ontemporary CPragmatism Edited by
John R. Shook & Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr. Volume 3 Number 2 December 2006
AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2006
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISSN: 1572-3429 ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2178-5 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in The Netherlands
Contemporary Pragmatism Volume 3 Number 2
December 2006
Contents Symposium on Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology Sami Pihlström Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
1
Joseph Margolis Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
15
Mark Timmons Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking: Reflections on Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
27
David Copp The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
39
Claudine Tiercelin Metaphysics without Ontology?
55
Hilary Putnam Replies to Commentators
67
Articles Scott R. Stroud Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
99
Hugh G. McDonald Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
117
Robert Lane Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans
151
Book Reviews David Vessey Review of Paul Fairfield, Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism
171
Kevin W. Gray Review of William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, eds., The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought
175
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 1–13
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology Sami Pihlström
This symposium contribution discusses the conception of ontology which is used in Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without Ontology.
1. Introduction Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology (2004) articulates and defends moral objectivity and the fact/value entanglement, continuing the themes of his previous book (Putnam 2002), which argued against the fact/value dichotomy at greater length (cf. Putnam 1981, 1990, 1994). This is a project I greatly admire; indeed, I use Putnam’s criticism of the fact/value dualism as a starting point in my own work on pragmatic moral realism (Pihlström 2003, chap. 7; 2005a). However, in this paper, I have little to say about Putnam as an ethical thinker. Instead, I will critically discuss the conception of ontology he assumes in his case for “ethics without ontology.” Putnam has written on ontological matters for decades. The attack on “Ontology” (with a capital “O”) in Ethics without Ontology parallels and further develops his famous attack on metaphysical realism (Putnam 1981, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1999; for discussions of Putnam’s and his critics’ views on realism, see Pihlström 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005b), although he no more employs his old terminology of metaphysical vs. internal realism. While I doubt that Ethics without Ontology adds anything essentially new to Putnam’s previous treatments of ontology, realism, and conceptual relativity, it clearly expresses his distaste for “Ontological” attempts of cutting the world at its joints. The most significant novelty in the book is presumably the way in which Putnam links his treatment of ontology with his pragmatist reconstruction of ethics – and, as we shall see, the relation between ontology and ethics is at the core of Putnam’s critique. 2. Conceptual Relativity and Pragmatic Pluralism Putnam’s repudiation of Ontology is based on his anti-reductionism. Mathematics, ethics, and many other human practices, he argues, are autonomous in the sense that the objectivity of these practices or the truths of statements formulated within them should not be metaphysically explained by appealing to
2
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
peculiar entities transcending those practices (3). (Unspecified references are to Putnam 2004a.) Mathematicians and ethical thinkers are committed to their distinctive truths from their practice-internal perspectives. (For a comprehensive discussion of this view, from the point of view of the philosophy of mathematics, see Putnam 2001a.) Ontology, or what Heidegger called the “onto-theological” tradition (16), takes, according to Putnam, basically two different forms: inflationary and deflationary. The former kind of ontologists postulate, like Plato, mysterious transcendent entities in order to explain certain worldly facts or properties (e.g., goodness); thus, they appeal to “non-natural objects” as the “truth-makers” of certain truths we believe to be true (17–19, 52). (It is worth noting that Putnam is not entirely opposed to the concept of a truthmaker, though he would undoubtedly oppose its employment by strongly realist metaphysicians, such as Armstrong 2004.) The latter, deflationary kind of ontology, comes in two versions: reductionist and eliminationist. Both try to get rid of some things we ordinarily speak about, such as properties, goodness, or numbers – eliminationists by denying their existence altogether, and reductionists by claiming such things to be “nothing but” something else (19–21). Putnam notes that it is, perhaps surprisingly, in analytic philosophy in particular that Ontology (in both of its main forms) flourishes, largely thanks to W. V. Quine’s rehabilitation of the term “ontology” in his 1948 paper, “On What There Is” (Quine 1953, chap. 1). Having described these unfortunate tendencies, Putnam proposes his alternative: In place of Ontology (note the capital “O”), I shall be defending what one might call pragmatic pluralism, the recognition that it is no accident that in everyday language we employ many different kinds of discourses, discourses subject to different standards and possessing different sorts of applications, with different logical and grammatical features – different “language games” in Wittgenstein’s sense – no accident because it is an illusion that there could be just one sort of language game which could be sufficient for the description of all of reality. (21–22) As he puts it in his concluding “obituary” for Ontology, “once we assume that there is, somehow fixed in advance, a single ‘real’, a single ‘literal’ sense of ‘exist’ – and ... a single ‘literal’ sense of ‘identity’ – one which is cast in marble, and cannot be either contracted or expanded without defiling the statue of the god, we are already wandering in Cloud Cuckoo Land” (84–85). A major issue is what kind of an “illusion” the monistic assumption of a single privileged language game or discourse is. Putnam’s diagnosis of this illusion and his proposed method of recovery are largely derived from his pragmatism. A rejection of the idea that “the world dictates a unique ‘true’ way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc.” (51) is, obviously, something we may expect from a pragmatist or an “internal realist.” Putnam
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
3
doubts the very intelligibility of metaphysical realism – roughly, the combination of three theses: first, that there is a way the world is in itself, mind- and language-independently; secondly, that this independent world can be described in a complete, unique, absolutely true representation (presumably an ideal scientific theory); and thirdly, that truth is a non-epistemic notion, viz., correspondence between linguistic items (statements, beliefs, or theories) and objects and/or states of affairs existing in the mind- and language-independent world. Putnam has, for decades, argued that the world can be correctly described from a number of different perspectives, reflecting our interests and purposes. Thus, he still holds the pragmatic (internal) realism he defended earlier, while rejecting the “epistemic” theory of truth at work in its original formulations (see Putnam 1999). This is a version of the pluralism one finds in pragmatists like James and Dewey (Putnam 1994, 1995). The Putnamian, just like the JamesianDeweyan, pragmatic pluralist (or “pragmatic realist”) maintains that no description of the world, not even the most advanced scientific one, is the world’s or Nature’s own. Descriptions available to us are grounded in human purposes and practices, and it is in terms of their overall success in the satisfaction of our purposes that the rational acceptability (or, ideally, truth) of those descriptions is to be assessed. Ontology, truth, and reference are in this sense internal to conceptual schemes serving different purposes. The upshot of this conceptual relativity is that we live in a human world: there is no “ready-made” world whose structure would be absolutely independent of our practice-embedded perspectives. It is dangerously scientistic and culturally harmful to regard natural science as being more intimately in touch with the true structure of reality than other language games. In Ethics without Ontology, Putnam is, however, brief in his attack on scientism; he simply notes that Quine has not given sufficient grounds for the distinction between “first-class” and “second-grade” conceptual systems (that is, between science and everything else) and that there is “something mad” about the scientistic conclusion that normatively described entities, such as “passages which are difficult to interpret,” do not really exist (82–84; see Putnam 2004b). So far, Putnam’s position has merely been described, though only in barest outline. Why should one embrace it? Putnam provides a rehearsal of an example he has employed on earlier occasions (Putnam 1987, 1990; cf. Sosa 1993; Pihlström 1996; Case 1997, 2001; Raatikainen 2001; and several contributions to Alston 2002): it is, he argues, a conventional matter whether mereological sums exist (37). Once again, Putnam invites us to consider a world of three individuals, which can be described in different ways, depending on whether one uses the language of a “Carnapian” logician or a mereologist. The answer to the question about the number of objects in this world varies: for a Carnapian, there are three objects, whereas for the mereologist there are seven (or eight, if one includes the “null object”). This relativity of objecthood shows that existential expressions (“there are,” “there exist,” “there exists a,” and “some,” as well as their logical codification, the existential quantifier) “do not
4
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
have a single absolutely precise use but a whole family of uses” (37, original emphasis). The logic of quantification does not settle the question of the existence of mereological sums. We can “create divergent uses of the existential quantifier itself” (38). This is something that Quine, given his strictly univocal criterion of ontological commitment, “to be is to be the value of a [bound] variable,” simply failed to acknowledge (78–84). Putnam succeeds in implicitly responding to one of his critics, Panu Raatikainen (2001), who erroneously claims that Putnam, in his earlier attempts to highlight conceptual relativity through the mereology example, was committed to the view that the mere choice of the mereological language would commit one to the existence of mereological sums, whereas in reality such a commitment requires an extra-logical postulate. I see no reason why Putnam should deny this. In the Wittgensteinian sense of “meaning as use,” he observes, the “Polish Logician” employing mereology and the Carnapian logician who does not accept mereological sums can be said to give “different meanings, that is, different uses” to the word “exist”; yet, Putnam denies that this difference between the two “must be described in a way that begs the question as to the existence of mereological sums,” i.e., by saying that the Polish Logician “includes mereological sums” in her/his universe of discourse (41, original emphases). The Polish Logician’s use of “exist” can be described without assuming that there are mereological sums (41–42). It is we, the speakers of languages, and not the languages or logical systems as such (abstracted from their use), that make ontological commitments; the use of mereology can, after all, also be interpreted fictionalistically as a mere facon de parler (42–43). There is, then, no reason to suppose that the one who uses the language of mereology affirms the existence of mereological sums simply by choosing that language. On the other hand, specific ways of using any language do carry ontological weight (if this un-Wittgensteinian formulation is allowed), and it may be hard to imagine anyone seriously using mereology, or any other (formal or natural) language without caring at all about the ontological commitments its users habitually make. (Cf. Pihlström 2002; for a discussion of conceptual relativity and context-sensitivity, see Gross 2004.) Endorsing Jennifer Case’s (1997, 2001) suggestion, Putnam points out that mereology (like set theory) is an optional language, an extension of our ordinary ways of speaking (43). Conceptual relativity applies to optional languages, while pluralism is a wider phenomenon. That we can use the “schemes” or languages of fundamental physics and of everyday objects such as desks and chairs “without being required to reduce one or both of them to some single fundamental and universal ontology” is what pluralism states (49). This is a fair restatement of James’s pragmatic pluralism. Conceptual relativity implies pluralism, but the reverse does not hold (49). We can decide not to employ mereology – it is, indeed, optional – but we can hardly give up our everyday language(s) in which we speak about tables and chairs. Physicists and mereologists alike must go on speaking about such ordinary entities. Conceptual
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
5
relativity thus concerns our “scientific images” of the world; moreover, according to pluralism, there is no reason to think that those images are the only ontologically relevant ones (see Putnam 2001b). The monistic, metaphysically realist Ontological claim that there is one privileged way the world is must be abandoned, according to Putnamian (or Jamesian) pragmatists. Putnam’s distinction between everyday language and optional languages might be compared to the Rortyan distinction between “fundamental vocabularies” and (alternative, mutually incompatible) “parasitic vocabularies,” emphasized by Brandom (2000). But it is not necessary to invoke Rorty’s (or Brandom’s) pragmatism to see that traditional ontologists, or metaphysical realists, tend to ignore both conceptual relativity and pluralism. Even if they accept the former, acknowledging a plurality of optional scientific languages, they at least tend to ignore the latter by assuming that it is science that, in the end, will provide us with the uniquely correct worldview. Another crucial failure is metaphysical realists’ “inflationist” tendency to postulate specific objects (often “non-natural” ones) to explain, or to serve as truthmakers for, certain kinds of truth, including ethical and mathematical truths – or, in the case of reductive or eliminationist (“deflationist”) ontology, to criticize the very idea of objective truth in the absence of an ontological scheme committed to such non-natural truthmakers. A case in point is Mackie’s (1977) rejection of objective moral values because of their alleged “queerness.” For a pragmatic pluralist, moral objectivity can stand on its own, without needing support from such a practice-transcendent postulation, and without being in trouble in the absence of such support (Pihlström 2005a). Specifically, Putnam argues, among other things, that the supposed mathematical objects that might be invoked as the truthmakers of mathematical truths have no clear identity relations: conceptual relativity applies to the questions of whether, ontologically speaking, numbers are sets and, if so, which sets they are (66). Mathematical existence can be accounted for in terms of mathematical possibility, but this should not be conflated with a metaphysical kind of possibility more basic than mathematics itself (67). I find Putnam’s main arguments against Ontology plausible, although he may not be able to argue non-question-beggingly against critics who do not share his pragmatism (Gross 2004). Both parties to the debate may end up arguing in a circle. Nevertheless, Putnam’s defense of pragmatic pluralism is promising, and he is right to remind us that we need not postulate practicetranscendent objects to account for the truths we find ourselves committed to in our practices. Even so, I am puzzled with his wholesale rejection of Ontology. The following question, among others, arises. Are Putnam’s worries about Ontology based on (1) skepticism regarding our ability to solve ontological problems (such as the choice between Quine’s, Lewis’s, and Kripke’s views on identity and modality, i.e., whether, say, a chair is identical with the spacetime region it occupies, preserves its identity over time and across possible worlds, etc.; cf. Putnam 1990, chap. 1); or (2) the idea that such problems are
6
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
meaningless pseudo-issues – though perhaps not exactly in the sense in which the logical positivists declared them to be meaningless (for a criticism of Putnam emphasizing his similarities to Carnap, see Westphal 2003); or, finally, (3) the view that metaphysics, especially when used to “ground” ethics, is not only intellectually confused but downright immoral, or alien to our ethical practices? All three readings are possible, and all aspects may be present in Putnam’s views, but (3) seems to be the strongest among them in Putnam’s most recent works. He seems to care less and less about the kind of metaphysical debates people like Armstrong, Lewis, Plantinga, and others have engaged in for decades. We might read Putnam as challenging the standard order of priority among philosophical subdisciplines, especially ontology and ethics. As classical pragmatists (particularly James) argued, our ethical needs may legitimately influence our metaphysical commitments. If we really pragmatically need to commit ourselves to a certain worldview, then that view may, because of such a human need, be held as (prima facie) true. In a Jamesian spirit, Putnam has urged that we need to develop “moral images of the world” in which metaphysical and ethical elements are profoundly entangled (Putnam 1987). He now claims, with Levinas, that there is something wrong with the ontological pursuit as such, with the attempt to ground ethics in “being” (23–24), because of the “totalizing” nature of such attempts. Yet, it is also possible to suggest, contra Putnam’s “ethics without ontology,” that ontology can be retained within a more inclusive, and more fundamental, ethical framework, that is, that ontology can be pragmatically reoriented in a manner that turns it less totalizing, or not totalizing at all. In addition to ethics, Putnam has even attempted to bring religious issues, marginalized in scientifically oriented analytic philosophy, back to the center of philosophy. While it would be an exaggeration to interpret him primarily as a philosopher of religion, he did publish, in the late 1990s, insightful papers (e.g. Putnam 1997) on religious language and the possibility of rationally discussing religious belief, noting that “scientific” attacks on theism are based on misunderstandings. As Wittgenstein argued, religious believers do not treat the belief that God exists as an hypothesis requiring evidential support. Scientistic critics of religion, mistakenly construing religious beliefs as scientific-like testable and explanatory hypotheses, fail to understand religious forms of life and religious uses of language. (I must say I find Putnam’s Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion both stimulating and unclear: see Pihlström 1999.) Religion, however, is not discussed in Ethics without Ontology. Putnam does a great job in extending the relevance of pluralism from scientific examples to ethics, to the realm of the humanly significant. Additional humanly serious examples of pragmatic pluralism would still be welcome, however. Particularly, a pragmatist should examine the relation between science and religion in more detail. Are these equally legitimate perspectives on the world? Is the science vs. religion case an example of pragmatic pluralism, and if so, might James’s
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
7
pragmatist philosophy of religion be helpful in dealing with it? Or is the science vs. religion case better construed as a case of conceptual relativity; if so, is religious language-use as “optional” as mereology? What role, more generally, does religious language-use play in the fixation of religious ontology? Choosing a religious way of speaking surely does not make God exist, but is it a prerequisite for even seriously considering the question of whether there is a God? In any case, metaphysically realist philosophy of religion (cf. papers in Alston 2002) must be rejected by a Putnamian pragmatist. Finally, could the anti-reductionist account of objective ethical (or mathematical) truth be extended to religious truths (if there are any) – and how do we settle the question whether there are any? Moreover, would those truths, unlike the mathematical and ethical ones, require an Ontological postulation of the transcendent – or could such a postulation remain ontological (with a small “o”), tied to human perspectives and practices, perhaps again along the lines suggested by James? 3. Pragmatic Ontology and Transcendental Idealism Even though Putnam has partly rejected internal realism, he continues to believe that the metaphysical realist’s search for a privileged scientific standpoint for describing the world as it is in itself, independently of practice-laden human perspectives, has only the illusion of sense. His attacks on strong forms of realism have increasingly turned into ethically motivated attacks on the reductively naturalist dream of representing ultimate reality in terms of naturalscientific theories, although he does not reject “naturalism” as such but only a certain scientistic temptation associated with it, the temptation to treat everything non-scientific with ontological suspicion (Putnam 2004b) – to abandon the ontology of familiar objects in favor of a mere “ontology of physics” (ibid., 69). It remains undecided whether Putnam’s rejection of metaphysical realism can be combined with a pragmatic commonsense realism affirming the objectivity and independence of the world, or whether it leads to a conception of the world as somehow ontologically dependent on human practices. Putnam has often been interpreted as a relativist or even an idealist, but he has constantly reminded his critics that he never regarded the facts or the world as dependent on how we use language in any normal sense of the word “dependent” (Putnam 1992, 1994). Still, there is no “absolute” perspective available for any “firstclass” description of those facts. No things or properties are simply “out there,” in the absence of human conceptualizations, which, in turn, depend on pragmatic interests – and may change through the historical development of our practices. We have seen how Putnam rejects – indeed, destroys – Ontology. The question (inseparable from the realism issue) remains whether he could still accommodate something like ontology in his project. More precisely, the question remains whether he could accept a transcendental-cum-pragmatist view of ontology as an examination of the basic features of a humanly categorized
8
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
reality, of practice-embedded conditions necessary for us to inhabit an objective, structured world – and, thus, whether he could admit that pragmatism is, or can be reinterpreted as, an ontologically relevant philosophical framework (Pihlström 1996, 2003). Here, ontology would amount to a Kantian investigation of what we need to commit ourselves to in our experience and thinking about the world, whereas Ontology, rightly criticized by Putnam, is closer to an Aristotelian picture of metaphysics as a “first philosophy,” largely presupposed by contemporary metaphysicians (e.g. Armstrong 2004). One possibility, then, would be to interpret Putnam’s position as an “empirical realism” in a Kantian sense. The world would, according to such a (re)interpretation, still be (transcendentally, non-empirically, non-causally) constituted by our purposeoriented practices, as the empirical world is a human construction, without being illusory or fictitious, in Kant’s transcendental idealism. Practices, in such a transcendental pragmatism, would be the dynamic, historically transformable substitute for the atemporal transcendental ego that constitutes objective reality. While the pragmatist should applaud Putnam’s “ethics without ontology” as an articulation of a key pragmatist theme, the autonomy (irreducibility) of serious human practices, such as ethics (Pihlström 2005a), s/he should not entirely reject ontological theorizing, when interpreted in a Kantian-like transcendental sense. Ethics, or philosophical inquiry into human values in general, may be a fundamental part of such a non-metaphysically-realist conception of ontology “with a human face” (Putnam 1990). Values are a crucial aspect of the human reality (transcendentally) investigated in such a pragmatist ontology. The pragmatist ought to be able to maintain that values “exist” as cultural entities irreducible to physical or mental entities (Pihlström 1996). Part of saying that cats, dogs, or semantic entities need not be seen as “occult” (Putnam 2004b, 70) is to say that these entities do exist as genuinely as electrons, though in a pragmatic sense. (Even electrons exist in a pragmatic sense, as elements of the highly workable scheme of physics.) The same holds for values, whose existence is cultural through and through (not “queer”), and for mental entities, which, however, must not (any more than values) be construed as mysterious objects like qualia. As an example of a pragmatist ontology that even Putnam might be able to accommodate we may take a brief look at Sandra Rosenthal’s “speculative pragmatism,” a metaphysical system drawn from classical pragmatism. Whereas traditional metaphysics deals with “categories of being,” the pragmatist metaphysician (not unlike Kant) understands categories as “the most fundamental principles of ordering by the mind,” “deeply embedded – though nonetheless alterable – a priori structures that reflect the purposive attitudes in terms of which we approach the independent element [of reality]” (Rosenthal 1986, 93– 94). The reality we “produce” by imposing our categories is not independent of the “projected meanings” we use to classify experience but a “worldly reality” that “emerges from the projection of meanings upon that which is independently there and which reveals itself through such meanings” (ibid., 94). Rosenthal
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
9
defines metaphysics as “a description of the basic contours or delineations made within our lived experience” (ibid.) – could this characterization be available to Putnam, too? At least Rosenthal’s struggle with realism is closely reminiscent of Putnam’s: while categories must be applicable to an independently real universe, “[w]e cannot get outside our intentional relatedness to the independently real to examine it in its character as independent. The characterization of the features of independent reality as independent of human experience can itself be only a categorization within experience to make experience more intelligible.” (ibid., 96) Accordingly, the “independent reality” is independent merely in the empirical, factual sense, yet transcendentally constituted (though this is not Rosenthal’s expression). Putnam, furthermore, would probably drop the word “cannot” in the rejection of metaphysical realism, because our inability of describing the world as it independently is is not a “failure” of ours (Putnam 1994), but as a pragmatist he should endorse the view that the “independent reality” is a pragmatic postulation. He should and probably would agree with Rosenthal that no metaphysical knowledge transcending the “meaningfulness that can emerge only through some interpretive structure” is available because the “radically nonspectator position” of speculative pragmatism cannot be abandoned (Rosenthal 1986, 97). On the basis of Rosenthal’s approach, we may also argue that emergence is a fundamental (meta-)category in pragmatist ontology: all reality – not just mental or cultural entities – that is for us in a way or another is an emergent construct arising out of our (transcendental-pragmatic) constitutional activities. Rosenthal’s pragmatic processual and emergentist metaphysics postulates a rich “transactional unity” of organism and its environment, including Peircean “generals,” getting rid of traditional dualisms. While Putnam will hardly embrace the emergence vocabulary, he might agree with Rosenthal and the classical pragmatists that “facts are not independent of the intentional unity between knower and known” and that worldly reality is “inherently perspectival”: there is no world without perspectives (Rosenthal 1986, 151, 163). A perspectival ontology is at work, for example, in Putnam’s (2004b, 289) appropriation of the concept of sortal identity: if we allow that things can be identical “in a respect” (failing to be identical in another respect), then our ontology will only pluralistically tell us “what there is in a respect (say what there is, qua physical objects)”; no absolute “What is there?” question will be meaningful. We are, hence, back with the issues of pluralism and conceptual relativity. An emergentist redescription of pragmatist anti-reductionism along Rosenthal’s lines is a further step toward a pragmatic metaphysics rejecting only Ontology, not ontology. Whether, and how, this is in the end compatible with the transcendental rearticulation of pragmatist ontology I sketched above requires another discussion, however.
10
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM 4. Conclusion
Putnam is ambiguous between rejecting ontology altogether (not only Ontology but ontology as well) and rejecting only Ontology and preserving less metaphysically-realist, less hubristic ontological inquiry into the pragmatically constituted human world. This ambiguity may have something to do with what might be regarded as his more fundamental ambiguity – which I see as analogous to the “divided self” of his pragmatist hero, James, excitingly analyzed by Gale (1999). This is the tension between, on the one side, constructive philosophical theorizing, including ontological theorizing (which, in Putnam’s case, results in pragmatic realism and pluralism, and attacks not only metaphysical realism but also Rorty’s much more deflationist and deconstructive pragmatism), and, on the other side, the wish to write an obituary not only for Ontology but for constructive, systematic philosophy in general, with a therapeutic appeal to the “ordinary” along the lines of Wittgenstein, Cavell, and McDowell. It is not clear that such appeals to the ordinary are philosophically neutral or “ordinary” (everyday) matters; they may, even ontologically, amount to something quite extraordinary. My proposal, in short, is that Putnam might combine his constructive (anti-Rortyan) and therapeutic insights by explicitly endorsing a transcendental rearticulation of pragmatism (cf. Pihlström 2003). I certainly do not expect him to embrace the transcendental vocabulary – even if the pluralism he defends may ultimately sound like a reconstruction of transcendental idealism. Yet, a transcendental redescription of the pragmatists’ ontological project might be an interesting strategic move in the debate between radical Rortyan and more moderate Putnamian pragmatists.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to John Shook for his invitation to contribute this paper, and to the audience of the FISP conference, “Metaphilosophical Reflections” (University of Helsinki, Finland, May 2005), where parts of this paper were presented – especially to David Evans, Gürol Irzik, Hans Lenk, and Ilkka Niiniluoto for valuable comments.
REFERENCES Alston, W. P., ed. (2002) Realism and Antirealism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Armstrong, D. M. (2004) Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brandom, Robert B. (2000) “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism,” in Rorty and His Critics, ed. R. B. Brandom (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell), pp. 156–183.
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
11
Case, Jennifer. (1997) “On the Right Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35, 1–18. ———. (2001) “The Heart of Putnam’s Pluralistic Realism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 55 (218), 417–430. Gale, Richard M. (1999) The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gross, Steven. (2004) “Putnam, Context, and Ontology,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34, 507–555. Mackie, J. L. (1977) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Pihlström, Sami. (1996) Structuring the World: The Issue of Realism and the Nature of Ontological Problems in Classical and Contemporary Pragmatism. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland. ———. (1998) Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthropology: Understanding Our Human Life in a Human World. New York: Peter Lang. ———. (1999) “Hilary Putnam as a Religious Thinker,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 11(2), 39–60. ———. (2002) “Conceptual Relativity, Contextualization, and Ontological Commitments,” Human Affairs 12, 26–52. ———. (2003) Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Pragmatic View. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. ———. (2004) “Putnam and Rorty on Their Pragmatist Heritage: Re-reading James and Dewey,” in Dewey, Pragmatism, and Economic Methodology, ed. Elias L. Khalil (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 39–61. ———. (2005a) Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defense. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. ———. (2005b) “Putnam, Hilary Whitehall (1926– ),” in Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, ed. John R. Shook (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum), vol. 3, pp. 1971–1978. Putnam, Hilary. (1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1987) The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. ———. (1990) Realism with a Human Face, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
12
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
———. (1992) Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (1994) Words and Life, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (1995) Pragmatism: An Open Question. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. ———. (1997) “God and the Philosophers,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 21, 175–187. ———. (1999) The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. (2001a) “Was Wittgenstein Really an Anti-Realist about Mathematics?” in Wittgenstein in America, ed. Timothy McCarthy and Sean C. Stidd (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 140–194. ———. (2001b) “Reply to Jennifer Case,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 55 (218), 431–438. ———. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (2004a) Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (2004b) “The Content and Appeal of ‘Naturalism’,” in Naturalism in Question, ed. Mario de Caro and David Macarthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), pp. 59–70, 286–290. Quine, W. V. (1953) From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (2nd edn., 1980). Raatikainen, Panu. (2001) “Putnam, Languages and World,” Dialectica 55, 167–174. Rosenthal, Sandra B. (1986) Speculative Pragmatism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Sosa, Ernest. (1993) “Putnam’s Pragmatic Realism,” Journal of Philosophy 90, 605–626. Westphal, Kenneth R. (2003) “Can Pragmatic Realists Argue Transcendentally?” in Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism, ed. John R. Shook (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. 175–190.
Putnam’s Conception of Ontology Sami Pihlström Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of Jyvaskyla Docent of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Helsinki Department of Philosophy P.O. Box 9 FI-00014 University of Helsinki Finland
13
This page intentionally left blank
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 15–25
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism Joseph Margolis
This symposium contribution discusses the conceptions of relativism and pluralism which are relevant to Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without Ontology.
1. I begin with a friendly request in the form of a small complaint – for a clearer version of the opening remarks of Hilary Putnam’s Hermes Lectures (originally delivered at the University of Perugia, 2001), now collected as Part I of his recent book, Ethics without Ontology, which bears the same title.1 Putnam says there, in his orienting lecture, that he intends to replace both “inflationary” ontology (exemplified in the views of the conventional Plato of the doctrine of the Forms) and “deflationary” ontology (as in Democritus and Berkeley) by what he calls “pragmatic pluralism,” which, enlisting Wittgenstein, Putnam characterizes as combating the “illusion that there could be just one sort of language game which could be sufficient for the description of all of reality!”2 This sounds reasonable. Nevertheless, at the first mention of his central thesis, it’s not really clear to me what Putnam intends by what he says. Of course, it’s trivially true that there are many false and failed ways of describing anything. No one would deny that, not even the inflationists and deflationists Putnam means to displace. That can’t possibly be the nerve of what Putnam means to defend under the name of pluralism: it wouldn’t cut any philosophical ice; it would record no more than the first-order fact that people describe things “in many ways” – possibly, then, also, in many erroneous ways; it also would say nothing about the ways in which, epistemically, acceptable descriptions are rightly constrained. (Even the rejection of “platonism” invites – and may require – an account of the conditions thought to be binding on human knowledge. I would say what Putnam says here captures the “empiric” or “pragmatic” plurality of ordinary descriptions, but it says nothing as yet about pluralism in the philosophical sense suggested, and it says nothing regarding Putnam’s own view of pluralism’s “ontological” standing vis-àvis inflationary and deflationary ontologies. Nothing really hangs on it at all. So there is a bit of a nagging complaint behind the intended courtesy. I think the issue has a much longer and busier inning than may at first appear.
16
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
I’ve made my start from a very small piece of text. But I’ll risk an additional step or two before looking into the rest of “Ethics without Ontology.” The single most compelling clue (I’ve found) regarding what Putnam “must mean” by what I’ve just cited struck me very forcibly when I read the Lectures the first time around. There’s a somewhat lonely passage at the very close of Putnam’s Reason, Truth and History (just before a final Appendix is added that bears on the Theaetetus and that happens to be relevant to the issue first touched on), a passage very well known among professionals who have followed Putnam’s line of inquiry, that ends this way – drawing on the “hope” of “produc[ing] a more rational conception of rationality or a better conception of morality if [only] we operate from within our own tradition”:3 Does this dialogue [“dialogue” is a term Putnam turns against Richard Rorty’s usage to signify the saving activity that starts from within our local tradition or practice and seeks to traverse all viable human traditions addressed to science and morality at least: does this dialogue, Putnam asks,] have an ideal terminus? Is there a true conception of rationality, a true morality, even if all we ever have are our conceptions of these? Here philosophers divide, like everyone else. Richard Rorty, in his Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association, opted strongly for the view that there is only the dialogue; no ideal end can be posited or should be needed. But how does the assertion that “there is only the dialogue” differ from the self-refuting relativism we discussed in Chapter 5 [the book’s principal chapter, the one that rejects the extremes of both objectivism (“a God’s-eye view”) and relativism, two false views of objectivity, two arbitrary “scientisms” (or “solipsisms”) that fail to heed the regulative need to “operate from within our tradition”]? The very fact that we speak of our different conceptions as different conceptions of rationality posits a Grenzbegriff, a limit-concept of the ideal truth.4 Perhaps. But to “posit” a Grenzbegriff hardly entails that there is anything more than a purely formal, completely empty notion of “the ideal truth.” (“Is there a true conception...” Putnam asks: the seemingly Quinean phrasing anticipates the central discussion of the “Ethics without Ontology” lectures.) Putnam backs away from actually affirming the necessity of there being an ideal regulative principle of truth: he speaks of it in terms that seem to favor a rational “hope” (much as Peirce did and for related reasons). Yet, if that were conceded, there might well be endlessly many such “posits” – all originating “from within our tradition” in the benign sense intended, changing with every significant change in our society’s collective experience. And then it would not be clear what to understand by Putnam’s Grenzbegriff. If Putnam believed he could claim more – a changeless Grenzbegriff, say – wouldn’t he have endorsed the objectivism he himself repudiates among the classic forms of logical positivism? And if he admitted the insuperable objection against
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
17
that option, wouldn’t he be obliged to admit some form of relativism (assuming, against Putnam himself, of course, that there are indeed coherent, self-consistent, non-solipsistic forms of relativism)? Since Putnam says No to objectivism and relativism, we must take his pragmatic pluralism to count as a third option between the two supposedly indefensible extremes. I see no other way to read the first citation. But if so, my initial complaint proves to be the obverse side of an honest worry, to the effect that Putnam’s inquiry may not reach to such an option. Putnam may not have succeeded in sketching or defining a viable third option between the other two extremes – whether applied to morality or the sciences.5 Again, when Putnam invokes Wittgenstein’s notion of a language game (which, I take it, illustrates what he himself means by “operating from within our tradition”), it’s clear that what Putnam alludes to in Wittgenstein’s thought (“the [philosophical] engine idling”6) is often read (quite mistakenly, I admit) as signifying that all philosophical claims – pragmatic pluralism, say – are ultimately indefensible; in any case, it’s not obvious that the bare image of a language game does not itself favor a relativistic conception of how to play with different language games. On the contrary, it seems a reasonable way to go! (Always assuming, that is, that relativism can take a coherent and self-consistent form.) And if all this is true, then perhaps Putnam and Rorty are not (in this regard at least) as completely opposed to one another as each supposes: perhaps both are relativists (faute de mieux). Each denies the charge and neither is willing to accept any such burden.7 Well, that’s half of my opening complaint. I must add that I also don’t quite see the difference Putnam intends to emphasize when he complains about Rorty’s insisting that “there is only the dialogue” – that there is no “ideal [truth].” Putnam explicitly says that that (namely, what Rorty says) is, effectively, what he means by “self-refuting relativism.” But does Putnam mean to reclaim a uniquely convergent ideal “limit-concept” that all rational truth-seeking inquiries (in science or morality) “posit” as their necessary Grenzbegriff? If he does, he’s contradicted himself; and if he does not, he surely risks being charged with being a relativist. The would-be third option, pluralism, doesn’t seem to be quite pertinent here. Putnam offers an entirely different doctrine answering to the name of “pragmatic pluralism.” (The bearing of the two sorts of pluralism on one another is nowhere clarified in the entire set of lectures collected here.) In any event, I need to know whether Putnam is equivocating when he praises Kant’s and Levinas’s moral universalisms: the work of rational selflegislation, I suppose, in Kant’s case; the benefit of some situationally indubitable revelation (in some sense) in Levinas’s. (I’m speaking of the closing pages of Putnam’s first lecture, in which he’s explaining what he means by “ethics without ontology.”) For my part, Levinas is simply incoherent, since if we find ourselves “situationally” confronted, “first,” with an obligation (our indefeasible obligation) to help “Another” – “an obligation to that human being”8 – then Levinas will have refuted his own premise: namely, that ethics is prior to ontology; and Kant will be seen to be philosophically arbitrary – also, oddly silent on substantive matters – in advancing the executive role of his Categorical Imperative.
18
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
I don’t see how Putnam can save the universalism of either; and, frankly, I don’t believe he means what he says – unequivocally. He admits the validity of Hegel’s critique of Kant. He favors Aristotle and Dewey in their “practical,” nonuniversalist, and tradition-centered reflections. He notes that “the idea of universal ethical equality was largely lost [his own term] for more than a millennium,” only to reappear with Kant’s “compelling” universalism.9 He puts his finger on the fact that Kant restored a kind of universalist metaphysics just when he undermined the inflationary (universalist) metaphysics of the pre-Kantian world. Putnam himself explicitly favors an ethics of universal moral equality and universal moral concern,10 but does that mean he thinks his claim is true or that it can be validated (in some way) on universalist grounds? Let that count as a benign dilemma: if it’s merely Putnam’s conviction, then it’s not responsive; and if it’s to be demonstrated, then, once again, it risks being self-refuting. It may be that pluralism can’t be saved as a third option. But if it can be – in taking up the question of a valid universalism – then it must, I suggest, advance a theory of how human beings can know anything. But that’s what’s missing – and never made good in the Hermes Lectures. 2. Read separately, Lecture 2 is a splendid piece, possibly the best of the lot, vintage Putnam at his clearest and most inventive. I agree with it entirely. But though it goes some distance toward assuaging my initial complaint, it also deepens it. The second lecture is essentially meant to prepare the ground for the main arguments of the final two lectures, which now appear to be directed mainly against “ontology” rather than offered in favor of or against “universalism” – which, in Lecture 1, clearly affects the fortunes of a very different way of construing pluralism. May I suggest, then, that, as things provisionally stand at the end of Lecture 2, Putnam will have provided an extremely important and convincing distinction (which he signals more than he features) between specifically cognitive issues and issues of “conceptual convention” that depend on prior cognitive judgments and help us avoid thereby “ontic commitments” of a seemingly strong cognitive sort where none is actually involved. I take all of this to count as a decisive improvement on Quine’s well-known account of ontic commitment. But it also changes the theme “pluralism” appears to feature in moving from the first to the second lecture: in the first, it suggests a distinctive cognitive orientation opposed to inflationary and deflationary ontologies; in the second, it secures the advantages of denying ontic import to certain contested kinds of assertion, which are thereupon permitted no more than a derivative cognitive role – as in the preference of one or another counting “conventions.” It’s here that Putnam introduces his very nice example of counting, by alternative conventions, the individual things of some universe of discourse (say, the objects in a room) – by “Carnapian” or “Lezniewskian” means. The important thing to keep in mind is that the pertinent cognitive issues will all have been
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
19
decided in advance; the counting conventions are simply introduced as ways of conveying or formally representing the admitted facts. There are no further facts or causal explanations affected by our specific choice of convention: “There is [Putnam assures us] no fact here to be known – not even by God.”11 We simply introduce an “optional language” that has no cognitive import of its own; as a result, “what are ‘incompatible’ [if we allow the expression at all] are not the statements themselves [offered on cognitively pertinent grounds], which cannot be simply conjoined, but the conventions [which are merely formal conveniences].” “Exists” then becomes equivocal wherever we neglect the distinction now introduced.12 I find all of this convincing. Well then, you may conclude, Putnam has made his case: he’s demonstrated the validity of “conceptual relativity” (alternative counting conventions, say) without producing paradox or contradiction; and he’s demonstrated that conceptual relativity implies “pluralism”: That we can use both of [our counting] schemes [which are incompatible as conventions but preserve whatever we take to be true extensionally – by equivalent means] without being required to reduce one or both of them to some single fundamental and universal ontology is the doctrine of pluralism; and while conceptual relativity implies pluralism, the reverse is not true.13 QED. Not so fast! I don’t oppose Putnam’s argument here: I do question what it signifies; I have doubts about what Putnam’s actually demonstrated. I’m not persuaded that what he’s shown (conceding, as I do, the argument he offers) bears in the right way on separating pluralism from either objectivism or relativism. It seems to me that what Putnam has demonstrated thus far – in the name of pluralism – is actually and entirely compatible with objectivism and relativism, once we get clear about what’s really at stake in opposing the options that have been called objectivism and relativism, the prospects of fashioning a coherent and selfconsistent and viable doctrine that we would be willing to call a version of relativism – that is, a version pertinent to resolving issues that a proper defense of pluralism would be expected to consider. In that sense, I don’t think Putnam succeeds – as yet – by the end of Lecture 2, and I’m not convinced his strategy is the right one for the task. I think he’s misread the issue. The bare relevance of the whole of Lecture 2 hangs by a single thread that, as Putnam pursues the argument, leads us in the wrong direction (in spite of his serendipitous contributions). Here, in two sentences linking ontology, universalism, conceptual relativity, and pluralism, is the motivation and thrust of Putnam’s entire argument in favor of the kind of pluralism he wishes to champion: The whole idea [he says] that the world dictates a unique “true” way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc., is a piece of philosophical parochialism. But just that parochialism is and always has been behind the subject called Ontology.14
20
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
Now, concede for the sake of the argument that Quine was entirely within his rights – when parsing his well-known example of a native speaker’s exclaiming, “Gavagai!,” on the occasion (as we might say) of a rabbit’s happening to hop in his vicinity – to allow as extensionally equivalent paraphrases (of the native’s utterance) our declaring, “Lo, a rabbit!” or something quite bizarre like “Rabbithood’s instantiated here and now!”: that is, affirmations providing perfectly adequate alternative “ontologies” where (as in Quine’s view) there is “no fact of the matter” to guide or govern our choice of translational formula and where the formulations offered are specifically introduced as picking out the same occurrence (salve veritate). Could that be all that Putnam means by “pluralism”? If it is, then how could it possibly justify our denying that pluralism is (as far as can be seen) entirely compatible with objectivism? (Or, for that matter, relativism?) Pluralism would then have no cognitive cards of its own. (Never mind how the deciding “fact” could ever be ascertained: Quine never really says and the supposed match between behavior and perception is known to be problematic; and Putnam himself simply tells us that nothing substantive is disturbed if we introduce such alternative “optional languages” if we wish, wherever our choice is intended to have no independent ontological force of its own.) I find it difficult to believe that pluralism, read as a philosophical option (opposed, say, to objectivism and relativism), is ever standardly thought to lack any interesting epistemological claim of its own (however inchoate such a claim may prove to be). But if that is what Putnam means to salvage, then, for one thing, it’s completely trivial and uncontested even by the objectivist; for another, it means no more than what we ordinarily mean by a “plurality” of idioms, descriptions, beliefs, or what have you; for a third, it cannot fail to be compatible with both objectivism and relativism (assuming that the latter can indeed be formulated coherently and in self-consistent ways); and, for a fourth, it is surely incompatible with what Putnam seems prepared to defend in advancing his trump against both objectivism and relativism: namely, the “regulative” Grenzbegriff of truth. The diminished claim seems to be out of sync with the intent of what Putnam says against noumena.15 So the pluralism Putnam tenders presupposes that we already have an effective objective procedure for determining just what may be found (and counted) in the world (or the room in question). All this is so efficiently contrived that we need have no further epistemic worries about pluralism’s going beyond the benign contribution it’s been assigned. But what if we conceded the possibility that we might not be able to demonstrate that all seemingly viable ways of construing what to regard as acceptable cognizing strategies are fully compatible or commensurable with one another (as they stand)? If this were conceded, Putnam’s account (so far at least) would have missed an important option on the strength of which pluralism itself (possibly relativism as well) might be assigned a more robust role – in the epistemological sense – one (say) closer to the seeming intent of Lecture 1. Let me remind you of what Putnam says in Reason, Truth and History, where he speaks against “metaphysical realism” (what, perhaps too casually, I’ve
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
21
called objectivism; what Putnam also calls “externalism”: the God’s-eye view, correspondentism in effect, where he seems to be speaking in favor of a distinctive third option between objectivism and relativism that still looks for all the world to be a doctrine committed to a very distinctive “epistemological” claim): The perspective I shall defend ... I shall refer to as ... the internalist perspective, because it is characteristic of this view to hold that what objects does the world consist of? is a question that only makes sense to ask within a theory or description. Many “internalist” philosophers, though not all, hold further that there is more than one “true” theory or description of the world. “Truth,” in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability – some sort of idealized coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are represented in our belief system....16 I’m not at all sure of what Putnam would now say about this feature of “internalism” – after the Dewey Lectures.17 But the Hermes Lectures – the lectures before us now – are even more recent, and they oblige us to reclaim the issue without insisting on the earlier doctrine. Nevertheless, you cannot suppose that Putnam is still engaged with his earlier issues and now concede that pluralism has no epistemological bite of its own. Notice, for instance, that objectivism (though not, in a certain obvious sense, “metaphysical realism”) is entirely compatible with some forms of internalism – Kant’s constructivism in the first Critique, for example. 3. There’s no need to rely entirely on what may be drawn from earlier sources. Putnam makes an extraordinarily important distinction in Lecture 3: he introduces the idea of a “conceptual truth” (which he contrasts very carefully with an “analytic truth” (in the sense both Quine and Carnap apparently regard as the only sort of conceptual truth to examine – the one involving the analytic/synthetic controversy). Putnam explicitly sides with the Hegelians and pragmatists, against Quine and Carnap: What makes a truth a conceptual truth, as I am using the term [Putnam explains], is that it is impossible to make (relevant) sense of the assertion of its negation. This way of understanding the notion of conceptual truth fits well with the recognition that conceptual truth and empirical description interpenetrate; for when we say that the denial of a certain statement makes no sense, we always speak within the body of beliefs and concepts and conceptual connections that we accept, and it has sometimes happened that a scientific revolution overthrows enough of those background beliefs that we come to see how something that previously made no sense could be true.18
22
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
I draw your attention to the similarity between this passage and the one cited just above, from Reason, Truth and History, which bears on the way answers to selected philosophical questions are counted (by Putnam) as intelligible only when relativized – construed as (as we may say) “internal” – to the “body of beliefs and concepts and conceptual connections that we accept.” Putnam speaks here of the “interpenetration” between conceptual truth and empirical description. (I take his point to depend on the original lesson shared by Kant and Hegel – in their very different ways.) In the Reason, Truth and History passage, Putnam used a very similar phrasing in the service of what he then called “internalism” (or “internal realism”), which, effectively, required making realist decisions from “within the body of our beliefs”; here, the device serves to locate “conceptual truths” within the body of our beliefs. Since, however, the specimens Putnam favors are pointedly mathematical, the formula also serves to eliminate the “ontological” excesses (the Quinean treatment) of what otherwise appear to be indispensable “abstract entities” – sets, in particular (a Platonist extravagance). In effect, then, in the final two lectures (of “Ethics without Ontology”), Putnam favors an “obituary” for ontology itself: that is, specifically for the unnecessary “ontologizing” of the “abstract entities” of (otherwise) “optional languages” – which address an issue altogether different from that of the epistemological distinction of the “pluralism” mentioned in Lecture 1. You must bear in mind that, after Kant and Hegel, as I’m certain Putnam would agree, the analysis of knowledge and the analysis of what is real become inseparably one: metaphysics just is epistemology (after Kant). But if so, then the concern of the second sort of pluralism can’t be brought under the terms of Putnam’s obituary addressed to inflated ontologies. I am entirely persuaded by Putnam’s analysis of “conceptual truths,” though I would even favor extending the notion (on something like conceptual truths) more informally: say, to include, as “near-conceptual truths,” not altogether dissimilar notions, where it is noticeably difficult, though perhaps not entirely impossible, to conceive of the negation of a would-be candidate assertion. Here, I think of P. F. Strawson’s attempting to conceive of a world of events that might completely replace the world of ordinary objects.19 I cannot see how Putnam’s innovation puts to rest the deeper question of how to characterize the choice of epistemology/ ontology that we associate with the sort of pluralism Putnam himself appears to have promised in Lecture 1 (and elsewhere). Putnam has somehow “mislaid” the deeper question: “conceptual pluralism” makes no sense except against the backdrop of some cognitively validating competence by which to confirm that (say) this or that counting strategy will be extensionally equivalent to what we determine to be in accord with our empirical evidence and our way of processing evidence – which, indeed, may (as Putnam admits) change and evolve over time under the influence of changing “conceptual truths.” (Is that already an incipient relativism or historicism?) But if the point is conceded, the deeper issue will surely embolden relativistic speculations, and then we will need to know precisely how, or whether,
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
23
pluralism diverges (and if it does, in what way) from the relativist’s alternative. I can’t see how Putnam can escape a reckoning here – and I can’t see how his usual dismissal of relativism (as incoherent or self-defeating or solipsistic or nihilistic) can possibly be persuasive. His own remarks seem to require a greater openness conceptually. You may even see that this is implicated in Putnam’s own summary of the counting issue: “For mathematical purposes,” says Putnam, “all mathematical entities can be ‘identified with’ (i.e., replaced by) certain sets ... but to suppose that there is a serious question of ‘the real existence of sets’ is silly.”20 This answer would make no sense unless it also made sense to ask “what there is,” in virtue of which the elimination itself goes through. But then, that cannot obtain without raising the deeper question about the pluralism Putnam seems to have set aside, and that question implicates the comparison with relativism under the condition of Putnam’s own treatment of “conceptual truths”! I have no wish to carry the argument beyond the issues raised by these remarks. It’s not clear to me just how far Putnam himself means to press or restrict his last innovation. His example of a conceptual truth concerns the import of the finding that the sum of the angles of a triangle can be (according to Riemann’s discovery) more than 180 degrees; so that, as a consequence, if someone had made the (Riemannian) claim in 1700, “he would have been speaking gibberish.”21 So conceptual truths are revisable and affect what we thereby “discover” to be true. What Putnam says here could easily be fitted (or so it seems) to Kuhn’s conception of paradigm shifts (and even lesser discontinuities). I can’t be sure how far Putnam might be willing to go in his concessions in this direction: even small concessions seem to yield in the direction of redeeming the viability of one or another form of relativism. I don’t see why considering a genuinely robust version of this concession should violate Putnam’s notion of his regulative Grenzbegriff. All that would be needed – it would seem – is to admit that the would-be Grenzbegriff is itself open to revising the field of (its) application – or perhaps contrasting very carefully the difference between truth sans phrase and the ascription of changing truth-values (or truth-like values) on the basis of the shifting evidence that (according to the doctrine just introduced) we might have in hand. If it should turn out that we need to admit a kind of validity fitted to truth-claims where it would be awkward to deny that we are not moving toward a convergent “truth,” then so be it. Some sort of relativistic accommodation would be required. I am inclined to think that Putnam is inexorably drawn in this direction, but I must leave it to him to tell us where he would draw the line between pluralism and relativism. My point is this: Putnam himself seems to have restored (almost in spite of his seemingly severe constraints) the epistemological distinction of pluralist claims. If so, then I agree with this much of what he says. I think it provides a sufficient clue for discarding the objectivist alternative – at the price of vindicating the relativist option. I don’t see any clear way to disjoin pluralism – if that is what Putnam is recovering in Lecture 3 – from a coherent version of relativism. I see
24
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
what appears to be a relativistic doctrine already nascent in what I’ve cited from Lecture 3. But certainly what Putnam says in Lecture 3 completely eclipses what he had offered earlier as the pluralism he wished to defend – which could hardly be confined to the doctrine of “optional languages.” What Putnam now offers – the thesis about “conceptual truths” – leads to the following argument-sketch. First, that conceptual truth entails and presupposes some version of (Hegelian) historicity. Second, conceding that leads directly to a weaker sort of conceptual truth, one that trades primarily on the concession regarding the “interpenetration” of such truths and empirical beliefs – not necessarily restricted to Putnam’s original emphasis on the gibberish of affirming the negation of his kind of conceptual truth. Third, conceding this last adjustment leads in turn to the reasonable conjecture that the weaker (near-)conceptual truths appear ubiquitously in truth-bearing inquiries (say, along lines even more concessive than Kuhn’s provision). Finally, conceding that yields the realization that we have no idea how to demonstrate that competing epistemological claims never yield, coherently, incompatible or incommensurable claims that are nevertheless thought to be cognitively viable – that is, as a result of a plurality of “cognizing perspectives.” But if all this is conceded, pluralism itself will, or may, prove to be a form of relativism. I rest my case.
NOTES 1. Hilary Putnam, “Ethics without Ontology,” Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). 2. Ibid., pp. 21–22. 3. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 216. 4. Ibid., p. 216. Compare p. 126 (chap. 5). The issue is, of course, the issue of the Theaetetus, and is taken up again in Putnam’s The Many Faces of Realism (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987). 5. A similar picture of our options appears earlier, in a fuller form, in Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). The trouble is, Bernstein offers absolutely nothing in the way of an account of the pluralism he takes to be a genuine third option. 6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953). 7. See, further, Richard Rorty, “Hilary Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 8. See Putnam, “Ethics without Ontology,” pp. 26–27. 9. Ibid., pp. 25–26. 10. Ibid., p. 25. 11. Ibid., pp. 46–47. 12. Ibid., p. 46. 13. Ibid., pp. 48–49.
Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
25
14. Ibid., p. 51. 15. Ibid., p. 14. 16. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, pp. 49–50. 17. See Hilary Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind,” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 445–517. 18. Putnam, “Ethics without Ontology,” p. 61. 19. See P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959). 20. Putnam, “Ethics without Ontology,” pp. 80–82. 21. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
Joseph Margolis Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy Philosophy Department 728 Anderson Hall Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122 United States
This page intentionally left blank
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 27–38
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking: Reflections on Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology Mark Timmons
This symposium contribution discusses the conception of ethical objectivity found in the metaethical views of Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without Ontology.
Objectivity and rationality humanly speaking are what we have; they are better than nothing. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, p. 55
I am delighted to be among the commentators on Ethics without Ontology. I first met Hilary Putnam in the summer of 1986 at the NEH summer seminar that he conducted on philosophical perspectives on truth and reality in which I was a participant. That was a wonderful experience in many ways including especially the lasting influence of Putnam’s thinking on my work in metaethics.1 What I see as one of Putnam’s major contributions to the field of ethics (going back at least as far as Reason, Truth and History) is his attempt to defend a conception of ethical objectivity with an eye to making sense of the complexities and nuances of our ethical experience. We find his latest treatment of ethical objectivity in his Hermes lectures that comprise part I of Ethics without Ontology with which I have a great deal of sympathy. In particular, I am entirely sympathetic to his claim that certain ethical judgments, despite being nondescriptive, are nevertheless assertoric judgments.2 But in these lectures Putnam does not go into metaethical detail about such judgments and indeed the idea of non-descriptive assertions is likely to strike many philosophers as oxymoronic. My plan here is to develop some of Putnam’s metaethical themes from the Hermes lectures in a certain direction that I find very attractive. The next section is devoted to laying out the key elements of Putnam’s metaethics and then in the following two sections I will proceed to explain how they can be elaborated within what I will simply call a “non-descriptivist” metaethical framework.3 1. Putnam’s Metaethics Putnam’s metaethics combines (1) a non-ontological conception of the objectivity of ethical discourse with (2) a “non-homogenous” understanding of
28
MARK TIMMONS
the range of ethical judgments – an understanding, that is, according to which some ethical judgments are descriptive in content, but some are not. The upshot is a nuanced view of ethical objectivity, according to which while all types of ethical judgment can be (and some are) objectively true, some objectively true ethical judgments are not descriptions. This goes against a dominant assumption of philosophy generally and metaethics in particular that objective ethical truths are descriptions of ethical matters of fact. In order to bring Putnam’s view into focus, let us briefly examine in order each of the two elements just mentioned. A. Ethical Objectivity Perhaps the most dominant theme in part I of Ethics without Ontology is that the standard ontological conception of objectivity – one which requires (roughly) that objectively true judgments correspond to objects – is not adequate for understanding some types of discourse that clearly are objective. The clear cases in question that Putnam discusses are logical and mathematical discourse, and understanding how these discourses can be objective without ontology is the basis for Putnam’s claim that we can have objective truth in ethics without ontology. Let us therefore consider the elements of the ontological conception of objectivity and then turn to the alternative conception that Putnam describes. Putnam formulates the basic claim of the objective conception this way: O1
“If a claim is objectively true, then there have to be objects to which the claim corresponds” (p. 53).
If we put this together with the idea that a claim whose truth is a matter of correspondence is a descriptive claim (which I do not believe Putnam challenges), then we get another tenet of the objective conception: O2
“If a claim is [objectively] true, then the claim is a description of whatever objects and properties make it true” (p. 53).
A third component of the ontological conception is: O3
Descriptions that cannot be construed as “descriptions of natural objects and properties [are to be construed] as descriptions which refer to nonnatural entities” (pp. 53–54).
In rejecting the ontological conception as adequate for understanding every discourse (some of whose claims are objectively true), Putnam is rejecting the metaphysical thesis that objectivity requires objects and properties (includeing relations) as truth-makers, and also the linguistic thesis that all objectively true claims are descriptive.
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking
29
Notice, by the way, that this way of characterizing ontological objectivity is neutral with regard to whether the truth-making objects and properties (call them “facts” for convenience) are supposed to be “scheme-independent” or whether (as Putnam holds) such facts are in some sense dependent on (or relative to) some conceptual scheme or other. High octane versions of ontological objectivity would maintain that there are OBJECTS and PROPERTIES – FACTS – that are part of the WORLD as it is “in itself” apart from how humans or any creature might conceive of it. (This capitalization device, introduced by Putnam, indicates when terms are being used to refer to what is schemeindependent.) By contrast, a lower octane version of ontological objectivity would allow that the objects and properties – the facts – there are are (in the relevant sense) scheme-dependent.4 As I understand Putnam’s obituary for ontology (pp. 84–85), he rejects high octane ONTOLOGY, not common sense (“of course, there are tables, chairs, and trees”) small ‘o’ ontology. Putnam’s non-ontological conception of objectivity – what I will call “methodological objectivity” (I don’t believe Putnam gives it a label) – involves the idea of standards that properly govern some realm of inquiry.5 In connection with logic (specifically, logically valid inferences and logical truth), Putnam writes: There are standards that logically valid inferences have to meet, and that logically true statements have to meet.... But those are not the standards that apply to what we ordinarily call “descriptions,” e.g., “There are some cars parked next to the church.” Logic is neither a description of nonnatural relations between transcendent “objects” nor a description of ordinary empirical properties of empirical objects (p. 59) The relevant standards and procedures that govern discourse in logic are what one learns in learning and mastering the concept of valid inference and logical truth (see esp. pp. 63–64). And, for Putnam, this same general conception of objectivity applies to mathematical discourse. Here, then, is how we might characterize this notion of methodological objectivity in relation to some discourse D: M1
If some claim C in discourse D is objectively true, then there are standards and procedures governing the acceptance of claims (judgments) in D that C meets and ~C does not.
To make clear that this is a non-ontological alternative to the ontological conception we should add: M2
The objectively true claims in D are not descriptions, and so the procedures and standards of D are not those of thought-language/object correspondence.
30
MARK TIMMONS
And in order to rule out relativism of a sort that is inconsistent with the very notion of objectivity, we should also add: M3
There is not a plurality of equally good or correct procedures and standards that apply to the claims of D whose application would yield incompatible but equally “true” claims. Note: This claim is meant to be fully compatible with the phenomenon of conceptual relativity that Putnam defends in lecture 2.6
So for ethical discourse generally (or for one of its species) to be methodologically objective there must be a unique set of procedures and standards that apply to the claims or judgments of that discourse which some of the judgments in question meet (and which are thereby objectively true) and some do not (and which are thereby objectively false). And certainly we should allow that some ethical judgments might be, relative to the standards and procedures in question, objectively indeterminate. (We will come back to this conception of ethical objectivity in the next section.) Notice that it is possible to hold that within some realm of discourse (broadly conceived) there may be important variation among the various judgments that comprise that realm – variation that bears on the matters of objectivity. In particular, it may turn out that some types of judgment within the realm are descriptive and thus that true judgments of the type in question are true because they conform to the demands of the ontological conception of objectivity, while other types of judgment from the same general realm are not descriptive and thus that the form of objectivity that applies to them is methodological. As I understand Putnam’s metaethical view this possibility is realized within the realm of ethical discourse. This brings us, then to Putnam’s non-homogenous conception of the realm of ethical judgment. B. Ethical Judgments It isn’t until the fourth and final Hermes lecture that Putnam turns to the nature of ethical judgments, and there he devotes only two short subsections of that lecture to this topic (pp. 72–78). His main claims in these passages are that (1) ethical discourse is objective and (2) the judgments that make up the discourse are assertoric (p. 74). But (3) as a whole ethical discourse is a “motley” – there are importantly different kinds of ethical judgment whose differences bear on the nature of their objectivity (pp. 72–73). (4) In particular, ethical judgments that feature “thick” ethical concepts are descriptive (pp. 73–74), but (5) ethical judgments that feature “thin” ethical concepts are not descriptions. Here is Putnam’s summary of his view of ethical judgments: In short (and here I find it convenient to use the term valuings as a general term for value judgments of every sort), my position isn’t simply
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking
31
that “valuings are not descriptions”; my position is that some valuings, in fact, some ethical valuings, are descriptions (though not of anything “nonnatural”), and some valuings are not descriptions. Valuings do not contrast simply with descriptions; there is an overlap, in my view, between the class of descriptions and the class of valuings (p. 74). If we now connect the two conceptions of objectivity with what Putnam says about different types of ethical judgment we have the view that some objectively true ethical judgments conform to the ontological model (small ‘o’) while others conform to the methodological model. This is ethical objectivity humanly speaking. This concludes my exegesis of Putnam’s conception of ethical objectivity. Let us now proceed to consider some of the elements of his view in more detail. 2. Avoiding Ethical Relativism My characterization of Putnam’s methodological conception of objectivity is similar to, but not identical with, a very familiar conception of objectivity that is associated with ethical constructivism. I think constructivism in ethics leads to relativism and if there is one thing Putnam is not it is an ethical relativist. So in order to both clarify Putnam’s position (at least as I understand his view) and provide a basis for suggesting an non-descriptivist framework for Putnam’s conception of ethical judgments, let us briefly consider this issue of constructivism and relativism. As I am using this term, an ethical constructivist holds that there are ethical facts (and associated truths), but such facts and truths are constituted by actual or ideal human attitudes, conventions, and the like – call them “stances.” We find ethical constructivism being defended by Rawls in his 1980 Dewey Lectures when he claims that those parties in the original position are not in search of the moral facts as if they were there to be discovered, rather there are no such facts “apart from the procedure of the construction as a whole; the facts are identified by the principles [that result from the procedure]” (Rawls 1980/1999, 354). Scanlon is also an ethical constructivist (not to be confused with his contractualism).7 He recognizes moral properties and associated facts but explains that once we settle on principles of right and wrong through a method of moral reasoning, “No interesting question would remain about the ontology of morals – for example about the metaphysical status of moral facts” (Scanlon 1998, 2). The idea working in both Rawls and Scanlon is that fundamental moral facts, expressed by basic moral principles, are the product of those procedures and standards which they put forth as governing ethical reasoning. The constructivist views of Rawls and Scanlon are not meant to be versions of or imply ethical relativism, but I don’t see how they avoid it. I have
32
MARK TIMMONS
argued for this claim in some detail in a previous article and cannot repeat it here, but the gist of the argument is this. In order for the various standards and procedures to yield a relatively rich set of moral principles with relatively determinate implications, those norms and standards will have to be morally loaded. This, by the way, is a lesson Putnam teaches us.8 But reflecting on cases of moral symmetry – my favorite is the Putnam/Nozick dispute over the morality of social welfare as described by Putnam (1981, 164–165) – strongly supports the conjecture that there is a plurality of standards and procedures that express different and conflicting moral outlooks (e.g., consequentialist, deontological) which, when viewed from a morally disengaged standpoint, are on equal footing. Each of the competing outlooks works with a morally loaded conception of the standards and procedures for moral thinking that fit with (because reflective of) its own moral outlook. So, if basic moral facts are, as Rawls says, identified by the procedure and there are alternative procedures that make use of alternative and conflicting morally loaded conceptions of rationality, we end up with alternative and conflicting sets of moral facts or truths. Isn’t this ethical relativism? One might attempt to avoid this problem by working with a non-morally loaded conception of rationality or reasonability and then try to vindicate some set of moral principles or another. But this is rationalist fantasy. The underlying problem with these versions of ethical constructivism is their assumption that moral judgments are in the business of describing moral facts and that if moral realism is not defensible, then some form of non-relativist constructivism must be the proper ontology for ethics. Once this move is made, moral descriptivists owe us a semantic story about moral terms (and the concepts they express) which does not lead to relativism, at which point they run into trouble. But then one might now wonder what sort of metaethic will allow us to accommodate the deeply embedded phenomena of moral thought and discourse including the fact that it is expressed by what seem to be genuine assertions and can be evaluated as (non-relativistically) rational or irrational, true or false. This brings us to what I am calling Putnam’s version of assertoric non-descriptivism in ethics. 3. Assertoric Non-descriptivism The very idea of combining the claim that moral discourse is genuinely assertive with the claim that it is nevertheless non-descriptive in character makes no sense as long as one embraces the following semantic assumption: SA
All genuinely assertoric discourse is descriptive discourse.
This deeply embedded assumption is something that in the past Terry Horgan and I have argued ought to be rejected.9 And doing so opens up some
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking
33
metaethical territory for what we take to be a more plausible metaethical view than the familiar run of the mill views. It is this semantic assumption that Putnam rejects when he argues that logical and mathematical discourses are genuinely assertoric but not descriptive and when he goes on to argue that certain types of ethical judgments – those involving “thin” ethical concepts – are likewise assertoric but not descriptive.10 But since the discourses of logic, mathematics, and (parts of) ethics all fall within the broad category of assertoric non-descriptivism, and since there are obvious and important differences between logic and mathematics on the one hand and ethics on the other (e.g., the latter but not the former are evaluative), one would expect that the semantical treatment of ethical discourse will differ importantly from a semantical treatment of logic and mathematical discourses. What, then, are some of the contours of this kind of metaethic? The sort of view that I (along with Terry Horgan) have defended features these ingredients, briefly set forth in the following seven theses:11 Moral thought and discourse, because it has all of the logico-grammatical trappings of genuine assertoric thought and discourse, is indeed genuinely assertoric. To form a moral judgment is to form a genuine belief whose content is appropriately expressed in declarative moral sentences that possess genuine assertoric content. This represents a form of metaethical cognitivism. However, moral beliefs and sentences are not descriptive – they do not purport to describe robust moral facts of some sort. Rather, they are in the business of guiding one’s attitudes and actions. The view thus represents a nondescriptivist metaethical view. The view is semantically minimalist because it refuses to give any kind of deep analysis – reductive or nonreductive – of moral thought and discourse. According to this view, the proper response to a question such as “What is the content of a sentence like ‘Apartheid is wrong’?” is a minimalist one: “Apartheid is wrong.” However, this is not a version of metaethical quietism: there is genuine illumination to be gained about moral thought and discourse, but it comes mainly from understanding the point and purpose of such thought and discourse and by understanding the distinctive functional role of moral belief in human cognition. Thus an adequate account of the point and purpose of moral assertions and of the cognitive-functional role of moral beliefs will be one in which various subtle decision-guiding and action-guiding aspects of moral beliefs and moral judgment are made perspicuous. The view is also ontologically minimalist because it does not countenance any metaphysically robust moral properties or facts, including constructed properties and facts. However, truth ascriptions are quite legitimate and should be understood minimalistically according to Tarski’s schema T. The semantic remark that, for example, “‘Apartheid is wrong’ is true” expresses a moral commitment to the claim that apartheid is wrong from within a morally charged metalinguistic
34
MARK TIMMONS
stance. In such judgments we thus find a fusion of semantic and moral normativity. Finally, this view is not a form of, nor is it committed to ethical relativism.12 It does not offer a relativized account of the contents of moral beliefs and utterances, nor does it construe moral judgments as involving an implicit relativization parameter or otherwise give an account of reference and truth that entails moral relativism. So, for instance, when one utters a logically simple moral claim such as “Apartheid is wrong,” one is not to be understood as making a statement that has some hidden relativization parameter that would make the statement turn out to have relativized truth conditions. Moral beliefs and utterances are typically categorical. I take this metaethical view as one (and perhaps the most) plausible way of developing assertoric non-descriptivism in ethics, and it nicely comports with what Putnam says about non-descriptive ethical judgments – those involving thin ethical concepts. There is one rather obvious loose end: what about ethical discourse featuring thick ethical concepts? Putnam claims that these judgments are descriptive – they purport to attribute a psychological property to an agent. How (if at all) can this species of judgment be made sense of within the metaethical framework just set forth? Here are three main options. First, one might follow Putnam and hold that thick ethical judgments cannot be understood within the framework of assertoric non-descriptivism – they can’t be because they are descriptive. Call this option, motley. Second, one might attempt to fit them into the framework by following the lead of traditional non-cognitivists and attempting to decompose these judgments into a purely descriptive part and a purely evaluative part and then claim that the purely evaluative part (which makes such judgments a species of ethical judgment) can be understood as essentially nondescriptive. This was Hare’s tactic. Call this option decomposition. Third, there is the unity option whereby one attempts to make sense of thick ethical judgments within the basic non-descriptivist framework just presented without attempting to decompose them and do so in a way that respects their descriptive character. I tentatively favor unity over the other two options. Ethical discourse is deeply evaluative – it is, as Allan Gibbard puts it – “fraught with ought.”13 And so one might hope to develop a unified metaethical account of both thin and thick ethical judgments by making use of the assertoric non-descriptivist metaethic that nicely characterizes ought-judgments. Decomposition yields a neat unification by way of reduction, but Putnam and others have argued fairly persuasively against decomposition and in favor of its opposite, entanglement.14 The unity I have in mind with the third option embraces the entanglement thesis and attempts to explain how thick ethical judgments can nevertheless be brought within the basic framework set forth above. Motley is thus a fall-back in case unity does not pan out. Here, then, is a sketch of how unity might be defended. (Horgan and I plan to write more extensively on this topic in the near future.)
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking
35
First, thick ethical judgments employing such positively evaluative concepts as courage, honesty, and kindness are typically used to indicate moral reasons in favor of some course of action or some attitude while cowardice, dishonesty, and cruelty are typically used to indicate reasons against some course of action or some attitude. Second, in sincerely thinking or uttering a thick ethical judgment for evaluative purposes, as in “To do that would be the honest thing to do,” one is citing a characteristic of a proposed course of action toward which one has a general ought-commitment. In the case at hand, one expresses a general (positive) ought-to-be-commitment toward states of affairs in which truth-telling (in character or deed) is present. This particular ought-tobe-commitment when taken to be relevant in one’s moral thinking is typically brought into contact with other thick ethical judgments where one is attempting to reach an all-things-considered ought-judgment about whatever action or attitude is under consideration. Third, thick evaluative judgments involve a kind of evaluative/descriptive fusion in the sense that one’s overall moral-evaluative outlook and certain descriptive features deeply interpenetrate so that which specific traits and deeds count as falling within the extension of a thick concept in question cannot be learned or properly discerned without taking the relevant evaluative point of view from which such thick judgments are made, justified, and criticized. This is essentially the entanglement thesis, which Putnam describes as follows: What they [proponents of entanglement] maintain is that if one did not at any point share the relevant ethical point of view one would never be able to acquire a thick ethical concept, and that sophisticated use of such a concept requires a continuing ability to identify (at least in imagination) with that point of view (Putnam 2002, 37–38). Fourth, this view of thick ethical concepts (and the judgments in which they figure) allows that such concepts and judgments are in a sense descriptive, though evaluative-descriptive – indicating interpenetration – would be more accurate. Fifth and finally, the basic non-descriptivist metaethic is retained (though perhaps in modified form) because the non-descriptivist conception of ought-commitments is in one sense – a sense that respects entanglement – at the bottom of moral thought and discourse. 4. Conclusion What I have tried to do is pick up on some metaethical themes in Ethics without Ontology (as well as some of Putnam’s earlier writings) that I find very attractive and explain how one might run with them in a certain metaethical direction that is non-descriptivist in its approach to moral thought and judgment, but which attempts to respect the entanglement of fact and value that we find in thick ethical judgments. I am not suggesting that this sort of view is one that
36
MARK TIMMONS
Putnam is going to want to embrace. So let me conclude with this question, (which goes along nicely with David Copp’s remarks toward the end of his contribution): how exactly are we to make clear sense of Putnam’s metaethics if not in one of the ways suggested in this and Copp’s paper? Copp argues that once one considers the various metaethical positions Putnam seems to reject, about the only option left is a view in the tradition (if not a form of) Kantian constructivism. But as I have explained above in section 2, constructivist views that aim to avoid ethical relativism succumb to it anyway. I have been suggesting that a kind of non-descriptivist view that avoids commitment to moral properties such as rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness and yet recognizes that we sensibly make attributions of truth and falsity to moral judgments is the most plausible metaethical way for ethics to do without ontology.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Terry Horgan for discussion of an earlier version of this paper, and especially David Copp for his helpful correspondence about my paper and about Putnam’s metaethical views generally.
NOTES 1. One dominant Putnamian theme of my Morality without Foundations is its insistence on developing a non-reductive characterization of moral thought and discourse. See also Timmons 1991. 2. The metaethical view I have defended in the recent past I called “assertoric non-descriptivism,” though I didn’t get the view or the terminology from Putnam. My use of this terminology (and the associated view) originated with a paper that Terry Horgan and I presented in honor of R. M. Hare’s retirement from the University of Florida in 1994. 3. In other writings I have sometimes referred to this non-descriptivist metaethic as a version of expressivism, understood very broadly as the view that moral judgments are not descriptive beliefs. See Horgan and Timmons 2006a, 2006b). 4. Notice further that one might hold a view according to which the true judgments from one discourse are made true by FACTS, while the true judgments from some other discourse are made true by facts. 5. For a more detailed discussion of the contrast between ontological and methodological conceptions of objectivity in ethics, see Timmons 2006. 6. For a discussion of the phenomenon of conceptual relativity, see Horgan and Timmons 2002. 7. Constructivism is an ontological/semantic thesis, contractualism (contractarianism) is an epistemological thesis. For more on this distinction see Timmons 2004. 8. See for instance, Putnam 1981, 136 and 215. 9. See Timmons 1999, chap. 4; and Horgan and Timmons 2000, 2006a. 10. See especially Putnam 2004, chap. 3. 11. This is not to endorse an across the board minimalism about truth. The concepts of truth and falsity, like many other concepts are governed by semantically
Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking
37
variable parameters – parameters which, in relation to some discourses (language games), may require more of the world in order for judgments of the discourse to be determinately true or determinately false. In effect, this is simply an application of Putnam’s thesis of conceptual relativity to semantic concepts. 12. For defense of this claim see Horgan and Timmons 2006b. 13. Gibbard 2001, 21. Gibbard attributes this remark to Wilfrid Sellars. 14. See especially Putnam 2002, chap. 2.
REFERENCES Gibbard, Allan. 2001. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Horgan, Terence, and Mark Timmons. (2000) “Nondecriptivist Cognitivism: Outline of a New Metaethic,” Philosophical Papers 29, 121–153. ———. (2002) “Conceptual Relativity and Metaphysical Realism,” Philosophical Issues 12, 74–96. ———. 2006a. “Cognitivist Expressivism,” in Metaethics After Moore, ed. Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 255–298. ———. 2006b. “Expressivism Yes! Relativism No!” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Putnam, Hilary. (1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2002. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2004. Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. (1980) “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 77, 515–572. Reprinted in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 303–358. Scanlon, T. M. (1998) What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Timmons, Mark. 1991. “Putnam’s Moral Objectivism,” Erkenntnis 34, 371–399. ———. 1999. Morality without Foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. “The Limits of Moral Constructivism,” in On What We Owe to Each Other, ed. Phillip Stratton-Lake (Oxford: Blackwell).
38
MARK TIMMONS
———. 2006. “Objectivity in Moral Discourse,” Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Elsevier).
Mark Timmons Professor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Arizona Social Science Bldg. Rm 213 PO Box 210027 Tucson, Arizona 85721-0027 United States
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 39–53
Editions Rodopi © 2006
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology David Copp
This symposium contribution discusses some issues of moral realism and antirealism involved in the metaethics of Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without Ontology.
In a refreshing and lively new book, Ethics without Ontology,1 Hilary Putnam aims to show that the respect given to ontology over the past several decades, since the publication of Quine’s “On What There Is,”2 “has had disastrous consequences for just about every part of analytic philosophy,” including ethics (2). He argues that ethics and mathematics are “objective” but that the attempt to explain their objectivity in ontological terms, by invoking such things as “Platonic forms” or “abstract entities,” is “deeply misguided” (2, 3–4). He views ethics, not as a system of principles, but as a “system of interrelated concerns” (22), a system that aims to deal “with the solution of practical problems” (28). And he says that this conception of ethics does not “lend itself” to “inflationary or reductive nor yet to nominalistic ontologizing” (32). This article tries to understand Putnam’s views about ethics and to determine what the import of his views is for the metaethical debate between moral realists and antirealists. Putnam’s target is not ontologizing as such. It is certain “inflationary” and “deflationary” metaphysical views that he dubs “Ontology,” with a capital “O” (21). He thinks the pursuit of an Ontological account of the objectivity of ethics obscures the fact that there is a “whole circle of related concerns” that are “constitutive of ethics” (29); and it leads one to think that it is possible to justify or vindicate ethics from the outside (32) by finding a single unifying account that explains its objectivity, as if one could see “ethics as a noble statue standing at the top of a single pillar” (28). He calls his view “pragmatic pluralism” (21). In Wittgensteinian terms, it holds that “the truth can be told in language games that we actually play when language is working” (21). I find it difficult to see exactly what metaethical position Putnam means to defend. There is evidence that he intends to propose a form of moral realism similar to the “quietistic” or “minimally theorized” view that has been proposed by Ronald Dworkin,3 or perhaps to the non-reductive naturalism that has been
40
DAVID COPP
proposed by Nicholas Sturgeon.4 Yet despite the fact that his official position eschews Ontologizing, I shall suggest in the end that it is more plausible to interpret his position as a kind of deflationism. It appears to reduce the truth of a moral claim to, roughly, the justifiability of making it, given the concerns of the moral life and given the standards of practical reason (71–72). I say this in the spirit of inviting clarification rather than with much confidence. His view certainly doesn’t appear reductive at the beginning of the book, for he rejects reductionist and other deflationary strategies in metaethics (19–21), and he suggests that ethical truths are adequately vindicated by giving ethical reasons to explain their truth (3). As I will explain, however, it is difficult to reconcile the views he takes early in the book with claims he makes later on. The book consists of two series of lectures. The first series, the Hermes Lectures of 2001, gives its name to the book and addresses the central issues of ethics and ontology. The second series, the 2001 Spinoza Lectures, addresses a kind of “‘postmodern’ skepticism about reason-talk,” including skepticism about “rational persuasion in ethics” (110–111). I shall restrict attention to the Hermes Lectures. 1. Moral Realism and Antirealism Moral realism is a view about the moral claims we make, including, for example, claims about what is morally right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust. For present purposes, take realism to be the view that (a) moral claims express beliefs that are true or false, depending on how things are, morally speaking, and that (b) some such beliefs are true.5 Moral realists can disagree about many things, but they agree in holding that some moral claims are actually true. As I shall use the term, a “quietist” is a moral realist who holds that it is a mistake to say anything substantive in non-moral terms to attempt to explain what makes true the moral claims that are true; quietism holds that moral reasons can be given to explain the truth of a true moral claim but that no other kind of explanation is available. Assume, for example, that one ought morally to keep one’s promises. The quietist would be content with a standard kind of moral explanation for this, an explanation of the kind we might give in a moral discussion. A quietist would reject any kind of philosophical or metaphysically ambitious explanation such as an explanation that postulated a special kind of fact or property. Putnam appears to be a moral realist. He rejects “antirealism” in ethics (1). He says that ethics is “objective” (2). He holds that there are “ethical truths” (73). He appears, moreover, to accept a Dworkinian style of quietism, for he argues, as I have said, that it is a mistake to attempt to provide an Ontological explanation of the objectivity of ethics. He thinks it is a mistake to attempt to explain the objectivity of ethics by “providing reasons which are not part of ethics for the truth of ethical statements” (3). These passages give us some
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
41
reason to think that Putnam is a realist who accepts quietism. An additional reason is that he appears to rule out all the alternatives, with the possible exception of non-reductive naturalism. Given that moral realism makes two key claims, there are two forms of antirealism, each of which denies one of the key realist claims. One form of antirealism agrees with the realist that moral claims express beliefs that are true or false, depending on how things are, morally speaking, but it denies that any of our moral beliefs are true.6 This view is called the “error theory” since it holds that our moral beliefs are all mistaken. J. L. Mackie famously advocated the error theory.7 The other form of antirealism denies that moral claims express beliefs – beliefs that are true or false, depending on how things are, morally speaking.8 This kind of antirealism is called “non-cognitivism” or “expressivism” since it holds that moral claims do not express cognitive states – states of belief – in the way that, say, claims about the weather express beliefs. It holds instead that moral claims express some kind of conative state akin to desire. Simon Blackburn is a contemporary philosopher who advocates a kind of noncognitivism.9 Putnam appears to reject both forms of antirealism, as we will see. He also rejects various familiar forms of realism, leaving very few alternatives. Putnam thinks each of the kinds of moral realism and antirealism that he rejects involves an objectionable Ontological view, either an objectionable inflationary view or an objectionable deflationary view. To understand why he rejects the various theories, then, we need to understand what he means by calling views “inflationary” or “deflationary,” why he thinks the metaethical theories he rejects involve inflationary or deflationary metaphysical views, and why he thinks inflationary and deflationary views are incorrect. I shall postpone addressing the last of these questions. To start, I turn to deflationism. Putnam views antirealism as deflationist. Deflationism begins, Putnam says, with a claim of the form, “there are nothing but so-and-sos, where the so-and-sos are a very small part of what we normally purport to talk about” (20). Presumably atheism would be a kind of deflationism, relative at least to a group of theists. The atheist says there are nothing but ordinary non-divine things. Given the example of atheism, it seems to me, it isn’t strictly necessary that the so-and-sos that are favored by a deflationist be “a very small part of what we normally purport to talk about.” Atheism doesn’t challenge most of what we normally talk about. It only challenges the existence of god. The key point is that atheism denies the existence of god or gods, where “we [or at least some people] normally purport” to be in a position to refer successfully to god or gods. It is a form of “eliminationism,” which is one form of deflationism, since it denies the existence of such-and-suches, where at least some people normally take themselves to be in a position to talk about such-and-suches. Mackie’s error theory is also a form of “eliminationism” (20, 134 n.5). It holds that “there isn’t such a thing” as goodness or rightness (20).
42
DAVID COPP
The other form of deflationism is “reductionism.” Suppose the deflationist says there is nothing but the ordinary spatio-temporal world. This may lead the deflationist to eliminationism about some things, such as gods. But it may lead her to reductionism about other things, such as numbers or properties. As a deflationist, the reductionist begins with a claim of the form, “there are nothing but so-and-sos,” but, as Putnam puts it, she goes on to say, about some other apparent things, the “such-and-suches,” that they really are “nothing but” soand-sos – “for example, ‘goodness is nothing but pleasure’ or ‘properties are nothing but names.’” (19–20). A reductionist in ethics might say, for example, that “‘ethical utterances are nothing but expressions of feeling’” (21). A philosopher who accepted a simple form of non-cognitivism might agree with Putnam’s formulation that “ethical utterances are nothing but expressions of feeling” (21). For according to such views, moral claims express desire-like conative states. Simple forms of non-cognitivism therefore appear to be forms of reductionist deflationism on Putnam’s account. Looked at in another way, simple forms of non-cognitivism are forms of eliminationism since they deny that moral claims ascribe moral characteristics to anything. They take it that a moral claim, such as the claim that truth-telling is good, does not ascribe goodness or any other moral characteristic to anything. This is an eliminationist view, not merely because it denies that there are moral characteristics, such as goodness, but also because such characteristics are “part of what we normally purport to talk about.” More sophisticated forms of non-cognitivism, including the expressivist quasi-realism advocated by Simon Blackburn,10 aim to accommodate the appearance that morality is objective. Blackburn agrees that moral discourse has a “realist surface.”11 He aims to accommodate the realist appearances by allowing that it is acceptable English, first, to speak of moral “beliefs,” second, to say that there are moral characteristics such as goodness and virtue and injustice, and third, to express agreement with a moral claim by saying it is “true.” He insists, however, that whatever we call them, our moral “beliefs” do not represent the world as being one way rather than another. They are not representational, so they are not beliefs strictly speaking. Putnam appears to view quasi-realism as a form of eliminationism. He does not explicitly discuss Blackburn’s quasi-realism in ethics, but, in a footnote, he rejects Blackburn’s quasi-realist position regarding numbers, which he describes as eliminationist (20, 135 n. 6). It is a fair bet that he would also reject Blackburn’s quasi-realism in ethics. For, early in the book, he remarks that “arguments for ‘antirealism’ in ethics are virtually identical with arguments for antirealism in the philosophy of mathematics,” and he goes on to complain that “philosophers who resist those arguments in the latter case often capitulate to them in the former” (1). Having said this, it would be odd if he were to resist Blackburn’s arguments for quasirealism in the philosophy of mathematics but to accept his arguments for quasirealism in ethics.
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
43
It needs to be said, however, that at least some of the familiar arguments for antirealism in ethics, including both arguments for non-cognitivism and arguments for the error theory, are very different from any plausible argument supporting antirealism in mathematics. One such argument in ethics is an argument from moral disagreement.12 There is no serious temptation to argue from disagreement in mathematics to antirealism. A second argument in ethics turns on the “internalist” doctrine that a person who accepts a moral judgment must be motivated accordingly, other things being equal. A person who holds, for instance, that she would be wrong to lie must have at least some degree of motivation to be truthful, other things being equal.13 No similar argument would be remotely plausible in the philosophy of mathematics. But since Putnam thinks that the realism/antirealism debate in ethics runs parallel to the debate in philosophy of mathematics, and since he rejects quasi-realism in mathematics, it is likely that he would reject it in ethics as well. It seems, therefore, that Putnam rejects all forms of non-cognitivism, whether simple and crude or sophisticated and quasi-realist. To be sure, Putnam does remark that certain typical ethical judgments, such as “Wife-beating is wrong” are not “descriptions” (52–53, 73), that “they are simply evaluations that convey” a moral attitude, such as “condemnation” (73). If read out of context, these remarks could be taken to support interpreting him as a kind of non-cognitivist, or at least as a kind of antirealist, since non-cognitivists have used the term “descriptivism” to refer to moral realism.14 But Putnam does not intend his rejection of the descriptions view to be a rejection of moral realism. On the contrary, he rejects antirealism (1). Indeed, one of the key points he wants to make is that the fact that “certain crucial ethical statements are not descriptions ... is no reason for classifying them as outside the range of the notions of truth and falsity” or for classifying them as non-objective (77). He holds that ethical claims are “bona fide instances of assertoric discourse, forms of reflection that are as fully governed by norms of truth and validity as any other forms of cognitive activity.”15 We need to try to figure out what Putnam means by saying that certain typical moral claims are not “descriptions” but they are “evaluations.” He does not mean simply that, unlike descriptive claims, such as claims about the weather, moral claims are normative. This is something that a moral realist ought to agree with and that Putnam might agree with. Indeed, I think it is a constraint on an adequate metaethical theory that it must construe moral claims as normative and as differing in this respect from ordinary non-moral claims. But this is not Putnam’s point. I will return to this issue. 2. Moral Naturalism and Non-Naturalism If Putnam rules out all forms of antirealism, as he appears to, he is committed to some form of realism. We can distinguish two forms of realism, naturalism and
44
DAVID COPP
non-naturalism. Putnam rejects antirealism because he views it as deflationist. He likewise rejects all deflationist and inflationist forms of moral realism. This leaves only forms of realism that are neither inflationist nor deflationist. The distinction between moral naturalism and non-naturalism is controversial. For present purposes, I shall take moral naturalism to be the view, roughly, that moral truth can be given a naturalistic explanation. Non-naturalism denies that moral truth can be given a naturalistic explanation. For present purposes, we can take it that a naturalistic explanation of moral truth would be an “empirical” explanation. A naturalist might say, for example, that moral properties such as rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness, are “nothing but” empirical properties, that moral claims ascribe empirical properties. Putnam would see this as a “reductionist” view, and, as we have seen, he rejects reductionism along with other forms of deflationism (20–21). Putnam also rejects “inflationism,” and he views non-naturalism, includeing the kind of non-naturalism that G.E. Moore advocated, as a form of “inflationary metaphysics” (17–18).16 In general terms, Putnam tells us, “the inflationary ontologist claims to tell us of the existence of things unknown to ordinary sense perception and to common sense, ... ([and] unknown [as well] to modern physical science)” (17). Putnam complains that in Moore’s theory, goodness is “supposed to be invisible to the senses and undetectable by the natural sciences” (18). The problem with the view, Putnam says, is that there is a multitude of ethical phenomena and it is a mistake to think that they can all be explained by the presence or absence of this “super-thing,” something nonnatural, “mysterious and sublime standing invisibly behind the goodness of the persons, actions, situations, etc., in question” (18–19). We will return to Putnam’s reasons for rejecting inflationism and deflationism. The question we now need to ask is, What is left? Putnam needs to find room in logical space for his view. The distinction between moral realism and moral antirealism was drawn in a way that was intended to be exhaustive, as was the distinction between naturalistic moral realism and non-naturalistic moral realism. So if he rejects antirealism as deflationist, Putnam must embrace realism, and if he rejects non-naturalism as inflationist, he must embrace naturalism. Since he rejects all deflationary and reductionist forms of naturalism, he is committed to thinking that there is room for a non-deflationary and non-reductionist form of moral naturalism. This appears to be the only remaining niche in logical space. And it appears that only two views fit in this niche. One is the minimally theorized form of quietistic moral realism that Dworkin advocates. The second is the non-reductionist form of moral naturalism that has been advocated by Sturgeon. Putnam discusses neither of these views, however, so it is unclear what he would say. To determine whether Sturgeon’s position is a live option for Putnam, we need to determine whether Putnam would view it as objectionably deflationist. I think he would not. Recall that, for Putnam, deflationism begins with the claim
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
45
that “there are nothing but so-and-sos, where the so-and-sos are a very small part of what we normally purport to talk about” (20). The naturalist who is a reductionist says that moral properties are nothing but such-and-such natural properties. Sturgeon’s form of naturalism agrees that moral properties are natural properties, but not because it holds that they can be identified with some properties, the “such-and-such” natural properties, that intuitively are distinct from the moral properties. Sturgeon’s view says that the moral properties are natural from the start and that they do not need to be vindicated by being identified in any terms other than moral terms.17 Sturgeon’s view is not intended to exclude from our conception of the world anything that common sense thinks is included in it. It is reasonable, then, to think that Putnam would not see Sturgeon’s naturalism as deflationist. To be certain of this, however, we need to look at Putnam’s reasons for rejecting deflationary metaphysics to see whether they give him reason to object to Sturgeon’s approach. 3. Putnam’s Objections to Ontologizing Putnam appears to have two main lines of argument against Ontology. First, he argues that Ontology rests on a false presupposition, the “philosophical parochialism,” that “the world dictates a unique ‘true’ way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc.” (51). Consider two partial descriptions of the contents of Putnam’s office, one in terms of ordinary objects such as a table and chair and the other in terms of fundamental physics. Putnam takes it that both of these descriptions are acceptable and that they do not compete with each other. Generalizing from the example, he says that there are cases in which there are different acceptable partial descriptions of a phenomenon – perhaps an ordinary language description and a scientific description – where these descriptions are compatible but not equivalent, and where there is no single fundamental ontology to which both of the descriptions can be reduced (48–49). He speaks of this phenomenon as “conceptual pluralism” (48–49). More troubling is a phenomenon he calls “conceptual relativity,” a phenomenon that he thinks affects our use of terms that are crucially important in metaphysics, terms such as “exists,” “object,” and “identical” (39, 47). Consider, for example, the issue whether every mereological sum of objects that exist is itself an object. Putnam claims that the meanings of the relevant words together with the extralinguistic facts do not settle the question one way or another; our decision of how to answer depends on which convention we adopt to extend our ordinary ways of speaking (43, 34–40, 137 n.6).18 The available answers are “cognitively equivalent” (45). It seems to follow that different ways of describing the world can be equally acceptable. The “world” together with the meanings of our words does not determine a unique true way of describing the world. I believe that this argument fails to show that there is a problem with all forms of Ontologizing. Ignoring certain subtleties, it seems to me that the central
46
DAVID COPP
premise in the argument boils down to this: Surprisingly, in some cases, apparently incompatible descriptions of a situation can all be true or can all be acceptable. It doesn’t follow, however, that no question about what exists is factual or that all questions about what exists are empty in the way that Putnam thinks the question whether mereological sums exist is empty. It doesn’t follow, for example, that atheism is false or that it is an empty thesis, nor does it follow that energy is irreducible (139 n. 1). So it doesn’t follow that all forms of eliminationism and reductionism must be abandoned. The most that follows, it seems to me, is that, to avoid error, Ontologizing needs to bear in mind the complications of conceptual pluralism and conceptual relativity. Putnam’s second argument depends on the premise, which he supports with examples from mathematics and logic, that a claim may be true even if there are no objects and properties that it describes and that make it true (52). Even if a proposition is true, there may be no “state of affairs” that the proposition describes and that makes it true (54–55). Consider, for instance, the claim that if all platypuses are mammals, then anything that is not a mammal is not a platypus. This claim, Putnam holds, is not made true by any state of affairs that obtains. To the objection that it is made true by the obtaining of the relation of entailment between the claim that platypuses are mammals and the claim that anything that is not a mammal is not a platypus, Putnam responds that “few philosophers today” think it is plausible to talk about any such relation “with inflationary metaphysical earnestness” (56). And even if there is a relation of entailment between the claims, Putnam says it is not plausible that “we are literally describing” the obtaining of this relation when we make the claim that if all platypuses are mammals, then anything that is not a mammal is not a platypus (56). Some of the statements that Putnam takes to be true without there being any states of affairs that they describe and that make them true are conceptual truths. Such a statement is true, Putnam says, in virtue of the fact that “it is impossible to make (relevant) sense of the assertion of its negation” (61). Some of the statements that are true without there being any states of affairs that they describe and that make them true are logical truths that are not conceptual truths. Such a statement is true, Putnam says, in virtue of its meeting relevant standards of logic (64). Similarly, Putnam says, mathematical truths are not made true by any set of objects that they describe. Rather, there are standards of mathematics that underwrite mathematical truth (66). I doubt, however, that Ontologizing depends on the proposition that every true claim is made true by some objects or state of affairs that it literally describes.19 So even if Putnam is correct that some claims are true without corresponding to states of affairs that they describe and that make them true, it does not follow that all Ontologizing is mistaken. It does not follow, for example, that atheism is false or that energy is irreducible. So it doesn’t follow that all forms of eliminationism and reductionism must be abandoned. The most
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
47
that follows, it seems to me, is that, to avoid error, Ontologizing needs to bear in mind that not every true claim is made true by some relevant objects or some relevant state of affairs that it describes. I therefore do not think that Putnam has given us good reason to object to Ontologizing. Moreover, he appears to engage in Ontologizing himself in his philosophy of mathematics and logic. First, he says that mathematical and logical truths do not describe states of affairs that make them true; rather, they are true in virtue of meeting relevant standards of mathematics or of logic (59, 64, 66). That is, he postulates the existence of standards that underwrite or otherwise explain the truth of the statements in question. This looks like Ontologizing to me. Putnam would respond by denying that he is a Platonist about such standards, but it is not clear what this denial amounts to. The question should be whether standards of mathematics and logic are known “to ordinary sense perception [or] to common sense, ... (...[or] to modern physical science)” (17), or whether they are visible “to the senses” or detectable “by the natural sciences” (18). If not, then to postulate their existence is to engage in inflationary Ontologizing by Putnam’s own standards. Second, Putnam appears to think that numbers do not exist. He is committed to saying that mathematical truths are not “made true” by any set of “objects” (66). This seems to commit him to saying that the claim that there is an even prime number is not made true by the existence of the number two, at least not if the number is construed as an “object” (66). Moreover, he says, “Every statement about the ‘existence’ of any mathematical entities is equivalent ... with a statement that doesn’t assert the actual existence of any mathematical objects at all, but only asserts the mathematical possibility of certain structures” (67). This strikes me as an example of deflationary, reductionist, Ontologizing. Putnam might respond that it is not an example of deflationism; it is merely the rejection of Platonistic inflationism. But the key point about deflationism is that it denies the existence of something that “we [or at least some people] normally purport to talk about” (20). And we do normally take ourselves to be in a position to talk about numbers. Putnam might respond that he does not deny that there are numbers, not unless the claim that there are numbers is made “with inflationary metaphysical earnestness.” It is not clear what this means, however. Perhaps the view is that although it is acceptable in ordinary English to speak of the existence of mathematical objects such as the number two, this has no metaphysical significance. But this, again, is an example of deflationary Ontology. It seems, in fact, uncomfortably close to Blackburn’s quasi-realism, which Putnam rejects (135 n. 6). I hope it is clear that I do not take myself here to be criticizing the substance of Putnam’s philosophy of mathematics. I do not see how a substantive philosophy of mathematics could avoid dealing with ontological issues.
48
DAVID COPP
I therefore do not see how Putnam can object to Ontologizing per se. His arguments against Ontologizing are not successful, or so I think, and he himself engages in ontologizing that at least bears a close family resemblance to Ontologizing. Despite this, of course, it might be that Ontologizing is a mistake, or, more plausibly, that certain forms of Ontologizing are mistakes. Putnam can of course object to specific deflationary and inflationary ontological views that he thinks are mistaken, but then he needs arguments that are more closely aimed at their intended targets. Putnam’s ambition was to give blockbuster arguments against Ontologizing as such, and I think he clearly has failed to do so. 4. Putnam’s Deflationary View in Ethics Earlier we saw that Putnam rejects a wide range of positions in metaethics on the ground that they involve Ontologizing. Only two views appeared to remain on the table. One is the form of quietistic moral realism that Dworkin advocates and the other is the non-reductionist form of moral naturalism that Sturgeon advocates. There appears to be nothing in Putnam’s arguments against Ontologizing requiring him to reject either of these views. It therefore seems tenable to interpret Putnam as holding a view that falls into one of these camps. I said before, however, that we need to try to figure out what Putnam means by saying that certain typical moral claims are not “descriptions” (52–53, 73), but that “they are simply evaluations that convey” a moral attitude, such as “condemnation” (73). This is unfinished business. It will turn out that when we understand what Putnam means by this, we will see that his view is not a form of quietistic moral realism or non-reductionist naturalism. He actually appears to accept a view of one of the kinds that he officially rejects. One cannot be confident of this, unfortunately, but it appears that his view is a kind of reductionist and eliminationist deflationism. Let me explain. Recall that Putnam thinks that mathematical and logical truths are not literally descriptions. They are made true, not by objects they describe, but by relevant standards. Putnam’s view about ethical truths is similar, although, he insists, “One cannot say equally simply that ethical truths are not descriptions, for it is a matter of which ethical statements one has in mind” (73). Putnam thinks that the statement that “Vlad the Impaler was cruel” is a description, but the statement that “Wife-beating is wrong” is not literally a description (73). Despite this, however, Putnam insists, moral statements are not “outside the range of the notions of truth and falsity,” for there can be “objectivity without objects” and “a bona fide statement is not necessarily a description” (77–78). This brings us to the most interesting discussion in the Hermes Lectures – at least to those interested primarily in ethics – Putnam’s account of the objectivity of ethical discourse in the first few pages of the fourth Hermes Lecture. Putnam suggests that “most” ethical judgments – presumably those couched in “thin” ethical terms, such as in terms of what is “right” or “wrong”
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
49
or “good” or “bad” – can be viewed as judgments about what would be reasonable or unreasonable given “the concerns of the ethical life” (71) – concerns such as a concern to alleviate suffering (23) and a concern with human flourishing (27). He suggests that “reflection on how it is reasonable to act given the overall concerns of the ethical life ... is subject to the same standards of fallibilistic inquiry that all practical reasoning is subject to, and the notions of truth and validity are internal to practical reasoning itself” (72). For example, in a debate about whether a country should adopt a universal government-funded health care insurance scheme, people are debating about how to deal with a practical problem, and a correct moral conclusion about the reasonableness of such a scheme, given the concerns of the ethical life, would be reached by reasoning in accord with the appropriate standards of practical reason. The view here seems to be that moral claims are true when they are accepted on the basis of solid practical reasoning about what would be reasonable given the concerns of ethical life. They are not made true by objects that they describe, for they do not describe the relevant standards of practical reasoning. They are not descriptions of these standards, or of the fact that the standards support our drawing certain conclusions. And true moral claims express the relevant moral concerns. A true moral claim might express compassion, for example (23), or condemnation of someone who lacks compassion. As I said, one cannot be confident about this, but it appears that Putnam’s view here is a kind of reductionist deflationism. For it appears to reduce the truth of a moral claim to roughly the justifiability of making it, given the concerns of the moral life and given the appropriate standards of practical reason. Consider, for example, the question whether a country ought to have a universal government-funded health care insurance scheme. Putnam’s position appears to imply that a country ought to have such a scheme just in case the conclusion that it ought to have such a scheme would be warranted by reasoning in accord with the appropriate standards of practical reason, given the concerns of the ethical life. This, it seems to me, is a fair reading of Putnam’s remark (in the relevant context) that “the notions of truth and validity are internal to practical reasoning itself” (72). If this is not what he means, I hope he will clarify his meaning. Putnam’s view seems also to include a thesis that is eliminationist, for he seems to deny the existence of moral properties, such as goodness, badness, rightness, and wrongness. People normally take themselves to be in a position to talk about such properties and about actions, people, and institutions that have them. We take ourselves to be talking about the wrongness of certain actions when we say, for example, that “Wrongdoing is becoming more widespread.” To be sure, it is not entirely clear whether Putnam would deny that there are moral properties. But if he thinks there are such properties, then I am puzzled by his denial that typical ethical statements such as “Wife-beating is wrong” are descriptions. If he thinks there is a property of wrongness, for example, then it seems to me he should agree that the statement “Wife-beating is wrong”
50
DAVID COPP
ascribes wrongness to wife-beating and therefore that it describes wife-beating as having that property just as the statement “Wife-beating is widespread” describes wife-beating as widespread. Accordingly, I take his rejection of the descriptions view to imply a denial of the existence of moral properties and therefore to commit him to an eliminationist thesis. Putnam’s position is not eliminationist in the way that Mackie’s error theory is a form of eliminationism, for Putnam does not deny that there are moral truths. As I understand his view, it holds that there are moral truths even though there are no moral properties because it holds that moral truth is constituted, roughly, by the standards of practical reason, given the concerns of the moral life. The overall view, as I understand it, combines eliminationism about moral properties with reductionism about moral truth. It would indeed be ironic if this were Putnam’s view, given that his book is devoted to arguing against Ontologizing, including both eliminationist and reductionist styles of deflationism. Perhaps Putnam would respond that although his view can be described as a kind of reductionist and eliminationist deflationism, it is not Ontological in the sense he has been arguing against. But on my interpretation it seems to me that it is, for the reasons I have given. It denies the existence of moral properties such as wrongness, although wrongness and the other moral properties are “part of what we normally purport to talk about” (20). And, it says that a moral truth really is “nothing but” a warranted conclusion about what would be reasonable given the concerns of the moral life and given the appropriate standards of practical reason. Putnam stands as a moral realist on my interpretation, for he holds that there are true moral claims. Ethical claims, he says, “are bona fide instances of assertoric discourse, forms of reflection that are as fully governed by norms of truth and validity as any other form of cognitive activity” (74–74). It is not clear, however, whether he is a naturalist or a non-naturalist, for it is not clear what the status is of the standards of practical reason that figure so centrally in his account. Putnam says very little about them. Putnam’s proposal points to a kind of position that has not perhaps clearly been seen to lie within the precincts of moral realism, a position that is in the tradition of Kantian constructivism.20 Realists typically focus on the properties that they take to be expressed by moral predicates such as “good” and “right,” and they ask what status these properties have. Putnam’s discussion suggests that there may be a way to make sense of robust moral truth without supposing there are moral properties. Instead we can take moral truth to be “constructed” from the relevant standards of practical reason, given the concerns of the ethical life. I do not know whether this account can be spelled out in sufficient detail to enable it to be evaluated. There are, for example, worries about the notion of “the concerns of the ethical life.” And there are worries about the idea that there are standards of practical reason that have enough content to underwrite moral truth without being themselves as much in need of
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
51
elucidation as moral truths were to begin with. We do not want merely to move the issue from one place to another, from the issue of explaining moral truth to the issue of explaining the truth or “validity” of standards of practical reason. But let me set aside these worries. The suggestion is worth following up. To conclude, I do not believe that Putnam has succeeded in showing that Ontologizing is philosophically suspect. Moreover, it appears that he himself engages in Ontologizing in his own philosophy of mathematics. It is clear that he engages in deflationary ontologizing, and, given that his arguments against Ontologizing are unsuccessful, it is of little interest whether what he engages in qualifies as deflationary Ontologizing with a capital “O.” He rejects a wide range of standard views in metaethics on the ground that they involve Ontologizing, but he has given us no good reason to suppose that all Ontologizing is problematic. Despite all of this, however, he has proposed an interesting positive view in ethics. If my reading is correct, his view is a version of moral realism that combines eliminationism about moral properties with reductionism about moral truth. I would not want my criticisms of Putnam’s arguments against Ontologizing to obscure the interest of his positive proposal.
NOTES 1. Hilary Putnam, Ethics Without Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). Numbers in parentheses in the text refer to pages in this book. 2. W. V. Quine, “On What There Is,” Review of Metaphysics 2 (1948):21–28. The paper was reprinted, with some revisions, in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 1–19. 3. Ronald Dworkin, “Objectivity and Truth? You’d Better Believe It,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (1996): 87–139. My use of the term “quietistic” to describe Dworkin’s view is unoriginal. 4. For an accessible statement of the view, see Nicholas L. Sturgeon, “Ethical Naturalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, ed. David Copp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 91–121. 5. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “The Many Moral Realisms,” in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 1–26. 6. There is the complication that if it is false that lying is wrong, then it is true that it is not the case that lying is wrong. If the belief that it is not the case that lying is wrong counts as a moral belief, then the error theorist should say, not that all moral beliefs are false, but that all “basic” or “simple” moral beliefs are false, where a basic moral belief is a belief that p in which p is a moral proposition that is not logically complex. The proposition that it is not the case that lying is wrong is logically complex in the relevant sense since it is the negation of the proposition that lying is wrong. 7. J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1977), chap. 1.
52
DAVID COPP
8. It should admit that some moral claims express beliefs. For example, it should admit that the claim that Smith was wrong to rob the bank expresses the belief that Smith robbed the bank. But it denies that any moral claim expresses a belief that is true or false depending on how things are morally speaking. The belief that Smith robbed the bank is not a moral belief and its truth depends only on the nonmoral historical issue of whether Smith did rob the bank. 9. Simon Blackburn, “Anti-Realist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism,” The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, ed. David Copp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 146–162. See also Simon Blackburn, “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12 (1988): 361–375, reprinted in Moral Discourse and Practice, ed. Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 167–178; also, Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 10. Blackburn, “Anti-Realist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism.” 11. Ibid. 12. See Mackie’s “argument from relativity” in Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, chap. 1. See also Blackburn, “Anti-Realist Expressivism and QuasiRealism.” 13. Mackie’s “argument from queerness” rests on an internalist doctrine. See Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, chap. 1. Blackburn relies on an internalist doctrine in arguing for quasi-realism; see Blackburn, “Anti-Realist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism.” 14. R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), and Moral Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). See also David McNaughton, Moral Vision: An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 24–26. 15. Putnam, pp. 74–75, also 54–55. On p. 74, Putnam places the quoted sentence in the antecedent of a hypothetical. It is clear, however, from what he says on p. 54–55 and p. 72, that he intends to assert the sentence. He accepts this way of stating his position. 16. See G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1903). 17. Sturgeon, “Ethical Naturalism.” 18. Putnam says he is using “convention” in Lewis’s sense (44). See David Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1969). 19. There are true, contingent, empirical, conditional statements that, it seems fair to say, do not literally describe the objects or states of affairs that make them true. Consider the sentence, “If there is a cottonmouth in the grass at your feet, you will soon know it,” which, if true, is made true by the fact that if that there is a cottonmouth in the grass at your feet, you will soon know it. Yet an assertion of this sentence would not describe the fact that if there is a cottonmouth in the grass at your feet, you will soon know it. To describe this fact we would have to say something descriptive about it, such as, “This is a frightening fact.” The sentence is “about” the cottonmouth; facts about the cottonmouth make it true. Yet its assertion would not describe the cottonmouth. It would be a joke to respond to a request to describe the cottonmouth by saying “If there is a cottonmouth in the grass at your feet, you will soon know it.” Now these points about the felicitous use of “describe” do not seem to me to have any significance for the semantics of the sentence at issue or for ontology. They do not undermine the idea that the sentence
The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
53
“represents” the fact that if that there is a cottonmouth in the grass at your feet, you will soon know it – where “represents” has the familiar technical sense. 20. See John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 512–572.
David Copp Professor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy 330 Griffin-Floyd Hall University of Florida Gainesville, Florida 32611-8545 United States
This page intentionally left blank
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 55–66
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Metaphysics without Ontology? Claudine Tiercelin
This symposium contribution discusses some issues of ontology involved in the metaethics of Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without Ontology.
Pragmatism was introduced into philosophy as a principle of logic, “a method of ascertaining the meaning of hard words and abstract conceptions” (Peirce 1931– 58, vol. 5, §464). Its purpose was to clarify and in some cases to eliminate as meaningless traditional metaphysical questions (ibid. §2). In that sense, from the start, Putnam was a pragmatist: contemporary metaphysics is indebted to him for elucidations, which still play a central role in current debates, of the nature of properties, modalities, of the weight of our various metaphysical commitments in logic, mathematics, the philosophy of language or the philosophy of mind, to say nothing of such loci classici as the Brain in a Vat or the Twin Earth thought experiments (see in particular Putnam 1975a, 1975b, 1983). Very early too, Putnam saw that, in order to reach a correct realistic position, the main enemy to overthrow was Metaphysical Realism (a variant of Platonism), i.e. the “parochial” illusion of a readymade world (or “dough”) out there, fixed once for all, dictating one single “true” description, and independent of our thoughts about it. The more Putnam moved from Internal realism to his current position, namely Commonsense (or “natural” or “pragmatist”) realism, the more it seemed obvious that metaphysical realism was not the only foe, but that we should free ourselves from any kind of metaphysical temptation, i.e. the illusion that we should “explain” what takes place, for example in mathematics or in ethics, by introducing extraneous reasons to those areas, instead of simply looking at what is going on there: “Metaphysics is almost by definition contrary to commonsense” (Putnam 2002, 124). In Ethics without Ontology, still in line with the pragmatists, Putnam now attempts to bury Ontology, after a diagnosis of the “disastrous consequences” of metaphysics of all sorts, either inflationary (Platonist or Metaphysical Realist) or deflationary (whether they be eliminationist or simply reductionist) (2004, 18– 20). We might think that Putnam limits his criticism to that part of metaphysics which, taken in its most classical and contemporary (more analytical than Heideggerian) sense, tries to answer the question: “What is there?” or to examine “what we are doing when we say that various sorts of entities ‘exist’”
56
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN
(2004, 32). But the criticism is so sweeping that the book might not only be entitled, as Peter van Inwagen suggested, “Everything without Ontology” (2005, 11), but “Everything without Metaphysics.” However is this so clear? In what follows, I shall advance some reasons why it might not be so: reasons which have to do, of course, with the fact (emphasized by Peirce, but first of all by Aristotle) that any project of getting rid of all metaphysics is from the start doomed to failure, since “everyman of us has a metaphysics,” and “becomes more or less imbued with philosophical opinions, without being clearly aware of it” (1931–58, vol. 1, §134). But there are further reasons which may have to do with the implicit metaphysics which is at the heart of Putnam’s own interpretation and consequent rejection of ontology. It is important to note that Putnam’s aim, in this book, is not primarily a strategy of destruction (to cure a “disease”) but of positive “replacement.” Putnam always dismissed hand-waving strategies, considering that “the true task of philosophy ... is not to rest frozen in a gesture of repudiation that is as empty as what it repudiates” (2002, 101). As a “strategic optimist,” a man of the Enlightenment, his aim it to give up the vehicle, while retaining the philosophical insights (2004, 18, 85), so as to replace a dead and stinking corpse (linked to the view, in particular, that such terms as “object” or “exist” have a unique and determinate meaning) by something alive, i.e. pragmatic pluralism, defined as “the recognition that it is no accident that in everyday language we employ many different kinds of discourse, discourses subject to different standards and possessing different sorts of applications, with different logical and grammatical features.” But Putnam’s aim is even wider: in keeping with his ongoing stress (see 1978) on the impossible demarcation between epistemology and ethics and, in general, between scientific and “non scientific” knowledge, he insists on the relatedness of the issues in the philosophy of mathematics and in ethics, clearly aspiring to an integrated (should we say architectonic?) vision of philosophy, eager to “take the ways of thinking that are indispensable in everyday life much more seriously than the onto-theological tradition has been willing to do,” hence, in so far as ethics is defined as “being concerned with the solution of practical problems,” having ethics at its core (2004, 32). With such a wide aim, the therapy itself should be wide enough. Indeed, metaphysical attempts of all sorts are being condemned. First, the inflationists, with their systems of substantive, necessary, established, infallible, cast in marble principles, on which criticism, experimentation, inquiry – which are yet so decisive, when we walk on “swampy ground” (2002, 102; 1995) and use “wobbling tables” (2004, 28) – seem ineffective. They postulate mysterious, invisible, supersensible, or supernatural forms which we would have a special intuition of and which would be required behind our language games to determine such things as ethical value and obligation, what the Good life is, what Justice really is. We must get rid of such “Platonizing”; conceive reason not as “a transcendent metaphysical faculty” but rather as “what is and what is nor reasonable given the concerns of the ethical life” (2004, 71); reject the idea of a
Metaphysics without Ontology?
57
single, unique monistic, anti-pluralistic vision, unable to see, for example, how much ethics is a matter of “interrelated concerns”; and create a combination of individualism (“my” immediate recognition, when confronted with a suffering fellow human being, that “I” have an obligation to do something (2004, 24)) and universalism (in so far as it is concerned with the alleviation of everyone’s sufferings (2004, 32)). Pragmatic pluralism will say that the truth can be told in language games that we actually play when language is working (2004, 22). Criticism of the deflationist standpoint covers both forms (reductionist or eliminationist) of nominalism, either viewing properties as “mere names,” or reducing universals to particulars; or denying the mere existence of all universals. The reductionist tries to show us what we are “really” saying (and that what we are really saying is compatible with his minimalist ontology); while the eliminationist tries to show us that “we are talking about mythical entities.” But both say that there are nothing but so and sos, “where the so and sos are a very small part of what we normally purport to talk about” (2004, 21). But something else is wrong with Ontology: it is the idea that “each and every instance of objectivity must be supported by objects” (2004, 51), which involves in its turn three theses. First, “If a claim is objectively true, then there have to be objects to which the claim ‘corresponds’,” and the second corollary idea that “if there are no obvious natural objects whose properties would make the claim true, then there must be some non-natural objects to play the role of ‘truth-maker’.” “Accept these two ideas, then you are likely to accept a third, the idea that if a claim is true, then the claim is a description of whatever objects and properties make it true” (2004, 52). I must say I agree, if not with the analysis given of the concept of “object” itself (for reasons which, I hope, will appear more clearly below), but at least with the basic claim, namely that there can be objectivity without objects. I also agree with most of the lessons to be drawn about what should be done, on the one hand in the philosophy of mathematics (also see Putnam’s program in 1996, Putnam 2001c, Conant 1997) in order to defend a realism which neither commits itself to Platonism nor ceases to have objectivity as its aims (Tiercelin 1993c), and on the other hand, in ethics, concerning value judgments (Tiercelin 2004, 67ff., 78ff; see also Tiercelin 2005a, 146–206). So I shall rather concentrate on some difficulties I have with chapter 2 of Ethics without Ontology, which, in my view, reveal some tensions and problems with Putnam’s approach to ontology. There are, Putnam claims, three phenomena that ontologists “have always had enormous difficulty in accommodating,” namely, “conceptual relativity, conceptual pluralism,” and a third, “the familiar phenomenon of vagueness” (2004, 33), which – maybe not surprisingly, more on this later – Putnam does not elaborate here (but see 1983, 271–286). In his review of the book, Peter van Inwagen claims that Putnam’s main thesis was that “ontologists have mistaken questions of convention for questions of fact” and “that all the disputes of ‘ontology’ are of this sort: once one sees that they’re not about matters of fact like disputes about whether there is a God
58
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN
(or whether there is a huge cache of biological weapons somewhere in Iraq), but about matters of verbal convention, one sees that they were simply silly” (2005, 12). In which case, Putnam would be one of those deflationist metaphysicians whom he himself stigmatizes. But is it the case? In many texts, Putnam has approached the question of conceptual relativity, granted that he has been confused on what is undoubtedly a difficult issue (see his reply to Case 2001a) and he has tried to clarify his position. From these discussions, several points should be kept in mind. First, the doctrine of conceptual relativity, when linked with the problem of convention (which is not always the case) is not so much the avowal that everything is a matter of convention or “absolutely conventional” as the claim of the interpenetration (or interdependence) of fact and convention (1995, 58) namely of the impossibility to “draw the line” between the “conventional part” and the “factual” part” (1990, x), of what presents itself more as a matter of “degrees” (as conceptual truths do too, which have, one way or other, empirical presuppositions) or as a continuum (1988, 112–113). Second, although Putnam associates convention with “free choice,” “stipulation,” “decision,” “invention,” such choices are not arbitrary – see his remarks on Poincaré (Putnam 1983, 11) who addresses the same kind of criticism to Le Roy’s too nominalistic conventionalism (1970, 152-170) – and convention is penetrated by fact (on this see 1992, 114-115 and Case 2001, 422). Third, this is precisely what distinguishes Putnam’s version from “pluralistic conventionalism” or “cultural relativism.” Indeed, following suggestions by Case, Putnam now suggests that conceptual relativity is not so important a phenomenon as “conceptual pluralism” (2004, 48, 49), namely the phenomenon illustrating “how many ways there are of ‘quantifying’ in the process of describing very simple situations, situations as simple as someone’s pulling a branch aside,” and how wrong is “the whole idea that the world dictates a unique ‘true’ way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc. which is a piece of ‘philosophical parochialism’.” (2004, 51). That we can use both the conceptual scheme of field particles and the schema of “desk” and “table” to describe the contents of a room without being required to reduce one or both of them to some single fundamental and universal ontology, is the doctrine of pluralism, “and while conceptual relativity implies pluralism, the reverse is not true” (2004, 49). Indeed, “conceptual relativity always involves descriptions which are cognitively equivalent (in the sense that any phenomenon whose explanation can be given in one of the optional languages involved as a corresponding explanation in the other” (2004, 48; see also 1983, 26–45). Now, according to Putnam such is not the case with the above two descriptions (2004, 48). Now how do such clarifications help us to read Ethics without Ontology? While claiming that we should concentrate on the view that there are a multitude of possible uses (hence meanings) of “object” and “exist,” Putnam is very concerned in rejecting mere “fictionalist agnosticism” (2004, 138). Indeed, it is
Metaphysics without Ontology?
59
true that one may understand conceptual relativity “just as a convenient fiction,” enabling one to freely choose a formalization à la Carnap or à la Polish logician. And, for sure, “one can use the language of mereology as a façon de parler if one wishes.” Hence, “the question whether mereological sums ‘really exist’ is a silly question. It is literally a matter of convention whether we decide to say they exist” (2004, 43). The convention one chooses à la Polish Logician (contrary of a world à la Carnap for example) “does not have to be described in a way that assumes that of course one grants the ‘existence’ of mereological sums,” but can “simply be described as choice between two specifiable ways of using words” (2005, 45). However, “conceptual relativity is not the mere recognition that there are cases of this kind” (my emphasis): indeed, how could one then avoid not only cultural relativism or pluralistic conventionalism, but mere quietism, a position which, as James Conant clearly showed, is not Putnam’s (1997, 209ff.) – contrary to my tendency to accuse him of (Tiercelin 2002, 124): “Conceptual relativity holds that the question as to which of these ways of using ‘exist’ (and ‘individual’, ‘object’, etc.) is right, is one that the meanings of the words in the natural language, that is, the language that we all speak and cannot avoid speaking every day, simple leaves open” (2004, 43). So to say that the set theory and the language of mereology for example are “optional languages” simply means that they “represent possible extensions of our ordinary ways of speaking.” It remains true that many formulations seem to draw a clear-cut opposition between reality and convention, thus comforting a purely nominalist reading (see in particular 2004, 37, 38, 43, 47, 137n6 on the “attitude he recommends” which was also Carnap’s: to consider that all this is “a question of the adoption of a convention, and not a question of fact” (my emphasis)). Following Lewis’s definition of convention, Putnam presents it “simply as a solution to a certain kind of coordination problem” (2004, 44); “a choice between two specifiable ways of using words” (2004, 45); absolutely “neutral,” in which “no metaphysics of ‘analyticity’, or ‘a priority’ or ‘unrevisability’ is involved,” the mere use of manuals of instructions (2004, 42). But most of all, it is of course Putnam’s rejection of the Quine-Putnam’s indispensability argument (the necessary positing of “abstract entities” in order to avoid the nominalist insufficiencies) which speaks in favor of a deflationary reading of his position. Noting that Quine (a “reluctant Platonist”) did not use quantifying over numbers as a mere fictionalist trick, which would have been mere hand-waving, or cheating (2004, 80), but as a genuine replacement, or substitute for some other idiom, he suggests the following metaphysically neutral attitude towards our “equivalent optional languages”: how can we avoid quantifying over abstract entities in mathematics? “Entirely by formalizing mathematics in a modal logical language, one which takes as primitive (mathematical) possibility and necessity.” Indeed, Putnam’s razor seems now to have shaven all superfluous entities but also to have brought us closer to pluralistic nominalism than realism. In fact, the tensions I noted are more apparent
60
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN
than real; or rather, they may just be the illustration not only of Putnam’s own metaphysical commitments, but of the difficulties for any nominalist position as well as the project of getting rid, once for all, of ontology. Concerning mathematical possibility and modalities in general, Putnam comments on Quine’s rejection of the possible formalization of mathematics in a modal logical language, for fear of the unclarity (or possibly hidden “ontological commitments of modalities”), noting that “this shows just how deep the Platonist bug had bitten Quine by this time” (2004, 82). But is it only by being a victim of Platonism to be suspicious about modalities, or for that matter, of the clarity of mathematical possibility? Why should one (and precisely in what way?) take this as a “primitive”? (Incidentally, aren’t we back, again, to a foundationalist metaphysics of some sort?) It may be that “talk of existence in mathematics is fungible with talk of possibility,” which “doesn’t assert the actual existence of any mathematical objects at all, but only asserts the mathematical possibility of certain structures” (2004, 67). But can we be so sure that talk of “structures” is clearer than talk of “objects” or less “metaphysically” committed talk (Putnam 1975, 60–78; Hellman 1989)? Again, suppose we grant that there are “equally good choices as to how the openness is to be closed” so that we can choose to formalize geometry according to our optional language. Are we sure it might work so easily with other parts of mathematics or elsewhere (as Poincaré seemed to admit by refusing to extend conventionalism to arithmetic and to physics)? Concerning geometry itself, even if we want to avoid the mirror images conveyed both by empiricism and rationalism, is it so obvious that the choices we make are completely neutral; or even more, that a commonsense realist who grants, moreover, “that we learn what mathematical truth is by learning the practices and standards of mathematics itself, including the practices of applying mathematics,” and that “all the statements we care about in geometry are independent of the choice of one or another of these optional languages as our formalization of geometry” (2004, 46, my emphasis), should not take very seriously such practices and, as a consequence, see whether they do not interfere in our own choices of what the right formalization might be (to say nothing of the part played here by the possible form of our understanding or our sensibility, as Russell and Jean Nicod rightly objected to Poincaré)? Concerning modalities as such, consider all the debates related to (1) the relations between conceivability and possibility (Gendler and Hawthorne 2002); (2) the relations between the logical, physical and metaphysical levels of possibility, which have been, at least since Duns Scotus, at the heart of the constitution of metaphysics as a science; or (3) the recent defense of serious metaphysics thanks to the method of conceptual analysis, based on the role of our folk intuitions of possible cases (Jackson 1998). All this tends to show not only that modalities have not such a “clear” status as one might think but also, that a reflection on possibility as such (and in particular on the status of “realpossibles” and on their relation with logical possibles) might be a good start to deal with metaphysics in a serious way) (Tiercelin 2002b, 2004a). Why should
Metaphysics without Ontology?
61
Putnam, whose reflexions are still so influential in all these debates and projects, be so hostile to them? In order to avoid the “nominalist reading” of conceptual pluralism, just as he refused to reduce the questions of conceptual relativity or meaning to a purely contextualist approach (see Putnam 2001a, 431–432; 2001b, 2–3; cf. Tiercelin 2005a, 261), Putnam must admit that there are some “primitives” or at least one a priori truth (but see Putnam 1983, 98–114). So, in the end, convention is not a matter of pure decision, and not everything is conventional: the laws of logic are definitely not true by convention. But, why should one take this for granted? After all, it is in the pragmatist’s agenda to get a closer look at vagueness, as Putnam himself did and continues to claim (as all pragmatists did: Peirce, Wittgenstein, or Ramsey (Tiercelin 2004b)). Now, as Peirce showed, not only does a logic of vagueness raise some doubts about our conception of classical logic (imposes a reflection on fuzzy or deviant logics), but it may be an interesting way to be clearer about the limits to fix between what are two radical impossibilities: the absolute determination and the absolute indetermination of our terms (Tiercelin 1993a, 258–334). Greater clarity, after all, may seem desirable, when one claims the “indefinite possibilities of extension” of such terms as “object” or “existence.” Taking a closer look at vagueness might lead to claim not only that vagueness is real (not a mere deficiency of knowledge and meaning), but that reality itself is vague. It seems all the more necessary to open this debate and to examine, for example, why although vagueness is pervasive and experienced as such, reality is made of irreducible categorical elements (qualia, reactions, representations), as one refuses all clear-cut divisions and dichotomies between fact and convention, fact and value, perception and conception, etc. and runs the permanent risk of “the loss of the world” (Tiercelin 2005a, 241 ff.; and 2005b). It has been noted that one of Putnam’s strategies to give more “flesh” to the “facts” was to rely on a form of essentialism (which he himself recognized) based on our referential intentions (Case, 2001, 426; Putnam 1983, 205–228). Although Putnam does not insist so much on this in this book, he seems to be still committed to a substantialist conception of ontology (as suggested by his praise of Husserl and Aristotle, and his presentation of the mereological interpretation of things as such ridiculous sums of contingent “parts” as the Eiffel Tower and my nose). But why should one be committed to an ontology of objects, essences, or substances? Part of the work being done today in metaphysics consists in questioning not only the nature of an object (is it a trope, a bundle of universals, a state of affairs, an abstract particular?), but also the supposed ontological priority of objects and substances (cf. E. J. Lowe or B. Ellis) over, for example, relations, events, dispositions, or laws. For my part, following Peirce (Peirce 1931–58, vol. 1, §27n), I would rather think that dispositions (under the form of habits, propensions, would be’s, laws of nature) are the types of “universals” one should be more attentive to (Tiercelin 2002c). These types, as I have tried to show, are more in keeping with Putnam’s view of
62
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN
ethics as a matter of moral perception in which valuings and evaluations suppose the presence but also the education of our ethical dispositions (Putnam 2002, 102, 104; Tiercelin 2005, 205–206). In his rejection of ontology, Putnam clearly sees that both nominalism and Platonism are close allies and, for the most part, mere forms of reductionism. But he sees less clearly that the basic issues in the problem of universals, and in ontology in general, do not have principally to do with “Platonic ideas” (Peirce 1982–, 486; Tiercelin 1992). As was shown by the medievals, the problem is not that of wondering whether there exist universals apart from our ideas or words. The alternative between esse in anima or esse extra animam is wrong. Universals are undoubtedly words or concepts: the real question is: are they only that? (Peirce 1931–58, vol. 3, §460). So “the real opposition between realists and nominalists lies in the question of the “fundamentum universalitatis” (Peirce 1931–58, vol. 6, §37), and this means that there still is a genuine and important question to handle which has to do with the way one accounts for commonness. In particular, can a nominalist avoid the regress problem following such an account in terms of resemblance (see Gonzalez-Pereyra 2002); or, can a realist (à la Armstrong) explain how “identities can run across states of affairs” (Tiercelin 2004a)? I doubt that the traditional problem of universals is so trivial, or that nominalism and realism are such simple positions as Putnam tends to reduce them to. Finally, one way of resisting the drift towards convention consists in granting that, that while there is an element of convention in all knowledge, there is no guarantee that anything we call a convention won’t someday have to be given up, perhaps for a reason we are totally unable to foresee now (Putnam 2004, 44), which seems in keeping with Putnam’s ongoing fallibilism. But on the other hand, Putnam now seems to believe that “one of the most difficult things to do in philosophy is to find a way to uphold the truth in fallibilism without giving up the game to skepticism. In particular I join the pragmatists in utterly rejecting the idea that there is a set of substantive necessary truths that it is the task of philosophy to discover, but I no longer think (as I once did) that it makes sense to affirm, as Quine does, that everything we presently believe can be revised” (2004, 16). We may touch here something which, in my view, is problematic for reasons I have shown elsewhere (Tiercelin 2005a), if one wishes, as any pragmatist should do, to stick both to commonsense realism and to fallibilism. Putnam wants to be a strategic optimist and defends his rejection of ontology in the name of his commonsense realism; but such a commonsense realism is closer to Wittgenstein’s neo-Pyrrhonian position than to Peirce’s critical commonsensism (Tiercelin 2005a, 106–108). Obviously, justification must end somewhere, at the point, in particular, where the negations of some assertions make no sense (“foundationalism” again?) (Putnam 2004, 62). Peirce believed that “Everyman of us has a metaphysics.” Commenting on this, he continued: “A man may say ‘I will content myself with common sense’. I, for one, am with him there, in the main. I shall show why I do not
Metaphysics without Ontology?
63
think there can be any direct profit in going behind common sense – meaning by common sense those ideas and beliefs that man’s situation absolutely forces upon him. ... I agree, for example, that it is better to recognize that some things are red and some others blue, in the teeth of what optical philosophers say, that it is merely that some things are resonant to shorter ether waves and some to longer ones. But the difficulty is to determine what really is and what is merely obiter dictum.” Peirce concluded that “there is no escape from the need of a critical examination of “first principles” (Peirce 1931–58, vol. 1, §129). But why did Peirce take such an attitude? Precisely because, exactly as Putnam, he was convinced that the core of philosophy was ethics and that the aim of philosophy was to find some way of solving practical problems. However, contrary to Putnam, he thought that the solution lay in the constitution, once “purified,” of a “realist scientific metaphysics,” whose first duty was to take seriously the issues involved in the problem of universals, for “though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life.” The question whether the genus homo has any existence except as individuals is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question on regard to every public institution the constitution of which it is in our power to influence. (1982–, vol. 2, 487) Peirce also wrote, ... so long as there is a dispute between nominalism and realism, so long as the position we hold on the question is not determined by any proof indisputable, but is more or less a matter of inclination, a man, as he gradually comes to feel the profound hostility of the two tendencies will, if he is not less than man, become engaged with one or other and can no more obey both than he can serve God or Mammon. If the two impulses are neutralized within him, the result simply is that he is left without any great intellectual motive. (1982–, vol. 2, 486) As I read Putnam’s project in Ethics without Ontology, it does not seem to me to be so different from Peirce’s and it is, for sure, animated by the same kind of “hope.” If so, why couldn’t the next step on Putnam’s agenda be “Metaphysics without Ontology,” or even better: “From Ethics to Metaphysics”?
64
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN REFERENCES
Case, Jennifer. (2001) “The Heart of Putnam’s Pluralistic Realism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 55(218), 417–430. Conant, James. (1997) “Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 (2), 195–222. Gendler, Tamar, and John Hawthorne, eds. (2002) Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Helmann, Geoffrey. (1989) Mathematics without Numbers. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jackson, Frank. (1998) From Ethics to Metaphysics: a Defense of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Peirce, Charles S. (1931–58) The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols., ed. Charles Harsthorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ——— (1976) The New Elements of Mathematics. 4 vols., ed. Carolyn Eisele. The Hague: Mouton. ——— (1982–) The Writings of Charles S. Peirce, ed. Max Fisch et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Poincaré, Henri. (1970) La Valeur de la Science. Paris: Flammarion. Putnam, Hilary. (1971) Philosophy of Logic. New York: Harper and Row. ———. (1975a) Mathematics, Matter and Method, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1975b) Mind, Language and Reality, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1978) Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. (1983) Realism and Reason, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1987) The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. ———. (1988) Representation and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ———. (1990) Realism with a Human Face, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (1995) Pragmatism: An Open Question. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Metaphysics without Ontology?
65
— (1996) “On Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics,” The Aristotelian Society suppl. 70, 243–264. — (2001a) “Reply to Jennifer Case,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 55(218), 431– 438. — (2001b) “Skepticism, Stroud and the Contextuality of Knowledge,” Philosophical Explorations 4(1), 2–16. ———. (2001c) “Was Wittgenstein Really an Anti-Realist about Mathematics?” in Wittgenstein in America, ed. Timothy McCarthy and Sean C. Stidd (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 140–194. ———. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. (2004) Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo (2002) Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tiercelin, Claudine. (1992) “Vagueness and the Unity of Peirce’s Realism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28, 51–82. ———. (1993a) La pensée-signe, études sur Peirce. Nîmes: Editions J. Chambon. ———. (1993b) “Peirce’s Realistic Approach to Mathematics: Or, Can One Be a Realist without being a Platonist?” in C. S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science, ed. E. C. Moore (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), pp. 30–48. ———. (2002a) Hilary Putnam, l’héritage pragmatiste. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. (2002b) “La métaphysique et l’analyse conceptuelle,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 4, 559–584. ———. (2002c) “Sur la réalité des propriétés dispositionnelles,” Le réalisme des universaux, Cahiers de l’université de Caen no. 38–39, 127–157. ———. (2004a) “Le problème des universaux: aspects historiques, perspectives contemporaines” in La structure du monde: objets, propriétés, états de choses, ed. J.-M. Monnoyer (Paris: J. Vrin), pp. 339–353. ———. (2004b) “Ramsey’s pragmatism,” Dialectica 58, 529–547. ———. (2005a) Le doute en question, parades pragmatistes au défi sceptique. Paris: Editions de l’éclat. ———. (2005b) “Abduction and the Semiotics of Perception,” Semiotica 153, 389–412.
66
CLAUDINE TIERCELIN
van Inwagen, Peter. (2005) “What There Is,” Times Literary Supplement (25 April), 11– 12.
Claudine Tiercelin Professor of Philosophy University of Paris XII Member, Institut Jean-Nicod 1 bis, avenue de Lowendal 75007 Paris France
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 67–98
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Replies to Commentators Hilary Putnam
This article makes replies to the five commentators of a symposium about my book Ethics without Ontology.
1. Reply to Sami Pihlström Although I shall begin with a few critical remarks, I want to emphasize that the only reason I begin with them is that the sentences in Sami Pihlström’s paper that I am troubled by occur relatively early in his paper. Indeed, I am grateful to Pihlström for his profound and sympathetic discussion of my writings on the subject of ontology. His description of my views is otherwise remarkably sophisticated and insightful, and he certainly raises very difficult questions – to some of which I am still searching for answers. Only in a couple of sentences does he attribute to me a view that I do not recognize as my own, and this error, if it is an error and not a misunderstanding on my part, does not seem to affect what he goes on to write about me (expect possibly towards the end of his essay). A. A short critical remark The views that I do not acknowledge as my own are described thus: “Descriptions available to us are grounded in human purposes and practices, and it is in terms of their overall success in the satisfaction of our purposes that the rationally acceptability (or, ideally, truth) of those descriptions is to be assessed. Ontology, truth and reference are in this sense internal to conceptual schemes serving different purposes.” (this volume, p. 3) I confess that I am not sure I understand this description. A few sentences earlier, Pihlström had observed that “he [Putnam] still holds the pragmatic realism he defended earlier, while rejecting the ‘epistemic’ theory of truth at work in its original formulations.” The substance of that “epistemic” theory was that, in order to be true, a statement S must be such that we could verify it were conditions good enough (were they sufficiently close to “ideal”). In rejecting the “epistemic theory of truth,” I ipso facto rejected the idea that there cannot be truths that we are totally unable to verify.1 It because Pihlström knows these writings that I am unsure what to make of the claim that I believe that “the
68
HILARY PUTNAM
rationally acceptability (or, ideally, truth)” of our descriptions is to be assessed “in terms of their overall success in the satisfaction of our purposes.” Is the claim that I think that under ideal circumstances, truth coincides with rationally acceptability, which in turn coincides with “success in the satisfaction of our purposes”? If so, it is wrong: I don’t believe that any two of these notions coincide, and in a reply to Brandom2 I offered textual evidence that none of the classical pragmatists identified truth with “satisfaction of our purposes” (unless what James called “contact with a reality” be counted as one of those purposes), although they did (mistakenly in my view) identify truth with rationally acceptability in the long run.3 When I held the “epistemic theory of truth,” I did unfortunately say that objects are “internal to conceptual schemes” – a formulation I repented of in my Dewey Lectures,4 among other places. I should have repented of it sooner – even the logical positivists counted “the Solar System existed before there were human beings” as a meaningful and true sentence, and they would also have agreed with the counterfactual “The Solar System would have existed even if human beings and their conceptual schemes had never evolved,” so in what sense are the sun and the planets “internal” to conceptual schemes? Perhaps Nelson Goodman would have said that the past itself is internal to our conceptual schemes (and he regarded counterfactual conditionals as original sin in philosophy), but, in spite of my admiration for Goodman, I have never been willing to follow him in these beliefs. In my view, although James had a wrong theory of truth, he did say very well just how interests and the world combine in fixing our “ontology” when he used the following analogy (in a 1906 letter to Dickinson Miller): The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may grasp them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name them capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. What ever he does, so long as he takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the beans-minus him and expresses the total fact, of beans-plus-him.5 It may be, however, that I misunderstood what Pihlström intended by the sentences that I found problematic. In any case, my own present view of truth is the “deflationist” view that Fred Stoutland ascribes to me in “Putnam on Truth.”6 B. Pihlström’s description of my position largely accurate Pihlström’s description of my position is accurate (after the two sentences at which I boggled), particularly when he writes that I succeed in refuting the criticism that my view entails that the mere choice of mereological language
Replies to Commentators
69
would commit one to the existence of mereological sums. Pihlström also catches the importance of the distinction between conceptual relativity and pluralism that I owe to Jennifer Case, and the fact that pluralism is meant to be “a wider phenomenon.” And I was delighted at his excellent account of my views on “the supposed mathematical objects.” At this point in his essay, appropriately, he turns from exegesis to critical questioning, and, as I said at the beginning, some of his questions – perhaps all of them – are ones to which I am still searching for answers. C. Pihlström’s first question Here is the paragraph in which Pihlström presses me for answers to a difficult question: The following question, among others, arises. Are Putnam’s worries about Ontology based on (1) skepticism regarding our ability to solve ontological problems (such as the choice between Quine’s, Lewis’s and Kripke’s views on identity and modality, i.e., whether say, a chair is identical with the spacetime region it occupies, preserves its identity over time and across possible worlds, etc.; or (2) the idea that such problems are meaningless pseudo-issues – although not exactly in the sense in which the logical positivists declare them to be meaningless ... or, finally, (3) the view that metaphysics, especially when used to “ground” ethics, is not only intellectually confused but downright immoral, or alien to our ethical practices. All three readings are possible, and all aspects may be present in Putnam’s views, but (3) seems to be the strongest among them in Putnam’s most recent works. He seems to care less and less about the kind of metaphysical debates people like Armstrong, Lewis, Plantinga, and others have engaged in for decades. (this volume, pp. 5–6) Part of this question is easy for me to answer. (1) Skepticism about our ability to “solve” ontological problems isn’t my position, because I think the socalled ontological problems are deeply confused. The notion of “solving” them makes no sense to me. For example, Lewis’s claim that possible worlds really exist is one that I do not so much find false as unintelligible – as unintelligible as belief in the real existence of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and the rest of the Greek gods would be today. (But see what I say below on “really exist.”) Secondly, (3) isn’t my position either. Although I find “the kind of metaphysical debates people like Armstrong, Lewis, Plantinga, and others have engaged in for decades” deeply confused, and at times even unintelligible, I certainly don’t think it is immoral to be confused. Indeed, to do philosophy at all involves the risk of confusion – and since all philosophers run that risk, and none of us is immune to failure, all of us are at times confused (and maybe all of us are at times unintelligible). The use made of philosophical positions is at
70
HILARY PUTNAM
times immoral, as when Lionel Robbins appealed to the positivist doctrine that “there is no room for argument” about moral questions in order to reject the whole issue of income redistribution as a means of combating the great Depression. (Robbins wrote that every moral question is simply “a case of thy blood or mine – or live or let live according to the importance of the difference, or the relative strength of our opponents.”7) But it was not the positivists who were immoral (Carnap and Reichenbach were, in fact, strongly in favor of income redistribution.) And G. E. Moore, whose metaphysical views (ones at the opposite extreme from logical positivism) I combat in Putnam 2004, was certainly an ethically admirable human being. I do think that philosophical mistakes have real world consequences – but that does not mean that philosophers who make mistakes are immoral people, or that we should stop doing philosophy – even if that were a possibility. (When people think they have stopped doing philosophy, they almost always do bad philosophy.) Nor do we have the option of doing only “correct” philosophy, if there is such a thing. Stanley Cavell once said to me “Of course, philosophical problems don’t have ‘solutions’. But there are better and worse ways of thinking about them.” Our only option is to go on trying to improve our ways of thinking about them. So, since I don’t accept either (1) or (3) as a description of my position, that seems to leave (2), “ the idea that such problems are meaningless pseudoissues – although not exactly in the sense in which the logical positivists declare them to be meaningless.” But I am not too happy with that formulation either. What is right about it, however, is that I do think that philosophical problems are frequently “pseudo-problems,” either because they rest on too narrow an idea of what the possible alternatives are, or because they assume statements have a clear meaning which do not, or both. An example of the first case, is the “problem”: “Do the natural numbers [substitute your favorite “mathematical entity” here] exist or not?” What I have been trying to do in the philosophy of mathematics is defend the view that “they exist” is the right answer if we choose one optional language and “saying they exist is a façon de parler” is the right answer if we choose another optional language, but there is no fact of the matter as to which is the “right” optional language here. If I am right, then the question “Do the natural numbers really exist or not?” is only a pseudo-problem as long as the assumption that the answer must be a simple “yes or no” is in place. In a sense, it is not that the problem is a “pseudo-problem” but that we make it one by approaching it with a certain dogmatic presupposition. Often the symptom that the philosopher is in the grip of such a presupposition is a “foot-stamping” use of the word “really,” as in: “Either they really exist or they don’t.” (And that’s a use of “really” that I find unintelligible – which is not to say that it is “nonsense” in any linguistic sense.) An example of the second alternative (we assume a philosophical thesis is clear when it isn’t) is the (currently hotly discussed) claim that there are not really any vague predicates (it is just that we do not know how to tell where the line is between, for example, bald and not-bald). I am not claiming that this
Replies to Commentators
71
claim could never be given a clear meaning; but talk of “the line between bald and not-bald” has certainly not been given a meaning that I can do anything with up to now (pace Tim Williamson). And I am a pragmatist/Wittgensteinian to this extent: if believing that there “really is” a precise “line” (an unknowable one, to boot) between baldness and not-baldness makes no difference at all to the way Williamson (or any of the other philosophers who maintain that all vagueness is just ‘epistemic’) behave outside of philosophy classes – in particular, it doesn’t lead them to engage in any research to discover the location of this “line,” or even to suggest how such research might begin – then, I would say, this “belief” isn’t really a belief at all, but just “language idling.” But I am not too happy at being identified as a “Wittgensteinian” either! I have in recent years written about the insights I find in Wittgenstein, but I know I shall also have to think and write more about what I find problematic in his writing. (That this is unfinished business is one of the reasons I said that I am still searching for answers to Pihlström’s questions.) I shall just say a word about it here. Pihlström’s (2) was: “such problems are meaningless pseudo-issues,” and I just replied: “I do think that philosophical problems are frequently “pseudoproblems” – I left out, please note, the word meaningless. Any issue that turns on confusion or an unclarity is, in a sense “pseudo,” but the terms “meaningless” and “nonsense,” are currently associated with the views that all philosophical confusions are, occasioned by “violating the rules of the language game.” An alternative, promoted by the “New Wittgensteinians” (sometimes called “resolute readers”), is that all philosophical confusions arise from failing to see that some piece of philosophical prose is literally “nonsense” – that view too says that the source of the unintelligibility we all sometimes find in philosophy is linguistic. I am inclined to think that the resolute readers are probably right about what Wittgenstein thought, but not right about philosophical prose – I don’t think any philosophical problem is literally “nonsense.” The idea that philosophical confusions are, at bottom, linguistic, is, in my view, erroneous. However, this topic will have to be left for future writing. D. Pihlström’s questions about my philosophy of religion Pihlström ask even harder questions, if possible, about my views with regards to religion, beginning with “Are [science and religion] equally legitimate perspectives on the world?” Speaking for myself, I do not find that I need to think of God as having an “ontological” reality outside of human experience. My own “philosophy of religion,” to the extent that I have one, is somewhere between Dewey’s naturalistic theology in “A Common Faith” and Buber’s relational theology in “I and Thou”; I find that the disciplines of the Jewish tradition enable me to relate both to the human construct that Gordon Kaufman has called “the available God” and
72
HILARY PUTNAM
to the wonderful and perplexing and agonistic Jewish tradition itself. But this “Reply” is hardly the place to try to expound a theology. With regard to the question I just quoted, I can, however, say the following: (1) I don’t think it is helpful to describe either science or religion as a “perspective on the world.” Science and religion are both enormous families of human activities, attitudes, and beliefs, and nothing is gained by the irenic move (if that is what it is intended to be) of saying, “Well, these are equally legitimate perspectives on the world.” (2) There are many religious views, some of which (e.g., ones which reject Darwinism, ones which insist the world was created about 6000 years ago, etc.) are obviously in conflict with science. There are also religious views – far too many, in fact – which are in conflict with human rights (e.g., ones which support patriarchy, homophobia, suppression of free speech, prohibition of abortion, etc ., etc.). And, happily, there are religious views which do not try to contradict science and which respect humanistic values. I vividly remember the words that Wilfrid Cantwell Smith spoke in his farewell lecture at Harvard many years ago. He said, “I am not saying all religions are equally good. I don’t believe even one religion is equally good.” What Smith meant is that religions are extended groups of people – extended in both space and time in the case of the great world religions – that consist of many different communities. The nature of these communities, the spiritual and moral content they put into their traditions, and the practices they read out of it, can vary enormously. Wilfrid Smith himself, with his enormous historical scholarship, made the bold claim that “I could show you as much variety in Methodist communities in London in 1815 as is supposed to exist among the ‘world religions’.” Within a single tradition there are wonderful communities of faith and there are awful communities of faith and there is a lot in between. Obviously, it cannot be the case that all of these outlooks are “legitimate perspectives on the world.” Pihlström continues by asking, “Is the science vs. religion case an example of pragmatic pluralism, and if so, might James’s pragmatist philosophy of religion be helpful in dealing with it? Or is the science vs. religion case better construed as a case of conceptual relativity? If so is religious language-use as “optional” as mereology...[etc.]” (this volume, pp. 6–7) I counted a total of ten questions in this paragraph and the next, not one of which admits of a short answer! Instead of trying to answer these questions one by one allow me to just make the following brief remarks. I don’t believe in “science vs. religion.” Any religious belief that sees itself as versus science is, from where I stand, misguided. The decision to employ religious language seriously is an “existential” decision, in the sense of being deeply connected with one’s way of being in the world. (This decision need not involve the notion of God; there are non-theistic religions, for example, Buddhism.) I see no similarity whatsoever between such
Replies to Commentators
73
a decision and the decision to use technical linguistic devices such as mereological language. I am not sure what Pihlström has in mind by “James’s pragmatist philosophy of religion.” James wrote a great deal on the subject (including A Pluralistic Universe, which is often overlooked in this context), and it is hard to assemble all that he wrote on religion into a single coherent view. With respect to Pihlström’s final question on this subject – “Could the anti-reductionist account of objective ethical (or mathematical) truth be extended to religious truths (if there are any) – and how do we settle the question whether there are any?” – I want to say that I don’t see someone like myself, who uses God language, and a Buddhist, who may eschew God language, as either disagreeing about reality, on the one hand, or as using two different “optional” vocabularies, on the other. I see us as guiding our lives by two different pictures. The question, for me, isn’t “How do we tell which picture is true?” but what the value of those pictures is for each of us, for our communities, and for human society as a whole. I suppose that this is a “pragmatist” philosophy of religion – I am not sure it is James’s. E. Ontology with a small “o” and transcendental idealism Finally, Pihlström asks my attitude towards “ontology” (note the small “o”), which he describes as “ontological theorizing, when interpreted in a Kantianlike transcendental sense.” He quotes with approval Sandra Rosenthal’s idea of categories as “the most fundamental principles of ordering by the mind,” “deeply embedded – though nonetheless alterable – a priori structures that reflect the purposive attitudes in terms of which we approach the independent element [of reality].” (this volume, p. 8) And he adds (still quoting Rosenthal) that we project our meanings upon that which is independently there and reveals itself through such meanings. Now, “a description of the basic contours or delineations made within our lived experience” (again Pihlström quoting Rosenthal) sounds like the project of Strawsonian “descriptive metaphysics,” and that is certainly a project I approve of. In that sense, I have no difficulty with the idea of “ontology with a small ‘o’.” But talk of “the independent element of reality” seems too much like Kant’s talk of the Ding an Sich. And Pihlström goes on to say that “all reality ... that is for us [fur uns! – Kant again] in a way or another is an emergent construct arising out of our (transcendental-pragmatic) constitutional activities,” again coming much too close to Kant, in my opinion. A revived and softened Kantianism cum pragmatism of the kind which Pihlström envisages in these passages faces the following dilemma: either “the independent element of reality” is describable – for example, by saying that mountains (and shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings) are parts of it, or all we can say is that while it is none of the foregoing, all of the foregoing are “constructed” out of it by “projecting our concepts” upon it. If the
74
HILARY PUTNAM
second horn of the dilemma is chosen, then the problem that Kant never solved, in the opinion of any of his successors, of how he can both speak of things in themselves and deny that we are able to conceive them, returns full force, and that horn of the dilemma is fatal for any position that chooses it. If the first horn of the dilemma is chosen, then one can ask what this talk of our “constructing” the mountains and the planets is supposed to mean, and I have not heard a satisfactory answer. But I will not expand upon this, because there is already a published debate between Nelson Goodman, Israel Sheffler, and myself on just this issue.8 F. Conclusion In his closing remarks, Pihlström expresses the fear that I may “wish to write an obituary not only for Ontology, but also for constructive, systematic philosophy in general, with a therapeutic appeal to the ‘ordinary’ along the lines of Wittgenstein, Cavell, and McDowell.” (this volume, p. 10) Well, I don’t know about “systematic philosophy” – although I don’t rule out anything in advance – but I certainly don’t think the only alternatives are systematic philosophy (at least not in the 19th century sense of that term) and “therapeutic appeals to the ordinary.” (In fact, I find much more than therapeutic appeals to the ordinary in Wittgenstein, Cavell, and McDowell, but that is another story.) My own work on a modal logical interpretation of mathematics is constructive philosophy, and my criticism of the positivistic philosophy of language that was presupposed by much influential 20th century economics in my last two books9 is neither systematic philosophy nor an appeal to the ordinary – it is, rather, what Dewey called “criticism of criticism,” which he equated with philosophy itself.
2. Reply to Joseph Margolis For many years, Joseph Margolis has been the most sophisticated AngloAmerican defender of relativism, but he is much more than that – he is a philosopher who, in addition to his undoubted dialectical skills, possesses extraordinary historical sensitivity and knowledge. And ever since he published The Truth About Relativism,10 I have figured in his writing as someone whose criticisms of relativism are to be rebutted! So I was not exactly surprised to find that “Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism” chides me for not having refuted “a coherent version of relativism.” Accordingly, in this reply I will try, if not exactly to “refute” relativism, to say why I am not convinced that we have been offered a clear and coherent version, and, beyond that, why I would not be inclined to join Margolis in the relativist camp even if he did convince me that the position is “coherent.”
Replies to Commentators
75
I will begin with a discussion of Margolis’s own position, because he does not spell it out very much in the present essay, but it is clearly the background to what he writes about my book. A. Margolis’s “robust relativism” In The Truth About Relativism, Margolis distinguished sharply between positions which relativize truth to a culture, speaker, point of view, etc., which he finds (as I do) self-refuting, and his own “robust relativism.” As I understand his “robust relativism,” it is characterized, first, by a rejection of certain classical logical principles, and secondly by a rejection of the idea that either reality itself or the mind of the cognizing subject have an invariant structure (sometimes he adds: “that can be known as such”). Margolis regards this latter rejection as the great insight of Protagoras, and an appreciation and interpretation of that philosopher is a central feature of at least three of Margolis’s books.11 In The Truth About Relativism, Margolis also charged me with being unfair to Richard Rorty, when I interpreted his position as involving a relativization of the truth-predicate to cultures, and I think that Margolis is right about that. I have great respect for Richard Rorty (I would not spend so much time criticizing his views if I didn’t!), and I am happy to withdraw that particular charge. Unfortunately, however, in replying to the accusation of being a relativist about truth, Rorty defended an explicit relativization of warranted assertability to cultures,12 and that is just as self-refuting, though for different reasons. But that is not my topic here. In The Truth About Relativism, we are told (p. 8) that (in “robust relativism”) “‘true’ is not thus relationized at all, but rather the bivalent values are systematically replaced in a formal way13 by a logically weaker set of manyvalued truth-values or truth-like values; so that, where, on the bivalent model, logical inconsistency or contradiction obtains, now, on the replacement model, and in accordance with appropriate relevance constraints, such logical incongruences (as we may call them) need no longer be treated as full logical inconsistencies, incompatibilities, contradictions, or the like.” And again (p. 9) “The robust relativist’s thesis is that there is no purely formal reason why manyvalued truth-values should function inconsistently or incoherently; or why such values cannot be distributively applied in an advantageous way in this or that particular sector of inquiry. In fact, the relativist claims that there is no reason for supposing that bivalent and many-valued truth values cannot be systematically used together (with due care) without risking conceptual disaster.” Later in the same work (pp. 74–75), it becomes clear that Margolis regards all arguments against relativism that presuppose the “strong realist reading” of the principles of excluded middle and noncontradiction as question begging. Here I am partly sympathetic. I have long felt14 that, unless we are willing to deny the reality of vagueness altogether (a position against which I have already taken my stand in my reply to Pihlström), then we should regard
76
HILARY PUTNAM
the principle of the excluded middle as an idealization. I have also long felt that the notion of “approximate truth” is an indispensable one, and I am not moved by the often-heard complaint of analytic philosophers that there is no precise formal and context-independent definition of “approximate” (in the phrase “approximate truth”).15 In addition, I am an admirer of Charles Travis’s work on context-sensitive semantics.16 But I utterly fail to see how granting that much of what we want to say about reality can only be said in language that is vague and context-sensitive, and granting, further, that it may be that even in fundamental physics we do not know whether we will ever be able to formulate laws that are better than approximately true, supports any talk about reality being “flux.” Nor do I see how statements (theories, views, etc.) which either lead to incompatible predictions in the same context or require us behave in incompatible ways in the same context can both be even approximately true. (And if one gives up the principle of noncontradiction to the extent of saying they can be, then the Margolis claim that relativism is not self-refuting is trivial. Absent the principle of noncontradiction in some form, there is not such thing as a self-refuting position.) Nor, finally, do I see how talk of “many-valued truth-values” and of replacing the notion of “incompatibility” with “incongruity” could possibly help here. But it is time to turn to what Margolis writes about Ethics Without Ontology. B. Pluralism and the Grenzbegriff of rationality Margolis begins by pointing out, reasonably enough, that my talk of pluralism had better amount to more than a recognition of the “first-order fact” that people describe things in many ways, including erroneous ones. And it does; what I mean is that there are descriptions (e.g., a description in a language in which points are identified with sets of lines, and a corresponding description in a language in which lines are identified with sets of points), which would be inconsistent if regarded as belonging to the same language17 (so they cannot simply be conjoined), but which are equally true, and, in a sense which is important in scientific practice, “say the same thing.” How do we know they are true? How do we know they are equivalent descriptions? We rely, I would say, on the best grasp we have of rationality – in this case, scientific rationality. At this point, Margolis quotes something I wrote in Reason, Truth and History: I raised the question, “Is there a true conception of rationality?” And I said that, although all we ever have is our conception of rationality, “the very fact that we speak of our different conceptions as different conceptions of rationality posits a Grenzbegriff, a limit-concept of the ideal truth.” And Margolis responds, “Perhaps. But to posit a Grenzbegriff hardly entails that there is anything more than a purely formal, completely empty notion of ‘the ideal truth’.” (this volume, p. 16)
Replies to Commentators
77
Now, almost a quarter century later, I too find talk of Grenzbegriffe and “the ideal truth” overly metaphysical. As I mentioned in my reply to Pihlström, Fred Stoutland in “Putnam on Truth” correctly describes my current view. In particular, as explained in my third Dewey Lecture,18 I distinguish between those theories of truth that disquote sentences regarded as “marks and noises,” and those that disquote “judgments” or “contents” or Wittgensteinian Sätze (which I take to be sentences in meaningful use). I also distinguish between deflationist theories that presuppose a verificationist account of what the meaningful use of a sentence is (Carnap19 and, in one publication, Paul Horwich20) and deflationist theories (those of Frege, Wittgenstein, myself) that do not. Today I defend what I would call a “moderate objectivism.” It is “moderate” because, as I said above, it recognizes that much of what we want to say about reality can only be said in language that is vague and contextsensitive, and that in many cases approximate truth is the best we can achieve. It is moderate in another respect as well; as I argue in The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy,21 when we come to questions of “rational preference,” partial orderings are the best we can hope for. (I would hope that this would leave room for enough pluralism in, for example, aesthetics, but I am sure Margolis won’t think so.) It is “objectivism,” surely, in the Margolian sense of rejecting “robust relativism,” but that is not a very clear sense, at least to me, because “robust relativism” remains unclear to me in important respects.22 But in fact I am an objectivist (in the sense that seems appropriate to me in each case) in a number of the areas that Margolis discusses in his books. C. My “objectivism” In The Truth About Relativism, referring to my views about reference in what I called the “mature sciences” (meaning sciences in which substantial predictive and explanatory success has been achieved), Margolis wrote (p. 129), “What Putnam claimed at that time23 was (i) that ... the executive terms of a ‘mature science’ functioning at the explanatory level ‘typically refer’ in the usual realist sense of successful reference; and (ii) that the alternative theories that appear to compete with one another in the actual process of scientific work nevertheless ‘typically refer’ to the same theoretical entities for which they offer diverging or incompatible characterizations. The trouble is that, contrary to doctrines (i) and (ii), the existence and nature of the entities in question may be no more than artifacts of the theories themselves.” Although (writing in 1990), Margolis assumed that I had given up those awful views, he was mistaken. I did not give them up (not even in my “internal realist” period,24 although I gave up the idea that they support metaphysical realism), and I certainly would not give them up today. A little earlier than the Locke Lectures, in “What is Mathematical Truth,” I had written:
78
HILARY PUTNAM The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle. That terms in a mature science typically refer (this formulation is due to Richard Boyd), that the theories accepted in a mature science are typically approximately true, that the same term can refer to different things even when it occurs in different theories – these statements are viewed by the scientific realist not as necessary truths but as part of the only scientific explanation of the success of science, and hence as part of any adequate scientific description of science and its relation to its objects.25
To – I am sure – the dismay of many (not only of Joseph Margolis, but also of some of my Wittgensteinian friends and former students), I still believe that. But, again, on a suitably modest construal. First the modesty, and then the reasons that I still believe it. The modesty: First, I do not believe (and I did not believe then, in fact) that science converges to a single “ontology” in Quine’s sense. And second, nothing in what I wrote then commits me to the Piercean view that science must in the long run converge to an absolutely true theory of the world. It may well be that we humans cannot get beyond approximate truth. But approximate truth is attainable, and about some things (“ships and shoes and sealing wax,” for example) we know a lot of truths, not all of them approximate by any means. In fact, an early version of the doctrine that I now call “conceptual relativity” was already defended in a paper I published in 1967: The same fact can be expressed by saying that the electron is a wave with definite wavelength O or by saying that the electron is a particle with a sharp momentum p and an indeterminate position. What ‘same fact’ comes to here is, I admit, obscure. It would be absurd to claim that the sentence ‘there is an electron-wave with the wavelength O’ is synonymous with the sentence ‘there is a particle electron with the momentum h/O and a totally indeterminate position’. What is rather being claimed is this: that the two theories are compatible, not incompatible, given the way in which the theoretical primitives of each theory are now being understood; that indeed, they are not merely compatible but equivalent.26 Today, the fact that the same theory in mathematical physics may admit of different “ontologies” in Quine’s sense is well known to quantum physicists, who speak of these “ontologies” as different “representations” of a given quantum mechanical theory. Such representations can even differ over whether a particle is or is not a boson,27 or over the number of dimensions of space-time! But this is not incompatible with the “doctrines (i) and (ii)” that Margolis mentions, for no matter which of these “equivalent descriptions” (as I have called them)28 we may choose, it is equally the case that the theory of which they are equivalent versions is approximately true!
Replies to Commentators
79
Cases in which it is unclear, from the point of a later theory, what an “executive term” in an earlier theory referred to are sometimes cited as an objection to “doctrines (i) and (ii)” – it is alleged, for example, that it is indeterminate from the standpoint of relativity theory whether the term “mass” in Newton’s theory referred to rest mass (which is my view, by the way) or to “relativistic mass” – but if this were a genuine ambiguity, it would still be the case that Newton’s laws were approximately true under both interpretations! Hardly an embarrassment for a scientific realist. What of Margolis’s claim that “contrary to doctrines (i) and (ii), the existence and nature of the entities in question may be no more than artifacts of the theories themselves.” Cases in which a scientific realist has to concede that this was the case have occurred, but they are in fact extremely rare (unless, of course, one believes that all scientific entities are “artifacts of the theories themselves” – but I see no reason to believe this). And when they are “artifacts” of the theories themselves, it is later and better theories that have shown us that this is the case. But in physics at least, those later theories have always preserved a great deal of the deep mathematical structure of the earlier theories, as well as a large part of the interpretation of that structure. But what of objectivity in ethics? Or in mathematics? Well, what of the objectivity of the claim that a certain way of solving a practical problem meets the relevant needs? John Dewey was want to ask. In the view I defend in Ethics Without Ontology, what we call ethics rests does not rest on a “foundation” in the usual philosopher’s sense, but on a complicated set of human interests (ones which, moreover, sometimes conflict). The objectivity of a warrantedly assertible ethical judgment is the objectivity of reasonable solutions to problems of interpreting and reconciling and satisfying such interests. Such reasonable solutions need not have what preference theorists call a “complete ordering” with respect to the interests in question; but complete ordering does not seem to me something that a modest objectivism in ethics requires. And as for mathematical objectivity, I have argued ever since “What is Mathematical Truth”29 that mathematics and physics are entangled in such a way that trying to unite objectivism (which I prefer to call “scientific realism”) in physics with anti-realism in mathematics is incoherent. Indeed, entanglement – the quadruple entanglement of facts, theories, ethics, and mathematics – is a standing theme in my work, and also, I believe, in the philosophies of the classical pragmatists. D. Where Margolis goes wrong in his interpretation of my pluralism I have gone into this much detail concerning my own past and present views, because the body of Margolis’s essay is based on a misinterpretation of the purpose of the “pluralism” that I defend. (This misinterpretation is linked, in his essay, with his decision – which I find difficult to understand – to take as his target not my present views, but the passage about the Grenzbegriff of the “ideal
80
HILARY PUTNAM
truth” in a book whose “internal realism” I repudiated more than fifteen years ago.30) Early on, he writes: If Putnam believed he could claim more [than a Grenzbegriff which is just a posit “originating ‘from within our tradition’ ... changing with every significant change in our society’s collective experience”] – a changeless Grenzbegriff, say – wouldn’t he have endorsed the objectivism he himself repudiates among the classic forms of logical positivism? And if he admitted the insuperable objections against that option, wouldn’t he be obliged to admit some form of relativism (assuming, against Putnam himself, of course, that there are indeed coherent, selfconsistent, non-solipsistic forms of relativism)? Since Putnam says No to objectivism and relativism, we must take his pragmatic pluralism to count as a third option between the two supposedly indefensible extremes, I see no other way to read the first citation. (this volume, pp. 16–17) The “first citation” to which Margolis refers is embedded in the first paragraph of his essay: “Putnam says there [in Ethics Without Ontology], in his orienting lecture, that he intends to replace both “inflationary” ontology (exemplified in the views of the conventional Plato of the Forms) and “deflationary” ontology (as in Democritus and Berkeley) by what he calls ‘pragmatic pluralism’, which, enlisting Wittgenstein, Putnam characterizes as combating the illusion that there could be just one sort of language game which could be sufficient for the description of all of reality.” (this volume, p. 15) Here the two “indefensible extremes” that I promise to combat are not “objectivism” and “relativism” but inflationary ontology and deflationary ontology. I suppose that the metaphysics usually ascribed to Plato is a form of “objectivism,” in Margolis’s sense, but the fact that I combat it does not mean that my target was objectivism, unless one assumes that all objectivism must presuppose one or another form of inflationary metaphysics (an assumption for which I can find no justification). And by no stretch of the imagination were either Berkeley or Democritus relativists. Moreover, I don’t believe I have ever criticized logical positivism for objectivism. If anything, I criticized it for not treating scientific theories as objective descriptions of reality.31 So pragmatic pluralism was not intended as a “third option” between objectivism and relativism. It was intended to show how one could retain what is right in objectivism (as I explained above) without falling into the errors of metaphysical realism. In this connection, Margolis also writes that “It may be that pluralism can’t be saved as a third option [between ‘objectivism’ and ‘relativism’]. But if it can be – in taking up the question of a valid universalism – then it must, I suggest, advance a theory of how human beings can know anything.” (this volume, p. 18) This seems to me to be the old philosopher’s trick of claiming
Replies to Commentators
81
that your opponent has the burden of solving the problems of philosophy in a definitive way, while you, of course, do not. I believe that Margolis and I in fact agree there are such things as situated good reasons, even if the dream of “a theory of how human beings can know anything” is a philosopher’s fantasy. But Margolis thinks that only a relativist (of his sort) is entitled to say that. As I read this essay, engagingly and powerfully written as it is, virtually all of it depends on the two moves of (1) supposing I am producing an alternative to objectivism and relativism (as opposed to trying to say what is reasonable and right in objectivism); and (2) insisting that one is only entitled to reject relativism if one can supply “objective procedures” for determining what can and what cannot be known. This is tantamount to claiming that a pragmatist must be a relativist, and I see no reason to believe that! E. But what is “relativism”? My “objectivism,” to use the term Margolis offers me, does not endorse Peirce’s claim that every empirical question can be decided if only scientific inquiry goes on long enough – that claim surely goes beyond anything we have good reason to believe. But just to take the case of physics (since Margolis explicitly includes it in the scope of his “robust relativism”): Haven’t we, in fact, discovered, if not an “invariant structure” of physical reality, at least the broad outlines of the history of the cosmos over the last six to ten billion years? Is that just something that this society’s “experience” causes it to find “noticeably difficult” to doubt? Don’t we know of approximately true statements of many physical laws that, we have good reason to believe, held for those six to ten billion years, with the possible exceptions of the first almost infinitesimal fraction of a second after the Big Bang? Holding, even approximately, for six billion or more years is darned close to “invariant” in my book! And “approximately” here means: good enough to predict with an accuracy of twenty decimal places! Why must trust in the best science we have (in the area of cosmology) be validated by “a theory of how human beings can know anything”? Is it indefensible “Peircean optimism” to believe that there are physical invariances in this sense, and that we can have fallible knowledge of them? In The Truth About Relativism (p. 196), Margolis described “incongruent alternative opinions and profound historical revision” as among the “philosophical saliencies of our own age.” Extended to physics, this sounds to me very much like Kuhn. I do not believe that either Kuhn or anyone else has shown that “profound historical revision” leads to “incogruence” – whatever that may come to. (It sounds like Kuhn’s claim that scientists “live in different worlds” before and after a scientific revolution.) I confess that in the end I am not sure what the coherent version of relativism that Margolis claims to possess really comes to. The arguments he uses to support it (from, for example, “profound historic revision” and (allegedly) “incongruent alternative opinions” do sound to me like arguments for saying
82
HILARY PUTNAM
that the only notion of rationality we actually possess is rationality relative to a historical period, a Kuhnian “paradigm,” a Zeitgeist, or something of that sort. Was I perhaps wrong in thinking that “robust relativism” is intended to be different from cultural relativism?
3. Reply to Mark Timmons I appreciate the warm friendliness of Mark Timmons’s reply, and I too have nostalgic memories of the NEH summer seminar that I conducted twenty years ago at which we met. And I am glad that Mark agrees with me on the important theme of fact/value entanglement. Nevertheless there are differences between our positions (unless they turn out to be mutual misunderstandings). The purpose of this reply will be explain where I feel my position has been misunderstood, and to explore the significance that the misunderstanding has, or may have. A. A terminological point But first, a point at which I have felt it necessary to change the terminology I employ. As Timmons describes my “lower octane version of ontological relativity,” it maintains that “the objects and properties – the facts there are are (in the relevant sense) scheme dependent.” That language seems to me way too metaphysical. Already in 1992, in one of the replies in The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam, I explained that my talk of “scheme dependence” was meant as material mode of speech for the following:32 (1) the notion of an object is an inherently extendable one; we extend it in a reasonable way, I think, when we speak of the weird entities of quantum mechanics as “objects”; we extend it in an unfortunate way, I think, if we refer to mereological sums as “objects”; and we shall undoubtedly continue to extend it in the future. Because the notion of “object” is inherently open in this way, the very notion of a “totality of all objects” is senseless. (2) Certain things are paradigmatically objects, for example tables and chairs, but other uses of the term “object” are, to a greater or lesser degree, optional. (3) As a consequence of (2), apparently incompatible schemes – for instance, a scheme that quantifies over mereological sums and a scheme that denies that there are any such things – may serve equally well to describe one or another state of affairs. These three theses are ones I still believe. But the thesis of my Reason, Truth and History to the effect that all “objects” – including tables and chairs – are “internal” to conceptual schemes, a thesis which was connected with the “verificationist semantics” I advocated in that book, I have long repudiated. Indeed, as I explained in Words and Life: Talk of “independent existence” makes little sense when what is at stake is neither ordinary causal nor ordinary logical independence. That
Replies to Commentators
83
the sky is blue is causally independent of the way we talk; for, with our language in place, we can certainly say that the sky would still be blue even if we did not use color words. And the statement that the sky is blue is, in the ordinary sense of “logically independent,” logically independent of any description that one might give of our use of color words. For these reasons, I have, especially in recent years, tried not to state my own doctrine as a doctrine of the dependence of the way things are on the way we talk. In any sense of “independent” I can understand, whether the sky is blue is independent of the way we talk.33 B. Re: “procedures and standards” A misunderstanding for which (as I shall explain shortly) I feel partly responsible, occurs when Timmons, after correctly quoting me to the effect that (in propositional calculus and quantification theory) “there are standards that logically valid inferences have to meet and that logically true statements have to meet, but these are not the standards we apply to descriptions,” goes on to describe my supposed conception of “methodological objectivity: thus: M1
If some claim C in discourse D is objectively true, then there are standards and procedures governing the acceptance of claims (judgments) in D that C meets and aC does not.
It seem clear that Timmons takes it that a methodological conception of objectivity is the same as a verificationist conception, and also believes that I hold such a conception in the philosophy of mathematics (“for Putnam, this same general conception of objectivity applies to mathematical discourse”). But in Ethics without Ontology, and just six pages after the sentence that Timmons quoted, I wrote on pp. 65–66: In a sense, what I want to say about mathematical truth has already been indicated, but there is a complication to be noted which is that whereas all truths of at least the elementary logic of quantifiers, so-called “quantification theory,” are provable, there are good reasons ... for believing that provability in pure mathematics is not coextensive with truth. I have in mind, of course, the Gödel Incompleteness Theorems, but not only these formal results. These theorems do not, by themselves, tell us whether we should say of sentences in pure mathematics that can neither be proved nor disproved (Gödel’s Theorems showed that there are such sentences) that they can be true or false. But, as I have argued elsewhere,34 none of the philosophies that try to identify mathematical truth with provability ... none of these “finitist,” or “intuitionist,” or “quasi-realist” philosophies of mathematics accords at all with the application of mathematics in physics. In particular, if one is unwilling, as I am, to be any sort of
84
HILARY PUTNAM “instrumentalist” about physics, then the attempt to be an antirealist about mathematics while trying to be a realist in any sense about physics will run into fatal trouble.
So I said in these very words that “provability in pure mathematics is not coextensive with truth.” But Timmons’s M1 says that mathematical truth is coextensive with meeting the “standards and procedures” for the acceptability of mathematical claims – and what is that if not provability in pure mathematics? Did I then simply contradict myself? I certainly didn’t think so, because immediately after the paragraph just quoted I wrote (p. 66): “Nevertheless, I think we can say with respect to mathematical truth what I just said about logical truth – that we learn what mathematical truth is by learning the practices and standards of mathematics itself, including the standards of applying mathematics.” So Timmons, although right in saying that I don’t think objectivity in logic and mathematics is explained by reference to platonic objects, is wrong in thinking that I believe we must accept a verificationist philosophy of logic and mathematics. But, I do feel partly responsible for the misunderstanding, because I now see that the sentence he quoted could bear a verificationist reading. What I should have said is that I think that logical necessity, logical validity, logical truth, are notions which we acquire as we learn to “do” and to apply logic, and similarly for mathematical truth and mathematical necessity. That does not mean (pace Dummett) that the practices we acquire when we learn either mathematical or empirical language exhaust the notion of truth either in mathematics or in empirical discourse. C. Some words on what I do believe about logic and mathematics The mistake in Timmons’s account of my view may begin, I suspect, with his distinction between descriptive statements, which “conform to the demands of the ontological conception of objectivity” and statements which conform to “the methodological model” (which sounds overly sharp). For, of course, there are also standards that descriptively true statements have to meet. Yet, as I argued in my third Dewey Lecture,35 it does not follow (pace Dummett), that truth for descriptive statements (my example was “Lizzie Borden killed her parents with an axe”) coincides with being verified. For the standards themselves are not stateable in a vocabulary which is epistemologically prior to the vocabulary of the statements in question (as the Carnap of the Aufbau hoped), nor is it the case that our grasp of those standards is simply grasp of verification procedures (as Dummett formerly36 thought). It was the point of my third Dewey Lecture to argue that we acquire the ability to understand what it is for statements to be true as we acquire the use of the relevant parts of language, and that reductionist accounts of that ability are failures.
Replies to Commentators
85
I believe the same thing is true in the case of mathematical language. I learn arithmetic, I learn what a prime number is, I learn that the sequence of natural numbers can be continued indefinitely,37 and I come to understand the Goldbach Conjecture: “There are infinitely many twin primes (pairs of primes whose difference is 2).” No one knows today whether this statement can be proved or disproved. But I certainly believe it has a truth-value.38 D. Kant Kant writes, If it [“general logic”] sought to give general instructions how we are to subsume under these rules, that is, to distinguish whether something does nor does not come under them, that could only be my means of another rule. This in turn, for the very reason that it is a rule, again demands guidance from judgment. And thus it appears that although understanding is capable of being instructed, and of being equipped with rules, judgment is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught. It is the specific quality of so called mother-wit [Mutterwitz]; and its lack no school can make good.39 Here Kant refers to a capacity to know what good sense requires, as opposed to the knowledge of a rule;40 without such a capacity – “mother wit” – neither science nor ethics are possible. The denial of the objectivity of judgments of reasonableness must quickly become denial of all objectivity. But I see no mention of such judgments in Timmons essay; only of “standards and procedures.” And that neglect, whether accidental or intended, underlies a criticism he makes of Scanlon’s constructivism with which I cannot go along. Before I turn to that, however, I must mention that “mother wit” is also needed in logic. For, without application logic becomes meaningless formalism. But the application of logic – the knowledge, for example, that if you ask me, “Was it a good play?” and I answer “It was and it wasn’t,” I have not contradicted myself, the ability to follow the countless “conversational implicatures” of which Paul Grice spoke – is not governed by any formal rules we have yet been able to write down. E. Timmon’s criticism of Scanlon In What We Owe to Each Other, Thomas Scanlon discusses the normative and motivational force of ethical assertions and the complexity of the connections between valuing and desiring. On Scanlon’s “contractualist” theory, the moral motivation par excellence is the desire to avoid an action if the action is such that any principle allowing it would be one that other people could reasonably
86
HILARY PUTNAM
reject. And Scanlon responds to the question, “Why accept this account of moral motivation?” by saying,41 According to the version of contractualism that I am advancing here, our thinking about right and wrong is structured by ... the aim of finding principles that others, insofar as they too have this aim, could not reasonably reject. This gives us a direct reason to be concerned with other people’s point of view: not because we might, for all we know, actually be them, or because we might occupy their positions in some other possible world,42 but in order to find principles that they, as well as we, have reason to accept.... [T]here is on this view a strong continuity between the reasons that lead us to act in the way that the conclusions of moral thought require and the reasons that shape the process by which we arrive at those conclusions.43 I believe that Scanlon has well described how one sort of ethical claim can have motivating force in any community which shares one of the basic interests of morality. And the explanation he gives does not presuppose anything we ought to regard as metaphysically “queer.” “But the motive Scanlon describes won’t motivate anyone who is indifferent to what others believe and desire!” someone – perhaps Timmons – will object. True, but the demand that an “objectivist” account of ethics must demonstrate that ethical utterances should motivate even those who are indifferent to the interests and beliefs of others is one for which I believe no good reason has been offered. Ethical utterances do have various kinds of motivating force, and I believe that Scanlon has well illustrated how one kind of motivating force can be accounted for.44 It may be that Timmons agrees with me here, because he distinguishes between Scanlon’s “contractualism” and what he calls Scanlon’s “constructivism.” This “constructivism” is supposed to lead to relativism: The constructivist views of Rawls and Scanlon are not meant to be versions of or imply ethical relativism, but I don’t see how they avoid it. ... [T]he gist of the argument is this. In order for the various standards and procedures to yield a relatively rich set of moral principles with relatively determinate implications, those norms and standards will have to be morally loaded. This, by the way, is a lesson Putnam teaches us. But reflecting on cases of moral symmetry – my favorite is the Putnam/ Nozick dispute over the morality of social welfare as described by Putnam (1981, 164–165) – strongly supports the conjecture that there is a plurality of standards and procedures that express different and conflicting moral outlooks (e.g., consequentialist, deontological) which, when viewed from a morally disengaged standpoint are on equal footing. (this volume, p. 32)
Replies to Commentators
87
My response to this argument is that the notion of a “morally disengaged standpoint” begs the question. Morality, in my view, is concerned with finding reasonable ways to act on interests that are complex, evolving, and occasionally (though not always or even usually) in conflict. If a “morally disengaged standpoint” involves not having (or pretending not to have) any of those interests (a sort of moral “veil of ignorance”), then what is “on an equal footing” from such a standpoint is irrelevant. But all actual standpoints I am aware of, including those of real live consequentialists, Kantians, etc., do share a good many of those interests. As far back as 1978, I reported with approval views of Grice and Baker according to which “different and conflicting moral outlooks” can be reasonably judged: Moral reasoning (I wrote) does not take place in a Cartesian vacuum, it takes place in the context of people trying to justify ways of life to other people, trying to criticize the ways of life of other people, etc., by producing reasons that that have some kind of general appeal….The question whether there is one objectively best morality or a number of objectively best moralities which, hopefully, agree on a good many principles or in a good many cases, is simply the question whether, given the desiderata that automatically arise45 once we undertake the enterprise of giving a justification of principles for living that will be of general appeal, then, will it turn out that these desiderata select a best morality or a group of moralities which have a significant measure of agreement on a number of significant questions.46 It is my experience that, in fact, only a tiny minority of reflective human beings regard either absolute consequentialism or absolute deontology as reasonable moral stances. (Probably the large majority of that tiny minority are philosophers – which may explain why professional philosophers are inclined not to count “wide appeal” as a desideratum for an answer to Baker and Grice’s three word question: “How to Live” – but the professional philosophers are, in this respect, unreasonable.) It is also my experience that the “moral stances” that actually divide people in large numbers are deeply entangled, both with frequently erroneous factual beliefs and with frequently irrational religious beliefs. But all of these beliefs are ones that it is possible and important to discuss. Talk of “relativism” here is a discussion stopper. Not that Timmons wishes us to embrace relativism! I can, in fact, agree with pretty much all of his 1–5 (this volume, p. 35), apart from a disagreement about his 2, with which I shall close. But I suggest that the use of the unfortunate word “expressivism” (given the history of that term) in Timmons (this volume, p. 36 note 3) fits ill with his insistence that “descriptivism,” in his sense, is compatible with objectivity. I sense a tension in Timmons’s position, and I suggest that it comes from, first, the confusion of methodological objectivity with verificationism, and, second, failure to see the importance of the informal
88
HILARY PUTNAM
notion of reasonableness. (As well as the under-thematization of the entanglement of fact and value.) In sum, ethics, like everything else, needs Mutterwitz. F. My disagreement about 2 Timmons has me wrong when he identifies the difference between descriptive and evaluative uses of ethical words with the “thick/thin” distinction. I don’t think the difference is between two kinds of sentences (or two vocabularies) at all. It is between two sorts of uses of sentences. A sentence that contains thick ethical words may have both descriptive and evaluative uses, and, very importantly, it may have both simultaneously. I used “Vlad the impaler was an exceptionally cruel monarch” as an example of a sentence which uses thick ethical concepts but which would typically have a primarily descriptive use in a present-day work of history. The same sentence, uttered by the widow of one of Vlad’s victims, would undoubtedly have had an evaluative use. (Sentences that contain thin ethical words also have descriptive uses; they are not absolutely thin in many contexts.) Timmons does say that sentences containing thick ethical words typically have primarily evaluative uses, but that also seems wrong to me. What they have are entangled uses – that is, they are often simultaneously evaluative and descriptive. Trying to parcel out descriptive and evaluative uses of language by assigning one sort of use to one sort of sentence and the other sort of use to another sort of sentence is reinstating, not overcoming, the fact/value dichotomy.
4. Reply to David Copp In many ways, David Copp’s essay seems to me the model of what a critical examination of a philosophical work should be. It is exemplary in its clarity, incisive in its criticism, and yet constructive in spirit. I shall take up Copp’s points in roughly reverse order, beginning, thus, with the last part of his essay and working towards the beginning. The very last sentence of Copp’s essay refers to a supposed “familiar technical sense” of “represent.” Well, I suppose I understand what it is for a sentence to be, about something – in fact, I once proposed a formalization of that notion.47 But I don’t think there is a familiar technical sense of fact – with Quine, I think the identity conditions for “facts” are extremely unclear. I don’t propose to ban the word “fact” from philosophy articles because of that. But the thesis that this or that sentence “represents a fact” doesn’t say anything to me except that the sentence is (purportedly) true. And, as I said in my reply to Pihlström, my account of truth is a “deflationist” one, albeit one that I distinguish from both Carnap’s and Horwich’s.48
Replies to Commentators
89
A. “Putnam’s view” Copp understands my view of moral truths pretty correctly (given my inevitable reservations, of course49). When he writes, “[Putnam’s view] holds that there are moral truths even though there are no moral properties because it holds that moral truth is constituted, roughly, by the standards of practical reason, given the concerns of the moral life” (this volume, p. 50), I want to say, “Take out the words, ‘even though there are no moral properties’ (why that isn’t a correct account of what I think will be the subject of the next subsection of this reply), and carefully refrain from construing ‘standards’ as ‘procedures’ in the sense of decision procedures (and recognize the need for Mutterwitz), and you are close to my view.” Why this is still only “close to” my view is that it also needs to be added that I think that rational discussion of the concerns of the moral life as they have developed in history, is possible, although certainly there is no fixed rulebook for such discussion. And with respect to the nature of such discussion, I am indeed a “quietist” in David Copp’s sense: “quietism holds that moral reasons can be given to explain the truth of a true moral claim but that no other kind of explanation is available. Assume, for example, that one ought morally to keep one’s promises. The quietist would be content with a standard kind of moral explanation for this, an explanation of the kind we might give in a moral discussion. A quietist would reject any kind of philosophical or metaphysically ambitious explanation such as an explanation that postulated a special kind of fact or property.” (this volume, p. 40) Although none of my commentators discusses part II of Ethics Without Ontology, I think my criticism of Bernard Williams’ skepticism on precisely this point (pp. 122–129) is important here. On whether I am a naturalist or a non-naturalist, I would reply that I am a naturalist in John Dewey’s sense. Our fallible ability to decide what is reasonable is part of our evolving human nature, not something supernatural. It is, however, a mistake when Copp concludes that, on my view, “a moral truth is ‘nothing but’ a warranted conclusion about what would be reasonable given the concerns of the moral life and given the appropriate standards of practical reason.” (this volume, p. 49) The reason this is a mistake is a simple logical one: truth (whether construed disquotationally or in some more metaphysical way) is tenseless and warranted assertability is tensed and relative to a particular epistemic situation. To make this point less abstractly, recall that a central emphasis of The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (the book of mine that preceded Ethics Without Ontology) was what might be called the triple entanglement of facts, theories, and values.50 Someone may believe that a course of action is morally right when it isn’t because they have accepted a false description of the situation (usually one which itself contains thick ethical words, and thus exhibits “entanglement”); and they may be warranted in accepting that false description (perhaps they were misled by people they had reason to trust, or perhaps later evidence will show that the evidence – which they had good reason to trust at the time – was partly false). They may also have
90
HILARY PUTNAM
a moral point of view – I give “macho ethics” as an example in Ethics without Ontology – which they will come to see (sometimes by contemplating the lives of exemplary human beings) are unreasonable or lacking in compassion or otherwise defective. What is in fact reasonable to believe is something we are highly fallible about. In no area does truth coincide with being a “warranted conclusion” at a time. The whole of part II of Ethics Without Ontology stressed the importance of fallibilism. B. “Putnam seems to deny the existence of moral properties” What leads Copp to say that I deny the existence of moral properties is that he assumes that what I fault G. E. Moore for was quantifying over them. Not at all. I think the real issue, in this case is one that Carnap put his finger on very nicely when he wrote: “Relations of the causal type can indeed hold only among physical objects (or states or processes), not between a physical object and an abstract entity. It seems typical of Platonism ... that it speaks of relations of this causal type (called ‘commerce’ or ‘intercourse’ or the like) as holding between physical objects (or persons or minds) and abstract entities.”51 (Carnap was emphatic that merely quantifying over numbers, sets, and the like did not make one a “Platonist.”) What makes Moore an Inflationary Ontologist (what Carnap called a “Platonist”) is not that he quantifies over such entities as “Good,” but that he posits a special faculty by which our minds can acquaint themselves with Good, a faculty that he himself analogizes to perception. This is a paradigm case of a pseudo-explanation of our ability to make true value judgments. C. Putnam appears to think that numbers do not exist Not at all. As I explained in my Reply to Pihlström, what I have been trying to do in the philosophy of mathematics is defend the view that “numbers exist” is the right answer if we choose one optional language and “saying they exist is a façon de parler” is the right answer if we choose another optional language, but there is no fact of the matter as to which is the “right” optional language here. As evidence that I think numbers do not exist, however, Copp cites my saying that mathematical truths are not “made true” by any set of “objects.” Well, yes. I don’t like calling numbers “objects.” I also don’t like talk of “making true,” unless that talk be interpreted in a deflationary way, as suggested by Crispin Wright in Truth and Objectivity.52 But that doesn’t mean I am not prepared to say numbers exist, when I use the normal language of number theory. Copp also accuses me of believing that the modal logical picture gives the real truth conditions for statements about numbers (which is why he thinks I am a sort of reductionist in anti-reductionist clothing). But I have emphasized from “Mathematics Without Foundations” on that I see the objects picture and the modal logical picture as equivalent descriptions. Metaphysically, I see them as
Replies to Commentators
91
two ways of saying the same things. Saying that mathematics is objective because mathematical necessity is objective is just as much a pseudoexplanation as saying that mathematics is objective because there really are mathematical objects. I can give reasons why we ought to conclude that mathematics is objective (no matter which of the equivalent pictures you prefer). The reasons I gave in “What is Mathematical Truth” still seem right to me. But on the question of the supposed need for a “metaphysical explanation” of the objectivity of mathematics, I am a “quietist”: modifying Copp’s definition by replacing the word “moral” with “mathematical,” I can say that “quietism holds that mathematical reasons can be given to explain the truth of a true mathematical claim but that no other kind of explanation is available.” I am guilty of “deflationist, reductionist Ontologizing” only in Copp’s imagination. D. Atheism I agree with Copp that a general rejection of what I call “deflationary” or “reductionist” Ontologizing does not entail that atheism is wrong (and theism is right by default). Whereas Inflationary Ontologizing of the kind to which I object to seems to me violate the norms of good (or, often, even of intelligible explanation – G. E. Moore’s comparison of Good to a “simple quality” like yellow is a case in point) – some ontological beliefs do need to be eliminated. I would, however, point out that it all too often happens that the atheist and the religious person simply talk past one another. In my reply to Pihlström, I described myself by saying that, “speaking for myself, I do not find that I need to think of God as having an ‘ontological’ reality outside of human experience.” To some that makes me an atheist; to others a religious “liberal.”. I respect principled atheism, but I respect it more when the atheist understands that not all religious people are fundamentalists. Still, if eliminationism is sometimes justified, what becomes of my attack on “Deflationary Ontologizing”? What I was thinking of in chapter one is this: when a philosopher says that properties do not really exist, etc., this typically makes no difference to the way (s)he talks outside of the lecture hall. That is what makes what these philosophers say a case of “language idling” – a good pragmatist metaphor if there ever was one. E. Putnam says that mathematical and logical truths are true in virtue of meeting relevant standards of mathematics and logic This is the same as Timmons’s misunderstanding, discussed in my reply to his essay. F. Putnam might respond that he does not deny that there are numbers, not unless the claim that there are numbers is made “with inflationary metaphysical earnestness.” It is not clear what this means, however.
92
HILARY PUTNAM
What it means is that if a mathematician says, as it might be, that Eduard Cech was the first person to describe the homology of a subnormal bicompact space, what (s)he says is perfectly in order; when a metaphysician says that the objectivity of mathematics is explained by the fact that it describes “real objects,” what (s)he does is offer a pseudo-explanation. In short, there is a difference between a metaphysical use of “describe” and an ordinary mathematical use. (I do not assume that “different use” implies different meaning.) Further, I think that this particular metaphysical use is bad metaphysics, for the reasons I give in the third chapter of Ethics without Ontology. I suspect Copp anticipated some such reply when he wrote, “But this, again, is an example of deflationary Ontology. It seems, in fact, uncomfortably close to Blackburn’s quasi-realism, which Putnam rejects” (this volume, p. 47). I don’t see the similarity, since Blackburn’s quasi-realism, as I understand it, says that, from a correct metaphysical point of view, mathematical sentences do not have objective truth values (unless, perhaps, they can be proved or disproved – in which case, their “truth” consists simply in their assertability”), whereas I claim – although this was only alluded to, but not gone into in detail – that the entanglement of mathematics and physics is such that anyone who rejects antirealism about physics – as both Blackburn and I do – should also reject it about mathematics.
5. Reply to Claudine Tiercelin Claudine Tiercelin is the author of a fine study of my work,53 and the extent of her familiarity with it is evident in the present essay. Moreover, I like the two slogans with which she closes: “Metaphysics without Ontology” and “From Ethics to Metaphysics.” In fact, in these replies I have already expressed a number of metaphysical views which do not, however, commit me to either inflationary or deflationary ontologizing.54 To me what both of Tiercelin’s slogans suggest is that the task of philosophy is, in Wilfrid Sellars’s well-known words, to say “how things in the widest sense of ‘things’, hang together in the widest sense of ‘hang together’,” and I take this to be a vitally important and non-terminating human reflective activity, but not an invitation to create something called a “science” of metaphysics. A. The Quine indispensability thesis and my indispensability thesis Tiercelin speaks of my “rejection of the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument,” but this is misleading. In “Mathematical Truth” I argued that the internal success and coherence of mathematics is evidence that it is true under some interpretation, and that its indispensability for physics is evidence that it is true under a realist interpretation – the antirealist interpretation I considered there was Intuitionism. This
Replies to Commentators
93
is a distinction that Quine nowhere draws. In Philosophy of Logic I argued that at least some set theory is indispensable in logic and in physics. (But I had already, in “Mathematics Without Foundations,” said that set theory and modal logical mathematics were “equivalent descriptions,” so that was in no way an argument for realism about sets as opposed to realism about modalities.) In sum, my “indispensability” argument was an argument for the objectivity of mathematics in a realist sense – i.e., for the idea that mathematical truth must not be identified with provability. Quine’s indispensability argument was an argument for “reluctant Platonism,” which he himself characterized as accepting the existence of “intangible objects” (numbers and sets). The difference in our attitudes goes back at least to 1967. There was a common premise in both my arguments and Quine’s, of course, even if the conclusions of those arguments were not the same; that premise was “scientific realism,” by which I mean the rejection of operationalism and kindred forms of “instrumentalism.” I believe that fundamental physical theories are intended to tell the truth about physical reality. A common objection is that we do not yet have (and may never have) the “true” physical theory; my response is that we should regard all of the rival theories as candidates for truth or approximate truth, and that any philosophy of mathematics that would be inconsistent with so regarding them should be rejected. This “indispensability argument” has continued to appear in my work right up to the present day.55 B. Some questions posed by Tiercelin Tiercelin poses a large number of questions. The ones that would require me to discuss metaphysical views that are not my own (for example, the claim that “reality is made of irreducible categorical elements,” and the claim that relations and laws are “ontologically prior” to objects and substances), I cannot possibly do justice to in this reply, and so I must postpone them to another occasion. But there remain some quite important ones, specifically: Why and in precisely what way should one take mathematical possibility as primitive? This question refers to a sentence in Ethics without Ontology in which I claimed that we can avoid quantifying over abstract entities in mathematics “by formalizing mathematics in a modal logical language, one which takes as primitive (mathematical) possibility and necessity.” Here “take as primitive” is used in its standard syntactic sense, familiar from elementary logic courses. I was describing two languages with different “primitives” (in this familiar syntactic sense) as equivalent descriptions. I was not saying that “mathematical possibility” is “primitive” in some metaphysical sense. In fact, if we take the notions of set theory as primitive, then a series of notions of mathematical possibility can be defined. Is it so sure that talk of “structures” [what is meant must be “talk of the possibility of structures”] is clearer than talk of “objects”? I never said it was. I said that the equivalence of these two types of “talk” sheds light on both of
94
HILARY PUTNAM
them. Incidentally, it is not only that talk of sets is fungible with talk of the possibility of structures; it is also a fact familiar to all logicians (but so far unmentioned in philosophy papers, except by me!) that talk of sets is fungible with talk of functions. Should we “take seriously” the question whether functions are a kind of set or sets are a kind of function? Is it obvious that the choices we make (the reference is to what I called “optional languages” for geometry) are completely neutral? It may not be “obvious” (as Georg Kreisel once said, “It’s not obvious what’s obvious”), but I do think that the right answer to the questions: “Are points really sets of lines?” and “Are lines really sets of points?” is “You can formalize geometry either way.” If a philosophy says that one of these answers is right because it allegedly corresponds to “the possible forms of our understanding or our sensibility,” I am inclined to regard that philosophy as an attempt to return to 19th century ideas of Kantian or post-Kantian vintage that have completely failed to profit. But I agree with Tiercelin, that if we say – as I recommend – that what we have here is a question of adopting a convention, that answer itself is always subject to reconsideration. As Tiercelin says, “while there is an element of convention in all knowledge, there is no guarantee that anything we call a convention won’t someday have to be given up, perhaps for a reason we can’t foresee now” Why am I hostile to reflection on “real possibles”? I am surprised by the charge that I am. I have (like Peirce, in fact), long defended the claim that physics presupposes a modal notion of physical possibility;56 the content of physical theories is not just that some things always happen, but that some things are possible (whether they actually happen or not) and some things are impossible. But perhaps Tiercelin thinks I should explain physical (and mathematical) possibility in terms of something more basic? That would surprise me, given her (and my) high regard for Pierce. Finally, I am surprised that Tiercelin thinks that I think that “nominalism and realism are simple positions.” In fact, the place where I discussed the problem of universals was “On Properties”;57 but that was not the subject of Ethics without Ontology. In “On Properties” I argued that, although the notion of a universal (or a property) is ambiguous,58 in at least one sense of “property,” the existence of properties is as fundamental as the existence of things. But it is not the question “how can different things be similar” – the supposed question of “commonness,” which I do regard as a pseudo-question – that properties explain. It is rather that, for example, the existence of a common property that obeys such and such laws, is sometimes the explanation of a physical similarity. And when the hypothesis succeeds, postulating such a property is not a pseudoexplanation, but a real explanation. It is not “abstract entities” that I oppose, but pseudo-explanations.
Replies to Commentators
95
NOTES 1. For examples, see my “Pragmatism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95 (1995): 291–306; and “When Evidence-Transcendence is not Malign: A Reply to Crispin Wright,” Journal of Philosophy 98 (2001): 594–600. 2. “Comment on Robert Brandom’s paper,” in Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism, ed. James Conant and Urszula Zeglen (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 59–65. 3. See my “James’s Theory of Truth,” in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 166–185. 4. “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind,” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 445–517, reprinted in my The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 5. “William James to Dickinson Miller, 5 August 1906,” The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), vol. 2, p. 295. 6. Fred Stoutland, “Putnam on Truth” The Practice of Language, ed. Martin Gustafsson and Lars Hertzberg (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 147–176. 7. See my The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 54. 8. Starmaking: Realism, Antirealism and Irrealism, ed. Peter J. McCormick (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). 9. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (2002), and Ethics without Ontology (2004). 10. Joseph Margolis, The Truth About Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 11. In addition to The Truth About Relativism, I have in mind Margolis’s Historied Thought, Constructed World: Conceptual Primer for the Turn of the Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) and The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 12. In “Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” Rorty writes, “I view warrant as a sociological matter, to be ascertained by observing the reception of S’s statement by her peers.” Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993): 450. 13. In fact, Margolis does not provide either a formal semantics or a formal logic for his “truth-like values.” I have no idea what “in a formal way” refers to here. 14. See my “Vagueness and Alternative Logic,” in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 15. These philosophers, it seems to me, are trapped by the image of the crystalline purity of logic that Wittgenstein famously decried. (“We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground.” (Philosophical Investigations, §107). 16. See my “Travis on Meaning, Thought, and the Ways the World Is,” Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002): 96–106. 17. Their conjunction would violate the axiom of Foundation. 18. Collected in my The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World, see pp. 49–69. Note that in those pages I use “deflationary” to refer to theories which combine the idea of disquoting sentences (construed as mere “marks and noises”) with a verificationist account of what it is for such “marks and noises” to have a meaning. In a different sense, I am myself a “deflationist,” as Stoutland points out in “Putnam on Truth.”
96
HILARY PUTNAM
19. See Rudolf Carnap, “Truth and Confirmation,” in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), pp. 119–127. 20. Paul Horwich, “Wittgenstein and Kripke on the Nature of Meaning,” Mind and Language 5(2) (1990): 105–121. For some comments on this paper, see The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World, pp. 193–194. 21. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, chap. 5: “On the Rationality of Preference.” 22. One such respect is the total unclarity of the “truth-like” many-valued truthvalues Margolis posits, and of the “formal way” (see note 5 above) in which they are to replace the usual bivalent truth-values; another is the way in which “robust relativism” is supposed to avoid collapsing into some version of cultural relativism. 23. Writing in 1990, Margolis was referring to my John Locke Lectures, delivered at Oxford University in Hilary Term of 1976. See Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 20. 24. This is made explicit in Meaning and the Moral Sciences itself, from which Margolis was quoting. Read carefully the first three paragraphs of p. 123! 25. Collected in my Mathematics, Matter and Method: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975). See p. 73. 26. “Mathematics Without Foundations,” in my Mathematics, Matter and Method, p. 46. 27. E.g., C. P. Burgess and F. Quevedo, “Bosonization as Duality,” Nuclear Physics B421 (1994): 373–390. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any papers in this area that do not presuppose knowledge of quantum field theories. 28. See “Equivalence,” collected in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, pp. 26–45. 29. Collected in my Mathematics, Matter and Method. 30. In Reason, Truth and History (1981), in the course of writing on subjects that went far beyond my pre-1975 interests, I made what I now see as a false start by defending a version of anti-realist semantics that I sometimes called “internal realism.” I gave it up for a more “realist” position by 1990, as I stated in my reply to Simon Blackburn at the conference on my philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in November of that year. A “written-up” version of that reply is published in Reading Putnam, ed. Peter Clark and Bob Hale (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). The reasons I gave it up are stated in the first three of my replies in “The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam,” Philosophical Topics 20 (Spring 1992), where I give a history of my use(s) of the unfortunate term “internal realism,” and, at more length, in my Dewey Lectures. 31. See “What Theories are Not,” collected in Mathematics, Matter and Method, pp. 215–227, and “Explanation and Reference,” collected in my Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 196–214. 32. “The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam,” Philosophical Topics 20 (Spring 1992): 366–367. 33. Words and Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 301. 34. In the Appendix to “Was Wittgenstein Really an Antirealist About Mathematics,” in Wittgenstein in America, ed. Timothy McCarthy and Sean Stidd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The gist of the argument was already in “What is Mathematical Truth,” pp. 74–75. 35. See The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World, pp. 44–59.
Replies to Commentators
97
36. I write, “as Dummett formerly thought,” because in Truth and the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), he modifies this view as far as statements about the past are concerned. I discuss the modified view in “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Does Dummett Have a Way Through?” in The Philosophy of Michael Dummett (Chicago: Open Court, forthcoming). 37. Some examples of “modal logical” translations of such statements about natural numbers are given in “Mathematics Without Foundations.” 38. Here I disagree with the thrust of some of Wittgenstein’s unpublished Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. I argue that Wittgenstein was wrong in these remarks in the Appendix to my “Was Wittgenstein Really an Antirealist About Mathematics,” and in more detail in “Wittgenstein and the Real Numbers,” forthcoming in Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond, ed. Alice Crary (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007). 39. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A 133, B 172. 40. A fine discussion of this aspect of Kant’s thought is Juliet Floyd’s “Heautonomy and the Critique of Sound Judgment: Kant on Reflective Judgment and Systematicity” in Kants Ästhetik/Kant’s Aesthetics/L’Esthétique de Kant, ed. Herman Parret (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998). 41. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 155. 42. Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” and “initial position” are what Scanlon is referring to. 43. Ibid., p. 191. 44. Where I differ from Scanlon is in rejecting (1) the idea that there is a unique motive for ethics, and (2) that idea that all ethical judgments depend on “principles.” 45. Among such desiderata, Baker and Grice listed (1) the morality should be one that people could, in fact, live by; (2) it should have wide appeal; (3) it should allow us a good deal of “discretionary” space. All of these are desiderata for a reasonable morality. 46. Meaning and the Moral Sciences, p. 84; unfortunately, the MS by Baker and Grice was never published. 47. “Formalization of the Concept ‘About’,” Philosophy of Science 25 (1958): 125–130. 48. I defend a form of what is sometimes called “disquotationalism” in my third Dewey Lecture (cited in note 4 above). I have since found that some authors use “disquotationalism” and “deflationism” in just the opposite way from the way I used them in that lecture! I now accept the description of myself as a “deflationist” (see Stoutland, cited in note 5), provided it is clear that my form of “deflationism” is the one I attribute to Wittgenstein in the Dewey Lectures, and not the form defended by Carnap or Horwich. 49. Probably no philosopher ever accepts another philosopher’s account of what (s)he thinks without some reservations. 50. The term “triple entanglement” was suggested by Vivian Walsh. 51. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963), pp. 924– 925. 52. Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). 53. Tiercelin, Hilary Putnam: l’héritage pragmatiste (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). If I have one disagreement with the way I am depicted in this otherwise excellent monograph, it is that there she interprets the direct realism I defend in
98
HILARY PUTNAM
my Dewey Lectures in terms of my earlier “internal realism,” rather than seeing it – as I intended it to be seen – as a repudiation of “internal realism,” and a return to a robust realism about the objects and properties we perceive. I believe that all the classical pragmatists, including Pierce, were direct realists, by the way. 54. Two smaller points that I shall not discuss beyond this note, therefore, are (1) that for me “different uses of ‘exist’” is not the same thing as different meanings of the word “exist,” in the sense of linguistic meaning. I believed I had made this clear in chapter 2. And (2) Tiercelin is quite right in saying that my position is not “mere quietism” in the sense she mentions (a dismissive refusal to engage in philosophical debate). In my previous reply I used the word in a different sense (Copp’s). 55. Most recently in my “Wittgenstein, le réalisme et les mathematiques,” in Wittgenstein, dernières pensées, ed. Jacques Bouveresse, Sandra Laugier and JeanJacques Rosat (Maseilles: Agone, 2002), pp. 289–313, and in “Wittgenstein and the Real Numbers” (see note 38 above). 56. For example in, “Is Water Necessarily H2O,” collected in Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), (see pp. 56–57), and in The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World. 57. “On Properties” in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel: A Tribute on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Nicholas Rescher et al. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1970), pp. 235–254; reprinted in Mathematics, Matter and Method, pp. 305–322. 58. Today rather than saying that “property” is ambiguous, I would prefer to say that the criteria for the “sameness” of properties are deeply context-sensitive. See my “Travis on Meaning, Thought, and the Ways the World Is,” Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002): 96–106.
Hilary Putnam Cogan University Professor Emeritus Department of Philosophy 208 Emerson Hall Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 United States
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 99–116
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation Scott R. Stroud
This article constructs a theory of moral cultivation from the writings of John Dewey. Examining his early work in ethics, I argue that the goal of moral cultivation for such a Deweyan scheme is an individual who is attentive and engaged with the particulars of her situation. I then sketch an account of art’s moral value and its connection to attentiveness, intimating a way to dissolve longstanding problems in the philosophy of art.
At first glance, attempting to extract a notion of moral cultivation from the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey would seem an impossible task. Such an endeavor presumably requires a substantialized self to change, and would also necessitate some sort of fixed ideal toward which one’s moral capacities would “grow.” For those familiar with Dewey’s moral thought, both of these requirements are held by him to be anathema to a useful conception of human moral activity. The constant theme of meliorism and improvement that one sees in pragmatists such as Dewey, however, causes one to expect that a usable notion of moral cultivation can be found. Can a Deweyan ethics be constructed that is based on a reasonable account of moral cultivation of the self? I will argue for such a notion of moral cultivation in Dewey’s thought that holds a place of importance for attentiveness to situations and relationships. Attentiveness denotes a first-person sense of experience, so I will largely base my account in Dewey’s early works in ethics from the 1890s, differentiated from his later works not so much in terms of content but in terms of perspective – the former tend to emphasize a personal psychological approach, and the latter develop a social psychological approach. A key theme in his early works is that of moral development being integrally tied to attention to one’s situation and impulses to activity, and the development of capability and character through the realization of self via attention. In the last section of this article, I will argue that this reading of moral cultivation is useful in that it entails that aesthetic experience is morally valuable and cultivating by virtue of being an instantiation of attentiveness to the details
100
SCOTT R. STROUD
of the present, as well as an instance of preparation for future cultivated attentiveness. I cannot fully explicate this idea of the moral value of aesthetic experience that my account of Deweyan cultivation reveals, but I will outline the next step of my project in regard to the implications of cultivation in Dewey’s moral thought. 1. Dewey and Moral Cultivation I begin with the important task of enunciating a notion of moral cultivation within Dewey’s thought. In doing so, I will be elucidating what is of moral value, or what conduces to the type of personal development that ought to be desired. “Moral cultivation” is not a concept employed in many Western ethical theories largely because their authors often overlook or undervalue the developmental aspects of moral activity, instead favoring criterial matters of moral judgment.1 One often sees this concept employed in discussions of ethical systems of China, India, and Japan. For instance, Philip Ivanhoe examines the early Confucian tradition and finds three types of cultivation models – the acquisition, development, and reformation models of moral cultivation.2 These correspond to the approaches of Confucius, Mengzi (Mencius), and Xunzi, respectively. All of these assume some sort of subject (viz., the person or agent), and assume that there is some sort of goal of moral development. This is the point to which cultivation contributes, and is the reason why the theories are often called self-cultivation theories. The “self” portion refers less to the agent of cultivation and more immediately to the object of cultivation, although selfinitiative and individual activity has a role to play in such cultivation approaches. In the developmental model, the key point is the encouragement of latent tendencies within the self to fully flower, whereas in the reformation model, potentially harmful forces in the agent are re-formed in such a way that they are conducive to moral self-hood. The acquisition model shies away from a commitment to the existence of original inclinations to good or bad in the agent, but it does insist on certain formations as the endpoint of self-development. In all of these accounts it seems as if the self is “going somewhere,” namely, to a state which it does not currently occupy. This presents an immediate problem to any sort of Deweyan notion of moral cultivation. Dewey was strongly against any separation between ideal and real, especially in the moral realm.3 First, he argued that such a separation would presume a separation between means and ends. A paradigm example of such a worry comes in Dewey’s Experience and Nature (1925), where he describes an end-in-view as a “constant and cumulative reenactment at each stage of forward movement. It is no longer a terminal point, external to the conditions that have led up to it; it is the continual developing meaning of present tendencies – the very thing as directed we call ‘means’.”4 Means and ends are integrally connected in the present, and any removal of ends qua ideals is unwarranted. If one were to insist on such a removal, Dewey would counter by pointing out that
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
101
ideals separate from current situations would lead to either a lack of action in the here-and-now (as the ideal does not connect to the concrete particulars of the given situation), or would lead to a moral fatalism, since it is often posited as a corollary of idealism that the real can never reach the ideal.5 These reasons inform the sort of critique Dewey leveled against the “self-realization” theory of Thomas Hill Green in his article “Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive” from 1892.6 There he argued that Green’s contrast between the concrete self of activity and the ideal self leaves one “conscious of an ideal which sets itself negatively over against every attempt to realize itself, thus condemning us to continued dissatisfaction.”7 If the ideal is truly separate from the concrete, the problem of actually reaching the ideal becomes apparent. Dewey found that a theory such as Green’s so differentiated the ideal that the real could never reach it. It appears that such a problem may exist for any account of moral cultivation – what is the ideal, and is it truly separate from the concrete details of the moral situation in which an agent finds himself? Is there truly a fixed goal that is to be reached or achieved in the act of cultivating? Dewey would seem to say that no such final consummation exists, and that the project of morality is ongoing without certain beginning or end.8 One can rebuild a notion of moral cultivation in Dewey that does not fall prey to the separation of means/ends or real/ideal. Such an account can be based in his early ethical writings concerning what he calls “self-realization.” Realizing one’s self can take two forms: one can discover what they already are, or they can become something that they are not at that instance. Dewey takes the former tack in his early writings, relying on the importance of expanding our understanding of our desires and ourselves. This attention to our character and its output into action then relates to the present self we will be in some future occasion. This is remarkably different from notions such as that of Green’s that postulate some sort of movement from a present self toward some future self. In those accounts, attention is on the future and not the present, while absorption in the present is a key part to ethical development for Dewey. While Dewey’s move away from idealism after 1904 does result in substantive changes of emphasis in his philosophy of experience, key themes remain – including the idealized immediate meaning that assumes such a prevalent role in his 1934 Art as Experience. This connection is so obvious that pragmatists such as Stephen Pepper and idealists such as Benedetto Croce would quickly criticize that later work as being irreconcilably idealist. While others have explored why this judgment is not wholly warranted,9 I will avoid that controversy here and construct a Deweyan notion of moral cultivation theory based in a dominant theme in his early works – that of attention to the present. I am not convinced that this theme, or its related end-state (albeit temporary) of progressive present adaptation, disappears in Dewey’s later “naturalistic” work. Indeed, I will highlight some continuations of this theme at the relevant points in his 1932 Ethics and his 1922 Human Nature and Conduct.
102
SCOTT R. STROUD
Dewey’s analysis of ethics and moral activity came on the heels of his Psychology from 1887.10 While this work was quite idealist in the neo-Hegelian sense, Dewey began what he has labeled a slow “drifting” from Hegelianism around 1890 and culminating with his stated break in 1904.11 Along the path of moving away from idealism in its Hegelian form, Dewey wrote two works on moral philosophy that explore a notion of self-cultivation, and they do not rely as heavily upon Hegelian commitments as do his earlier works. He holds two points in common with these earlier commitments – first, that in one way of seeing things, the self is “finished” and existent in the present situation, and second, that there is a reciprocal relationship between the agent and her environment (viz., the world in which she is embedded). Both of these commitments lead, as I hope to show, to a notion of self-cultivation that prizes a “progressive adaptation” of the self and its capacities to its specific, concrete place in the social environment, as well as to an insistence that a key part of this adaptation is attention to the present activities of the acting self. Dewey insists in his early works that the self is not a separate entity above and beyond the agent, but is instead integrally tied to the concrete situation in which one finds oneself. This is a common theme in his Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (OCT, 1891) and The Study of Ethics (SE, 1894),12 two works that are often overlooked in commentaries on Dewey’s ethical thought. I will use these two texts as a fairly unified presentation of what can be reconstructed as “Dewey’s early ethics,” even though I acknowledge differences in the particular details of these works. For instance, Jennifer Welchman’s precise study of Dewey’s early ethical thought notes some divergence between OCT and SE, particularly with the concept of will as used in analyzing individual action.13 My purpose here has less to do with the history of philosophy and more with a constructive endeavor to use the resources in Dewey’s early work to propose a notion of moral cultivation firmly based in American pragmatism. It is with this caveat in mind that I will now begin to provide such an account from Dewey’s OCT and SE. While not from Dewey’s “naturalistic” writings, both OCT and SE base their analysis on a reading of human activity in light of a surrounding environment. Thus, OCT points to the general division of “specific capacity” and “specific environment” as being key to a workable notion of individuality. This notion of individuality has both a descriptive angle (viz., how humans find themselves situated in the world) and a normative angle (viz., how to best optimize or balance these factors). “Specific capacity” is said to mean “special disposition, temperament, gifts, bent, or inclination.”14 These can be seen as “internal” elements in that they are mostly based in one’s character, even though Dewey would be the first to acknowledge that they are formed and reformed in relation to external (objective) conditions. One must not mistake Dewey’s working distinctions for reified dualisms. The other side to the human situation is “specific environment,” or the “station, situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities, etc.”15 in which a human finds himself situated. Thus, an agent
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
103
may be prone to fits of anger, and could be in a social station that promotes this trait; conversely, an individual with a passive nature may find himself in a society that prizes aggression, and may not advance as far in its ranks because of this mismatch between specific capacity and specific environment. The connection between these two factors is what Dewey calls in OCT “function,” or the “active relation established between the power of doing, on one side, and something to be done on the other.”16 The individual has certain pushes to alter the environment, and the environment (largely considered as social) holds certain resistances and limits that affect the agent’s desire and ability to act in certain ways. Notice too how the specific environment an individual finds herself in conditions her capacities and her development – an individual in a society that does not prize artistic creativity may never discover her abilities to draw, paint, etc. Function as union combines these two factors into their own unique combination – one person’s concrete capacities join with her concrete social situation (her station, her cultural surroundings, etc.) to form one activity or process. Like Dewey’s analysis of means/ends (specifically of there being no final, remote end of activity), this process does not truly produce a product, but instead melts into other processes. There does not seem to be an end to the merging of one’s internal capacities and drives with their social station and its requirements. Instead, it seems that this is a process, or as Dewey puts it, an activity that continues with ongoing modifications in the specifics of the two general factors (capacity and environment). In his 1894 SE, Dewey talks less of “capacities,” but uses a term similar in meaning: “impulse.” SE begins with Dewey separating ethics into “psychological” and “social” perspectives, and it is fairly clear that SE focuses more on the former.17 The use of impulse seems fairly consonant with “specific capacity” insofar as they both indicate an “inner” push that originates, at least within the confines of a delineated situation, from within the agent and her character. Thus, impulse covers those drives that have evolved connected to the maintenance of life,18 as well as those drives arising from one’s existence in a social situation. The key fact about impulse is that it is not clearly distinguished from other such drives due to its lack of “meaning” – a characteristic tailing left by reflective or conscious mediation for Dewey. Impulses have results, and the nature of the human organism is such that it notices these results in light of the originating impulse. To use one of Dewey’s examples, a child sees a lump of sugar and puts it in her mouth; the meaning of a lump of sugar has now been expanded as the results of this experience reflect back upon the original impulse to eat the sugar. Now, the child sees the eating of sugar as closely connected to a pleasant sweet taste, whereas before such a meaning was absent. According to Dewey’s early work, the impulse leading up to the act of eating the sugar has been idealized – a particular concrete situation and impulses to activity have now gained a meaning and connection to other states (past and future consequences) that are not present in the act itself. The act has become meaningful. What was formerly called “specific capacity” of an agent now segues into a more biological idiom of
104
SCOTT R. STROUD
“impulse,” but the import is the same. The agent pushes against the environment, which consequently resists, leading the agent into reflective or mediating activities that imbue the present activity with more meaning. What he called “function” in his OCT, Dewey now describes by the nature of mediated impulse in light of environmental conditions. The important connecting point for both discussions is the interaction between the subject and the environment and the impetus this provides for meaning-making activity. This mediation serves as an overlay to the activity there, as well as in the future. In the SE, mediated impulses become a conscious guide to conduct (viz., one now knows that a certain act means such and such). This system of impulses is what Dewey refers to as “character,” and this has an impact on specific activity in three ways.19 First, impulse can be so completely mediated that it is completely transformed into an engrained habit of activity. The meaning of drinking coagulated milk could be so clear and evident that once one has done such an act, its future meaning is evident and readily translatable into action – namely, one cringes when she sees milk of that sort, instead of initiating drinking activities. This is the instantiation of meaning into fairly rigid structures of action, a reading of habit that continues on in Dewey’s later works such as HNC and the Ethics. A second way that such mediation can affect action is by the provision of certain lines/plans of action as connected to a certain impulse. Thus, when a teacher is confronted with a student’s excuse as to why he could not meet an assignment’s deadline, the teacher’s reaction is an impulse toward caution that is held within certain lines of meaning – past student “tricks,” ways that such an excuse could be legitimate, ways to negotiate both of these possibilities in teacher reaction, etc. The teacher does not think of physical violence largely because such an action is outside of the plans connected to this general mediation of impulse (viz., the reaction to student excuses and potential abuse). A third way in which impulse is mediated is through the consideration of specifics – some impulses and the situations that evoke them can acquired such a meaning that attention must be paid to that situation’s specifics. This could be what Dewey will later discuss as a “habit” of reflection or consideration. Here it is noted as a particular way that impulse can have meaning, and must be distinguished from his more limited notion of habit in the first way discussed previously. All of these levels of mediation of impulse and its reaction to an environment in the way of concrete activity are called by Dewey as “tendencies to action,” which “taken together, constitute ‘capacity.’”20 Like OCT, Dewey’s SE includes environing factors as well as the internal drives to agent activity. “Capacity” still survives in SE as “the power of action, whether impulsive, or habitual, or reflective, which an agent has at his disposal.”21 Two main elaborations are made, however, in the SE notion of capacity. First, Dewey has specified in more detail the ways that an agent is driven to action – including original impulse, previously established habit, or reflective activity. Second, Dewey anticipates his later dialectic of organism-environment by noting that these are both drives to action and enabling powers of action. Habit, as well as
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
105
reflective activity, limits and allows action; only naive and incomplete definitions of habit portray it as “dumb” and purely limiting on human capabilities. In the OCT as well as SE, Dewey starts with the potentials of a human agent (capacities) formed in light of environmental factors, and highlights their interaction with that environment in activities that the agent undertakes. The goal of moral activity in such a system is optimally to align human capacity with the resisting and enabling forces in the environment. In OCT, Dewey highlights this endpoint of moral activity as optimal function, or “The performance by a person of his specific function, this function consisting in an activity which realizes wants and powers with reference to their peculiar surroundings.”22 What is in the background of Dewey’s thought here has already been broached – the connection of the ideal with the material of the present situation. Welchman connects this reading in OCT to Dewey’s challenge of the standard dichotomy between normative and descriptive values – “The moral scientist was (1) to describe and explain just what ideal personal capacities had historically been realized by human agents and (2) to suggest ways ideal personal capacities (and so persons themselves) could be more freely and fully realized.”23 The SE changes this equation, according to Welchman, by leaving out the need for the moral scientist to know historical forms of realization and to even further minimize any “normative suggestiveness” that (2) proposes. Discussing the endpoint of Dewey’s self-realization in SE, she goes as far as to state “Since knowing and expressing the self is our true end, then obviously any science that increases our understanding of ourselves is inherently ‘practical’.”24 While I agree with Welchman’s emphasis on the present situation (versus historical forms of realization), I disagree insofar as both OCT and SE do appear to contain “practical” proposals, instead of merely relying on knowing the self. The self can be expressed (and known) in differing degrees, and certain of these can be more unified and whole than others. It is not simply a matter of complete knowledge/expression being whole, as there is a reflectivity built into the capacity-environment distinction that prevents it from going one way. I argue that the environment modifies our capacities to some extent, a point Dewey makes in his later work on habit and reflection.25 The important point I want to emphasize here, however, is that moral cultivation ought to end with the agent being optimally adjusted to her environment; this means expressing her impulses, habits, etc. in a sustainable, meaningful, and effective fashion in light of the present situation (environment). In SE, Dewey translates this into the idiom of judgment (and with it, conscious direction of practical activity) by defining right actions as those that “tend to expand, invigorate, harmonize, and in general organize the self.”26 Moral cultivation of the self involves a revealing of that self and its capacities in a certain situation, but it also deals with better or worse ways to express impulse in action. Creating a character that expresses impulses that are well adjusted to other impulses and to the agent’s environment is key to moral activity for Dewey, as actions flow from agent character, and both are evoked and formed in
106
SCOTT R. STROUD
light of some prevailing environment. Self-expression is the expression of the self we ought to be – the harmonized system of impulses given meaning in light of our present environment. Why does Dewey call this self-realization or expression? This is partly due to his commitment to avoid a strict removal of “ideals” from the present situation – including the ideal of what sort of self one ought to become. It is also largely due to Dewey’s insistence on a close relation between an agent’s character and his actions. Largely eschewing notions of will that signal a radical sort of metaphysical libertarianism, Dewey instead ties responsibility and volition to the drives inherent in one’s character – a good man is good because he does good acts. One’s character is formed by her actions, and her actions flow from or express that character in concrete situations. Agents ought to be concerned with adjusting their selves to their specific environment largely because of this connection between character and action. The correct amount of concern and effort is that which balances the drives of the self (character) with the opportunities and challenges of the environment. This is the endpoint of moral cultivation for Dewey, and is labeled as “goodness,” or “progressive adjustment” of conduct to the demands of the environment (including the demands of one’s social station).27 In such a scheme as that found in OCT and SE, what is of moral value is that which conduces to this endpoint of progressive adjustment of character to environment. This is obviously a wide notion of moral value, but it is the one that follows from Dewey’s commitment to the interconnection of agent and act. Agent and act are not inherently separate, but are both parts of a single activity. Separating act from agent (viz., her character) leads to problems with indeterminacy or caprice in willing, or at the very least, a need for an independent faculty of will. Dewey has reasons why these are not palatable options, and closely connects character and action worth. Indeed, in SE he notes, “the act, no matter how specific, utters his whole self.”28 The act is an expression of the agent’s character, even if it is only a small instantiation of it (i.e., dishonesty in a card game). Conversely, the act reflects back on the creation of character; expression is something that can be controlled to an extent, and this explains why the SE calls for certain types of expression (the sort that increase coordination and wholeness among the system of agent impulses). The endpoint of moral cultivation, progressive adjustment, is not a set of certain actions that are morally worthy or a specific virtue that is mandatory, but instead addresses the “development of character, a certain spirit and method in all conduct.”29 Thus, any activity can have moral value insofar as any activity can affect one’s character (it is, indeed, a reflection of it as well) and can serve as the forming ground of the aforementioned “spirit and method” of conduct. Like the putative category of “moral activities,” Dewey holds that there is no delineated realm of “moral value” (and objects that possess it) because the wide nature of character and the ways it can be developed. I will now argue that a key part to this “spirit
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
107
and method” of conduct that is so key to developing and developed character is a keen attention to the present situation. 2. The Moral Importance of Attention To further clarify this discussion of Dewey on moral cultivation, one can state some of the major concepts and their relations to the others. As has been evidenced previously, the endpoint of moral development is progressive adjustment of the internal aspects of an individual (viz., her capacities) to her surrounding environment. Since actions are closely tied to character, one can see this adjustment as stemming from a certain sort of character that one wants to foster (which in turn, leads to more “adjusted” actions as a natural outpouring of that character). This character differs per individual and concrete environments/ capacities, so the most we can say about it is that it involves a certain way (“spirit or method”) of going about action. What I will argue in the remainder of this section is that this way of acting integrally involves attention to the present situation (involving the concrete aspects of the agent’s capacities and environment). Thus, moral cultivation involves the development of attentiveness to one’s present situation. I must now discuss why attention to the present is so important. For Dewey moral situations are basically unique in their concreteness, and moral principles can only guide action in general, not in its specifics. Why is the subjective orientation of attention so important for moral cultivation, or the adjusting of one’s capacities to her environment? To answer this challenge, I will supply two lines of defense – first, attention is vital because the moral situation is fundamentally a “present” situation, and second, because the ends and goals of moral activity always occupy a present. First, it is clear that Dewey insists on the present nature of moral activity – the moral situation is a here-and-now. This situation has certain concrete details about it, details that are not likely to be exactly replicated in other situations, and this means that there is no substantive notion of moral ends that transcend the particulars of a present situation.30 The needs of the situation, composed of the environment and the agent herself, dictate the ideals of conduct and the available actions. Thus, attention to the concrete details of this function or relation between capacities and environment is needed for a full assessment and response to that situation. Focusing on some distant and abstract moral theory is just that – focusing on something other than the situation in all of its details. Another key part to the situation is the instantiated relationships in which an individual agent finds himself enmeshed. Impulses and available actions are suggested and constrained by the environment, a major part of which is the role one plays relative to others. Thus, a mother has certain obligations and considerations to her offspring that others may not even think of; conversely, there are some general considerations that all may think in virtue of being citizens of the same state (i.e., legal rights and their protection). An important part of moral activity is the upholding of these relationships in an
108
SCOTT R. STROUD
intelligent way; thus, attention to these relationships and the actions they seem to suggest is a vital step in being a morally sensitive and caring individual. I will return to this point momentarily, but I wish to emphasize here that attentiveness to the present is a key constituent in upholding one’s relational obligations. One final consideration of the value of the present in moral activity is that it is the locus of preparing for future situations. I have already argued previously against too strong an intellectualist reading of SE, particularly those that emphasize too strongly a fixed self that has merely to be expressed. Dewey revolts against such notions of self,31 and his discussions of self-transformation highlight the changeability of that self which is to be expressed. The self is made aware of its self (its specific character) in the act (since the act utters the self), and “character [can] be transformed and developed through this continual mediation.”32 It is the meaning that we see in the present and in response to the present situation that lets us know our character and, more importantly, cultivate our character. Part of that cultivation involves improving character through acts of attention, and that character itself will create one who is attentive to her actions and situations. The important point is that attentiveness to the present is a key part of the goal of progressive adjustment, and is also a vital means in the present to do so. Insofar as attention is both a means and an end-in-view, it flows naturally from Dewey’s theory of value. A further, and connected, way in which to defend the importance and moral value of attention to the present is by highlighting the point that the end or goal of moral cultivation and activity is always some present situation. In other words, the means of moral activity are also an instantiation of the end of moral activity, since there is no principled difference between present “means” and present “ends” – both are part of the continuous life of purposive activity. I have already intimated a version of this argument above with the discussion of attention as a means and end to character transformation; here I will emphasize the general point that attention to a situation is an instantiation of what is desired in general moral activity. I will do this in two ways. First, attention to a situation entails attention to the details of the self (one’s impulses and desires), as well as to the environment (her station, its duties, the needs of others). Attention to the situation is adjustment to the situation. Attention to some remote ideal or abstract consideration removes attention from the concrete details of the situation, and hence any adaptation is purely coincidental. Sustainable and reliable (“progressive”) adaptation requires attention, and is constituted largely by attention to the situation. Thus, attention is a key element to moral cultivation because it is, in a very real sense, an instantiation of the goal that one is attempting to achieve. Dewey makes a similar point in his Human Nature and Conduct (HNC) from 1922: happiness is always a present, and should not be looked at as something far off. Indeed, he claims that “We have insisted that happiness, reasonableness, virtue, perfecting, are on the contrary parts of the present significance of present action. Memory of the past, observation of the present, foresight of the future are indispensable. But they are indispensable to a
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
109
present liberation, an enriching growth of action.”33 Happiness is a full, unified functioning of the human organism – it is an activity in the here-and-now. What makes it progressively adapted is the agent’s attention to its development in the present and in the situations after the present. Another argument for the importance of attention deals with relationships again. Dewey has always placed great importance on relationships, from his idealist works to his later works such as the 1932 Ethics.34 Indeed, it is from such a ground that Steven Fesmire criticizes notions of self-realization in Deweyan thought – for Dewey, Fesmire argues, there is no individual self to cultivate.35 Raymond Boisvert offers a similar criticism, indicating that selfrealization schemes seem to place growth apart from social interactions.36 One must note, however, that even Dewey’s early idealist thought prized the social integration and constitution of the individual. Relationships allow for one to exist as an individual, as well as to flourish as a truly developed individual. This latter point is what Dewey is maintaining in his discussions of the “ethical postulate” in OCT which maintains that In the realization of individuality there is found also the needed realization of some community of persons of which the individual is a member; and conversely, the agent who duly satisfies the community in which he shares, by that same conduct satisfies himself.37 This postulate assumes that individuals and communities cannot be ontologically separated, viz., that communities are made up of individuals and an individual will always be relatable to some grouping of other individuals. The more important claim it is making is that the development of the individual is the development of the community, and vice versa. Is this defendable? It seems to be, if one looks at the goal of community development being the creation of a group of individuals who enjoy their activities out of the worth of these activities themselves. Insofar as this system must be cohesive and sustainable, the moral development of one is dependant upon the moral development of others. Improving one’s character is the improvement of the community because (1) the community is closer to its overall realization than it used to be (viz., by one agent), and (2) the activities of each agent affect others, so there may be a multiplying effect to self-realization. Notice that since the end state is not certain and static, I am not claiming that the improvement of one individual ends all need for community development. Instead, ends-in-view are constantly changing and meeting the needs of the present situation, so attention to the needs of one’s station and capacities is an instantiation of moral development, albeit not the last one that will ever be needed in that community. Attention to the relationships one is involved in is a key part to upholding her own self-development as well as developing the community. These relationships suggest actions, highlight obligations, and also compose key parts to the happiness of individuals. Attention to them in the present is a vital part of successfully upholding them.
110
SCOTT R. STROUD
Of course, a version of the hedonistic paradox could be leveled against this sort of defense of moral cultivation via attention to present relationships and situations. It could suggest that if one pays attention so intently to the here-andnow, he will not be successful in future situations (lack of preparation connecting the present with these upcoming events, perhaps), or he may fail to uphold the demands of the present. For instance, a father who goes through life consciously trying to be a good father may not turn out to be the best father possible – he may over-analyze mistakes, or avoid “parentally risky” encounters with his son (for instance, coaching a baseball team and assuming a potentially conflicting station with his role of father), and so forth. In general, thinking so much about the present may hurt the effectiveness here and later that one wants, and would reduce the ease and pleasure with which one navigates through the present situation. I believe that such a critique can be easily answered from Deweyan grounds. Such an objection rests on a dichotomized understanding of ideals in moral conduct (including relational behavior). What the father is focusing on is not the present, but some remote ideal of “fatherhood” that must be upheld in the present. This is substantially different from basing a father’s actions on and in the concrete details of the situation because a large part of the father’s attention is not on the present situation – it is on the remote ideal. If the father was truly focused on his impulses, the son’s needs, the demands of the specific relationship they are embedded within, etc., it would be much easier to be a good father. Indeed, one may easily argue that a good father is one who is totally present in the situation – not lacking the time to be present physically, not focused on the demands of work when he is present, and not focused on remote goals not germane to the concrete situation at hand. This is an excellent example, I believe, of what Dewey pictures as a morally cultivated individual – one who is attentive to the situation (capacities and environment), and attentively adjusts her actions to reflect both the situation and her character. The present, if viewed in the right way, is the end one is continually seeking. One’s attitude is vital to such a notion of cultivation, and the key part to this attitude is attentiveness to the situation, including one’s relationships. Such attentiveness is both a means to further instantiations of desired states (and progressive adjustment in general) as well as the end of moral activity. Situations continue to change, so this end is as final as any moral end gets for Dewey – it is the focus of attention in the present, now and in any of the future presents one may occupy. 3. Implications for the Moral Value of Aesthetic Experience I will end this piece by locating this account, albeit briefly, within the larger project of connecting aesthetic activity to moral cultivation. Can art or aesthetic experience be morally valuable and edifying without being merely a form of propaganda or moral indoctrination? I believe the answer to be yes, and the justification for such a response comes in both in the notion of moral cultivation found in Dewey’s early ethics as well as in his later Art as Experience (1934,
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
111
AE). The challenge that such an account has to overcome is simple – how can one provide a reading of the value of art regarding moral cultivation and not render it a replaceable “mere” means? For instance, Malcolm Budd describes the “intrinsic value” of art as “the experience the work of art offers.”38 Artistic value is intrinsic on this account because it is caused or constituted by awareness solely to what is in the work of art (the work’s aesthetic properties, etc.). The value of this experience is not connected to other objects, purposes, or states of affairs, since these would render the artwork’s value merely instrumental. This is contrasted to “instrumental value,” which is “the value, from whatever point of view, of the actual effects of the experience of the work on people or the effects that would be produced if people were to experience the work.”39 Thus, the internal realm of the work of art is linked to a special type of value – “intrinsic” value. Other ways of approaching the artwork on this account emphasize practical purposes, linkages to other state of affairs, and ultimately focus on the effects of the interaction with the work of art. Budd wants to do justice to the interaction itself, and his notion of intrinsic value attempts to do just this. If the value of art is tied too closely to an effect (say the production of morally cultivated individuals), then one can say art is replaceable if another (or better) way of affecting such a result is identified. Thus, the challenge becomes connecting art with the end of moral improvement while safeguarding the rich details and sensory immediacy that make it such a unique practice. Keeping his insistence on moral value and activity involving a certain “spirit and method” to activity in mind, we find a clue to connecting aesthetic experience to moral cultivation when Dewey discusses the difference in the experience of two different men crossing the Hudson River into New York City by ferryboat. One man sees this portion of his commute as drudgery, and cannot wait for it to end; he notes “landmarks by which to judge progress toward his destination.”40 Another man sees “the scene formed by the buildings ... as colored and lighted volumes in relation to one another, to the sky and to the river. He is now seeing esthetically.”41 This person perceives an interconnected whole, a “perceptual whole, constituted by related parts. No one single figure, aspect, or quality is picked out as a means to some further external result which is desired, nor as a sign of an inference that may be drawn.”42 Two points of importance are found here. First, one sees a lived instantiation of the connection of means and ends in this aesthetic experience – seeing the skyline aesthetically is distinct from seeing parts of the skyline as indicative as waypoints in a journey to a remote goal, work. Second, the same situation or object can be experienced in a variety of ways. A certain way (“spirit or method”) of experienceing an object with a certain sort of attention and absorption characterizes what Dewey labels as “aesthetic experience.” This sort of reading of ends and means, as well as their connection to activity, is the Deweyan path to giving aesthetic experience a role in moral matters that does not extinguish the particularity of art as experienced. Art objects can be said to be morally valuable because they are an exemplary
112
SCOTT R. STROUD
instance of what all action ought to aim for – attending to and seeing the present means as intrinsically valuable and as interconnected with ends-in-view. Thus, aesthetic experience is morally cultivating on a deep level because it is both an instance of attention to the present (viz., the particulars of the art object), as well as a means for future attention to future presents (thus, as preparatory). One can sketch the sort of argument that can be made on its behalf from the preceding account of Deweyan moral cultivation. In brief, art (and the sort of experience it spawns) strikes at the separation of present activity from remote ends by making the means or process the end or product.43 In Dewey’s view of art, the subject and the object closely fuse and are integrated, because the focus of attention is on the immediate material of the experience.44 Like Martha Nussbaum’s reading of the moral value of literature, Dewey’s account can be said to be valuable because it opens the door to the experience of an art object being an experience of moral cultivation. For Nussbaum, the fine and detailed attention one puts into attending to a literary depiction is an instance of the attention needed in moral activity, such as that of upholding demands emerging from relationships and specific situations. Simply put, she is arguing that “Obtuseness is a moral failing; its opposite can be cultivated.”45 For Nussbaum, one primary way of such cultivation is through the instances of attentiveness in what can be called aesthetic experience. Such an instance of the endpoint of moral cultivation, for Dewey or for Nussbaum, does not end moral growth or striving; as I emphasized in the previous section, it is an instantiation as well as a connection to future states of affairs. This segues into a general point Dewey often made – activity has an immediate, experienced meaning as well as implications for future states of affairs (viz., desired ends). Dewey was well aware that humans can alter and adjust their orientation toward the meaning of experiences, a fact that is well noted in a 1939 essay titled “Democratic Ends need Democratic Methods for their Realization.”46 In this work, Dewey hints at the point I have gestured toward in regard to aesthetic experience – that its morally cultivating value is tied to its focusing of attention to the present as intrinsically or immediately valuable, as well as to its connections to other future presents that are aimed at in present action. In discussing the topic of using “non-democratic” means to achieve ends that are democratic, he notes that democracy is only created by instantiating a form of it now. This is due to the fact that the “now” reflects our attitudes and values as well as shapes future attitudes and values. It is both an instantiation of the endpoint (democracy) as well as preparation for future instantiations of that endpoint. Those who think the present can be sacrificed (in other words, treated as a mere means to a future goal) are forgetting the value of the present in immediate experience. Dewey reminds us that “We must always remember that the dependence of ends upon means is such that the only ultimate result is the result that is attained today, tomorrow, the next day, and day after day, in the succession of years and generations.”47 The goal of action (the end) always lies in some present, some “here-and-now,” and there is no determined
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
113
“final present.” One should not make the activity of a given present a mere means to some remote end as this makes it expendable and not equal to what the valued future state is – a present site of experience that can be a source of immediate meaning and value for an experiencing individual. Failure to recognize this equivalence leads not only to the lack of experiential value that the present (now) is capable of, but in all likelihood will foster habits and attitudes that will equally soil the meaning and potential of the future when it too becomes present to the agent. Dewey makes this point in his work on education as well. In Experience and Education, he attacks theories of education that make education a mere preparation for something external to it (whether cognitive skills, virtue, etc.), stating The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and even shuts out, the very condition by which a person can be prepared for his future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.48 It is the meaning of the present that is in the experience, and that is what ought to be the focus of attention, not some remote end or state. That is moral cultivation or progressive adjustment to the present situation and its actual meaning to some degree or another, and that is exemplified by the close connection of means and ends in aesthetic experience. This is what I have elsewhere called orientational meliorism, denoting the method of correcting or improving experience by altering or changing the orientation or mental habits one takes to the particular situations one confronts.49 The orientation that Dewey’s early ethics encourages us to take is that of attentiveness to the present; this, incidentally, is also the hallmark orientation instantiated and cultivated by aesthetic experiences. The account sketched above makes sense of art’s distance from much of the “practical world” (due to its remove from immediately “practical” endeavors in many cases) but while still giving it a vital role in the project of moral improvement. Moral cultivation, for Dewey, is integrally tied to attentiveness to the present situation, as well as the potential it holds for future states of affairs. I have elaborated on such a reading as found in his early work in ethics, and I hope to have at least intimated the direction from which one can take it in addressing the conundrum of the moral value of aesthetic experience. The full account of that maneuver, however, will await another venue.
114
SCOTT R. STROUD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Previous versions of this article have benefited from the comments of Richard Shusterman, Joseph Margolis, Paul Guyer, and Paul C. Taylor, and portions were presented at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting, New York, 27–30 December 2005, as well as to audiences at San José State University, California State University–East Bay, and Temple University in 2006.
NOTES 1. One possible exception would be some of the authors in or around the 18th century, such as Kant and Schiller. For my reading of Kant on moral cultivation, see Scott Stroud, “Rhetoric and Moral Progress in Kant’s Ethical Community,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 38 (2005): 328–354. 2. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, 2nd edn. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000). 3. Indeed, this is what motivates Victor Kestenbaum’s project in The Grace and Severity of the Ideal: John Dewey and the Transcendent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 11–18, which focuses on locating notions of transcendence and ideals in Dewey’s thought. 4. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), p. 280. Hereafter references to the Collected Works of John Dewey are indicated by EW (The Early Works), MW (The Middle Works), or LW (The Later Works), followed by volume and page numbers. 5. For example, think of Kant’s employment of the “summum bonum,” the highest good composed of the perfect union of virtue and happiness that can be imagined. This good, according to his moral thought of the 1780s, was an unreachable ideal that we merely approximate in our earthly activities. For Kant’s description of this ideal, see his 1788 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), especially around 5:123. 6. Dewey, “Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive,” EW 3: 155–173. 7. EW 3: 162–163. 8. A similar, pragmatist reading of morality as being without foundations and without certain ending principles is given in Joseph Margolis, Moral Philosophy after 9/11 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2004). 9. Thomas M. Alexander, John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). 10. Dewey, Psychology, EW 2. 11. Dewey, “From Absolutism to Experimentalism,” LW 5: 147–160. 12. Dewey, “Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics,” EW 3: 239–388; “The Study of Ethics,” EW 4: 221–364. 13. Jennifer Welchman, Dewey’s Ethical Thought (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). 14. EW 3: 301. 15. EW 3: 301. 16. EW 3: 303. 17. EW 4: 234. 18. EW 4: 236. 19. EW 4: 240.
Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
115
20. EW 4: 241. 21. EW 4: 241. 22. EW 3: 304. 23. Welchman, Dewey’s Ethical Thought, p. 99. 24. Ibid., p. 100. 25. See Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, MW 14. 26. EW 4: 244. 27. EW 3: 378. 28. EW 4: 293. 29. EW 4: 307. 30. EW 3: 266, 304. 31. EW 4: 258. 32. EW 4: 359. 33. HNC, MW 14: 182. 34. Ethics, LW 7: 227, 298. 35. Steven Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 99. 36. Raymond D. Boisvert, John Dewey: Rethinking our Time (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 60. 37. EW 3: 322. 38. Malcolm Budd, Values of Art: Pictures, Poetry, and Music (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 4. 39. Ibid., p. 5. 40. Dewey, Art as Experience, LW 10: 140. 41. LW 10: 140. 42. LW 10: 140–141. 43. I am, of course, aware of the common criticisms of aesthetic experience, as well as the notorious problems attendant to monolithic uses of the word “art.” Here I beg the reader’s indulgence to allow me to merely point to a possibility that the forgoing reading of moral cultivation enables. 44. LW 10: 281. 45. Martha C. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 156. 46. Dewey, “Democratic Ends need Democratic Methods for their Realization,” LW 14: 367–368. 47. LW 14: 367. 48. Dewey, Experience and Education, LW 13: 29–30. 49. Scott R. Stroud, “Pragmatist Aesthetics and Film: The Thin Red Line and Orientational Meliorism,” Film and Philosophy 10 (2006): 67–83; Scott R. Stroud, “Ontological Orientation and the Practice of Rhetoric: A Perspective from the Bhagavad Gita,” Southern Communication Journal 70 (2005): 146–160.
116
SCOTT R. STROUD
Scott R. Stroud Lecturer in Communication Studies Department of Communication Studies University of Texas 1 University Station A1105 Austin, Texas 78712 United States
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 117–150
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value Hugh G. McDonald
This paper presents a basically new theory of values. Potential goods such as flying machines have been creatively actualized and thus value is creative actualization. Norms, ideals, standards, and theories also require creative actualization. As actions melioristically transform the world for the better, the goals of action provide purpose and meaning, as well as the ground of change, a superior goal providing the end for which agents undertake action. The kinds of value represent irreducibly plural categories of good: beauty, knowledge, prosperity, intimacy, and so on.
1. Creative Actualization Creative actualization is a basically new theory of value that is consistent with the theories of value of classical pragmatism taken as a whole, particularly John Dewey’s, although it differs in certain respects from each of the pragmatists.1 The theory evolved out of a growing conviction that, despite many subtle psychological analyses of value that had been set forth in philosophy and the literature of value, these approaches actually had little or nothing to do with value. At most the psychological factors and motives may be one, and only one condition of evaluation, and only in the human agent. Usually, however, even if or where they are a prelude to value, psychological factors contribute nothing and tell us little or nothing about value itself except, perhaps, the relentless egoism of Western philosophy and culture. Value theorists should free their subject from what Frege called “psychologizing,” just as logic was liberated about a century ago and on similar grounds. In the background of psychological theories lie metaphysical commitments, especially to the Cartesian distinction of subject and object. Values should also be examined independently of metaphysics, whether that of substance and attribute, or any other. Let us begin with consideration of one variety of a good, a plane, a flying machine. We can examine the eidetic aspect of such a machine, distinguishing planes from other kinds. However, it also has a genetic-historical aspect, since planes did not always exist. Prior to the successes of the Wright Brothers, flying machines were simply an idea, a possibility, which the Wrights and other
118
HUGH G. MCDONALD
visionaries made into a goal. In 1875, there were no working planes. In 1925, there were many functioning planes. Attempts to create flying machines prior to 1907 were unsuccessful. The machines were defective and would not fly: they were no good. This is indicated in the well-worn phrase “it won’t fly.” Planes were desired; it was felt that they would bring pleasure of a sort; the will was there; the interest; the correct attitudes, feelings and emotions. What was not in existence prior to Kitty Hawk was a good flying machine, a plane that functions as it should and actually flies. The goodness of a plane was not contingent or based on any of these psychological factors, but entirely independent of them. Desiring a plane or feeling it would be valuable alone could not produce a good plane. Actual flying machines were produced through practice, action, trial and error and the like. These activities were end-governed, since the goal was a flying machine, not satisfaction of desire or feeling. Desire, feeling and other psychological factors may well have been present prior to the actual creation of a working plane. However, the goodness of the latter was in no way contingent upon them. Those who failed may have had such psychological motives as much as the Wright Brothers did. What they did not have was a plane that could fly. In general, value is connected with such a genesis or actualization of a goal at a historical point in time. This point separates actualization of a good as an achievement from its mere potentiality. Prior to 1907 planes were a possibility; after that point in time they were an actuality. This movement from potential to actual involves the creation of a novel good, a novelty. Thus the world is at least subtly changed, since the world before the time at which the good is created did not contain such goods. We now live in a world of flight while in 1880 they did not. While time continues as before, alterations mark historical changes, since a novelty has altered the world, whether for better or worse, more or less. History is thereby differentiated as the kind and number of goods is increased. New values emerge at such a point of historical differentiation, marking the pragmatic actualization of an end which, prior to that point, had only been aimed at. The result is good, since the end is actually achieved: the result is true to the aim in some respect. The plan is achieved successfully. The good is feasible and functional: a working flying machine. Value marks the historical point at which history is altered or changed by the emergence of the novel, which differentiates the moment from the past in greater or lesser ways. What was not now is. Planes are historical novelties, not recurrences of ontological patterns in a becoming. The change is not a comingto-be or becoming, as planes did not exist prior to their creative actualization. They were not. There was no being or existence of planes prior to the change marked by creative actualization of planes as a good, as functioning. Value as the historical point of differentiation is the differentiation of an individual good at a distinct point in time. Temporal, as opposed to generic or specific, that is, normative differentiation is truly novel: the basis for genuine differentiation. To individuate in time is creative actualization of a good. Creation of a new good, whether completely novel or a novel individual, changes the world. Value is the
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
119
ground of such changes, since it is the aim of the activity that creatively actualizes the good and marks the point at which it is accomplished or emergence of successful achievement. Thus value as such is not transcendent. If we achieve something in time a good of some sort has emerged. The nail did not bend this time but was successfully driven home, the note was hit on pitch, the theory successfully predicted the new planet, the invention works. The criteria are completely non-subjective since the practical success of planned change is a good, the mark of value as the historical point of change, novelty and differentiation. Value marks a difference in the world as a historical change. Since all such goods change or differentiate the world in some respect, value is the ground of such change. Goods are maximized by increasing successes, by the increase of creatively actualized goods in the world, whether planes, successful theories, art works, or other modes and categories of good. Even though these changes may only increase value one good at a time, the world is ostensibly better, since the quantity of value is increased. The future is ameliorated with improvement over time. Since they were not in existence prior to their actualization, their creative actualization as individual goods is genuine differentiation, historical change. Teleologically, values complete action, by bringing it to an end. Action is not endless, but finite and comes to an end when the good is creatively actualized. Action is finalized when and if the project actually achieves worth. This achievement gives the action both its ground as an action and its meaning. Action can be beneficial, since its end increases goods. Normatively, values provide grounding for rules, principles, ideals, standards, and other potentialities. They are creatively actualized as generic or specific individuals, one good such as a plane. Norms are grounded as creatively actualized goods, the manifesting of what ought to be. Thus rules are literally grounded in their creative actualization as a goal with an end as success. Temporally, or more strictly historically, values open the future to the present by aiming at a differentiated world in the future. Thus a life or ethic of improved future times can be envisioned and projected as a goal of action. The future can be altered for the better pragmatically through teleological or normative actions and activities. Creative actualization involves an ongoing activity in which a valued end is projected into the future as worthwhile, a potential improvement. It is completed as a good through action. Creative actualization unites worth, action, end, and achieved good as one activity. A potential change is evaluated worthwhile and then creatively actualized as a good in the world through action or activity. Thus creative actualization is in the world, a goal actualized in the world. Of all possibilities, those that are creatively actualized are both feasible and have been chosen over rivals: evaluated as worth creative actualization. Thus there is a critical element in creative actualization as much as a practical one. Creative actualization marks the bridge between the speculative and the practical as much as between the present and future or norms and world. Creative actualization of a good is practical and not merely speculative, as the
120
HUGH G. MCDONALD
example of the plane indicates. Creative actualization marks the point at which speculative evaluation is brought into world as a good. Idealism taken as a whole is correct in maintaining that the field of values is not limited to the existing, but larger, since it includes possibilities, norms, and standards. Realists are correct that possibilities have no worth without actualization. Actualizing possibilities is creative, because it is not ontologicalexistential: it goes beyond the real, the given, and thereby changes reality. Actualization, including bringing about novelties and norms that ought to be creatively actualized, is value in historically distinct contexts. Dewey is correct in his view that contexts or situations are vital in defining parameters and frameworks of creative problematics. Where he went astray is in the reduction of this activity to the “natural,” since creative possibilities go far beyond the natural defined as what exists. What is required for value is the creation of such potentialities grounded in the world as goods and its compossibility with other distinct goods. Value as actualized and not a mere wish or desire is essential to the connection and interaction of the possible to the actual. The results of the goal of creative actualization of possibilities are actual in the world instantiated as a good. Agents actualize value through action and activity as goods and thereby ground what is adjudged worthwhile in the world, if it is feasible. Artwork provides an illustration. An artwork requires a construct in the world, regardless of the feelings involved. It is the creative actualization through external components in the world of something new and unique. Skill in accomplishing this goal is the art in one sense, involving actions in the world and manipulation of external materials. Such skill is not based on subjective or psychological states, but practice and to some degree talent. The work of art is creatively actualized regardless of how an observer feels about it or emotes about it. Its beauty ties both the artist and the observer to the world as it is the creative actualization of potential beauty into a world as a unique work. What is good is that we can create beauty, bring about new words of beauty. We can also creatively actualize designs. It is good that we can create cures for diseases and actualize a healthy life style. It is also mostly for the good that we can create wealth and the goods that preserve their value. That we can create goods while preserving other goods is also good. That we can hypothesize the truth of principles is good and that they can be confirmed through the creative actualization of knowledge as an activity governed by the end of confirmation or discovery is good. That we can communicate is good. That we can live in peace is good. All these goods are grounded in our world, as they constitute our world, the world of our own historical time. Outside of philosophy, such creative actualizations, manifesting value, are referred to as “goods.” Goods reflect the creative actualization of instances of good; instances that have been creatively actualized are goods. Even economic objects are not material things or material objects except in a materialist metaphysic. To characterize them as such ignores their creation and the imaginative vision that foresaw their possibility. They have been creatively
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
121
actualized and are valued. The work that went into their creative actualization was the goal of betterment, for a better way of life, since it was over and above biological necessity. If value is creative actualization, then the goods of the world which have value and to which value is assigned are also created. Nor are economic commodities the only goods. Economic commodities delimit a precise field of goods, those with commercial potential. Economists and the world of commerce refer to created wealth as “goods” as in “shipping the goods,” not things as units or instances. The downside is the economism of using this way of referring to individual instances. However, this nominative use of good is not confined to economic life. Aristotle, Moore and Dewey approach value preferring the adjectival use, but base this approach on an implicit evaluation, given that “good” and “value” can be used as many different parts of speech, including the verbal use of “value”. It is only where ontological prejudices have prevailed, or the metaphysics of subjects and objects, that goods are evaluated as good “things” or good “objects.” To argue that referring to goods as “things,” “objects,” “existences” or “states of affairs,” is a superior approach is a value judgment. The ontological at best merely captures such value as the enduring, but since value may fade the value of ontological as a concept is questionable. Another good is that we do not live in a world of being qua being: of fixed, destined, unchanging stasis without change, novelty or improvement. That we can keep making pottery, keep growing corn year in and year out; in sum that we can bring new instances to actuality is not, as Heidegger and Aristotle would have it, the ontological element in change. It is the value of method as such. The method has value as a method: inherently. It also reveals the continuing potentiality of the world as good. Values are discoveries of practical possibilities that do not have being as such but mark changes as actualities if creatively actualized. Discoveries yet to be made in the future have no existence, no being. Goods are not entities since future inventions have no being or existence, but may yet have value. Goods do not “exist” in the sense of being, but are subsequently creatively actualized as novelties that change the world. This answers the question of the objectivity of value. However, the point of this section is that goods make no reference to objects or subjects, the Cartesian epistemology that has spilled over into value theory. There are no objects only goods. Goods, however, are the result of the process of creative actualization, not identical with it. Another question is whether creative actualization is too tied to goods as a whole rather than specific qualities of goods. Is creative actualization the actualization of good qualities or of goods? Is it of a whole or, to use Aristotle’s word, attributes? Creative actualization can be of either: a plane is no good without all of its parts, since it cannot fly without them. Thus a good plane is a more holistic notion. However, improvements in the quality of this or that element might be creatively actualized as well, including the comfort of the passengers, safety, and fuel efficiency. The goal can be the creative actualization
122
HUGH G. MCDONALD
of either the whole or simply a valued quality of the whole. Quality is primarily an evaluative term or a standard in the context of value but creative actualization of superior quality or a higher quality good is nevertheless inherent in the good, if it is achieved. Further, there are other modes of good than simply tangible goods. A prediction is good if successful, such as the prediction of the bending of light by Einstein. Predictions may also involve tangibles, however, for Herschel actually predicted the planet Uranus. The planet “was not,” by analogy with planes, prior to this prediction. It was creatively actualized as a planet by the successful prediction, since its actuality as a planet was not known prior to this point. The actuality of objects of theory is also a creative actualization of a sort. Quality can be inherent in the good. Creative actualization means that a standard or ideal can be actualized: the creative actualization of a norm. A part or a whole can be brought up to standard, as having successfully fulfilled the standard as an instance. The value is then inherent in the instance or valuable in itself in some respect and thus not in an extrinsic relation. The standards or other norms are actualized in an instance that need not refer beyond itself in an extrinsic relation for this mode of good, since it is inherent in it. A good is creatively actualized as such, not in any relation, once it has been completed. If a quality, norm or standard is creatively actualized in an instance, the quality or norm is inherent in the instance. A plane that flies has the principle of flight; one that does not is no good. Again, if it is inherent the question arises again as to whether it is “objective.”2 A quality of either a part or the whole, I would argue, can be inherent, without being “objective.” There is no relation to a legitimating metaphysical first, whether of value, substance or subject. Making may involve a repetition of previous creative actualizations, reproduction of or copying a good. Since creative actualization includes creative actualization in instances that can be duplicated, in further creative actualizations, creative actualization can be a reduplicative process. Copies reveal the normative dimension of creative actualization. In this context, the question is whether a good is a composite in a sense, involving the individuation of a norm as a quality or as a whole, in an instance of a normative good. Is duplication the creative actualization of a kind as an instance? The goal of duplication is creative actualization of norms in the form of principles that regulate both the production and the good. This is important for goods, as goods can be increased once they have been creatively actualized successfully, making more new planes or other goods. Once flight has been achieved it can be achieved again. Thus norms are grounded in the world as principles and normativity seems to be a worldly, not simply imaginative, principle but as an instance. Creative actualization grounds norms in the world as goods that follow principles. It might be objected that creative actualization may well be the condition of value but is not the mark of value. I would respond that creative actualization is one process with different elements. The first is evaluation of the worth of a project. Thus evaluation is distinct from value, since evaluation requires creative
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
123
actualization for grounding in world. The evaluation that a goal would be worthwhile is not yet the achievement or creative actualization of the goal. The goal, end, or purpose, is another element. This goal is the ground in one sense as the ground of action, but not as result or consequence, a distinction analogous to Dewey’s distinction of end-in-view from consequence.3 Evaluation of this goal as worthwhile precedes action and is creatively actualized in or through action. Creative actualization involves acting for such a worthwhile goal in an activity, often of a type like economic, medical or artistic. The result, if successful or feasible is creative actualization of a good. Creative actualization, creating values from the world may be an art, a skill or craft, even a process of thinking. Value creation may be within a category or personal. But it involves a separation, a distinction which includes wresting what has value from out of the potentialities of the world. The results are goods that are creatively actualized from a past in which they were not actual. In summary, value as creative actualization includes evaluation of worthwhile goals, action and activity in pursuit of such goals and the creative actualization of goods. Creative actualization of a good can involve a new kind that was not actual prior to the historical point of creation, in actualizing a novel possibility such as a flying machine. This same activity can also include creatively actualizing norms and ideals as instances, moving from ought to is, grounding them in the world. Predictions are of this type, since confirming hypotheses is confirmation of a norm in the form of a principle or law in actuality. The overall result of such goods consists in the creation of a new world that includes new instances and kinds, differentiating time as historical change. The quality of world is at least ostensibly improved, since more good has been added to world. The world is at least ostensibly better off. The question of whether the world is actually better off is a question for critical and moral evaluation. This topic is beyond the scope of this paper. However, in general, as a rough indicator, the world is better off if intrinsic goods are compossible, and if one good is not creatively actualized at the expense of another. The survival of one organism should not be at the expense or life of another. Value includes the degree to which a goal is actualized since the result must function well or it has not been fully creatively actualized. If an end is not fully actualized then the possible good is defective or incomplete, it is not up to standard and it will not fly. Creative actualization includes actuality, action, and activity, all of which have a similar root. The tendency of recent philosophy is to separate these by analysis almost into different worlds. I argue that action and activity create the actual world and thus are interconnected in important ways that supercede the minute differences in importance. Action and activity are the means to effect change. They are grounded in value as creative actualization, the ground of action and activity that gives them an end and regulate how the action will proceed over time. Activity of course is both a wider term than action and may
124
HUGH G. MCDONALD
include the end. An activity may not involve action, since resting is an activity but not an action in the normal sense. Activities may be defined in terms of their end while action is merely regulated in terms of its end, unless, following Aristotle, it constitutes an end in itself. Actualization creates the actual world of change, in which action is combined with actual in a world. Animals and plants are part of this world of change since they are involved in the transformation of the world, creating the biosphere and acting for ends. They act to survive, to preserve and in some cases to enhance their own life.4 Activity requires certain conditions that are universal and hold for all activities. These include a specific time, a historical context, and a location or place. However, for some activities not just any time or place will do but only a specific time or place. Observing an eclipse cannot be done at any time or place but only at certain times and places. Eating a meal is more flexible. If value as creative actualization involves activity it may require a specific setting and time. Other aspects of activities may not be universal for all activities, but may be required for particular ones or for certain types. These include culture, institutions, beliefs, language, and customs. A particular religious practice may be culturally mediated, while money requires institutions and education is generally transmitted by language. Value in general means that we can actualize the possible. We can enact our ends, norms, standards and other worthwhile possibilities. By acting according to duty, we are actualizing the duty as an instance. By invention, we are creatively actualizing a worthwhile possibility. Thus what ought to occur meets the world in value, actualized as an end. Norms are possible in the world since if they ought to be accomplished, and are actualizable as an end of action, they can be creatively actualized as a worthwhile action. The worthwhile may include both actualized goods such as a good tool, and unactualized standards that are possible but not yet accomplished. Imaginary goods, goals, and projects are not actual but can be creatively actualized; the actual is distinguished by value criteria. That is, the actual has been successfully achieved as goods. Actualization involves meeting the world in action and actualizing the possible. The activity of bringing about novel goods, creative actualization, involves bringing to actuality what had only been potentially or possibly worthwhile. The possible may or may not have occurred to someone as an idea; no doubt some possibilities lie hidden in the mists of the future, while others, like hidden treasures, may never occur to anyone. In any case, possibilities are not always potentialities, since the latter implies a potentiality of some actuality, some previously actualized good; while a possibility is more novel. Bringing out any potentialities of an actuality might include improvements in quality in some actual good, while creative actualization of possibilities is more like the invention of flying machines. Invention is indeed novel, not merely an improvement. However, both are modes of creative actualization, since improvements in quality must also be creatively actualized.
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
125
The question also arises of whether creative actualization as an actualization of a potency concerns the action or the good created by the action. Is creative actualization in the act or a good created by the act? Of course if the action is itself good, its creative actualization is inherently valuable. However, the action is generally connected with means, and is done for the sake of creative actualization as its ground. A good is the product or result of creative actualization, a creatively actualized good. Value occurs when the end of action is achieved as success. This may or may not include a product that, as a good, has creative actualization as its ground. Creative actualization may or may not include creative actualization of the duration of the good. In the case of durable goods it does, but in the case of performances it does not. A musician may hit the correct note, but would be incorrect to hold it longer than is suitable to the piece. The latter would not be good but defective. However, as some kinds of goods decay their value may be reduced: they become threadbare and are written off or amortized. Their actual value fades over time: the basis or grounding in the actual. Art works may form an exception, since antiquity may be a factor in the worth of a piece, even if it is incomplete, broken, or depauperate. A faded but genuine medieval tapestry may be worth one hundred shiny, bright, contemporary copies. “Actualization” is a superior overall concept to “existence” or “realization,” since the former includes the genesis of the good. This term also includes artifacts in the actual world of goods, the world of human transformations and change. Goods do not come into existence as if from nowhere, they are creatively actualized, either as discovery or duplication. “Existence” fails to indicate the creativity involved in goods, as if they always were. “Existence” is not critical, since the existing goods have been creatively actualized through previous evaluation of their actuality as worthwhile and subsequently established by action. “Realization” as the in rem of things is only one mode of actualization and fails to include its genesis: the creation of the real. Worth is actualized as a good. The real is fixed in things, which have been creatively actualized. Thus things are only one mode of actualization which fails to indicate their genesis. If actualization constitutes the active and actual element in value, the dynamic and worldly element, creativity brings the novel, melioristic element. Creativity involves acting for a new goal and thus action and telos, an end. A new good is creatively actualized, adding to the total value in the world. As we noted above, this improves the world in some respect, subject to wise, critical evaluation. It is melioristic if it is compossible with other inherent goods. Compossibility creates reciprocity, the reciprocity of prior actualizations with novel goods. Reciprocity is a moral norm for creative actualization. Creativity is neither subjective nor objective but more basic, accomplishing a novel differentiation in the world. When someone has been created a novel good, it is not merely subjective, since it has been actualized in the world. Nor is it entirely objective since, like an artwork, it reflects the creator to some degree,
126
HUGH G. MCDONALD
not just the world. The act of creation is central in transferring the worthwhile in imagination to the actual. Creativity transforms the world, however, as historical differentiation. Value as creative actualization is the meeting of “subject” and “object” in the making of world as its objective. In this sense, the world is made part of oneself to some degree and loses its alien quality as our own. Creativity may help overcome alienation.5 Of course creation in creative actualization in this sense is the ground of the object and thus more basic. The subject, granting the actuality of a sub-jectum as underlying the stream of consciousness, is informed with values by acculturation and development, thus grounded in value through creative actualization of character. However, imagination may be one source of novelties as ideas. Creative actualization of worthwhile goals of the imagination constitutes value, grounding of creative images in the world as actual goods. Creativity is thus fundamental and more important than labor, which it regulates. People can be creative in small ways as well as large, for example, in creating a new kind of daily meal and actualizing it. Creativity in this sense is tied to all activity, since successful completion of the activity is a creative actualization. Creativity is an important and basic element of all activities, personal and impersonal. Bringing about a novelty often involves trial and error, since there is no experience to guide creation. Kant’s theory of practice as based in the “empirical” misses what is novel about creative actualization: what is invented is new. The novel cannot be based on past experience, as only repetition of the novel can.6 Craftsmanship involves the perfecting and repetition of an initial creative actualization but is itself creative in perfecting and in dealing with new circumstances. Of course creation is not creation ex nihilo as it were, since elements in and of the world are transformed by creation into novelties. Computers are new, but not created out of absolutely nothing. Yet in a sense creativity involves a novelty that comes out of nothing, for although computers have physical components, computers as such are a novelty – a new item in the repertory of the feasible. The actuality is new as a creatively actualized vision. Even the components are creatively actualized as plastics, metals, and other fabricated materials. Moreover, novelty always disrupts the stasis, the natural order. Value can indeed be a “non-natural predicate.”7 Value as the ground of the new, the creation of novelty, is the basis for a superior world, and as meliorist disrupts the “natural order,” the fixed world that is the hypothesis of philosophies of being. Value is temporally-historically dynamic and as such values can be upsetting. As novel, value is a check upon the stultification of values inherited from the tradition. Creative actualization, as we noted above, includes a discovery of the novel. However, some creative actualizations are more novel than others; there are degrees of novelty. A factory that turns out identical parts creates new goods, but they are new only in one dimension, whereas their original invention was a greater novelty. Accurate predictions of new kinds are a greater novelty than a new act of viewing them. The Wright Brothers broke a new barrier that is more novel than later imitations or improvements. The idea was actualized
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
127
creatively for the first time. These beginnings are of course successful in certain respects, but they are good more than as mere success. The idea is actualized creatively for the first time. These different senses of novelty can be referred to generically as original and contextual. The latter, contextual novelty, may well result in new goods, or preservation of older ones. However, its novelty is not as great as entirely new creations. Indeed the two can be in conflict, as in the case of genetic engineering, which some consider as a threat to life. A prey trying to avoid capture may create a new pathway through the undergrowth. An animal must with each step decide if this step aids its survival. Taking the pathway may or may not prove to be the correct strategy for the animal to survive, to creatively actualize its own life. If the strategy is defective, it will lose its life. It should have remained on the older pathway. The latter was at one time new and creates a means for new acts of motion by different creatures. While both are creative actualizations, contextual novelty should not be confused with creative actualization, which can include contextual novelty. Contextual novelty also includes “jury-rigging” temporary solutions to contextual problems. Creative novelties are actualized in the world. The discovery of new values is both historical-temporal and creative. New values contribute to the change in the world that is historical. They may also include discoveries about the possibilities inherent in world. The emergence of both new species and technologies has changed the world-scape on the basis of discovered worth. New value determinations have meant a new world. Such novelties transform the world. Values once hidden by the future have been revealed through creativity. Discovery of such novelties reveals a whole set of aspects about the world unknown to that point: value is revelatory. New goods as feasibilities reveal something of world previously undisclosed. Value reveals the world in terms of its potentialities: it widens our understanding of the world as capable of new compossibilities. Our world is the latest compossible set of creative actualizations or goods, considered qualitatively. Value also brings new value to the world, since the new value is worth creating. Differences of value that are discovered in turn create new possibilities. Good as creative actualization creates the possibility of amelioration. Destiny is not fixed: the novel is not determined in principle, it is free. The world can be made a better place. Creative actualization of qualities of a creatively actualized whole is such amelioration. As we noted above, this could be a quality of a part in some cases, for example, the fineness of color in a gem. Thus a lemon tree may be good, without defects, but another may have a superior form, fruit, or other particular characteristics, however quality is defined. Also, its qualities or improvements are a further good: better. However, creative actualization is generally of a whole good, and its parts function within that whole. Flight is not a property of a part of a plane but of the whole: the whole flies. Creative actualization of a calculating machine, a computer, involves the whole. Thus creative actualization concerns amelioration in general
128
HUGH G. MCDONALD
although it can involve improvements of particular parts. Creative actualization of goods is in general ameliorative. What is the test for value? At what point has value been reached? What is the criterion for creative actualization, the event of value? There is a decisive test for values, if the result does not work, or will not fly. Thus it is not good, since it is defective in some way, whether entirely or in part. It may not be up to standard, or can be broken or in need of repair. This test is an event in time, for it happens at the point at which the good passes the test or proves defective. Ultimately such tests involve action, a test that culminates in passing or failing. Value may not be perceivable at any point in time, since a plane that is not in use cannot be perceived to fly. Value may be less a property of actual goods, than whether such goods fulfill their function well or badly, goodness as relative to purpose. A good functions well for the purpose for which it was designed. It can consistently be used for its end, in activities of creative actualization or value. A plane that is maintained flies properly again and again. In turn, purposes are related to worth or value, not things. They are grounded in value as creative actualization. Creative actualization can mean functioning or working well. A new invention such as a computer is not defective but works properly and well. Value has been reached when the novelty works, at which point the activity is finished, ended and complete in itself, a whole. This may mean a part as well, however, as when lacking a particular part prevents flight. Replacement of the part allows flight again and this ends the activity of repair. The plane has gone from incomplete to completed and from defective to valuable. “Wellfunctioning” is not the only sense of creative actualization, of course, but it is one mode.8 It certainly applies to machines and, by analogy, to the parts of an organism, the organs. It is less applicable to putting norms into practice, other than mechanical principles, in fields like morals. A painting is complete when it is finished, when all its parts are completed and it forms a finished whole. But we may not regard this in terms of functioning well and may even treasure incomplete works of art. Again, a prediction can be successful but not a case of functioning well. However, in the latter case, it may imply that a theory from which it is derived functions well at predicting, for example, the theory of gravitation and the prediction of Uranus. The theory functions as it should and norms have been successfully actualized as creative predictions. Functioning well involves the creative actualization of an idea or norm as a good, which functions as it should. Thus it is a criterion of when creative actualization has been reached, the point at which value has accrued. Oughts and ideas are actualized as goods when they function according to plan, or as they should. Goods, then, are derivative and grounded in norms and ideals that have been creatively actualized as functional. Action here mediates norms and the world by the creative actualization of the former, another mode of value. In the case of a flying machine the test is simple and clear cut: the machine either flies or it does not. In some other cases the criterion may be more complex or
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
129
ambiguous, for example, a new computer program or even more especially the completion of a painting. Pollock could have added more paint, but had a sense of what was enough. Even representational paintings may be overdone. Mozart was accused of using “too many notes,” although most listeners would not want a single note less. Success is another test or criterion. If some good is actualized it has value both in the sense of successful actualization, one that is not defective, and that the good is a feasible creation. We noted above that a prediction is a good one if successful. Value as creative actualization includes the judgment that an outcome has been successfully achieved. A good outcome has been achieved by contrast with inconclusive or bad ones and adversities have been overcome with favorable results. Success is also a matter of degree. A new quality of flight may be partially achieved, but require more testing and development to achieve complete success. Degrees of success may not be equivalent to degrees of good. A good off of a mass-production assembly line may be as much of a good as a complete novelty, but the latter may be more of a success. Each note hit properly is a good note, although the composition as a whole is more of a success. Creative actualization is more than just success or achievement as such of course, since it may involve invention or creation of novelties. Success may simply involve contextual novelty, not the greater sort involved in invention. I may successfully take the next step in a daily walk but this is usually not a great accomplishment. Creative actualization in the greater sense involves bringing the non-actual, what does not exist, to actuality. New possibilities are opened up by an initial actualization, such as quick passage from some distant place to another by flying machines. In turn, previous actualizations were at one time new goods. Ultimately all this invention creates grounds for evaluation of propriety about what will work and what will not, a sense of feasibility, which is a derivative sense of value. Metal is more suitable for kettles for boiling water than paper. The latter falls apart when filled with water and burns when put over a flame. It is no good because it does not work for the purpose of boiling water, although it may be excellent for printing. Creative actualization of paper kettles can be critically evaluated as a waste of time and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. Creative actualization actualizes in the world, and thus of all the possibilities what has been actualized is feasible on some level. However, something may function temporarily that is not generally a suitable substitute for a good. Propriety is elastic to some degree. Closely related to functioning, success, and propriety is practicality. Practicality is a test for creative actualization, since actualizing what is not actual involves making practical a theoretical or speculative possibility, an idea. The idea does not have merely speculative worth, but has been creatively actualized. In a sense some creation is no good if it is not practical: it is useless unless it has proven worthwhile in practice. The practical is the mark of grounding a possibility as an actuality in the world, having a basis in actuality as well
130
HUGH G. MCDONALD
as functioning well. Value cannot be defined as practical, however, since practicality is a test for certain kinds or modes of value, rather than a mark of value as such. An idea may have theoretical value within a system of ideas, a theoretical whole, without having practical application, however. Practicality is the criterion of worth or of future values creatively actualized into a present or practical actuality. Creative actualization of a future possibility is its practical actuality. One nail of the same lot bends, while the other does not. The former is “no good,” although they are conceptually and perceptually identical as nails. Their worth becomes differentiated in practice. Even the difference between individuals may be revealed by practice. Novelties are discovered through experimentation, trial and error and testing out hypotheses and other norms in the actual world. We discover the actual feasibility of possibilities in the world by testing and creation, not by theory. The discovery of value cannot be a priori but must be tested. Of course practice is distinct from practicality, as action is to feasibility. An action can be feasible while its end is not: this further reveals the distinction. As with goals, practicality is temporal, as the attempt to solve problems over a period of time. Value emerges over time in historical advances. The pragmatic aspect of value is being true to practicality. Pragmatics means that principles are normative but that circumstances are the context of creative actualization. Pragmatics are true to circumstances as much or as more as to principles. The critical evaluation that “practice makes perfect” would be reformulated as “practice makes actual” and “practice makes better.” Pragmatics means that actualization has its own sphere that requires as much attention as inspiration, the realm for critical evaluation. Without such attention to the practical sphere no value ensues. Actualization as melioristic is a pragmatic view of good, good as improvement with the slow accretion of such goods as a bettering. It is the only good available to us as finite creatures. Pragmatics simply recognizes that we are not God: we cope as best we can, but are limited in our powers. Our results are not perfect but limited by the constraints of feasibility, time, funds, or circumstances. However, a Utopian solution is nowhere forthcoming or practicable. Improvements, on the other hand, where practicable, constitute a bettering and so should be adopted. Functioning, success, feasibility, and practicality are all in contradistinction to what has not been creatively actualized as a good, namely, what is defective, a bad plane, work of art, or idea. Creative actualization is good especially in the sense that it is not defective. It can be actualized as something that works as it should, functions practically, and instantiates a standard or principle. Planes that fly are not defective and creative actualization is good in this sense of not defective. Flight can be brought about, and it is not mere wishful thinking. But more, it is not defective, a bungled job or operation. This is a distinct test for creative actualization, if there are no defects in the operation of the good. This test includes but is distinct from defects in functioning, success, and feasibility. The good is, as a whole, not defective; a non-defective
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
131
instance can be creatively actualized. In sum, the test or criterion for creative actualization is that the good, the act, or the other bearer of value is not defective. It must function as it should, successfully and practically or it is not worthwhile. It must be suitable for the function it is to play, although this sense of value is derivative. A bad plane has not had the principle or practice of flight creatively actualized. In a sense, it is not yet a plane, but only a defective attempt, since a plane flies. A functioning plane has creatively actualized flight, while a nonfunctioning one has not. However, improvements may turn it into a plane. Thus a bad plane is defective, while an incomplete one simply is missing parts. It is defective as missing the mark, creating a gap between what has actually been accomplished and the goal. A bad plane falls short of its goal, end, principle, standard or norm.9 Even in creative actualization of generics, principles and other goods of a kind in mass production, some may be defective. In this respect, creative actualization marks the difference between success and failure: goods and defective products. As I noted above this generic sense of bad covers good as disfunctional, that is, what does not work as it should or according to design. If it does not function according to its type it is not up to standard, that is, the principle of the standard has not been creatively actualized. It then may be adjudged useless, except as scrap or a lesson for future endeavor. The standard, which is primarily connected with instrumentality, may not be actualizable, either ever or at least for the present. Time travel may provide an example. The project may not be feasible, since it attempts to creatively actualize in impractical ways. Some proposals may also be evaluated as useless not because they cannot be actualized but because they do not improve the world or the type. Value as a ground of action is tentative, since the end is in the future and the outcome uncertain; it reflects evaluation since the end is chosen over alternatives. Value as creative actualization is the ground of superior outcomes, which justifies bringing a change into the world as improvement. We create the world of goods by this grounding of projects in world through action, the valued world. Value marks the point of grounding in the world of a construct and, subsequently, copies of a construct. Value includes the discovery of new and superior possibilities and their actualization in the world through teleological activity. With creative actualization, grounding is not in the “given” but in superior discoveries. These are evaluated superior both as actualizable goods that are not defective and that function better. Is creative actualization identical with grounding in the world, or distinct? Creative actualization and grounding in world are two aspects of the same activity, since by successfully grounding a project, idea, principle or norm, it has been creatively actualized in the world. The good itself has been creatively actualized in the world, in space-time and thus in relation to other actualities and goods. This relation is grounding in the world, creating actual grounds in the world for what had hitherto been merely possible, an actual basis in the world.
132
HUGH G. MCDONALD
The activity is grounded and the consequence is a superior world, with more good. This process of creative actualization is beyond being or existence, since what has been grounded from the possible could have never “existed,” if value is the ground of the actual. What “is” is grounded in value as the ground of what has been actualized. Value is the ground of genuine change in the world and thus changes what is. Value is its own ground, as the source of a goal that creatively actualizes a good as consequence. As its own ground value is inherently valuable and does not refer beyond to an extrinsic source of value: it is not an instrument. How is grounding in world the creation of a superior world? We argued above that creative actualization is in general ameliorative. Agents produce novelties with effort for the sake of some sort of improvement in the world. Value is distinguished from becoming by improvement: creative actualization is in one sense a holistic improvement, since a good plane flies as a whole and this is an improvement over one that does not. We noted that ostensive improvements might not prove to be actual ones, since plans may fail, only succeed in part, or create more problems than solutions. Improvements may require critical and wise evaluation of if and whether they are improvements. An improvement must be just that, something that is new, distinctive and a positive good. Either it is a new kind or a relative improvement that is superior to an older good or version. A further test is that it is compossible with other goods, that is, it is not destructive of inherent value. A good must increase the amount of good in the world, or it has not improved it. Destruction of other goods is not such an increase. Of course ostensive improvements may be so minimal as to not be worth the bother, e.g. “new,” nominally “improved” versions of certain wellknown computer programs. This is an issue for evaluation. Another is the waste created by riddance of the old goods. Since economic life is only one category of social activity, other categories are implied in which other sorts of goods form a distinct field of activity in their creative actualization. Different categories imply a plurality both of goods and of kinds of good in which none can be reduced to the others. For example, a prediction is good if it is successful. This is a different kind or category of good than the goods of economic life. Goods are pluralistic and amelioration requires compossibility with previous actualizations, that is, with different goods. One aspect of such improvement is whether a novelty is life supportive or enhancing, since life is a bearer of value in all theories of value. The world must be better in some respect with novel creative actualizations. New goods are added to the world’s inventory, increasing the total. Comparative value is within kinds, but value is a superior actualization in the world that thereby improves it as such. The world is not given but constructed by improvement: melioration. One issue this raises is whether improvement or superiority is the same as creative actualization or distinct. Is creative actualization value, but improve-
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
133
ment of relative worth? What someone chooses as a proposal for creative actualization is first evaluated as an improvement. It is chosen as worth actualizing, a worthwhile goal. Thus creative actualization involves choosing superior alternatives, based on evaluations of worth. The evaluation is made that this undertaking, if creatively actualized, would somehow improve the world. Improvement involves value judgments, that is, evaluations of superior worth. Creative actualization also includes a critical evaluation. Evaluations are judgments of potential value; their actual value is subject to subsequent critical evaluation of their success. However, evaluation generally comes prior to creative actualization, that is, value, which in turn grounds such evaluations. The quality of the grounds of action is subject to critical evaluation in that a superior good, norm, quality, or other value can be chosen. Present actualities reflect and thereby include past evaluations of quality and of what at that time was evaluated as constituting an improvement. Past agents actualized these goods, some of which linger as durable goods. Evaluation is the choke point of actualization since at least a seeming good has been evaluated worthwhile and created as actual. Value in this sense is the condition of actualization as the worthwhile, that is, as the ground. Imagined goals cannot be actualized if they are no good. Value conditions actualization as ground, although it may be the same activity, ground as creative actualization. The realm of evaluation includes ideals, standards, and potentially worthwhile goals. Desires and other psychological factors should be critically evaluated for worth and potential. Ideals and desires that have not been creatively actualized have no value as such, since they are not grounded in the world, so they belong in the sphere of evaluation of competing possibilities.10 An ideal can constitute a standard for comparative evaluation of actual and possible improvements or as a future goal. Desires, feelings, and other psychological urges and subjective states must be critically evaluated for propriety, feasibility, amelioration and other tests of value. Thus as such they are not even in the sphere of evaluation, much less of value, of creative actualization in world. A whim of steel will not make a plane fly. Value as involving or making reference to consciousness of any kind, including feeling and attitudes, is in the realm of evaluation, not value, that is, whether ideas or feelings are worth acting on. Value is distinct from evaluation, since the latter appraises and thereby regulates the possible, which has not yet been actualized as feasible or practicable. Evaluation as a critical notion regarding the value of a value does not make reference to consciousness except in the personal mode of value, what one individual values. Values are independent of conceptualization, ideas, and other possibilities from the realm of evaluation. Conceiving a possibility as worthwhile is very different from achievement. The latter requires creative actualization, including the feasibility of the possibility. A period of time separates imagining a project and achieving it in which the possible is made actual. Thus we cannot
134
HUGH G. MCDONALD
investigate the value of what is valuable starting from consciousness, since this is in the realm of potential possibilities that have yet to be evaluated, not value. Psychological and subjective theories of value confuse fixed evaluations with value. Evaluation includes the choice of priorities. Priorities are what are most important, and evaluation of alternatives uses axiological criteria, not psychological ones. Axiological criteria provide the basis of importance as the measure of importance. They are evaluated as priorities as first in importance. I may not desire to accomplish some task, but it may nevertheless have priority on other grounds, whether it is required for work, for survival, or to complete an important plan. Desire and other psychological urges are often overruled in such evaluation of priorities. It is only if they are evaluated worthwhile that they can be transformed into ends. The quality of what has been actualized is a fertile field for philosophy as love of wisdom – is what has been actualized truly worthwhile? Were the choices wise? Philosophy is in part a critical, hopefully wise evaluation of the quality and worth of the grounds of action. In summary, value may be characterized as creative actualization, making good on a possibility. Value is neither subjective nor ideal, since agents create goods in the world for the purpose of improving the world in some way with more good. Goods are actually in world and value marks the point at which good is achieved in the world. The value world reflects critically evaluated activity resulting in a created world that is valued. Actualization brings a goal to world as actual, not potential while creativity marks its novelty. Creative actualization is future oriented and the ground of genuine change, a challenge to philosophies of being and coming to be, ontological philosophy. The creative actualization of goods creates plural goods, differentiated from one another. They are distinct in time and space and as responses to a unique situation and thus value is the ultimate ground of differentiation of plural goods, including different kinds of goods. The test or criterion of creative actualization is success, functioning well and practicality from which feasibility is derivative. Value is the ground of action and regulates telos as result or consequence. It grounds ends in world as the basis of preferred outcomes, evaluated superior by marking the end of the action. Value is not an attribute, but can be the basis for qualitative enhancements as well as holistic improvements in general. This is the inherent value of the good, its own excellence. Different possibilities are evaluated as part of creative actualization for whether amelioration will accrue. Evaluation is distinct from value in the relation of prior condition to ultimate grounding. Value includes creative actualization of a superior world, created through action, a superior alternative in which greater good is achieved. Value justifies bringing novelties into the world, the ultimate justification or ground of the changes that constitute a dynamic world.
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
135
2. Action, Telos, Meaning A value is a cause or ground for action oriented toward the future. The promise is that the action will creatively actualize a good in some form. Since value is what is pursued through action, it is a cause or ground of action. However, it is also the end of action, the consequence. This double aspect of teleology, both prior ground of action and result or consequence is peculiar to teleology and to value, since value regulates ends as their grounding. Since it is distinctive in this sense, its relation to cause in the mechanical sense can only be analogous. Thus it is more like a “ground” of action in the sense of ground and consequent. However, it is not precisely a reason for action since reason as logic is formal and has no content, including ends; and reason as ground and consequent can have anything for a ground, a desire, feeling, an object, or an activity. People generally behave for grounds other than pure rationality. I noted above that value is the ground of action and telos. Values are pursued in time as ends and manifested by acts. There is a close relation between action, ends and value that it is worthwhile to explore. The relation of action, telos, and value to meaning will gradually unfold also. The argument will be made that telos identifies the act as aiming at some end; values differentiate the act by finalizing it and thus giving the act finitude so that other activities can be taken up: new acts. The act is completed when worth is actualized or achieved. The endless stream of activities is thereby differentiated. The world is improved by the birth of new or additional goods. Good is achieved over time, at different times, through an historical accumulation of goods. However, the value problem is distinct from quantity. Indeed, one act can be distinguished from another by the worth achieved. Goods acquire value only through action. They are pursued, made, improved, or acquired. This results in very actual changes in the world, for which action is the agency of change. Actions bring about different situations from those at the time the action commenced. However, actions are not independent of value. Creative actualization as a theory of values is a finite theory in which values limit actions by ending them, and thus finishing actions. By limiting actions, values differentiate them from one another. Each act is limited and thus distinct from another action, different from one another. Creative actualization includes the successful achievement of the result of the action and thus finishes and finalizes the action. Actions are qualitatively ended when good is achieved. By de-fining action, ending or finishing them, values make actions possible by constituting and marking them off as actions, different from mere coming to be. Values limit action to finitude and thereby separate action from becoming.11 Our activities are not tied to an endless coming-to-be but end as results or consequences that are improvements. A painter does not work on one canvas forever. When something of value is achieved, the painter goes on to the next painting. The painting or most other actualizations can of course be improved
136
HUGH G. MCDONALD
with minor adjustments, but there comes a point at which and end, the goal, has been achieved. The value is actualized and the action ends. Similarly, a building is completed, and an order to a factory is filled. In religion a ceremony is brought to an end. In science an experiment is completed. A medical treatment is successful, the disease is cured and does not linger, or is adjudged incurable. The actions and activities have accomplished something of value. We are then justified in ending the action by its having achieved value. The emergence of some good that has value marks the end or goal. By limiting action, value differentiates and thereby constitutes it, just as the action reciprocally is the agency of creative actualization of the value. In this context of action, creative actualization provides and constitutes an answer to Moore’s famous question about good. In answer to Moore’s question, “but is it good?” or “is it valuable, does it have value?” creative actualization ends action by the achievement of good. Value is fully actualized as inherent. No further good can be actualized as this good, as this good is actualized and childlike repetition of the question is redundant. The end of a successful action is a practical end to a theoretical infinite. If the action falls short of the goal, good has not been achieved. However, good in relation to other goods can be evaluated as questionable, especially moral evaluation and environmental ethics.12 Should we continue to make plastics? Use atomic energy? Is it worth it? However, evaluation is distinct from value, as we argued above. By limiting action, values make other actions feasible. Because actions are limited, we can commence new actions. One comes to an end so another can begin. We can evaluate and choose what our next action will be undetermined by finished, completed goals. The world can still be improved in the continued possibility of more and better creative actualizations. The world is not in a finished or perfected state. Actions make our world possible: it is not the flux of becoming or the endless cycle of biology and life. Making a world means a better world is possible. Improvement is the enemy of perfection. Evaluation of what would constitute improvement is ever destructive of the given. What is given to perception is past evaluations of improvement, of successful creative actualizations. The novel creates a new “given.” Values limit activities by differentiating them. As the most general term of difference, values give limits and meaning to actions that differentiate them. Values bring actions to an end so that they are not endless and thereby futile. By achieving something of value, action is given its meaning, purpose and justification, differentiating the worthwhile from the futile. The action is worthwhile, for it is not ceaseless and blind but definite. An actual improvement results or the action was a “waste of time,” useless, or no good. In turn, action contributes actuality to values. If action is justified by values, values are brought about by activity. Thus action is tied to value: they are mutually connected with one another since values make actions possible. The action receives its type and direction from the value, exhibited in choices of action as well as how time is spent. In turn, to value something is to act on it. Values are revealed through
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
137
action since they are creative actualizations utilizing action. Value may even be creatively actualized in the action itself, as I noted above. Value can be a character of practice. Value in this sense is evident in action, since the action aims at a valued goal. Values also ground actions by bringing them to an end and so giving them purpose and meaning. Actions are thus grounded in the world, since the world is made good. Not a lack but a valued goal stirs us to action, for a lack is only perceived as such in terms of betterment. It is the goal of improving the world and ourselves that stirs action. Value as creative actualization is the source of qualitative changes in the world, of genuine novelties and differences. Change is not a coming to be for creative actualization means that novelties are created by action. The world is modifiable. Values are the sufficient ground of action for they constitute action and give it meaning. Ironically, due to the double direction of teleology, they are embodied through action. A successful action entails its good; it completes or brings about the value it aims at as its ground. If value grounds action, how can instrumental values have value? Value as “that which is pursued” covers only end value, not means. An instrument such as a tool has proven worth, as it is useful for the creative actualization of something else in a reciprocal relation. The means are justified and grounded in the end but the ends require the means. The instrumental value is also a creative actualization, since the tool was creatively actualized at some point in the past, if not always for its own sake. The creation of tools and other instruments is novel, and a historical achievement grounded in world. The instrument has inherent value but agents use it as an instrument in a relation. Action thus combines or mediates norms and the world by creatively actualizing norms in the world so that they function as they should. “Oughts” become “is” or actual, since their duration is finite and variable. The distinction of ought from the actual is merely theoretical, since practice is frequently the creative actualization of norms and principles. Action attenuates the distinction and creatively makes an ought actual. Similarly, creative actualization creates the goods that practical knowledge as facts are based on. By contrast with becoming, a relative improvement can be gauged. A painting may not be perfect nor make life bearable but it is better than no painting at all. It is melioristic, marking a relative, not an absolute improvement by making the world a slightly better place.13 Good accumulates over time, with achievement at different historical times, in a pragmatic fashion. Value is revealed over time, and thus is not a priori or transcendent. The goals of action are to achieve something worthwhile and meaningful in the world, not the futility of mere becoming, personified in the myth of Sisyphus. Creative actualization is an immanent theory of values. Good is frequently cumulative and therefore neither permanent nor involving an endless cycle. Value may come to an end with decay, as with the beauty of the Parthenon, or destruction, as with the Colossus of Rhodes. Such goods must be replaced or are superceded. Time may also play
138
HUGH G. MCDONALD
a part in differences in value. What is adjudged scrap at one time may be a vital component in a broken machine at another. Further, we can have different virtues and exercise different talents because the same kind of value can be actualized at different times by different actions. Since action is completely bound up and constituted by values creative actualization is historical. However, it does not participate in the endless flux of becoming, since time is utilized for improvement and change. The “ontological” problematic is superceded in the use of time for improvement. The temporal flow is not similar to endless others – becoming – but have an end or limit created by actualization of the goal. Time is constituted as historical. Values differentiate and give worth to moments as distinctive. There are many different aspects of the relation of action, telos and value: value has multiple aspects. Firstly, there is the dimension of space and time: the locus and historical context of creative actualization. An end lies in the future and an agent actualizes the goal over time in a place through action. Another is quantity: that an act constitutes a unity with its end and creatively actualizes a value as a good. Another is quality, which often distinguishes the worth of an act. Quality is actualized as an end of the act. There is the causal relation, the causing of a new good in the world as result. An act has a cause that is its sufficient ground, thus the end as a “cause” or ground is presumed. However, the end is also a result or consequence. Still another dimension consists in the relation of the possible to the actual and the extent to which what is actualized manifests the possible. Further, we may ask if actualization of instances manifest general values, norms and principles? There is the worth of ends as justification of the pursuit of an end in action. For who would pursue worthless ends? The good an act aims at is a distinct aspect from the end as result. Values are pursued as ends, constituting an activity over time, from evaluation of worthwhile goals to completion as success. As I argued above, bringing an action or activity to an end, limiting action to a finite goal allows for other goods, other activities. Limiting action is the cause of more goods and different kinds of good. Further, teleology as an end is actualized in the world. The end as result is separate from mere subjectivity – from mere whim, wish, desire or feeling – by its creative actualization. The goal of action in the world aims at creatively actualizing a goal as actual: as a part of the world. Actual creation of a good results, not a thought of a possible one. Achievement of the goal separates the actual from the possible. Technology is not the result of such psychological factors: it is not a matter of feeling, desire or will. The goods that are made are in the world and their good is part of the world. Norms as oughts are similarly creatively actualized. Telos involves aiming at bringing something into the world.14 Values both justify and ground ends since we finish or complete an action when the worthwhile goal has been achieved. Creative actualization grounds by bringing action to an end when the goal is achieved. Our ground in the future, our aim has resulted in an end. We are justified in stopping an activity by the
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
139
value that has resulted, the good that has been achieved. Goals are actualized in the world: they are not a dream, a hallucination, a desire or wish. Creative actualization actualizes the value of a possibility. Value ends or concludes activity with actual value in the world, which remains in the world. Value continues grounding thus continues as good or valuable. Value as creative actualization is reliable. In sum, value as the ground is the evaluation of worthwhile possible goals and actions as means to them. Value is the creative actualization of such possibilities whose result ends the action. The possible value is then grounded in world as actual: the possible is creatively actualized. Value also justifies the whole process as its ultimate ground, differentiating the actual as worthwhile. Distinct goods are creatively actualized, changing the world for the better. Values justify as the grounds of worthwhile teleological action. Values are the “invisible movers” (Nietzsche) as they give action and its goals a focus and significance even before they appear. They are both regulative over acts and made: they make history possible, but are in turn creations of history. A work of art is performed through the significance given to it by evaluation. A person writes a phrase of music, makes a certain meal, marries a certain person, and even picks up an attractive shell along the beach as acts of value. Each act focuses on a determinate and particular end rather than some other end due to value. Just what ends up proving worthwhile differs in time, which allows different actions, and in quality and kind. Such differences are values in the sense of the most general term of differentiation. In turn, values are discovered through teleological action. Experiment, practice, work and other activities reveal the actuality of new goods. The possibility of such discoveries in turn generates new actions stimulated by new goals in historical accumulation. By differentiating goals, various different goals can be related as mutually feasible. Values mediate means and ends, harmonize the possible and the actual, imagination and action. If an end is evaluated as worth pursuing, the action used as its means of creative actualization is well performed and the goal is achieved as a consequence. In their mediating role, values are comparable to Peirce’s category of “thirds.” However, values are ultimately a differentiation as instantiation, so are not mere “generals.” Ends are instances of generals, which gives axiology its “logy” element. A value is distinguished as distinctive, differentiating an activity and resulting in a distinct good. As singularly actualized, the good is distinctive, not merely an instance of a principle. Thus the end has a real basis in the world for it is grounded as creatively actualized. Evaluation, then, is in part normative. “Oughts” as a species of norm also may be the ends of action for they involve acting for the future if they are evaluated worthwhile and are not impractical. Oughts are also creatively actualized as a goal over time and in a place as a pro-ject. Genuine oughts as a species of norm predict what will be but is not, unless an ought coincides with the actual already, for example, bravery as a trait of an individual’s character.
140
HUGH G. MCDONALD
Norms are actualized as ends and this includes principled action. If we truly ought to do something we will and this creative actualization of the ought confirms it. Value is not identical with the end as a goal, however. Value inheres as inherent to what has been creatively actualized as a good. Value as either intrinsic or inherent constitutes an “in itself,” and as such is not a goal, not teleological, despite Aristotle’s identification of the good and the end.15 This equation correctly identifies achievement of the end with the good, as a quantitative unity, but is likely to confuse the issue by identifying good with goals. Thus value is more than an analytic element. The goal is what is aimed at by the activity while achieving the goal is the result. Value is the point at which the end is reached and no further effort is required, since the end point is achieved because it has been creatively actualized, that is, it is good. Value regulates both goal and result as the test or point for actualization. However, it is not present as an objective or goal. Creative actualization remains as a goal: a projected end. Agents and actors pursue purposes and goals through action until they are actualized: until their accomplishment puts an end to the discrete activity. Values in relation to ends are the worthwhile element in any end that is pursued. They justify the worth of ends: whether some end is worth pursuing. By ending an activity, creative actualization gives the activity meaning. The action or activity is finite and thus bounded: it is not infinite and thus endless. The action is grounded, the activity finite and thus meaningful since it is not without purpose and significance. The value justifies as it ends the activity as its grounding in world as result. The world is improved and given new meaning by the birth of a new good. Meaning is a species of value.16 Activities are meaningful because they are valuable: value ends a futile, meaningless life. Value provides the worthwhile element of purposes that give life a meaning. Value also differentiates the endless stream of activity with a genuine change for the better. Even labor comes to an end with the completion of a finite task. Grounds for meaningfulness are ends of activity, which justify the activity, differentiate purposes and thus end the futility of mere becoming. Creation of change moves action from futile becoming to the meaningful, since the world is improved. Alienation from the world is ended with amelioration. The change also marks the movement toward meliorism as the number and kind of goods are increased. Change is not for its own sake, but is purposeful and valuable. By differentiating actions, value differentiates the moments in a life and thus gives them significance as well. Value differentiates moments with different activities and thereby gives distinctive worth to moments. Although becoming is temporal, time is not actually important for becoming since there is no beginning or end to becoming only endless flux. Becoming as a coming to be, is an endless cycle unless it is altered, that is, changed, which requires value, goals that can alter the world for the better, differentiating moments in terms of quality or some other mode of value. One starry night resembles another in most
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
141
respects but a work of art is unique. The temporal flow of creative actualization is not identical to all others in an endless becoming, but has an end, a limit or goal that makes it unique. Values can add significance to time by differentiating temporal moments as significant. Just as life is given meaning by connecting actors to their world, so do values connect the future and the present. The present, or what is actual, reflects past evaluations and their successful creative actualization. Critical evaluation of the results may end in further action for the goal of future improvement. The future becomes clearer with valued goals. However, the value of the present is not overlooked, since it holds the record of successful creative actualizations. Those who evaluate are the judges of time and history. One activity ceases and they must judge how the next time frame will be used. The time can be spent well or futilely: it can be wasted by mere becoming or acted upon wisely in a valuable manner. We are freed from endless, futile becoming, from a Sisyphean fate, by values. The meaning of life is not evident a priori. Life must be given meaning as a project: active not passive meaning. A meaningful life is a good life full of significant purposes that have been creatively actualized as goals. Such a life is full of incremental acts of value, which collectively make for a good life. Thus the passivity of previous value theory as affective is ended by creative actualization. Detached judgments as to the abstract value of life or contemplation of its meaning are replaced with incremental improvements through limited actions. The world is improved by action, not merely by contemplation. A transcendent or historical agency does not impose meaning upon us, as meaning is not determined. Agents and actors discover meaning as a species of value in the world through revelatory investigation, and by uncovering hidden potentialities. Giving meaning or value to life is a creative, imaginative, activity. In summary, values give action, life and time meaning by bringing activities to an end. This end is a change and improvement. By distinguishing a time period as important, time is given meaning that it lacks in mere becoming. 3. Improvements in the World Since goods compete for attention in a world of improvement, each new good must be an improvement to replace its forerunner. Values are self-corrective, since a mere novelty will not take its place among the goods unless and until it has proven itself in some respect. Of course there are different tests for value in different fields: a good painting may be unique rather than an improvement in quality. However, the painting has received critical evaluation as an advance or success, that is, a different sort of improvement, a genuine novelty. Meliorism is the constant surpassing of old undertakings through action creating novelty, the goal of new values actualized. This is an axiological view of improvement that provides certain tests for evaluation of plans.
142
HUGH G. MCDONALD
A better car is better in several respects, but specifically, improvement of a part is of the whole part and also improves the whole. This may take several forms, such as more power with greater fuel efficiency, more options such as delayed wipers to cope with different situations, or other improvements. Improvement is of course historically situated. What is genuinely better may be ambiguous since more power may mean more pollution and less fuel efficiency. Improvement requires critical evaluation. However, improvement in a certain respect may be demonstrably better, that a car actually gets better mileage than a previous model. This is no imaginary improvement, but can be measured, tested and utilized. Improvement is the end of a cycle of coming to be. Improvement is open-ended, since any improvement disproves a static world. Value as the ground of change is dynamic, altering the present as the future through projects. Creative actualization incorporates change and thus argues against a static universe and the values associated with such a universe: “duration” of values as actualizing their “being.” Values are not permanent, a characteristic that represents the interest of “being,” since revaluation and improvement undercut the value of the actual. Values are the ground of change as improvements that are the measure of the former. Values can be revalued in a world of improvement. The expansion of good involved in amelioration argues against a fixed sum of good in the world: the “being” of good. Improvement is anti-ontological. A better world is not a static, fixed, enduring world. To be sure: that a good can sometimes endure as a value is also to the good. The creative actualization of a good that endures throughout many adverse circumstances may indeed be valuable. A car that lasts may be an improvement over “dynamic obsolescence.” A tool that does not break, a painting that does not fade quickly, a diet that preserves our health are all melioristic. However, endurance or duration is no mark of value as such: the Ku Klux Klan persists despite its many axiological defects and those of its members. Duration may require critical evaluation. Orgasms do not have duration: duration does not define the good of pleasures. Nor do musical notes, performances and many other goods. Creative actualization of pleasures, performances and other temporally relative goods may require the opposite of duration, namely, limitation of one for the sake of another. One note must end for another to begin. Duration may be appropriate or feasible to some actualizations but not to all. Endurance may also require maintenance, which is a mode of creative actualization, that is, recreation of a good as functional or the like. Maintenance argues against the duration of goods, since they lose their value with time. Maintaining value requires replacement or repair, an argument against duration of value. The world has proven flexible and capable of change. Thus a world of values is a world of improvement, of meliorism.17 This is the good of the world: the world is opened and revealed by improvement even as it is improved. Improvement cannot be separated from evaluation. What has potential value consists only in an evaluation of potential value, that some future outcome
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
143
would be better, based on some standard of comparison, possible improvement, novelty or difference. Some values remain to be created, no doubt, as new differences are actualized. New categories of value are new creations and determinations of worth, something hitherto undetermined. Health emerged as a value with the differentiation of the model of being well and the discovery and creative actualization of medicines. Transforming the world through actions that creatively actualize creates a new world: creation of the world. The conjunction of action, ends and norms actualized in a world creates the world. Value marks the historical point at which the novel becomes actualized but also involves a place in the world, a “topology” if you like. The world is involved in all creative actualization as the place for bringing about new values, for bringing them into the world. Thus the world as a whole is the place of value or where creative actualization takes place and is thereby transformed into a new world by value. The actual world is the world of goods. Tools, art, medical instruments, scientific results and economic goods have all been creatively actualized as actualities in the world. Such goods are perceivable but only as the end product of action. The world is the collection of all such goods, all actualizations. Thus the world is the value world, and value is not a realm, a distinct part. A realm of values would reflect only a part, in which there is a world that has not undergone transformations. However, such a world, a static world, is a fiction. The present world reflects past evaluations of what ought to have been actualized or what was worth actualizing and includes the creative actualizations that followed such evaluations.18 Yesterday’s reality of horses and buggies has been transformed into today’s actuality of traffic jams and pollution. An inferior reality was left behind and superceded by new more accurate descriptions, technologies, and other modes of value. Even former goods are replaced with better goods. We have tools because our ancestors evaluated them worthwhile and creatively actualized them as goods. The created world is valued and also an activity and goal that has come about. The transformation of the world as an improvement means that we are not locked within ourselves, solipsistic but passive subjects, in Stoic denial of world, wishful but impotent to change the world. On the contrary, value as creative actualization is transformation of the world for the better. We are part of the world we transform and belong within it, even as we transform it: such creative actualizations involve ourselves as agents acting within the world. The world is our home in which we are at home as agents of its direction and destiny. We transform the world as an alien place into a better, more intimate place of which we form a part. Our values transform the world and thus it is no longer foreign: we improve it to reflect ourselves in part as our home. The remainder is the condition of what is my own, reflecting a division of the indeterminate into own and alien, what any person evaluates as good and what she merely tolerates, ignores or devalues as bad. Transformation of the world for the better ends alienation from it. Inaction is the evaluation that the world is sufficiently good as
144
HUGH G. MCDONALD
it is, that no novelties are worth the bother. In other words, the world is as it ought to be. We have evaluated such goods as worth actualizing into the world over competing possibilities, including competing objects of desire, feelings, attitudes and other psychological factors. Desire and feeling are overcome in many such evaluations, since they are not evaluated worthwhile. Values are the ground of superior outcomes, that is, the cause of actions and activity that aim at an improved world. A world in which a good result has been brought about, accomplished or achieved is judged superior to a previous situation. Thus value justifies bringing a novelty into the world. Value also consists in the grounding in the world of superior actualizations of possible ends. Value as ground marks the convergence of any act and the world: the plan is successful, the novel is realized. In this sense value is the cause of goods to which value is attributed. It is the cause of their actuality, which has been creatively actualized from a past in which they are not actual: the purpose of bringing them about. But thereby the possible, including norms, principles, possible ends, novelties and others are grounded. They are given an actuality in the world that separates or differentiates them from the possible and potential. Those that are creatively actualized have been evaluated worthwhile: superior to competing possibilities and worth bringing to world. Thus they are justified as superior actualizations. Value as ground, then, causes creative actualization of the possible, the purpose; actual grounding of the possible in world, that is, successful grounding; and the justification of such grounding. Value is the cause as the goal of action, the ground as the consequence or success and the justification as improvement of world. Value is both having a cause or a ground and also grounding the possible in the world as actual, since the goal is actually part of the world when creatively actualized. We have used “cause” in this paragraph to distinguish it more sharply from grounding in the sense of bringing something new into the world and thus grounding the possible. As we have indicated above, cause in this sense does not match the modern sense of cause as power to effect, except metaphorically. Ground includes cause but is not reducible to it. Value as a standard of comparison, involving evaluation of competing possibilities, is a ground in a sense similar to value as the end of action. The actual is created as novel value, the discovery of the novel as a creative actualization. Values ground the possible as the actual but create the actual in the novel. The creative must be actualized but the actual is created. The creative is inseparable from the actual. The world is changed, hopefully for the better. Achieving a value is to ground the goal while at the same time improving the world with more good. The goal is no longer proposed, but part of the world created through action. The value world is the result of superior alternatives achieved. Since the world is transformed by such novelties, however subtly, value is the ground or cause of the new world, the transformed world. Enough of such transformations remake the world. In some of our cities, nothing is actual that was actual a hundred years ago: it is all new.
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
145
Since improvements are evaluated before they are manifested through action, the world is transformed by choice. The value is contingent: it could be or could not be. As different possibilities can be actualized, the result is not determined, since what has been actualized reflects past evaluations of what ought to have been but was not at the time the activity was undertaken. Since it was not, it cannot have been determined by what was. Further, values are oriented toward the future, not the past. Creative actualization is the bringing forth in the future what was not actual in the past, and so cannot have been determined by past causes. Creative actualizations like flying machines are novelties, so they cannot be determined by past conditions. There were no such machines in the past to condition their creative actualization. Creative actualization alters the world slightly from what it was before. The world is different with the creation of new goods. This differentiation makes up the multiple goods of the world, since each is finite and different from the rest. Creative actualization is a finite activity that can be repeated. Values bring actions to an end and differentiate the actions by ending them. By limiting actions, they give shape to the world. One good is limited in time, space and effort, leaving space for others. Through differentiation, multiple values are compossible, including different modes and kinds of value. Each instance actualizes a kind in the world, a principle, since it can be copied. Thus a genus and species can be normatively ascribed to an instance that has been creatively actualized, for example, a species of flying machine. This is a further form of compossibility, since multiple principles are combined in an instance. A norm is actualized as an instance compossible with the world. An identity is combined with a difference, a distinct individual, in an instantiated kind. Norms are creatively actualized in a world: grounded in the world. Values do not, then, exist in some ideal realm since if they did, they would never be actual and there would be two worlds, the ideal realm of the ought and the actual realm of the is. But creative actualization attenuates this distinction by bringing what ought to be about. Value as a goal may be an idea that still requires achievement, but the goal or meaning is achieved in the world. Creative actualization brings norms into the world as principles, thereby improving the world. There are not two realms but one world that has gradually been improved by creative actualization of change. Values as the ground of such changes are neither real nor ideal, since value changes the “real” as novel actualities. The “real” is a historically and culturally relative term, which gives it limited worth. Spirits are real to an animist but not to modern science. Airplanes are real to the twentieth century but not the tenth. Everything imaginable which could conceivably be put into practice may ultimately be real, but may now not be. Thus it is better to refer to actualities, since “real” is tied to a static world. Values also regulate the ideal as feasible or practicable. Which ideals are actualized in the world is grounded in their actual worth. But values as a goal are creatively actualized and thereby concrete, not ideal. Similar considerations apply to subjectivity.
146
HUGH G. MCDONALD 4. Norms
A new good has been successfully created and these new, successful goods are a new kind of good. What is the relation of a kind of good, a good of its kind, and creative actualization? A novel success in this sense is a novel kind of functioning. Planes that actually fly are a new kind of good in a distinct mode: actual flight. Since flight in general can now be achieved, flight can be a normative or repetitive good. An identity of norm and instance, of idea and actuality has been creatively actualized. Applied principles are simply a species of good of its kind, since if they are properly applied they result in a well-functioning version or bearer of the instance, a creative actualization of the principle. Standards are another species, since the standard can be used as a norm for a great many individuals that come up to standard. If they are creatively actualized they have value as the instance, if not they are defective. Standards are still transcendent, since even if they are never achieved, they remain as ideas. They are constants in a changing world precisely because of their transcendence from the changes creatively actualized as valuable. However, value is not transcendent, as the creative actualization of the standard, the point at which it is achieved as an actuality, in the world. Unactualizable or impossible standards, such as flying unassisted, are Utopian. Actualizable standards may or may not have worth, subject to critical evaluation. The point here is that norms, standards and the like are species of good of its kind. If mechanical principles can be actualized without defect so can other norms and generals as principles, goods of their kind. The question then arises of whether creative actualization is always of a functioning kind, an instance or bearer that functions according to a plan, norm or principle. Did the Wright Brothers actualize a single plane or flight? In a sense they actualized both and also more. The plane was singular and cannot be recreated as such; it can only be copied or duplicated. The flight in 1907 cannot be duplicated in 1907 only now. Flight was creatively actualized but also a single flight in time. Thus what can be duplicable is never absolutely repeatable, for its time and space frame and its individual content, whether metal, wood, or some other material, differ. Good of its kind is a species of value. Values as kinds have a long history and the ancient ethicists considered virtue as excellence of a kind. Norms in general can be creatively actualized as instances of a kind, the trend of the contemporary world. What is missed is the value of the difference between kinds, involving creation of a plurality of goods, and the unique or inherent value of the instance as a successful creative actualization. A further point is that quality often differentiates instances or individuals of a kind. Quality is a determinable difference between individuals of a kind, whether two glasses, machines or art works. In terms of comparison, one is better, regardless of how this critical evaluation is arrived at.
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
147
When we successfully act upon an ought, we actualize it. An ought is not simply some transcendent standard, for it may be creatively actualized over time and intervene in history. Rights, justice, truth and beauty are not beyond our grasp but can be creatively actualized in the world, transforming the world. To enact norms by creative actualization through pragmatic means is to change the world. Standards and norms can be brought to earth and grounded through creative actualization in practice as principles. Values are grounds of action that alter the world for the better, since they actualize what ought to have occurred or should occur. In turn, value is the measure of which norms are practicable, at least at a point in history. Standards and other norms must prove their practical worth through actualization. Oughts that are actualizable become values, that is, creative actualizations. To creatively actualize an ought or other norm is one mode of value. Those that cannot be actualized may be Utopian as we argued above. They may also be worthless although they may remain as critical standards. There are also good ideas (flying machines) and bad ideas (time machines) whose test is whether they work out in practice. However, it is impossible to rule out such ideas altogether, since at some point in the future some ingenious individual may actualize them. Since norms in the form of oughts, that is, deontological principles or directives can be creatively actualized, or brought about in the world, the distinction of ought from the actual is attenuated. The actual may reflect previous norms that have been brought to the world through action. If we can creatively actualize norms, then ought has become is. If we say, “the grass has grown since the last time I mowed it,” add “if the grass is too long it requires mowing,” and “the lawn needs mowing” or ought to be mowed, so “I should mow it,” and then do so, then the lawn is changed by our action. We have moved from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’ back to an ‘is’. Creative actualization means that what we creatively actualize functions as it should function: the norm and the instance, ought and is are combined as actual. My argument is not that there is no distinction of norms and actualities, but rather that the two can form a composite or synthesis if norms are creatively actualized in the world. Thus creative actualization constitutes an argument against the absolutizing of the distinction, as if the actual and the normative were in two different universes. Oughts and other norms regulate practice, that is, some good is put into practice that is not now but can be. If we successfully bring about or creatively actualize a good, then it is a good. An “is” or actuality is made of an ought. Practice is the condition of creative actualization of the norm, that is, the objectification of it as a good. Dewey has made an implicit critique of the reverse case of “one can’t derive an ought from an is.” A problematic situation is one which, as problematic, ought to be improved. The distinction of standards of value from facts is also attenuated by creative actualization and with it the standards of philosophy and evaluation from the facts of science. Value as creative actualization creates facts, for
148
HUGH G. MCDONALD
example, the fact that flying machines, which were not a fact in 1900, are now a fact. Knowledge is the creative actualization of facts, or critical knowledge that has been proven, in accord with the standard or norm of truth. Philosophy dwells in both, as does science. Creative actualization, then, is neither idealist nor realist, for it dissolves the distinction. The real reflects and embodies previous creative actualizations, and one mode of such values is creative actualizations of ideal norms in the form of principles. Following pragmatism, creative actualization follows a middle road: pursuing the possible with an eye on the actual, but the heights of actuality not the depths. Strict idealism, which includes speculative rationalism, can ignore the actual in favor of the counterfactual and thus depreciate the value of what has been achieved. While idealism is correct to emphasize higher values, and the contingency of the “given,” it judges the actual successes too harshly and often without a fair appraisal.19 Strict realism, which includes empiricism, wallows in the actual without trying to improve upon it. While realism and empiricism correctly emphasize the truth of the actual, of what values have actually been pursued, they ignore the developments leading up to the actual, historical genesis and the activity surrounding creative actualization. The ideal is made real by creative actualization, attenuating the distinction. Creative actualization transcends the actual through creation of novelties. However, values are not ideals for they are immanent and without creative actualization no ideals would or could be part of the world. Creative actualization surpasses ideals as value. Creative actualization can nevertheless overcome the “opposition” of transcendence and immanence by actualization of transcendent norms, ideals, hypotheses and principles. Opposition is superceded by revaluation, in which the transcendent is judged worthwhile and practiced as immanent. This activity revalues the actual for it is transcended by creative actualization of novel principles. I have characterized value as creative actualization. Creative actualization is bringing about novel goods in the world through creativity and activity that successfully achieve the goal. Such goods alter the world, and value is the ground of actual changes in the world. The world is thereby improved and given meaning, even as it is the locus of creative acts. Value is distinguished from evaluation; the latter regulates which possibilities will be creatively actualized, since they are judged worthwhile. Successful achievement marks their value, while failures are no good. Since creative actualization can bring about what was merely potential, value marks the successful achievement of norms considered as generic, including ideals, rules, obligations, standards and other modes of potential generalities. However, value differentiates them as instances that have been creatively actualized.
Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
149
NOTES 1. A precis of creative actualization as a theory of value was presented in my article “Toward a Deontological Environmental Ethic,” Environmental Ethics 23 (2001): 411–430. This article is a precis of a longer treatment of the topic in a completed book manuscript titled Creative Actualization. 2. I borrowed the term “inherent” from C. I. Lewis, and it is not equivalent to intrinsic. 3. See Dewey’s “Theory of Valuation,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), vol. 2, no. 4, among other texts. 4. I have argued this point in more detail in my paper “Toward a Deontological Environmental Ethic.” 5. I am indebted to the late Albert Hofstadter on this point. See his Agony and Epitaph: Man, His Art, and His Poetry (New York: George Braziller, 1970). 6. For Kant’s view see Critique of Practical Reason and Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals. 7. G. E. Moore has claimed both that everything is natural and that good is a nonnatural predicate in his Principia Ethica (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1903), p. 1. This is not only an egregious contradiction, but preposterous. Creative actualization is within nature taken as a whole and could not but be or would not be possible. Breathing is natural: it is also good for our health. This is to speak nothing of his uncritical use of “natural.” If everything is natural, then Auschwitz, lawrencium and synthetic chemicals are “natural.” I have critically evaluated nature and naturalism in my paper “Does Nature Exist? Toward a Critique of Nature and Naturalism,” in two parts in Contemporary Philosophy 21 (September–October 2000) and 21 (November–December 2000). 8. Functioning well is one translation of Aristotle’s eupraxis. 9. My view of bad is very close to that of Aristotle, although I reject the metaphysics of substance and attribute. There are also similarities between his notion of good as functioning and mine, although I reject his distinction of natural and artificial good. 10. Evaluation of competing possibilities to create alternative “realities” was covered in my book Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2004) . 11. See Hannah Arendt on the distinction of work and labor in The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). Work creates goods while labor is tied to becoming, the cycles of nature, in her view. 12. I have argued elsewhere (see note 1) that the distinction of environmental ethics from ethics is untenable. Environmental ethics is the ethics of the future, since our decisions as humans are both within the environment and affect that environment. The environment is a larger whole than the merely human and thus human ethics is only a subset of environmental ethics. I will expand these points in a future essay. 13. The term meliorism and ethics of meliorism have been kidnapped from William James. 14. I am following Aristotle, for whom the end is equated with the good (Nicomachean Ethics I, 1ff.). Cf. also Metaphysics I and II and XII; and Physics II, 7 for his account of the good as the end. Telos has several aspects that are disguised by the unity of the concept. Firstly, telos is both end or goal and also good. Secondly, Aristotle
150
HUGH G. MCDONALD
does not carefully distinguish end as goal and end as result or consequence. However, the notion of value as “bringing about” is in Dewey. 15. Nicomachean Ethics I, 1ff. 16. Obviously, I am using meaning in the sense of value, not the analytic sense of the meaning of a concept. However, the latter is actually based on the former, since meaning is a norm and its creative actualization as a word in an utterance is a species of creative actualization (cf. “speech acts”). Further, since analysis or division can go on ad infinitum (cf. splitting the indivisible, the a-tom), an end to this activity is required for use of language at the point where meaning is reached. Value is the ultimate basis for analysis into “simple” or singular elements. Simple itself is defined normatively and this is the unit of analysis, the end of the process. 17. I am following William James here who argued that the world could be improved: meliorism. The critical question, i.e. what is a genuine improvement, is beyond the scope of this paper. 18. I examined how evaluation of competing ideas or models of reality must be evaluated in my book Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values. 19. This applies particularly to the Frankfurt School and its neo-Hegelian, rationalist approach to value.
Hugh P. McDonald Assistant Professor of Philosophy School of Arts and Sciences New York City College of Technology 300 Jay Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 United States
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 151–170
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans Robert Lane
I provide an account of the moral status of pre-birth humans that integrates ideas from Charles Peirce, including: synechism, the idea that “all that exists is continuous”; the reality of “Seconds,” independently existing individual entities; and Peirce’s pragmatic conceptions of truth and reality. This account implies that destroying a pre-birth human is determinately moral very soon after conception and determinately immoral very late in pregnancy. But it also implies that during much of gestation, destroying a pre-birth human is of indeterminate moral status, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral.
I am a pragmatic bioethicist. I know this now, but it took me some time to realize it. The “bioethicist” part is obvious. Some of my published research has dealt with moral questions relevant to human reproduction, and I teach courses in ethics that touch on those issues. That I am a pragmatist is also obvious. I have an interest in and regularly teach courses on classical American pragmatism, and some of my research focuses on aspects of the work of the classical American pragmatists. But until relatively recently, I did not realize that I was, not just a pragmatist and a bioethicist, but, in some sense, a pragmatic bioethicist. Not long ago I began to develop a view regarding the moral status of pre-birth humans1 (PBHs), a view according to which destroying a very young PBH (e.g., in order to abort an early-term pregnancy, or to harvest stem cells for therapeutic purposes) is prima facie morally permissible and destroying a relatively mature PBH (e.g., to abort a late-term pregnancy) is prima facie immoral.2 In the face of subsequent criticisms of that work, I began to develop an account of the identity of organisms through time, one that would help shore up my conclusions about abortion. It was only after that work on identity was well under way that I realized that themes from the work of Charles Peirce had influenced my thinking about the moral status of PBHs. And so I realized that I was not merely a pragmatist and a bioethicist, but also a pragmatic bioethicist. However, I am a pragmatic bioethicist in a different sense than most others by whom that title would be claimed. In recent years a number of
152
ROBERT LANE
philosophers working within the tradition of American pragmatism have brought pragmatic ideas to bear on bioethical concerns. I think of the contributors to Glenn McGee’s edited anthology, Pragmatic Bioethics, as well as the pragmatic themes in McGee’s The Perfect Baby; Micah Hester’s account of the patientphysician relationship in Community as Healing draws on classical pragmatism;3 and a recent double-issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy was devoted to bioethics and pragmatism.4 What’s more, there has been notable work within ethics, more broadly construed, by Peirceans and drawing on Peircean ideas.5 But there has been little specifically Peircean work within bioethics and few pragmatic bioethicists who might accurately be described as Peircean pragmatic bioethicists.6 I hope that the present work will begin to change that. In this article I explain the Peircean ideas which I found, after the fact, to be woven into my account of the moral status of PBHs. In doing so I will begin to articulate a Peircean approach to reproductive bioethics that I hope is interestingly different from previous pragmatist approaches to this subject. I do not intend this article to serve as an argument for my moral view, although I will, at points, indicate the shape that some of my arguments take. Rather, I will sketch just enough of my position to allow me to illustrate the sense in which it constitutes a distinctively Peircean approach to the issue. However, I hope that readers will find at least some aspects of the view itself plausible or, at the very least, that they will find it suggestive of potentially fruitful new directions within pragmatic bioethics. 1. Synechism and the Continuity of Fetal Development Christopher Tollefsen and Mark Cherry have suggested that “Pragmatists of the classical American variety tend toward a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards metaphysics,”7 and Micah Hester has described bioethical pragmatism as “primarily methodological, not metaphysical.”8 The view that I sketch in this article is an exception to these claims. The most prominent Peircean idea at work in my account of the moral status of PBHs is, at least in one of its aspects, a metaphysical doctrine: Peirce’s synechism, according to which “all that exists is continuous” (CP 1.172, c.1897).9 Peirce held, for example, that the laws of nature grew into being through a continuous process from an earlier state of lawlessness and that even the universe itself developed continuously from an earlier state of non-existence. (CP 1.175, c.1897) No sudden, dramatic leaps of development brought either natural laws or the universe into being. Peirce’s thoughts on how best to define continuity changed over time, but by 1897 he had settled on the view that genuine continuity consists in real possibility, e.g., the continuity of a line consists in the real possibility of constructing any multitude of actual points on that line. However, the construction of any actual point would breach the continuity of the line, so a genuinely continuous line is
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
153
composed of merely possible (i.e., possible but non-actual) points. (e.g., CP 4.219, 1897) Peirce thought of synechism, not simply as a doctrine of metaphysics, but as a regulative principle of inquiry. In his Baldwin’s Dictionary entry for “synechism,” he described it as the tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance in philosophy and, in particular, upon the necessity of hypotheses involving true continuity. ... Synechism is not an ultimate and absolute metaphysical doctrine; it is a regulative principle of logic, prescribing what sort of hypothesis is fit to be entertained and examined. (CP 6.169 and 6.173, 1902)10 As a regulative principle, synechism is the idea that a hypothesis, especially a metaphysical hypothesis, should be considered only if it does not “block the way of inquiry” (CP 1.135, EP 2:48, 1898), i.e., only if it permits further investigation.11 Synechism enters into my view as an emphasis on the continuous coming into existence of human beings and a denial that there is a single occasion in the development of a PBH at which it becomes a human being. By “human being” I mean a human animal, a member of the species homo sapiens. In this sense, a newborn infant is a human being whether or not it is a person, and a pair of human gametes at the moment before conception is not a human being. My use of “human being” does not express a normative concept of any sort, e.g., Mary Anne Warren’s concept of a moral human being or person.12 So far as I can tell, I am begging no moral questions by my use of this term. My view is that the entity that is a human being when it is born does not begin to exist at any specific time. Rather, he or she has entered into existence continuously during some portion of his or her mother’s pregnancy. The origination of a human being includes a number of distinct, essential events. The introduction of a spermatozoon and an ovum into the same environment; the fusion of those two cells; the initial division of the singlecelled zygote into two cells, then into four, and so on; implantation of the multicellular blastocyst into the uterine lining; ... each of these events is essential to the eventual existence of a human being.13 But none of those events serves as a boundary between the non-existence and the existence of the human being in question. At the beginning of the process, there are two separate living cells. These pre-fusion gametes and the very early-term PBHs that develop from them are not themselves human beings. On the other hand, the PBH during the last weeks of gestation is a human being. But human beings do not begin to exist instantaneously. The development of a human being out of its originating gametes is not simply gradual.14 It is also continuous, and there is no single event that marks a boundary before which the human being does not, and after which it does, exist. Any moment or event during gestation that one might allege
154
ROBERT LANE
to count as the beginning of the existence of a human being would count as a breach in the continuum of human development, much as a point actually constructed upon a line violates the continuity of that line. So with regard to the existence of human beings, I share the attitude Peirce demonstrated towards Parmenides’s claim that “being is, and not-being is nothing.” Said Peirce: “This sounds plausible; yet synechism flatly denies it, declaring that being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing.” (CP 7.569, EP 2:2, 1893) But I do not take this to mean that existence itself comes in degrees, i.e., that existence, like warmth or brightness, is a property that an entity can possess to a greater or lesser degree. It is not that a PBH existing early on in pregnancy exists to a lesser degree than a PBH that exists later on in pregnancy. Rather, my position is that the early-term PBH is numerically distinct from the late-term PBH and that the transition from one to the other takes place continuously, so that the replacement of the former by the latter happens continuously. This does not imply that there are times during the transformation during which there exists a concrete particular which exists to a lesser degree than other particulars.15 My synechistic view of the ontological and moral status of the PBH resembles that of Warren Quinn.16 Quinn argued for what he called a process theory, according to which a PBH is a human organism from conception but is not yet a human being. There is, he said, no point at which the PBH instantaneously becomes a human being (he somewhat derisively called such an alleged event a “pop”). Rather, the human being comes into existence gradually, by degrees.17 The PBH is a fully existing organism at every point during pregnancy, but it is not fully a human being until relatively late in pregnancy, “when the nervous system is developed enough for the organism to start learning, in the fashion of the normal neonate, the ways of the world.”18 But not all contemporary philosophers who have weighed in on the issue of fetal ontology understand the coming into existence of the human individual in the same way as Quinn and I. These others take a very different, decidedly non-synechistic view. For example, Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard have argued that there is a specific point in time at which the human individual begins to exist: the end of gastrulation at about 16 days after conception.19 According to Smith and Brogaard, this is the first time at which the PBH (they use the Danish term “foster”) is a human individual and thus numerically identical to the infant with which it is continuous. Roughly, their argument is that it is only at the end of gastrulation that the foster is a single organism. At that time it is no longer “a cluster of homogeneous cells” but instead “a single heterogeneous entity – a whole multicellular individual living being which has a body axis and bilateral.” At the end of gastrulation, its “cranial axis and its dorsal and ventral surfaces come into existence,” forming “the boundaries of a discrete, coherent entity.” At this point “there is a new type of integration of the foster, ... manifested in the fact that twinning is from this point no longer possible.”20 Smith and Brogaard assume that there must be some discrete point at which the human individual
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
155
begins to exist, because beginning to exist is a substantial change in the Aristotelian sense, not simply an alteration in a thing’s accidental properties, but the coming into existence of a whole new substance: If at some earlier time in the course of the development of the fetus a human being does not exist, and at some later time a human being does exist, then at some time in the intervening interval a change takes place which is a substantial change.21 But they never say why they think that a substantial change must be instantaneous or nearly so.22 On my synechistic account, there is no reason to assume that substantial change must be instantaneous. In fact, synechism construed as a principle regarding which metaphysical hypotheses are to be preferred suggests that we ought first to try the opposite hypothesis. While it is true that there is some (fully existing) entity or other present at every stage of embryological development, it is not necessarily true that it is determinate for every time during pregnancy whether the entity present at that time is numerically identical to the late-term fetus. In Smith and Brogaard’s Aristotelian language, my point is that the transformation of a substance a into another substance b need not happen instantaneously, or even very quickly. This means that there are times at which the substance is neither determinately identical to a nor determinately identical to b. This is a consequence a synechist will embrace. I will return to this point below. 2. Secondness and the Distinctness of Concrete Particulars Another Peircean idea that plays a role in my view is the insistence on the reality of what Peirce called “Seconds.” Peirce described three “Universal Categories”: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. He applied these three categories in multiple contexts, including logic, phenomenology, and semiotics, and they take on different appearances in each. But in general, Firstness is the category of quality and possibility, Secondness the category of resistance, individuality, and actuality, and Thirdness the category of representation, generality, and necessity. Anything that actually exists, that reacts against other things, is an individual (in Peirce’s sense of the term) and exemplifies the category of Secondness, the category of “hard fact” (CP 1.524, 1903). In my account, this doctrine becomes the insistence that there are multiple, distinct concrete particulars involved in the emergence of a human being into existence. Early on in gestation, there is a fully real organism growing in utero, an early-term PBH that is physically connected through time with a late-term PBH (as well as with a fully mature human being). But on my view, the PBH that exists during the earliest stages of pregnancy is numerically distinct from, not one and the same thing as, the PBH that exists during pregnancy’s last stages. Consider 37-year-old Bill, who is physically continuous
156
ROBERT LANE
with a PBH that was located in his mother’s womb during the third week of her pregnancy (i.e., days 15 through 21).23 Let “B3” serve as a rigid designator for that PBH, and let “B32” serve as a rigid designator for the PBH that was located in Bill’s mother’s womb during the 32nd week of her pregnancy (i.e., days 218 through 224).24 Since “B3” is a rigid designator, it refers to any entity that is numerically identical to the PBH that was in Bill’s mother’s womb during the third week of her pregnancy. If that PBH is numerically identical to the PBH that was located in Bill’s mother’s womb during the fifth week of her pregnancy and with which it is physically continuous, then it makes sense to speak of B3 during the fifth week of Bill’s mother’s pregnancy. And since “B32” is a rigid designator, it refers to any entity that is numerically identical to the PBH that was located in Bill’s mother’s womb during the 32nd week of her pregnancy. On my view that includes Bill as an infant, Bill as a five-year-old, Bill-as-a-37-yearold, etc. So it makes sense to speak of B32’s birth, fifth birthday, marriage, etc. My position is that B32 is numerically identical to the infant, child, and adult with which it is continuous. In other words, B32 is the same entity as the newborn Bill, the five-year-old Bill, and the 37-year-old Bill. But B32 is not the same entity as B3. B3 and B32 are each fully real entities, yet despite their physical connection through time, they are distinct concrete particulars: independently existing entities, distinct Peircean “Seconds.” I do not mean that B32’s existence at a given time does not depend on the prior existence of B3. Clearly, had B3 not existed early on, B32 would not exist later on. Rather, I mean that the two PBHs are numerically distinct, that each is a different thing, entity, concrete particular, than the other. But again, the early-term PBH does not instantaneously “pop” out of existence to be replaced by the late-term PBH. There is no moment before which B3 definitely does exist and B32 definitely does not exist, and after which B3 definitely does not exist and B32 definitely does exist. The former entity continuously shades out of existence and the latter continuously shades into existence.25 At first glance, the Peircean themes of continuity and individuality seem to pull in different directions. My claim that human development is continuous strongly suggests that a human being is himself or herself a continuum in some important sense. But if this is the case, in exactly what sense is a human being an individual or concrete particular? Intuitively, the claim that a thing is an individual and therefore distinct from other individuals is at odds with the claim that it is continuous, since it cannot be both distinct from that other individual and also continuous with it. There is, then, at least one respect in which any individual is discontinuous. To dispel this apparent tension, we need only recognize that a concrete particular, an actually existing individual that can react with other such individuals, can be discontinuous in some ways, e.g., in being distinct from other individuals, but nonetheless be continuous in other ways. A physical object, like a brick, or the moon (an example of Peirce’s; see CP 3.613, 1902), is at the very least continuous through time. Its existence in time is not a matter of a series of “blinkings” into and out of existence. Were an object to pop
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
157
(to use Quinn’s term) into and out of existence again and again, it would not continue through time across those events; rather, it would have a number of separate, independent “existences.”26 Peirce’s later view of continuity implies that a collection of actual discrete points is not a genuine continuum and thus not really a line at all; analogously, an individual whose existence through time occurs across several discrete intervals does not exist continuously across all of those intervals. An individual’s temporal continuity is a matter of its existence having no temporal gaps, and this continuity is consistent with the object’s being distinct from, and thus non-continuous with, other individual things. The same is true with regard to the continuity of development described in the previous section. There I posited that the development of an individual human being during pregnancy happens continuously, with no sudden jumps or breaks marking its “entrance” into existence. This continuity of development and absence of sharp ontological boundaries is consistent with the fact that the developing being is an individual. There is no inconsistency, nor even any tension, in the claim that an individual entity can come into existence through a continuous process. A more difficult challenge for my account (but not necessarily for Peirce’s own views of individuality) has to do with my claim that an individual x, which exists at one time, and an individual y, which exists at a later time, can be physically continuous but nonetheless numerically distinct. The challenge here is this: what justifies my singling out two entities as being numerically distinct, despite the fact that they are a part of the same extended continuum? I need an account of the identity conditions of Peircean “Seconds” that can provide an explanation of how individuals can be physically connected across time and yet still be numerically distinct. The following passage from Peirce’s 1903 Lowell Lectures suggests an account of the identity conditions of Seconds according to which the identity of a given individual entity depends on the “Firsts,” i.e., the qualities, which it exemplifies: The mode of being of the quality is that of Firstness. That is to say, it is a possibility. It is related to the matter accidentally; and this relation does not change the quality at all, except that it imparts existence, that is to say, this very relation of inherence, to it. But the matter, on the other hand, has no being at all except the being a subject of qualities. This relation of really having qualities constitutes its existence. But if all its qualities were to be taken away, and it were to be left quality-less matter, it not only would not exist, but it would not have any positive definite possibility – such as an unembodied quality has. It would be nothing at all. (CP 1.527, emphasis added) This Peircean idea appears in my account, not as a full-blown statement of identity conditions for concrete particulars, but rather as a constraint on what
158
ROBERT LANE
a plausible statement of such conditions might be. In my view, the degree to which x and y are qualitatively similar is a constraint on the diachronic (i.e., trans-temporal) identity of x and y. My claim that an early-term PBH is not numerically identical to the late-term PBH with which it is continuous is based on the radical dissimilarity between the two entities. Very early in gestation, including during week three, a PBH is too dissimilar, anatomically, physiologically and psychologically, to the late-term PBH with which it is physically continuous to be numerically identical to it. On the twenty-second day (the beginning of the fourth week) of gestation, about six days after the end of gastrulation, a PBH “is about an eighth of an inch long and bears a striking resemblance to a corncob.”27 The anatomical and physiological differences (not to mention the psychological differences) between a PBH on day 22 and a lateterm fetus are numerous, so much so that the organisms are numerically distinct.28 What’s more, on my view physical continuity plus some degree of similarity – structural, functional or psychological – are, in general, jointly sufficient for the identity of an organism through time, and a very late-term PBH is sufficiently similar to the infant and the adult with which it is physically continuous to warrant the claim that it is one and the same concrete particular. So unlike B3, B32 is Bill.29 In ordinary contexts, we tend to judge whether x is diachronically identical to y based on how similar x is to y. Suppose that when I leave my hotel room, my watch is the sole object on my nightstand. When I return, there is no longer a watch on my nightstand, but a pineapple. My natural reaction is not to say that the entity which previously had the qualities (the “Firsts”) of a watch now has the qualities of a pineapple, but rather to say that the concrete particular which formally sat atop my nightstand is no longer there and that it has been replaced by another entity entirely. Had I come back to find a watch qualitatively identical to my own except that its face is cracked, I would judge, not that my watch has been replaced by another, numerically distinct concrete particular (although that is a possibility) but that something happened while I was gone to damage my watch, or that my watch had been damaged earlier and that I simply had not noticed it before. Of course, similarity is a matter of degree, and the pre-philosophical judgments I have just described are not based on whether things are similar, but on how similar they are. My judgment that the watch and the pineapple are not the same concrete particular is based on their deep dissimilarity, and my judgment that the watch with the intact face and the watch with the cracked face are numerically identical is based on their deep similarity. My judgment that B3 is numerically distinct from B32 is based on the same sort of recognition. This example illustrates that similarity should serve as a constraint on theories of the nature of concrete particulars (be they bare substratum theories or bundle theories) and on theories of the persistence of concrete particulars through time (be they endurance theories or perdurance theories).30 Any such theory that implies that things as dissimilar as a watch and a pineapple are in fact one and the same concrete particular would have to be
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
159
based on deeply intuitive assumptions – assumptions which themselves are more intuitive than the claim that an entity cannot be a watch at one time and a pineapple at another. Admittedly, the preceding explanation of a similarity constraint on theories of identity and persistence does not in itself constitute an account of identity conditions for Seconds. Neither does it reflect Peirce’s most developed view on the subject. The following suggests that Peirce himself viewed identity and persistence in a way that might be at odds with my own similarity-based approach: It is to be observed that numerical identity is not empty verbiage, as the identity of a quality with itself is, but is a positive fact. This is due to the possibility of the individual’s assuming different accidents. Throughout all vicissitudes its oppositions to other things remain intact, although they may be accidentally modified; and therein is manifest the positive character of identity. (CP 1.461, c.1896, emphasis added) Peirce’s view seems to have been that it matters little how much an individual’s qualities (its “Firsts”) change; an individual retains its identity through time when its “oppositions to other things,” i.e., its reactions against other things, are continuous. This is echoed in his 1902 Baldwin’s Dictionary entry for “individual,” in which he asserted that “everything whose identity consists in a continuity of reactions will be a single logical individual” (CP 3.613, 1902). But these comments do not give us a satisfactory identity condition for Seconds, since they leave open the question how we can distinguish one instance of continuous reaction from another. For Peirce, the answer seems to have been the medieval notion of haecceity (e.g., CP 3.434, 1896).31 Whatever Peirce’s views were, though, any account of the persistence of concrete particulars that appeals to haecceity must have the resources to explain how numerically distinct entities can be continuous through time (as they must be, since a mother and her child are continuous through time and are nonetheless distinct entities), and (on my view) must be consistent with the similarity constraint described above.32 3. Pragmatism and Indeterminacy So far I’ve explained how two of Peirce’s doctrines play a role in my own thinking about pre-birth humans. It is now time to begin building toward an explanation of the consequences of Peirce’s synechism for the moral status of PBHs. This will require that I first explain the idea of indeterminate diachronic identity. As we shall see, an examination of this idea will lead us from synechism into Peirce’s pragmatism and thus show how my view represents a genuinely pragmatic approach to the issue of the moral status of PBHs.
160
ROBERT LANE
We can consider for each second during the transformation from B3 to B32 whether, during that interval, B3 has ceased to exist and B32 (which is one and the same thing as Bill) has begun to exist. My position is that for any second you happen to choose, the answer is no. There is no definite time at which B3 ceases to exist and at which B32 begins to exist, just as there is no single hair the loss of which transforms a hirsute-but-slowly-balding person into a bald person. And yet, just as the hirsute man who loses all of his hair one hair at a time eventually becomes bald, so B3 is eventually replaced by B32. What I mean to suggest is that the concept of diachronic identity, like that of baldness, is susceptible to sorites reasoning. The following illustration may make this clearer. Assume that we have very small units of measurement for dissimilarity, such that a concrete particular x can change by one unit during an interval t to t1 (that is, x-at-t differs from x-at-t1 by only one unit of dissimilarity) and nonetheless still exist (that is, x-at-t and x-at-t1 are numerically identical); this is analogous to the fact that a hirsute person can lose a single hair without thereby becoming bald. But by continuing to alter x’s characteristics one unit of dissimilarity at a time, we can alter x by an exceedingly large number of units such that x has ceased to exist and a distinct concrete particular has begun to exist; and this is analogous to the transformation of a hirsute person into a bald one via the removal of every one of her hairs a single hair at a time. What’s more, just as there are persons about whom it is indeterminate whether or not they are bald, there are times in the gestational development of a human organism at which it is indeterminate whether the PBH that exists at that time is identical to the PBH that existed during week three of pregnancy or whether it is identical to the PBH that will exist during week 32 of pregnancy. For example, it is indeterminate whether B6 (the PBH that existed in Bill’s mother’s womb during the 6th week of her pregnancy) is identical to B3 or whether it is identical to B32.33 So on my view, there is real indeterminacy in the world, in that there is no fact of the matter regarding whether B6 is the same concrete particular as B32. Peirce himself seems to have acknowledged the reality of indeterminacy. To see exactly what shape this acknowledgment took, it will be helpful first to consider Peirce’s pragmatic understanding of the concepts of truth and reality. According to Peirce, a true belief is one that would survive all possible inquiry, and the real is the object of such a belief.34 This pragmatic account (or, to use Cheryl Misak’s apt expression, pragmatic elucidation35) of the concepts of reality and truth is consistent with the definition of reality as that which is independent of what anyone in particular believes about it,36 and with the definition of truth as the correspondence of a proposition with what it represents.37 But it goes beyond those merely verbal definitions to show how the notions of reality and truth are relevant to our investigatory practices: a true proposition is one which would be believed, and a false proposition is one which would be rejected, by an ideal community of inquirers at the hypothetical end of inquiry, and the real is the object of the former sort of proposition.
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
161
On its own, this account of truth and reality does not require propositions which are neither true nor false, i.e., it does not require that there be propositions which would be neither accepted nor rejected at the hypothetical end of inquiry. But there is good reason to think that Peirce himself held that there are such propositions. Late in his life, he discovered a set of logical operators sufficient to ground a three-valued system of formal logic, and he called its third value “the Limit” between truth and falsity.38 He intended that third value to characterize propositions that ascribe a boundary property to a continuitybreach. Consider his example of a drop of black ink spilled on, and rupturing the continuity of, an otherwise clean piece of white paper. The propositions “The boundary between the white area and the black area is white” and “The boundary between the white area and the black area is black” each ascribe to a continuity-breach the property the continuity of which is ruptured by that breach. On Peirce’s view, the boundary between the white area and the black area is neither black nor white, but neither is it non-black or non-white. The propositions in question, then, are neither true nor false. Peirce’s view was that at the hypothetical end of inquiry there would be no consensus regarding such matters – no matter how far inquiry into the color of the boundary were pushed, neither of the propositions in question would be accepted, and neither would be rejected.39 If truth and falsity are understood pragmatically, neither proposition is true, and neither is false; and if reality is understood pragmatically, it is really indeterminate whether the boundary is black and really indeterminate whether the boundary is white. Peirce’s pragmatism about truth and reality, when paired with his acknowledgment of propositions which are neither true nor false, implies that there are ways in which the world – not just our descriptions of the world, but the world itself – is indeterminate. If the best we can possibly do in describing the world is to describe it in vague terms, then in that respect the world really is indeterminate. In some cases, the world is such that S is neither P nor not-P; with regard to S being P, the world is indeterminate, and the proposition that S is P is neither true nor false. This willingness to acknowledge worldly indeterminacy appears in Peirce’s defense of the synechistic, anti-Parmenidean claim that I quoted earlier, that “being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing”: ... to say that a thing is is to say that in the upshot of intellectual progress it will attain a permanent status in the realm of ideas. Now, as no experiential question can be answered with absolute certainty, so we never can have reason to think that any given idea will either become unshakably established or be forever exploded. But to say that neither of these two events will come to pass definitively is to say that the object has an imperfect and qualified existence. (CP 7.569, EP 2:2, 1893, emphasis added)
162
ROBERT LANE
If no possible inquiry, no further experiences or reflections, would ever result in a consensus regarding whether or not S is P, then there is no fact of the matter about whether S is P. This is essentially the same as my view regarding some statements of diachronic identity. If no evidence or arguments would ever yield universal consensus regarding whether or not a PBH during week six of gestation is numerically the same as a PBH during week 32 of gestation, then it is really indeterminate whether, e.g., B6 is numerically identical to B32.40 Although Peirce might not have agreed with my specific claims that the sentence “B6 = B32” is of indeterminate truth value and that the world is such that it is indeterminate whether B6 is diachronically identical to B32, he would have accepted the more general conclusion that some meaningful statements are neither true nor false and that inquiry, no matter how far it might be carried, may not be able to settle all meaningful questions. So there are times during which it is indeterminate whether the PBH growing in Bill’s mother’s womb is B3 or whether it is Bill (a.k.a. B32), just as there are times during the transformation of a non-bald person into a bald person during which it is indeterminate whether he is bald. Thus, there is no determinate answer to the question, at what point does Bill (a.k.a. B32) begin to exist. And this, I believe, has important implications for our view of the moral status of pre-birth humans. 4. Synechism and Moral Indeterminacy On my view, there is no moment or event in the course of human development that constitutes an important moral boundary. That is, there is no point immediately before which a PBH is not morally relevant and immediately after which it is morally relevant. The moral properties that characterize procedures that involve the destruction of PBHs, procedures such as abortion and the harvesting of embryonic stem cells, depend (either entirely or in part) on the relevant biological and psychological facts about PBHs. But because of the gradual and continuous shading into existence of a human being, the relevant biological and psychological facts are not always such as to be characterized in a determinate way. So the gradual shading out of existence of one Peircean Second and the gradual shading into existence of another is mirrored, I believe, by the relevant moral properties of procedures involving PBHs. In particular, there is no specific point during gestation at which abortion ceases to be determinately prima facie morally permissible and becomes determinately prima facie immoral. A defense of this view requires an explanation of an assumption that I adopt from Don Marquis’ widely discussed and reprinted article “Why Abortion is Immoral.”41 Marquis argues that the primary reason that killing an adult human being is prima facie immoral is that it deprives her of the most valuable thing she possesses, viz. a future of valuable experiences, including enjoyments,
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
163
relationships, projects, and so forth. Marquis calls this sort of future a futurelike-ours (FLO). If someone kills Bill when he is 37 years old, this deprives him of the same FLO of which he would have been deprived had he been killed as a newborn. Since killing him at age 37 is prima facie deeply immoral, so is killing him just after he has been born. This, I maintain (along with Marquis), is a sufficient, although not a necessary, condition of the prima facie immorality of killing a neonate: it deprives him of his FLO. But Marquis goes further than this and argues that it would have been just as immoral to kill Bill when he was an early-term PBH, and thus he believes that abortion is prima facie immoral by at least the end of the second week of pregnancy. Here is where Marquis and I part ways. On my view, Bill-at-37 does not have the same FLO as B3 because Billat-37 and B3 are not numerically identical. The point is not that they are different persons (since B3 is not a person at all, under any plausible criterion of personhood). It is, rather, that they are numerically distinct concrete particulars, i.e., non-identical Peircean Seconds. Were B3 and B32 identical, they would share a future, and destroying B3 would deprive it of the very same future of which one would deprive B32 were one to destroy it. B32’s future is an FLO, and so it is prima facie seriously immoral to destroy B32. But on my view, B3 is not one and the same thing as B32, and so they do not share a future. B3 has a future of sorts, but it is not a future characterized by projects, activities, personal relationships, or any conscious experiences whatsoever. It is, in short, not an FLO. B3 gradually fades out of existence and is replaced by B32, an entity that is numerically identical to Bill-at-37 and thus has the same FLO as Bill-at-37. The entity that itself has no direct moral claims on our actions, because it has no FLO, is physically continuous through time with the entity that does have such a claim because it does have an FLO. So there is no specific point during the transformation of B3 into B32 immediately before which it is morally permissible to destroy the PBH and immediately after which it is immoral to do so. To pick out conception, implantation, viability, or any other specific event as the point at which the PBH acquires moral status is to succumb to a sort of dualism. Peirce wrote that “in its broadest legitimate meaning,” the word “dualism” refers to “the philosophy which performs its analyses with an axe, leaving, as the ultimate elements, unrelated chunks of being.” This view, he wrote, is “most hostile to synechism.” (CP 7.570, EP 2:2, 1893) On my view, at some point after the third week of gestation, abortion ceases to be determinately permissible, but there is no definite point at which this happens. Likewise, at some point before week 32 of pregnancy, abortion becomes determinately immoral ... and neither is there a definite point at which this happens. My synechistic approach to the question of abortion suggests the possibility that some moral judgments might be neither true nor false, and this brings us back to a point made in the previous section. My view is that some moral judgments regarding abortion are, although meaningful, neither determinately true nor determinately false. There is a period during pregnancy in
164
ROBERT LANE
which it is indeterminate whether the developing PBH is identical to the lateterm PBH with which it is continuous, and during this period, the PBH’s moral status is indeterminate. For example, abortion during the eighth week of pregnancy is, on my view, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral, and propositions such as “Abortion in the eighth week of pregnancy is immoral” and “Abortion in the eighth week of pregnancy is morally permissible” are neither determinately true nor determinately false. While there is no evidence that Peirce himself intended his third truthvalue to be taken by propositions expressing moral judgments, he may nonetheless have taken synechism to imply that there are moral properties “between” determinate moral permissibility and determinate immorality: One of the worst effects of the influence of moral and religious reasonings upon science lies in this, that the distinctions upon which both insist as fundamental are dual distinctions, and that their tendency is toward an ignoring of all distinctions that are not dual and especially of the conception of continuity. Religion recognizes the saints and the damned. It will not readily admit any third fate. Morality insists that a motive is either good or bad. That the gulf between them is bridged over and that most motives are somewhere near the middle of the bridge, is quite contrary to the teachings of any moral system which ever lived in the hearts and consciences of a people. (CP 1.61, c.1896) My own view is analogous to the anti-dualistic attitude Peirce expresses here. Destroying an embryo in order to harvest stem cells from it, preventing a pregnancy from being initiated after fertilization has occurred (e.g., by the use of emergency contraception such as Plan B) and aborting a pregnancy very early on (e.g., by ingesting mifepristone within the first few weeks of gestation) are all determinately prima facie morally permissible, and aborting a pregnancy that is very far along is prima facie determinately immoral. But there is a period during any pregnancy, a period the beginning- and end-points of which are indeterminate, during which aborting that pregnancy would be neither determinately morally permissible nor determinately immoral. My pragmatic, synechistic view is an attempt to “bridge the gulf” between the dual moral notions of moral permissibility and immorality. 5. Conclusion I will conclude with an idea that is especially valuable for a pragmatic bioethics that attempts to deal with such deeply controversial subjects as abortion. The idea is fallibilism, the view that any belief, no matter how closely held, might in future fall victim to further reasoning or experience. Peirce held that synechism will seem wholly implausible to anyone who rejects fallibilism:
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
165
The doctrine of continuity rests upon observed fact.... But what opens our eyes to the significance of that fact is fallibilism. The ordinary scientific infallibilist ... cannot accept synechism ... because he is committed to discontinuity in regard to all those things which he fancies he has exactly ascertained, and especially in regard to that part of his knowledge which he fancies he has exactly ascertained to be certain. For where there is continuity, the exact ascertainment of real quantities is too obviously impossible. ... scientific infallibilism draws down a veil before the eyes which prevents the evidences of continuity from being discerned. But as soon as a man is fully impressed with the fact that absolute exactitude never can be known, he naturally asks whether there are any facts to show that hard discrete exactitude really exists. That suggestion lifts the edge of that curtain and he begins to see the clear daylight shining in from behind it. (CP 1.172, c.1897) I hope that the pragmatic approach to reproductive bioethics sketched in this essay will eventually help to “lift the curtain” and shed just such clear daylight on difficult moral questions involving pre-birth humans.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An early version of this article was presented at the 2006 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in San Antonio, Texas, and at the spring 2006 meeting of the Georgia Philosophical Society in Atlanta, Georgia. I am grateful for the very helpful criticisms and suggestions I received at each meeting.
NOTES 1. I use “pre-birth human” as a blanket term covering every stage of the human organism from conception until birth. 2. The qualification “prima facie” is important. My view is not that destroying a relatively young PBH is absolutely morally permissible, for there may be circumstances in which doing so is wrong (e.g., when doing so would be against the wishes of the genetic parents), and my view is not that destroying a relatively advanced PBH is absolutely immoral, for there may be circumstances in which doing so is permissible (e.g., when doing so is necessary to save the life of the mother). 3. D. Micah Hester, Community as Healing (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). 4. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 nos. 5–6 (2003). 5. A recent example is James Liszka, “What is Pragmatic Ethics?” presented at the March 2005 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in Bakersfield, California. For other examples of Peircean work within ethics broadly construed, see the contributions to Peirce and Value Theory, ed. Herman Parret (Philadel-
166
ROBERT LANE
phia: J. Benjamins, 1994), which collects papers presented at the Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress at Harvard University in 1989. 6. The few exceptions of which I am aware are: Elizabeth Cooke, “On the Possibility of a Pragmatic Discourse Bioethics: Putnam, Habermas, and the Normative Logic of Bioethical Inquiry,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2003): 635–653 (see also Griffin Trotter’s response in the same issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy); and Mary Mahowald, “On Helping People to Die: A Pragmatic Account,” in Pragmatic Bioethics, 2nd edn., ed. Glenn McGee (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 109–120. Also worth noting here is Stanley Harrison, “The Unwilling Dead,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 46 (1972): 199–208, which argues that a fetus is a person in a distinctively Peircean sense, that of being a possible member of society, from the moment of conception, and that “[t]he willful destruction of a fetus ought [in most cases] to be prohibited by law” (p. 208), even very early on in pregnancy. 7. Christopher Tollefsen and Mark J. Cherry, “Pragmatism and Bioethics: Diagnosis or Cure?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2003): 533–544, at p. 534. 8. D. Micah Hester. “Is Pragmatism Well-Suited to Bioethics?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2003): 545–561, at p. 552. 9. References in the familiar decimal notation are to Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols., ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958), by CP, volume, and paragraph number. Other references to Peirce’s works are as follows. EP refers to The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 2 vols., ed. Peirce Edition Project et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992–1998), references by volume and page number. W refers to Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, ed. Max Fisch, et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982–), references by volume and page number. PPM refers to Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, ed. Patricia Turrisi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 10. Note that Peirce does not deny that synechism is a metaphysical principle, but only that it is an “ultimate and absolute” metaphysical principle. It is accurate, I think, to construe synechism as a methodological principle that governs the admissibility of metaphysical hypotheses. 11. For pointing out the methodological aspect of Peirce’s synechism, I am indebted to Susan Haack, “Not Cynicism, but Synechism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41 (2005): 239–253. 12. Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” The Monist 57 (1973): 43–61. 13. The multitude of events essential to the eventual birth of a healthy human being is emphasized by Harold Morowitz and James Trefil, The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 14. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “gradual” as “Taking place by degrees; advancing step by step; slowly progressive.” So to say that human beings come into existence gradually is not necessarily to imply that their coming into existence is continuous. A merely gradual coming into existence could happen across a number of discrete steps and thus need not be continuous. 15. I agree with Roderick Chisholm that existence does not come in degrees, a claim he argued in “Coming Into Being and Passing Away,” in Philosophical Medical Ethics: Its Nature and Significance, ed. Stuart Spicker and H. Tristram Engelhardt
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
167
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1977), pp. 169–182; reprinted in Roderick Chisholm, On Metaphysics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). 16. Warren Quinn, “Abortion: Identity and Loss,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 24–54; reprinted in Quinn, Morality and Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); quotations are from the original. I developed my own view before becoming aware of Quinn’s. I am indebted to Roberta Ballarin for bringing it to my attention. 17. Quinn tends to say “gradual” rather than “continuous.” The sole exception is when he describes the proponent of “gradualism” as finding “the idea that artifacts and human beings pop into existence extremely artificial and implausible. On his view, gradual and continuous phenomena have been radically misrepresented in the interest of logical neatness and simplicity.” (Ibid., p. 34) On the distinction between gradualness and continuity, see note 14. 18. Ibid., p. 40. 19. Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard, “16 Days,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2003): 45–78. 20. Ibid., pp. 62–63. 21. Ibid., p. 52. 22. They do, however, embrace explicitly the anti-synechistic aspect of their view; see p. 76. 23. This assumes that there was a single PBH growing in Bill’s mother’s womb throughout week three of her pregnancy, from day 15 to day 21. This is something that Smith and Brogaard would dispute, since, on their view, before the end of gastrulation (at around day 16) the PBH is not a single entity at all, and so it is not the same entity as the PBH that exists after gastrulation is complete. Nothing in the present article turns on whether Smith and Brogaard are correct about this, so readers who are sympathetic to their view can simply read my “B3” as referring to the entity that begins to exist around day 16 rather than the being that already exists on day 15. 24. On the notion of rigid designator, see Saul Kripke, “Naming and Necessity,” in Semantics of Natural Language, ed. Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972), pp. 253–355; reprinted in Naming and Necessity, rev. edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). 25. While I am unsure whether Peirce himself would agree with the position I take here regarding the diachronic identity of PBHs, it is clear that he would insist that, even if my position is correct, it is still not the case that individual human beings exist absolutely independently of each other. Nor must any synechist say, “I am altogether myself, and not at all you.” If you embrace synechism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity. In the second place, all men who resemble you and are in analogous circumstances are, in a measure, yourself, though not quite in the same way in which your neighbors are you. (CP 7.571, EP 2:2, 1893) If we are to accept this synechistic doctrine, we must construe it in such a way as to be consistent with the fact that individual human beings, while perhaps not absolutely
168
ROBERT LANE
independent of each other, are at least independent to some significant degree, such that, for example, by killing me, you would not thereby be killing everyone else. He went on: There is still another direction in which the barbaric conception of personal identity must be broadened. A Brahmanical hymn begins as follows: “I am that pure and infinite Self, who am bliss, eternal, manifest, all-pervading, and who am the substrate of all that owns name and form.” This expresses more than humiliation, – the utter swallowing up of the poor individual self in the Spirit of prayer. All communication from mind to mind is through continuity of being. A man is capable of having assigned to him a rôle in the drama of creation, and so far as he loses himself in that rôle, – no matter how humble it may be, – so far he identifies himself with its Author. (CP 7.572, EP 2:3, 1893) Peirce may have meant to imply, not that any conception of personal identity is “barbaric,” but that the commonly accepted conception of personal identity is barbaric because of its narrowness. 26. It is unclear what criterion we would use to judge such an object as being “the same” across all of its appearances. In his 1902 Baldwin’s Dictionary entry for “individual,” Peirce wrote that an individual’s “identity consists in a continuity of reactions” (CP 3.613), which suggests that there is no time during the existence of an individual at which it is not reacting with or against something, so that it is impossible for one and the same individual to cease to exist (and thus cease to react) and then resume existing at a later time. Reflecting this view, Manley Thompson wrote that “[i]f I think of [an] object as having ceased to react” for a period of time, then “I think of it as having ceased to exist” during that time. Thompson, “Hartshorne and Peirce: Individuals and Continuity,” in Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne, ed. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 131. 27. Morowitz and Trefil, Facts of Life, p. 89. 28. Smith and Brogaard assume that if x is a PBH and an organism, then x is numerically identical to the late-term fetus (child, adult) with which it is physically continuous. I acknowledge that by no later than the end of week three, the PBH is an organism. But it is possible for two distinct organisms to be physically continuous with one another through time, so further argument is needed to show that that organism is numerically identical to the late-term PBH with which it is physically continuous. Smith and Brogaard offer no such argument. 29. One reason that I believe that B32 is numerically the same entity as the neonate Bill is that by 32 weeks after conception, the EEG data gathered from a prematurely born infant are the same as those gathered from a full-term infant (Morowitz and Trefil, Facts of Life, p. 122). Thus B32 is not only physically and physiologically similar to Bill-as-an-infant, but psychologically similar, as well. 30. For a good overview of each sort of theory, see Michael Loux, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge, 2002). 31. For an extensive discussion of this idea, including how Peirce’s use of it differs from that of Duns Scotus, see Jeffrey R. DiLeo, “Peirce’s Haecceitism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 27 (1991): 79–109. 32. Whether Peirce’s haecceitism can be made consistent with the recognition either of the diachronic continuity of numerically distinct entities or of the relevance of similarity to identity is a subject for future research. If it can be made so consistent, this
Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View
169
might help me to avoid a possible objection to my view, viz. that individuation is always relative to a purpose. A critic might maintain that in insisting that B3 and B32 are numerically distinct, I am merely adopting a particular point of view with a particular purpose, either conscious or not; but there are equally legitimate claims to be made from different points of view with different purposes behind them, claims according to which B3 and B32 are in fact identical. But if haeccetism is true, then individuation is not always relative to a purpose. “Seconds” are individuals independent of our (actual) cognitive activities and thus of human purpose. 33. It is also a consequence of my view that diachronic identity is, not only indeterminate, but also non-transitive. I further defend the claim that diachronic identity is both indeterminate and non-transitive in a forthcoming article. 34. Peirce’s pragmatic view of reality and truth occurs throughout his writings. The classic statement of that view is in his 1878 “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.” (CP 5.407, EP 1:139, W 3:273). 35. Cheryl Misak, Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 36. Peirce defined the term “real” in this way as early as his 1871 review of Fraser’s Berkeley (CP 8.12, EP 1:88, W 2:467). 37. Peirce seems not to have wanted to replace a correspondence definition of truth with his own pragmatic elucidation. He seems to have assumed something like a correspondence account of truth in a number of works, including “The Fixation of Belief” (CP 5.387, EP 1:122, W 3:256), the Harvard lectures of 1903 (CP 5.96, EP 2:182, PPM 191), and, perhaps most conspicuously, a manuscript of 1906: That truth is the correspondence of a representation with its object is, as Kant says, merely the nominal definition of it. Truth belongs exclusively to propositions. A proposition has a subject (or set of subjects) and a predicate. The subject is a sign; the predicate is a sign; and the proposition is a sign that the predicate is a sign of that of which the subject is a sign. If it be so, it is true. But what does this correspondence ... of the sign to its object consist in? The pragmaticist answers this question as follows.... if we can find out the right method of thinking and can follow it out ... then truth can be nothing more nor less than the last result to which the following out of this method would ultimately carry us. ... Truth is the conformity of a representamen to its object.... (CP 5.553– 554, EP 2:379–380) But as Misak argues in Truth and the End of Inquiry, Peirce would reject any version of the correspondence theory according to which truth is correspondence with things-in-themselves, apart from how we can possibly experience them. 38. Peirce’s work on three-valued logic was conducted in 1909. It was first brought to light in Max Fisch and Atwell Turquette, “Peirce’s Triadic Logic,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2 (1966): 71–85; reprinted in Fisch, Peirce, Semeiotic and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner and Christian Kloesel (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 171–183. For Peirce’s work itself, see “On Triadic Logic,” in Pragmatism, Old and New, ed. Susan Haack (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006), pp. 217–220.
170
ROBERT LANE
39. See Robert Lane, “Peirce’s Triadic Logic Revisited,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (1999): 284–311. 40. Here I am reminded of the somewhat Peircean position regarding moral experience and vagueness that John Dewey adopted in his Experience and Nature (1925). Dewey contrasted the view that the ultimately real consists of the objects of only one sort of experience (knowledge, reflection, cognition) with the view that other sorts of experience ought also to be taken seriously as indications of what is real: From the standpoint of knowledge, objects must be distinct; their traits must be explicit; the vague and unrevealed is a limitation. Hence whenever the habit of identifying reality with the object of knowledge as such prevails, the obscure and vague are explained away. It is important for philosophic theory to be aware that the distinct and evident are prized and why they are. But it is equally important to note that the dark and twilight abound. ... the assumption that nature in itself is all of the same kind, all distinct, explicit and evident, having no hidden possibilities, no novelties or obscurities, is possible only on the basis of a philosophy which at some point draws an arbitrary line between nature and experience. (The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), pp. 27–28). 41. Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 183–202.
Robert Lane Assistant Professor of Philosophy Department of English and Philosophy University of West Georgia 1601 Maple Street Carrollton, Georgia 30118 United States
Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 171–178
Editions Rodopi © 2006
Book Reviews Paul Fairfield. Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Pp. 184. Cloth ISBN 0-8204-4997-0.
Paul Fairfield’s Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism is one of the first book-length studies explicitly informed by the thematic overlap of pragmatism and philosophical hermeneutics. He draws equally proficiently on William James, Martin Heidegger, John Dewey, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. His familiarity with the different traditions provides him the conceptual resources to articulate a view of the relation between theory and practice that is both clear and persuasive. Fairfield shows himself to be fluent not only in a number of debates ranging from the more theoretical, such as the nature on truth, to the more practical, such as a nitty gritty of business ethics, but also of different philosophical styles and approaches, from historical analysis to phenomenological description. Fairfield’s book has five chapters: “Hermeneutical Pragmatism,” “Truth without Methodologism,” The Educative Process,” “Ethics and its ‘Application,’” and “Structures of Intersubjectivity.” Earlier versions of the second and fourth chapters were previously published. Each chapter is self-contained – in fact each contains not only its own set of notes, but also its own bibliography – and can be read independently of the other five, though the theoretical background for the project is only laid out in detail in the first chapter. The middle three chapters can be read as applying the conclusions of the first chapter to the question of the nature of truth, the proper character of education, and applied ethics. The final chapter stands apart from the other four in that it is the least influenced by pragmatism; there Fairfield develops a phenomenological taxonomy of ways of comporting ourselves in the world and the kinds of ethical responsibility that accompany each. Of particular interest to pragmatists are the first and second chapters, where he most systematically integrates concerns of pragmatism and philosophical hermeneutics. Unifying the five chapters is Fairfield’s attempt to explain the relationship between theory and practice without either making theory simply another practice, or making practice simply the application of theory. He writes, these studies defend a conception of philosophical theory that is committed at once to abandoning the foundationalist epistemological assumptions underlying modern normative theories while providing the
172
Book Reviews resources necessary in articulating a philosophical and principled critique of the practices in which we habitually engage. (5–6)
His goal is a common one, preserving the possibility of rational criticism while denying we can achieve transcendental, a-historical, or a-cultural perspectives upon our practices. Fairfield’s suggestion for achieving a critical perspective on practices is to derive the norms of evaluation from the practices themselves. To take one of his examples, we can criticize certain legal actions if we can articulate the goals implicit in legal practice and then show that these actions do not properly fulfill the practice’s goals. At no point in the process do we need to appeal to extrapractical norms. A practice, according to Fairfield, is “a complex of action types, relationships, roles and rules which display a common orientation toward the attainment of particular ends” (9). A practice is essentially teleological, although we never aware of the full character of the ends except though engagement in the practice. Following Dewey’s employment of the idea of “ends-in-view,” Fairfield argues that we only become able to reflectively articulate the ends of a practice as we succeed in the practice. “Practice imminent theorizing,” then, is the activity of (1) descriptively clarifying the ends of the practice and (2) evaluating the practice with respect to those ends. In this process, which Fairfield calls hermeneutic pragmatism, practices can be rationally evaluated without appeal to criteria external to the practice. Since clarifying the ends-inview internal to a practice occurs by describing the ends that appear within the practice, this part of Fairfield’s dialectic of theory and practice is called “phenomenological,” and it is one of the main places where he sees pragmatism and hermeneutic phenomenology intersecting. That said, a classical phenomenologist would probably balk at Fairfield’s employment of the term, as Fairfield uses it to refer simply to describing the way things seem to us rather than as an intellectually disciplined activity of experiencing things in such a way that their essential features show themselves to us. In the second chapter Fairfield addresses the concern that philosophical hermeneutics has an inadequate account of truth. The account of truth as aletheia – phenomenological disclosure, which Gadamer inherits from Heidegger – is “far from complete” as it cannot tell us why some disclosing interpretations are epistemically preferable to others. Fairfield thinks hermeneutics should look to the pragmatism to arrive at a more satisfactory account of truth. He gives three criteria for any theory of truth that could be acceptable to hermeneutics: it must make no appeal to correspondence between interpretation and the “thing in itself” nor to anything transcending our experience, ... it must recognize the historical contingency and partiality of truth, ... [and f]inally – and most importantly – it ought to be a necessary condition for
Book Reviews
173
truth that it provide a compelling answer to Nietzsche’s question of why exactly the truth is something that we value and ought to value. (36) Once we put aside the idea of aletheia, what is left of Gadamer’s theory of truth is simply the idea that an interpretation must be coherent with itself and with other accepted interpretations. Fairfield supplements this with James’s idea of truth as pragmatic success, a kind of coherence that extends beyond interpretations to other beliefs, judgments, experiences, and even actions. He also introduces Dewey’s model of experimentation as the proper phenomenology for how truth functions in practice. Finally, reintroducing Gadamer’s emphasis on interpretation as a social activity, we get, Fairfield argues, an account of truth that uniquely meets his established criteria. Although his patchwork account of truth does indeed fit his criteria, the cobbling together of disparate theories runs the risk of leading us into concluding some things are both true and not true under the same theory of truth. But of greater concern is Fairfield’s quick dismissal of aletheia as a viable part of Gadamer’s phenomenology of truth, especially since the kind of disclosure discussed by Gadamer and Heidegger is often disclosure that is not reduced to ways in which the subject matter functions in practice. If it is necessary to remove the notion of aletheia in order to bring together Gadamer’s and pragmatic accounts of truth, it may not only be because of concerns about an aletheic component of a phenomenology of truth, but perhaps also because it is at this point that Gadamer and Heidegger are at their least pragmatic. In the third chapter Fairfield applies his pragmatic hermeneutics to questions of education and shows how Dewey’s results follow. He takes on E. D. Hirsch’s view of education, characterizing it as emphasizing “the acquisition of knowledge as the passive registering of facts and the development of reflective capacity as an inevitable and happy by-product of the accumulation of information” (76). Hirsch’s view is easy pickings for anyone versed in Dewey’s educational theory; what makes Fairfield’s presentation interesting is how he follows his method of “immanent theoretical critique” to describe the ends internal to the practice of education – education “aims at deepening our understanding of ... phenomena and enlarging our acquaintance with the cultural lifeworld to which we belong” (89) – and derives his criticisms from that point. He also applies his conclusions to questions of the intellectual virtues of education, the immorality of indoctrination, academic dishonesty, the abuse of power, students being grade-oriented, and the issue of academic freedom. Here Fairfield’s hermeneutic pragmatism most clearly shows its fruitfulness. The fourth chapter deals with applied ethics, particularly business ethics and medical ethics. Understandably if theory arises out of practice and is not separate from practice, then the standard view of applied ethics – normative ethics applied to concrete ethical problems – does not reflect actual moral reasoning. According to Fairfield’s hermeneutical pragmatism, moral theorizing about practical cases arises in the context of the professional practices
174
Book Reviews
themselves, much as was the case with education in the third chapter. Theorizing again takes on the role of describing the ends of the practice and then evaluating the extent to which the current professional activities satisfy those ends. An obvious objection would by that there may be cases where the ends of the practice do not assure that the means to those ends are moral means – consider a capitalist factory owner exploiting the employees to satisfy the end of maximizing profit. Fairfield anticipates these concerns and appeals to universal human rights to bolster his account of practice immanent theorizing. Rights are properly conceived as constraints on practices generally or trumps over other kinds of moral considerations. As constraints, they offer little positive guidance on what individuals must do in order to be ethical ... their function is primarily that of identifying limits on how individuals may pursue the ends that they hold quite apart from the practices in which they engage. (119) This is a surprising supplement to a project the main intellectual motivation of which is to show the possibility of deriving norms of reflection without appeal to transcendent moral principles. Fairfield seems to think that by giving only a negative conception of rights – rights as limits on morally acceptable behavior – he is avoiding difficulty here, but the kinds of arguments used to establish the legitimacy of universal rights, even in their negative conception, go far beyond the resources Fairfield offers us in his hermeneutical pragmatism. One has to wonder if by helping himself to rights talk Fairfield isn’t appealing to just those practice-transcendent norms hermeneutic pragmatism is supposed to function without. In fairness, in his discussion of rights Fairfield directs our attention to his fifth and final chapter where he spells out the “depth structures implicit in intersubjectivity” (145) in order to uncover “the normative conditions of social praxis broadly conceived” (145). A pragmatist, and a hermeneut as well, should be skeptical about Fairfield’s claim to be providing an account of these structures “without prior theoretical commitment” and indeed this chapter may have the least to offer pragmatist readers. Nonetheless, it is rich in philosophical insights. Here Fairfield focuses entirely on Continental figures in order to construct an account of “moral being-in-the-world” that integrates (or sublimates) what he calls the “suffering” mode of being and the “presiding” mode of being into a “participating” mode of being. He argues that we are in a constant state of tension between our desire to be responsive to others and our desire to withdraw into ourselves for the sake of self-edification. Implicit in this dialectic, which Fairfield (following Kant) calls our “unsocial sociability,” are the values of authenticity, recognition, and freedom. His argument for rights, then, lies in the claim that the tension in the dialectic only has a political resolution “in the recognition of human rights of the kind traditionally associated with liberal politics. In particular, the freedom of all persons to pursue self-chosen ends is
Book Reviews
175
fundamental to a social order that recognizes the fundamentality of imperatives of both sociability and unsociability” (167). Fairfield may be right, but given how important rights are to his ethical theory, it will take more than these brief Hegelian comments to make his case. I am in sympathy with Fairfield’s moral intuitions and sense for what an adequate moral philosophy should look like. He draws frequently and expertly on the views of other philosophers, but his selectivity was at times more distracting than helpful. Within in a couple pages he supports his view with extended quotations from Buber, Nietzsche, and Hegel, yet one can’t help but note how different these three thinkers are and how opposed they are (or would be) to each other’s conclusions. The result is that no matter how plausible Fairfield’s conclusion, it is likely to be unsatisfactory to defenders of a particular philosopher’s viewpoint, and pragmatists may suspect that he relies too heavily on just those practice-transcendent values he seems to be rejecting. The ultimate question of the successfulness of Fairfield’s project will not be answered by this slim volume, and we should expect more detailed arguments in the three books he has published (or is in the process of publishing) since. On the other hand, one of the merits of Fairfield’s book is that it constantly pushes us to articulate why we would want to defend a fuller version of a philosopher’s position, when an exceedingly plausible view, one that draws only on parts of that philosopher’s position and dismisses the rest, is put in front of us. Fairfield’s view is exceedingly plausible and he presents it with admirable clarity; furthermore it is on a theoretical topic (the proper relation between theory and practice), and practical topics (how to think about education and professional ethics), that should interest all philosophers, especially pragmatists. David Vessey University of Chicago
William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, eds. The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Pp. vi + 262. Cloth ISBN 0-7914-6069-X. Paper ISBN 0-7914-6070-3.
Billed as a discussion of the influence of pragmatism’s modern incarnation over contemporary philosophy of language, the subtitle of this book is slightly misleading. Originally published in Germany, most of the essays contained in The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy were first included in Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus.1 The English version of the book was given a slightly different title on translation – possibly because it had been originally published in Europe,
176
Book Reviews
and the publishers were hoping to capitalize on the interest in pragmatism generated by the linguistic turn in the thought of the Frankfurt School. In fact, when William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe speak about contemporary engagements between analytic and continental thought, they are speaking almost exclusively of the work done in the United States dating from the early 1970s to bridge the divide between analytic and continental philosophy. In terms of an actual engagement with properly “Continental” thinkers, A House Divided,2 another book to which Mike Sandbothe has contributed, actually does a better job of comparing the work of analytic thinkers with their 19th and 20th century European counterparts. It would be fair to say, in fact, that 20th century continental philosophy is represented in Egginton and Sandbothe’s book almost exclusively through the figure of Richard Rorty. Beyond this critique, however, Egginton and Sandbothe’s book represents an interesting discussion of the revival of American pragmatism in the late 20th century. Comprising eleven essays in total, the first three essays in the book, by Ludwig Nagl, Hilary Putnam and Antje Gimmler, discuss the origins of classical American pragmatism, comparing pragmatism to other philosophical strains prominent at the time. Nagl argues that American pragmatism in general, and its discussion of temporality in particular, can be understood as an attempt to detranscendentalize traditional German metaphysics (Kantianism). Putnam discusses the original goals of pragmatism, wanting to criticize the idea, common to William James and John Dewey, that truth can be understood as consensus. Putnam nonetheless militates for the need to retain the critical urge embodied by Charles Pierce’s and William James’s pragmatism, namely, the need to abandon metaphysical definitions of truth. Gimmler’s essay is the most interesting of the three, at least from the point of view of investigating the divergence between continental and analytic thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her discussion is of broader interest because of her other interests in German sociology and Jürgen Habermas’s philosophical project. She begins her text by discussing Robert Brandom’s neo-pragmatism, specifically Brandom’s emphasis on recognition (which Brandom openly acknowledges as borrowed from Hegel) in his usetheory of meaning. Gimmler argues that while Brandom can be understood as a Hegelian, there is an important distinction between the two thinkers: what separates Brandom from Hegel is Hegel’s emphasis not only on recognition but on assimilation. Her interest in Brandom and Hegel has practical importance, because it provides another entry into the discussion of intentionality in Habermas’s pragmatics, specifically in Habermas’s somewhat critical discussion of Brandom in his Truth and Justification.3 The other eight essays discuss the consequences of what the editors term “neopragmatism.” Obviously, I cannot deal with every one of them here. In particular, for reasons of space (and also because their content seems at odds with the themes of the rest of the book), I can only mention William Egginton’s “Keeping Pragmatism Pure: Rorty with Lacan,” the only discussion of French
Book Reviews
177
philosophy (besides a few passing references to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida) in the volume; and Arthur Fine’s “The Viewpoint of No-one in Particular,” a discussion of pragmatism and the philosophy of science The highlight of the remaining essays is undoubtedly Albrecht Wellmer’s “The Debate about Truth: Pragmatism without Regulative Ideas.” Wellmer continues his criticism of Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, a critique he began in “Intersubjectivity and Reason”4 and in Ethik und Dialog.5 Echoing ideas developed (separately, as far I as am aware) by Nicolas Rescher in his book Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus,6 Wellmer argues that Habermas and Apel have conflated the difference between justified belief and truth. Closing with a discussion of Apel, Wellmer argues that “the attempt to anchor truth in the idea of an ideal communication community is structurally analogous to the strategy of the metaphysical realists” (107). Rather than escaping the well-known problems of classical metaphysics, Apel has proposed an entity (the ideal speech community) that no individual has access to, and can serve as no possible frame of reference for communication. Criticizing Apel for believing that “the only alternative to ‘truth-absolutism’ ... is a relativistic-historicist dissolution of the concept of truth,” Wellmer concludes that “we in fact need no such Archimedean point in order to save the normative power of truth” (108–109). Of the remaining essays, four deal specifically with Rorty’s philosophy, including one by Rorty himself. In “A Pragmatist View of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy,” Rorty examines correlations between contemporary philosophy of science and Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language. This essay, while interesting, unfortunately suffers from a general deficiency common to all the essays in this volume that deal with Rorty and Davidson. Rorty fails to address the contention that is often made against him (by Davidson himself in some places) that Rorty has relativized Davidson’s philosophy in a way that Davidson would be utterly opposed to. In two essays, “The Pragmatic Twist of the Linguistic Turn,” written by Mike Sandbothe, one of the editors of the volume, and “What Knowledge? What Hope? What New Pragmatism?” by Barry Allen, the authors attempt to tease out and define the various separate projects within neopragmatism and Rorty’s thought. Sandbothe argues that what separates Rorty from Davidson is the difference between a theoretician generally uninterested in social concerns (Davidson), and a social philosopher whose use for pragmatism and Davidson is merely to provide a framework for practical concerns (Rorty). While erudite, Sandbothe never properly questions Rorty’s understanding of Davidson’s philosophy of language. Allen, for his part, focuses exclusively on Rorty’s reinterpretation of the philosophical task, arguing that the uniqueness of Rorty’s work lies in that fact that, of all possible philosophical goals, Rorty is interested in philosophy neither as epistemology nor as metaphysics, but, following the late Wittgenstein, in philosophy as a therapeutic activity. “In this point of view, the best philosophy undermines the feeling that there is something valuable for
178
Book Reviews
philosophy to do” beyond merely trying to find new ways to express the problems we find in world around us (146). In the last essay of this section, “Richard Rorty: Philosophy beyond Argument and Truth” (and the only one overtly critical of Rorty), Wolfgang Welsh argues that Rorty has transgressed his own self-imposed philosophical boundaries, borrowing methods from distinctly different philosophical disciplines (something that Rorty has argued against). In doing so, Rorty has implicitly, Welsh argues, let slip back in a type of metaphysical reality that his philosophy should leave out. Finally, the book closes with a defense of classical pragmatism as the much needed anecdote to classical metaphysics. In “Cartesian Realism and the Revival of Pragmatism,” Joseph Margolis argues that the genesis of pragmatism was a desire to combine metaphysical and empirical problems into one inseparable framework. Margolis takes pains to stress how a spectre haunting 19th century philosophy (Kantian metaphysics) is always looking for a way to slip back into contemporary thought. While it is difficult to recommend the book as a discussion of pragmatism’s role as a bridge between Anglo-American analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, I can recommend it as a useful propaedeutic to any discussion of Richard Rorty’s pragmatic turn. NOTES 1. Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus: Aktuelle Verflechtungen zwischen analytischer und kontinentaler Philosophie, ed. Mike Sandbothe (Weilerswist, Germany: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2000). 2. A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy, ed. C. G. Prado (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2003). 3. Jürgen Habermas, Truth and Justification, trans. Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003). 4. Published in Perspectives on Human Conduct, ed. Lars Herzburg and Juhani Pietanen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988). 5. Albrecht Wellmer, Ethik und Dialog (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986). 6. Nicholas Rescher, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Kevin W. Gray Laval University
This page intentionally left blank
r o d o p i
[email protected]–www.rodopi.nl
Problems for Democracy Edited by John Kultgen and Mary Lenzi
This book, based on the premise that democracy promotes peace and justice, explores theoretical and practical problems that can arise or that have arisen in democratic polities. Contributors address, with clarifying analyses, such theoretical issues as the relationship between recursivist metaphysics and democracy, the relationship between the economic and political orders, and the nature of justice. Contributors offer, as well, enlightening resolutions of practical problems resulting from a history of social, political or economic injustice.
Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2006 XXIII-278 pp. (Value Inquiry Book Series 181) Paper € 60 / US$ 78 ISBN-10: 9042020601 ISBN-13: 9789042020603
USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue - Suite 1B, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA. Call Toll-free (US only): 1-800-225-3998 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. +31-20-611 48 21 Fax +31-20-447 29 79 Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations
