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xi Here is the third volume of my "Pragmatic Idealism" trilogy... The present concluding volume deals with philosophy itself - the nature of the discipline and the methodology of its pursuit.
p.3 Philosophizing represents the human mind's attempt to bring intelligible order into our often chaotic experience of the world's doings.
p.3 The mission of philosophy is to ask, and to answer in a rational and cognitively disciplined way, all the great questions about life in this world that people wonder about in their reflective moments.
p.4 For we must act - our very survival depends upon it - and a rational animal must align its actions with its beliefs.
p.5 A rational animal that has to make its evolutionary way in the world by its wits has a deep-rooted need for speculative reason.
p.6 On the one hand, knowledge is its own reward. On the other hand, knowledge is the indispensable instrument for the more efficient and effective realization of other goals.
p.13 while we ever strive to improve our knowledge, we never manage to perfect it.
p.21 As a cognitive enterprise, philosophizing is invariably involved in a network of interlocking commitments; when some of the strands are pulled, others will be stretched and perhaps broken.
Change your mind about one fact about the real, and you cannot leave all the rest unaffected.
p.37 We must recognize that there is no prospect of assessing the truth - or presumptive truth - of claims... independently of the use of our imperfect mechanisms of inquiry and systematization. And here it is estimation that affords the best means for doing the job. We are not - and presumably will never be - in a position to stake a totally secure claim to the definitive truth regarding those great issues of philosophical interest. But we certainly can, and indeed must, do the best we can to achieve a reasonable estimate of the truth. We can and do aim at the truth in our inquiries, even in circumstances where we cannot make failproof pretentions to its attainment, and where we have no alternative but to settle for the best available estimate of the truth of the matter - that estimate for which the best case can be made out according to the appropriate standards of rational cogency. Systematization in the context of the available background information is nothing other than the process for making out this rationally best case.
p.41 We don't want just any answers, but reasoned answers, defensible answers that square with what we are going to say in other contexts and on other occasions.
p.47 Systematization itself is an instrument of inquiry, a tool for aligning question-resolving conjecture with the data at hand (which, of themselves, are inadequate). The factors of completeness, comprehensiveness, inclusiveness, unity, and so forth are all crucial aspects of system, and the ampler the information base, the ampler is the prospect for our systematization at attain them.
p.51 the strength and weakness of a philosophical position comes down to the extent to which it is developed systematically in relation to the problems it confronts and to the rival alternative resolutions that it outweighs... to establish "the claim of system as an arbiter of fact," to use F. H. Bradley's apt expression.
p.53 Philosophy cannot provide a rational explanation for everything, rationalizing all of its claims "all the way down." Sooner or later the process of explanation and rationalization must - to all appearances - come to a halt in the acceptance of unexplained explainers.
p.61 Philosophers often say things to the general effect that those whose experience of the world is substantially different from our own are bound in consequence to conceive it in very different terms.
p.68 Schemes differ in just this regard - in undertaking different sorts of factual commitments, in their having "a different view of things." ...A conceptual scheme for operating cognitively in the factual domain is always correlative with... a view of how things work in the world. Our categorical frameworks... reflect our view of the facts. They are inseparably linked to our beliefs - to our picture of the truth (or purported truth) of things and stand correlative to the cognitive "state of the art."
p.69 the issue of scheme innovation at bottom turns not on a difference in determinate truth-values but on having of no truth-value at all, because the innovation will lie outside the boundaries of the conceptual horizon of a certain scheme.
p.70 A change of scheme is not a change of mind but a change of subject... The "disagreement" of schemes does not turn on a varying truth-assignment to overlapping theses, but on differences in conceivability (formulatability) of theses - the nonoverlap of theses.
p.71 Different conceptual schemes carry us into literally different spheres of thought... The difference between schemes is accordingly a matter of difference in orientation rather than one of disagreement in doctrine... The denizens of different schemes live in - to at least some extent - different "thought-worlds," as it were.
p.75 Kant stressed that perception cannot be separated from conception - that in the domain of empirical fact, observation cannot be separated from descriptive characterization. Extending this line of thought, his twentieth-century successors stress that conception cannot be separated from judgment, that issues of meaning cannot be separated from issues of fact or purported fact
p.77 There is no obstacle to constructing conceptual schemes as part and parcel of a comprehensive belief-structure that is committed to the facts (or purported facts) - a substantive position, in short, a different view of things on the side of content rather than a different way of viewing the same things on the side of form... our conceptual schemes... are "theory permeated," to use Karl Popper's term; that they involve facts and are inconceivable without them.
p.78 Different conceptual schemes can embody different philosophies without any prospect of - or need for - their translatability into others (our own emphatically included).
p.79 To all intents and purposes, philosophers fall into groupings that are internally united by an affinity of doctrinal fundamentals but divided from one another in distinct "schools of thought" and "traditions." ...Philosophers belong to warring tribes, as it were...
p.82 [footnote] John Kekes has put the salient point well, commenting that to understand a philosopher properly, we must "go to the heart of a philosopher's concern: to the problem he wanted to solve..."
p.83 Philosophical positions evolve dialectically, in mutual interaction.
p.89 Philosophy's very reason for being is to enable us to categorize, describe, and explain what goes on - to understand the world about us and our place within its scheme of things. The discipline exists to elucidate the issues arising out of what we encounter in experience. Accordingly, the conceptions and categories in whose terms we pose the fundamental questions of our philosophical deliberations are rooted in those of everyday life.
p.92 Philosophically relevant conceptions generally possess an inner complexity in which theoretically reparable factors are conjoined in coordinated juxtaposition. The integrity of such concepts rests on a factual rather than a theoretical basis; they hinge upon an empirically based, fact-laden vision of how things work in the world.
p.98 the issues the philosopher seeks to elucidate... are issues that arise in the conditions of everyday life and in the sciences; these questions are... about the domains of experience. Without them, philosophy would lose its point, its very reason for being... The concepts that lie at the ultimate basis of our philosophical discussions are always borrowed from everyday life (existence, reality, knowledge, truth, justice, virtue, etc.) or from science (matter, space, time, etc.).
p.102 The pragmatic approach is serviceable not only with respect to our factual commitments but with respect to our value commitments as well.
p.103 values and ideals are one of the most important thought-tools that we deploy in coming to practical and evaluative terms with our situation... To be sure, values do not describe reality. Yet values and ideals, though instruments of thought, are not mere myths. There is nothing false or fictitious about them. Their pursuit is something that can be perfectly real - and eminently productive... For they provide us with guidance for the management of our lives in all of its practical dimensions, including our cognitive praxis as instituted in philosophy.
[JLJ - Ok, so in artificial intelligence we would need to develop values and ideals which can guide the machine in the performance of the task it was created to do. These might be the same as the ones used by humans performing an identical task, or they might in some cases differ. It should be no surprise if a machine - executing code written by a human (or operating as a mechanism such as a thermostat) - appears to perform a task intelligently, if it is guided in this process by practically effective values and ideals for the selection and processing of certain specific kinds of information, including possibly diagnostic tests which inform on the perceived success of the mission or undertaking, and suggest where its attention should 'focus'. Hmmm.]
p.107 To be viable, generalizations in everyday discourse will ordinarily have to be framed as having a limited force. They will generally be subject to implicit qualifications and provisos that relate to what happens customarily or ordinarily or standardly or other things being equal (ceteris paribus) or the like... Everyday-life generalizations are secured against remote spoiling possibilities through the fact that we do not intend them to be taken rigorously and unrestrictedly, without being softened and accorded some "benefit of qualification."
p.109 There are, however, two importantly different sorts of situations with respect to the exception cases. In the one, it is possible to provide a complete inventory of the exception categories... In the second, more deep-rooted sort of standardist situation, the exception categories simply cannot be inventoried completely and comprehensively in advance
p.110 Standardism is in its element wherever there are clear-cut exceptions to general patterns... What militates for standardism is the presence of irregularity... that precludes representation through theories formulated in strictly general rules.
p.111 Standardism looks to the issue of what happens normally and as a rule. But, of course, the matter of what happens normally (ordinarily, as a rule) is something that, as such, has to be approached from an experiential point of view... The course of experience alone can afford a standard by means of which the contrast between the normal and the abnormal can be implemented; what is normal or not is a matter that hinges crucially and unavoidably on the offerings of our experience.
p.112 In these standardistic situations, explanation is forthcoming under a pervasive presumption of normalcy, which is something we can generally take for granted, given the established policy of presuming situations to be normal (ordinary, standard) unless there are positive indications to the contrary.
[JLJ - Much of human action lies in identifying the typical situation we are in, and supplying the typical response or action for that situation. Such responses often involve a prior quick check of common exceptions to avoid making unnecessary or improper actions.]
p.116-117 The general rules that can be laid down to characterize our situation... have to be geared to the general course of things because unusual unforeseeable confluences and complications can almost always intrude to upset the apple cart.
p.118 A standardistic focus upon the usual (rather than necessary) course of things thus becomes a sensible and realistic proposition. For standardism enables us to achieve various important desiderata:
- an increased security for our theses, enabling us to feel a firmer ground under our feet;
- an improved methodological grasp - it being far easier to spot how things generally go than to establish that they must always and invariably stand in a certain way;
- an enhanced persuasiveness for our position - it being much simpler to convince people that things standardly and normally stand X-wise than to convince them that they must be so inevitably.
p.118 The problems are so intricate, the issues so complex, and the evidence so tenuous... In philosophical contexts, we can (generally) do no better than to support theses regarding how matters stand in general with respect to the questions at issue
p.119 given the complexity of the issues, it is clear that such an "empirical" - that is, experience-oriented - approach that rests satisfied with theses geared to how things stand generally and usually (rather than universally and necessarily) affords our best prospect for obtaining answers to our philosophical questions in a way that is at once informative and defensible.
p.124 in philosophy every argument for a position is one that proceeds from a position.
p.126 The matter of evaluation... is something one can get wrong... It is thus something that can, in principle, come to constitute a target of rational criticism
p.127 All values... transcend issues of information to involve an element of decision and action - of position taking.
p.128 Only through perspectivally conditioned inquiry can we arrive at a view of the truth of things.
p.130 In philosophy, as elsewhere, rational inquiry is a venture in truth estimation.... Inspired by James, pragmatists are quite prepared to abandon concern for truth.
[JLJ - A pragmatist is someone who sees no need to participate in the debate over what is true. It is essentially irrelevant if it cannot be applied to practical problems, to 'going on,' in the current predicament we are or might be in. A pragmatist sets out to acquire 'tricks that work,' or in the business world, practical wisdom also known as 'case studies,' and rests content that a collection of workable schemes is better than a book of 'truths' that are likely to be undermined by 'truer truths' stumbled upon later on down the road. A pragmatist would see only truth claims, become unconcerned, and turn his or her attention elsewhere.
p.132 the human condition being what it is, it lies in the very nature of our situation that we must make a choice. We are emplaced in medias res in a difficult world, and to get about satisfactorily within it we must orient ourselves cognitively. We have no alternative but to choose - arbitrarily if worse comes to worst... As Pascal put it: "You must play. It is not optional. You are embarked."
p.144 Kant and Hegel... they adopted the view that philosophy's prime concern is not with objects as such - philosophy, strictly speaking, does not deal with such items as God, nature, people, actions, and so forth. Rather, the focus of its concern - as they saw it - is with concepts (ideas, conceptions). Its mission is to study, analyze, and systematize people's ideas about God, nature, people, actions, and so on. On this view, philosophy is a second-order enterprise; it does not deal with the world's furnishings as such, but with people's conceptions (ideas, beliefs) about them. Thus, philosophy is a matter of the analysis and synthesis of concepts rather than the examination directly of things or objects of some sort.
p.145 Bertrand Russell wrote:
As soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science... Those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answers can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
p.147 For every mode of human activity (throughout the entire range... even such recreations as sports or games of chance), we can in principle, theorize philosophically regarding:
- the process of the activity (its methodology and praxis);
- the products of the activity and their place in the larger scheme of things;
- the ethics of the activity.
p.151 philosophy has no fixed and predetermined form; its development is not an inexorable rational exfoliation from abstract principles whose general structure can be seen in advance... Philosophy evolves in response to contingently developing experience and interests. In understanding the nature and structure of philosophy, as in the practice of philosophy itself, it is our exposure to the experiential realities that is - and has to be - our guide.
p.155 in philosophy (unlike natural science) there is no reason to think that all serious inquiry must ultimately lead to the same conclusion.
p.156 Inability to achieve consensus is something very different from an inability to achieve answers... absence of consensus simply means that not everyone will accept the answers we ourselves arrive at, and this need not necessarily dismay us - provided that we can find answers whose credentials we ourselves deem satisfactory... One can develop a perfectly sound supporting case to legitimate my holding of a certain position, but this need not be of a sort that will persuade anyone else.
p.160 When we articulate a position in philosophy, we create a structure that is limited in its scope. It will never be able to accommodate everybody. Only those who share our cognitive values... can be brought under its roof. But if the structure is built well upon a solid foundation, it can (in principle) last forever.
p.162 science is simply the wrong model for philosophical inquiry. Its demands for consensus... are simply inapplicable in a field where value espousal must exert its differential pressure.
p.163 The historical development of any philosophical tradition is a story of the ongoing rejection of simple solutions... There is always more to be said.
p.164 Progress is possible only through complication... Once we are embarked on the journey of inquiry, there is no way of returning to the comfortable simplicities of an earlier age. Evolving complexity is not sought for its own sake; it is the inevitable consequence of the nature of the problems of the intellectual instrumentation available to us for dealing with them.
p.165 No doubt philosophy is born in wonder and puzzlement and is destined always to remain there to some extent. But better this than the vacuity of ignorance
p.166 Why should we ask for more than to answer philosophical questions to our own satisfaction? Why should it daunt us that others see matters differently?
p.167 Why be worried as long as one's position can be shown by cogent argumentation to be appropriate "from where one stands," given the sum-total of experience at one's disposal?
[JLJ - What, me worry?]
p.168 If there indeed is a "philosophy" of process, it must pivot not on a thinker but on a theory. What is at issue must, in the end, be a philosophical position that has a life of its own, apart from some particular exposition or expositor. And so it is. Process philosophy elaborates the position that it is processes - rather than say, things or persons - that constitute the category most central to philosophical understanding.
[Alfred North] Whitehead himself fixed on "process" as a central category of his philosophy because he viewed time and change as salient metaphysical issues. Invoking the name of Bergson, he adopted "Nature is a process" as a leading principle and saw temporality, historicity, change, and passage as fundamental facts to be reckoned with in our understanding of the world.
p.169 From the time of Aristotle, Western metaphysics has had a marked bias in favor of things... processes are not in general a matter of the doings of things.
p.170 other events and processes relate to the coordinated doings of things... or of people... But many events and processes are patently subjectless in that they do not consist of the doings of one or more personal or impersonal agents... What is at work in these self-subsistent or subjectless processes are not "agents" but "forces." And these can be diffusely located... or lack any genuine location at all
p.170 Leibniz... maintained that all of the "things" that figure in our experience (animals alone grudgingly excepted) are mere phenomena and not really things at all. The world in fact consists of clusters of processes he called monads (units), which are "centers of force" or bundles of activity. For Leibniz, processes rather than things furnish the basic materials of ontology.
p.170 it seems sensible to understand "process philosophy" as a doctrine involving certain basic propositions;
- Time and change are among the principal categories of metaphysical understanding.
- Processes are more fundamental, or are at any rate not less fundamental, than things for the purposes of ontological theory.
- Several, if not all, of the major elements of the ontological repertoire... are best understood in process terms.
- Contingency, emergence, novelty, and creativity are among the fundamental categories of metaphysical understanding.
p.170 A process philosopher, then, is someone for whom temporality, activity, and change - alteration, striving, passage, and the emergence of novelty - are the cardinal factors for our understanding of the real. Ultimately it is a question of priority - of viewing the time-bound aspects of the real as constituting its most characteristic and significant features.
p.171 The world is full of processes that do not represent the action of things
p.171 Being follows from operation because all there is, in the final analysis, is the product of processes.
As process philosophers see it, processes are basic and things derivative
p.172 it takes a mental process of identification and individuation to extract "things" from the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world's physical processes.
p.172 Process metaphysics... takes the line that the categorical properties of things are simply stable clusters of process-engendering dispositions.
p.172 If... things are totally inert - if they do nothing - they are pointless.
[JLJ - Really? A wall does nothing, but can stop someone who wants to cross over, simply by remaining a wall.]
p.173 As Leibniz insisted, a substance is primarily a center of force, a bundle of dispositions to exert impacts of various sorts upon the others. Substances can come upon the stage of consideration only through the mediation of processes.
p.173 A process ontology thus greatly simplifies matters. Instead of a two-tier reality that combines things with their inevitable coordinated processes, it settles for a one-tier ontology of processes alone. It sees things not just as the products of processes (as one cannot avoid doing) but also as the manifestation of processes - as complex bundles of coordinated processes. It replaces the troublesome ontological dualism of thing and activity with a monism of activities of various sorts. If simplicity is an advantage, process ontology has a lot to offer.
p.175 A process approach thus simplifies greatly the problem of securing a coherent view of nature. Modern physics teaches us that at the level of the very small there are no ongoing things (substances, objects) at all in nature, no particulars with a continuing descriptive identity of their own - there are only patterns of process that exhibit stabilities... Only those stability waves of continuous process provide for any sort of continuity of existence. The development of stable "things" begins at the submicroscopic level with a buzzing proliferation of "events" that have little if any fixed nature in themselves but exist only in reciprocal interaction with each other, and that have no stable characteristics in and of themselves but come to exhibit spatiotemporally stable aspects only at the level of statistical aggregates.
p.176 so-called enduring things come about through the compilation of stabilities in statistical fluctations... Processes are not the machinations of stable things; things are the stability patterns of variable processes.
p.178 what we do defines what we are.
p.179 from the process point of view - one's self just is the complex process composed of those various physical and psychic experiences and actions in their systematic interrelationship.
p.180-181 any philosophical position or doctrine... is in itself something unfinished, incomplete, and obsolescent... the presently attained stage is not the end of the road - the journey continues. (It could not proceed on its actual course, however, had its present stage not been attained.)
p.184 Tiedemann emphasized the value and importance of a comprehensive survey of alternative positions.
p.205 The human condition is such that we are going to have some view... The question is simply whether we are going to have one that is well thought out or not.
p.206 philosophy... orients our thought, clarifies our values, and guides our actions. Philosophy matters because it clarifies and systematizes our thought about issues that matter.
p.229 The aim of any rational inquiry is to get viable answers to our questions. But to maintain anything seriously (whether a factual claim or an evaluation or whatever) is to claim and affirm implicitly that this particular way of resolving the question at issue is appropriate - that its rationale is cogent and its credentials superior to those of alternative possibilities.
p.237 In every field - philosophy included - the only standard it makes any sense for us to use is the one we endorse. There is no point in my applying someone else's standard of value or worth or interest or appropriateness or whatever.
[JLJ - So, what makes you think your 'standard' is better than all others? A common man would append, "but I could be wrong," to every speculation, but not Rescher - he arrogantly applies "but I'm likely right."]
p.247 in inquiry, as elsewhere, we have to distinguish between aim and achievement. We may intend to assert the (real and genuine) truth, but all that we can ever actually achieve is to assert what we think the truth to be.
p.248 The long and short of it is that we have no choice about seeing our best-considered way of going about it to be the right one... If we are to take our philosophizing seriously, we must ourselves approach it from the angle of the right and the true... this is a stance that we are certainly able - and perfectly entitled - to take.
[JLJ - People generally feel this way about their chosen and practiced religion - but then again, Rescher is a preacher at the pulpit of the Church of Rationality. I would say that the world and reality we live in does not demand perfection from our interpreted way of looking at things and then 'choosing' to 'go on' - many ways 'work' and in fact get us from one present to the next. Only a philosopher worries about the true - every other (sane) individual worries about constructing (and executing) a practical scheme for 'going on' that is fair, ethical, sensitive, effective, changeable, resilient, and perceptive.]
p.253-256 Pragmatic Idealism: A Schematic Sketch of the Overall Position
1. The reach of reason
- Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives
- Reason is our characterizing instrument...
- Cognitive rationality is a major component of human reason...
- However, rationality extends well beyond the cognitive domain to encompass both the practical and the evaluative sectors...
- The rationality of ends - evaluative rationality that pivots on the realization of our opportunities as free rational agents - is a pivotal aspect of rationality at large.
2. Knowledge and idealization
- In pursuing the cognitive project we aspire to correctness and completeness...
- Although cognitive perfection is not a practical project, it is a valid and appropriate ideal...
- The validation of this perfectionistic ideal thus resides ultimately in its utility...
3. Inquiry as truth estimation
- Knowledge is an indispensable guide to action for a rational being.
- The conditions under which we pursue rationally cogent knowledge about the real are such that final, definitive information about the real... is not attainable by us. We are constrained... to making the most and best we can of the imperfect materials at our disposal.
- We are accordingly restricted to making estimates of the truth. Scientific knowledge is a matter of truth estimation by means of the systematization of our observational experience.
- In this process of systematization we do the best we can to produce a coherent, cogent, comprehensive account capable of yielding answers to our questions...
- ...prediction and control provide an effective, objective quality-control monitor of our cognitive proceedings.
4. Reality
- Reality is not definitively knowable to us, seeing that the most and best we can do is to estimate its nature.
- ...at best, all we can manage is to produce an (unavoidably imperfect) picture or model of it...
- ...is an indispensable thought-tool for us in forming a proper view of our inquiries and their object.
5. Understanding our own place in reality's scheme of things
- Humans are... committed to the quest for... knowledge - regarding the world we live in.
- ...the need for knowledge is... pressing...
- We humans face an inescapable and irreducible challenge to achieve cognitive accommodation to the world.
- Arriving at a viable understanding of our own place in reality's scheme of things is for us not only a challenge but part of our destiny...
6. Values
- ...Making appropriate evaluations is as critical a part of our lives as securing appropriate information.
- Values constitute for us a basis for decision and action...
- Many of our human values inhere in our needs. But to some we become committed ontologically...
- ...The values based in our ontological situation underpin the rational validity of ends...
- ...values... Their impetus roots in our condition and our needs...
7.Morality...
8.Philosophical anthropology
- ...The impetus to rationality is what makes us what we can and should be...
9. Against relativism...
10. Philosophizing
- Philosophizing is an integral part of the cognitive project of rational beings.
- It consists in the cognitive endeavor to make good rational sense of the world and our place within it by asking and endeavoring to answer "the big questions" that arise in this sphere...
11. Limits and idealization (again)
- In every aspect of our mental life - evaluative and moral as well as cognitive - we face limits. our various intellectual projects - even in philosophizing - have to be carried on with means inadequate to the full realization of our aims.
- In these circumstances, we have no choice but to do the best we can...
- ...regarding the larger issues of rational inquiry... an idealization... provides us with an incentive and a stimulus to move matters along toward a better state of things.
- Our ideals urge us on to do the best we can...
12. Why pragmatic idealism?
- The power and value of such an ideal does not lie in its achievability but in its utility - its capacity to provide rational incentives toward the realization of positive results.
- ...Goals we expect to achieve, but ideals we neither can nor expect to bring to actual realization.
- The case for idealization lies in the legitimacy and appropriateness of having ideals...
- This legitimacy and appropriateness of ideals lies in their utility...
- ...the praxis that is at issue with ideals... looks to an intellectual praxis and indeed even to one where "higher"... considerations count as well.
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