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xiii In an era when fashion leads towards a monolithic 'analysis of knowledge' that regiments this conception into the format of a computational formalism, the book seeks to convey the idea that knowledge is something far more diversified, variegated, and complex than is generally acknowledged.
xiv Our knowledge is a tool or instrument that enables a creature hungry for understanding to get a cognitive grasp on things. And any tool or instrument is bound to reflect in its make-up the uses its user proposes to make of it; it inevitably takes on a form that is coordinated by the ends and purposes for which it is designed.
p.5-6 there may be some sorts of knowledge that people just cannot handle, destabilizing them to the point where the knowledge destroys or undermines their ability to function effectively. Here it would be imprudent for the individual to acquire the knowledge... the fact remains that there is nothing improper about such knowledge per se, problems arise only when it is put to unintelligent use.
p.8 Might there be some items of knowledge that it would be just morally wrong for us to have at all? ...Could the mere possession of knowledge as such - in and by itself - be morally improper?
p.9 No doubt virtually all of us have a temptation threshold - a breaking point beyond which we cannot resist.
p.15 knowledge plays a very special role in human affairs... knowledge serves to facilitate the realization of any other legitimate good: any and every such good is cultivated the more effectively by someone who pursues its realization knowledgeably.
p.16 The upshot, then, is that there are moral limits to inquiry and we can legitimately implement them in some cases. But we are well advised to do so only when other vital interests are seriously put at risk. The idea of "forbidden knowledge" is one we should never apply lightly... this is not quite to say it should never should be applied at all.
p.26 The history of science shows that our "discoveries" about how things work in the world secured through scientific coherentism constantly require adjustment, correction, replacement... Our "knowledge" is in such cases no more than our best estimate of the truth of things.
p.28 Much, if not most, of our thinking is carried out under conditions where we do not deem the premisses from which we reason to be absolutely certain truths, but merely very probable or plausible suppositions.
p.28-29 Whenever we reason in a deductively valid way from assured premisses - premisses viewed as being true in line with the traditional conception of "truth" as systematized in classical logic... our reasoning can be linear and progressive. We can march straight on, never needing to look back over our shoulders at earlier findings to assure ourselves that the new ones have rendered the old unacceptable... By contrast, "dialectical" reasoning is a matter of the repeated reconsideration of old issues from newly attained points of view. The root idea of such reasoning is that of a multistage process where we repeatedly re-examine one self-same issue from different, and mutually inconsistent, points of view... We proceed in circles or cycles where we return to a certain issue first in this light and then in that.
p.29 In dialectical reasoning we make assertions that are negated ("corrected") by subsequent counter-assertions. We have here a process of successive approximation, where at each stage we assert things that are literally false and in need of eventual correction. When things go smoothly, however, these successive corrections appertain to increasingly minor and insignificant issues.
p.33 There are two profoundly different approaches to the cognitive enterprise which, for want of better choices, might be called the ampliative and the reductive, respectfully.
The ampliative strategy searches for highly secure propositions that are acceptable as "true beyond reasonable doubt". Given such a carefully circumscribed and tightly controlled starter-set of propositions, one proceeds to move outwards ampliatively by making inferences from this secure starter set.
p.33-34 The reductive strategy... begins in a quest not for unproblematically acceptable truths, but for well-qualified candidates or prospects for truth. At the outset one does not require contentions that are certain and altogether qualified for recognition as genuine truths, but proposition that are no more than plausible, well-spoken for, well-grounded candidates for endorsement... What we have to do is to impose a delimiting (and consistency restoring) screening-out that separates the sheep from the goats until we are left with something that merits endorsement.
p.34 the paradigm method of contraction is dialectical argumentation. To effect the necessary reductions we do not proceed via a single deductive chain, but through backing and filling along complex cycles which criss-cross over the same ground from different angles of approach in their efforts to identify weak spots... We are now looking for the best candidates among competing alternatives - for that resolution for which, on balance, the strongest overall case can be made out. It is not "the uniquely correct answer" but "the most defensible position" that we seek in dialectics.
p.35 With reductive reasoning... The touchstone is now not certainty, but something on the order of plausibility, or credibility, or likelihood, or verisimilitude. Here we want to cast our net widely to gather in as much as we can of all those contentions that "have something to be said" for them... Our view of "acceptability" changes form acceptable-as-certain to acceptable-as-a-credible prospect - from outright endorsement to serious entertainment.
[JLJ - We might even briefly consider unlikely candidates - the thinking being that certain truths are hidden, and the act of investigation, underway as it is - might stumble upon an answer that was momentarily hidden from our view.]
p.37 The implementation of an ampliative epistemology calls for a keen eye to basic certainties. the quest for that appropriate starter set of secure axiomatic propositions is the paramount task. A reductive epistemology calls for a mind-set oriented to breadth in the first instance rather than depth. It is a matter of a wide-ranging search for plausibilities rather than a deep-probing reach for fundamentalities. The model is that of a detective searching for plausible clues and indications rather than that of a mathematician searching for assured axioms.
p.38 Argument in a controversial discussion, rather than mathematical demonstration along Euclidean lines, is the best model for dialectics.
p.48-49 Even a system that is finitely complex both in its physical makeup and in its basic law structure might yet be infinitely complex in its actual operations over time. For the operations of a structurally finite and nomically finite system can yet exhibit an infinite intricacy in operational or functional complexity, manifesting this limitless diversity in the working out of its processes rather than at the spatio-structural or nomic level. Even were the number of constituents of nature to be small, the ways in which they can be combined to yield products in space-time might yet be infinite.
p.50 Increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of conceptual coordination can lead us to regard the same phenomena in the light of different complexity-levels.
p.51 Even though nature might be of finite physical and nomic complexity as regards its physical structure and its basic procedural laws, nevertheless it could be infinitely diverse in the unfolding operational complexity of its phenomenal products over time.
p.55 Complexity, after all, lies less in the objects than in the eyes of their beholder.
p.55 If we are sufficiently myopic, then, even when the scene we examine is itself only finitely complex, an ever ampler view of it will emerge as the resolving power of our conceptual and observational instruments is increased... At each successive state-of-the-art stage of increased precision in our investigative proceedings, the world may take on a very different nomic appearance, not because it changes, but simply because at each stage it presents itself differently to us.
p.55 Continuing discovery is quite as much a matter of how we inquirers proceed with our work as it is of the nature of the object of inquiry.
p.56 There is no effective procedure for randomness-determination, and so the search for order can never be terminated with unalloyed confidence that further effort in the search for order is fruitless.
p.57 the effort to advance our scientific probes of nature is not easy, the work not inexpensive... The forces of anti-intellectualism in society and in government are ever on the lookout for reasons to keep science on a short financial leash. Perhaps there indeed are such reasons.
[JLJ - Yeah, just people that do not have food to eat or a place to live. How dare they use the democratic process to seek to reduce government funding of science...]
p.77 there is a tendency for analysts to look for an "easy way out" - to facilitate the process of calculation by making inappropriate or eminently problematic substantive suppositions.
p.78 Probability no doubt affords substantial guidance to practical decision making.
[JLJ - Yes, and a probability coupled with a practical scheme that works. Someone who wants his scheme to work will simply present you with a situation where probability suggests you should do things his way, when in fact, the situation is not as it might seem.]
p.78 As the probabilistic program in epistemology sees it, knowledge always roots in mere probabilities. Propositional acceptance is thus a two-stage process. Initially, at stage one, we have only probabilistic information regarding the matters at issue. Subsequently, at stage two, we use this probabilistic information to determine - somehow or other - which claims to actually accept.
[JLJ - The human mind is an expert at finding simple or even complex cues in the environment that hint or signal that a situation of importance is possibly at hand. These tripwires, once established and subsequently stumbled upon, cause us to stop our general scanning behavior and begin to focus our attention on the situation and what else is developing. Probability - combined with the presence or absence of (intelligently derived) subtle cues - might just shift our mode of behavior from one of unconcern to one of mild or even sudden concern. This intelligent attention shifting is a proper and appropriate task for probability - we then address the issue with an appropriate degree of paranoia, before ultimately moving on or being interrupted by other issues.]
p.79 merely probabilistic information as such does not enable us to answer our questions about the world... to get answers to our questions... we must take the step from stage one to stage two by somehow effecting a transition from probability to acceptability... probable statements do not thereby gain a hold on the truth. Nor, again, does its improbability (i.e., low probability) entail the falsity of a thesis: an improbable contention is not thereby rendered false - improbable things happen all the time.
[JLJ - No, but we might pause to investigate, or add more time, or look at something another way. We merely have to decide how to 'go on' in our current predicament, and probability might serve as a good launching point in a task which must gather information with a clock ticking.]
p.80 probabilistic epistemologists propose... "prior" probability claims... Factual claims of this particular sort, so they maintain, need not be grounded or evidentiated at all - they are simply somehow "given"... are mere subjectively stipulated posits - decrees that stake claims (of a specifically probabilistic nature) which subsist without themselves having any visible means of support in the realm of acceptance.
p.89 Deliberations at the level of totality generally involve... reflections regarding how things stand when we drive matters through to their logical conclusion.
p.90 In viewing the world we humans invariably also use a mind's eye vision that looks beyond what the body's eye can possibly see... We standardly so frame our thought as to project its ramifications beyond the secure realm of accomplished facts and insist in locating local issues in a global framework.
p.91 Deliberation at the level of totality is a most useful, indeed essential, resource because the proper appraisal of realities is greatly aided by use of such idealizations.
p.94 In complex situations, the quantitative factors may be the easiest to get hold of, but they are not necessarily the most pivotal. Certainties are more easily measured than uncertainties, simplicities than complexities. But they are not necessarily the determining factors.
p.95 The numbers are not a substitute for sound judgment. On the contrary, it is generally only on the basis of sound judgment that they themselves are useful.
[JLJ - Yes, and in my thinking, the scheme for going on calls for the sound judgment, which in turn calls for the evaluation, which might be done by several methods, such as heuristics, comparison, diagnostic testing, most similar case, or even best practice.]
p.96 Rational choice among alternatives is undoubtedly a matter of selecting "the best option." But since this preferability cannot in general be quantified in most real-world situations, its comparative determination is a matter of qualitative judgment rather [than] quantitative measurement. The appraisal at issue is generally not a matter of quantitative evaluation but of comparison and contrast with other cases - of analogy and assimilation. The experienced judge often evaluates but seldom calculates.
In many of our deliberations we do well to adopt this judicial model of decision-making rather than that of quantitative comparison - not a model of calculating but of appraising by "weighing arguments". And the idea of "strength of evidence" is an example of a situation in which quantitative resources leave us in the lurch. The crux is not a matter of scientific computation but of informal estimation - of making "judgment calls" on the basis of seasoned experience that may not have a quantitative foundation. We generally cannot assess the bearing of evidence in quantitative terms.
The crucial lesson is that even where quantification is impracticable - or even though in principle feasible where numerical data are lacking - it is perfectly appropriate to place reliance on informed and tested judgment... In the cognitive and practical affairs of man there are all sorts of issues where quantification is infeasible and we must proceed by qualitative judgment based on assimilation and analogy.
[JLJ - These are powerful lessons useful as well for playing complex games of strategy.]
p.98 If the top speed of a car is 5 m.p.h, no augmentation in passenger safety or operating reliability can make up for this shortcoming.
[JLJ - Rescher touches on what is known in the business world as critical success factors.]
p.98 In general, things have many different value-aspects and we have no workable single-valued "function of combination" enabling us to extract a single, all-embracing measure of overall value from them.
[JLJ - ...yet Consumer Reports does exactly that. It will also blacklist a product if it does not meet minimum standards - such as Rescher's unlikely-to-be-produced 5 mph top speed car, but will remove this particular form of serious criticism once the defect in question is fixed.]
p.99 "The good" at large is something multi-dimensional and not homogeneous. Enhancing it is a matter of optimizing a complex, not of maximizing a determinable quantity... In general, when we have to appraise a profile or complex of desiderata, preferability becomes a matter of contextually determined structural harmonization rather than of mensurational maximization.
[JLJ - Yes, and we can intelligently create a diagnostic test of whatever quantity we want to see, and so arrive at an estimate of such a multi-dimensional complex. A fire drill held at an Elementary school provides an estimate of the time it would take to empty the building and allows a discovery of related problems, such as locked doors or excessive hallway congestion during evacuation.]
p.99 Where is it written that quantification alone yields genuine understanding - that judgment based on analogy or qualitative harmonization is unhelpful and uninformative, so that where numbers cannot enter, intelligibility flies away... In everyday life, professional activity, and public affairs alike, reliance on numbers is no substitute for reflective thought.
[JLJ - Show me a number, and I will likely be able to show you a human attempt at understanding in progress, completed, abandoned or just underway. Numbers are generally by-products or intermediate steps of thought underway. Whether they are part of an effective scheme or not is the general question.]
p.100-101 Human existence in this mortal sphere inexorably presents us with a constantly changing situation... Everyone who is not prematurely carried off by death is involved in an inescapable transit through the successive stages of life.
p.103 Age classification proceeds in terms of a series of developmental stages, demarcated by "phase-transitions" that represent "milestones" in human development
p.107 We position phenomena in a classificatory and descriptive framework whose design involves judgments of importance and significance - value judgments in short.
p.109 Actual physical age... is something that is... infinitely varied... But the age characterizations used in our man-devised age taxonomies always involve artificial breaks and discontinuities. They reflect rules of thumb designed to render the variety and complexity of the real world amenable to our descriptive convenience. Accordingly they involve the element of... roughness or vagueness to eliminate the variability of the real through oversimplification for the sake of operating convenience.
[JLJ - Perhaps we classify in such a fashion only because we have pre-decided how we are going to act in each possible case we might encounter, as part of our scheme for 'going on'. We don't as much decide what to do, as to decide which case exists - in our current scheme - in this present situation, and then we subsequently act as we have previously determined would be best, for this particular case. In appearances, we are deciding what to do, in actuality, maybe we are just looking for the intelligently obtainable cues which indicate that we have a case 1 here, rather than a case 2 or a case 3.]
p.111 to use a scheme is to endorse it... Employing a given age-periodization scheme reflects a certain ideology - a way of looking at the world that reflects the "subjective" views of the onlooker as much as the objective nature of what he sees.
[JLJ - Really? To use a scheme is to endorse it? Apparently Rescher has not yet advised a teenager to "do as I say and not as I do..." I know many smokers that would like to quit, and who would advise against the habit. One might use a scheme only to revel in the moment, such as to attend a college party, but upon dealing with the hangover the next day, not endorse it. Are you saying, Mr. Rescher, that medical doctors who smoke, drink, maintain extra weight and do not exercise, actually endorse this behavior? Getting back to Rescher's observation, to use a scheme for classifying means only to me that it is a practical way to figure out what to do next - perhaps we have pre-decided how to 'go on,' depending on which category or age-classification of person we take to be the case.]
p.112 The classifications of natural science are designed to reflect substantial real differences in the objective nature of the object. We divide only where the demarcations are clear and sharp and general - where there are abrupt transitions in the phenomena themselves... The classifications of natural science are designed only to facilitate the explanation of pre-existing differences and not to introduce differences by deploying our own interests to impose abrupt breaks where nature sees only gradual slides - reflecting the concerns and values that we ourselves import into the classificatory situation.
[JLJ - Classification by DNA examination might end up being more accurate than any human-based scheme to classify based on function and appearance.]
p.123 With 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, etc. Rather, the focus of its concern is concepts (ideas, conceptions). Its mission is to study, analyze and systematize people's ideas about God, nature, people, actions, etc.
p.123 we cannot successfully distance things from our conceptions of them.
p.123-124 [Bertrand Russell]
(A)s soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science... (T)hose questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
p.133 Any philosopher must soon come to terms with the fact that other philosophers will not agree with his views on the substantive issues of the discipline.
[JLJ - There are currently 7.6 billion people in the world and I would expect that about 7.6 billion people do not agree with what I have written...]
p.138 Until one's own philosophical position is ready, one can expect no useful guidance from philosophy... It is from one's own philosophy, and not from philosophy per se, that guidance for our thought and action is to be extracted... Philosophy-in-general cannot answer our questions, this can only happen when we accept a particular philosophy... To obtain answers to our questions we must work them out on a basis which we can endorse... Once we have a philosophy in place, we can draw upon it for counsel.
p.139 Answers are something we cannot obtain from philosophy-at-large - they come only from our philosophy.
p.139 Strictly speaking, there is but one way in which actually to "apply" philosophy - namely by first developing a philosophical position of one's own, and then proceeding to put it to work in resolving issues. It is obvious enough that to apply a philosophy one must first have a philosophy to apply.
p.141-142 What is at issue with this methodological mode of applied philosophy is not problem-resolution, then, but rather that crucial preliminary of problem-clarification. Such a procedure can enable us to achieve technical adequacy in our deliberations
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