there must be some truth in the system. He says, for example: While action on false belief . . . can on occasion succeed—due to chance or good luck or kindly fate or whatever—it cannot do so systematically, the ways of the world being as they are it is effectively impossible

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that success should crown the products of systematically error producing cognitive procedures. Inquiry procedures which systematically underwrite success-conducive theses thus deserve to be credited with a significant measure of rational warrant. Put somewhat differently, Rescher ultimately adopts the argument to the effect that the overall and systematic success of scientific theories as predictive devices cannot plausibly be explained in the absence of believing that there has to be some “kernel of truth” to them. As we saw above, this point Rescher emphasizes in Scientific Realism and thus comes to refine his “approximationist realism” as a position asserting that we cannot account for the systematic or overall predictive success of some of our theories without assuming that some of the claims made in the theories are accurate descriptions of the external world even if those descriptions are approximate or incomplete, and even if some of the claims made in the theories are complete failures as successful descriptions. Moreover, in Scientific Realism he argued (as we also saw above) that just as when a theory fails us we are not in a position (being holists of sorts) to say which sentences failed at describing the world, so too when a theory works well, we are equally at a loss to point out which of the beliefs are the successful describers of fact. Naturally, the success of Rescher’s position depends on showing that all proposed alternative explanations for the general predictive (or ‘applicative’) success of the theories or hypotheses in question cannot be as plausibly explained in any other way than by asserting that some of the sentences in any successful theory must succeed in correctly describing the world even though we may not be able to pick out the ones that do from the ones that do not. So, scientific theories may all be false and ultimately go the way of the geocentric hypothesis, but even then some of the claims made in them must succeed in correctly describing the external world. Notice, then, that Rescher’s view here is more realistic than the “realism of intent” or the “realism of aspiration” he defended in The Limits of Science and elsewhere. Notice further that the position, as so construed, is consistent with perpetual revolutions in natural science. It is also consistent with the claim that “all theories are born dead” because, as theories, they will be replaced by successor theories. Finally, notice that in this final and refined picture, according to Rescher, we do not have an effective decision

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procedure for determining which sentences of our theories are doing the successful describing and hence carrying the success of the theory. Of course, not all of the propositions in a successful theory can be true. If they were all true, then scientific theories would never get replaced. And if none of them were true, then we would have no way to explain the predictive success of such theories. Successful theories require true propositions, but eternal revolution in science requires a good deal of false but robustly confirmed beliefs. As so stated, then, Rescher’s scientific realism is, (pending refutation of instrumentalists’ alternative explanations of success) quite defensible as a statement on the theoretical limits of scientific theory in providing for an understanding of an independently given world. It implies that whatever we take as criteria for truth (presumably robustly confirmability or warranted assertibility) suitably explicated in terms of coherence with initially given data), are sometimes satisfied; but it does not imply, even with a high degree of probability, that any particular proposition one might name as being completely justified is in fact satisfying the alethic or platitudinous definition of truth, although we know that some of them must be doing so. In this it differs, of course, from classical scientific realism because the latter typically asserts that we know, and can say, which of our beliefs about the external world are in fact the ones describing the external world. But if the core of classical realism is the belief that some of our robustly confirmed beliefs about the external world are more or less correct descriptions of that world, and thus that science succeeds at any given time in telling us in some important way how the world really is, then Rescher’s position is surely consistent with the core of classical scientific realism. As so construed, with the suggested provisos, Rescher’s position is an attractive, compelling, and pre-eminently defensible answer among all other proposed answers to the question of the extent to which natural science can and does succeed in some important measure in accurately describing the external world. He calls it ‘myopic’ realism and, as we notes above, it is consistent with that form of idealism described above. However, in spite of all this sweetness and light, one might plausibly register a contrary, and certainly a minority, belief—even if only to raise the issue for further discussion. It has to do with Rescher’s thesis that scientific progress will continue forever and will never be completed, even in the presence of a logarithmic retardation in progress, because the number of non-trivial empirically answerable questions that can in principle be answered in natural science is inexhaustible. As I noted elsewhere, [1990

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(LNS)], Rescher’s argument for this thesis is essentially that since there have always been questions generated by past successes in answering questions in science, then there is good inductive reason to believe that as science continues there will continue to be questions emerging from all the questions answered in the advances of science. Even if there happens to be a finite number of non-trivial questions at any given time, there will always be more questions to answer at any time in the indefinite future. In fact, it looks as if this is a straightforward and uncomplicated inductive generalization from the past history of science. But this inductive argument for the thesis seems problematic. Let me explain briefly. Rescher’s thesis that the number of non-trivial empirically answerable questions is indefinitely many would be undermined if the number of nontrivial questions that science and technology could answer were finitely many in a world existing indefinitely long, and where more and more nontrivial questions get answered under the methods of the natural sciences and advancing technology. Suppose, for example, that Bertrand Russell’s celebrated chicken had strong evidence that his master-farmer had only enough food to feed him for 750 days. In that case, the chicken should not conclude that because the farmer had fed him for 750 days in the past that therefore the farmer would feed him tomorrow, on day 751. Simple induction from the past is a valid indicator of the future only under certain clear proviso clauses to the effect that there is no good reason to suppose that the conditions warranting the inductive inference will change. So, it seems that the basic inductive inference supporting the belief in the eternal progress of science assumes that the total number of non-trivial questions is not finitely many in a world existing indefinitely long, and where progress is defined in terms of answering more and more non-trivial questions in time. If the total number of such questions were finitely many, then the fact that past progress in natural science always generated more questions than existed before the progress would by no means entail that there will always be such questions to answer in the future. In other words, from the fact that there have always been questions generated in the past by answers generated from science and technology, it does not follow that there will always be such questions in the future unless one already knows or assumes that the total number of non-trivial questions in the indefinite future is not finitely many. Similarly, if Russell’s chicken had not assumed that there would be enough food for the farmer to feed him indefinitely long, then he might have been more prepared for his eventual demise. At this point, one might suggest that the belief that the total number of non-trivial questions

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at any given time is indefinitely large is no better supported by our experience than is its denial. Indeed, what is the inductive evidence that there are indefinitely many non-trivial empirically answerable questions? Again, it cannot derive simply from the fact that in the past there have always been questions generated by answers provided. 7. CONCLUSION Suitably qualified in small ways, Rescher’s central views on the knowledge, the limits of natural science, and his general picture about realism and idealism are impressive, quite defensible, and even magisterial. Whether we are talking about the limits placed on natural science by the progressive and inevitable lack of economic resources to conduct science in a vigorous fashion, or whether we are talking about the limits of science to deliver up in any non-controversial ways the propositions that in fact succeed in correctly describing the external world in some fashion, or whether we are talking about the limits of science by way of providing a justification for its own basic beliefs, or whether we are talking about the limits accruing to the fact that there must be some interesting questions about the world that are not scientific questions, or whether we are talking about the limits science will inevitably have in seeking to solve pressing social issues because of the increasing complexity of technology and scientific answers, we have a persuasive panoramic picture presented of the limits of science along with an unbounded enthusiasm for what science has done and continues to do by way of providing for specific predictions of our sensory experience in a way that counters classical idealism by allowing for belief in and knowledge of an external world while granting full force to a fallibilism that may well prevent us from being able to say which of our beliefs is true while showing that some of them are indeed true. Apart from a more fallibilist view about the deliverances of common sense, for what more could one reasonably ask? REFERENCES Almeder, Robert, Blind Realism (BR) (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). ———, Praxis and Reason (PR) (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982).

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———, Harmless Naturalism (HN) (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishers 1998). ———, “The Limits of Natural Science,”(LNS) in Martin Carrier et al. (eds.), Science at Century’s End: Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Natural Science (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990). Bonjour, Laurence, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge.(SEK) (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985). ———, In Defense of Pure Reason (DPR) (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Goodman, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking (WOW) (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishers, 1978). Rescher, Nicholas, The Coherence Theory of Truth (CTT) (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1973). ———,Cognitive Systematization(CS) (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1979). ———, Empirical Inquiry (EI) (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.) ———, The Limits of Science (LS) (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984). ———, Induction (I) (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1981). ———, Scientific Progress (SP) (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1977). ———, Methodological Pragmatism (MP) (Oxford: 1977). ———, Skepticism. (S) (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1978).

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———, Scientific Realism (SR) (Dordrecht, Holland: D.Riedel Publishing Company, 1987). ———, Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective (HKIP) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). ———, Realistic Pragmatism (RP) (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000). ———, Cognitive Pragmatism (CP) (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). ———, Pragmatic Realism (PR) (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Rorty, Richard, “Universality and Truth,” in Robert Brandom (ed.), Rorty and His Critics (RAC) (Oxford, England: Oxford Publishers, 2000). Sellars, Wilfrid, Science and Metaphysics (SM) (New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1968). Sosa, Ernest (ed.), The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (PNR) (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel Publishers, 1979). van Fraassen, Bas, The Scientific Image (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1980).

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Chapter III/1 THE SYSTEMATICITY OF NATURE 1. COGNITIVE AND ONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMATICITY

T

he ideal developing our knowledge scientifically stands coordinate with the idea of system. Now the conception of a system has historically been applied both to objects in the world and to bodies of knowledge. In the face of this ambivalence, it is important to distinguish between the ontological systematicity (simplicity, coherence, regularity, uniformity, etc.) of the objects of our knowledge—that is, between systematicity as a feature of things—and the cognitive systematicity of our (putative) knowledge or information about things. In fact, three significantly distinguishable roles must be assigned to systematicity: I. COGNITIVE SYSTEMATICITY 1. Codificational systematicity—systematicity as a feature of the organization of our knowledge. 2. Criterial systematicity—systematicity as a criterial standard for assessing the acceptability of theses. II. NONCOGNITIVE (ONTOLOGICAL) SYSTEMATICITY 3. Ontological systematicity—systematicity as a descriptive characteristic of objects—in principle including the whole of the natural universe. Given this distinction of several modes of systematicity, the question of their relative fundamentality arises. Preeminently we must ask: is systematicity at bottom an epistemic desideratum for our knowledge regarding nature, or is it an ontologically descriptive feature of nature itself? From the epistemic standpoint, the parameters of systematicity—

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simplicity, coherence, regularity, etc.— can effectively serve to regulate and control the acceptability claims of our explanatory-descriptive accounts of the world. In particular, they can serve as regulative principles of inquiry, as instruments for assessing appropriateness and acceptability in the conduct of our cognitive endeavors. If a characterization of the workings of nature manifested a substantial lack of cognitive systematization, then it would thereby betoken its own inadequacy. One could not rationally rest content with such an account because‚ by hypothesis, it contravenes what is in fact a characterizing condition of an adequate account. But this perspective on cognitive systematicity is not the whole of the story. 2. THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST EFFORT AND THE METHODOLOGICAL STATUS OF SIMPLICITY-PREFERENCE IN SCIENCE In the days of the medieval Schoolmen—and of those later rationalistic philosophers whom Kant was wont to characterize as dogmatists— simplicity was viewed as an ontological feature of the world. Just as it was then held that “Nature abhors a vacuum”—and, perhaps more plausibly, “In nature there is an explanation for everything”—so it was contended that “Nature abhors complexity.” Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” shifted the responsibility for such desiderata from physical nature to the human intellect. Simplicity-tropism accordingly became not a feature of “the real world,” but rather one of “the mechanisms of human thought” (though perhaps one that is “hard-wired” into the human intellect, as we would nowadays put it.) Kant acutely observed that what was at issue was a facet not of the teleology of nature, but of the teleology of reason, responsibility for which lay not with the theory but with the theorizers. The subsequent Darwinian Revolution may be viewed as taking the process a step further. It removed the teleological element. Neither nature nor man’s rational faculties were now seen as an ontological locus of simplicity-preference; rather its rationale was placed on a strictly methodological basis. And there is much justice in this position. For in the end responsibility for simplicity-tropism lies not with the “hardware” of human reason, but with its “software”—i.e., with the methodological principles

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that we ourselves employ because we find simpler theories easier to work with and more effective. Hans Reichenbach has written: “Actually in cases of inductive simplicity it is not economy which determines our choice. . . . We make the assumption that the simplest theory furnishes the best predictions. This assumption cannot be justified by convenience: it has a truth character and demands a justification within the theory of probability and induction.”1 But this perspective is gravely misleading. What sort of consideration would possibly justify the supposition that “the simplest theory furnishes the best predictions”? Any such belief is surely inappropriate. Induction with respect to the history of science itself—a constant series of errors of oversimplification—would soon undermine our confidence that nature operates in the way we would deem the simpler. On the contrary, the history of science is a highly repetitive story of simple theories giving way to more complicated and sophisticated ones. The Greeks had four elements; in the nineteenth century, Mendeleev had some eighty; we nowadays have a vast series of stability states. Aristotle’s cosmos had only spheres; Ptolemy’s added epicycles; ours has a virtually endless proliferation of complex orbits that only supercomputers can approximate. Greek science could be transmitted on a shelf of books; that of the Newtonian age required a roomful; ours requires vast storage structures filled not only with books and journals but with photographs, tapes, floppy disks, and so on. Of the quantities nowadays recognized as the fundamental constants of physics, only one was contemplated in Newton’s physics, the universal gravitational constant.2 It would be naive—and quite wrong—to think that the course of scientific progress provides a world-picture of increasing simplicity. Just as organic evolution exfoliates ongoing diversity and complexity from a simple starting point, so does cognitive evolution. The process at issue may be simple, but its recursive and convoluted working-out always engenders complexity. To claim the ontological simplicity of the real is somewhere between hyperbolic and absurd. Instead, our inductive practice insists upon the simplest issue-resolving answer—the simplest resolution that meets the conditions of the problem. And we take this line not because we know a priori that this simplest resolution will prove to be correct. (We know no such thing!) Rather, we adopt this answerprovisionally at leastjust exactly because it is the least cumbersome and most economical way of pro-

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viding a question resolution that does justice to the facts and demands of the situation. Reichenbach has thus turned things upside down here: it is indeed methodology that is at issue rather than any factual presumption or discovery to the effect that simpler theories provide better predictions. The reality of it is that when other things are anything like equal, simpler theories are bound to be operationally more advantageous. We avoid needless complications whenever possible, because this is the course of an economy of effort. It is the general practice in scientific theory construction, to give preference to • one-dimensional rather than multidimensional modes of description, • quantitative rather than qualitative characterizations, • lower- rather than higher-order polynomials, • linear rather than nonlinear differential equations. The comparatively simpler is for this very reason easier to work with. In sum, we favor uniformity, analogy, simplicity, and the like exactly because they ease our cognitive labor. On such a perspective, simplicity is a factor that belongs to the practical order, pivoting on an operational economy that makes fewer demands upon our limited resources. In the course of scientific inquiry, we seek for the most economical theory-accommodation for the amplest body of currently available experience. Induction—here short for “the scientific method” in general—proceeds by way of constructing the most straightforward and economical structures able to house the available data comfortably while yet affording answers to our questions.3 This methodological commitment to rational economy does not prejudge or prejudice the substantively ontological issue of the complexity of nature. Natural science is emphatically not precommitted to a Principle of Simplicity in Nature, and this is fortunate, seeing that there really are no convincing grounds for supposing the “simplicity” of the world’s make-up. Instead, the so-called “Principle of Simplicity” is really a principle of complexity-management: “Feel free to introduce complexity in your efforts to

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describe and explain nature’s ways. But only when and where it is really needed. Insofar as possible ‘keep it simple!’ Only introduce as much complexity as you really need for your scientific purposes of description, explanation, prediction, and control.” Simplicity-preference is based on the clearly method-oriented practical consideration that the simple hypotheses are the most convenient and advantageous for us to put to use in the context of our purposes. The Principle of Least Effort is in control here—the process is one of maximally economic means to the attainment of chosen ends. This amounts to a theoretical defense of inductive systematicity that in fact rests on practical considerations relating to the efficiencies of method. Accordingly, inductive systematicity is best approached with reference, not to reality as such—or even merely our conception of it—but to the ways and means we employ for its conceptualization. To be sure, only time will eventually tell to what extent we can successfully move in the direction to which systematicity and its concomitant simplicity point. This is something that “remains to be seen.” (And here the importance of ultimate experiential retrovalidation comes in to supplement our commitment to methodological convenience.) But they clearly afford the most natural and promising starting point. The systematically smoothest resolution of our questions is patently that which must be allowed to prevail—at any rate pro tem, until its untenability becomes manifest. Where a simple solution will accommodate the data at hand, there is no good reason for turning elsewhere. On such a perspective, then, our simplicity-based inductive practices are seen as a fundamentally regulative and procedural resource in the domain of inquiry, proceeding in implementation of the injunction: “Do all you reasonably can to enhance the extent to which your cognitive commitments are simple and smoothly systematic.” It is, after all, a fundamental principle of rational procedure—operative just as much in the cognitive domain as anywhere else—that from among equally well qualified in other regards we should adopt the one that is the simplest, the most economical—in whatever modes of simplicity and economy are relevant. 3. RATIONALITY AND ECONOMY What matters for us finite beings is not ideal and certain knowledge in the

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light of complete and perfected information, but getting the best estimate that is actually obtainable here and now. We humans need to achieve both an intellectual and a physical accommodation to our environment. Now in regard to the former, rationality requires doing the best one can with the means at one’s disposal, striving for the best results that one can expect to achieve within the range of one’s resources, specifically including one’s intellectual resources. Accordingly, rationality has an ineliminable economic dimension since the effective use of limited resources is, after all, a crucial aspect of rationality. It is against reason to expend more resources on the realization of a given end than one needs to.4 And it is against reason to expend more resources on the pursuit of a goal than it is worth—to do things in a more complex, inefficient, or ineffective way than is necessary in the circumstances. And it is also against reason to expend fewer resources in the pursuit of a goal than it is worth, unless these resources can be used to even better effect elsewhere. Cost effectiveness—the proper coordination of costs and benefits in the pursuit of our ends—is an indispensable requisite of rationality. This general situation obtains with particular force where the transaction of our specifically cognitive business is concerned. With any source of information or method of information acquisition, two salient questions arise: 1. Utility: How useful is it; how often and how pressingly do we have occasion/need to make use of it; how significant are the issues that rest on its availability; what sort of benefit does its possession engender? 2. Cost: How costly is its employment; how expensive (complicated, difficulty, resource demanding) is its use? A natural tendency is at work in human affairs—and indeed in the dealings of rational agents generally—to keep these two items in alignment so as to maintain a proper proportioning of costs and benefits. In particular: 1. If some instrumentality affords a comparatively inexpensive means

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to accomplishing a needed task, we incline to make more use of it. 2. If we need to achieve a certain end often, then we try to devise less expensive ways of achieving it. Such principles of economic rationality not only explain why people use more staples than paper clips, but also account for important cognitive situations—for example, why the most frequently used words in a language tend to be among the shortest. (No, ifs, ands, or buts about that!) Economy of effort is a cardinal principle of rationality that helps to explain many aspects of the way in which we transact our cognitive business. Why are encyclopedias organized alphabetically rather than topically? Because this simplifies the search process. Why are accounts of people’s doings or a nation’s transactions standardly presented historically, with biographies and histories presented in chronological order? Because an account that moves from causes to effect simplifies understanding. Why do libraries group books together by topic and language rather than, say alphabetically by author? Because this minimizes the difficulties of search and access. We are in a better position to understand innumerable features of the way in which people conduct their cognitive business once we take the economic aspect into account. It is particularly noteworthy from such an economic point of view that there will be some conditions and circumstances in which the cost of question resolution—even assuming that it is possible in the prevailing state of the cognitive art—is simply too high relative to its value. There are (and are bound to be) circumstances in which the acquisition costs of information exceed the benefits or returns on its possession. In this regard, too, information is just like any other commodity. The price is sometimes more than we can afford and often greater than any conceivable benefit that would ensue. (This is why people generally do not keep count of the number of people they all on a given day.) Rationality and economy are thus inextricably interconnected. Rational inquiry is a matter of epistemic optimizations, of achieving the best overall balance of cognitive benefits relative to cognitive costs. Cost-benefit calculation is the crux of the economy of effort at issue. The principle of least effort—construed in a duly intellectualized manner—is bound to be a sali-

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ent feature of cognitive rationality.5 A version of Occam’s Razor obtains throughout the sphere of cognitive rationality: complicationes non multiplicandae sund praeter necessitatem. Efforts to secure and enlarge knowledge are worthwhile only insofar as they are cost effective in that the resources we expend for these purposes are more than compensated for through benefits obtained—as is indeed very generally the case. But not always. We are, after all, finite beings who have only limited time and energy at our disposal. And even the development of knowledge, important though it is, is nevertheless of limited value—it is not worth the expenditure of every minute of every day at our disposal. The standard economic process of cost-effectiveness tropism is operative throughout the cognitive domain. Rational inquiry is rigorously subject to the economic impetus to securing maximal product for minimal expenditure. Concern for answering our questions in the most straightforward, most cost-effective way is a crucial aspect of cognitive rationality in its economic dimension. The long and short of it is that the acquisition and management of information is a purposive human activity—like many or most of our endeavors. And as such it involves the ongoing expenditure of resources for the realization of the objectives—description, explanation, prediction, and control—that represent the defining characteristics of our cognitive endeavors. The balance of costs and benefits becomes critical here, and endows the cognitive enterprise with an unavoidably economic aspect. 4. THE REGULATIVE/METHODOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF COGNITIVE SYSTEMATICITY The parameters of cognitive systematicity—simplicity, regularity, coherence, conformity and the rest—generally represent principles of economy of operation. They implement the idea of epistemic preferability or precedence, of presumption and burden of proof, by indicating where, in the absence of specific counterindications, our epistemic commitments are to be placed in weaving the fabric of our knowledge. In this way they are laborsaving devices for the avoidance of complications in the conduct of our cognitive business. Such a procedural/methodological mechanism does not prejudge or preempt any ultimate substantive finding, but it does decisively

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guide and control the process by which the answer—whatever it may be— is attained. Accordingly, one need not prejudge that the world is a system to set about the enterprise of striving to know it systematically. The finding of ontological systematicity (orderliness, lawfulness) in nature—to whatever extent that nature indeed is systematic—is a substantive product of systematizing inquiry, rather than a needed input or presupposition for it. For it is a regulative or action-guiding presumption and not a constitutive or world-descriptive principle that is at issue—in the first instance at any rate.6 We are to proceed as though nature in fact exhibited those modes of systematicity needed for systematizing inquiry to bear fruit. Its confirmation as in requisite degree present as a matter of descriptive fact at the substantive level is something that must come later on, as a product rather than starting point of inquiry. The inductive method standard in rational inquiry thus emerges as a matter of the pursuit of systemic economy in the cognitive sphere. Inductive simplicity and systematicity inhere in a regulative ideal of inquiry correlative with the procedural injunction: Organize your knowledge so as to impart to it as much systematic structure as you possibly can! A cognitive venture based on the quest for simplicity and systematicity, while at first merely hopeful, is ultimately retrovalidated in experience by the fact that its pursuit enables us to realize the fundamental aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise more efficiently than the available alternatives. Initially, the pivotal issue is simply the matter of our convenience in doing what must be done to serve our purposes. The whole ontological question of the systematicity of nature can safely be left to await the results of the actual deployment of our inductive processes. No prior presuppositions are needed in the regard. But does not the prospect that its objective may well be unattainable impede the appropriateness of adopting simplicity as an ideal of inquiry? Surely not. The validation of this cognitive ideal does not lie in the fact that its realization can be guaranteed a priori from the outset. We may in fact never realize it. But this possibility should never be allowed to impede our efforts to press the project of systematization as far as we possibly can. Here, as elsewhere, the validity of an ideal does not call for any prior guarantee of its ultimate realization. (What ideal is ever validated in the way?)

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To be sure, a hope of its eventual realization can never in principle be finally and totally demolished. But this feeble comfort is hardly sufficient to establish its propriety. The long and short of it is that while we have no a priori assurance of ultimate success in the quest for systematicity, a standing presumption in favor of this key cognitive ideal is nevertheless rationally legitimate because of its furtherance of the inherent aims and objective of the cognitive enterprise. In sum, the validation of systematicity as a cognitive ideal roots essentially practical consideration of its proven utility. There is, however, another important aspect to the issue of the relation of the world’s cognitive and ontological systematicity. 5. COGNITIVE SYSTEMATICITY AS AN INDICATOR OF ONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMATICITY Ontological systematicity relates to the orderliness and the lawfulness of nature—to its conformity to rules of various sorts. Now if nature were not rulish in exhibiting manifold regularities—if it were pervasively “unruly” (say because its laws changed about rapidly and randomly)—then anything approaching a scientific study of the world would clearly be impossible. The modes of orderliness at issue in the various parameters of systematicity (regularity, coherence, and the rest) are all related to aspects of the workings of nature that underwrite the possibility of scientific inquiry. If natural science is to be possible at all then our situation in nature must be such that our local environment is sufficiently systematic (orderly, regular) to permit the orderly conduct of rational inquiry, and thus, a fortiori, the existence of intelligent beings capable of it. If the world were not orderly (both in itself and as concerns the modus operandi of inquiring creatures), then there would be no uniformity in information-gathering, information-storage, etc., and consequently there would be no avenue to the acquisition of knowledge of the world—or indeed even putative knowledge of it. If the attainment—nay even the pursuit—of knowledge is to be possible for us, the world must be at any rate sufficiently orderly to permit of our cognitive functioning. This, after all, is basic to the very possibility of natural science. The aims of science—the description, explanation, prediction, and control of nature—would clearly be altogether unrealizable in a

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world that is sufficiently badly asystematic. A significant degree of ontological systematicity in the world is (obviously) a causal requisite for realizing codificational systematicity in our knowledge of the world. Thus while the ontological systematicity of the world is not a conceptual presupposition for the success of systematizing inquiry, it is nevertheless—at least in some degree—a causal precondition for this success. A world that is insufficiently systematic and verges on chaos cannot provide an environment with in which inductive learning is possible. (To be sure, a world that admits of knowledge-acquisition need not be a total system, partial systematicity will do—merely enough to permit orderly inquiry in our cosmic neighborhood by beings constituted as we are.) As these deliberations indicate, the rationale of our recourse to the parameters of inductive systematization is not wholly methodological but also has an ontological, realistic aspect, in that we learn by experience how to practice induction—that is, how to go about the process of a conservation of effort. Trial and error—that is, the course of experience—constrains us to bring methodological/procedural economy into alignment with substantive/ontological economy in our cognitive operations. In particular, the reification of the mechanisms of our simplest explanations (unobservable entities and the like) affords a powerful heuristic. It is the (empirically confirmed) efficacy of such a process that provides the ultimate justification for seeing science in realistic perspective. Thus we are well advised to accept unobservable entities not because their existence is somehow revealed in observation (which ex hypothesi it is not), but because experience shows that a methodology of inquiry predicated on such a simplifying assumption in the end affords our most efficient and effective resources. The justification of relying on those systematicity-related virtues in the pursuit of our cognitive affairs will initially rest on an essentially instrumental basis. We incline to initially prefer the optimally systematic (simple, uniform) alternative because this is the most economical, the most convenient, thing to do. But we persist in this course because experience shows the utilization of such economical methods to be efficient, to be optimally cost effective (relative to available alternative) for the realization of the task. For the pivotal fact is not that (as Reichenbach puts it) “we make the assumption that the simplest theory furnishes the best predictions”—an assumption obviously ill-advised in the light of experience—but that plau-

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sible expectation preindicates and actual experience retrojustifies the supposition that a process of inquiry that proceeds on this basis is comparatively efficient in the realization of our cognitive goals. The crux is that we ultimately learn by experience (and thus through inductive reasoning itself) how to conduct our inductive business more effectively. Our recourse to induction—that is, that we proceed by its means—is justified instrumentally. For induction is a self-improving process. Experience can itself teach us that the guiding ideals of inductive practice (simplicity, conformity, generality, and the rest) can lead to improved performance in the transaction of our inductive business. But a cyclic feedback process of variation and trial, we learn to do induction more effectively. Economy, convenience, and efficiency play the crucial pioneering role in initially justifying our practice of inductive systematization on procedural and methodological grounds. But, in their turn, the issues of effectiveness and success come to predominate at the subsequent stage of retrospective revalidation ex post facto. And the question of the seemingly preestablished harmony coordinating these two theoretically disparate factors of convenience and effectiveness is ultimately resolved on the basis of evolutionary considerations in the order of rational selection.7 For the modus operandi of a rational creature clearly makes for a selective pressure to use, retain, and transmit those processes that prove effective and efficient in the accomplishment of essential tasks. And so, while our commitment to inductive systematicity is a matter of methodological convenience within the overall economy of rational procedure, nevertheless, it is in the final event not totally devoid of ontological commitments regarding the world’s nature. To be sure, things need not be systematic to admit of systematic study and discussion. The systematicity of the real is not a prerequisite for systematicity in knowledge of it. (Knowledge need not share the features of its objects; to speak of a sober study of inebriation or a dispassionate analysis of passions is not a contradiction in terms.) However, while its converse fails, as we have seen, the implication information about X is (X is ontologically systematic) o in principle cognitively systematizable

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is nevertheless a necessary one. Ontological systematicity is in fact a sufficient condition for cognitive systematizability. For clearly such implications as the following will hold. If no simple account of a thing is in principle realizable, then it cannot itself be simple, ontologically speaking. If no coherent explanation of a process is in principle realizable, then it cannot itself be coherent, ontologically speaking. If no uniform description of a thing is in principle realizable, then it cannot itself be uniform, ontologically speaking. The parameters of systematicity are accordingly such that the following basic principle holds: If a things is itself ontologically simple (uniform, coherent, etc.), then a simple (uniform, coherent, etc.) account of it must in principle be possible (however difficult we may find its realization in practice).

Thus while cognitive systematicity cannot provide deductively necessitating evidence for ontological systematicity, nevertheless it certainly provides an inductive indication of ontological systematicity. And in fact, cognitive systematicity of a suitable kind affords the best—perhaps the only—empirical evidence we can ever actually obtain on behalf of ontological systematicity; the former constitutes the best available criterion or evidential indicator of the latter. To be sure, the following objection might well be made at this stage: Might there not be a theory which, in its make-up as a theory, is extremely complex, but according to which the modus operandi of nature itself is extremely simple?

But despite its surface plausibility this objection rests on a mistake. For nature cannot be simple (etc.) if our mental processes are not, seeing that we

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ourselves are a part of nature. If our intellectual dealings are not simple (or regular or—generally—systematic), then nature itself does not pervasively exhibit this characteristic either. The fact that our mental operations must be inserted into the world as a smoothly functioning integral part thereof means that a nature which incorporates such complex processes cannot be simple overall. (In theory it could be simple in everything that does not appertain to such processes but, as these processes are increasingly brought to bear upon nature itself, it becomes clear that the region of that which does not somehow appertain to them is continually diminished. And so it turned out that we require a highly complex theory to account for the ways of human thought, then nature itself cannot be all that simple. And so in the end nature’s cognitive systematicity that provides an evidential indication— perhaps the best we actually have—of its ontological simplicity and/or systematicity.8 NOTES 1

Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction (Chicago and London, 1938), p. 376. Compare: Imagine that a physicist . . . wants to draw a curve which passes through [points on a graph that represent] the data observed. It is well known that the physicist chooses the simplest curve; this is not to be regarded as a matter of convenience [for different] curves correspond as to the measurements observed, but they differ as to future measurements; hence they signify different predictions based on the same observational material. The choice of the simplest curve, consequently, depends on an inductive assumption: we believe that the simplest curve gives the best predictions. . . . If in such cases the question of simplicity plays a certain role for our decision, it is because we make the assumptions that the simplest theory furnishes the best predictions. (Ibid., pp. 375-76.)

2

See B. W. Petly, The Fundamental Physical Constants and the Frontiers of Measurement (Bristol and Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985).

3

Details to fill in this telegraphic account are considered in the author’s Induction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).

4

But is it indeed irrational to give a gift more costly than the social situation requires? by no means! It all depends on one’s aims and ends, which may, on such an occasion, lie in a desire to cause the recipient surprise and pleasure, rather than merely doing the customary thing. There is an important difference between wastefulness and generosity.

5

On this theme, see the important investigations of George K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Press, 1949). Zipf’s investigations furnish a wide variety of interesting examples of how

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NOTES

various of our cognitive proceedings exemplify a tendency to minimize the expenditure of energy. 6

Charles Sanders Peirce took the sensible line that the principles such as those of the uniformity or systematicity of nature represent not so much a substantive claim as an action-guiding insinuation: Now you know how a malicious person who wishes to say something ill of another, prefers insinuation that is, he speaks so vaguely that he suggests a great deal while he expressly says nothing at all. In this way he avoids being confronted by the fact. It is the same with these principles of scientific inference. . . . They rather insinuate a uniformity then state it. And as insinuation always expresses the state of feeling of the person who uses it rather than anything in its object, so we may suppose these principles express rather the scientific attitude than a scientific result. (Collected Papers, Vol. VII, [Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-58], sect. 7.132.)

7

Some other considerations relevant to these issues are canvassed in the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977) and Cognitive Systematization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979).

8

Further relevant aspects of the matter are discussed in Chapter 8 of the author’s Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).

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Chapter III/2 THE COMPLEXITY AND COGNITIVE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF NATURE 1. THE LAW OF NATURAL COMPLEXITY

M

uch can be said for the dictum that “Truth is stranger than fiction.” And the reason for this is straightforward. Nature is vastly more complex than the human brain—if only because we ourselves are merely a minor constituent of nature itself. Moreover, the human intellect’s capacity for complexity management is limited, and the states of affairs that our minds can envision are vastly fewer and simpler than those that nature can present. As best we can tell from our own experience of it, nature’s intricacy proceeds without stop. The impenetrable and unchanging atoms of the ancient Greeks have become increasingly dematerialized and ethereal, composed of automatically smaller processes. As we increase the power of our particle accelerators, our view of the makeup of the subatomic realm becomes not only ever different but also ever stranger. The history of science is the story of an everincreasing complexity in our account of things. (The volume of our information about the housefly is greater than Aristotle’s about the whole of the animal kingdom.) And we cannot even begin to conceive the facts and phenomena that will figure on the agenda of the science of the future. Its complexity is one of the most striking and characteristic features of reality in general—and indeed of anything in particular that is real. As G. W. Leibniz already stressed in the 17th century, real existence is always involved in an unending elaborateness of detail.1 Anything that exists in this world exhibits an infinite descriptive depth. No account of it can come to the end of the line. None can ever manage to tell us everything that there is to know about something real—none can say all that there is to be said. Nature’s detail is inexhaustible. It is important for the world’s functioning—and for our understanding of it—that the details often do not matter to the particular issue on the agenda—that fine-grained differences produce no large consequences here. What you as an individual decide to do—whether to buy that umbrella or not—makes no difference to the American economy; its money supply, in-

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flation rate, balance of trade, etc., will all remain unaffected. But not every sort of system is like that. Natural systems can be classified into two types: the linear and the nonlinear.2 Linear systems admit of approximation. If we oversimplify them, we change nothing essential: the results we obtain by working with the simplified models will approximate the condition of their more complex counterparts in the real world. Small scale departures from reality make no significant difference. But nonlinear systems—like smoke wisps and electoral politics—behave very differently. Here small variations—even undetectedly small ones—can make for great differences. Accordingly, simplification—let alone oversimplification—can prove fatal: even the smallest miss can prove to be as good as a mile as far as outcomes are concerned. Differentiating between an essential core and a negligible periphery is beyond implementation here. Every detail matters—none is “irrelevant” or “negligible.” Simplified models will accordingly be of no help at all—with nonlinearity it is a matter of all or nothing. And so, perhaps the most fundamental question that can be asked of any natural system is: Is it linear or nonlinear? Everything turns on this: since nonlinear systems must be studied holistically and comprehensively. And a system whose formative subsystems are to any appreciable extent nonlinear thereby becomes immensely complex. Just here lies the reason why intricately convoluted complex systems such as biological evolution or human history or electoral politics—processes where seemingly haphazard and “external” events can continually effect outcomes—are so complex that the questions they pose for us defy calculation and foreclose the prospect of computational problem solving. The machinations of a deranged assassin can make an enormous difference for the entire nation whose leader is his victim. Nonlinear systems are always far less tractable, be it operationally or cognitively. And for reasons deeply rooted in its modus operandi, nature is nonlinear to an extent greater than we like to think. As already indicated, we do well from a methodological point of view to struggle against such complexity, inclining to the assumption that the systems we confront are cognitively tractable—that we can (over)simplify and “get away with it.” Methodological Simplificationism—the presumption of simplicity—is an important, common, and legitimate instrument of inquiry. But it has to be acknowledged as being no more than that—a mere presumption. And we recognize full well that the realities of a difficult world will often fail to accommodate us in this regard—often, though fortunately not always. For intelligence could not emerge and make its evolutionary way in a world where it could get no purchase-hold and its efforts

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proved constantly abortive. C. S. Peirce never tired of emphasizing nature’s inherent tendency to complexity proliferation. He wrote: Evolution means nothing but growth in the widest sense of that word. Reproduction, of course, is merely one of the incidents of growth. And what is growth? Not mere increase. Spencer says it is the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous—or, if we prefer English to Spencerese— diversification. That is certainly an important factor of it. Spencer further says that it is a passage from the unorganized to the organized; but that part of the definition is so obscure that I will leave it aside for present. But think what an astonishing idea this of diversification is! Is there such thing in nature as increase of variety? Were things simpler, was variety less in the original nebula from which the solar system is supposed to have grown than it is now when the land and the sea swarms with animal and vegetable forms with their intricate anatomies and still more wonderful economies? It would seem as if there were an increase in variety, would it not?3

The tenor of these observations is just. The fact is that complexity is selfpotentiating. Complex systems generally engender further principles of order that produce yet greater complexities. Complex organisms create an impetus towards complex societies, complex machines towards complex industries, complex armaments towards complex armies. And the world’s complexity means that there is, now and always, more to reality than our science—or for that matter our speculation and our philosophy—is able to dream of. 2. HIDDEN DEPTHS The quest for knowledge embarks us on an infinite journey. From finitely many axioms, reason can generate a potential infinity of theorems; from finitely many words, thought can exfoliate a potential infinity of sentences; from finitely many data, reflection can extract a potential infinity of items of information. Even with respect to a world of finitely many objects, the process of reflecting upon these objects can, in principle, go on unendingly. One can inquire about their features, the features of these features, and so on. Or again, one can consider their relations, the relations among those relations, and so on. Thought—abstraction, reflection, analysis—is an inherently ampliative process. As in physical reflection mirror images can reflect one another indefinitely, so mental reflection can go on and on.

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Given a start, however modest, thought can advance ad indefinitum into new conceptual domains. The circumstance of its starting out from a finite basis does not mean that it need ever run out of impetus (as the example of Shakespearean scholarship seems to illustrate). The number of true descriptive remarks that can be made about a real thing—about any actual item of the world’s actual furnishings—is theoretically inexhaustible. For example, take a stone. Consider its physical features: its shape, its surface texture, its chemistry, etc. And then consider its causal background: its subsequent genesis and history. Then consider its functional aspects as relevant to its uses by the stonemason, or the architect, or the landscape decorator, etc. There is, in principle, no theoretical limit to the different lines of consideration available to yield descriptive truths about a thing, so that the totality of potentially available facts about a thing—about anything real whatever—is in principle inexhaustible. In particular, the world’s descriptive complexity is literally limitless. Ever since the days of Locke and Leibniz in the 17th century, theorists have endorsed the conception that new ideas can always be amplified by recombinations of the old. And once this sort of process gets under way, there is no reason of principle why it should ever have to come to a stop. For it is clear that the number of true descriptive remarks that can be made about a thing—about any concrete element of existence, and, in specific, any particular physical object—is theoretically inexhaustible. Take a stone for example. Consider its physical features: its shape, its surface texture, its chemistry, etc. And then consider its causal background: its genesis and subsequent history. And then consider its functional aspects as reflected in its uses by the stonemason, or the architect, or the landscape decorator, etc. There is, in principle, no end to the different lines of consideration available to yield descriptive truths, so that the totality of potentially available facts about a thing—about any real thing whatever—is bottomless. Evolving science can always embed things in new modes of lawful order. Reality/existence is not homogeneous. It embraces distinct realms. There is the physicist’s world of material existence, the symbolic realm of language and mathematics, the conceptual realm of ideas and propositions, the artifactual realm of literature, drama, music, and so on. And all of these are capable of further subdivision, even as the material realm of substantial objects can be divided along various lines of consideration: physical, biological, social, etc. John Maynard Keynes’ “Principle of Limited Variety” is simply wrong: there is no inherent limit to the number of distinct kinds or categories to which the things of this world can belong. In the study of

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natural phenomena further distinctions are always possible, and those distinctions will themselves always admit in principle of additional sophistication and complication. As best we can possibly tell, natural reality has an infinite descriptive depth. It confronts us with a “Law of Natural Complexity”: There is no limit to the number of natural kinds to which any concrete particular belongs. And even where these realms overlap in their contents (as music can be represented in scores, dramas in staged performances, geometric forms in printed formulas and diagrams, etc.—all of which are physical representations of very different sorts of things) nevertheless these realms are conceptually separate. As even a cursory survey of typographical scripts shows, no particular physical shape or shapes can ever entirely capture a letter of the alphabet. Every realm of being has its own distinctive family of conceptual categories, and none of these can be reduced or translated into the others. We can establish correspondences between the states of one realm and that of others (can digitalize music or represent numbers on an abacus). But such correspondences never manage to transpose meanings from one domain to the other. To take the deliberations of one realm as literal reiterations of another is always to commit a category mistake—a conflation or confusion of inherently different sorts of things. It is helpful to introduce a distinction at this stage. On the standard conception of the matter, a “truth” is something to be understood in linguistic terms—the representation of a fact through its statement in some actual language. Any correct statement in some actual language formulates a truth. (And the converse obtains as well: a truth must be encapsulated in a statement, and cannot exist without linguistic embodiment.) A “fact,” on the other hand, is not a linguistic entity at all, but an actual circumstance or state of affairs—a condition of things existing in the world. Anything that is correctly characterizable in some possible language constitutes a fact.4 Every truth must state a fact, but it is not only possible but indeed to be expected that there will be facts that cannot be stated in any actually available language—and which thus fail to be captured as truths. Facts afford potential truths whose actualization as such hinges on the availability of appropriate linguistic machinery for their formulation. Truths involve a one-parameter probability range: they include whatever can be correctly stated in some (actual) language. But facts involve a two-parameter probability range comprising whatever can be stated truly in some possible language. Truths are actualistically language-correlative, while facts are pos-

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sibilistically language-correlative stable in principle—though very possibly not in fact.5 Accordingly, it must be presumed that there are facts that we cannot manage to formulate as truths, though it will obviously be impossible to give concrete examples of this phenomenon—any more than one can implement the idea of the incompleteness of one’s knowledge by citing an example of a truth that one does not accept as such.6 After all, in real life, languages are never full-formed and the conceptual framework they provide is never “fixed and given.” Any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of information acquisition at issue in science is a process of conceptual innovation, which always leaves certain facts about things wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period. Even with such familiar things as birds, trees, and clouds, we are involved in a constant reconceptualization in the course of progress in genetics, evolutionary theory, and hydro-dynamics. Our conceptions of things always present a moving rather than a fixed object of scrutiny, and this historical dimension must also be reckoned with. Caesar did not know—and in the then extant state of the cognitive art could not have known—that his sword contained tungsten and carbon. There will always be facts about a thing that we do not know because we cannot even conceive of them in the prevailing conceptual order of things. To grasp such a fact means taking a perspective of consideration that as yet we simply do not have, since the state of knowledge (or purported knowledge) has not reached a point at which such a consideration is feasible. One reason for this is the fundamentally progressive nature of knowledge in a world domain of potentially ongoing discovery. But another, deeper reason, lies in the circumstance that any n facts give rise to n! factual combinations that themselves represent further facts. The domain of fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvass it in overt detail. There are always bound to be more facts than we are able to capture in our linguistic terminology. There is always more to be said than the propositions of any particular set—or indeed of any particular language—enable us to say.7 At this point, the following objection may well arise: One single suitably general truth can encapsulate infinitely many descriptive facts—even a transdenumerable infinity of them. For example, in saying of a particular spring that it obeys Hooke’s law (over a certain range)—assigning it the infinitely rich disposition to displace proportionally with imposed weights—I have implicitly provided for a transdenumerable infinity of descriptive consequences by means of the continuous parameter at issue. Ac-

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cordingly, while it is true that the actual deductions which one can carry out from an axiomatic basis are denumerable, they can certainly manage to “cover”—at a certain level of implicitness—a transdenumerable range of descriptive fact.

But of course the process envisioned here allows for only one very limited sort of infinitism: the positing of a particular value within one and the same infinistic range of determination—the fixing of special case within a prespecified spectrum. The objection is thus transcended when one recalls the Law of Natural Complexity’s contention that there is in principle no theoretical limit to the lines of consideration available to provide descriptive perspectives upon a thing—that the range of descriptive spectra can always, in principle, be extended. The limitless descriptive complexity of the world’s concrete things establishes the need for acknowledging a clear contrast between the manifold of the discerned properties of things as we have established them to date (always a finite collection) and their actual properties (which are potentially limitless). To be sure, the limitlessness of world’s descriptive complexity does not mean that we cannot say how things stand by way of a “reasonable approximation.” We can always oversimplify matters—for example by specifying how things normally and usually comport themselves within the range of our observation. And often this is good enough for our practical and even our cognitive purposes. But, of course, it is an inevitable fact of life that the actual course of events is not always and everywhere normality-conforming: in the real world events all too often transpire in ways that depart from what we see as the usual course. Those oversimplifications of ours are no more than useful rules of thumb. It is exactly because reality is too complicated to be captured by our facile generalizations—is too full of vagaries and quirks—that we must constantly resort to qualifying locutions such as “generally,” “standardly,” and the like.8 If we insisted on “telling it exactly as it is,” then we couldn’t get there from here. However adequately they may function at the local level of their characteristic applications, seen as a whole our “models of reality” are no more than rough approximations.9 3. DESCRIPTIVE INCOMPLETENESS Neither can we (truthfully and correctly) characterize nature exactly nor can we manage to do so completely. We have to proceed by processual approximations. And this means that there is a need for different disciplines

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in the study of a complex world. All epistemology is local (as all politics is said to be): our proper modus operandi in matters of inquiry must always be attuned to the local conditions that prevail in the particular public area at issue. There is no single, unique way of organizing our interests here— questions and particulars about nature. The physicists, the chemists, the biologists, the economists—none have a monopoly on the study of the real. The prospect of proliferating disciplines is inherent in that of a multiplication of the perspectives of consideration we ourselves bring to nature’s cognitive domestication.10 Our description of anything in nature is never exhaustive, but always admit of further elaborative detail. Its inner structure and external relationships can always be characterized more fully. There is always more to be said. Everything in the world—no matter how large or small—has involvements and ramifications about which more remains to be said. To be sure, we may always lose interest after a while. Our interest is always governed by some aspect of our own concerns and principles. And in due course further information becomes irrelevant to these. (When we know that someone at large in the room is a homicidal maniac, the issue of his cholesterol level may well become irrelevant for us.) But this issue of diminishing returns is one that relates to our own purposes and concerns. It does not countervail against the fact that the truth of the matter is always open to further elaboration. Whatever the topic of consideration may be, our knowledge of any given matter of fact will never be complete. The real has an inner complexity that is humanly inexhaustible and the range of fact inevitably outruns that of articulable truth. The upshot is clear. The descriptions that we can ever actually provide for real particulars are never complete. The detail of the real is bound to outrun our descriptive accomplishments: the domain of thingcharacterizing fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to canvas completely. A precommitment to description-transcending features—no matter how far description is actually pushed—is essential to our conception of what it is to be a real, concrete object. 4. COGNITIVE INCOMPLETENESS This cognitive opacity of real things means that we are not—and will never be—in a position to avoid the contrast between “things as we think them to be” and “things as they actually and truly are.” Their susceptibility to fur-

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ther elaborate detail—and to changes of mind regarding this further detail—is built into our very conception of a “real thing.” And the situation is much the same when our concern is not with physical things, but with types of such things. To say that something is copper or magnetic is to claim a good deal more than that it has the properties we think copper or magnetic things have, and to say more than that it meets our test conditions for being copper (or being magnetic). It is to say that this thing is copper or magnetic. And this is an issue regarding which we are prepared at least to contemplate the prospect that we have got it wrong. It is worthwhile to examine more closely the considerations that indicate the inherent incompleteness of our knowledge of things.11 To begin with, it is clear that, as we standardly think about things within the conceptual framework of our fact-oriented thought and discourse, any real physical object has more facets than it will ever actually manifest in experience. For every objective property of a real thing has consequences of a dispositional character, and these are never surveyable in toto because the dispositions which particular concrete things inevitably have endow them with an infinitistic aspect that cannot be comprehended within experience.12 This desk, for example, has a limitless manifold of phenomenal features of the type: “having a certain appearance from a particular point of view.” It is perfectly clear that most of these will never be actualized in experience. Moreover, a thing is what it does: entity and lawfulness are coordinated correlates—a good Kantian point. And this fact that things demand lawful comportment means that the finitude of experience precludes any prospect of the exhaustive manifestation of the descriptive facets of any real things.13 Moreover, physical things not only have more properties than they ever will overtly manifest, but they have more than they possibly ever can manifest. This is so because the dispositional properties of things always involve what might be characterized as mutually preemptive conditions of realization. This cube of sugar, for example, has the dispositional property of reacting in a particular way if subjected to a temperature of 10,000°C and of reacting in a certain way if placed for one hundred hours in a large, turbulent body of water. But if either of these conditions is ever realized, it will destroy the lump of sugar as a lump of sugar, and thus block the prospect of its ever bringing the other property to manifestation. The perfectly possible realization of various dispositions may fail to be mutually compossible, and so the dispositional properties of a thing cannot ever be manifested completely—not just in practice, but in principle. Our objective

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claims about real things always commit us to more than we can actually ever determine about them. The existence of this latent sector is a crucial feature of our conception of a real thing. Neither in fact nor in thought can we ever simply put it away. To say of the apple that its only features are those it actually manifests is to run afoul of our conception of an apple. To deny—or even merely to refuse to be committed to the claim—that it would manifest particular features if certain conditions came about (for example, that it would have such-and-such a taste if eaten) is to be driven to withdrawing the claim that it is an apple. The process of corroborating the implicit contents of our objective factual claims about something real is potentially endless, and such judgments are thus “non-terminating” in C. I. Lewis’ sense.14 This cognitive depth of our objective factual claims inherent in the fact that their content will always outrun the evidence for making them means that the endorsement of any such claim always involves some element of evidence-transcending conjecture. The concepts at issue (viz. “experience” and “manifestation”) are such that we can only ever experience those features of a real thing that it actually manifests. But the preceding considerations show that real things always have more experientially manifestable properties than they can ever actually manifest in experience. The experienced portion of a thing is similar to the part of the iceberg that shows above water. All real things are necessarily thought of as having hidden depths that extend beyond the limits, not only of experience, but also of experientiability. To say of something that it is an apple or a stone or a tree is to become committed to claims about it that go beyond the data we have—and even beyond those which we can, in the nature of things, ever actually acquire. The “meaning” inherent in the assertoric commitments of our factual statements is never exhausted by its verification. Real things are cognitively opaque— we cannot see to the bottom of them. Our knowledge of such things can thus become more extensive without thereby becoming more complete, since definite completeness is an unrealistic idea in a context where new dimensions of significance can open up. In this regard, however, real things differ in an interesting and important way from their fictional cousins. To make this difference plain, it is useful to distinguish between two types of information about a thing, namely that which is generic and that which is not. Generic information relates to those features of a thing which it has in common with everything else of its kind or type. For example, a particular snowflake will share with all others cer-

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tain facts about its structure, its hexagonal form, its chemical composition, its melting point, etc. On the other hand, it will also have various properties which it does not share with other members of its own “lowest species” in the classificatory order—its particular shape, for example, or the angular momentum of its descent. These are its non-generic features. Now a key about fictional particulars is that they are of finite cognitive depth. In discoursing about them we shall ultimately run out of steam as regards their non-generic features. A point will always be reached when one cannot say anything further that is characteristically new about them— presenting non-generic information that is not inferentially implicit in what has already been said.15 New generic information can, of course, always be forthcoming through the progress of science. When we learn more about coal-in-general then we know more about the coal in Sherlock Holmes’ grate. But the finitude of their cognitive depth means that the presentation of ampliatively novel non-generic information must by the very nature of the case come to a stop when fictional things are at issue. With real things, on the other hand, there is no reason of principle why the provision of non-generically idiosyncratic information need ever be terminated. On the contrary, we have every reason to presume these things to be cognitively inexhaustible. A precommitment to descriptiontranscending features—no matter how far description is pushed—is essential to our conception of a real thing. Something whose character was exhaustible by linguistic characterization would thereby be marked as fictional rather than real.16 5. THE DYNAMIC ASPECT OF DESCRIPTIVE INEXHAUSTIBILITY: THE INSTABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE Any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of information enhancement in scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves certain facts about things wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period. Caesar did not know—and in the then existing state of the cognitive art could not have known—that his sword contained tungsten and carbon. There will always be facts about a thing that we do not know because we cannot even conceive of them within the prevailing conceptual order of things. To grasp such a fact would call for taking a perspective of consideration that as yet we simply do not have, since the state of knowledge (or purported knowledge) has not and indeed cannot yet reach a point at which such a consid-

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eration is feasible. Nor is this the end of the story. The preceding considerations regarding the descriptive complexity of things relate to the limits of knowledge that can be rationalized on a fixed and given conceptual basis—a fully formed and developed language. But in real life languages are never full-formed, and a conceptual basis is never “fixed and given.” The prospect of change can never be eliminated in this cognitive domain since the properties of anything real are literally open-ended so that we can always discover more of them. Even if we were (surely mistakenly) to view the world’s descriptive nature as inherently finitistic—espousing that mistaken Keynesian Principle of Limited Variety to the effect that nature can be portrayed descriptively with the materials of a finite taxonomic scheme—we can never rest assured that the progress of science will not lead to an indefinite series of changes of mind regarding this finite register of descriptive materials. This conforms exactly to our expectation in these matters. Be the items in question elm trees, volcanoes, or quarks, we have every expectation that in the course of future scientific progress people will come to view their origins and their properties differently from the way we do at this juncture. For the fact of it is that where the real things of the world are concerned, we not only expect to learn more about them in the course of scientific inquiry, we expect to have to change our minds about their nature and modes of comportment. And when the conceptions at issue are different, so are the claims that we make by their measures. The language of emergence can perhaps be deployed usefully in the context of these deliberations. But here emergence is not one of the features of things, but one of our unfolding information about them. Blood circulated in the human body well before Harvey; substances containing uranium were radioactive before Becquerel. The emergence at issue relates to our cognitive mechanisms of conceptualization, not to the objects of our consideration in and of themselves. Real-world objects must be conceived of realistically, as antecedent to any cognitive encounter, as being there right along—“pregiven” as Edmund Husserl put it. Those cognitive changes or innovations are to be conceptualized as something that occurs on our side of the cognitive transaction, rather than on the side of the objects with which we deal. To be a real thing is to be something regarding which we can always, in principle, acquire further new information—information that may not only supplement but even correct that which has previously been acquired. This view of the situation is supported rather than impeded once we abandon the

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naive cumulativist/preservationist view of knowledge acquisition for the view that new discoveries need not augment but can displace old ones. It is, of course, imaginable that natural science will come to a stop, not in the trivial sense of a cessation of intelligent life, but rather in Charles Sanders Peirce’s more interesting sense of eventually reaching a condition after which even indefinitely ongoing effort at inquiry will not—and indeed actually cannot—produce any significant change. Such a position is, in theory, possible. But we can never know—be it in practice or in principle— that it is actually realized. We can never establish that science has attained such an omega-condition of final completion: the possibility of further change lying “just around the corner” can never be ruled out finally and decisively. We thus have no alternative but to presume that our science is still imperfect and incomplete, that no matter how far we have pushed our inquiries in any direction, regions of terra incognita yet lie beyond. And this means that to be realistic we must take the stance that our conception of real things, no matter how elaborately developed, will always be provisional and corrigible. Reality has hidden reserves; it is “deeper” than our knowledge of it. As the history of science amply indicates, the impact of later, fuller knowledge, almost invariably shows that matters are in fact far more complex than one thinks them to be. 6. THE COMPLEXIFICATION OF SCIENCE As these considerations indicate, the developmental tendency of natural science is generally in the direction of greater complication and sophistication. Herbert Spencer argued long ago that evolution is characterized by von Baer’s law of development “from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous” and thereby produces an ever-increasing definition of detail and complexity of articulation.17 Now this view of the developmental process may or may not be correct for biological evolution, but there can be little question about its holding for cognitive evolution. Evolution, be it natural or rational—whether of animal species or of literary genres—ongoingly confronts us with products of greater and greater complexity.18 And in consequence, our cognitive efforts manifest a Manichaean-style struggle between complexity and simplicity—between the impetus to comprehensiveness (amplitude) and the impetus to system (economy). We want our theories to be as extensive and all-encompassing as possible and at the same time to be elegant and economical. The first desideratum pulls in one direction, the second in the other. And the accommodation reached here is

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never actually stable. As our experience expands in the quest for greater adequacy and comprehensiveness, the old theory structures become destabilized—the old theories no longer fit the full range of available fact. And so the theoretician goes back to the old drawing board. What he comes up with here is—and in the circumstances almost invariably will be— something more elaborate, more complex than what was able to do the job before those new complications arose (though we do, of course, sometimes achieve local simplifications within an overall global complexification) It is worthwhile to examine somewhat more closely the ramifications of complexity in the domain of cognition, now focusing upon science in particular. Progress in natural science is a process of dialogue or debate in a reciprocal interaction between theoreticians and experimentalists. The experimentalists probe nature to discern its reactions, to seek out phenomena. And the theoreticians take the resultant data and weave about them a fabric of hypotheses that is able to resolve our questions. Seeking to devise a framework of rational understanding, they construct their explanatory models to accommodate the findings that the experimentalists put at their disposal. Thereafter, once the theoreticians have had their say, the ball returns to the experimentalists’ court. Employing new, more powerful means for probing nature, they bring new phenomena to view, new data for accommodation. Precisely because these data are new and inherently unpredictable on the basis of earlier knowledge, they often fail to fit the old theories. Theory extrapolations from the old data could not encompass them; the old theories do not accommodate them. A disequilibrium thus arises between available theory and novel data, and at this stage, the ball reenters the theoreticians’ court. New theories must be devised to accommodate the new, nonconforming data. Accordingly, the theoreticians set about building a new theoretical structure to accommodate the new data. They endeavor to restore the equilibrium between theory and data once more. And when they succeed, the ball returns to the experimentalists’ court, and the whole process starts over again. Scientific theory-formation is, in general, a matter of spotting a local regularity of phenomena in parametric space and then projecting it “acrossthe-board,” maintaining it globally. But the theoretical claims of science are themselves never small-scale and local—they are not spatiotemporally localized, and they are not parametrically localized either. They stipulate— most ambitiously—how things are always and everywhere. But with the enhancement of investigative technology, the “window” through which we can look out upon nature’s parametric space becomes constantly enlarged.

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In developing natural science, we use this window of capability to scrutinize parametric space, continually augmenting our data-base and then generalizing upon what we see. What we have here is not a lunar landscape where once we have seen one sector we have seen it all, and where theoryprojections from lesser data generally remain in place when further data comes our way. Instead it does not require a sophisticated knowledge of history of science to realize that our worst fears are usually realized—that our theories seldom if ever survive intact in the wake of substantial extensions in our cognitive access to new sectors of nature’s parametric space. The history of science is a sequence of episodes of leaping to the wrong conclusions because new observational findings indicate matters are not quite so simple as heretofore thought. As ample experience indicates, our ideas about nature are subject to constant and often radical changedemanding stresses as we “explore” parametric space more extensively. And the ongoing destabilization of scientific theories is the price we pay for operating a simplicity-geared cognitive methodology in an actually complex world. As the preceding chapter argued, the methodology of science embodies an inherent dialectic that moves steadily from the simpler to the more complex, and the developmental route of technology sails on the same course. We are driven in the direction of ever greater complexity by the principle that the potential of the simple is soon exhausted and that high capacity demands more elaborate and powerful processes and procedures. The simpler procedures of the past are but rarely adequate to the needs of the present—had they been so today’s questions would have been resolved long ago and the issues at stake would not have survived to figure on the present agenda. Scientific progress is of a nature that inherently involves an inexorable tendency to complexification in both its cognitive and its ideational dimension. Consider the books and documents that outfit our libraries. At the base level there are topical materials, novels, say or mathematical treatises, or biographical works. At the next level of aggregation we have such things as collective plot summaries, comparative critical studies, synthetic monographs, and collective author biographies. This in turn leads to the next level of reference works: bibliographies, encyclopedias, topical dictionaries, citation studies, and the like. And then there remains the yet higher level of catalogues, document indices, and the like. And the ongoing refinement in the division of cognitive labor that an information explosion necessitates issues in a literal disintegration of knowledge. The “progress

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of knowledge” is marked by an ever continuing proliferation of ever more restructured specialties marked by the unavoidable circumstance that the any given specialty cell cannot know exactly what is going on even next door—let alone at the significant remove. Our understanding of matters outside one’s immediate bailiwick is bound to become superficial. At home base one knows the details, nearby one has an understanding of generalities, but at a greater remove one can be no more than an informed amateur. This disintegration of knowledge is also manifolded vividly in the fact that our cognitive taxonomies are bursting at the seams. Consider the example of taxonomic structure of physics. In the 11th (1911) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, physics is described as a discipline composed of 9 constituent branches (e.g., “Acoustics” or “Electricity and Magnetism”) which were themselves partitioned into 20 further specialties (e.g., “Thermo-electricity” or “Celestial Mechanics”). The 15th (1974) version of the Britannica divides physics into 12 branches whose subfields are— seemingly—too numerous for listing. (However the 14th 1960’s edition carried a special article entitled “Physics, Articles On” which surveyed more than 130 special topics in the field.) When the National Science Foundation launched its inventory of physical specialties with the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel in 1954, it divided physics into 12 areas with 90 specialties. By 1970 these figures had increased to 16 and 210, respectively.19 And the process continues unabated to the point where people are increasingly reluctant to embark on this classifying project at all. Substantially the same story can be told for every field of science. The emergence of new disciplines, branches, and specialties is manifest everywhere. And as though to negate this tendency and maintain unity, one finds an ongoing evolution of interdisciplinary syntheses—physical chemistry, astrophysics, biochemistry, etc. The very attempt to counteract fragmentation produces new fragments. Indeed, the phenomenology of this domain is nowadays so complex that some writers urge that the idea of a “natural taxonomy of science” must be abandoned altogether.20 The expansion of the scientific literature is in fact such that natural science has in recent years been disintegrating before our very eyes. An ever larger number of ever more refined specialties has made it ever more difficult for experts in a given branch of science to achieve a thorough understanding about what is going on even in the specialty next door. It is, of course, possible that the development of physics may eventually

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carry us to theoretical unification where everything that we class among the “laws of nature” belongs to one grand unified theory—one allencompassing deductive systematization integrated even more tightly than that of Newton’s Principia Mathematica.21 But the covers of this elegantly contrived “book of nature” will have to encompass a mass of ever more elaborate diversity and variety. Like a tricky mathematical series, it will have to generate ever more dissimilar constituents which, despite their abstract linkage are concretely as different as can be. And whatever convergent unification there may abstractly be at the pinnacle of a pyramid of explanatory principle, further down there will be an endlessly expansive range and encompassing the most variegated components. The “unity of science” to which many theorists aspire may indeed come to be realized at the level of concepts and theories shared between different sciences—that is, at the level of ideational overlaps. But this is always a highly abstract unity combining a concrete network of incredible variety and diversity since for every conceptual commonality and shared element, there will emerge a dozen differentiations. The lesson of such considerations is clear. Scientific knowledge grows not just in extent but also in complexity, so that science presents us with a scene of ever-increasing complexity. It is thus fair to say that modern science confronts us with a cognitive manifold that involves an ever more extensive specialization and division of labor. The years of apprenticeship that separate master from novice grow ever greater. A science that moves continually from an over-simple picture of the world to one that is more complex calls for ever more elaborate processes for its effective cultivation. And as the scientific enterprise itself grows more extensive, the greater elaborateness of its productions requires an ever more intricate intellectual structure for its accommodation. The growing complexity of scientific process and product escalate hand in hand. And the process of complexity amplification that Peirce took to be revealed in nature through science is unquestionably manifested in the cognitive domain of scientific inquiry itself. The regulative ideal of science is to integrate our knowledge of the world’s modus operandi into a coherent and cohesive unifying system. Nevertheless, the world’s complexity means that this will be an aspiration rather than an accomplished fact. It represents a goal towards which we may be able to make progress but which we will never be able to attain.22

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7. NOMIC OR OPERATIONAL COMPLEXITY The preceding discussion has focused on the world’s compositional and descriptive complexity both in its synchronous and in its temporal dimensions. We shall now turn to the question of its nomic and operational complexity, shifting from issues of structure to issues of process. In a law-hierarchy, any particular law is potentially a member of a wider family that will itself exhibit various lawful characteristics and thus be subject to synthesis under still “higher” laws. We thus move from first-order laws governing phenomena to second-order laws governing such laws, and so on, ascending to new levels of sophistication and comparative complexity as we move along. No matter what law may be at issue, there arise new questions about it that demand an answer in emergently new lawful terms. It becomes crucial in this context that higher-level patterns are not necessarily derivable from lower-level ones. The statistical frequency with which the individual letters A and T occur in a text fails to determine the frequency with which a combination like AT occurs. (Note that the groups ATATATAT and TTTTAAAA both have a 50 percent frequency of A’s and of T’s, yet the pair AT occurs four times in the first group but never in the second.) On the other hand, lower level patterns may also become lost in higher level ones. Consider, for instance, the sequence of 0’s and 1’s projected according to the rule that xi = 1 if a certain physical situation obtains (or is exemplified) on occasion number i, and xi = 0 if not. Whenever two different features generate such sequences, say 0100110100 . . . 1001011010 . . . we can introduce the corresponding matching sequence—namely 0010010001 . . .—such that its i-th position is 1 if the two base sequences agree at their respective i-th positions, and 0 if they disagree. Such matching sequences will have a life of their own. And even if two base sequences are entirely random, their matching sequence need not be—for example when those random base sequences simply exchange 0’s and 1’s. (Even random phenomena can be related by laws of coordination.) Note, moreover, that one can always regard matching sequences themselves as further base sequences, so as to yield “second-order” phenomena,

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as it were. One can then proceed to examine the relationships between them—or between them and other base sequences. This process yields a potential hierarchy of “laws of coordination”—at level i + 1 we have the laws of coordination between sequences at level i. Such a perspective illustrates how simple base phenomena can ramify to bring more and more grist to the mill of study and analysis. Increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of conceptual coordination can lead us to regard the same phenomena in the light of different complexity-levels. These considerations indicate that quite different regularities and laws can emerge at different law levels. Suppose, for example, a natural system to be such that for essentially technical reasons a certain parameter p cannot be evaluated by us at the precise time-point t, but only on average over an interval around t. In such a case, the system can be very simple indeed—it need contain no complexities apart from those at issue in the preceding assumptions—and yet the prospect of endless cognitive progress is nevertheless available. For as our capacity to make p-determinations down to smaller and smaller time-intervals increases from minutes to seconds to milliseconds to nanoseconds, and so on, we can obtain an increasingly comprehensive insight into the modus operandi of the system and thus obtain ever fuller information about it that could not have been predetermined on the basis of earlier knowledge. Since averages at larger levels of scale do not determine those at smaller ones, quite different modes of comportment—and thus laws—can manifest themselves with the new phenomena that arise at different levels.23 Or, consider a somewhat different illustration. Suppose a totally random sequence of 2’s and 3’s, on the order of 2 3 2 2 3 . . . And suppose further a transformation that substitutes the pair 10 for 2 and 11 for 3 so as to yield: 10 11 10 10 11 . . . Now suppose this series to be given. We are now in a position to ascertain such “laws” as: (1) The sequence of even-numbered positions 01001 . . . will be a random mix of 0’s and 1’s (which simply mirrors the initial random sequence of 2’s and 3’s) (2) All the odd-numbered positions are filled by 1’s.

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We confront a peculiar mixture of randomness with regularity here. But of course it is only by studying pairs in that given zero-one sequence that we can discern its code. Only by bringing appropriate coordination concepts to bear can we discern the laws at issue. And no matter how far we push forward along such lines into even more elaborate configurations the prospect of further structural laws can never be eliminated—nor downplayed by claiming that such laws are inherently less significant than the rest. And there is no reason why this sort of nomic novelty cannot continue to recur ad infinitum. For a particular system can always exhibit new patterns of phenomenal order in its operations over time, and so there is always more to be learned about it. There is no end to the new levels of functional complexity of operation that can be investigated with such a system. Coordination phenomena have a life of their own. In principle, it will always be possible to discern yet further levels of lawfully structured relationship.24 When we change the purview of our conceptual horizons, there is always in principle more to be learned—novelties of order that could not have been predicted from earlier, lower-level information. And this means, interestingly enough, that once the world is sufficiently complex in the operational mode to impose limits upon our cognitive interaction with it, then it certainly need not be infinitely complex in the compositional mode to provide for the prospect of indefinite scientific progress. God could call halt after the seventh day and rest satisfied in the contemplation of his finished labor. Science can never afford this luxury. 8. THE IMPERFECTABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE IN A COMPLEX WORLD With such an unending exfoliation of law-levels, our knowledge of the world’s lawful order becomes self-potentiating and new combinations can always spring up to exploit the interrelations among old disciplines. Given chemistry and biology we can develop biochemistry; given mathematics and astronomy, we can develop the mathematics of astronomical relationships. Wherever interfaces exist among such areas, new insights into lawful processes can be expected. And it is clear that such an endless proliferation of laws would also serve to block any prospect of completing science. There is accordingly no need to suppose that the physical complexity of nature need be unlimited for nature to have an unlimited cognitive depth: the ongoing nomic complexity of nature’s laws suffices to provide for potentially endless discovery.25

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We must thus come to terms with the fact that we cannot realistically expect that our science will ever—at any given stage of its actual development—be in a position to afford us more than a very partial and incomplete representation of a highly complex nature. After all, the achievement of cognitive control over nature requires not only intellectual instrumentalities (concepts, ideas, theories, knowledge) but also, and no less importantly, the deployment of physical resources (technology and “power”), since our knowledge of nature’s processes unavoidably calls for interacting with her. And the physical resources at our disposal are restricted and finite. It follows that our capacity to effect control is bound to remain imperfect and incomplete, with much in the realm of the doable always remaining undone. We shall never be able to travel down this route as we might like to go. The Danish historian of science A. G. Drachmann closed his fine book The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity26 with the following observation: “I should prefer not to seek the cause of the failure to make an invention in the social conditions till I was quite sure that it was not to be found in the technical possibilities of the time.” The history of science, as well as that of technology, is crucially conditioned by the limited nature of “the technical possibilities of the time.” And this is as true for us as it was of the ancients. In scientific inquiry into nature, technological dependency sets technological limits, first to data acquisition and then to theory projection. Every successive level of technical capability in point of observation and experimentation has its limitation through limits whose overcoming opens up yet another more sophisticated operational level of the technological state-ofthe-art. There will always be more to be done. The accessible pressures and temperatures can in theory always be increased, the low-temperature experiments brought closer to absolute zero, the particles accelerated closer to the speed of light, and so on. But when we move halfway towards that goal the next halfway step becomes vastly more difficult. Progress is always possible but is increasingly demanding. And experience teaches that any such enhancement of practical mastery brings new phenomena to view—and thereby provides an enhanced capability to test yet further hypotheses and discriminate between alternative theories conducive to deepening our knowledge of nature.27 Limitations of physical capacity and capability also spell cognitive limitations for empirical science. Where there are inaccessible phenomena, there must be cognitive inadequacy as well. To this extent, at any rate, the

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empiricists were surely right. Only the most fanatical rationalist could uphold the capacity of sheer intellect to compensate for the lack of data. The existence of unobserved phenomena means that our theoretical systematizations may well be (and presumably are) incomplete. Insofar as certain phenomena are not just undetected but by their very nature inaccessible (even if only for the merely economic reasons suggested above), our theoretical knowledge of nature must be presumed imperfect. Fundamental features inherent in the structure of man’s interactive inquiry into the ways of the world thus conspire to ensure the incompleteness of our knowledge— and moreover, will do so at any particular stage of the technological/cognitive game. Here technological limitations carry cognitive limits in their wake. There will always be yet unrealized interactions with nature of so great a scale (as measured in energy, pressure, temperature, particle-velocities, etc.) that their realization would require greater resources than we can commit. And where there are interactions to which we have no access, there are (presumably) phenomena that we cannot discern. It would be very unreasonable to expect nature to confine the distribution of cognitively significant phenomena to those ranges that lie conveniently within our reach. But while there is always more to be discovered, the doing of it becomes increasingly difficult as we move into the increasingly remote regions of parametric space. And since our material resources are limited, these limits inexorably circumscribe our cognitive access to the real world. We can plausibly estimate the amount of gold or oil yet to be discovered, because we know the earth’s extent and can thus establish a proportion between what we have explored and what we have not,. But we cannot comparably estimate the amount of knowledge yet to be discovered: we have and can have no way of relating what we know to what we do not. At best, we can consider the proportion of currently envisioned questions we can in fact resolve; and this is an unsatisfactory procedure. For the very idea of cognitive limits has a paradoxical air. It suggests that we claim knowledge about something outside knowledge. But (to hark back to Hegel), with respect to the realm of knowledge, we are not in a position to draw a line between what lies inside and what lies outside—seeing that, ex hypothesi, we have no cognitive access to that latter. One cannot make a survey of the relative extent of our knowledge or ignorance about nature except by basing it on some overall picture or model of nature that is already in hand via prevailing science. But this is clearly an inadequate procedure. This process of judging the adequacy of our science on its own tell-

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ing may be the best we can do, but it remains an essentially circular and thereby unavoidably inconclusive way of proceeding. The long and short of it is that there is no cognitively satisfactory basis for maintaining the completeness of science in a rationally cogent way. For while we can confidently anticipate that our scientific technology will see ongoing improvement in response to continued expenditure of effort, we cannot expect it ever to attain perfection. There is no reason to think that we ever will, or indeed can, reach “the end of the line.” We live in a world without categorical guarantees. In various fundamental respects, our world may prove to be random and disorderly. But from a cognitive point of view this is not the worst prospect. For a random order is still an order of sorts. But anarchy—the total absence of laws—is something very different. Thus consider a series like 12112ABCBDFKxyxzzxx. . . that consists of random-length groups of arbitrarily differentiated symbols. Here we cannot even specify the kind of thing that will be at issue. Not only is there no specifiable pattern to the specific items, but there is no phenomenological order whatsoever. It is this sort of thing that is at issue with anarchy: not only cannot we predict which item will come next but we cannot even predict what sort of item will come next. As far as we can ever tell there is no limit of theoretical principle—let alone of cognitive practice—to the cognitive complexity of the real. The things that populate the real world are always—both individually and in the aggregate—of an inner complexity so deep that inquiry and cognition cannot get to the bottom of it. There is always more to be done—and to be said about it. Complexity as a definitive and unavoidable feature of the real and as such has far reaching—and profoundly humbling—implications for the nature of our knowledge. And so, the cognitive project like the moral project is a matter of doing the best we can in the face of a sobering realization of ultimate inadequacy. And in science as in the moral life, we can function perfectly well in the realization that perfection is unattainable. No doubt here and there a scientist may nurse the secret hope of attaining some fixed and final definitive result that will stand, untouchable and changeless, through all subsequent ages; but such unrealistic aspirations are by no means essential to the scientific enterprise as such. Here, as elsewhere, in the realm of human endeavor it is a matter of making the best possible use of the tools that lie at

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hand. To be sure, the circumstance that perfection is unattainable does nothing to countervail against the no less real fact that improvement is realizable— that progress is possible. The undeniable prospect of realizable progress— of overcoming genuine defects and deficiencies that we find in the work of our predecessors—affords ample impetus to scientific innovation. Scientific progress is not only motivated a fronte by the pull of an unattainable ideal; it is also stimulated a tergo by the push of dissatisfaction with the deficiencies of achieved positions. The labors of science are doubtless sometimes pulled forward by the mirage of (unattainable) perfection. But they are less vigorously pushed onward by the (perfectly realizable) wish to do better than our predecessors in the enterprise. There are two ways of looking at progress: as a movement away from the start, or as a movement towards the goal. On the one hand, there is advancement-progress, defined in terms of increasing distance from the starting point. On the other hand, there is destination-progress, defined in terms of decreasing distance from the goal (the “destination.”) With any finitely distant goal these two are equivalent—as with a foot-race, for example. But when the goal is infinitely removed, they are very different. The idea of approaching an ultimate goal becomes impossible here.28 The upshot of such deliberations is straightforward. The idea of ongoingly improving our science can be implemented without difficulty, since we can clearly improve our performance as regards its goals of prediction, control, and explanatory comprehensiveness. But the idea of perfecting our science cannot be implemented in an unfathomably complex world. We can not and never will warrantedly be able to regard the attained position of science (as it exists here and now) as something finished. NOTES 1

G. W. Leibniz, Monadology, sect. 37.

2

The “linearity” at issue here is that of physics, which so characterizes system whose functioning can be described by the smooth curves of everywhere differentiable differential equations. The behavior of such systems is thus calculation friendly and predictable.

3

Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. I (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), sect. 1.174.

4

Our position can come to terms with P. F. Strawson’s precept that “facts are what statements (when true) state”. (“Truth”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,

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NOTES

Supplementary Volume 24 (1950), pp. 129-156; see p. 136.) Difficulty would ensue only if an “only” were inserted. 5

But can any sense be made of the idea of merely possible (i.e., possible but nonactual) languages? Of course it can! Once we have a generalized conception (or definition) of a certain kind of thing—be it a language or a caterpillar—then we are inevitably in a position to suppose the prospect of things meeting these conditions are over and above those that in fact do so. The prospect of mooting certain “mere” possibilities cannot be denied—that, after all, is just what possibilities are all about.

6

Note, however, that if a Davidsonian translation argument to the effect that “if it’s sayable at all, then, it’s sayable in our language” were to succeed—which it does not—then the matter would stand on a different footing. For it would then follow that any possible language can state no more than what can be stated in our own (actual) language. And then the realm of facts (i.e., what is (correctly) statable in some possible language) and that of truths (i.e., what is (correctly) statable in some actual language) would necessarily coincide. Accordingly, our thesis that the range of facts is larger than that of truths hinges crucially upon a failure of such a translation argument. And, of course, fail it does. (See Donald Davidson, ‘The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, 1973-1974, pp. 5-20, and also the critique of his position in Chapter II of the author’s Empirical Inquiry [Totowa NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982]).

7

See Patrick Grim, The Incomplete Universe: Totality, Knowledge, and Truth (Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1991.

8

Compare the author’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

9

On these issues see Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).

10

On this theme see John Dupré, The Disorder of Things (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

11

On this theme see also Vincent Julian Fecher, Error, Deception, and Incomplete Truth (Rome: Officium Libri Catholici, 1975).

12

To be sure, abstract things, such as colors or numbers, will not have dispositional properties. For being divisible by four is not a disposition of sixteen. Plato got the matter right in Book VII of the Republic. In the realm of abstracta, such as those of mathematics, there are not genuine processes—and process is a requisite of dispositions. Of course, there may be dispositional truths in which numbers (or colors, etc.) figure that do not issue in any dispositional properties of these numbers (or colors, etc.) themselves—a truth, for example, such as my predilection for odd numbers. But if a truth (or supposed truth) does no more than to convey how someone thinks about a thing, then it does not indicate any property of the thing itself. In any case, however, the subsequent discussion will focus on realia in con-

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NOTES

trast to fictionalia and concreta in contrast to abstracta. (Fictional things, however, can have dispositions: Sherlock Holmes was addicted to cocaine, for example. Their difference from realia is dealt with below). 13

This aspect of objectivity was justly stressed in the “Second Analogy” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, though his discussion rests on ideas already contemplated by Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, Vol. VII (Berlin: Wiedmann, 1890), pp. 319 ff.

14

See C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle: Open Court, 1962), pp. 180-181.

15

To deny inferentially implicit information the title of novelty, is not of course, to say that it cannot surprise us in view of the limitations of our own deductive powers.

16

This also explains why the dispute over mathematical realism (Platonism) has little bearing on the issue of physical realism. Mathematical entities are akin to fictional entities in this—that we can only say about them what we can extract by deductive means from what we have explicitly put into their defining characterization. These abstract entities do not have non-generic properties since each is a “lowest species” unto itself.

17

Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 7th ed. (London: Methuen, 1889); see sect’s 1417 of Part II, “The Law of Evolution.”

18

On the issues of this paragraph compare Stuart Kaufmann, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

19

American Science Manpower: 1954-1956 (Washington, 1961; National Science Foundation Publications) and “Specialties List for Use with 1970 National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel” (Washington DC: National Science Foundation Publication, 1970).

20

See John Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Meraphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

21

See Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon, 1992). See also Edoardo Amaldi, “The Unity of Physics,” Physics Today, vol. 261 (September, 1973), pp. 23-29. Compare also C. F. von Weizsäcker, “The Unity of Physics” in Ted Bastin (ed.) Quantum Theory and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

22

For variations on this theme see the writer’s The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

23

The variation of modes of comportment at different levels means that the descriptive taxonomies at those levels will differ also, and may well be conceptually dis-

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NOTES

joint from one another. For variations on this theme see John Dupré, The Disorder of Things (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 24

On issues of complexity in science see the works of Mario Bunge, especially the Myth of Simplicity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963) and Scientific Research (New York: Springer, 1967; 2 vol.’s.).

25

For an interesting and suggestive analysis of “the architecture of complexity,” see Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969).

26

Madison and Copenhagen: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.

27

On the implausibility of seeing physics as a unified and closed mathematical system see Edoardo Amaldi, “The Unity of Physics,” Physics Today, vol. 261 (Sept., 1973), pp. 23-29.

28

This consideration allays Kuhn’s worries about science pursuing truth. For progress with respect to truth is something quite different from progress towards THE TRUTH. (See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

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Chapter III/3 THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF FUTURE SCIENCE 1. DIFFICULTIES IN PREDICTING FUTURE SCIENCE

T

he idea that science has limits can take very different forms. One is that it may run out of steam—that its capacity to raise further major questions may become exhausted. It is this sort of thing that has concerned us in the preceding chapters. Another type of limit is at issue when there are certain important questions or ranges of scientific questions that it is simply impotent to resolve. These two sorts of limits are very different. For it is entirely possible that science might be unlimited in the former way— that is, it can always come upon new and interesting questions to answer— and yet be limited in the latter way in finding some matters intractably beyond its ability to resolve. It is this second sort of limit that will now concern us. The landscape of natural science is ever-changing: innovation is the very name of the game. Not only do the theses and themes of science change but so do the very questions. Of course, once a body of science comes to be seen as something settled and firmly in hand, many issues become routine. Various problems become mere reference questions a matter of locating an answer within the body of preestablished, already available information that somewhere contains it. (The mere here is, to be sure, misleading in its downplaying of the formidable challenges that can arise in looking for needles in large haystacks.) However, in pioneering science we face a very different situation. People may well wonder “what is the cause of X”—what causes cancer, say, or what produces the attraction of the loadstone for iron—in circumstances where the concepts needed to develop a workable answer still lie beyond their grasp. Scientific inquiry is a creative process of theoretical and conceptual innovation; it is not a matter of pinpointing the most attractive alternative within the presently specifiable range but of enhancing and enlarging the range of envisageable alternatives. Such issues pose genuinely open-ended questions of original research: they do not call for the resolution of problems within a preexisting framework but for a rebuilding and enhancement of the framework itself.

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Most of the questions with which present-day science grapples could not even have been raised in the state-of-the-art that prevailed a generation ago. The difficulty of a scientific question—as measured by the resources of time, effort, material resources, and so on that we inquiring investigators must expend in resolving it—can generally not be predicted in advance, save in the case of routine issues. With questions of pioneering research, we usually cannot even begin to predict how much effort we must expend on a solution; this information is generally available only after an answer has been found. One would certainly like to be in a position to have prior insight into and give some advance guidance to the development of scientific progress. But grave difficulties arise where questions about the future, and in particular the cognitive future, are involved. When the prediction of a specific predefined occurrence is at issue, a forecast can go wrong in only one way: by proving to be incorrect. The particular development in question may simply not happen as predicted. But the forecasting of a general course of developments can go wrong in two ways: either through errors of commission (that is, forecasting something quite different from what actually happens—say, a rainy season instead of a drought), or through errors of omission (that is, failing to foresee some significant part of the overall course-predicting an outbreak of epidemic, say, without recognizing that one’s own locality will be involved). In the first case, one forecasts the wrong thing; in the second, there is a lack of completeness, a failure of prevision, a certain blindness. In cognitive forecasting, it is the errors of omission—our blind spot, as it were—that present the most serious threat. For the fact is that we cannot substantially anticipate the evolution of knowledge. We cannot tell in advance what the specific answers to our scientific questions will be. It would, after all, be quite unreasonable to expect detailed prognostications about the particular content of scientific discoveries. It may be possible in some cases to speculate that science will solve a certain problem, but how it will do so lies beyond the ken of those who antedate the discovery itself. If we could predict discoveries in detail in advance, then we could make them in advance.1 In matters of scientific importance, then, we must be prepared for surprises. Commenting shortly after the publication of Frederick Soddy’s speculations about atomic bombs in his 1950 book Science and Life, Robert A. Millikan, a Nobel laureate in physics, wrote that “the new evidence born of further scientific study is to

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the effect that it is highly improbable that there is any appreciable amount of available subatomic energy to tap.”2 In science forecasting, the record of even the most qualified practitioners is poor. For people may well not even be able to conceive the explanatory mechanisms of which future science will make routine use. As one sagacious observer noted over a century ago: There is no necessity for supposing that the true explanation must be one which, with only our present experience, we could imagine. Among the natural agents with which we are acquainted, the vibrations of an elastic fluid may be the only one whose laws bear a close resemblance to those of light; but we cannot tell that there does not exist an unknown cause, other than an elastic ether diffused through space, yet producing effects identical in some respects with those which would result from the undulations of such an ether. To assume that no such cause can exist, appears to me an extreme case of assumption without evidence.3

Since we cannot predict the answers to the presently open questions of natural science, we also cannot predict its future questions. For these questions will hinge upon those as yet unrealizable answers, since the questions of the future are engendered by the answers to those we have on hand. Accordingly, we cannot predict science’s solutions to its problems because we cannot even predict in detail just what these problems will be. In inquiry as in other areas of human affairs, major upheavals can come about in a manner that is sudden, unanticipated, and often unwelcome. Major scientific breakthroughs often result from research projects that have very different ends in view. Louis Pasteur’s discovery of the protective efficacy of inoculation with weakened disease strains affords a striking example. While studying chicken cholera, Pasteur accidentally inoculated a group of chickens with a weak culture. The chickens became ill, but, instead of dying, recovered. Pasteur later reinoculated these chickens with fresh culture—one strong enough to kill an ordinary chicken. To Pasteur’s surprise, the chickens remained healthy. Pasteur then shifted his attention to this interesting phenomenon, and a productive new line of investigation opened up. In empirical inquiry, we generally cannot tell in advance what further questions will be engendered by our endeavors to answer those on hand. New scientific questions arise from answers we give to previous ones, and thus the issues of future science simply lie beyond our present horizons. We cannot even say what concepts the inquirers of the future will use within the questions they will raise. Maxwell’s research was directed to-

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ward answering questions that grew out of Faraday’s work. Hertz devised his apparatus to answer questions about the implications of Maxwell’s questions. Marconi’s devices were designed to resolve questions about the application of Hertz’s work. Each confronted a research problem inherent in solutions to earlier problems. It is a key fact of life that ongoing progress in scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always places certain developments outside the cognitive horizons of earlier workers because the very concepts operative in their characterization become available only in the course of scientific discovery itself. (Short of learning our science from the group up, Aristotle could have made nothing of modern genetics, nor Newton of quantum physics.) The major discoveries of later stages are ones which the workers of a substantially earlier period (however clever) not only have failed to make but which they could not even have understood, because the requisite concepts were simply not available to them. Thus, it is effectively impossible to predict not only the answers but even the questions that lie on the agenda of future science. Detailed prediction is outside the realm of reasonable aspiration in those domains where innovation is preeminently conceptual. Moreover, forecasts of scientific developments conform to the vexatious general principle that, other things being equal, the more informative a forecast it, the less secure it is, and conversely, the less informative, the more secure it is. Consider some applications of this principle: (1) It is easier and safer to forecast general trends than specific developments. (2) It is easier and safer to forecast over the near future than over the longer term; long-range forecasts are inherently more problematic. (3) The fewer and cruder the parameters of a prediction, the safer it becomes: it is easier and safer to forecast aggregated phenomena than particular eventuations (e.g., how many persons will live in a certain city ten years hence as compared with how many will belong to a particular family). (4) The more extensively a prediction is laden with a protective shield of qualifications and limitations, the safer is the prediction. (5) The more vaguely and ambiguously a prediction is formulated, the safer it becomes; particularly equivocal predictions have an inherent advantage. (6) The prediction of possibilities and prospects is safer and more secure than that of real and concrete developments. (It is one thing to predict what will be feasible at a given “state-of-the-art” and another to predict what will be actual.) A degradation relationship thus circumscribes the domain of feasible prediction. The reliability of the claims we can responsibly make declines

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sharply with the exactness to which we aspire. (See figure 1.) If one insists on resolving a predictive question with high informativeness (exactness, detail, precision), one’s confidence in the response should be drastically diminished. And any exercise in science forecasting is bound to conform to this general relationship of futurological indeterminacy. An ironic but critically important feature of scientific inquiry is that the unforeseeable tends to be of special significance just because of its unpredictability. The more important the innovation, the less predictable it is, because its very unpredictability is a key component of importance. Science forecasting is beset by a pervasive normality bias, because the really novel often seems so bizarre. A. N. Whitehead has wisely remarked: If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.4

Before the event, revolutionary scientific innovations will, if imaginable at all, generally be deemed outlandishly wild speculation—mere science fiction, or perhaps just plain craziness.5 Thus, while the safe course lies in degrading the informativeness of our forecasts, this obviously undermines their utility—and, in the case of science forecasts, renders them virtually useless. For science scorns the security of inexactness. If we are content to say that the solution to a problem will be of “roughly” this general sort or that it will be “somewhat analogous” to some familiar situation, we will be on safe ground. But science is not like that. It does not deal in analogies and generalities and rough approximations. It strives for exactness and explicitness—for precision, detail, and, above all, for generality and universality of application. It is just this feature of its claims that makes science forecasting a very risky business. For the more we enrich our forecast with the details of just exactly what and just exactly how (etc.), the more vulnerable it becomes. In maintaining that future science is inherently unpredictable, one must be careful to keep in view the distinction between substantive and structural issues, between particular individual scientific questions, theses, and theories, and generic features of the entire system of such individual items. At the level of loose generality, various inductions regarding the future of science can no doubt be safely made. We can, for example, confidently predict that future science will have greater taxonomic diversification, greater theoretical unification, greater substantive complexity, further highlevel unification and low-level proliferation, increased taxonomic specia-

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Figure 1 THE DEGRADATION OF SECURITY WITH INCREASING INFORMATIVENESS

Security

Region of Predictive Feasibility

Informativeness

tion of subject-matter specialties, and so on. And we can certainly predict that it will be incomplete, that its agenda of availably open questions will be extensive, and so on. But of course this sort of information tells us only about the structure of future science, and not about its substance. These structural generalities do not bear on the level of substantive detail: they relate to science as a productive enterprise (or “industry”) rather than as a substantive discipline (as the source of specific theories about the workings of nature). With respect to the major substantive issues of future natural science, we must be prepared for the unexpected. We can confidently say of future science that it will do its job of prediction and control better than ours; but we do not—and in the very nature of things cannot-know how it will go about this. 2. PRESENT SCIENCE CANNOT SPEAK FOR FUTURE SCIENCE Analysis of the theoretical general principles of the case and induction from the history of science both indicate that the theories accepted at one stage of scientific inquiry need not carry over to another but can be replaced by something radically different. The reality of past scientific revolutions cannot be questioned, and the prospect of future scientific revolutions cannot be precluded. Yet it lies in the nature of things that we cannot

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pinpoint them. The substance of future science inevitably lies beyond our present grasp. If there was one thing of which the science of the first half of the seventeenth century was confident, it was that natural processes are based on contact-interaction and that there can be no such thing as action at a distance. Newtonian gravitation burst upon this scene like a bombshell. Newton’s supporters simply stonewalled. Roger Cotes explicitly denied there was a problem, arguing (in his Preface to the second edition of Newton’s Principia) that nature was generally unintelligible, so that the unintelligibility of forces acting without contact was nothing specifically worrisome. However unpalatable Cotes’s position may seem as a precept for science (given that making nature’s workings understandable is, after all, one of the aims of the enterprise), there is something to be said for it—not, to be sure, as science but as metascience. For we cannot hold the science of tomorrow bound to the standards of intelligibility espoused by the science of today. The cognitive future is inaccessible to even the ablest of present-day workers. After Pasteur had shown that bacteria could come only from preexisting bacteria, Darwin wrote that “it is mere rubbish thinking of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.”6 One might indeed! The inherent unpredictability of future scientific developments—the fact that no secure inference can be drawn from one state of science to another—has important implications for the issue of the limits of science. It means that present-day science cannot speak for future science: it is in principle impossible to make any secure inferences from the substance of science at one time about its substance at a significantly different time. The prospect of future scientific revolutions can never be precluded. We cannot say with unblinking confidence what sorts of resources and conceptions the science of the future will or will not use. Given that it is effectively impossible to predict the details of what future science will accomplish, it is no less impossible to predict in detail what future science will not accomplish. We can never confidently put this or that range of issues outside “the limits of science”, because we cannot discern the shape and substance of future science with sufficient clarity to be able to say with any assurance what it can and cannot do. Any attempt to set “limits” to science—any advance specification of what science can and cannot do by way of handling problems and solving questions—is destined to come to grief. An apparent violation of the rule that present science cannot bind future science is afforded by John von Neumann’s attempt to demonstrate that all

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future theories of subatomic phenomena—and thus all future theories— will have to contain an analogue of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle if they are to account for the data explained by present theory. Complete predictability at the subatomic level, he argued, was thus exiled from science. But the “demonstration” proposed by von Neumann in 1932 places a substantial burden on potentially changeable details of presently accepted theory.7 The fact remains that we cannot preclude fundamental innovation in science: present theory cannot delimit the potential of future discovery. In natural science we cannot erect our structures with a solidity that defies demolition and reconstruction. Even if the existing body of “knowledge” does confidently and unqualifiedly support a certain position, this circumstance can never be viewed as absolutely final. Not only can one never claim with confidence that the science of tomorrow will not resolve the issues that the science of today sees as intractable, but one can never be sure that the science of tomorrow will not endorse what the science of today rejects. This is why it is infinitely risky to speak of this or that explanatory resource (action at a distance, stochastic processes, mesmerism, etc.) as inherently unscientific. Even if X lies outside the range of science as we nowadays construe it, it by no means follows that X lies outside science as such. We must recognize the commonplace phenomenon that the science of the day almost always manages to do what the science of an earlier day deemed infeasible to the point of absurdity (“split the atom”, abolish parity, etc.). Present science can issue no guarantees for future science. 3. THE PLASTICITY OF SCIENCE The crucial fact is that—basic aims apart—science is not a fixed object but a temporal and transient one; it is invariably a matter of states and stages. We cannot speak atemporally of “the facts of science,” “the questions of science”, “the methods of science,” flatly and categorically, without a temporal qualification such as “as construed in the seventeenth century,” or “as we see them today.” The reason for this disability lies exactly in this fact that present-day science cannot speak for future science—that we are not, and never will be, in a position to delineate the issues and materials of future science. But how can this be so? Surely “science” cannot change all that drastically without ceasing to be science. Well—yes and no. In substantive regards, in its concepts and ideas, natural science is endlessly changeable.

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But of course functionally—in terms of the aims of the enterprises encompassing description, explanation, prediction, and control over nature— science indeed is something fixed. The materials of science can vary endlessly, but the range of its definitive tasks is set once and for all. It is only in functional terms that we can give a satisfying definition of natural science and provide a stable characterization of its nature. The one and only thing that is determinate about science is its mission of description, explanation, prediction, and control of natural phenomena, and the commitment to proceed in these matters by the empirically based rational controls for the testing and substantiation of our assertions that have become known as “the scientific method.” Everything else—methods, mechanisms, theories, and so on—is potentially changeable. Matters squarely placed outside the boundaries of science in one era (action at a distance dismissed as unintelligible nonsense, or hypnotism rejected as fakery) can enter within the orthodoxy of a later generation. An enterprise that, on the cognitive/theoretical side, did not aim at either the description or explanation of nature, and that, on the applied/pragmatic side, did not aim at either prediction or control, simply could not count as natural science. One element on either side may be downgraded, and perhaps even sacrificed. (Instrumentalist physicists have abandoned explanation as a goal of science; the Babylonian astronomer-priests, seeing the celestial bodies as gods, took prediction alone as their pragmatic goal, and would have rejected control as blasphemous.) But when all the appropriate elements of theoretical and practical purpose are removed, we are not dealing with science at all. This functional basis of ulterior aims is essentially requisite for any enterprise that can be qualified as “science.” But everything else is potentially changeable. Entire subject-matter areas can come (quantum electrodynamics) or go (astrology). Questions can arise (the composition of quarks) or vanish (the structure of the luminiferous aether). Theses and theories can come and go. Methods can evolve. In substance and form alike, science is inherently changeable—indeed, highly volatile. The epistemological situation of science points toward a theology reminiscent view of the human condition that sees man as a creature poised between comfortable assurance and the abyss. Our hold on the things of the world—our science included!—is always tenuous. We must view science in the dual realization that it is at once the best we can do and nevertheless by no means good enough. Our scientific picture of the world is vulnerable to being overthrown at any instant by new, unlooked for, and perhaps even unwelcome developments. The history of man’s science, like the history of

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all his works, invites ruminations on the transiency of things human and the infeasibility of attaining perfection. (Of course, in our cognitive as in our moral life, the unattainability of perfection affords no reason why we should not do the very best we can; the point is simply that we can never afford the smug confidence that what we have attained is quite good enough.) At the frontiers of scientific innovation, the half-life of theories and explanatory models is brief. Even particular devices of methodology can change drastically: witness the rise of probabilistic argumentation and use of statistics in the “design of experiments”. Larry Laudan has illustrated this point nicely: In many cases, it is the methodology of science itself which is altered. Consider, as but one example, the development of Newtonian theory in the eighteenth century. By the 1720’s, the dominant methodology accepted alike by scientists and philosophers was an inductivist one. Following the claims of Bacon, Locke, and Newton himself, researchers were convinced that the only legitimate theories were those which could be inductively inferred by simple generalization from observable data. Unfortunately, however, the direction of physical theory by the 1740’s and 1750’s scarcely seemed to square with this explicit inductivist methodology. Within electricity, heat theory, pneumatics, chemistry, and physiology. Newtonian theories were emerging which postulated the existence of imperceptible particles and fluids—entities which could not conceivably be “inductively inferred” from observed data, ... and so, various Newtonians (e.g., LeSage, Hanley, and Lambert) insisted the norms themselves should be changed so as to bring them into line with the best available physical theories. This latter group took it on themselves to hammer out a new methodology for science which would provide a license for theorizing about unseen entities. (In its essentials, the methodology they produced was the hypothetico-deductive methodology, which even now remains the dominant one.) This new methodology, by providing a rationale for “microtheorizing”, eliminated what had been a major conceptual stumbling block to the acceptance of a wide range of Newtonian theories in the mid and late eighteenth century.8

The quintessential requisites of scientific intelligibility can themselves undergo drastic transformation: witness the fall of the hallowed proscription of action at a distance in the age of Newtonian physics. Science can and does change “the rules of the game” on us. It can and does abandon whatever is unserviceable and co-opt whatever serves its purposes.

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Any attempt to specify the “essential presuppositions” or “unchangeable commitments” of science is fruitless. The principle that every event has a specific cause whose operation explains why it eventuated thus rather than otherwise has been an article of scientific faith since classical antiquity. “Nihil turpius physico fieri quidquam sine causa dicere,” said Cicero,9 and for two millennia this doctrine that “nothing occurs by chance” remained a received dogma in science until quantum theory came along to sweep this “indispensable” principle of causality away with a single stroke. R. G. Collingwood valiantly attempted to specify certain absolute (or ultimate, or primal) presuppositions of the scientific enterprise.10 He held, in particular, that the uniformity of nature must be presupposed if the scientific enterprise is to succeed. But who is to say that cosmology may not decide tomorrow that the universe is partitioned into distinct compartments (and/or eras) within which different ground rules apply—that is, that the “laws of nature” in the universe are not uniform? What seems an absolute presupposition of science at one point may be explicitly denied at another. In postulating the changeless universality of these “absolute presuppositions,” Collingwood’s doctrine involves him in an unsubstantiable (and uncharacteristic) absolutism. Natural science is altogether ruthless and opportunistic—very much a fair-weather friend. If an old and heretofore useful theory can no longer do serviceable work, science has no hesitancy about dropping it. If a heretofore rejected theory proves helpful in altered circumstances, science has no hesitancy about taking it up. On the side of its procedures and theses, science has no fixed nature, no stable commitments; it is prepared to turn whichever way the wind blows. Science is fickle: it is given to flirtations rather than lasting relationships. It is prepared on any and every day to wipe the slate clean if this should prove to be advantageous. Science is incurably pragmatic, and settles for whatever works, abandoning its “established general principles” with a shameless disloyalty when changed circumstances recommend this course. When something new comes along that proves more effective than existing “knowledge,” science immediately changes course. Success is the guiding star: science immediately co-opts whatever succeeds in the sphere of its mission. If something other than existing science were to work out better, science itself would change to embrace it. We cannot permanently exclude something from the boundaries of science, because these boundaries are changeable, which is to say that they are effectively nonexistent. The supremacy of natural science is closely bound up with its plasticity.

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If we could set limits to the shape and substance of science, then it could also be possible to set limits to what science can and cannot accomplish. If, for example, we could say (with Emil du Bois Reymond11) that the explanatory program of science is an atomistic Newtonianism—a mechanistic world in which we could, at the most and best, achieve the “astronomical knowledge” of a “Laplacean Spirit who knows the total history of the motions of all particles throughout space for all of time—then we could indeed say (as Reymond does) that Science cannot account for the source of motion, the nature of matter, the operations of consciousness, and so on. If we could circumscribe the substantive nature of science, we could also circumscribe its potential achievements. But just this is impossible. We cannot defensibly project the present lineaments of science into the future. While we can say with confidence what the state of science as we now have it does and does not allow, we cannot say what science as such will or will not allow. The boundary between the tenable and the untenable in science is never easy to discern. Future science can turn in unexpected and implausible directions. The realm of scientific possibility is unchartable. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .” That some theoretically available scientific position fails to accord with the science of the day is readily established, but that it is inherently unscientific is something that it lies beyond our powers to show, The contention that this or that explanatory resource is inherently unscientific should always be met with instant scorn. For the unscientific can only lie on the side of process and not that of product on the side of modes, of explanation and not its mechanisms; of arguments rather than phenomena. There is indeed a line between science and pseudoscience—and also between competent science and poor science. Yet, such boundaries cannot be drawn on substantive grounds. The line between science and pseudoscience cannot be defined in terms of content—in terms of what sorts of theses or theories are maintained—but only in terms of method, in terms of how these theories are substantiated. The inherent unpredictability of science change is the very hallmark of science. It sets real science apart from the closed structures of pseudoscience, whose methodological defect is precisely the “elegance” with which everything falls much too neatly into place. And it means that no sort of idea, mechanism, or issue can be placed with reasonable assurance outside the realm of science as such. Science, as already noted, is simply too opportunistic to be fastidious about its mechanisms. Eighteenth-century psychologists ruled out hypnotism. Nineteenth-century biologists excluded geophysical catastrophes.

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Twentieth-century geologists long rejected continental drift. Many contemporary scientists give parapsychology short shrift—yet who can say that its day will never come? The pivotal issue is not what is substantively claimed by an assertion but rather whether this assertion (whatever its content!) has been substantiated by the prevailing canons of scientific method. There is, to be sure, rough wisdom in scientific caution and conservatism: it is perfectly appropriate to be skeptical about unusual phenomenaconstructions and to view them with skepticism. Before admitting “strange” phenomena as appropriate exploratory issues, we certainly want to check their credentials, make sure they are well attested and appropriately characterized. The very fact that they go against our understanding of nature’s ways (as best we can tell) renders abnormalities suspect—a proper focus of worriment and distrust. But, of course, to hew this line dogmatically and rigidly, in season and out, is a mistake. The untenable in science does not conveniently wear its untenability on its sleeves. We have to realize that, throughout the history of science, stumbling on anomalies—on “strange phenomena,” occurrences that just don’t fit into the existing framework—has been a strong force of scientific progress. One does well to distinguish two modes of “strangeness”: the exotic and the counterindicated. The exotic is simply something foreign-something that does not fall into the range of what is known but does not clash with it either. It lies in what would otherwise be an informational vacuum, outside our current understanding of the natural order. (Hypnotism and precognition are perhaps cases in point.) The counterindicated, however, stands in actual conflict with our current understanding of the natural order (actionat-a-distance for seventeenth-century physics; telekinesis today). One would certainly want to apply rigid standards of recognition and admission to phenomena that are counterindicated. But if and when they measure up, we have to take them in our stride. In science we have no alternative but to follow nature where it leads. And new theories can be ruled out even less than new phenomena, for to do so would be to claim that science has reached the end of its tether, something we certainly cannot and doubtless should not even wish to do. Throughout natural science, we are poised in a delicate balance between reasonable assurance that what we believe is worth holding to and a recognition that we do not yet have “the last word”—that the course of events may at any time shatter our best laid plans for understanding the world’s ways. We can set no a priori restrictions, but have to be flexible. Nobody can say what science will and will not be able to do.

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4. AGAINST DOMAIN LIMITATIONS The project of stipulating boundaries for natural science—of placing certain classes of nature’s phenomena outside its explanatory reach—runs into major difficulties. Domain limitations purport to put entire sectors of fact wholly outside the effective range of scientific explanation, maintaining that an entire range of phenomena in nature defies scientific rationalization. This claim is problematic in the extreme. The scientific study of human affairs affords a prime historical example. Various nineteenth-century German theorists maintained that a natural science of man—one that affords explanation of the full range of human phenomena, including man’s thoughts and creative activities—is in principle impossible. One of the central arguments for this position ran as follows: It is a presupposition of scientific inquiry that the object of investigation is essentially independent of the process of inquiry, remaining altogether unaffected. But this is clearly not the case when our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions are at issue, since they are all affected as we learn more about them. Accordingly, it was argued, there can be no such thing as a science of the standard sort regarding characteristically human phenomena. One cannot understand or explain human thought and action on the usual procedures of natural science but must introduce some special ad hoc mechanisms for coming to explanatory terms with the human sphere. (Thus, Wilhelm Dilthey, for example, maintained the need for recourse to a subjectively internalized Verstehen as a characteristic, science-transcending instrumentality that sets the human “sciences” apart from the standard—that is, natural—sciences.) And, so it was argued, seeing that such a process cannot, strictly speaking, qualify as scientific, there can be no such thing as a “science of man.” But this position is badly misguided. With science we cannot prejudge results nor predelimit ways and means. One cannot in advance rule in or rule out any particular explanatory processes or mechanisms (“observationindependence”, etc.). If in dealing with certain phenomena they emerge as observer-indifferent, so be it; but if they prove to be observer-sensitive, we have to take that in our stride. If we indeed need explanatory recourse to some sort of observer-correlative resource (“sympathy” or the like), then that’s that. In science we cannot afford to indulge our a priori preconceptions. To be sure, if predictability is seen as the hallmark of the scientific, then there cannot be a science that encompasses all human phenomena (and, in

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particular, not a science of science). But, of course, there is no reason why, in human affairs any more than in quantum theory, the boundaries of science should be so drawn as to exclude the unpredictable. Even before the rise of stochastic phenomena in quantum physics, one might have asked: Must scientifically tractable phenomena be predictable. Can science not tread where predictability is absent? When we encounter strange “intractable” or “inexplicable” phenomena, it is folly to wring our hands and say that science has came to the end of its tether. For it is exactly here that science must roll up its sleeves and get to work. Long ago, Baden Powell got the main point right : When we arrive at any such seeming boundary of present investigation, still this brings us to no new world in which a different order of things prevails; it merely points to what will assuredly be a fresh starting point for future research. It is an unwarrantable presumption to assert, that at a mere point of difficulty or obscurity we have reached the boundary of the dominion of physical law, and must suppose all beyond to be arbitrary and inscrutable to our faculties. It is the mere refuge and confession of ignorance and indolence to imagine special interruptions, and to abandon reason for mysticism.12

It is poor judgment to jump from a recognition that the science of the day cannot handle something to the conclusion that science as such cannot handle it. But the changeability and plasticity of science are also a source of its power. Its very instability is at once a limitation of science and a part of what frees it from having actual limits. We can never securely place any sector of phenomena outside its explanatory range. NOTES 1

As one commentator has wisely written: “But prediction in the field of pure science is another matter. The scientist sets forth over an uncharted sea and the scribe, left behind on the dock is asked what he may find at the other side of the waters. If the scribe knew, the scientist would not have to make his voyage” (Anonymous, “The Future as Suggested by Developments of the Past Seventy-Five Years,” Scientific American, vol. 123 [1920], p. 321).

2

Quoted in Daedalus, vol. 107 (1978), p. 24.

3

Baden Powell, Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy (London: Longman, 1855), p. 23.

4

A. N. Whitehead, as cited in John Ziman, Reliable Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 142-143.

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NOTES 5

See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), for an interesting development of the normal/revolutionary distinction.

6

Quoted in Philip Handler, ed., Biology and the Future of Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 165.

7

See also the criticisms of his argument in David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (London: Routledge, 1957), pp. 95-96.

8

Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 59-60.

9

Cicero, De finibus, I, vi. 19.

10

See R. G. Collingwood, An Essay in Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), and The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945).

11

Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, 11th ed. (Leipzig: Von Veit, 1916).

12

Powell, Essays, p. 111.

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Chapter III/4 TECHNOLOGICAL ESCALATION AND THE EXPLORATION MODEL OF NATURAL SCIENCE 1. THE EXPLORATION MODEL OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

I

n theory, a prospect of unending scientific progress lies before us. But its practical realization is something else again. One of the most striking and important facts about scientific research is that the ongoing resolution of significant new questions faces increasingly high demands for the generation and cognitive exploitation of data. Though the veins of cognitive gold run on, they become increasingly difficult—and expensive—to mine. In developing natural science, we humans began by exploring the world in our own locality, and not just our spatial neighborhood but—more farreachingly—our parametric neighborhood in the space of physical variable such as temperature, pressure, and electric charge. Near the “home base” of the state of things in our accustomed natural environment, we can operate with relative ease and freedom—thanks to the evolutionary attunement of our sensory and cognitive apparatus—in scanning nature with the unassisted senses for data regarding its modes of operation. But in due course we accomplish everything that can be managed by these straightforward means. To do more, we have to extend our probes into nature more deeply, deploying increasing technical sophistication to achieve more and more demanding levels of interactive capability. We have to move ever further away from our evolutionary home base in nature toward increasingly remote observational frontiers. From the egocentric standpoint of our local region of parameter space, we journey ever more distantly outward to explore nature’s various parametric dimensions in the search for cognitively significant phenomena. The appropriate picture is not, of course, one of geographical exploration but rather of the physical exploration—and subsequent theoretical systematization—of phenomena distributed over the parametric space of the physical quantities spreading out all about us. This approach in terms of

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exploration provides a conception of scientific research as a prospecting search for the new phenomena demanded by significant new scientific findings. As the range of telescopes, the energy of particle accelerators, the effectiveness of low-temperature instrumentation, the potency of pressurization equipment, the power of vacuum-creating contrivances, and the accuracy of measurement apparatus increases—that is, as our capacity to move about in the parametric space of the physical world is enhanced— new phenomena come into view. After the major findings accessible via the data of a given level of technological sophistication have been achieved, further major findings become realizable only when one ascends to the next level of sophistication in data-relevant technology. Thus the key to the great progress of contemporary physics lies in the enormous strides which an ever more sophisticated scientific technology has made possible through enlarging the observational and experimental basis of our theoretical knowledge of natural processes.1 In cultivating scientific inquiry, we scan nature for interesting phenomena and grope about for the explanatorily useful regularities they may suggest. As a fundamentally inductive process, scientific theorizing calls for devising the least complex theory structure capable of accommodating the available data. At each stage we try to embed the phenomena and their regularities within the simplest (cognitively most efficient) explanatory structure able to answer our questions about the world and to guide our interactions in it. But step by step as the process advances, we are driven to further, ever greater demands which can be met only with a yet more powerful technology of data exploration and management. This idea of the exploration of parametric space provides a basic model for understanding the mechanism of scientific innovation in mature natural science. New technology increases the range of access within the parametric space of physical processes. Such increased access brings new phenomena to light, and the examination and theoretical accommodation of these phenomena is the basis for growth in our scientific understanding of nature. 2. THE DEMAND FOR ENHANCEMENT Natural science is fundamentally empirical, and its advance is critically dependent not on human ingenuity alone but on the monitoring observations to which we can gain access only through interactions with nature. The days are long past when useful scientific data can be had by unaided

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sensory observation of the ordinary course of nature. Artifice has become an indispensable route to the acquisition and processing of scientifically useful data. The sorts of data on which scientific discovery nowadays depends can be generated only by technological means. The pursuit of natural science as we know it embarks us on a literally endless endeavor to improve the range of effective experimental intervention, because only by operating under new and heretofore inaccessible conditions of observational or experimental systemization—attaining extreme temperature, pressure, particle velocity, field strength, and so on— can we realize situations that enable us to put knowledge-expanding hypotheses and theories to the test. The enormous power, sensitivity, and complexity deployed in present-day experimental science have not been sought for their own sake but rather because the research frontier has moved on into an area where this sophistication is the indispensable requisite of further progress. In science, as in war, the battles of the present cannot be fought effectively with the armament of the past. As one acute observer has rightly remarked: “Most critical experiments [in physics] planned today, if they had to be constrained within the technology of even ten years ago, would be seriously compromised.”2 With the enhancement of scientific technology, the size and complexity of this body of data inevitably grows, expanding on quantity and diversifying in kind. Technological progress constantly enlarges the window through which we look our upon nature’s parametric space. In developing natural science continually enlarge our view of this space and then generalize upon what we see. But what we have here is not a homogeneous lunar landscape, where once we have seen one sector we have seen it all, and where theory projections from lesser data generally remain in place when further data comes our way. Historical experience shows that there is every reason to expect that our ideas about nature are subject to constant radical changes as we explore parametric space more extensively. The technologically mediated entry into new regions of parameter space constantly destabilizes the attained equilibrium between data and theory. It is the engine that moves the frontier of progress in natural science. 3. TECHNOLOGICAL ESCALATION: AN ARMS RACE AGAINST NATURE This situation points toward the idea of a “technological level,” corresponding to a certain state-of-the-art in the technology of inquiry in regard

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to data-generation and processing. This technology of inquiry falls into relatively distinct levels or stages in sophistication—correlatively with successively “later generations” of instrumentation and manipulative machinery. These levels are generally separated from one another by substantial (roughly, order-of-magnitude) improvements in performance in regard to such information-providing parameters as measurement exactness, dataprocessing volume, detection sensitivity, high voltages, high or low temperatures, and so on. The perspective afforded by such a model of technologically mediated prospecting indicates that progress in natural science has heretofore been relatively easy because in this earlier explanation of our parametric neighborhood we have been able—thanks to the evolutionary heritage of our sensory and conceptual apparatus—to operate with relative ease and freedom in exploring our own parametric neighborhood in the space of physical variables like temperature, pressure, radiation, and so on. But scientific innovation becomes even more difficult—and expensive as we push out further from our home base towards the more remote frontiers. No doubt, nature is in itself uniform as regards the distribution of its diverse processes across the reaches of parameter space. It does not favor us by clustering them in our accustomed parametric vicinity: significant phenomena do not dry up outside our parochial neighborhood. But scientific innovation becomes more and more difficult—and expensive—as we push our explorations even further away from our evolutionary home base toward increasingly remote frontiers. And phenomenological novelty is seemingly inexhaustible: we can never feel confident that we have got to the bottom of it. Nature always has fresh reserves of phenomena at her disposal, hidden away in those ever more remote regions of parametric space. Successive stages in the technological state of the art of scientific inquiry accordingly lead us to everdifferent views about the nature of things and the character of their laws. Without an ever-developing technology, scientific progress would soon grind to a halt. The discoveries of today cannot be made with yesterday’s equipment and techniques. To conduct new experiments, to secure new observations, and to detect new phenomena, and ever more powerful investigative technology is needed. Scientific progress depends crucially and unavoidably on our technical capability to penetrate into the increasing distant—and increasingly difficult—reaches of the spectrum of physical parameters in order to explore and to explain the ever more remote phenomena encountered there.

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The salient characteristic of this situation is that, once the major findings accessible at a given level of sophistication in data-technology level have been attained, further major progress in any given problem area requires ascent to a higher level on the technological scale. Every datatechnology level is subject to discovery saturation, but the exhaustion of prospects at a given level does not, of course, bring progress to a stop. Once the potential of a given state-of-the-art level has been exploited, not all our piety or wit can lure the technological frontier back to yield further significant returns at this stage. Further substantive findings become realizable only by ascending to the next level of sophistication in data-relevant technology. But the exhaustion of the prospects for data extraction at a given data-technology level does not, of course, bring progress to a stop. Rather, the need for enhanced data forces one to look further and further from man’s familiar “home base” in the parametric space of nature. Thus, while scientific progress is in principle always possible—there being no absolute or intrinsic limits to significant scientific discovery—the realization of this ongoing prospect demands a continual improvement in the technological state-of-the-art of data extraction of exploitation. The requirement for technological progress to advance scientific knowledge has far-reaching implications for the nature of the enterprise. The instrumentalities of scientific inquiry can be enhanced not only on the side of theoretical resources but preeminently on the side of the technological instrumentalities of observational and experimental intervention. Pioneering scientific research will always operate at the technological frontier, and nature inexorably exact a drastically increasing effort with respect to the acquisition and processing of data for revealing her “secrets.” This accounts for the recourse to more and more sophisticated technology for research in natural science. However, the increasing technological demands that are requisite for scientific progress means that each step ahead gets more complex and more expensive as those new parametric regions grow increasingly remote. With the progress of science, nature becomes less and less yielding to the efforts of further inquiry. We are faced with the need to push nature harder and harder to achieve cognitively profitable interactions. The dialectic theory and experiment carries natural science ever deeper into the range of greater costs. We thus arrive at the phenomenon of technological escalation. The need for new data forces us to look further and further from man’s familiar home base on the parametric space of nature. Thus while scientific pro-

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gress is in principle always possible—there being no absolute or intrinsic limits to significant scientific discovery—the realization of this ongoing prospect demands a continual enhancement in the technological state of the art of data extraction or exploitation. The perspective afforded by such a process of escalation indicates that progress in natural science was at first relatively undemanding because we have explored nature in our own parametric neighborhood.3 And seeing that the requisite technology was relatively crude, economic demands were minimal at this stage. But over time an ongoing escalation in the resource costs of significant scientific discovery arose from the increasing technical difficulties of realizing this objective, difficulties that are a fundamental— and an ineliminable—part of an enterprise of empirical research, for we must here contrive ever more “far out” interactions with nature, operating in a continually more difficult, accordingly, sector of parametric space. Nature becomes less and less yielding to the efforts of our inquiry. As science advances, we are faced with the need to push nature harder and harder to achieve cognitively profitable interactions. That there is “pay dirt” deeper down in the mine avails us only if we can actually dig there. New forces, for example, may well be in the offering, if one able physicist is right: We are familiar, to varying degrees, with four types of force: gravity, electricity, the strong nuclear force that holds the atomic nucleus together and the weak force that brings about radioactive decay by the emission of electrons. … Yet it would indeed be astonishing if ... other types of force did not exist. Such other forces could escape out notice because they were too weak to have much distinguishable effect or because they were of such short range that, no matter whether they were weak or not, the effects specifically associated with their range were contained within the objects of the finest scale that our instruments had so far permitted us to probe.4

But, of course, such weak forces would enter into our picture of nature only if our instrumentation was able to detect them. This need for the constant enhancement of scientifically relevant technology lies at the basis of the enormous increase in the human and material resources needed for modern experimental science. Given that we can only learn about nature by interacting with it, Newton’s third law of countervailing action and reaction becomes a fundamental principle of epistemology. Everything depends on just how and how hard we can push against nature in situations of observational and detec-

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tional interaction. As Bacon saw, nature will never tell us more than we can forcibly extract from her with the means of interaction at our disposal. And what we can manage to extract by successively deeper probes is bound to wear a steadily changing aspect, because we operate in new circumstances where old conditions cannot be expected to prevail and the old rules no longer apply. The idea of scientific progress as the correlate of a movement through sequential stages of technological sophistication was already clearly discerned by the astute Charles Sanders Peirce around the turn of the century: Lamarckian evolution might, for example, take the form of perpetually modifying our opinion in the effort gradually to make that opinion represent the known facts as more and more observations come to be collected. ... But this is not the way in which science mainly progresses. It advances by leaps; and the impulse for each leap is either some new observational resource, or some novel way of reasoning about the observations. Such a novel way of reasoning might, perhaps, also be considered as a new observational means, since it draws attention to relations between facts which would previously have been passed by unperceived.5

This circumstance has far-reaching implications for the perfectability of science. The impetus to augment our science demands an unremitting and unending effort to enlarge the domain of effective experimental intervention. For only by operating under new and heretofore inaccessible conditions of observational or experimental systematization—attaining ever more extreme temperature, pressure, particle velocity, field strength, and so on—can we bring new grist to our scientific mill. To be sure, there is, on its basis, no inherent limit to the possibility of future progress in scientific knowledge. But the exploitation of this theoretical prospect gets ever more difficult, expensive, and demanding in terms of effort and ingenuity. With scientific progress we are engaged in a situation of price-inflation where further equal-size steps become more difficult with every step we take. New findings of equal level of significance require ever greater aggregate efforts. In the ongoing course of scientific progress, the earlier investigations in the various departments of inquiry are able to skim the cream, so to speak: they take the “easy pickings,” and later achievements of comparable significance require ever deeper forays into complexity and call for an ever-increasing bodies of information. (And it is important to realize that this cost-increase is not because latter-day workers are doing better science, but simply because it is harder to achieve

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the same level of science: one must dig more deeply or search more widely to achieve results of the same significance as before.) Physicists often remark that the development of our understanding of nature moves through successive layers of theoretical sophistication.6 But scientific progress is clearly no less dependent on continual improvements in strictly technical sophistication: Some of the most startling technological advances in our time are closely associated with basic research. As compared with 25 years ago, the highest vacuum readily achievable has improved more than a thousand-fold; materials can be manufactured that are 100 times purer; the submicroscopic world can be seen at 10 time higher magnification; the detection of trace impurities is hundred of times more sensitive; the identification of molecular species (as in various forms of chromatography) is immeasurably advanced. These examples are only a small sample. ... Fundamental research in physics is crucially dependent on advanced technology, and is becoming more so.7

Without an ever-developing technology, scientific progress would grind to a halt. The discoveries of today cannot be advanced with yesterday’s instrumentation and techniques. To secure new observations, to test new hypotheses, and to detect new phenomena, an ever more powerful technology of inquiry is needed. Throughout the natural sciences, technological progress is a crucial requisite for cognitive progress. Frontier research is true pioneering: what counts is not just doing it but doing it for the first time. Aside from the initial reproduction of claimed results needed to establish the reproducibility of reproducibility of results, repetition in research is in general pointless. As one acute observer has remarked, one can follow the diffusion of scientific technology “from the research desk down to the schoolroom”: The emanation electroscope was a device invented at the turn of the century to measure the rate at which a gas such as thorium loses its radioactivity. For a number of years it seems to have been used only in the research laboratory. It came into use in instructing graduate students in the mid-1930’s, and in college courses by 1949. For the last few years a cheap commercial model has existed and is beginning to be introduced into high school courses. In a sense, this is a victory for good practice; but it also summarizes the sad state of scientific education to note that in the research laboratory itself the emanation electroscope has long since been removed from the desk to the attic.8

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In science, as in a technological arms race, one is simply never called on to keep doing what was done before. And ever more challenging task is posed by the constantly escalating demands of science for the enhanced data that can only be obtained at the increasingly costly new levels of technological sophistication. One is always forced further up the mountain, ascending to ever higher levels of technological performance—and of expense. As science endeavors to extend its “mastery over nature,” it thereby comes to be involved in a technology-intensive arms race against nature, with all of the practical and economic implications characteristic of such process. The enormous power, sensitivity, and complexity deployed in presentday experimental science have not been sought for their own sake but rather because the research frontier has moved on into an area where this sophistication is the indispensable requisite of ongoing progress. In science, as in war, the battles of the present cannot be fought effectively with the armaments of the past.9 NOTES 1

A homely fishing analogy of Eddington’s is useful here. He saw the experimentalists as akin to a fisherman who trawls nature with the net of his equipment for detection and observation. Now suppose (says Eddington) that a fisherman trawls the seas using a fishnet of two-inch mesh. Then fish of a smaller size will simply go uncaught, and those who analyze the catch will have an incomplete and distorted view of aquatic life. The situation in science is the same. Only by improving our observational means of trawling nature can such imperfections be mitigated. (See A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928]).

2

D. A. Bromley et al. Physics in Perspective, Student Edition (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1973); pp. 16, 13. See also Gerald Holton, “Models for Understanding the Growth and Excellence of Scientific Research,” in Stephen R. Graubard and Gerald Holton, eds., Excellence and Leadership in the Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), p. 115.

3

Note, however, that an assumption of the finite dimensionality of the phase space of research-relevant physical parameters becomes crucial here. For if these were limitless in number, one could always move on to the inexpensive exploitation of virgin territory.

4

Sir Denys H. Wilkinson, The Quarks and Captain Ahab or: The Universe as Artifact (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1977; Schiff Memorial Lecture), pp. 1213.

5

Collected Papers, ed. by C. Hartshorne et al., Vol. I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 44-45 (sects. 108-109); ca. 1896.

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NOTES 6

“Looking back, one has the impression that the historical development of the physical description of the world consists of a succession of layers of knowledge of increasing generality and greater depth. Each layer has a well defined field of validity; one has to pass beyond the limits of each to get to the next one, which will be characterized by more general and more encompassing laws and by discoveries constituting a deeper penetration into the structure of the Universe than the layers recognized before.” (Edoardo Amaldi, “The Unity of Physics,” Physics Today, vol. 261, no. 9 [September 1973], p. 24.) See also E. P. Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” Communication on Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13 (1960), pp. 1-14; as well as his “The Limits of Science,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 93 (1949), pp. 521526. Compare also Chapter 8 of Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950).

7

D. A. Bromley et al., Physics in Perspective, Student Edition (Washington D.C., 1973; National Research Council/National Academy of Science Publications), p. 23.

8

Gerald Holton, “Models for Understanding the Growth and Excellence of Scientific Research,” in Stephen R. Graubard and Gerald Holton (editors), Excellence and Leadership in a Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), p. 115.

9

Some of the themes of this chapter are also addressed in Chapter 7 “Cost Escalation in Empirical Inquiry” of the author’s Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). Scientific Progress (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), and The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984) are also relevant.

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B

y “knowledge” we shall here understand putative knowledge that is not necessarily correct but merely represents a conscientiously contrived best estimate of what the truth of the matter actually is.1 But this is not all there is to it. Information is simply a collection of (supposedly correct) beliefs or assertions, while knowledge, by contrast, is something more select, more deeply issue-resolving. Like all usable information it must be duly evidentiated and at least presumably correct. But there is also an additionally evaluative aspect, seeing that knowledge is a matter of important information: information that is significantly informative. Not every insignificant smidgeon of information constitutes knowledge, and the person whose body of information consists of utter trivia really knows virtually nothing. To provide a simple illustration for this matter of significance, let us suppose an object-descriptive color taxonomy—for the sake of example, an over-simple one based merely on Blue, Red, and Other. Then that single item of knowledge represented by “knowing the color” of an object—viz. that it is red—is bound up with many different items of (correct) information on the subject (that it is not Blue, is rather similar to some shades of Other, etc.). As such information proliferates, we confront a situation of redundancy and diminished productiveness. Any knowable fact is always potentially surrounded by a vast penumbral cloud of relevant information. And as our information grows to be ever more extensive, those really significant facts become more difficult to discern. Knowledge certainly increases with information, but at a far less than proportional rate. One instructive way of measuring the volume of available information is via the opportunities for placement in a framework for describing or classifying the features of things. With n concepts, you can make n2 twoconcept combinations. With m facts, you can project m2 fact-connecting juxtapositions, in each of which some sort of characteristic relationship is at issue.2 A single step in the advancement of knowledge is here accompanied by a massive increase in the proliferation of information. Extending

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the previous example, let us also contemplate shapes in addition to colors, again supposing only three of them: Rectangular, Circular, Other. Now when we combine color and shape there will be 9 = 3 x 3 possibilities in the resultant (cross-) classification. So with that complex, dual-aspect piece of knowledge (color + shape) we also launch into a vastly amplified (i.e., multiplied) information spectrum over that increased classification-space. In moving cognitively from n to n + 1 cognitive parameters we enlarge our knowledge additively but expand our information field multiplicatively. If a control mechanism can handle three items—be it in physical or in cognitive management—then we can lift ourselves to higher levels of capacity by hierarchical layering. First we can, by hypothesis, manage three base-level items; next we can, by grouping three of these into a first-level complex, manage nine base level items; and thereupon by grouping three of these first-level complexes into a second level complex we can manage 27 base level items. Hierarchical grouping is thus clearly a pathway to enhanced managerial capacity. But in cognitive contexts of information management it is clear that a few items of high-level information (= knowledge) can and will correspond to a vast range of low-level information (= mere truths). Knowing (in our illustration) where we stand within each of those three levels—that is having three pieces of knowledge—will position us in a vastly greater information space (viz. one of 27 compartments). And this situation is typical. The relational structure of the domain means that a small range of knowledge (by way of specifically high-grade information) can always serve to position one cognitively within a vastly greater range of low-level information. It is instructive to view this idea from a different point of view. Knowledge commonly develops via distinctions (A vs. non-A) that are introduced with ever greater elaboration to address the problems and difficulties that one encounters with less sophisticated approaches. A situation obtains that is analogous to the “Game of 20 Questions” with an exponentially exfoliating possibility space being traced out stepwise (2, 4, 8, 16, . . . 2n, . . .). With n descriptors one can specify for 2n potential descriptions that specify exactly how, over all, a given object may be characterized. When we add a new descriptor we increase by one additional unit the amount of knowledge but double the amount of available information. The information at hand grows with 2n, but the knowledge acquired merely with n. The cognitive exploitation of information is a matter of dramatically diminishing returns.

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Again, consider an illustration of a somewhat different nature. The yield of knowledge from information afforded by legibility-impaired manuscripts and papyri and inscriptions in classical paleography provides an instructive instance. If we can decipher 70 % of the letters in such a manuscript we can reconstruct the phrase at issue. If we can make out 70 % of the phrases we can pretty well figure out the sentences. If we can read 70 % of its sentences we can understand the message of the whole text. So some one-third of the letters suffice to carry the whole message. A vast load of information stands coordinate with a modest body of knowledge. From the standpoint of knowledge, information is highly redundant, albeit unavoidably so. A helpful perspective on this situation comes to view through the idea of “noise,” considering that expanding bodies of information encompass so much cognition-impeding redundancy and unhelpful irrelevancy that it takes successive many-fold increases in information to effect successive fixed-size increases in actual knowledge. It is supposed that internal “noise” or variability in the information-system is such that the increment needed to effect a cognitive advance of a certain fixed size or significance is proportional to the magnitude of the starting position as a whole. Consider now the result of combining two ideas, namely that (1) Knowledge is distinguished from mere information as such by its significance. In fact: Knowledge is simply particularly significant information—information whose significance exceeds some threshold level (say q). (In principle there is room for variation here according as one sets the quality level of entry qualification and the domain higher or lower.) (2) The significance of additional information is determined by its impact upon pre-existing information. Significance in this sense is a matter of the relative (percentage-wise) increase that the new acquisitions effect upon the body of pre-existing information (I), which may—to reiterate—be estimated in the first instance by the sheer volume of the relevant body of information: the literature of the subject, as it were. Accordingly: The significance of incrementally new information can be measured by the ratio of the increment of new information to the volume of information already in hand: ¨ I / I.

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Putting the ideas of these two principles together, we have it that a new item of actual knowledge is one for which the ratio of information increments to preexisting information exceeds a fixed threshold-indicative quantity q: ¨I >q I Thus knowledge-constituting significant information is determined through the proportional extent of the change effected by a new item in the preexisting situation (independently of what that preexisting situation is). On the basis of these considerations, it follows that the cumulative total amount of knowledge (K) encompassed in an overall body of information of size I is given by the logarithm of I. This is so because we have dI K = œ I = log I + const = log cI where K represents the volume of actual knowledge that can be extracted from a body of bare information I,3 with the constant at issue open to treatment as a unit-determinative parameter of the measuring scale, so that the equation at issue can be simplified without loss to K = log I.4 In milking additional information for significant insights it is generally the proportion of the increase that matters: its percentage rather than its brute amount. We accordingly arrive at the Law of Logarithmic Returns governing the extraction of significant knowledge from bodies of mere information. It should thus come as no surprise that knowledge coordinates with information in multiplicative layers. With texts we have the familiar stratification: article/chapter, book, library, library system. Or pictographically: sign, scene (= ordered collection of signs), cartoon (= ordered collection of scenes to make it a story). In such layering, we have successive levels of complexity corresponding to successive levels of informational combining combinations, proportional with n, n2, n3, etc. The logarithm of the levels—log n, 2log n, 3log n, etc.—reflect the amount of “knowledge” that is available through the information we obtain about the state of affairs prevailing at each level. And this is something that increases only one step at a time, despite the exponential increase in information. The general purport of such a Law of Logarithmic Returns as regards expanding information is clear enough. Letting K(I) represent the quantity

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of knowledge inherent in a body of information I, we begin with our fundamental relationship: K(I) v log I. On this basis of this fundamental relationship, the knowledge of a two-sector domain increases additively notwithstanding a multiplicative explosion in the amount of information that is now upon the scene. For if the field (F) under consideration consists of two sub-fields (F1 and F2), then because of the cross-connections obtaining within the information-domains at issue the overall information complex will take on a multiplicative size: I = inf (F) = inf (F1) x inf (F2) = I1 x I2 With compilation, information is multiplied. But in view of the indicated logarithmic relationship, the knowledge associated with the body of compound information I will stand at: K(I) = log I = log (I1 x I2) = log I1 + log I2 = K(I1) + K(I2) The knowledge obtained by compiling two information-domains (subfields) into an over-all aggregates will (as one would expect) consist simply in adding the two bodies of knowledge at issue. Where compilation increases information by multiplicative leaps and bounds, the increase in knowledge is merely additive. 2. THE RATIONALE AND IMPLICATION OF THE LAW The Law of Logarithmic Returns presents us with an epistemological analogue of the old Weber-Fechner law of psychophysics, asserting that inputs of geometrically increasing magnitude are required to yield perceptual outputs of arithmetically increasing intensity. The presently contemplated law envisions a parallelism of perception and conception in this regard. It stipulates that (informational) inputs of geometrically increasing magnitude are needed to provide for (cognitive and thus) conceptual outputs of arithmetically increasing magnitude. In searching for meaningful patterns, the ongoing proliferation of data points makes contributions of rapidly diminishing value. It is not too difficult to come by a plausible explanation for the sort of information/knowledge relationship that is represented by K v log I. The principal reason for such a K/I imbalance may lie in the efficiency of intel-

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ligence in securing a view of the modus operandi of a world whose lawstructure is comparatively simple. For here one can learn a disproportionate amount of general fact from a modest amount of information. (Note that whenever an infinite series of 0’s and 1’s, as per 01010101 ..., is generated—as this series indeed is—by a relatively simple law, then this circumstance can be gleaned from a comparatively short initial segment of this series.) In rational inquiry we try the simple solutions first, and only if and when they cease to work—when they are ruled out by further findings (by some further influx of coordinating information)—do we move on to the more complex. Things go along smoothly until an oversimple solution becomes destabilized by enlarged experience. We get by with the comparatively simpler options until the expanding information about the world’s modus operandi made possible by enhanced new means of observation and experimentation demands otherwise. But with the expansion of knowledge new accessions set ever increasing demands. At bottom, then, there are thus two closely interrelated reasons for that K/I disparity: i.

Where order exists in the world, intelligence is rather efficient in finding it.

ii. If the world were not orderly—were not amenable to the probes of intelligence—then intelligent beings would not and could not have emerged in it through evolutionary mechanisms. The implications for cognitive progress of this disparity between knowledge and mere information are not difficult to discern. Nature imposes increasing resistance barriers to intellectual as to physical penetration. Consider the analogy of extracting air for creating a vacuum. The first 90 % comes out rather easily. The next 9 % is effectively as difficult to extract than all that went before. The next .9 is proportionally just as difficult. And so on. Each successive order-of-magnitude step involves a massive cost for lesser progress; each successive fixed-size investment of effort yields a substantially diminished return. Intellectual progress is exactly the same: when we extract actual knowledge (i.e., high-grade, nature-descriptively significant information) from mere information of the routine, common “garden variety,” the same sort of quantity/quality relationship is obtained. Initially a sizable proportion of the available is high grade—but as we press further this proportion of what is cognitively significant gets ever smaller. To double knowledge we must quadruple information. As science

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progresses, the important discoveries that represent real increases in knowledge are surrounded by an ever increasing penumbra of mere items of information. (The mathematical literature of the day yields an annual crop of over 200,000 new theorems.5) This state of affairs clearly has the most far-reaching implications for the progress of knowledge. There is an immense K/I imbalance. With ongoingly increasing information I, the corresponding increase in knowledge K, shrinks markedly. To increase knowledge by equal steps we must amplify information by successive orders of magnitude. Extracting knowledge from information thus requires ever greater effort. For the greater a body of information, the larger the patterns of order that can potentially obtain and the greater the effort needed to bring particular orderings to light. With two-place combinations of the letters A and B (yielding the four pairs AA, AB, BA, and BB) we have only two possible patterns of order—namely “The same letter all the way through” (AA and BB), and “Alternating letters” (AB and BA). But as we add more letters, the possibilities proliferate massively. This situation is reflected in Max Planck’s appraisal of the problems of scientific progress. He wrote that “with every advance [in science] the difficulty of the task is increased; ever larger demands are made on the achievements of researchers, and the need for a suitable division of labor becomes more pressing.”6 The Law of Logarithmic Returns at once characterizes and explains this circumstance of why substantial findings are thicker on the informational ground in the earlier phase of a new discipline and become ever attenuated in the natural course of progress. 3. THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE The Law of Logarithmic Returns also connects up with—and is interestingly illustrated by—the idea of a cognitive lifespan as expounded by the sagacious Edward Gibbon in his Memoirs of My Life: “The proportion of a part to the whole is the only standard by which we can measure the length of our existence. At the age of twenty, one year is a tenth perhaps of the time which has elapsed within our consciousness and memory; at the age of fifty it is no more than a fortieth, and this relative value continues to decrease till the last sands are shaken out [of the hour-glass measure of our lifespan] by the hand of death.”7 On this basis, knowledge development is a matter of adding a given percentage increment of what has gone before. Thus fresh experience superadds its additional increment ¨E to the preex-

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isting total E in such a way that its effective import is measured by the proportion that movement bears to the total: ¨E/E. And cumulatively we of course have it that this comes to the logarithm of E: œ ¨E/E = log E. On such an approach, an increment to one’s lifetime has a cognitive value determined on strict analogy with Daniel Bernoulli’s famous proposal to measure the utility value of incremental economic resources by means of a logarithmic yardstick.8 The Law of Logarithmic Returns clearly has substantial implications for the rate of scientific progress.9 In particular, it stands coordinate with a principle of a swift and steady decline in the comparative cognitive yield of additions to our body of mere information. With the enhancement of scientific technology, the size and complexity of this body of data inevitably grows, expanding on quantity and diversifying in kind. Technological progress constantly enlarges the window through which we look out upon nature’s parametric space. In developing natural science, we use this window to scrutinize parametric space, continually augmenting our data base and then generalizing upon what we see. And what we have here is not a homogeneous lunar landscape, where once we have seen one sector we have seen it all, and where theory projections from lesser data generally remain in place when further data comes our way. Historical experience shows that there is every reason to expect that our ideas about nature are subject to constant radical changes as we enhance the means of broadening our data base. But of course the expansion of knowledge proceeds at a far slower rate than the increase of bare information. It is illuminating to look at the implications of this state of affairs in an historical perspective. The salient point is that the growth of knowledge over time involves ever-escalating demands. Progress is always possible— there are no absolute limits. But increments of the same cognitive magnitude have to be obtained at an ever increased price in point of information development and thus of resource commitment as well. Here our basic formula that knowledge stands proportionate to the logarithm of information (K v log I). And this means the increase of knowledge over time stands to the increase of information in a proportion fixed by the inverse of the volume of already available information: 1 dI d d K § log I § dt dt I dt

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The more knowledge we already have in hand, the slower (by vary rapid decline) will be the rate at which knowledge grows with newly acquired information. And the larger the body of information we have, the smaller will be the proportion of this information that represents real knowledge. In developmental perspective, there is good reason to suppose that our body of bare information will increase more or less in proportion with our resource investment in information-gathering. But then, if this investment grows exponentially over time (as has historically been the case in the recent period), we shall in consequence have it that d I(t) v ct and correspondingly also dt I(t) v ct and accordingly K(t) v log I(t) v log ct v t and consequently d dt K(t) = constant Exponential growth in I is coordinated with linear growth in K. On this basis, it is not all that difficult to find empirical substantiation of our law of logarithmic returns (K v log I). The phenomenology is that while information has increased exponentially in the past (as shown by the exponential increase in journals, scientists, and outlays for the instrumentalities of research), real knowledge has expanded only linearly. Throughout modern times the number of scientists has been increasing at roughly 5 % per annum.10 Thus well over 80 % of ever-existing scientists (in even the oldest specialties, e.g., mathematics, physics, and medicine) are alive and active at the present time. And scientific information has also been growing at the (reasonably constant) exponential rate over the past several centuries, so as to produce a veritable flood of scientific literature in our time. The Physical Review is now divided into six parts, each of which is larger than the whole journal was a decade or so ago. The total volume of scientific publication is truly staggering. It is reliably estimated that, from the start, well over 10 million scientific papers have been published and that by the mid-1970s some 30,000 journals were publishing some 600,000

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new papers each year. It is readily documented that the number of books, of journals, of journals-papers has been increasing at an exponential rate over the recent period.11 (See Display 1.) To be precise, the printed literature of science has been increasing at some 5 % per annum throughout the last two centuries, to yield an exponential growth-rate with a doubling time of ca. 15 years and an order-of-magnitude increase roughly every half century. And much the same story holds for the recruitment of people and the expenditures on equipment—that is for resource commitment in general. But during this period the progress of science per se—the progress of authentic scientific knowledge as measured in the sort of first-rate discoveries of the highest level of significance has progressed at a more or less linear rate. There is much evidence to this claim. It suffices to consider the size of encyclopedias and synoptic textbooks, or again, the number of awards given for “really big contributions” (Nobel Prizes, academy memberships, honorary degrees), or the expansion of the classificatory taxonomy of branches of science and problem areas of inquiry.12 All of these measures of preeminently cognitive contribution conjoin to indicate that there has in fact been a comparative constancy in year-to-year progress, the exponential growth of the scientific enterprise notwithstanding. 4. THE CENTRALITY OF QUALITY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS The preceding deliberations also serve to indicate, however, why the question of the rate of scientific progress is somewhat tricky. For this whole issue will turn rather delicately on fundamentally evaluative considerations. Thus consider the past once more. At the crudest—but also most basic— level, where progress is measured simply by the growth of the scientific literature, there has for centuries been astonishingly swift and sure progress: an exponential growth with a doubling time of roughly 15 years. At the more sophisticated, and demanding level of high quality results of a suitably “important” character, there has also been exponential growth, but only at the pace of a far longer doubling time, perhaps 30 years, approximating the reduplication with each successive generation envisaged by Henry Adams at the turn of this century.13 Finally, at the maximally exacting level of the really crucial insights that fundamentally enhance our picture of nature, our analysis has it that science has been maintaining a merely constant pace of progress. It is this last consideration that is crucial for present purposes and brings us back to the point made at the very outset. For what we have been deal-

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____________________________________________________________ Display 1 THE NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ABSTRACT JOURNALS FOUNDED, AS A FUNCTION OF DATE

1,000,000 100,000 number of journals 10,000 Scientific Journals 1,000 (200)

(200)

100 10 Abstract Journals

(1665) 1700

1800

1900

2000

date Source: Derek J. de Solla Science Since Babylon Price, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).

____________________________________________________________ ing with here is an essentially seismological standard of importance. It is based on the question “If the thesis at issue were abrogated or abandoned, how large would the ramifications and implications of this circumstance be? How extensive would be the shocks and tremors felt throughout the whole range of what we (presumably) know?” And what is at issue is exactly a kind of cognitive Richter Scale based on the idea of successive orders of magnitude of impact. The crucial determinative factor for increasing importance is the extent of seismic disturbance of the cognitive terrain. Would we have to abandon and/or rewrite the entire textbook, or a whole chapter, or a section, or a paragraph, or a sentence, or a mere footnote? And so, while the question of the rate of scientific progress does indeed involve the somewhat delicate issue of setting of an evaluative standard, our stance here can be rough and ready—and justifiably so because the de-

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tails pretty much wash out. Viewing science as a cognitive discipline—a body of knowledge whose task is the unfolding of a rational account of the modus operandi of nature—stands correlative with its accession of really major discoveries: the seismically significant, cartography-revising insights into nature. And here progress has historically been sure and steady—but essentially linear. However, this perspective lays the foundation for our present analysis—that the historical situation has been one of a constant progress of science as a cognitive discipline notwithstanding its exponential growth as a productive enterprise (as measured in terms of resources, money, manpower, publications, etc).14 If we look at the cognitive situation of science in its quantitative aspect, the Law of Logarithmic Returns pretty much says it all. In the struggle to achieve cognitive mastery over nature, we have been confronting an enterprise of ever escalating demands, with the exponential growth in the enterprise associated with a merely linear growth in the discipline. And this situation regarding the past has important implications for the future. For while one cannot—as we have seen—hope to predict the content of future science, the law does actually put us into a position to make plausible estimates about its volume.15 NOTES 1

There is thus no suggestion of cumulation here. Clearly, knowledge, like populations, grows not just by additions (births) but also by abandonment (deaths). But with knowledge, in contrast to population, the concepts of displacement and replacement play a more crucial role. Knowledge never dies off without leaving progeny: in this domain you cannot eliminate something with nothing.

2

Note that a self-concatenated concept or fact is still a concept or fact, even as a self-mixed color is still a color.

3

In information theory, entropy is the measure of the information conveyed by a message, and is there measured by k log M, where M is the number of structurally equivalent messages available via the available sorts of symbols. By extension, the v log I measure of the knowledge contained in a given body of information might accordingly be designated as the enentropy. Either way, the concept at issue measures informative actuality in relation to informative possibility. For there are two types of informative possibilities (1) structural/syntactical as dealt with in classical information theory, and (2) hermeneutic/semantical (i.e., genuinely meaningoriented) as dealt with in the present theory.

4

Some writers have suggested that the subcategory of significant information included in an overall body of crude data of size I should be measured by Ik (for some suitably adjusted value 0 < k < 1)—for example by the “Rousseau’s Law” standard of I . (For details see Chapter VI of the author’s Scientific Progress [Oxford: Blackwell, 1978].). Now since log Ik = k log I which is proportional to log I,

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NOTES

the specification of this sort of quality level for information would again lead to a K v log I relationship. 5

See Stanislaw M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (New York: Scribner, 1976).

6

Max Planck, Vorträge und Erinnerungen, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1949), p. 376; italics added. Shrewd insights seldom go unanticipated, so it is not surprising that other theorists should be able to contest claims to Planck’s priority here. C. S. Peirce is particularly noteworthy in this connection.

7

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 63.

8

Gibbon’s “law of learning” thus means that a body of experience that grows linearly over time yields a merely logarithmic growth in cognitive age. Thus a youngster of ten years has attained only one-eighth of his or her chronological expected lifespan but has already passed the halfway mark of his or her cognitive expected lifespan.

9

It might be asked: “Why should a mere accretion in scientific ‘information’—in mere belief—be taken to constitute progress, seeing that those later beliefs are not necessarily true (even as the earlier one’s were not)?” The answer is that they are in any case better substantiated—that they are “improvements” on the earlier one’s by way of the elimination of shortcomings. For a detailed consideration is the relevant issues, see the author’s Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987).

10

Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. 6-8.

11

For the statistical situation in science see Derek J. de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon (New Haven, 1961; 2nd ed. 1975), See Chap. 8, “Diseases of Science.” Further detail is given in Price’s Little Science, Big Science (op. cit.).

12

The data here are set out in the author’s Scientific Progress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).

13

Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918).

14

To be sure, we are caught up here in the usual cyclic pattern of all hypotheticodeductive reasoning. In addition to explaining the various phenomena we have been canvassing that projected K/I relationship is in turn substantiated by them. This is not a vicious circularity but simply a matter of the systemic coherence that lies at the basis of inductive reasonings. Of course the crux is that there also be some predictive power, which is exactly what our discussion of deceleration is designed to exhibit.

15

Some of the themes of this chapter were also addressed in the author’s Scientific Progress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). This book is also available in translation:

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NOTES

German transl., Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982); French transl., Le progrès scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994).

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Chapter III/6 THE UNREALIZABILITY OF PERFECTED SCIENCE 1. CONDITIONS OF PERFECTED SCIENCE

H

ow far can the scientific enterprise advance toward a definitive understanding of reality? Might science attain a point of recognizable completion? Is the achievement of perfected science a genuine possibility, even in theory when all of the “merely practical” obstacles are put aside as somehow incidental? What would perfected science be like? What sort of standards would it have to meet? Clearly, it would have to complete in full the discharge of natural science’s mandate or mission. Now, the goal-structure of scientific inquiry covers a good deal of ground. It is diversified and complex, spreading across both the cognitive/theoretical and active/practical sectors. It encompasses the traditional quartet of description, explanation, prediction, and control, in line with the following picture: DESCRIPTION (answering what? and how? questions about nature) theoretical goals EXPLANATION (answering why? questions about nature)

cognitive goals

PREDICTION (successful alignment of our expectations regarding nature) practical goals

CONTROL (effective intervention in nature to alter the course of events in desired directions)

manipulative goals

The theoretical sector concerns itself with matters of characterizing, explaining, accounting for, and rendering intelligible—with purely intellectual and informative issues, in short. By contrast, the practical sector is

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concerned with guiding actions, canalizing expectations, and, in general, with achieving the control over our environment that is required for the satisfactory conduct of our affairs. The former sector thus deals with what science enables us to say, and the latter with what it enables us to do. The one relates to our role as spectators of nature, the other to our role as active participants. It thus appears that if we are to claim that our science has attained a perfected condition, it would have to satisfy (at least) the four following conditions: 1. Erotetic completeness: It must answer, in principle at any rate, all those descriptive and explanatory questions that it itself countenances as legitimately raisable, and must accordingly explain everything it deems explicable. 2. Predictive completeness: It must provide the cognitive basis for accurately predicting those eventuations that are in principle predictable (that is, those which it itself recognizes as such). 3. Pragmatic completeness: It must provide the requisite cognitive means for doing whatever is feasible for beings like ourselves to do in the circumstances in which we labor. 4. Temporal finality (the omega-condition): It must leave no room for expecting further substantial changes that destabilize the existing state of scientific knowledge. Each of these modes of substantive completeness deserves detailed consideration. First, however, one brief preliminary remark. It is clear that any condition of science that might qualify as “perfected” would have to meet certain formal requirements of systemic unity. If, for example, there are different routes to one and the same question (for instance, if both astronomy and geology can inform us about the age of the earth), then these answers will certainly have to be consistent. Perfected science will have to meet certain requirements of structural systematicity in the manner of its articulation: it must be coherent, consistent, consonant, uniform, harmonious, and so on. Such requirements represent purely formal cognitive demands upon the architectonic of articulation of a body of science that could lay any claim to perfection. Interesting and important though they are, we

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shall not, however, trouble about these formal requirements here, our present concern being with various substantive issues.1 2. THEORETICAL ADEQUACY: ISSUES OF EROTETIC COMPLETENESS Erotetic completeness is an unattainable mirage. We can never exhaust the possibility of questions. The Kantian Principle of question propagation means that inquiry—the dialectic of questions and answers—can never get to the ultimate bottom of things. Any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of science is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves certain theses wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period. This means that there will always be facts (or plausible candidatefacts) about a thing that we do not know because we cannot even conceive of them. For to grasp such a fact calls for taking a perspective of consideration that we simply do not have, since the state of knowledge (or purported knowledge) is not yet advanced to a point at which its entertainment is feasible. In bringing conceptual innovation about, cognitive progress makes it possible to consider new possibilities that were heretofore conceptually inaccessible. And the prospect of change can never be dismissed in this domain. The properties of a thing are literally open-ended: we can always discover more of them. Even if we view the world as inherently finitistic, and espouse a Principle of Limited Variety which has it that nature can be portrayed descriptively with the materials of a finite taxonomic scheme, there can be no a priori guarantee that the progress of science will not engender an unending sequence of changes of mind regarding this finite register of descriptive materials. And this conforms exactly to our expectation in these matters. For where the real things of the world are concerned, we not only expect to learn more about them in the course of scientific inquiry, we expect to have to change our mind about their nature and mode of comportment. Be it elm trees, or volcanoes, or quarks that are at issue, we have every expectation that in the course of future scientific progress people will come to think differently about them than we ourselves do at this juncture. Cognitive inexhaustibility thus emerges as a definitive feature of our conception of a real thing. In claiming knowledge about such things, we are always aware that the object transcends what we know about it—that

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yet further and different facts concerning it can always come to light, and that all that we do say about it does not exhaust all that can be said about it. The world’s furnishings are cognitively opaque; we cannot see to the bottom of them. Knowledge can become more extensive without thereby becoming more complete. And this view of the situation is rather supported than impeded if we abandon a cumulativist/preservationist view of knowledge or purported knowledge for the view that new discoveries need not supplement but can displace old ones. The concept of a thing so functions in our conceptual scheme that things are thought of as having an identity, a nature, and a mode of comportment wholly indifferent to the cognitive state-of-the-art regarding them, and presumably very different from our conceptions of the matter. But this is something we presume or postulate; it is certainly not something we have discovered—or ever could discover. We are not—and will never be—in a position to evade or abolish the contrast between “things as we think them to be” and “things as they actually and truly are.” Their susceptibility to further elaborative detail-and to changes of mind regarding this further detail—is built into our very conception of a “real thing.” To be a real thing is to be something regarding which we can always in principle acquire more information. And much the same story holds when our concern is not with things but with types of things. To say that something is copper (or is magnetic) is to say more than that it has the properties we associate with copper (or magnetic things), and indeed is to say more than that it meets our testconditions for being copper (or being magnetic). It is to say that this thing is copper (or magnetic). And this is an issue regarding which we are prepared at least to contemplate the prospect that we’ve got it wrong. There is thus good reason of general principle to think that erotetic completeness is unachievable. But another line of consideration is no less decisive for our present purposes. Could we ever actually achieve erotetic completeness (Qcompleteness)—the condition of being able to resolve, in principle, all of our (legitimately posable) questions about the world? Could we ever find ourselves in this position?2 In theory, yes. A body of science certainly could be such as to provide answers to all those questions it allows to arise. But just how meaningful would this mode of completeness be? It is sobering to realize that the erotetic completeness of a state of science S does not necessarily betoken its comprehensiveness or sufficiency.

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It might reflect the paucity of the range of questions we are prepared to contemplate—a deficiency of imagination, so to speak. When the range of our knowledge is sufficiently restricted, then its Q-completeness will merely reflect this impoverishment rather than its intrinsic adequacy. Conceivably, if improbably, science might reach a purely fortuitous equilibrium between problems and solutions. It could eventually be “completed” in the narrow erotetic sense—providing an answer to every question one can also in the then-existing (albeit still imperfect) state of knowledge— without thereby being completed in the larger sense of answering the questions that would arise if only one could probe nature just a bit more deeply. And so, our corpus of scientific knowledge could be erotetically complete and yet fundamentally inadequate. Thus, even if realized, this erotetic mode of completeness would not be particularly meaningful. (To be sure, this discussion proceeds at the level of supposition contrary to fact. The exfoliation of new questions from old in the course of scientific inquiry that is at issue in Kant’s Principle of question-propagation spells the infeasibility of ever attaining Q-completeness.) The preceding considerations illustrate a more general circumstance. Any claim to the realization of a theoretically complete science of physics would be one that affords “a complete, consistent, and unified theory of physical interaction that would describe all possible observations.”3 But to check that the state of physics on hand actually meets this condition, we would need to know exactly what physical interactions are indeed possible. And to warrant us in using the state of physics on hand as a basis for answering this question, we would already have to be assured that its view of the possibilities is correct—and thus already have preestablished its completeness. The idea of a consolidated erotetic completeness shipwrecks on the infeasibility of finding a meaningful way to monitor its attainment. After all, any judgment we can make about the laws of nature—any model we can contrive regarding how things work in the world—is a matter of theoretical triangulation from the data ac our disposal. And we should never have unalloyed confidence in the definitiveness of our data base or in the adequacy of our exploitation of it. Observation can never settle decisively just what the laws of nature are. In principle, different lawsystems can always yield the same observational output: as philosophers of science are want to insist, observations underdetermine laws. To be sure, this worries working scientists less than philosophers, because they deploy powerful regulative principles—simplicity, economy, uniformity, homogeneity, and so on—to constrain uniqueness. But neither these principles

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themselves nor the uses to which they are put are unproblematic. No matter how comprehensive our data or how great our confidence in the inductions we base upon them, the potential inadequacy of our claims cannot be averted. One can never feel secure in writing finis on the basis of purely theoretical considerations. To monitor the theoretical completeness of science, we accordingly need some theory-external control on the adequacy of our theorizing, some theory-external reality-principle to serve as a standard of adequacy. We are thus driven to abandoning the road of pure theory and proceeding along that of the practical goals of the enterprise. This gives special importance and urgency to the pragmatic sector. 3. PRAGMATIC COMPLETENESS The arbitrament of praxis—not theoretical merit but practical capability— affords the best standard of adequacy for our scientific proceedings that is available. But could we ever be in a position to claim that science has been completed on the basis of the success of its practical applications? On this basis, the perfection of science would have to manifest itself in the perfecting of control—in achieving a perfected technology. But just how are we to proceed here? Could our natural science achieve manifest perfection on the side of control over nature? Could it ever underwrite a recognizably perfected technology? The issue of “control over nature” involves much more complexity than may appear on first view. For just how is this conception to be understood? Clearly, in terms of bending the course of events to our will, of attaining our ends within nature. But this involvement of “our ends” brings to light the prominence of our own contribution. For example, if we are inordinately modest in our demands (or very unimaginative), we may even achieve “complete control over nature” in the sense of being in a position to do whatever we want to do, but yet attain this happy condition in a way that betokens very little real capability. One might, to be sure, involve the idea of omnipotence, and construe a “perfected” technology as one that would enable us to do literally anything. But this approach would at once run into the old difficulties already familiar to the medieval scholastics. They were faced with the challenge: “If God is omnipotent, can he annihilate himself (contra his nature as a necessary being), or can he do evil deeds (contra his nature as a perfect being), or can he make triangles have four angles (contrary to their definitive na-

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ture)?” Sensibly enough, the scholastics inclined to solve these difficulties by maintaining that an omnipotent God need not be in a position to do literally anything but rather simply anything that it is possible for him to do. Similarly, we cannot explicate the idea of technological omnipotence in terms of a capacity to produce and result, wholly without qualification. We cannot ask for the production of a perpetuum mobile, for spaceships with “hyperdrive” enabling them to attain transluminar velocities, for devices that predict essentially stochastic processes such as the disintegrations of transuranic atoms, or for piston devices that enable us to set independently the values for the pressure, temperature, and volume of a body of gas. We cannot, in sum, as of a “perfected” technology that it should enable us to do anything that we might take it into our heads to do, no matter how “unrealistic” this might be. All that we can reasonably ask of it is that perfected technology should enable us to do anything that it is possible for us to do—and not just what we might think we can do but what we really and truly can do. A perfected technology would be one that enabled us to do anything that can possibly be done by creatures circumstanced as we are. But how can we deal with the pivotal conception of “can” that is at issue here? Clearly, only science—real, true, correct, perfected science—could tell us what indeed is realistically possible and what circumstances are indeed inescapable. Whenever our “knowledge” falls short of this, we may well “ask the impossible” by way of accomplishment (for example, spaceships in “hyperdrive”), and thus complain of incapacity to achieve control in ways that put unfair burdens on this conception. Power is a matter of the “effecting of things possible”—of achieving control—and it is clearly cognitive state-of-the-art in science which, in teaching us about the limits of the possible, is itself the agent that must shape our conception of this issue. Every law of nature serves to set the boundary between what is genuinely possible and what is not, between what can be done and what cannot, between which questions we can properly ask and which we cannot. We cannot satisfactorily monitor the adequacy and completeness of our science by its ability to effect “all things possible,” because science alone can inform us about what is possible. As science grows and develops, it poses new issues of power and control, reformulating and reshaping those demands whose realization represents “control over nature.” For science itself brings new possibilities to light. (At a suitable stage, the idea of “splitting the atom” will no longer seem a contradiction in terms.) To see if a given state of technology meets the

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condition of perfection, we must already have a body of perfected science in hand to tell us what is indeed possible. To validate the claim that our technology is perfected, we need to preestablish the completeness of our science. The idea works in such a way that claims to perfected control can rest only on perfected science. In attempting to travel the practicalist route to cognitive completeness, we are thus trapped in a circle. Short of having supposedly perfected science in hand, we could not say what a perfected technology would be like, and thus we could not possibly monitor the perfection of science in terms of the technology that it underwrites. Moreover, even if (per impossible) a “pragmatic equilibrium” between what we can and what we wish to do in science were to be realized, we could not be warrantedly confident that this condition will remain unchanged. The possibility that “just around the corner things will become unstuck can never be eliminated. Even if we “achieve control” to all intents and purposes, we cannot be sure of not losing our grip upon it—not because of a loss of power but because of cognitive changes that produce a broadening of the imagination and a widened apprehension as to what “having control” involves. Accordingly, the project of achieving practical mastery can never be perfected in a satisfactory way. The point is that control hinges on what we want, and what we want is conditioned by what we think possible, and this is something that hinges crucially on theory—on our beliefs about how things work in this world. And so control is something deeply theoryinfected. We can never safely move from apparent to real adequacy in this regard. We cannot adequately assure that seeming perfection is more than just that. We thus have no alternative but to presume that our knowledge (that is, our purported knowledge) is inadequate at this and indeed at any other particular stage of the game of cognitive completeness. One important point about control must, however, be noted with care. Our preceding negative strictures all relate to attainment of perfect control—of being in a position to do everything possible. No such problems affect the issue of amelioration—of doing some things better and improving our control over what it was. It makes perfectly good sense to use its technological applications as standards of scientific advancement. (Indeed, we have no real alternative to using pragmatic standards at this level, because reliance on theory alone is, in the end, going to be circular.) While control does not help us with perfection, it is crucial for monitoring progress. Standards of assessment and evaluation are such that we can imple-

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ment the idea of improvements (progress), but not that of completion (realized perfection). We can determine when we have managed to enlarge our technological mastery, but we cannot meaningfully say what it would be to perfect it. (Our conception of the doable keeps changing with changes in the cognitive state-of-the-art, a fact that does not, of course, alter our view of what already has been done in the practical sphere.) With regard to technical perfectibility, we must recognize that (1) there is no reason to expect that its realization is possible, even in principle, and (2) it is not monitorable: even if we had achieved it, we would not be able to claim success with warranted confidence. In the final analysis, them, we cannot regard the realization of “completed science” as a meaningful prospect—we cannot really say what it is that we are asking for. (To be sure, what is meaningless here is not the idea of perfected science as such but the idea of achieving it.) There deliberations further substantiate the idea that we must always presume out knowledge to be incomplete in the domain of natural science. 4. PREDICTIVE COMPLETENESS The difficulties encountered in using physical control as a standard of “perfection” in science all also hold with respect to prediction, which, after all, is simply a mode of cognitive control. Suppose someone asks: “Are you really still going to persist in plaints regarding the incompleteness of scientific knowledge when science can predict everything?” The reply is simply that science will never be able to predict literally everything: the very idea of predicting everything is simply unworkable. For then, whenever we predict something, we would have to predict also the effects of making those predictions, and then the ramification of those predictions, and so on ad indefinitum. The very most that can be asked is that science should put us into a position to predict, not everything, but rather anything that we might choose to be interested in and to inquire about. And here it must be recognized that our imaginative perception of the possibilities might be much too narrow. We can only make predictions about matters that lie, at least broadly speaking, within our cognitive horizons. Newton could not have predicted findings in quantum theory any more than he could have predicted the outcome of American presidential elections. One can only make predictions about what one is cognizant of, takes note of, deems worthy of consideration. In this regard, one can be myopic either by not noting or by losing sight of significant sectors of

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natural phenomena. Another important point must be made regarding this matter of unpredictability. Great care must be taken to distinguish the ontological and the epistemological dimensions, to keep the entries of these two columns apart: unexplainable

not (yet) explained

by chance

by some cause we do not know of

spontaneous

caused in a way we cannot identify

random

lawful in ways we cannot characterize

by whim

for reasons not apparent to us

It is tempting to slide from epistemic incapacity to ontological lawfulness. But we must resist this temptation and distinguish what is inherently uncognizable from what we just don’t happen to cognize. The nature of scientific change makes it inevitably problematic to slide from present to future incapacity. Sometimes, to be sure, talk in the ontological mode is indeed warranted. The world no doubt contains situations of randomness and chance, situations in which genuinely stochastic processes are at work in a ways that “engenders unknowability.” But these ontological claims must root in knowledge rather than ignorance. They can only be claimed appropriately in those cases in which (as in quantum theory) we can explain inexplicability—that is, in which we can account for the inability to predict/explain/ control within the framework of a positive account of why the item at issue is actually unpredictable/unexplainable/unsolvable. Accordingly, these ontological based incapacities do not introduce matters that “lie beyond the limits of knowledge.” On the contrary, positive information is the pivot point. The only viable limits to knowability are those which root in knowledge—that is, in a model of nature which entails that certain sorts of things are unknowable. It is not a matter of an incapacity to answer appropriate questions (“We ‘just don’t know’ why that stochastic process eventuated as it did”). Rather, in the prevailing state of knowledge, these questions are improper; they just do not arise. Science itself sets the limits to predictability—insisting that some phenomena (the stochastic processes encountered in quantum physics, for ex-

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ample) are inherently unpredictable. And this is always to some degree problematic. The most that science can reasonably be asked to do is to predict what it itself sees as in principle predictable—to answer every predictive question that it itself countenances as proper. And here we must once more recognize that any given state of science might have gotten matters quite wrong. With regard to predictions, we are thus in the same position that obtains with regard to actually interventionist (rather than “merely cognitive”) control. Here, too, we can unproblematically apply the idea of improvement— of progress. But it makes no sense to contemplate the achievement of perfection. For its realization is something we could never establish by any practicable means. 5. TEMPORAL FINALITY Scientists from time to time indulge in eschatological musings and tell us that the scientific venture is approaching its end.4 And it is, of course, entirely conceivable that natural science will come to a stop, and will do so not in consequence of a cessation of intelligent life but in C. S. Peirce’s more interesting sense of completion of the project: of eventually reaching a condition after which even indefinitely ongoing inquiry will not—and indeed in the very nature of things cannot—produce any significant change, because inquiry has come to “the end of the road.” The situation would be analogous to that envisaged in the apocryphal story in vogue during the middle 1800s regarding the Commissioner of the United States Patents who resigned his post because there was nothing left to invent.5 Such a position is in theory possible. But here, too, we can never determine that it is actual. There is no practicable way in which the claim that science has achieved temporal finality can be validated. The question “Is the current state of science, S, final?” is one for which we can never legitimate an affirmative answer. For the prospect of future changes of S can never be precluded. One cannot plausibly move beyond “We have (in S) no good reason to think that S will ever change” to obtain “We have (in S) good reason to think that S will never change.” To take this posture towards S is to presuppose its completeness.6 It is not simply to take the natural and relatively unproblematic stance that that for which S vouches is to be taken as true but to go beyond this to insist that whatever is true finds a rationalization within S. This argument accordingly embeds finality in completeness, and

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in doing so jumps from the frying pan into the fire. For it shifts from what is difficult to what is yet more so. To hold that if something is so at all, then S affords a good reason for it is to take so blatantly ambitious (even megalomaniacal) a view of S that the issue of finality seems almost a harmless appendage. Moreover, just as the appearance of erotetic and pragmatic equilibrium can be a product of narrowness and weakness, so can temporal finality. We may think that science is unchangeable simply because we have been unable to change it. But that’s just not good enough. Were science ever to come to a seeming stop, we could never be sure that is had done so not because it is at “the end of the road” but because we are at the end of our tether. We can never ascertain that science has attained the Z-condition of final completion, since from our point of view the possibility of further change lying “just around the corner” can never be ruled out finally and decisively. No matter how final a position we appear to have reached, the prospects of its coming unstuck cannot be precluded. As we have seen, future science is inscrutable. We can never claim with assurance that the position we espouse in immune to change under the impact of further data— that the oscillations are dying out and we are approaching a final limit. In its very nature, science “in the limit” related to what happens in the long run, and this is something about which we in principle cannot gather information: any information we can actually gather inevitably pertains to the short run and not the long run. We can never achieve adequate assurance that apparent definitiveness is real. We can never consolidate the claim that science has settled into a frozen, changeless pattern. The situation in natural science is such that our knowledge of nature must ever be presumed to be incomplete. The idea of achieving a state of recognizably completed science is totally unrealistic. Even as widely variant modes of behavior by three dimensional objects could produce exactly the same two-dimensional shadowprojections, so very different law-systems could in principle engender exactly the same phenomena. We cannot make any definitive inferences from phenomena to the nature of the real. The prospect of perfected science is bound to elude us. One is thus brought back to the stance of the great Idealist philosophers (Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, Bradley, Royce) that human knowledge inevitably falls short of recognizably “perfected science” (the Ideas, the Absolute), and must accordingly be looked upon as incomplete.

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We have no alternative but to proceed on the assumption that the era of innovation is not over—that future science can and will prove to be different science. As these deliberations indicate, the conditions of perfected science in point of description, explanation, prediction, and control are all unrealizable. Our information will inevitably prove inconclusive. We have no reasonable alternative to seeing our present-day science as suboptimal, regardless of the question of what date the calendar shows. Note that the present discussion does not propound the ontological theses that natural science cannot be pragmatically complete, Z-definitive, and so n, but the epistemological thesis that science cannot ever be known to be so. The point is not that the requirements of definitive knowledge cannot in the nature of things be satisfied but that they cannot be implemented (that is, be shown to be satisfied). The upshot is that science must always be presumed to be incomplete, not that it necessarily always is so. No doubt this is also true. It cannot, however, be demonstrated on the basis of epistemological general principles but requires the substantive considerations regarding the metaphysics of inquiry that will be developed in the next chapter. 6. THE DISPENSABILITY OF PERFECTION The cognitive situation of natural science invites description in theological terms. The ambiguity of the human condition is only too manifest here. We cannot expect ever to reach a position of definitive finality in this imperfect dispensation: we do have “knowledge” of sorts, but it is manifestly imperfect. Expelled from the garden of Eden, we are deprived of access to “the God’s-eye point of view.” Definitive and comprehensive adequacy is denied us: we have no basis for claiming to know “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in scientific matters. We yearn for absolutes, but have to settle for plausiblities; we desire what is definitively correct, but have to settle for conjectures and estimates. In this imperfect epistemic dispensation, we have to reckon with the realities of the human condition. Age disagrees with age; different states-ofthe-art involve naturally discordant conceptions and incommensurate positions. The moral of the story of the Tower of Babel applies. The absolutes for which we yearn represent an ideal that lies beyond the range of practicable realizability. We simply have to do the best we can

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with the means at our disposal. To aspire to absolutes—for definitive comprehensiveness—is simply unrealistic. It is sometimes maintained that such a fallibilist and imperfectionist view of science is unacceptable. To think of science as inevitably incomplete and to think of “the definitive answers” in scientific matters as perpetually unattainable is, we are told, to write science off as a meaningful project. But in science as in the moral life, we can operate perfectly well in the realization that perfection is unattainable. No doubt here and there some scientists nurse the secret hope of attaining some fixed and final definitive result that will stand, untouchable and changeless, through all subsequent ages. But unrealistic aspirations are surely by no means essential to the scientific enterprise as such. In science as in other domains of human endeavor, it is a matter of doing the best we can with the tools that come to hand. For the fact that perfection is unattainable does nothing to countervail against the no less real fact that improvement is realizable—that progress is possible. The undeniable prospect of realizable progress—of overcoming genuine defect and deficiencies that we find in the work of our predecessors—affords ample impetus to scientific innovation. Scientific progress is not generated a fronte by the pull of an unattainable ideal; it is stimulated a tergo by the push of dissatisfaction with the deficiencies of achieved positions. The labors of science are not pulled forward by the mirage of (unattainable) perfection. We are pushed onward by the (perfectly realizable) wish to do better than our predecessors in the enterprise. We can understand “progress” in two senses. On the one hand, there is O-progress, defined in terms of increasing distance from the starting point (the “origin”). On the other hand, there is D-progress, defined in terms of decreasing distance from the goal (the “destination.”) Consider the picture: origin

destination

the attained position

Ordinarily, the two modes of progress are entirely equivalent: we increase the distance traveled from O by exactly the same amount as we decrease the distance remained to D. But if there is no attainable destination—if we are engaged on a journey that, for all we know, is literally endless and has

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no determinable destination, or only one that “infinitely distant”—then we just cannot manage to decrease our distance from it. Given that in natural science we are embarked on a journey that is literally endless, it is only O-progress that can be achieved, and no D-progress. We can gauge our progress only in terms of how far we have come, and not in terms of how far we have to go. Embarked on a journey that is in principle endless, we simply cannot say that we are nearing the goal. The upshot is straightforward. The idea of improving our science can be implemented without difficulty, since we can clearly improve our performance as regards its goals of prediction, control, and the rest. But the idea of perfecting our science cannot be implemented. 7. “PERFECTED SCIENCE” AS AN IDEALIZATION THAT AFFORDS A USEFUL CONTRAST CONCEPTION Reasons of general principle block us from ever achieving a position from which we can make good the claim that the several goals of science have actually been reached. Perfection is simply not a goal or telos of the scientific enterprise. It is not a realizable condition of things but at best a useful contrast conception that keeps actual science in its place and helps to sensitize us to its imperfections. The validation of this idealization lies not in its future achievability but in its ongoing utility as a regulative ideal that affords a contrast to what we do actually attain—so as to highlight its salient limitations. With respect to the moral aspirations of man’s will, Kant wrote: Perfection [of the moral will] is a thing of which no rational being in the world of sense is at any time capable. But since it is required [of us] as practically necessary, it can be found only in an endless progress to that complete fitness; on principles of pure practical reason, it is necessary to assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will. . . . Only endless progress from lower to higher stages of moral perfection is possible to a rational but finite being.7

Much the same story surely holds on the side of the cognitive perfecting of man’s knowledge. Here, comparable regulative demands are a work governing the practical venture of inquiry, urging us to the ever fuller realization of the potentialities of the human intellect. The discontent of reason is a noble discontent. The scientific project is a venture in self-transcendence; one of the strongest motivations of scientific work is the urge to go beyond

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present science—to “advance the frontiers.” Man’s commitment to an ideal of reason in his pursuit of an unattainable systematic completeness is the epistemic counterpart of our commitment to moral ideals. It reflects a striving toward the rational that is all the more noble because it is not finally attainable. If the work of inquiring reason in the sphere of natural science were completable, this would be something utterly tragic for us. Ideal science is not something we have in hand here and now. Nor is it something toward which we are moving along the asymptotic and approximative lines envisaged by Peirce.8 Existing science does not and never will embody perfection. The cognitive ideals of completeness, unity, consistency, and definitive finality represent an aspiration rather than a coming reality, an idealized telos rather than a realizable condition of things. Perfected science lies outside history as a useful contrast-case that cannot be secured in this imperfect world. The idea of “perfected science” is that focus imaginarius whose pursuit canalizes and structures out inquiry. It represents the ultimate telos of inquiry, the idealized destination of a journey in which we are still and indeed are ever engaged, a grail of sorts that we can pursue but not possess. The ideal of perfection thus serves a fundamentally regulative role to mark the fact that actuality falls short of our cognitive aspirations. It marks a contrast that regulates how we do and must view our claims, playing a rile akin to that of the functionary who reminded the Roman emperor of his mortality in reminding us that our pretensions are always vulnerable. Contemplation of this idea reminds us that the human condition is suspended between the reality of imperfect achievement and the ideal of an unattainable perfection. In abandoning this conception—in rejecting the idea of an “ideal science” that alone can properly be claimed to afford a definitive grasp of reality—we would abandon an idea that crucially regulates our view regarding the nature and status of the knowledge to which we lay claim. We would then no longer be constrained to characterize our view of things as merely ostensible and purported. We would be tempted to regard our picture of nature as real, authentic, and final in a manner that we at bottom realize it does not deserve. What is being maintained here is not the “completed/perfected science” is a senseless idea as such but that the idea of attaining it is senseless. It represents a theoretically realizable state whose actual realization we can never achieve. What is unrealizable is not perfection as such but the epistemic condition of recognizing its attainment. (Even if we arrive, we can never tell that we’re there!)

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Does this situation not destroy “the pursuit of perfection” as a meaningful endeavor? Here it is useful to heed the distinction between a goal and an ideal. A goal is something that we hope and expect to achieve. An ideal is merely a wistful inkling, a “wouldn’t it be nice is”—something that figures in the mode of aspiration rather than expectation. A goal motivates us in striving for its attainment; an ideal stimulates and encourages. And ideal does not provide us with a destination that we have any expectation of reaching; it is something for whose actual attainment we do not even hope. It is in this sense that “perfected science” is an ideal. Here, as elsewhere, we must reckon appropriately with the standard gap between aspiration and attainment. In the practical sphere—in craftsmanship, for example, or the cultivation of our health—we may strive for perfection, but cannot ever claim to attain it. And the situation in inquiry is exactly parallel with what we encounter in such other domains—ethics specifically included. The value of an ideal, even of one that is not realizable, lies not in the benefit of its attainment (obviously and ex hypothesi!) but in the benefits that accrue from its pursuit. The view that it is rational to pursue an aim only if we are in a position to achieve its attainment or approximation is mistaken; it can be perfectly valid (and entirely rational) if the indirect benefits of its pursuit and adoption are sufficient—if in striving after it, we realize relevant advantages to a substantial degree. An unattainable ideal can be enormously productive. And so, the legitimation of the ideas of “perfected science” lies in its facilitation of the ongoing evolution of inquiry. In this domain, we arrive at the perhaps odd-seeming posture of an invocation of practical utility for the validation of an ideal.9 8. SCIENCE AND REALITY We are now in a position to place into clearer relief one of the really big questions of philosophy: How close a relationship can we reasonably claim to exist between the answers we give to our factual questions at the level of scientific generality and precision and the reality they purport to depict? Scientific realism is the doctrine that science describes the real world: that the world actually is as science takes it to be, and that its furnishings are as science envisages them to be.10 If we want to know about the existence and the nature of heavy water or quarks, of man-eating mollusks or a luminiferous aether, we are referred to the natural sciences for the answers. On this realistic construction of scientific theorizing, the theoretical terms of natural science refer to real physical entities and describe their attributes

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and comportments. For example, the “electron spin” of atomic physics refers to a behavioral characteristic of a real, albeit unobservable, object— and electron. According to this currently fashionable theory, the declarations of science are—or will eventually become—factually true generalizations about the actual behavior of objects that exist in the world. Is this “convergent realism” a tenable position? It is quite clear that it is not. There is clearly insufficient warrant for and little plausibility to the claim that the world indeed is as our science claims it to be—that we’ve got matters altogether right, so that our science is correct science and offers the definitive “last word” on the issues. We really cannot reasonably suppose that science as it now stands affords the real truth as regards its creatures-of-theory. One of the clearest lessons of the history of science is that where scientific knowledge is concerned, further discovery does not just supplement but generally emends our prior information. Accordingly, we have little alternative but to take the humbling view that the incompleteness of our purported knowledge about the world entails its potential incorrectness as well. It is now a matter not simply of gaps in the structure of our knowledge, or errors of omission. There is no realistic alternative but to suppose that we face a situation of real flaws as well, of errors of commission. This aspect of the matter endows incompleteness with an import far graver than meets the eye on first view.11 Realism equates the paraphernalia of natural science with the domain of what actually exists. But this equation would work only if science, as it stands, has actually “got it right.” And this is something we are surely not inclined—and certainly no entitled—to claim. We must recognize that the deliverances of science are bound to a methodology of theoretical triangulations from the data which binds them inseparably to the “state-of-the-art” of technological sophistication in data acquisition and handling. The supposition that the theoretical commitments of our science actually describe the world is viable only if made provisionally, in the spirit of “doing the best we can now do, in the current state-of-the-art” and giving our best estimate of the matter. The step of reification is always to be taken qualifiedly, subject to a mental reservation of presumptive revisability. We do and must recognize that we cannot blithely equate our theories with the truth. We do and must realize that the declarations of science are inherently fallible and that we can only “accept” them with a certain tentatively, subject to a clear realization that they may need to be corrected or even abandoned.

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These considerations must inevitably constrain and condition our attitude toward the natural mechanisms envisaged in the science of the day. We certainly do not—or should not—want to reify (hypostasize) the “theoretical entities” of current science, to say flatly and unqualifiedly that the contrivances of our present-day science correctly depict the furniture of the real world. We do not—or at any rate, given the realities of the case, should not—want to adopt categorically the ontological implications of scientific theorizing in just exactly the state-of-the-art configurations presently in hand. Scientific fallibilism precludes the claim that what we purport to be scientific knowledge is in fact real knowledge, and accordingly blocks the path to a scientific realism that maintains that the furnishings of the real world are exactly as our science states them to be. Scientific theorizing is always inconclusive. Convergent scientific realism of the Peircean type, which pivots on the assumption of an ultimately complete and correct scientific theory (let alone those stronger versions of realism that hinge on our ability to arrive at recognizably true scientific theories), is in deep difficulty. For we have little choice but to deem science’s grasps or “the real truth of things” as both tentative and imperfect. According to one expositor, the scientific realist “maintains that if a theory has scientific merit, then we are thereby justified in concluding that . . . the theoretical entities characterized by the theory really do exist.”12 But this sort of position encounters insuperable difficulties. Phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous aether all had scientific merit in their day, but this did not establish their existence. Why, then, should things be all that different with us? Why should our “scientific merit” now suddenly assure actual existence? What matters for real existence is clearly (and only) the issue of truth itself, and not the issue of what is thought to be true at some particular stage of scientific history. And here problems arise. For its changeability is a fact about science that is as inductively well-established as any theory of science itself. Science is not a static system but a dynamic process. We must accordingly maintain a clear distinction between our conception of reality and reality as it really is. Given the equation: Our (conception of) reality = the condition of things as seen from the standpoint of “our putative truth” (= the truth as we see it from the vantage point of the science of the day)

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We realize full well that there is little justification for holding that our present-day science indeed describes reality and depicts the world as it really is. In our heart of hearts, then, our attitude toward our science is one of guarded affirmation. We realize that there is a decisive difference between what science accomplishes and what it endeavors to accomplish. The world that we describe is one thing, the world as we describe it is another, and they would coincide only if our descriptions were totally correct—something that we are certainly not in a position to claim. The world-as-known is a thing of our contrivance, and artifact we devise on our own terms. Even if the “data” uniquely determined a corresponding picture of reality, and did not underdetermine the theoretical constructions we base upon them (as they always to), the fact remains that altered circumstances lead to altered bodies of “data.” Our recognition of the fact that the worldpicture of science is ever-changing blocks our taking the view that it is ever correct. Accordingly, we cannot say that the world is such that the paraphernalia of our science actually exist as such. Given the necessity of recognizing the claims of our science to be tentative and provisional, one cannot justifiably take the stance that it depicts reality. At best, one can say that it affords an estimate of it, an estimate that will presumably stand in need of eventual revision and whose creatures-of-theory may in the final analysis not be real at all. This feature of science must crucially constrain our attitude toward its deliverances. Depiction is in this regard a matter of intent rather than one of accomplishment. Correctness in the characterization of nature is achieved not by our science but only by perfected or ideal science—only by that (ineradicably hypothetical!) state of science in which the cognitive goals of the scientific enterprise are fully and definitively realized. There is no plausible alternative to the view that reality is depicted by ideal (or perfected or “complete”) science, and not by the real science of the day. But, of course, it is this latter science that is the only one we’ve actually got— now or ever. A viable scientific realism must therefore turn not on what our science takes the world to be like but on what ideal or perfected science takes the world to be like. The thesis that “science describes the real world” must be looked upon as a matter of intent rather than as an accomplished fact, of aspiration rather than achievement, of the ideal rather than the real state of things. Scientific realism is a viable position only with respect to that idealized science which, as we full well realize, we do not now have— regardless of the “now” at issue. We cannot justifiably be scientific real-

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ists. Or rather, ironically, we can be so only in an idealistic manner— namely, with respect to an “ideal science” that we can never actually claim to possess. The posture of scientific realism—at any rate, or a duly qualified sort— is nevertheless built into the very goal-structure of science. The characteristic task of science, the definitive mission of the enterprise, is to respond to our basic interest in getting the best answers we can to our questions about the world. On the traditional view of the matter, its questionresolving concern is the raison d’être of the project—to celebrate any final victories. it is thus useful to draw a clear distinction between a realism of intent and a realism of achievement. We are certainly not in a position to claim that science as we have it achieves a characterization of reality. Still, science remains unabashedly realistic in intent or aspiration. Its aim is unquestionably to answer our questions about the world correctly and to describe the world “as it actually is.” The orientation of science is factual and objective: it is concerned with establishing the true facts about the real world. The theories of physics purport to describe the actual operation of real entities; those Nobel prizes awarded for discovering the electron, the neutron, the pi meson, and anti-proton, the quark, and so on, we intended to recognize an enlargement of our understanding of nature, not to reward the contriving of plausible fictions or the devising of clever ways of relating observations. The language of science is descriptively committal. At the semantical level of the content of its assertions, science makes firm claims as to how things stand in the world. A realism of intent or aspiration is built into science because of the genesis of its questions. The factually descriptive status of science is ultimately grounded in just this erotetic continuity of its issues with those of “prescientific” everyday life. We begin at the prescientific level of the paradigmatic realities of our prosaic everyday-life experience—the things, occurrences, and processes of our everyday world. The very reason for being of our scientific paraphernalia is to resolve our questions about this real world of our everyday-life experience. Given that the teleology of the scientific enterprise roots in the “real world” that provides the stage of our being and action, we are committed within its framework, to take the realistic view of its mechanisms. Natural science does not address itself to some world-abstracted realm of its own. Its concern is with this familiar “real world” of ours in which we live and breathe and have our being—however differently science may characterize it. While science may fall short in performance, nevertheless in aspiration and endeavor it is

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unequivocally committed to the project of modeling “the real world,” for in this way alone could it realize its constituting mandate of answering our questions as to how things work in the world. Scientific realism skates along a thin border between patent falsity and triviality. Viewed as the doctrine that science indeed describes reality, it is utterly untenable; but viewed as the doctrine that science seeks to describe reality, it is virtually a truism. For there is no way of sidestepping the conditional thesis: If a scientific theory regarding heavy water or electrons of quarks or whatever is correct—if it were indeed to be true—then its subject materials would exist in the manner the theory envisages and would have the properties the theory attributes to them: the theory, that is, would afford descriptively correct information about the world.

But this conditional relationship reflects what is, in the final analysis, less a profound fact about the nature of science than a near truism about the nature of truth as adequation ad rem. The fact remains that “our reality”— reality as we conceive it to be—goes no further than to represent our best estimate of what reality is like. When we look to WHAT science declares, to the aggregate content and substance of its declarations, we see that these declarations are realistic in intent, that they purport to describe the world as it really is. But when we look to HOW science makes its declarations and note the tentativity and provisionally with which they are offered and accepted, we recognize that this realism is on an abridged and qualified sort—that we are not prepared to claim that this is how matters actually stand in the real world. At the level of generality and precision at issue in the themes of natural science, we are not now—or ever—entitled to lay claim to the scientific truth as such but only to the scientific truth as we and our contemporaries see it. Realism prevails with respect to the language of science (that is, the asserted content of its declarations); but it should be abandoned with respect to the status of science (that is, the ultimate tenability or correctness of these assertions). What science says is descriptively committal in making claims regarding “the real world,” but the tone of voice in which it proffers these claims is (or should be) provisional and tentative. Our position, then, is one not of skepticism but of realism—in two senses: (1) it is realistic about our capabilities of recognizing that here, as elsewhere, we are dealing with the efforts of an imperfect creature to do the best it can in the circumstances; and (2) it recognizes the mind-

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transcendent reality of a “real world” that our own best efforts in the cognitive sphere can only manage to domesticate rather imperfectly. We do, and always must, recognize that no matter how far we manage to extend the frontiers of natural science, there is more to be done. Within a setting of vast complexity, reality outruns our cognitive reach; there is more to this complex world of ours than lies—now or ever—within our ken.13 NOTES 1

The author’s Cognitive Systematization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) deals with these matters.

2

Note that this is independent of the question “Would we ever want to do so?” Do we ever want to answer all those predictive questions about ourselves and our environment, or are we more comfortable in the condition in which “ignorance is bliss”?

3

S. W. Hawking, “Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?” Physics Bulletin, vol. 32 (1981), pp. 15-17.

4

This sentiment was abroad among physicists of the fin de siècle era of 1890-1900. (See Lawrence Badash, “The Completeness of Nineteenth-Century Science,” Isis, vol. 63 [1972], pp. 48-58.) and such sentiments are coming back into fashion today. See Richard Feynmann, The Character of Physical Law, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965, p. 172. See also Gunther Stent, The Coming of the Golden Age, Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1969); and S. W. Hawkins, “Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?” Physics Bulletin, vol. 32, 1981, pp. 15-17.

5

See Eber Jeffrey, “Nothing Left to Invent,” Journal of the Patent Office Society, vol. 22 (July 1940), pp. 479-481.

6

This inference could only be made if we could move from a thesis of the format ~(r)(r S & r Ÿ p) to one of the format (r)(r S & r Ÿ ~p), where “Ÿ“ represents a grounding relationship of “furnishing a good reason” and p is, in this case, the particular thesis “S will at some point require drastic revision.” That is, the inference would go through only if the lack (in S) of a good reason for p were itself to assure the existence (in S) of a good reason for ~p. But the transition to this conclusion from the given premise would go through only if the former, antecedent fact itself constituted such a good reason that is, only if we have ~(r)(r S & r Ÿ p)Ÿ ~p. Thus, the inference would go through only if, by the contraposition, p Ÿ (r)(r S & r Ÿ p). This thesis claims that the vary truth of p will itself be a good reason to hold that S affords a good reason for p—in sum, that S is complete.

7

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 122 [Akad].

8

See the author’s Peirce’s Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978).

9

Note, however, that to say that some ideal can be legitimated by practical considerations is not to say that all ideals must be legitimated in this way.

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NOTES 10

For some recent discussions of scientific realism, see Wilfrid Sellars, Science Perception and Reality (London: Humanities Press, 1963); E. McKinnon, ed., The Problem of Scientific Realism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1972); Rom Harré, Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); and Frederick Suppe, ed., The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977).

11

Some of the issues of this discussion are developed at greater length in the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), Scientific Progress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), and Cognitive Systematization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).

12

Keith Lehrer, “Review of Science, Perception, and Reality by Wilfrid Sellars,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 63 (1966), pp. 269.

13

This chapter draws on the author’s Empirical Inquiry (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982).

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Part IV

METAPHYSICS

Introduction William Jaworski

R

escher’s metaphysics is wide-ranging and innovative. The chapters that follow display some of its major themes. These include a commitment to a metaphysics of experience similar to Kant’s transcendental idealism—a conceptual idealism that is nevertheless compatible with a causal materialism. They also include a functionalistic pragmatism which Rescher uses to defend a robust form of metaphysical realism, and which provides him with the resources to articulate a metaphysics of value. The latter provides a basis in turn for a metaphysics of moral value with a biological orientation similar in its outlines to Aristotle’s ethics. It also gives Rescher resources for answering what we might call the fundamental question of existence: Why is there something instead of nothing? Rescher endorses an optimalist answer along Leibnizian lines: There is something instead of nothing, he claims, because that is for the best. Unlike Leibniz, however, Rescher thinks that what is best can be reckoned in purely naturalistic terms. Rescher’s optimalism is compatible with theism, but it is not committed to theism as Leibniz’s optimalism is. Finally, Rescher’s metaphysics includes a sober account of modal discourse that avoids the ontological extravagances as well as the philosophical problems attending many accounts of possible worlds. In what follows I will try to provide some orientation to Rescher’s rich and detailed discussion of these points by sketching its main contours. Rescher’s metaphysical realism comprises two ideas: the idea that there is an objective, mind-independent world, and the idea that we can have knowledge of that world. To support his realism Rescher employs a broadly Kantian strategy. Where Kant appeals to a notion of experience, however, Rescher appeals to a notion of practice. Metaphysical realism, he argues, is a precondition for the existence of cognitive practices such as inquiry, communication, and evaluation. There can be such a thing as empirical inquiry, for instance, only if there is a mind-independent reality that cooperates in certain ways with our inductive practices. We can make

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

sense of our scientific practice as a process that yields knowledge of the world, for instance, only if we presuppose that there is a world, and that certain “ampliative” modes of inference are legitimate: that subjective phenomena give us some (albeit defeasible) information about objective realities, that particular cases give us some (albeit incomplete) information about universal conditions, an so on. Scientific practice is made possible by a commitment to metaphysical realism. The same is true, Rescher argues, about intersubjective communication, evaluation, and the other cognitive practices that depend on the distinction between truth and falsity, the notion of truth as agreement with reality, the distinction between reality and appearance, and the possibility of error. All of these are made possible by a tacit endorsement of metaphysical realism. According to Rescher, when we examine the ways metaphysical realism is implicated in our cognitive practices, it becomes apparent that it is not something we discover, but something we presuppose and that we must presuppose if we are to engage in the cognitive and communicative practices we do. Moreover, Rescher argues, we have no choice but to engage in such practices. Creatures like us have no other modus operandi and can live no life that holds more promise than a life that seeks good reasons for thinking and acting in certain ways, and that means a life that involves cognitive practices. Engaging in rational inquiry, communication, and other cognitive practices is something that is for us unavoidable, and for that reason in the absence of something better we have no choice but to embrace metaphysical realism. Rescher’s approach to metaphysical realism stands opposed to a familiar type of skepticism. Very roughly the skeptic assumes that belief in an objective world can be warranted only by appeal to rational inquiry, and then argues on broadly Humean grounds that rational inquiry cannot warrant this belief because it already presupposes it. Rescher is free to agree that rational inquiry cannot warrant its own starting points in the way it warrants, say, the acceptance of empirical results by means of induction. But he rejects the idea that the methods of rational inquiry are as limited in scope and variety as the skeptic conceives them to be. When it comes to metaphysical realism, something that is, to use Kant’s expression, a condition for the very possibility of engaging in the cognitive practices we do (including, importantly, the practice of formulating skeptical arguments), our endorsement of it is ultimately warranted not by some process internal to the inquiry it enables—at least not by scientific induction or similar

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process of the sort the skeptic has in mind. Our endorsement of it is instead warranted by the success of the practices it makes possible. According to Rescher, metaphysical realism not only enables us to engage in cognitive practices, it is ultimately vindicated by their results. The results in question are both practical and theoretical. On the practical side we develop a picture of the world that enables us to operate effectively in it: we might think here of the technological advances that have accompanied the growth of scientific knowledge. On the theoretical side, the picture we develop enables us to predict and control natural occurrences, and it also enables us to explain why creatures like us with our particular cognitive resources and modus operandi would be able to develop a picture of the world and our place in it that was more or less accurate. Metaphysical realism is thus warranted in a twofold way: first, it enables rational inquiry; second, it is justified by its success. Rescher refers to this second point as retrojustification. The success of an inquiry based on certain assumptions enables us to assert with hindsight that those assumptions were the right ones to make. Hence, the success of our cognitive endeavors—of science, of communication, and so forth—vindicates the realist presupposition. Rescher’s approach to metaphysical realism is an expression of his more general commitment to pragmatic criteria of justification and what he calls “functionalistic pragmatism.” According to Rescher, we are purposive animals. We do things in order to achieve certain ends: We have laws to establish and endorse rules of conduct; we construct ethical systems to guide behavior in ways that are conducive to living well; we engage in inquiry to remove doubt, and so on. Theorizing is ultimately something we do, a process that aims among other things at answering various questions we have. As a result, we can evaluate theorizing according to the same sort of criteria we use to evaluate other goal-directed processes: the criteria of efficacy and efficiency: whether something achieves its goals and whether (all things being equal) it does so in the most efficient and economical way. According to Rescher these criteria can be brought to bear on the evaluation on an enormous variety of procedures and processes: theoretical, legal, and moral ones included. Functionalistic pragmatism fits hand-in-glove with a theory of rationality since rational beings will prefer (all things being equal) those methods and procedures which are most effective at achieving their ends and which achieve those ends in the most efficient ways. This connection with rationality might suggest a stereotype of pragmatism as a crass utilitarian doc-

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trine that sees reason as a mere tool for calculating means to ends but that pays no heed to the evaluation of ends themselves. Hume endorsed a theory of rationality of this sort. Reason, he said, was the slave of the passions. The latter furnish us with ends, and to those ends reason merely reckons the means. Consequently, Hume claimed, “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”1But Rescher argues against this conception of rationality and articulates an alternative. Reason, he says, has two aspects: an instrumental aspect and an axiological one. The former aspect concerns the calculation of means to ends, as Hume thought, but the latter concerns the evaluation of ends themselves. Clearly if we adopt inappropriate ends; if, for instance, we pursue an end in a way that outstrips its true worth, we cannot lay claim to being fully rational. In addition, Rescher reminds us, ends often concern values, and values are not tastes. Tastes do not admit of rational evaluation; they are unreasoned preferences. Values on the other hand have an instrumental aspect; they serve to guide and direct behavior. As a result they admit of functionalistic evaluation. Values that direct us to pursue ends that are clearly not in our best interests or that do not satisfy our real needs are not values it is rational for us to adopt. This axiological component of reason provides Rescher with a basis for articulating a metaphysics for moral evaluation. Like Kant’s metaphysics of morals, Rescher’s is based on the requirements of rationality. But unlike Kant’s metaphysics of morals and like Aristotle’s, Rescher’s account has a biological orientation that grounds evaluation in an account of human flourishing. Rescher talks about the notion of what is in our best interests in a twofold way: in terms of the conditions that are necessary for our being, and in terms of the conditions that are necessary for our well-being. Human life involves a manifold of processes, he says. Some of these are chosen; they mark the kinds of behaviors we call “wants,” “wishes,,” “desires,” and so on. But some are not chosen; they mark genuine needs, determined in large part by our biological heritage. Because we are animals with a particular evolutionary provenance there are certain things we need in order to live such as air, food, and shelter, and there are also certain things we need in order to live well: self-respect, companionship, a sense of belonging, and so on. These needs provide an important part of the basis for assessing what is or is not in our best interests. Like Aristotle, then, and unlike Kant, Rescher’s metaphysics of moral evaluation has a biological orientation that centers on the notion of specifically human agents as opposed to rational agents in general. And again,

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like Aristotle, Rescher looks to ground evaluation in the requirements enddirected behavior must satisfy if it is to achieve the goal of human flourishing. Rescher’s metaphysics of experience, on the other hand, is very similar to Kant’s. He endorses a type of idealism—what he calls conceptual idealism in contrast to the ontological idealism associated with philosophers like Berkeley. Conceptual idealism is not the claim that everything is mental, or that the mind generates or constitutes everything that exists. It is not a causal claim. It is instead the claim that our experience of reality is minddependent. It claims that the basic categories in terms of which we describe and explain the physical world involve an implicit reference to mental operations. More precisely, it claims that the basic predicates and terms we use to describe the world express relations, and each of these relations has some aspect of the mind as one of its terms. Consider an analogy. Artifacts cannot be defined apart from the purposive activities in which they are involved, activities which themselves involve mental operations. Books, for instance, cannot be defined apart from activities such as reading and writing—activities involving mental operations. According to Rescher all the concepts we use to understand the world are analogous to the concept of a book; all of them advert in some way to the operations of mind. Consider, for instance, basic metaphysical notions such as the notion of particularity. That notion adverts to the activity of identifying, a mental operation. Consider likewise basic physical notions such as the notion of spacetime. It involves the operation of locating, another mental operation. Mental operations of this sort are built into the very concepts we use to understand the world; they constitute our very idea of physical reality. Conceptual idealism claims, then, not that the mind is a causal source of the world, but that the mind provides part of the basic interpretative mechanism whereby we experience and understand the world. Conceptual idealism does not deny that reality is mind-independent in the sense that the basic furniture of the universe might remain unchanged if beings with minds had never existed. The world might be mind-independent in a causal sense, Rescher argues, but it is not mind-independent in a conceptual sense. Consider: what exactly would remain unchanged in a world without minds. Would, for instance, roses exist? Consider the various features we attribute to roses, especially the ones that categorize something as a rose—its smell, color, size and shape. The concepts of all of these features advert in some way to mental operations such as identifying, classifying, and measuring. Take away those features, and what is left? Nothing

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that could be classified as a rose surely, for being a rose depends on having features of the aforementioned sorts. Without those features, ones defined in part by reference to mental operations, there is no longer any basis for categorizing something as a rose. Rescher doesn’t deny that there might be other ways of conceiving the world that are not mind-involving, but he does argue that there is no way of articulating such a conceptual scheme given that our own conceptual scheme is mind-involving. Any act of articulation requires the use of conceptual tools already at our disposal, and the only ones currently at our disposal are mind-involving. There is no way of articulating a conceptual scheme that transcends the limits of the scheme we work with in fact, and that means, then, there is no way of articulating a conceptual scheme that is not mind-involving. Importantly, conceptual idealism is compatible with causal materialism. The idea that our concepts of physical processes depend on mental operations is perfectly compatible with the idea that our mental operations depend causally on physical processes. Conceptual idealism is not an explanatory theory regarding the causal source of the mind, says Rescher; it is instead an analytic or hermeneutic theory regarding the basic categories in terms of which we understand the world. Conceptual idealism is thus officially neutral about physicalism, substance dualism, neutral monism, and other theories constituting philosophy of mind’s stock in trade—theories that are causal in the relevant sense. Rescher’s metaphysics also includes an account of modality that is sharply critical about the way many philosophers speak of possible worlds. He proposes an alternative semantics for modal discourse according to which talk of possible worlds represents a way of making assumptions and entertaining hypotheses. Real entities have clear principles of identity and individuation, Rescher argues, but possible worlds do not have clear principles of identity and individuation. There is no clear way of determining exactly what individuals or properties a given non-actual possible world has, he argues, for several reasons. We do not know enough, for instance, about the laws of nature and their interdependence to be able to conceive of what the world would be like if things were different in some respect. Likewise, we do not know enough about the kinds of antecedent conditions that would have to obtain in order for there to be individuals of different kinds—horses with wings, say, or dogs with horns. We do not even know enough about existing individuals to be able to specify the range of antecedent and other conditions that would have to obtain for a given existing in-

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dividual to have ended up in a different location or with different properties at a given time. For a world to qualify as real, these conditions would have to be fully determinate. In our talk of unactualized possibilities, however, most of these conditions remain indeterminate. When we engage in modal discourse, then, we articulate possible-world schemata; we do not postulate individualized possible worlds. Rescher’s account of modal discourse thus avoids hypostatizing possible worlds. As a result, he argues, it sidesteps the vexing ontological and epistemological problems that attend many forms of modal realism yet without evacuating modal discourse of its content. Rescher also sketches a strategy for answering what I called earlier ‘the fundamental question of existence’: Why is there something instead of nothing? In line with his functionalistic pragmatism, he defends an axiological approach along Leibnizian lines: There is something instead of nothing, he argues, because that is for the best. An answer along these lines appeals to what Rescher calls the Law of Optimality: whatever possibility is for the best is the possibility that is actualized—precisely because it is for the best. Rescher refers to an approach based on this principle as a type of optimalism. Optimalism claims that it is in the nature of things that the best possible alternative is realized. One advantage of optimalism is that the Law of Optimality is selfsubstantiating, a desirable feature in a first principle. A principle that could not be explained except by appeal to some further principle would make a poor candidate for a first principle since it could not lay claim to being foundational in its domain. If asked, however, why the Law of Optimality obtains, the optimalist can appeal to the Law itself: it obtains because that is for the best. This makes the Law of Optimality as good a candidate for being a first principle as any; it ends up being part of the very world order whose existence it explains. Applying the Law of Optimality to the prevailing world order requires something of a promissory note which Rescher describes as a “scientifically reputable” set of value parameters that are in some way physically relevant. With such a set of value parameters in hand, the optimalist can explain the existence of the world using the following line of reasoning: (i) whatever possibility is for the best is the possibility that is realized; (ii) the prevailing world order is the best that can be realized; therefore, (iii) the prevailing world order exists. Rescher defends optimalism against three competing approaches to the fundamental question of existence. First, he defends it against an approach

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that rejects the question on the grounds that it is ill-posed. Rescher shows that the arguments for this approach fail. Second, he defends optimalism against an approach that insists on a non-axiological answer to the question, one that appeals, for instance, to a notion of efficient causation. According to Rescher the question needn’t be taken to ask for a productive force or other causal factor. Causal explanation is one type of explanation, but it is not the only type. It is possible to explain the existence of something without identifying a cause that produces it. This is what the optimalist answer does. According to the optimalist, value operates on the range of logical possibilities not as an agent that produces the best alternative, but as a factor that constrains the range of possibilities so that only the best are available to be realized, and only the uniquely best is realized in fact. A constraint of this sort doesn’t require the postulation of a causal agent. By analogy, says Rescher, consider the operation of certain rules for English word formation. English allows double letters but not triple ones. This rule constrains the range of possible English words. It thereby explains why, for instance, ‘pussy’ is an English word but not ‘pusssy’, but it surely doesn’t cause this to be the case in the sense of having produced the double letter in ‘pussy’. To insist, as non-axiologists do, that an answer to the fundamental question of existence invokes a cause is to insist on a model of explanation the optimalist is not obliged to accept. Finally, Rescher defends the optimalist answer against what I will call an axiological supernaturalism which argues that there can be no value without a valuer—that an axiological answer to the fundamental question of existence must appeal to a supernatural source of value and/or purpose. Supernaturalism poses a serious challenge to Rescher’s optimalism because if it is right, the Law of Optimality is not self-substantiating. If value requires a valuer, then the Law of Optimality would have to be explained by appeal to some further principle positing a valuer such as God. Rescher argues, however, that the major premise of the supernaturalist argument is false. It assumes that values are analogous to purposes. A purpose must be someone’s purpose, and hence purposive explanations must appeal to the purposes of an agent. But values can be completely impersonal. They are less like purposes in this sense and more like facts. Something’s being a fact doesn’t depend on someone endorsing it; in the same way, says Rescher, something’s being valuable doesn’t depend on someone actually valuing it. To be valuable is to deserve to be prized, but that doesn’t mean anyone actually prizes it. Hence, according to Rescher, the supernaturalist

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argument fails: a commitment to axiology does not imply commitment to theology. Rescher’s optimalism does, however, imply a commitment to teleology since it implies that things tend toward optimality. But teleology in general does not require agents with purposes. In a way that is once again reminiscent of Aristotle, Rescher argues that there are natural end-directed processes that do not require conscious agency: homeostasis and heliotropism are just two examples.2 Further, Rescher argues that a naturalistic axiology is superior to the supernaturalist alternative for several reasons. It is, for instance, more economical. The supernaturalist adds a theological component to an account that is capable of standing on its own axiological feet. In addition the supernaturalist view is regressive from the standpoint of the history of science—a history in which God has been invoked with decreasing frequency to do increasingly little explanatory work. Moreover, it seems that supernaturalism inverts the natural order of explanation: it tries to explain what is better understood—the natural world—by appeal to what is not understand at all: God. Rescher’s axiology is not committed to theism, but it is not committed to atheism either. If axiology needn’t be grounded in theology, it remains compatible with theism, and indeed Rescher’s axiology would appear to be perfectly in harmony with theism since it is reasonable to suppose a divine creator would operate optimalistically. As with the other claims he advances, however, Rescher thinks the ultimate warrant for an axiological metaphysics along the lines he endorses is to be found its practical application—in the way it enables us to systematize our knowledge, in particular. This, he thinks, is something that will depend in the long run on the future progress of science. Rescher’s ideas have a lucidity and candor that is refreshing to read. Methodologically he is engaged in what Strawson calls descriptive metaphysics.3 He is most profound in articulating ideas that are integral to our intuitive pre-philosophical understanding of the world, but that are for various reasons difficult to articulate systematically. Rescher’s work thus strikes one as being highly insightful without being shocking or counterintuitive. It also presents a broad, systematic vision. In a profession whose practitioners increasingly operate with tight-angle shutters and zoom lenses, a philosopher with a panoramic view of a broad constellation of issues marks a refreshing deviation from the norm.

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NOTES 1

Treatise on Human Nature Book II, Part iii, Section 3.

2

Aristotle argues that not all teleology involves deliberation and choice. His examples include web-building in spiders, nest-building in birds, and leaf-growing in plants (Physics ii.8: 199b20-33).

3

P. F. Strawson, Individuals, An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959), pp. 10-11.

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Chapter IV/1 PRAGMATIC REALISM: A PRACTICALISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM 1. REALISM IN ITS REGULATIVE/PRAGMATIC ASPECT

T

he ontological thesis that there indeed is a mind-independent physical reality to which our inquiries address themselves more or less adequately—and no doubt always imperfectly—is the key contention of realism. But on the present analysis, this basic realist has the epistemic status of a presuppositional postulate that is validated in the first instance by its functional utility and thereafter ultimately retrovalidated by the satisfactory theoretical and practical results of its implementation. Without a presuppositional commitment to objectivitywith its concomitant acceptance of a real world independent of ourselves that we share in commoninterpersonal communication and communal coordination would become impracticable. Realism, then, is not a factual discovery, but a functional postulate justified, in the first instance at any rate, by its practical utility or serviceability in the context of our cognitive and practical aims and purposes, seeing that if we did not take our experience to serve as an indication of facts about an objective order we would not be able to validate any objective claims whatsoever. Realism, so conceived, is a position to which we are initially led not by the push of evidence but by the pull of purpose. At bottom, a commitment to realism is an input into our investigation of nature rather than an output thereof. At bottom, it does not represent a discovered fact, but a methodological presupposition of our praxis in communication and inquiry; its status is not constitutive (fact-descriptive) but regulative (practicefacilitating). Its ultimate validation lies in its power to enable us effectively to accomplish essential objectives. Now insofar as ontological realism ultimately rests on such a pragmatic basis, it is not based on considerations of independent substantiating evi-

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dence about how things actually stand in the world, but rather on considering, as a matter of practical reasoning, how we do (and must) think ontologically about the world within the context of the projects to which we stand committed. Bearing this pragmatic perspective in mind, let us take a closer look at the issue of utility and ask: What can this postulation of a mindindependent reality actually do for us? The answer is straightforward. The assumption of a mind-independent reality is essential to the whole of our standard conceptual scheme relating to inquiry and communications. Without it, both the actual conduct and the rational legitimation of our communicative and investigative (evidential) practice would be destroyed. Much of what we do in this cognitive domain would not make sense if we did not subscribe to the conception of a mindindependent reality. To begin with, we indispensably require the notion of reality to operate the classical concept of truth as “agreement with reality” (adaequatio ad rem). Given that to assert a statement is to assert it as true—so that p iff it is true that p—the very idea of declaration with assertoric intent comes as to a (harmlessly minimalistic) version of realism. For once we abandon the concept of reality, the idea that in accepting a factual claim as true we become committed to how matters actually stand—“how it really is”—would also go by the board. The very semantics of our discourse constrain its commitment to realism; we have no alternative but to regard as real those states of affairs claimed by the contentions we are prepared to accept. Once we put a contention forward by way of serious assertion, we must view as real the states of affairs it purports, and must see its claims as facts. We need the notion of reality to operate the conception of truth. A factual statement on the order of “There are pi mesons” is true if and only if the world is such that pi mesons exist within it. By virtue of their very nature as truths, true statements must state facts: they state what really is so, which is exactly what it is to “characterize reality.” For the conceptions of truth and of reality come together in the notion of adaequatio ad rem—the venerable principle that to speak truly is to say how matters stand in reality, in that things actually are as we have said them to be. In the second place, the nihilistic denial that there is such a thing as reality would destroy once and for all the crucial Parmenidean divide between appearance and reality. And this would exact a fearful price from us: we would be reduced to talking only of what we (I, you, many of us) think to be so. The crucial contrast notion of the real truth would no longer be

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available: we would only be able to contrast our putative truths with those of others, but could no longer operate the classical distinction between the putative and the actual, between what people merely think to be so and what actually is so. We could not take the stance that, as the Aristotelian commentator Themistius put it, “that which exists does not conform to various opinions, but rather the correct opinions conform to that which exists.”1 The third consideration is the issue of cognitive coordination. Communication and inquiry, as we actually carry them on, are predicated on the fundamental idea of a real world of objective things, existing and functioning “in themselves,” without specific dependence on us and so equally accessible to others. Intersubjectively valid communication can only be based on common access to an objective order of things. The whole communicative project is predicated on a commitment to the idea that there is a realm of shared objects about which we as a community share questions and beliefs, and about which we ourselves as individuals presumably have only imperfect information that can be criticized and augmented by the efforts of others. This points to a fourth important consideration. 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. Inquiry and communication alike are geared to the conception of an objective world: a communally shared realm of things that exist strictly “on their own” comprising an enduring and independent realm within which and, more importantly, with reference to which inquiry proceeds. We could not proceed on the basis of the notion that inquiry estimates the character of the real if we were not prepared to presume or postulate a reality for these estimates to be estimates of. It would clearly be pointless to devise our characterizations of reality if we did not stand committed from the outset to the proposition that there is a reality to be characterized. The fifth factor implies a recourse to mind-independent reality which makes possible a “realistic” view of our knowledge as potentially flawed. A rejection of this commitment to reality an sich (or to the actual truth about it) exacts an unacceptable price. For in abandoning this commitment we also lost those regulative contrasts that canalize and condition our view of the nature of inquiry (and indeed shape our conception of this process as it stands within the framework of our conceptual scheme). We could no longer assert: “What we have there is good enough as far as it goes, but it

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is presumably not ‘the whole real truth’ of the matter.” The very conception of inquiry as we conceive it would have to be abandoned if the contract conceptions of “actual reality” and “the real truth” were no longer available. Without the conception of reality we could not think of our knowledge in the fallibilistic mode we actually use—as having provisional, tentative, improvable features that constitute a crucial part of the conceptual scheme within whose orbit we operate our concept of inquiry. After all, reality (on the traditional metaphysicians’ construction of the concept) is the condition of things answering to “the real truth”; it is the realm of what really is as it really is. The pivotal contrast is between “mere appearance” and “reality as such,” between “our picture of reality” and “reality itself,” between what actually is and what we merely think (believe, suppose, etc.) to be. And our allegiance to the conception of reality, and to this contrast that pivots upon it, root in the fallibilistic recognition that at the level of the detailed specifics of scientific theory, anything we presently hold to be the case may well turn out otherwise—indeed, certainly will do so if past experience gives any auguries for the future. Our commitment to the mind-independent reality of “the real world” stand together with our acknowledgement that, in principle, any or all of our present scientific ideas as to how things work in the world, at any present, may well prove to be untenable. Our conviction in a reality that lies beyond our imperfect understanding of it (in all the various senses of “lying beyond”) roots in our sense of the imperfections of our scientific worldpicture—its tentativity and potential fallibility. In abandoning our commitment to a mind-independent reality, we would lose the impetus to inquiry that lies at the core of the human condition. Sixthly and finally, we require the conception of reality in order to operate the causal model of inquiry about the real world. Our standard picture of man’s place in the scheme of things is predicated on the fundamental idea that there is a real world (however imperfectly our inquiry may characterize it) whose causal operations produce inter alia causal impacts upon us, providing the basis of our world-picture. Reality is viewed as the causal source and basis of the appearances, the originator and determiner of the phenomena of our cognitively relevant experience. “The real world” is seen as causally operative both in serving as the external moulder of thought and as constituting the ultimate arbiter of the adequacy of our theorizing.

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In summary, then, we need that postulate of an objective order of mindindependent reality for a cluster of interrelated versions including at least the following six. • To preserve the distinction between true and false with respect to factual matters and to operate the idea of truth as agreement with reality. • To preserve the distinction between appearance and reality, between our picture of reality and reality itself. • To serve as a basis for intersubjective communication. • To furnish the basis for a shared project of communal inquiry. • To provide for the fallibilistic view of human knowledge. • To sustain the causal mode of learning and inquiry and to serve as basis for the objectivity of experience. What is at stake here is thus ultimately a principle of practice—though, to be sure, it is thought-practice that is at issue. Accordingly, the justification for this fundamental presupposition of objectivity is not evidential at all; postulates as such are not based on evidence. Rather, it is practical and instrumentalistic—pragmatic, in short. It is procedural or functional efficacy that is the crux. The justification of this postulate lies in its utility: we need it to operate our conceptual scheme. We could not form our existing conceptions of truth, fact, inquiry, and communication without presupposing the independent reality of an external world. In its absence, we simply could not think of experience and inquiry as we actually do. (What we have here is a “transcendental argument” of sorts, namely one that from the character of our conceptual scheme to the unavoidability of accepting its inherent presuppositions.) A commitment to the mind-independent reality of “the real world” stands alongside our fallibilistic acknowledgment that in principle any or all of our present scientific ideas as to how things work in the world, at any present, may well prove to be untenable. Our conviction of a reality that lies beyond our imperfect understanding of it (in all the various senses of “lying beyond”) roots in our sense of the imperfections of our scientific world-picture—its tentativity and potential fallibility. In abandoning this

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commitment to a mind-independent reality, we would lose the impetus of inquiry. And yet realism’s epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery, but that of a presupposition whose ultimate justification is a transcendental argument from the very possibility of the projects of communication and inquiry as we standardly conduct them. The presuppositional conception of a mind-independent reality accordingly plays a central and indispensable role in our thought about matters cognition. It is seen as the epistemological object of veridical cognition, in the context of the contrast between “the real” and its “merely phenomenal” appearances. Moreover, it is seen as the target of telos of the truthestimation process at issue in inquiry, providing for a common focus in communication and communal inquiry. (The “real world” thus constitutes the object of our cognitive endeavors in both senses of this term—the objective at which they are directed and the purpose for which they are exerted.) And, further, reality is also to be seen as the ontological source of cognitive endeavors, affording the existential matrix in which we live and move and have our being—and whose impact upon us is the prime mover for our cognitive efforts. All of these facets of the concept of reality are integrated and unified in the classical doctrine of truth as it corresponds to fact (adaequatio ad rem), a doctrine that not merely invites but indeed requires a commitment to mind-independent reality as constituting at once the framework and the object of our cognitive endeavors in science. And their ultimate ratification lies in their role as indispensable presuppositions for our unavoidable practices. *** One can of course abandon realism and accept the negativities surveyed above. But doing so exacts a fearful price.2 For as these deliberations indicate, the conception of a mindindependent reality plays a central and indispensable role in our thinking with respect to matters of language and cognition. In communication and inquiry alike we seek to offer answers to our questions about how matters stand in this “objective realm.” It is seen as the epistemological object of veridical cognition, in the context of the contrast between “the real” and its “merely phenomenal” appearances. Again, it is seen as the target of telos of the truth-estimation process at issue in inquiry, providing for a common focus in communication and communal inquiry. (The “real world” thus constitutes the “object” of our cognitive endeavors in both senses of this

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term—the objective at which they are directed and the purpose for which they are exerted.) And further, reality is seen as the ontological source of cognitive endeavors, affording the existential matrix in which we move and have our being, and whose impact upon us is the prime mover for our cognitive efforts. All of these facets of the concept of reality are integrated and unified in the classical doctrine of truth as it corresponds to fact (adaequatio ad rem), a doctrine that only makes sense in the setting of a commitment to mind-independent reality. And in the face of the evident utility of this conception in matters of knowledge and action alike, there is no good reason for paying the price of its abandonment. However, the justification for this fundamental presupposition of objectivity is not evidential at all; postulates are not based on evidence. Rather, it is functional. We need this postulate to operate our conceptual scheme. The justification of this postulate lies in its utility. We could not form our existing conceptions of truth, fact, inquiry, and communication without presupposing the independent reality of an external world. We simply could not think of experience and inquiry as we do. (What we have here is a “transcendental argument” of sorts from the character of our conceptual scheme to the acceptability of its inherent presuppositions.) The primary validation of that crucial objectivity postulate roots in its basic functional utility in relation to our cognitive aims. Let us explore this aspect of the matter more fully. 2. REALISM AS A REQUISITE OF COMMUNICATION AND INQUIRY The information that we may have about a thing, be it real or presumptive, is always just that—information we ourselves purport and lay claim to. And we recognize that this varies from person to person. Our attempts at communication and inquiry are thus undergirded by an informationtranscending position—the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of objectively existing things, a world of “real things” amongst which we live and into which we inquire but about which we do and must presume ourselves to have only imperfect information at any and every particular stage of the cognitive venture. This realism is clearly not something that we learn from the course of experience. The “facts of experience” can never reveal it to us. It is something we postulate or presuppose. Its epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery, but that of a pre-

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supposition whose ultimate justification is a transcendental argument from the very possibility of the projects of communication and inquiry as we standardly conduct them. Our commitment to an objective reality that lies behind the data at hand is indispensably demanded by any step into the domain of the publicly accessible objects essential to communal inquiry and interpersonal communication about a shared world. We could not establish communicative contact about a common objective item of discussion if our discourse were geared to the substance of our own idiosyncratic ideas and conceptions. But the objectivity at issue in our communicative discourse is a matter of its status rather than one of its content. For the substantive content of a claim about the world in no way tells us whether it is factual or fictional. This is something that we have to determine from its context: it is a matter of the frame, not of the canvas. The fact-oriented basis of our informationtransmitting exchanges is provided for a priori by a conventionalized intention to talk about “the real world.” This intention to take real objects to be at issue, objects as they really are, our potentially idiosyncratic conceptions of them quite aside, is fundamental because it is overriding—that is, it overrides all of our other intentions when we enter upon the communicative venture. Without this conventionalized intention we should not be able to convey information—or misinformation—to one another about a shared “objective” world. We are able to say something about the (real) moon or the (real) Sphinx because of our submission to a fundamental communicative convention or “social contract” to the effect that we intend (“mean”) to talk about the very thing itself as it “really” is—our own private conception of it notwithstanding. We adopt the standard policy in communicative discourse of letting “the language we use,” rather than whatever specific ideas and conceptions we may actually “have in mind” on particular occasions, be the decisive factor with regard to the things at issue in our discussions. When I speak about the Sphinx (even though I do so on the basis of my own conceivably strange conception of what is involved here), I will be discussing “the real Sphinx” in virtue of the basic conventionalized intention governing our use of referring terms. This fundamental intention of objectification, the intention to discuss “the moon itself” regardless of how untenable one’s own ideas about it may eventually prove to be is a basic precondition of the very possibility of communication. It is crucial to the communicative enterprise to take an egocentrism-avoiding stance that rejects all claims to a privileged status for

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our own conception of things. In the interests of this stance we are prepared to “discount any misconceptions” (our own included) about things over a very wide range indeed—that we are committed to the stance that factual disagreements as to the character of things are communicatively irrelevant within very broad limits. The incorrectness of conceptions is venial. If we were to set up our own conception of things as somehow definitive and decisive, we would at once erect a barrier not only to further inquiry but—no less importantly—to the prospect of successful communication with one another. Communication could then only proceed with the wisdom of hindsight—at the end of a long process of tentative checks. Communicative contact would be realized only in the implausible case where extensive exchange indicated retrospectively that there had been an identity of conceptions all along. And we would always stand on very shaky ground. For no matter how far we push our investigation into the issue of an identity of conceptions, the prospect of a divergence lying just around the corner—waiting to be discovered if only we pursued the matter just a but further—can never be precluded. One could never advance the issue of the identity of focus past the status of a more of less well-grounded assumption. And then any so-called communication would no longer be an exchange of information but a tissue of frail conjectures. The communicative enterprise would become a vast inductive project—a complex exercise in theory-building, leading tentatively and provisionally toward something which, in fact, the imputations groundwork of our language enables us to presuppose from the very outset. Communication requires not only common concepts but common topics, interpersonally shared items of consideration, a common world constituted by the self-subsistently real items basic to shared experience. The factor of objectivity reflects our basic commitment to a communally available world as the common property of communicators. Such a commitment involves more than merely de facto intersubjective agreement. For such agreement is bound to be a matter of a posteriori discovery, while our view of the nature of things puts “the real world” on a necessary and a priori basis. This stance roots in the fundamental convention of a shared social insistence on communicating—the commitment to an objective world of real things affords the crucially requisite common focus needed for any genuine communication. What links my discourse topically with that of my interlocutors is our common subscription to the a priori presumption (a defeasible presumption, to be sure) that we are both talking about a shared thing,

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our own possible misconceptions of it notwithstanding. This means that no matter how extensively we may change our minds about the nature of a thing or type of thing at issue, we are still dealing with one common item. It assures reidentification across theories and belief-systems. Our very conception of a real thing is such that it provides a fixed point, a stable center around which interpersonal communication revolves, an invariant focus of potentially diverse conceptions. What is to be determinative, decisive, definitive, etc., of the things at issue in my discourse is not my conception, or yours, or indeed anyone’s conception at all. The conventionalized intention discussed means that a coordination of conceptions is not decisive for the possibility of communication. Your statements about a thing will convey something to me even if my conception of it is altogether different from yours. To communicate we need not take ourselves to share views of the world, but only take the stance that we share the world that is being discussed. The commitment to objectivity is basic to any prospect of our discourse with one another about a shared world of “real things,” to which none of us is in a position to claim privileged access. This commitment establishes a need to “distance” ourselves from things, that is, to recognize the prospect of a discrepancy between our (potentially idiosyncratic) conceptions of things and the true character of these things as they exist objectively in “the real world.” The ever-present contrast between “the thing as we view it” and “the thing as it is” is the mechanism by which this crucially important distancing is accomplished. And maintaining this stance means that we are never entitled to claim to have exhausted a thing au fond in cognitive regard, to have managed to bring it wholly and fully within our epistemic grasp. For to make this claim would, in effect, be to identify “the thing at issue” purely in terms of “our own conception of it,” an identification which would effectively remove the former item (the thing itself) from the stage of consideration as an independent entity in its own right, by endowing our conception with decisively determinative force. And this would lead straightaway to the unacceptable result of a cognitive solipsism that would preclude reference to intersubjectively identifiable particulars, and would thereby block the possibility of interpersonal communication and communal inquiry. Any pretensions to the predominance, let alone the correctness, of our own conceptions regarding the realm of the real must be set aside in the context of communication. In communication regarding this we must be able to exchange information about them with our contemporaries and to

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transmit information about them to our successors. And we must be in a position to do this on the presumption that their conceptions of things are not only radically different from ours, but conceivably also rightly different. Thus, it is a crucial precondition of the possibility of successful communication about things that we must avoid laying any claim either to the completeness or even to the ultimate correctness of our own conceptions of any of the things at issue. This renders it critically important that (and understandable why) conceptions are not pivotal for communicative purposes. Our discourse reflects our conceptions and perhaps conveys them, but it is not substantively about them. What is crucial for communication, however, is the fundamental intention to deal with the objective order of this “real world.” If our assertoric commitments did not transcend the information we have on hand, we would never be able to “get in touch” with others about a shared objective world. No claim is made for the primacy of our own conceptions, for their correctness, or even for their mere agreement with those of others. The fundamental intention to discuss “the thing itself” predominates and overrides any mere dealing with the thing as we conceive it to be. Certainly, that reference to “objectively real things” at work in our discourse does not contemplate a peculiar sort of thing—a new ontological category of “things-in-themselves.” It is simply a shorthand formula for a certain communicative presumption or imputation rooted in an a priori commitment to the idea of a commonality of objective focus—a presumption that is allowed to stand unless and until circumstances arise to render this step untenable. How do we really know that Anaximander of Miletus was talking about our earth in his discussion in the sixth century BC? He is not here to reassure us. He did not leave elaborate discussions about his aims and purposes. How can we be so confident about what he meant in that strange talk about a slablike object suspended in equilibrium in the center of the cosmos? The answer is straightforward. That he is to be taken to mean that our earth is such an object is something that turns, in the final analysis, on two very general issues in which Anaximander himself plays little if any role: (1) our subscription to certain generalized principles of interpretation with respect to the Greek language; and (2) the conventionalized subscription by us and ascription to other languages users in general of certain fundamental communicative policies an intentions. In the face of appropriate functional equivalences we allow neither a difference in language nor a difference of “thought-worlds” to block an identity of reference.

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The realism at issue pertains to the fact that there is an objective reality and leaves for another occasion the issue of what it is like. We deliberately put the whole matter of conceptions aside—abstracting from the question of the agreement of my conception with yours, and all the more from the issue of which one of us has the right conception. This sort of epistemic humility is the price we pay for keeping the channels of communication open. Seen in this light, the key point may be put as follows: it is indeed a presupposition of effective communicative discourse about a thing that we purport (claim and intend) to make true statements about it. But for such discourse it is not required that we purport to have a true or even adequate conception of the thing at issue. On the contrary, we must deliberately abstain from any claim that our own conception is definitive if we are to engage successfully in profitable discourse with others. 3. THE UTILITARIAN IMPERATIVE But now consider the following objection: Let it be granted that this general approach makes sense—that the idea of a mind-independent reality is a presupposition basic to the conceptual framework that undergirds our project of inquiry and “knowledge” acquisition and communication. But why should one see this assumption as validated by its serviceability in this regard? After all, perhaps the entire project is simply unjustified. Consider the analogy of religion. God is essential to the project of religion and worship: the “external world” is essential to the project of inquiry and cognition. But perhaps those entire projects are simply inappropriate.

In countering this considered objection with respect to cognition, we must stress the inappropriateness of the analogy. For the religious project is optional, one could simply decline to enter in. But the cognitive project is not so easily evaded. We must act to live: must eat this or that, move here or there, do something or other. And, being the sort of creatures we are, our actions are guided by our beliefs. Is this substance edible? Is that place safe? Is that action goal-conducive? If we do not form views on these subjects and allow our actions to be guided by “knowledge”—or pretensions thereto—then there are but few alternatives (all duly noted and recommended by the skeptics of classical antiquity):

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—to follow custom and “do what is generally done”; —to follow instinct or “hunch”; —to follow our desires and the modes of “inclination”; —to be guided by clues, indications, and “probabilities.” But none of these noncognitive alternatives seem very promising, none have much appeal to a creature who demands good reasons for acting. (Thus even to begin to validate a reliance on probabilities we need facts.) The impetus to inquiry for knowledge-acquisition reflects the most practical of imperatives. Our need for intellectual accommodation in this world is no less pressing and no less practical than our need for physical accommodation. But in both cases, we do not want just some house or other, but one that is well built, that will not be blown down by the first wind that sweeps along. Skeptics from antiquity onward have always said, “Forget about those abstruse theoretical issues; focus on your practical needs.” They overlook the crucial fact that an intellectual accommodation to the world is itself one of our deepest practical needs—that in a position of ignorance or cognitive dissonance we cannot function satisfactorily. The project of communal inquiry is not optional—at any rate not for us humans. Its rationale lies in the most practical and prudent of considerations, since it is only by traveling the path of inquiry that we can arrive at the sorts of good reasons capable of meeting the demands of a “rational animal.” And given the mandatory nature of the cognitive project, we have no real choice but to “buy in” on its presuppositions. We thus arrive at an overall course of justificatory argumentation whose structure runs as follows: (1) We cannot survive and flourish in this world without effective action. (2) We cannot act effectively without rationally warranted confidence in our (putative) knowledge. (3) We cannot achieve confidence-inspiring knowledge without rational inquiry.

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(4) Commitment to a real world is an essential requisite for rational inquiry. Therefore: (5) Realism (i.e., commitment to a real world that is the object of our inquiries) is a rational imperative on the side of practical reason—a sine qua non for a rational creature like ourselves to survive and to flourish. Its justifactory rationale thus lies in effect in its being a situational imperative of our condition in the world’s scheme of things. Only by subscribing to that fundamental reality postulates can we take the sort of view of experience, inquiry, and communication that we in fact have. Without it, the entire conceptual framework of our thinking about the world and our place within it would come crashing down. As realists throughout the ages have rightly insisted, the utility of the conception of reality is such that even if reality were not there, we would have to invent it. 4. RETROJUSTIFICATION: THE WISDOM OF HINDSIGHT How can considerations of need and functional utility by themselves provide an adequate validation of authenticity? A “validation” in terms of functional utility establishes our claims to mind-independent reality not by the cognitive route of learning but by the pragmatic route of an eminently useful postulation. Crucial though this may be, it clearly cannot be the entire story. The consideration that we must proceed in the way of objectivitypresuming cognition as a matter of the functional requisites of our cognitive situation—seeing that otherwise there is just no alternative if our aims are to be attained and our needs and purposes served—stops well short of being totally satisfactory. It does not offer us any assurance that we actually will succeed in our endeavor if we do proceed in this way; it just has it that we will not if we do not. The issue of actual effectiveness remains untouched. And so a nagging doubt still remains which in the challenge: “Let us grant that this line of approach provides a cogent practical argument. All this shows is that realism is useful. But does that make it true? Is there any rational warrant for it over and above the mere fact of its utility?”

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To address this issue, we have to move beyond presupposed functional requisites to address the issue of actual effectiveness. We must now have recourse to the resources of actual experience. For what is learned by experience—and can only be learned in this way—is that in proceeding on this prejudgment our attempts do, by and large, work out pretty well vis-àvis the purposes we have in view for inquiry and communication. We want and need objective information about “the real world.” This, of course, is not to be had directly without the epistemic mediation of experience. And so we treat certain data as evidence—we extend “evidential credit” to them as it were. Through trial and error we learn that some of them do indeed deserve it, and then we proceed to extend to them greater weight—we “increase their credit limit” as it were and rely on them more extensively. And, of course, to use those data as evidence is to build up a picture of the world, a picture which shows, with the “wisdom of hindsight,” how appropriate it was for us to use those evidential data in the first place. To clarify the pragmatic rationale of realism, consider a cat-on-the-mat experience where “I take myself to be seeing a cat on the mat.” On its basis I would arrive quite unproblematically at the following contentions: • It seems plausible to suppose that there is a cat on the mat. • There is presumably a cat on the mat. In the circumstances to claim unqualified assurance that there indeed is a cat on the mat would be stretching matters too far. Classical skepticism is right in this, that there is a possibility of illusion or delusionthat something controversial might be being done with mirrors or puppets, etc. But the indicated pro-inclination toward the theses at issue is certainly warranted. Conclusiveness may be absent but plausibility is certainly there. Yet how is one to get beyond such tentativity? To step from that visual experience to an objective factual claim on the order of • There actually is a cat there. • There actually is a mat there. • The cat is actually emplaced on the mat.

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is a move that can be made—but not without further ado. Let us consider what sort of “further ado” is required here. The position at issue is a “direct realism” of sorts. The step from a sensory experience (“I take myself to be seeing a cat”) to an objective factual claim (“There is a cat over there and I am looking at it”) is operationally direct but epistemically mediated. And it is mediated not by an inference but by a policy, namely the policy of trusting one’s own senses. This policy itself is based neither on wishful thinking nor on arbitrary decisions: it emerges in the school of praxis from the consideration that a long course of experience has taught us that our senses generally guide us right—that the indications of visual experience, unlike, say, those of dream experience, generally provide reliable information that can be implemented in practice. But how would this business of policy validation from a body of experience work in practice? The concept of presumption is the key that unlocks this issue. The classical theories of perception from Descartes to the sense-datum theorists of the first half of the twentieth century all involve a common difficulty. For all of them saw a real and deep problem to be rooted in the question: Under what circumstances are our actual experiences genuinely veridical? In particular: which facts about the perceptual situation validate the move from “I (take myself to) see a cat on the mat” to “There is a cat on the mat”? How are we to monitor the appropriateness of the step from “perceptual experiences” to actual perceptions of real things-in-the-world, seeing that experience is by its very nature something personal and subjective.

The traditional theories of perception all face the roadblock of the problem: How do we get from here to there, from personal and subjective experience to warranted claims of objective fact? However, what all these theories ignore is the fact that in actual practice we operate within the setting of a presumption-based concept-scheme that reverses the burden of proof here: that our perceptions (and conceptions) are standardly treated as innocent until proven guilty. The whole course of relevant experience is such that the standing presumption is on their side. The indications of experience are taken as true provisionally—allowed to stand until such time (if ever) when concrete evidential counterindications come to view. Barring indications to the contrary, we can and do move immediately and unproblematically from “I take myself to be seeing a cat on the mat” to “There really is a cat on the mat and I actually see it there.”

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But what is at issue here is not an inference (or a deriving) from determinable facts but a mere presumption (or a taking). The transition from subjectivity to objectivity is automatic, though, to be sure, it is always provisional, that is, subject to the proviso that all goes as it ought. For unless and until something goes amiss—i.e., unless there is a mishap of some sort— those “subjective percepts” are standardly allowed to count as “objective facts.” To be sure, there is no prospect of making an inventory of the necessary conditions here. Life is too complex: neither in making assertions nor in driving an automobile can one provide a comprehensive advance survey of possible accidents and list all the things that can possibly go wrong. We can no more inventory all possible ways of epistemic mishaps that are in merely all possible ways of atomistic mishaps. But the key point is that the linkage between appearance and reality is neither conceptual nor causal: it is the product of a pragmatic policy in the management of information, a ground rule of presumption that governs our epistemic practice. With presumption we take to be so what we could not otherwise derive. This idea of such presumptive “taking” is a crucial aspect of our languagedeploying discursive practice. For presumptively justified beliefs are the raw materials of cognition. They represent contentions that—in the absence of preestablished counterindications—are acceptable to us “until further notice,” thus permitting us to make a start in the venture of cognitive justification without the benefit of pre-justified materials. They are defeasible all right, vulnerable to being overturned, but only by something else yet more secure some other preestablished conflicting consideration. They are entitled to remain in place until displaced by something better. Accordingly, their impetus averts the dire consequences that would ensue of any and every cogent process of rational deliberation-required inputs which themselves had to be authenticated by a prior process of rational deliberation—in which case the whole process could never get under way. The key consideration is that we must proceed in the way of objectivitypresuming cognition as a matter of the functional requisites of our situation because there is just no viable alternative if our aims are to be attained and our needs and purposes served, still stops short of being altogether conclusive. For it does not offer us any assurance that we will actually succeed in our endeavor if we do proceed in this way; it just has it that we will not if we do not. And so, the issue of actual effectiveness remains undecided and a nagging doubt still remains, one which roots in the challenge: “Let it be granted that this line of approach provides a cogent practical argument. All

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this shows only that realism is useful—perhaps so much so as to be effectively indispensable for us. But does that make it true? Is there any rational warrant for it over and above the mere fact of its utility?” Indispensability apart, then, what is it that justifies making presumptions, seeing that they are not established truths? The answer lies substantially in procedurally practical considerations. Presumptions arise in contexts where we have questions and need answers. It is a matter of faute de mieux, of this or nothing (or at any rate, nothing better). Presumption is a thought instrumentality that so functions as to make it possible for us to do the best we can in circumstances where something must be done. And so presumption affords yet another instance where practical considerations play a leading role on the stage of our cognitive and communicative practice. For presumption is, in the end, a practical device whose rationale of validation lies on the order of pragmatic considerations. The obvious and evident advantage of presumption as an epistemic recourse is that it enables us vastly to extend the range of questions we are able to answer. It affords an instrument that enables us to extract a maximum of information from communicative situations. Presumption, in sum, is an ultimately pragmatic resource. To be sure, its evident disadvantage is that the answers that we obtain by its means are given not in the clarion tones of knowledge and assertion but in the more hesitant and uncertain tones of presumption and probability. We thus do not get the advantages of presumption without an accompanying negativity. Here, as elsewhere, we cannot have our cake and eat it, too. 5. MORE ON RETROJUSTIFICATION: THE CLOSING OF THE CYCLES Yet how is it that those realism-grounding presumptions become entitled to claims of rational appropriateness. The crux of the answer has already been foreshadowed. A twofold process is involved. Initially it is a matter of the generic need for answers to our questions: of being so circumstanced that if we are willing to presume we are able to get . . . anything. But ultimately we go beyond such this-or-nothing consideration, and the validity of a presumption emerges ex post facto through the utility (both cognitive and practical) of the results it yields. We advance from “this or nothing” to “this or nothing that is determinably better.” Legitimation is thus available, albeit only through experiential retrovalidation, retrospective revalidation in the light of eventual experience. It is a matter of learning that a certain

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issue is more effective in meeting the needs of the situation than its available alternatives. Initially we look to promise and potential but in the end it is applicative efficacy that counts. The fact is that our cognitive practices have a fundamentally economic rationale. They are all cost effective within the setting of the project of inquiry to which we stand committed (by our place in the world’s scheme of things). Presumptions are the instrument through which we achieve a favorable balance of trade in the complex trade-offs between ignorance of fact and mistake of belief—between unknowing and error. We proceed in cognitive contexts in much the same manner in which banks proceed in financial contexts. We extend credit to others, doing so at first to a relatively modest extent. When and as they comport themselves in a way that indicates that this credit was warranted, then we extend more. By responding to trust in a “responsible” way—proceeding to amortize the credit one already has—one can increase one’s credit rating in cognitive much as in financial contexts. In trusting the senses, in relying on other people, and even in being rational, we always run a risk. Whenever in life we place our faith in something, we run a risk of being let down and disappointed. But in such matters, no absolute guarantees can be had. And yet there is little choice about the matter: it is a case of “this or nothing.” If we want answers to factual questions, we have no real alternative but to trust in the cognitively cooperative disposition of the natural order of things. We cannot preestablish the appropriateness of this trust by somehow demonstrating, in advance of events, that it is actually warranted. Rather, its rationale is that without it we remove the basis on which alone creatures such as ourselves can confidently live a life of effective thought and action. In such cases, pragmatic rationality urges us to gamble on trust in reason, not because it cannot fail us, but because in so doing little is to be lost and much to be gained. A general policy of judicious trust is eminently cost effective in yielding useful results in matters of cognition. Charles Sanders Peirce put the issue with characteristic clarity: “It may be asked how I know that there are reals. If this hypothesis is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis.”3 Peirce placed his finger on exactly the right question. Yet while this reality-hypothesis is indeed not a product of inquiry, but a presupposition for it, nevertheless, it is one whose justification ultimately stands or falls on the success of the inquiries it facilitates. Its validation cannot be preestablished through evidence but can only be provided

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ex post facto through the justificatory impetus of successful implementation. The starting point of our justifactory reasoning was a basic projectfacilitating postulation. Yet this does not tell the whole story. For there is also the no-less-important fact that this postulation obtains a vindicating retrojustification because the farther we proceed on this basis, the more its obvious appropriateness comes to light. With the wisdom of hindsight we come to see with increasing clarity that the project that these presuppositions render possible is an eminently successful one. The pragmatic turn does crucially important work here in putting at our disposal a style of justificatory argumentation that manages to be cyclical without vitiating circularity. What is at issue is a matter of unavoidable presumptions whose specific mode of implementation is ultimately retrovalidated in the light of experience. We want and need objective information about “the real world.” This, of course, is not to be had directly without the epistemic mediation of experience. And so we treat certain data as evidence—we extend “evidential credit” to them as it were. Through trial and error we learn that some of them do indeed deserve it, and then we proceed to extend to them greater weight—we “increase their credit limit” as it were and rely on them more extensively. And, of course, to use those data as evidence is to build up a picture of the world, a picture which shows, with the “wisdom of hindsight,” how appropriate it was for us to use those evidential data in the first place. On this basis, the substantive picture of nature’s ways that is secured through our empirical inquiries is itself ultimately justified, retrospectively as it were, through affording us with the presuppositions on whose basis inquiry proceeds. As we proceed to develop science there must come a retrojustifactory “closing of the circle.” The world-picture that science delivers into our hands must eventually become such as to explain how it is that creatures such as ourselves, emplaced in the world as we are, investigating it by the processes we actually use, should do fairly well at developing a workable view of that world. As we saw in the preceding chapter’s discussion of “rational selection,” the “validation of scientific method” must and can in the end itself become scientifically validated. Though the process is cyclic and circular, there is nothing vicious and vitiating about it. The process of rationally validating our cognitive procedures must in the end be cyclical and close on itself in systematic consideration. The substantive picture of nature’s ways that is secured through our

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empirical inquiries is itself ultimately justified, retrospectively as it were, through validating the presuppositions on whose basis inquiry has proceeded. As we develop science there must come a “closing of the circle.” The world-picture that science delivers into our hands must eventually become such as to explain how it is that creatures such as ourselves, emplaced in the world as we are, investigating it by the processes we actually use, should do fairly well at developing a workable view of that world. The “validation of scientific method” must in the end itself become scientifically validated. Science must (and can) retrovalidate itself by providing the material (in terms of a science-based world-view) for justifying the methods of science. The rational structure of the overall process of justification accordingly looks as follows: (1) We use various sorts of experiential data as evidence for objective fact. (2) We do this in the first instance for practical reasons, faute de mieux, because only by proceeding in this way can we hope to resolve our questions with any degree of rational satisfaction. (3) As we proceed two things happen: (i) On the pragmatic side we find that we obtain a world picture on whose basis we can operate effectively. (Pragmatic revalidation.) (ii) On the cognitive side we find that we arrive at a picture of the world and our place within it that provides an explanation of how it is that we are enabled to get things (roughly) right—that we are in fact justified in using our phenomenal data as data of objective fact. (Explanatory revalidation.) The success at issue here is twofold—both in terms of understanding (cognition) and in terms of application (praxis). And it is this ultimate success that justifies and rationalizes, retrospectively, our evidential proceedings. Though the process is cyclic and circular, there is nothing vicious and vitiating about it. The reasoning at issue is not a matter of linear sequence but of systemic coherence.

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We thus arrive at the overall situation of a dual “retrojustification.” For all the presuppositions of inquiry are ultimately justified because the “wisdom of hindsight” enables us to see that by their means we have been able to achieve both practical success and a theoretical understanding of our place in the world’s scheme of things. Here successful practical implementation is needed as an extra-theoretical quality-control monitor of our theorizing. And the capacity of our scientifically devised view of the world to underwrite an explanation of how it is that a creature constituted as we are, operating by the means of inquiry that we employ, and operating within an environment such as ours, can ultimately devise a relatively accurate view of the world is also critical for the validation of our knowledge. The closing of these inquiry-geared loops validates, retrospectively, those realistic presuppositions or postulations that made the whole process of inquiry possible in the first place. Realism thus emerges as a presuppositionaffording postulate for inquiry—a postulation whose ultimate legitimation eventuates retrospectively through the results, both practical and cognitive, which the process of inquiry based on those yet-to-be-justified presuppositions is able to achieve. The retroactive component of the justification at issue is critical for present purposes. That a priori presumption of realism could be validated by the “essential presupposition” argument that if we do not proceed in this way then success in the projects at issue (inquiry and communication) simply becomes impossible. So far so good. But not quite enough. For this pivots the matter on the issue of the mere possibility of success. It does nothing to extend any sort of assurance that success will actually be attained. (We remain at the level of necessary conditions without embarking on the issue of sufficiency.) And this is something that can only be achieved ex post facto—after we actually go on to proceed with the process of inquiring. That this is achievable in a reasonable degree is something that has to be a matter of actual discovery. And it is here that the factor of pragmatic efficacy at issue with such retrojustification comes to play its critical role. Of course, when it comes to this issue of actual efficacy, we have no choice but to proceed experientially—through the simple stratagem of “trying and seeing.” Functional requiredness remains a matter of a priori considerations, but efficacy—actual sufficiency to our purposes—will be a matter of a posteriori experience. It is, and is bound to be, a matter of retrojustification—a retrospective revalidation in the light of experience. And this empirically delivered pragmatic consideration that our praxis of

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inquiry and communication does actually work—that we can effectively and (by and large) successfully communicate with one another about a shared world, inquiry into whose nature and workings proceeds successfully as a communal project of investigation—is the ultimately crucial consideration that legitimates (through “retro-validation”) the evidencetranscending imputations built into the objective claims to which we subscribe. What we began with was a view of realism as a basic project-facilitating postulation. But this does not tell the whole of the justificatory story. For there is also the no less important fact that this postulation obtains a vindicating retrojustification because the farther we proceed on this basis, the more its obvious appropriateness comes to light. With the wisdom of hindsight we come to see with increasing clarity that the project that these presuppositions render possible is an eminently successful one. And this pragmatic turn does crucially important work in putting at our disposal a style of justificatory argumentation that manages to be cyclical without vitiating circularity. The closing of these inquiry-geared loops validates, retrospectively, those realistic presuppositions or postulations that made the whole process of inquiry possible in the first place. Realism thus emerges as a presupposition-affording postulate for inquiry—a postulation whose ultimate legitimation eventuates retrospectively through the results, both practical and cognitive, which the process of inquiry based on those yet-to-be-justified presuppositions is able to achieve. In the end we achieve a realism all right, but one that is heavily indebted to pragmatic and idealistic lines of thought. *** Let us review the overall line of these somewhat convoluted deliberations. Metaphysical realism—the doctrine that there is a mind-independent reality and that our experience provides us with a firm cognitive grip upon it— does not represent a learned fact but a presuppositional postulate. As such, it has a complex justification that comes in two phases. The first, initial phase is prospective, proceeding with a view to the functional necessity of taking this position—its purpose-dictated inevitability. For this step alone renders possible a whole range of activities relating to inquiry and to communication that is of the highest utility for us—and indeed is a practical necessity. In possibilizing4—that is, bringing it within the range of the feasible—a host of purpose-mandated activities, the postu-

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late of metaphysical realism obtains its initial justification in the practical order of reasoning. Such initial functional justification is good but not good enough. The second phase of justification goes further, albeit retrospectively. It proceeds by noting that after we actually engage in the goal-directed practice that the postulate in question renders possible, our applicative and explanatory efforts are, in fact, attended by success—that making the initial postulate has an immense pragmatic payoff. And in its retrospective aspect, this issue of actual efficacy is ultimately crucial for the overall systemic justification of the practical postulate at issue. A notion that has such important work to do as is the case with that of mind-independent reality cannot be dismissed as vacuous or superfluous. As was observed above, the utility of the conception of reality is so great that if it were not already there we would have to invent it. But the pragmatic success that ensues when we put this conception to work goes to show that we have not in fact done so.5 NOTES 1

Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, ed. by M. Friedländer (London: George Routledge & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1904), I, 71, 96a.

2

To be sure, adopting a correspondence-theory based view of “truth”—does nothing whatever to address the issue of the criteriology of truth and the evidentiation of truth claims. This point has been stressed by many truth-theorists including the present author in his Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).

3

Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), sect. 5.383.

4

In current English usage there is no single-word verb “to make possible” akin to the German ermoeglichen. To adopt “possibilize” would perhaps be sensible and certainly convenient.

5

Readers intrigued by the issues of this chapter may want also to examine the treatment of cognitive issues in the author’s Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), Induction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980). Empirical Inquiry (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982), Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987), and Realistic Pragmatism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001).

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Chapter IV/2 IDEALISM 1. ON VIABILITY

W

hat sort of issue is this anyway—this question of whether or not a certain philosophical position is viable today? We are clearly not dealing here with the sociological question of what people-in-general think in the manner of public opinion questionnaires— what they would agree to or disagree with if asked. We are not testing the popular pulse. Rather, what is at stake is related to William James’s distinction between live and dead issues. Viability should here be construed in terms of consonance and compatibly with what the general run of relevantly well-informed people—professional philosophers in particular— think of as being at least a real option: a position to be reckoned with through being taken seriously enough to discuss and debate, even if only by way of rejection and refutation. 2. IDEALISM AND ITS MODES

Idealism, broadly speaking, is the doctrine that reality is somehow mindcorrelative or mind-coordinated. Bertrand Russell said that “idealists tell us that what appears as matter is really something mental.”1 But that is rather stretching things. Idealism certainly need not go so far as to maintain a causal theory to the effect that mind somehow makes or constitutes matter. This over-simple view of idealism ignores such versions of the theory as, for example, the explanatory idealism which merely holds that an adequate explanation of the real always requires some recourse to the operations of mind. A genuine idealism will indeed center around the conception that reality as we understand it reflects the workings of mind. But it need not necessarily see mind as a causal source. Traditional ontological idealism of the sort criticized by Russell did indeed center on the idea that thought creates reality. But in this regard it put the cart before the horse. For the situation is the very reverse: the fact of biological of evolution means that natural reality creates thought. Thought

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has gained its key position in reality not by virtue of the primacy of creating it but rather by virtue of the emergent saliency of its role in nature. In the historic past, disputes raged within the idealist camp over whether “the mind” at issue in the position’s definition was a mind emplaced outside of or behind nature (absolute idealism), or a nature-pervasive power of rationality of some sort (cosmic idealism), or the collective impersonal social mind of people-in-general (social idealism), or simply the distributive collection of individual minds (personal idealism). But over the years, the more grandiose versions of the theory have dropped increasingly from favor, and in recent times virtually all idealists have construed “the minds” at issue in their theory as a matter of separate individual minds equipped with socially engendered resources, and thus forming part of the world rather than standing outside or behind it. The aim of the present discussion is thus to argue for a version of idealism that does not go too decidedly against the grain of such current philosophical sensibilities. What it seeks is a form of idealism that is modest—or, if you insist, minimalistic—enough to flourish in the intellectual climate of the times. 3. PROBLEMS OF IDEALISM It is quite unjust to charge idealism with an antipathy to reality, with ontophobia, as Ortega y Gasset called it. For it is not the existence but the nature of reality upon which idealism sets its sights. Yet it is not reality but materialism that classical idealism rejects—and even here the idealists speak with divided voice. (Berkeley’s “immaterialism” does not so much deny the existence of material objects as their unperceivedness.) There are certainly versions of the doctrine well short of the spiritualistic position of an ontological idealism that (as Kant puts it at Prolegomena, sect. 13, n. 2) holds that “there are none but thinking beings.” Few among the so-called idealists have held to pan-psychism of the high-octane variety. To be sure Berkeley maintained an idealistic position on the basis of his thesis that “to be (real) is to be perceived” (esse est percipi). It seems more sensible, however, to adopt “to be is to be perceivable” (esse est percipile esse). For Berkeley, of course, this was a distinction without a difference: if it is perceivable at all, then God perceives it. But if we forego philosophical reliance on God, the matter looks different. We are then driven back to the question of what is an object of perception. On this basis, something really exists if it is, in principle, experientiable: “To be (physically) real is to be actually perceivable by a possible perceiver—one

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who is physically realizable in the world.” Physical existence is seen as tantamount to observability-in-principle for perceivers who are physically realizable in “the real world.” The basic idea is that one can only claim (legitimately or appropriately) that a particular physical object exists if there is potential experiential access to it—if something indeed exists in the world, then it must be observable-in-principle, detectable by a suitably endowed creature equipped with some suitably powerful technology. On such an approach, to exist (physically) is to be “observable” in principle—to be open to experiential confrontation by a cognition-capable creature of some sort. And such merely dispositional observability is clearly something objective, in contrast to actual observations, which are always personalized. Observability is a matter of what beings with mindendowed capacities can encounter an experience, and not one of what any particular one or more of them actually does encounter in experience. The physical features of the real come to be seen as mind-correlative dispositions—conceivably dispositions in both the perceptual and the conceptual order. In this sense, detectability and discriminability in principle is an indispensable request for qualifying as part of the actual furniture of the world. And it is clear that such a weak—and cognitive rather than ontological—version of substantial idealism is altogether unproblematic. Over the years, many objections to idealism have been advanced. Samuel Johnson thought to refute Berkeley’s phenomenalism by kicking a stone. He conveniently forgot that Berkeley’s theory goes to great lengths to provide for stones—even to the point of invoking the aid of God on their behalf. G. E. Moore pointed to the human hand as an undeniably mindexternal material object. He overlooked that, gesticulate as he would, he would do no more than induce people to accept the presence of a hand on the basis of the hand-orientation of their experience. C. S. Peirce’s “Harvard Experiment” of releasing a stone held aloft was supposed to establish scholastic realism because his audience could not control their expectation of the stone’s falling to earth. But an uncontrollable expectation is still an expectation, and the realism at issue is no more than a realistic thoughtposture. Immanuel Kant’s famous “Refutation of Idealism” argued that our conception of ourselves as mind-endowed beings presupposes material objects because we view our mind-endowed selves as existing in an objective temporal order, which is something that indispensability requires the existence of periodic physical processes (clocks, pendula, planetary regularities) for its establishment. At most, however, this argumentation succeeds in show-

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ing that such physical processes have to be assumed by minds that insist upon a certain view of themselves—the issue of their actual mindindependent existence remaining unaddressed. (Kantian realism is an intraexperiential “empirical” realism.) In sum, each of the traditional objections to idealism has inherent limitations that allow a judiciously formulated version of idealism remain unscathed. 4. CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM AND ITS MERITS The specifically conceptual idealism that will stand at the forefront of concern here maintains that any adequate descriptive characterization of physical (“material”) reality must at some point involve an implicit reference to mental operations—that some commerce with mental characteristics and operations always occurs in any viable explanatory exposition of “the real world.”2 The central thesis of this position is that the mind is responsible for nature-as-we-understand-it, not, to be sure, by making nature itself, but rather through its formative role in providing the mode-andmanner determining categories in whose terms its conception is cast On such an approach, the constitutive role of mind in nature is to be thought of neither in ontological nor causal terms, but hermeneutically by way of concept-explication. It is not that mind produces nature, but rather that the way in which it effects its conceptualization of nature involves the analogy of mind; in sum, that we conceive of the real in mind-correlative terms of reference. Conceptual idealism’s central thesis is that the principal characterizing properties ascribed to physical things in our standard conceptual scheme are at bottom all relational properties, with some facet of “the mind”—or of minds-in-general—serving as one term of this relation. Specifically, it holds that the concept-scheme we standardly use to construe our experience itself ascribes to “material” objects properties and characteristics that involve some reference to mental operations within the very meaning of the terms at issue. Let us consider how this is so. Conceptual idealism is predicated upon the important distinction between conceptual mind-involvingness and explicit mind-invokingness, illustrated in the contrast between a book and a dream. To characterize an object of consideration as a dream or a worry is explicitly mind-invoking. For dreams and worries exist only where there is dreaming and worrying, which, by their very nature, typify the sorts of things at issue in the

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thought-processes of mind-endowed creatures: where there are dreams or worries, there must be mind-equipped beings to do the dreaming and worrying. A book, by contrast, seems at first sight entirely non-mental: books, after all, unlike dreams or worries, are physical objects. If mind-endowed beings were to vanish from the world, dreams and, worries would vanish with them—but not books! Even if there were no mind-endowed beings, there could certainly be naturally evolved book-like objects, objects physically indistinguishable from books as we know them. Nevertheless there could not be books in a world where minds have no existence. For a book is, by definition, an artifact of a certain purposive (i.e., communicative) sort equipped with pages on which “reading material” is printed. Such purposive artifacts all invoke goal directed processes of a type that can exist only where there are minds. To be a book is to have writing in it, and not just marks. And writing is inherently the sort of thing produced and employed by mind-endowed beings. In sum, to explain adequately what a book is we must thus make reference to writing and thereby in turn, ultimately to minds. The salient point here is not that the book is mentalesque as a physical object, but rather that to explicate what is involved in characterizing that object as “a book”—to explicate what it is to be a book—we must eventually refer to minds and their capabilities, seeing that, given our understanding of what is at issue, a book is by its very nature something for people to read. A world without minds can contain objects physically indistinguishable from our books and nails, but books and nails they could not be, since only artifacts created for a certain sort of intelligence-invoking purpose can correctly be so characterized. The status of those objects as books or nails is mind-conducted. And so, while books—unlike dreams—are not mental items, their conceptualization/characterization must nevertheless in the final analysis be cast in mind-involving terms of reference. What it is to be a book is to be something to which minds are related in a suitable and characteristic sort of way. Books as such can only exist in mind-affording contexts. Now the pivotal thesis of conceptual idealism is that we standardly think of reality in implicitly mentalesque terms. And this contention rests on two basic theses: (1) That our world, the world as we know it, is—inevitably—the world as we conceive it to be, and

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(2) That the pivotal concepts (thought-instrumentalities) that we standardly use in characterizing and describing the world contain in their make-up, somewhere along the line, a reference to the operations of mind. Observing that our “standard conception” of the world we live in is that of a multitude of particulars endowed with empirical properties and positioned in space and time and interacting causally, conceptual idealism goes on to maintain that all of the salient conceptions operative here— particularity, spatio-temporality, causality, and the possession of empirical (experientially accessible) properties—are (so conceptual idealism contends) mind-involving in exactly the sense explicated above. Within the present confines, there is not room enough to tell the whole story. So a vary part of it will have to do. Let us begin at the beginning— with particularity. Particularity is a matter of identification; causality a matter of bringing about, and spacetime a matter of locating—and all these are mind-involving processes. And similarly with the rest. But the fact is that careful analysis show that identification, causal explanation, and spatio-temporal positioning—are all implicitly mind-involving activities that envision the world’s operations in terms of characteristically mental processes. The world as we conceive it accordingly emerges throughout a mental artifact that is constructed (at least partly) in mind-referential terms— that the nature of the world as we conceive of it reflects the workings of mind. (Of course, in speaking of mind-involvement or mind-invocation, no reference to any particular mind is at issue. The mental aspect here operative is not private or personal: it is not a question of whose mind—of this or that mind rather than another. The dependence at issue is wholly generic and systematic in nature.) And so, conceptual idealism sees mind not as causal source of the materials of nature, but as indispensably furnishing some of the interpretative mechanisms in whose terms we understand them. It is predicated on the view that reality as we standardly conceive it—in terms of material objects identifiable through discernible dispositional properties and causally interacting with one another in setting of space and time—is thereby unavoidably enmeshed with the operations of mind. It maintains that the mind understands nature in a manner that in some ways reflects its own operations in some fundamental respects—that we come to cognitive grips with nature on our own terms, that is, in terms of concepts whose make-up involves some reference to minds and their operations. The position rests squarely

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on the classical idealistic doctrine that mind contributes essentially to the constitution—as well as the constituting—of our knowledge of reality. Such a view of reality is not a do-it-yourself position that lets us shape the world in any way we please. Historically, idealists have always recognized objective constraints: God with Berkeley, the faculty-structure of the mind with Kant, biological and perhaps ultimately Darwinian considerations with Bergson, and so on. And conceptual idealism correspondingly acknowledges the restrictive role of an objectively given conceptual scheme. Thus the items that such an idealism characterizes as “minddependent” can be perfectly interpersonal and objective; they need not be subjective at all—let alone be something over which people have voluntary control. It is sometimes said that idealism is predicated on a confusion of objects with our knowledge of them and conflates the real with our thought about it. But this charge misses the point when a conceptual idealism is at issue. Conceptual idealism’s thesis is not the trivial one that mind makes the idea of nature, it is not open to Santayana’s complaint against Schopenhauer that “he proclaimed that the world was his idea, but meant only (what is undeniable) that his idea of the world was his idea.” Rather, what is at issue is that mind-patterned conceptions are built into our idea of nature— that what this idea involves is itself limited to mental operation in that the way we standardly conceive of nature is in some crucial respects involved with the doings of minds. The conceptualistic idealist sees mind as an explicative resource for our understanding of the real, rather than as a productive source in the causal order of its genetic explanation. Accordingly, while the thesis that our world picture is mind-provided is not a philosophical doctrine but a simple truism, nevertheless this thesis that an adequate world-picture is one that must be mind-patterned—that it will have to be painted in the coloration of mind, or (to put is less picturesquely) that will involve a recourse to the analogy of mind—is something at once far less obvious and far more interesting. For an idealism designed along these lines has it that while our minds neither make nor constitute nature, they nevertheless depict it in their own terms of reference. At this point, Santayana’s triviality charge falls apart. To say that we can only obtain a view of reality via its representations by mind is true but alas trivial—we can only obtain a mind-provided view of anything whatsoever. But to say that our view of reality (as standardly articulated) is one that represents reality by means of concepts and categories that are themselves mind-referring in their nature is something very

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different. For this idealism is one that sees our view of the world as to be such as to attribute to it features in whose conceptual make-up mindcoordinated conceptions play a pivotal and ineliminable role. And it is this position that is at stake in the conceptual idealism that is now at issue. 5. WHAT CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM COMES TO The most common objection to idealism in general centers on the issue of the mind-independence of the real. “Surely,” so runs the objection, “things in nature would remain substantially unchanged if there were no minds. Had intelligent creatures never evolved on the earth, its mountains and valleys would nevertheless be much as they are, and the sun and moon remain substantially unaffected.” This contention is perfectly plausible in one aspect, namely the causal one—which is just why causal idealism has its problems. The crucial mind-independence of the real has to be granted in the causal mode. But not in the conceptual. For the objection’s exponent has to face the question of specifying just exactly what it is that would remain the same. “Surely roses would smell just as sweet in a mind-denuded world!” Well . . . yes and no. Agreed—the absence of minds would not change roses. But rose-fragrance and sweetness—and even the size and shape of roses—are all features whose character hinges on such mindinvoking operations as smelling, scanning, comparing, measuring, and the like. For something actually to be a rose it must, unavoidably, have various capacities to evoke mental responses—it must admit of identification, specification, classification, and property attribution, and these, by their very nature, are all mental operations. Striking people as being rose-like is critical to qualifying as a rose; if seemingly rose bushes performed strangely—say by sprouting geranium like flowers—they would no longer be so: rose bushes just don’t do that sort of thing. A rose that is not conceived of in mind-referential terms is—nothing at all. To be sure, the conceptual idealism envisioned here does not maintain that any possible way of conceiving nature must proceed in mind-invoking terms of reference (difficult though it is for us to imagine how things could be otherwise). Its purport, rather, is to highlight the role of mind-invocation operative in the standard conceptual framework that we in fact (de facto) use to recognize and interpret our experience. It is geared to what has here been characterized as “our standard conception of reality,” and so its strictures need not and will not invariably apply to other possible conceptions of the real. Specifically, it does not apply to a contingent regularity view of

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the world that dispenses both with laws (and thus lawful processes): and thereby with the disposition-demarcated particulars to whose conception lawfulness is indispensable. And while it is not easy to conceive in detail what such a kaleidoscopic reality that dispenses both with sensory identifiable particulars and with necessitarian laws would be like, nevertheless, that does not render it impossible. All this must be conceded. Is this concession damaging? Does it mean that conceptual idealism, with its focus in the ideational mechanisms in whose terms “we standardly think” of the real, is a position no more than a sociological significance? The answer is clearly negative. For while how we act is simply a reflection of sociological matters, how we think of things is, clearly, something of deeper and more far-reaching significance—and inevitably so, seeing that our only possible access to how things are is through the mediation of what we think them to be. There is, ultimately, no way of limiting the consequences of “how we think of things” to appertain merely and wholly to facts about us rather than facts about them. Still, must not a genuine idealism ask for more? Must it not argue transcendentally that every possible conceptual scheme for exploiting experience to form a picture of objective reality must be mind-involving? Can it rest content with what is so relative to our standard concept-scheme rather than inevitably? As one critic has objected: Rescher tries to handle the problem by, an appeal . . . to . . . the standard conceptual framework. But . . . the real and unavoidable problem is to determine the conditions of the possibility of any conceptual framework whatsoever.3 A splendid Kantian ambition, this—but very much misguided. For it makes little sense to demand that which one cannot realistically hope to obtain. Kant’s lesson holds good: for us, reality unavoidably has to be an empirical reality—reality as we can experience it. This sort of transcendentalism is quixotically unrealistic because we cannot use the mechanism of our conceptual scheme to project from within the confines of that very conceptual scheme what the essential lineaments of other, different conceptual schemes must of necessity be. No state of science, no genre of art, no style of life or framework of thought can possibly manage to encompass all the rest. This sort of thought-imperialism is just not in the cards. Our own cognitive position cannot at one and the same time be—as it inevitably must—just one posi-

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tion among others, and at the same time somehow encompass them by embracing their essential features. No state of knowledge, no doctrinal theory or position can ever find the holy grail of self-transcendence—can ever transmute itself into something that achieves more than the situational immanency of being just one particular alternative among others. The envisioned quest for a self-transcendingly transcendental basis of “conditions under which alone conceptualization is possible” must accordingly be seen as a futile endeavor that is destined to failure from the very outset. And the implications of this fact are, for us, innocuous rather than skeptically nihilistic. For that standard concept-scheme of ours has to be taken at face value. No doubt, it is—in theory—conceivably one alternative among others, without any inevitable foothold in the very structure of intellect, let alone in the nature of things at large. No doubt, its status is the product of natural and cultural evolution. Let all this be as it may. Still, for us the fact remains that this scheme is what we have and is all that we have. What matters in the end is that this alternative is our alternative. Our intellectual dependence on it is as absolute as our physical dependence on the air we breathe. For us there are no options. If this be “mere contingency,” we have little alternative but to make the most of it.4 6. PROBLEMS OF MIND AND MATTER The following sort of objection against a conceptual idealism along the indicated lines may well be offered: How can one sensibly maintain the mind dependency of matter as ordinarily conceived, when all the world recognizes that the operations of mind are based on the machinations of matter. (As Mark Twain asked: “When the body is drunk does the mind stay sober?”) To be an idealist in the face of this recognition is surely to be involved in a vicious or at least vitiating circle.

However, this objection simply gets things wrong. There just is no question of any real conflict once the proper distinctions have been drawn, because—as indicated above—altogether different sorts of dependencies or requirements are at issue in the two theses: 1. That mind is causally dependent upon (i.e., causally requires) matter, in that mental process demands causally or productively the physical workings of matter.

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2. That matter (conceived of in the standard manner of material substance subject to physical law) is explicatively dependent upon (i.e., conceptually requires) mind, in that the conception of material processes involves hermeneutically or semantically the mentalistic working of mind. We return here to the crucial distinction between the conceptual order with its essentially hermeneutic or explicative perspective upon the intellectual exposition of meanings, and the causal order with its explanatory perspective upon the productive efficacy of physical processes. In the hermeneutic framework of consideration, our concern is not with any facets of the causal explanation of intellectual processes, but upon understanding them from within, on their own terms—in the conceptual order. The issue is not one of causal explanation at all, but one of the understanding to be achieved through an analysis of the internal meaning-content of concepts and of the semantical information conveyed by statements in which they are operative. Because of the fundamental difference between these two perspectives, any conflict in the dependency relations to which they give rise is altogether harmless from the standpoint of actual inconsistency. The circle breaks because different modes of dependency are involved: we move from mind to matter in the conceptual order of understanding (of rationes cognoscendi or rather concipiendi) and from matter to mind in the ontological dependency order of causation (rationes essendi). Once all the due distinctions are duly heeded, any semblance of vicious circularity disappears. No doubt, this calls for a certain amount of care and subtlety—but then so do many issues of intellectual life, and why should things be easier in philosophy than elsewhere? And so, while the conceptual idealist’s thesis that one specific direction of dependence (viz., that of the physical upon that of the mental) is built into the view of reality at issue in our standard conceptual scheme, this must not be seen as conflicting with the debatable (but by no means thereby negligible) prospect that the scientific explanation of causal relationships might envision a reversal in the direction of dependence. Where different perspectives are involved, seemingly conflicting theses are perfectly compatible. (I can say without conflict that my car is economical in point of gas mileage and uneconomical in point of maintenance costs.) But even if no vicious circle arises, do we not arrive at an equally vicious infinite regress that altogether precludes understanding. For is under-

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standability not precluded from the outset if an adequate overall understanding of mind requires reference to its causal origins in matter and an adequate overall understanding of matter requires reference to its functional presuppositions of a mind-invoking sort? The answer is negative. A problematic regress would arise here only if one adopted an essentially linear model of understanding. But this is quite inappropriate in the case of coordinated concepts such as the present instance of mind/matter or the simpler case of cause/effect. To say that we cannot fully understand the cause until we understand its effect, and that we cannot fully understand the effect until we understand the cause, is not to show that there is a vitiating regress with the result that we cannot understand either one. All it shows is that two such coordinated and interrelated concepts cannot be set out through a sequential explanation but must be grasped together in their systematic unity. A somewhat crude analogy may be helpful at this point. Take a knife and its blade. If that object yonder is to count as a knife, then that shiny thing attached to the handle must be a blade, but this thing cannot count as a blade unless the whole it comprises together with that handle is a knife. The two items stand in conceptually symbiotic apposition: X cannot be properly characterized as X unless it is duly related to Y and Y cannot be properly characterized as such unless it is duly related to X. We cannot pick up either end of the stick without avoiding the other, but must grasp the whole in one fell swoop. Just such a cognitive coordination of mentalisitc and materialistic concepts holds with respect to our present analysis of their mutual interdependencies. But interdependency does not annihilate difference, and by maintaining due distinctions, any collapse into vicious circularity or vitiating regress can be avoided. Conceptual idealism is thus even compatible with a causal materialism that maintains matter to be basic to mind in the causal order. On the causal issues of the origins of mind, conceptualistic idealism is silent and so compatible with various theories—materialism itself not excluded. Conceptual idealism just is not an explanatory theory regarding the causal mechanisms of the mind’s processes or mode of origination; it is an analytical or hermeneutic theory regarding the nature of the conceptual mechanisms of the categories of understanding. It can thus coexist with any theory of mind that is articulated along strictly causal lines, be it a materialistic view that sees the causal origin of mind in matter of a Cartesian-style dualism of reciprocal influence or even an epi-phenomenalism.

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The conceptual idealist accordingly has no vested interest in denying a “scientistic” view that mind and its functioning may ultimately prove to be somehow causally emergent from the processes of matter. The position does not need to be argued through an attack upon causal materialism: it is quite compatible with the idea that mental functioning has its material basis and causal origins in the realm of physical process. The doctrine’s point is simply that our standard rational account of the world—its material sector specifically included—is forthcoming in terms of reference that are at bottom mind-involving. It is the analytical issue of how we actually think of the world, not the operational issue of the mechanics of its causal goings-on, that constitutes the focus of concern. And this point is crucially connected to the issue of idealism’s contemporary viability as mastered in our title. For our present-day intellectual outlook is committed to a scientifically naturalistic understanding of nature far more deeply and pervasively than was the case with the cognitive ethos of the earlier eras in which idealism took root. But what of an “identity theory of mind” that flatly denitrifies mental processes with the operation of certain material configurations—namely our brains? Is our conceptual idealism not incompatible with such a theory? Not necessarily. It depends upon whether the identity at issue is seen as being a factual one (like the identity of the morning star with the evening star or that of the tallest man in the room with the poorest man in the room), or as a conceptually necessary one (like that of Smith’s only brother with Smith’s only male sibling). Our idealism will encounter no difficulties with a thesis of contingent identity. An incompatibility will arise only if the identity theory of the mental with the material is taken to obtain in conceptual terms, as holding the essentially concept-relative thesis that mentalistic talk is eliminable, in that it can be translated without conceptually viable residue into talk about the behavior of matter. Such a conceptually eliminative reductionism is indeed incompatible with a conceptual idealism. For if “mentalese” were analytically altogether reducible to materialistic discourse, then mind could not be conceptually basic to matter in the sense of our theory. But, of course, since our theory is based on an analysis of the ordinary conceptual scheme, this goes no further than to show that this ordinary scheme is incompatible with a conceptually reductive materialism, and this upshot is perhaps not surprising. (If we point out to the reductive materialist that he violates the ordinary conceptual scheme, he may well reply that he is only too ready to do so. And in taking this stance he is, to be sure, not inconsistent. But he does cut himself off from participation

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in those discussions that take place within the mentalistic framework of our standard conceptual scheme which is, after all, the frame of reference in which the whole issue is posed in the first place.) Finally, why adopt a conceptual rather than a more traditional ontological idealism? The basis for a response goes back to the title of the essay with regard to tenability today. Three considerations seem to have particular saliency here: (1) IDEALISM. The world is at least in some significant aspect or other—mind-made. And this leads straightaway to the question of whose mind is it that can plausibly claim responsibility for this vast task. Three possible alternatives come to the fore: • One’s own mind—that of the particular individual at issue. This is not an alternative option. For here lies the road to megalomania and solipsism. • God’s mind; the world spirit; the absolute idealist’s all encompassing eternal mind. But surely non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum. It seems unreasonable to ask God to do our philosophical work. • Our mind; social mind as reflected in the collectivity created deposit of languages, ancient-scheme, theory-systems, etc. that are the aggregated work of evolved intelligences. Only the last of these alternatives can be seen as a currently available option, and it is surely a merit of conceptual idealism that it takes this line. (2) REALISM. Mind is the only resource we have for the constituting of our picture or model of reality. And it is only natural and to be expected that in constituting this picture or model mind does so to some extent in its own terms of reference. But of course the instruction is not a free construction. Peirce’s Harvard experiment comes to mind here. Nature’s lawfulness is the pivotal factor, with its mandating how things must and have to be. For plausibility, the operations of mind in the devising of a reality-picture have to be seen are subject to constraint seen as inexorable and imposed. Mind is not at liberty to proceed as it wishes. Its subscription to this sort of realistic modesty is clearly another venture of conceptual idealism. (3) EVOLUTIONISM AND THE ACCEPTANCE OF SCIENCE. Clearly any currently viable form of idealism has to make its peace with science

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and come to terms with the world as the science of the day depicts it. And in particular it must accept the theory of evolution—cosmic and biological alike—and come to terms with a universe that initially dispensed even with solid state physics (to say nothing of chemistry, let alone biology). In such a universe, the emergence of mind comes late in the day; mind is but a “johnny come lately.” And this, too, is something that a conceptual idealism can manage to take in stride. In sum, then, a cogent case can be made out for holding that the familiar objections to idealism—traditional and recent alike—can virtually all be overcome when one makes a shift to the conceptualistic version of the doctrine. And I submit that it is, to all appearances, this sort of idealism that nowadays offers the best promise of acceptability.5 NOTES 1

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 58.

2

The author’s involvement with the defense of this version of idealism goes back to his Conceptual Idealism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973).

3

Robert E. Innes, “[Review of] Conceptual Idealism,” Foundations of Language, vol. 14 (l976), pp. 287-95 (see p. 294).

4

This issue is also treated from another point of departure in the author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

5

This essay served as basis for a paper of the same title presented at a conference on Anglo-American Idealism held at Harris Manchester College, Oxford in July of 1997.

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Chapter IV/3 PRAGMATISM 1. FUNCTIONALISTIC PRAGMATISM

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ragmatism is an approach to philosophy that puts practice at center stage and sees efficacy in practical activities as a prime goal of human endeavor. But there are two markedly different ways of working out this sort of program. One way of implementing the idea of pragmatism is to see theory and theorizing as being incidental and secondary in importancea “merely intellectual” concern that has a less significant role in human affairs than do matters of action and praxis. This version of the position might be characterized as practicalism. However, a quite different version of pragmatism sees theory as subordinate to praxis not in importance but rather in fundamentality. This approach does not relegate theory to a secondary status in point of interest or importance. On the contrary, it regards theory as something crucial and critically important, but then takes success in matters of practical implementation as the adequacy criterion of successful theorizing. This criteriological version of the theory might be designated as functionalism. Such a functionalistic version of pragmatism regards effective praxis as the arbiter of appropriate theorizing. It takes considerations of purposive effectiveness to provide the test-standard for the adequacy of the operative principles of human endeavoralike in theoretical and in practical matters. Effective implementation is its pervasive standard of adequacy. After all, pragmatism’s historic concern has always been not with the descriptive characteristics of things but with their normative appropriateness. And here its logical starting point is the uncontroversial idea that the natural and sensible standard way of assessing anything proceduralanything whose nature is methodological, procedural, instrumentallies in the question of its successful application. Anything that has a teleologythat is an instrumentality for the realization of certain purposeswill automatically stand subject to an evaluation standard that looks to its efficacy. For whenever something is in any way purposively

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oriented to the realization of certain ends, the natural question for its evaluation in this regard is that of its serviceability in end-realization. The close connection between functional efficacy and rationality must be stressed in this context. In any context where the meeting of needs and/or the realization of goals is at issue, a rational creature will prefer whatever method process or procedure willother things equalfacilitate goal realization in the most effective, efficient, and economical way. In this way economic rationality is a definitive dimension of rationality-in-general and thereby endows functional efficacy with a normative aspect. 2. THE RAMIFICATION OF PURPOSE Man is a purposive animal. Virtually everything that we do has a purpose to it. Even play, idleness, and tomfoolery has a purposeto divert, to provide rest and recreation, to kill time. And certainly our larger projects in the realm of human endeavor are purposive: Inquiryto resolve doubt and to guide action. Ethicsto encourage modes of conduct in human interactions that canalize these into a generally satisfactory and beneficial form. Lawto establish and enforce rules of conduct. Educationto acculturate the younger generation so as to enhance the prospect that young people will find their way to personally satisfying and communally beneficial lifestyles. Artto create objects or object types exposure to which engenders personally rewarding and enlightening experiences. On this basis a functionalistic pragmatism can encompass the entire range of human concern. It is not (and should not be) a mainly materialistic doctrine concerned only for crass payoffs. It is a multi-purpose resource. For a pragmatic approach to validation can of course be implemented in any purposive setting. Given any aim or objective whatever, we can always provide a correlative validation in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in realization. But a really thorough prag-

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matism must dig more deeply. It cannot simply take purposes as given—as gift horses into whose mouths we must not look. For purpose-adoption should also be seen in a pragmatic perspective as an act or activity of sorts that itself stand in need of legitimation. Accordingly, a sensible pragmatism also requires an axiology of purposes, a normative methodology for assessing the legitimacy and appropriateness of the purposes we espouse. We humans live subject to a manifold of processes: physical, chemical, biological, social, economic, and so on. Each such processual realm imposes various purposes upon us, subjecting us to needs, requirements, and desiderata of various sorts. The meeting of these purposes involves us in a wide variety of projects each with its own manifold of purposeaccommodating processes. We are thus committed to such projects as the pursuit of nourishment, or physical security, of comfort, of education, of sociability, of rest and recreation, etc., designed to meet our requirements for food, shelter, clothing, knowledge, companionship, realization, etc., and equipment with its own complex of needs and desiderata. And throughout this manifold we encounter the same rationale of endrealization with its inherent involvement with issues of effectiveness and efficiency. Pragmatism’s concern for function efficiency, for success in the realization of ends and purposes, is an essential requisite for intelligent being’s ability to make its way in the world by reason-guided agency. In such a purposive setting the pragmatic approach with its concern for functional efficacy is a critical aspect of rationality itself. To be sure, functionalistic pragmatism does not itself tell us what human purposes are mandated by the situation of homo sapiens in the world’s scheme of things. That has to come from other sorts of investigationsinquiries that are effectively factual. But what it does do on this basis is to deploy a standard of normative adequacy via the customary demands of practical rationality: effectiveness and efficiency in the realization of appropriate goals. The justifactory impetus of functionalistic pragmatism accordingly bear directly and immediately upon anything that is of an instrumental nature. On this basis, it applies: not directly to truths as such but to processes of truth validation, not directly to acts but to act-recommending norms,

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not directly to question-resolving answers but to processes to answerdetermination, not directly to scientific hypotheses but to the methods and procedures by which the endorsement of such hypotheses is validated. The deliberations of functionalistic pragmatism accordingly have a methodological bearingone that makes its impact upon methods rather than results, upon process rather than product. But, of course, since the processes at issue are product-productive processes, these deliberations will have an important indirect bearing on issues of product as well. The rational validation of functionalistic pragmatism is accordingly something that is comparatively simple and straightforward. For the approach at issue is validated through the consideration that its modus operandi based on the principle “In all matters of purposive actionselect that among alternative processes and procedures which, as best you can tell, will enable you to reach the objective in the “most effective and efficient way.” To be sure, such a position we meet with the objection: “Surely efficacy in goal-attainment cannot count for all that much. Surely we have to worry about the rationality of ends as well as the rationality of means! Surely there is no sense in pursuinghowever effectivelyan end that is absurd, counter-productive, harmful.” Quite right! There is good common senseand indeed even sound rationalityto such a view of the matter. But, of course, the fact of it is that when we are concerned with the human situation it is far from being the case that all ends are created equalthat giving people needless pain, say, is every bit as appropriate as helping them avoid injury. However, this is an issue that a thoroughgoing pragmatism, one which is altogether true to itself, needs to and can address in pragmatic terms. And the terms of reference at issue here will in the natural course of things have to be those of philosophical anthropology. We are humans, members of Homo sapiens—that is an inescapable given for us. And given along with it are the conditions needed by us humans to lead not just survivable lives (requiring air, food, and shelter) but also those conditions needed by us to live satisfying lives (requiring self-respect, companion-ship and a feeling of belonging, and a sense of control over major elements of our life, and the like). And the pragmatic validation of aims and purposes can be established pragmatically in point of their efficiency and effectiveness

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in the realization of such life-maintaining and life-enhancing requirements that are mandated to us by our position in the world’s scheme of things. The fact of it is that human beings not only have wants, wishes, and desires; they have needs as well. Individually we need nourishment, physical security, and congenial interaction if our physical and psychological wellbeing it to be achieved and maintained. Collectively we require social arrangements that maximize the opportunities for mutual aid and minimize those for mutual harm. This aspect of the practical scheme of things is built into our very condition as the sorts of creatures we are. Some aims and purposes are optionalwe choose them freely. But others are mandatorybuilt into the very fabric of our existence within nature as members of homo sapiens. These non-optimal goals and purposes will obviously have to play a pivotal role in a functionalistic pragmatism built on that paramount demand of reason: efficacy in goal attainment. And this endows functionalistic pragmatism with a second dimension of objectivity. On the one hand it is perfectly objective and nowise a matter of preference what sorts of means are effective in the realization of specified objectives. And on the other hand it is analogously perfectly objective and nowise a matter of preference that humans have certain needscertain requirements that must be satisfied if they are to exist, perdure, and function effectively as the sorts of creatures they have evolved as being on the world’s stage. By virtue of their very nature as purposive instrumentalities, value claims can and generally do fall within the domain of reason. For values are functional objects that have a natural teleology themselves, namely that of helping us to lead lives that are personally satisfying (meet our individual needs) and communally productive (facilitate the realizations of constructive goals to the community at large). This state of things has farreaching implications because it indicates that our assessment of values themselves can and should be ultimately pragmatic. Our evaluations are appropriate only insofar as their adoption and cultivation are efficiently and effectively conducive to the realization of human interests—the rationally appropriate endspersonal and communalthat root in our place in the scheme of things. Accordingly, a pragmatism that is consistent, coherent, and selfsustaining will not just proceed pragmatically with respect to achieving unevaluated ends and purposes but must also apply its pragmatic perspective to the issue of validating ends and purposes themselves in terms of their

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capacity to facilitate the realization of those considerations which, for us humans, are simply “facts of life.” 3. EVALUATIVE RATIONALITY AND APPROPRIATE ENDS: AGAINST THE HUMEAN CONCEPTION OF REASON But how far can this line of thought carry us? Pragmatism’s standard of adequacy pivots on procedural efficacy. But can this seemingly crass prioritization of utility possibly provide grounds for even acknowledging the significance in human affairs of higher, less crassly utilitarian sorts of values? Can it ever reach beyond the sphere of the bare basic necessities of life? To resolve this question we must go back to basics. Pragmatism pivots the validation of our instrumentalities of thought and action on their effectiveness in goal realization. But goals are certainly not created equal; they clearly have different degrees of merit. There are impersonally valid modes of evaluation by which goals themselves can be assessed, so that the rational evaluation that pragmatism envisions can be implemented in an objectively cogent way. The capacity for intelligent choice makes us humans into rational agents, but it is only through our having appropriate values that the prospect of intelligent choice becomes open for us. The human situation being what it is, existential circumstances spread a vast range of possibilities out before us. At many junctures, life confronts us with alternative directions in which to proceed. And only through the evaluation of such alternatives can we effect a sensible (rationally appropriate and acceptable) choice among them. On this basis, values are instrumentalities that serve to make the satisfactory conduct of life possible. And a commitment to values not only aids in making our lives as intelligent agents possible, they also make it meaningful. For the life of the human individual is brief: here today, gone tomorrow. It is through our commitment to values that we can reach out beyond the restrictive limits of the space and time available to us as individuals in this world, moving towards the realization of something larger and more significant. To be sure, it is often said that values are just matters of taste—of mere personal predilection. If this were indeed the case, then any and all claims to value objectivity would at once become untenable. But is it so? Evaluation certainly is not—and should not be—a matter of taste. People who are not prepared to back an option of X over Y by cogent reasons of some sort are merely evincing a preference and not actually making any sort of

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meaningful evaluation at all. Tastes, as usually understood, represent unreasoned preferences and purely subjective predilections. There is consequently no disputing about them: de gustibus non disputandum est. If I prefer X to Y, then that’s that. But values are something quite different. They are by nature functional instrumentalities since their mission is to canalize our action via our rational choices. They have objective impact, relating not to what we do prefer but to what we can and should appropriately deem preferable—that is, worthy of preference. And preference worthiness is something that is always discussible, something that needs to be reasoned about. To be in a position to maintain—in a manner that is sensible and reasonable—that X is preferable to Y, one must be in a position to back one’s claim up with some sort of rationale. And this reason-boundedness of sensible evaluations carries them outside the range of mere matters of taste. Moreover, our values themselves are not—and should not be—arbitrary and haphazard. For in the final analysis, they pivot not on mere wants ant the vagaries of arbitrary choice in fortuitous preference, but on our best interests and real needs—on what is necessary to or advantageous for a person’s well being. We humans, being the sorts of creatures we are, have need-based interests which as such should (insofar as we are rational) control the validation of our wants and preferences. Validating an evaluation thus is not and cannot be a matter of mere subjectivity. The projects into which our nature impels us—the medical project, say, or the alimentary, or the cognitive—obviously carry a whole host of value commitments in their wake. Just here is where the pragmatic impetus comes into play. For once a goal is given, other connected goals can come to be validated with reference to it. It is thus a grave mistake to think that one cannot reason about values on the supposed ground that values are simply a matter of taste and thus beyond the reach of reason because “there’s no reasoning about tastes.” Such a position founders on the distinction between mere wants and real needs. For the fact is that values are valid just exactly to the extent they serve to implement and satisfy our needs and our correlatively appropriate interests. (The seeming harshness of this view is mitigated by the circumstance that for us humans the satisfaction of some of our mere wants—seen not in specific but in statistical generality—is itself a need.) A good way to exhibit the inappropriateness of the view that where values begin reason is at an end is thus through a pragmatic appraisal that regards values as practical instrumentalities, tools that aid us in the best approach to understanding what valuation is is to proceed by examinating what valuation does. This purposive aspect of evaluation renders it part and

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parcel of the pragmatic enterprise, thereby making room for value deliberation within the sphere of practical rationality. And this means that a rational critique of values is not only possible but necessary. In particular, values that impede the realization of a person’s best interests are clearly inappropriate. A priority scheme that sets mere wants above real needs or sets important objectives aside to avert trivial inconveniences is thereby deeply flawed from the rational point of view.1 And even as with needs and interests in general, so even great values may well have to yield to the yet greater. (Some things are rightly dearer to sensible people than life itself.) David Hume drew a sharp contrast between “reason,” which he construed narrowly as concerned solely with means and wholly indifferent to ends, and a very different, entirely reason-detached faculty of motivation that concerns itself with ends—namely the passions. As Hume saw it, the exposition of formal relationships in logic and mathematics apart, reason merely deals with experiential information about the world’s states of affairs and the associative relationships that lie at the root of cause and effect. Accordingly, reason is strictly instrumental: it can inform me about what I must do if I wish to arrive at a certain destination, but only “passion”—desire or aversion—can make something into a destination for me. Hume thus regarded an impetus toward or away from some object—any sort of pro- or con-reaction—as simply the wrong sort of thing to be rational or sensible, an autonomous force operating entirely outside the realm of reason. And he accordingly considered those directive passions as entirely arational. Rationality is totally disconnected from matters of evaluation. When one asks what is to be done, reason as such has no instructions—in its exclusive concern for rationally arbitrary ends, it is wholly a matter of what one happens to want. As Hume thus saw it, reason is a “slave of the passions” where evaluation is concerned. Its modus operandi is strictly conditional: it dictates hypothetically that if you accept this, then you cannot (in all consistency) fail to accept that. But, all this is a matter of the hypothetical if-then. The categorical “accept this!” is never a mandate of reason, but of those extrarational passions. Reason herself initiates no commitments; it is inherently conditionalized, never saying what one should (or should not) opt for, but only what one is consequentially committed to if one already stands committed to something else. The assessment of fundamentals, be they cognitive or evaluative, lies beyond the reach of reason. On this basis, Hume insisted:

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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin... It is as little contrary to reason to refer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and to have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.2

But all this is obviously very strange stuff. Any conception of reason that has these consequences is deeply problematic. For a “rationality” that excludes the critique of harmful affections and desires is no rationality at all. On any plausible view of the matter, reason cannot simply beg off from considering the validity of ends. Our motivating “passions” can surely themselves be rational or otherwise: those that impel us towards things that are bad for us or away from things that are good for us go against reason, those that impel us away from things that are bad for us and towards things that are good for us are altogether rational. There is certainly such a thing as evaluative, appraisal-oriented reasoning. Meeting people’s needs is (by hypothesis) an imperative necessity. And even meeting their mere desires is a rationally warranted desideratum as long as no larger obstacle stands in the way (their very real vicarious interests in the interests those of others, for example). But some such sort of qualification is always necessary in adjudging the role of preferences. As this perspective indicates, rationality involves two sorts of issue— means and ends. The rationality of means is a matter of factual information alone—of what sorts of moves and measures lead efficiently to objectives. But the rationality of ends is a matter not of information but of legitimation. It is not settled just by factual inquiry, but involves appraisal and evaluative judgment. And in the larger scheme of things both aspects are needed: ends without requisite means are frustrating, means without suitable ends are pointless. Accordingly, rationality has two sides: an axiological (evaluative) concern for the appropriateness of ends and an instrumental (cognitive) concern for effectiveness and efficiency in their cultivation. The conception of rationality fuses these two elements into one integral and unified whole, seeing that the inherent purposiveness of values makes them part of the rational enterprise. Evaluation is not at odds with reason but is a crucial component of its work. People’s ends and purposes are certainly not automatically valid: they can be self-destructive, self-defeating impediments to the realization of their true needs and best interests. For ends do not lie outside the domain of value but rather serve to define it. And, to reemphasize, the rationality of ends inheres in the simple fact that we humans have various valid needs—that we require not only nour-

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ishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information (“cognitive orientation”), affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without such varied goods we cannot thrive as fulfilled human beings. The person who does not give these manifold desiderata their due—who may even set out to frustrate their realization—is clearly not being rational. Evaluation thus lies at the very heart and core of rationality. For, rationality is a matter of best serving our overall interests. The person who expends more effort in the pursuit of ends than they are worth is not just being wasteful but foolish, which is to say irrational. The rationality of our actions hinges critically both on the appropriateness of our ends and on the suitability of the means by which we pursue their cultivation. Both of these components—the cogently cognitive (“intelligent pursuit”) and the normatively purposive (“appropriate ends”)—are alike essential to full-fledged rationality. To be sure, the springs of human agency are diverse. We frequently act not for reasons alone, but from “mere motives”—out of anxiety, cupidity, habit, impulse. In such cases we also have ends and purposes in view—but generally not appropriate ones. If rationality were merely a matter of unevaluated goals and purposes as such—if it were to consist simply in the “technical rationality” of goal-efficient action—then the established line between the rational and the irrational would have to be redrawn in a very different place, and its linkage with what is intelligent and well advised would be severed. But where there is no appropriate and thus no meaningful end, rational agency ceases. (There may, of course, still be room for goal-directed action, but without goals it is bound to be problematic from the rational point of view.) And of course while all people are (hopefully) capable of reason, no well-informed person thinks they invariablyor even generallyexercise this capacity. But the fact remains that the rationality of ends is an indispensable component of rationality at large for two principal reasons. Rationally valued ends must be evaluatively appropriate ones: if we adopt inappropriate ends we are not being rational, no matter how efficiently and effectively we pursue them. The sensible attunement of means to ends that is characteristic of rationality calls for an appropriate balancing of costs and benefits in our choice among alternative ways of resolving our cognitive, practical, and evaluative problems. Reason accordingly demands determination of the true value of things. Even as cognitive reason requires that in determining what we are to accept we should assess the evidential grounds for

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theses at their true worth, so evaluative reason requires us to appraise the values of our practical options at their true worth in determining what we are to choose or prefer. And this calls for an appropriate cost-benefit analysis. Values must be managed as an overall “economy” in a rational way to achieve overall harmonization and optimization. Economic rationality is not the only sort of rationality there is, but it is an important aspect of overall rationality. Someone who rejects such economic considerations— who, in the absence of any envisioned compensating advantages, deliberately purchases for millions benefits he recognizes as being worth only a few pennies—is simply not rational. It is just as irrational to let one’s efforts in the pursuit of chosen objectives incur costs that outrun their true worth as it is to let one’s beliefs run afoul of the evidence. And the evaluative rationality at issue here is the pragmatic one of the efficient pursuit of appropriate ends.3 4. THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF INTERESTS AND NEEDS: WANTS AND PREFERENCES ARE NOT ENOUGH Functionalistic pragmatism’s concern for success and effectiveness in matters of goal attainment is accordingly something very different from mere preference utilitarianism. Economists, decision theorists, and utilitarian philosophers often maintain that rationality turns on the intelligent cultivation of one’s preferences. But this is problematic in the extreme. We cannot extract judgmental rationality from preferences because mere preferences as such are unevaluated wants, and there is no such rationality without evaluation. After all, what I want or merely think to be good for me is one thing; what I need and what actually is good for me is another. To move from preferences and perceived interests to genuine benefits and real interests I must engage in a rational critique of ends—to examine in the light of objective standards whether what I desire is desirable, whether my actual ends are rational ends, whether my putative interests are real interests. The genuinely rational person is the one who proceeds in situations of choice by asking not the introspective question “What do I prefer?” but the objective question: “What is to be deemed preferable? What ought I to prefer on the basis of my best interests?” Rational comportment does not just call for desire satisfaction, it demands desire management as well. The question of appropriateness becomes crucial here. And this is an issue about which people can be—and often are—irrational; not just careless but even perverse, self-destructive, and crazy. We pursue mere will-o’-the-

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wisps when we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have. An objectivistic pragmatism will—if at all reasonable—certainly not deny the personalistic element of subjectively originating tastes, desires, inclinations, and personal involvements. But it insists that they must ultimately have a footing in our genuine needs. Wants and preferences as such are not enough; legitimate values must have a rationale. Consider the contrast between: • professed wants: what I say or declare that I want or prefer; • felt wants: what I (actually) do want or prefer; • real (or appropriate) wants and actual needs: what the reasonable (impartial, well-informed, well-intentioned, understanding) bystander would maintain that I ought to want on the basis of what is “in my best interests.” It is this last item—namely what is in my “real” or “best” interests—that is decisive for rationality. Rationality, then, is not just a matter of doing what we want (if this were so, it would be far simpler to attain!), but a matter of doing what we (rationally) ought, given the situation in which we find ourselves. The rationality of ends is essential to rationality as such; there is no point in running—however swiftly—to a destination whose attainment conveys no benefit. It is useless to maintain “rational consonance” with what we believe or do or value if those items with respect to which we relativize are not themselves rational in the first place. The issue of the rationality of ends is pivotal. Wants per se (wants unexamined and unevaluated) may well provide impelling motives for action, but will not thereby constitute good reasons for action. To be sure, it is among our needs to have some of our wants satisfied. But, it is needs that are determinative for interests, and not wants as such. A person’s true interests are not those he does have but those he would have if he conducted his life’s affairs properly (sensibly, appropriately). A person’s welfare is often ill served by his wishes—which may be altogether irrational, perverse, or pathological.4 This distinction of appropriateness of real, as opposed to merely seeming, wants and interests—is crucial for rationality. The latter turns on what we merely happen to want at the time, the former on what we should want, and

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thus on “what we would want if”—if we were all those things that “being intelligent” about the conduct of one’s life requires: prudent, sensible, conscientious, well-considered, and the like.5 Clearly, there is nothing automatically appropriate—let alone sacred— about our own ends, objectives, and preferences as such. We can be every bit as irrational and stupid with the adoption of ends as with any other choice. Apparent interests are not automatically real, getting what one wants is not necessarily to one’s benefit, goals are not rendered valid by their mere adoption. People’s ends can be self-destructive, self-defeating impediments to the realization of their true needs. For rationality, the crucial question is that of the true value of the item at issue. What counts for rational validity is not preference but preferability—not what people do want, but what they ought to want; not what people actually want, but what sensible or right-thinking people would want under the circumstances. The normative aspect is ineliminable here. Rationality calls for objective judgment—for an assessment of preferability, rather than for a mere expression of preference, no questions asked. The rationality of ends, their rational appropriateness and legitimacy, is accordingly a crucial aspect of rationality. More is at issue with rationality than a matter of strict instrumentality—mere effectiveness in the pursuit of ends no matter how inappropriate they may be. When we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have, we pursue mere will-o’-the-wisps. There is an indissoluble connection between the true value of something (its being good or right or useful) and its being rational to choose or prefer this thing. Being desired does not automatically make something desirable, nor being valued valuable. The pivot is how matters ought to be—a region where needs come to dominate over wants. And so, the crucial question for evaluative rationality is not that of what we prefer, but that of what is in our best interests—not simply what we may happen to desire, but what is good for us in the sense of fostering the realization of our needs. The pursuit of what we want is rational only in so far as we have sound reasons for deeming this to be want-deserving. The question whether what we prefer is preferable, in the sense of deserving this preference, is always relevant. For it is not just beliefs that can be stupid, ill-advised, and inappropriate—that is to say, irrational—but ends as well. Valuation can be sensible or perverse, well-oriented or ill-advised, interest-enhancing or interest-retarding in sum, rational or irrational. The fact is that we can be every bit as irrational in the adoption of ends as in any

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other choice. Apparent interests are not automatically real, getting what one wants is not necessarily to one’s benefit, goals are not rendered valid by their mere adoption. Rationality accordingly calls for critical judgment—for an assessment of preferability, rather than for a mere expression of preference. More is at issue with rationality than a matter of strict instrumentality—mere effectiveness in the pursuit of arbitrarily selected ends, no matter how inappropriate they may be. When we impute to our ends a weight and value they do not in fact have, we pursue mere will-o’the-wisps. The rational appropriateness and legitimacy of ends is thus an indispensable aspect of rationality at large. Contentions like “Smith is selfish, inconsiderate, and boorish” accordingly do not lie outside the sphere of rational inquiry—nor for that matter do contentions like “Behavior that is selfish/inconsiderate/boorish is against the best interest of people.” The issue of appropriate action in the circumstances in which we find ourselves is pivotal for rationality. Be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, we want—that is to say, often do and always should want—to do the best we can. One cannot be rational without due care for the desirability of what one desires—the issue of its alignment with our real, as distinguished from our putative, or merely seeming interests. But just what is it that is in a person’s real or best interests? Partly, this is indeed a matter of meeting the needs that people universally have in common—health, satisfactory functioning of body and mind, adequate resources, human companionship and affection, and so on.6 Partly, it is a matter of the particular role one plays: co-operative children are in the interests of a parent, customer loyalty in those of a shopkeeper. Partly, it is a matter of what one simply happens to want. (If John loves Mary, then engaging Mary’s attention and affections are in John’s interests—some sorts of things are in a person’s interests simply because he takes an interest in them.) But these want-related interests are valid only by virtue of their relation to universal interests. Mary’s approbation is in John’s interest only because “having the approbation of someone we love” is always in anyone’s interest. Any valid specific interest must fall within the validating scope of an appropriate universal covering principle of interest legitimation. (The development of my stamp collection is in my interest only because it is part of a hobby that constitutes an avocation for me and “securing adequate relaxation and diversion from the stress of one’s daily cares” is something that is in anyone’s interests.)

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But what of those “mere whims and fancies.” If I have a yen for eating crabgrass then is my doing so not a perfectly appropriate “interest” of mine? Yes it is. But only because it is covered by perfectly cogent universal interest, namely that of “Doing what I feel like doing in circumstances where neither injury to me nor harm to others is involved.” A specific (concrete, particular) interest of a person is valid as such only if it can be subordinated to a universal interest by way of having a basis in people’s legitimate needs. It is these higher-level principles that are the controlling factors from the standpoint of reason. Only through coming under the aegis of those larger universal needs can our idiosyncratic want come to be validated. The person who does not give such manifest desiderata their due—who may even set out to frustrate their realization—is clearly not being rational. This certainly can—and does—happen. Like various beliefs, various evaluations are palpably crazy.7 Reason, after all, is not just a matter of the compatibility or consistency of pre-given commitments, but of the warrant that there is for undertaking certain commitments in the first place. An evaluative rationality which informs us that certain preferences are absurd—preferences which wantonly violate our nature, impair our being, or diminish our opportunities—fortunately lies within the human repertoire. Xenophanes of Colophon was doubtless right. Even as different creatures may well have different gods so they might well have different goods. But no matter. For us humans the perfectly appropriate sort of good is our sort of good—the human good inherent in the manner of our emplacement within the world’s scheme of things. In this regard, Aristotle did indeed get to the heart of the matter. For us, the human good is indeed an adequate foundation for substantive, practical rationality. Given that we are what we are, it is this that is decisive for us. We have to go on from where we are. It is in this sense alone that there is no deliberation about ends. The universally appropriate ends at issue in our human condition are not somehow freely chosen by us; they are fixed by the (for us) inescapable ontological circumstance that—like it or not—we find ourselves to exist as human beings, and thus able to function as free rational agents. Their ultimate inherence in (generic) human needs determines the appropriateness of our particular, individual ends and thereby endows a functionalistic pragmatism with a broadly humanistic value orientation. We humans are so situated that from our vantage point (and who else’s can be decisive for us?) various factors can and should be seen as goods— as aspects or components of what is in itself a quintessentially good end in

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its relation to us. Without achieving such goods we cannot thrive as human beings—we cannot achieve the condition of well-being that Aristotle called “flourishing.” Flourishing as humans, as the sorts of creatures we are, patently is for us an intrinsic good (though not, to be sure, necessarily the supreme good). It “comes with the territory” so to speak, being mandated for us by our place in nature’s scheme of things. And this desideratum is itself many-faceted in serving as an umbrella goal that can carry others in its wake. It must, after all, come to be particularized to the concrete situation of specific individuals and thereby becomes complex and variegated. On this basis, the rationality and objectivity of evaluative ends inheres in the simple fact that we humans have various valid needs—that we require not only nourishment and protection against the elements for the maintenance of health, but also information (“cognitive orientation”), affection, freedom of action, and much else besides. Without achieving such varied goods we cannot thrive as human beings. To be sure, a person’s “appropriate interests” will have a substantial sector of personal relativity. One person’s self-ideal, shaped in the light of his own value structure, will—quite appropriately—be different from that of another. And, moreover, what sorts of interests a person has will hinge in significant measure on the particular circumstances and conditions in which he finds himself—including his wishes and desires. (In the absence of any countervailing considerations, getting what I want is in my best interests.) All the same, there is also a large body of real interests that people not only share in common but must pursue in common—for example, as regards standard of living (health and resources) and quality of life (opportunities and conditions). And both sorts of interests—the idiosyncratic and the generic—play a determinative role in the operations of rationality. And both must accordingly figure in a sensible pragmatism’s concern for the efficacious realization of our valid objectives.8 5. PRACTICAL RATIONALITY ENCOMPASSES THEORETICAL RATIONALITY A good case can be made out for saying that even the prime concerns of theoretical reason, namely consistency and coherence, are themselves simply matters of practical rationality. For information that is inconsistent or incoherent is not able to achieve the aims of the enterprise of inquiry that is at issue with theoretical reason. Answers to our questions that are inconsistent (“yes and no”) are effectively no answers at all, and information that is

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incoherent is “information” in name only. What is wrong with theoretical incoherence is thus ultimately something pragmaticits frustration of the cardinal aim of the practical enterprise of inquiryof securing sensible answers to our questions. The primacy of practical reason must accordingly be acknowledged. Theoretical reason itself stands under its sway. After all, inquiry itself is a practice and in the pursuit of its aims the issue of efficacy and effectiveness in goal realization do and must constitute our criterion of procedural adequacy. Already Thomas Aquinas accordingly saw practical reason (intellectus practicus) as an extension of theoretical reason (intellectus speculativus): intellectus speculativus per extensionen fit practicus (Summa Theologica: qu. 79, art. 11). As he saw it, practical reason is broader than theoretical reason and embraces it: cognitive practice is a special brand of practice in general, practice whose aim is the accession of information and the resolution of questions. And this essentially pragmatic/fundamentalistic view of the matter is surely correct. A practicalistic perspective upon cognition is not only possible but eminently desirable. Ideas convictions and beliefs, methods as cognitive conditions of cognitive affairs. They are tools we use to solve our problems: answering questions, guiding actions (both theoretical and practical). They can be viewed in their procedural, methodological, use-oriented roles. We are embarked here on a broadly economic approach—but one that proceeds in terms of a value theory that envisions a generalized “economy of values,” and from whose standpoint the traditional economic values (the standard economic costs and benefits) are merely a rather special case. Such an axiological approach sees theoretical rationality as an integral component of that wider rationality that calls for the effective deployment of our limited resources. 6. THE PRAGMATIC ASPECT OF INQUIRY The characteristic genius of pragmatism lies in its insistence on being practical about things and specifically in its steadfast refusal to allow us to view the very best that we can possibly do as not being good enough. Its operative injunctions are: Approach the issue of the cognitive accessibility of truth by asking the classical pragmatic question: “If that is indeed how realities stand, then what would be the best sort of evidence for it that we could expect to achieve?” Realize that we have no access to matters of fact save through the mediation of evidence that is often incomplete and imper-

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fect. And realize, too, that to say that the best evidence is not good enough is to violate Peirce’s cardinal pragmatic imperative never to bar the path of inquiry. In line with this perspective, a realistic pragmatism insists upon pressing the question: “If A were indeed the answer to a question Q of ours, what sort of evidence could we possibly obtain for this?” And when we obtain such evidence—as much as we can reasonably be expected to achieve—then pragmatism too see this as good enough. (“Be prepared to regard the best that can be done as good enough” is one of pragmatism’s fundamental axioms.) If it looks like a 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. Once the question “Well what more could you reasonably will ask for?” meets with no more than hesitant mumbling, then sensible pragmatists say: “Feel free to go ahead and make the claim.” It is not that truth means warranted assertability, or that warranted assertability guarantees truth. What is the case, rather, is that evidence here means “evidence for truth” and (methodologically) warranted assertability means “warrantedly assertable as true.” After all, estimation here is a matter of truth estimation and where the conditions for rational estimation are satisfied we are—ipso facto—rationally authorized to let that estimates stand surrogate to the truth. The very idea that the best we can do is not good enough for all relevant reasonable purposes is—so pragmatism and common sense alike insist—simply is absurd, a thing of unreasonable hyperbole. Whatever theoretical gap there may be between warrant and truth is something which the very nature of concepts like “evidence” and “rational warrant” and “estimation” authorizes us in crossing. And so at this point we have in hand the means for resolving the question of the connection between thought and reality that is at issue with “the truth.” The mediating linkage is supplied by heeding the modus operandi of inquiry. For cognition is a matter of truth estimation, and a properly effected estimate is, by its nature as such, something that is entitled to serve, at least for the time being and until further notice, as a rationally authorized surrogate for whatever it is that it is or estimate of. 7. THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE Deflationary epistemologistsincluding such soft-line pragmatists as Wil-

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liam Jamesare fearful that if we take a hard objectivistic line on the meaning of truth, then truth becomes transcendentally inaccessible and skepticism looms. And they accordingly insist that we soften up our understanding of the nature of truth. But another option is perfectly open, namely to retain the classical (hard) construction of the meaning of truth as actual facticity (“correspondence to fact”) and to soften matters up on the epistemological/ontological side by adopting a “realistic” view of what is criteriologically required for staking rationally appropriate truth claims. Pragmatists accordingly have the option of approaching “the truth” with a view to the methodology of evidence—of criteriology rather than definitional revisionism. They canand are will advisedto see in pragmatic efficacy not the meaning of truth but merely a factor in its criteriology. And the sort of truth pragmatism that moves in this (surely sensible) direction is one that does not use pragmatic considerations to validate claims and theses directly, but rather uses inquiry methods (claim-validating processes) for this purpose, while validating these practices themselves not in terms of the truth of the products (a clearly circular procedure), but in terms of the capacity of their products to provide the materials for successful prediction and effective applicative control. Accordingly, the most promising position here would be what might be characterized as a methodological pragmatism rather than a thesis pragmatism. That is, it is a position that assesses thesis assertability in terms of the methodological processes of substantiation and their assesses method appropriateness in terms of the practical and applicative utility—systematically considered—of the thesis from which the methods vouch. Such an approach calls for a prime emphasis on the methodology of truth-estimation, bringing into the forefront the processes of evidentiation and substantiation by which we in practice go about determining what to accept as truth. The truth/reality connection that is operative here is certainly not a cognitively isolated issue subject to no sort of theory-external quality controls. “Thought externalized” objectivity is still at our disposal. For with regard to our methodological resources of truth-estimation we can indeed deploy a theory-external means of quality control—viz., applicative efficacy. The success of our thought-guided practice is something that lies substantially outside of the range of thought itself. And so the arbitrament of practice— of efficacy in matters of application for the purposes of prediction and control (i.e., effective active and passive involvement with nature)—can and will in the final analysis serve as a theory-external monitor over our theorizing. Theory is, in this sense, subordinated to practice, a circumstance

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that speaks loud and clear on behalf of a realistic pragmatism, affording a position whose orientation is at once realistic and pragmatic because successful praxis is, in the end, the best index of appropriateness that is at our effective disposal.9 NOTES 1

And what other view point would it possibly make sense for us to adopt here?

2

David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, bk. II. pt. iii. sect. 3. For Hume, the only inappropriate desires are those that depend on logically irrational beliefs.

3

Other aspects of the presently deliberated issues are treated in the author’s Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

4

See the author’s Welfare (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972). Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 421. Rawls traces this line of thought back to Henry Sidgwick.

5

The contrast goes back to Aristotle’s distinction between desire as such and rational preference. Many aspects of Aristotle’s ethical theory bear usefully on the present discussion.

6

The issue goes back to the specification of the “basics” (principiae) of the human good in the Middle Academy (Carneades)—things like the soundness and maintenance of the members of the body, health, sound senses, freedom from pain, physical vigor, and physical attractiveness. Compare Cicero, De finibus, V. vii. 19.

7

For strict consistency, a rigorous Humean should, by analogy, hold that cognitive reason, too, is only hypothetical—that it only tells us that certain beliefs must be abandoned if we hold certain others, and that no beliefs are contrary to reason as such, so that “it is not contrary to reason to think one’s finger larger than the entire earth.”

8

The author’s The Validity of Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) offers further perspectives on some of the themes of these deliberations.

9

This chapter is a slightly revised version of a paper of the same title initially published in Contemporary Pragmatism, vol. 1 (2004), pp. 43-60.

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hat is perhaps the biggest metaphysical question of them all was put on the agenda of philosophy by G. W. Leibniz: “Why is there anything at all?” This question is not only difficult to answer but poses difficulties in its very conception. After all, it is—or should be—clear that such questions as “Why is there anything at all?”, “Why are things-in-general as they actually are?”, and “Why are the laws of nature as is?” cannot be answered within the standard causal framework. For causal explanations need inputs: they are essentially transformational rather than formational pure and simple. And so, if we persist in posing the sorts of global questions at issue, we cannot hope to resolve them in orthodox causal terms. For when we ask about everything there are no issue-external materials at our disposal for giving a noncircular explanation. Does this mean that such questions are improper and should not be raised at all—that even to inquire into the existence of the entire universe is somehow illegitimate? Not necessarily. For it could be replied that the question does have a perfectly good answer, but one that is not given in the orthodox causal terms that apply to other issues of smaller scale. A more radical strategy is thus called for if rejectionism is to be avoided. And such a strategy exists. But before turning in this direction, let us consider more closely a rejectionism which holds that it is just a mistake to ask for a causal explanation of existence per se; the question should be abandoned as improper—as not representing a legitimate issue. The line of thought at issue here holds that in the light of closer scrutiny the explanatory “problem” vanishes as meaningless. Such a dismissal of the problem as illegitimate is generally based on the idea that the question at issue involves an illicit presupposition because it looks to answers of the form “Z is the (or an) explanation for the existence of things.” Committed to this response-schema, the question presupposes the thesis “There actually is a ground for the existence of things—

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existence-in-general is the sort of thing that has an explanation.” And this presumption—we are told—is false on grounds of deep general principle inherent in the logical nature of the case. Consider the following suggestion along these lines made by C. G. Hempel: Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing? . . . But what kind of an answer could be appropriate? What seems to be wanted is an explanatory account which does not assume the existence of something or other. But such an account, I would submit, is a logical impossibility. For generally, the question “Why is it the case that A? is answered by “Because B is the case” . . . [A]n answer to our riddle which made no assumptions about the existence of anything cannot possibly provide adequate grounds. . . . The riddle has been constructed in a manner that makes an answer logically impossible . . . .1

However, this plausible-seeming line of argumentation has shortcomings. The most serious of these is that it fails to distinguish appropriately between the existence of things on the one hand and the obtaining of facts on the other,2 and supplementarily also between specifically substantival facts regarding existing things, and nonsubstantival facts regarding states of affairs that are bound to particular things. (Unlike saying that the sun is hot, saying that the day is hot does not ascribe that heat to an object of some sort.) We are confronted here with a principle of hypostatization to the effect that the reason for anything must ultimately always inhere in the properties of things. And at this point we come to a prejudice as deep-rooted as any in Western philosophy: the idea that things can only originate from things, that nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) in the sense that no thing can emerge from an amorphously thingless condition.3 Now, this somewhat ambitious principle is perfectly unproblematic when construed as saying that if the existence of something real has a correct explanation at all, then this explanation must pivot on something that is really and truly so. Clearly, we cannot explain one fact without invoking other facts to do the explaining. But the principle becomes highly problematic when construed in the manner of the precept that “things must come from things,” that substances must inevitably be invoked to explain the existence of substances. For we then become committed to the thesis that everything in nature has an efficient cause in some other natural thing that is its causal source, its reason for being.

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This stance is implicit in Hempel’s argument. And it is explicit in much of the philosophical tradition. Hume, for one, insists that there is no feasible way in which an existential conclusion can be obtained from nonexistential premises.4 And the principle is also supported by philosophers of a very different ilk on the other side of the channel—including Leibniz himself, who writes: The sufficient reason [of contingent existence] . . . must be outside this series of contingent things, and must reside in a substance which is the cause of this series . . . .5

Such a view amounts to a thesis of genetic homogeneity which says (on analogy with the old but now rather obsolete principle that “life must come from life”) that “things must come from things,” or “stuff must come from stuff,” or “substance must come from substance.” What, after all, could be more plausible than the precept that only real (existing) causes can have real (existing) effects? But despite its historic stature, this principle has its problems. It presupposes that there must be a type-homogeneity between cause and effect on the lines of the ancient Greek principle that “like must come from like.” And this highly dubious principle of genetic homogeneity has taken hard knocks in the course of modern science which has, to all appearances, given up on the “effect must resemble cause” idea. Matter can come from energy, and living organisms from complexes of inorganic molecules. If the principle fails with matter and life, need it hold for substance as such? The claim that it does so would need a very cogent defense. And none has been forthcoming to date. Is it indeed true that only things can engender things? Why need a ground of change always inhere in a thing rather than in a nonsubstantival “condition of things-in-general”? Must substance inevitably arise from substance? Even to state such a principle clearly is in effect to challenge its credentials. What is to say that substance cannot emerge from pure process? Why must the explanation of facts rest in the operation of things? To be sure, fact-explanations must have inputs (all explanations must). Facts must root in facts. But why thing-existential ones? A highly problematic bit of metaphysics is involved here. Dogmas about explanatory homogeneity aside, there is no discernible reason why an existential fact cannot be grounded in nonexistential ones, and why the existence of substantial things cannot be explained on the basis of some nonsubstantival circumstance or principle whose operations can constrain existence in

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something of the way in which equations can constrain nonzero solutions. Once we give up the principle of genetic homogeneity and abandon the idea that existing things must originate in existing things, we remove the key prop of the idea that asking for an explanation of things in general is a logically inappropriate demand. The footing of the rejectionist approach is gravely undermined. There are also further routes to rejectionism. One of them turns on the doctrine of Kant’s Antinomy that it is illegitimate to try to account for the phenomenal universe as a whole (the entire Erscheinungswelt). Explanation on this view is inherently partitive: phenomena can only be accounted for in terms of other particular phenomena, so that it is in principle improper to ask for an account of phenomena-as-a-whole. The very idea of an explanatory science of nature-as-a-whole is illegitimate. Yet this view is deeply problematic. To all intents and purposes, science strives to explain the age of the universe-as-a-whole, its structure, its volume, its laws, its composition, etc. Why not then its existence as well? The decree that explanatory discussion in general is by nature necessarily partial and incapable of dealing with the whole lacks plausibility. It seems a mere device for sidestepping embarrassingly difficult questions. In the end, then, it must be acknowledged that rejectionism is not a particularly appealing doctrine. For its alternatives have the significant merit of retaining for rational inquiry and investigation a question that would otherwise be abandoned. After all, the question of “the reason why” behind existence is surely important. If there is any possibility of getting an adequate answer—by hook or by crook—it seems reasonable that we would very much like to have it. There is nothing patently meaningless or clearly improper about this “riddle of existence.” And it does not seem to rest in any obvious way on any particularly problematic presupposition— apart from the epistemically optimistic yet methodologically inevitable idea that there are always reasons why things are as they are (the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”). To dismiss the question as improper or illegitimate is fruitless; try as we will to put it away, it comes back to haunt us.6 2. OPTIMALISM AND EVALUATIVE METAPHYSICS From its earliest days, metaphysics has been understood also to include “axiology,” the evaluative and normative assessment of the things that exist. Already with Aristotle the aim of the enterprise was not just to describe

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or characterize, but to grade (appraise, rank) matters in point of their inherent value. Such metaphysical evaluation has two cardinal features: (i) it is genuine evaluation that involves some authentic concept of greater or lesser value and (ii) the mode of value involved is sui generis and thus not ethical, aesthetic, utilitarian, etc. Accordingly, it evaluates types of things or conditions of things existing in nature (not acts or artifacts) with a view to their intrinsic merit (not simply their “value-for” man or anything else). The very possibility of this axiological enterprise accordingly rests on the acceptance of distinctly metaphysical values—as opposed to ethical (right/wrong) or aesthetic (beautiful/ugly) or practical (useful/unuseful) ones. The paternity of evaluative metaphysics in philosophical practice can unhesitatingly be laid at Plato’s door, but as a conscious and deliberate philosophical method it can be ascribed to Aristotle. In the Physics and the De Anima we find him at work not merely at classifying the kinds of things there are in the world, but in ranking and grading them in terms of relative evaluations. Above all, his preoccupation in the Metaphysics with the ranking schematism of prior/posterior—for which see especially chap. 11 of Bk. 5 (Delta), and chap. 8 of Bk. 9 (Theta)—is indicative of Aristotle’s far-reaching concern with the evaluative dimension of metaphysical inquiry.7 It was thus a sound insight into the thought-framework of the great Stagirite that led the anti-Aristotelian writers of the Renaissance, and later preeminently Descartes and Spinoza, to attack the Platonic/Aristotelian conception of the embodiment of value in natural and the modern logical positivist opponents of metaphysics to attach the stigma of illegitimacy to all evaluative disciplines. Nevertheless, despite such attacks, evaluative metaphysics has continued as an ongoing part of the Western philosophical tradition as continued by such thinkers as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Whitehead, all of whom envision will-systems where some things have greater value than others. A prime example of this methodological approach in recent philosophy is G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica.8 For Moore taught that the realm of ethical values is not self-contained but rather roots in a manifold of metaphysical values. His celebrated “method of absolute isolation” invites us to make comparative evaluations of two hypothetical worlds supposed to be alike in all relevant respects except that in one of them some factor is exhibited which is lacking in the other. Thus Moore argues for the intrinsic value of natural beauty (i.e., its value even apart from human contemplation) by the argument:

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[A hypothetical] beautiful world would be better still, if there were human beings in it to contemplate and enjoy its beauty. But that admission makes nothing against my point. If it be once admitted that the beautiful world in itself is better than the ugly, then it follows, that however many beings may enjoy it, and however much better their enjoyment may be than it is itself, yet its mere existence adds something to the goodness of the whole: it is not only a means to our end, but also itself a part thereof. (Op. cit., § 50)

To espouse the project of evaluative metaphysics is thus to give Moore the right as against Henry Sidgwick’s thesis that: “If we consider carefully such permanent results as are commonly judged to be good, other than qualities of human beings, we find nothing that, on reflection, appears to possess this quality of goodness out of relation to human existence, or at least to some [presumably animal] consciousness or feeling.”9 (There is of course the trivial fact if “we” do the considering, “we” do the evaluating. The point to be borne in mind is that this need not be done from a humanly parochial let alone an idiosyncratically personal, and “subjective” standpoint.) Sidgwick to the contrary notwithstanding, man is neither the measure nor necessarily even the measurer of all things in the evaluative domain. Moore was well aware of the salient difference which, despite some kinship, obtains between standard ethics on the one hand and evaluative metaphysics on the other, recognizing the sui generis character of the latter enterprise: By combining the results of Ethics as to what would be good or bad, with the conclusions of metaphysics, as to what kinds of things there are in the Universe, we get a means of answering the question whether the Universe is, on the whole, good or bad, and how good or bad, compared with what it might be: a sort of question which has in fact been much discussed by many philosophers.10

Such an axiological position does not (as with Sidgwick) see metaphysical evaluation as rooted in ethics but insists on the very reverse relationship. For if “Maximize value!” is indeed a metaphysically grounded maxim of impersonal rationality, and ethical conduct is, by its very nature, of greater value than its contraries, then ethics will ultimately be predicated upon evaluative metaphysics.

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In the present discussion, however, it will not be ethics that concerns us but ontology, and the present deliberations will accordingly focus on exploring the role of value in the explanation of existence. The governing idea is to consider the prospect of giving a Leibnizian answer to that Leibnizian question, contemplating the prospect that things exist—and exist as they do—because that is for the best. Can such an optimalism be developed in a way that is at all plausible? 3. AXIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION: HOW OPTIMALISM WORKS Accustomed as we are to explanations in the mode of efficient causality, the idea of an axiological explanation of existence on the basis of an evaluative optimalism has a somewhat strange and unfamiliar air about it. Let us consider more closely how it is supposed to work. The approach rests on adopting what might be called an axiogenetic optimality principle to the effect that value represents a decisive advantage in regard to realization in that in the virtual competition for existence among alternatives it is the comparatively best that is bound to prevail.11 Accordingly, whenever there is a plurality of alternative possibilities competing for realization in point of truth or of existence the (or an) optimal possibility wins out. (An alternative is optimal when no better one exists, although it can have equals.) The result is that things exist, and exist as they do, because this is for the (metaphysically) best. It may be a complicated matter to appraise from a metaphysical/ontological standpoint that condition X is better (inherently more meritorious) than condition Y. But, so optimalism maintains, once this evaluative hurdle is overcome the question “Why should it be that X rather than Y exists?” is automatically settled by this very fact via the ramifications of optimality. In sum, a Law of Optimality prevails; value (of a suitable—as yet unspecified—sort) enjoys an existential impetus so that it lies in the nature of things that (one of) the best of available alternatives is realized.12 “But why should it be that optimalism obtains? What sort of plausible argument can be given on this position’s behalf?” Why should what is for the best exist? The answer to these questions lies in the very nature of the principle itself. It is self-substantiating, seeing it is automatically for the best that the best alternative should exist rather than an inferior rival. But this is just one of its assets;13 it also offers significant systemic advantages. For of the various plausible existential principles, it transpires—in the end—that it is optimalism that offers the best available alternative.

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The principle being, as it were, self-explanatory, it transpires that to ask for a different sort of explanation would be inappropriate. We must expect that any ultimate principle should explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. And the impetus to realization inherent in authentic value lies in the very nature of value itself. A rational person would not favor the inferior alternative; and there is no reason to think that a rational reality would do so either. To be sure, could one ask “But why should it be that reality is rational?” But this is a problematic proceeding. For to ask this question is to ask for a reason. It is already to presume or presuppose the rationality of things, taking the stance that what is so is and must be so for a reason. Once one poses the question “But why should it be that nature has the feature F?” it is already too late to raise the issue of nature’s rationality. In advancing that question the matter at issue has already been tacitly conceded. Anyone who troubles to ask for a reason why nature should have a certain feature is thereby proceeding within a framework of thought where nature’s rationality—the amenability of its features to rational explanation—is already presumed. Yet what is to be the status of a Law of Optimality to the effect that “whatever possibility is for the best is ipso facto the possibility that is actualized.” It is certainly not a logico-conceptually necessary truth; from the angle of theoretical logic it has to be seen as a contingent fact—albeit one not about nature as such, but rather one about the manifold of real possibility that underlies it. Insofar as necessary at all it obtains as a matter of ontological rather than logico-conceptual necessity, while the realm of possibility as a whole is presumably constituted by considerations of logico-metaphysical necessity alone.14 But the division of this realm into real vs. merely speculative possibilities can hinge on contingent considerations: there can be logically contingent laws of possibility even as there are logically contingent laws of nature (i.e., of reality). “But if it is contingent then surely it must itself rest on some further explanation.” Granted. It itself presumably has an explanation, seeing that one can and should maintain the Leibnizian Principle of Sufficient Reason to the effect that for every contingent fact there is a reason why it is so rather than otherwise. But there is no decisive reason why that explanation has to be “deeper and different”—that is, no decisive reason why the prospect of self-explanation has to be excluded at this fundamental level.15 After all, we cannot go on putting the explanatory elephant on the back of the tortoise on the back of

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the alligator ad infinitum: as Aristotle already saw, the explanatory regress has to stop somewhere at a “final” theory—one that is literally “selfexplanatory.” And what better candidate could there be than the Law of Optimality itself with the result that the division between real and merely theoretical possibilities is as it is (i.e., value based) because that itself is for the best? The reasoning at issue proceeds as follows: • The prevailing world order is the best that can be actualized—i.e., the best that it is possible to realize. • The best possible order exists because that’s for the best. Therefore: The prevailing world order exists. What is self-explanatory here is not the existence of the world (whose explanation after all proceeds from this entire account). It is, rather, the principle of optimality reflected in the second premiss that is selfexplanatory—the fact that the best possible order exists. For this fact is part and parcel of the optimal order whose obtaining it validates; the principle being, as it were, self-explanatory. And to ask for a different sort of explanation would be inappropriate. We must expect that any ultimate principle must explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. The impetus to realization inherent in authentic value lies in the very nature of value itself. A rational person would not favor the inferior alternative; and a rational reality cannot do so either. To be sure, the law’s operation here presupposes a manifold of suitable value parameters, invoking certain physically relevant features (symmetry, economy, or the like) as merit-manifesting factors. The optimization at issue is—and should be—geared to a “scientifically reputable” theory of some suitable kind, coordinate with a complex of physically relevant factors of a suitable kind. After all, many a possible world will maximize a “value” of some sort (confusion and nastiness included). It is its (presumed) gearing to a positive value which like elegance is plausibly identifiable as physically relevant—contingently identifiable as such subject to scientific inquiry—that establishes optimalism as a reasonable proposition and ultimately prevents the thesis “optimalism obtains because that’s for the best” from declining into vacuity.

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Ontological optimalism is closely related to optimism. The optimist holds that “Whatever exists is for the best,” the optimalist maintains the converse that “Whatever is for the best exists.” But at least when we are dealing with exclusive and exhaustive alternatives, the two theses come to the same thing. For if one of the alternatives A, A1, . . . An must be the case, then if what is realized is for the best it follows automatically that the best is realized. Optimalism has many theoretical advantages. Here is just one of them. It is conceivable, one might contend, that the existence of the world (i.e., of a world) is a necessary fact while nevertheless its nature (i.e., of which world is contingent. And this would mean that separate and potentially different answers would have to be provided for the questions “Why is there anything at all?” and “Why is the character of existence as is—why is it that this particular world exists?” However, an axiogenetic approach enjoys the advantage of rational economy in that it proceeds uniformly here. It provides a single uniform rationale for both answers—namely that “this is for the best.” It accordingly also enjoys the significant merit of providing for the rational economy of explanatory principles. But is not optimalism merely a version of wishful thinking? Not necessarily. For even as in personal life what is best for us is all too often not at all what we individuals want so in metaphysics what is abstractly for the best is very unlikely to bear any close relationship to what we would want to have if we humans could have things our way. However, a threatening difficulty seems to arise in the form of a possibility range that is evaluatively “topless”—that is, which does not have some alternatives that are optimal in the sense of not being bettered by any other.16 In such a range each alternative is surpassed by yet another that is better. And so on optimalistic principles it would transpire that there are no real possibilities at all. Within such a range there is no optimum and thus no possibility of actualization. Here optimalism must take the bull by the horns. Insofar as situations can be imagined which—like that of a “topless” infinite alternative spectrum—could raise difficulties for the theory, it could and should simply be seen as part and parcel of optimalism to assert that such situations cannot actually arise: that a reality that is benign all the way through is thereby such that as to exclude such a problematic situation. As optimalism sees it, the very fact that toplessness conflicts with optimalism excludes it from the range of real possibilities. But what if there is a PLURALITY of perfection-contributory features so interrelated that more of the one demands less of the other? Here it would

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result that nothing is straightforwardly best. This may be so, but matters need not be straightforward. In such cases one can—and should—resort to a function of combination that allows for the interaction of those different value parameters. For example, with two operative value-making factors, say cheapness (that is, inverse acquisition cost) and durability in the case of a 100-watt light bulb, one will use the ratio (cost of purchase) y (hours of usability) or equally cost/hour of service as a measure of merit. This possibilizes the reduction of the multi-factor case to the situation of a single compound and complex factor so that optimization is once again possible. And that this is possible is guaranteed by optimalism itself; it is part and parcel of the best possible order of things that optimalism should be operable within it. Yet is such a theory of axiological ontogenesis not defeated by the objection: If it were the case that value explains existence, then why isn’t the world altogether perfect in every regard? The answer lies in the inherent complexity of value. An object that is of any value at all is subject to a complex of values. For it is the fundamental fact of axiology that every evaluation-admitting object has a plurality of evaluative features. Consider an automobile. Its parameters of merit clearly include such factors as speed, reliability, repair infrequency, safety, operating economy, aesthetic appearance, road-handle ability. But in actual practice such features are interrelated. It is unavoidable that they trade off against one another: more of A means less of B. It would be ridiculous to have a supersafe car with a maximum speed of two miles per hour. It would be ridiculous to have a car that is inexpensive to operate but spends three-fourths of the time in a repair shop. In any multicriterial setting, “absolute” perfection is simply an impossibility. Perfection—maximum realization of every value dimension all-atonce—is simply unrealizable because of the interaction of parameters: in designing a car you cannot maximize both safety and economy of operation. Analogously the world is not absolutely perfect—perfect in every respect—because this sort of absolute perfection is in principle impossible of realization. And of course it makes no sense to ask for the impossible. Accordingly, the objection “If value is the key to existence, the world would be perfect” collapses. All that will follow on axiogenetic principles is that the world will exemplify an optimal interactive balance of the relevant natural factors. An optimally realizable best need not be “perfect” in the naive sense of that term which unrealistically demands maximality in every relevant respect. Leibniz had the right approach here: optimalism

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does not maintain that the world is absolutely perfect but just that it be the best that is possible—that it outranks the available alternatives. It is an inherently inevitable feature of the nature of things—an inevitable “fact of life”—that value realization is always a matter of balance, of trade-offs, of compromise. The reality of it is that value factors always compete in matters of realization. A concurrent maximum in every dimension is simply unavoidable in this (or indeed any other realistically conceivable) world. All that one can ever reasonably ask for is an auspicious combination of values. But—really!—how can sensible people possibly embrace the conception that the inherently best alternative is thereby automatically the actual (true) one. Does not the world’s all too evident imperfection stand decisively in the way here? The matter is not all that simple, however. For the issue is going to pivot on the question of what “inherently best” means. If it means “best” from that angle of your desires, or of my interests, or even of the advantage of homo-sapiens in general, then clearly the thesis loses its strong appeal. For such plausibility that “best” had best be construed as looking to the condition of existence-as-a-whole rather than one particular privileged individual or group. Optimality in this context is clearly not going to be a matter of the affective welfare or standard of living of some particular sector of existence; it is going to have to be a metaphysical good of some synoptic and rather abstract sort that looks to the condition of the whole. Accordingly the objection: “is not optimalism simply too Pollyanna-ish to be plausible” can be met effectively. The optimalist need not simply shut his eyes to the world’s all too evident parochially considered imperfections. For what the optimalist can and should do is to insist that because of the intricate inherent interrelationships among value parameters an “imperfection” in this or that respect must be taken in stride because they have to be there for an optimal overall combination of value to be realized. There is, in fact, a point of view from which optimalism is a position that is not so much optimistic as deeply pessimistic. For it holds that even the best of possible arrangements is bound to exhibit very real imperfections from the angle of narrowly parochial concerns or interests. And as regards the sort of value that indeed is at issue, this is something that will all be dealt with in some detail below.

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4. THE PROBLEM OF HOW VALUE CAN HAVE EXPLANATORY EFFICACY: OVERLOOKING SOME OBJECTIONS A seeming obstacle to optimalism looms in the question: “But how can value possibly exert a causally productive influence?” And the answer to this good question is that it does not. What value conditions do is not to create anything (i.e., productively engender its realization). Their modus operandi is not causal but modal: their role is to block or preclude certain theoretically conceivable possibilities from realizability. They serve an entirely restrictive function and only manage to preclude certain theoretical possibilities from qualifying as ontological (potentially achievable) possibilities. At this stage we contemplate a tripartite hierarchy of (increasingly substantive) possibilities: logical, ontological, and physical subject to the control of logic, of axiology and of physics, respectively. It is thus at the middle level of ontological possibilities that axiology does its work. The operative impetus of optimality does not express itself by way of causality in the realm of the real but rather by way of a determination in the realm of the genuinely possible—that is, of the metaphysically rather than logically possible. And this metaphysical possibility should be seen as constraining the most fundamental laws of physics, the most basic of which would emerge as invariant with respect to those metaphysical possibilities. The overall story that must be narrated here runs as follows: Nature— physical reality as we have it—represents the actualization of certain possibilities. But underlying this existential condition of affairs is the operation of a prior sub- or metaphysical principle, operative within the wider domain of logical possibility, and dividing this domain into disjoint sectors of “real” and “purely theoretical” possibility. To put it very figuratively, logical possibilities are involved in a virtual struggle for existence in which the axiologically best win out so as to become real possibilities. Specifically, when there are (mutually exclusive) alternatives that are possible “in theory,” nevertheless none will be a “real” or “ontological” possibility for realization as actual or as true if some other alternative is superior to it. The availability of a better alternative disqualifies its inferiors from qualifying as ontologically available—as real—that is, metaphysical—possibilities. And so whenever there is a uniquely best alternative, then this alternative is ipso facto realized as actual or true. Optimalism is certainly a teleological theory: it holds that nature’s modus operandi manifests a tropism towards a certain end or telos to wit optimization. The upshot represents a doctrine of “final causes” in Aristotle’s

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sense. But this axiology is emphatically not a causal theory in the nowadays standard sense of efficient causation. It does not—and does not need to—regard value as a somehow efficient cause, a productive agency. On the contrary—value is not productive at all, but merely eliminative in so functioning as to block the way to availability of inferior productions. It does not drive causal processes but only canalizes or delimits them by ruling certain theoretical (or logical) possibilities out of the realm of real possibility. Consider an analogy. The English language allows double letters in its words, but not triple letters. But that doesn’t mean that the double S of “pussy” causes that ss-successive letter to be something different from S. It merely imposes a structural constraint of possibility. The lawful principle at issue explains the factual situation without any invocation of causality, seeing that an explanation via inherent constraints on possibility is not a causal explanation at all. At this point a skeptical reader will doubtless ask: “Given a spectrum of possibility with a tripartite structure such as (1) (2) (3), which would be the difference between an elimination that excludes the A of actuality from compartment 3 and thereby impels it to the two left-most compartments numbered 1 and 2 and a magnetic-style attraction that that causes A to move towards the left and thereby out of compartment 3? Is the effect not the same either way? And this point is well taken—as far as it goes. But it overlooks something important. The fact is that an attractive force involves a causal agency of some sort. Possibility exclusions on the other hand canthe sheer unavailability of alternativessimply root in “the general modus operandi” of things without any reference to causal agency. Consider an analogy. Suppose that a society exhibits a suicide rate of 1.2 per 1000 per annum during a certain era of its existence. No positive force is at work in constraining it to meet its quota of suicides—no identifiable cause engenders this aggregate result. And while it is effectively impossible to have a suicideless year, this lies in “the nature of things” generally and not in the potency of some suicide-impelling power or force. Again, more than 5 % of the letters on the first page of tomorrow’s Times newspaper will be E’s. But no force or power compels this effect. And while it is literally impossible for no E’s to occur there and “the nature of the situation,” preclude this prospect, there is no force of attraction to constrain the presence of E’s. It is inevitable that there be more E’s than Z’s but this result is not the product of any

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power or force. This result is not produced by some ad hoc force or agency or power—it is simply a feature of how things work in this context. In explaining why physical objects and events exist we must indeed invoke causes and effects. But laws of nature themselves do not “exist” as causal products—they just obtain. Now when laws obtain, there is, no doubt, a reason for their obtaining (an axiological reason, as we ourselves see it). But this reason can presumably be provided by an explanatory principle that need not carry us into the order of efficient causality through the motivations of an agent. To insist upon asking how values are able to function causally in law-realization is simply to adopt an inappropriate model for the processes involved. Value explanation just is not causal: values do not function in the order of efficient causality at all and so do not the Law of Optimality yields those results not via the mysterious attractive power of optimal possibilities but because suboptimal possibilities are excluded through a displacement by their superior rivals which simply preempts their place in possibility space. Axiogenetic theory has it that even as the presence of light displaces darkness so does the availability of better alternatives preclude the very possibility of any inferior so-called alternatives require the intervention of a productive agent or agency. And so in essence this line of reply concedes that value does not engender existence in the mode of efficient causations and that it would indeed be rather mysterious if values were asked to play a causal role in regard to laws. But this is to be seen as irrelevant. The real point is that while value does not efficiently cause existence, it nevertheless explains it, exactly because causal explanation is not the only sort of explanation there is. And so the fact that axiology does not provide such an explanation is not an occasion for appropriate complaint. It does not stop value explanations from being explanations. They present perfectly good answers to “Why is something-or-other so?” type questions. It is just that in relation to laws, values play only an explanatory role though possibility elimination and not a causally productive role though actual creation. And this is no defect because a productive process is simply not called for. And so, while axiological explanations fail to address a question for which design explanations have an answer—namely the causal question “How do values operate productively so as to bring particular laws to actualization?”—this reflects no demerit. For this question is simply inappropriate in the axiological setting. Values don’t “operate” in the causal order at all. They function only—and quite inefficiently—as constraints

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within the manifold of possibility. The issue of a specifically causal efficacy simply does not arise with axiological explanation. What we have here, then, is not the operation of some rather mysterious force or agency but the preclusion (or rarefaction) of certain (theoretical) possibilities owing to the operation of natural law: a combination of the space of possibility from a wider range of hypothetical possibility to a narrow range of mimic possibility under the aegis of lawful principles—and optimality principle in the present case. (Here “direct” preempts the prospect of a deeper explanation in terms of further principles relating to the operation of the powers or forces of some agent or agency.) The point is that the regress of explanatory principles must have a stop and that it is here—with axiology—that we reach a natural terminus by way of selfexplanation. The long and short of it is that axio-ontology can be autonomous and nomically self-sufficient: it does not need to be seen as based in the operative power of some productive force or power or agency. However, if such an axiogenetic explanation is to work, then since there is only one real world the manifold of “real possibilities” must ultimately be reduced to one. That is, a series of successively operable value considerations must reduce the manifold of “theoretical possibilities” more and more restrictively until at last, as with the little Indians of the story, there remains but a single one. And that one is, in a very real sense, necessitated: it is, so to speak, “constrained by value.” Does this necessitation bespeak a Spinozistic determinism? Will it engender a “block universe” whose every detail is deterministically necessitated? By no means. The necessitation at issue relates to the why of the universe and not to its what. It is not only conceivable but presumably actual that “the best possible world” whose existence is axiologically necessitated by value considerations is one which in its internal mode of functioning provides for the contingencies of chance and free agency. The necessitation at issue here must emphatically not be construed as a matter of occurrence-necessitation as this is standardly construed in metaphysical deliberations about causal determinism. 5. THE VALUE EFFICACY OBJECTION AND THE THEOLOGICAL ASPECT But what of the theological dimension? Optimalism must come to terms with the complaint: “Values are inherently anthropomorphic: Only through constituting the motives of agents

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can values possibly obtain explanatory efficacy. Only by serving as some deliberate agent’s motivational repertoire can a value come into effective operation.” And this line of thought leads to the objection: The axiological explanation of nature’s laws with reference to values is not really self-sufficient. Without recourse to the productive agency of a creator God, the question of how values secure their functional efficacy remains unresolved. For how can values in and of themselves ever acquire their modus operandi in the determination of laws? Only design explanations can offer us an answer here: Values are brought to bear on the world through the divine will which governs the productive agency of God.

This line of thought demands an answer to the question of how values can possibly figure in the realization of things save through the mediation of the purposes of a creatively active being—a finite agent with mundane things and with the universe as a whole, who else but God. We may characterize this as a theistically based “value-efficacy objection.” It clearly poses a challenge with which an axiological theory of explanation must come to terms. Such a view of value-explanation is nothing new: it has existed in embryo since Plato’s day thanks to his conception of demiurge. The basic idea is that the only way in which values can be brought to bear in the explanation of phenomena is through the mediation of a creative agent. Accordingly, thinkers from classical antiquity onwards, have defended (or attacked) the principle that explaining the presence of order in nature—the fact that the world is a cosmos—requires postulating a creative intelligence as its cause. That nature manifests and exemplifies such cognitive values as order, harmony, uniformity was thus explained by regarding these as marks of purpose. On this basis, the mainstream of Western thought regarding axiological explanation has taken the line that there is a super-natural agent (God, demiurge, cosmic spirit) and the values obtain their explanatory bearing by influencing the state of mind which governs his creative endeavors. This essentially purposive approach characterizes the traditional “argument from design,” which explains the creation with reference to a creator (as its ratio essendi) and infers the existence of this creator from the orderly structure of created nature (as his ratio cognoscendi).17 The sequential explanatory slide from design to value to purpose to intelligence was historically seen as inexorable. And so the idea of a recourse to an explanatory principle that is geared to values without any such mediation represents a radical departure. The guiding conception of

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the present deliberations—that value is the natural place to sever this chain—reflects a break with a longstanding tradition. However, the justification of this break lies in observing the important distinction between values and purposes. Granted, a purpose must be somebody’s purpose: it must have some intelligent agent as its owneroperator. It lies in the very nature of the concept that purposes cannot exist in splendid isolation; they must, in the final analysis, belong to some agent or other. For purposes as such, to be is to be adopted. Purposive explanations operate in terms of why conscious agents do things, and not ones of why impersonal conditions obtain. A value, however, can be altogether impersonal. Being a value does not require that somebody actually values it (any more than being a fact requires that somebody actually realizes it). A person can certainly hold a certain value dear but if it indeed is a value, then its status as such is no more dependent on its actually being valued than the symmetry of a landscape depends on its actually being discerned. Values admit of being prized, but that does not mean that they actually are, any more than a task’s being difficult means that anyone actually attempts it. To be of value is to deserve to be valued, but that of course need not actually happen: the value of things can be underestimated of overestimated or totally overlooked. Neither the items that have value not the facts of their being of value depend on apprehending minds for their reality. And this holds in particular for “ontological” values like economy, simplicity, regularity, uniformity, etc., that figure in the axiological explanation of laws. The being of values does not consist in their being perceived: any more than does the being of most other sorts of things. When someone adopts a certain value, then fostering or promoting it can of course become one of his purposes. “Promoting friendship among the members” can function exactly as “getting elected president of the club” in regard to being someone’s purpose. But values as such (“simplicity” for example) are not purposes any more than offices (“being president”) are—though, of course, their promotion or more ample realization may well function as somebody’s purpose. The crucial point is that the being of a value does not consist in its being adopted by someone, any more than the being of a truth consist in its being endorsed by someone. Just here is where the shift from purpose to value explanation is decisively advantageous. A purpose must be somebody’s purpose, and if something has a purpose at all then it must be that it serves somebody’s purposes. But in this regard purpose different from value where less bag-

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gage is required. While people indeed can value things, something can be of value—can have value—without being valued by anybody—not even God (To be sure it must be valuable for something or other but it need not be valued by somebody; in principle clean air can be valuable for mammals without being valued by any of them.) In general, then, we need not embed values in purposes; axiological explanation can stand on its own feet. Axiological existence-explanation can thus proceed entirely outside the purposive order. In taking the axiological route, one is not saying that the realization of value is reality’s purpose. We need not personify nature to account for its features. To say that nature embodies value is a very far cry from saying that the realization of value is one of its purposes. That reality operates in a certain manner—that its modus operandi follows certain laws or principles—is in general an entirely impersonal thesis. The values involved in axiological explanation need not be SOMEBODY’S values. No element of personification, no reference to anyone’s aims of purposes, need be involved in axiological explanation. Purpose, on the other hand, necessarily requires a purposer—it must be somebody’s purpose. In this regard, value stands with order rather than with purpose. Order “seeking” in nature does not presuppose an orderer, nor value “seeking” a valuer. The maintenance of enhancement of a value can be a matter of “blind” operation of impersonal forces or factors. For these values are mundane and nontranscendental and the axiology at issue will be an altogether naturalistic one that can be posited on the basis of the world’s observable features. And so, from the angle of explanation, a final “causality” of value has substantial advantages over a final causality of purpose. To be sure, both represent modes of final rather than efficient causation, since in both cases we deal with tendencies towards the realizations of some prespecifiable condition of things. But these two forms of teleology are altogether distinct. The former explains regularities in terms of their conduciveness to some purposive agent’s aims and objectives (“he never mixes business with pleasure”). The latter explains them through an in-principle universal force that exerts an operative value-impetus such as efficiency or economy. Accordingly, an axiological ontogenesis can be a matter of nomological constraint based on values, and not a matter of efficient causality at all—it is a “causality” in name only. In this respect, the present axiological approach differs decisively from that of Leibniz. He answered the question “Why is it that the valueoptimizing world should be the one that actually exists?” with reference to

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the will of a God who chooses to adopt value optimization as a creative principle. Leibniz was committed to an idea that it is necessary to account for the obtaining of a principle in terms of the operation of an existing entity (specifically the agency of an intelligent being—viz. God). Instead, our axiological approach sees the explanatory bearing of a principle of value as direct, without mediation through the agency of a substantial being (however extraordinary) as final and fundamental.18 On grounds of explanatory economy, at least, purpose is thus something that we would be well-advised to manage without if we can actually manage to do so. Altogether different explanatory processes are thus at issue in axiological and in purposive explanation, and the ontological requirements of the former are a great deal more modest than those of the latter. To hold that nature operates so as to minimize or maximize this or that evaluative factor does not commit us to presupposing a purposive agency as work in or behind nature. The rationale of value can be self-contained; it can stay clear of any involvement with matters of causality, agency, and purpose. Values, in sum, can affect the constitution of reality directly through serving as possibility constraints rather than mediately through the aims and objectives of agents. 6. VALUE NATURALISM Since it is values rather than purposes that function in axiological explanation, these explanations can be entirely impersonal. We need not commit the pathetic fallacy in personalizing matters here by invoking the mediation of agents. Value can enter into an explanation simply by way of characterizing a tendentious, quasi-telic feature of its modus operandi, and thus is something very different from a purpose or aim that requires actual adoption. For a claim to end-direct transactions in the world (“Nature abhors a vacuum”) is without any presuppositions or implications with regard to a purposively operating mind. A system can be goal directed through its inherent natural “programming” (e.g., heliotropism or homeostasis) without any admixture of purpose even as a conservation of energy principle need not be held on the basis of nature’s “seeking” to conserve energy. In sum the values at issue are impersonal and “natural” in relating to the physical and metaphysical status of potential existents. For there is no good reason why axiology could not here take the form of a value naturalism—and very good reason why it should do so. Given that it is values rather than purposes that function in axiological

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explanation, these explanations can be entirely impersonal. Values here function directly rather than via the mediation of agents. The idea is simply that the system in question is value-tropic (as it were) in that it inherently tends to realize certain value-endowed conditions (maintaining stability, achieving symmetry, prolonging longevity, operating efficiently, etc.) But, of course, the system that comports itself in this way need not overtly hold such a value—like a physical system that pursues the path of least resistance, it may well be the sort of thing for which the conscious adoption of values is simply not possible. To reemphasize: when its modus operandi establishes commitment to a certain value, nature need not “seek” value any more than water need “seek” its own level. We need not anthropomorphize here. There is no good reason why an axiology cannot or should not take the form of a value naturalism. On the contrary. To implement the principle of axiology by way of personification would be selfdefeating, since we ideally want to explain existence in a way that is selfsustaining (self-contained, “ultimate”). To be sure, why nature so operates as to implement the value V will require some explanation. But as we have seen the prospect of self-invoking explanations is available here. For example: nature favors economy (simplicity, harmony, etc.) exactly because that is the most economical of things for it to do. Or again: why do its laws exist as they do? Because that’s for the axiological best in optimizing the systemic operations that obtain. And why does what’s for the best obtain—just exactly because that itself is for the best. The explanation of the operation of laws is axiological (value-referential). And the explanation of the obtaining of values is selfreferential—i.e., is also axiological. The possibility of providing an explanation on its own basis—a reflexive explanation that is literally a selfexplanation—is now before us. Value is, or can be, regress-stopping: it can be “final” by way of being self-explanatory in a manner purpose cannot be. The axiology at issue should thus be seen as naturalistic. The values involved are to encompass factors like stability, symmetry, continuity, complexity, order, and even a dynamic impetus to the development of “higher” forms possessed of more sophisticated capabilities—perhaps even a sort of Hegelian impetus toward the evolutionary emergence of a creature possessed of an intelligence able to comprehend and appreciate the universe itself, creating a conscious reduplication model of the universe in the realm of thought through the artifice of intelligence. So in any event these values are mundane and nontranscendental, pivoting on physico-

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metaphysical factors that make for an altogether “naturalistic” axiology that can be posited on the basis of the world’s observable features.19 After all, it is plausible to take the naturalistic line that in reasoning from the character of nature we should remain in the natural realm. Whatever values we may find to inhere in the operations of nature are still something natural—there need be nothing supra-natural (let alone supernatural!) about it. A universe that functions under the aegis of value no more requires an underlying extra-natural valuer than a universe that exhibits lawful order necessarily requires an extra-natural lawgiver or a universe that has a start in time (the “big bang”) necessarily requires an extra-natural creator. The values at issue can, in principle, function wholly within the modus operandi of nature. Value-tropism requires the support of a naturalexternal intelligence no more than a principle of conservation or a principle of least action does. Our axiogenetic theory is thus without theological demands or implications. And this is all to the good. For David Hume’s point holds good: that nature is the product of the operations of a designing intelligence is not something we can learn convincingly merely from a study of the workings of nature itself. 7. SIDESTEPPING THEOLOGY And so, confronted with the challenge “What if one is skeptical about theism? Would one then not have to reject optimalism?” the optimalist replies: “Not at all. Optimalism does not presuppose theism—it perhaps could but certainly need not call upon God to institute optimalism.” To reach outside the value domain itself is to equip value with a purposive explanation that is theological in nature is unnecessary and counterproductive—it complicates rather than simplifies the explanatory process. For we then cannot avoid the question: “Why does the putative creator adopt this purpose?” The response must take the form that he deems (and of course, since it is God that is at issue, rightly deems) it to be of value. And this at once carries us back to axiology. Recourse to divine purpose merely adds a complex epicycle once the question of the rational validity of this purpose arises. We now have a two-factor explanation of creator plus value, where in principle a one-factor explanation in terms of value as such can accomplish the explanatory task. Following the guidelines of Kant’s Critique of Teleological Judgment, Archbishop Temple wrote:

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The chain of causes is not self-explanatory. . . There is in fact only one principle which is self-explanatory; it is Purpose. When in tracing any causal nexus we read the activity of a will fulfilling a Purpose with which we ourselves sympathize, we are in fact satisfied.20

But this is very problematic because purpose clearly does not stand at the end of the explanatory line. A rational agent’s purposes always have a rationale: the that of purpose leaves open the question why? It is altogether appropriate to inquire why an agent A adopts a particular purpose P: the question of the rationale for that purpose cannot be avoided. The good archbishop is simply wrong to think of purpose as an explanatory ultimate. However much we may sympathize with someone’s purposes, they will still remain items on the explanatory agenda. If you are famished, then however thoroughly I may understand your plight, your purpose of getting food still needs (and is capable of receiving) an explanation—in terms of hunger satisfaction immediately, and pertains in terms of the value of pain avoidance ultimately. The operation of a rationally adopted purpose must itself always root in a value of some sort: well-being in the present case. The explanation is doubtless eminently simple and straightforward, but its being obvious is something quite different from its being superfluous. The salient difference between the present axiological approach and the traditional theological argumentation from design thus turns on keeping values apart from divine intentions and purposes. To say that reality is subject to an evaluative principle is emphatically not to personify nature or to personalize the productive forces that serve to explain it. There is enormous confusion in the philosophical tradition on this point. Early on, Anaximander of Miletus and other Presocratic nature philosophers were prepared to do without the idea that cosmic order requires an orderer. But Plato and especially Christian Neoplatonism entrenched this idea in Western philosophy almost beyond recall. And yet this stance is eminently questionable. For one simply need not locate the source of value in a personal creator, a divine mind or spirit that is an agent whose creative actions are animated by a desire for the good. Hume, Kant, and the numberless post-Darwinian anti-teleologists to the contrary notwithstanding, the conception that order requires an orderer still continues to be deeply entrenched. And yet this temptation must be resisted—order no more requires an orderer or value a valuer than temperature demands a heatsensitively sentient being. Value itself is taken to constitute a determinative force, capable on its own footing of providing a principle of explication without the mediation of a personal agent for whom it serves as a de-

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termining motive. In the 19th century, William Whewell wrote: “The examination of the material world brings before us a number of things and relations of things which suggest to most minds the beliefs of a creating and presiding Intelligence.”21 And many theorists from Leibniz to Einstein have held exactly this same view.22 But the historical course of science—where God has been asked to do less and less explanatory work over the course of time— is such as to make it reasonable to contemplate an account of design without recourse to a designer. Accordingly, axiology need not be tied to religion as this enterprise is usually understood.23 It may be tempting for us anthropomorphizing humans to ground nature’s elegant laws in the mathematicized planning of an Originative Intelligence, but the merit of an axiological approach show that this temptation can—and should—be resisted. From the days of Laplace and Darwin onwards, it has become increasingly clear that design in nature does not entail a designer of nature, a purposing intelligence “behind” nature, a creator God. The axiological explanation of nature and its laws circumvents the cosmological argument rather than engendering some version of it. To be sure, axiological explanation is not incompatible with theism— on the contrary, it is thoroughly congenial to it. (A benign Creator would certainly create a duly optimal world.) But a theory of axiological ontogenesis certainly does not require a further recourse to the theological domain. What is at issue here is not an odium theologicum—an aversion to theological considerations as such. It is rather the idea of the medieval dictum non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum—that we should not ask God to pull our philosophical chestnuts out of the fire.24 God has more important work to do than helping philosophers out of the corners into which they paint themselves. This said, however, it must be stressed that axiological explanation is altogether congenial to theism—even though they do not require it. After all it is only to be expected that if the world is created by a God of a sort that the tradition encourages us to accept, then the world that such a God creates should be one in which values play a role. And so it would seem that theism requires axiological explanation distinctly more than axiological explanation requires theism. Questions like “Why is there anything at all?” are at bottom naturalistic questions and they ought ideally to be answered by naturalistic means. After all, to explain the natural realm in super-natural terms is surely an epistemically problematic proceeding. It is a matter of explaining something

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we understand rather imperfectly in terms of something we really do not understand at all (namely God). As an integral part of natural reality we ourselves have at least some cognitive grip upon it. But the ways of God are so far and above our comprehension that here indeed we do confront an authentic mystery. To account for nature’s features in super-natural terms it to explain obscurum per obscurior. But axiogenesis must surely be rejected because it is so strange and even weird. Really? Is it any stranger than much that we encounter in science—for example, the current theories of the physics of the very small or of the very large. Clearly when you ask extraordinary questions you must be prepared for extraordinary answers. That the theories that do the job in any domain of issues extremely remote from the realm of everyday experience should seem weird by everyday standards is only natural and to be expected. Weirdness by the standards of everyday familiarity, is no cogent objection here—it is something that we have to expect. But what of the epistemic dimension. What sort of evidence speaks for axiogenesis? What sorts of grounds are there for claiming that what is for the best actually exists? Of course, with matters of synoptic explanation we are dealing with issues that go above and beyond the resources of observation. The rationale of reality-as-a-whole is clearly not going to be something that is directly observable—it will have to be a “theoretical entity”—or, rather, a “theoretical fact.” Like all other such facts it will have links to observation, but they will almost certainly be very long-distance links that provide for only a rather loose coupling. The validation at issue here certainly cannot dispense with matters of observation but it will inevitably have to go far above and beyond them—much as in other branches of theoretical science. It is unavoidable that the explanatory requisites of this problem-domain should be not super-natural, to be sure, but in some respects supra-natural. For it is, after all, the explanation of nature’s nature that is at issue. In general we verify abstract theses by monitoring the acceptability of their concrete consequences. And there is no reason not to apply this general principle in the present case as well. Of course it all depends. And specifically it depends on the standard of merit or value that we employ. Clearly if the standard is one of such specifically human-advantage value as comfort, peace of mind, security of existence, or the like, then this claim becomes very problematic and questionable. But if the values at issue are less blatantly anthropomorphic and more metaphysical—if they look to such factors as nomic order under the aegis of natural laws conge-

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nial to the “progressive” development of life and intelligence—then matters appears in a less problematic light. Axiogenesis has to be seen as a confirmable thesis whose evidentiation hinges on the systematizing our knowledge of nature’s ways. The crux would now be a framework of natural law engendering a course of progressive development whose successive phases of cosmic, biological, and rational evolution provide for the emergence of intelligent life forms able not only to understand nature under the aegis of science but also to appreciate it under the aegis of religion. What is pivotal here is thus not just a lawful order in nature but a lawful order able to provide an effective pathway alike to a scientific understanding and an aesthetic appreciation of the real. But these are matters that have to emerge from inquiry. Philosophical deliberations can do no more than show that the doctrine is available as a plausible theoretical prospect that enjoys certain theoretical advantages over its alternatives. But its acceptability will ultimately hinge on the progress of science itself. APPENDIX As already noted, the axio-ontological position set out here is clearly indebted to the teachings of G. W. Leibniz. And more recently, a kindred position has been defended by the Canadian philosopher John Leslie.25 There are, however, substantial differences between Leslie’s approach and that of the present discussion. Leslie’s position is predicated on a recourse to specifically ethical considerations so that for him “the world’s existence and make-up are products of “a directly active ethical necessity” with the result that “ethical requirements are creatively powerful”26 On this basis, Leslie contemplates a productive agent or agency which, while not necessarily identifiable with God, is nevertheless a being whose creative action is thereby appraisable in the category of right/wrong. As Leslie sees it, ethically guided dutiful agency is the crux, and reality is the creation of a power or agency that functions subject to the impulse of ethical considerations. And he has little alternative to such a produceranthropomorphism since ethical considerations are by nature agentcoordinated, having to function as link between producer and product. By their vary nature, ethical factors are causally productive only by way of motivation. No such anthropomorphism invades the present axiological account. It sees the real as emerging from the manifold of possibility a modus oper-

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andi that is altogether natural. That is to say it sees this manifold as subject to inherently value-oriented principles of operation that serve to condense a plurality of possibilities down to a unique alternative, so that among a multitude of logical possibilities only a single real possibility remains, which is actualized in virtue of this very fact. The world thus exists of necessity alright, but the necessity in question is not logical but metaphysical or axiological in nature. The aspect of productive agency which is crucial to Leslie’s deontological ontogenesis—as it was to that of Leibniz—is altogether absent from the present axiological ontogenesis. The key factor here is not ethical motivation but ontological constraint. For the values contemplated in the present discussion are ontological rather than ethical values—that is values within the spectrum of good/bad rather than that of right/wrong. Accordingly, the present position prescinds from the requirement of a productive-creative-active agency or power, instead viewing the effect of value not in terms of productive exigency but rather in terms of exclusion. Its operative principle is not the magnetic attraction that a consideration of the good exerts upon a creative agent but the eliminative impetus within in the range of “real” possibilities. Leslie’s axiological ontology pivots on the idea that ethics somehow requires existence. The present theory moves in the reverse direction to stipulate that existence does (and axiologically must) have a nature that paves the way to ethics: to the evolutionary emergence of a creature capable of recognizing its duties in relation to the furtherance of the good. Thus as in big bang cosmology, the universe of cosmic evolution begins with physics and gives rise to biology—let alone anthropology and psychology and ethics—only late in the game. As axiogenesis sees it, ontological values are primary and basic, while specifically ethical values emerge on the world stage only in eventual due course with the evolutionary emergence of intelligent agents.27 NOTES 1

Carl G. Hempel, “Science Unlimited,” The Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, vol. 14 (1973), pp. 187-202. (See p. 200). My italics.

2

Note, too, that the question of the existence of facts is a horse of a very different color from that of the existence of things. There being no things is undoubtedly a possible situation, there being no facts is not (since if the situation were realized, this would itself constitute a fact).

3

Aristotle taught that every change must emanate from a “mover,” i.e., a substance whose machinations provide the cause of change. This commitment to causal reification is at work in much of the history of Western thought. That its pervasiveness

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NOTES

is manifest at virtually every juncture is clear from William Lane Craig’s interesting study of The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (London: Macmillan, 1980). 4

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (ed. N. K. Smith; London: Longmans, Green, 1922), p. 189.

5

G. W. Leibniz, “Principles of Nature and of Grace,” sect. 8, italics supplied. Compare St. Thomas: “Of necessity, therefore, anything that in process of change is being changed by something else.” (S.T., IA 2,3). The idea that only substances can produce changes goes back to Thomas’ master, Aristotle. In Plato and the Presocratics, the causal efficacy of principles is recognized (e.g., the love and strife of Empedocles).

6

For criticisms of ways of avoiding the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” see Chap. III of William Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Cf. also Donald R. Burrill (ed.), The Cosmological Argument (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1967), esp. “The Cosmological Argument” by Paul Edwards.

7

His willingness to subscribe to teleological/axiological explanation is clearly attested by his account of the rationale of the continuity of organic existence: “For since some existing things are eternal . . . while others are capable both of being and of not being, and since the good . . . is always accordingly to its own nature a cause of the better in things . . . for these reasons there is generation of animals.” (De Gener. Animalium, 731b24-31).

8

Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1903. See in particular §§ 50, 55, 57, 112-113.

9

Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (London and New York: Macmillan, 1874), Bk. I, Chap. ix, § 4.

10

Some Main Problems of Philosophy; p. 40 of the Collier paperback edition.

11

The prime spokesman for this line of thought within the Western philosophical tradition was G. W. Leibniz. A present-day exponent is John Leslie. (See the Appendix to this chapter.) See also the present author’s The Riddle of Existence (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1984).

12

To make this work out, the value of a disjunction-alternative has to be fixed at the value of its optimal member, lest the disjunctive “bundling” of a good alternative with inferior rivals so operates at to eliminate it from competition.

13

Other principles can also be self-substantiating, seeing that, for example, the Principle of Pessimism (that the worst of possible alternatives is realized) also has this feature.

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NOTES 14

The operative perspective envisions a threefold order of necessity/possibility: the logico-conceptual, the ontological or proto-physical, and the physical. It accordingly resists the positivistic tendency of the times to dismiss or ignore that second, intermediate order of considerations. And this is only to be expected since people nowadays tend to see this intermediate realm as predicated in value considerations, a theme that is anathema to present-day scientism.

15

After all, there is no reason of logico-theoretical principle why propositions cannot be self-certifying. Nothing vicious need be involved in self-substantiation. Think of “Some statements are true” or “This statement stakes a particular rather than universal claim.”

16

Leibniz saw the existence of the actual world as a decisive argument against hopelessness since existence could not be realized in a realm of topless meritoriousness. Here a benevolent creature would be effectively paralyzed.

17

For a useful collection of relevant texts see Donald R. Burrill, The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1967). Two interesting recent accounts of the issues and their historical ramifications are: William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and William L. Craig, The Cosmological Argument From Plato to Leibniz (London: Macmillan, 1980).

18

Our metaphysical invocation of a principle of value is akin to A. C. Ewing’s theological application of similar ideas in his interesting article “Two ‘Proofs’ of God’s Existence,” Religious Studies, vol. 1 (1961), pp. 29-45. Ewing there propounds the argument that God’s existence is to be accounted for axiologically: that he exists “because it was supremely good that God should exist” (p. 35). This approach has the substantial merit of avoiding Leibniz’s tactic of grounding the efficacy of value in a preexisting deity by contemplating the prospect that value is so fundamental that the deity itself can be accounted for in its terms.

19

It might seem at first thought that a reality that emerges under the aegis of physicometaphysical values is cold-bloodedly indifferent to the welfare of its having population. But this is in fact unlikely. For such an existential manifold by its very nature is a manifold of (quasi-rational) order that is bound to be congenial to the creaturesand especially the intelligent creaturesthat evolve within it. (What we have here is a position that is a hybrid crossing of Leibniz and Darwin.)

20

Contemporary British Philosophy, First Series, ed. by J. H. Muirhead (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), p. 418.

21

William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (London: H. G. Bohn, 1852), p. 1

22

See Lewis S. Feuer, “Noumenalism and Einstein’s Argument for the Existence of God,” Inquiry, vol. 26 (1981), pp. 251-85.

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NOTES 23

To be sure, some idealists envision a religion in which God plays so small a roll that even the present theory can count as “religious.” J. M. E. McTaggart, for example, defined religion as “an emotion resting on a connection of a harmony between ourselves and the universe at large.” (Some Dogmas of Religion [London: E. Arnold, 1906], p. 3) But, of course, since we humans are ourselves an evolved part of nature, some degree of affective “harmony” is pretty well inevitable in a way that need not have much of “religion” about it on any ordinary understanding of the matter.

24

Indeed an over-enthusiastic optimalist could take the line that theism hinges on optimalism rather than the reverse because: “God’s own existence issues from optimalism: he exists because that’s for the best.”

25

He initially expounded it out in a paper entitled “The Theory that the World Exists Because It Should” (American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 7 [1970], pp. 286-98), and subsequently developed it more fully in his book Value and Existence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). See also his paper “The World’s Necessary Existence” (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 18. [1980], pp. 207-23) and his book Universes (New York: Routledge, 1996).

26

John Leslie, “The Theory that the World Exists Because It Should,” p. 268.

27

This chapter replicates Chapter 8 of the Author’s Nature and Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

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Part V

ETHICAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Introduction Lenn E. Goodman

A

few years ago, taking a visiting philosopher to lunch, I found myself treated to quite a spate of views that I thought sounded rather cockeyed. Not hearing much in the way of argument, I asked why one should think that way. The answer I got stunned me a bit: “If we don’t, we’ll all just be killing each other.” That, I think, was meant to sound like pragmatism. To me it rang hollow, a sort of updated ad baculum. Does failure to agree, broadly, set us inevitably at each other’s throats? Is conformity a better recipe for peace than recognition of our differences? Can one respect another’s outlook without endorsing it—or reject it without tears? Is agreement in fear of conflict cheap, or bought too dear? Is it condescension, or doublethink? Nicholas Rescher’s Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus took aim at one of today’s fatter sacred cows, the idea of a moral, political, even epistemological imperative for intellectual convergence. “Recognizing that others see some matter differently from ourselves,” Rescher writes, “need not daunt us” (121). “There is nothing rationally mandatory about the quest for consensus” (126). What a breath of fresh air in today’s academic hothouse, where rare, self-pollinated specimens exude well rehearsed praises of diversity but can barely countenance an alien thought. Many vocally abhor stereotypes but crowd into a procrustean bed of their own making, mouthing the passwords for admission—and then caricature rival views, or romanticize what they find pleasantly primitive or safely exotic. Squeezing into their partisan mold, they make tintypes of their adversaries, mocking those they’ve already stamped, out of their parents or their former selves. So learning becomes not discovery or growth but mimicry—storage and retrieval, cookbook chemistry and McGuffey physics and philosophy. Teaching collapses into a facile relativism, secure in the promise that little on offer will jar against biases duly accredited.

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

Rescher’s chief targets in Pluralism are Jürgen Habermas, Hans Georg Gadamer, and Karl-Otto Apel. But he does not ignore Kuhn or Rorty, Rawls, Mill, Peirce, and James. His case rests on his commitment to what he calls objective rationality. But reason today often gets a bad rap, and that’s not just Hume’s fault. A lot of overweening claims have been made in its name, and false pretenders have so often usurped a mantle that doesn’t fit too well that reason itself can look or sound somewhat pretentious and halloweenish. If its fruits were just the Terror, then Burke’s or Oakeshott’s tradition, or Rorty’s parochial (“local” or “retail”) values begin to look downright cozy, and the idea of a truth “out there” to be grasped and held onto starts to look greedy, a source, or reflex, of an urge to dominate. There’s a variety of responses to the seeming scandal of intellectual or practical diversity. Rescher lists skepticism, relativism, and syncretism among them, each defined in severe but hardly fanciful terms. For no stance seems quite overstated enough in today’s agora to lack its familiar enthusiasts. One need hardly dummy up strawmen. Well documented avatars preen in the literature. Skepticism, here traced back to Xenophanes and Aenesidemus, deems no truth claims tenable. Rescher calls it nihilism and tackles it with an argument garnered and generalized from H. H. Price’s take on testimony: There’s at least as much risk in skirting as in making a commitment— more, in fact. For sitting on the sidelines assures vacuity; but commitment risks only error, in principle open to correction. Rescher’s watchword: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Skeptics might answer, as Sextus does, that their quarrel is not with ordinary life but with claims to ultimate truth. But Rescher sees forced choices: “We cannot rationally maintain a posture of indifference. . . . One must “choose sides” (120-21). For the ultimate questions that skeptics try to shake off are fraught with value issues vital to the conduct of life: “It makes a crucial difference to everybody which position one adopts. . . . We cannot view doctrinal disagreement in the light of a “mere divergence of opinion.” It is a serious conflict—as one would expect when something as important as one’s values comes into play” (122). To opt out is itself to choose. Despite their blanket condemnations, skeptics, in fact, are usually pretty specific in their allergies and agendas: Metaphysics, religion, and (hand picked) value notions top the roster of anxieties and neuralgias from which equipollence promises relief. Philip Hallie sees skepticism as the royal

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road to tolerance—despite the doctrinaire skeptic’s disavowal of any value that would set tolerance ahead of persecution or oppression, or any other seeming end. Most skeptics reserve a special place in epistemic Hell for superstition. So Sextus singles out astrology for bitter invective and opprobrium, even as his tropes sweep away astronomy at large. Almanacs get a pass from him, but logic is out. Somehow skeptics hope to hang on to a critical edge, even as they reject reason and the senses wholesale and forswear all objective criteria of truth. Evidently, we humans find it hard to give up theorizing just because some theory (even our own!) pronounces theory impossible. “Homo sapiens,” Rescher writes, “has evolved within nature to fill the ecological niche of an intelligent being” (87). We don’t always fill it very creditably. Syncretism is the quest for a conjunction of all views. Its poster child here is Paul Feyerabend, who shifts the skeptic’s motto “no more” into a new register and comes out singing “Anything goes!” (90, 100). Assiduously uncritical, Rescher’s syncretists hope, delusively, to rise above the fray of outlooks and opinions. But the views they lump together are discordant. Their fusion is not a symphony but “a mess” (102). For Rescher’s syncretists, “The incompatibility of claims does not mean that one or another of them must be denied. . . . Truth is somehow large and complex enough to accommodate contradictions” (91). That appraisal, typifying the extreme, may be somewhat hasty. There are, after all, ways to unite discordant views without simply and mechanically conjoining them at the expense of the excluded middle—if one can see past the limited horizons of rival outlooks. Language and experience canonize all sorts of conflicting views and values, rarely needing to reconcile them since they come into play in disparate contexts. But a good philosopher does not simply play off one of these against another but charitably seeks the motives of each, in hopes of finding a larger context in which apparent disparities are resolved, even those among the sharply antagonistic intellectual forces that have barricaded themselves behind one fragmentary insight or another. Success in devising that kind of creative vision is the hallmark of genuinely great philosophy: Plato overcomes the opposition of Heraclitean flux to Parmenidean invariance by finding the place of change in this world, and seeing a place for ultimate unity beyond the world of becoming, yet shining through it. Aristotle can wed his naturalism to Plato’s idealism by discerning steady, indeed telic patterns in the natural flux. Spinoza discovers liberty in a world of determinacy, when he observes that identity does

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not mean changelessness, and urges that we, too, are, in some measure, among the many causes whose agency has effect. Kant can reconcile Hume with Leibniz by sifting the a priori from the innate, separating the warrant for our concepts from the story of their genesis in the mind. Syntheses like these complement the analytic moment in philosophy and build a syncretism rather more thoughtful than the one that Rescher rightly and firmly excludes when he calls on us to be “open-minded, not empty-headed” (119). The relativism Rescher rejects he calls indifferentist. Like syncretism, he finds, it resembles skepticism in (at least overtly) refusing to discriminate among rival views: It finds no rational grounds for choice, but only taste, or tradition. Rescher fells it with a tu quoque: Indifferentists have foresworn all rational grounds for choosing their own approach. Yet choices must be made, not all of them on a par with ordering coffee instead of tea. Those who take all values to be “irrationalizable” (103) have left themselves no rational leg to stand on. That argument, to be sure, is dialectical, best addressed to those not yet wedded to the nugacity of reason. It won’t gain much purchase on committed anti-rationalists. They can always say that demands for rational argument were just what they were trying to avoid. So Rescher does smoke out his adversaries, but does not exactly handcuff them. They can always say that to ask for reasons for their irrationalism simply begs the question. Still, it’s never useless to expose the pretensions of speciously reasonable dismissals of the use of reason. Does Rescher’s tu quoque slap back at his pluralism? Facing the objection that pluralism, too, cannot discriminate, he declares it perfectly consistent to respect a variety of views while taking seriously a limited subset and endorsing just one: “The fact that a plurality of positions is available does not mean that we have to see them all as equally correct and adoptable” (96). We need not treat all options equally or avoid all preferences. We have our reasons, and they will reflect our experience. But that’s no call to turn “feckless,” “spineless,” or fainthearted (89, 96). We should not be afraid to “stick our necks out” and “take a position that endorses some answers and rejects others” (96). Indeed, we must. We have to be committed to the views we hold: “We have no choice but to see our truth as the truth” (105). On one level that sounds like a truism. If saying “In my opinion . . .” is just a kind of ritual forelock pulling, expressive of modesty or an admission of fallibility, it’s probably pretty innocuous. No stack of disclaimers,

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even if couched in the language of relativism, gets one wholly off the hook: Either we hold a view or we don’t. It’s fine to say we’re not sure and we’re open to conviction. But if conviction means anything, the bottom line is that with whatever caveats and qualifications remain, we’re convinced. Consensus, as Rescher argues, is a ready substitute if truth itself seems unattainable. And advocates of the various species of “indifferentism”— skepticism, relativism, and syncretism—can always urge that truth itself is a dangerous illusion. They may readily brand commitments to objectivity “absolutist,” muddling into the notion of the name all the bad associations of know-nothing triumphalism, dogma and dictatorship. But holding a view is not the same as imposing it, and it’s the pluralist who recognizes that there are people in the world who live differently or think differently than he. The skeptic, relativist and syncretist, placing all views and ways on a par, pretends that none is any better than the rest, and so reduces all to one, whether in the syncretist’s amazing ball of wax, the relativist’s shallow deference to their diversity, or the skeptic’s wholesale dismissal. Mill’s alternative looks attractive when he promises that truth is what will likelier emerge where many and diverse voices can be heard. What troubles Rescher in that promise is Mill’s further hope that intellectual ferment will yield not just truth in the end but its common acknowledgment, albeit at “a stage of intellectual advancement which at present seems at an incalculable distance” (On Liberty, Part 2, ed. H. B. Acton, p. 105). Peirce strikes a more discordant note when he makes the ultimate consensus of inquirers not just the consummation of inquiry but the criterion of truth. Rescher, for his part, is very ready to admit that reality itself is out of reach. We have no God’s eye view, no secret passage away from and above our own perspectives. But what follows, on Rescher’s account, is no “indifferentist” attraction or repulsion but recoil from the intellectual apathy he finds among others who make and press the same admission: We need to acknowledge the limits of our experience and our methods but get on with our lives. Of course our human limitations and the open-endedness of experience will inevitably lead different persons (and different cultures) in different directions. But the inference Rescher draws is a need to recognize that we are who we are and think as we do: It’s perfectly fine to hold a view. We have to stick to our guns and have every right to do so, so long as we make every endeavor to be rationally conscientious in our thinking. For “right” here just means rational warrant.

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What recognition of our limitations ought to teach us, Rescher argues, is not that we should hold no view or abide by no practice but only that we should not expect others to see eye-to-eye with us or march with us in lockstep. To be who we are, we can, and should, and must think the thoughts we think, hold the beliefs we hold, cherish the values we prize, and live by the practices we admire. We have no obligation to cave in just because others think differently. There is no obligation to ape their ways, and no intrinsic merit in yielding to their outlook. What morality asks of us is simply to give up the expectation or demand that they do or think as we do. And what epistemic humility asks of us is to make every effort to take account of others’ standards in the shaping of our own (110-11). Flexibility is one thing; pliability, quite another. It’s one thing to learn from others and quite something else to embrace a view or practice simply because others seem to expect that of us. One factor that drives an interest in consensus today (quite apart from our penchant as social animals, in many a good and bad sense) is the pressure toward a sort of ideological minimalism. It feels good, of course, to know that others think or feel as we do, that their goals are like ours, that they’re pulling for the same team. But that kind of feeling can goad inquisitorial behavior, jihads, show trials, and crusades, enforcing conformity not in the interest of social harmony or even the salvation of souls but out of an intellectual or moral imperialism that is all too ready to forget about sincerity or depth of commitment, so long as the longed for formula of surrender is heard. But when consensus becomes a goal in its own right (especially among equals), simplicity is at a premium. Clarity and coherence readily give way to a drive for univocity and the reduction of holdouts to (at least outward) conformity. Hence the immolation of consistency in doxastic creeds: The telltale marker of the heavy political hand is the residue of words: shibboleths linger where once, for some, at least, there was a shining, joyous faith. The politics of early Church councils, the secular and mildly skeptical humanism of the Renaissance, the Reformation search for simple, Gospel truths, the new secularity and secularism of the Enlightenment, the quest for some lowest common denominator in public education, or, failing that, a muttering of overlapping sayisms in societies at last ready to acknowledge their diversity, all press toward minimalism: What are the least offending phrases to be uttered, the least obtrusive gestures to be made. The formulae of compromise are battered into shape and into place not to make them ready for real credence but because they least stir the somnolence of

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consensus with unfamiliar claims, the strong scent of coffee, or of the fire it was brewed on. By a kind of Gresham’s law of ideas, bad thinking drives out good. Laws, of course, do, and rightly, press toward minima, demands that all (or nearly all) can live with. But law, quite naturally, drags morals along with it, on the vulgar presumption that morals should hardly ask what law does not insist on. Why should we ask more of ourselves, morally, or intellectually, or spiritually, than we expect of one another? We can see the trend pretty clearly in religious institutions, when spirituality is commodified and the tough intellectual work and spiritual discipline of a tradition or personal quest give way to the gestures of commity, vocal lipservice and tacit laxity that passes for tact in the marketplace. Mill says something precious here, and seldom quoted: Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without being considered unmannerly or presuming. (On Liberty, Part 4, ed. Acton, p. 134).

What Mill is addressing here is the biblical obligation of reproof (Leviticus 19:17), a sensitive matter, to be sure, but also an obligation constitutive in the larger if more abstract sounding commandment of the next verse, which it helps motivate biblically: Love thy neighbor as thyself. Part of Rescher’s program, intellectually and morally, is to call for the kind of candor that Mill is wishing for and that today, even more than in Mill’s day, is smothered by the demands of false tact—which too readily morphs into the pressure toward conformity and correctness that called forth Mill’s defense of intellectual freedom and diversity of life plans and patterns. One can, Rescher holds, respect another’s outlook without embracing it; and one can recognize another’s lifestyle without adopting it. But acknowledging the possibility of respect and recognition of this sort does not commit us to the view that every outlook is worthy of respect or every life course admirable. More than one pathway can be and is rationally pursued, and more than one style or outcome of thinking can be and is adopted.

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That’s inevitable, Rescher argues, given our finitude and the diversity of human experience. Only think of the variety of grounds on which one theory might be given preference to another. A fortiori should we expect diversity in the larger pathways of thought. But it is rationality, in whatever form, that wins respect. A viewpoint must be defensible publicly and indeed publicly defended to be worthy, in Rescher’s eyes not of credence but of deference. So one needn’t take astrology, say, or geomancy, seriously. Indeed, one shouldn’t, and (smart people at least) should be able to say why. But there are alternative rational outlooks, and they need not be cut off from one another. Precisely because rationality was their modus operandi, conversation and debate among them can and should become their modus vivendi. Communication, pace Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner (137) and Donald Davidson (142) or Apel (148), does not presuppose consensus; and pace Habermas (153), it does not even presuppose a common goal of consensus. Indeed, Rescher argues, conversation presumes a bracketing of our assumptions about whose views are most adequate: “To be sure it is sometimes said that to understand other people’s discourse we must agree with them... But this is simply wrong. . . . we may need to know (or conjecture) what their beliefs are, but we need not agree with them. We can understand what Galen says about the four humours or what Leibniz says about his windowless monads without agreeing with these authors as to the issues involved” (142). We don’t have to agree with Anaximander (or, still less to share his world view!) to understand what he meant when he said that the sun was a hole in the firmament through which we can see the cosmic fire that circles the world (138). Praxis may work somewhat differently here from the more intellectual realms of symbolism or belief. Do we need to agree, if not to understand each other, then to get along? One problem in discussions of consensus and its lack is a slack-key slide from talk about agreement and disagreement over particular (or specific) facts to wider ranging talk about paradigms, or from language games to systems of syntax, from rituals, say, to ways of life. The notion of diverse “forms of life” facilitates the slide. Clearly we can’t have much of a conversation with someone if we don’t have a common language. And many people think there’s always a metaphysic or a cosmology embedded in our language. That’s an inference commonly drawn from Whorf’s work. And many presume that we can’t live together unless we share a world view. Hence the moral pressure to unify our world views. And yet translation, although no easy or mechanical task, is possi-

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ble. Conversations do take place across cultural divides. And people who share a culture can and do differ profoundly. Poets and philosophers can work creatively at the boundaries of syntax and semantics, and regular Janes and Joes, too, regularly think and speak and act creatively. They don’t just make fixed moves within established language games. Great painters don’t just color inside the lines, and neither do the rest of us when we’ve a mind to be ourselves. It’s easy to assume that to live together, if we don’t have common values on the object level, as it were, then we’d better share some values on a meta-level—say, about getting along or keeping the law, or living and letting live. But even that assumption is not perfectly true. Shared values do contribute to the functioning of a society. But value differences are found in any human group, even in a couple or among siblings, or parents and their children. And it’s not always through shared meta-values that such differences are mediated. It can be through common interests, or a sense of shared history or destiny. What unites a community need not be doxastic at all, although I think it will be ideational. Ibn Khaldun calls the commitment that holds a tribe or clan together as. abiyya, literally, sinew. Pragmatically it means a sense of shared interests, underwritten by the recognition (tested in experience) that another’s gain or loss, pride, grief, or shame is one’s own. Tribally what’s critical is how dependably one can expect help when trouble strikes. It’s easy to reify that prospect, but phenomenologically it’s a matter more of roles than rules, a construal of identity not a body of beliefs. Roles still are values but not in the credal way that the history of European sectarian and secularizing history might have led one to expect; and the counters in play tribally are more often brides or reprisals than, say, oaths of allegiance, trade credits, or scholarships and cultural exchanges. But interests, not ideologies alone, are the vitamins that build sinew, not just in tribes but also in nations. One of the merits of Rescher’s pluralism is to turn our eyes in that direction. It’s pretty clear that people can live together (not just in the same country but even in the same household) when they don’t share the same outlook. And it’s widely observed that for practical purposes people can get along pretty well, keep the laws and uphold the constitutions of their lands, even when they have profoundly different reasons for doing so. Indeed, the liberal dispensation is based on the assumption that one need not (and should not) press one’s fellows as to the ultimate groundings of their allegiance.

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Outlooks, Rescher reasons, will always be diverse. So the quest for consensus is utopian (181). But what marks and builds the health of a healthy society are shared efforts and allegiances. Individuals and groups of all sorts can find their own good reasons for working together and getting along. “What matters for irenic conflict resolution is not second-order consensus but second order acquiescence.” And that is more a matter of personal and group concerns than of shared slogans or beliefs: “The rational person’s acquiescence is, after all, based on a cost-benefit calculation. . . . sensible people are distinctly unlikely to acquiesce in arrangements that are oppressive to them”(171-73). What follows, Rescher argues, is that “A political process that is both theoretically valid and practically workable must seek not to abolish divisive self-interest but to co-ordinate it.” The means to that end are “certainly not just the methodology of deliberative reasoning,” but “the forging of a community of consilient interests” (181). For “What is needed for cooperation is not consensus but something quite different—a convergence of interests” (180). Pressure to conform, in the interest of consensus, will prove an impediment to creativity, an invitation to mediocrity, and a disincentive to innovation and productive effort (163). Realism accepts “the unavailability of consensus” and strives instead to create “a communal framework of thought and action where we can come to terms with disagreement and make the best—and most—of it” (193). It’s framing the human political problem in terms of interests rather than agreement that leads Rescher to find Rawls’ posit of unanimity behind the veil of ignorance utopian. But the charge goes further. Rescher wants to speak of real people in the real world. That’s why he dismisses consensus as a chimera. He’s not interested in conjectures about the virtual agreement of ideally rational choosers in a fictive thought experiment. He, too, of course, posits sensible people when he speaks of acquiescence. But that, he thinks, is a reasonable expectation. He assumes that people can be counted on (for the most part, at least) to recognize their own interests. That’s the basic premise of any liberal democracy, and it’s why he cites the ability of people to tell the difference between when they’re flourishing and when they’re being oppressed. Like any theory, that one might hold steady only within certain tolerances. It might not work too well with folks who see their interests in terms, say, of reconquering Andalusia, restoring the Caliphate, and toppling every secular state—and who would rather die than acquiesce. Rescher, like Rawls, thinks that people should and would desire to preserve

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their liberties and then their other interests, which he readily assumes are met with liquid assets. His theory is not well calibrated for societies or movements where liquid assets are so ample for some and so scanty for others as hardly to have weight in the plotting of a course. When conquest matters more than life itself, and dignity is bought by martyrdom, not work or wisdom, wealth is not a stabilizing factor, and liberty needs to be reborn before it can take wing. Conversation is rarely fruitful with fanatics, and never with armed terrorists. Nor does social mobility unify the societies on which fanatics feed. It can as likely foster that sense of guilt and revulsion with self that (when turned upon the alien other) transforms alienated youths into suicide bombers and ordinary hoodlums and autodidacts into bomb designers and planners of suicide missions. Dialogue is not quite the answer here, and I think Rescher knows that. What he exposes as not just utopian but wholly artificial in Rawls is the notion of “ideally rational people” planning a society in “ideally rational circumstances.” “Knowing how to play a perfect hand in a card game will not help us decide how to play the imperfect hands that fate actually deals to us” (178). Rescher here pinions one of Rawls’ deepest weaknesses: Like the economists who give real world names to the variables in their models, Rawls would like his model to reveal the veritable nature of justice: Knowing what arrangements rational subjects would choose if unconstrained by need or fear or history, unbiased by any thought of the roles they themselves would play in the society they frame, and undistracted even by presumptions about their own strengths or tastes, should show us what is properly called justice. Rational choosers, Rawls informs us, would give lexical priority to the preservation of personal liberty and then use the maximum principle in the distribution of goods and ills. That is, inequalities would be tolerated only insofar as they benefitted even those least advantaged by them. This is not the place to note the many rivals to Rawls’ variant on Pareto equity. Nor should we dwell upon the tensions in the notion of rational choosers who don’t know their own values yet know themselves well enough to know what they would deem a cost and what they would welcome as a benefit—and know just how risk averse they’d be in a society they have not yet lived in. (For otherwise, how do we know that they would not risk all, by giving up equality of any sort for a chance at wealth or fame or learning, virtuosity, romance, or power?) What stops Rawls’ car before it gets into motion at all is that it’s not a real car but a schematic.

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That is, Rawls, no less than Quine, is a mathematician. The results he draws from his analysis of rationality are just the ones that he’s packed into it. In a real society Rawls is impatient with those messy human beings who bring all their cultural and historical baggage along with them, and (in the name of liberalism!) bars political appeal to fundamental principles (“comprehensive doctrines”). But seeing that he is no position to legislate what reasons people might adduce (or have in mind) when they argue about the ground rules under which they live, he confines his legislation to a stipulative definition of political liberalism, withholding the name of liberal from anyone who appeals to comprehensive doctrines in a political context. Rescher is not so Pickwickian. He locates liberty and liberality in free wheeling debate. As a kid getting my feet wet in philosophy, I used to make a certain mark in my notes when I came across the kind of contretemps that I later saw labeled with the rubric: “One philosopher’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens.” My signal to myself was a bit less wordy, if not quite as cute: just two exclamation points side by side, one upright, the other inverted. (The order of the marks could indicate which view was being rejected and which retained, or even presumed). The irony that bars a reductio from working as a lead pipe cinch is that it can spring an adversary right into the briar patch he was hoping for. It clarifies things to know or show that what one thinker finds absurd another took for granted all along. But the real lesson is that words like “tantamount” will not do much to alter settled convictions. Al-Farabi saw that when he studied Aristotle’s case that assigning determinate truth values to sentences about particular events in the future could license a crippling determinism. That was just the outcome that Aristotle’s (Megarian) adversaries were looking for. Aristotle’s reductio was dialectical, and Farabi needed a stouter stick if he was to head off the Ashcarite predestinarians of his own day. (He found one in the recognition that the necessity by which a true prediction entails the corresponding facts does not infect those facts themselves. Hypothetical necessity does not cash out as categorical.) Does Rescher run that briar patch kind of risk when he makes our lack of instant access to a God’s eye view of things not only a warrant for his pluralism but, simultaneously, a part of his pitch for commitment? How does he avoid landing in the briar patch himself with Rorty, Feyerabend, or

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even Sextus, all of whom celebrate in different tones the same lack of omniscience? How, does fallibility become an argument for taking a stand? Formalizing his dissolution of the framework-relativity of a claim we actually make, Rescher finds just the claim itself left behind, an insoluble precipitate (105). Does that mean that whatever views we hold we’re stuck with; and the standards we accept we must persist in? Rescher rightly qualifies the impression of fatalism: Of course we want others to see our viewpoint, and indeed to use our standards. But we are expected (and should expect of ourselves) to take others’ commitments seriously. All of us should make “every reasonable effort” to apply the standards that by our best lights “ought to be everyone’s” (108-09). Flexibility is a virtue. But it’s not an end in itself. Forthrightness is not the same as dogmatism. Rescher grips the tiller tightly here, steering between the Scylla of “megalomania” and the Charybdis of vacuity. He may tack a bit, allowing that “individuals do, in general, have a cognitive orientation and are able to resolve issues by its means” (105), but then urging that “Each thinker, each school, is bound to take a strongly negative stand towards its competitors: belittling their concerns, deploring their standards, downgrading their values, disliking their presuppositions, scorning their contentions, and so on” (108, and again on 120). Rescher’s heading is best plotted as the view that we should respect a variety of viewpoints (but not all) and can learn from any, but need not and should not assign them all “cognitive parity.” We don’t want to be stuck on the corner where a man has passed out, unable to decide between chanting incantations and calling an ambulance. Rescher mounts his commitment to commitment, that is, earnestness and openness about what we actually believe (or practice) on a kind of tripod. His rationalism is one leg, the philosopher’s faith that we should be willing and able to make sense of our commitments to ourselves and others. The second leg is candor, not quailing or paltering about where we stand or why. The third is his free admission that we have no godlike access to the absolute truth about all things (108, 118) or the clear page of the “Recording Angel” (77). The irony not lost on a philosopher of Rescher’s experience, is that this last premise is Rorty’s, and many another postmodernist’s. The critical difference is that Rescher has not relinquished, or even pretended to relinquish, his critical (and constructive) tools. He agrees with the anointed foes of foundationalism that we have no window to climb out of, to escape the envelope of our own views. But our self-styled post-moderns infer from this that truths or worlds are many and indistinguishable by reason. Rescher, by contrast, resolves to make the

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most of what we have: Truth is one (as it must be if there is to be logic or reasoning of any kind), despite the fact that “paradigms” are many—as they must be, given the divergences among any two slices of experience. But despite the divergences we see, we have good grounds for ignoring some outlooks and privileging others. When we’ve weighed up all the evidence at hand, we still have grounds for drawing our conclusions, and we need to draw the conclusions that we draw. We can do so in no expectation of (even ultimate) unanimity. The underlying premise here: Although we don’t own a god’s eye view of things, we do have ways of checking up on appeals to our credence or allegiance. So Rescher sees no need to play cynical games with inquiry as Feyerabend and his merry cohort do. Nor is he loath to use a moral test or two, alongside the familiar logical tests that philosophers put store in: The American polity is a better model for a pluralistic society than, say, Lebanon or Yugoslavia (167). And dissent can often break through (at least some) cultural trammels: “The Andalusian friar Bartolomeo de las Casas [1484-1566] upheld the human rights of Amerindians against the consensus of Spanish conquistadores and settlers alike that they were inferior beings” (163). Alonso de la Vera Cruz, his younger contemporary, dedicated his life to that cause in the mid-sixteenth century. One hopes it’s not just in a desire to please or to agree that others might say and see that this Bartolomeo and Alonso were right, and the conquistadores and settlers were wrong when they ground the faces of their poor victims. That last is no mere deduction from a general truth. It’s something rather more primary (if hardly universal!)—a moral truth in its own right, and one upon which general laws might be constructed inductively just as readily as it might be derived from them once they have been framed. Alonso and Bartolomeo did not know that it was wrong to extort and exploit the Indians because they read it in a book. For there were many books, against which they wrote theirs, that taught just the opposite. One of the flaws in the notion of paradigms, world views, or blicks, is the assumption that such entities are airtight and logic-tight, immune to criticism by way of thoughts framed within their own categories or through the critique of those categories. The notion that a theory or construct cannot generate within itself the means of its own critique is one of the deep mistakes that many a twentieth century thinker picked up from the false analogy of thought with language and of natural languages with artificial schemes of logic. That false assumption, which should have been dissolved by Gödel’s discoveries about reflexivity, if not by common sense, fatally

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infects the notion of paradigms and world systems, treating them as selfcontained and even self-sufficient mechanisms and not as living things capable of biting themselves—or systems of living thinking, capable of being thought through, or seen through. Critiques, in fact, are not exclusively internal. The same sort of crosscultural checks that relativists enlist to undermine claims to objectivity can also open up the eyes of the morally sensitive or conceptually adept. Moral differences do not disqualify all claims to moral truth, any more than moral affinities flush any such unicorns from forest coverts. If truths must be constructed, as postmoderns so often inform us, the fact remains that some constructs are sounder than others. Not every image is a sham, not every currency is counterfeit, not every relationship is an imposture or an imposition. Categorical differences, real or imagined, do not discredit taxonomic realism, no matter how much they may give it pause. Category sets, like tools—or metaphors—have their varied uses, and their aptness or ineptitude depends upon their fit. It is a fact, and no mere fantasy that humans are closer kin to chimps than to mushrooms, no matter how many words the Inuit are said to have for snow or the beduins for sand. The uniform deep structure of all (human) languages (if we frame their rules with sufficient generality and abstraction) does not prove that we’re sure to slice the world rightly at the pre-existing joints. And yet, we can in some measure (and for varied purposes) triangulate (as forest rangers do, not candidates for office), to test our presumptions against their logical or cultural alternatives and project alternatives and syntheses that rise above the dichotomies we encounter. So we can open up a rent or two in the fabric of familiar suppositions and let in a little light and air. Granted we don’t have a superhighway to the absolute as dogmatists and the marketers of scientism, positivism, moral or spiritual dogmatism, instant enlightenment or salvation like to claim. But experience can be objectifying. Human it remains, and situated, as every human individual and group must be—and yet, not fixed immovably in place. We can grow a bit through the broadening effects of travel, temporal, cultural, geographical, or conceptual. And it is only human knowledge, after all, that we need; and human virtue, presumably, that we’re after. Our study is not to become angels or jinn, or happy naked ratmoles somewhere in Alpha Centauri. We plant our ladders here on earth, and our effort will never do more (but should never try for less) than to rise somewhat above our starting point, using the tools we are given and those that a culture, increasingly aware of

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its own limits and diversity and of options that lie somewhat beyond those limits, allows us to make our own. In the end I don’t think Rescher needs to be quite as cautious as he is about building his case for conviction on the fact of our human limitations—although there’s a neat twist in that, since he’s building on his adversaries’ premises. My own take on the situation is that we humans, through and not despite, our various traditions, be they scientific or religious, moral, artistic, social or political, do sometimes work our way toward truths, and toward other values that can be crystallized and expressed as truths. That observation seems to me to chime well with Rescher’s pluralist intent—and, for that matter, with the project of the university, properly conceived. Our ability to test one tradition against another, since human ways of thinking and the values that arise in human ways of living are not utterly incommensurable, gives hope to the more critical and selective type of syncretist, who is willing not only to convince or be convinced but also to learn and grow.

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Chapter V/1 MORAL RELATIVISM: ARE THERE MORAL UNIVERSALS? 1. THE PROBLEM OF MORAL RELATIVISM

T

he thesis of “moral relativism” runs roughly as follows:

The moral doctrines of people in different places, times, and cultures each have their own position on moral matters. So while “internally” to such a doctrinal position—there is a place for right and wrong, nevertheless “externally” when the entire doctrine is under consideration, matters stand differently. Nothing is really right or wrong as such—it is all relative. Different people and different cultures hold different views about such matters: what is right for one is wrong for another. Autres lieux, autres moeurs. There are no absolute moral standards binding on all men in all times and cultures; in moral matters there is no prospect of unqualified correctness or error. Any and every group is entitled to its own opinion. Since all different views are equally “valid” the ideas of validity or correctness, strictly speaking, simply do not apply in matters of morality.

Such a moral relativism is widely maintained—and nowadays even more often simply assumed as self-evident. In fact, however, it is deeply problematic. The present chapter will exhibit some of its shortcomings.1 From classical antiquity onwards, students of human affairs have made much of the cultural (and temporal) variability of moral opinion.2 After all, it is only too plain that different societies follow different rules. Some regard giving alms to beggars as praiseworthy; others see this as improper encouragement of a demeaning and degrading practice. In some societies killing a person accidentally is seen as a grave offense, and conscientious people who do so suffer torments of reproach and self-recrimination; in other societies strictly accidental killing is not taken so seriously. As Pascal observed regarding different conceptions of justice, “What is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is error on the other.”3 In 1909 Émile Durkheim wrote:

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It can no longer be maintained nowadays that there is one, single morality which is valid for all men at all times and in all places. We know full well that morality has varied. . . . The moral system of the Romans and Hebrews was not our own, nor could it have been so. For if the Romans had practiced our morality with its characteristic individualism, the city of Rome would never have been, nor consequently would the Roman civilization, which was the necessary antecedent and condition of our present civilization. The purpose of the morality practiced by a people is to enable it to live: hence morality changes with societies. There is not just one morality but several, and as many as there are social types. And as our societies change, so will our morality. It will no longer be in the future what it is today.4

Among different societies and cultures there plainly are—are there not?— diverse moralities with their diverse moral codes, all rooted in very diverse ways of life.5 People’s (altogether plausible) views about what is morally appropriate change with changes in place and time. Seemingly, we must agree with one recent theorist’s affirmation that “Moralities are social. They are defined by the conventions of groups.”6 On the other hand, the great majority of moralists and moral philosophers have insisted on the universality and unrestricted validity of moral claims. How—if at all—is this to be reconciled with the seemingly inescapable fact of the variability of moral teachings? Does the plurality of moral practices not annihilate morality’s claims to universality of obligation, thus destroying the legitimacy and authority of the whole enterprise? Are we forced to conclude that there is no such thing as someone’s moral convictions being correct or appropriate at all—that there are no (evaluative) facts of the matter here, but only what people think? Moral relativism holds that morality—like language itself—is no more than a social artifact, a product of local convention. Like law or custom morality is just a matter of local practice. “Nothing is good by nature”7— moral standards come down to “when in Rome do as the Romans do.” Usury was sinful for medieval Europeans, but was perfectly acceptable for their 20th century descendants; shaving one’s beard is wicked for orthodox Jews but was mandatory for Roman aristocrats. Right and wrong is merely a matter of the custom of the community; morality is just a matter of what people are habituated to approve or disapprove. Clearly if morality dissolves in this way into a chaos of variable customs and conflicting opinions, its claims to legitimacy are thereby annihilated and its capacity to make rationally appropriate demands upon us

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abolished in a remorseless slide into moral nihilism. There are no generally valid moral principles; in theory, anything goes, with local custom alone as limit. Is this conclusion that moral pluralism effectively annihilates moral validity in fact avoidable? Let us consider how and why it indeed is. 2. AGAINST RELATIVISM: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MORALITY AND MORES The ideas of right and wrong are at the core of morality, But morality does not have a monopoly on these ideas—there are right and wrong ways to use a hammer, to spell words, to hunt tigers. Very different sorts of injunctions and prohibitions are possible. Rules of behavior can be based on such very different considerations as: prudence (advancing personal or communal self-interest) custom (“simply not done” or “that’s just how we X’s do things”) law (acting in line with legal mandates) tabu (pleasing or avoiding displeasing the good or evil spirits, the gods, “fate,” etc.) morality (caring and concern for the best interests of people-in-general). The idea of “bad form” is pervasive: virtually every community has its own views about proper ways to eat, cook, dress, marry, or talk. But this has little if anything to do with morality. For morality is not just a matter of right and wrong in general, but of right and wrong of a very particular sort, one that refers to due care for the interests of people-in-general. To maintain something like “Smoking is prohibited here (say, by the laws of the place, or by the responsible authorities.” or even by mere custom) is one sort of thing. But “Smoking here is morally wrong” (say, because we are in a hospital nursery and the smoke will distress or even endanger the health of infants) is something very different. The moral project is a particular sort of enterprise that has a particular aim or function. For morality is, “by definition” as it were, a matter of acting so as to safeguard people’s interests. And this issue of rationale is crucial. One can in theory have a society of agents who act in morally appropriate ways (i.e., who al-

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ways or generally “do the right thing”), but who in fact lack morality altogether, because their actions proceed entirely on the basis of mere custom or taboo. What is pivotal for morality is the sort of reasons at issue. Suppose that Smith told a lie on a certain occasion. Clearly, that is not and cannot be all that he did. For he also did something on the order of: —telling a lie because it was the convenient thing to do —telling a lie because it was a way to avoid further, potentially embarrassing questions —telling a lie because it was the only way to avoid causing his interlocutor needless pain (a “little white lie”) —telling a lie to protect an innocent person from the wrath of a pursuing madman obviously intent on mayhem What Smith did was—and has to be—something of a much more ramified and specific character than merely “telling a lie.” His action admits of and indeed demands a fuller and more adequate description from the moral point of view, one that also takes its motivating rationale into account. Only acts that are described not just in behavioral terms, but also in terms of their motivating rationale, can be evaluated properly from a moral standpoint. To characterize an act as a “taking” is to leave it in a moral vacuum, but to characterize it as a “stealing” (i.e., taking what properly belongs to another without due authorization) is to characterize it in such a way that moral appraisal becomes possible. To reemphasize: morality is not just about actions but about reasons and motives as well. Everything pivots on this matter of rationale. That is why the matter of excuses is crucial. Even if someone does a morally reprehensible act the question remains: did he do so excusably or was his acting indeed reprehensible? Appropriate excuses can lie in three spheres: 1. Cognition: Was the act done knowingly? 2. Volition: Was the act done willingly or not; was it done inadvertently or under duress, etc.?

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3. Intention: Was the act done only as a lesser evil to avert a yet greater evil? With morality, the crucial thing is not just the moral status of the act (as right or wrong) but also the character of the action. The factors of reason and motive are also critical. Morality calls for doing the right thing because it is the right thing—i.e., out of a recognition that it is the morally appropriate thing to do. Reasons at odds with this undermine the moral merit of an action—even one that happens to involve “doing the right thing.” It lies in the very nature of the conception of moral behavior that act, reason, and motive must all be in proper alignment. Which rules and norms are to be characterized as the moral ones—as opposed to those pertaining to religion, manners, social tradition, or the like? The answer is that this hinges on how the rule or the norm is justified. To determine whether a certain rule followed in some community is a moral one we must look not simply to what the rule requires (its material content), but to how the rule is supported (its justificatory rationale). To run afoul of the Chinese Confucian’s view of what is due to one’s ancestors or the 16th century Spanish nobleman’s view of the obligations of family honor is clearly to be a bad person in the context of those particular societies. But not every good or bad is a moral good or bad. What endows a moral rule with its status as such is its being justified in terms of certain sorts of values, namely those whose adoption and implementation reflect a concern for the legitimate interests of people-in-general. Morality is, most centrally and importantly, not just about actions but about reasons for acting. Thus we cannot say whether or not a certain rule of conduct operative within a community is a moral rule until we know how its members go about justifying it. As such deliberations suggest, it is helpful to consider morality in a functional perspective, as constituting a goal-oriented enterprise whose aim is to contribute (in a certain particular way) to the well-being of a community. Like language and custom, a moral code is an instrument of civilization—a resource that helps intelligence-endowed agents to live together in a mutually supportive social order. Yet it has a deeper basis, rooting not merely in the settled habit of the community, but in a rationale that goes well beyond “the traditionally done thing.” What characterizes a rule as moral is its being justified in terms of the consideration that violating it would injure some valid interest of a fellow person. Unlike mere conven-

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tions, moral judgments must, as such, reflect inherent nature of actions— their bearing on the interest of those involved (does the act cause them harm, damage their interests, enhance or abridge their rights, or the like). Moral rules are one thing, and “the customs of the tribe” another. (Viewing morality in terms of mores is not an explanation of morality but an annihilation of it, seeing that customs are never inherently universal while moral principles must always be so.) The “morally adequate description” of an action must accordingly include the specification of two items: (1) the character of the act, and (2) its rationale—the agent’s reason or motive for its performance. The former will be something on the order of —to tell a falsehood —to kill someone —to take something belonging to another —to assist someone in difficulty The latter will be something on the order of —to help a friend in need —without even thinking about it —merely for fun —to secure one’s advancement —for one’s own gain —to cause pain to somebody one dislikes The character of the act can be negative, positive, or neutral from the moral point of view. And similarly with grounds (in the above list, the first motive is clearly good, the last one bad, the middle ones neutral or negative if the act harms the interests of others). A wicked act can be done for a good motive (“to kill someone in order to help a friend in need”) or conversely,

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a noble act can be done for a wicked motive “to assist a person in difficulty in order to cause pain to somebody one dislikes (since he hates the person at issue).” Both factors are critical. An inherently meritorious action can be morally negated as such if done for the wrong reasons (an act of charity, say, if done only so that the good repute of it will lie in men’s mouths). An inherently wicked action can be morally redeemed if done for the right reasons—say, only because it is the least among alternative evils. Even something as morally offensive as eating the flesh of a fallen enemy could in theory be mitigated once we heed the reasons for the act. “Here is a brave fallen warrior, one who might, but for the luck of it, be oneself. May his courage, spirit, and daring live on—if only as a part of ourselves.” An incomplete (overly schematic) characterization of the act as one of “lying” is morally indecisive and “Never lie” is accordingly problematic as a moral precept due to this incompleteness (for example, because we may have to lie to avert a yet greater evil). But the generalizations “Never lie merely for your own convenience” or “merely out of malice” are totally unproblematic. It was not only wrong of Smith so to act on a particular occasion, it would be wrong always, anywhere, and for anyone to do so. Any description of an act which is “morally sufficient” will have to lend itself to universalization. If a particular act is morally wrong (or right) under that description, then this will also be so for all other acts that answer to the description. At this level, universality is inevitable. An action is fully and unqualifiedly positive from the moral point of view only if both its act-type and its motive are morally positive; otherwise, it will be negative. To be sure, some action-characterizing terms are such that both of these factors— both act-description and rationale—are already built in, as for example: to steal = to take something that actually belongs to another for one’s own use and benefit. to murder = to kill someone in order to accomplish one’s own purposes (rather than acting say, as public executioner, combatant soldier, or the like). This circumstance automatically renders stealing morally negative (unlike mere taking)—and the same with murdering (unlike mere killing). Again, sometimes enough of the rationale is inherent in the act-description itself

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that further detailed specification is morally superfluous. And so “wishing that (unmerited) misfortune should befall another” is sufficiently indicative of a wicked motivation that one need not go on to the amplifying detail of “out of hatred” or “through spite” or “from boredom” to ascertain that a morally reprehensible motivation is at work. Morality pivots on reasons for action. Now a practice may be urged or a rule justified in a human community on the grounds that: —it is the will of the monarch, —it is required by law, —it follows ancestral custom, —it answers to the demands of the gods as interpreted by the priests. But within morality proper motivation is the crux: does the agent care in regard to his action-choices about what “the right thing to do” is? (This is why the wheels of morality do not engage the activities of lower animals, no matter how self-servingly deceptive or predatory their behavior may be. Only with rational beings does action have the dimension of morality.) The agent who does the morally right thing (be it in a particular case or in general) yet does so on the basis of examining the balance sheet of personal advantage will indeed do (by hypothesis) what morality requires, but will not thereby gain any moral credit. He does what morality requires but not because morality requires it, seeing that the consideration that it is the right thing to do does not (by hypothesis) figure in his reflections at all. Morally mandated action is not enough for moral credit, which is a matter not just of the nature of the act but of its motivating rationale. In considering whether and how far an action merits moral credit or blame, we must— indispensably-inquire into the agent’s reasons and reflections and look to the aims and goals and values out of which the act emerged. As Kant rightly stressed, even the person who systematically acts in line with the prescriptions of morality, but who does so only for purely prudential reasons of personal advantage, is not being moral in the strict sense of the term. Morality as such requires people to do the moral thing for the right sorts of reasons. Unlike courtesy, say, which is a matter of action only (with no questions asked as to motivation), morality is a matter not only of action but of intent. To qualify as moral, a person’s actions must be rooted

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in due care for the interests of others. It is the reasons and principles of action that count. And so morality and mores stand distinct. Neither entails the other. Moral behavior (e.g., truth telling) need not be customary. Custom mandated behavior (e.g., sending Christmas Cards) often fails to be moral in nature. What is crucial for morality is not conformity to custom but the rationale of action. (To be sure, one cannot—and should not try to—effect a total separation between custom and morality. Even mere customs have some degree of moral respectability in canalizing people’s justified expectations. If one violates these mores, one thereby also offends the sensibilities of others—and this is something that is morally wrong if done callously and needlessly. ) If some tribe or culture maintains that “It is quite acceptable to hurt another’s feelings simply to suit your own convenience” or “It is a good thing to tell falsehoods in order to further your own advancement,” then they just don’t have a clue what morality is all about. For however common or even customary that sort of thing may be among them (or us!), it simply is not morally acceptable on the one and only standard of morality there is—that of absolute morality. The pivot of the difference between morality and mores lies in the rationale for which conformity to the rules is mandated. Is it a matter of conformity (“That’s the way we do it; so if you want to be one of us you’ve got to do it that way too”)? If so, then we are dealing with mores. Or is it a matter of obligation or duty (“That’s how one ought to do it because otherwise one injures the interests of others”)? If so, then we are dealing with morality. The pivotal difference lies in this matter of “the reason why.” To repeat: it is not the content of a practice or rule but its rationale that renders it moral. And this factor is crucial for the case for moral absolutism.8 Of course, different people in different places and times conduct their “moral” affairs very differently. Nevertheless, at the level of basics, of first fundamentals, there indeed is uniformity and universality “all across the board.” For what all modes of morality have in common is just exactly this—that (by hypothesis) they all qualify as “modes of morality” under our conception of the matter. And this circumstance constrains various moral principles and values in a once-and-for-all manner. A “questioner’s prerogative” prevails. Our own use of language is determinative for our inquiries. An alien culture may well have no morality at all, but it cannot have one that differs from ours in its fundamentals, simply

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because differing in fundamentals would entail that “morality’s” being no morality at all. Consider an analogy. There are many sorts of blades for knives. But the fundamental principle that knives have blades at all does not depend on how people choose to go about making knives; it inheres in our conception of what a “knife” is. If certain objects lack blades, then they just are not knives. The bladedness of knives is not a matter of transcultural invariance but rather one of local cultural determination: what matters when we discuss knives is determined by what is at issue with “knives” as we (in our culture) construe and consider them. A locution like “The X’s have a different conception of morality from ourselves” makes about as much sense as “The X’s have a different conception of knives from ourselves” Of course, they may think of the objects that we describe as “knives” in a very different way—say as light-reflectors for signaling. But that simply means they have no conception of knives at all.9 And the same sort of thing goes for morality as well. If someone thinks that random violence is “morally” acceptable it is improbable to the point of unfeasibility that he understands what morality is all about. While the actions seen as acceptable and even the criteria of moral acceptability vary across times and cultures, the determinative principles of morality do not. However, this interesting circumstance does not so much reflect a fact about different times and cultures as the fact that what counts as a “principle of morality” at all is something that lies with us, through the fact that we are the ultimate arbiters of what “morality” is all about in the setting of our own discussions and deliberations on the topic. With “What is moral?” at the level of concrete actions there is substantial room for variation and pluralism. But not with “What is morality?” The concept and its groundrules are fixed by “questioner’s prerogative,” the question being ours, it is our conception of “morality” and its governing paradigms that is conclusive for our deliberations. At this stage absolutism prevails. Accordingly, a certain “absolutism” inheres in the moral realm through the fact that there is a fixity of principles at the level of fundamentals or basics. Consider such rules as: —Recognize rational agents as persons having interests that deserve recognition in our deliberations.

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—Treat people as ends and not as means subservient of your own wants and desires. —Do not inflict needless pain on others. —Do not deceive people maliciously. Such principles are morally non-negotiable. A person who dismisses them or a society whose operational code omits them—let alone replaces them by incompatibly variant principles—does not have an alternative morality on the issue, but no morality at all. Such agents simply have no idea what morality is all about. Admittedly, the Roman ideal of manliness or the Renaissance ideal of virtue did not give pride of place to moral virtues. But that does not mean that the contemporaries of Cicero or of Machiavelli had a different morality from ourselves; it simply means that they systematically subordinated morality per se to other values—a step which is in the final analysis not morally defensible, whatever can be said for it on other grounds. No matter how strongly communal custom may endorse and normalize certain practices (e.g., maltreatment of prisoners of war), they are not morally acceptable (any more than customary acceptance renders certain foods nourishing or certain practices healthy). The ground of the absoluteness of those “fundamental” moral principles thus does not, however, lie in any putative superiority of our own morality over that of other cultures and civilizations—any more than the absoluteness of the fundamental principles of archery do. The salient point is a conceptual one. To operate with guns or catapults is not to do archery in a variant and unaccustomed way but is simply not to do archery at all. We have changed the topic. And similarly with those different modes of appraising human action. When we are dealing with a society that deems it appropriate to abuse women, maltreat strangers, and rejoice in the sufferings of the innocent, we are not dealing with people who have a variant sort of morality, but with people who have no morality at all. The absoluteness of morality is not a matter of cultural imperialism but of conceptual fixity. In either case, moral agency or archery, we are dealing with a certain kind of thing—one that is fixed as such by the very words used to place the topic at issue on the agenda of consideration. The overarching “fundamental principles” of morality—for example, that morality is a matter of respect for persons and care for their interests—

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are inherent in the very conception of what is at issue. If you abandon principles of that sort, then you are simply not involved with the moral enterprise at all. And this is so for conceptual reasons. The basic rules of knifehood or evidence or morality are “culture dependent” only in the sense that some cultures may conceivably not pursue that particular project (the cutting-with-knives enterprise, the evidentiary enterprise, the moral enterprise) at all. But it is just not feasible that others could pursue the same enterprise in a radically different sort of way—that they have learned how to have knives without blades, evidentiation without grounds, or moral agency without those fundamental principles that define what morality is all about. 3. THE “ANTHROPOLOGISTS’ FALLACY” The confusion between morality and mores is endemic in the social science community, whose members standardly depict morality as a matter of the behavioral practices of a society. The sociologist Émile Durkheim, for example, asserted in a series of influential studies that morality is nothing other than the science of mores (la science des moeurs).10 And this typifies the position of traditional ethnographers. W. G. Sumner maintained in his widely disseminated book Folkways that the facts of ethnography prove “that ‘immora’ never means anything but ‘contrary to the mores of the time and place’.”11 “Morality,” Ruth Benedict insists, “differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.”12 Social scientists of every stripe urge on us the equations: morally blameworthy (wrong) = contrary to (local) custom morally meritorious (right) = in accordance with (local) custom But the error at issue here is not set right by its pervasiveness. The violation of a moral rule, unlike that of a mere custom, is by its very nature something grave and serious. For in violating a moral rule, you do not just break with an established pattern. With a moral rule, the well-being and real interests of people are deeply engaged. Ruth Benedict speaks for anthropologists without number in treating the customs of different cultures as representing “the coexisting and equally valid patterns of life which mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence.”13 Yet to see slavery, torture, cannibalism, human sac-

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rifice, etc. as social practices “equally valid” with wearing turbans or drinking afternoon tea is patent folly. Whatever “validity” may be at issue here clearly has nothing to do with moral validity. Even brief reflection should suffice to reveal the fatuity of equating moral status with local custom. Racial discrimination is morally blameworthy, regardless of how customary this practice may be. No sensible person would think to condemn disinterested charity as immoral, no matter how rare it may be. Contrariwise, eating mashed potatoes with a fork is doubtless in accord with custom, yet not one would dream of characterizing it as morally meritorious. And saintly action (“give all you have to the poor and follow me”) is unquestionably morally meritorious, though it would be foolish to characterize it as part of the mores of the time and place. Morality is not just about actions and their or conflict with custom, but about reasons for actions. Care for the interests of others has to be an essential part of the story. Morality is inherently normative— geared to the implementation of those particular values which reflect a care for the interests of others—honesty, common decency, civility, courtesy, helpfulness, generosity, and the like.14 (The shift from an action-custom in the dimension of performing/refraining to an approval-custom in the dimension of encouraging/discouraging would help some, but not enough.) A line of mistaken reasoning which might be called the Anthropologists’ Fallacy is pervasive in this profession. It runs as follows: —When individuals in a given society judge the rightness and wrongness of actions, they standardly use the (merely) locally prevailing criteria of moral appraisal. Therefore: “Right” and “wrong” mean right and wrong according to the (merely) locally prevailing standards of evaluation. This inference is patently inappropriate. It is tantamount to reasoning: —When individuals do multiplication, they standardly use the multiplication tables they have learned in school. Therefore: “Arithmetical multiplication” means to calculate by the multiplication tables one has learned in school.

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Only if that “standardly” of the initial premisses were replaced by “necessarily, in virtue of the very meaning of the term” would such an inference from modus operandi to meaning be valid. And this precondition clearly fails. An influential anthropologist asserts that “we are handicapped in dealing with ethical problems so long as we hold to an absolute definition of morality.”15 Yet if the conception of “morality” has any meaning at all, it can scarcely avoid being an absolute one. The terms of reference of our discussion have to be taken as fixed, irrespective of whether it is morality or carpentry that we are talking about. Moral standards can indeed vary, but the conceptual delineation of what morality is all about (as opposed, to say, to carpentry) is surely something that has to be fixed once and for all. And this means that while moral rules can vary, moral principles cannot. But fuel is surely carried to the fire of moral relativism by practices like the old Eskimo custom of killing infirm old people.16 Does this not betoken a morality radically different from our own? Not necessarily! We must hark back to the fact that from the standpoint of morality the crucial issue is that of the rationale of action. To evaluate a moral situation, we accordingly have to inquire into the reasons the agents have. When we ask about what those natives are doing, we might be told something like “This is ‘the done thing’ for us (our custom)” or again, “This practice is what our ancestors have ordained.” In such a case we are not dealing with a different morality but with an indifference to the interests of people that betokens an utter lack of moral awareness. The people concerned simply have no morality (at any rate with respect to the matters under consideration). On the other hand, we might be told something like: “We ‘expose’ old people to spare them the anguish of decrepitude and debility— the burden of a life in our conditions of life is so hard for the very old that ‘it’s not worth living’.” Or perhaps: “They’ve had their chance for a meaningful life, but must now give way to create a better chance for others in the interests of the long-range survival of the group, as their forefathers did before them.” Once justificatory considerations of this sort are introduced, we are indeed back in the sphere of morality—of proceeding (however inadequately) from moral considerations that one can unhesitatingly recognize as such because they reflect a (distinctly problematic) way of caring for the best interest of people-in-general. We would, of course, definitely want to argue about whether the practice at issue is the best way of dealing with the problem. But it is now not a different morality (a different set of funda-

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mental moral values and principles) that is at issue, but only a different (mis)judgment about proper ways to implement familiar moral principles. These deliberations have an important bearing on the “cross-cultural” aspect of morality. Anti-relativists are sometimes tempted to embark on a search for culturally invariant rules, arguing as follows: There are some moral rules that all societies have in common, because those rules are necessary for society to exist. The rules against lying and murder are two examples. . . .Therefore, it is a mistake to overestimate the amount of difference between cultures. Not every moral rule can vary from society to society.17

But there is an insidious mistake at work here, namely the standard anthropologists’ and sociologists’ confusion between a socially disapproved (or encouraged) practice and a morally prescribed (or mandated) mode of behavior—between mores and morals. Admittedly, every viable society must discourage practices such as lying and murdering in the interests of its own survival. But it need not do so by establishing moral rules at all—a taboo of some sort will do perfectly well, be it based on invocation of ancestors, fear of the gods, mere custom (“we just don’t do that sort of thing”), or whatever. Morality—a reflective valuating of the interests of others—need not come into it at all. What matters from the angle of morality is not the ubiquity of moral rules or practices, but their underlying rationale. The principles put into operation here must, in the very nature of the case, reflect universal norms that are bound up with the very conception of what “morality” is. And here values like truthfulness, honesty, and considerateness of others, are pivotal—however much their practice may run counter to the custom of the community. In their endeavors to study the morality of other cultures and civilizations, anthropologists often do not probe deeply enough. For what is at issue with morality (as distinguished from mere mores) is not simply a study of behavior patterns and not even of the relevant overtly formulated rules of behavior—the behavioral injunctions and prohibitions of the group. With morality, the essential thing is the justificatory rationale that underlies those behavioral patterns and rules. The salient issue is: “How is obedience to the rules argued for? What sorts of considerations are adduced to support the claim that the rules should be obeyed?” Only if this validation takes the form that the rules ought to be obeyed because this is required for serving the true interests of people-at-large is morality at issue. (To reemphasize: it is the matter of good reasons for acting that is crucial to moral-

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ity.) The crux of morality is not the descriptive issue of how people in fact generally do behave (which is the most that cross-cultural comparison can reveal), but the normative issue of how people ought to behave with a view to the interests of their fellows. What counts for morality is not the practices (or the rules of conduct that consolidate them), but the principles that set out the reasons through which practices are justified. The pivotal factor is not the rules but the values at work. Where morality is concerned, the quest for behavioral invariants or universals—however interesting in its own right—is simply beside the point. No doubt at the level of causal explanation people or societies hold certain evaluative views about behavior because they are accustomed or conditioned (or otherwise causally induced) to do so. And it is entirely conceivable that custom-based habituation is the operative causal mechanism here. But to equate causal explanation with rational validation is about as serious a philosophical error as it is possible to make—a violation of fundamental distinctions. People may well hold certain moral (or mathematical) views as a matter of custom: but the appropriateness or legitimacy of those beliefs nowise depends on the customs of the community. Morality is not about “socially approved habits” as such, but about the sorts of reasons for which certain modes of behavior are approved—to wit, those which relate to protecting people’s interests. If morality were no more than a matter of “appropriate behavior”— regardless of the sorts of standards of appropriateness at issue—then the variety of behavioral customs would indeed fragment morality into a disjointed chaos. We would then have to follow anthropologists to distant corners of the globe to catalogue countless strange practices—outlandish and bizarre customs of all sorts that have little if any bearing on human virtue or well-being. But the variety of behaviors approved or indeed mandated in different human communities has little to do with morality as such-anthropologists by the legion to the contrary notwithstanding. The crux of morality is neither a universality of behavior nor a universality of acceptance but a universality of application. Morality is not a matter of our value or thesis, which are indeed variable, but rather of our best interests and theirs, which are effectively uniform. It is perfectly possible in theory for a community to have no moral norms at all. Its behavioral rules might all be simply totemic (“that’s how the gods want us to do things and we must please them”) or customary (“that’s how our people have always done things, and it is fitting and proper to walk in the ways of our forefathers”). Morality would then sim-

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ply be absent. For, as we have stressed, it is about reasons, and in such situations piety and custom and habit simply short-circuit reason. But of course such a society is extremely fragile—and therefore vulnerable. When circumstances and conditions change, such authority-based responses lack the flexibility for readjustment-exactly as with instinct-programmed plants and animals. Intelligence is now out of the picture, unable to accomplish its useful work of enhancing the prospects of survival under changing conditions. Accordingly, a totemic/customary society lacks flexibility for adaptation to changing circumstances. Its very survival is at risk, for when no sensible rationale underlies the rules, there is nothing to fall back on when they fail to prove serviceable. Of course, different people in different places and times pass different moral judgments on human actions. That is clear and undisputed. But by itself this settles little in the question of the correctness or appropriateness of their beliefs and practices. The circumstance that racists, however numerous, regard their target group to be morally extraneous subhumans does nothing whatever to offset the inappropriateness of that judgment and the moral reprehensibility of practices based upon it. Geographical diversity in the moral evaluation of actions no more abolishes cogency and correctness than does temporal diversity in the formation of scientific opinion. With moral deliberations the crucial issue is not ubiquity but validity. William Graham Sumner’s dictum that “the mores can make anything right”18 is egregiously incorrect—mores can make anything commonplace (or accepted or expected), but they can make wrongs into rights no more than they can make cats into dogs. Morality is crucially concerned for the interests of others, and this is not something that depends on the vagaries of communal custom. For morality does not hinge on local practices or rules, but on the underlying universal norms and values that these practices or rules are—or should be—designed to implement. W D. Ross cogently urged the absolutist claims of morality against those of anthropological and sociological relativism: [T]here is a system of moral truth, as objective as all truth must be, which, and whose implications, we are interested in discovering; and from the point of view of this, the genuinely ethical problem, the sociologist inquiry is simply beside the mark. It does not touch the question to which we most desire answers.19

The prime issue for morality is not that of the variable operational codes of particular groups but rather the changeless underlying universal principles

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that function at the level of rational validation. An adequate theory of morals need not deny moral pluralism; it need not hesitate to recognize that the moralities of different times and places will (quite appropriately) differ in matters of implementing detail. But in its insistence on a uniformity of fundamentals, it will reject moral relativism, emphatically denying that moral obligation is merely and wholly a matter mores—of local custom. This issue of reconciling local variation with inherent universality demands closer examination. For no adequate defense of moral absolutism can fail to come to terms with the variability of moral codes across the varied terrain of the human condition. 4. IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHIES Morality is a well-defined project whose cohesive unity as such resides in its functional objective of molding the behavior of people through a care for others’ interests. Even as there are many ways to build houses, fuel automobiles, or skin cats, so there are various ways of being moral. But that surely does not mean that there is no overarching unity of goals, functions, principles, and values to lend cohesion to the enterprise. Moral variability is more apparent than real—an absolute uniformity does, and must, prevail at the level of fundamentals. “Act with due heed of the interests of others” is a universal and absolute moral principle whose working out in different contexts will, to be sure, very much depend on just exactly how the interests of people happen to be reciprocally intertwined. But despite the diversity of the substantive moral codes of different societies, the basic overarching principles of morality are uniform and invariant. Different “moralities” are simply diverse implementations of uniform moral principles. There is ample room for variation and pluralism in response to the question: “What is the morally appropriate thing to do?” But there is no such room with respect to: “What is morality—and what principles are at issue here?” The concept of morality and its contents are fixed by the “questioner’s prerogative” inherent in the principle that it is the inquirer’s own conception of the matter that is determinative for what is at issue in his inquiries. In our deliberations about moral rights and wrongs it is thus our conception of “morality” and its governing principles that is conclusive for what is at issue. When we deliberate about morality, it is about “morality” as we understand it. And this circumstance engenders a fixity of moral principles. All modes of morality have important elements in common simply in view of the fact that morality is at issue. Since (by hypothesis) they all

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qualify as being “modes of morality,” they are bound to encompass such fundamental principles as the following: 1. What people do matters. Some actions are right, others wrong, some acceptable and some not. There is an important difference here. 2. This is not just a matter of convention, custom, and the done thing. Violations of moral principles are not just offenses against sensibility but against people’s just claims in matters where people’s actual well-being is at stake. 3. In violating the moral rules we inflict outright injury on the life, welfare, or otherwise legitimate interests of others. Injunctions of this sort are by definition essential to any system of “morality,” and they provide the basis for imperatives like: —Do not simply ignore other people’s rights and claims in your own deliberations! —Do not inflict needless pain on people! —Honor the legitimate interests of others! —Do not take what rightfully belongs to others without their appropriately secured consent! —Do not wantonly break promises! —Do not cause someone anguish simply for your own amusement! Principles and rules of this sort are universal and absolute. They are of the very essence of morality; in abandoning them we would withdraw from a discussion of morality and would, in effect, be changing the subject. From the moral point of view, the empirical search for “cultural invariants” as pursued by some ethnologists is thus wholly beside the point. When such investigations embark on a cross-cultural quest for “moral universals” or “universal values” amidst the variation of social customs, they are engaged in a search which, however interesting in its own way, has

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nothing to do with the sort of normative universality at issue with morality as such.20 Moral universality is not a matter of cross-cultural commonality but of a conceptually constrained uniformity. But how can this fixity of the basic principles of morality—inherent in the monolithic uniformity of the issue of “what morality is”—be reconciled with the plain fact of a pluralistic diversity of (presumably cogent) answers to the question: “What is it moral to do?” How can such an absolutism of morality’s fundamentals coexist with the patent relativity of moral evaluations across different times and cultures? The answer lies in the fact that several intermediate levels or strata inevitably separate those overarching “basic principles of morality” from any concrete judgments about what it is moral to do. We have, in fact, to deal with a descending hierarchy of characterizing aims, fundamental principles and values, governing rules, implementing directives, and (finally) particular rulings. (See Display 1.) At the topmost level we have the defining aims of morality, the objectives that identify the moral enterprise as such by determining its nature and specifying the aims and objectives that characterize what morality is all about. (Example: “Act with a view to safeguarding the valid interests of others.”) These characterizing aims of morality represent the overarching “defining objectives” of the entire enterprise that characterize the project as such. They explicate what is at issue when it is with morality (rather than basket weaving) that we propose to concern ourselves. In spelling out the fundamental idea of what morality is all about, these top-level norms provide the ultimate yardsticks of moral deliberation. And they are unalterably fixed—inherent in the very nature of the subject. And these fundamental “aims of the enterprise” also fix the basic principles and controlling values that delineate the moral virtues (honesty, trustworthiness, civility, probity, and the rest). Such values define the salient norms that link the abstract characterizing aims to an operating morality of specific rules. The specifications embodied in these basic principles and values are “universal” and “absolute,” serving to make up morality as the thing it is. (Examples: “Do not violate the duly established rights and claims of others.” Do not unjustly deprive others of life, liberty, or opportunity for self-development.” “Do not tell self-serving falsehoods.” “Do not deliberately aid and abet others in wrongdoing.”) These high level principles also lie fixedly in the very nature of the subject. At these top most levels, then, there is simply no room for any “disagreement about mo-

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____________________________________________________________ Display No. 1 THE STRATIFICATION LEVELS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHY FOR MORAL NORMS Level 1

CHARACTERIZING AIMS

“due care for the best interest of others”

Level 2

BASIC PRINCIPLES AND VALUES

“honesty”

Level 3

GOVERNING RULES

“Do not lie”

Level 4

OPERATING DIRECTIVES (GROUNDRULES OF PROCEDURE)

“Say plainly what you believe (to be) so”

Level 5

PARTICULAR RULINGS

“Answer Jones truthfully (as best you can)”

____________________________________________________________ rality.” If one does not recognize the fundamental aims, principles, and values that characterize the moral enterprise as such, then one is imply talking about something else altogether. In any discussion of morality these things are simply givens. But this situation changes as we take further steps in the descent to concreteness. At the next (third) level we encounter the general rules and regulations that govern the specifically moral transaction of affairs. Here we have the generalities of the usual and accustomed sort: “Do not lie,” “Do not cheat,” “Do not steal,” etc. At this level we come to the imperatives that guide our deliberations and decisions. Like the Ten Commandments, they set out the controlling do’s and don’ts of the moral practice of a community, providing us with general guidance in moral conduct. They implement morality’s ruling principles at the level of recommended practices in a way that admits of variation in the changeable circumstances of local conditions. However, a moral rule on the order of: Do not steal = Do not take something that properly belongs to another. is in itself still something abstract and schematic. It still requires the concrete fleshing out of substantive implementing specifications to tell us what sorts of things make for “proper ownership.” And so the next (fourth) level presents us with the groundrules of procedure or implementing directives that furnish our working guidelines and criteria for the moral resolution of

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various types of cases. (Example: “Killing is wrong except in cases of self defense or under legal mandate as in war or executions.”) At this level of implementing standards and criteria, the variability of local practice comes to the fore, so that there is further room for pluralistic diversification here: we ourselves implement “Do not lie, avoid telling falsehoods,” by way of “Say what you believe (to be the case),” but a society of convinced skeptics could not do so. The operating groundrules of Level 4 thus incorporate the situation-relative standards and criteria though which the more abstract, higher level rules get their grip on concrete situations. Those general rules themselves are too abstract—too loose or general to be applicable without further directions to give them a purchase on concrete situations. They must be given concrete implementation with reference to local and variable arrangements.21 Finally, at the lowest (fifth) level we came to the particular moral rulings, individual resolutions with respect to the specific issues arising in concrete cases. (Example: “It was wicked of Lady Macbeth to incite her husband to kill the king.”) In such an “implementation hierarchy” we thus descend from what is abstractly and fixedly universal to what is concrete and variable. Level 2 is contained in Level 1 simply by way of exfoliative “explication.” But as we move downwards via Level 3 to the implementing specifications of Level 4, there is—increasingly—a looseness or “slack” that makes room for the specific and variable ways of different groups for implementing the particular higher-level objective at issue. (Further examples are given in Display 2.) Overall, then, we have to deal with a chain of subordination-likages that connect a concrete moral judgment—a particular moral actrecommendation or command—with the ultimate defining aim of the moral enterprise. The long and short of it is that any appropriate moral injunction must derive its validity through being an appropriate instantiation or concretization of an overarching principle of universal (unrestricted) validity under which it is subsumed. It must, in short, represent a circumstantially appropriate implementation of the fixities of absolute morality. To be sure, this sort of story holds not just for morality, but for any goal-oriented human project—medicine or dietetics or science or whatever. In every case, such a hierarchical series descends from the overarching defining objective of the enterprise at issue down to the specific resolutions of concrete cases. The same structure of practical reasoning by subordination under higher-level norms obtains throughout.

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____________________________________________________________ Display No. 2 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE IMPLEMENTATION HIERARCHY OF MORALITY Level 1: Characterizing Aims • Support the interests of people —Avoid injury to the interests of people —Act to advance the interests of people Level 2: Basic Principles (Controlling Values) • Do not cause people needless pain (GENTLENESS) • Do not endanger people’s lives or their well being unnecessarily (CARE FOR SAFETY) • Honor your genuine commitments to people; in dealing with people given them their just due (PROBITY) • Help others when you reasonably can (GENEROSITY) • Don’t take improper advantage of others (FAIRNESS) Level 3: Operating Rules • Don’t hurt people • Don’t lie; tell the truth • Don’t cheat Level 4: Operating Directives • Use anesthetics when operating on people • Be candid when asked questions • Play with fair dice Level 5: Concrete Rulings • Return the money you borrowed from Smith • Don’t pollute this river, dispose of your sewage elsewhere • Don’t let these children play with those matches

____________________________________________________________

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The situation of medicine provides a helpful illustration. Here, too, there is an “implementation hierarchy” that leads from a fixed “top level” characterizing aim, health, through governing norms and values (like “wellnourished,” “well-rested,” “mentally balanced”) to particular rules (“Eat and drink adequately!,” “Get enough rest”; etc.). Finally, we move via moderating injunctions (“Three meals a day”) down to the particular decisions and rulings of medical practice (particular diet-plans or prescriptions). The top levels of such a normative hierarchy are “ultimate”—they define and specify what is at issue in the venture under consideration. But variation arises at the lower levels of implementation. As one moves through the lower levels of such a hierarchy, there is a “slack” that leaves room for increasing variability and dissensus. Specific rules and guidelines will vary with situations and circumstances. We cannot expect to encounter any universal consensus across cultural and temporal divides—physicians of different eras are (like moralists) bound to differ—and to some extent those of different cultures as well. There is—inevitably—substantial variability among particular groups, each with its own varying ideas conditioned by locally prevailing conditions and circumstances. But the impact of low-level variation is mitigated by the fact that justification at lower levels proceeds throughout with reference to superordinated standards in a way that makes for higher-level uniformity.22 The crucial fact is that one selfsame moral value—fairness, for example—can come into operation very differently in different contexts. In an economy of abundance it may militate for equality of shares, in an economy of scarcity for equality of opportunity. The particular circumstances that characterize a context of operation may importantly condition the way in which a moral value or principle can (appropriately) be applied. Uniform high-level principles will have to be implemented differently in different circumstances. Medicine and morality alike are complex projects unified and integrated amidst the welter of changing conditions and circumstances by the determinative predominance of high-level principles. At the level of basic principles, then, morality is absolute: its strictures at this level hold good for everyone, for all rational agents. And lower level rules and rulings must—if valid—preserve a “linkage of subsumption” to those highest-level abstractions, a linkage mediated by way of more restrictive principles of implementation. These implementing conditions involve contextual relativity—coordination with contingently variable (setting-dependent and era- and culture-variable) circumstances and situations. Thus while moral objectives and basic principles—those top levels of the

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hierarchy of moral norms—are absolute and universal, “slack” arises as we move further down the ladder, leaving room for (quite appropriate) variability and differentiation. But a linkage of subordination is maintained throughout. “Do not unjustifiably take the property of another for your own use” is an unquestionably valid principle of absolute morality. But it avails nothing until such time as there are means for determining what is “the property of another” and what constitutes “unjustified taking.” “Don’t break promises merely for your own convenience” is a universal moral rule, and as such is global and absolute. But what sorts of practices constitute making a valid promise is something that is largely determined through localized social conventions. Local context—variable history, tradition, expectation-defining legal systems, and the like—thus makes for substantial variability at the level of operational rules and codes, of moral practices. All the same, the validity of concrete rulings is always a matter of their attuning global (and abstract) prescriptions to local (and concrete) conditions. Without that linkage to the fixed highest-level absolutes, the linkage to morality is severed. For a particular ruling to be a proper moral ruling at all, there must be a suitable moral rationale for the action—a pathway of subordination linkages that connects it in a continuous manner all the way up to the characterizing aims of the moral enterprise. Varying practices and codes of procedure only possess moral validity insofar as they are implementations of a fixed and determinate set of moral principles. Moral validity must always root in a moral universality that is constrained by a conceptual fixity. Discussions of moral relativism by philosophers and social scientists alike are all too frequently vitiated by the oversimplification of seeing moral norms at all levels as being of a piece. They fail to distinguish between lower level rules and standards, which indeed are variable and context-dependent, and higher level values and principles, which are fixed, universal, and unchanging. Recognition of the hierarchical stratification of moral norms is essential to a proper understanding of morality. The fact that there are uniform and unchanging principles at the top of the hierarchy—principles that inhere in the very conception of morality itself—is quite compatible with plurality, variation, and even some measure of conventionality in the moral norms of the lower levels. The multi-level structure of moral norms provides the key to reconciling the inherent absolutism of morality with the “cultural relativity” of moral codes by showing how the relativistic variation of such codes is perfectly compatible with the ab-

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solutism of moral fundamentals. Plurality and variability in regard to lower-level norms is nowise at odds with an absolutistic uniformity of higher-level principles. An absolutistic one-morality doctrine at the level of the basic (abstract or “general”) principles of morality is thus perfectly compatible with a circumstantially diversified plurality of moral codes at the level of concrete rules of operation. Morality has two sides. One is a parochial matter of particular practices—of locally conditioned concrete rules of operation relating to locally established claims, entitlements, obligations, and the like. The other is a universal matter of underlying principles that revolve about the governing factor of safeguarding people’s real interests. Both are formative aspects of the over-all enterprise. If one forgets about those overarching uniformities, the moral landscape assumes a kaleidoscopic variety. But appearances are misleading. There is a single overarching framework of moral principles that inhere in the very notion of what morality is all about. And so the transcultural variation of moral rules does not show that morality is something merely conventional and customary in nature. It illustrates rather than destroys the many-sided bearing of the uniform, context-transcendent, universal moral principles operative at the level of fundamentals. 5. UNIFORMITY DESPITE DIVERSITY: THE ROLE OF BASIC PRINCIPLES Moral pluralism is unavoidable: moral codes can appropriately differ. But this does not entail an indifferentist relativism maintaining that ultimately “anything goes” because morality is ultimately just a matter of local custom. The controlling role of higher-level principles inherent in the very idea of what “morality” is all about saves morality from a destructive fission that engenders indifferentism. The overarching moral principles provide for such “fixed” and “absolute” moral values as: —the value of the human person, grounding its rights of safety and security —the dignity and respect of the individual —liberty, individual freedom

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—people’s rights to consultation in matters affecting their well being and interests We cannot at once remain within the moral purview and avoid recognizing these fundamental desiderata as pivotal to the enterprise. To abandon them is not to contemplate “a different morality” but to abandon the moral domain itself, to change the subject of discussion. And when these rights are infringed or abrogated in a certain culture or society, it proclaims its moral failings in virtue of this very fact. There is no “room for negotiation” here. Anthropologists, and even, alas, philosophers, often say things like “The Wazonga tribe deem it morally proper (or even mandatory) to sacrifice first born female children to the tribal gods” But there are big problems here. This way of talking betokens lamentably loose thinking. For compare: (i)

The Wazonga habitually (customarily) sacrifice. . . .

(ii)

The Wazonga think it acceptable (or perhaps even meritorious) to sacrifice. . . .

(iii) The Wazonga think it morally acceptable to sacrifice. . . . Now however true and incontestable the first two contentions may be, the third is untenable. For compare (iii) with: (iv) The Wazonga think it mathematically true that dogs have tails. No matter how firmly convinced the Wazonga may be that dogs have tails, thesis (iv) taken as it stands is firmly and squarely a thesis of ours, and NOT of theirs! Accordingly, it is in deep difficulty unless the (highly implausible) condition is realized that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what mathematics is, and, moreover, are convinced that the claim that dogs have tails belongs among the appropriate contentions of this particular realm. Analogously, one cannot appropriately maintain (iii) unless one is prepared to claim both that the Wazonga have an essentially correct conception of what morality is (correct, that is, by our lights), and furthermore that they are convinced that the practice in question is acceptable within the framework of this (moral) project as so conceived. And this concatenation is not only implausible in the circumstances, but even para-

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doxical, seeing that the first commitment powerfully counterindicates the second. The salient point is that the mere fact of seeing this practice as custom-mandated (as part of “what’s expected of us and what we’ve always done”) does not make it part of their morality. Only a morally relevant rationale can render a practice a moral one. The anthropological route to moral relativism is, to say the least, highly problematic. There is no difficulty whatever about the idea of different social customs, but the idea of different moralities faces insuperable difficulties. The case is much like that of saying that the tribe whose counting practices are based on the sequence: “one, two, many” has a different arithmetic from ourselves. To do anything like justice to the facts one would have to say that they do not have arithmetic at all—but just a peculiar, and very rudimentary way of counting. And similarly with those exotic tribesmen. On the given evidence, they do not have a different morality, but rather their culture has not developed to a point where they have a morality at all. If they think that it is acceptable to engage in practices like the sacrifice of first-born girl children, then their grasp on the conception of morality is somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent. The long and short of if is that the anthropological reduction of morality to mores just does not work. Some things are wrong in an absolute and universal way: —murder (i.e., unjustifiedly killing another person) —taking improper advantage of people —inflicting pointless harm —lying and deception for selfish advantage, betraying a trust for personal gain —breaking promises out of sheer perversity —misusing the institutions of one’s society for one’s own purposes. Local custom to the contrary notwithstanding, such things are morally wrong anytime, anywhere, and for anyone. Their prohibitions are moral universals—parts of morality as such. (And so they hold good not just for us humans but for all rational beings.)

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To be sure, different societies operate with different moral groundrules at the procedural level. Some societies deem it outrageous for women to expose their faces, their breasts, their knees; others view this as altogether acceptable and perhaps even mandatory. But behind this variation stands a universal principle: “Do not wantonly violate the established rules of proper modesty but respect people’s sensibilities about proper appearance.” This overarching rule is universal and absolute. Its implementation with respect to, say, elbows or belly buttons is of course something that varies with custom and the practices of the community. The rule itself is abstract and schematic—in need of implementing criteria as to what “proper modesty and due decorum” demand. The matter is one of a universal principle with variable implementations subject to “locally established standards and criteria” that are grounded in the customs of the community. And so, while the concrete strictures of morality—its specific ordinances and procedural rules of thumb—will of course differ from age to age and culture to culture, nevertheless the ultimate principles that define the project of “morality” as such are universal. The uniform governing conception of “what morality is” suffices to establish and standardize those ultimate principles that govern the moral enterprise as such. At the level of fundamentals the variability of moral codes is underpinned by an absolute uniformity of moral principles and values. Relativism proclaims: “We have our moral convictions (rules, standards, values) and they have theirs. One is every bit as good as the other. To each his own. Nobody is in a position to criticize or condemn the moral views of others.” But to take this line is moral matters is simply to abandon the very idea of morality. Such a position does indeed hold good with respect to mores—we eat with cutlery, they with chopsticks; we sleep on beds, they in hammocks; we speak one language, they another—each with equal propriety. But this indifference does not hold for matters of moral principle. “We treat strangers with respect; they (those cannibals) eat them. We treat the handicapped kindly; they drown them at sea. It’s all just a matter of local custom.” Rubbish! It is just not true from the moral standpoint! If crass selfishness, pointless maltreatment, wanton deceit, or the infliction of needless pain is wrong for us, it is wrong for them, too—and conversely. At the level of fundamentals, matters of moral principle are the same for everyone. What holds good for us holds good for them, too. Even people who class themselves as relativists generally incline to regard some behavior (political torture, random violence, senseless vandalism) as improper and undesirable. How, then, must they appraise their own

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position on such matters? They incline to say something like this: “Of course we ourselves (civilized moderns that we are) deem this sort of thing to be wicked. But others could, with equal validity, think it to be acceptable, nay even praiseworthy.” The difficulty of course lies in that phrase, “with equal validity.” From whose point of view does this equality obtain? Ours? Certainly not! On our standards, our own position clearly prevails. From God’s? When did he become a party to the discussion? (And if he is a party to the discussion, then what price relativism?) In this matter as in any other, we must of course rely on our own basis of justificatory reflections to furnish a validation we can accept as satisfactory. Relativists very mistakenly deem cultural variation to indicate that “it just doesn’t make any real difference.” But this slide from pluralistic variation to indifferentism roots in a grave error—a mistaken assimilation of morality to mere mores that are conventionally arbitrary and inherently indifferent. The fatal flaw of such radical relativism lies in its failure to distinguish sufficiently clearly between matters of custom and social approval on the one hand and matters of principle and moral propriety on the other. From the Thrasymachus of Plato’s Republic to Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and the Existentialists, critics of “traditional morality” propose not to abolish morality as such, but to put something different and better in its place— to provide a new set of “superior” moral values and principles. However, such revolutionism cannot be altogether revolutionary—at any rate, as long as its advocacy rests on a rational basis. For insofar as its proponents set out to convince us, they must somehow argue that their variant moral code somehow affords a better morality. And that means that their arguments must ultimately pivot on the project of morality-as-we-understand-it, with those fundamental values that characterize the entire project’s reason for being left wholly intact. (Clearly, if we are to accept those putatively superior moral norms as indeed better than ones that we endorse, this evaluative conclusion can only be argued with reference to norms we already hold.) The relativist thunders: “How can you justify approving one set of practices and condemning another?” This, of course, is something one can only accomplish by reasoning, by reflective and judicious evaluative appraisal. But on what basis can this reasoning proceed, by whose standards and measures of morality? Why . . . by our own, of course! (Who else’s would we use—or would we ever want to use?) But what, then, of moral variability—of interpersonal and cross-cultural disagreement regarding moral matters? It is tempting to indulge in a con-

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venient impoverishment of the range of alternatives: throughout morality we have either mere mores, mere customs of the tribe, or unvarying and all-pervasive absolutes. Given this choice, the reduction of morality to matters of mere convention seems relatively plausible.23 But this particular range of alternative is over-narrow and overlooks another possibility far more promising than either of those considered, namely that moral norms can operate at very different levels and that morality accordingly involves the implementation of fundamental and invariant principles within diversified and variable situations. The uniformity of the higher-level norms determinative of morality means that different families of (appropriate) moral rules—different moral codes—simply represent diverse routes to the same ultimate destination. And, given the functional integrity of morality—as an endeavor geared to safeguarding and promoting the best or real interests of rational agents as such—this is exactly how it should be. The mere fact that a single enterprise—morality—is at issue means that, despite the plurality of moral codes, we have to deal with one single uniform family of fundamentals— that the variability of moral rules is underpinned by an absolute uniformity of moral principles, the plurality of valid moral codes notwithstanding. Relativism stands committed to the idea that morality is simply a matter of local convention. It loses sight of what is really at issue with morality— the proper heed of people’s real interests. And thereby it makes a travesty of morality by restricting the idea of what people ought to do to what the customs of their society require. It confuses morality with mores. Mores indeed are simply matters of custom and convention, like table manners and dress codes. But morality involves the adaptation to local conditions of universal principles regarding the safeguarding of people’s interests. A crucial divide thus separates morality from mores; a difference in kind is at issue. After all, moral choice is a matter of opting not for what is preferred but for what is (morally) preferable—or can reasonably be claimed to be so. And this normative dimension means that the variability involved in the variation of moral rules is a mere surface phenomenon that does not reach the level of fundamentals. 6. THE CLAIMS OF OUR OWN COMMUNITY But if variability is a fact of life in morals—if different sorts of rules and rulings can (quite appropriately) obtain for different cultural groups—then how does one’s own particular code secure its obligating hold? Why is it

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that I should see myself as duty-bound to follow “our established rules” rather than some others? The answer to this question is straightforward. A certain (potentially variable) rule obtains its binding grip (its deontic hold, as it were) upon us precisely through representing the contextually appropriate way of implementing a certain fixed value or principle in the particular social context in which we are in fact emplaced. The mere fact of their being de facto part of the operational code of our social environment endows them with authority exactly because this society is (by hypothesis) our society. The salient point is that the moral code of our own environing community is the one that is paramount for us. It is the one that defines and specifies the rights and expectations of those others with whom we are (ex hypothesi) co-situated in a context of mutual interaction. It makes little sense to say: “I concede that you have shown me I should be law-abiding; but why abide by those laws of my environing community? Why not pick and choose one’s laws?” Being law-abiding consists in respecting the laws of one’s own community: to pick and choose one’s own laws is not being law-abiding at all. And the same holds for morality. People’s real interests are largely canalized by their (justified) expectations, and these are determined and defined by the ground-rules of the community in which they operate. To treat the people amongst whom one lives and acts according to the moral code of a community foreign to the environing one is simply to fail to honor the requisites of morality. As long as the local moral groundrules are indeed just that—the locally operative mode implementing the basic principles of morality—they deserve our respect and our allegiance. After all, in morality, as elsewhere, the universal is available to us only through mediation of the specific: one can only pursue a generalized desideratum via its particularized (and variable) concretizations. Communication is universal, language is specific; eating is universal, cookery local; morality is universal, particular concrete moral codes are variable and diversified. But such variability does not undermine or abrogate validity; it does no more than illustrate that, with morality as elsewhere, one must pursue generalized desiderata via their specific realizations—the “married state” via a particular spouse. The universals of morality not only permit, but require adjustment to local conditions. And at that level we are concerned not with validation of morality as such, but with the justification of a particular moral code for a particular group in particular circumstances. The concrete code of our community is the only way in which implementa-

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tion to the high level demands of morality is available to us, given the realities of the particular context in which we live and labor. No doubt there is a large measure of truth in Émile Durkheim’s contention that morality is simply “a set of rules of conduct, of practical imperatives which have grown up historically under the influence of specific social necessities.”24 But the fact that people’s moral views are historically and culturally conditioned—our own of course included—does not preclude their binding stringency for those to whom they appertain (ourselves preeminently included). In transacting our moral affairs in this world—as in conducting our physical movements within it—we have no choice to but go on from where we are. Perhaps Leopold von Ranke was right in saying that every age and every civilization “is equal in the sight of God.” But even if this is so, it does not mean that we—who surely lack all pretensions to divinity—can or should see the moral rules and guidelines of any one group as having equally good claims for our adherence as any other. For us, the moral groundrules of our local setting are paramount—and rightfully so. To be sure, that behavioral practices of a society (our included) are not above criticism—gift horses into whose mouths we must not presume to look. Anything that people do can be done badly—the shaping of a moral code included. Confronted by any set of purported “moral rules of behavior” we can and should ask: how well do they implement the fundamental principles that articulate the aims of the moral enterprise as we do (and must) understand it? Any system (for example) that authorizes the infliction of pain on people for no better reason than affording amusement to others deserves flat-out condemnation and rejection. It would be a decisive objection to any system of “morality” that it deems acceptable (let alone approbation-worthy) a mode of behavior which is immoral on the conscientious application of our standards—that is approves pointless lying, for example, or wanton cruelty, or any other practice that countervails against the legitimate interests of people. Accordingly, one’s own moral code can also be subjected to moral criticism and reevaluation. For the question can always be pressed whether the concrete moral practices and rules of one’s own (potentially variable) code do indeed implement effectively the definitive values of the moral enterprise and—above all—whether they satisfactorily serve the best real interests of people in general. The operational code of our community can be found defective or deficient in point of morality. (Think of Nazi Germany, for example.) Socially accepted principles of action are clearly not beyond

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criticism. But this criticism can—if appropriate—only be developed from the vantage point of those first and fundamental principles which characterize the moral project as such. These are—unavoidably—part and parcel of any morality worthy of the name. Of course, no belief-system, no thought-framework, no system of norms—moral or other—is a world-detached absolute delivered to mankind in unchangeable perfection by the world-spirit from on high. We can do no more than utilize the local, particularized, diversified instruments we humans can manage to develop within the limitations of our place and time. Thus far, relativism is both inevitable and correct. But this emphatically does not engender an indifferentistic subjectivism. For pluralism does not mean that there are no applicable standards—that with morality one can throw things together any which way. An overarching function is operative in the very conception of what morality is all about, and this prevents it from becoming unraveled as a rational enterprise through the pluralistic variability that relativists mistakenly see as somehow destructive of moral universality. The crucial point, then, is that one can be a pluralist in matters of morality without being a relativist, let alone an indifferentist. For consider these positions: MORAL PLURALISM: There are different, yet in their own context appropriate, moral codes. MORAL RELATIVISM: There are no fixed principles in moral matters. Everything hinges on contingent local options. Morality is wholly a matter of mores. MORAL INDIFFERENTISM: Moral issues are ultimately indifferent. There is no objective justification for one position rather than another, no rationale of good reasons through which a particular culture’s resolution can be justified (not even for its particular conditions, let alone unconditionally). Moral relativism is to be rejected because an absolute uniformity prevails at the level of fundamental principles and values. And moral indifferentism is to be rejected because the moral code of one’s own community has a valid claim to our won allegiance. But moral pluralism does not fall with these objections; it is something we can and must accept—absolutism of

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moral principles notwithstanding. In the end, the diversity of moral codes is not at odds with the fundamental diversity of moral rationality: that we pursue our own ends appropriately, with a due recognition of the needs, rights, and claims of others. The stability of moral fundamentals is not destroyed or abrogated by the moral variability created by the changing vagaries of the human condition. NOTES 1

Two recent anthologies provide useful discussions relating to moral relativism: Michael Krausz and Jack W. Meiland (eds.), Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame and London, 1982); John Ladd (ed.), Ethical Relativism (Lanham, 1985). These works contain substantial bibliographies of the field. A wide-ranging and interesting philosophical discussion of moral relativism is found in David B. Wong’s book Moral Relativity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London; 1985). However, a shortcoming of this useful work is that the author is totally disinclined to take absolutism seriously and simply assumes that all morally sensitive people are bound to be relativists of some sort. His interpretations are thus governed by the problematical principle that when people say absolutistic sorts of things, this cannot be taken literally.

2

Herodotus (ca. 450 B.C.), the “father of history” already perceived the phenomenon at issue: [I]f one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others. . . . Unless, therefore, a man was mad, it is not likely that he would make sport of such matters. . . . That people have this feeling about their laws may be seen by very many proofs: among others, by the following. Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked—”What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?” To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said—”What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?” The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forebear such language. Such is men’s wont herein; and Pindar was right, in my judgment, when he said, “Custom is the king o’er all.” The History of Herodotus, tr. by George Rawlinson [New York, 1859-61], Bk. III, ch. 38.) Such views were the common good of the Greek sophists of the 5th century B.C. (Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus) and were later adopted and elaborated by the sceptics (esp. Sextus Empiricus).

3

Pensées, sect. 60 (Brunschwicg).

4

Émile Durkheim, “A Discussion on the Effectiveness of Moral Doctrines” in Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education, ed, by W. S. E Pinkering, tr. by H. C.

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NOTES

Shortcliffe (Boston, 1979), pp. 130-131; Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, vol. 9 (1909), p. 221. 5

Compare John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York, 1977), p. 36.

6

Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York, 1977), p. 113.

7

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists, sect. 75; tr. by R. G. Bury, Loeb Classical Library (London and Cambridge, MA.; 1953), p. 423.

8

The classical exponent of moral absolutism is Immanuel Kant. His relevant books, Critique of Practical Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals, Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, and Lectures on Ethics, are readily available in numerous editions and translations. Some useful modern discussions are: G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy:’ Philosophy, vol. 33 (1958), pp. 1-14: Jonathan Bennett “Whatever the Consequences,” Analysis, vol. 26 (1966); P. T Geach, God and the Soul (London, 1969), see esp. Chap. 9; and James Rachels, “On Moral Absolutism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 48 (1970).

9

Observe that if X believes of knives (as we understand them) that they are something very different (say the mirrors of small, thin leprechauns) and that as such they have magical powers, then we cannot appropriately say: “X believes that knives have magical powers” To approach adequacy, we would have to adopt a far more complex locution, along something like the following lines: “X takes knives to be the magic mirrors of small leprechauns and thus to be equipped with mysterious powers.”

10

Compare also C. Levy-Bruhl, who holds that moral codes and systems “are mere rationalizations of custom.” La Morale et la science des moeurs (Paris, 1903).

11

William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1906), sect. 439. See also Franz Boas, Anthropology and Modem Life (New York, 1928), and Edward A. Westermark, Ethical Relativity (London, 1932).

12

Ruth Benedict, “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” Journal for General Psychology, vol. 10 (1934), pp. 59-80.

13

Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston, 1934), p. 278.

14

Kai Nielsen’s papers “Ethical Relativism and the Facts of Cultural Relativity” (Social Research, vol. 33 [1966], pp. 531-551) and “Anthropology and Ethics” Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 5 [1971]) afford good philosophical examination of the significance, or lack of it, that anthropological data have for moral issues.

15

Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston, 1934), p. 271

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NOTES 16

From Ellis’ account of his Voyage from the Discovery of a North-West Passage (London, 1689), as cited by K. Duncker in Ladd’s anthology on Ethical Relativism [op. cit.], p. 96.

17

E. M. Adams, Ethical Naturalism and the Modem World-View (Chapel Hill, 1960), p. 32. One anthropologist who equates anti-relativism with the existence of cultural universals is Clyde Kluckhohn. See his “Ethical Relativity: Sic et non” in The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 52 (1955), pp. 663-77.

18

W. G. Sumner, op. cit., sect. 31.

19

W. D. Ross, The Right and Good (Oxford, 1930), pp. 14-15.

20

See Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture and Behavior (Glencoe, 1962); idem, “Ethical Relativity; Sic et Non,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 52 [1955], pp. 663-677; R. Redfield, “The Universally Human and the Culturally Variable,” The Journal of General Education, vol. 10 (1967), pp. 150-160; Ralph Linton, “Universal Ethical Principles: An Anthropological View” in R.N. Anshen (ed.), Moral Principles in Action (New York, 1952); idem, “The Problem of Universal Values,” in R. F. Spencer (ed.), Method and Perspective in Anthropology (Minneapolis, 1954).

21

The analogy of natural law is helpful: “Theft, murder, adultery and all injuries are forbidden by the laws of nature; but which is to be called theft, what murder, what adultery, what injury in a citizen, this is not to be determined by the natural but by the civil law. . . .” (Thomas Hobson, De Cive, Chap. IV, sect. 16). St. Thomas holds that appropriate human law must be subordinate to the natural law by way of “particular determination”; with different human laws, varying from place to place, nevertheless representing appropriate concretizations of the same principle of natural law. (See Summa Theologica, Iallae, questions 95-96.)

22

Note that as we move down the scale it becomes ongoingly easy for one man to conflict with others in particular subactions. Here the prospect of moral conflict will become unavoidable.

23

After all, “the actual variations in the moral code (of different groups) are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect different ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values,” J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York, 1977), p. 37.

24

From a discussion in La Revue, vol. 59 (1905), pp. 306-8; tr. in W. S. F. Pickering and H. L. Sutcliffe (eds.), Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education (London, 1979), p. 34.

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Chapter V/2 RATIONALITY AND MORAL OBLIGATION 1. RATIONALITY, SELF-INTEREST, AND MORALITY

R

ationality is (“by definition” as it were) a matter of seeking optimal (best available) resolutions to the problems we face in life. It consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives. It impels us to act for the best. Does this mean that rationality requires people to be good? The relationship between morality and rationality has been debated since classical antiquity. In the course of these discussions, it has become clear that various fundamental distinctions are needed to deliberate sensibly about this issue. It is appropriate to begin by attending to some of them. One’s self-interest—one’s own welfare and well being—is certainly a sensible objective for people and thus a guiding factor for rationality. But just what sort of “self-interest” is at issue here? It is very much in order to distinguish in regard to “self-interest” between: (i)

what someone wants,

(ii)

what somebody thinks is good for him: what he deems beneficial on the basis of the information at his disposal,

(iii) what somebody objectively ought to want: what actually is beneficial for him. In line with this perspective, it is needful to distinguish between mere desires, subjective interests, and objective (or real) interests, respectively. The demands of rationality will certainly go beyond (i). But they cannot go so far as (iii), seeing that, in the existing state of information, there may simply be no way to discern accurately what actually is beneficial in the circumstances. All that can—and should—be demanded for rationality is a strengthened version of (ii):

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(ii*) what someone has good reason (in the prevailing state of his information) to think to be truly beneficial to him. The point is that while rationality does not demand going the entire distance to (iii), it does require us to go as far in that direction as our circumstances realistically permit. Rationality demands that we pursue not quite our real interests as such, but our determinably-real interests—our real interests as best the prevailing circumstances enable us to discern them. Yet another distinction is crucial in the present context, namely that between selfish (narrow) and enlightened (wide) self-interest. For people not only frequently do but generally should make the interests of others a part of their own—shaping their own personal interests so as to include those of others.1 Most of us do, and all of us should construe our interests in an enlarged way, to include those of parents, siblings, spouses, children, and—perhaps in decreasing degree—friends and associates, felloe countrymen, humanity at large, and possibly sectors of the animal kingdom as well. (With interest, something akin to a law of gravitation is operative, where the strength of attraction falls off with the “social distance” separating other individuals from ourselves.) Putting these two lines of thought together we arrive at the theses • Rationality requires doing what one can to cultivate one’s determinably real self-interest. • People’s self-interest, properly construed, also embraces the best interests of others to some extent. Now given that due attention to the (real) interests of others is the crux of morality, it follows on this basis that in some degree at least, rationality carries morality in its wake. Once we recognize that the pursuit of (determinably) real self-interest in its wider, enlightened mode is an appropriate objective for people-in-general it becomes clear—seeing that it is a cardinal principle of morality to safeguard and promote the real interest of people—that morality is in substantial measure not only compatible with the demands of reason, but itself constitutes an important part of them. Rationality calls on us to act for the best. But for whose best? A whole host of issues springs up at this point. Whose goods and advantages and interests are at stake with rationality? Is it just the agent’s (i.e., does selfish-

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ness lie at the core of rationality)? Or is it that of people-in-general, so that rationality involves morality as well? The facile either-or dichotomy of self-interest vs. general-interest must be transcended by recognizing that—as many philosophers since Plato have stressed—the general interest is itself a crucial part or aspect of one’s self- interest. It is in my own interest to care for the interests of others— that their interests are at one remove a part of my own because human life is communal and human welfare systemic. The boat we build through our actions is one that we must sail in together. Because of the systemic interconnectedness of the world’s arrangements, it would be a gross mistake to think that action contrary to the welfare of others is without consequences for one’s own. Yet this is not the end of the story. 2. ON SELF-INTEREST AND SELFISHNESS But what of those cases in which doing the moral thing patently exacts a price in terms of selfish personal advantage? One must look on this issue as being much like any other conflict-ofinterest situation. I simply have to decide where my priorities ought to lie, whether with morality or with selfish advantage. And this decision has larger implications for us. For it is not just a matter of deciding what I want to do in this case. Because of the ramified nature of the case, it is a matter of deciding what sort of person I am to be. And it is now that our deliberations require the postulation of a case along the lines of the “Ring of Gyges” episode of Plato’s Republic, a case where one has to “pay a price” for doing the moral thing—where there is a conflict between morality and narrowly self-interested prudence. Now the salient feature of such a case is that it is by deciding how to act that we effectively decide what sort of person we want to be. For in acting immorally I produce two sorts of results: • The direct result of my action—presumably certain gains that it would secure for me; • The indirect result of making me a person of a certain sort, viz., someone who would do that sort of thing to realize that sort of result.

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In so acting I make myself into a person of a certain sort. Even if no one else knows it, the fact still remains that that’s what I’ve done—I’ve made myself into a person who would do something immoral in order to realize that sort of benefit. And my self-respect is (or ought to be) of such great value to me that the advantages I could secure by immoral action do not countervail against the losses of self-respect that would be involved. In acting in a way that I recognize to be wrong, I sustain a loss and (if my head is screwed on straight) sustain it where it counts the most—in my own sight. A vicarious concern for others enriches one’s life and makes one not only a better but also a more fully developed person. Doing what one wants is not automatically a matter of selfishness; that very much depends on what it is that one happens to want. As one recent author points out “while it does sound distinctly odd to say that a person embarked on a life of self-sacrifice and devotion to others is pursuing his own good,” there is nothing odd about saying that such a person is leading a life which (as he sees the matter) is good for him to lead.2 One’s vision of the good can (and should) include arrangements where one is not oneself cast in the role of a prime beneficiary. Surely there is nothing in any way inherently unreasonable or irrational about a selfless concern for others. To be sure, a man will be unreasonable, indeed irrational, if his actions systematically impede his objectives. But— convenient oversimplification apart—there is no justification whatever for holding that his only rationally legitimate objectives are of the selfish or self-interested sort. It is a travesty of this concept to construe rationality in terms of prudential self-advantage. Neither for individuals nor for societies is “the pursuit of happiness” (construed as narrowly selfish pleasure) an appropriate guide to action; its dictates must be counterbalanced by recognizing the importance of doing those things upon which we can in due course look back with justifiable pride. Just as it is rational to do the prudent thing (endure the dentist’s ministrations, say) even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires, so the same story holds with doing the moral thing. Being a moral person is prominent among our (real) interests. And so, confronted with the choice between a moral and a narrowly selfish automatically lies on the side of the moral choice. Morality is indeed a matter of self-interest, but only if one is prepared to distinguish true (real) from merely apparent interests (“what’s good for me” from “what one wants”).

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Back then to that original question: “Why be moral—why do what morality demands?” This is an ambiguous question that can be construed in three importantly different ways: (1) Why be moral—from the moral point of view? (2) Why be moral—form the standpoint of enlightened prudence, of an intelligent heed of our real interests? (3) Why be moral—from the standpoint of the selfishness of desiresatisfaction? Here as elsewhere, the answer we arrive at depends on the question we ask. If we ask (1), the answer is simply that morality itself demands it. And if we ask (2), the answer is that enlightened prudence also demands it, that our real and truly “best” interests require it for the reasons indicated above. But if we ask (3), the situation is quite different. There just is no earthly way to validate morality from the standpoint of selfishness, of self-interest narrowly construed, in terms of the satisfaction of mere (raw and unevaluated) desires. And this is to be welcomed, not lamented—at any rate from the moral point of view. For the very reason for being of morality lies in countervailing the siren call of immediate gratification. All considered, it is point (2) that is crucial here. And in its light the basic question of the relation of morality and rationality may be resolved via the argument: 1. The intelligent cultivation of one’s real self-interest is quintessentially rational. 2. It is to one’s real self-interest to act morally—even if doing so goes against one’s immediate selfish desires. Therefore: It is rational to be moral. There is nothing all that complex about the relationship of rationality and morality. We have, more of less by definition: rationality: doing the intelligent thing (in matters of belief, action, and evaluation),

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morality: doing the right thing (in regard to action affecting the interest of others). The concordance of morality with rationality is established through the fact that the intelligent thing to do and the right thing to do will ultimately coincide. To forego rationality is to abandon (as best we can tell) the intelligent cultivation of appropriate interests. Given the fact that we have a genuine interest in being the sort of person who cares for the interests of others, morality is part of the package. The rational person will also be morally good—conscientious, compassionate, kind, etc.—because his own best interest is served thereby, seeing that he has a real and sizable stake in being the sort of person who can take rational satisfaction in the contemplation of his own way of life. “But what if I just don’t happen to be the sort of person who gets satisfaction from contemplating the quality of my life and its constituent actions?” Then not only can we feel sorry for you, but we are (normatively) justified in setting your stake in the matter at nought. Your stance is like that of someone who says: “Appropriate human values mean nothing to me.” Your position seems afraid to that most basic of rational imperatives: to realize oneself as the sort of creature one happens to be. In being profoundly unintelligent, such a stance is profoundly irrational as well. In the final analysis, to act immorally is to act unreasonably because it compromises one’s true interests—partly for Hobbesian reasons (fouling one’s own nest) and partly for Platonic ones (failing to realize one’s human potential). Such a position is essentially identical with that which Plato attributes of Socrates in the Republic: that being unjust and immoral—regardless of what immediate benefits it may gain for us—is always ultimately disadvantageous because of the damage it does to our character (or psyche) by making us into the sort of person we ourselves cannot really respect. (“What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”) On such a view it is not the case that the impetus of morality subsists through its rewards: either intrinsic (“virtue is its own reward”) or prudential. We should be moral not because it (somehow) pays, but because we ought to be so as part and parcel of our ontological obligation towards self-realization.

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Even David Hume is drawn towards such a view. As he sees it, even if those “sensible knaves” whom he imagines to take improper advantage of their opportunities for selfish gains in a moral society “were . . . ever so secret and successful,” they would still themselves emerge “in the end, the greatest dupes,” because they have “sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws” (Enquiry, II, p. 283). The sensible knave automatically foregoes the pleasure of “peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct” (ibid.). And because he cannot then sustain even his own critical scrutiny, the knave also renders himself unable to enjoy membership in an organized society (which, as Hume sees it, is perhaps no lesser loss). 3. THE PROBLEM OF NORMATIVE FORCE If morality is a matter of (true) self-interest then whence does it get its normative force, its obligatoriness and its stern demand for doing of duty? Three levels of imperation can be considered: (1) the ontological: realize your highest potential—an obligation you owe not only to yourself but to the world-system that has brought you forth, (2) the rational: do the best you can in the circumstances in which you find yourself, (3) the moral: safeguard the interests of others in the circumstances in which you find yourself. Now (3) can indeed be grounded in (2)—safeguarding the interests of others is part of acting for the best, including what is the best for us. But its normative force does not inhere simply in this. For in the final analysis it derives from (1), upon which (2) itself is ultimately grounded. Morality is a matter of (true) self-interest all right. But it is not this circumstance that endows its injunctions with their normative force. That is something that comes from that ontological imperative to realize the best that is in us—to make the most of the opportunities that our existence in this world puts at our disposal. Our normative obligations rest on two fundamental injunctions, the one negative, the other positive. The one is:

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• Do not act in such a way as to diminish the good of the universe through your presence in it. The other is: • Do act in such a way as to enhance the good of the universe through your presence in it. The former is negative and moralistic; the latter is positive and ethical in orientation. “But why should I bother about the universe? What has the universe ever done for me?” The answer is simple: It has given you the benefit of existence and put at your disposal the opportunity of acting for the good. The commandment “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is obviously important. But it follows from this larger ethical injunction since the person who treats others improperly thereby clearly diminishes the good of the universe. On the other hand, in and of itself that commandment is too narrow. For it is over-narrow in its concern only for “others”—presumably other humans. And this leaves too much of the larger issues out of sight. Clearly, one of the key obligations of intelligent beings—be they humans or extraterrestrial aliens—is to satisfy the requirement—and indeed the need to see ourselves as something higher and worthier than mere animals—as beings who, equipped with minds and spirits occupy a place of special worth and significance upon the world’s stage. And we do (and should!) incline to see immoral action—as degrading and unworthy, as diminishing us in our own sight. In the face of unethical and unworthy action we can no longer see ourselves as the sorts of beings we prefer to think of ourselves as being. Psychopaths aside, those who yield to the temptation of unethical, immoral, and antisocial behavior generally devote considerable psychic effort and energy to invent excuses—excuses which, by and large, do not succeed in convincing even themselves. 4. RATIONALITY AND SELF-INTEREST It is often said that modern game theory shows that morality is caught up on the horns of a dilemma that sets communal well-being at odds with rational self-interest.

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The term “prisoner’s dilemma”, attributed to the Princeton mathematician A. W. Tucker, is taken from the anecdote originally used to illustrate the special sort of “game” situation that can arise in social-interaction contexts. Two prisoners, held incommunicado, are charged as accomplices in the commission of a crime. If each prisoner confesses, the result is mutual incrimination, and both will (so we suppose) divide the penalty of twenty years’ imprisonment. If only one turns state’s evidence and confesses, thereby incriminating the other (who maintains silence), the whole penalty will fall on this hapless unfortunate. But if both maintain silence and neither confess, the case against them is weakened, and each will incur a much-diminished penalty (say two years’ imprisonment). The prisoners face the problem of whether to take a chance on confession or to opt for the possible benefit of silence, even though accompanied by the risk of a greater possible penalty. The moral of the story, it is often said, is that by following the rational course of “sensible prudence” the parties to a social-interaction situation may actually assure themselves of a result unfavorable to the best interests of the community. To all appearances, rationality conflicts with morality’s concern for the general advantage. Or so it seems. But appearances can be deceiving. The first thing to note is that the conflict that comes to light here is not one between prudent rationality on the one hand and a morality of “the common good” on the other. Rather, the conflict is one between safety-first narrow-mindedness and one’s own overall interests. (Not surprising circumstance!) That comparatively severe penalty which the prisoners are led to incur is simply the “insurance cost” they pay to avert the risk of a still larger loss. (Here, as elsewhere, risk-containment does not come cost-free.) And so the dilemma situation is not paradoxical at all. It shows merely that the realization of a generally advantageous result may require the running of individual risks, and that the pursuit of other-disinterested prudence may produce a situation in which the general advantage of the community is diminished. For these lessons, we did not need to await modern game theory; the moralists of classical antiquity told us as much many years ago. But the main point is that the example does not show (as is often said) the rationality can be prudentially counterproductive: that doing “the rational thing” can lead to suboptimal results from the angle of personal and collective interests. For to take this line is to take a very blinkered and narrow-minded approach to rationality—to prevent it from taking the broad view that is its proper job.

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Seen in its correct perspective, the game-theoretic situation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is actually more complex than meets the eye at first. To grasp how this is so, we must pursue the idea of a meta-game. Meta-games arise in situations where the ultimate outcome does not just lie in the confines of the “basic” game itself but is determined by further “external” conditions additionally superimposed upon its play. Consider, for example, a two-person game in which the parties each have two choice-alternatives, subject to the following pay-off schedule: 3/1 2/1

0/2 2/2

The parties are to play the game for just two rounds. The ultimate result is determined as follows: each gets $100 if one party has won a total of more than 5 units; neither gets anything otherwise. It is clear that this added “side-condition” has major implications for the rational strategy of play by the participants in the basis-game. Or again consider the situation of a game based on the payoff schedule: 3/3 2/1

1/2 3/2

The governing condition is that the game is to be played three times, with the ultimate result being determined as follows. If the overall total of units won is odd, each player gets $100; if it is even neither gets anything. It is clear, once again, that the overall perspective makes a great difference to the choice of a rational strategy of play by the participants. Let us now reconsider the Prisoner’s Dilemma from this perspective. The postulated situation confronts us with a basis-game whose structure is as follows: 10/-10 -20/0

0/-20 -2/-2

We can, however, choose to regard this situation in the light of the following meta-game: The parties are to play one round of the basic game. Each player then gets a payoff determined as follows:

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-1 if the player “fares really badly”—that is, loses more than 2 units in the basic game, +1 otherwise (i.e., if the player does not lose more than 2 units in the basic game).

In this perspective, we arrive at a “transformed” payoff schedule: -1/-1 -1/+1

+1/-1 +1/+1

The choice between these two alternatives is now altogether indifferent for both players. There is no longer a “dominant” choice for either one. But that’s still not quite the end of the matter. For each party can now reason as follows: From my point of view, the alternatives lie on a plane. Once my opponent makes his choice, I shall fare exactly the same, regardless of how I choose. But while the alternatives are thus indifferent from my standpoint, they are very different from that of my opponent. For if I choose my first alternative, then he is bound to lose, while if I choose my second, he is bound to gain.

If we take the line that the “rational” man will act to benefit others when he can do so at zero cost to himself—since his own best interests embrace those of others to at least this minimal extent—then we arrive at the result that each party must, if rational, opt for their second alternative. A general point is at issue here. Reality tends to be hermeneutically equivocal: it leaves itself open to diverse interpretations. The salient fact is that there are different alternatives formal representation or reconstructions for many and most informal (verbally described) social-interaction situations. In the analysis of a given problem there is, often as not, a variety of options. And when where is, there is good reason to opt for that one which, all considered, gives the most satisfying overall result.3 And this is surely the case with situations of the sort presently at issue. By taking the line that what is “actually” at issue in the Prisoner’s Dilemma situation is a meta-game of sorts, that purported conflict between morality and enlightened self-interest is altogether circumvented. For that minimal-benevolence principle of “advance the interest of others if you can do so at zero cost” represents a small but critically important step towards that larger conception of self-interest which incorporates and enhances the

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interests of others within its scope—a step that is appropriate not only in the service of morality, but in that of duly enlightened self-interest as well. And so the key point is clear. In the final analysis morality can and should be seen as a mode of practice which achieves the goal of seeing the general advantage in concurrently seeing the real and bad interests of the constituent individuals. There is nothing rational about being moral.4 NOTES 1

Cf. the author’s Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975).

2

Stephen L. Darwall, Impartial Reason, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 105.

3

In any event, determining the “sensible” strategy of play in the prisoner’s dilemma is only possible if one makes a specific meta-game assumption of some sort. Is the game to be played exactly once, of a fixed, predetermined number of times, or repeatedly but on an indefinite number of occasions? The answer to such questions makes all the difference. (See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: The Free Press, 1984).

4

This chapter was originally published under the same title in Synthese, vol. 72 (1987), pp. 29-43.

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Chapter V/3 IS CONSENSUS REQUIRED FOR A RATIONAL SOCIAL ORDER? 1. THE QUESTION OF PRACTICAL CONSENSUS

I

t is instructive to examine some of the more or less “political” aspects of consensuality in the context of decision making in the public forum. In particular, it is worthwhile to consider the demand for a practical consensus about what is to be done in the setting of a social group, focusing on the question: Is consensus-seeking to be regarded as a prime imperative of rational social policy? In and of itself, consensus is clearly no absolute. One obviously has to worry about what it is that people are consensing about and why it is they are doing so. (Think of the precedent of Nazi Germany.) All the same, the idea has been astir in some European intellectual circles for many years now that a just and democratic society can be achieved only on the basis of a shared social commitment to the pursuit of communal consensus. Such a view insists that the public harmony required for the smooth functioning of a benign social order must be rooted in an agreement on fundamentals. Progress towards a congenial and enlightened society accordingly requires an unfolding course of evolving consensus about the public agenda—a substantial agreement regarding the practical question of what is to be done. This general line of thought traces back to Hegel, who envisioned an inexorable tendency towards a condition of things where all thinking people will share a common acceptance of the manifold of truths revealed by reason. Sailing in Hegel’s wake, the tradition of German social thought reaching through Marx to the Frankfurt School and beyond has reinforced the idea that the realization of a communally benign social order requires a commitment to consensus—a shared public commitment to the idea that the pursuit of consensus in communal affairs is a good thing. This position, however, is deeply problematic. A good case can be made out for the contrary view that a benign social order need not be committed to the quest for consensus, but can be constituted along very different, irreducibly pluralistic lines. After all, the idea that a consensus on fundamen-

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tals is realistically available is in fact false with respect to most large, complex, advanced societies and is (so we shall argue) simply not needed for the benign and “democratic” management of communal affairs. And even the idea that consensus is a desirable ideal is very questionable. To be sure, giving pride of place to consensus sounds benevolent, irenic, and socially delectable. Indeed, it may sound so plausible at first hearing that it is difficult to see how a person of reasonableness and goodwill could fail to go along. Nevertheless, there is room for real doubt as to whether this utopian-sounding position makes sense. Serious questions can be raised as to whether the best interests of a healthy community are served by a commitment to consensus. To begin at the end, let it be foreshadowed that the policy whose appropriateness will be defended here is one of a restrained dissonance based on an acceptance of a diversity and dissensus of opinion—a benevolent (or at any rate resigned) acceptance of the disagreement of others with a credo of respect to beliefs and values. Such an approach envisions a posture of diversity conjoined with “live and let live,” taking the line that a healthy democratic social order can not only tolerate, but even—within limits— welcome dissensus (disagreement, discord), provided that the conflicts involved are kept within “reasonable bounds.” The present discussion will accordingly maintain the merits of the consensus dispensing view that a benign social order can be unabashedly pluralistic and based not on the pursuit of agreement but on arrangements that provide for an acquiescence in disagreement. This position sees as perfectly acceptable a situation that is not one of judgmental homogeneity and uniformity, but one of a dissonance and diversity that is restrained to a point well short of outright conflict and chaos. Dissensus has this to be said for it, at least, that it is at odds with a stifling orthodoxy. A dissent-accommodating society is ipso facto pluralistic, with all the advantages that accrue in situations where no one school of thought is able to push the others aside. Indeed, the extent to which a society exhibits tolerance—is willing and able to manage with a-consensual diversity arising from free thought and expression—could be seen as a plausible standard of merit, since a spirit of mutual acceptance and accommodation is one of the hallmarks of a benign and productive social order.

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2. PRODUCTIVE VS. UNPRODUCTIVE MODES OF CONFLICT It must be acknowledged, of course, that dissensus does have a negative side. Its negativities preeminently include: 1. The danger of escalation from productive competition to destructive conflict. 2. The possible diversion of resources (effort and energy) into potentially unproductive forms of rivalry. 3. The separatist fragmentation of the community into groups estranged from each other in a posture of mutual hostility. 4. The tendency to dismiss otherwise meritorious plans, projects, and ideas simply because they originate from the “outside,” from a rival, competing source. Clearly, the story is not altogether one-sided. However, the sensible way of handling the question of consensus vs. dissensus calls for effecting an appropriate balance between the positive and the negative of the issue, seeking the productive advantages of tolerating dissent while averting its potential negativities by ad hoc mechanisms fitted to the specific circumstances at hand. This said, the fact remains that it is highly problematic to maintain that a rational public policy must be predicated on a striving for consensus. Situations where the public good is best served by a general acquiescence in disagreement are not only perfectly possible but also often actual. Life being what it is, it would be too hard on all of us to be in a position where we had to reach agreement in matters of opinion and evaluation. A society in which the various schools of thought and opinion try to win the others over by rational suasion is certainly superior to one in which they seek to do so by force or intimidation. But this does not automatically make it superior to one where these groups let one another alone to flourish or founder in their divergent individuality. After all, the striving towards consensus produces a sometimes debilitating uniformity of thought, and the tolerance of diversity permits the flourishing of an often fruitful variety of individual plans, projects, and visions. Pluralism on the other hand can often better serve the currently prevailing interests of individuals, securing

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for them and for their society the potential future benefits accruing from a stimulating competition and productive rivalry. 3. ACQUIESCENCE AND CONTROLLED CONFLICT Consensus by its very nature is a condition of intellectual uniformity, a homogeneity of thought and opinion. And just herein lie some of its significant shortcomings. For the fact is that the impulsion to consensus will in various circumstances prove itself to be: 1. An impediment to creativity and innovation. (Settling into a consensus position is a discouragement from endeavoring to outdo others and striving to improve on their efforts by “doing one’s utmost to excel.”) 2. An invitation to mediocrity. (By its very nature, realization of consensus involves a compromise among potentially divergent tendencies and thus tends to occupy “the middle ground” where people are most easily brought together, but where, for that very reason, the element of creative, insightful innovation is likely to be missing.) 3. A disincentive to productive effort. (One of the most powerful motives for improving the level of one’s performance is, after all, to come under the pressure of competition and the threat of being outdone by a rival.) Not only is insistence on the pursuit of general consensus in practical matters and public affairs unrealistic, it is also counterproductive. For it deprives us of the productive stimulus of competition and the incentive of rivalry. In many situations of human life, people are induced to make their best effort in inquiry or creative activity through rivalry rather than emulation, through differentiation rather than conformity, through a concern to impede the folly they see all around. Productivity, creativity, and the striving for excellence are—often as not—the offspring of diversity and conflict. Most human intellectual, cultural and social progress has begun with an assault by dissident spirits against a comfortably established consensus. The Andalusian friar Bartolomeo de las Casas upheld the human rights of Amerindians against the consensus of Spanish conquistadores and settlers

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alike that they were inferior beings; the 18th century American abolitionists protested the institution of slavery in the teeth of a vast preponderance of powerful opponents; J. S. Mill’s protest against “the subjection of women” was a lone voice crying out in a wilderness of vociferous males. Dispensing with consensus is often possible in cases where people are prepared to acquiesce in “splitting the difference.” In principle consensus is not needed in regard to what is the most effective measure for reducing America’s dependence on imported oil: there is the prospect of doing something constructive along each possible line. Consensus is not needed with regard to the propriety or morality of abandon for getting people to go along with measures to reduce or even minimize the need for it. When we find ourselves dissenting from others, we may dislike their opinions and disapprove of their actions—and they ours—but we can, by and large, manage to come to terms. We can—often, at least—“get along” with others quite adequately when we can “agree to disagree” with them or when we can simply ignore, dismiss, and sideline our disagreements— postponing further opposition to another day. What matters for social harmony is not that we agree with one another, but that each of us acquiesces in what the other is doing, that we “live and let live,” so that we avoid letting our differences become a casus belli between us. Acquiescence is the key. And this is not a matter of approbation, but rather one of a mutual restraint which, even when disapproving and disagreeing, is willing (no doubt reluctantly) to “let things be,” because the alternative actual conflict or warfare—will lead to a situation that is still worse. All is well as long as we can manage to keep our differences beneath the threshold of outright conflict. The crucial fact about acquiescence is that it is generally rooted not in agreement with others but rather in a preparedness to get on without it. What makes good practical and theoretical sense is the step of (on occasion) accepting something without agreeing with it—of “going along” despite disagreement—an acquiescence of diversity grounded in a resigned toleration of the discordant views of others. The merit of such tolerance is not (as with John Stuart Mill) that it is an interim requisite for progress towards an ultimate collective realization of the truth, but simply and less ambitiously that it is a requisite for the peace and quiet that we all require for the effective pursuit of our own varied visions and projects. A deep strain of utopianism runs through social contract theory, be it of the Rawlsian form favored among North American social philosophers or the Habermasian form in vogue on the European continent. Historical ex-

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perience, empirical understanding of the human realities, and theoretical analysis of our social situation, all conjoin to indicate that an insistence on agreement among rational inquirers and problem-solving agents is simply futile. However inconvenient for the philosophers, ample experience shows that not only in matters of politics, art, and religion, but also in a whole host of cognitive domains like history, economics, social science, and philosophy, we shall never actually achieve a firmly secured general consensus. And there is no reason to think that a benign society can exist only where the clash of private opinions and preferences is eliminated or suppressed by the processes of social coordination. A healthy social order can perfectly well be based not on agreement but on the sort of mutual restraint, in which subgroups simply go their own way in the face of dissensus. Neither in intellectual nor in social contexts, after all, have we any firm assurance that a consensual position somehow represents the objectively correct or operationally optimal solution. To be sure, in many cases some sort of resolution must be arrived at with respect to public issues. But we need not agree about it: a perfectly viable result may be had simply on the basis of a reluctant acceptance of diversity. What matters for the smooth functioning of a social order is not that the individuals or groups that represent conflicting positions should think alike, but simply that they acquiesce in certain shared ways of conducting the society’s affairs. 4. SOME OBJECTIONS We come, at this juncture to what is a central point in the defense of our present position. It pivots on the following objection put forward by a hypothetical critic: I agree with much of what you have said on the merits of dissensus and diversity. But you have failed to reckon with the crucial distinction between a consensus on matters of ground level substance and a consensus on matters of procedure. As you maintain, a benign social order can indeed dispense with a substantive consensus regarding what is decided upon. But what it indispensably requires is a procedural agreement on modes of conflict resolution—a second-order consensus about how those first-order issues are to be decided. If the society is to serve effectively the interests of those involved, and if mutual strife and conflict—are to be averted, there must be a consensus on process, or the validity of the procedural ways in which these base-

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level resolutions are arrived at. Consensus on particular decisions may be dispensable, but consensus on the decision-making process is essential.

Despite its surface plausibility, even this more sophisticated argument for the necessity of an at least procedural consensuality is deeply problematic. For one thing, even where there is a consensus about process, there may nevertheless be sharp disagreement regarding matters of implementation. Even where people agree on, say maintenance of law and order, civility of interaction, an equitable distribution of resources—and many other such “procedural” principles of human action in the public domain such procedural agreements are much too abstract to define particular public policies. (We can agree on the need for “law and order” and yet quite plausibly disagree on questions of civil disobedience and the limits of appropriate protest.) Process consensus is a lot to ask for—but still is not sufficient for a benign social order. But the problem goes deeper yet. For it is simply false that procedural agreement is indispensable for a benign social order. To manage its affairs in a mutually acceptable way, a community needs no agreement on the merits of those procedures as long as there is acquiescence in their operation. What matters is not that we agree on methods—I may have my favorite and you yours. (I might, for example, think that the proper way to address the issue at hand is for the electorate to decide it by referendum; you think that the right and proper way is by a vote in the legislature.) But as long as we both acquiesce in the established process of having the courts decide, all is well. There is no agreement here: we emphatically do not concur in thinking that the courts are the proper (let alone the best!) avenue for a solution—in fact, neither of us thinks so. What we do is simply acquiesce in what the courts make their decisions on the issue. What matters for irenic conflict resolution is not second-order consensus but secondorder acquiescence. A sensible defense of acquiescence is accordingly not predicated on ignoring the distinction between first-order substantive issues and second-order methodological ones: rather it is prepared to turn this. Distinction to its own purposes and to see it as advantageous rather than inimical to establishing the claims of acquiescence vis-à-vis consensus. But even when we “agree to disagree” do we not in fact agree? Not really. Or, rather, we do so in name only! An agreement to disagree is as much an agreement as a paper dragon is a dragon—the whole point is that there is no agreement at all here. Parties who agree to disagree do not

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agree on anything—they simply exhibit a similarity of behavior in that they walk away from a disagreement. They no more agree than do bouncing billiard balls that move away from one another. Another possible objection to an emphasis on acquiescence as a mechanism of social decision runs as follows: To cast acquiescence in a leading role in the management of public affairs is to invite the deployment of raw power; to open the doors to coercion, oppression, domination, and the subjection of the weak to control by the strong.

But this view of the matter is simply unjust. The rational person’s acquiescence is, after all, based on a cost-benefit calculation that weighs the costs of opposition against the costs of “going along.” And to deploy raw power is to raise the stakes—to readjust not only the benefits but also the costs of acquiescence. As those who study revolutions soon learn, it is precisely at the point when power is made blatantly overt—when bayonets are mounted and blood shed in the streets—that acquiescence is most gravely endangered. It is clear that discernibly just, benign, and generally advantageous arrangements will secure the acquiescence of people far more readily and more extensively than those that infringe upon such obvious social desiderata. It is quite false that an approach that roots social legitimacy in acquiescence somehow favors oppression and injustice. To be sure, much will depend on the sorts of people one is dealing with. If they are unreasonably longsuffering and spineless—if they are weakkneed and cave in easily under pressure—then a social order based on acquiescence, is one in which they indeed can be oppressed and exploited. (But then, of course, if they are totally accommodating and yielding, a consensual order based on agreement with others is also one in which their true interests are likely to suffer.) The fact remains that sensible people are distinctly unlikely to acquiesce in arrangements that are oppressive to them. An acquiescence-oriented political process does not provide a rationale for domination, exploitation, oppression precisely because these are factors in which sensible people are unlikely to acquiesce—once brought into play they soon call forth opposition rather than accommodation. One of the early lessons that an acquiescence-based society learns is that its ethics are not smoothly viable if people are constantly testing the limits of acquiescence. An emphasis on being civilized, urbane, restrained is not at odds with a glaring to acquiescence but is actually conducive to the enterprise.

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Moreover, the complaint that a polity of acquiescence inherently favors the perpetration of injustices cannot be sustained. Acquiescence is like agreement in this, that nobody else can do it for you. People may be able to rearrange the conditions under which you will have to proceed in this regard, but how you proceed within those conditions is always in the final analysis up to you. As recent developments in Eastern Europe all too clearly show, people will only acquiesce in injustice up to a certain point. After that they turn to non-cooperation and opposition—they take up arms against the sea of troubles or perhaps simply emigrate. The limits of acquiescence are finite. Admittedly, acquiescence can be bad—it can be forced or compelled. It is no automatic route to political legitimacy. But then of course neither is consensus. We are always entitled to ask why people agree: is it for good and valid reason—a concern for truth or for fairness, say—or is it because of self-interest, conformism, constraint, or propagandism. Legitimacy is always an additional issue: and just as it is not just consensus one wants but a consensus that is rational and free, so it is not just acquiescence one wants but acquiescence that is given in a way that is sensible and uncoerced. 5. A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE A great continental divide runs across the landscape of the philosophical tradition. On the one side lies the Platonic tradition that looks to systemic order through a rational coordination under the aegis of universal principles. On the other the Aristotelian tradition that looks to organic balance and an equilibration of diversity and division. The one is geared to a classicism of holistic order, the other to a pluralism of countervailing checks and balances. The one favors the rational uniformity of a harmonious consensus, the other the creative diversity of a limited dissensus. The one invokes the tidiness of theorizing reason, the other the diversified complexity of actual history. Given this divide, European political thought since the time of the Enlightenment has been fixated upon the idea of the “general consent” of the people in defining a general agreement of the community (la volonte generale) which may or may not be all that apparent to the people themselves (and may need to be discerned on their behalf by some particularly, insightful elite). All the same, the dangers of that idea, run amuck, is ap-

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parent to anyone who has looked even casually into the history of the French Revolution. The polity of consensus proceeds from a fundamentally socialistic commitment to the coordination and alignment of individual action into the uniform social order of “rationalized” central planning (albeit, no doubt, a uniformization that is not imposed, but rather engendered—presumably— through the “hidden hand” of an idealized rationality). Legislatures, taxing authorities, and political theorists all like to keep the affairs of the citizenry neat and tidy. But the fact of the matter is that the impetus to public consensus, agreement and concurrence of thought will not be high on the priority list of the true friends of personal freedom and liberty. And so, the polity of pluralism abandons the goal of a monolithically unified “rational order” for the “creative diversity” of a situation of variegated rivalry and competition. Its political paradigm is not that a command economy with its ideal of rationalization and uniformizing coordination, but that of a free market with its competitive rivalry of conflicting interests. Consensuality looks to uniformity of thought, pluralism to reciprocally fruitful harmonization of discordant elements. Rather different sorts of policy approaches are at work in social orders based on consensus-oriented and acquiescence-oriented principles. Consensus-seeking societies will aim to maximize the number of people who approve of what is being done; acquiescence-seeking societies seek to minimize the number of people who disapprove very strongly of what is being done. The one seeks actual agreement, the other seeks to avoid disagreement so keen as to preclude acquiescence. The two processes sound similar but are in actual fact quite different in spirit and in mode of operation. The social requisite of a viable public order can thus plausibly be viewed as lying not in the fostering of consensus, but in the forging of conditions in which people become willing and able to acquiesce in dissensus through recognizing this as a state of affairs that is not only tolerable but even in some way beneficial. Consensus simply is not a requisite for the prime social desideratum of having people lead lives that are at once personally satisfying and socially constructive. 6. IS CONSENSUS A VALID IDEAL? To be sure, in matters of practical decision at the individual and social level consensus can be a significant desideratum. Our mind is eased if the

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consulting physicians can agree in a diagnosis and cause of treatment, for then we have done all we can to put dissonant possibilities out of range. The climate of public opinion is healthiest where the representatives of different interests and points of view can reach a meeting of minds, for then the likelihood of social conflict is minimized. But of course fate is not generally all that cooperative; agreement in such matters is not so common that we have a right to expect it. A well-designed social order has to be able to make do without consensus. And so, while consensus is a desideratum of sorts—something it would be nice to have if we could get it under the right conditions, something to be welcomed where it can be found—it is nevertheless not something whose pursuit we should insist on and persist in. But is consensus not at least an appropriate ideal? There is good reason to think it is not. To begin with, one must distinguish between an ideal and an idealization. An ideal as such belongs to the practical order. It is something that can and perhaps should be a guide to our actual proceedings, providing a positive goal—or at least a positive direction—for appropriate human endeavor. It represents a state of thing whose realization—even if only in part—is to be evaluated positively and which should, by its very nature, be seen as desirable. Like “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” an ideal represents a state of affairs whose pursuit in practice is to be regarded as “a good thing.” By its very nature as such, an ideal is something towards whose realization right-thinking people would deem it appropriate to strive. An idealization, on the other hand, is something quite different. It involves the projection of an hypothesis that removes some limit or limitation of the real (a perfectly elastic body, for example, or a utopia comprising only of sensible and honest people). An idealization is accordingly a thought-instrument—a hypothetical state of things that it may be profitable to think about, but towards whose actual realization in practice it may be altogether senseless to strive. Ideals, in sum, are action-guiding, while idealizations need by no means be so. A world of eternal springtime might be nice to have if we could get it. But it makes no sense to expend effort and energy in this direction. A positively evaluated idealization does not necessarily constitute a valid ideal. This distinction between ideals and idealizations bears directly and informatively on the status and standing of consensus. For there is no doubt that consensus is merely an idealization—and thus not a sensible goal and

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not a plausible guide for action, seeing that it prescinds from the variety, and dissonance that inevitably characterizes the beliefs, opinions, goals, and values of any sizable human community. And so, the fact that consensus represents an idealization does not in and of itself mean that consensus is a valid ideal even when seen in its most positive aspect—that it is something whose pursuit in practice is reasonable and appropriate. The notion that consensus is a valid ideal—that the endeavor to bring about a uniformity of thought and opinion is an unqualifiedly good thing is deeply problematic. Consensus is not in general a goal whose pursuit should regulate the way in which we actually proceed in the conduct of our cognitive and practical affairs. In many contexts the interests of the entire community are best served by a fragmentation of beliefs and values within its ranks. For example, the social welfare of a group is usually most effectively catered to when different political subunits can, though pursuing different policies and adopting different programs, provide testing grounds for the evaluation of alternatives. And the communal welfare of a group is generally more effectively served when different religious or cultural “sects” or “schools of thought” that can provide a congenial home for individuals with different personal needs and inclination. Consensus can be the cause of boredom, inaction, stagnation, and complacency. It can result in a narrowing of horizons and a diminution of options that is destructively stultifying—that substitutes bland uniformity for an envigorating variety. The situation differs in this regard as between theoretical and practical philosophy. A resort to idealization in theoretical philosophy—in matters of inquiry, truth, and rationality—is something of a harmless bit of theoretical ornamentation. But in matters of practical philosophy idealization can do actual harm. No doubt, ideals can be a useful motive in the direction of positive action. But generally only as a primum mobile—an initiator. To hold to the hard and fast, in season and out—not just as the start of the process of decision and action but all along the line—can be dangerous and self-defeating. By diverting our attention away from the attainable realities, a preoccupation with the unrealizable ideal can do real damage in this domain where a pursuit of the unrealizable best can all too easily get in the way of the realization of attainable betterments and impede the achievement of realizable positive objectives. It might be nice for me to be a good polo player but if this lies beyond my means and talents, it would be foolish to let this desideratum get in the way of my perfectly feasible and attainable goal of being a good tennis player. It would be a splendid thing to be a great artist, but for many individuals it could be counterproductive to

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let this aspiration get in the way of being a good craftsman. Similarly it might be nice to have social consensus, but it would be counterproductive to let this get in the way of social amelioration—of effecting various smaller, but perfectly feasible, improvements in the arrangements of a pluralistically diversified society. Insofar as consensus is something positive, then, it has to be seen in the light of a desideratum rather than a valid aspiration of the sort at issue with an ideal. The polity of consensus is too utopian to provide me with so useful an instrument. On this perspective, one arrives at a less tidy, less optimistic, but nevertheless truer and more realistic picture of our social condition, one that accepts without regret the dissensus of a restrained rivalry among discordant and incompatible positions none of which is able to prevail over the rest. The upshot is one of reciprocal acquiescence in a pluralistic community of conflicting views—a situation in which each party is content to accept a diversity which of itself constrains a common-sensical accommodation that affords them the benefit of pursuing their own projects at the sole cost of according a like privilege of others.1 NOTES 1

This chapter was originally published under the same title in Axel Wüstehube (ed.), Pragmatische Rationalitätstheorien (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995), pp. 113-24.

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Chapter V/4 THE POWER OF IDEALS 1. THE SERVICE OF IDEALS

I

deals pivot about the question “If I could shape the world in my own way, how would I have it be?” And, of course, every voluntary action of ours is in some manner a remaking of the world—at any rate, of a very small corner of it—by projecting into reality a situation that otherwise would not be. To act intelligently is to act with due reference to the direction in which our own actions shift the course of things. And this is exactly where ideals come into play. Our ideals guide and consolidate our commitment to human virtues in general and moral excellences in particular. Courage and unselfishness provide examples. Acts of courage or of selflessness often go beyond “the call of duty,” exhibiting a dimension of morality that transcends the boundaries of obligation in a way that is typical of ideals. In an influential 1958 paper, the English philosopher J. O. Urmson stressed the ethical importance of the Christian conception of works of supererogation (opera supererogationis),1 reemphasizing the traditional contrast between the basic morality of duties and the higher morality of preeminently creditable action “above and beyond the call of duty.” Such supererogation is best conceived of not in terms of duty but in terms of dedication to an ideal. The values at issue are often symbolized in such “role models” as heroes and saints. An ethic of ideals can accommodate what is at issue here in ways in which a mere ethic of duty cannot. Nobody has a duty to his fellows to become a saint or hero; this just is not something we owe to people, be it singly or collectively. Such “duty” as there is will be that of the diffuse but nevertheless sometimes compelling “sense of duty” that calls upon one to be or become a person of a certain sort. Here we are not, strictly speaking, dealing with something that is not so much a matter of actual duty as one of dedication to an ideal—the inner impetus to do one’s utmost to make the world into a certain sort of place, even if only that very small corner of it that consists of oneself. A knowledge of their ideals gives us much insight into what people do. “By their ideals shall ye know them.” We do know a great deal about

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someone when we know about his or her ideals—about their dreams, their heroes, and their utopias. The question of what gods somebody worships— power or fame or Mammon or Jehovah—does much to inform us about the sort of person we are dealing with. (To be sure, what we do not yet know is how dedicated this person is to those ideals—how energetically and assiduously he or she puts them to work.) 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. The vision of our mind’s eye extends to circumstances beyond the limits of the possible. A proper appreciation of ideals calls for a recognition of man’s unique dual citizenship in the worlds of the real and the ideal—a realm of facts and a realm of values. It is remarkable that nature has managed to evolve a creature who aspires to more than nature can offer, who never totally feels at home in its province, but lives, to some extent, as an alien in a foreign land. All those who feel dissatisfied with the existing scheme of things, who both yearn and strive for something better and finer than this world affords, have a touch of moral grandeur in their makeup that deservedly evokes admiration. Skeptically inclined “realists” have always questioned the significance of ideals on the grounds that, being unrealizable, they are presumably pointless. But this fails to reckon properly with the realities of the situation. For while ideals are, in a way, mere fictions, they nevertheless direct and canalize our thought and action. To be sure, an ideal is not a goal we can expect to attain. But it serves to set a direction in which we can strive. Ideals are irrealities, but they are irrealities that condition the nature of the real through their influence on human thought and action. Stalin’s cynical question, “But how many divisions has the Pope?”, betokens the Soviet Realpolitiker rather than the Marxist ideologue. (How many soldiers did Karl Marx command?) It is folly to underestimate the strength of an attachment to ideals. Though in itself impracticable, an ideal can nevertheless importantly influence our praxis and serve to shape the sort of home we endeavor to make for ourselves in a difficult world. Ideals take us beyond experience into the realm of imagination— outside of what we do find, or expect to find, here in this real world, into the region of wishful thinking, of utopian aspiration, of what we would fain

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have if only (alas!) we could. Admittedly this envisions a perfection or completion that outreaches not only what we actually have attained, but even what we can possibly attain in this sublunary dispensation. However, to give this up, to abandon casting those periodic wistful glances in the “transcendental” direction is to cease to be fully, genuinely, and authentically human. In following empiricists and positivists by fencing the ideal level of deliberation off behind “No Entry” signs, we diminish the horizons of human thought to its grave impoverishment. (As is readily illustrated by examples from Galileo and Einstein, there is a valid place for thought experiments that involve idealization even in the domain of the natural sciences themselves.) The idealized level of contemplation provides a most valuable conceptual instrument. For it affords us a most useful contrast conception that serves to shape and condition our thought. Like the functionary imperial Rome who stood at the emperor’s side to whisper intimations of mortality into his ear, so idealizations serve to remind us of the fragmentary, incomplete, and parochial nature of what we actually manage to accomplish. If the ideal level of consideration were not there for purposes of contrast, we would constantly be in danger of ascribing to the parochially proximate a degree of completeness or adequacy to which it has no just claims. To prohibit our thought from operating at the idealized level of a global inclusiveness that transcends the reach of actual experience would create a profound impoverishment of our intellectual resources. To block off our entry into the sphere of perfection represented by the ideal level of consideration is to cut us off from a domain of thought that characterizes us as intellectually amphibious creatures who are able to operate in the realm of realities and ideals. Expelled from the Garden of Eden, we are cut off from the whole sphere of completeness, perfection, comprehensiveness, and totality. We are constrained to make do with the flawed realities of a mundane and imperfect world. But we aspire to more. Beset by a “divine discontent,” we cannot but yearn for that unfettered completeness and perfection, which (as empiricists rightly emphasize) the limited resources of our cognitive situation cannot actually afford us. Not content with graspable satisfactions, we seek far more and press outward “beyond the limits of the possible.” It is a characteristic and worthy feature of man to let his thought reach out toward a greater completeness and comprehensiveness than anything actually available within the mundane sphere of secured experience. Homo sapiens alone among earthly creatures is a being able and (occasionally) willing to

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work toward the realization of a condition of things that does not and perhaps even cannot exist—a state of affairs where values are fully and comprehensively embodied. He is an agent who can change and transform the world, striving to produce something that does not exist save in the mind’s eye, 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. Our commitment to this level of deliberation makes us into a creature that is something more than a rational animal—a creature that moves in the sphere of not only ideas but ideals as well. 2. THE PRAGMATIC VALIDATION OF IDEALS What do ideals do for us? What useful role do they play in the human scheme of things? The answer runs something like this. People can act and must choose among alternative courses of action. This crucial element of choice means that our actions will be guided in the first instance by considerations of “necessity” relating to survival and physical well-being. But to some extent they can, and in an advanced condition of human development must, go far beyond this point. Eventually they come to be guided by necessity-transcending considerations, by man’s “higher” aspirations—his yearning for a life that is not only secure and pleasant but also meaningful in having some element of excellence or nobility about it. Ideals are the guideposts toward these higher, excellence-oriented aspirations. As such, they motivate rather than constrain, urge rather than demand. The validation of an ideal is ultimately 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. To be sure, one ideal can be evaluated in terms of another. But to employ our ideological commitments in appraising ideals is ultimately question begging—a matter of appraising values in terms of values. 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 realistically practical. The superiority of one ideal over another must be tested by its practical consequences for human well-being. “By their fruits shall ye know them.” In appraising ideals we must look not to the nature of these ideals alone but also to their work. For the key role of an ideal is to serve as an instrument of decision making—a sort of navigation instrument for use in the pursuit of the good. And here the homely practical goods—survival,

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health, well-being, human solidarity, happiness, and the like—come into their own once more. Those higher values validate their legitimacy in terms of their bearing on the quotidian ones. By urging us to look beyond the limits of the practicable, ideals help us to optimize the efficacy of our praxis. Their significance turns on what we do with them in the world—on their utility in guiding our thought and action into fruitful and rewarding directions, wholly notwithstanding their unrealistic and visionary character. Their crucial role lies in their capacity to help us to make the world a better place. There is no conflict between the demands of (valid) practice and the cultivation of (appropriate) ideals. The bearing of the practical and the ideal stand in mutually supportive cooperation. Such a perspective of course begs the question against the empiricist and skeptic. He wants to play safe—to have assurances that operations on that empyrean level cannot get us into intellectual or practical mischief. And we must concede to him that such advance assurances cannot be given. We live in a world without guarantees. All we can say is: “Try it, you’ll like it—you’ll find with the wisdom of hindsight that you have achieved useful results that justify the risks.” The impracticability of its realization is thus no insuperable obstacle to the validation of an ideal. This issue of its feasibility or infeasibility is simply beside the point because what counts with an ideal is not the question of its attainment but the question of the overall benefits that accrue from its pursuit. Having and pursuing an ideal, regardless of its impracticability, can yield benefits such as a better life for ourselves and a better world for our posterity. The validation of an ideal thus lies in the pragmatic value of its pursuit. As Max Weber observed with characteristic perspicuity, even in the domain of politics, which has been called “art of the possible,” “the possible has frequently been attained only through striving for something impossible that lies beyond one’s reach.”2 There are, of course, competing ideals. Aldous Huxley wrote: About the ideal goal of human effort there exists in our civilization and, for nearly thirty centuries, there has existed a very general agreement. From Isaiah to Karl Marx the prophets have spoken with one voice. In the Golden Age to which they look forward there will be liberty, peace, justice, and brotherly love. “Nation shall no more lift sword against nation”; “the free development of each will lead to the free development of all”; “the world shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”3

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Susan Stebbing took Huxley sharply to task here: In this judgment Mr. Huxley appears to me to be mistaken. There is not now, and there was not in 1937 when Mr. Huxley made this statement, “general agreement” with regard to “the ideal goal of human effort,” even in Western Europe, not to mention Eastern Asia. The Fascist ideal has been conceived in sharpest opposition to the values which Mr. Huxley believes to be so generally acceptable, and which may be said to be characteristic of the democratic idea. The opposition is an opposition with regard to modes of social organization; it...necessitates fundamental differences in the methods employed to achieve aims that are totally opposed. The ideal of Fascism is power and the glorification of the State; the ideal of democracy is the development of free and happy human beings; consequently, their most fundamental difference lies in their different conception of the worth of human beings as individuals worthy of respect.4

And Stebbing is quite right. Conflicting ideals are a fact of life. Different priorities can be assigned to different values, and to prize A over B, is incompatible with prizing B over A. But of course, the prospect of goal alternatives no more invalidates one’s ideals than the prospect of spouse alternatives invalidates one’s marriage. 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. Ideals may involve unrealism, but this nowise annihilates their impetus or value precisely because of the practical consequences that ensue upon our adoption of them. But what are we to make of the fact that competing and conflicting ideals are possible—that not only can different people have different ideals but one person can hold several ideals that unkind fate can force into situations of conflict and competition (“the devoted spouse” and “the successful politician,” for example)? Clearly, we have to make a good deal of this. Many things follow, including at least the following points: that life is complex and difficult; that perfection is not realizable; that lost causes may claim our allegiance and conflicts of commitment arise; that in matters of practice realism calls on us to harmonize our ideals. It follows, in sum, that we must make various reciprocal adjustments and compromises. But one thing that does not follow is that ideals are somehow illegitimate and inappropriate. To attain the limits of the possibilities inherent in our powers and potentialities, we must aim beyond them. And just here lies the great importance of the ideal realm. Human action cannot in general be properly understood

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or adequately managed without a just appreciation of the guiding ideals that lie in the background. For man’s intervention in the real world sometimes is—and often should be—conditioned by his views of the ideal order in whose direction he finds it appropriate to steer the course of events. This situation has its paradoxical aspect. Ideals may seem to be otherworldly, or remote from our practical concerns. But in a wider perspective, they are eminently practical, so that their legitimation is ultimately pragmatic. The imperative to ideals has that most practical of all justifications in that it facilitates the prospects of a more satisfying life. Paradoxical though it may seem, this pragmatic line is the most natural and sensible approach to the validation of ideals. The general principle of having ideals can be defended along the following lines: Q: Why should people have ideals at all? A: Because this is something that is efficient and effective in implementing their pursuit of values. Q: But why should they care for the pursuit of values? A That is simply a part of being human, and thus subject to the fundamental imperative of realizing one’s potential of flourishing as the kind of creature one is. The validity of having ideals inheres in the condition of man as an amphibian who dwells in a world of both facts and values. Admittedly, 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. But in the sphere of human endeavor we cannot properly explain and understand the reality about us without reference to motivating ideals. The contemplation of what should ideally be is inevitably bound to play an important role in the rational guidance or our actions. The validation and legitimation of ideals accordingly lie not in their (infeasible) applicability but in their utility for directing our efforts—their productive power in providing direction and structure to our evaluative thought and pragmatic action. It is in this, their power to move the minds

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that move mountains, that the validation and legitimation of appropriate ideals must ultimately reside. 3. THE GRANDEUR OF IDEALS To say that the ultimate legitimation of ideals is pragmatic is not to say that they are merely practical—that they are somehow crass, mundane, and bereft of nobility. By no means! The mode of justification of ideals has effectively no bearing on their nature at all. Their validation may be utilitarian, but their inherent character can be transcendent. And so there need be nothing crass or mundane about our ideals as such. With societies and nations, as with individuals, a balanced vision of the good calls for a proportionate recognition of the domestic impetus concerned with the well-being of people, home and hearth, stomach and pocketbook, good fellowship, rewarding work, etc. But it also calls for recognition of the heroic impetus concerned with acknowledging ideals, making creative achievements, playing a significant role on the world-historical stage, and doing those splendid things upon which posterity looks with admiration. Above all this latter impetus involves the winning of battles not of the battlefield but of the human mind and spirit. The absence of ideals is bound to impoverish a person or a society. Toward people or nations that have the constituents of material welfare, we may well feel envy, but our admiration and respect could never be won on this ground alone. Excellence must come into it. And in this excellence-connected domain we leave issues of utility behind and enter another sphere—that of human ideals relating to man’s higher and nobler aspirations. Homo sapiens is a rational animal. The fact that we are animals squarely emplaces us within the order of nature. But the fact that we are rational exempts us from an absolute rule by external forces. It means that our nature is not wholly given, that we are able to contribute in at least some degree toward making ourselves into the sort of creatures we are. A rational creature is inevitably one that has some capacity to let its idealized vision of what it should be determine what it actually is. It is in this sense that an involvement with ideals is an essential aspect of the human condition. 4. CONCLUSION Their fictional nature accordingly does not destroy the usefulness of ideals. To be sure, we do not—should not—expect to bring our ideals to

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actual realization. Yet an ideal is like the Holy Grail of medieval romance: it impels us onward in the journey and gives meaning and direction to our efforts. Rewards of dignity and worth lie in these efforts themselves, irrespective of the question of actual attainment. When appraising a person’s life, the question “What did he endeavor?” is as relevant as the question “What did he achieve?” The objects at issue in our ideals are not parts of the world’s furniture. Like utopias and mythic heroes (or the real-world heroes we redesign in their image by remaking these people into something that never was), ideals are “larger than life.” The states of affairs at issue with ideals do not and cannot exist as such. Look about us where we will, we shall not find them actualized. The directive impetus that they give us generally goes under the name of “inspiration.” They call to us to bend our efforts toward certain unattainable goals. Yet, though fictions, they are eminently practical fictions. They find their utility not in application to the things of this world but in their bearing upon the thoughts that govern our actions within it. They are not things as such but thought instrumentalities that orient and direct our praxis in the direction of realizing a greater good. Yet ideals, though instruments of thought, are not mere myths. For there is nothing false or fictional about ideals as such—only about the idea of their embodiment in concrete reality. Their pursuit is something that can be perfectly real—and eminently productive. (And it is at this pragmatic level that the legitimation of an ideal must ultimately be sought.) Still, given the inherent unrealizability of what is at issue, are ideals not indelibly irrational? Here, as elsewhere, we must reckon with the standard gap between aspiration and attainment. In the practical sphere—for example, in craftsmanship or the cultivation of our health—we may strive for perfection, but we cannot ever claim to attain it. Moreover, the situation in inquiry is exactly parallel, as is that in morality or in statesmanship. The cognitive ideal of perfected science stands on the same level as the moral ideal of a perfect agent or the political ideal of a perfect state. The value of such unrealizable ideals lies not in the (unavailable) benefits of attainment but in the benefits that accrue from pursuit. The view that it is rational to pursue an aim only if we are in a position to achieve its attainment or approximation is simply mistaken. As we have seen, an unattainable end can be perfectly valid (and entirely rational) if the indirect benefits of its pursuit are sufficient—if in striving after it, we realize relevant advantages to a substantial degree. An unattainable ideal can be enormously productive.

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The issue of justifying the adoption of unattainable ideals thus brings us back to the starting point of these deliberations—the defense of the appropriateness of fighting for lost causes. Optimal results are often attainable only by trying for too much—by reaching beyond the limits of the possible. Man is a dual citizen of the realms of reality and possibility. He must live and labor in the one but toward the other. The person whose wagon is not hitched to some star or other is not a full-formed human being; he is less than he can and should be. It seems particularly incongruous to condemn the pursuit of ideals as contrary to rationality. For one thing, rationality is a matter of the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends, and ideals form part of the framework with reference to which our determinations of appropriateness proceed. No less relevant, however, is the fact that a good case can be made for holding that complete rationality is itself something unrealizable, given the enormously comprehensive nature of what is demanded (for example, by recourse to the principle of total evidence for rationally constituted belief and action). Neither in matters of thought nor in matters of action can we ever succeed in being totally and completely rational; we have to recognize that perfect rationality is itself an unattainable ideal. And we must be realistic about the extent to which we can implement this ideal amid the harsh realities of a difficult world. Yet even though total rationality is unattainable, its pursuit is nevertheless perfectly rational because of the great benefits that it palpably engenders. It is thus ironic that the thoroughgoing rationality in whose name the adoption of unattainable ends is sometimes condemned itself represents an unattainable ideal whose pursuit is rationally defensible only by pragmatically oriented arguments of the general sort considered here. To be sure, this practicalistic sort of validation of ideals leaves untouched the issue of which particular values are to prevail. The approach is a general one and thus does not address the justification of particular ideals. It indicates the importance of having some ideals or other, leaving the issue of specific commitments aside. For addressing this issue requires more than an abstract analysis of the nature and function of ideals; it calls for articulating and defending a concrete philosophy of life. And this, of course, is an issue beyond the range of our present deliberations. But the fact remains that it is important—and crucially so—for a person to have guiding ideals. A life without ideals need not be a life without purpose, but it will be a life without purposes of a sort in which one can appropriately take reflective satisfaction. The person for whom values matter

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so little that he has no ideals is condemned to wander through life disoriented, without guiding beacons to furnish that sense of direction that gives meaning and point to the whole enterprise. Someone who lacks ideals suffers an impoverishment of spirit for which no other resources can adequately compensate.5 NOTES 1

J. O. Urmson, “Saints and Heroes,” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. A. I. Melden (Seattle, 1958)). On this theme, see also David Heyd, Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

2

“Nicht minder richtig aber ist, dass das Mögliche sehr oft nur dadurch erreicht wurde, dass man nach dem jenseits seiner Kraft liegenden Unmöglichen griff.” “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ in den soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften,” Logos, vol. 7 (1917-18), p. 63; reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen: Mohr, 1922), p. 476.

3

Aldous Huxley, “Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and the Methods Employed for Their Realization,” in his Ends and Means (London: Chatto & Windus, 1937), p.1.

4

L. Susan Stebbing, Ideals and Illusions (London, Watts, 1948), pp. 132-33.

5

Some of the lines of thought of this chapter are developed more fully in the author’s Ethical Idealism, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987).

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Part VI

PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMATIZATION

Introduction Lorenz B. Puntel 1. SALIENT POINTS

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t the focus of this discussion lies Rescher’s important essay on the topic of philosophical systematization “On Philosophical Systematization (Plausibility and the Hegelian Vision).” Section references are to this essay. Rescher’s essays on systematization are fundamentally the result of the attempt to link together three elements he has articulated in different contexts in various writings on the historical systematics of philosophical thought: the theory of plausibility, the theory of aporetics, and the theory of philosophical dialectics. Not surprisingly, Rescher explicitly refers to Hegel, for whom—according to Rescher—“the history of philosophy is not a story of a random walk of mistaken efforts leaving a plethora of ruins along the way, but a progressive journey along a rationally evolving program of inquiry unfolding a coherent system of thought in increasingly vivid details” (Section 1). This is unquestionably an insufficient characterization of Hegel’s project; nonetheless, Rescher relies upon it in contending that Hegel’s system and the endeavours of Hegel-inspired thinkers “are going to issue in incoherence and incomprehension” (ibid.). He himself attempts to work out a very different approach that calls for a rational reconceptualization of the syncretist project he envisages. This is “the prospect of [. . .] construing philosophy-as-a-whole as a rational system of cognition alright, but a system geared at the explanation not of the manifold of accomplished truth but rather of the manifold of beckoning plausibility[.] [. . .] [This is] the perfectly feasible prospect of viewing philosophical claims at large not as so many conflicting and incompatible

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truths, but rather as just so many coexisting plausibilities. This [is] the shift from truth to plausibility”. (Section 3) This leads Rescher to develop the idea of syncretism and aporetics, which he explains by presenting numerous examples. So conceived philosophy-at-large transforms the study of philosophy into an exercise in aporetics. “[A]poretics is not just a mapping the cartography of the battlefield of philosophical disputation but also a tool for understanding and explaining the dialectic of historical development” (Section 11). The idea of plausibility opens up a very specific way of viewing philosophy-at-large and of organizing the history of philosophy. The entire manifold of the contentions of philosophers is now regarded as so many merely plausible propositions and this makes it possible to envisage “the prospect of systematizing philosophy at large and one single unified—albeit vast—nonAristotelian [i.e., according to Rescher, not conceived of as truth-manifold] system of rational cognition” (Section 14). This kind of systematization of philosophy-at-large is a comprehensive coordination of philosophizing in general. “It does not [. . .] pretend to offer the truth but only surveys of different and discordant purported truth emanating from different purporters” (Section 14). In the last section (Section 15) Rescher carefully distinguishes between philosophy-at-large and one’s own philosophy and, correspondingly, between the study of philosophy and the practice of philosophy: philosophyat-large is the object of study, one’s own philosophy is the result of practice. To develop an aporetic conception of philosophy-at-large, according to Rescher, is not a way of philosophizing. Somewhat ambiguously, he says that one’s own philosophy is a constituent part of philosophy-at-large, but immediately adds that “one’s own attitude toward it is—and should be—very special, specific—and prejudicial” (Section 15). Indeed, the philosopher who takes an independent philosophical position must think it is his position and in doing so he “is bound to see it as unquestionably correct and the others as erroneous, no matter how plausible they may appear to be” (ibid.). Significantly, here Rescher avoids using the term ‘true,’ but of course he cannot completely avoid the truth topic—and he doesn’t, as is shown in what follows.

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2. TWO CRITICAL POINTS As always, Rescher presents a conception that is clear, detailed, and wellbalanced—but that is so only according to and within the general theoretical framework on which his entire philosophical oeuvre implicitly or explicitly relies. Despite Rescher’s illuminating and helpful reflections on many aspects of his chosen topic, the general question arises whether the resources provided by his framework make possible an adequate treatment of that topic. In what follows this general question is explained and elaborated as it relates to two central aspects of his conception. [2.1] The first aspect concerns the most central idea defended in the essay: the thesis that philosophy-at-large is best conceived of on the basis of a shift from truth to plausibility. This thesis is in accordance with Rescher’s entire systematic philosophy, which he understands as a system of pragmatic idealism. Finding something plausible is a typical epistemic attitude and stance. For this reason, Rescher’s general thesis can be expressed by saying that it amounts to a complete epistemization of the concept of philosophy-at-large and, thus, also of the entire history of philosophy. Is such an epistemization a good idea? Is it an inevitable step? Is the thesis that articulates it well-founded? Rescher himself seems to offer a basis for responding to these questions in the negative in that he stresses that “plausibility aims at truth” (Section 3). This is indeed the central point. If plausibility aims at truth, why do we need it? Or, to formulate the question in more adequate terms, Why do we as subjects need to “go through” plausibility in order to get to the truth? What is at stake here can be shown in the following way: Taking “plausible” not as a predicate, but instead as an operator (“it is plausible that”) and also taking all other important terms occurring in this context as operators rather than as predicates (especially “true,” yielding “it is true that”), a chain of operators can be articulated such that the final operator in the chain is “it is true that” this operator, together with its argument (say, the operatorless sentence p), is governed by the operator “it is plausible that.” The entire complex sentence that results can be understood as being an argument that lies within the scope of a further operator that could be articulated as “it is believed that”. And all of this in its turn can be an argument that lies within the scope of an even more radical operator that is articulable as “it is certain that” (which need not be the end of the chain). The result (taking this last operator as final) is,

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“It is certain that ^it is believed that; it is plausible that [it is true that (p)]}”. What does all of this show? Plainly, these operators—with the exception of “it is true that”—are articulations of mental attitudes or states of subjects. Rescher’s “prospect of viewing philosophy construing philosophy-as-a-whole as a rational system of cognition” is the result of concentrating exclusively on this epistemic dimension that in different ways includes all these mental attitudes and states. Supposing that Rescher would take “cognition” to be the highest or central point in this dimension, how should it be characterized? There is an ambiguity in Rescher’s position: his “shift from truth to plausibility” seems not to be a shift from truth to cognition (= knowledge). What is cognized presumably has a higher status within this dimension than what is merely plausible, but if it does, then “the prospect of viewing philosophical claims at large . . . as just so many coexisting plausibilities” is not “the prospect of . . . construing philosophy-as-a-whole as a rational system of cognition” (Section 3; emphases added) Granted, Rescher emphasizes that “plausibility aims at truth” (ibid.). So, both plausibility and cognition/knowledge have to do with truth; but they do so in fundamentally different ways. Whereas plausibility (according to Rescher) only “aims at truth,” cognition/knowledge is in general defined as that mental attitude or state that “has” in the sense of “articulates” the truth of the sentence or proposition that is said to be known. Indeed, the definition of knowledge generally accepted includes three conditions, the first of which reads: Subject S knows that p iff p is true. And Rescher makes the distinction between plausibility and cognition even sharper when he says: “[A] plausibility system, unlike a system of purported truth, does not provide an answer to any of the questions––or a solution to any of the problems. Instead it provides a plausibility of (incompatible) answers and a multitude of (different and distinct) solutions. It does not even pretend to offer the truth but only surveys of different and discordant purported truths emanating from different purporters.” (Section 14) This thesis appears to be irreconcilable with Rescher’s characterization of “philosophy as a whole as a system of cognition” (Section 3). The shift from truth to plausibility poses another and much more serious problem. If philosophy-at-large is viewed only as the great multiplicity of philosophical claims––“not as so many conflicting and incompatible truths, but rather as just so many coexisting plausibilities” (Section 3)—this seems not to do justice to what in the course of the history of philosophy philosophers have called “philosophical claims.” Interpreting those claims only as

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“coexisting plausibilities” reduces them to something purely subjective, something that, to be sure, “aims at truth,” but never gets at it “in itself,” never reaches it “in itself,” in any respect. This is so undifferentiated a position that it cannot capture the importance and the weight of the philosophies of the past. Capturing that importance and weight in no way entails the thesis that any of those philosophies attained any absolutely ultimate truth. The crucial problem arises from Rescher’s completely rigid talk of “truth” and “reality”. He seems to suppose that “truth/reality” is something monolithic, without facets, degrees, and the like. This appears very clearly in some formulations to be found in his writings. For instance, in the essay under consideration he writes: “[W]hile philosophy is often characterized as a quest for truth, this strategy [i.e., the turning from truth to plausibility] realizes the prospect of an entirely different approach to information––one geared not to irrefragable truth but [to?] the fallible plausibility.” (Section 14; emphasis added) According to Rescher, it appears, “truth” is only given (more exactly: would only be given) as “irrefragable truth,” as “the truth,” with no differentiations or specifications whatsoever. If one makes this presupposition, the rigid and complete disjunction of “truth” and “plausibility” is unavoidable. But the presupposition is not a well-founded philosophical stance. Clarifying and justifying it leads to a significantly different view of “philosophy-at-large.” First of all, the view that philosophical claims are only plausibilities is hardly acceptable already because of its immediate consequences. These can be summarized by saying that philosophy would then be a Sisyphean task and enterprise. Not to have reached “the truth” does not mean that “nothing of truth (of truth itself!)” has been articulated. The concept of truth is reality-directed or in other words is ontologically oriented: it is the expression of the articulation of the ontological dimension. In other writings, Rescher introduces fundamental distinctions between “the truth” or “the real truth” and “truth for us” or “our truth” or “our putative truth,” between “reality in itself” and “our reality” or “reality for us,” etc. This is a facile way to speak about the tremendous problem one is confronted with. Since Kant, distinctions of this kind have been extremely popular among philosophers. Despite its popularity, however, this way of speaking is completely insufficient because it leaves too much unexplained, above all the following point: How does “our truth” and/or “our reality” relate to “the truth itself” and/or “reality in itself”? If nothing positive is said about

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this relation, then we are left with a deep, insurmountable dichotomy that imperils the whole philosophical (and also scientific) enterprise. Rescher does not acknowledge all the alternatives to the position he defends. One alternative that he neglects is that of concentrating, in order to clarify the factors that are presupposed by every question, statement, thesis, and theory, not on the subject or on the epistemic dimension but instead on the concept theoretical framework (see the author’s book Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy. Penn State University Press, 2008, passim). Elaboration of this concept shows that subjects—no matter how determined (as theoreticians, as speakers, as knowers, etc.)—are not decisively important as far as theories are concerned. What is of decisive importance in the case of any theory, purely as such, is the theory itself, as a collection of sentences that, in a highly structured way, expresses something about the world/reality. The structure of these sentences is clarified by the explicit inclusion of the operator “It is the case that” (hence, for example, “It is the case that ij)”. In these sentences, there is no reference whatsoever to subjects, knowers, situations, or anything of that sort. The exclusion of such references from these sentences is essential to their qualifying as genuinely philosophical or scientific. This point has far-reaching consequences. Since a plurality of real and of possible theoretical frameworks must be admitted, it is possible to identify a basis for developing a systematic view of the history of philosophy wholly distinct from the views Rescher considers. Two of the main consequences of accepting the idea of different theoretical frameworks concern the question of truth and the ontological dimension. Every truth is relative to a theoretical framework. This is a nonselfcontradictory thesis, because it articulates only a moderate, noninconsistent truth relativism. Moreover, every well-constituted theoretical framework has an ontological import: it articulates reality in the way that corresponds to the framework. But this ontological import is not an articulation of a mere “reality for us” in the sense of “not in itself”; instead, it is the articulation of (a facet of) reality itself. Because a plurality of (wellconstituted) theoretical frameworks must be accepted, a plurality of ontological imports must be admitted as well. How to conceive of “reality” (or the “ontological dimension”) as being constituted by all those “ontological imports” is one of the most difficult and at the same time most fascinating philosophical tasks. In this context the author can only refer the reader to his treatment of this problem in his above-mentioned book Structure and Being.

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[2.2] The second aspect to be briefly remarked upon is Rescher’s conception of “philosophical systematization.” By that he means a “quasiHegelian system of philosophy, that is now conceived of not as a systematization of a domain of truth, but rather as a systematization of a domain of plausibility” (Section 5). It enables us to “see clearly how our own system is related to its rivals, how our own system emerges from its antecedents, what price we are paying and what benefits we are denied from doing things our way rather than in the way of alternatives” (Section 14). Rescher’s is one way of dealing with different philosophical claims and with the history of philosophy, but his understanding of “philosophical systematization” has a limited significance, especially as regards the concentration on the “aporetic” aspect of the comparison between different claims and conceptions. Such an “aporetic comparison” is meaningful and possible only within well-established limits, i.e., when the rival claims are situated within the same theoretical framework or at least within different frameworks that have significant common bases. Such an “aporetic” dealing with different claims is what today mostly happenS within analytic philosophy, especially when it is understood and practiced in a narrow sense. But this “aporetic” perspective cannot be relied upon when rival philosophical positions are based on fundamentally different theoretical frameworks. It is hardly conceivable that it makes sense or even that it is possible at all for instance to directly compare a claim made by Heidegger with a claim made by Hegel, when one relies only on considerations about “a situation of aporetic inconsistency” (Section 6). To be sure, some kind of comparison is possible, but on a deeper level, i.e., as a comparison between the theoretical frameworks underlying the claims. But the comparison between different theoretical frameworks cannot be an “exercise in aporetics” (Section 5). Finally, a vitally important question to be addressed to Rescher’s view of “philosophical systematization” is this: what is the source of Rescher’s criteria for plausibility? If those criteria are to qualify as rational, a new question arises: how to define rationality? To address these questions, one has to have recourse chiefly, although not exclusively, to intelligibility. Indeed, the most important criterion for comparing different philosophies based on different theoretical frameworks is the criterion of greater intelligibility, a criterion which, as I see it, incomparably more fundamental than the criterion of plausibility. (See chapter 6 of the writer’s Structure and Being.)

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Chapter VI/1 ON PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMATIZATION: PLAUSIBILITY AND THE HEGELIAN VISION 1. THE HEGELIAN VISION

I

n contemplating the great historical panorama of the history of philosophical thought, Hegel conceived the interesting and ambitious prospect of encompassing the whole of it within the domain of a single, allembracing system. In this way, all of those diverse and conflicting theses and systems could be conjoined together as so many components of one unified whole of coordinated thought. All those seemingly rival systems with their conflicting ideas could be reconceptualized not as enemies-inconflict but rather as cooperative constituents in the development of one vast and many-sided collaborative venture. The idea of one single grand all-encompassing system was a siren song that lured Hegel and his followers down the primrose path of a dialectical syncretism. But this grand program encounters substantial obstacles. For Hegel, it will be recalled, the history of philosophy is not a random walk of mistaken efforts leaving a plethora of ruins along the way, but a progressive journey along a rationally evolving program of inquiry gradually unfolding a coherent system of thought in increasingly vivid details. As Hegel saw it, the course of philosophical history is an organic process of organic development through incompatible stages (à la chrysalis and butterfly) producing an increasingly complex end product in which those earlier are preserved and combined—albeit in a transfixed manner. The task of the serious student of philosophical history is thus not a matter of antiquarian compilation but one of philosophical creativity—to present the teachings of philosophers past in their conceptual and developmental role within a viable and coherent system of philosophical thought. As Hegel himself, rather ambitiously, put it: “The succession of philosophical systems in the course of history is one and the same as the succession of logical inference in the determination of the Idea.”1 The aim is not just to present the past as was, but to reveal how it has come to contribute to the

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manifold of philosophical truth as best we ourselves can manage to discern it. Accordingly, it is a prime task of philosophical inquiry is to accommodate, absorb, and coordinate the manifold of part philosophizing in systemic interaction.2 2. A FATAL OBSTACLE: THE PLUNGE INTO INCONSISTENCY Easier said than done! For a fatal obstacle confronts any crude syncretism that seeks to conjoin or compile the diversity of historical projects in the field. For from the very outset, philosophy has been conceived of as a quest for truth. And the contentions and theories offered by various philosophers have been regarded by one and all who have contemplated them as so many truth-claims, albeit often as not as flawed ones. But if this gearing of philosophy to truth is how one is going to proceed in construing philosophical claims, then the idea of a grand systemic compilation is destined to come to grief. For if you maintain that p, and I maintain that not-p, then in conjoining our claims one has a logical contradiction on one’s hands. And so any system that takes the route of a philosophical syncretism—of cognitively combining or pooling these claims—is not going to lead us to a larger or deeper view of things, but will end in a mess. It has always been the goal of Hegel-inspired thinkers to treat philosophy-as-a-whole as a single system—a grand unified amalgamation of theses and ideas embracing the entity of thought on fundamental issues. Unfortunately for such an approach, something very big and powerful has stood in the way, namely: logic. For the subject is, of course, replete with mutually incompatible contentions. And this very fact stands in the way of seeing the field as a manifold of truths. If the Aristotelian perspective is correct, and a system of rational cognition must—actually or potentially— constitute a truth-manifold, then philosophy-as-a-whole is ruled out of contention as a rational cognitive system from the very start. For to all appearances any fusionary project of combining or conjoining philosophical claims is going to issue in incoherence and incomprehension. And it was doubtless for this reason that otherwise appealing idea of an historically all-absorbing system failed to meet with widespread sympathy among philosophers and students of the history of philosophy.

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3. PLAUSIBILITY TO THE RESCUE The roadblock to any mere compilation of philosophical doctrines is the result of the very problematic idea of treating those philosophical claims as so many rival truths. For it then follows at once that, since the truth-atlarge is (and must be) collectively consistent while incompatible claims cannot all be true, the discordancy and inconsistency of philosophical contentions constitutes a decisive obstacle to a realization of the syncretist program. There is, however, the prospect of a very different and decidedly more promising approach—albeit one that calls for a rational reconceptualization of the syncretist project at issue. For what if one were to embark on a seismic shift and undertake to reconceptualize the discipline not as a classically Aristotelian quest for truth but as a quest for plausibility instead? What if it were to take up the prospect of construing philosophy-as-awhole as a rational system of cognition alright, but a system geared to the explanation not of the manifold of accomplished truth but rather of the manifold of beckoning plausibility? This approach calls for taking the very different line of approach based on the perfectly feasible prospect of viewing philosophical claims at large not as so many conflicting and incompatible truths, but rather as just so many coexisting plausibilities. This shift from truth to plausibility puts the whole matter in a very different light. For even as one can accept goods either “for keeps” or “on approval” so one can accept claims or contentions either by way of endorsement as true or by way of entertained as plausible. But if you give up on truth, do you not thereby abandon the prospect of achieving something of cognitive significance? By no means! Plausibility after all is not nothing. It is, after all, closely linked to evidentiation, and while such evidentiation need not and often will not be decisive, the very fact that probability and plausibility are at issue prevents the matter from cognitive emptiness. 4. HOW PLAUSIBILITY WORKS In their single-minded focus upon truth and certainty, epistemologists have neglected the idea of plausibility. Plausibility is a matter of evidentiation. A proposition is plausible if some of the available evidence speaks significantly in its favor and nowise against it. And so while truth/falsity is a matter of the status of a proposition in relation to the facts of the matter, its

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plausibility/implausibility is a matter of its status in relation to the state of its evidence—its relation to the known facts. If the extent to which the evidence speaks for something is not outweighed by available counterindications it straightaway passes the test of plausibility. To be sure, plausibility is something very different from truth in its nature and in its logic since what is plausible need by no means be true. And there are various largely consonant ways of approaching the general idea of plausibility. First, from the angle of evidence: a proposition is plausible if there is some evidence for it and no preponderating evidence against it. Second, consider the situation from the vantage point of a specified spectrum of exhaustive but mutually exclusive possible cases. Then a proposition will be true in just exactly the one that is actual, it will be possible if it holds in any one of them, and it will be plausible if it holds in several (i.e., more than one) of them than its negation does. The third line of approach proceeds by way of probabilities. A proposition is certain if its probability equals on (= 1), it will be possible if its probability is greater than zero (> 0), and it will be plausible if its probability is nonminimal (say, > 1/10). Plausibility is thus something decidedly different from truth which, by its nature, must exhibit certain characteristic features of truth: Conjunctivity: The conjunction of true propositions is true If Tp and Tq, then T(p & q) Consistency: A proposition and its negation are never both true Never: T(p) and T(~p) Transparency: One can see through the truth of a proposition to the proposition itself If Tp, then p However, none of these principles will invariably hold when we move from truth to plausibility, replacing the truth operator T by the plausibility operator P. What this means is, in effect, that the domain of the plausible is ruled not so much by logical formalities as by substantive considerations, so that

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in dealing with plausibility one must be concerned for matters of substance as well as matters of form. 5. PLAUSIBILITY SYNCRETISM AND APORETICS The difference between truth and plausibility is crucial for present purposes, seeing that it opens up the prospect of a quasi-Hegelian system of philosophy, now conceived of not as a systematization of a domain of truth, but rather as a systematization of a domain of plausibility. For clearly, the prospect of seeing rival philosophical positions as plausible and endeavoring to configure philosophy-as-a-whole in the fashion of a plausibility system (rather than a truth system) is not subject to any logical impediment. A truth-syncretism makes no sense in philosophy, seeing that a manifold of logically inconsistent propositions is simply incoherent. But a plausibility-syncretism is something else again. In admitting inconsistencies at this level we do not blind the prospect of a rationally cogent systematization, but open the door to it—albeit by way of a plausibility rather than an unrealizable alethic (truth-geared) system. To be sure, the result of such a compilation of discordant position is not a system of philosophy but rather a systematization of philosophizing at large. After all, as Kant already emphasized, the study of philosophy is neither a method of nor a substitute for philosophizing itself.3 When one takes the step of seeing philosophy-at-large in the light of a plausibility syncretism, one thereby transforms the study of philosophy into an exercise in aporetics. An apory is a group of individually plausible propositions individually that are collectively inconsistent. In general if we gather together a cluster of contentions by philosophers on virtually any issue of the field, such a cluster will result. And the reason for the proliferation of apories in philosophy is simple. In this domain we are trying to answer large questions on the basis of small information. The evidence at our disposal is imperfect and incomplete in relation to the conclusions we have to draw from it. Almost unavoidably the projection of what we have into what we need can be made in different and incompatible directions. In moving from the given to the plausible the prospect of aporetic conflict is pretty well inevitable. As an example, the theory of knowledge of the ancient Greeks revolved about the following quartet of currently mooted albeit collectively incompatible contentions:

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(1) We do have some knowledge about the world. (2) Whatever knowledge we have about the world must come via the senses (i.e., ultimately roots in what the senses deliver). (3) There is no genuine knowledge (episteme) without certainty. (4) The senses do not yield certainty. Any positive inclination toward these theses—any tendency to see them each as plausible and (presumptively) acceptable—sets the stage for philosophical conflict. A (limited) variety of exits from the inconsistency is available: Deny (1): Maintain that we cannot have authentic knowledge about the world (the Pyrrhonian Skeptics). Deny (2): Maintain that genuine knowledge about the world can come from reason alone (Pythagoreans, Plato). Deny (3): Maintain that adequate knowledge need not be based on the certain but can be based on the plausible-to pithanon (the Academic Skeptics). Deny (4): Maintain that the senses do yield certainty in some cases— those that result in the so-called “cataleptic” perceptions (the Stoics). Faced with that aporetic cluster, we must make up our minds to decide between these alternatives. Again, consider the following “Cartesian” apory regarding the nature of knowledge. (1) Knowledge must be absolutely certain. (2) Absolute certainty is never available with matters of fact. (3) Factual knowledge is available.

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Here we have a straightforward example of an inconsistent triad. Descartes and the skeptics alike agree on (1). But in the interest of consistency, Descartes sacrificed (2) to (3) while his skeptical predecessors in classical antiquity sacrificed (3) to (2). Clearly one cannot maintain all three propositions as conjointly true. Any such family of plausible-seeming but inconsistent contentions sets the stage of an aporetic situation that cries out for resolution. 6. CONSISTENCY AND APORIES The methods of cogent philosophizing root in the very aims of the enterprise. Philosophizing may “begin in wonder,” as Aristotle said, but it soon runs into puzzlement and perplexity. We have many and far-reaching questions about our place in the world’s scheme of things and endeavor to give answers to them. But generally the answers that people incline to give to some questions are incompatible with those they incline to give to others. (We sympathize with the skeptics, but condemn the person who doubts in the face of obvious evidence that those drowning children need rescue.) We try to resolve problems in the most straightforward way. But the solutions that fit well in one place often fail to square with those that fit smoothly in another. Cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head and inconsistency arises. And the impetus to remove such puzzlement and perplexity is a prime mover of philosophical innovation. An apory is a group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.4 The things we incline to maintain issue in contradiction. One can encounter apories in many areas—ordinary life, mathematics, and science included—but they are particularly prominent in philosophy. For the wide-ranging and speculative nature of the field—the fact that it addresses questions we want to raise but almost dare not ask— means that the range of our involvements and commitments is more extensive, diversified, and complex here than elsewhere. For it lies in the nature of the field that in philosophy we must often reason from mere plausibilities, from tempting theses that have some substantial claim on our acceptance but are very far from certain. And so it can transpire here that the theses we endorse are inconsistent—conflicting plausibilities rather than assured compatible truths. Thus aporetic situations arise-circumstances in which the various theses we are minded to accept prove to be collectively incompatible.

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Consider an historical example drawn from the Greek theory of virtue: 1. If virtuous action does not produce happiness (pleasure) then it is motivationally impotent and generally pointless. 2. Virtue in action is eminently pointful and should provide a powerfully motivating incentive. 3. Virtuous action does not always—and perhaps not even generally— produce happiness (pleasure). It is clearly impossible—on grounds of mere logic alone—to maintain this family of contentions. At least one member of the group must be abandoned. And so we face the choice among: 1-Abandonment: Maintain that virtue has substantial worth quite on its own account even if it does not produce happiness or pleasure (Stoicism, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). 2-Abandonment: Dismiss virtue as ultimately unfounded and unrationalizable, viewing morality as merely a matter of the customs of the country (Sextus Empiricus) or the will of the rulers (Plato’s Thrasymachus). 3-Abandonment: Insist that virtuous action does indeed always yield happiness or pleasure—at any rate to the right-minded. Virtuous action is inherently pleasure-producing for fully rational agents, so that the virtue and happiness are inseparably interconnected (Plato, the Epicureans). This illustration exemplifies the situation of an aporetic cluster: an inconsistent group of plausible contentions to which the only sensible reaction is the abandonment of one or another of them. Our cognitive sympathies have become overextended and we must make some curtailment in the fabric of our commitments. Note, moreover, that in aporetic situations, unlike elsewhere, the option of a suspension of judgment is foreclosed; the mere rejection of a thesis is tantamount to the acceptance of its negation. For suppose that A, B, C is an inconsistent triad composed of theses we deem individually plausible. Then, by the hypothesis that we are minded “to accept

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as much as possible,” when we drop C we are in a position to accept A and B, and these (by the condition of inconsistency) entail not-C. Doing nothing is not a rationally viable option when we are confronted with a situation of aporetic inconsistency. Something has to give. Some one (at least) of those incompatible contentions at issue must be abandoned. Apories constitute situations of forced choice: an inconsistent family of theses confronts us with an unavoidable choice among alternative positions. When one confronts an aporetic situation there are only two rationally viable alternatives: one can throw up one’s hands, become a skeptic, and walk away from the entire issue, or else one can settle down to the work of problem solving, trying to salvage by way of cognitive damage control enabling one to make the best of a difficult situation. This latter course clearly has greater intellectual appeal. Apories structure the philosophical landscape. They show how various positions are interlocked in a mutual interrelationship that does not meet the eye at first view because the areas at issue may be quite disparate. Consider, for example, the following apory: 1. A (cognitively) meaningful statement must be verifiable-in-principle. 2. Claims regarding what obtains in all times and places are not verifiable-in-principle. 3. Laws of nature characterize processes that obtain in all times and places. 4. Statements that formulate laws of nature are cognitively meaningful. As ever, various exits from inconsistency are available here, specifically the following four: 1-Rejection: Maintain a purely semantical theory of meaning that decouples meaningfulness from epistemic considerations. 2-Rejection: Accept a latitudinarian theory of verification that countenances remote inductions as modes of verification. 3-Rejection: Adopt a view of laws that sees them as local regularities.

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4-Rejection: Maintain a radical skepticism with respect to claims regarding laws of nature, one which sees all such law-claims as meaningless. This apory locks four very different issues into mutual relevancy: (i) the theory-of-meaning doctrine that revolves about (1), (ii) the metaphysical view regarding laws of nature at issue in (2), (iii) a philosophy-of-science doctrine regarding the nature of natural laws as operative in (3), and finally (iv) a language-oriented position regarding the meaningfulness of law claims. 7. ON APPRAISING APORIES When an apory confronts us, a forced choice among the propositions involved becomes unavoidable. One way or another we must “take a position”—some particular thesis must be abandoned or, at the very least, amended. An apory thus delineates a definite range of interrelated positions. It maps out a small sector of the possibility space of philosophical deliberation. And this typifies the situation in philosophical problem-solving in that several distinct and discordant resolutions to a given issue or problem are available, none of which our cognitive data can exclude in an altogether decisive way. Consider a philosophical argument that supports a certain conclusion or contention C, on the basis of certain premisses P1, P2, . . ., Pn. (We may suppose, without loss of generality, that this argument is deductively valid, since if it were not we could treat it as enthymematic and supply the missing premisses, so as to fill in the deductive gaps). Note that if not-C does not have some modicum of plausibility, then it is scarcely worthwhile to argue for C. In philosophical argumentation, one generally argues from contentions whose denials exert some appeal in virtue of having plausibility. (Even philosophers are disinclined to waste their time completely.) And so the series P1, P2, . . ., Pn, not-C will form an aporetic family. The initial argument now reappears in a very different light. Instead of proving a conclusion from “given” premisses, what we have is simply a collection of variously plausible theses that are collectively inconsistent.5 We can thus subject the situation to the standard process of aporetic analysis. Apories are not only frequent in philosophy but typical of the contexts

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in which the problems of the field arise. Accordingly, philosophical arguments can standardly be transmuted into aporetic clusters and analyzed in this light. In all such cases, a necessity for choice is forced by the logic of the situation, but no particular outcome is rationally constrained for us by any considerations of abstract rationality. There are forced choices but no forced resolutions. Whenever we are confronted with an aporetic cluster, a plurality of resolutions is always available. The contradiction that arises from over-commitment may be resolved by abandoning any of several contentions, so that alternative ways of averting inconsistency can always be found. This circumstance is typical of aporetic situations. Any resolution of an apory calls for the rejection of some contentions for the sake of maintaining others. Strict logic alone dictates only that something must be abandoned; it does not indicate what. No particular resolutions are imposed by abstract rationality alone—by the mere “logic of the situation.” (In philosophical argumentation one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.) It is always a matter of trade-offs, of negotiation, of giving up a bit of this in order to retain a bit of that. Thus consider the following aporetic cluster: 1. Some facts can be explained satisfactorily. 2. No explanation of a fact is (fully) satisfactory if it uses unexplained facts. 3. Any satisfactory explanation must be noncircular: it must always involve some further facts (facts distinct from the fact that is being explained) to provide materials for its explanatory work. Premise (3) indicates the need for unexplained explainers. Premise (2) asserts that the presence of unexplained explainers prevents explanations from being satisfactory. Together they entail that there are no (fully) satisfactory explanations. But premise (1) insists that satisfactory explanations exist. And so we face a contradiction. A forced choice among a fixed spectrum of alternatives confront us. And there are just three exits from this inconsistency: 1-Abandonment: Explanatory skepticism.

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2-Abandonment: Explanatory foundationalism. Insist that some facts are “obvious” or “self-evident” in a way that exempts them from any need for being explained themselves and make them available as “cost-free” inputs for the explanation of other facts. 3-Abandonment: Explanatory coherentism. Accept circular explanations as adequate in some cases (“very large circles”). We have the prospect of alternative resolutions—but over a well-defined range of alternatives. As such examples show, any particular resolution of an aporetic cluster is bound to be simply one way among others. The single most crucial fact about an aporetic cluster is that there will always be a variety of distinct ways of averting the inconsistency into which it plunges us. We are not just forced to choose, but specifically constrained to operate within a narrowly circumscribed range of choice. But how to proceed? What is our standard of priority to be? Of course, we could, in theory, in such a case simply throw up our hands and abandon the entire cluster. But this total suspension of judgment is too great a price to pay. By taking this course of wholesale abandonment we would plunge into vacuity by foregoing answers to too many questions. We would curtail our information not only beyond necessity but beyond comfort as well, seeing that we have some degree of commitment to all members of the cluster and do not want to abandon more of them than we have to. Our best option—or only sensible option—is to try to localize the difficulty in order “to save what we can.” 8. APORY ENGENDERS A DIVERSITY OF RESOLUTIONS Whenever we are confronted with an aporetic cluster, a plurality of resolutions is always available. The contradiction that arises from overcommitment can be resolved by abandoning any of several contentions so that alternative ways of averting inconsistency can always be found. Thus consider the theory of morality developed in Greek ethical thought affords a good example of such an aporetic situation. Greek moral thinking inclined to the view that the distinction between right and wrong: (1) does matter,

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(2) is based on custom (nomos), (3) can only matter if grounded in the objective nature of things (phusei) rather than in mere custom. Here, too, an aporetic problem arises. The inconsistency of these contentions led to the following resolutions: Deny (1): Issues of right and wrong just don’t matter-they are a mere question of power, of who gets to “lay down the law” (Thrasymachus). Deny (2): The difference between right and wrong is not a matter of custom but resides in the nature of things (the Stoics). Deny (3): The difference between right and wrong is only customary (nomoi) but does really matter all the same (Heraclitus). We have here a paradigmatic example of an antinomy: a theme provided by an aporetic cluster of propositions, with variations set by the various ways of resolving this inconsistency. The problem of the philosopher is not one of inductive ampliation but of systemic reduction of a restoration of consistency. And philosophers fail to reach a uniform result because this objective can always be accomplished in very different ways. If we have firm confidence in our reasonings, then it follows by the inferential principle of modus tollens that whenever a belief is rejected, one must also call into question some of the various (collectively compelling) reasons on whose basis this belief had been adopted. For example, if one rejects free will, then one must also reject one of the following (presumptive) initial reasons for espousing freedom of the will: “People are usually responsible for their acts,” “People are only morally responsible for those acts that are done freely.” The rejection of an accepted thesis at once turns the family of reasons for its adoption into an aporetic cluster. Apory, once present, tends to spread like wildfire through any rational system. This line of consideration accounts for what is, on first view, a puzzling aspect of the field, namely, the prominence in the philosophical literature of counterargumentation and refutatory discussions. In mathematics no one troubles to argue that fourteen or thirty-two is not a satisfactory solution to a certain problem. This would be pointless because the number of incorrect

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answers is endless. But when there is only a limited number of viable alternative candidates in the running, negative and eliminative argumentation will obviously come to play a much more substantial part. 9. APORETIC ANTINOMIES STRUCTURE THE ISSUES It emerges against this background how it is that an aporetic perspective or philosophizing comes to be significantly instructive: • We now see these propositions in their interrelational interconnectedness. We come to realize that they are related notwithstanding the prospect of a radical diversity of thematic subject matter. • We are confronted in a very clear and urgent way with the need for choice insofar as it is truth that is our goal. • We get a clear view of the battlefield—and are able to pinpoint with enhanced precision and detail exactly where the discordances between alternative parties are located. Consider an example. The theory of morality developed in Greek ethical thought, which affords a good illustration of such an aporetic situation, was based on three plausible considerations: (1) If virtue does not produce happiness, pleasure, then it is pointless. (2) Virtue is not pointless—indeed it is extremely important. (3) Virtue does not always yield happiness. These, however, are collectively inconsistent. And three ways of averting inconsistency are available here: Deny (1): Maintain that virtue is worthwhile entirely in itself, even if it does not produce happiness/pleasure (Stoics, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). Deny (2): Maintain that virtue is ultimately pointless and can be dismissed as a folly of the weak (nihilistic sophists, e.g., Plato’s

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Thrasymachus). Deny (3): Maintain that virtue is automatically bound to produce happiness (of itself always yields real pleasure)—so that the two are inseparably interconnected (Plato, the Epicureans). We have here a paradigmatic example of an antinomy: a theme provided by an aporetic cluster of propositions, with variations arising from the various ways of resolving this inconsistency. Their grounding in aporetic conflicts provides philosophical controversies with a natural structure that endows its problem areas with an organic unity. The various alternative ways of resolving such a cognitive dilemma present a restricted manifold of interrelated positions—a comparatively modest inventory of possibilities mapping out a family of (comparatively few) alternatives that span the entire spectrum of possibilities for averting inconsistency.6 And the history of philosophy is generally sufficiently fertile and diversified that all the alternatives—all possible permutations and combinations for problem resolution—are in fact tried out somewhere along the line. Philosophical doctrines are accordingly not discrete and separate units that stand in splendid isolation. They are articulated and developed in reciprocal interaction. But their natural mode of interaction is not by way of mutual supportiveness. (How could it be, given the mutual exclusiveness of conflicting doctrines?) Rather, competition and controversy prevail. The search of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans (notably Hippias) for a universally “natural” belief system based on what is common to different groups (espousing different doctrines, customs, moralities, religions) is of no avail because no single element remains unaffected as one moves across the range of variation. Given that rival “schools” resolve an aporetic cluster in different and discordant ways, the area of agreement between them, though always there, is bound to be too narrow to prevent conflict. Alternative positions involve different priorities, and different priorities are by nature incompatible and irreconcilable. Other illustrations are readily available. A metaphysical determinism that negates free will runs afoul of a traditionalistic ethical theory that presupposes it. A philosophical anthropology that takes human life to originate at conception clashes with a social philosophy that sees abortion as morally unproblematic. A theory of rights that locates all responsibility in the contractual reciprocity of freely consenting parties creates problems for

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a morality of concern for animals. And the list goes on and on. 10. DIALECTICS: A MECHANISM OF SYSTEM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT AND THE ROLE OF DISTINCTIONS One important insight that a resort to plausibility aporetics puts at our disposal relates to its revelation of developmental dialectics. To be sure, Aristotle was right in saying that philosophy begins in wonder and that securing concerns to our questions is the aim of the enterprise. But of course we do not just want answers but coherent answers, seeing that these alone have a chance of being collectively true. The quest for consistency is an indispensable part of the quest for truth. The quest for consistency is one of the driving dynamic forces of philosophy. But the cruel fact is that theorizing itself can yield contradictory results. For in moving from empirical observation to philosophical theorizing, we do not leave contradiction behind—it continues to dog our footsteps. And just as reason must correct sensation, so more refined and elaborate reason is always needed as a corrective for less refined and elaborate reason. The source of contradiction is not just in the domain of sensation but in that of reasoned reflection as well. We are not just led into philosophy by the urge to consistency, we are ultimately kept at it by this same urge. Accordingly, aporetics is not just a mapping the cartography of the battlefield of philosophical disputation but also a tool for understanding and explaining the dialectic of historical development. For in breaking out of the cycle of inconsistency created by an aporetic cluster one has no choice but to abandon one or the other of the propositions involved. But in jettisoning this item it is often—perhaps even generally—possible to embody a distinction that makes it possible to retain something of what is being abandoned. For distinctions enable the philosopher to remove inconsistencies not just by the brute negativism of thesis rejection but by the more subtle and constructive device of thesis qualification. The crux of a distinction is not mere negation or denial, but the amendment of an untenable thesis into something positive that does the job better. By way of example, consider the following aporetic cluster: (1) All events are caused. (2) If an action issues from free choice, then it is causally unconstrained.

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(3) Free will exists—people can and do make and act upon free choices. Clearly one way to exit from inconsistency is to abandon thesis (2). We might well, however, do this not by way of outright abandonment but rather by speaking of the “causally unconstrained” only in Spinoza’s manner of externally originating casualty. For consider the result of deploying a distinction that divides the second premise into two parts: (2.1) Actions based on free choice are unconstrained by external causes. (2.2) Actions based on free choice are unconstrained by internal causes. Once (2) is so divided, the initial inconsistent triad (1)-(3) give way to the quartet (1), (2.1), (2.2), (3). But we can resolve this aporetic cluster by rejecting (2.2) while yet retaining (2.1)—thus in effect replacing (2) by a weakened version. Such recourse to a distinction—here that between internal and external causes—makes it possible to avert the aporetic inconsistency and does so in a way that minimally disrupts the plausibility situation. To examine the workings of this sort of process somewhat further, consider an aporetic cluster that set the stage for various theories of early Greek philosophy: (1) Reality is one (homogeneous). (2) Matter is real. (3) Form is real. (4) Matter and form are distinct sorts of things (heterogeneous). In looking for a resolution here, one might consider rejecting (2). This could be done, however, not by simply abandoning it, but rather by replacing it—on the idealistic precedent of Zeno and Plato—with something along the following lines:

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(2’) Matter is not real as an independent mode of existence; rather it is merely quasi-real, a mere phenomenon, an appearance somehow grounded in immaterial reality. The new quartet (1), (2’), (3), (4) is entirely cotenable. Now in adopting this resolution, one again resorts to a distinction, namely that between (i) strict reality as self-sufficiently independent existence and (ii) derivative or attenuated reality as a (merely phenomenal) product of the operation of the unqualifiedly real. Use of such a distinction between unqualified and phenomenal reality makes it possible to resolve an aporetic cluster—yet not by simply abandoning one of those paradox-engendering theses but rather by qualifying it. (Note, however, that once we follow Zeno and Plato in replacing (2) by (2’)—and accordingly reinterpret matter as representing a “mere phenomenon”—the substance of thesis (4) is profoundly altered; the old contention can still be maintained, but it now gains a new significance in the light of new distinctions.) Again one might—alternatively—abandon thesis (3). However, one would then presumably not simply adopt “form is not real” but rather would go over to the qualified contention that “form is not independently real; it is no more than a transitory (changeable) state of matter.” And this can be looked at the other way around, as saying “form is (in a way) real, although only insofar as it is taken to be no more than a transitory state of matter.” This, in effect, would be the position of the atomists, who incline to see as implausible any recourse to mechanisms outside the realm of the material. Aporetic inconsistency can always be resolved in this way; we can always “save the phenomena”—that is, retain the crucial core of our various beliefs in the face of apparent consideration—by introducing suitable distinctions and qualifications. Once apory breaks out, we can thus salvage our philosophical commitments by complicating them, through revisions in the light of appropriate distinctions, rather than abandoning them altogether.

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The exfoliative development of philosophical systems is driven by the quest for consistency. Once an apory is resolved through the decision to drop one or another member of the inconsistent family at issue, it is only sensible and prudent to try to salvage some part of what is sacrificed by introducing a distinction. Yet all too often inconsistency will break out once more within the revised family of propositions that issues from the needed readjustments. And then the entire process is carried back to its starting point. The over-all course of development thus exhibits the following overall cyclical structure: Detection of inconsistent commitments

Removal of inconsistency by deletion

Introduction of a Distinction

Reintroduction of Deletion Revised Revisions The unfolding of distinctions accordingly plays a key role in philosophical inquiry because new concepts crop up in their wake so as to open up new territory for reflection. In the course of philosophy’s dialectical development, new concepts and new theses come constantly to the fore and operate so as to open up new issues. And so in securing answers to our old questions we come to confront new questions that could not even be asked before. 11. AN HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION The inherent dynamic of this dialectic deserves a closer look. Let us consider an historical example. The speculations of the early Ionian philosophers revolved about four theses: (1) There is one single material substrate (archê) of all things. (2) The material substrate must be capable of transforming into anything and everything (and thus specifically into each of the various elements).

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(3) The only extant materials are the four material elements: earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gaseous), and fire (volatile) (4) The four elements are independent—none gives rise to the rest. Different thinkers proposed different ways out of this apory: • Thales rejected (4) and opted for water as the archê. • Anaximines rejected (4) and opted for air as the archê. • Heraclitus rejected (4) and opted for fire as the archê. • The Atomists rejected (4) and opted for earth as the archê. • Anaximander rejected (3) and postulated an indeterminate apeiron. • Empedocles rejected (1), and thus also (2), holding that everything consists in mixtures of the four elements. Thus virtually all of the available exits from inconsistency were actually used. The thinkers involved either resolved to a distinction between genuinely primacy and merely derivative “elements” or, in the case of Empedocles, stressed the distinction between mixtures and transformation. But all of them addressed the same basic problem—albeit in the light of different plausibility appraisals. As the Presocratics worked their way through the relevant ideas, the following conceptions came to figure prominently on the agenda:

(I)

(1) Whatever is ultimately real persists through change. (2) The four elements—earth (solid), water (liquid) air (gaseous), and fire (volatile)—do not persist through change as such. (3) The four elements encompass all there is by way of extant reality.

Three basic positions are now available:

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(1)-abandonment: Nothing persists through change—panta rhei, all is in flux (Heraclitus). (2)-abandonment: One single elements persists through change—it alone is the archê of all things; all else is simply some altered form of it. This uniquely unchanging element is: earth (atomists), water (Thales), air (Anaximines). Or again, all the elements persist through change, which is only a matter of a variation in mix and proportion (Empedocles). (3)-abandonment: Matter itself is not all there is—there is also its inherent geometrical structure (Pythagoras) or its external arrangement in an environing void (atomists). Or again, there is also an immaterial motive force that endows matter with motion—to wit, “mind” (nous) (Anaxagoras). Let us follow along in the track of atomism by abandoning (3) though the distinction between material and non-material existence. With this cycle of dialectical development completed, the following aporetic impasse arose in pursuing the line of thought at issue: (II)

(1) Change really occurs. (2) Matter (solid material substance) does not change, nor does vacuous emptiness. (3) Matter and the vacuum are all there is.

As always, different ways of escaping from contradiction are available: (1)-abandonment: Change is an illusion (Parmenides, Zeno, Eleatics). (2)-abandonment: Matter (indeed everything) changes (Heraclitus). (3)-abandonment: Matter and the word are not all there is; there is also the void—and the changing configurations of matter within it (atomism). Taking up the third course, let us continue to follow the atomistic route. Note that this does not just call for abandoning (3), but also calls for sophisticating (2) to

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(2’) Matter as such is not changeable—it only changes in point of its variable rearrangements. The distinction between positional changes and compositional changes comes to the fore here. This line of development has recourse to a “saving distinction” by introducing the new topic of variable configurations (as contrasted with such necessary and invariable states as the shapes of the atoms themselves). To be sure, matters do not end here. A new cycle of inconsistency looms ahead. For this new topic paves the way for the following apory: (1) All possibilities of variation are actually realized. (III) (2) Various different world arrangements are possible. (3) Only one world is real. Again different resolutions are obviously available here: (1)-rejection: A theory of real chance (tuchê) or contingency that sees various possibilities as going unrealized (Empedocles). (2)-rejection: A doctrine of universal necessitation (the “block universe” of Parmenides). (3)-rejection: A theory of many worlds (Democritus and atomism in general). As the atomistic resolution represented by the second course was developed, apory broke out again:

(IV)

(1) Matter as such never changes—the only change it admits of are its rearrangements. (2) The nature or matter is indifferent to change. Its rearrangements are contingent and potentially variable. (3) Its changes of condition are inherent in the (unchanging) nature of matter—they are necessary, not contingent.

Here the orthodox atomistic solution would lie in abandoning (3) and replacing it with

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(3’) Its changes of condition are not necessitated by the nature of matter. They are indeed quasi-necessitated by being law determined, but law is something independent of the nature of matter. The distinction between internally necessitated changes and externally and accidentally imposed ones enters upon the scene. This resolution introduces a new theme, namely law determination (as introduced by the Stoics). Yet when one seeks to apply this idea it seems plausible to add: (V) (4) Certain material changes (contingencies, concomitant with free human actions) are not law determined. Apory now breaks out once more; the need for an exit from inconsistency again arises. And such an exit was afforded by (4)-abandonment, as with the law abrogation envisaged in the notorious “swerve” of Epicurus, or by (3’)-abandonment, as with the more rigoristic atomism of Lucretius. The developmental sequence from (I) through (V) represents an evolution of philosophical reflection through successive layers of aporetic inconsistency, duly separated from one another by successive distinctions. This process led from the crude doctrines of Ionian theorists to the vastly more elaborate and sophisticated doctrines of later Greek atomism. And this historical illustration indicates an important general principle. The continual introduction of the new ideas that arise in the wake of new distinctions means that the ground of philosophy is always shifting beneath our feet. And it is through distinctions that philosophy’s prime mode of innovation—namely conceptual innovation—comes into play. And those novel distinctions for our concepts and contexts for our theses alter the very substance of the old theses. The dialectical exchange of objection and response constantly moves the discussion onto new—and increasingly sophisticated—ground. The resolution of antinomies through new distinctions is thus a matter of creative innovation whose outcome cannot be foreseen.

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12. PHILOSOPHY IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: RECOVERING THE HEGELIAN VISION OF PHILOSOPHY AT LARGE The turn to plausibility opens up different ways of viewing philosophy-atlarge and of organizing the history of philosophy on rational (or at least more perspicuous) principles. To be sure, in looking to our own philosophy we are, of course, minded to see its contentions as true—and thereby see the rival alternatives as falsehoods and errors. But there is also a somewhat more generous prospect. For one has the option of regarding the entire manifold of the contentions of philosophers—ourselves included—as so many (merely) plausible propositions. In turning from truth to plausibility one realizes both gains and losses. The gains relate to amplitude of vision and breadth of perspective: a great many more things are plausible than are determinately true. The loss relates to reliability: a good deal of shaky stuff gets added in and there will be more dubious dross amid the reliable gold. Accordingly, in interpreting philosophy-at-large in the light of plausibility considerations one takes a distinctive and in some ways nondoctrinal line. For while philosophy is often characterized as a quest for truth, this strategy realizes the prospect of an entirely different approach to information—one geared not to irrefragable truth but the fallible plausibility. Such an approach represents a vision that has been on the stage in German philosophy since Christian Wolff7 and prominent since Hegel. And it was in this frame of mind that the Bertrand Russell of the pre-World War I era wrote: “Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, extend our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation.”8 It must be emphasized, however, that in taking such a more inclusive and many sided view of the subject, we are in process of addressing philosophy-at-large, and not deriving our own philosophy. We survey, examine, and weigh the size of possible answers to the questions with their deciding which one to accept as correct. We are, in sum, looking at the matter from the standpoint of the community, not from that of ourselves in propria persona.

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For, what we get in such a quasi-Hegelian perspective is not a system of philosophy—not a coherent and cohesive exposition of a philosophical position that offers specific answers to definite questions. Rather, what we get is a systematization of philosophizing-at-large, a comprehensive coordination of philosophizing in general. After all, a plausibility system, unlike a system of purported truth, does not provide an answer to any of the questions—or a solution to any of the problems. Instead, it provides a plausibility of (incompatible) answers and a multitude of (different and distinct) solutions. It does not even pretend to offer the truth but only surveys of different and discordant purported truths emanating from different purporters. Philosophy as such cannot abandon the quest for credible truth regarding the solution of philosophical problems. Non-Hegelian plausibility syncretism does not even attempt to provide it. Facing a plurality of contending rival answers to philosophical questions, the skeptic embargoes all of the available options and enjoins us to reject the whole lot as meaningless or otherwise untenable. A more radical option, though equally egalitarian, is to proceed in the exactly opposite way and view all the alternatives positively, embracing the whole lot of them. The guiding idea of this approach is that of conjoining the alternatives. Such a syncretism represents an attempt to “rise above the quarrel” of conflicting doctrines, refusing to “take sides” by taking all the sides at once. It is a Will Rogers kind of pluralism that never met a position it didn’t like. Confronted by discordant possibilities, it embraces them all in a generous spirit of liberalism that sees them all as potentially meritorious. But of course what is now at issue is mere plausibility and not actual truth. The discordant philosophical doctrines are viewed by syncritists as no more than individual contributions to a communal project whose mission is not a matter of establishing a position at all but one of examining positions, of exploring the entire space of alternatives. The key question is now not (as with the hermeneutic approach described above) the history-oriented “What positions have been taken?” but the possibility-oriented “What positions can be taken?” It is a matter of the comprehensive appreciation of possibilities in general and not one of trying to substantiate some one particular position as rationally appropriate. On this approach, the real task of philosophy is to inventory the possibilities for human understanding with respect to philosophical issues. In studying the issues we widen our sensibilities, enhance the range of our awareness, and enlarge the range of our cognitive experience. Philosophy now becomes a matter of horizon broadening rather than problem solving—a matter not of knowledge at all but of

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the sort of “wisdom” at issue in an open-endedly welcoming stance toward diverse positions. To take philosophy as judging its theses and theories— deeming these acceptable and those not—looks from this standpoint to be something of a corruption. Instead, philosophy is seen as essentially nonjudgmental, its task being to enlarge our views and extend our intellectual sympathies by keeping the entire range of possibilities before our mind. But even without taking this line, it is clear that the benefit that a multilateral approach based on plausibility aporetics lies in its enabling us to see clearly: • how our own system is related to its rivals, • how our own system emerges from its antecedents, • what price we are paying and what benefits we are denied from doing things our way rather than in the way of alternatives, • provide ways of processing the actualizes (and disactualizes) of our own position vis-à-vis atheism. 13. PHILOSOPHY-AT-LARGE VS. MY PHILOSOPHY: STUDY VS. PRACTICE It must, however, be acknowledged that developing the aporetic conception of philosophy-at-large is not a way of philosophizing. To philosophize we must figure out where we stand—we ourselves—and not just elaborate and coordinate the manifold views of philosophy-at-large. No matter how elaborately and sophisticated we canvas the spectrum of alternatives—of what can be thought—we must in the end make up our minds about what we propose to think on our own account. The analysis of plausibility and its ramifications is all very well in its own way, but it is neither a version of nor a replacement for the pursuit of truth. Philosophy, after all, is in the business of seeking to answer “the big questions” concerning man and his place in nature’s scheme of things. The object of philosophizing is to remove ignorance and puzzlement, to resolve cognitive problems-to provide information, in short. To abstain from taking a definite position, to refuse to take sides (be it through skeptical abstention or through open minded conjunctiveness) is simply to abandon the enterprise. To endorse a plurality of answers is to have no answers at all—

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an unending openness to various possibilities, a constant yes-and-no, leaves us in perpetual ignorance. To be sure, studying the modus operandi of philosophizing will in the end be a part of philosophy—who else but a philosopher is willing or able to do such a thing. But this form of metaphilosophy is at most and at best a part of philosophy—it is not and cannot be a substitute for philosophy itself. The study of philosophy-at-large will not—cannot—itself constitute a philosophy. To survey of what is plausible will not instruct us about what is true. To look into the plausible answers to our questions will not show us what the appropriate answers are. It is, of course, instructive to explore the manifold of plausibility. But in the end we want more. Plausibility mongering is not enough: we hanker after truth. Shift the realm of deliberation from philosophy at large to my philosophy—to what I can, on my own account, accept as true. And so, notwithstanding, its obvious attractions, the view of philosophy as possibility exploration is not without its defects. The prime difficulty is that possibility mongering fails to accommodate the central project of serious inquiry. Possibilities don’t answer questions. To engage in the enterprise, rather than merely to deliberate about it, we must ask, “What position shall we take?” and not merely “What position can we take?” Plausibility mongering is all very well as far as it goes. But in the end if one wants to have actual (rather than merely possible) answers to one’s questions, one must make up one’s mind. One must stop being a student of philosophy and become a philosopher. The individual laborer in the domain of philosophy cannot transcend his individuality and adopt the diversified labors of the community into his own doctrine. Conjunctionism is a grand notion that founders on the recalcitrant fact that there is just no way of making the library over into a single coherent book by conjoining the multiplicity of discordant philosophies into a meaningful whole. Individual philosophers can do no more than take one stance among others, arriving at a position that unavoidably remains controversial. They cannot at once engage in the enterprise and enjoy the security of a higher vantage point above the din of battle. By their very nature, philosophical disagreements resist being transcended by way of conjunction. Conjunctionism is an invitation to indifference, to refraining from the serious business of making up one’s mind. To project one’s pacifist ideology into the sphere of philosophy is to emasculate the subject. It is not by accident that Athena, goddess of wisdom and patroness of philosophy, presides over the arts of war as well. The

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strife of systems is relentless—the destiny of philosophy is not peace but the sword. But of course this does not prevent a larger, more generous view of philosophy-at-large. When I contemplate the status of the claims and theses of my own philosophical position, I do indeed myself regard them as so many claims to truth. (And just this is why the internal consistency of my own position is a critical function). But when I contemplate the work of my philosophical rivals I do not—can not—regard these contentions as truths but I certainly can—and very possibly should—see those theses and contentions as plausible. The present deliberations highlight the difference between the study of philosophy on the one hand and the practice of philosophy on the other. In the study of philosophy a neo-Hegelian plausibility systematization proves to be a highly useful and instructive resource. But of course to practice philosophy we must deal in more than mere plausibilities: to determine where we are to stand we cannot rest content with the examination of plausibilities and possible answers but must decide upon optimalities and appropriate (at least preemptively correct) answers. At this level truth systematization is the way to go. To say all this, however is to distinguish the two enterprises, not to detach them. For of course the quest for answers that are optimally tenable— and thus at least preemptively correct and true—require us to compare the available alternatives. And just what these alternatives are, and what ramifications they send into the wider net of related issues, is just exactly what a plausibility systematization can enable us to see.9, 10 NOTES 1

Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie.

2

A good compact account of Hegel’s position regarding the history of philosophy is Lucian Braun, Historie de l’historie de la philosophie (Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1973), pp. 328-40.

3

See Immanuel Kant’s Polegomena to any Future Metaphysics.

4

The word derives from the Greek DSRUíD on analogy with “harmony” or “melody” or indeed “analogy” itself.

5

The conception of plausibility (and, in particular its difference from the more familiar conception of probability) is explained in the author’s book on Plausible Reasoning (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976).

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NOTES 6

This general position that philosophical problems involve antinomic situations from which there are only finitely many exits (which, in general, the historical course of philosophical development actually indicates) is foreshadowed in the deliberations of Wilhelm Dilthey. See his Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VIII (Stuttgart and Göttingen: Teubner and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), p. 138.

7

For Christian Wolff, philosophy is scientia possibilium, quatenus esse possunt (Philosophia Rationalis, sect. 29).

8

Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 249-50.

9

This paper represents an endeavor to link together three elements that have long governed my thinking about the historical systematics of philosophical thought, namely the theory of plausibility (see my Plausible Reasoning; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), the theory of aporetics (see my Paradox’s; Chicago: Open Court, 2001), and the theory of philosophical dialectics (see my The Strife of Systems; Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

10

This chapter is an expanded version of a paper originally published under the same title in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 48 (2005), pp. 415-442. That paper was also published in a German version: “Philosophische Systematisierung,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 53 (2005), pp. 179-202.

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E

conomists characterize as “externalities” the costs that a given agent’s operations engender for other participants in the economic system— the expenditures that one agent’s activities exact from other agents, be it willingly or unwillingly. They are the operating costs that an agent simply off-loads onto the wider community: the expenses that one generates for others in the course of addressing one’s own immediate concerns—as for example, when a farmer’s fertilizers contaminate the drinking water of his neighbors. It is interesting to observe that substantially the same phenomenon can arise also in philosophy. For in philosophy we may, in solving a problem within some particular domain, create major difficulties for the solution of problems elsewhere, even in areas seemingly far removed from the original issue. It is instructive to consider some examples of this phenomenon. Example 1: Epistemology and Ethics. Suppose that we are sailing on the open sea on a vacation cruise ship. It is dusk, and the visibility is getting poor. As we stroll on deck along the rail of the ship, there is suddenly a shout, “Man overboard.” Someone grabs a life preserver from the nearby bulkhead and rushes with it towards the railing. Suddenly, he comes to a stop and hesitates a moment. To our astonishment he turns, retraces his steps, and replaces the life preserver, calmly proceeding step by step as the region of the incident slips away, first out of reach, then out of sight. Puzzled and chagrined, we turn to the individual and ask why he broke off the rescue attempt. The response runs as follows: “Of course, throwing that life preserver was my first instinct, as my behavior clearly showed. But then some ideas from my undergraduate epistemology courses came to mind and convinced me that it made no sense to continue.” Intrigued, we ask for more details and receive the following response:

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Consider what we actually knew. All we could see was that something that looked like a human head was bobbing out there in the water. But the visibility was poor. It could have been an old mop or a lady’s wig stand. Those noises we took for distant shouts would well have been no more than a pulsing of the engines and the howling of the wind. There was simply no decisive evidence that it was actually a person out there. And then I remembered William Kingdon Clifford’s classic dictum: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” So why act on a belief that there was actually a human being in danger out there, when the evidence for any such belief was clearly insufficient? And why carry out a rescue attempt when you do not accept that someone actually needs rescuing?

Something has clearly gone badly wrong here. We may not choose to fault our misguided shipmate as an epistemologist, yet we cannot but wonder about his moral competency. Even if I unhesitatingly accept and endorse the abstract principle that one must try to be helpful to others in situations of need, I am clearly in moral difficulty if I operate on too stringent a standard of evidence in relevant contexts—if, for example, I allow skeptical concerns about other minds to paralyze me from ever recognizing another creature as a human person. For then I will be far reachingly precluded from doing things that, morally considered, I ought to do. William James rightly noted this connection between epistemology and morality, in insisting that the skeptic rudely treads morality underfoot: “If I refuse to stop a murder because I am in [some] doubt whether it is not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt whether my effort will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. . . . Skepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality.”1 There is much to be said for this view of the matter. To operate in life with epistemological principles so stringent as to impede the discharge of one’s standard moral obligations is to invite justified reproach. Where the interests of others are at risk, we cannot, with moral appropriateness, deploy evidential standards of acceptability of a higher, more demanding sort than those that are normally operative. At this point, epistemology has moral ramifications. For morality as we know it requires a commonsense, down-to-earth epistemology for its appropriate implementation.

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In such a case, then, the stance we take in the one domain (epistemology) has significant repercussions for the way we can proceed in the other (ethics). The issues arising in these seemingly remote areas stand in systemic interlinkage. Externalities can come into play. A problem-solution that looks like a bargain in the one domain may exact an unacceptable price in the other. Example 2: Semantics and Metaphysics. For another illustration—one of a rather different sort—consider the semantical position urged by a contemporary Oxford philosopher who maintains that there are no incognizable facts, because there actually is a fact of the matter only when a claim to this effect is such that “we [humans] could in a finite time bring ourselves into a position in which we were [fully] justified either in asserting or in denying [the contention at issue].”2 This sort of “finite decidability semantics” holds that a proposition is communicatively meaningful— qualifies as inherently true or false—only if the matter can actually be settled, decisively and conclusively, one way or the other, by a finite effort in a limited time. But this doctrinal path issuing from semantics leads to some strange destinations. For it automatically precludes the prospect of maintaining anything like our common-sense view of things in the world about us. In this way, the wolf of a highly problematic metaphysic comes concealed in the sheep’s clothing of innocuous-looking semantical theory. For consider: As we standardly think about things within the conceptual framework of our fact-oriented thought and discourse, any real physical object has more facets than it will or indeed can ever actually manifest in experience. Every objective property of a real thing has consequences of a dispositional nature, and these are never actually surveyable in toto, seeing that the dispositions that particular concrete things inevitably have endow them with an infinitistic aspect that cannot be comprehended within experience. This desk, for example, has a limitless manifold of phenomenal features of the type “having a certain appearance from a particular point of view.” It is perfectly clear that most of these will never be actualized in experience. Moreover, a thing is what it does: to be a desk or an apple is to behave like one. Entity and lawfulness are coordinated correlates—a good Kantian point.3 And this fact that things as such involve lawful comportment means that the finitude of experience precludes any prospect of the exhaustive manifestation of the descriptive facets of any real thing. Some of the ramifications of this circumstance deserve closer attention.

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Physical objects, as we standardly conceive them, not only have more properties than they ever will overtly manifest, they actually have more than they could ever actually manifest, because the dispositional properties of things always involve what might be characterized as mutually preemptive conditions of realization. A cube of sugar, for example, has the dispositional property of reacting in a particular way if subjected to a temperature of 10,000°C and of reacting in a certain way if emplaced for one hundred hours in a large, turbulent body of water. But if either of these conditions is ever realized, it will destroy the lump of sugar as a lump of sugar, and thus block the prospect of its ever bringing the other property to manifestation. Because of such inherent conflicts, the severally possible realization of various dispositions can fail to be conjointly compossible, and so the dispositional properties of a thing cannot ever be completely manifest—not just in practice, but in principle. On the other hand, to say of the apple that its only features are those it actually manifests is to run afoul of our conception of an apple. For to deny—or even merely to refuse to be committed to the claim—that it would manifest particular features if certain conditions came about (for example, that it would have such-and-such a taste if eaten) is to be driven to withdrawing the claim that it is an apple. A real thing is always conceptualized as having features that transcend our actual experience of it. All discourse about objective things involves an element of experiencetranscending imputation—of commitment to claims that go beyond the experientially acquirable information, but yet claims whose rejection would mean our having to withdraw the thing-characterization at issue. To say of something that it is an apple or a stone or a tree is to become inexorably committed to claims about it that go beyond the data we have—and even beyond those that we can, in the nature of things, ever actually acquire. Real things always do and must have features that transcend our determinable knowledge of them. In the light of such considerations, it emerges that a finite decidability semantics—though seemingly a merely linguistic doctrine about meaningful assertion—is in fact not just theory of language or logic. For it now has major repercussions in very different domains. In particular, it has the farreaching metaphysical consequence of precluding any prospect of the common-sense realism at issue in our standard conception of the world’s things. On its basis, any statement of objective fact—however modest and common-sensical—is immediately rendered meaningless by the infinitude of its evidential ramifications. Thus, a “merely semantical” doctrine seem-

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ingly devised to serve the interests of a philosophy of language has implications that pre-empt a major substantive position in metaphysics. Its conflict with the common-sense realism of ordinary discourse does not, of course, demonstrate that finite decidability semantics is ultimately incorrect. But it once again illustrates vividly the ramified interconnectedness of philosophical doctrines—the fact that a seemingly attractive problem-solution in one area may be available as such only at the cost of creating massive problems elsewhere. The theory is certainly one that we cannot reasonably accept on its local, semantical recommendations alone, irrespective of wider implications. Externalities are once again at work. *** Other illustrations are readily available. A metaphysical determinism that negates free will runs afoul of a traditionalistic ethical theory that presupposes it. A philosophical anthropology that takes human life to originate at conception clashes with a social philosophy that sees abortion as morally unproblematic. A theory of rights that locates all responsibility in the contractual reciprocity of freely consenting parties creates problems for a morality of concern for animals. And the list goes on and on. The basic reason why philosophical issues are interrelated across different subject-matter domains lies in their aporetic nature—their invariable linkage to the situation where we confront groups of propositions that may seem individually plausible but are collectively inconsistent. For as was indicated above, the data of philosophy—the manifold of nontrivially evidentiated considerations with which it must come to terms—is always such that internal tensions and inconsistencies arise within it. The range of contentions which there is some reason to accept here outrun the range of what can be maintained in the light of consistency considerations. And the diversity of participants in such a conflict of overextension is almost always such as to outrun the boundaries of the thematic and disciplinary units that we generally entertain. 2. SYSTEMATIC INTERCONNECTEDNESS AS A CONSEQUENCE OF APORETIC COMPLEXITY The aporetic perspective on philosophical issues puts the phenomenon of philosophical externalities into sharp relief. It shows that philosophical doctrines are inextricably interconnected, spreading their implications

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across the frontiers of very different, subject-matter disjoint and seemingly disparate areas. The ramifications and implications of philosophical contentions do not respect the discipline’s taxonomic boundaries. The examples we have been considering thus convey a clear lesson. We all too easily risk losing sight of this interconnectedness when we ride our hobby horses in pursuit of the technicalities of a limited subdomain. In actuality, the stance we take on questions in one domain will generally have substantial implications and ramification for very different issues in other seemingly distant domains. And exactly this is why systematization is so important in philosophy—because the way we do answer some questions will have limiting repercussions for the way we can answer others. We cannot emplace our philosophical convictions into conveniently separated compartments in the comfortable expectation that what we maintain in one area of the field will have no unwelcome implications for what we are inclined to maintain in others. The long and short of it is that the realm of truth is unified and its components are interlinked. Change your mind on one fact about the real, and you cannot leave all the rest unaffected. To qualify as adequate, one’s account of things must be a systemic whole whose components are interrelated by relation of systemic interaction or feedback. In the final analysis, philosophy is a system because it is concerned to indicate, or at least to estimate, the truth about things, and “the truth about reality” is a system.4 Its various sectors and components are bound to dovetail smoothly with one another. For even if one is reluctant to claim that reality as such must be systematic, the fact remains that an adequate account of it must surely be so. Even as we must take a sober view of inebriation so we must aim at a coherent account of even an incoherent world. Philosophy’s commitment to the project of rational inquiry, to the task of making coherent and comprehensive sense of things, means that an adequate philosophy must be holistic, accommodating and coordinating all aspects of its concerns in a single unified and coherent whole, with the result that any viable philosophical doctrine will and can be no more than a particular component piece fitting smoothly into the wider puzzle. Moreover, in philosophy, there are no secure axioms—no starter-set of absolutely certain “givens” whose implications we can follow through without question to the bitter end. In general, we cannot assess the acceptability of our contentions solely in terms of the security of their antecedents, but must reassess their acceptability in the light of their consequences and not only locally but globally. The implicit interconnectedness

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of philosophical issues means that the price philosophers must pay for overly narrow specialization—for confining attention narrowly to one particular set of issues—is compromising the tenability of their position. Insofar as such a perspective is right, it emerges that the range of relevant consequences cannot be confined to the local area of the immediate thematic environs of the contention, but will have to involve its more remote reverberations as well. If an otherwise appealing contention in semantics wreaks havoc in metaphysics or in the philosophy of mathematics, that, too, will have to be weighed when the question of its tenability arises. The absolute idealist for whom “time is unreal” cannot appropriately just write off the ethicist’s interest in future eventuations (as regards, for example, the situation that will obtain when the time to make good a promise arrives)—or the political philosopher’s concern for the well-being future generations. The materialist cannot simply dismiss the boundary-line issues involved in the moral question of why pointlessly to damage a computer one owns is simply foolish, but pointlessly to injure a developed animal is actually wicked. The long and short of it is that philosophical issues are organically interconnected. Positions that maximize local advantages may fail to be optimal from a global point of view. In the final analysis, only positions that are holistically adequate can be deemed to be really satisfactory. From Greek antiquity to the nineteenth century, a conviction prevailed that the branches of philosophy could be arranged in a neat hierarchy of sequential dependence and fundamentality, somewhat along the lines of: logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics (axiology) and politico-social philosophy. In fact, however, the various sub-domains of philosophy are interlinked by a complex crisscross network of reciprocal interrelationships. (For example, one needs epistemology to validate principles of logic, and yet one must use logic for reasoning in epistemology.) Justificatory argumentation in philosophy admits of no neat Aristotelian order of prior/posterior in its involvement with the subject’s components. The inherent interrelationships of the issues is such that we have no alternative but to see the sectors of philosophy as interconnected in interlocking cycles that bind the subject’s various branches into one systematic whole. Because its issues are interrelated, philosophical argumentation must look not just to antecedents but to consequences as well. Virtually nothing of philosophical relevancy is beyond question and altogether immune to criticism and possible rejection. Pretty much everything is potentially at risk. All of the “datum” of philosophy are defeasible—anything might in

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the final analysis have to be abandoned, whatever its source: science, common sense, common knowledge. One recent theorist writes: “No philosophical, or any other, theory can provide a view which violates common sense and remain logically consistent. For the truth of common sense is assumed by all theories. . . . This necessity to conform to common sense establishes a constraint upon the interpretations philosophical theories can offer.”5 But this overstates the case. The philosophical landscape is littered with theories that tread common sense underfoot. As philosophy goes about its work of rendering our beliefs coherent, something to which we are deeply attached often has to give somewhere along the line, and we can never say at the outset where the blow will or will not fall. Systemic considerations may well in the end lead our most solid-seeming suppositions into insuperable difficulty—even as can happen in the context of natural science. And the only cure for failures of systematization in philosophy lies in the construction of better systems. 3. LOCAL MINIMALISM VERSUS GLOBAL OPTIMALISM In philosophy, as in various other cognitive domains, two very different approaches to problem-solving can be implemented. The first is the narrow, localist course of opting for the least risky—and thus the least informative—answer to our immediate questions that can accommodate the putative facts of the case (minimalism). The second is the more ambitious course of opting for the globally most adequate—and thus most risky— among the “available” answers that is compatible with the facts (maximalism). Confronted with this choice, the epistemic localist is a pessimist who opts for the first, more modest option. The epistemic globalist, on the other hand, is an optimist who opts for the second, more ambitious alternative. For the localist what matters is the least costly solution to the range of problems that lie immediately to hand. With Occam’s razor as his favored instrument, he rejects out of hand any entities, concepts, or theses that do not answer to the requirements of immediate needs. A global approach, by contrast, looks beyond the issues of an initial problematic to the issues that will predictably arise further down the road. The global maximalist wants tools that are serviceable not only for the immediate problem situation but also for the wider issues that seem likely to arise. In dealing with immediate concerns he keeps a weather eye on more distant horizons. Globalists

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are constantly mindful of the big picture. With them, the impetus to system is paramount, and ingenuity enjoins epistemic optimism. Localists buy a hammer just big enough to drive in the nails they have on hand. They see the prospect of the larger nails they may be handling tomorrow as immaterial—something to be dealt with if and when the time comes. When they marry, localists buy a house just large enough for themselves and their spouses. The idea that, for a modest additional expenditure, they can buy a larger house also adequate to their needs if and when children arrive does not move them. They are penny wise and pound foolish; for them, the cheapest solution to the immediate problem is all that counts. They do not consider the idea of expending resources to provide extra capacity and spare power for the future. Proceeding in this spirit, various schools of epistemic minimalism go about posting signposts that put all risk of engaging larger issues OFF LIMITS. Such theorists turn Occam’s razor into Robespierre’s guillotine. Their tumbrels carry off a wide variety of victims: • sets in the philosophy of mathematics; • abstracta in semantics; • unobservable entities in the philosophy of physics; • dispositional theses in the philosophy of language; • obligations that reach beyond the requisites of prudence in moral theory, etc. etc. Reluctant to venture beyond the immediate, locally, case-specific requisites of the first-order agenda epistemological demands, the philosophical minimalist is content to accept incomprehension on the larger issues. All too often, observability alone is his standard of reality and causal and explanatory questions are ruled out. Why do phenomena have the character we observe? Don’t ask. What accounts for the lawfulness of their interrelationships? Don’t ask! Why are they uniform for different observers? Don’t ask! What of factual claims that go beyond observability? Throw them out! What about claims that transcend the prospect of decisive verification? Throw them out, too! But such an approach is not without its problems. The fact is that, in

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philosophy, as elsewhere, localistic minimalism proves to be a very questionable bargain. Here—as elsewhere—some investment in added capacity is generally required for extra capability. In philosophy, as in life, the economies of a localistic minimalism are unwise practices that frequently produce long-term waste. To be sure, one can readily imagine a narrowly focused specialist who is prepared to say something like this: As far as I am concerned, the limits of my core interests are the limits of my world. Having worked out what I see as the optimal solution for the local issues of my chosen field of primary specialization, I simply don’t care about its ramifications anywhere else. Local optimization is all that concerns me— global implications and ramifications are a matter of indifference to me.

One can readily imagine someone having this attitude. But certainly one cannot approve of it. For it imports into philosophy a fanaticism and narrow-minded unconcern for wider ramifications that sensible people reject in virtually every other context. The systematic nature of philosophy-as-a-whole has far-reaching implications for the proper cultivation of the discipline. In particular, it means that we should not—nay cannot—rest satisfied with isolated piecework, with single pieces of doctrine whose merits do not extend beyond immediate adequacy in a local problem area. For in philosophizing, as in economic matters, externalities may come into play. A seemingly elegant solution to the difficulties posed by one problem may carry in its wake hopeless difficulties for the satisfactory resolution of some other problem. Its ramifications in another, seemingly remote, area may require one to pay an unacceptable price for the neat resolution of a problem in a given domain. One may, as we have seen, be forced into accepting an epistemology that one does not much like for itself in the interests of possibilizing an ethical position that one deems essential. Philosophizing is, in this regard, akin to cognitive engineering. For the sensible philosopher, like the sensible engineer, must proceed holistically with a view to the overall implications of his particular ventures in problem solving. An engineer who allows one particular desideratum (cost, safety, fuel economy, repair infrequency, or the like) to dominate his thinking, to the exclusion of all else, would not produce a viable product, but an absurdity. We would certainly laugh at someone who offered to build us a supersafe car—but one that would go only two miles per hour. Surely a similar derision is deserved by the skeptic who offers to build us a super-

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safe, error-excluding epistemology that would not, however, allow us to maintain a line of distinction between science and pseudoscience. In philosophy as in economics, engineering, and medicine we cannot avoid concern for externalities and have to come to grips with incidental interactions and side-effects. In chess, we cannot play rooks independently of what we do with bishops; in medicine, we cannot treat one organ independently of the implications for others; in political economy, we cannot design policies for one sector without concerning ourselves with their impact upon the rest. In most any problem-solving contexts we do well keep all our commitments in reasonable coordination overall. Why should philosophy be any different? A philosopher who achieves his or her proximate, localized ends at the cost of off-loading difficulties onto other sectors of the wider domain is simply not doing an adequate job. With rationally cogent philosophizing, it is not local minimalism but global optimalism that is required. To be acceptable, a philosophical problem-solution must form an integral part of a wider doctrine that makes acceptably good sense overall. Here only systemic, holistically attuned positions can yield truly satisfactory solutions— solutions that do not involve undue externalities for the larger scheme of things. For better or for worse, viable philosophizing has to be a matter of holistic systematization. Tenable philosophy must be a systematically dovetailed whole. For in the end the range of our philosophical concern is a network where everything is systematically interconnected with everything else.6 Of course, ultimately, in the final analysis, the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. We set out for the consolation that a satisfying philosophy must be systematic: that IF a satisfying philosophy is to be realized, THEN it will have to be one that is systematic. We are dealing here with a condition of adequacy. Only time and effort as channeled into the course of events can tell whether this gist is actually achieved. The justification of systematicity as a regulative ideal for our philosophy must thus be seen in essentially instrumental terms. “Conduct your cognitive proceedings with a view to the pursuit of systematicity!” is a regulative principle of inquiry whose legitimation ultimately lies in its pragmatic utility with respect to the teleology of the project at issue. Our commitment in philosophy to the pursuit of systematicity is justified by the consideration that it provides the only effective route to achieving the characterizing aims of the enterprise.

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4. THE METHODOLOGICAL RATIONALE OF SYSTEMATICITY IN PHILOSOPHY The preceding discussion has emphasized that the explanatory work of philosophy needs to be accomplished systematically—that in the interests of adequacy, philosophizing must aim at a system that is at once comprehensive in its purview and systematic in its articulation. But does this requirement not prejudice the substantive issues—does it not precommit us to the view that the world is a system? Any such presupposition would clearly be inappropriate in philosophy. This is an issue that needs to be addressed. The conception of a system has historically been applied both to things in the world and to bodies of knowledge. It is thus critically important to distinguish between the ontological systematicity (simplicity, coherence, regularity, uniformity, etc.) of the objects of our knowledge—that is, between systematicity as a feature characterizing the manifold of existing things—and the cognitive systematicity of our (putative) knowledge of information regarding such things. In fact, three significantly distinguishable roles must be assigned to systematicity: I. COGNITIVE SYSTEMATICITY 1. Codificational systematicity—systematicity as a regulative ideal or methodological desideratum for the organization of our knowledge. 2. Criterial systematicity—systematicity as a regulative standard for a acceptability of theses—in the wake of the “Hegelian Inversion” that see system as a criterion of truth (rather than the reverse). II. NONCOGNITIVE (ONTOLOGICAL) SYSTEMATICITY 3. Ontological systematicity—systematicity as a descriptive characteristic of objects—in principle including the whole of the natural universe. Given these distinctions, there at once arises the question of the relationships among these several modes of systematicity. And for present purposes it is critical whether systematicity is to be taken as an epistemic desideratum for our knowledge regarding nature or an ontological descriptive feature of nature itself. The pivotal issue is: Does the reliance on

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systematicity in philosophy rest on a grounding of epistemic or of ontological considerations? In the days of the medieval Schoolmen and of those later rationalistic philosophers whom Kant was wont to characterize as dogmatists, simplicity was in fact generally viewed as an ontological feature of the world. Just as it was held that “Nature abhors a vacuum”—and, perhaps more plausibly, “In nature there is an explanation for everything”—so it was contended that “Nature abhors complexity.” However, Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” wisely shifted the responsibility for such desiderata from physical nature to the human intellect. Simplicity-tropism accordingly became not a feature of “the real world,” but rather one of “the mechanisms of human thought.” Kant acutely observed that what was at issue was a facet not of the teleology of nature, but of the teleology of reason, responsibility for which lay not objectively with the objects theory but in objectively with the modus operandi of the theorizers. And the subsequent Darwinian Revolution may be viewed as taking the process a step further. It transmuted the teleological element. Neither nature nor man’s rational faculties now come to be seen as an ontological locus of simplicitypreference. Rather, its rationale is now placed on a strictly methodological basis. Responsibility for simplicity-tropism lies not with the very constitution of the human mind and the “hardware” of human reason, but rather with its “software”—that is, with the procedural and methodological principles which we ourselves employ because we find simpler theories easier to work with and more effective. It deserves reemphasis in this thematic context that the coherentism espoused by the partisans of philosophical systematization takes criterial systematicity as the pivot. They regard the various parameters of systematicity—simplicity, coherence, regularity, etc.—as factors that serve to regulate and control the claims to rational acceptability of our doctrinal accounts, providing a check on the validity of our pretensions to knowledge regarding how things work in the world. The crux here is not that the world avoids complexity, but that we do so—insofar as we find it possible. In the setting of our inquiries, the parameters of cognitive systematicity— simplicity, regularity, coherence, and the rest—generally represent principles of economy of operation. They are labor-saving devices for averting avoidable complications in the conduct of our cognitive business. They are governed by an analogue of Occam’s razor—a principle of parsimony to the effect that needless complexity is to be avoided. No factual prejudgments are involved.

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To be sure, it may be tempting to adopt the equation at issue in construing “The world itself is systemic [or simple or uniform, etc.]” as tantamount to “An adequate account of the world is systematic [or simple or, uniform, etc.].” For it is natural to expect certain features of accounts— “significance,” for example—to reflect corresponding aspects of the materials they deal with. But this convenient correspondence does not always obtain, and in particular the connecting linkage between cognitive and ontological systematicity is not all that tight. A poor intellectual workman can present information regarding even a simple and regular (etc.) configuration of objects in complex, disorganized form; and a clever workman may be able to describe a disorganized chaos in relatively simple and systematic terms. The ontological object-systematicity of what is described and the presentational knowledge-systematicity of the description are in principle quite different things—and largely independent to boot. A supposed implication of the format

ªinformation aboutº « X is cognitively » o (X is ontologically systematic) ¬ systematizable ¼ thus does not represent a valid consequence relationship. Ontological systematicity on the part of the objects of knowledge is not a requisite for the cognitive systematicity of our knowledge about them. Things need not be systematic to admit of systematic study and discussion. The systematicity of the real is not a prerequisite for systematicity in knowledge of it. Knowledge need not share the features of its objects: to speak of a sober study of inebriation or a dispassionate analysis of passions is not a contradiction in terms. What will count as evidence for the ontological systematicity in the world is not simply that our account of it is systematic, but rather how it is systematic—i.e., what sort of systematic world-picture it envisages. It is a matter not of structure but of content. (Even a disorderly scene can be described in an orderly way.) The cognitive parameters at issue in systematicity—simplicity, regularity, coherence, unity, uniformity, and the rest—thus have the standing of regulative principles of probative procedure. They implement the idea of epistemic preferability or precedence, of presumption and burden of proof, by indicating where, in the absence of specific counterindications, our epistemic commitments are to be placed in weaving together the fabric of our knowledge. Such a procedural/methodological mechanism does not antici-

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pate the ultimate answer to the questions we pose. All that it does is to guide and control the process by which the answers—whatever they may be—are attained. Cognitive systematicity characterizes the procedural structure of our endeavors to organize our knowledge of the world. It embodies methodological or regulative principles of epistemic plausibility and presumption— principles in the sense of rules governing how we are to proceed in the conduct of our cognitive affairs, and not principles in the sense of theses describing how things work in the world. There is no question here of presupposing the ontological systematicity of nature. A regulative presumption of the sort at issue here is a rule of cognitive procedure or of method not an assumption of fact. Systematicity-seeking thus emerges as a salient aspect of the rational methodology of inquiry in general and philosophical inquiry in particular. But such a methodology seeks to reveal orderliness if it is there. When fishing, a net whose mesh has a certain area will catch fish of a certain size if any are present. Use of the net indicates a hope perhaps even an expectation that the fish will be there, but is certainly not based on a preassured foreknowledge of their presence. Nothing in the abstract logic of the situation guarantees a priori that we shall find order when we go looking for it. Our cognitive search for order and system may issue in a finding of disorder and chaos. The question of whether the world is such that systematic knowledge of it is possible is an ultimate contingent question—one the answer to which must itself emerge from our actual endeavors at systematization. Charles Sanders Peirce wrote: Underlying all such principles [of cognitive methodology] there is a fundamental and primary . . . hypothesis which we must embrace at the outset, however destitute of evidentiary support it may be [at this stage]. That hypothesis is that the facts in hand admit of rationalization, and rationalization by us. That we must hope they do, for the same reason that a general who has to capture a position or see his country ruined, must go on the hypothesis that there is some way in which he can and shall capture it. We must be animated by that hope concerning the problem we have in hand . . . (Collected Papers, vol. VII, 7.219.)

This passage almost gets the matter straight—almost, but not quite. To be sure, in philosophy we must “act as though” the hypothesis were correct; we must, as was said, effectively deploy this particular as-if as a regulative

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presumption that serves us as a principle of procedure in this cognitive domain. But it is not necessary (save perhaps for psychological reasons of morale) for us to embrace this hypothesis—we need not assume or postulate it. Initially there need be no actual credence at all, and one can proceed in an experimental spirit, by the provisional adoption of a mere hypothesis. (One can assume the stance of the injunction: “Allez en avant et la foi vous viendra.”) A methodologically motivated presumption in favor of ontological systematicity accordingly does not involve us in any vicious or vitiating circularity. It is a regulative or action-guiding practical presumption that governs our philosophical praxis and not a constitutive or worlddescriptive principle that is at issue—in the first instance at any rate.7 On this basis we are to proceed until further notice as though nature in fact exhibited those modes of systematicity needed for systematizing inquiry to bear fruit. Its legitimation is a matter of descriptive fact at the substantive level and is something that must come later on, as a product rather than a presupposition. NOTES 1

William James, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), p. 109.

2

Michael Dummett, “Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1956-59): 159-170 (see, p. 160); reptd. in Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). C. S. Peirce sometimes asserted a similar view.

3

This aspect of objectivity was justly stressed in the “Second Analogy” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, though his discussion rests on ideas already contemplated by Leibniz. See the Philosophische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, Vol. VII (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1890), pp. 319-20.

4

Further aspects of the systemic nature of truth are explored in the author’s The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).

5

John Kekes, The Nature of Philosophy (Totowa N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980), p. 196.

6

Some of these themes are also discussed upon Chapter 2 of the author’s Metaphilosophical Inquiries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

7

In another passage, Peirce seems to me to have come much closer to getting the matter right, by holding that the principles such as those of the uniformity or systematicity of nature represents no so much a substantive claim as an action-guiding insinuation: “Now you know how a malicious person who wishes to say something ill of another, prefers insinuation; that is, he speaks so vaguely that he suggests a great deal while he expressly says nothing at all. In this way he avoids being con-

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NOTES

fronted by fact. It is the same with these principles of scientific inference. . . . They rather insinuate a uniformity than state is. And as insinuation always expresses the state of feeling of the person who uses it rather than anything in its object, so we may suppose these principles express rather the scientific attitudes than a scientific result.” (Collected Papers, Vol. VII, sect. 7.132.)

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Chapter VI/3 PHILOSOPHY AND PARADOX 1. THE TASK OF PHILOSOPHY

P

hilosophy has no distinctive subject matter. For everything is relevant to its concerns, its task being to provide a sort of expositio mundi, a traveler’s guidebook to reality at large. The mission of philosophy is to ask, and to answer in a rational and disciplined way, all those great questions about life in this world that people wonder about in their reflective moments. In the first book of the Metaphysics, Aristotle tells us that “it is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize, wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g., about the origin of the universe” (982b10). Philosophy thus strives after that systematic integration of knowledge that the sciences initially promised but have never managed to deliver because of their increasing division of labor and never-ending pursuit of specialized detail. Dealing with being and value in general—with possibility, actuality, and worth—the concerns of philosophy are universal and all embracing; philosophy is too inclusive and all encompassing to have a delimited range of concern. Nor has it a distinctive method, for its procedures of inquiry and reasoning are too varied and diversified to give it an exclusive identity. What characterizes philosophy is its mission of grappling with the “big questions” regarding man, the world, and his place within its scheme of things, making use in this endeavor of whatever means come to hand. Neither individually nor collectively do we humans begin our cognitive quest empty handed or with a tabula rasa. Be it as single individuals or as entire generations, we always begin with a diversified cognitive heritage, falling heir to that great mass of information and misinformation that is the “accumulated wisdom” of our predecessors—or those among them to whom we choose to listen. But just what sort of things constitutes “the data” of philosophy? They include:

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(1) common-sense beliefs, common knowledge, and what have been “the ordinary convictions of the plain man” since time immemorial; (2) the facts (or purported facts) afforded by the science of the day; the views of well-informed “experts” and “authorities”; (3) the lessons we derive from our dealings with the world in everyday life; (4) the received opinions that constitute the world view of the day; views that accord with the “spirit of the times” and the ambient convictions of one’s cultural context; (5) tradition, inherited lore, and ancestral wisdom (including religious tradition); (6) the “teachings of history” as best we can discern them. No plausible source of information about how matters stand in the world fails to bring grist to philosophy’s mill. The whole range of the (purportedly) established “facts of experience” furnishes the extraphilosophical inputs for our philosophizing-the materials, as it were, for our philosophical reflections. The “commonplaces” (endoxa) that lie at the root of philosophizing may well of course also include certain parochial commitments that represent not (purported) facts, but what is explicitly acknowledged as mere beliefs of the group—what “we Americans” or “we liberals” believe. These parochial commitments can be put aside for present purposes. It is not that they are unimportant—quite the reverse. But it lies deep in the nature of the philosophical enterprise that it should endeavor (at any rate) to “proceed with the limits of reason alone.” We need not, of course, accept all these “givens” as certified facts that must be endorsed wholly and unqualifiedly. Every datum is defeasible— anything might in the final analysis have to be abandoned, whatever its source: science, common sense, common knowledge, the whole lot. Nothing is immune to criticism and possible rejection; everything is potentially at risk. One recent theorist writes: “No philosophical, or any other, theory can provide a view which violates common sense and remain logically consistent. For the truth of common sense is assumed by all theories. . . .

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This necessity to conform to common sense establishes a constraint upon the interpretations philosophical theories can offer.”1 Stuff and nonsense. The philosophical landscape is littered with theories that tread common sense underfoot. There are no sacred cows in philosophy—common sense least of all. As philosophy goes about its work of rendering our beliefs coherent, something to which we are deeply attached will have to give, and we can never say at the outset where the blow will or will not fall. Systemic considerations may in the end lead to difficulties at any point. All the data should, however, be treated with consideration. They are all “plausible,” exerting some degree of cognitive pressure and having some claim upon us. They may not constitute irrefutably established knowledge, but nevertheless they do have some degree of epistemic merit, and given our cognitive situation, it would be very convenient if they turned out to be true. The philosopher cannot simply turn his back on these data without further ado. Still, these data are by no means unproblematic. The constraint they put upon us is not peremptory and absolute-they do not represent certainties to which we must cling at all costs. What we owe these data, in the final analysis, is respect, not acceptance. Even the plainest of “plain facts” can be questioned, as indeed some of them must be. For these data constitute a plethora of fact (or purported fact) so ample as to threaten to sink any ship that carries so heavy a cargo. The difficulty is and always has been—that the data of philosophy afford an embarrassment of riches. They engender a situation of cognitive overcommitment within which inconsistencies arise. They are not only manifold and diversified but invariably yield discordant results. Taken altogether in their grand totality, the data are inconsistent. The rigoristic standards of science mean that the data will always underdetermine theories in this domain. But in philosophy the matter is different. The relaxed standards of philosophical datahood mean that the data will overdetermine theories. The data with regard to philosophical issues are generally inconsistent; the plausible contentions that constitute “accumulated knowledge” contain such a diversity of claims and assertions that they become incompatible. As we set out to answer our questions about the world, we begin in a condition of cognitive dissonance in which the claims that call upon our allegiance are inconsistent with one another. Our initial belief inclinations engender cognitive overcommitment, seeing that the answers we deem it convenient and promising in some contexts conflict with those we embrace in others.

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Just here lies the crux. Two injunctions regarding the mission of rational inquiry set the stage for philosophy: (1) Answer the questions! Say enough to satisfy your curiosity about things. (2) Keep your commitments consistent! Don’t say so much that some parts are in conflict with others. There is a tension between these two imperatives-between the factors of commitment and consistency. We find ourselves in the discomfiting situation of cognitive conflict, with different tendencies of thought pulling in divergent directions. The task is to make sense of our discordant cognitive commitments and to impart coherence and unity to them insofar as possible. Philosophizing always moves through two stages. At first there is a “presystemic” stage, where we confront a group of tentative commitments, all viewed as more or less acceptable, but which are collectively untenable because of their incompatibility. Subsequently there comes a “systematizing” phase of facing up to the inconsistency of the raw material represented by the “data.” And this becomes a matter of eliminative pruning and tidying up where our commitments have been curtailed to the point where consistency has been restored. Philosophy roots in contradiction—in conflicting beliefs. Philosophical problems arise in a cognitive setting, not wholly of our making, that is rationally intolerable; the overall set of contentions we deem plausible lead us into logical inconsistencies. The cognitive situation is always deeply problematic in its initial and presystemic state. The impetus to philosophizing arises when we step back to look critically at what we know (or think we know) about the world and try to make sense of it. We want an account that can optimally accommodate the data-recognizing that it cannot, in the end, accept them all at face value. Philosophy does not furnish us with new ground-level facts; it endeavors to systematize and coordinate the old into coherent structures by whose means we can meaningfully address our larger questions. The prime mover to philosophizing is the urge to systemic adequacy-to bringing consistency, coherence, and rational order into the framework of what we accept. Its work is a matter of the disciplining of our cognitive commitments in order to make overall sense of them. And so the demands of rational consistency come to the forefront.2

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The key task of philosophy is thus to impart systemic order into the domain of relevant data; to render them coherent and, above all, consistent. One might, in fact, define philosophy as the rational systematization of our thoughts on basic issues-of the “first principles” of our understanding of the world and our place within it. We become involved in philosophy in our endeavor to make systemic sense of the extraphilosophical “facts”— when we try to answer those big questions by systematizing what we think we know about the world, pushing our “knowledge” to its ultimate conclusions and combining items usually kept in convenient separation. Philosophy is the policeman of thought, as it were, the agent for maintaining law and order in our cognitive endeavors. The question “Should we philosophize?” accordingly obtains a straightforward answer. The impetus to philosophy lies in our very nature as rational inquirers: as beings who have questions, demand answers, and want these answers to be cogent ones. Cognitive problems arise when matters fail to meet our expectations, and the expectation of rational order is the most fundamental of them all. The fact is simply that we must philosophize; it is a situational imperative for a rational creature. 2. ANTINOMIES AND COGNITIVE OVERCOMMITMENT We have already considered such aporetics situations as that of the aporetics cluster: (1) All knowledge is grounded in observation (the key thesis of empiricism). (2) We can only observe matters of empirical fact. (3) From empirical facts we cannot infer values; ergo, value claims cannot be grounded in observation (the fact/value divide). (4) Knowledge about values is possible (value cognitivism). There are four ways out of this box: (1)-rejection: There is also nonobservational, namely, intuitive or instinctive, knowledge-specifically of matters of value (intuitionism; moral-sense theories).

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(2)-rejection: Observation is not only sensory but also affective (sympathetic, empathetic). It thus can yield not only factual information but value information as well (value sensibility theories). (3)-rejection: While we cannot deduce values from empirical facts, we can certainly infer them from the facts, by various sorts of plausible reasoning, such as “inference to the best explanation” (values-as-fact theories). (4)-rejection: Knowledge about values is impossible (positivism, value skepticism. Committed to (1), empiricist thinkers thus see themselves driven to choose between the three last alternatives in developing their positions in the theory of value. Given an aporetic cluster, there is on the one hand substantial reason to maintain all of these collectively incompatible theses, because each “has much to be said for it.” On the other hand, the bare demand of logical consistency requires the elimination of some of these theses. The whole of the cluster is too much-something has to give way. If we have firm confidence in our reasonings, then it follows by the inferential principle of modus tollens that whenever a belief is rejected, one must also call into question some of the various (collectively compelling) reasons on whose basis this belief had been adopted. For example, if one rejects free will, then one must also reject one of the following (presumptive) initial reasons for espousing freedom of the will: “People are usually responsible for their acts,” “People are only morally responsible for those acts that are done freely.” The rejection of an accepted thesis at once turns the family of reasons for its adoption into an aporetic cluster. Apory, once present, tends to spread like wildfire through any rational system. 3. ANTINOMIES STRUCTURE THE ISSUES It lies in the logical nature of things that there are always several distinct exits from inconsistency. Whenever we confront an antinomy, no matter which particular resolution we ourselves may favor, and no matter how firmly we persuade ourselves of its merits, the fact remains that there will

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also be other ways of dealing with the inconsistency. As far as abstract rationality is concerned, distinct alternative resolutions always remain open—resolutions leading to contrary and inconsistent results. An aporetic cluster is thus an invitation to conflict: its resolution always yields one or another of a coordinated group of mutually discordant doctrines (positions, teachings, doxa). The cluster accordingly sets the stage for divergent “schools of thought” and provides the bone of contention for an ongoing controversy among them. A family of inconsistent theses spans a “doctrinal space” that encompasses a variety of interrelated albeit incompatible positions. An interesting illustration from the domain of epistemology is afforded by the so-called “Münchhausen trilemma,” based on the following aporetic cluster:3 (1) We do sometimes have rational beliefs. (2) To have a rational belief we must have good reasons that warrant its acceptance. (3) A good reason for a rationally held belief must itself be (pre-) warranted—it cannot afford a good reason for something if we do not have in hand a good reason for accepting it itself. (4) A good reason for a belief must be less problematic than the belief itself. (5) We do not obtain a good reason if the regress of warranting reasons is nonterminating—that is, goes on ad infinitum. Overall we have an inconsistent group here. Theses (1)-(4) leave open only the prospect of an infinite (nonterminating) regress, which (5) rules out; while (1)-(3) plus (5) leave open only the prospect of a cyclic regress, which (4) rules out. As long as we both reject skepticism by adopting (1) and reject irrationalism by adopting (2), it follows that there are only three exits from this aporetic inconsistency:

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(3)-rejection: It is not necessary for a good reason to be prewarranted, because certain beliefs can be postwarranted; warrant can be reciprocal and cyclic (coherentism). (4)-rejection: A belief need not be granted to something less problematic, for some beliefs can be self-granted; they can be self-evidentiated, so that this regress of reasons can terminate in a self-evident basis (foundationalism). (5)-rejection: We simply accept the prospect of a infinite regress, insisting that this does not block justification since it need never be completed; it is simply a matter of going on as long as one needs to (regress-acceptance). An interesting web of epistemological theories can be spun out through the relatively simple exercise of working one’s way out of the aporetic inconsistency of the preceding cluster. Their grounding in such aporetic situations endows philosophical controversies with a certain definitiveness of structure. The various ways of resolving a cognitive dilemma present a finitely diversified structure of interrelated situations—a manageably modest inventory of possibilities. Though positions on an issue will differ, they will neither vary without limit nor run off into rationally unmanageable variety. The issues are such that the alternative positions group themselves into a natural structure that endows the problem area with an organic unity. They map out a family of (finitely few) alternatives that span the entire spectrum of possibilities for exiting from inconsistency. Any possible position on the issue is thus bound to be a variant of one or another of a manageable (indeed generally very small) list of alternatives. And the history of philosophy is generally sufficiently fertile and diversified that all the alternatives—all possible permutations and combinations for problem resolution—are in fact tried out somewhere along the line. Philosophical positions are not discrete and separate units that stand in splendid isolation. They are articulated and developed in reciprocal interaction. But their natural mode of interaction is not by way of mutual supportiveness. (How could it be, given the mutual exclusiveness of conflicting doctrines?) Rather, competition and controversy prevail. It follows that the prospect of pluralism is a necessary feature of philosophy—rooted deep in the aporetic nature of the discipline. Insofar as

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philosophical doctrines resolve aporetic difficulties, every position must of necessity have its rivals that disagree with it in fundamental respects. Aporetic situations just do not allow for the idea of a “common denominator” thesis that is retained by all of the rival theories. There are simply no “basis-invariant” positions in philosophy—doctrines that hold good no matter which approach we may choose to adopt. Any aporetic thesis can be sacrificed in the interests of achieving consistency—and in general it eventuates that all possibilities are actually tried. All of the permutations and combinations for resolving inconsistency find their adherents: all changes are rung—all of the variable elements get varied. The search of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans (Hippias) for a “natural” belief system based on what is common to different groups (espousing different doctrines, customs, moralities, religions) is of no avail because no single element remains unaffected as one moves across the range of variation. Given that rival “schools” resolve an aporetic cluster in different ways, the area of agreement between them, though always there, is bound to be too narrow to prevent conflict. The problem structure arises from the cognitive overdetermination of inconsistency, but whatever resolution is arrived at is simply underdetermined by the shared, mutually agreed commitments. From time to time philosophers propose a revived variant of the old Stoic program of ethics as they search for points of universal agreement among the moral codes of different cultures and societies.4 But the decisive shortcoming of such an approach is that in philosophy there just are no such universal invariants. By the time philosophers have come and gone, everything that can be varied has been varied; by and large, there are no invariant points of universal consensus. 4. CAN DIFFERENT SCHOOLS DEBATE THE SAME ISSUES? The gregarious nature of philosophizing deserves comment. In antiquity we have Aristotelians and Platonists, Stoics and Epicureans; in the middle ages, Thomists and Augustinians and Scotists; in modern times rationalists and empiricists, and so on. That philosophers fall into such doctrinal brotherhoods as “schools of thought” and “traditions” is readily accounted for by the present theory. Since philosophical doctrines issue from the untying of aporetic knots, only a limited number of solutions can be available. Philosophers thus fall into groupings that are united by an affinity of doctrinal fundamentals. It seems a fact of life that there are always different schools

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of thought on “the same” issues-different approaches to resolving “the same” problems. This view meets opposition from several quarters. Some theorists have argued that conflicting philosophical doctrines represent positions that are incommensurable so that philosophers share no issues in common. They hold incomparable views; they cannot disagree and cannot agree either. Different doctrinal positions are totally disconnected; different theories are incommensurable—they cannot be expressed in common units of thought. Philosophical theses arise (only) in context and cannot be lifted out of their contexts without a vitiating distortion. There are and can be no universal, all-inclusive contexts: all contexts are situation specific. Each thinker must be understood on his own ground, in his own terms—there is no question of thinkers sharing theses or theories, no position-detached basis for a comparison or contrast. There is no prospect of disagreement (or even agreement) across the divide of different theory commitments, because there is no real communication at all across these borders. Philosophical positions thus occupy separate and disconnected thought worlds. Adherents of different theories literally “talk a different language,” so that when one makes an assertion and the other a denial it is not the same thing that is at issue. In the English-language orbit, the prime spokesman for such a view was R. G. Collingwood: If there were a permanent problem P, we could ask “What did Kant, or Leibniz, or Berkeley, think about P?” and if that question could be answered, we could then go on to ask “was Kant, or Leibniz, or Berkeley, right in what he thought about P?” But what is thought to be a permanent problem P is really a number of transitory problems, PI, P2, P3, . . . whose individual peculiarities are blurred by the historical myopia of the person who lumps them together under the name P.5

A cognate line of approach is common among intellectual historians. They also often maintain that every thinker stands wholly by himself, that every teaching is ultimately distinctive, every thesis so impregnated with the characteristic thought style of its proponent that no two thinkers ever discuss “the same” proposition. As one writer puts it: As soon as we see that there is no determinate idea to which various writers contributed, but only a variety of statements made with the [same] words by a variety of different agents with a variety of intentions, then what we are

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seeing is equally that there is no history of the idea [as such] to be written, but only a history necessarily focused on the various agents who used the idea, and/or their varying situations and intentions of using it.6

Conditions of context of place, time, education, interest, and so on, separate thinkers form one another by insuperable barriers. J. H. Randall, Jr., has formulated this view with stark directness: The problems of one age are ultimately irrelevant to those of another. . . . What bond is there between the aims and problems of an Athenian poet, like Plato; a Roman senator, like Cicero; a medieval monk, like Thomas Aquinas; a seventeenth-century scientific pioneer, like Descartes; a German professor, like Kant. . . . The philosophical problems of one age, like the cultural conflicts out of which they arise, are irrelevant to those of another.7

There are thus no “schools of thought” that share commitments and no “perennial issues” treated in common by successive generations of thinkers. Different thinkers occupy different thought worlds. Disagreement— indeed even comprehension—across doctrinal divides becomes impossible: the thought of every thinker stands apart in splendid isolation. Discordant philosophers can never be said to contribute to the same ongoing issues: “There are simply no perennial problems in philosophy: there are only individual answers to individual questions, with as many different answers as there are questions, and as many different questions as there are questioners.”8 Philosophers of different persuasions are separated from each other by one unbridgeable gulf. But this position exaggerates mutual incomprehension to the point of absurdity. Of course, incomprehension can and sometimes does occur across reaches of time or space when major conceptual dissimilarities are involved. But this is not generally the case. Philosophy is a matter of publicly accessible inquiry. If he did not view his doctrines and their supporting arguments as public objects communally available and appraisable—a thinker would be doing something very different from philosophizing. To lock each philosopher into the cell of some purported thought world of his own is to lose sight of the very point of the venture as a cognitive enterprise. Philosophical positions evolve dialectically, in mutual interaction. “Some are designed to substantiate others—or, more commonly, to disagree with them. Aristotle is deliberately seeking to criticize and replace Plato’s theory of ideas; Kant is explicitly endeavoring to refute Hume’s

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theory of causality. Different philosophies do not spring up in aseptic isolation; they evolve as rival solutions to shared problems. In general, philosophers fail to agree not because they do not understand each other’s views but because they reject them. Determinists and indeterminists do not disagree about what causality is, but about its pervasiveness. Skeptics and cognitivists need not disagree about the idea of knowledge, but about its availability. Statists and libertarians do not clash about what desires individuals have, but about the weight these should carry in public policy deliberations. All such controversies flow from agreement about the range or jurisdiction or desirability of certain factors with respect to whose nature there is little or no disagreement. 5. CONSEQUENCES OF INCOMMENSURABILITY Rigid adherence to the incommensurability line of philosophical holism simply destroys the subject at one blow. If the conflicting views of philosophers cannot be brought into touch—if they are indeed incommensurable, with each theory enclosed in a world of its own—then they become altogether inaccessible. We all become windowless Leibnizian monads, but bereft of the benefit of a preestablished harmony. A dogmatic insistence on mutual incomprehension is unprofitable and self-defeating. Contact of some sort is essential. It we cannot in principle relate the thought of distinct philosophers by way of identity and similarity, if we cannot say that here they are discussing the same (or similar) questions and that there they are maintaining the same (or similar) answers, then we shall be in bad straits indeed. For if we cannot relate X’s thought to Y’s, we cannot relate it to ours either. Without the prospect of shared problems and theses considered in common by diverse thinkers, all hope of interpretation and comprehension is lost. Every thinker—indeed each one of us—would be locked within the impenetrable walls of his own thought world. If one philosophical mind cannot connect with another, then we ourselves cannot connect with anyone either. In the absence of relatability to other times and places, the historian himself would be faced with issues that he is incapable of dealing with. If Kant cannot address Hume’s problems, neither can Collingwood. If conceptual contact across the divide of conflicting beliefs were impossible, then, given the diversity of their views, all philosophers would be condemned to mutual incomprehension. Were it the case that, as a matter of

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principle, X would not come to grips with a rival theorist Y by way of agreement or disagreement, then we ourselves would be condemned to philosophical solipsism—unable to come to make a rational assessment of the ideas of any other thinker due to an inability to make conceptual contact. If philosophers cannot speak to one another, then they cannot speak to us either. Any prospect of communal discussion of shared issues is at once destroyed. Deprived of the life-sustaining element of intercommunication, the subject dies a swift death. Philosophical positions make sense only insofar as they deny something: omnis affirmatio est negatio. They claim truth by denying falsity; they assert saving insight by attacking dangerous error. To this end there must be contrasts. If one denies the very existence of rival positions and views them as literally inconceivable, there can be nothing substantial to one’s own view. Where there is no enemy to attack, there is no position to defend. To see rival positions as incomprehensible is to demean and devalue one’s own; if opposing positions were conceptually ungraspable in their very natures, there would be little use in taking a stance that precludes them. Where no possible rival position has the least plausibility, advocacy of a particular doctrine as the solely “appropriate” position becomes rather pointless. To deny the possibility of philosophical disagreement on grounds of incommensurability is to abandon the enterprise as a meaningful cognitive project from the very outset. Only if disagreement is possible does the enterprise make sense. To be sure, we can never flatly say without the further ado of closer scrutiny that X and Y mean the same thing by the same words or even by the same sentences. What they mean and what they maintain may well need careful examination and analysis. It should be recognized that when we maintain relations of similarity and difference between the assertions of X and Y, we are bound to do so on the basis of comparisons made within the framework of our own constructions and interpretations of their positions. Our own thought about their thought is (and in the very nature of things has to be) the tertium quid that affords the vehicle of relation. Relations of doctrinal sameness or similarity are not transparent facts but represent theories of ours that must emerge from our studies and analyses. But there is—and can be—no reason of principle that we cannot cogently maintain that here and there X and Y are discussing substantially the same issue and maintaining con- or dis-cordant positions regarding substantially

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the same questions. In sum, the prospects of concord and discord in philosophy cannot be dismissed on the basis of general principles. Philosophers concern themselves with ongoing problems—problems that agitate not only their contemporaries but often as not their predecessors and successors as well.9 Philosophy, after all, is a matter of publicly accessible inquiry. And the basic problems with which philosophers deal are public property, so that the inquiries have to be conducted in the public domain by means of generally available resources. After all, philosophers are always would-be problem solvers, and at some level of generality they always share their problems with others. And the issue now before us itself affords a clear illustration of this circumstance. Our central problem—the persistence of philosophical conflict and diversity—has been on the agenda of philosophy since the time of the Skeptics of classical antiquity and is a perennial problem that has agitated philosophical thinkers in every age. A further argument against the prospect of real disagreements also deserves consideration: the thesis that adequate understanding requires actual agreement. If this were indeed so, then no thesis or contention could be common property of thinkers who do not have common views. To understand and interpret the views of another philosopher we would now have to suppose that he is by and large correct. To understand Plotinus we would have to accept his whole system in matters of theory and doctrinehypostheses, emanations, categorical machinery, and all-lock, stock, and barrel. Only if we were prepared to grant the fundamental correctness of his position would we be able to understand a philosopher. But this is clearly a far-fetched and untenable idea. The understandingrequires-agreement doctrine presents a Hobson’s choice between unacceptable alternatives. For it confronts us with the unpleasant dilemma that, as regards the declarations of Parmenides or Berkeley or any philosopher whose views we may deem unpalatable, we have the choice between acceptance as essentially correct on the one hand and dismissal as wholly unintelligible on the other. Dissent from (for example) the Eleatic denial of the reality of change would mean that our view of this theoretical stance must be that is at bottom incomprehensible gibberish and cannot be that it is simply wrong. Fortunately, however, this is not how the matter actually stands. The doctrine that understanding requires agreement is gravely defective in giving insufficient weight to the crucial distinction between what we take to be true on our own account and what we take to be their view of

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the truth. The latter can, of course, differ radically from the former. And it can do so without becoming unintelligible as long as we are able to adopt a “suspension of disbelief” and form some view of how others transact their cognitive business in ways suppositionally different from our own. Hypothetical reasoning and belief-contravening assumptions are the key here. There is indeed a link between intelligibility and truth, but “the truth” at issue has to be neither the real truth nor what one inclines to accept as such, but a merely putative truth to which one can perfectly well have recourse in the hypothetical mode of supposition, assumption, or conjecture. One can unproblematically address the question of what the situation would be if certain of one’s beliefs were wrong. Hence one can come to understand the position of someone who maintains that this is so. Understanding does not presuppose agreement. Accordingly, there is no good reason to think that bilaterally contemplated theses never provide bones of contention across doctrinal divides—that different schools of thinkers cannot disagree about mutually controverted issues. And this is most fortunate. The ultimate consequence of the incommensurability doctrine would be to block any prospect of that dialetical development which is in fact the lifeblood of philosophy. For the philosopher is impelled to his labors precisely because he is aware that tempting and plausibleideas combining to how one might lead the unwary into error. 6. WHY NOT SIMPLY “LIVE WITH INCONSISTENCY”? THE IMPERATIVE OF COGNITIVE RATIONALITY The maintenance of consistency is philosophy’s key task. But is consistency itself not simply a mere ornament—a dispensable luxury? Rousseau wrote to one of his correspondents that he did not wish to be shackled by narrow-minded consistency—he proposed to write whatever seemed sensible at the time. In a writer of belles lettres, this sort of flexibility may seem refreshingly open minded. But such an approach is not available to a philosopher. Philosophy in its very nature is a venture of systematization and rationalization—of rendering matters intelligible and accessible to rational thought. Its concern is for the rational order and systemic coherence of our commitments. The commitment to rational coherence is a part of what makes philosophy the enterprise it is. But why not embrace contradiction in a spirit of openness rather than flee from it?10 The answer is that rejecting inconsistencies is the only road

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to comprehension and understanding. To the extent that we do not resolve an issue in one definite way to the exclusion of others, we do not resolve it at all. Only a coherent, alternative-excluding resolution is a resolution at all. Philosophy, after all, is a matter of inquiry. It roots in human curiosity—in the “fact of life” that we have questions and want rationally satisfying answers to them. We are not content with information about which answers people would like to have (psychologism) nor with information about what sort of answers are available (possibility mongering). What we want is rational guidance to which answers to adopt—which are to be accepted as correct or at any rate plausible. The presence of an inconsistency in the formulation of a position is selfdestructive. To respond “yes and no” is in effect to offer no response at all; answers that don’t exclude manage to achieve no useful inclusions either. Only where some possibilities are denied is anything asserted: “All determination is negation” (omnis affirmatio est negatio). A logically inconsistent theory of something is thereby self-defeating not just because it “affirms an impossibility” but because it provides no information on the matter at issue. An inconsistent “position” is no position at all. Keeping on good terms with all the possibilities requires that we embrace none. But the point of having a position at all is to have some answer to some question or other. If we fail to resolve the problem in favor of one possibility or another, we do not have an answer. To whatever extent we fail to resolve the issue in favor of one alternative or another, we also fail to arrive at some answer to the question. Ubiquitous yea-saying is socially accommodating but informatively unhelpful. (Compare Aristotle’s defense of the law of noncontradiction in Book Gamma of the Metaphysics.) As long as and to the extent that inconsistencies remain, our goal of securing information on achieving understanding is defeated. To Alice’s insistence that “one can’t believe impossible things,” the White Queen replied: “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” But even with practice, the task is uncomfortable and unsatisfying. A profound commitment to the demands of rationality is a thread that runs through the whole fabric of our philosophizing; the dedication to consistency is the most fundamental imperative of reason. “Keep your commitments consistent” is philosophy’s ruling injunction. We don’t want just answers, but reasoned answers, defensible answers that square with what we are going to say in

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other contexts and on other occasions. And this means that we must go back and clean out the Augean stable of our cognitive inclinations. To endorse a discordant diversity of claims is in the end not to enrich one’s position through a particularly generous policy of acceptance, but to impoverish it. To refuse to discriminate is to go empty handed, without answers to our questions. It is not a particularly elevated way of doing philosophy—but a way of not doing philosophy at all, of evading the problems of the field, of abandoning the traditional project of philosophy as rational problem solving. We are compelled to systematize our knowledge into a coherent whole by regimenting what we accept in the light of principles of rationality. Philosophizing is a work of reason; we want our problem resolutions to be backed by good reasons—reasons whose bearing will doubtless not be absolute and definitive but will, at any rate, be as compelling as is possible in the circumstances. Reasoning and argumentation are thus the lifeblood of philosophy. The case might be different if philosophy were a strictly practical endeavor instead of a theoretical one. In engineering, for example, or even science, concurrent use of inconsistent theories might be justified on pragmatic grounds—it might effectively guide our interactions with nature.11 In philosophy this consolation is denied us. The aims of the enterprise are fundamentally cognitive, not practical, and from the cognitive standpoint, if we do not have a coherent doctrine, we have nothing. As this line of thought indicates, two basic goals set the scene for philosophical inquiry: (1) the urge to know, to have answers to questions, to enhance our cognitive resources, to enlarge our information, to extend the range of accepted theses, to fill up an intellectual vacuum. But this in the nature of the case—given the character of its “data”—inexorably leads to overcommitment, to informational overcrowding, to inconsistency. And now comes (2), the urge to rationality: to have a coherent theory, to keep our commitments consistent. The first impetus is expansive and ampliative, the second contractive and eliminative. Having surveyed the terrain, we want to create an orderly map of it. We want to be able to find our way about by means of the instrumentality of critical intelligence. But is not the impetus to knowledge (or at any rate to reasonable answers) simply a pointless exercise—an irrational fetish? May not our quest for “information” prove to be something we cannot ultimately justify? For one thing, even if the “quest for knowledge” were mere fetishism, it still remains irrevocably ours; it is something to which we, being the sort of creatures we are, stand immovably committed. We are so constituted

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that we cannot be fully content where we do not feel “at home,” and we cannot comfortably feel at home in a world we do not understand. The need for understanding has a deeper rationale. For there is good reason indeed why we humans pursue knowledge: it is our evolutionary destiny. We are neither numerous and prolific (like the ant and the termite), nor tough and aggressive (like the shark). Weak and vulnerable creatures, we are constrained to make our evolutionary way in the world by the use of brainpower. It is by knowledge and not by hard shells or sharp claws or keen teeth that we have carved out our niche in evolution’s scheme of things. In situations of cognitive frustration and bafflement we cannot function effectively as the sort of creature nature has compelled us to become. Confusion and ignorance even in such “remote” and “abstruse” matters as those with which philosophy deals—yield dismay and discomfort. The old saying is perfectly true: philosophy bakes no bread. But it is no less true that man does not live by bread alone. The physical side of his nature that requires man to eat, drink, and be merry is just one side of his nature. Man is also homo quaerens: he needs nourishment for his mind as urgently as he needs nourishment for his body. We seek knowledge not only because we wish but because we must. NOTES 1

John Kekes, The Nature of Philosophy (Totowa, 1980), p. 196.

2

This view of philosophy accords closly with the spirit of Aristotle’s description of the enterprise in the opening section of book beta of the Metaphysics. with its stress on the centrality of apories.

3

On this trilemma see Hans Albert, Traktat über Kritische Vermunft (Tübingen, 1968).

4

Cf. Hector-Neri Castaneda, On Philosophical Method (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), p. 20, and “Thinking and the Structure of the World,” Philosophia, 4 (1974): 3-40.

5

R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford, 1939), p. 69.

6

Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969): 3-53 (see p. 38).

7

John H. Randall, Jr., The Career of Philosophy, Vol. I (New York, 1962), p. 7.

8

Ibid., p. 50.

9

John Kekes has put the salient point well:

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NOTES

[To understand him properly, we must] go to the heart of a philosopher’s concern: to the problem he wanted to solve. Plato, Hobson, Locke, and Popper are all concerned with the nature and justification of political authority. The stoics, Spinoza, Kant, and Sartre, all have the analysis and understanding of individual freedom at the core of their ethical thought. Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Frege, and Quine share the problem of logical necessity. Their motivation, vocabulary, rhetoric, and situations differ. But the problems are the same. . . . In sum, historical understanding makes it possible to see the point of a philosopher’s work by acquainting us with the problem the philosopher was trying to solve. Without this understanding one cannot judge the work, because one cannot judge whether the problem he was trying to solve has been solved. (The Nature of Philosophy [Totowa, NJ; 1976], p. 171). 10

Paul K. Feyerabend embraces the concurrent use of mutually inconsistent scientific theories within a “theoretical pluralism.” See his essay “Problems of Empiricism” in Beyond the Edge of Certainty, ed. R. G. Colodny (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1965), pp. 145260 (see esp. pp. 164-68).

11

To be sure, this reflects a particular cognitive-value orientation. The matter would stand differently if, adopting Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (1845), one took the line: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to change it.”

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Chapter VI/4 HOLISTIC EXPLANATION AND THE IDEA OF A GRAND UNIFIED THEORY 1. GLOBAL ISSUES

I

f the world is to be substantially intelligible then it will have to afford its intelligent creatures the prospect of securing rationally satisfactory answers to questions about its own nature and modus operandi—be these questions large or small. Let us for the moment focus upon the large. Global issues are represented by “the big questions” that provide the ultimate focus of inquiring reason’s agenda. We of course need answers to many questions of detail. But above and beyond all this there lie such large-scale synoptically holistic issues as: • Why is there anything at all? • Why are things-in-general as they indeed are? • Why are the laws of nature as they are? • Why is reality understandable at all? Any rational inquiring being will in the end face the challenge of achieving some understanding of reality-at-large. And so the dream of an ultimate theory that “explains it all” has entranced philosophers and scientists throughout the centuries. And it continues to beguile physicists in our own day in the form of an allencompassing “theory of everything.” For a glint in the eyes of many physicists nowadays is the vista of a single overarching “grand unified theory” that achieves a synoptic explanatory unification of the laws of operation of the fundamental forces at work in physical nature: electromagnetism plus the weak and strong nuclear forces, as well as—ultimately— gravitational force and perhaps also a somewhat diffuse force of symmetry tropism.1

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What is at issue here is thus the ideal of a single, unified principle of explanatory understanding that is at once all-embracingly comprehensive and also final in representing the end of the explanatory line. Such an “ultimate theory” will not (or need not) be claimed as chronologically ultimate in the sense of temporal finality through precluding any prospect of change and revision in the wake of scientific progress. It need not be final in the sense of being fixed for all time, once and for all, admitting no further readjustments and refinements and totally impervious to improvement in the light of further information. Rather, the theory must be final in the very different sense of providing answers all of the substantive questions we ask about the modus operandi of nature. Its purported ultimacy is strictly explanatory and thus hermeneutic rather than chronological. But does the hope for such an overarching theory make sense? 2. REDUCTIONISM: THE HUME-EDWARDS THESIS AND ITS DEFECTS One tempting way of reacting to these embarrassingly large scale, global issues is to reject them as such, and instead take the deflationary route of dividing them through disaggregation into their local components. Accordingly there are theorists who dismiss collectively global issues as such, and insist that all we can ever meaningfully address are the destributively disaggregated matters regarding the various particular constituents of the whole at issue. Such theorists advocate the philosophical doctrine of what has come to be called the Hume-Edwards Thesis to the effect that: When the existence (or nature) of every member of a set is explained, then the existence (or nature) of the set is thereby explained.2 But with holistic issues, this otherwise tempting tactic has its problems. After all, to explain the existence of the bricks is not automatically to achieve an explanation of the wall, seeing that this would call not just for explaining those bricks distributively but their collectively coordinated copresence in the structure at issue. Only by addressing the aggregate coordination of those bricks can we put onto the agenda the wall that they collectively constitute. In explaining the existence of the parts we do not really as yet explain the existence of the whole. The existence of the camels does not account for the existence of the caravan. Explaining an adequate account of a whole calls not just for explaining these constituents distributively but their collectively coordinated co-presence within the unifying structure at issue.

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Consider the following two claims: • If the existence of every member of a team is explained, the existence of that team is thereby explained. • If the existence of each member of a criminal gang is explained, the existence of that criminal gang is thereby explained. Both of these claims seem clearly false as they stand. One the other hand, however, contrast these two theses with the following cognate revisions: • If the existence of every member of a team as a member of that particular team is explained, then the existence of that team is thereby explained. • If the existence of every member of a criminal gang as a member of that particular criminal gang is explained, then the existence of that criminal gang is thereby explained. Both of these theses are indeed true—albeit only subject to that added qualification. Such examples convey a significant lesson. Wholes are not just aggregated items but also involve the coordinating structure of such aggregates. Or again, we can explain the functional modus operandi of the parts without explaining that of the whole that they collectively constitute. We can explain the bouncing of two otherwise identical balls without explaining (or even touching upon) the fact that they are bouncing in unison (or in opposition). And to get distributive explanation of the right sort in point of viability we will need a collective explanation of just the sort that those distributionists are seeking to avoid. Only by explicitly inserting the issue of collectivity into that distributive proliferation at hand would the HumeEdwards thesis be made tenable. But it is exactly that collectivization that the theory is designed to resist. And in ignoring this need for the explanation of coordinative copresence, the Hume-Edwards doctrine of distributive explanation is unable to bear the reductive burden that its advocates wish to place upon it. For a distributive explanation that is viable will now require a collective explanation of just the sort that those Hume-Edwards distributionists are seeking to avoid.

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In its present explanatory context, the Hume-Edwards approach is based on the decidedly erroneous idea that distributively individualized explanation accomplishes the job of collectively integrated explanation: that the former entails the latter. In the end, a logical fallacy is at issue here, an illicit conflation that overlooks the crucial distinction that emerges by comparing: Distributive explanation: (x)((x  S Š Fx) with Collective explanation: ((x)(x  S Š Fx) The lesson of these deliberations is that a synoptically holistic explanation has to proceed at a duly collectivized level. What is needed here is a unified, integral theory able to achieve the explanatory task on a collective rather than distributive basis. Distributive reductionism just does not meet the needs of the situation: there just are some large-scale issues that are irreducible and holistic through not admitting a dissolution into components. 3. REJECTIONISM: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE IDEA THAT THERE JUST IS NO ULTIMATE EXPLANATION AT ALL So much for explanatory reductionism. But what about an issueeliminative rejectionism that dismisses those holistic questions as entirely inappropriate? For perhaps the idea of an ultimate theory—a grand unified account—is utopian and unrealistic pathway opened up by Immanuel Kant who reassured roughly as follows: The demand for a rationale that accounts for reality-as-a-while is a totalitarian demand. As such it is illegitimate. All explanations require inputs. Explanation always proceeds by explaining one thing in terms of something else. There thus is no way to explain Reality, to give an account of everything-asa-while. For this sort of thing would either result in a vitiating regress or in a vicious circle.

Such a rejection of holistic explanation looks to be a promising basis for rejecting as just plain illegitimate the inherently plausible demand for an explanation of capital-R Reality-at-large. Nevertheless, it fails to achieve

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this result. For despite its insistence on the need for inputs, there indeed is an explanatory way forward. To see this, it is necessary to take a somewhat closer and critical look at the roadblock at issue—the principle that explanation can achieve adequacy only if it averts vitiating circularity by resorting to unexplained explainers. The key to the problem is that questions on the order of “Why is there anything at all?”, “Why are things in-general as they actually are?”, and “Why is the law structure of the world as it is?” cannot be answered within the standard causal framework. For causal explanations need inputs: they are essentially transformational (rather than formational pure and simple). They can address themselves to specific issues distributively and seriatim, but not collectively and holistically. If we persist in posing the sorts of global questions at issue, we cannot hope to resolve them in orthodox causal terms. Does this, however, mean that such questions are inevitably improper? Must the entire question of obtaining the (or a) reason for the existence of things simply be dismissed as illegitimate. It is just a mistake to ask for a causal explanation of existence per se; that in the light of closer scrutiny the explanatory “problem” vanishes as meaningless. In pursuing this idea, let us begin by considering if the question of existence might be invalidated by considerations whose roots lie deep in the conceptual nature of things. Consider the following discussion by C. G. Hempel: Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing? . . . But what kind of an answer could be appropriate? What seems to be wanted is an explanatory account which does not assume the existence of something or other. But such an account, I would submit, is a logical impossibility. For generally, the question “Why is it the case that A? is answered by “Because B is the case” . . . [A]n answer to our riddle which made no assumptions about the existence of anything cannot possibly provide adequate grounds. . . . The riddle has been constructed in a manner that makes an answer logically impossible. . .3

But this plausible line of argumentation has shortcomings. The most serious of these is that it fails to distinguish appropriately between the existence of things on the one hand and the obtaining of facts on the other,4 and supplementarily also between specifically substantival facts regarding ex-

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isting things, and nonsubstantival facts regarding states of affairs that are not dependent on the operation of preexisting things. We are confronted here with a principle of hypostatization to the effect that the reason for anything must ultimately always inhere in the operations of things. And at this point we come to a prejudice as deep-rooted as any in Western philosophy: the idea that things can only originate from things, that nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) in the sense that no thing can emerge from a thingless condition.5 Now, this somewhat ambiguous principle is perfectly unproblematic when construed as saying that if the existence of something real has a correct explanation at all, then this explanation must pivot on something that is really and truly so. Clearly, we cannot explain one fact without involving other facts to do the explaining. But the principle becomes highly problematic when construed in the manner of the precept that “things must come from things,” that substances must inevitably be in evoked to explain the existence of substances. For we then become committed to the thesis that everything in nature has an efficient cause in some other natural thing that is its causal source, its reason for being. This stance is implicit in Hempel’s argument. And it is explicit in much of the philosophical tradition. Hume, for one, insists that there is no feasible way in which an existential conclusion can be obtained from nonexistential premisses.6 And the principle is also supported by philosophers of a very different ilk on the other side of the channel-including Leibniz himself, who writes: [T]he sufficient reason [of contingent existence] . . . must be outside this series of contingent things, and must reside in a substance which is the cause of this series. . . .7

Such a view amounts to a thesis of genetic homogeneity which says (on analogy with the old but now rather obsolete principle that “life must come from life”) that “things must come from things,” or “stuff must come from stuff,” or “substance must come from substance.” What, after all, could be more plausible than the precept that only real (existing) causes can have real (existing) effects? But despite its appeal, this principle has grave problems. It presupposes that there must be a type-homogeneity between cause and effect on the lines of the ancient Greek principle that “like must come from like.” This highly dubious principle of genetic homogeneity has taken hard knocks in the course of modern science. Matter can come from energy, and living or-

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ganisms from complexes of inorganic molecules. And if the principle fails with matter and life, need it hold for substance as such? The claim that it does so would need a very cogent defense. None has been forthcoming to date. Is it indeed true that only things can engender things? Why need a ground of change always inhere in a thing rather than root in a nonsubstantival “condition of things-in-general”? Must substance inevitably arise from substance? Even to state such a principle is in effect to challenge its credentials. For why must the explanation of facts rest in the operation of things? To be sure, fact-explanations must have inputs (all explanations must). Granted, in matters of explanation, facts must root in facts. But why thing-existential ones? A highly problematic bit of metaphysics is involved here. Dogmas regarding explanatory homogeneity aside, there is no discernible reason why an existential fact cannot be grounded in nonexistential ones, and why the existence of substantial things cannot be explained on the basis of some nonsubstantival circumstance or principle whose operations can constrain existence in something of the way in which the relationships of law-specifying equations can constrain nonzero solutions. Once we give up the principle of genetic homogeneity—and thus abandon the idea that existing things must originate in existing things, we remove the key prop of the idea that asking for an explanation of things-in-general is a logically inappropriate demand. Given the prospect of explaining things in terms of laws and principles and conditions—of accounting for concreta via abstraction, in sum—the footing of the rejectionist approach is gravely undermined. There are, of course, other routes to rejectionism. One of them turns on the doctrine of Kant’s Antinomy that it is flat-out illegitimate to try to account for the phenomenal universe as a whole (the entire Erscheinungswelt). Explanation on this view is inherently partitive: phenomena can only be accounted for in terms of other phenomena, so that it is in principle improper to ask for an account of phenomena-as-a-whole. The very idea of an explanatory science of nature-as-a-whole is illegitimate. Yet this view is deeply problematic. To all intents and purposes, science strives to explain the age of the universe-as-a-whole, its structure, its size, its laws, its composition, etc. Why not then its existence as well. The decree that explanatory discussion is by nature necessarily partial and incapable of dealing with the whole lacks plausibility. It seems a mere device for sidestepping embarrassingly difficult questions.

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It is a fundamental principle of epistemology that the answer must be attuned to the question at hand. And distributive explanations are simply unable to provide adequate answers to collective questions. And so rejectionism is not a particularly appealing course. Any alternative to it automatically has the significant merit of retaining for rational inquiry and investigation an important question that would otherwise be abandoned. The question of “the reason why” behind existence is surely pressing. If there is any possibility of getting an adequate answer—by hook or by crook—it seems reasonable that we would very much like to have it. There is nothing patently meaningless about this “riddle of existence.” And it does not seem to rest in any obvious way on any particularly problematic presupposition—apart from the elemental idea that some sort of explanation for why things are as they are can always be secured (the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”). To dismiss those global questions as improper or illegitimate is fruitless. Try as we will to put them away, they will always come back to haunt us. NOTES 1

See Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon, 1992) as well as the article “Grand Unified Theories” by A. Guth and P. J. Steinhardt in The Encyclopedia of Cosmology ed. by N. S. Hetherington (New York: Garland Publishing, Incorporated, 1993), pp. 255-274. See also Edoardo Amaldi, “The Unity of Physics,” Physics Today, vol. 261 (September, 1973), pp. 23-29. Compare also C. F. von Weizsäcker, “The Unity of Physics” in Ted Bastin (ed.), Quantum Theory and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

2

On this principle in its relation to the cosmological aspect for the existence of God see William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). See also Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Alexander R. Pruss, “The Hume-Edwards Principle and the Cosmological Argument,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 434 (1988), pp. 149-65.

3

Carl G. Hempel, “Science Unlimited,” The Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, vol. 14 (1973), pp. 187-202. (See p. 200). Our italics.

4

Note too that the question of the existence of facts is a horse of a very different color from that of the existence of things. There being no things is undoubtedly a possible situation, there being no facts is not (since if the situation were realized, this would itself constitute a fact).

5

Aristotle taught that every change must emanate from a “mover,” i.e., a substance whose machinations provide the cause of change. This commitment to causal reification is at work in much of the history of Western thought. That its pervasiveness is manifest at virtually every juncture is clear from William Lane Craig’s interesting study of The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (London, 1980).

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NOTES 6

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (ed. N. K. Smith; London, 1922), p. 189.

7

G. W. Leibniz, “Principles of Nature and of Grace,” sect. 8, italics supplied. Compare St. Thomas: “Of necessity, herefore, anything in process of change is being changed by something else. (S.T., IA 2,3).” The idea that only substances can produce changes goes back to Thomas’ master, Aristotle. In Plato and the Presocratics, the causal efficacy of principles is recognized (e.g., the love and strife of Empedocles).

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BOOKS BY NICHOLAS RESCHER 1960 On the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences. Santa Monica, CA (RAND Corporation) 1960; RAND Research Monograph R353. Coauthored with Olaf Helmer. 1962 Al-Farabi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh Press), 1962.

Pittsburgh (University of

1963 Al-Farabi’s Short Commentary on Aristotle’s “Prior Analytics.” Translated from the Arabic, with Introduction and Notes. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. Studies in the History of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. 1964 Al-Kindi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964. The Development of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964. Hypothetical Reasoning. Amsterdam (North-Holland Publishing Co.; “Studies in Logic” series edited by L.E.J. Brouwer, E.W. Beth and A. Heyting.), 1964. An Introduction to Logic. New York (St. Martin’s Press), 1964. 1965 The Refutation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of Galen’s Treatise on The First Mover. Karachi (Publications of the Central Institute of Islamic Research), 1965. Co-authored with Michael E. Marmura. 1966 Distributive Justice. New York (Bobbs Merrill Company), 1966. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). Galen and the Syllogism: An Examination of the Claim that Galen Originated the Fourt Figure of the Syllogism. Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Press), 1966. The Logic of Commands. London (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1966.

Nicholas Rescher x Reader

1967 Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1967; Supplementary Series of Foundations of Language. The Philosophy of Leibniz. Englewood Cliffs (Prentice Hall), 1967. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. Press), 1967.

Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh

1968 Topics in Philosophical Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1968; Synthese Library. 1969 Essays in Philosophical Analysis: Historical and Systematic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1969. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.) Introduction to Value Theory. Englewood Cliffs (Prentice Hall), 1969. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). Many-Valued Logic. New York (McGraw-Hill), 1969. Reprinted: Aldershot (Gregg Revivals), 1993. 1970 Scientific Explanation. New York (The Free Press), 1970. 1971 Temporal Logic. New York and Vienna (Springer-Verlag), 1971. Coauthored with Alastair Urquhart. 1972 Welfare: The Social Issues in Philosophical Perspective. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1972. 1973 The Coherence Theory of Truth. Oxford (The Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press), 1973. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.).

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Conceptual Idealism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. Reissued in 1982 by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.). The Primacy of Practice. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. Translated into Spanish as La Primacia de la práctica, Madrid (Editorial Tecnos), 1980. 1974 Studies in Modality. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1974. (American Philosophical Quarterly, Monograph Series.) 1975 A Theory of Possibility. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1975. Co-published in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1975. 1976 Plausible Reasoning. Amsterdam (Van Gorcum), 1976. 1977 Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1977. Translated into Japanese as Taiwa No Roni Tokyo: Kinokuniya Press, 1981. Methodological Pragmatism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1977. Copublished in the USA by the New York University Press. 1978 Peirce’s Philosophy of Science. Dame Press), 1978.

Notre Dame (University of Notre

Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1978. Copublished in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Translated into German as Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt (Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag, 1982). Translated into French as Le Progrès Scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaries de France, 1993). 1979 Cognitive Systematization. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979. Copublished in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Translated into

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Nicholas Rescher x Reader

Spanish as Sistematización cognoscitiva (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1981). Leibniz: An Introduction to His Philosophy. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979; APQ Library of Philosophy. Co-published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Reprinted in 1986 by the University Press of America (Lanham, MD). Reprinted in 1993 by Gregg Revivals (Aldershot, UK). The Logic of Inconsistency: A Study in Nonstandard Possible-World Semantics and Ontology. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979; APQ Library of Philosophy. Co-authored with Robert Brandom. Published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ; 1979). 1980 Induction. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1980. Co-published in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Translated into German as Induktion (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1986). Scepticism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1980. Co-published in the USA by Rowman & Littlefield. Unpopular Essays on Technological Progress. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1980. 1981 Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Nature: A Group of Essays. Dordrecht and Boston (Reidel), 1981. 1982 Empirical Inquiry. Totowa, N.J. (Rowan & Littlefield), 1982. Copublished in Great Britain by Athlone Press (London, 1982). 1983 Kant’s Theory of Knowledge and Reality: A Group of Essays. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1983. Mid-Journey: An Unfinished Autobiography. Lanham MD (University Press of America) 1983. Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1983. 1984 The Limits of Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles (University of California Press), 1984. Translated into German as Grenzen der

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Wissenschaft. Dietzingen: Reclam Verlag, 1985. Translated into Spanish as Las Limites de la Sciencia (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1994). Translated into Italian as I Limita della Sciencia (Rome: Armando Editore, 1990). Second (revised and enlarged) edition (Pittsburgh: Unviersity of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). The Riddle of Existence: An Essay in Idealistic Metaphysics. Washington, D.C. (University Press of America), 1984. 1985 Pascal’s Wager: An Essay on Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame (University of Notre Dame Press), 1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1985. Translated into Italian as La Lotti dei Sistemi (Genoa: Marietti, 1993); into German as Der Streit der Systeme (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1997); into Spanish (in progress). 1986 Ongoing Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. Lanham MD (University Press of America) 1986. 1987 Ethical Idealism: A Study of the Import of Ideals. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London (University of California Press), 1987. Forbidden Knowledge and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Cognition. Dordrecht (Reidel Publishing Co.), 1987. (Episteme Series, No.13). Scientific Realism: A Critical Reappraisal. Dordrecht (Reidel Publishing Co.), 1987. 1988 Rationality. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1988. Translated into German as Rationalität (Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen & Neumann, 1993); into Spanish as La Racionalidad (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1993); into Italian as Razionalità (Rome: Armando Editore, 1999). 1989 Cognitive Economy: Economic Perspectives in the Theory of Knowledge. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1989. Moral Absolutes: An Essay on the Nature and the Rationale of Morality. New York (Peter Lang Publishing Co.), l989.

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A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective. Savage, MD (Rowman and Littlefield), 1989. Translated into German as Warum sind wir nicht klüger (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 1994). 1990 Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology. Stanford (Stanford University Press), 1990. 1991 Baffling Phenomena and Other Studies in the Philosophy of Knowledge and Valuation. Savage, MD (Rowman and Littlefield), 1991. Frank Plumpton Ramsey: On Truth, ed. by Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991). Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1991. Leibniz’s Monadology: An Edition for Students. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1991. Co-published in the United Kingdom by Routledge (London). 1992 The Validity of Values: Human Values in Pragmatic Perspective. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1992. 1993 Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1993. Standardism: An Empirical Approach to Philosophical Methodology. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1993. Reissued in paperback, 2000. 1994 American Philosophy Today, and Other Philosophical Studies. Savage, MD (Rowman & Littlefield), 1994. Animal Conversations: A Collection of Fables. Verona PA (NAP Publications), 1994. Metaphilosophical Inquiries. Princeton (Princeton University Press), 1994.

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

Würzburg

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

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1999 Kant and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 1999. Razón y valores en la era cientifico-tecnológica. Barcelona (Editorial Paidos), 1999. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1999. 2000 Inquiry Dynamics. New Brunswick, NJ (Transaction), 2000. Nature and Understanding: A Study of the Metaphysics of Science. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 2000. 2001 Cognitive Pragmatism. 2001.

Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press),

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

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Sensible Decisions On the Ways and Means of Rational Decision. Totowa, N.J. (Rowman & Littlefield) 2003. Rationality in Pragmatic Perspective. Lewiston, N.Y. (Mellen Press) 2003. Epistemology: On the Scope and Limits of Knowledge. Albany NY (SUNY Press) 2003. Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unrealized Possibility. Chicago, Ill. (Open Court Publishing Co.) 2003. 2004 Value Matters: Studies in Axiology. Frankfurt (Ontos), 2004. 2005 Cognitive Harmony. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2005. Common Sense. Milwaukee, WI (Marquette University Press) 2005. [Aquinas Lecture] Cosmos and Logos: Studies in Greek Philosophy. Frankfurt (Ontos), 2005). Epistemic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2005. Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2005. Reason and Reality: Realism and Idealism in Pragmatic Perspective. Lanham, MD. (Rowman & Littlefield), 2005. Scholastic Meditations. Washington, DC (Catholic University of America Press), 2005. What If? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy. New Brunswick, NJ. (Transaction Books), 2005. 2005-2006 Nicholas Rescher: Collected Papers, 10 vol’s; Frankfurt (Ontos), 2005: Studies in 20th Century Philosophy, Studies in Pragmatism, Studies in Idealism, Studies in Philosophical Inquiry. 2006: Studies in Cognitive Finitude, Studies in Social Philosophy, Studies in Philosophical Anthropology, Studies in Value Theory, Studies in Metaphilosophy, Studies in the History of Logic.

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2006 Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realistic Perspective. Amherst, N.Y. (Prometheus Books), 2006 Essais fur les fondements d’ontologie du procès. Edited by Michel Weber. Frankfurt (Ontos), 2006. Process Philosophical Deliberations. Frankfurt (Ontos), 2006. Presumption and Tentative Cognition. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 2006. Philosophical Dialectic: An Essay in Metaphilosophy. Albany, NY. (SUNY Press), 2006. Epistemetrics. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 2006. Error. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2006. 2007 Is Philosophy Dispensable? And other Philosophical Studies . Frankfurt (Ontos), 2007. Conditionals. Cambridge, Mass (MIT Press), 2007. Interpreting Philosophy: The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics. Frankfurt (Ontos), 2007. Dialectics: A Classical Approach to Inquiry. Frankfurt (Ontos) 2007. 2008 Epistemic Pragmatism: And Other Essays in the Theory of Knowledge. Frankfurt (Ontos) 2008. Being and Value: And Other Philosophical Essays. Frankfurt (Ontos) 2008. Issues in the Philosophy of Religion. Frankfurt (Ontos) 2008. 2009 Aporetics. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2009. Free Will. New Brunswick, NJ (Transaction Books) 2009. Ignorance. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2009.

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Philosophical Issues. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press) 2009. Reason, Method, and Value: A Reader on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher. Edited. by Dale Jacquette. Frankfurt (Ontos) 2009. Unknowable Facts. Lanham, Md. (Lexington Books) 2009. Reality and Appearance. London (Continuum) 2009. Wishful Thinking and Other Philosophical Reflections. (Forthcoming)

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