|
p.1 Knowledge development is a practice that we humans pursue because we have a need for its products. The cognitive project is accordingly a deeply practical endeavor, irrespective of whatever purely theoretical interest may attach to its results.
p.2 Knowledge development is itself a practice
p.9 verification is a practical process that, although not in general determinative of truth as such, is nevertheless perfectly adequate for the probative authorization of rationally appropriate truth claims... evidentiation ipso facto authorizes us in rationally warranted claims to truth.
p.13 the most promising position here is - as I see it - 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 then assesses method appropriateness in terms of the practical and applicative utility - systematically considered - of the theses for which the method vouches. 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.
[JLJ - This is the approach to legal justice - We establish a method or contest for establishing our truth, then turn the crank - producing first witnesses and evidence, then producing summarizing or concluding arguments, next providing for deliberation of jury or judge, and we produce - when time expires - an authoritative result, which we will then call the truth. Truth is effectively meaningless without an authority which backs the claim, usually with a supporting argument, which points to evidence, and effectively or practically refutes or dismisses competing claims.]
p.14 how can we ever determine that we are actually getting at the real truth of things? How can we tell that our truth estimates are actually good estimates? Here the pragmatically appropriate response, as I see it, goes roughly as follows: "Because they are provided by methods that yield results that work. They emerge from the use of inquiry methods whose products can be implemented successfully in practice - with success monitored in the usual way of effective application and prediction."
p.15 With Putnam, as with Dewey, communal acceptance is the key.... Instead the sort of pragmatism I favor looks to cognitive methods of truth estimation that can be quality-controlled through considerations of applicative efficacy.
p.16 where the conditions for rational estimation are satisfied we are - ipso facto - rationally authorized to let that estimate stand surrogate for the truth... 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 a methodology of inquiry. For cognition is a matter of truth estimation, and a properly effected estimate is, by nature, an at least pro tem rationally authorized surrogate for whatever it is that it is an estimate of.
[JLJ - That is, provided that your scheme for going on calls for such an estimate to be elevated in such a way. In certain cases - such as in public safety, medical care, working with dangerous or hazardous materials, we have a duty to do more than just estimate, elevate and go on in such a manner. Estimation generally does not stand by itself, as an item isolated - it is generally called for by a scheme for going on, is to be done in such-and-such a way, and should in general be quality controlled or otherwise validated before continuing on with the scheme which called for it.]
p.16 we have no access to reality apart from what we think to be true about it.
[JLJ - Yes, but in many cases in life and in activities such as sports, we do not have the luxury to know what the truth of the matter actually is. Because of this, perhaps we strategically form a posture to the known and to the unknown, and we let the future unfold. The truth might not be known until later, if at all - this does not prevent us from taking a stance or forming a posture, in order to 'go on'.]
p.19 To capture the truth of things by means of language we must proceed by way of "warranted approximation." In general we can be sure of how things "usually" are and how they "roughly" are, but never how they always and exactly are... insofar as our ignorance of the relevant issues leads us to be vague in our judgments we manage to enhance the likelihood of being right... We can purchase truth at the price of imprecision.
p.27 a long course of experience has taught us that our senses generally guide us aright: that the indications of visual experience... generally provide reliable information that can be implemented in practice.
p.28 Presumptions by nature provide a provisional surrogate for the actual truth... Presumptions are... in tentative and provisional possession of the cognitive terrain, holding their place only until displaced by something more evidentially substantial. A presumption is a putative fact that, although in the circumstances perhaps no more than probable or plausible, is nevertheless accepted as true provisionally - allowed to stand until such time (if ever) that concrete evidential counterindications come into view.
[JLJ - Yes, but only because the human cognitive use of presumptions effectively becomes a heuristic that generally works, and which therefore become part of a scheme appropriate to grasp at in order to 'go on'. It has no answer to the accusation that it is merely a 'presumption'.]
p.30 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 counterindications come to countervail against them.
p.31 we cannot pursue the cognitive project - the quest for information about the world - without granting certain initial presumptions
p.31 Presumptions arise in contexts in which we have questions and need answers.
p.31 Presumption is a thought instrumentality that so functions as to make it possible for us to do the best we can in circumstances in which something must be done.
[JLJ - It might be better to say that our scheme for going on calls for a presumption. The operators of a nuclear power plant considering the meaning of a flashing light that should not be on, or the President of the United States considering an urgent message that a foreign country has launched its nuclear weapons, ought not to blindly use presumptions. Sometimes we need to be really, really, really REALLY sure, in which case presumptions, as useful as the are in general, are not appropriate. We need to manage presumptions using a higher-level wisdom, they need to be called for and deemed appropriate in our current circumstances and predicament, according to our carefully constructed and properly executed scheme for 'going on'.]
p.32 Presumption, in sum, is an ultimately pragmatic resource. To be sure, its evident disadvantage is that the answers we obtain are given not in the clarion tones of knowledge and assertion but in the more hesitant and uncertain tones or presumption and probability. We thus do not get the advantages of presumption without the accompanying negativity of a certain risk of error.
[JLJ - Rescher fails to consider that a presumption 'works' because it is called for by a carefully constructed and selected scheme for 'going on'. The scheme will likely take steps to mitigate the risks of a wrong presumption - in certain professions, such as a police detective called on to investigate a crime, following up on the leads by making presumptions is part of professional behavior. If you take anything - presumption included - out of the environment in which it is used and examine it as a thing isolated - you lose the larger picture and in fact do not see the complete picture.]
p.33 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.
[JLJ - As I have said elsewhere, presumptions - in order to be truly effective, must be part of an intelligently crafted scheme for 'going on' that mitigates or minimizes the occasionally incorrect or misleading results produced. Show me a presumption grasped and used by an intelligent human, and I will show you a corresponding mitigation or resilient practice that goes along with it. The simplest example lies in training sports teams - the players read opponents' body language cues to predict future actions, but also rely on general purpose physical fitness to recover from mistakes or unexpected movements or plays.]
p.46 No issue in epistemology more clearly indicates how the theoretical issues of the field demand a recourse to pragmatic considerations than the theory of categories.
Information issues from inquiry... It is by means of categories that we structure the manifold of questions.
Items belong to the same category when they provide possible answers to the same question... Categories are thus coordinate with the range of answers we are prepared to contemplate as meaningful responses to our questions.
[JLJ - Rescher says here that categories provide a narrower range of answers to our questions, and in fact intelligently speed inquiry. In fact, our scheme to go on will not depends so much on what really is, as much as on what category of action applies...]
p.48 Since categories are correlative with questions[,] they delineate and canalize our efforts to secure information about the world. They provide the conceptual frame of reference in terms of which we pose our questions about the nature of things - the cognitive scaffolding we employ in erecting our view of the world, or some sector thereof. "To think is to order," said Thomas Aquinas, and the categories we use are our conceptual ordering tools, our devices for setting out on the task of collecting, gathering, and arranging our thoughts about how things stand.
[JLJ - Did Medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas actually write 'To think is to order' ? A Google search on Aquinas and 'To think is to order' produced only two hits - a Google books reference to this work [Cognitive Pragmatism] and to a later work by Rescher, 'Being and Value and other Philosophical Essays.' Rescher provides no citation for this Aquinas quote. Perhaps Rescher loosely had in mind this Aquinas quote: 'Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.' Or, perhaps Rescher was referring to this one by Aquinas: 'Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.' The same Aquinas, by the way, also said: 'If... the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since nothing violent is eternal .... It follows, therefore, that the earth is not moved with a circular motion.' Commentaria in libros Aristotelis de caelo et mundo]
p.48-49 There are the protoquestions with which inquiry begins, the elemental and elementary issues from which we start our cognitive explorations... But we are soon led to greater depths. The answers to our questions spawn yet further questions for which those answers furnish presuppositions. And as we proceed along this question-and-answer route we come to increasingly sophisticated questions that arise out of our answers to earlier questions, and that themselves lead to still more complex issues.
p.50 The protocategories map out the "frame of reference" defining the conceptual issues that shape our initial, most basic efforts at posing our descriptive and explanatory questions about the world.
p.60-61 The pragmatic standard of successful praxis thus affords a natural and semantically neutral arbiter of our conceptual mechanisms... Schemes... Their relative superiority or inferiority... hinges on the practical issue of how effectively they enable us to find our way amidst the shoals and narrows of a difficult world.
[JLJ - There is much to be said for a practical, experienced scheme. But such a scheme cannot be analytically broken down any further - the mind grasps at (and executes) appropriate, practical, ethical schemes that ought to work, or at least offer the best chance for success, in a difficult, changing and complex world. Consciousness may yet prove to be the sparking and surging of suspended schemes in self-regeneration as they await trigger - the sum of all our learned schemes, intertwined as they are, in a semi-dormant state, awaiting the proper trigger for use, and then returning to a quiet hum of a sleep-like state.]
p.61-62 Our use of a scheme in no way involves us in claiming it as the best of all possible schemes. In adopting a scheme we simply "do what comes naturally" by using a tool that lies conveniently to hand. We actually have little overt choice here - we simply have to go on from where we are.
p.62 The point is that categories are thought instruments devised in the interests of action, and that this action may itself be a matter of cognitive action (i.e., inquiry). And so here - as in other cases in which the interests of action figure - the natural standard of appraisal is prospective and utilitarian, pivoting on the question of efficacy and efficiency in realizing the objectives for whose sake those actions are undertaken.
p.64 The reality of it is that even knowledge about the extent of my ignorance is unavailable to me.
[JLJ - Playing along with the quiz show candidates on the Jeopardy! TV show can reveal categories of knowledge that one knows little of. Doing practice tests in college, or reviewing homework problems that one has missed, are other ways to become informed of one's ignorance. Outside the sphere of knowledge, accountants may perform a test of goodwill impairment to assess the claim made by a company to have an asset on their balance sheet. My point is that there exists diagnostic testing of intangibles in general - perhaps I am missing his point here.]
p.64 the progressive and developmental nature of knowledge means that the knowledge of the future is substantially unavailable to the investigators of the present... The details of the cognitive future are hidden in an impenetrable fog.
[JLJ - All the better reason to value and develop adaptive capacity. We invest, not in 'crystal balls', but instead in developing and refining our adaptive capacity. The plan will be to reconfigure or re-posture intelligently when the future - whatever it is - arrives at our doorstep - invited or uninvited as the case may be. We value being ready for whatever arrives, rather than predicting specifically what will arrive.]
p.66 progress on the side of questions is a crucial mode of cognitive progress, correlative with - and every bit as important as - progress on the side of information.
p.66 Change in knowledge carries change in questions in its wake... Any alterations in the membership of our body of knowledge will afford new presuppositions for further questions that were not available before.
p.77 In practical matters, in particular, such rough guidance is often altogether enough. We need not know just how much rain there will be to make it sensible for us to take an umbrella.
p.77 to act with more knowledge is not necessarily to act more effectively.
p.79 Exactly because additional information always has the potential of constraining a change of mind - rather than merely providing additional substantiation for a fixed result - we have no assurance that further information produces "a closer approximation to the truth."
p.79 When we are dealing with assured truths, additional information cannot unravel or destabilize what we have... When what we accept is deductively derived from truths it is secure. Here what we do not know can do no damage to the knowledge we have. But when what we accept is inductively derived from probabilities and plausibilities it is vulnerable to unraveling. Here what we do not know can do great damage.
p.80 the sensible management of ignorance is something that requires us to operate in the realm of practical considerations
p.81 Authentic knowledge of the detailed truth of things is by nature something of an idealization: it is what emerges from appropriate inquiry appropriately conducted... what we do get - and in fact all that we can get - are our best estimates of the truth.
p.84 Rationality calls for adopting the overall best (visible) alternative - the best that is, in practice, available to us in the circumstances.
[JLJ - Yes, but an opponent in a complex game of strategy will arrange for us to be in a position where the best option is not clear - now what? ]
p.88 what we want in inquiry - the object of the whole enterprise - is information. What we seek is the very best overall balance between answers to our questions and ignorance or misinformation.
p.94 For us humans thought is generally a matter of mental discourse, of "a conversation with oneself."
[JLJ - Yes, the internal conversation of Margaret Archer, William James, George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin and others.]
p.96 Undoubtedly a mind that evolves in the world via natural selection has a link to reality sufficiently close to enable it to secure some knowledge of the real.
p.103-104 Our conceptions of what things are and how they function always present a moving rather than a fixed object of scrutiny... as far as the real things of the world are concerned, not only do we 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... The existence of this latent (hidden, occult) sector is a crucial element of our conception of a real thing. Neither in fact nor in thought can we ever simply put it away.
p.105 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 what which has previously been acquired. Further inquiry can always, in theory, lead us to recognize the error of our earlier ways of thinking about things - even when thoroughly familiar things are at issue.
p.109 we do and should always think of real things as having hidden depths inaccessible to us finite knowers... Any particular thing... is such that two related but critically different versions can be contemplated:
- The [thing], the actual [thing] as it "really" is.
- The [thing] as somebody (you or I...) conceives of it.
p.109-110 the "I think" ...is an ever-present implicit accompaniment of every claim or contention that we make.
p.113 Our discourse reflects our conceptions and perhaps conveys them, but it is not in general substantively about them but rather about the things on which they actually or supposedly bear.
p.113 The only plausible sort of ontology is one that contemplates a realm of reality that outruns the range of knowledge (and indeed even language), adopting the stance that character goes beyond the limits of characterization. It is a salient aspect of the mind-independent status of the objectively real that the features of something real always transcend what we know about it. Indeed further or different facts concerning a real thing can always come to light, and all that we do say about it does not exhaust all that can and should be said about it. In this light, objectivity is crucial to realism, and the cognitive inexhaustibility of things is a certain token of their objectivity.
p.115-116 Reality... is the realm of what really is as it really is.
[JLJ - Thanks for clarifying that Nicholas...]
p.116 we need the conception of reality in order to operate the causal mode of inquiry about the real world.
[JLJ - I would think that we need the conception of reality because it forms the input of our schemes to 'go on.' We are constantly looking to the real world because our scheme for 'going on' directs us to do this, rather than lie in bed and dream, or any other non-productive kind of behavior.]
p.119 Realism, then, is a position to which we are constrained not by the push of evidence but by the pull of purpose. Initially, at any rate, a commitment to realism is an input into our investigation of nature rather than an output thereof... by taking this realistic stance we are able to develop a praxis of inquiry and communication that proves effective in the conduct of our affairs.
[JLJ - Perhaps ultimately, our interest in the real relates to our higher-level interest in how best to 'go on,' from where we are now in our present predicament. Such a higher-level interest must involve a practically effective construction of the real, and the forces involved, and the intentions of others, and the development and execution of a scheme to go on which manages and leverages these objects, forces and intentions to our advantage. One might say that reality as such does not tell us directly how to 'go on' within it, so the simple determination of what is real can never be the end result of cognition - we must instead use the determination of the real as part of a grappling with schemes of posture and movement and communication and interaction - to truly and effectively pursue our goals. One can only avoid the bloomin' buzzin' confusion of James by asking the simple, 'How much should I care about that?' to everything we encounter, and to wisely move on from the things we do not have time to attend to, to the ones that we do, with the speed and urgency that our current predicament demands.]
p.119-120 realism... is not based on considerations of independent substantiating evidence about how things actually stand in the world, but rather as a matter of practical reasoning, how we do (and must) think about the world within the context of the projects to which we stand committed.
[JLJ - Mr. Rescher, Margaret Archer would be sooo sooo proud of you. She feels the same way. But I would add, a project only comes about as part of a scheme to 'go on,' which sits at a higher level of cognition. Sometimes in order to go on, we have to guess at what is real - a guess that is usually safe and effective if part of a mature, tested and properly mitigated scheme. Our scheme to 'go on' relies on a categorization that is applied regardless of what specifically is the case, what is truly real - truly truly real - does not truly truly matter.]
p.126 induction is not so much a process of inference as one of estimation - its conclusion in not so much extracted (or derived) from data as suggested (or indicated) by them. It involves filling a gap in our information... Induction accordingly leaps to its conclusion instead of literally deriving it from the given premises by drawing the conclusion from them through some extractive process... our inductive "conclusions" are "not derived from the observed facts, but invented in order to account for them."
p.126 induction is at bottom an erotetic (question-answering) rather than an inferential (conclusion-deriving) procedure.
p.127 Since a process of truth estimation is at issue, inductive cogency as such cannot provide a theoretically fail-safe basis for answering our questions about how things stand in the world.
p.133 A proposition that is part of our best available systematization of all the relevant facts is not thereby necessarily true, but it indeed is thereby qualified to count as out best available estimate of the truth.
[JLJ - I would say that this is the case for certain schemes for 'going on.' In other cases, we must be more certain than this. Also, 'our best available' is certainly vague, since no matter the case, we are likely able to be more certain given more time, effort, energy and even help from others.]
p.134-135 Systematization is not a matter of conclusion drawing but of construction: we do not infer a system from the data but construct it on that basis... we have good reason for accepting the best overall account we can provide ... as affording us the best estimate of the truth that is available in the circumstances... For systematization requires both coherence and a maximum of achievable comprehensiveness... Issue resolution via optimal systematization is clearly the sensible direction for developing a coherentist epistemology.
p.136 Economy of cognitive operation is the bottom line for systematization... any thesis - explanatory ones included - that forms part of the optimal systematization of the facts in general must for that very reason square with our best understanding of the overall situation. And on this ground alone we can plausibly view it as endowed with a natural warrant for acceptance, seeing that systematization to all appearances affords the best route to truth estimation that is at our disposal... Ideally we would, of course, hope and prefer to substantiate all our beliefs and our actions on the basis of confirming evidence. But a very different, nonevidential mode of validation has also been contemplated, namely the so-called demonstration by utility
[JLJ - Very close in thinking to my 'tricks that work' explanation of cognition - that the mind is a collector of 'tricks that work' that lie suspended, and which are triggered by carefully selected thresholds and information cues. These tricks are built up into schemes, which ideally cover all or most situations, and when mature enough, can simply can be executed. A newly encountered situation not covered in a scheme is improvised or converted through maneuver or analysis to a familiar situation, and if not successful, the situation is pondered and the scheme altered to reflect the new tactic. And so on. We are, at core, a fabric of suspended tricks - of various kinds and complexities, which we execute as needed in order to 'go on.' Perhaps I am the only philosopher somewhat amused by one's own philosophy.]
p.137 What we are dealing with throughout is not a matter of evidentiated fact determination but one of a pragmatically justifiable assumption... Rationality, that is to say, is a two-track process that can proceed by way of either evidential or pragmatic considerations.
[JLJ - Strategy theorists would laugh at this nonsense. The concept of rationality breaks down in competitive environments, anywhere tricks are or might be present, or in business environments where there are multiple ways to proceed, murky predictions of the unfolding future and large investments at stake. Rescher's beloved rationality cannot tell you how, precisely, to 'go on', in a complex world where we ourselves are not sure of the driving forces, our own latent abilities, or our own resilience in the face of what are essentially struggles against the tides of fortune. One must form, execute and sustain schemes of maneuver that ultimately have their source in practical and experienced musings, and in creatively formed and improvised solutions to the inevitable problems which emerge.]
p.138 The less definite and committed an explanation, the more secure it is.
p.139 The North Pole and the equator are useful resources for geography and for navigation. That does not mean, however, that they are actually existing objects.
[JLJ - This is like asking the question, does the finish line for a 10K race exist, of its own accord, when a race is currently not being run? Well yes, and well no. Cognition sometimes needs to establish markers and waypoints, as part of the process of understanding and maneuver in the world. Perhaps there are social truths and conventions which become real when necessary, and as needed.]
p.142 Validation involves argumentation... To validate anything... we must make use of arguments
p.143 When we develop a system of inferential procedure this should ultimately retrovalidate our presystematic, informal practice.
p.143-144 As Aristotle has already stressed, there must ultimately be a nondemonstrative source of premises for demonstrative inference. This source or resource he thought to find in "experience."
p.152 Epistemic accomplishments are grounded in processes that are never instantaneous.
p.156 there are two importantly different modes of substantiation: demonstration (which is supposedly conclusive) and evidentiation (which is merely supportive and confirmatory).
p.164 What counts is doing enough "for practical purposes."
p.165 With finite creatures, cognitive validation is thus achieved not when everything has been done to achieve the deductive regress ideally necessary to rational systematization, but when enough has been done for the purposes at hand. Since we cannot achieve totality we must settle for sufficiency, and this is ultimately a practical rather than a purely theoretical matter.
p.165 Reason too is a practical resource. In the end what matters for rational substantiation is not theoretical completeness but pragmatic sufficiency.
p.166 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.
p.167 we cannot count what we cannot identify.
[JLJ - Perhaps, but we can always come up with a scheme which - intelligently - aims to correctly estimate.]
p.168 Here, as elsewhere, what the answer is depends on just exactly what the question at issue happens to be.
p.187 The fabric of fact is woven tight. But suppose that we make only a very small alteration in the descriptive composition of the real... hypothetical perturbations of reality confront us with problems without end. Every hypothetical change in the physical makeup of the real sets in motion a vast cascade of physical changes either in the physical makeup of the real or in the laws of nature or both.
p.188 Any change anywhere has reverberations everywhere.
p.201-202 The conception of "knowledge" clearly represents a flexible and internally diversified idea. In general terms it relates to the way in which people can be said to have access to information. This can, of course, come about in rather different ways:
- Occurrent knowledge. This is a matter of actively paying heed or attention to accepted information... The present evidence of our senses...
- Dispositional knowledge. This is a matter of what people would say or think if the occasion arose - of what, for example, they would say if asked...
- Accessible knowledge. This is a matter not of what a person would say if asked... but of what one could say if he was sufficiently clever about using the information that is at one's disposal occurrently or dispositionally... it is what is implied by or inferable from the facts he already knows in any of these senses.
p.202 we propose... a person knows something
- If this is known to him occurrently, or
- If this is known to him dispositionally, or
- If this can be derived by logical deduction or by other secure inferential means from information that is (already) known to him.
p.204-205 In articulating epistemological "principles" we must come to terms with the fact that one can distinguish three different levels or bases of assertability on which such principles can be affirmed:
- Conceptual truth...
- Contingent truth...
- Plausible truth candidates
Each of these defines a level of tenability or assertability that may be characterized as Level 1, 2, or 3, respectively.
p.205 in general the propositions we ourselves see as eminently plausible are accepted by us as true.
p.229 some significant overall lessons emerge... the most important of these is that we must operate a two-tier epistemology - one that looks not just to knowledge alone but also to the lesser level of epistemic commitment represented by plausible conjecture or supposition. Another lesson is that a systematic rational account of the cognitive situation is possible with "knowledge" understood in the sense of inferentially accessible information.
|
