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p.1-2 systematization is not merely a way of organizing knowledge, but - more fundamentally - a criterial standard for determining what it is that we indeed know.
p.4 Systematicity... relates... not to what we know - the facts at issue in the items of information at our disposal - but rather to how we proceed in organizing our knowledge of them.
p.5 In ancient Greek, systema (from syn-histemi, "to [make to] stand together") originally meant something joined together - a connected or composite whole... flocks of animals, medications, military formations, organized governments, poems, musical configurations, among others... The Renaissance gave the term a renewed currency. At first it functioned here too in its ancient applications in its broad sense of a generic composite. But in due course it came to be adopted by Protestant theologians of the 16th century to stand specifically for the comprehensive exposition of the articles of faith, along the lines of a medieval summa: a doctrinal compendium.
p.6 By the early years of the 17th century, the philosophers had borrowed the term "system" from the theologians, using it to stand for a synoptically comprehensive and connected treatment of a philosophical discipline: logic, rhetoric, metaphysics, ethics, etc.
p.7 Condillac developed a judicious critique of systems in his celebrated Treatise on Systems. He distinguished between systems based on speculation... and those based upon experience. A system cannot be better than the principles on which it is based, and this - he held - invalidates philosophical systems, since they are based upon hypotheses... Scientific systems, on the other hand, were viewed in a very different light.
p.8 The post-Renaissance construction of systematicity emphasized its orientation towards specifically cognitive or knowledge-organizing systems. The explicit theory of such cognitive systems was launched the second half of the 18th century, and the principal theoreticians were two German contemporaries: Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The practice of systematization that lay before their eyes was that of the great 17th-century philosopher-scientists: Descartes, Sipnoza, Newton, Leibnitz, and the subsequent workers of the Leibnizian school - especially Christian Wolff.
p.9 Lambert and Kant stressed that the idea of system applied alike to material systems (such as organisms) and intellectual systems (such as "organically" integrated bodies of knowledge).
p.10-11 the following features emerge as the definitive characteristics of systematicity:
- wholeness: unity and integrity as a genuine whole...
- completeness: ...avoidance of gaps or missing components
- self-sufficiency: ...autonomy
- cohesiveness: ...if some components are changed or modified, then others will react to this alteration
- consonance: ...harmonious mutual collaboration or coordination...
- architectonic: a well-integrated structure of arrangement of duly ordered component parts...
- functional unity: purposive interrelationship...
- functional regularity: ...conformity to "the usual course of things"
- functional simplicity: ...structural economy...
- mutual supportiveness: the components of a system are so combined... as to conspire together in mutual collaboration for its realization; interrelatedness
- functional efficacy: efficiency, effectiveness, adequacy to the common task
These are the definite parameters of systematization. A system, properly speaking, must exhibit all of these characteristics... These various facets of systematicity reflect matters of degree, and systems can certainly vary in their embodiment.
p.12 The basic paradigm of a system is that of an organism, an organized whole of interrelated and mutually supportive parts functioning as a cohesive unit.
p.14 The idea of systematization is intimately intertwined with that of planning in its generic sense of the rational organization of materials.
[JLJ - What if we intelligently assumed a posture that could flexibly adapt to all sorts of things that might upset it? It would look like we did a lot of planning, wouldn't it? What if we developed this posture by creatively developing and testing incremental adjustments - perhaps by evolutionary experimentation - to various force levers, including clever but non-obvious attempts, and tried in various ways to find the postures that are dynamically stable, and that afforded us the best chances of 'going on"? Curiously, it would be almost planless planning.]
p.15 Systematicity, accordingly, emerges as an internally complex and multi-criterial conception, which embraces and synthesizes all the various aspects of an organic, functionally effective whole.
p.18 Inquiry is the pursuit of truth.
[JLJ - Yes, sometimes. But practically it can also be the pursuit of anything required by a scheme to 'go on,' such as a metric or cue, which can help position oneself against the unknown and unknowable, and therefore indirectly help one to reach a desired goal. A trick that works hardly rises to the level of a truth - it is and remains only a practical scheme for going on. In this particular case, inquiry is not practically the pursuit of a truth, but instead a pursuit of effective insight into the way things are or will be, as part of a strategic and wise way to proceed, or to position oneself in order to 'go on.']
p.21-22 Systematicity is no doubt a necessary condition for a science, but scarcely a sufficient one, since the rules of an art (sonnet writing, chess playing) can also be systematized.
p.35 The consideration that we have no direct access to the truth regarding the modus operandi of the world we inhabit is perhaps the most fundamental fact of epistemology... The Hegelian idea of truth-assessment through systematization represents a hard-headed and inherently attractive effort to adjust and accommodate to this fundamental fact.
p.37 what one is actually claiming to be systematic is not the world as such, but rather our knowledge of it.
p.52 This coherentist approach thus takes as its index of acceptability the overall fit of a presumptively acceptable thesis with the rest of what is presumptively acceptable.
p.53 Many epistemologists have held that truths - nay even mere probabilities - can be maintained only on a basis of certainty.
[JLJ - For me, and practically speaking, there truly are no truths - there are only truth claims. Such claims can intelligently or rationally appear to be certain, can be backed by strong arguments or even proofs, can be self-evident, and can even be unopposed, but sadly they are and can remain only truth claims.]
p.55 the Euclidean approach to cognitive systematization does not represent the only way of implementing the justificatory process inherent in the approach to knowledge as true... the network model of cognitive systematization affords the prospect of a workable alternative approach - one which leads straightaway to the coherentist program of epistemology.
p.66 Coherentism... views the network-interrelatedness of factual theses as the criterial standard of their acceptability.
p.67 Acceptance-as-true is in general not the starting point of inquiry but its terminus.
p.67 A coherentist epistemology... views the extraction of knowledge from the data in terms of an analysis of best-fit considerations... The coherence approach maintains that truth is accessible in the extralogical realm on the basis of best-fit considerations, without any foundation of certainty.
p.68 The foundationalist begins his epistemological labors with a very small initial collection of absolutely certain truths from which he proceeds to work outwards by suitably additive procedures of supplementation to arrive at a wider domain of truth. By contrast, the coherentist begins with a very large initial collection of insecure pretenders to truth from which he proceeds to work inwards by suitably reductive procedures of elimination to arrive at a narrower domain of truth.
p.68-69 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. They are not given as secure truths... but merely as presumptive or potential truths, i.e. as truth-candidates... The task to which a coherentist epistemology addresses itself is that of bringing order into S be separating the sheep from the goats, distinguishing what merits acceptance as true from what does not... The situation arising here resembles the solving of a jigsaw puzzle with superfluous pieces that cannot possibly be fitted into any maximally orderly picture representing the "correct solution."
[JLJ - In game theory, rather than to determine "truths", our strategy should involve determining how much attention each plausible (or even implausible) sequence of moves and counter moves should appropriately merit, and then of course, to practically attend to those matters accordingly. What emerges from such attending - if properly done - is a high-quality move or card trick or posture, as the case may be.]
p.69-70 The procedure at issue [for] such a coherence analysis calls for the following epistemic resources:
I. INPUTS
- "Data": theses that can serve as acceptance-candidates in the context of inquiry...
- Plausibility ratings: comparative evaluations of our initial assessment... of the relative acceptability of the "data." ...
II. MACHINERY OF "BEST FIT" ANALYSIS... the general strategy of the coherence theory lies in a three-step procedure:
- To gather in all of the "data"...
- To lay out all the available conflict-resolving options that represent the alternative possibilities that are cognitively at hand.
- To choose among these alternatives by using guidance of plausibility considerations, invoking... the various parameters of systematicity as indices of plausibility.
p.70-71 The process of deriving significant and consistent truths from an inconsistent body of information is a key feature of the coherence theory of truth, which faces... the question of the inferences appropriately to be drawn from an inconsistent set of premisses. The initial mass of inconsistent information are the data for applying the mechanism of coherence as a criterion of truth, and its product is a consistent system of acceptable truths. On this approach, the coherence theory 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 infirm... The coherentist approach is thus quite prepared to dispense with any requirement for self-evident protocols to serve as the foundations of the cognitive system.
p.72 Even a well-entrenched item can be dislodged in the face of more plausible data... one can be brought to recognize that one has fallen victim to an illusion. Entrenched data may have a "benefit of doubt," but that is not to say that their lease on life is absolute.
p.72-73 The essential difference between the coherence theory and any foundationalist approach to acceptance-as-true lies in the fact that on the latter line of approach every discursive (i.e. reasoned) claim to truth requires truths as inputs. If a (presumptively) true result is to be obtained, the premisses on which it rests must themselves be true (or assumed to be so)... The decisive difference of the coherence theory is its capacity to extract (presumptive) truths discursively from a basis that includes no conceded truths whatsoever - i.e. from data that are merely truth-candidates and not truths. The foundationalist requirement for basic truths is something that the coherence theory - proceeding as it does from a basis of data that need be neither compatible nor true - has been designed to overcome.
p.74-75 with coherentist inductivism... there is a definite place for a dialectical process of cyclical structure, where one returns repeatedly to an item already "established." For a process of confirmation is now more complex, and a thesis might first appear on the status of a mere datum of low plausibility, later as one of higher plausibility, and ultimately even as a validated truth.
p.75 Rather than proceeding linearly, by fresh deductions from novel premisses, one may be in a position to cycle round and round the same given family of prospects and possibilities, sorting out, refitting, refining until a more sophisticatedly developed and more deeply elaborated resolution is ultimately arrived at. The information-extracting process developed along these lines is one not of advance into new informative territory, but one of cyclic reappraisal and revision of the old, tightening the net around our ultimate conclusion as we move round and round again, gaining surer confidence in the wake of more refined reappraisals.
p.75 we now envisage a variant view of justification... "justified" comes to mean not "derived from basic (or axiomatic) knowledge," but rather "appropriately interconnected with the rest of what is known."
p.76 one way of reading the literature of this dispute is as showing that knowledge can only be extracted INFERENTIALLY from knowledge, and not from something that is epistemically less than knowledge (such as justified belief). And this is wholly congruent with the stance of coherentism.
p.77 The network concept of grounding offers a perfectly viable alternative here... a coherentist's network approach is not only a possible, but an emphatically attractive alternative to the foundationalist's axiomatic methodology... all these various parameters of systematicity are most advantageously seen as principles of an essentially epistemological, or rather methodological character. They represent regulative principles for the construction of adequate explanatory accounts: procedural principles of plausibility that afford evaluative standards governing the provision of such accounts.
p.78 the coherence analysis sets out from a starting point of data together with certain characteristic initial assessments of presumption and plausibility.
p.79 On the coherentist approach, the choice between alternative "rival" systematizations in the same cognitive domain is not absolute - not a matter of yes-or-no, right-vs.-wrong. It is a matter not of forced choices but of preferential choices in the light of plausibilistic constraints. The basic process is one of cost-benefit analysis.
p.79-80 Coherentism is, in effect, the very quintessence of a systematist's approach. Taking systematicity as the standard of truth, it casts the parameter of systematization as prima facie determinants of the epistemic preferability of alternatives. The principles of systematicity now represent presumptive principles regulatively governing the conduct of inquiry.
p.83 it is clear that the parameters of systematicity - simplicity, uniformity, cohesiveness, and the rest - are one and the same as the guiding standards of inductive reasoning... Induction, that characteristic instrument of scientific reasoning, is a search for order - in short, for system.
p.84 The problem of justification here is that of exhibiting the rational warrant for this inferential procedure and its cognates. We must thus grapple with a variant of Hume's puzzle: what could possibly assure that a future instance (an+1) will be like the past ones (a1, a2, a3, ..., an)?
p.84-85 consider the following plausibility-delimiting rule:
When the initial evidence exhibits a marked logical pattern, then pattern-concordant statements are - ceteris paribus - to be evaluated as more plausible than pattern-discordant ones.
[JLJ - Yes, and in complex environments, such patterns might be formed from complex interactions of forces stretching, holding, buckling and otherwise playing themselves out in space and time; such patterns might visually or observationally be hidden from view, and might require intelligently crafted diagnostic tests or stress testing to reveal.]
p.85-86 a coherentist approach... proceeds by way of a process that involves two steps:
- to rely on pattern-conformity considerations to support a differential assessment of the plausibilities of the truth-candidates involved, then
- to use the general procedure of the coherence analysis of best-fit considerations to vindicate "the inductively right conclusion" in the move from plausibility to acceptance as a presumptive truth.
Of course there will be situations that do not fit the textbook patterns of inductive inference, but reflect more closely the complex realities of actual scientific practice. The workings of plausibility-considerations would have to be deployed in somewhat more sophisticated ways to accommodate such complexity... But the general principles at issue remain the same.
p.86 The coherentist approach to inductive reasoning thus deploys pattern-conformity as a guide to plausibility in strict accord with the doctrinal spirit epitomized in Bradley's dictum: "If by taking certain judgments of perception [for us, 'data'] as true, I can get more system into my world, then these 'facts' are so far true..." The reliance on pattern-conformity - an obvious facet of orderliness and system - as a guiding criterion to plausibility, and hence to alethic preferability, is clearly one way to "get more system into my world."
[JLJ - alethic: denoting modalities of truth, such as necessity, contingency, or impossibility. I would argue that systematicity is simply a trick that works - there perhaps are others. Why be hung up on one trick? Why not accumulate a 'bag of tricks' and keep them in mind, and apply them when it is deemed that they are likely to work? Perhaps induction should broadly aim at first categorizing the situation - in order to determine which trick to apply, in order to 'go on.']
p.88 the coherence approach... can provide an instrument for making manifest the rational warrant that supports the "inductively proper" conclusion... The tactics characteristic of inductive reasoning all emerge simply as facets of the same fundamental strategy - a drive towards systematicity... How are we to justify this specific resolution, given that alternative possibilities exist? The coherentist answer is that we do so by selecting that resolution which best fits the given evidential basis... The crucial fact is that conformity to established patterns is not used on the coherence approach as a criterion of truth per se, but only as a guide to plausibility.
p.89 What the coherence approach does is to shift the requisite argument from an argument for truth to an argument for plausibility.
p.93 the things one rationally accepts are not of a piece. Specifically, careful heed must be given to the distinction between theses on the one hand and methods on the other... one can also justify the acceptance of specific theses on the grounds that they are validated by an appropriately warranted inquiry procedure... Accordingly, it becomes possible to break the regress of justifying theses by theses: a thesis can be justified by application of a method, and the adoption of this method is justified by reference to certain practical criteria
p.96 one can also discover that something is seriously amiss with the principles of our initial evaluation of plausibilities. For it can, of course, happen that certain types of data which we initially regarded as highly plausible turn out to be generally or systematically rejected as unacceptable by the workings of the coherence mechanism. Or, in an essentially converse way, some category of data that we initially tended to consider as low in plausibility-rating may turn out to prevail generally as truths, once we let the wheels of the coherence machinery grind away. A reappraisal of plausibility judgments is thus also possible.
p.97 If we are to be justified in setting up the parameters of systematicity as such procedural presumptions regulative for inquiry, then the world-picture that results from that inquiry must retrovalidate these presumptions by depicting a world that is adequately systematic.
p.99 circularity in a cognitive method or procedure... is harmless when it is compatible with defeasibility - the potential discovery of mistakes.
p.106 The "real truth" is thus rational precisely in that it is determined through the output of a rationally warranted methodology.
p.106 the pragmatic warrant of coherentism is seen to reside in its capacity to serve as organon of scientific reasoning. [JLJ - organon: an instrument for acquiring knowledge]
p.106-107 the articulation of cognitive systems is a matter of historical development, of 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 effective 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.
p.107-108 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 standard of survivalistic "fitness."
p.113 Such first principles are thus "first" only in the first analysis. Their theory-internal 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. [JLJ - nothing more beyond]
p.116 the conception of a system has historically been applied both to things in the world and to bodies of knowledge.
p.119 Induction, as we have seen, is the search for order, and our processes of inductive inquiry into nature are geared 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 certainly not 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 in the world.
[JLJ - As in game theory, the construction of a principal variation and the examination of sidelines from it is not (nor does it claim to predict) a foreknowledge of exactly how the game will develop, but instead simply represents a hope that - like a fisherman casting a net without precise foreknowledge that the fish are there - that the insight developed into the forces present in the game, combined with the present posture of the game pieces, will allow good moves to emerge from future positions down the road, in the uncertain future.
p.123 For Peirce the validation of man's scientific talent lies in evolution... man has evolved in nature as a creature who tries to make his way in the world by his wits.
p.124 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... This perspective makes manifest the duality of ontological systematicity as both an ontological precondition for the conduct of scientific inquiry and also a substantive product thereof, so that its regulative presumption comes to be retrovalidated by the products of the inquiry process.
p.124 Cognitive systematicity emerges as a regulative ideal governing the conduct of inquiry - an ideal whose adoption is appropriate because its pursuit enables us to realize more effectively the fundamental aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise with respect to understanding..., prediction, and control over nature.
p.125 The parameters of systematicity are accordingly such that the following basic principle holds:
If a thing 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).
[JLJ - Yes, but place this simple thing on an interacting grid, with other simple interacting things, especially with simple interacting things that differ in subtle or even profound ways, and things suddenly get more complicated.]
p.126 Cognitive and ontological systematicity must thus be seen as symbiotically interrelated.
p.127 The validation of systematicity as a cognitive ideal lies in the more practical consideration of its proven utility.
p.127 "Design your cognitive procedures with a view to the pursuit of systematicity!" is a regulative principle of inquiry whose legitimation ultimately lies in its being pragmatically retrovalidated by its capacity to guide inquiry into successful channels.
[JLJ - Rescher suggests that cognitive procedures that pursue systematicity (ideally) guide inquiry into successful channels.]
p.127 It merits reemphasis that this essentially methodological legitimation of the pursuit of systematicity on the cognitive side involves no substantial prejudgment of the substantive question of the systematicity of nature on the ontological side.
p.132-133 Peirce, in effect, saw the history of science as progressing through two stages: an initial or preliminary stage of groping for the general structure of the qualitative relations among scientific parameters, and a secondary phase of quantitative refinement - of filling in with increasing precision the exact values of parameters that figure in equations whose general configuration is determined in the initial phase. Once the first phase has been gotten over with... ongoing scientific progress is just a matter of increasing detail and exactness
p.134 Significant scientific progress is generally a matter not of adding further facts... but of changing he framework itself. Science in the main develops not by addition but by way of substitution and replacement.
p.135 Epistemic change over the course of time relates not only to what is "known" but also to what is asked.
p.147 "Why is there anything at all?"
[JLJ - A question that can only be formulated when there is something. Clearly the question can only arise from a situation where there is something. The parallel but opposite question, "Why is there nothing at all?" can never be legitimately posed. So therefore the question as posed is irrelevant. See how fun it is to do philosophy - you just find creative reasons to dismiss the questions you cannot answer...]
p.152 we have little alternative but to take the humbling view that the incompleteness of our information entails its incorrectness as well - incompleteness must be presumed to carry incorrectness in its wake. This aspect of the matter endows incompleteness with an import far graver than meets the eye on first view.
p.159 The properties of a thing are literally open-ended: We can always discover more of them.
p.160 if there are interactions to which we have no access, then there are (presumably) phenomena which we cannot discern... Where there are inaccessible phenomena, there must be cognitive incompleteness... Where there are unobserved phenomena we must reckon with the prospect that our theoretical systematizations may well be... incomplete... if certain phenomena are not just undetected but in the vary nature of the case inaccessible... then our theoretical knowledge of nature is (presumably) incompletable.
p.160 We are thus led back to the thesis of the great Idealist philosophers (Spinoza, Hegel, Bradley, Royce) that human knowledge inevitably falls short of "perfect science"..., and must accordingly be presumed deficient both in its completeness and its correctness.
[JLJ - Yes, but it might just be good enough to use to determine how to 'go on.']
p.161 Nothing is in principle placed outside the purview of science... Whatever be its lack of completeness, science is self-sufficient... Corrections to science must come from science.
[JLJ - Yes, but certain ideas are ahead of their time when proposed, and perhaps are ridiculed initially or even ignored (evolution, plate tectonics, the Copernican theory of the solar system, Mendel's genetics, the laser.) How long must we wait when science itself "decides" not to advance, or when the mechanisms of science are controlled by totalitarian governments out to control the hearts and minds of their citizens? Science, at any given time in snapshot, is perhaps at once an orthodoxy and a fringe, where competing ideas clash and the tension drives further advancement. When a scientific advancement or paradigm shift happens, ideas that were once located at the fringe are promoted to orthodoxy, and ideas that were once orthodox are relegated to the fringe.]
p.178 We have seen that systematicity is both a matter of degree, and a matter of respect. With the ideal of systematicity, as with other desiderata, one must presume it infeasible to realize the objective in a total and absolute way.
p.179 Realism requires us to recognize that as concerns our scientific understanding of the world our most secure knowledge is presumably no more than presently acceptable error... In human inquiry, the cognitive ideal is correlative with the striving for optimal systematization. And this is an ideal which, like other ideals, is worthy of pursuit, despite the fact that we must realistically recognize that its full attainment lies beyond our grasp.
p.181 Throughout its application, the concept of a system indicates a whole composed of elements that are joined together by linkages operating under the unifying aegis of a connecting principle.
p.182 Classification is, of course, a tool of cognitive systematization in general
p.198 The formation, testing, confirmation or invalidation, and change (modification or replacement) of scientific theses and hypotheses has accordingly been the leading themes of the philosophy of science during the present century.
[JLJ - The "present century" Rescher refers to is the twentieth, as the text was written in 1979.]
p.202 As we probe nature more deeply in our "exploration" of its phenomena, it is only natural and to be expected that our knowledge of it should grow increasingly complex... The fundamental metasystematic lesson of the history of cognitive systematization is surely that complexity is the price of progress.
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