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ix-x The root idea of aporetics lies in the combination of reductive quality control in situations where we have succumbed to the cognitive overcommitment of inconsistency and find ourselves having to salvage some part of what must be abandoned. It may seem surprising in that this selfsame process of analysis recurs over so diversified a variety of cognitive endeavors. The book nevertheless seeks to synthesize and systematize an aporetic procedure for dealing with information overload... What is involved is... a procedural method for analyzing ideas in difficult situations of information management. It turns out that this single method - coherence tropism via plausibility analysis - can be used to deal with issues in many areas of deliberation and information processing, including hypothetical reasoning, inquiry epistemology, paradox analysis, and others.
[JLJ - perhaps even in game theory.]
p.1 In Greek, aporia literally means an impasse, a blockage where there is no practicable way to go forward.
p.3 The resolution of apories calls for a plausibility analysis that enables the chain of inconsistency to be broken at the weakest link... In principle, the apory management is thus a straightforward process that calls for appraising the comparative plausibility of what we accept, and then restoring consistency by making what is less plausible give way to what is more so... All that the analysis is able to do for us is to optimize - that is, to maximize plausibility via considerations of systemic coherence in matters of question-resolution. Aporetics is thus less a method of innovation than that of regimentation: its task is not to engender new insights but to bring systemic order and coherence into those we already have.
p.3 The prime directive of cognitive rationality is to maintain consistency and consequently to restore consistency to inconsistent situations.
[JLJ - Not for me - the prime directive would be to find a way to 'go on' with the promise or hope of successfully navigating the current predicament. Maintaining/restoring consistency is one way to do this, but not of course the only trick that works.]
p.5 Strict logic alone indicates only that something must be abandoned; it does not indicate what.
p.12 when inconsistency looms we can no longer view what we have as truths. They will be at best be truth candidates or plausible data... The key to dealing with inconsistency in inquiry lies in treating those incompatible materials not as established truths, but as provisional data.
p.13 A datum is not so much a "given" as a "taken."
p.14 Any experiential justification of a truth criterion must pull itself up by its own bootstraps - it needs factual inputs... To meet this need, it is natural to appeal to truth candidates
[JLJ - Rescher again avoids the concepts of emergence and process - perhaps the truth will emerge from spending time analyzing the truth candidates.]
p.19 Plausibilities are thus one thing and truths another.
[JLJ - I would say that there are only truth claims. Once we are "certain" that a plausible truth is a "true" truth (as opposed to an "untrue" truth... but ignore that for now) we stop our investigations and turn our attention to other things. We arrive at "truth" through the process of investigating the plausible truths - perhaps the truth emerges from our investigation efforts. But in reality, the fact is that truth can only be a claim - which appears that way to a sentient being.]
p.20 The plausibility of contentions may also, however, be based not only on a thesis-warranting source or evidentiation but also on a thesis-warranting principle.
[JLJ - such as critical success factors. For example, if our king in the game of chess is in danger, investigating a move that indicates that the king might be safer might follow from the principle of king safety as a critical success factor in chess. If our king is already safe, then we might investigate a plausible move which is based on another critical principle, such as general multiple-move mobility or constraint of enemy pieces.]
p.22-23 Coherence... 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 non-circular: we need make no imputations of truth at the level of data to arrive at truths through application of the criterial machinery in view.
[JLJ - a Rescher truth machine - just put in data and plausibility and turn the crank, looking for coherence...]
A coherentist epistemology... Its approach is fundamentally holistic in judging the acceptability of every purported item of information by its capacity to contribute toward a well-ordered, systemic whole.
The procedure at issue... calls for the following epistemic resources:
- Data: theses that can serve as acceptance candidates in the context of the inquiry, plausible contentions which, at best, are merely presumptively true... we would be prepared to grant them acceptance as true if... there were no countervailing considerations upon the scene...
- 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...
Accordingly, the general strategy of the coherence theory lies in a three-step procedure: (1) to gather in all of the relevant "data"... (2) to inventory the available conflict resolving options that represent the alternative possibilities for achieving overall consistency; (3) to choose among these alternatives by using the guidance of plausibility considerations, subject to the principle of minimizing implausibility.
p.23 In the face of aporetic inconsistency, 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. [JLJ - F. H. Bradley in another work declares:
"There is a fair presumption that any truth, which cannot be exhibited at work, is for the most part untrue."
and also:
"The test [of truth] which I advocate is the idea of a whole of knowledge as wide and as consistent as may be. In speaking of system [as the standard of truth] I always mean the union of these two aspects [of coherence and comprehensiveness]... [which] are for me inseparably included in the idea of system... Facts for it [i.e. my view] are true... just so far they contribute to the order of experience. If by taking certain judgments... as true, i can get some system into my world then these 'facts' are so far true and if by taking certain 'facts' as errors I can order my experience better than these 'facts' are errors."
So it seems to me [JLJ] that truth exists within a system for comprehending a large external phenomenon that must be grasped in order to "go on." In fact, truth can be no more than the results of a Rorschach test for our personal interpretations of the "ink blot" of reality, which we use to order, organize, justify and ultimately execute our efforts in "going on." Can it be, that all knowledge is an inference, backed by a diagnostic test constructed from a system, and it is the diagnostic testing that we abandon at some point, because it is deemed practically to be 'good enough?']
p.24 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.
p.25-26 There are two profoundly different approaches to the cognitive enterprise that, for want of better choices, might be called the ampliative and the reductive. The ampliative strategy searches for highly secure propositions that are acceptable as true beyond reasonable doubt. Given such carefully circumscribed and tightly controlled starter set of propositions, one proceeds to move outward ampliatively by making inferences from this starter set... The reductive strategy, however, proceeds in exactly the opposite direction. It begins in a quest not for unproblematic acceptable truths, but for well-qualified candidates or prospects for truth... the reductive approach proceeds by narrowing that overample range of plausible prospects for endorsement.
While the paradigm instrument of ampliative reasoning is deductive derivation, the paradigm method of contraction is dialectical argumentation.
p.27 It is not the uniquely correct answer but the most defensible position that we seek in dialectics.
p.27 coherentist epistemology is reductive. It begins with inconsistent data and looks to take more harmonious reduction that is available on the basis of plausibility considerations.
p.30 Just as explanations answer "why" questions, counterfactual conditionals offer responses to "what if" questions... Such conditionals have been a mainstay of speculative thinking for a long time.
p.33-34 Hypothetical alterations in the manifold of fact lead us to embark on a process that potentially has no end... Every hypothetical change in the physical makeup of the real sets in motion a vast cascade of physical changes either in the physical construction of the real or in the laws of nature at large.
p.67 the crux of counterfactual analysis is not a matter of scrutinizing the situation in other possible worlds, but at most one of prioritizing our accepted beliefs regarding this actual one. There is simply no need to look beyond the cluster of the environing propositions that are immediately relevant to the particular counterfactual at issue.
p.68 The fact is that the analysis of counterfactuals is at most a matter of a very localized propositional prioritization in line with some rather straightforward and pragmatically cogent rules. Given such right-of-way prioritization, the mystery of troublesome elusiveness is completely dissipated.
p.68 All that is ever required for the analysis of counterfactuals is a handful of plausible ground rules of precedence and priority to settle matters of conflict resolution - of "right-of-way" in a conflict of aporetic inconsistency among the immediately involved reality-appertaining propositions.
p.68 What is at issue is a localized microprocess and not a globalized macroprocess
p.89 Plausible propositions play a very special role in the cognitive scheme of things.
p.103 So, while philosophizing may "begin in wonder," as Aristotle said, it soon runs into puzzlement and perplexity.
[JLJ - not for me - I never lose my sense of wonder.]
p.107 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.
Confronted by an aporetic antimony, we recognize that something must give way.
[JLJ - sigh, not necessarily. Reality merely presents itself to our senses - it does not "tell" us clearly how to "go on" from within our predicament. A presumption is just that - a practical guess that maps an appearance to a reality, and appearances can be deceiving. Like the story of the blind men and the elephant, apparent contradictions might just represent different views of a situation that are each correct for reasons that are initially unclear.]
p.121 In general, however, philosophers do not provide for consistency restoration wholly by way of rejection. Rather, they have recourse to modification, replacing the abandoned belief with a duly qualified revision thereof... Only by modifying the thesis through a resort to distinctions can one manage to give proper recognition to the full range of considerations that initially led into aporetic difficulty.
p.122 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.
p.124 To be sure, the process of thesis revision in the light of distinctions is not just a matter of clarification but also one of enhancing the acceptability (plausibility, tenability, truthfulness) of what has been retained.
p.138 insofar as our ignorance of relevant matters leads us to be vague in our judgments, we may well manage to enhance the likelihood of being right... The fact of the matter is that we have this ironic principle: By constraining us to make vaguer judgments, ignorance enhances our access to correct information (albeit at the cost of less detail and precision).
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