Vol. XII, Sept. 2001

EPISTEME

Volume XII • September 2001

Episteme is published under the auspices of the Denison University Department of Philosophy Granville, Ohio

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E ditor~in-<;hief philip lv1iller Assistant Editor

Ji:rn Dunson Editorial Board Tamara Carty Nina Clements MeghanCoil Nathan Cook Shiloh Kuhlmann Owen McGrann SiInone Mulla Charlie Shonk JasonShuba Matt Tipping David Tulkin Faculty Advisor Barbara Fultner

Episteme is published an­ nually by a staff of under­ graduate philosophy stu­ dents at Denison Univer­ sity. Please send all in­ quiries to: The Editors, Episteme, Department of Philosophy, Blair Knapp Halt Denison University, Granville, Ohio 43023.

Episteme aims to recognize and en­ courage excellence in undergraduate philosophy by providing examples of some of the best work currently being done in undergraduate philosophy programs around the world. Episteme intends to offer undergraduates their first opportunity to publish philo­ sophical work. It is our hope that the journal will help stimulate philosoph­ ical dialogue and inquiry among stu­ dents and faculty at colleges and uni­ versities.

Episteme will consider papers written by undergraduate students in any area of philosophy; throughout our history we have published papers on a wide array of thinkers and top­ ics, ranging from Ancient to Contem­ porary and philosophical h'aditions including Analytic, Continental, and Eastern. Submissions should not ex­ ceed 4,000 words. All papers undergo a process of blind review by the edi­ torial staff and are evaluated accord­ ing to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophical in­ qUiry, creativity, original insight, and clarity. Final selections are made by consensus of the editors and the edi­ torial board. Please provide three double-spaced paper copies of each submission and a cover sheet includ­ ing: author's name, mailing address (current and permanent), email ad­ dress, telephone number, college or university name, and title of submis­ sion, as well as one (electronic) copy formatted for Microsoft Word for Windows on a 3.5" disk. The deadline for submissions for Volume XIII is 1 February 2002.

EPISTEME

A Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy Volume XII

September 2001 CONTENTS

Statement of Purpose and Editorial Board

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Table of Contents

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Revolutionary Modality in Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Ambiguity: A Phenomenological Basis for Critical Politics

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Andrew Thomas LaZella, RamUne University Truth, Inquiry, and the Prospect for Moral Knowledge

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Adrian M. Viens, University of Toran to Necessary Truth and the Existence of External Objects

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Nathan J. JUll, Loyola UniversihJ, Chicago Pragmatism, Neo-Pragmatism, Language and "Truth"

39

Andrew J. Forney, Western Manjland College Deep Problems for Bayesianism

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David James Anderson, Stanford University Call For Papers, VoL XIII (2002)

65

The editors express sincere appreciation to the Denison Univer足 sity Research Foundation, the Denison Honors Program, Pat Davis, and Faculty Advisor Barbara Fultner for their assistance in making the publication of this journal possible.

We extend special gratitude to the Philosophy Department Fac足 ulty: Alexandra Bradner, Barbara Fultner, David Goldblatt, Tony Lisska, Jonathan Maskit, Mark Moller, Ronald E. Santoni, and Steven Vogel for their enthusiasm, support, and creative input.

Revolutionary Modality in Merleau~Ponty's

Philosophy of Ambiguity: A Phenomenological

Basis for Critical Politics

.ANDREW THOMAS LAZELLA

n his essay "Situation and Suspicion in the Thought of Merleau-Ponty: The Question of Phenomenology and Poli­ tics," Merold Westphal argues that Merleau-Ponty's philoso­ phy of ambiguity necessitates political complacency: "Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, which in both its early and later forms is a powerful synthesis of method and ontology, has a minimal significance for his political writings" (160). According to this argument, Merleau-Ponty is unable to deduce a critical politics from his phenomenology of perception, because the latter is a philosophy of ambiguity. For Merleau­ Ponty, the structure of perception requires inexhaustible hori­ zons of meaning. Due to the situated-ness of perception within these horizons, ambiguity is required at the expense of absolute 1 meaning. Yet counter to Westphal, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity not only rejects political complacency but also justifies critical philosophy.

Through his rejection of epistemological foundationaHsffi, Merleau-Ponty can achieve a politics that minimizes the terror­ ism implicit in dogmatic political philosophy. When politics is dominated by a vanguard group's monopoly on abstract Truth, at the expense of the masses' lived experience, the progressive politics of revolution become reactive terrorism. Vanguard poli­ tics occurs with both liberalism's call for pure principled rational­ ity and also Hegelian-Marxist dialectics that posit reason in history. Only when political activity returns to the concrete level of existence can grounds be opened for the critical politics of revolution. Thus the philosophy of ambiguity not only provides a powerful critique of the terrorism implicit in foundationalism, it also creates new possibilities for revolutionary modality.

Westphal locates the disjunction between Merleau­ Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity and political theory around the latter's hermeneutics of suspicion. In the spirit of Marx, Niet­ zsche, and Freud, a hermeneutics of suspicion aims to uncover, unmask, or demystify the 'forgetfulness' of self-deception. Yet Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity fails to demystify the

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REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

horizons as is required for a hermeneutics of suspicion. Westphal asks: "Is the philosophy of ambiguity, in either its earlier or later version, a.critical philosophy in any meaningful sense?" (167). He answers: "only minimally." According to Westphal, a philosophy of ambiguity fails to show why dogmatism is a viable part of political life. In de constructing the foundational tradition of abso­ lute meaning, Merleau-Ponty loses the grounds needed for cri­ tique. All meaning is within the shifting horizons of Being.

The situational character of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity necessitates the existence of latent horizons of meaning. Yet any hermeneutics of suspicion requires that the repressed latency be made available given proper analysis. For Freud, psychoanalysis can uncover the repressed unconscious.

Similarly for Marx, the proletariat gains class-consciousness of their once-latent condition. In contrast, for Merleau-Ponty's phe­ nomenology, we never overcome the ambiguity of situatedness.

The latent horizons of experience are the invisible, which make the visible possible, and yet are always on the fleeting corners of our experience.

By characterizing Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambigu­ ity as complacency, Westphal misinterprets the very essence of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Instead of seeking a hermeneutics of suspicion to justify his critical politics, Merleau­ Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity is necessary for a critical poli­ tics. By grounding his politics in a hermeneutics of suspicion, as Westphal requires, Merleau-Ponty would negate the ambiguity required for critical politics. Westphal has failed to acknowledge the dynamic nature of the horizons of Being, and thus the critical element therein.

This connection between a philosophy of ambiguity and a critical politics is contained in Phenomenology of Perception, and is 2 only intensified in later works. Merleau-Ponty's early political writings must be interpreted as a continuation of this common theme, and not a hermeneutics of suspicion lacking proper philo­ sophical grounding. This is especially important in reading Hu­ manism and Terror, which seems most likely to flirt with the absolute role of the proletariat. Concerning Merleau-Ponty's phi­ losophy of ambiguity, Westphal states "the philosophy that moves from being-in-the-world to Being as its ground (and abyss), first in Heidegger and then in Merleau-Ponty, is estheti­ cally but not politically fruitful" (178). This last clause, contrast­

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ANDREW THOMAS LAZELLA

ing politics with aesthetics, tips us off in the right direction.

I will demonstrate first that Merleau-Ponty's critique of political dogmatism stems from his larger rejection of epistemo­ logical foundationalism (I). Secondly, I will argue that through such a critique, Merleau-Ponty makes possible radical politics of revolution, not complacency (II). By redefining political engage­ ment in terms of philosophy of ambiguity (I), Merleau-Ponty creates new possibilities for revolutionary modality (II). Only when his political theory is understood in conjunction with his philosophy of ambiguity are radical politics possible.

I. An understanding of the critical nature of Merleau-Ponty's phi­ losophy of ambiguity requires a preliminary sketch of his rejec­ tion of epistemological foundationalism, and its political counter­ part of dogmatism. Westphal had argued that the most Merleau­ Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity could achieve was a critique of political dogmatism, and yet could not even show why such dogmatism was a viable part of political life.3 To the conrrary, Merleau-Ponty's critique of dogmatism not only shows that it gains a viable role through its connection with epistemological foundationalism, but also that such a critique is a necessary prerequisite for a critical politics of revolution. This latter claim is h'ue because MerIeau-Ponty's critique breaks the status quo ter­ rorism of vanguard party politics (based on foundational episte­ mology) and reopens the horizons for the dialectic to solicit revolutionary activity.

For Merleau-Ponty, political action, like perception, is situated and thus does not lend itself to absolute judgments. In his philosophy of ambiguity, Merleau-Ponty seeks to reject such foundationalism's attempt to rranscend the situated character of socio-natural eksistance, and make absolute judgments. The goal of foundationalism's transcendence is to gain access to the pure eidos of reality, because only therein apodicticity can be achieved.

Yet in such a process, concrete lived experience is negated in favor of rational reflection. Situation is forgotten, and absrract forms are posited as 'absolute.' In Phenomenologtj of Perception, Merleau-Ponty rejects a long rradition of epistemological found a­ tionalism, which seeks to subordinate lived-experience to ratio­ nal reflection. Husserl sought to perform an epochi to bracket lived-experience. The act of bracketing through rational reflec­

REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

tion is to recover the essential structure of experience. HusserI's apodicticity requires forfeiting the body, other selves, and the world of lived-experience. In his Cartesian Meditations, HusserI describes his method as uncovering" an all-embracing essentially necessary structural form belonging to all transcendental subjec­ tivity" (57). It is exactly this h'anscendental phenomenology, which Merleau-Ponty rejects in Phenomenology ofPerception.

Political dogmatism is a natural outgrowth of foundation­ alism because relativity threatens to contaminate the pure eidos.

In Phenonzenol0gtj of Perception Merleau-Ponty states "with cogito begins that sh'uggle between consciousnesses each of which, as Hegel says, seeks the death of the otller" (355). Stalin's view of a vanguard party functions using the same foundationalist paradigm as Kant, Heget and HusserI. Existential modality is insufficient to bind individuals together. The only 'true' COlmec­ tion is reflective and thus exclusive. Rational consciousnesses of the privileged few (a vanguard/master) impose abstract truths upon the concrete experiences of the masses, disguising the situational nature of the former. Such an act is terrorism.

Terrorism can be defined as the introduction of absolute forms into the content of inter-subjective lived-experience. Ter­ rorism arises when the experiences of the masses are subjugated to the absolute forms dictated by a vanguard party. One example is writing history from a white male perspective, and characteriz­ ing it as "natural" history. Such is an act of terrorism against females and non-whites, whose history is considered secondary and accessory. Such "natural" history terrorizes the lived­ experience of the subordinate group.

In Sense and Nonsense Merleau-Ponty writes, lithe man with the most exact awareness of the human situation is not the master (since the master pretends ignorance of the foundations of being and communication underlying the play of his despair and pride) but the slave" (68). The master imposes a situational perspective as absolute, rendering the lived-experience of the slave irrational. Yet the slave is more firmly rooted in the world, and possesses greater awareness of the horizons. The slave pos­ sesses the "double consciousness" of DuBois, allowing for an understanding of the interdependency of both the master and slave. The slave understands his or her role both from the "slave" perspective, and also from the perspective of the master. As the master imposes his or her forms as absolute, in a corresponding

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ANDREW THOMAS LAZELLA

act the forgotten horizons become charged. A tension grows as the master moves further away from the horizons.

According to Merleau-Ponty, problems arise when the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a vanguar d-for-its elf. In Humanism and Terror he states "the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the will of a few officials who are the only ones initiated into the secret of history, as in Hegel; it follows the spontaneous movement of the proletariat in every country and relies upon the instinct of the masses" (xix). Counter to Westphal's claims, dog­ matism is a viable part of political life because it is an outgrowth of epistemological foundationalism. A vanguard party in posses­ sion of the logic of history will inevitably subject the life of the masses to its will. Only through foundational legitimization can such an act of terrorism be justified.

The critique of foundationalism, both epistemological and political, is the cornerstone of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity. The phenomenon of foundationallsm is not as myste­ rious as Westphal suggests. He requires that the self-deception of foundationalism stem from a retrievable unconscious or a Will to Power. However, foundationalism is simply an attempt to trans­ form situated perspective into absolute law. By such a transfor­ mation, a group can feel justified in political action due to apodic­ ticity. Such an act is reactive in nature because it seeks to mold an atemporal logic to history and is unable to account for the di­ verse, the ambiguous, and the "irrationaL" Political dogmatism leads to reactive politics and alien­ ates the concrete experiences of the masses. By revealing the situated nature of foundational epistemology, Merleau-Ponty breaks the status quo terrorism of the vanguard party and re­ opens the horizons of change. Because I am situated, and thus incomplete, I can have being-for-others. The moment I posit myself as essential, as cogito, or as a monad, I am cut off from others, from my world, and from my body. Only in the absence of apodicticihj is reciprocity possible. My situation is within the hermeneutics of Being, and thus foundationalism is an impossi­ ble venture. Merleau-Ponty states "universality is only con­ ceived, it is not lived" (H. T., 116). The only means to minimize terror is to embrace the horizons of situated-ness, and keep the dialogue open. The vanguard cannot empathize with the prole­ tariat's experience because it seeks to dominate it. The vanguard seeks divinity but in the process forgets its humanity. Thus we

REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

11

must not conceive of Merleau-Ponty's politics as separate from his phenomenology, as both share a common ambiguity. His political theory furthers the attack on foundationalism, because application of foundational principles to politics leads to conser­ vatism. Only upon return to the ambiguity of the concrete can a radical politics of revolution form without the conservative ter­ rorism of vanguard foundationalism.

II. Westphal had argued that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambi­ guity justifies situation instead of denouncing it, and thus cannot maintain a critical politics. To the contrary, the absence of ambi­ guity, sought by foundationalism, denies critical politics in favor of dogmatism. However, philosophy of ambiguity goes beyond mere critique by offering a critical politics of revolution.

By rejecting the inherent terrorism of foundationalism, Merleau-Ponty reopens the ground for critical activity. Being, not logic, compels us to adopt revolution, and ambiguity saves it from terrorism. Only through solicitation from situation, from flesh, and from Being, can the individual gain the critical per­ spective necessary for revolulionary modality. As will be demon­ sh'ated, Westphal's statement that Merleau-Ponty' s philosophy of ambiguity is esthelically but not politically fruitful" contains the deepest element of truth. Only when politics has been rede­ fined aesthetically, can we overcome the terrorism of foundation­ alism and achieve a critical politics of revolution.

In Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty states, "what I understand never quite tallies with my living experience, in short I am never quite at one with myself" (347). The horizons, which Westphal calls 'self-deception,' shape meaning. The invisi­ ble allows us to see the visible. We do not see the invisible, but see because of it. Counter to Westphal's claim, the positing of non-the tic horizons is not an act of bad faith, but a necessary part of experience. Merleau-Ponty's rejection of foundationalism's I = I redefines the I as being-in-the-world. As a being-in-the-world, I encounter a world molded by humanity and a world containing traces of II other selves." By placing the first inter-subjective con­ tact in the perceptual world of lived-experience, Merleau-Ponty avoids foundationalism's exclusionist tactics of positing others on a transcendental level. All meaning is given within the world, and abstract principles of the Kantian-Husserlian sort are contin­ /I

12

A"1DREW THOMAS L.~ELLA

gent and immanently plagued by lived-experience. MerIeau­ Ponty states "between my consciousness and my body as I experience it, between this phenomenal body of mine and that of another as I see it from the outside, there exists an internal relation which causes the other to appear as the completion of the system" (PhP, 352). Other selves are a pre-given part of my lived-experience, and not the bracketed objects of reflection in HusserI's transcendentalism. Thus, such a phenomenology of perception does not encounter the problems plaguing founda­ tional inter-subjectivity and its inherent terrorism of exclusion.

Meaning is based on the primacy of perception, as Merleau-Ponty states lithe social is already there when we come to know it and judge it" (PhP, 362). As in Gestalt psychology, the forms are not absolute but derived from the horizons. Meaning can be stabilized but never formalized. Applying Merleau­ Ponty's phenomenology of perception to politics, the forms of political activity (the abstract principles) are inseparable from the matter of political activity (the concrete lived-experiences). As Merleau-Ponty states, the matter is pregnant with form. Yet the vanguard (the form) is inseparable from the proletariat's embod­ ied experience in the world (matter). The proletariat's experience has its own meaning (form), although such is deemed insufficient in the vanguard's quest for the eidos.

Like perceptual meaning, political meaning forms within our experience. In Sense and Nonsense, MerIeau-Ponty states "all several men need to do is live together and be associated with the same task for some rudimentary rules and a beginning of law to emerge from their life in common" (118). Meaning takes place within experience, and not on some transcendental level outside of experience. We encounter forms within lived-experience, yet not the absolute forms sought after by the epochi. The above passage illustrates the connection between Merleau-Ponty's phi­ losophy of ambiguity and his critical politics. Within the horizons of ambiguity political meaning is inescapable, even if it is not the apodicticity of dogmatic foundationalism.

For both the perceptual and the political, meaning is derived from the ambiguity of situation. Sense is derived from Nonsense, as is the Visible from the Invisible. Meaning is given in a world surrounded by horizons, as Merleau-Ponty states in Humanism and Terror, one does not become a revolutionary through science, but out of indignation" (11). Yet how can we II

REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

13

undertake a critical politics if all action relies on situation, and situated perspective is contingent? Does this ambiguity not con­ demn us to inactivity due to limited perspective?

Due to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity, inter­ subjectivity is derived from situated being-in-the-world and not transcendental Egology. The problem with the latter's inter­ subjectivity is its a priori definition of legitimate subjectivity, and thereby its exclusion of 'irrational' subjects. Vanguard leadership is derived from such exclusionist inter-subjectivity. Merleau­ Ponty's dismissal of vanguard leadership, due to his rejection of foundationalism, makes true responsibility possible. Also, revo­ lutionary modality is no longer an act of transcendental will, but a process that requires other selves and Being. And therein critical politics of revolution is possible. The mistaken dilemma is that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity leads to either political complacency or the amoralism of Nietzsche's unprinci­ pled Clbermensch. Yet, just because history has not been won in Heaven or in a primordial battle of the gods, this need not condemn us to the dilemma between amoralism and compla­ cency.

The revolution gives no 'pure' motives, our conunitment is never absolute. It is always an activity counter-balanced by doubts, by fears, and by uninviting material conditions. In effect, the workers have more to lose than their chains. In Pllenomenologtj of Perception, Merleau-Ponty states lIalthough I can will myself to adopt a course of conduct and act the part of a warrior or a seducer, it is not within my power to be a warrior or a seducer with ease and in a way that 'comes naturally'i really to be one that is" (436). My project is more than my will alone; it requires my situation. Without an inviting situation, we become Don Quixote willing himself a Knight in a world without chivalry.

Thus I am not Sartre's monad of freedom; I am bound by my past, by the present, and by others around me in my world.

Freedom is freedom-in-a-situation, and thus it is difficult to become a revolutionary in a time of peace and prosperity.

Concerning the arrival of meaning within experience, Merleau­ Ponty states lias Gestalt psychology has shown, there are for me certain shapes which are particularly favorable, as they are for other men... " (PhP, 440). Like perceptual gestalts, the revolution­ ary shape forms for the oppressed. It is "natural" for them to "see" revolution as viable activity; their horizons of Being present

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ANDREW THOMAS LAZELLA

a revolution to-be-achieved.

To state 'the oppressed masses will eventually revolt' means neither pure reflective will nor mechanical necessity. To prove that revolution should be undertaken is not like proving a mathematical equation. I-the-oppressed exist in a situation that "naturally" lends itself to revolutionary consciousness. What I make of such natural inclinations is up to me, yet they are there-to-be-intended. Even if I deny them, I still take up a posi­ tion in response to them; in this case, that of denial. Through external persuasion I can learn to see the gestalt shapes differ­ ently, but never as pure free will. Even this process of learning requires my pre-existing situation.

The revolution is not something to be entered into lightly, because my horizons must be inviting. Far from Westphal's notion of static horizons of ambiguity, the horizons are the necessary source of revolutionary persuasion. As the master forgets the horizons in favor of abstract eidos, the neglected horizons become charged. The slave cannot forget his or her material existence, as can the master. Despite the ambiguous horizons of the slave's experience, the slave remembers situation.

And as the master moves further away from situation, the slave's horizons become ever more charged with forms of revolution.

Only through tlle horizons of Being can revolutionary modality be made possible. My status as a revolutionary requires reciprocity by my fellow revolutionaries and my world. Much like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith, who requires an invitation from God, my situation and my fellow persons must elect me as a revolutionary. I must be able to "play their language game" through a common reservoir of lived experience and a common situation. I must have the ability to view the world as "naturally" ripe-for-revolution. Being solicits me to become part of the revo­ lution, serving as the background for my activity. In effect, I must believe in the revolution.

Westphal's problem with the ambiguity of situated-ness has not been resolved because no source of judgment has been established. However, it is absolutely essential that such ambigu­ ity persists, and that the epochi is rendered impossible. Without ambiguity, dogmatic terrorism is inevitable. Only when the con­ crete experience of the non-vanguard element is embraced with its ambiguity can terrorism be minimized. Unlike the vanguard, embodiment always contains traces of doubt, fear, and uncer­

REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

15

tainty, and such are necessary to avoid terrorism. True responsi­ bility requires an openness to change, to ambiguity, and to pluralism. In Humanism and Terror, Merleau-Ponty states "the point is that we are not spectators of a closed history; we are actors in an open history, our praxis introduces the element of construction rather than knowledge as an ingredient in the world" (92). Only when an embodied revolutionary group acts without presumptuous notions of foundational apodicticitlj, can they open themselves to new horizons and thus achieve genuine responsibility.

The meaning of history is phenomenological, not logical.

We enter the revolution through the gradual solicitation of our situation, and not through an all-encompassing willful act nor a predetermined material position. We begin with vague expecta­ tions, such as change or better living conditions. Most do not enter the revolution seeking to kill the king or following a step­ by-step blueprint for building utopia. We see ourselves in terms of our immediate concrete lived-experience, not as the represen­ tative of the world proletariat class. Yet as we become more involved, we begin to see the bigger picture. We learn the names and lives of others who share our misfortune. In this initial unreflective openness with others, the reciprocity of empathy presents itself. We ek-sist with others upon a common horizon of Being.

The transformation into a revolutionary remains gradual, and is always dependent upon this openness to the horizons of Being. In absence of such opelmess, vanguard mentality is intro­ duced, and becomes a conservative force within the revolution­ ary bloc. In Phenomenologt} of Perception, Merleau-Ponty states "the revolutionary movement, like the world of the artist, is an intention which itself creates its instruments and its means of expression" (445}.The process of revolutionary modality is grad­ ual. Much like the artist, one begins with vague notions, and never a detailed formula. As we move along, we become further enticed and further engaged. We begin to see our own struggle within a larger movement, which is made possible through a common horizon of Being. As in the work of art, every stroke defines the whole, and the whole every stroke.

Like the artist, it is important that we are open to the horizons of Being at every moment, which might take us in an unexpected direction. We must follow the feeling of inspiration,

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ANDREW THOMAS LAZELLA

and not subject free movement to the confines of rationality.

Political activity, like aesthetics, must be defined for what it is: concrete lived-experience, not an exact science. Thus Merleau­ Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity, in its perpetual openness to Being, supports a radical and critical politics. Vanguard politics, on the contrary, dogmatically clings to history's eidos, and be­ comes reactive and conservative in its complacency.

Counter to Westphal's notion of the invisible horizons of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity, meaning is necessary and radical change is possible. Despite the inherent impossibility of exhausting the meaning of our horizons, such an act of recov­ ery is impossible not because of deception, but because of the thetic/non-thetic relationship. The thetic interweaves with the non-thetic to form an irreducible system of lived experience.

History has a gestalt-seeking equilibrium, which embraces this relationship. If the vanguard distances its forms from the lived­ experience of the oppressed (with whom it forms a necessary system), the tension will erupt into revolution. One example is the American Civil Rights movement, which was the result of a long-standing forgetfulness by the White population in America.

This "master/vanguard" group neglected the lived-experience of a large segment of American life. Thus this abstraction of forms charged the horizons of Black America, soliciting them to radical politics.

Like all forms of expert behavior,4 revolutionary modality is more a matter of knowing-how than of knowing-that. My knowing-that revolution is a possibility is derived from my knowing-how the fields of oppression are presented through lived­ experience. The truth of the revolution can never be verified. Yet only once we break ourselves of foundationalism's quest for apodicticity, and instead view revolutionary involvement like the work of the artist, can we achieve the openness necessary for responsible revolutionary modality. Like judging aesthetic inter­ pretations, we can still judge interpretations of revolutionary situations as "better" or "worse." Some calls for revolution may be deemed "unripe" or "superficial." We are able to avoid the dilemma between complacency and nihilism, even without an absolute measuring stick of history. History's gestalt seeks a point of equilibrium that uses revolutionary politics to counter­ balance foundationalism's forgetfulness.

Even if the proletariat or any other revolutionary group is

REVOLUTIONARY MODALITY

17

not ordained by the divine logic of history, nevertheless they are solicited by their embodied humanity. Revolution can minimize terrorism through openness to the horizons of Being. Such open足 ness allows for the perpetual movement of the dialectic and also for the dismissal of vanguard politics. The revolutionaries must keep an opelmess amongst themselves in order not to create a universal revolutionary category. Such a category would negate racial, ethnic, gender, and religious differences, and limit the movement of history.

As has been demonstrated, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity warrants critical politics. Reciprocity of the flesh is made possible only once human relations are re-grounded from their abstract position allotted by traditional philosophy.

Thereby, exclusive categories of the "irrational" (Le., women, non-Whites, non-Christians) are ended. Politics becomes a matter of shared situational perspective and openness to the horizons of Being, not a search for historical apodicticitlj.

HamUne UniversihJ NOTES 1 The ambiguity of situated-ness results from three interrelated factors.

The subject does not constitute the object prior to perception (i.e., as an ego). The subject derives meaning from a pre-existing socio-natural world. And the subject lacks an 1=1 relationship to itself, because only as being-in-the-world does it relate to itself.

2 I will concentrate on his philosophy of ambiguity as offered in his early works (1945-1947). These will include Phenomenology ofPercep足 tion, Sense and Nonsense, and Humanism and Terror. I believe the themes of ambiguity, made most explicit in his later writings, are implicit in the earlier writings and can be derived from them. The later works intensify his earlier project. Humanism and Terror comes closest to supporting vanguard politics when read apart from Merleau-Ponty's larger phenomenological project.

3 Without the unconscious of Freud or the Will to Power of Nietzsche, Westphal argued that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of ambiguity lacked a source of such repressive activity other than the vagueness of "Being."

4 See Hubert Dreyfus. What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

REFERENCES Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phe足 nomenology. Dorion Cairns, trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.

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Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology ofPerception. Colin Smith, trans. New York: Routledge, 1999.

- . Sense and Nonsense. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus, trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

- . Humanism and Terror: The Communist Problem. John O'Neill, trans. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000.

Westphal, Merold. "Situation and Suspicion in the Thought of Merleau-Ponty: The Question of Phenomenology and Politics."

Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Galen A. Johnson and Micahel B. Smith, eds. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990, 158-179.

Truth, Inquiry, and the Prospect for Moral

Knowledge

ADRIAN M. VIENS

he prospect for objectivity and determinate truth-values in the realm of moral inquiry has certainly gained greater sympathy in recent years. Traditional arguments from logical positivists, which maintained that value judgements, as opposed to factual judgements, were devoid of meaning or, at best, some lower order of non-cognitive meaning have been abandoned (Misak, 1994, 39). Even with the rejection of the legitimacy of such views, there is still a tendency to differentiate mathematical or logical propositions from those of the moral or political realm based on their formalism. While opening the door to the possibility of a cognitivist account of ethics, this has resulted in a state of affairs whereby moral claims or beliefs are at worst not considered sufficient to be considered candidates for objective truth-values, or; at best, admits a two­ tiered truth pluralism wherein empirical propositions are consid­ ered more true than moral propositions.

Those anticipating my argument may be expecting a re­ hashing of some form of realism in which the possibility of objective truth-values can be realized. However, the prospect of achieving genuine moral beliefs is not to be found in the believer­ independent metaphysics of some correspondence-based realism advanced by philosophers such as Michael Dummett who, while maintaining the possibility of objective truth-values, render the truth or falsity of such propositions independent of the inquirer's understanding. Instead, what is needed is a competing epistemic account that holds a view that the truth of a particular belief or proposition does not go beyond experience and inquiry. I con­ tend that this account ista be found in pragmatism. The prag­ matic epistemology originated by C. S. Peirce (1839-1913), and subsequently developed by contemporary pragmatists such as Cheryl Misak and Christopher Hookway in tl1eir recent works Truth, Politics, and MoraUft}: Pragmatism and Deliberation and Truth, Rationalift} and Pragmatism: Themes from Peirce provides an elucidation and improvement of Peirce's account of truth and an ideal normative framework in which a persuasive case can be made for the possibility of objective moral knowledge.

T

20

ADRIANM. VIENS

The focus of this paper will be to demonstrate that the success of the pragmatic view lies in its ability to illustrate that both empirical and moral propositions have determinate content that, when asserted, leads to consequences and commitments; when unpacked, these commitments show that genuine beliefs, including moral beliefs, aim at truth and thus strive for objectiv足 ity. Moreover, I will argue that such an account will provide not only a robust account of truth that admits moral propositions as candidates for determinate truth-values, but also sufficiently defends against the spectre of moral relativism without resorting to cultural imperialism. Although such an account in moral philosophy - one that places truth at its core - appears different from much of the contemporary discourse, it just may be what is needed to firmly establish the attainment of genuine moral knowledge.

I. Genuine Beliefs and the Commitments of Inquiry In "The Fixation of Belief," Peirce argues that a true belief is one

that is fated to be agreed upon were we to inquire as far as we could. Cheryl Misak improves this notion of truth to read that a true belief is one upon which inquiry could not improve -: a belief which would fit with experience and argument and which would satisfy the aims of inquiry, no matter how much the issue was subject to experiment, evaluation, and debate" (2000, 1). The pragmatist rejects the correspondence theory of truth on the basis that it disconnects truth from the practice of inquiry (i.e., a proposition's veracity is not dependent on what evidence can speak for or against it). From an epistemic perspective, this pragmatic construct throws a lifeline to truth and objectivity and rescues it from the mind-independent metaphysics that has fallen into derision. Instead, we put in its place a process of inquiry in which we strive to obtain the best belief - with "best" denoting a belief that would fit with available evidence, argumentation, and knowledge. On this view, we maintain an account of truth .that does not go beyond experience. Although Peirce did not devote an inordinate amount of time to discussing moral philosophy, his work in epistemology does set a solid foundation for the possibil足 ity of genuine moral knowledge.

Christopher Hookway reinforces the importance of the internal connection between assertion and truth in the pragmatic account of truth when he states that "every assertion that we U

THE PROSPECT FOR MORAL KNOWLEDGE

21

make involves a commitment to the truth of the asserted proposi­ tion" (62). Thus, our commitment to a proposition's truth is manifested in our practice that to assert proposition "p" is analo­ gous to asserting: TIp is true." However, we will see that we will want to distinguish this view from that of the minimalist or disquotationalist views, for under Peirce's assertoric account, we obtain a more robust account of truth (and this will have impor­ tant implications for moral inquiry, as we shall see).l A view of truth expressed by the minimalist does not go far enough in linking truth and inquiry, for the disquotationalist schema does not express the commitments that we incur in discourse, and as a result is not sufficient to account for the expectations and features of a true belief that is necessary for inquiry (Misak, 2000, 59).

According to Hookway, Peirce's account of truth is best understood not as a method of explaining the meaning of a proposition's truth, but rather as an account of the commitments we incur when we assert a proposition. When we assert a proposition, it is done under the belief that it is the best belief according to the available evidence and argumentation, and it would stand up to future inquiry. However, we are also commit­ ted to the view that under subsequent experience, our beliefs may be thrown into doubt, which may necessitate modification or abandonment for a new belief.

Yet Hookway adds an important qualification in this pragmatic account of truth - he argues that Peirce holds that when we assert a proposition "the content of what I commit myself to can be somewhat indeterminate" (57). The case in which truth is indeterminate, yet reality is determinate will " .. .involve quite a complex propositional attitude, one that uses the concept of truth to articulate an ideal to which the asserted proposition does not fully measure up. In that case, asserting a proposition commits me to its 'approximate truth/ not exactly its truth" (64-5). Such commitments are tied into Peirce's fallibilismi since we can never really know when we have reached the best belief, we need to focus on the process and aims of inquiry itself.

History reveals that previous beliefs (both empirical and moral), which we thought were absolute or could not be improved upon, were subsequently revised or invalidated on further evidence or argumentation. Inquiry is an active process in which new evi­ dence and justifications continually test our beliefs, and if doubt is cast on a particular belief, the opportunity is provided under

22

ADRIAN M. VIENS

the pragmatic account that allows for subsequent refinement or replacement of that belief.

II. Dissolution of the FactjV due Dichotomy Recall that under Misak's improvement of Peirce's account of truth, a true belief is one that best fits with evidence and argu­ mentation, and we would expect it to stand up to recalcitrant experience. Yet it will be necessary to briefly elaborate on the process of good inquiry and how we arrive at these best beliefs, for on Hookway's account, "if we cannot do this, then Peirce's clams about truth become trivial and uninteresting - an inquiry counts as good enough only when it contributes to producing agreement, even if we cannot say in detail what was good about the inquirer's activities" (51). In both empirical and moral areas of discourse, we tend to adopt a method of inquiry which results in agreement and convergence - what Peirce called the scientific method." What is important on Peirce's construal of such a method is that it takes experience seriously, and has a very broad account that what experience consists in.

Unlike the classical empiricists or logical positivists who took a thin and constrained view of experience to include only perceptual evidence from the sensory world that could speak for or against the veracity of a particular belief, on Peirce's account, experience is much more broadly construed as that which im­ pinges on us - all "compulsions of thought" (Vol. 8, paragraph 101). Experience is more than what can be seen, heard, and felt in the physical world, but anything that is "to be classed under the species of perception wherein a positive qualitative content is forced upon one's acknowledgement without reason or preten­ sion to reason" (Vol. 7, paragraph 623). The central role of experi­ ence, especially such a broad construal; under the Peircian notion of pragmatism is imperative because it appears to leave room for all propositions and beliefs (especially those concerned with morality) to qualify as genuine and objective.

However, if the pragmatist is to succeed in the establish­ ment of genuine moral knowledge, it will be necessary to dis­ solve the fact/value dichotomy. It will not be necessary to show that beliefs and propositions from empirical discourse are analo­ gous to those in moral discourse, but only to show that both maintain similar aims and commitments. Misak advocates the need to adopt a radical holism that does not result in "driving a /I

THE PROSPECT FOR MORAL KNOWLEDGE

wedge between various sorts of inquiri' and instead focus on the features and commitments of areas of genuine inquiry in which determinate truth-values are to be found to see if moral proposi­ tions can measure up (2000, 84).

On the view of classical empiricists and logical positivists, all genuine beliefs originated and were verified by perceptual experience of the physical world. Yet it was well-recognized that particular areas of scientific inquiry such as mathematics and logic, while thought to be objective and candidates for truth­ values, could not meet the test of experience. Hence, we were left with the analytic/ synthetic distinction, which while acknowl­ edging the inability of perceptual experience to verify mathemat­ ical or logical beliefs, allowed for a dualism in which these propositions were accorded a greater level of legitimacy in our inquiries. However, even with the admittance of the Quine/ Duhem Thesis, which rejects the distinction between the analytic and synthetic on the grounds that synthetic statements fail the empiricist test, mathematical and logical propositions were still accorded a legitimacy in our inquiries, which, while not indepen­ dently verifiable, were taken to be objective and candidates for truthvalues (85).

On Misak's account, since the view that Quine was pro­ moting jettisons the tTaditional empiricist dichotomy, there is nothing substantive that can be proffered from the exclusion of moral judgements from the realm of genuine belief. If both empirical and moral areas of inquiry are aiming at achieving the best beliefs - beliefs that fit with theoretical and observational experience - "there is no prima facie reason for denying moral inquiry a place in our search for truth" (86). If we take the process of inquiry seriously, that is, take it to have the aim of discovering genuine beliefs with determinate truth-values, there is no reason to suppose that given the dissolution of the fact/value dichotomy and the broad Peircian view of experience, we are not strongly warranted in treating moral inquiry as a genuine and objective area of inquiry.

The view of radical holism that Misak advances is attrac­ tive for it maintains an account of knowledge that requires genuine beliefs to be accountable to experience - to the reasons and evidence that strive to throw it into doubt. It is a view that, by making experience the "new empirical test," strikes a difficult balance between not prejudicing particular areas on inquiry

23

24

ADRIAt'J'M. VIENS based on artificial distinctions and maintaining a robust account that does not require the devaluing of empirical propositions to meet the needs of moral propositions. However, the pragmatist does not want to advance a position that maintains that state­ ments from areas of inquiry such as physics and morality are analogous in every way. What the pragmatist has done is to show that if we take a view of inquiry to be the achievement of true beliefs that are resistant to recalcitrant evidence, we should be able to see why moral beliefs can aspire to truth and objectiv­ ity and can be good candidates for determinate truth-values. As Ivfisak succinctly points out, once we can see that under Peirce's account the line between fact and value is blurred, in that both classes of belief (e.g. empirical and moral) are both constrained by experience, we are warranted in expecting that inquiry into these matters will result in determinate answers (1994,44). Both empirical and moral beliefs are acquired through the same per­ ceptual set and both are vulnerable to doubt and reclassification by recalcitrant experience.

III. Moral Inquiry, Pluralism, and Relativism "Moral deliberation has many marks of objectivity - the distinc­ tion between thinking that one (or one's culture) is right and being right, the use of moral beliefs in inferences, the thought that we can discover that something is right or wrong and improve our views, and the thought that it is appropriate, or even required, that we give reasons and arguments for our beliefs, to name a few" (Misak, 2000, 52). The objectivity of moral proposi­ tions lies in their sensitivity to recalcitrant evidence and argu­ mentation. If we were really a bunch of subjectivists who believe that appeal to objective moral values were specious, why do we deliberate and dispute so much about morality? I am inclined to believe that we take moral inquiry seriously because we believe that there is something to get correct - there is a right and a wrong answer. We hope that there will be an upshot to our activities, namely determinate answers with true-values.

The qualifications of our beliefs, which tend to be more predominant in moral inquiry, show that as an area of discourse, it is not as clean and ordered as mathematics. However, the desire to abandon our project of moral knowledge on the basis of these qualifications is misguided. In actuality, no area of dis­ course is free from the need for qualification. If it is a legitimate

25

THE PROSPECT FOR MORAL KNOWLEDGE

area of inquiry, inquirers will be continually striving for obtain­ ing the best belief. Even if it is conceded that qualification in areas of discourse such as morality and politics is more prevalent than in the natural and physical sciences, the same fact remains ­ both empirical and moral areas of inquiry aim at getting the best belief supported by available evidence and argumentation, and as a result are vulnerable to qualification. Quite paradoxically, the qualification of moral beliefs is seen as a weakness; however, the phenomenology of moral inquiry should establish that our practice of justifying moral belief speaks against the non­ cognitivist. It speaks against those who do not think there is good reason to see moral belief as being objective - those who think that the best explanation of a person's moral judgements is always a story about the person's cultural background or up­ bringing" (52).

Yet we still run into difficulties. For showing that the project of genuine moral knowledge is cognitive may be neces­ sary, but it is not sufficient-even J. L. Mackie agrees that moral claims pass any reasonable test for cognitive contenti however, such a state of affairs does not necessitate the jump to viewing moral claims as objective. Such objections are not novel; philoso­ phers such as David Burne and G. E. Moore have raised similar claims in the past. In the desire to show that moral knowledge can be objective, the pragmatist is not interested in making the case for some absolutist notion such as a categorical imperative or some form of act utilitarianism.

The pragmatist admits in certain areas of moral inquiry there will be underdetermination, and as a result there will be instances of conflict between moral principles or morally permis­ sible actions where it appears that there will be no upshot to our inquiry. Does this indicate the absence of authenticity of objec­ tive moral judgements (and the project)? I do not believe the evidence bears out such a conclusion. Although this does neces­ sitate caution, it does not indicate systematic relativism or doubt about the validity of moral judgements as truth-value candidates, for no belief is immune from revision or doubt. Although tll.ere is a higher frequency in moral inquiry as opposed to mathematical inquiry, both areas of inquiry aim at achieving the best belief - a belief that fits with available evidence, argumentation, and knowledge.

The strength of the pragmatist project lies inits ability to II

26

ADRIAN M. VIENS

(in the midst of divergent opinions and values) provide a robust account of ethics that can objectively criticize particular beliefs or actions as amoral, without resorting to cultural imperialism.

Misak provides a persuasive argument for why such a state of affairs of substantive homogeneity in morality is not problematic: But the fact that the compulsion of internal experience is less pervasive and less persuasive and less insistent means that the apparent lack of consensus on moral matters does not pose a serious problem for the Peircian project. There is a remarkable amount of consensus with respect to moral judgements and this can be ex足 plained by the force of internal experience. Any lack of consensus can be explained away by the fact that the way things are in the moral world does not impinge upon us in quite the same way things are in the empiri足 cal world. Thus, there is nothing debilitating about some (or many) undetermined moral questions. (1994, 45)

The pragmatist will not want to assert that resolution of ethical dilemmas will be as clear-cut and uncontroversial as solving a mathematical problem - they are clearly two different areas of discourse. Yet this lower level of consensus and agreement on moral matters does not necessitate that we give up on the project of truth and objectivity in morality. It is this challenge - what John Rawls calls the "fact of pluralism" which the pragmatist must face if the prospect for moral knowledge will be successful.

We can accommodate the reality of pluralism in Western society under Peirce's cognitivist account without succumbing to moral relativism. The pragmatist provides the only persuasive account which counters the relativist charge that an absence of agreement or performance of moral customs or actions is suffi足 cient to establish that there is no trace of objectivity in moral inquiry.2 But the pragmatist will be the first to admit that moral足 ity is a special area of inquiry that does not easily admit to universalization. "We cannot be quite sure that the community ever will settle down to an unalterable conclusion upon any given question. Even if they do so for the most part, we have no reason to think the unanimity will be quite complete, nor can we rationally presume any overwhelming consensus of opinion will be reached upon every question" (peirce, 1935, paragraph 610).

Moreover, the pragmatist will need to be careful when

THE PROSPECT FOR MORAL KNOWLEDGE

27

placing truth at the center of his or her ethical account; that one particular conception of the good is not endorsed as the good, and the rest designated as false or amoral. The pragmatist acknowl­ edges that human lives are better governed internally, and she will not want to dictatorially pick one particular conception of the good life and force it upon everybody. Instead, pragmatism works well with our democratic liberal practices in which it is recognized that our lives are better governed internally and that individuals can subscribe to numerous acceptable conceptions of the good (Misak, 1994,48). While in a pluralistic SOciety, we will find many well-formed and permissible conceptions of the good life that all have one thing in common. Each comprehensive doctrine is promoting a conception of the good which results in the production of moral judgements with an associative truth­ value that we hope will not be overturned by subsequent evidence and argumentation.

But a pressing problem remains - although we can main­ tain that moral beliefs strive towards truth and objectivity, how does the pragmatist avoid what Paul Taylor called the ethnocen­ tric fallacy (563-4)? How do we avoid designating non-liberal values as false (because they do not accord with our own)? It almost becomes an exercise of determining not whether the moral judgements are true, but whether they accord with West­ ern values! The pragmatist will want to be wary of such a state of affairs because she will want to maintain Peirce's account of the "community of inquiries." Unlike some contemporary pragma­ tists of Richard Rorty's sb'ipe, who argue for the existence of various communities of inquirers (which inevitably lead to rela­ tivism), we are better served with Peirce's conception whereby there is only one community of inquirers - all inquirers bound by the requirement to justify their beliefs and actions to the entire community of inquirers, and not particular segments of it. If we are to escape from charges of relativism in the realm of moral inqUiry, it will be essential to hold all inquirers accountable to the commitments of truth and objectivity, and not allow particular beliefs or actions that are resistant to recalcitrant experience.

It provides the only substantive argument against sub­ stantive homogeneity or the jack-booted thugs who come to take you away in the night that is epistemically robust. We can say that such conceptions are certainly not in the interest of converg­ ing on the best conception of the good life, but simply and

28

ADRIAN M. VIENS

advantageously can identify a conjunction of permissible concep­ tions of the good life that fit with available evidence and argu­ mentation. For instance, while Catholicism or vegetarianism would be considered acceptable conceptions of the good life, anarchism and Nazism would not be, and could be soundly criticized, for views of discrimination and violence do not aim at beliefs that fit with available argumentation, reasons, and evi­ dence. "Thus there is room for underdetermination and plural­ ism in a Peircian view of the objective status of moral judge­ ments. Our moral inquiries are legitimized without positing a correspondence between our moral judgements and moral facts, and without cultural imperialism. For an account of the truth of moral judgements that initially looked so implausible, this, I suggest, is no small thing" (Misak, 1994, 48).

Conclusion Knowing that all empirical and moral propositions and beliefs are vulnerable to recalcitrant evidence or argumentation, the pragmatic epistemology of Peirce's stripe is the only account that can maintain philosophically robust and identify serious areas of inquiry that strive for truth and objectivity.

The pragmatist does not want to suggest that propositions such as "The contemplative life is the good life" and "2 + 2 = 4" should be seen as analogous entities entitled to identical levels of certainty and reasonableness. To think otherwise would miscon­ strue the aspiration of what the pragmatic elucidation can bring in the area of genuine moral knowledge. What should be taken away from such an account is that in genuine areas of discourse, the process of inquiry will be aiming for truth.

In the area of moral inquiry, for instance, when dealing with the question of the good life, the strength of the pragmatic cognitivist position is not that it promises to identify the one, true conception of the good - instead, the pragmatic epistemology can identify various well-formed and rational conceptions of the good life, while being able to mount a robust challenge to amoral or illogical conceptions such as those advanced by the Nazis. It can provide a substantive objection and criticism of amoral be­ liefs or actions, while forcing relativists and sceptics to hide in the comer. One cannot make the case, as the relativist or sceptic does, that morality is simply a matter of expressing one's subjec­ tive preferences and dislikes, and then turn around and tell a

THE PROSPECT FOR MORAL KNOWLEDGE

group like the Nazis that genocide is wrong - it is only an account which places truth and objectivity at the center of moral inquiry that will allow us to levy justified criticism. Pragmatism provides such an account.

University ofToronto NOTES I The minimalist or disquotationalist view simply states that a proposi­ tion is true if and only if the state of affairs it represents is true [''p'' is true if and only if p]. An instance of this account of truth would be: "grass is green" is true if and only if grass is green. Thus, the truth of the proposition "grass is green" is only true ifin fact grass is actually green.

2 Relativists will often charge that it is the de Jacto absence of uniform adherence to moral beliefs and actions between different communities or nations that proves that morality is not objective. It is often charged that empirical disciplines, such as science, are the same in the world no matter where you go - there is not such thing, for instance, as Chinese REFERENCES Christopher Hookway. Truth, Rationality, Pragmatism: Themes from Peirce. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Cheryl Misak. "A Peircian Account of Moral Judgements." Peirce and Value TheOlY: On Peircian Ethics and Aesthetics, Herman Par­ ret, ed. An1sterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994.

Truth, Politics, and Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation. Lon­ don: Routledge, 2000.

Charles S. Peirce. "The Fixation of Belief." Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 3, C. Klosesal, ed.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

- . Collected Papers, Vol. 6, C. Hartshorn and P. Weiss, eds. Cam­ bridge: Harvard University Press. 1935.

Collected Papers, Vols. 7-8, A. Burks, ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Paul Taylor. "The Ethnocentric Fallacy." The Monist, Vol. 47,563­ 584.

29

Necessary Truth and the Existence of External

Objects

NATHAN J. JUN

ince at least the time of Descartes, one of the most impor­ tant issues facing Western philosophers has been the relationship between the internal world of individual human consciousness and the external world of physical objects. Some thinkers, most notably Berkeley and Hegel, sought to resolve the issue by altogether denying the existence of an objective world beyond sense perception. Others, such as W. V. Quine, have gone to the opposite extreme by denying the exis­ tence of consciousness, mental substances, or anything else which could be said to exist apart from the physical world,l All of these views share in common the idea that some kind of polarity allegedly exists between the external and the internal, such that one is inexorably occasioned by, or derived from, the other, I have argued elsewhere that an examination of the ax­ ioms of formal logic, rather than of the nature or structul'e of consciousness, may provide a clue as to the ontological status of physical objects. 2 In what follows, I hope to draw upon and improve this idea in an effort to provide a deductive proof for the existence of physical objects apart from cognition, In so doing, my chief goal is to establish a prima facie distinction between the existence of physical objects and the cognitive realization of those objects as such. I shall not attempt to deal with broader issues pertaining to the ontological status of consciousness, cOgnition, and the like.

S

I. Strong Idealism Defined

Unlike their ancient and medieval forbearers, the philosophers of the Enlightenment were especially fascinated by the vagaries of sense perception. By shifting the focus of philosophy from reason to perceived experience, Locke, Berkeley, Hurne, and their ilk radically challenged the longstanding Aristotelian correspon­ dence theory of knowledge and its accompanying metaphysical doctrines. More importantly, they called into question the very intelligibility of a "real world" which can be said to exist inde­ pendently of knowing, experiencing subjects. In an orderly, piecemeal succession, the empiricists divested epistemology of its old tokens, starting with Locke's doubting of substantial

NECESSARY TRUfH AND EXTERNAL OBJECTS

31

qualities and ending with Bume's rejection of substance and mind.

Although Burne is not an idealist in the strict sense, he nonetheless provides a very good example of the kind of thinking 1 wish to criticize in this paper. Bume begins his Treatise of Human Nature with a detailed consideration of the origin of ideas.

All perceptions, he says, can be divided into ideas and impres足 sions. The latter are those perceptions which enter with most force and violence/' including physical sensations, desires, emo足 tions, etc. (1:1:1). The former, in contrast, are "faint images" of impressions which emerge in the course of thinking and dis足 course. According to Bume, all thoughts and ideas ultimately come from impressions. We could not have ideas for things for which we have no impressions whatsoever (1:1:1).

All ideas of the mind seem to be interconnected by some universal set of principles (1:1:4). The first of these, which Bume terms resemblance, refers to the way in which particular ideas or impressions are said to be similar to other ideas or impressions.

The second, contiguihj, refers to the way in which particular ideas or impressions are ordered in time and space. The third, cause and effect, refers to the way in which certain ideas 01' impressions cause or bring about other ideas or impressions. The first two principles pertain to relations belween ideas and can be divided into qualities such as identity, quality, etc. (1:1:5). Cause and effect, in contrast pertains to all contingent matters of fact about the world (1:3:2).

Cause and effect, again, refers to relationships in which particular ideas or impressions seem to cause or occasion other ideas or impressions. Hume argues that empirical observation, rather than a priori reasoning, leads us to posit cause and effect: "Though the mind in its reasonings from causes or effects canies its view beyond those objects, which it sees or remembers, it must never lose sight of them entirely, nor reason merely upon its own ideas..." (1:3:4). The observation of causal relationships between impressions forms the basis of human experience as well as all reasoning about matters of fact (1:3:4-5).

Given that resemblance, contiguity, and causation are the only ties that unite our ideas together in consciousness, how are we to discern between true beliefs about matters of fact and fictitious beliefs? In the first place, Burne says, a belief is not the same thing as a simple idea. Rather, belief is a particular manner /I

II

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NATHAN}. }UN

of forming an idea" which convinces the mind of some thing's existence (1:3:7). The idea, moreover, is always formed according to relational and/ or causal relationships between present impres­ sions or impressions given to us in the past (1:3:8). To put it another \\'ay, the mind forms beliefs according to the resem­ blance, contiguity, or causal connections which subsist among particular impressions and ideas. In cases of demonstration, truth is established precisely because falsity is unintelligible. But in cases of matters of fact, true belief is established to the extent that such a belief corresponds to present impressions, impressions given in the past, or an agglomeration of both. Thus for Hume, all human knowledge reduces to ideas; we can have no knowledge of substance.

This account of knowledge differs from that of Locke and Berkeley in a number of important ways, a few of which are certainly worth noting. For Locke, the mind can only form simple ideas from the primary substantial qualities of objects of experi­ ence, e.g., extension, numbers, the power to produce secondary qualities in minds, etc. (II:2). Locke takes for granted that minds exist and that these minds form ideas from the primary qualities of objects of experience. It follows, then, that we can know something of the substance - that is, the world outside our minds - but only through its power to produce ideas within us. For Berkeley, in contrast, we cannot even know the primary qualities of substances (1:9-10). All we know are the ideas given to the mind. It is impossible to know whether these ideas correspond to some substance separate from our own minds. Hume goes one step further then both Locke and Berkeley by suggesting that all knowledge reduces to ideas formed from impressions. We cannot even assume a "mind" to which ideas are given, for the idea of mind is not formed from present or past impressions.

For the purposes of this paper, I will refer to the afore­ mentioned notion that all knowledge of existing things reduces to ideas as strong idealism. Some philosophers, including Kant, have attempted to refute strong idealism by suggesting that an external world must exist in order for our ideas to exist, even if the exact nature of this world remains eternally beyond our grasp.3 More recently, certain analytic philosophers have gone in the opposite direction by suggesting that ideas, and all attendant notions of mind, consciousness, and the like, are somehow re­ ducible to physical or materialistic processes, thereby inverting

33

NECESSARY TRUfH AND EXTERNAL OBJECTS

the nature of the problem entirely. For such philosophers, the question is how to account for the existence of the internal world," and not vice versa. I make no attempt here to deal with either of these solutions. Rather, I want to suggest an alternate way to account for the existence of an external world beyond cognition or sense experience by examining the idea of logically necessary truth.

IF

II. Necessary Truth and the Existence of Physical Objects All relevant epistemological issues aside, it is generally accepted that certain truths of formal logic or mathematics, such as "2+2=4," are necessary, such that their denial implies a kind of unintelligible contradiction. To put it another way, we cannot intelligibly imagine a state of affairs in which a necessary state­ ment such as "2+2=4" could be false, provided that the terms in question are adequately defined. At the same time" however we can intelligibly imagine a universe which is like ours in all respects except that it does not contain any human (or, for that matter" rational) beings. The question then becomes: do logically necessary truths obtain in such a universe?

In one sense, this seems impossible, inasmuch as it is impossible to imagine any possible world in which the denial of "2+2=4/1 is true. But it is also clear that the very concepts (quanlitative and otherwise) that are presupposed by this state­ ment are unintelligible in the absence of rational minds to con­ ceive them. This latter point has led some philosophers to con­ clude that the whole notion of necessary truth is in some sense absurd. J. S. Mill, for instance, argues that the JI character of necessity ascribed to truths of mathematics, and even... the pecu­ liar certainty attributed to them" is an illusion [because] those h'uths relate to, and express the properties of, purely imaginary objects" (19). Similarly, A. J. Ayer points out that the reason necessary h'uths are necessary is that "we cannot abandon them without sinning against the rules which govern the use of lan­ guage, and so make our utterances self-stultifying" (33). But language is, of course, something which is inconceivable without the existence of beings who use language. In this sense, logically necessary truths are only necessary within a decidedly contin­ gent context - namely, a context in which rational beings exist.

Assuming that the latter point is true, i.e., that the exis­ tence of rational beings is contingent, it follows that the existence l

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of any rational being X at time T is purely potential - that is, it mayor may not be the case that X exists at time T. Assuming further that the aforementioned truths of logic are ontologically dependent on the existence of some rational being X, it follows that these truths mayor may not obtain at time T, depending on whether X happens to exist at T. From these assumptions, it would seem to follow that in a universe such that X does not exist at time T, no logically necessary truths obtain at time T. Even if \ve grant that the instantiation of logically neces­ sary truths is ontolOgie ally dependent on the existence of some rational being X, it does not necessarily follow that there is a possible rational being X such that the existence of X could instan­ tiate a different or even contradictory set of logically necessary truths. In fact, it seems impossible to imagine a rational being X such that the existence of X instantiates a "truth" of the form "2+2=5./1 Even in a state of pure potentiality, logically necessary truths seem binding on all possible rational beings. To this extent, logically necessary truths remain necessary for all possible be­ ings, whether or not such beings ever happen to actually exist at all.

This idea implies, among other things, that the truth­ value of certain logical axioms or propositions remains indepen­ dent of the actual cognition of some rational being X. In other words, certain axioms or propositions remain necessarily true even if the instantiation of these axioms or propositions by some rational being X is contingent. If this is the case, it follows that the truth value of logically necessary axioms or propositions is in some sense independent of the ontolOgical status of rational beings, possible or actual. They remain constant even in a uni­ verse in which rational beings happen not to exist.

Taken at face value, this view carries a number of difficul­ ties. It seems absurd, for example, to suggest that 1/2+2==4" is a true proposition in a universe with no rational beings to instanti­ ate notions of quantity. Notice, however, that the very construc­ tion of these arguments necessarily implies that our universe is such that at least one rational being exists (namely, the author).

And while it is certainly true that the rational being in question just happens to exist (that is, exists contingently), the fact remains that he does actually exist, which means that the aforementioned logically necessary truths obtain.

Let us assume for a moment that the external world, and

NECESSARY TRUTH AND EXTERNAL OBJECTS

35

all physical objects that are part of the external world, do not exist apart from the cognition of some rational being X (a position which is roughly synonymous with "strong idealism"). Most of the aforementioned logically necessary truths, especially those pertaining to mathematics, implicitly rely upon a principle of quantification, which in tum relies upon principles of identity through which physical objects are differentiated. If physical objects do not exist, then it makes no sense to speak of "identities" and, by extension, It quantities." Thus the very idea of a statement such as 1/2+2=4/1 becomes, in some sense, unintelligi­ ble.

As we have already seen, however, it is impossible for any possible rational being to come into existence and not to instantiate the aforementioned logically necessary truths. If this is the case, it follows that whenever some rational being X comes into existence at time T, it not only instantiates certain logically necessary truths, but also all the necessary preconditions in­ volved with the instantiation of these truths. Inasmuch as the actual existence of physical objects is a precondition of the instan­ tiation of at least some of these truths (viz., the laws of mathemat­ ics), it follows that the actual existence of some rational being X at time T necessitates the existence of physical objects. And inas­ much as at least one rational being actually exists (viz., the author), it follows that physical objects also exist.

It may be objected that the actual existence of physical objects beyond the cognition of some rational being X is not necessary for the instantiation of relevant logically necessary truths. Quantity, for instance, may be derived from "ideas" of physical objects alone, whether or not these ideas correspond to some reality outside of the cOgnition of some rational being X. My reply is twofold. First, on what basis can quantity be derived if ideas alone exist? On a partially materialist view, quantity can be derived from physical differences - that is, we can decide that there are two things rather than one if the things in question meet certain physical criteria (e.g., the atoms of which they are con­ structed are at a certain spatio-temporal distance from each other, the atoms have differing chemical make-ups, etc.). On what grounds can we possibly say of two ideas that they are distinct without positing the existence of some kind of super-ideal sub­ stance?

Second, the existence of ideas must come either from

NATHAN J.

36

JUN

some reality outside the cognition of some rational being X, or else from other ideas already present to that same being. If the latter is true, then the ideas in question must themselves come from other ideas, or else they must come from at least one innate idea. The former is not plausible because it leads to an endless causal chain of ideas. The latter, in contrast, needs to be ac­ counted for according to a principle of sufficient reason. Such an idea, even if innate, must come from somewhere apart from itself. Clearly it cannot come from another idea, since it is the first idea, which means either it comes from an external world apart from cognition or else was "implanted" by some other force.

The question then becomes what this "other force" might be. If it is not part of an external world outside of cognition, then it must be some kind of "superphysical/l or supernatural force.

We then must decide whether the alleged existence of such a supernatural force" carries more evidentiary weight than the alleged existence of an external, phYSical world. The principle of parsimony (or Ockham's razor, if you prefer) allows us to elimi­ nate this hypothesis. There is no need to posit the existence of a supernatural force when we Call just as easily account for the existence of ideas with reference to an external world which exists apart from the cognition of some rational being X. The point is that quantity, among other things, logically entails the existence of physical objects, such that qUalltity cannot obtain apart from the existence of physical objects. Even in a world in which some rational being X happens not to exist, there is no state of affairs such that X could come into existence without the concomitant existence of physical objects, for these are neces­ sitated by the concomitant instantiation of logically necessary truths. The preceding proof can be expressed in the following syllogistic form: PI: If some rational being X exists at time T, then all logically necessary truths are instantiated; P2: The instantiation of some logically necessary h'uths is ontologically dependent on the existence of physical ob­ jects apart from the cognition of some rational being X. P3: No physical objects exist apart from the cognition of some rational being X. P4: Some rational being X exists at time T. el: Therefore, only logically necessary truths that are not ontologically dependent on the existence of physical ob­ II

N ECE'SSARY TRUTH AND EXTERNAL OBJECTS

37

jects apart from the cognition of some rational being X are instantiated at time T. C2: But this is absurd (from PI and P2).

C3: Therefore, P3 is false.

C4: Therefore, some physical objects exist apart from the cognition of some rational being X at time T. In the foregoing proof, only a few of the premises are truly controversiaL P1 seems irreproachable because its negation would entail the denial of at least some logically necessary truths, which is impossible. P2, however, depends on the aforemen足 tioned idea that certain logically necessary truths, such as the laws of mathematics, require the existence of physical objects to be intelligible. I have already addressed one possible objection to this premise; are there any others? It seems that one could deny that concepts such as quantity are ontologically dependent upon the existence of physical objects, but it is unclear exactly how this would be the case. Quantity presupposes the existence of two Xs, where X is a physical object of some kind or else an idea derived from a physical object.

The only other option is to deny the existence of cogni足 tion, in which case all physical objects exist apart from the cognition of some agent X. This option takes us beyond the purview of metaphysics and into the philosophy of mind; as such I make no attempt to deal with it here. The proof is not intended to demonstrate that all existence is reducible to physical phenom足 ena, but rather to refute the strong idealist position by demon足 strating that at least some things exist apart fmm the cognition of some rational being X. The question of whether cognition exists at all as a separate, non-physical phenomenon is left open. I should point out, however, that the general foundation of this proof, as well as its conclusions, seem perfectly compatible with a strong materialist view of mind and substance.

III. Conclusion In sum, although the instantiation of logically necessary truths is ontologlcally dependent upon the existence of some rational being X, their necessity is such that they could not be otherwise for any possible rational being X. This implies that the actual existence of any rational being X at time T brings with it the instantiation of logically necessary truths, as well as any and all preconditions which this instantiation requires. I have argued

38

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that the actual existence of physical objects is a precondition to the instantiation of at least some of these truths. Whether or not cognition stands in any real relationship to physical objects re­ mains an open question. But in the meantime, the existence of logically necessary laws provides sufficient grounds for conclud­ ing that at least some physical objects exist apart from the cogni­ tion of rational beings.

Loyola University, Chicago NOTES

I Cf., e.g., W. V. Quine. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. New

York: Random House, 1966; Ontological Relativity and Other Essays.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Quine is obviously only

one of many modem philosophers who endorse this sort of thesis.

Others worth mentioning include Gilbert Ryle, John Searle, Paul and

Patricia Churchland, etc.

2 Nathan Jun. "Truth, Language, and Derridean Skepticism." Nexus: A

Forum for Ideas, Vol. 3,3-8.

3 See, e.g., Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason. Paul Guyer,

trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

REFERENCES Ayer, AJ. "The A Priori." Necessary Truth. L.W. Sumner and John Woods, eds. New York: Random House, 1969,27-43.

Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles ofHuman Knowledge. Jonathan Dancy, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hume, David. A Treatise ofHuman Nature. P. H. Nidditch, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. P. H. Nid­ ditch, ed. New York: Clarendon Press, 1975.

Mill, John Stuart. "Of Demonstration and Necessary Truths." Neces­ sary Truth. Sumner and Wood, eds. New York: Random House, 18-26.

Pragmatism and Neo~Pragmatism, Language and

"Truth" ANDREW

J. FORNEY

ragmatism, as a philosophy, is distinctly American in nature. Originally proposed as a means for truth evalua­ tion by Peirce in the 1870's, it was formally introduced

by James as a standard philosophy at the turn of the century. Its focus on evaluative knowledge and disregard for metaphysical "Truths" set it at odds with the Continental philos­ ophy that preceded it in the nineteenth century.1 Dewey, who sought to restructure philosophy along the pragmatic lines that James had laid out, furthered the cenb:al concepts of Pragmatism in the decades following James. In recent years, pragmatism has again come to the forefront of philosophy, mainly through the work of Davidson in the philosophy of language, Kuhn in the philosophy of science, and Rorty in a more wide-ranging, social perspective (Rorty, 1989, 9-10).

While taking a somewhat more drastic, and some may claim expansionist, view of Pragmatism, Rorty, while working towards synthesis with Davidson and Kulm, does follow along its main ideas. Rorty uses language as a stepping-stone to invesligate reality, and as a result, to liberate academia from the notion of a structured teality and a tepresentational view of "Truth." Rathet, his conception of language is, by no means, that of the philosophers who supported the linguistic turn in philoso­ phy that was witnessed in the twentieth century. However, his philosophy seems to present a return to the Kantian metaphysics of the nineteenth century, a move decidedly against any Prag­ matic notion. For Rorty, language is not the key to reality, but simply a tool to describe our perceptions of reality. This claim, though, leads to radical extrapolalion on the nature of reality, again, towards Kant.

To return to the foundations of Pragmatism, James con­ sidered the main focus of his philosophy to be the delineation between "Truth" and "truth." "Truth" was, according to James, a somewhat antiquated notion. "Truth," as an entity, involved those things that a majority of persons agreed to as the way reality was. "truths," the noncapitalized variety, were those summations that involved our everyday life. He contended, however, that "Truth happens to an idea" (77). For James, the

P

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ANDREWJ. FORNEY

truth of anything does not exist solely in the world; truth, in either form, is not an existent. Rather, truths are those facts that are verified as working in the world. Those facts that could not be verified or validated would be false. liThe true," James points out, "is only the expedient in our way of thinking" (86). As Rorty summarized, for James, truth = justifiability. What could be justified in nature, or through experience, was what was true, not in the scope of an ultimate reality, but true for the experience.

(Rorty, 1991,127).

Dewey took the idea of truth and ultimate reality further.

He rejected the notion of ultimate reality as something on which philosophy had any intrinsic grasp. It was agreed that any notion of an ultimate reality would involve deliberation on a Kantian noumenal realm, one that could not be empirically verifiable.

Thus, for Dewey, ultimate reality would, in essence, be a nonen­ tity, something that could be neither proven nor disproven. In logical terms, it was an empty statement. Philosophy had to shift its focus from this noumenal realm to the verifiable world, to what could be proven as true relative to the situation in which it was present (Dewey, 1957, 23-7). Also, Dewey felt that philoso­ phy had to exonerate itself from the ideas of "progress" and "ideals." Making reference to the trend in intellectual thought .following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, Dewey points to the shift from a notion of progress in evolution to the concept of continual change in lifeforms. Operating under the idea of Darwinian evolution, philosophy had to cease perpetuat­ ing the myth that an end goal was what it intended. Rather, philosophy was a changing form, one that worked in a grouping based on time, tradition, and culture (Dewey, 1998, 42).

This is a key idea that Kuhn would later bring to the fore in the philosophy of science. Kuhn, while studying the history of scientific advancements, realized that dominant scientific theo­ ries did not show a progression. Rather, the history was indica­ tive of a series of revolutions in which one grouping of ideas replaced another in an attempt to explain or better describe reality and the world. These revolutions took place due to the natural tendency for science to expound on its theories, thus eventually leading to problems that could not be solved in rela­ tion to the dominant theory of the time. A new theory or way of thinking had to be brought forth, one that would attempt to rectify the problems that the prior way of thinking left unsolved.

PRAGMATISM AND NEO~PRAGMATISM

Later, Kuhn and Rorty would call these outdated ways of think­ ing, replaced through revolution, paradigms (Kuhn, chs. 4-8).

However, in a method removed from trends in philoso­ phy in the latter half of the twentieth century, neither James nor Dewey brings the philosophical weight of Pragmatism to bear directly on language. The dominant feature of traditional philos­ ophy following the Pragmatists was what is traditionally called the linguistic turn. During this period of philosophic thought, ontological methodology centered on language. It was felt that language held the answer to questions of ontology, epistemol­ ogy, and ultimately, existence and reality. This trend later branched off into conceptual analysis. With conceptual analysis, one felt content to ponder questions, and the language games in which tllese questions were presented, to determine the truth (Devitt and Sterelny, 280-7). This is the complete antithesis of Pragmatism; verifiability, in conceptual analysiS, had been rele­ gated to the mind and quasi-metaphysics, not to experience.

James and Dewey cannot be blamed for arriving too early to critique tllese notions, for it would appear that both of them would have largely disagreed with the majority of the concepts present in the linguistic turn, and particularly those found in the works of the conceptual analysts.

In particular, the Pragmatists would take issue with cog­ nitive verification as the only means towards truth. For the adherents of Pragmatism, it is crucial to have experiential verifi­ cation for "truths," not simply proof through idea problem­ solving that the conceptual analysts espoused. Thus, Rorty, writing after tlle linguistic turn, realized that any notions of reality and truth that he wished to posit would have to take into account language in some way. However, as a contemporary Pragmatist, it is not a stretch to assume that he would hold a deflationary view of language, one that, like the Pragmatists before him, places more of an emphasis on experience than metaphysics.

Rorty does just that by appealing to Davidson as one of the main contributors to his theory of reality and language.

Davidson has a somewhat deflationary view of language and its relation to the reality of language speakers. He posits the "passing theory" as a means to interpret the noises and gestures that each person makes. Davidson explodes the idea that lan­ guage has an intrinsic semantic quality to it. Instead, in accor­

41

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J. FORNEY

dance with his passing theory, an individual draws the meaning f sentences and words from experience and from verbal and ~onverbal context clues. Communication between individuals is too prone to misinterpretation and error,to be se~antically holi~­ tic. Rather, communication follows one s expenences and one s notions about these experiences and the relation they have to the world around them (Rorty, 1989, 11-16).

Rorty recognizes the importance of Davidson's passing theory and the implications that it holds for philosophy. Without a truly semantic quality, language is stripped of its metaphysical ability of reality solving. Rorty, in the same vein as Dewey, rejects any idea of an ultimate reality. The world around us has no intrinsic nature or essencei it is an existent that the human perceives along side itself.

This raises an interesting point in relation to language.

Rorty claims that the work of Davidson is much like that of a "field linguist" interacting with a foreign, non-English speaking tribe. Here is where we see the passing theory in action: to discern what the natives are discussing, one must deal with experiential knowledge and causation. Reference is squeezed out of the language equation. As Rorty contends, " ...Davidson is suggesting we maximize coherence and truth first, and then let reference fall out as it mayl! (1991,134).

RortyI alongside Davidson, has done away with any lin­ guistic theory of reference, and in essence, the philosophy of language. By letting reference "fall out as it may/, it would appear that language has become an almost relativistic form of communication. Reference has taken a strict Pragmatic bent; a thing's reference is determined by the expediency in understand­ ing that individuals gain by the reference-grounding that they create. Without a definite theory of reference fixing, language becomes an amorphous entity lacking any central standard against which it can be measured. This would appear to be a controversial concept. .

I Davidson s rejection of semantics, when combined with ~orty' s ideas of reality, lends itself to some interesting perspec­ tives on the nature of reality. As illustrated above in the discus­ sion of the.linguistic tum, many twentieth-century philosophers felt, an~ still contend, that language is a jigsaw puzzle, the final ?"oal bemg ~e ability. to decipher ultimate reality. Rorty, borrow­ mg from WlttgenstemI sees language not as pieces to a jigsaw

PRAGMATISM AND NED-PRAGMATISM

43

puzzle, but as a tool for the description of reality (1989, 12-13).

However, he takes a realist stance in relation to the world around him. Reality holds no mysteries for us, no clues to lead us to an ultimate goaL For there is no ultimate goal; much like Dewey's reflections on philosophy and Darwinian theory, Rorty sees lan足 guage as moving and evolving, but not towards any prescribed juncture with an overarching Truth: Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independent of the human mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own - unaided by the describing activities of human beings - cannot. (5)

The world, as an entity, exists outside the framework of the human. The individual is present in the world, exists in it as well, but is not secretly in touch with it Language, as Davidson has illustrated, is not a medium between the individual and reality. The gap between the individual and the world is not surmountable by language - or in another case, the concep t "mind" -and should not be viewed as a way to reach any conclusions about reality and the world (10).

What use, then, does language - as a tool - fulfill? Lan足 guage describes tlle reality that an individual finds herself in.

However, tlle world does not select certain words to serve as a means to describe itself. Language is a human creation. Thus, language is devoid of any knowledge of the world. And without an intrinsic nature, the world does not change, especially in regard to human values. "What does change, as history has shown, is language, as well as the ideas that language forms. As Rorty points out, " ... human beings make truths by making lan足 guage in which to phrase sentences" (9).

Rorty presents us with an interesting dilemma: if the human is separated from the world, the world holds no final goal, and language serves as a descriptive agent for the world and provides the human with "trUtllS," how do we explain the supposed progression of human history towards the eventual complete description/ understanding of the world in which it exists? Rorty claims that fuis is not progress, but a process, one that continues unabated throughout human history. Societies, intellectuals, and individuals have always sought to understand

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the world and reality around them. These have all operated in the groupings that Dewey commented on at the turn of the century and which Kuhn elucidated for the sciences, calling them paradigms. None of these have any access to the real nature of reality, but they are attempts none the less.

Rorty's conception of history is that of changing vocabu足 laries. A dominant vocabulary is in place as a means to describe reality. This reality is not "Truth," for it is still not the medium for inter-human reality communion. However, it is the "truth" for those operating in the present paradigm; it is true for the knowledge that they have present before them. This is by no means static, though. As new vocabularies arise - for instance, with new scientific findings or the advent of new scientific theories - the new vocabulary gradually infringes on the former one. There is a time of muddled definitions as the two vocabular足 ies contest with each other, until gradually the new vocabulary reaches general acceptance, thus replacing the old vocabulary: (The method) .. .is to redescribe lots and lots of things in new ways, until you have created a pattern of linguistic behavior which will tempt the rising generation to adopt it, thereby causing them to look for apparent new forms of nonlinguistic behavior. (Rorty, 1989,9)

These paradigm shifts, as termed by Kuhn, are a constant process of redescription of reality. Each new paradigm seeks a more efficient way to describe the world around it, one that attempts to solve the problems and inefficiencies of the previous paradigm (Kuhn, ch. 13). The shifting paradigms, though, get no closer to any overarching "Truth." Rather, each paradigm operates within the conceptions of language and knowledge that it has present before it. No paradigm is truer than any other - each has its own truth-value inside itself, not across paradigmatic lines (Rorty, 1989,6-7).

Rorty, following along traditional Pragmatic lines, delin足 eates between "Truth" and "truth." Truth, in both forms, are human creations, they do not exist freely in the world. Neither do they have any sort of form in the world; they exist purely as human creations and only as human creations. Thus, one can discard "Truth" - or metaphysical constants - because they draw conclusions from nature that are not there. To have "Truths," reality must have an intrinsic essence to it, an essence rejected by

PRAGMATISM AND NEO~PRAGMATISM

45

Rorty. One is thus left with "truths" relative to the paradigm in which they find themselves living. These truths are the Prag足 matic, verifiable truths that we see in relation to our experience.

And yet Rorty widens the scope of these truths: one sees in relation to her experience these truths are direct descriptions of the reality around the individual. They are not "Truths" for two reasons: first,there is no way for the individual to gain an ultimate grasp on reality, and second, without being able to grasp fully the nature of reality, they are simply operative in the paradigm in which they are present. They are bound to change, evolving in a constant state of change and upheaval (Rorty, 1989, 9; 1991, 127).

It is important here to note that although Rorty discusses paradigm shifts along the same lines as Kuhn, he does not subscribe to his notion of incommensurability, particularly in regard to the sciences. Kuhn contended that, in the time between paradigms, which he referred to as crisis, it was possible for two scientists to view the same experiment with the same results and see" two different things. Each would be operating in his or her own paradigm, thus claiming that experimental results led to different, and sometimes conh'ary conclusions. For each scien足 tist, each result would symbolize a different element; words, language itself, would thus be intrinsically and semantically different based on the experiences of each scientist. Corrununi足 cation between the two paradigms would be impossible because the same words, the same results, were indicative of differing worldviews. This was the barrier of incommensurability (Kuhn, II

146-51).

Rorty points out that incommensurability does not equate to unleamability, which thus leads to discussability. While the Aristotelian concept of the universe calU10t be directly translated into the Galilean, an adherent of one could be made to learn the other and to take it as a possible description of the working of the world. Here, Rorty takes something of a departure from the Pragmatism of James. James argued that one could claim that past theoretical concepts (Ptolemaic astronomy, Euclidean space, etc.) were "absolutely false," New developments have shown that these thinkers could have gone beyond the limits that they thought existed. Present thinkers have proven that new perspec~ tives on the world operate contrary to the past ones; for James this proves them false (86). Rorty views these inter-paradigm

46

ANDREW

J. FORNEY

valuations as invalid. "Ethnocentrism" - the idea that our con足 cept of true was created in our paradigm and cannot be applied to past paradigms - keeps the individual from being able to claim that one paradigm had a superior description of reality. Rorty would again claim that no concept of reality could ever be superior to another; all are hopelessly separated from the world and are not capable of bridging the human/world gap (1991, 46-51).

Whether consciously or unconsciously, Rorty raises an interesting, and even controversial, notion. We can start with a solidly Pragmatic idea - the world does not make facts true. Each description operates as a means to bridge the gap between the world and the human. However, this presents us with another surprising problem, one that might not typically be considered in the era of contemporary philosophy. The unbridgeable gap that Rorty claims exists between the human and the world is a similar one to that described by Kant, which he termed the division between the phenomenal (physical) realm and the noumenal (metaphysical) realm. The noumenal world was beyond our perceptions; it existed on the other side of the "wall of knowl足 edge." The noumenal realm could only be described through our rationalistic thoughts concerning it. The noumenal realm con足 tained notions that humans assumed a priori and then imposed on their reality to construct it from a blur.2 While not necessarily as strong a claim when placed alongside the realism of Rorty, Kant does recognize the significance of the metaphysical split in our reality.

Rorty discusses the same division. Yet he does not posit a means to describe his noumenal world. Instead, he claims that we are forever separated from it and it is impossible for us to ever actually fully conceptualize and understand it. His phenomenal realm is created completely from human deSign; it is the concept of the universe, or paradigm, in which we, as individuals, work.

The noumenal realm is the actual world, the world into which we have no insight. To use an almost Existential term, it would appear that the individual is alienated from the true nature of reality.

This does not appear to be of concern to Rorty. In his thinking, we should abandon any conception of a connection with the world. Humans have for centuries lived this way, shel足 tered in the worldview of their respective paradigms. Society has

PRAGMATISM AND NEO-PRAGMATISM

47

still functioned; humans have still found a sense of individual purpose or meaning" in their actions in the midst of this discon足 nectedness from the world. This conceptualization of reality brings the nature of science into question, however. If we can never bridge the gap between the human and the world, what good is continued scientific inquiry, especially if its main focus is the eventual description of the world around us?

To him, scientific Rorty doesn't completely say. advancement" is part of a great"cultural conversation" that he sees as the development of human intellectual history. Rather than focus on the metaphysical, we should focus instead on the development of human culture and the societal implications that this portends. This is not a new concept; Dewey pushed for the same shift in focus in his Reconstruction in Philosophy. As stated previously, he thought philosophy futile if its only endeavor was to sit and discuss things, such as ultimate reality, that could never be fully quantified to begin with. This left philosophy in the peculiar position of leaving the general populace assuming that they had the key to the universe, when they had but a theoretical concept of little true cash value (Dewey, 1957, 23-5).

Dewey does not appear to go as far as Rorty does, though.

While he rejected the notion of ultimate reality, he never felt that humans were separated from the exact content of the world atound them. It is safe to assume that neither James nor Dewey, nor any of the other tum of the century Pragmatists would espouse the concepts that Rorty presents to us at the end of the same century.

Rorty himself admits that what he calls "pragmatism" is more along the lines of "left-wing Kuhnianism" (1991, 38). This radical conception of reality, and the human separation from it, seems to bring the scope of philosophy back to the high-minded German metaphysicians, like Kant, with whom the Pragmatists sought to do away. Rorty has deflated the lin足 guistic turn in philosophy, while at the same time expanding the focus and range of Pragmatism from its pure form, i.e. of James and Dewey. Rorty, it would appear, seems content to expand on his foundation and rightly deserves the term neo-Pragmatist until a possible, more applicable one can be found.

II

/I

Western Maryland College

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J. FORNEY

NOTES

I See "Pragmatism" in Audi.

2 Ibid. "Kant."

REFERENCES Audi, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Dictionary ofPhilosophy. Cam足 bridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Devitt, Michael and Sterelny, Kim. Language and Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

Dewey, John. "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy." The Essential Dewey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Reconstroctioll in Philosophy. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1957.

James, William. Pragmatism. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1995.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structures ofScientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. Cambridge: The Cam足 bridge University Press, 1989.

Objectivity, Relativism, and Troth. Cambridge: The Cambridge

University Press, 1991.

Deep Problems for Bayesianism DAVID JAMES ANDERSON

n his celebrated work, An EnquinJ Into Human Understanding, David Hume produces a persuasive skeptical argument against inductive reasoning based on experience. Coupled with Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, Hume's argument presents a grand challenge to modern epistemologists.

Indeed, "challenge" accurately characterizes the true intent of Hume's seminal work. Hume does not claim to prove defini­ tively that inductive reasoning is not justified; rather, he demon­ strates the difficulty of making arguments for induction. Truly, Hume admits that it is "a man guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes, because an argument has escaped his own inves­ tigations, that therefore it does not really exist" (25).

Bayesianism purports to be this argument that has es­ caped Hume's investigations. By showing that our beliefs are consistent only if they adhere to a probability calculus, Bayesian­ ism provides a justified model for induction based on experience.

Unfortunately, when faced with Hume's exact skeptical chal­ lenge, the Bayesian model runs into some theoretical difficulties.

What's more, the Humean skeptical challenge actually exploits some deeper problems with Bayesianism. In short, because Bayesianism acts like a process of elimination with respect to certain hypotheses, Bayesianism is inherently unqualified to model inductive reasoning of any sort.

To begin, we will briefly sketch Hume's skeptical chal­ lenge. Next, we will look at the philosophical foundations of Bayesianism. Third, we will examine exactly how Bayesianism purports to justify inductive hypotheses - its successes and short­ comings. Finally, we will see exactly how the Humean challenge reveals the deeper problems of Bayesianism and how a Bayesian might respond to these problems.

I

Hume's Skeptical Challenge Hume suggests that if a hypothesis is confirmed many times in one's experience, it does not necessitate that it will be true in the future. Upon the consistent confirmation of a hypothesis in one's experience, it is natural to assume that such a hypothesis will be confirmed in the future. Truly, this sort of inductive reasoning is crucial both for science and our day-to-day survival. Hume calls

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DAVID JAMES ANDERSON

into question this reasoning by showing that it rests on an unsupported assumption: the future resembles the past. Truly inductive reasoning often takes the following form: (1) I have found the hypothesis h to be true in all past instances.

(2) The future resembles the past.

(3) The hypothesis h will be true in the future.

Such an inductive argument is valid but not sound because one cannot justify (2) without falling into a vicious circle.

As such, there is a challenge implicit in Hume's skepti足 cism that is of interest to the Bayesian. Since Hume does not think we are justified in believing that the past resembles the future, clearly a justification of inductive reasoning must warrant our inductive conclusions without implicitly assuming that the fu足 ture resembles the past. As such, it is Hume's skeptical challenge to show that the hypothesis hlOo, that a statement S will always be true is more justified than the hypothesis hI' that the statement S is only true before time t.

Accordingly, by shOWing that h100 is more justified then hf, we can justify inductive reasoning without necessarily assuming that the past resembles the future.

The Philosophic Foundations of Bayesianism As a system of justification, Bayesianism attempts to justify the supporting connections between our beliefs by showing that these connections preserve consistency. The Bayesian uses an argument from probability and betting theory to show that our belief formation must follow certain rules to be consistent. Thus, we can justify the connections between our beliefs by showing that they follow the Bayesian rules and, thus, are consistent. Put simply, the Bayesian argument works as follows: (1) Our degrees of belief can map to subjective probabili足 ties.

(2) Our subjective probabilities imply a system of odds.

(3) Certain systems of odds are subject to a Dutch Book.

(4) Odds subject to a Dutch Book are inconsistent.

(5) Certain systems of beliefs are inconsistent by syllogism of 1-4.

(6) If we form beliefs according to the axioms of probabil足 ity calculus, our system of beliefs will never be "Dutch

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYESIANISM

51

Book" inconsistent.

(7) Thus, we can justify connections between beliefs by the theorems based on the axioms of the probability calculus.

In all Bayesianism does not claim to address the regress argu足 ment and provide an ultimate foundation for belief; rather, it seeks to explain how we can justify the connections within a group of beliefs.

Observe that our beliefs in certain propositions come in degrees of certainty that we can map to numbers-subjective probabilities. Certainly, we are more confident in some beliefs than others. For example, although I might be absolutely certain that there is a pen on the desk in front of me, I may be only somewhat confident that my date will be at lunch on time.

Clearly, we naturally prescribe different levels of certainty to our beliefs. Intuitively, these degrees of. certainty can map onto an arbitrary range of numbers. As in the example above, my belief in the pen would map onto a number larger than my belief in my date's timeliness. For the Bayesian, certainty is a subjective proba足 hilittj the strength of which we measure by assigning a numerical value. One's subjective probability P in a belief h is expressed as the function P(ll). In all a subjective probability POt) is simply a measure of one's confidence in the hypothesis h.

As such, we believe that It in the sense required for knowledge when our subjective probability that h is sufficiently high. To know that h, one must truly believe, truly be certain that h. Indeed, according to the "true, justified belief" theory of knowledge, I only know that h if I believe with some level of confidence in the truth of h, and h is in reality true. My level of confidence in a belief is measured by my subjective probability; thus, if my subjective probability in h is sufficiently high, I believe that h. Determining the exact threshold at which simple beliefs become true conviction of the sort necessary for knowl足 edge will not be essential for the Bayesian argument. Rather, it is enough to show that only a sufficiently high subjective probabil足 ity that h implies that one truly believes that h.

To divert briefly from the topic, objective probabilities (as opposed to subjective probabilities) can describe "fair" betting odds. In betting, first the bookmaker offers betting odds p:b against a hypothesis It and puts the sum b into the pot. Next the punter, who has some level of confidence in h, puts a sum pinto

52

DAVID JAMES ANDERSON

the pot. Now the truth-value of h is revealed: if h, then the punter receives the pot; if -h, the bookmaker receives the pot. In SUC? a scenario, given a certain real-world probability that h, the obJec­ tively fair odds are odds that comer no advantage or disadvan­ tage to the punter or bookmaker based on this probability. For example, if the probability that h is 1/6, then the fair odds against It are 1:5 because larger rewards make up for the relatively slim chances for the punter. In other words, if the bookmaker and punter were to continue betting on h at these odds infinitely, neither person would, on average, make any money. As such, given an objective probability P(h), we can always find the objec­ tively fair betting odds P(h):l-P(/t) such that neither person is at an advantage.

Similarly, subjective probabilities can describe subjec­ tively fair betting odds. If I believe that h with a certain probabil­ ity P(It), then I should I be inclined to accept a wager at or above the "fair" betting odds for that probability. Certainly, financial considerations or personal aversion to gambling may prevent me from ever taking such a Ufair" bet; however, if I have this subjec­ tive probability, then I am at the very least deeply inclined to believe that such odds will comer no advantage to either side.

Importantly, since these are subjectively fair betting odds, these odds may not in fact be fair, but are subjectively fair to the person who holds the subjective probability. In all, just like subjective probabilities numerically represent our comidence in a proposi­ tion, they similarly represent not so much an evaluation, but a deep feeling that tends to produce these odds.

If our beliefs can be represented as subjective probabilities which, in turn, can be represented as betting odds, then our system of beliefs is equivalent to a system of betting odds.

Indeed, there is an intuitive appeal that "to possess a degree of belief, P(h), in h is actually to be prepared to bet indifferently on or against h at odds P(h):l-P(h)" (Howson and Urbach, 91). In fact, we make bets like this all the time. For example, suppose I am driving home late at night. I have a certain level of confi­ dence that I will get home safely; in other words, I have some s~bjective probability that I will get home safely. This may be different from the actual probability that I will get home safely, but it certainly is the probability that influences my decisions. In considering whether I should speed, I clearly weigh the reward (getting home earlier) with the penalty (death on 101). Certainly,

53

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYESIANISM

the penalty outweighs the l'ewal'd, but I might still be inclined to speed if my subjective pmbability of getting home safely is sufficiently high. Thus, the rewards and penalties for speeding form a sort of odds that I choose to accept based on my confi足 dence in my driving ability. Intuitively, the connection between a system of betting odds and a system of belief is clear. But if 0UI' beliefs are analogous to a system of betting odds, what does this tell us abot the nature of 0UI' beliefs?

We begin by looking at a method for judging the fairness of a system of betting odds - a method that involves the Dutch Book As explained above, we say the betting odds for a particu足 lar hypothesis are fair if they confer no advantage to either party.

Similarly, we define a system of betting odds as fair if neither party can gain an advantage fmm exploiting this system. By convention, we say that any system that is ripe to be exploited in such a manner is subject to a "Dutch Book" Put simply, a Dutch Book is a system of stakes that, given some wagers, can ensure a net l6ss for the punter-regardless of the truth-values of the hypotheses.

For example, if your fair odds for the mutually exclusive hypotheses (1, b, and (n ~i b) are 1:2. 1:2, and 1:1 respectively, then your system of betting odds is subject to a Dutch Book Given these odds, should the bookmaker ask for a bet of 2 for a, 2 for b, and 3 against (a ~) b) at these odds you will accept. However, given any possible truth-value for a and b, you will always have a net loss. We are led to conclude, even if the odds for each different hypothesis are fair, the system of odds as a whole cannot be fair. In other words, while the odds 1:2 for a and b may be fair, the odds 1:1 for (a v b) cannot be fair. Given this example, if our system of beliefs acts like a system of odds, then what does it mean if this system of beliefs is subject to a Dutch Book?

Example of a Dutch Book against the betting odds a ~1:2 b ~1:2 and (a v b)~1:1 Possibili- Your Bet ties

Gain

Loss

Net Profit

a and-b

2

4

5

-1

-a and b

2

4

5

-1

-a and -b

3

3

4

-1

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DAVID JAMES ANDERSON

The Bayesian makes a strong case that a system of beliefs subject to a Dutch Book is incoherent or at least inconsistent.

Using the previous example, the Bayesian argues that there is something inconsistent in believing Pea) = Pcb) = 1/3 and also believing Pea v b) = 1/2. Indeed, this argument has intuitive appeal. Suppose I am about 1/2 certain that David Hume had red hair, and 1/2 certain that he had brown hair. It seems, if my beliefs are consistent, that I should be quite certain that he had either red or brown hair. The Dutch Book, the Bayesian argues, tests for this sort of consistency in the connections between beliefs. Fur­ ther, according to Bayesianism, to be inconsistent is to be unjusti­ fiable. Inconsistent systems of beliefs are simply irrational. As such, the Bayesian looks for a way to create systems of beliefs that avoid the Dutch Book, and, thus, are justifiable and consis­ tent.

If your beliefs adhere to four axioms of probability calcu­ lus, then your beliefs cannot be exploited like a Dutch Book and will always be consistent. Avoiding the inconsistency of Dutch Books puts a certain set of constraints on any set of betting odds.

It follows that since our subjective betting odds map directly onto a set of subjective probabilities, our formation of subjective prob­ abilities is also constrained by the Dutch Book. According to the Bayesian, tl1ese constraints are expressed in foul' axioms of proba­ bility calculus. The Bayesian proves that if one does not obey the axioms in forming beliefs, then the resultant subjective betting odds will be subject to a Dutch Book In short, if your degrees of belief are measured by subjective probabilities, then consistency demands that they satisfy the probability axioms (79). It imme­ diately follows that for your belief in h to be justified with respect to your system of beliefs, then it must satisfy the axioms of probability calculus with respect to your other beliefs.

Consider an example concerning perception. Suppose I "know" the proposition d that there is a desk :in front of me.

When asked how I know that d, I might say that it is supported by a variety of other beliefs like "I am fairly certain that my vision is reliable," "I am certain that tables have this shape," "I am confident that there was a table here a minute ago/' "I am somewhat certain that the table did not move." Given these other beliefs, one still might ask how these beliefs (if they them­ selves are justified) justify d. In response, I can show mathemati­ cally that d is the only consistent hypothesis given my other JJ

ll

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYFSIANISM

55

beliefs and the axioms of Bayesianism. In other words, my knowledge that d is consistent with and justifiable by my set of other beliefs by the laws of Bayesianism.

Having laid down the philosophic foundations of Bayesianism, we turn now to a specific kind of connection be­ tween beliefs: induction.

The Bayesian Justification of Induction - Virtues and Vices Although Bayesianism claims to justify the connections between our beliefs, experiential induction seems to cause prob­ lems for the Bayesian picture. In the previous section, we saw how Bayesianism uses the Dutch Book to justify the connections between our beliefs. If Bayesianism truly justifies the connec­ tions between our beliefs, then it should be able to justify the connections between our belief in experience and conclusions we draw from that experience. In other words, Bayesianism should be able to justify induction. Nevertheless, while the Bayesian axioms provide a compelling account of experiential induction, they seem unable to refute the direct challenge of Hume's skepti­ cal argument. Our exploration of the Bayesian picture of induc­ tion begins with Bayes's Theorem.

Bayes's Theorem provides a justified account of certain conditional probabilities. From the axioms of probability calcu­ lus, we can derive Bayes's Theorem: P(lt I e) = Pee I h)P(h) / P(e) , In plain English, "The probability of the hypothesis given the event is equal to the probability of the event given the hypothesis times the probability of the hypothesis over the probability of the event." An addendum to Bayes's Theorem, the subjective proba­ bility that e, P(e), has a useful equivalent expression based on the Total Probability Theorem. Given a subjective probability Pee) and a set of hypothesis hl' h21 h3 ...hI! that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, the Total Probability Theorem states that the probability that Pee) = P(h 1)P(e I hI) + P(hJP(e I hJ + ... + P(hJP(e I It). Most important, by using substitution of the Total Proba­ bility Theorem into Bayes's Theorem, we get an alternate, and ulLimately the most useful, construction of the Bayes's Theorem: P(h

I e) == Pee I h) P(h) /

sum( P(h,JP(e

I h,J).

From Bayes's Theorem, the Bayesian claims to have a rule for updating subjective probabilities based on experience­ Bayesian conditionalization. Suppose P(h) is your subjective probability before experiencing e and P' (h) is your subjective

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DAVID JA~IES A:-':DERSO~

probability after experiencing e. According to Bayesianism we should set P'(h) == POl I e). This stipulation seems natural enough; indeed, if P(h I e) is your subjective probability that h given the event e then it follov.s that after the event e occurs, you should set P'(IL) to POI I e) to be consistent. Interestingly, there is some debate over whether setting P'OI) = POI I e) is actually Dutch Book justified; however, for the purposes of this paper, we will assume this assignment is justified. In all, Bayes's rule clearly gives us a model for updating subjective probabilities based on eX'Perience-induction.

For example, consider the belief that bread is nourishing.

Consider three hypotheses: 110: No bread is nourishing

hso: 50% of bread is nourishing

h 1oo: All bread is nourishing

Assume that these hypotheses are exhaustive of the hypotheses v:e are considering. Also, note that they are mutually exclusive.

Before tasting any bread, we might favor one hypothesis over the other; in any case, our subjective probabilities for all three hy足 potheses need to add up to one because this is an exhaustive set of hypotheses. The issue of assigning subjective probabilities has been much debated in Bayesian literature; however, we will just assume indifference, assigning POI,,) = 1/3. According to Bayes's RuIe, as we begin to taste pieces of bread, our degrees of belief in each hypothesis shouId change in such a way that our beliefs are consistent and mirror our own process of inductive reasoning.

Indeed, after the first taste of nourishing bread, el , our subjective probabilities change in a natural way: P'OzrJ = 0, P'OZ5rJ == 1/3, P'OZlOrJ = 2/3. As additional confirming experience is gathered, our inductive conclusion that all bread is nourishing continues to be justified by the Bayesian probability calcuIus. After four nourishing pieces of bread our subjective probability POzuxJ = 16/17 is compared to POZ5J ::: 1/17.

At first glance, Bayesianism accounts for our inductive reasoning in a realistic manner; moreover, it justifies this reason足 ing by showing that these inductive leaps create a consistent system of belief. Clearly, the example shows how confirming experience with bread bolsters our hypothesis"all bread is nour足 ishing." Indeed, where Hume believed we were unjustified in making assumptions based on experience, this Bayesian example shows that any belief system that doesn't respond to experience is

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYFSlANISM

inherently inconsistent and unjustified (except, of course, when the initial probability P(h) is 0).

Nevertheless, although the Bayesian seems to refute Hume's skeptical argument, the Bayesian model of induction fails to meet the exact skeptical challenge. In fact, the Bayesian system cannot prove that we are any more justified in believing some hypothesis will be true for all time than that a hypothesis will be true up until a certain date. To explore this possible Humean counter-example to the Bayesian argUment, we look at a similar example.

Consider again the belief that bread is nourishing. We begin by considering the same three mutually exclusive and exhaustive hypotheses, plus a fourth: ht "Bread is nourishing up until June 1." After the first taste of nourishing bread before June, el , our subjective probabilities change as follows: P'(hoY = 0, P'(h5oY = 1/5, P'(hJ = 2/5, P'(hlOoY = 2/5. As additional confirming experience is gathered, P(hJ continues to equal P(h 10oY. P(hlOoY changes by the same amount as P(hJ after each consecutive confirming experience. In the preceding example, the hypothesis"all bread is nourishing" and the hypothesis"all bread is nourishing until June" remained equally subjectively probable after each confirming experience. Certainly, if we set the priors differently, we could artificially avoid this equality.

Nevertheless, even with different priors, P(lllOO) would still change by a similar amount as P(h t) after each consecutive con足 firming experience. As proof, after each experience we will always multiply both P(l1.lOoY and P(ht) by the same quantity, ljP(e). In other words, instead of the Bayesian theories' changing the values of P(hlOoY and P(hJ to support P(h 100) and refute Hume, only the arbitrary value of the priors influences the outcome.

Clearly, to refute Hume's skeptical argument, Bayesian足 ism needs to justify our being more inclined to believe P(hlOoY than P(llJ. Hume's skeptical argument claimed that we were no more justified in believing that a hypothesis will be true for all time than we are justified in believing that a hypothesis will be h'ue up until some date. However, in everyday experience we think the former hypothesis is much more justified. Thus, to refute Hume's skeptical argument Bayesianism needs to show that P(hl00Y is more justified than P(ht) after confirming evidence.

Unfortunately for the Bayesian, the above example shows that Bayesianism does not provide this evidence and does not meet

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DAVID JAlYfFS ANDERSON

the skeptical challenge.

The Humean Counter-Example: A Larger Bayesian Problem Just like the Humean counter-example shows that Bayesianism cannot justify induction over time, we can make a counter-example against induction over other traits. Consider the hypothesis Iza that "all tennis balls are bouncy" and hb "all tennis balls except orange tennis balls are bouncy." We test tennis balls of all different shapes and sizes and they are all bouncy. In fact, just to be safe, we test tennis balls of over a thousand different colors. They too are bouncy. However, up until today we have not actually tested any orange tennis balls.

Clearly, after testing tennis balls of a thousand different colors, we know that color has nothing to do with a tennis ball's bounce.

As such, we would like to say that we know hb is false, or at least very subjectively improbable. More to the point, we would like to indu.ce that orange tennis balls are bouncy. Nevertheless, by Bayesian conditionalization, each hypothesis is equally proba足 ble-P(hJ = P(hJ. Just like in the Humean counter-example, Bayesianism does not justify induction. In light of this counter足 example, Bayesianism is clearly incapable of justifying a variety of different types of induction- the Humean counter-example is not a "special case." So how do these counter-examples work?

In general, Humean-style counter-examples work by cre足 ating a hypothesis that accords with the inductive hypothesis except with respect to the inductive leap. In the tennis ball example, we attempt to make an inductive leap-that all tennis balls are bouncy, even though we have not tested orange tennis balls. The counter-example works by identifying this inductive leap and proposing a hypothesis that accords with this induction except with respect to orange tennis balls. As such, all evidence that supports the inductive hypothesis also supports the counter足 hypothesis, hb.: thus, the hypotheses are equally justified. The Humean counter-example works in the same way. The inductive leap is to assume that because bread is nourishing in the past, it will also be nourishing in the future. The counter-hypothesis accords with this inductive hypothesis, except with respect to the future. Once again, all available evidence equally supports both hypotheses; thus, Bayesianism fails to justify induction. In all, it seems that given almost any inductive hypothesis we can create a counter-hypothesis that exploits this inductive leap and shows

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYESIANISM

induction is unjustified.

In fact, the way the Humean counter-examples work exposes a larger problem with the Bayesian system. In short, with respect to certain types of hypotheses Bayesianism acts more like a sophisticated process of elimination than a model of human inductive reasoning. To begin, we distinguish a certain type of hypothesis: "non-probabilistic hypotheses." Such a dis­ tinction between probabilistic and non-probabilistic hypotheses is a real, meaningful distinction - all hypotheses behaving in the manner described by their category.

Pee I h), where 1z is a "non-probabilistic" hypothesis, can only equal either 1/ 0, or Pee) given any event e. The hypothesis h100 in the Humean counter-example is a good example of a non-probabilistic hypothesis. Given ew a nourishing piece of bread, peen I /twoJ will always be 1. Similarly, given ep' a non­ nourishing piece of bread, Peep I 1z 10oJ will always be O. Pee I hlOoJ = Pee) only in the case where e and h100 are probabilistically independent-they have nothing to do with each other. For example, if e; signifies daisies growing in the garden," the conditional probability of P(el I hlOoJ = P(eJ. Clearly, by the axioms of probability Pee; I hlOoJ Pee; 1\ hl00J / P(JZ10oJ. Further, because when a and bare probabilistically independent, Pea 1\ b) = P(a)P(b), it follows that P(el I 1z 100J = P(eJP(JIlOoJ/P(hlOoJ = P(eJ. Most importantly, lzlOo represents a non-probabilistic hypothesis because Pee I lz100J cannot equal anything besides 1, 0, or Pee) given any event e. More to the point, Pee I h100J can never equal .5 or .3 unless, of course, e and h100 are probabilistically indepen­ dent. So how do non-probabilistic hypotheses behave in the Bayesian system?

Given a set of mutually exclusive non-probabilistic hy­ potheses, one's subjective probabilities in these hypotheses can only (1) remain unchanged, (2)rise at a constant rate across all hypotheses, or (3) go to zero based on a single event. First, one's subject probabilities in a non-probabilistic hypothesis remain effectively unchanged when all events are probabilistically inde­ pendent of tlle hypothesis. In such a scenario, Pee I h) = Pee).

When this result is applied to Bayesian conditionalization, P' (h) = P(ll). Second, one's subjective probabilities rise at a constant rate across all hypotheses when all events accord with the hypothe­ ses. For example, consider two non-probabilistic hypotheses: hr all red balls are bouncy and h. all balls are bouncy. Every time 11

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D AVID JAMES ANDERSON

we experience er, a red bouncy ball, P(e r I hr) = P(e r I hJ = 1.

Thus, our subjective probabilities of P(h r) and P(hJ rise at the same rate. Finally, one's subjective probabilities in a non­ probabilistic hypothesis can go to zero given a single event. In the case of h 100, all bread is nourishing, eating just one piece of non-nourishing bread, epr fully eliminates this hypothesis. P(e p I hlOoJ = 0 so P' (hlocJ == o.

The unfortunate implication of these observations is that, with respect to non-probabilistic hypotheses, Bayesianism be­ haves like a sophisticated process of elimination. Consider a set of non-probabilistic hypotheses (hI" .h lO ) with equal prior proba­ bilities (P(h,J = 1/10). Inevitably I experience events that affect my subjective probabilities in these hypotheses. If the event is in accordance with some of my hypotheses h 1 ••• h9, then I increment my subjective probability in these hypotheses equally across hI" .Ils. If the event is counter to a hypothesis h10l I eliminate the hypothesis and set P(hlJ = O. Observe that this is essentially a process of elimination. As events come in, I either eliminate a hypothesis, leave its subjective probability unchanged, or adjust the subjective probability equally to all others. Indeed, I can never encounter an affirming event that will cause my subjective probability of P(h 1) and P(hJ to rise at different rates. Instead, P(h 1) and P(hJ either rise at the same rate, or I eliminate a hypothesis.

In a process of elimination, all hypotheses remain relatively equally attractive that have not been proven otherwise by the evidence at hand. Clearly, with respect to non-probabilistic hypotheses, Bayesianism behaves similarly to a process of elimi­ nation.

• A system capable of induction needs to support subjective probabilities that can change at different rates given the same evidence. As shown above, for Bayesianism to justify induction, it needs to show that an inductive hypothesis is justifiably more subjectively probable than the counter-inductive hypothesis. For instance, in the Humean counter-example, to justify induction, Bayesiarusm needs to show that P01J < POZlOJ given the same evidence and the same priors. Truly, any system capable of supporting induction needs to support subjective probabilities growing at different rates given the same evidence.

Because a process of elimination does not support subjec­ tive probabilities changing at different rates given the same evidence, it seems that Bayesianism is inherently unqualified to

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61

justify induction of non-probabilistic hypotheses. As shown above, the Bayesian system operates like a sophisticated process of elimination with respect to non-probabilistic hypotheses. As such, Bayesian conditionalization will always grow subjective probabilities at the same rate, except to fully eliminate a hypothe­ sis. Nonetheless, an inductive system needs to grow subjective probabilities at different rates - exactly what Bayesianism, as a process of elimination, can't do. In alt this deep relation between Bayesian conditionalization of non-probabilistic hypotheses and a process of elimination lies at the heart of Bayesianism's inability to justify induction.

One might object that even if the Bayesian handling of non-probabilistic hypotheses is inherently unqualified to handle induction, the Bayesian handling of probabilistic hypotheses does not suffer from the same problem. We defined non­ probabilistic hypotheses as those hypotheses that when consid­ ered as condition probability Pee I h) returned 1,0, or Pee) for any e. However, probabilistic hypotheses like "50% of bread is nour­ ishing" or "only two pieces of bread are nourishing" can yield Pee I 11.) = [0..1]. In other words, probabilistic hypotheses can change at different rates given the same evidence. As such, it seems that tlle Bayesian handling of probabilistic hypotheses might not be so "inherently unqualified" to handle induction.

Although Bayesianism certainly does not act like a pro­ cess of elimination with respect to probabilistic hypotheses, Bayesianism is still unsuited to justify induction of probabilistic hypotheses. Observe that probabilistic inductive hypotheses like hso' "50% of bread is nourishing," all have an inductive leap. For 1150, the leap is the assumption that because 50% of bread was nourishing in the past it will continue to be so in the future.

Dsing the same method described above, we can formulate a hypothesis that exploits this inductive leap - h" 50% of bread will be nourishing until tomorrow when no bread will be nourishing.

Once again, the subjective probabilities of the two hypotheses change at the same rate given the same evidence. In all, certainly the subjective probabilities of probabilistic hypotheses do not necessarily change at the same rate given the same evidence (like they do with non-probabilistic hypotheses); nevertheless, we can still construct two hypotheses that do, in fact, change at the same rate given the same evidence up to a point. Thus, even proba­ bilistic hypotheses are subject to Humean counter-examples to

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DAVID JAMES ANDERSON

induction, though not for entirely the same reasons.

One might also object that non-probabilistic hypotheses can, in fact, be construed to change at different rates. Certainly, when e signifies eating a nourishing piece of bread pee I hl0d because given that all bread is nourishing, it follows that every experience of eating bread will be nourishing. Similarly, pee I hJ also equals one because assuming it is before June all bread must be nourishing. However, perhaps we can interpret P(e I hJ such that it does not equal one. If we consider e not as eating nourishing bread right now" but as eating nourishing bread in general" then pee I ht) is certainly less than 1. Consider that hI means that only the bread before June will be nourishing. Fur足 ther, I will experience eating bread both before and after June.

Thus, "the probability that bread will be nourishing given the hypothesis" might be interpreted as "the probability that my experience of eating bread will be before June." Given that I will have experiences of eating bread before and after June (in fact, my next experience might be after June), this probability will certainly be less than 1. Most importantly, if P(e I hJ < 1 then P(hJ and P(7!lOoJ change at different rates - supporting induction.

Nevertheless, whether or not this interpretation of P(e I hJ makes sense, the inconsistencies this interpretation raises in the overall Bayesian system show that P(e I hi) cannot be less than one. If we consistently interpret e as the general experience of eating bread," we are bound to have inconsistent beliefs.

Suppose we eat a piece of non-nourishing bread before June.

With this interpretation of e as a general experience, we are committed to believing that hi even though hI is definitely false.

In short, such an interpretation inevitably leads us to a situation where we have a P(71J that is above 0 even though we have eaten non-nourishing bread before June.

In concluding, certainly Bayesian conditionalization pro足 vides a compelling story of how our beliefs can be justified given certain relevant experiences. Nevertheless, because Bayesian conditionalization of non-probabilistic hypotheses behaves like a process of elimination, it is inherently unqualified to justify inductive logic. In all, by identifying the deep Bayesian problems that give Humean counter-examples their force, we have defined more precisely the task ahead for the defender of justified induc足 tion.

II

II

1/

Stanford Universittj

DEEP PROBLEMS FOR BAYESIANISM

REFERENCES Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Phi足 losophy. Donald Cress, trans. fudianapolis: Hackett, 1998.

Eannan, John. Bayes or Bust?,' A Critical Examination ofBayesian Confirmation Theory. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992.

Howson, Colin, and Peter Urbach. Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach. Los Angeles: Salle Open Court, 1989.

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. fudi足 anapolis: Hackett, 1998.

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