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p.8 philosophy is oriented to the ways in which humans can, do, and should think about things.
p.10 We need to do the very best we can to resolve questions that transcend accreted experience and outrun the reach of the information already at our disposal.
[JLJ - ...and I would say that we cannot do 'the very best we can' without looking at these 'questions' from multiple angles, including positions that differ from ones you accept. We must cast the net wide and haul in ideas from traditions and individuals of all sorts when we ponder such 'questions'. Francois Jullien is insightful in his philosophical teachings because he has considered a very different perspective when 'answering' the 'questions' Rescher speaks of.]
p.11 We can and do aim at the truth in our inquiries, even in circumstances where we cannot make fool-proof 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.
[JLJ - For Rescher, apparently, 'we don't know' is not an 'answer' to a philosophical 'question'. It is for me. If you take any 'question' and put it under a microscope of analysis and produce a 'rational answer', but you separate it from the predicament, you are going to get less of a truth than if you tie it tightly and effectively to the predicament we all face in our individual lives. We need to 'go on', and so we need to plan and scheme and invest and 'live' within cycles of expending energy and resting, learning and socializing.]
p.12 In effect, there are no uncontested issues of philosophy.
p.35 We have to form our judgment about things - philosophical things included - on the basis of the information at our disposal.
[JLJ - Yes, but we can just as well decide that we do not yet have enough information at our disposal in order to decide.]
p.48 "First things first" is not only a principle of action but one of discovery as well.
[JLJ - We need wisom, advice, and experience to direct us in 'First things first.' When we scheme to accomplish something, anything, the driving forces of our predicament push back to varying degrees, especially if we confront someone - perhaps an opponent or business associate who is also putting 'First things first.' When someone acts, he or she acts in a world full of other actors who are also moving towards their goals. 'First thngs first' will mean to understand the driving forces of one's predicament, the goals and ambitions of the rational actors of our world, and out of necessity, to construct practical and effective schemes of action, planning and investing resources that are modifiable by learning and observing, and which have a distant payoff worth the time and invested effort in pursuing.]
p.65 The idea goes back to Protagoras (b. ca. 490 BC) that equally cogent arguments pro and con can be made out on virtually any significant issue.
p.70 It is... important, even when we recognize the utility of a trial-and-error technique, that this be thought of not as a blind groping among all conceivable alternatives but as a carefully guided search among the really promising alternatives.
[JLJ - An effective scheme might call for such a trial-and-error technique, especially when estimating the capacity of a position in a game to coerce, in the uncertain future - including those positions which emerges from beyond our planning efforts. Such a technique might be used to estimate a capacity, perhaps with a certain level of confidence.]
p.101-102 Eubulides' classic Paradox of the Heap... there... will have to be a transition point where non-heaps become heaps. But... there is no such thing as an exact transition point in such matters. There is simply a murky region of uncertainty - itself lacking any definite balance - one side of which is clearly too small and the other too large.
[JLJ - Rescher and others miss that a heap is a generalization, or a special case of a classification which does not need to be specific. We typically do not distinguish between a heap, a pile, or a stack, because we do not need to in order to 'go on' within our predicament. A generalization is useful in certain cases of extreme complexity or limited time for investigation, when any potential harm resulting by the generalization itself is more than compensated by the insight obtained. In other words, a trick that works might call for a generalization or general purpose classification to be made. Despite the inexactness, the trick still works, or produces in the end, acceptable results.]
p.102 Exactness impedes utility
[JLJ - We need to return to the predicament and the logic of the predicament. In our lives, a clock is ticking and things are changing and opportunities come and go and often we do not have the luxury of exactness. A trick that works, that is effective in a predicament, most likely will not call for exactness, in all cases.]
p.104 Fortunately for us many - indeed even most - decisions in life can be made very reasonably on the basis of indefinite information.
[JLJ - Yes, but try to maneuver with this 'indefinite information', or to run a business in a competitive environment, and suddenly things are not so easy. An effective scheme - one that we would want to execute in order to 'go on' - should call out the right type and amount of information needed, and should work without extreme precision. Perhaps a scheme to go on needs to be re-examined when much is unknown, or too much is guessed at.]
p.107 On virtually every theme or topic, the information securely at our disposal is manifestly incomplete, with more holes than a swiss cheese. Conjecture is one of our principal means for extending the range of information at our disposal so as to fill those holes. It is always guesswork: a leap in the dark for by its very nature conjecture carries us well beyond the evidence at hand. And inevitably this involves the risk of error.
[JLJ - Yawn... our practical scheme for managing our predicament should suggest to us if, when and how to 'fill those holes' in 'information at our disposal.' The answer to many of our daily problems can be found by simply looking around at how others are acting when they face similar problems. You go about plugging your holes in information and fretting about 'error'. I instead will execute practical, effective, fair, sensitive and ethical schemes to manage my predicament. Let's see who - in the end - has better chances of reaching their goals.]
p.108 Inference is a matter of evidentiation, conjecture a matter of guesswork... conjecture transcends the substance of the already available and pushes our informative range into new substantive territory moving further beyond this range... conjecture is guesswork - cognitive gapfilling; it goes beyond where inference can tread... Conjecture can be rational or wild, sensible, or idle. .. conjecture is based on a background of information. However, it uses the information not as premisses but rather indications - suggestions or clues... we seek to fill these gaps in the most orderly, uniform, regular, smooth, symmetrical, cohesive available way, and the language of justification shifts from the range of evidentiation to that of unification.
[JLJ - We have to decide how to 'go on' at every moment of our lives. Inference rises to the level of an 'arrow' that possibly points to a promising path, or one likely worth the time and effort exploring further. But in the end it is still only a promising path, but one more likely than conjecture to offer useful direction.]
p.109 It is the established efficacy of those modes of informative gapfilling in comparison with other available means that establish the claims of harmonizing guesswork a[s] our optimal prime methodology of evidence-transcending guesswork.
p.123 it is next to impossible to get a more definite fix on our own ignorance.
[JLJ - Just listen to your critics... including me... Rescher is used to lecturing, he does not appear to be used to listening. I remind Rescher that writing philosophy is like spray-painting graffiti on a wall. You have the attention of others until your text is covered up by those who come after you. The fate of the dusty library shelf, and then removal from circulation and disposal sale on e-bay, awaits all texts in the college library...]
p.155 Contingency represents the idea that reality might be different from what it actually is: that there are alternatives to the prevailing order of things.
[JLJ - Rescher examines things that depend on other things. Well...so? Why ponder different things that might have happened twenty years ago? Our individual predicament of today awaits, the sun continues to rise and set each day, and opportunities - some fleeting - present themselves, some of which will disappear forever if not grasped. Philosophy for me is the philosophy of managing the predicament. It cannot be otherwise for me - that is, unless you have tenure at a University and can sit in your day-job and write whatever you please. Those who sit and write books see the world differently from those who do not...]
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